Not felt like blogging of late. Lots of stuff to observe and comment on, but no will...
I think it may have a lot to do with the fact that we are watching the end of the world as we know it, and I'm just getting my head around it (and building up my grab-and-go box, just in case.)
I think there are a few things that will affect me directly, and perhaps get exacerbated by the potential nationalisation of everything and the potential presidency of Obama. Kind of scary.
For one, my anticipated return to the US may be put off for a while, as this whole mess sorts itself out. It may take longer to get sorted if the wrong policies are pursued (such as a tax hike on "rich" people.) This is a very real possibility; as one commentator pointed out, there are far-left Democrats in Congress who have been waiting decades for a like-minded POTUS to help them re-engineer America. Even if Obama is a "moderate", which seems unlikely given his past associations and self-admitted dabblings in Marxism, he is not strong enough to stand up to the apparatchiks in his party.
I really hope I'm wrong, because this could potentially be very problematic, because they are not going to be Fabian in their approach, like almost all good idealogues who finally get their way, they are going to overplay their hand. And I don't think the American people are the sorts to take things sitting down. A recent survey, for instance, put American opposition to the redistribution of wealth at about 85%. 85% of the US population is to the right of the Democrat Party platform. And a lot of them are armed.
And, outside of the government, there isn't going to be a lot of job creation in the US with a Reid-Pelosi-Obama leadership.
The Republicans were dip-sh**s when they were running Congress. And now we are all going to pay.
And this economic thing...A lot of Europeans are patting themselves on the back because they avoided this nasty subprime business that's happened in the US. But as we are seeing the beginning of the end to the problems in the US, we are seeing the end of the beginning for Europe. Where do you think all that bad debt ended up? European institutional investors have always preferred debt over equity as investment vehicles. Those lovely subprime loans looked really tasty a couple of years ago.
Plus the European banks have their own sub-prime messes to muddle through in the Baltics and the Balkans. The European banking system is teetering completely on the edge.
Why do you think they are dictating to Bush that the US has to come along? So that when their own systems go tits-up, the US's will too. Unlike Britain and the US, the European systems have already been nationalized or at least collectivized (as in Germany) to the extent that the banks and private industry are so intertwined that they cannot be considered separate sectors.
So I haven't been of cheery mien of late. But as with everything, this too, shall soon pass. But what will take its place?
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