Nothing to worry about here, says Timmy, while Lassie seems to be speculating a bit…
It’s a big game of chicken among the PIIGS, Brussels, and the Chicago Merc, currently hosting the biggest bet (nearly $8 billion) against the Euro.
Gorilla says: “We’ll know at the EU summit on Thursday who’ll be ponying up, but it won’t be pretty!”
In Sri Lanka, the wheels are turning again…
Last week’s opposition Presidential candidate Sarath Fonseka, who had never previously voted in an election and lost overwhelmingly to the sitting President, is now under arrest, apparently on fraud charges connected with his days as Army Chief.
Gorilla asks: “Meg Whitman, Colombo calling, is your past prologue?”
Rep. John Murtha dead, ironically after gall bladder surgery!
A true dinosaur, beloved pork snacker, corrupt as could be, he won’t be missed!
Gorilla says: “He died in the trough!”
Iran’s back with mixed messages today:
1) They’d be willing to have their nuclear fuel processed abroad if it was 20% enriched.
2) They’re planning to go to 20% enriched on their nuclear fuel and build 10 more plants (seen as a farce, since Iran can’t keep their current plant going at all times).
The UN’s export deal is for 3.5% uranium, which the Iranians claim isn’t enough for the medical isotopes they want to produce.
The West sees 20% enrichment as a step on the way to nuclear weapons development, which requires 90% enrichment.
Sooner or later, there’s going to have to be a deal. The sanctions aren’t working very well, and there’s no support for further sanctions from China.
But it’s an election year in the US and UK, and politicians don’t want to be seen as “soft” on state sponsors of terrorism.
Gorilla thinks: “Give it a year and we’ll be in Tehran doing a deal!”
Another day, another summit on an issue that no one wants to lead on!
Over the weekend, the G-7 boys and girls tried to reassure each other that the PIIGS of Europe aren’t going to be a problem.
Today, it’s President Obama, calling on Republican leaders to join him for yet another pointless summit on health care reform.
The facts are these:
1) Republicans will not vote for any Administration proposal on health care reform, or any other major issue, in 2010.
2) Democrats have not yet decided whether they will abandon health care reform, thus guaranteeing they will lose big time in 2010.
So, the President could say to House Democrats: Vote for the Senate bill and we’ll fix it later using reconciliation.
Or he could engage in a time wasting exercise in hopes that Americans will blame a minority opposition party for the failures of this President and his party to tackle major issues.
Gorilla says: “Good luck with that!”
In Ukraine, the former and current Russian puppet Viktor Yanukovich appears to have won the runoff election.
And the Orange Revolution leaders Viktor Yushenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, having split politically, managed to split more than 50% of the vote.
Yushenko’s call for Ukrainians to vote “against all” provided Yanukovich’s margin of victory.
The difficulty in Ukraine is that the Orange Revolution didn’t bring anything tangible to improve people’s lives. It’s doubtful Yanukovich will do any better, but he’ll be more popular with Moscow and that counts for something.
Ukraine remains very dependent on Russia for energy resources, and there’s a steep divide between western Ukrainians and Russian speaking Ukrainians.
Gorilla says: “Freedom ain’t easy, sustainability is harder!”
Simon Johnson, almost as big a bear as Roubini, has a good analysis of what’s wrong with the Eurozone, and how it may push the world into a double dip recession.
Paul Krugman also has a useful note on the Spanish problem.
The more or less solvent Northern Europeans (Germany and the Netherlands) once again are faced with having to bail out the so-called PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain).
Johnson’s great fear is a speculative attack on the Euro, followed by a cataclysmic event like the Germans or Greeks leaving the Eurozone.
He believes the banks there, and the banks here, are too weak to stem the inevitable losses that will come.
Krugman sees the Spanish difficulty as emblematic of a currency union that’s not working.
The US, as usual, seems to be in cloud cuckooland, fantasizing that more robust growth is just around the corner.
Consumer and business demand say this is utter nonsense.
Will our undercapitalized banks be back at Uncle Sam’s trough if the dollar carry trade suddenly goes the other way?
Gorilla’s only slightly more optimistic: “Simon says, and Brussels pays!”
Not by unemployment, or by Know Nothing recalcitrance, but by the Governor of Jakarta!
Seems the famous statue “Barry As A Boy With Butterfly” made some Indonesians angry, because our President, although attending elementary school in Jakarta and more popular in the country than he is in America, hasn’t done much for Indonesians so far.
Gorilla says: “Hopefully Barry will stop being a statue and start being a leader!”
Today’s bombings: in Pakistan and in Iraq…
These were aimed at Shiites attending religious festivals, and were presumably detonated by or at the behest of Sunnis.
In Pakistan, Sunnis are the majority, in Iraq, the Shiites hold sway.
These religion-based civil wars appear to be beyond our control, and certainly beyond the control of the local governments.
It’s difficult to square our national security strategy in these regions, which is essentially to keep Islamic terrorists from attacking in the West, with the reality on the ground in places where terrorists live: there aren’t any jobs, village life is more or less medieval, and the populations are easy targets for the ravings and the bombs of religious fanatics.
No amount of soldiers will change the situation, and it’s very unlikely that weak and corrupt governments can do anything more than pursue containment in those regions they tenuously control.
What’s frustrating and depressing about all this is that these problems don’t get discussed by our political leaders.
They seem stuck on either fear (“they’ll be attacking by July!”) or on anger (“we’ll show these ragwearers a thing or two!”).
And they certainly want to do anything to avoid admitting that we don’t have a clue about what’s going on in Iraq, Pakistan, or Afghanistan, or that the threat a few thousand fifth-rate terrorists pose to our way of life is extremely minimal.
We’re not winning anything, we’re not nation building, and we’re not promoting democracy: we’re essentially a marginal player in a religious civil war.
Gorilla says: “It’s their fight, not ours, and so far they want to keep fighting!”
Whoops, despite the confident predictions of Wall Street, employers still aren’t adding jobs, they’re just cutting back less!
Hooray, say our politicians, the unemployment rate is down to 9.7%!
The reason unemployment’s down is because more people are giving up on looking for work.
While employers only cut another 20,000 jobs, the number of people who’ve given up looking is now 400,000 higher than it was a year ago (when unemployment was just over 7%).
More than 8 million jobs have been lost since the recession started in 2007. At best, the woefully inadequate stimulus programs have saved 2-3 million jobs. Do the math.
Conclusion: the economy’s marginally better at the moment than it has been, but not growing sufficiently to make a dent in unemployment. It’s a disaster for the country that no one’s doing anything about.
Gorilla says: “Jobs for the future? It would be nice if we had as many jobs now as we did 10 years ago!”
