Category: Politics and Economics

  • Guns and the USA: No Comment!

  • US Default looms large as Politicians squabble

    I turned on Meet the Press at 8am Pacific time this morning to see one of the Gang of Six declaring that he would not agree to severe cuts in spending so long as President Obama insisted on raising taxes for the wealthy. I had to shake my head and clear my thoughts as my…

  • Looking at Sovereign Debt

    I am in Heathrow on my way to Cape Town for the World Cup. Sitting in the lounge I was watching Japan v Cameroon on the TV and, as the game was boring, began to read the Independent newspaper. Then this graphic caught my attention.

  • Rebooting a nation – not impossible it seems!

    The news of Barak Obama’s election victory, inevitable as it has seemed for weeks, if not for months, has barely sunk in. Commentators as diverse as George Bush and The Reverend Jessie Jackson are agreed about one thing – Americans (and I am now one) should be proud of themselves for electing an African-American as…

  • My prediction for the general election

    I used the USA Today vote tracker today. Here’s where I came out in my predictions. I hope I’m close 🙂 Having said that Obama is clearly the “lesser of 2 evils”. I don’t agree with a lot of what he says. Particularly his belief that the US should send more troops to Afghanistan and…

  • Economic Crisis, Financial Crisis, Debt Crisis? Is USA Inc finished?

    You know the old saying – Bulls make money, Bears make money and Pigs get slaughtered. Well, take a look at this graph from the World Bank: It seems like Iceland is Pig number 1. Look at who is number 2! The chart is measuring domestic credit as a % of GDP, or the extent…

  • From the BBC

    Kofi Annan’s comments yesterday have created a fuss. The BBC reports: Authorities in the UK, Australia, Poland, Bulgaria and Japan also rebuffed Mr Annan’s claims. Australian Prime Minister John Howard described the UN as a “paralysed” body and said it was incapable of dealing with international crises. Clearly both Annan and Howard are right, but…

  • UN Chief says Iraq war was illegal!

    Iraq war was Illegal and breached UN charter, says Annan. Too little too late I fear. The UN is now irrelevant. This is a bad fact for the US and the UK who now need it to help them in post-war Iraq, but that’s really just too bad. The UN has been revealed as a…

  • “All the people I had shared my shelter with were dead!”

    An amazing piece of journalism and a compelling story of the reality of Iraq. The day after US helicopters killed many civilians – purportedly to save a Bradley fighting vehicle from being exposed to “the enemy” an eye witness, a British journalist from The Guardian, tells what happened. It’s amazing to me that the Democratic…

  • Russia Too!

    Also from the Times of London Click Here Putin taunts Blair: Is Saddam sitting in a bunker ready to blow the whole place up with WMD? From Rosemary Bennett and Robin Shepherd in Moscow PRESIDENT Putin scuppered Tony Blair’s efforts to repair Anglo-Russian relations after the Iraq war by challenging him and President Bush to…