₦airaland Forum

I'm afraid, that's exactly where it will lead, each nation formulating protectionist rules over its economy. Trade barriers will again be instituted which will stifle imports, capital growth and global cooperation. I fear particularly for India, Brazil, Korea, they will be caught in the middle of many tariff rules that could crumble their global aspirations.

Tayo,

I concur with your view. He is hyper- elevated by faithful followers who cannot bear to see him make any mistake and they forget that he is human and prone to imperfection. I do believe he (The President) desires to lead with sincerity of heart and an open hand policy. If caught between defending his personal integrity and standing up for political gain, he will not hesitate to do away with political expediency. He has some values that I find unacceptable but this is not one of them. In this matter of vetting, Obama is not culpable, though he took the beat for Daschle when he admitted error.

I love Clinton but she was hurriedly confirmed before full inspection was done on the possibility of conflict of interest with Bill's global work. Her nomination is questionable and should either have been delayed pending full revelation or she should have been replaced for the position.

Tim Geithner said this was a honest mistake. No, this was a deliberate tax evasion and he should never have been confirmed. Tim Geithner was worse of a political burden than Eric Holder in his capacity as AG, given the accusation against his nomination.

Obama's political team - the folks in White House that managed both the vetting process and the transition are a bunch of freaks for dropping the ball so many times on so many cabinet post candidates for the same errors. They are the ones that "screwed up", not their Boss.

What's going on with the vetters?

. . . first it was Geithner,
. . . then Daschle,
. . .then Nancy Killefer and now we have
. . .Hilda Solis.

Rep. Hilda Solis is the California lady picked for Labor Sec. It's announced that her nomination is put on hold because her husband had tax lien.

I believe President Obama's political team should take the remaining nominees through the vetting process again and vouch them before they go through nomination steps. This is embarassing given President Obama's principles on the job.

I hear you LOUD and CLEAR!!

@Post,

This is like white racism in South Africa all over again. Except the parties and the regions are different. US was subsidizing apartheid and sharing technology with the racist regime. We have come full circle. It's a shame!

Israel should not need any outside sponsorship to guide it forward on how to end this conflict. The Jews have earned enormous experience from history and their conscience, particularly reflecting upon their tragedy in Europe, should be their moral compass forward.

Both sides have faults but the Palestinians have not been through hell like the Jews have but in the hands of the Jewish state itself; this single inequity serves as a deterrent that should warn Israel to settle this conflict quick. When you oppress an opponent, you end up empowering them beyond imaginations!

In summary, for every $1 spent in the stimulus allocation, x, y & z cents will go to foreign trade partners locked in a free trade treaty with US. China will be the biggest benefactor. Interesting!!

@Post,

Africa has investments.  What we lack is socialism.

Hardly does anyone post hot news items from other regions of the world beside Africa, America and Middle East. If you live in any of the regions in the topic share your political news with us.

Sell the wide screen tv to David, he is intimidated by your numbers and theories.

I don't care how you dice it Ibime, common wisdom is against your tell tale. Go back to your responses and reviw them against my responses on this topic. Consistently, everyone that have common sense have said the human element is a greater factor in the success or failure of the stimulus than say application of a theoretical solution. Which part of that do you not understand?

Yeah, I lost some money dear. But it's limited to the odds on his retaining office, everything else as predicted is still standing okay, I will regain the loss on his criminal trial. Some of the stakes are long term and may not even mature for another 4yrs, depending on when trial starts and how long it takes to wind up. That's beneficial because the longer it stands the more people join in and raise the stakes even higher. It's just like stock trading - loose some gain some.


Ibime,

I don't water ski, I don't ice ski, I do not motorcross. . .I consider it wild and risky but I respect the guys who take the risks of adventure and enjoy those sports. Sometimes they fall and get hurt only to return soon after and continue their hobby. They have experience and exposure that I can never have. They have touched places and enountered life boundaries that I can only fantasise about. That's the way you have to take this INTRADE loss.

My forecast was strong on his impeachment. What you are looking at is a dangerous territory. A Senate trial that bars witnesses! I did not fathom that could ever happen and that was my miscalculation. But this is my territory, not yours and you can only fantasize about the ifs and buts, but you can never touch what I have encountered nor experience the boundaries I have laid foot on in POLITICAL ANALYSIS & PROSPECTING.

I am a Sheperd and you are still a sheep. A lot of what you read in the news, beside what is directly sourced from government, are taken from chatters and trends in political blogs and event forecasts. If I ask you to name 5 top outcomes for the newly enacted Guantanamo order you cannot. A person that attempts the test and fails at it is better than one is intimidated by it. Using my earlier analogy, the skier that fell and was hurt is better than me, intimidated by the risks. So until you can be like me and give predictions, shut up and continue to play Nintendo!!

Moremi, . . Moremi, Ooohhh, that S-O-B!  

He should have taken his ass to the doggone senate and defend his case.  Oh somebody help me, I lost $800 in my placement.  I should get a grip of his crazy hairdo.  

I will be back later. . . need to check something.

Of course it's about punishment. To exact justice you've got to implicate punishment wrongdoing. And if you're taking money from someone because of something their forefathers did, how is this not punishing them for those earlier sins imbalances?

It's only applicable to US citizens. Africans have no rights under the US Constitution

.

Exactly the point! The African slaves were not accorded US citizenship. So US has an obligation to define their presence on its soil. What were their human status?

Yes, because there's the chance that they are still alive. But the slave owners of 140 years ago are dead. The comparison is irrelevant.

I'm not talking about relevance. I am talking about legal precedence and customs of the land.

Again, you're talking about recent history. The IRS will not levy on estates of estates which would be the case here.

If you drive around the streets of America you will see companies that advertise their brand with pride of season "Established since 1801, The Pride of America". If you were established in 1801 we want to know your business back then. It is possible that you still owe wages to slaves that tilled your cotton plantation. We are not asking for money, we just want to know if you owned slaves, that's all. It's all for record keeping!

Then you're no better than them. But let's get one thing straight here - there are degrees of punishment and you're still advocating one. Financial forfieture for something your great great -grandfather did 140 years ago is a punishment.
But open up that can of worms and you indict the whole human race. Who doesn't have somebody in their ancestry who hasn't committed a crime for which compensation couldn't be claimed in your scenario?

Nobody is advocating punishment or penalty against anyone but you. You keep drawing that inferrence. Is that what you want. money? We are not discussing crime here. We are exercising imaginations and learning by way of discussion of a topic of interest. That topic happens to be Reparations. Next time it could be "Colonialism - what the white man stole". You feel me?

You can't. Some things are beyond redemption or healing and slavery is one of those things. It's something that has to be faced, remembered, stopped from ever happening again, but it can't be reconciled in any way other than by the healing process of time.

. . .or by the accelerated intervention of well intended discussions and debates.

Again, of course it's about guilt. If there was no guilty party there would be absolutely no basis for a claim for compensation. The problem is that the guilty party is long gone. Reparations can't be made on that basis. No guilty party, no-one to claim compensation from.

Guilt is a burden on the conscience. It's not just the descendants of slaves that need healing. The descendants of slave owners need it more. They need to release the guilt of self-recognition for the atrocities commited against humanity bytheir forefathers. Paying an award for the damages of those atrocities in effect become a therapy for them and they can move on in peace.

For all doubters on the claim that Ibime is yarning nonsense here. . .

So what can we say about the outcome of this tug-of-war between the forces of expansion or deflation? Only one thing for certain: no economic forecaster will predict what happens in the next year correctly, except by chance. This is not because economists are stupid, but because computer models they use are based on past experience - and at a time of unprecedented upheavals, computer forecasts are of no use.

Does this mean that all economics is useless? Not at all. But it does mean that we should not trust any quantitative forecasts produced by computers and return instead to qualitative reasoning about society and human nature. This is how the word economics was understood by Adam Smith, Joseph Schumpeter and Maynard Keynes and why the subject was called “political economy”. These great economists never claimed to be able to predict the future. What they tried to do instead was to shed light on the social processes and political and psychological pressures that lead to the creation or destruction of wealth.

I usually don't rely on news pundits but his claim of expertise on Keynesian theory and economics principles is an insult. Well here is a quote from participant at Davos and the . For more of this go here. . .

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/anatole_kaletsky/article5607339.ece

When you get there read the credits on the author, Anatole. He discredits Ibime as nonsense and warns not to buy his wide screen tv.

Ibime, don't mind me. I love my brother as I love myself.

It existed in name only when compared to the entity that exists today. As you've stated, there was the Confederacy and the Union. They were in effect, two different countries with different laws and governmental systems.

Their existence was one. But like I said its a dynamic discussion. Wait till we get into who, when and how to discuss culpabilities.

You claim that descendants are liable but this is a very, very tenuous argument. Firstly the moral aspect is questionable - punishing people for the actions of their forefathers is treading on very dangerous ground. Secondly, the practicalities of such a claim are beyond action - how do you judge which descendant should pay what? What if the descendant is someone whose forefathers only owned one slave but who is now immeasurably rich? What if the descendant is someone whose forefathers owned hundreds of slaves but who now lives in a shack by the Mississippi? How do we even know who did what? And if you claim from the US government itself to give money to Africa, you're taking taxes paid in part by the descendants of slaves!!
The variables make the question of compensation irrelevant.

Nobody is punishing anybody. It is exacting justice against the actions of their forfathers. This belief is addressed in the US constitution and demands that people be given due process. There are people on fugitive lists for crimes committed in the 40s and I bet you if the government can find them now they will exact justice against them. If they owed money, I guarantee you IRS will levy their estate and draw the amount plus penalties and interests. Is this not true? Likewise you must exact justice against those forefathers who sought to protect the innocence of their sons and daughters but violate that of the slaves. Punishment it will be if you pack their descendants and lock them up or take them through the same tragedies that their forefathers visited upon another human. But here, thats is not the objective. The objective here is to reconcile the ethics with the obligations and see if anyone was hurt in the process. If they were, how do you heal them?

But let's say that we can overcome all of that and that we have a guilty party who we can make pay. Who then do we get him to pay out to?

Its not about guilt. Rather, it is a lesson for better understanding. We can discuss payment when we get to that point in the discussion. This is not it.

lmao! Oh my God!! David, if you don't know what to say please stop sticking foot down your throat. Listen to this statement. . .

you dont really say anything. u're just piggy backing on others to claim that as your point. Ibime has been asking you to clearly state your points and u've been dodging since. I'm not an economist so you wont catch me posting here but i wont couch my ignorance in flowery words either.

Do you see anything wrong with it?

It's not about ignorance, you sheep. Hahaha. . .oh, Oritshe me be o! I am not an economist either. Keynesian theory is all over the web and the blogs. You don't need to be an economist to discuss it but you need to understand fundamentals of economy and statistics. This is not issue of ignorance. . . I just refuse to allow a self-claimed economist to pass smoke across my eyes and sell me a box full of bricks as a wide screen television.

But you don't understand anything like that. . . you are intimidated by Ibime's nonsense. You let him use numbers to scare you. Go siddon somewhere boy!!

No. There's a major problem with the comparison and that's because it's based on two different cultures, thousands of miles apart. We can't say that there are "levels" of slavery that reparation should be adjusted to accordingly. By doing that, we run the risk of giving some justification to less severe examples when the truth is that all slavery is equally as abhorrent.

Slavery is abhorrent in our society today. In the past ages it was not. It was to them what securities and exchange is to us today. The vessels were insured, the crew were contracted, the cargo was insured, . . . you are talking about a vast system of international trade. The ship owner in England who lost his vessel in the storm across the Gulf of Mexico is not going to dimsiss it as a loss thousands of miles away. He will get his coverage reimbursed by the insurance company. Right? The slave cargo that went down with the ship will be reimbursed per head count. Right? So why should reparation not be accounted for in those same level of record keeping, regardless of the culture or the distance away?

And as I've already stated, some of the nations that those cultures were based in don't even exist nowadays.
You can't claim compensation from the US because the US didn't exist. You can't claim from the UN because you're then asking innocent people who had no party to slavery to pay compensation. You can't claim from individuals because they can't be held responsible for the actions of their anscestors.

US was in existence when the trans-African slave trade occurred. UN is not in the equation at all. You can claim from individuals and the estate they have inherited. If the descendant of Confederate soldiers can claim legacy of the American civil war, then he can equally be made liable for the atrocities of his ancestor in that era of American history. Beside there are corporations in America that are as old as the nation itself and were active participants in the economies of slavery. What is their involvement?

Lagosboy stated earlier that modality of payment is not an issue but unfortunately it is the issue. Even if you can make a concrete claim that money is owed, you've got to have the payee and the receiver otherwise there's no legal case to answer

True and I added that this is not a demand for reparation but a discussion to better understand. It's a mental exercise to unravel and share in understanding. I wish we could hold such discussions going forward and just dive into issues about Africa and come up with ideas for the way forward. Won't you agree?

I believe it was Ibime who talked about govt buying bad assets with the hope it brings a return in the future! If such assets have potential for such, investors and enterprenuers will go for them big time. Isn't that what investors do? Buy cheap now while selling at a higher price in the near future! That the govt has to buy the assets reveal one of two things. Either the assets have not yet reached their bottom in the opinion of investors, or investors are not willing to take a risk knowing that the govt's actions suggests unfair competition and an undue interference by the govt. Enterprenueship does not thrive in a situation where the govt picks winners and losers.

And let's not forget one thing. Govts make decisions to gain political capital. So I do agree with you guys that there will be a multiplier to that govt spending. The question however is if the multiplier will be experienced finanacially by the tax payers who will pay for the spending or by the politicians who stand to gain through succumbing to special interests!

Tayo,

END OF STORY! I'm done with it!! But I promise to give him the link when his news pundits come around to common sense and admit what you and I see in their rhetorical analysis of Keynesian theory. They act like if you don't support Keynesian then you don't understand it. What is complex about Keynesian theory? The analogy is that of a car. Everyone loves to own it but you can get behind the steering and drive responsibly or you can do otherwise and crash it into a tree, either way you are still a car owner; it just depends on whether its still drivable or is out in the junkyard.

Our economic problem is not understanding Keynesian theory but rather understanding human behavior that will be responsible to implement the spending and making sure that the methods go ahead of the allocations. Simple!

Let's consider some scenarios.

scenario 1. An African owns another African as slave.

What are the guiding principles that protect the security of that slave? We will need to review the customs and traditions of the land in which the slave and his owner lived. In that land were slaves allowed liberties that were at par with that of a free person? I have heard that slaves in Africa back in those days were given hearing by the King to state their grievances against the owner. Is slavery a lifetime tenure or does it end when the contract of service expires? Is slave allowed marriage with free persons and who owns the child, the parents or the slave master?

scenario 2. An American white owns an African slave.

What securities does that slave have under the law of the land? Is he accorded same liberties as a free person, can he get audience in court to state his claims against his owner, can he draw contractual agreement with his master or is he a slave for life? Can he marry persons of free birth and does their child belong to them or to the master?


This is just a touch on the surface without going into it at length. You see, using this comparative analogy you can draw out the ethical violations and claim that as the basis for the damages.

Slavery itself as an institution is usually not the focus of high talk on reparation. It is the abuses that went with it. I will give you an example with what's going on in the financial market today. It is common and accepted practice to trade stocks and invest in the financial market and no one is questioning the morality and the ethics of the practice until it blew in our face and we begin to see how investment managers have swindled people and abused the trust to enrich themselves, sometimes totally wiping out many many years of family savings and livelihood. Well, in future would these victims be entitled to an award for the damages they incurred from mismanagement on Wall street? The damage is not for the institution of investment but rather for the mismanagement of the trade and the unethical practices of corporations and regulators that allowed it to happen.

This is why I sought to demarcate the institution with the ethics of the trade in an earlier post above.

I put it the way Ibime's mind comprehend it. Using a different wording will give him room to attack the question instead of answering. If he use disinvest, you use same word for him, otherwise he looses comprehension.

I am proud of my verbosity. I wear it as a badge of honor.

Are you proud of your timid juvenile mind?

Nna, you know say you no get sense, I swear! Your own worse pass Funmi. I hope she no hear me.

4Play,

I am not sure your opening was directly on the economic theory but it progressed to become that. When I respond to topics I am known to do this - @topic -. Meaning my response is directly relevant to the opening. I believe my first response was to your opening which I take as a question of the policy and not of the economics.

Regardless, the issues are tied together - the credit crunch, the bank failures, the bailout and the stimulus spending. In one discussion sometime ago Ibime declared that he does not bother with political propaganda. I ended the discussion at that point. I don't understand how anyone could be in a political forum and not encounter propaganda! That's like discussing in economic forum and having distaste for the theory of open market or the laws of demand and supply. Propaganda is the bedrock of politics, that's where the power is derived. So for him to discuss economic theory in political forum and dismiss propaganda is beyond shock!

I am willing to tie all the dots together for him. I am awaiting his response to my question on disinvestment.

Because it's on a much larger scale. There are many more tribes in Africa who don't see eye to eye with each other.

If you take a look elsewhere on the planet, in the most part, tribalism isn't as severe. Although it still exists, it only does so in a much more watered down version.
Take a look at Europe and you'll see that even the nation state is being supplanted by the EU and they're becoming an indistinguishable mass. They don't war with each other because the main reason for warring (tribalism) has been removed. One could counter and say that they're destroying their identity but in reality, their society is evolving. In Africa, tribalism not only dictates how nations deal with each other but even how individuals within those nations interact.

So Africa does have a unique case. Let us look at Nigeria in the way it is composed. Hausa, Ibo, Yoruba and many smaller tribal units. All these tribes are forced to live together today because of colonialism, not because of tribalism. Each tribe has indicated that it would fare better on its own as an independent sovereign nation than in a joint federation with other tribes. I acknowledge your issue with tribalism as one of the major problems, but I disagree that we are not impacted by the encounters of slavery. The sweet rewards of slavery served as incentive for Europeans to extend and legitimize their presence on our lands stretching their dominance across the continent in a wafer like arrangement across the different indigenous lands and tongues - english/french/english/french. . .then broken with a german territory before the pattern is again repeated english/french/english/french. . .


On reparation. It depends on how you look at it. If you say that British was once enslaved by Africans, then it would seem logical that British has exacted its reparation on account of its violation across Africa and instituting Crown ownership over our most precious natural resources. Beside, reparation is commonly thought of as monetary payment. Reparation is an award for damages sufferred. Award for damages can take many form - academic scholarship grant, apology and symbolic recognition and so on and so forth. I don't want to peempt the discussion. I know people have ideas and I hate to suggest what I believe they want. Read what Lagosboy said about taking it in steps.

What approach would you take after the fact to reverse disinvestment, both in the financial markets and in the high street?

Good! What is causing disinvestment? Why are people not willing to prospect or take risks for gainful returns?

I'm a realist! Theories do not put food on my table; show me the action! It is not the theory that failed us, the banks did not go into problem because the theories were no longer applicable or were redundant and it was not because the laws and regulations were obsolete. Human beings, through their actions and or inactions failed us. The solution does not lie in re-inventing the wheel and proposing more theories but in rooting out the attributes of the problem and reinstating sanity and trust in the system.

This is what you fail to acknowledge. You think you know Keynesian theory better than the CEO of Lehman or Merril or Bear Stearns?

Africans are where they are today because of tribalism

There is tribalism in every race and every continent. Why is ours different?

As I've stated elsewhere, there are major problems with reparations. Do we take into account the billions of dollars that the West has given to Africa and is still giving? And what about the African connection itself? Do we get reparations from the tribes who sold their brothers into slavery? The white-man rarely captured slaves for himself - they were delivered by their fellow Africans. If we ask for reparations from the whites, then shouldn't we also ask for reparations from our fellow Africans?

It's a dynamic discussion. We are at the beginning. I have discussed reparations with the initiators of the idea, that doesn't stop me from participating when I come across the topic. Join us and share your points as we go along.

Debo,

You are right and I will be the first to admit, trust me; I waste words to explain points but thats my style. I have blogged online for many years and I used to be very short but then people will demand clarification and I had to go back and redo the opinion. That apart, points are points and any well reasoning person should be able to navigate through a stack of words and take what they need and dump what they dont.

Ibime is stubbornly excusing bad judgement on wall street. He will excuse the same if this had happened in Nigeria. It's because of mindsets such as his that we complacently continue to cheer our corrupt leaders as champions of our cause.

lmao!  Don't worry, when your authoritative news pundits publish my opinion I will share the link with you; as I did with the two previous and erased your doubts.  It's only a matter of time before you take your foot out of your mouth and swallow your pride in its place.

You take your lack of political understanding and try to substitute it with economic wizardry, you joker!   Go back to our topic on "bailout".  Every one of my projection has come true.  Go and review the thread and update yourself on reality on the ground.  Sheep!  

Okay, let's start with first step - Necessity for Reparation.

We can deduce from the innate desires and needs of mankind that his (gender implicit) nature is manifested in a duality. There is a mankind that seeks to adapt his being to the environment and nature of things around him. There is another mankind that seeks to adapt the nature of things around him in the environment to his being.

THE FIRST TYPE
This human is complacent and is able to endure prolonged hardship which he sees as a divine fate and rather than to self-initiate a solution. . .a pathway out of his suffering, he will choose instead to supplicate for an external intervention to deliver him out of the predicament. He will bear that pain continously for however long it takes for the external aid to arrive and rescue him. He has adapted himself to his problem.

This human has faith in other beings and objects outside of his own existence, regards them as aid to his survival and gives reverence to their existence and in fact is willing to be of service to them out of his innate recognition that life subsists on life.


THE SECOND TYPE
The other type has short endurance for hardship, under prolonged predicament he will derive self-help solutions and if those fail he will start to dis-integrate and then panick. His faith lies in self, if he has no solution for a problem at hand then an external help is useless. Failing to resolve the growing burden, he then reasons that ending his life ends the hardship and so he commits suicide. This human has adapted his problem to his own being.

This human has faith in his existence as the ultimate solution to survival and does not have reverence for the existence of other beings and objects beside himself and unless he can adapt them to the service of his being, their existence is of no value and they are then dispensable.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

When a meeting happen between the first and the second type, there will result a Master-Slave type of relationship. This is the order of nature and creation. This is why there is no condemnation of slavery in the Holy Scriptures.

In order to discuss necessity for reparations on slavery we need to define clearly if we are grieving slavery or is it the inhuman and savagery with which the transactors conducted their trade in human traffic that we abhor.

In all of human history, except when man chooses to neglect the conscience of his soul for the benefits of his pockets, mankind has always observed the treatment of fellow beings with forbearance, not wanting to visit upon another person extreme hardship and burden on account of karma drawing retribution on one's blood and children. In that forbearance was the beginning of justice - the balance of weights!

Reparations must be approached in terms of its relevance to humane treatment and the contemporaneous customs and civility amongst the slave trading nations of that age. I would have suggested using UN charter to examine this relevance but UN was not formed in those times that the reparative damages is contingent upon.

So what is the best fit? Paulson's bailout which you opposed?

Bawo,

Two things!

(1) Paulson's bailout - this was a direct act of sabotage, so to speak, of incompetent investors and bankers using fraudulent accounting practices to dodge accountability. There were overlay of checks and cross-checks. There should be internal audit and inspection practices and they were expected under the law to use that for balances. They are required to retain external auditors to review their books and make sure that book results are conciliatory with ground or field operations. On top of that you have government regulators who are expected to enforce rules and prevent malpractice.
Three independent layers of oversight and they all failed! Before discussing bailout congress should have demanded an overhaul of the system. But you see congress could not exercise its power because majority of the members have laid with dogs and now they smell of faeces. To save face they went along and approved Paulson's bailout. At the time of his proposal Paulson knew that this was a global problem but he choosed not to make such scary declaration and positioned it as an urgent domestic problem that need domestic solution. These investment giants and banks operated globally, their rescue rested in finding global solutions, not governmental bailout. Eventually, after they have exhausted the bailout money and the well is dry, they will turn their attention to global solutions. Trust me!

There is another angle to it that nobody has reviewed and modelled. Bush put a choke on what he declared were "terrorist transactions" through the banking system. He also choked Iranian government transactions and investments as well as many other monetary sanctions including that of Venezuela. How much impact did these sanctions (that he called dirty money) have on the bank failures? It would be nice to research that using the historical data. Speaking of historical data, the banks and investment houses can trace back their accounting data and establish the query point at which the outliers began to surge overwhelmingly above standard deviations, this is the junction where they missed the road. They need to return to it and re-establish sanity in their operations.

(2) President Obama's Stimulus Spending. It's a very bright idea and is promising. The reality of my suspicion on its success is embodied in the caliber and competency of the people that will manage the spending and the quality of the projects it will be spent on. Are you familiar with RACI chart? Responsibility Accountability Consultative Informative. If you tear through the tiers from White House to Congress to Government Agencies to Enterprises and you give each entity an ownership on the RACI chart, you will discover that the accountability and consultative owners are the same people who with the same mindset and attitude got us into where we are today.

Yes, its true it's Obama plan and he is very magnanimous and I just can't fathom in my mind why anyone would oppose such a competent and fine leader and not go along with this plan, oh my! The President has Responsibility ownership he will not be the one implementing the program. If those who own Accountability fail to deliver, what is the consequence of their failure? Where is the full plan of the tangibles and the contingencies? So until those plans are in place, it is a guess game at this point and everybody share in the idealism of its success but no one can predict its outcome. You cannot forecast the outcome of an encounter you have never experienced and hence all projections so far are fantasies. It is hope and without tangibles and contingencies that's all it will remain; hope!

You cannot wriggle out of this by saying that you do not think this is the best fit. You will oppose any Govt intervention despite not knowing your ABC's or XYZ's.

The truth is, you have opposed ALL forms of Govt intervention in this crisis.

For pragmatic reasons outlined above.

The height of your ignorance is that you do not see ANY need for Govt intervention. You stated as much during the Paulson debate. Your preferred option is to let the free-market have its way.

Globally, yes! That's where it is ultimately headed.

Bawo,

I already covered this with David in another topic and I should do the same with you. Do you need clarification or do you prefer to throw tantrum on this discussion?