What’s wrong with a change of heart? For seven years Bush never had a heart in Afghanistan, but when Obama "dithers" even though he had committed forces there as one of his first acts in office, now he’s hesitant over committing more. Bravo. However. It’s wrong to keep troops already there in suspension. I say, just get the hell out of there, including Iraq. Nor is there any point—in order to win—in bombing them back to the Stone Age because Afghans have never left....

You don’t hear much today about the nanny state even though it is displayed in the full dress of overwhelming force. Criticism of nanny is ordinarily directed toward the welfare mother, pubic housing, government employees, social security and Medicaid, Medicare, even national emergency handouts, which has now become financial behemoths as too big to fail, when in faith we are told, the free market is capable of taking care of itself. Much like insurance companies notorious for exorbitant c...

First of all, I don’t want to hear anymore about the poor sacrificing US taxpayer shelling out hard earned money for bailouts—it’s the hard working Chinese tax payer who’s doing the bailing out. Sure, our great grandchildren will eventually get the bill in the mail, but by that time it will be inconsequential inasmuch as China shall have claimed ownership of the good old USA. As for Geithner it’s too soon to judge—in light of current upbeat stockmarket r...

I thought Obama campaigned against the top-down theory of governance and economics? Unfortunately that's how our universe works--and ultimately black holes rule. Since the beginning of our time, the social contract is pocked with black holes--politicians and corporate moguls suck the life out of us. It may be the way of darwinian cosmology and the matrix of pac-man society, but damn it, we shouldn't take it anymore! No social structure should have to be at the mercy of these thugs on Wall Street...

The most important action the government can take to ease the economic crisis is to bypass the middle-fiddle manipulators of Wall Street and deal with the thousands of solvent local and regional banks that still exercise sound lending and investment practices. Moreover, there are countless ways to put people to work without having to wait for new technology such as wind turbine grids and high speed rails. Decaying malls and housing are in need of immediate clean up and repair. Many malls in decl...

This reminds me of the principal of a high school who disciplines only the good kids. In face of the squeamish manner toward the financial thugs, this firing of Wagoner--the only CEO of the big three that's actually an automaker--is ludicrous and hypocritical. With GM finally getting it right with the Volt, top seller Buick, and the innovative Caddy, this is no time to crack the whip.Obama caved in to the Bill Clinton Club led by Summers who wouldn't dare get tough with his buddies on Wall...

I'm more concerned over just what is a toxic asset and the degree of its negative value. No one ever says what the hell they are. They should be listed and identified. We've been told this mess is due to subprime mortgages. I don't believe it, what with all the revisions made be by Fan/Fred Macs and FDIC. Ithink these transnational banks have been engaged in Ponzi schemes, dubious Wall street trading, especially with hedge funds, not to mention horrendous loans to other nations far worse than Ci...

Ask not what your country can do for you... The aim of bailouts is not only to renew reasonably profitable banks but mainly for banks to be serviceable to average citizens so that they can make sound financial decisions in developing an egalitarian economy. Bankers need a lesson in good citizenship.

 Needless to say there was no such thing as finance in the dawn of an emerging human race. Every able-bodied thing we now call a prehistory person fended for himself in the hunt for nutrition, placing him in the midst of the animal kingdom and not yet barely above. Able-bodied females and children not far from the mouth of the cave gathered twigs and branches to keep the cave fires burning for the hunt’s yield. Scattered extended families merged into tribes in realizing the pooling ...

  Exchanging ideas is essential to a free society. However, when on the tax system a letter writer who is a math teacher says the government ought not to penalize taxpayers who are wealthy owes to free speech the entire equation. The tax system does not nor should it consider a simplistic proportion as the writer advocates, for it is just another flat tax scam that sees no unfairness to one percentage fits all. Progressive tax is based on taxable income meaning income after one has had...

    Fevers were running high in the wake of 9/11, and many high-level officials from the president to CIA bomb-ticking “24” paranoids—to say nothing of amateur sadists at Abu Ghraib —lost control of reason. No amount of rationalization will justify the use of unduly “harsh treatment,” or if you will, “torture.” Granted legitimate POWs are a respectable cut above the thugs of al Qaeda and deserve relatively humane treatment from thei...

For months now I have been reading blogs, economic columnists, guests on talk shows, congressional committees and whatever, yet all more or less say the same thing without going to the core issue that the financial system is essentially inefficient and amoral. It is indeed the invisible hand of corruption. The juxtaposition of the auto industry and the banking system is a case in point, symbolic of what is wrong with the economic base. The outrage toward the Big Three—far from big for some...

For many years now I’ve advocated an economy that gets the best bang for the buck. In face of calamity calls for cutting costs on social security, Medicare and Medicaid, I argued that this big three accounts for millions of jobs and release of capital owing to direct and immediate benefit to the sectors of retirement and healthcare. Others would argue that if eliminated the regressive payroll tax would put more spending power into the hands of working people who would on a steady basis sti...

  Though behind in fringe benefits why does Toyota and other foreign auto manufacturers located here are on a par —in some even exceed— in wages with the Big Three? The simple answer is the long-lived strategy of keeping up or one step head of organized workers. Little credit is ever given to unions for instigating a universal awareness of workers’ rights for the past eighty years while simultaneously relegating the concept to class warfare, which in reality doesn&rsquo...

A bad bank is not really a bank at all: it’s a toxic dump. It will never "earn" the "privilege" of bearing the name of a stadium. It’s more like an asylum or nuclear waste storage located in a remote wasteland . I cannot imagine it occupying space on Wall Street though ironically the renowned path has become a wasteland in itself. I suggest, since Obama wants to save jobs, that 30,000 Circuit City soon to be ex-employees could stock up all the "troubled assets" at bargain prices. ...