Charlie Rose

vongleichent  02/09/2012 03:06 PM Report

This clearly wasn't enough. Charlie you should have gone deeper into the deficit and so on. At the same time the foreign minister is excellent at what he does. Like avoiding any wrong doing by his country. For example hiring Goldman Sachs to get into the EU.

JohnGelles  11/01/2011 02:39 AM Report

I recommend the review in the New Yorker 31 October 2011, page106, for "MARGIN CALL", the movie. The young writer-director (J.C. Chandor)'s father worked 40 years at Merrill Lynch. The reviewer, David Denby found the film convincing. This leads me to believe there is more to be learned at that movie, of the Gordian Knots infecting the global and Middle East political economies, than other sources of wisdom. That is, if what we are facing is as much like a brain tumor as it is like an IED.

If, however if what we face is nuclear IED's, the rule for Gordian Knots is to cut them in half and repeat the cuts until they are nothing but dust.

JohnGelles  11/01/2011 02:15 AM Report

The macro problems facings all nations collectively and each individually, like similar micro problems facing each one of us alive and individuals collectively, feature an endless series of intractable (or unsolvable) ultimate questions. These are called Gordian Knots in by many philosophers.

In one sense such knots can be severed in half with a blade. This will free victims from one knot at a time. The alternative desire to untie the knot is fruitless -- because Gordian Knots do not untie that way. And certainly, a series of Gordian Knots can only be loosened with a very sharp blade and a very strong arm.

History teaches, in my view, that the myth and metaphor of Gordian Knots is truer than other rules of thumb.

However, in profound science, DNA and the double helix were Gordian Knots untied by heroic patient intellectual effort without blades or mighty blows.

So, as with most things, perhaps history offers the dialectical model of many choices and many answers where a great length of time is required to tie us into knots and to be able to escape from unwanted effects thereof.

Humphrey Bogart died of cancer at 57. I just watched his son's bio-video of his Dad. Tobacco was one reason. Must we untie smoking from human habits? Or is freedom to be blind to risk a higher human value?

I have avoided the habit from age 7 (actually from birth) because it had caused a cousin to lose his wind playing high school basketball -- and he said to me NEVER SMOKE.

Philosophy, destiny, chance, science and social science present diplomats with endless opportunity to fail. Not to worry, acts of war can clear the air.

The hope we have this century is that acts of war will not metastasize and spread too fast and far for life to ever recover.

REMant  10/31/2011 11:52 AM Report

The US as usual has rather stuck its snout in where it's not wanted and no doubt likes no part of this agreement. There need be no "fiscal union." The problem lies entirely with the people who borrowed the money, and the people stupid enough to lend to them, which includes the central bank which no doubt made a lot of it possible. Greater "fiscal union" made no difference in the US, nor has it in China, or in Turkey; more likely, it made it worse. It is simply code for bail-out. The Greeks and the Italians have had a problem with socialist bureaucracy for many years. They are relatively young nations, too, not formed until the late 19th c, and hardly united thru much of the 20th. Tey in fact should be giving us lessons, not we, them. The problem is not where to find investment, but where to find virtue, because no matter how much investment you have it won't make any difference without the latter. Only virtue will balance a budget. Yet we have Geithner once again touting saving the banks so they can print more money and warning of dire consequences for the entire planet.

I think the minister is generally right about Turkey, but I doubt he speaks for the EU on this, or that Turkey will enjoy life in the EU as it exists and esp as it will likely become.

I hope, BTW, he really isn't referring to actual Gordian knots, which had something to do with the conquest of Asia, as I recall.