Charlie Rose

GaryZaetz  12/29/2010 01:16 PM Report

Indian BJP opposition leader Sushma Swaraj is reported by several major Indian publications to have said, after meeting with President Obama, that the US canceled joint US-Indian exercises in Arunachal Pradesh to placate the Chinese. It is highly likely that these canceled exercises were the recovery operations planned to recover the remains of my uncle and the rest of the crew of the American World War II aircraft "Hot as Hell", found by American Clayton Kuhles and Indian Oken Tayeng in 2006. The Obama Administration should be ashamed of this act of kowtowing to Chinese intimidation. If the UPA coalition had any part in persuading the Obama Administration to make this cowardly decision, which also seems likely, then Mrs. Sonia Gandhi and her government share in this shame. Thanks go to Ms. Swaraj and the BJP for bringing these embarrassing facts to light.

JohnGelles  12/20/2010 10:00 PM Report

Charlie Rose ought to interview Congressman Dennis Kucinich, Democrat from Ohio, on his emergency economic and employment defense act in relation to the debate over Stimulus versus Austerity over the near and medium term going forward.

Representing other views should be Harvard's Nial Ferguson (who is mildly pro austerity) and Univ. of Texas' James Galbraith (who is pro full employment).

Kucinich may be ignored by all main stream media. Yet his appeal for debt-free money may be the most important idea Charlie could explore.

Recently Charlie Rose has taken the lead in exploring the end of the end of history as Fukuyama once had us believing. Not even the New Yorker is more ahead of the curve than Charlie Rose. Charlie is old enough to die when I do -- in a little while. He should press on. Will this be another American Century. It can be, if we build more robots than China can hatch real people.

Don't laugh. Charlie wondered if China is run by engineers who think they are in business. I wonder who runs us and what is the current business of America. When I was young, it was said the business of America was business. Now we know that is not true. Our business is to defend civilization and human rights to see they do not perish from the earth. We are Abraham Lincoln--not Thomas Edison or Charlie Wilson (former chief of GM).

JohnGelles  12/20/2010 03:55 PM Report

http://positivemoney.us is where we can follow up on all of today's posts.

JohnGelles  12/20/2010 03:53 PM Report

Anyone who half agrees with me on the stuff I've posted here for several months ought to help create something better than NO LABELS and better than the TEA PARTY. We need centrist movement similar to NEED that can win the bankers to our side. They are useful, as is small business. But we must get beyond money constraints. Money buys brains and labor. We need brains and labor to work in a win-win political economy. If me need THEM, we need money to hire them. Hence we need a centrist movement aimed at matching money to output and output to legitimate need.

The days of laissez fair and business insecurity must be ended. How can we expect great doctors, engineers and leaders, if they never get tenure in society -- if they all want a golden parachute for themselves alone?

Let's get real. Competition must have its limits. Teamwork is the answer. And functional finance can pay fore it in cash.

JohnGelles  12/20/2010 03:41 PM Report

General was Hugh Shelton, his book is "Without Hesitation", his autobiography.

Shelton is a remarkable leader. And he will not screw over the Chinese. But, if they have the bad luck to become aggressive, we will have to worry that the Utopia promised by Kucinich and NEED, the law to make money work for us as much as we work for it, may not be deliverable.

Huntsman is a breath of fresh air. But we are still at a turning point in the history of political economy after 1776. We will go forward and outproduce scarcity. Or we will go backward and ruin the earth with plastic crap, burning carbon, and the horror of needless war.

JohnGelles  12/20/2010 03:29 PM Report

Anyway, Huntsman is presidential timber. His plans and understanding remind me of Obama: but Obama is a lawyer, Huntsman is more a merchant. Both are are great young Americans who have worked well together.

There is legitimate concern that our military leadership get to like each other. I listened to Clinton's Sec Defense Cohen discuss with the Chief of the Joint Chief's a new book by the latter. I'll remember or Google the names later. The gist of the military mind on China was caution. If a military dictator were to become the leader of that very large country, we would need to be on our guard to prevent war that nobody wanted.

JohnGelles  12/20/2010 03:20 PM Report

I say the Huntsman interview is as good as it gets. To surpass it, you would need a documentary made for graduate school by the film industry's finest -- assisted by top scientific, engineering and other minds steeped in history and political economy -- all assisted by graphic artists who can map and diagram abstract thought so that it is not lost in translation.

In other words, Charlie Rose has topped himself again this fall-winter season.

Now what is the bottom line? Will we remain half-way between partners in business and enemies in war? Maybe.

Will we wake up and follow Warren Buffet into Import Certificate territory? I hope so. Huntsman has faith that services are as essential as products. He sees entrepreneurial spirits in entertainment, design, education, as OK. I want more manufacturing to be tied to our inventiveness.

I noted that Huntsman and Rose both saw 600 million farmers turned to migrant workers as a heavy problem. Why not see them as skilled workers, not migrants? If they could farm they can do anything!

On Friday Dennis Kucinich introduced monetary reform to guarantee full employment, fair wages and global prosperity instead of poverty, pollution and war. He called it the National Emergency Employment Defense Act (NEED for short). It does away with fractional reserve banking. I say such a change is not necessary -- fractional reserve lending is good for MORE money, not less. His allies disagree -- they see bubbles where I see output of goods and services.

[to be continued]

REMant  12/20/2010 12:50 PM Report

I'm not sure, but that countries have a larger military when they have little money or are losing it, than when they are richer. The idea flies in the face of the notion of doux commerce, as well as, of free trade. I don't agree with what appeared to be his view of the history either. Economic development started in China when it invited cos to build factories there in exchange, basically, for technology and training. They didn't just start dumping stuff, because they had excess farmers, paying for it with excess dollars. And as I wrote last Thursday and several times previously, our currency is over-valued, not theirs under-valued. All they are trying to do is keep exporting to places that can no longer afford them. Their saving rate no doubt reflects their wealth, not its absence. It is not hoarding, but sufficiency, as it is in Japan. All of this seemed to me to reflect a Keynesian perspective. Despite the statement that we have to understand things from their point of view, it seemed to me he is projecting. Economies grow not because of spending, but because of saving. The opposite view is undoubtedly tied up with our religion. The problem for China, in the short-term, is the health of the economies they trade with, and, in the long-term, the creation of corruption and class divisions caused by the implementation of measures forced on them to make up for the weakness of the former. What happens in China depends a lot on what we do, not on what they do. A stronger United States will make for a more stable China. I'm sure that patterning themselves on us will not. In addition to this one-sidedness, he seemed condescending, and spoke as if this country had them over a barrel, and I have to think that if he displays that attitude there he can't be liked very much, Mandarin or no, nor be very effective. I've noticed this tendency in all the US trade representatives I can think of and I don't think it's very helpful.