WALL STREET SCREWS MAIN STREET

WALL STREET SCREWS MAINSTREET

BUSINESS WEEK (2009) 11/30

FRANCIS, ET. Al 34-39

Taxpayers were personally hurt by funny money deregulated money schemes. Now it is

getting worse. The charm offensive was also on cities, local businesses, public pensions,

and infrastructure. Not only do cities and Ma & Pa business are trying to make a go off it with their personal investments, but they must also faces cities that are broke, because

the wider urban community bought into unregulated derivatives full of phony promises.

This is perhaps both the first and last straw of Laissez-faire capitalism. It happened in the

20’s and now it has arrived again in the Great Recession of the 21st centuries. We may

be back from going over the cliff, but we need sound fundamental economy that has some direction and regulation. Locals were outwitted by Tony sales and economists who with their econometric models understood by few and not at all at the local level were

outsmarted by the Wall Streeters.

The punishment has really yet to come except that what they did was legal and now they are getting bailed out. The bail out is absolutely necessary to keep the pump primed, but the punishment must come in some lawful way.

However, this is just the beginning of the story.

FRANCIS, T.

The same people who screwed everyone at the middle and the bottom is now working their way forward through the courts to return to deregulation. It is the same policies that got us in before and they are going to do it again. As Newsweek’s Alan Sloan noted,

YOU CAN NOT TRUST WALL STREET. If the Milton Freidman followers and their likes win in the conservative packed Supreme Court, we will march our way into

second world status. From there, one can only hope that an alternative market can be set up that has regulators and sound fiscal principles. That this second market can save us from the first market. At the moment trusting Wall Street with your money is a fool’s errand. Also fear of Obama’s reforms is those CEO’s who might not get their millions of dollars for doing not much.

NEWSWEEK (2009) 11/30

48-50

What the Copenhagen summit is about is to control the level of carbon footprints. Even if you do not believe in global warming, one can see pollution as a great threat in which there is a natural change going on. The first big step with disappointment from environmentalists is to get some cap and trade or some other mechanism in place in the USA. It can be and current legislation indicates that it probably will be full of holes. That is okay, because controlling the world is impossible. This especially applies to 3rd world countries. What cap and trade legislation does in the USA is more symbolic than real, but it MAY start the ball rolling towards technology that is more viable and less oppressive to the planet. Or even better, if the planet is not harmed, we have the ability to live within our means with new technology that makes us less depended on oil from the Middle East.

In other words, energy independence MAY lead to technologies that are profitable, clean, and not threatening. If that is the case, then most countries are going to head in that direction because it is more profitable. From the Potsdam Climate Impact Research with projections of the future, show that essentially the USA is relative stable in its Greenhouse-Gas emissions (in million metric tons of CO2.) However India but especially China will be the great contributors of air junk.

How much time we have to change is subject to debate and that applies to a new technology that will transcend the environmental problems now discussed. However, trying to control other countries into reducing global warming is like going to war with a country and then forcing democracy on them in very undemocratic ways.

THE ECONOMIST (2009)

11/21/ 34-36

In 2006, the last industrialized world wide tests of student’s ability; both the USA and Germany did badly on math and science. Germany did something about it. The USA

created the No Child Left Behind. It was not funded, and basically each teacher taught to

a nationwide test. That’s it. Assessment levels varied greatly from state to state.

Now under Obama, certain standards will be set for Math and English. They build their model after Singapore and Massachusetts. All this has been done before. In fact, the first was in 59’ under Ike.

4 billion has been set aside. We have failed in the past, but hopefully this might work.

46 states have signed on. Why Math and English? Why not Math and Science? Whatever, perhaps that is what Singapore has done.