In 1956, the Suez fiasco stripped the British Empire of its anachronistic fantasy of power. The current combination of the Iraq fiasco (an infinitely greater disaster than Suez), a now unwinnable war in Afghanistan, and the greatest economic debacle since 1932 is making it clear to us and the world that we're not producing any Morgans these days. Who in our entire polity has the acumen, the guts, the character, and the persuasive power to build confidence such characteristics convey? We used to have great men in America. Now we have John McCain, a reductio ad absurdum of "heroism" straight off of SNL, a man lacking the character to persuade the public of anything, even if he had the economic intelligence to have the slightest clue about what would "save" the nation. Like McCain, this country looks very much like a has-been who's fallen and can't get up.

JP Morgan acted in the same way as Teddy Roosevelt (who was president while Morgan was saving the economy) - start with a small carrot and then show the big stick. Bush and Paulson act like tween age girls trying to popular. McCain is capable of acting like TR but it did not work in his past attempt to run for president so he is trying to act like a coy girl now. Who knows which one he will be if he gets elected?

Since McCain's promised policies don't differ at all from Bush's, I don't want to find out how he'd ACT as president... However he behaved, I vehemently oppose the policy that his staff will carry out...

Fortunately, if everyone actually shows up to vote we will not find out what a McCain presidency will be like.

A very fascinating thing to watch, I must say.

USA conquered the governmental forces in Iraq and Afghanistan inside a few days. That shows power. In Iraq, our force of 150,000 rules 25 Million people.

Our weakness in those places comes from tribal and religious murderous primitives who make money from warfare.

USA's economy also retains great power. A lot of the power stems from military strength. The current financial mess would not be visible if the fog of housing inflation had not lifted. The recession will worsen but USA will come out once again. Even with a hypothetical 30% unemployment, 70% still work, including fine strippers and missile-makers. We COULD use less toxins in our food and arithmetic back in our schools.

Please don't get French on us.

I'll admit that Jean Renoirs were very good in painting and movies.

But since 1930, France has not been very stalwart, except for Bardot, Belmondo, and the Blochs.

A trait you interestingly share with almost all of the Republicans. 'Hard power' is military strength, the ability to manufacture missiles, and so forth. Yes, we still have that. But our 'soft power', the cultural attractiveness of America, the strength of our IDEAS, our ability to win the hearts and minds of people around the world, is fading rapidly, and the Bush administration has done terrible and perhaps irrevocable damage to it. And, given our 'difficulties' in teaching arithmetic in our schools, in perhaps twenty years or less, we shall be buying, or rather ATTEMPTING to buy, the computer chips that guide our missiles, from the Chinese. Golly. What if the Chinese decide to stop selling us those chips? What happens to our vaunted hard power then??? This is a dying empire, Sov. We are living in the twilight days of the American Empire. We do not 'rule' Iraq. We are a mostly hated occupying force, and the sooner we get out, the better. That war in Iraq, estimated by Stiglitz to ultimately cost some $3-$5 TRILLION, is helping to bankrupt this country. We can no longer afford our little glorious military misadventures. Time to bring our goose-stepping troops back home, to try to rebuild THIS country. Heck, Iraq has a nice budget surplus these days. They can build their own damned schools. We need to start worrying more about ours.

"we shall be buying, or rather ATTEMPTING to buy, the computer chips that guide our missiles, from the Chinese."

Maybe not the Chinese: AMD is spinning off it's manufacturing capabilities into a joint venture with Abu Dabi!

Dear Sovereign8,

Our only problem we have is our current account deficit, we are importing 800B more than we export.

Over the last 7 years it has been over 4T, and this created this asset bubble.

But an asset bubble is good really, as when it burst the foreign investers that did not want to buy our products lose lots of money on the assets.

I had been getting ready for this for a while, I thought it was was going to happen last summer, but I was wrong, missed it by a year.

The point is, we should have let the companies go into chapter 11, then we should have stepped in and after zeroing out the shareholders, and writing down the bondholders, we are basically okay.

We could have loaned directly to the business that needed the money, like we are doing now, with the 90 days loans without having to provide all this money to the banks.

We need to put america back to work, and everything will be fine, we just are 700B poorer right now.

Look at how the banks are fighting over the assets now, if the government takes the bad ones,the good ones are still worth a lot.

God Bless You

Dear Jeanrenior,

Might want to read up on the subject a little,

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Our economic issues are based on a couple of simple facts, the most basic one is we are running a huge 800B a year trade deficit.

This means we are exporting 800B in dollars and getting 800B in goods.

This money is going to buy our assets and created an asset bubble, just like the one Japan created during the first SL crisis except much worst as there was a lot more money this time.

We have to grow america from the supply side, not the demand side, Mr Clinton cut government spending and inceased taxes, Mr Reagan cut spending and cut taxes.

These both work, increasing taxes and increase spending will not work, it will make it worst.

Voting Mr Obama is voting to make our economy worst, and voting McCain is voting to make it better.

It really is that simple, you choice but remember you have to live with it.

God Bless You

USA has MIT, Columbia, Caltech, CCNY, RPI, Stanford, Berkeley, Penn State, Case-Western Reserve, Rutgers, etc. We ain't yet really behind. Many of their students are Asian, but many of those are American too.

USA's masses were always laggards at math and sciences. But the top kids are rather strong. And we had the Wrights, Edison, Ford, Jobs, and many others who wouldn't have made it in Tokyo or Warsaw.

In Iraq, USA actually rules the place, but there are multitudes of primitives. With your view, we'd have to say that USA has ZERO power in Chasidic Brooklyn or maybe in ALL Brooklyn and a lot of towns with street-toughguys. John Gotti thought USA had no real power. Of course, every thug says the same. Look up "Thugs."

You could be correct though re our manufacturing base. On that, the GOP subversive plutocrats and the Dem subversive academics are in league.

Go figure.

Anyway, USA still has very great power in every sense. Culturally, USA rules porn, which is said to be 40% of the Internet.

Dear LeRoy,

You have hit on the issue, at least around it, we are military power with no able to manufacter anything of any value.

We are dependent on countries like china and we spend 800B a year on imports.

But this is the funny issue, if the countries like China want to sell us stuff and then refuse to buy anything that are hosed even more than us.

They buy our assets, and cause a bubble, and when the bubble burst they lose all their assets, sucks to be them.

This works, but we messed up, we put 700B into the assets that should have just deflated.

Not all banks were going down some smart ones like JP Morgan gave out donations to groups like ACORN instead of making stupid loans.

BA also saw this coming from a mile away, they got sued a bunch, and just fought the lawsuits instead of making the stupid loans.

Now both of these banks are doing okay, not great but they are going to be fine in the long run, BA got me to believe when they bought country wide that that was about the bottom, so I did my investment based on watching them, they are a very smart bank, and have made me a lot of money, just not this time.

We need to let the market correct, be glad that the foreign investors lost a lot lof money and reinvest on our industrial base, not bailing out the investors.

No worries, we own all the design to the chips, the factories in the United States can be made in about 3 years for everything we import.

If Mr Obama gets elected, then he will increase government spending and taxes, if Mr McCain get elected he will decrease taxes and government spending.

Seem very simple, if we want to expand out economy vote Mr McCain.

God Bless You

Mark_RSM: If Mr Obama gets elected, then he will increase government spending and taxes, if Mr McCain get elected he will decrease taxes and government spending.

Seem very simple, if we want to expand out economy vote Mr McCain.

LeRoy: Well, Mark, it seems that professional economists would mostly disagree with you. In the October 4-10 issue, The Economist published the results of a survey of professional research economists in regard to America's Presidential election. A few excerpts:

"As the financial crisis pushes the economy back to the top of voters' concerns, Barack Obama is starting to open up a clear lead over John McCain in the opinion polls. But among those who study economics for a living, Mr. Obama's lead is much more commanding. A survey of academic economists by The Economist finds the majority---at times by overwhelming margins---believe Mr. Obama has the superior economic plan, a firmer grasp of economics and will appoint better economic advisers."

"...We emailed a questionnaire to 683 research associates, all we could track down, of the National Bureau of Economic Research, America's premier association of applied academic economists...A total of 142 responded, of whom 46% identified themselves as Democrats, 10% as Republicans, and 44% as neither. This skewed party breakdown may reflect academia's Democratic tilt, or possibly Democrats' greater propensity to respond. [LeRoy: Or it may simply reflect the growing unpopularity of the Republican 'brand'!] Still, even if we exclude respondents with a party identification, Mr. Obama retains a strong edge."

"Eighty percent of respondents and no fewer than 71% of those who do not cleave to either main party say Mr. Obama has a better grasp of economics. Even among Republicans Mr. Obama has the edge: 46% versus 23% say Mr. Obama has the better grasp of the subject." [Emphasis added by LeRoy, because it is quite remarkable that Republican economists in the survey, by a two-to-one margin (!) concede that Senator Obama understands economics better than Senator McCain.]

LeRoy: Perhaps a major reason why academic economists offer stronger support for Obama is because they understand, in a way that the public does not, that McCain's plans, if implemented as he proposes, would cause the federal budget deficit, and hence the national debt, to simply explode. From an article in The Wall Street Journal of a few months ago: "McCain's plan would appear to result in the biggest jump in the deficit, independent analyses based on Congressional Budget Office figures suggest. A calculation done by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center in Washington found that his tax and budget plans, if enacted as proposed, would add at least $5.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade."

Sorry, Mark_RSM, but we have tried these 'trickle-down' policies. We have tried to 'grow' the economy by growing the national debt. We have tried to borrow our way into prosperity. We have done all that in the last eight years. And look where it has got us. It simply does not work. The economic catastrophe we see unfolding around us should be ample proof of that, at least to anyone with more than a few functioning neurons.

Time for a major change in direction.

And we will get that, with President Obama.

Dear LeRoy,

I would like to see the link to under stand what they based this opinion on.

One thing I am certain of, government spending and increase in taxes while you are running an 800B trade surplus is going to be very, very bad.

See the govenment does not export anything, all they do is consume. We need to expand our private industry, put american to work making products, not service and government jobs.

I have a master degree in economics, I can run all the models, my undergrad is in physics, and if you read Ricardo, it has very good book on the subject.

I can find not a single person that would say to increase taxes during this type of economic condition would be helpful.

We we need to do is stablize the economy, let the price of the assets drop, put them back in to useful hands and grow the private segment.

The government consumes money and increase our deficit, our dollar is over valued, and we need to increase out debt to force it down.

Our tax code is jacked but nobody wants to fix this, so not much to be said in this subject. Mr Obama started down path but his donors got in the way. We have two very large marginal tax rates, one is at 100k, when you hit the SSA cap, the other one is at 250K when you are getting hammered by the AMT.

We need to get rid of these both, and create a fairer system of taxing so we all pay the same percentage of income tax, the very wealthy pay so little as a percentage it is silly, but hey, they give a lot back in donations to people running.

Remember the parties are about the donors.

God Bless you