Author: KlatooBaradaNikto

A principle that is used extensively in engineering systems,redundancy,in effect,says don’t put all your eggs in one basket.Nature itself uses this to create diversity in all plant and animal life.

Given this universal principle, it is amazing that the fever for globalization has been recklessly adopted by many richer countries.Their use of GMO foods is a good example which destroys the diversity of plant life leading to many suicides among farmers in India.

I think globalization to ensure profits for big corporations is a great danger and could lead to a catastrophe that Rumsfeld called “unknown unknowns”.

In effect,we must create a firewall so that local economies can thrive without exposure to the vagaries of the global markets.That will be our protection.

What Chris Bowers’ proposal of whipping up   public anger to make big institutions responsive to the public
is up against is the lure of the sinecure that brings most of congressme to their “profession”.The lobbyists and their financial patrons have got this territory covered and those congressmen who play by the rules of these financial patrons can expect a steady stream of fundsthat would ensure his survival over the long term,which is precisely what attracts them.

This why I think Emmanuel Cleaver’s statement is significant.Even though he was rattled by the emergence of public anger at the AIG misdeeds,he went back to being a coward,in his own words because he wanted a long term sinecure,like all of them.

That explains a lot to me.

Congressman Dennis Kucinich wants Sy Hersh’s assertion about the Bush WH operating black assassination squads,accountable to no one,a practice if proven would represent a new level of barbarism.

IMO,this shows the two strands of thought in American public life.The American people,by and large,devoted to their economic concerns and the well being of their children,stay away from imperial delusions.In fact,they have powerful motivations to avoid foreign wars because it is their children that fight and die.

The other strand is  represented by an elite that seeks hegemony worldwide and wants to achieve this by state-of-the art military force.One method Bush and Cheney hve devised is to nullify American Democracy before and after demonstration elections so that their hegemonic dreams can proceed regardless of the expressed wishes of the American people.If this situation becomes a permanent fixture of the American political landscape,say goodbye to that this country stands for.

Two weeks ago, IBM announced that it plans to shift all operations to India and offered US workers the chance to move to India if they would adapt to Indian wages.Cisco,another heavy hitter in the networking sphere,after announcing that it is planning major cutbacks,also announced moves to India and China.The pharmaceutical have already climbed aboard this train,moving research work in drugs to India to contain their spiraling costs.

Technology Review,MIT’s prestigious journal predicts that in the next ten years 36 million jobs in technology related fields will move to India,decimating an already reeling middle class.This is the kind of calamity that Paul Craig Roberts has been predicting for quite sometime now.As manufacturing moved to China,economists crowed that this need not worry us because we are the leaders in high technology and the best jobs will stay in US.That now sounds like a mirage.

A long age of suffering is upon us because there are now many more competitors who are gaining strength through their educational systems.They have also learned the American trick of empowering the people with capital and encouraging their enterprise.And they can do all this at fraction of our costs.All this bodes ill for our own economy.

One of the tenets of our automotive industry is that given cheap fuels,the automobile will come roaring back generating employments in the millions and restoring private and public financial heath.

There are two problems with this belief ,IMO.First , the American public’s purchasing power has been decimated in the past twenty oddyears by the deliberate impoverishment of the middle classes.We are now looking at a situation not unlike that of the Soviet Union where  consumers who did not have any money to buy anything with were given tantlizing glimpses of what stylish clthes, scents and shoes would look like.

The second problem with this idea is that simply switching from fossil fuels to electricity would bring people out in droves to buy the new cars.Those who have spent hours on clogged roads and highways do not expect that experience to change any.

This is why in spite of GM’s perennial boast that it has an ace in the hole with an electric car looks like an empty one and its nose dive in the market and the collapse of its stock price are omens.

By now all of us know the reach of the auto industry in our society.Fully one fifth of the jobs in this country is in some way or other tied to the auto industry.It is on the strength of this industry and its reach that the US got prosperous.Conversely, if that industry vanishes, we are likely to see the impoverishment of many communities from coast to coast.

For a society already poised on a knife edge as a result of years of accumulating debt, removing the prop provided by the auto industry is likely to topple the house of cards built by the financial industry unleashed by Alan Greenspan’s bubble blowing with other people’s tax money.

The  disappearance of the auto industry will savage the tax base of many communities which use the tax base to issue municipal bonds that finance road construction, hospital upkeep,police and fire services, the essential services that are needed by any community.Ironically, the contraction of the tax base will hit even the Wall Street firms that specialize in bond issues bringing down their fortunes.

The wizards of Wall Street who set about destroying the health of communities and states to enrich themselves have dispalyed all the wisdom of a man who saws off the limb of a tree on which he is perched.

In looking at the plight of the auto,banking and housing industries,it occurred to me that the agricultural subsidies of many years ago might offer a model for us to climb out of this mess.

Remember that most of these problems have been created,in the end, by overcapacity.Too much money in the hands of bankers;too many cars produced by the auto industry and of course, too many homes built by the homebuilders.

The remedy:Government stockpiling of all these goods and services.

The government should have a budget to simply buy excess auto inventories, homes and even soak up the money supply when it becomes too much.

The success of the agricultural subsidies in propping up the prices of grain is a good example.We should simply let this become our national bailout plan for anything and everything that causes dislocations in our economy.

From the very beginning,it was clear that Obama was favored by a faction of American jews who were getting tired of the steady drumbeat of war by the likes of Perle,Feith and Kristol.That suppport is now out in the open after the discreet and decent interval of the election season.The appointment of Rahm Emmanuel,the jockeying for power among Richard Holbrooke,Dennis Ross says that a new group of intellectuals is stepping forward to assist Obama in solving the problems in the Middle East.

Obama also has the support of many powerful Jewish business and political leaders who want a different approach to the problems.The Pritzker family in Chicago,which has been very forthcoming in its support to Obama comes to mind.

I believe that this will strengthen Barack Obama’s hand in dealing with  the Palestinians in a spirit of give and take.The great advantage Obama has over past American administrations is that the color of his skin makes him immune to attacks by the Arabs as a white colonial master perpetuating the dominance of the Europeans.

I am hoping Obama will recognize this and see the opening for a new day of peace in the Middle East.

Last week the grim reaper was at GM’s door.It had bled nearly 2.5 billion dollars in the last quarter and had just enough cash on hand to get by till the end of 2008.

That was the signal for GM’s arrogant and incompetent management to go with hats in hand to Washington to seek a bailout.The Democrats, led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, were sympathetic but want to wait for a signal from the new President elect before they set the wheels in motion for a bailout of the auto industry.

There is a very strong reason not to proceed with this.

THE WORLD IS NOW AWASH IN CARS.Atleast sixteen million more cars are being produced than there are customers for them each year.And more cars are being added each day.In effect, cars are becoming commodities and profit margins are under assault from a worldwide glut of cars.

So no matter what cost cutting is carried out at the margins, the industry will be starved for profits and will be living from hand to mouth for a long time.In effect,the plight of the steel industry about two decades ago has moved up the food chain.

This validates the marxist analysis of capitalist contradiction.That the ruthless efficiency practised by capitalist economies carries within it the seeds of its own destruction.

If Shakespeare were alive today, he would write “Our fault, Dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but our ruthless eficiencies’

So, the more we worship profits the more we plant the seeds of our destruction.

As Barack Obama inches ever closer to his rendezvous with destiny,these thoughts came to mind:

1. Within two generations this nation has had two great leaders,Martin Luther King and now Barack Obama provide the transformational leadership that shreds the hate filled past and ushers in a future that makes Martin’s vision of a color blind society a reality.

2.By embracing this change, America announces to the world it is still the one place where change is possible.

3.Ben Wattenberg at one time called us the First Universal Nation.When he uttered those words, it sounded pompous.Not any more. We truly have become the First Universal Nation.

4.With the ascension of Barack Obama,it will be possible for us to achieve everything that we have failed to achieve with military might.

How fortunate can one nation be?