Charlie Rose

NeilMacCallister  05/18/2010 04:16 PM Report

Mr. Rose? ..Is the accompanying "Transcript" accurate?

Is the following what you actually said???

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CHARLIE ROSE: "..in the words of John Kennedy, 'It’s not what the government can do for you, but what you can do for

your government'."

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No sir! ..What JFK actually said was,

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JOHN F. KENNEDY: "Ask not what your COUNTRY can do for you, ask what you can do for your COUNTRY."

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Don't you agree, Sir, ..that there is a profoundly important difference between these two readings?

Our country, The United States of America, does not exist as a "useful item" in the pocket of any current President or any current Congress.

The objective is NOT to serve any sitting "government" of elected officials, or Administrative rulings, ..but to "defend and protect" the high-water marks of human culture, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United States of America.

I believe whole-heartily that you understand that, ..but why do we let truth slip from our attentions so easily??

You claimed:

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CHARLIE ROSE: "President Obama -- he gets it".

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Mr. Obama may have "gotten it" at one time, ..maybe rejoicing on the beaches of Hawaii, or in the yard of his grandparents, that he would be able to work the opportunities available to him on these shores, and with these fellow Americans,..

..but his speech in Philadelphia last year in which he disparaged the 'founding fathers', and his general unconcern for American achievements tells the tale quite clearly that he has also let his understanding slip.

Please, Mr. Rose, ..we really CAN do something for our country. We can remember that we are here as a country first, and that we are a sitting panel of holding-the-nose-closed elected "best-of-the-worsts" second.

***

Let's not apologize for our own failures by blaming America or the authors of our founding documents.

If we go bankrupt, WE are the ones who did it.

If we pollute the Earth with smoke, plastic, and "useful" ignorance, ..WE are the ones who have done so.

And if we don't live up to the freedoms, independence, and opportunities to achieve "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness", ..WE will be the ones who have let that slip.

slightly_optimistic  05/18/2010 11:47 AM Report

The NYT's Keith Bradsher comments this week on the effects of the accidental *mercantilism*.

Not only is the falling euro harming the competitiveness of the dollar, China is also suffering. Chinese companies are selling less to Europe, their largest market.

Bradsher points out this is all complicating Washington's moves to break the Chinese currency's peg to the dollar. As bad luck would have it, the American secretary of commerce, Gary Locke, is in China this week leading the first cabinet-level trade mission of the administration of President Obama.

slightly_optimistic  05/16/2010 11:54 AM Report

Austerity for some countries will be the result of 'rebalancing' the global economy. But simple rebalancing will no doubt remove even more safeguards - such as the global public goods now supplied by the United Nations system.

On the subject of mercantilism, much of Europe will be helped by the weaker euro; but the corollary is the US will probably fail to achieve the big surge in export led growth that the president wants.

ksjayhawk  05/15/2010 07:01 PM Report

I recently bought and read Mr. Friedman's book, The World is Flat, for a paper. This was a truly disappointing book from the perspective that he was overly fond of the words, flat, flattening, and/or world and the fact that he never once actually mentioned the result on American workers. Instead he was singing the glories of globalizing, outsourcing, and just generally killing the goose that laid the golden eggs, the American workers. I can't believe he's ever had to deal with the call centers the way I've had to deal with them or he wouldn't have been so enamoured with them. They don't always speak english very well, they're busy looking through their book for an answer, and they're not always polite. Reading Mr. Friedman's book, its clear the foreign workers are being taken advantage of and he doesn't seem to mind.

The interview was pretty much the final straw. In fact, given my apparent invisible or non-existent status according to Mr. Friedman, I don't plan to watch or listen to Mr. Friedman any more.

MarieIsenburg  05/15/2010 09:04 AM Report

Mr. Friedman asserts that in the "green" realm, humans are bound by the laws of physics and the nature will have the last call. Granted. He also says that the laws of the market will prevail. The "market" is a microcosm in the scheme of things. A perfect market, impossible in human terms, may meet Mr. Freedman's definition of inevitability. The tattered remnants of today's "free market" merely serve to buffer the mighty from the rest of us. Ditto China's party control, green or not.

slightly_optimistic  05/15/2010 07:48 AM Report

Seeing the job through in Afghanistan is the aim of the new minister of defence in Britain, Liam Fox, the media reports today. However there seems to be uncertainty, as is also suggested in the interview with Thomas Friedman, as to what the "job" is that justifies the national expense. There are 9,000 British troops in Afghanistan.

Dr Fox complains that other countries in Nato aren't pulling their weight in Afghanistan. " We need to find better ways of burden sharing. . . It is unreasonable to expect Britain to carry such a full burden inside the Nato alliance."

On military commitments overall, he says the forthcoming defence review in Britain will acknowledge the end of the Cold War.

An essay in 'Foreign Affairs' by Robert Kaplan suggests that Europe is fairly settled now after the Cold War; the next challenge will be in Asia where Nato is reluctant to tread.

So much for Nato going to the expense of preparing a new strategic concept for the future - maybe Britain's defence review should factor in that Nato is unlikely exist much longer.

salgadoce  05/15/2010 02:33 AM Report

Tom Friedman - solving the world's problems, one metaphorical witticism at a time.

JLRmapman  05/14/2010 10:52 PM Report

Freidman makes a lot of catchy comments. I especially like the one about politicians job's now being taking away rather than giving away. Cant really see that happening-but its true. Its not the government it's 'we the people' that will never put up with hard choices and rational sacrifice. We much prefer to deal with hard issues through a huge food fight.

Agree with mutex about the panacea of 'innovation'. which is at best a double edged sword and didn't we just have a period of tremendous innovation in information technology.

mutex  05/14/2010 07:23 PM Report

Innovation is not some genie Americans can summon at will by rubbing a magic lamp. It comes as a by-product of millions of people struggling to compete in a global economy by producing goods and services the rest of the world wants to buy at prices they can afford to pay.

This illusion that American exceptionalism will save us is counterproductive. What we need more than anything after the last 30+ years of supposed prosperity built on debt is a healthy dose of humility and an extra large dose of reality.

If our national psyche is so fragile that the only way we can move forward is to have everything sugar-coated then we are truly doomed.

robdverity  05/14/2010 02:57 PM Report

Ole Thommy - agree or not - is one engaged and engaging dude. His gears are meshing at a fascinating rate. His Af-Pak analysis redacted to fit mine: the two countries are made up of tribal cultures that will sorely test any solutions that we try to leave them with. Too fractured to be solvable. [Problematical at best; doomed to ultimate failure IMO.] To be fair, I’ve extrapolated his tribal comment considerably.

Agreed with Roubini: Greece is in trouble and by extension the Euro-zone. (Being reflected in mkts today.) To avoid the same self-indulgent destruction I would add a steeply geometric progressive sales tax; or VAT. Hope Thom would agree. TEA party be damned. Spending cuts and annual budget reductions in tandem. Elst the alpha of our omega will commence. Get it? Greek. (Wonder if Thom could use a writer?)

Oil spill: we need to break our oil dependency. Hybrids, solar, wind turbines etc. I would add a $1.50 a gallon gas tax. Again hope Thom would agree. (Read early version of "Flat" a hundred yrs ago.)

Agree w/charlize: Obama's a loser in Afghanistan. If our economics deteriorate to point of having to pull out, then it wuld be one of those ill-winds that doesn't blow at least some good.

charlizecourriers  05/14/2010 02:04 PM Report

Obama is a loser in Afganistan. But that may be good for everyone. We are effectively bogged down there. Which means we are't where we should be. P.S. That means bozos like Hillary and Richard are just where they should be. When she (and he) figure that out we will all know, quickly! But we don't need to hold our breath. As for Greece, as I mentioned in another comment, the greek answer is: seisactheia. A new leader, in the footsteps of Solon, will bring it back to the Greek people. That brings us to the USA. Friedman's fantasy that in a crisis we all sees things the same way won't happen. Look at history and you see just the opposite. It's called rebuilding from the ground up (and that's your ground, the ground you are standing on). So, China is the new Red/Green. I doubt it...This is "his whole argument." But that's not an argument. Enough said.

REMant  05/14/2010 01:45 PM Report

Will the Afghans EVER want what we want?

I think you'll find that many American funds are deeply involved in Europe, because they have always bought European stocks whenever it looked like the dollar was going south in order to profit from the change in exchange rates.

It is not just that we have been living beyond our means, but on the backs of poor ppl the world over, and this is coming back to bite us now. But I doubt robbing them of their best young ppl is going to help them or, ultimately, us. I don't see how someone can argue about making the pie bigger, and at the same time talk about monopolizing the means to do that.

Altho this may seem paradoxical to many, we will be able to grow when our wages go down to the level of the Chinese, provided our prices follow suit. (Note I am not suggesting lowering the American living standard to the Chinese, that will depend on how productive we are, not the price level.) What is holding this up is the demand of debt holders for repayment at prices we can no longer afford, and unfortunately, the Fed's actions and our so-called "stimulus" spending has made this more difficult, not less, their program assuming that we simply had a little unused capacity, but it's a lot more than that. We need to deflate, and most of that has to come from investors. This is what I meant when I said a year or two ago that we had to go in and restructure mortgages, and I'm afraid we are going to have to write off a lot more than just those. Like the houses, these debts have to be considered "underwater." In the past we could simply devalue the dollar to achieve the result, but, so far from that, what we are doing is defending the dollar, and the Europeans are defending the Euro. How we plan to sustain this I have no idea. You could argue that the Chinese should raise prices and wages to match ours, but that will destroy their economy, and they are not the ones being unproductive. One way or the other things will equilibrate, but as a general principle it has to be understood that greater productivity means lower prices and interest rates, not higher ones, and if higher prices occur, then someone is milking the system. The only other approach I can see is if, as in WWII, the govt uses progressive taxation coupled with spending to redistribute what has been appropriated from labor, and/or for the country to be forced to save and find ways of being more productive without firing ppl.