The Whole World Is Watching--And It's Not Pretty
HONG KONG
Like an impressionist painting, the political and financial mess that is besieging the U.S. seems much clearer from a distance.
I have spent the last week visiting my son here in Hong Kong where interest in our election campaign and economic meltdown are both intense and very personal. As in the U.S., wealth and jobs have been disappearing here at an alarming rate as the financial crisis that began in our country has spread throughout the world like an epidemic.
I have been hanging out with smart, ambitious young professionals who are really struggling to understand the seemingly bizarre behavior and suicidal choices that are coming from America's political leaders. They all had the same question:
"How can a country that is so smart choose people who are so stupid to be their leaders?"
It has popped up in one form or another all week long. During that week, we sat together and watched the Katie Couric-Sarah Palin interviews. You can imagine how that went. Actually, no one said much. People were just searching for some explanation that would cause Palin's candidacy to make sense. They want it to be less outrageous and frightening than it is.
We saw McCain suddenly promise to suspend his campaign (he didn't) and suggest that his debate with Obama be delayed for no credible reason, much in the way Bush and Cheney were cancelled from the Republican Convention due to a weather forecast. We saw Bush and McCain then strongly urge their Republican followers in Congress to support the Paulson rescue plan. Then they assured Nancy Pelosi and the country that they had enough Republican votes to bring the matter to a successful vote.
We then watched in disbelief as two-thirds of the Republicans voted against the plan, their president, and their nominee less than 24 hours later. They precipitated a market panic that cost investors $1 trillion in the U.S. alone in just a few hours. After the vote, GOP leaders said they had been all set to vote for the plan they had agreed to support but then Pelosi got them all upset with her speech so they decided to get even with her by trying to destroy our financial system.
It really makes one proud to be an American.
So how do we get back on track? We need to stop defining ourselves and our political leaders in black and white terms based on party and ideology and instead look to be guided by truth and wisdom without regard to the source.
People are labeled and label themselves as either being on the Left or the Right, Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, for higher taxes or against them, for more regulation or for free markets, and so on.
This labeling has dumbed down both the level of conversation and the people themselves.. Our leaders have trapped themselves in ideological boxes which keep them from making intelligent decisions.
Don't get me wrong. It's important for people to have values and to stand for something. But they also need to be pluralistic and anxious to learn from and incorporate the best aspects of positions from the other sides because life is just too complex and nuanced to be an ideologue. As with most things, pluralism is the key to success.
In business we call pluralism using "best practices." In sports we call it "cross training." The top performers in every field use the approach to get even better at what they do. We desperately need it in political discourse because we just can't afford to act this stupid any longer. There's way too much at stake.
We can't afford to continue the dishonest luxury of blaming "Washington" for our problems. In a democracy, we elect leaders to act on our behalf. If they decide that we need to fight wars, improve security, provide health care and social security, build bridges and roads, then we should insist that they make us pay enough in taxes to pay for them. If we don't want the stuff they are buying on our behalf or it we can't or don't want to pay bill, then we should let them know or replace them.
Free markets are preferable but we can't afford to be stupid.
If our financial system is too important to the welfare of our country to be allowed to fail, then we need to create and enforce regulations to make sure that we never again come close to the position we find ourselves in now.
We need to preserve unfettered free market capitalism but only in those areas where success is desired and failure can be tolerated. That's the essence of the entrepreneurial system that has made our country great. But at the same time, we can't have Congress approving huge deficit spending and allowing system-threatening practices to run amok on Wall Street and then acting outraged at anyone but themselves when the taxpayers have to intervene to prevent a collapse.
When a criminal escapes from jail because the guard fell asleep with the cell door open, it's the guard's fault. Criminals are criminals--they do what criminals do. Wall Street is greedy. That's what Wall Street does and is rewarded for. That's why we have guards and regulators and a president and Congress to maintain control. When the guard falls asleep and things get out of control, the outrage should be directed at the guard and he should feel terrible about letting us down. We have seen none of that. On Capital Hill, it's the Congressmen who fell asleep at the switch who are expressing all the outrage.
Where is the pluralism, the outreach, the self-examination? Is there anything about this that is complicated or hard to understand?
Viewing it from halfway around the world it all seems pretty simple. The only real question is if we as a country are ready to start acting like grownups or if we're going to keep blaming Washington, illegal immigrants, liberals, conservatives, Wall Street, mortgage lenders--everybody but ourselves--for our problems. We know what we need to do. The only question is if and when we're going to make it happen.
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There's good news and bad news.
The good news is that the bailout may not be the biggest problem on the horizon. The bad news... Well watch this short clip and make your own judgement. http://www
When twenty million people have streaming video showing the Republicans fleeing the scene of the massacre, each of them carrying murder weapons and each of them drenched in the blood of others, you can bet the Republicans will always say: This is not the time to be pointing fingers or placing blame. That's all I've heard from the Republicans in the past few weeks. Wrong. We need to point fingers and place blame. Then we need to get honest and real about the people on wall street who have looted the country and committed a massive fraud on the U.S. and on many international investors by "bundling" bad loans, pretending they're good, and selling them off to the victims of this con. We need criminal prosecutions independent of Congress or the government because the evidence suggests the Congress and the other branches of the government have been getting kick-backs and are complicit in this crime.
We know that by holding down interest rates, Greenspan allowed the financial institutions, developers, brokers, to radically increase what they charged for any housing. By the end of the Bush term, many Americans could not afford housing in any form, and were paying over 50% of their take-home for shelter. These policies were part of a plan to loot the country. We need to arrest the people who led this con (pssst - they're the ones who got the money), take back the money, then send them to Attica.
And we need a media who are allowed to challenge the lies (the euphemism "spin") of politicians without the censorship of the media ownership who profit from the lies.
I'd be the last to defend the intelligence of the American electorate. Add to that, however, the yellow journalism of the mainstream media and the result is the vampires get elected. And let's be realistic: the folks in Hong Kong are no different. How about their real estate market? It soared and BS, just like ours. The apt reply to their accusations is, Who's dumber? Those who believe the politicians' lies? Or those who obey the US economy as if in a trance?
I just want to sat that Larry is right ,,,,,,,,,,,the rest of the world is watching and judging us........
Could'nt agree with your comment more. It is so important to elect Smart people in the WH and not phoney "Country First" logo imagery type. Best of Luck.
America must reverse the 1913 law that created the privately owned corporation called the Federal Reserve, by such families as the Rockeffellers, Morgans, Warburgs..
"The modern theory of the perpetuation of debt has drenched the earth with blood, and crushed it's inhabitants under burdens ever accumulati
There is a solution to everything that is simple, obvious and ... wrong. Think about that for a moment.
:-)
Some very thoughtful sentiments and I agree with you in many ways.
However I must object to such a diffusion of responsibility outward to every American voter, something we see too often and is usually a cover for those who actually failed in the responsibilities of their jobs.
The subtext is typically that no one is to blame because everyone is to blame.
"We" don't detest "government", Republicans do, as they have since at least the beginning of Reagan.
The rest of us are cognizant that all human history proves we need regulations and protections against unbridled greed.
"We" don't deregulate financial and other corporations and believe they will be "self-regulating" when they are only self-enriching, Reagan/Bush/Bush and Republican-majority congresses have.
"We" don't believe we can have important and essential government services performed well and simultaneously cut taxes endlessly, only Republicans do. (Treasury surpluses during Clinton, trillions in debt during Bush.)
I have been politically active my entire life beginning around age 14, reading as much as I can to inform myself of issues, perspectives, disciplines, and history, voting at every opportunity at every level of government, making phone calls, sending letters and emails to my representatives, even participating in protests.
I strongly disagree that every American shares equal responsibility for the current messes.
There aren't enough Americans remaining who hold any sense of social responsibility; like Wall St itself, too many Americans are me, me, me and to hell with our neighbors.
See Larry Gellman's Profile
One of the downsides to democracy is that the people own the behavior of the leaders we elect. All these unfolding disasters were well underway in 2004 when the American people elected Bush to a second term by a significant margin. Honest politicians would tell the American people that we have dug ourselves financially into such a big hole that it will take years of higher taxes and a lower standard of living to get our house in order. Honest politicians would say that in the dangerous world in which we live that we need a draft and mandatory low paying community service and sacrifice to effectively meet those challenges. My guess is that we will never hear anything close to the truth from either side because the accurately believe that no one would vote for them.
I'm not excusing the horrible behavior on Wall Street and in Washington. Many of those people have taken the terms "incompetent" and "greedy" to a whole new level. But at the end of the day, no one ever improved their situation by complaining about the people who put them there. We have to look at our situation and commit ourselves to being part of the solution instead of simply allocating blame for the problems.
It's a democracy. We can't blame the king or the emporer or the dictator. We own this thing.
Well said Larry! We are all responsible for our own choices, and blaming the government, which the people themselves have elected won't clear up the problem on a personal level. Governing our own behaviour will.
Not sure I agree, Larry. First of all, with all the voting irregularities in the last few elections, many are skeptical that the voting system is honest. And with large corporate media ownership, the actions of our "elected" leaders is rarely transparent to most people; instead they're sold the Administration line, day in, day out. This kind of advertising DOES work, regardless of the quality of the product.
Wall Street is quick, these days to say that "Only a handful of people on Wall Street even understand these derivatives" - which is why the government has a responsibility to make sure that disasters like this one do NOT happen, NO MATTER WHO IS IN OFFICE. We pay quite a bit, as taxpayers, to fund the Treasury Dept, DOJ, DHS, etc. and we have a legitimate and compelling expectation that our money is being spent for our benefit, by people competent and willing to do the jobs they are paid to do.
But lately we have a DOJ that views itself as Bush's legal bodyguards
It is refreshing, at last for you to admit that this mess is all due to Bush (That is what you're saying, after all; it's our fault for electing him, and because we elected him we're in this mess).
I agree, but only because he did the unthinkable, largely under the radar, which was to take Government departments with real jobs to do, and staffed their top levels with partisan hacks who lack the basic skills required to do their jobs.
I find it hard to discuss how this Nation elected Bush with my friends around the world. They all talk about how much respect the US had under Bill Clinton and how he was received in their country. They knew about his affair but it did not stem his appeal overseas. Now we have a long uphill battle to change the harm done by Bush's foreign policy.
If this election is given to the rightwingnuts the headlines around the world will be:
AMERICA - LAUGHING STOCK OF THE WORLD
While continuing to ask us to help them, in one form or another.
For a global economy, it's also interesting the EU begged the US lawmakers to pass the bailout... how about other countries that have benefited from globalization? Are they concerned? Laughing? What? As we've all noticed, despite it all, if the US goes down, so does everyone else. Including the rich, it seems.
God forbids. If Palin/McCain get elected we will be the subject of utter ridicule by the world. we will deserve whatever we get for our stupidity.
"How can a country that is so smart choose people who are so stupid to be their leaders?"
Maybe it is just time to get past the illusion that this was ever a nation of smart people.
well said.
Con men.
I disagree. The single biggest problem is that the Democrats are not sufficiently partisan, that they don't distiniguish themselves from their competitiors, and that they stand up for themselves, or anyone, or anything in the face of the abuse from the Republicans and media. Yes, they hold hearings to embarass the Republicans, but they have not even tried to prevent them from doing further damage.
Democrats have to be MORE than just Anti-Repubics. Being Repubic lite didn't help anything at all. Democrats need to stand up for our beliefs, despite the caterwauling from the Repubics, and support EACHOTHER. One of the reasons the Repubes have been able to get away with murder is they all march lockstep with their "leader", at least until recently.
They're called "Republicans".
Our nation is also a Republic.
If you're making a jibe because some ninnies call the Democratic party the "Democrat Party", then come up with something that actually has a breath of creativity to it and call them "Republicants". It works as the contraction for "can" and "not" and as the verb "cant" too. :)
See Larry Gellman's Profile
What you say is true, but the fact is that the Democrats don't have any more to say than the Republicans do. One thing that is appeal is that they at least have the decency to act embarrassed when they get caught in a lie which the Republicans don't. Obama has handled the attacks much better than Kerry did. He fights back but doesn't get flustered.
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