Charlie Rose

robdverity  02/01/2010 03:13 PM Report

IRISH - Wish I'd a said that. The corrosiveness of corruption is our biggest enemy (al Qaeda be damned).

IRISH  01/31/2010 06:57 PM Report

America is on autopilot with regard to a dysfunctional and corrupt legislative assemblies and grow up to the fact that the executive cannot make progress against a corrupt legislative assembly. One man cannot do it.

AdamKhan  01/30/2010 02:19 PM Report

18 minutes in, and the only single interesting observation so far is that the President didn't mention a second "stimulus".

Maybe they should have waited for David Brooks before beginning?

ShalomFreedman  01/29/2010 04:43 AM Report

This was an informative conversation on American domestic politics. It focused it seems to me more on style than on substance, more for instance on the question of how the President appeared than on what he actually intends to do. There was a sense a worrisome sense that the problems of American are so huge that the President has no path to tackle them in a good way. The philosophy regarding Health Care seems to be 'Better a health- care package no matter what it is, than staying with the current unsatisfactory situation'.

Charlie Rose's discussion did not touch upon foreign policy at all. The speech did, and it was in my opinion quite weak. As it appears now the Obama's Administration of courting and flattering enemies while not encouraging friends has led to setbacks only. The President said a few forceful words about Iran, while 'Der Spiegel' and other sources report that Iran already has the material for a nuclear weapon. As it appears now the President will probably just 'adjust' to this reality, or 'reset' to this reality. The Iraq situation is internally bad but the U.S. is on the way out. Afghanistan- Pakistan is a mess,and the date of 2011 for withdrawal suggests to the local forces that America will retreat without achieving anything. President Obama signaled to those in Central Europe that they are not important to him. Even friends like Great Britain, France, Germany are worried about U.S. weakness.

The President during his first year in office placed great pressure on one country only. He did not mention that country in the speech. Is it because that country is the single democracy in the Middle East, and a longtime American ally, certainly the best ally it has in the war against Terrorism?

A disappointing year with not any real sign that President Obama is going to change his policy, begin aiding friends ( Including the Iranian dissidents) and cease appeasing the Chavezes of this world.

REMant  01/28/2010 12:32 PM Report

This is BY FAR his best speech-making to date, in or out of office, and I have a feeling he wrote at least the beginning and end of it. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for its content.

To have hope you have to have adversity first, so I don't think it's a very good idea to keep dwelling on it or ppl will think you are simply self-destructive.

Saying he hated bailing out the banks is unfortunately uncomfortably like FDR saying he hated war, and he remains unrepentant about it. Money being paid into the Treasury by the big banks came from the Fed to a great extent, so trumpeting it is pretty disingenuous. Giving a little bit of it now to community banks is not necessarily helping pay it back either, tho a lot of Keynesians hope it will. Some, it seems, would like to believe that thru a surcharge on financial institutions they are proving the bail-outs were really merely "liquidity," but it won't wash.

And he produced a laundry list of more spending, or tax breaks, which amount to the same thing. A jobs bill is still relief, tho it is a bigger relief to me that no one is calling it stimulus anymore. Health care and educational benefits not only cost money, but are undeniably a moral hazard, and suffer as well from the same bureaucratic inadequacies as such programs have in the past.

Now there's nothing at all inherently wrong with a command economy, as long as it pays its bills. The problem is that so few of them ever have. We can't afford these things when China and Saudi Arabia are paying for them, or the debt is holed up in the Fed. That just depreciates the dollar. Worse, our national debt, is far from the country's total debt, because it excludes personal and corporate debt, not to mention the Fed's debt. Not only has the govt accumulated a huge deficit in the past decade, but so has the avg American's pocketbook, and the dollar is worth about 70% less against the Euro than at the latter's inception. The real way China, et al, can help us - and ultimately themselves - is by buying our products, not by buying our securities.

But I am glad he is backing the Conrad-Gregg effort, pay-as-you-go, and, at long last, Paul Volcker. However, a consumer agency is not nearly enough financial reform, nor is a line item veto, or controls on lobbyists and earmarks. And the budget freeze applies to so little of the budget as to be insignificant.

Of the Court's decision on election finance, I think that whether you like corporations or not, they are these days pretty much the only kind of aristocracy we have, essential to a balanced constitution, disenfranchising which would be essentially to repeal the Magna Carta. The thing for the people to do is to tackle a financial system which allows money to be so concentrated, and a corporate structure which allows it to be spent against their wishes. Corporations exist at the pleasure of the people, not God Almighty.

I am sure admonitions about working together or dealing with lobbyists or pet peeves is not enough, either. We not only have divisions about govt and business, govt and individuals, but also about fiscal responsibility, and until that is smoked out and dealt with I think we will make no progress. I keep hearing statements from both sides that perpetuate Keynesian and monetarist fallacies and indicate the belief that inflation is insignificant or even good. The difference between deflation and inflation regards not wealth or unwealth, but who it benefits, and it never benefits all equally. The Phillips curve is clearly wrong, and we do not have to accept inflation that benefits the shareholder more than the laborer in order to have employment. That is trickle-down economics, just as much as tax cuts for the wealthy. Too, the wealth of nations does not consist in a beehive of activity, but in the utility of what is produced. And we are not wealthier when we have higher prices, even of gold and real estate, or common stock.

It was Hoover, in fact, who tried, and succeeded, in keeping prices and wages up for several years after the stock mkt crash of 1929. But two FDR terms later Gracie Allen could still make jokes about unemployment and education programs, such as: "My administration will nationalize the Gracie Allen Self-Delusion Institute and give free correspondence courses. This will open up hundreds of new fields of endeavor, so that people who can't find jobs in their own line will soon be without jobs in three or four kinds of work." And Japan, the first victim of the kind of international money flows, trade imbalances, and voodoo economics, causing these recent crises, has been about this for 10-15 yrs now without success.

I think, too, he would have been wiser to have avoided speaking about social values Republicans will take offense at and certainly make hay of, and that Biden and Pelosi should give up any thoughts about new careers as actors.

BTW, on health care, David, surely he was being facetious, and thinks the present bills the best possible.

PS- Worked okay, but seems to have upset Charlie's sleep schedule pretty badly.