Der Spiegel: The End of Arrogance

[starroute]

My apologies if this has been posted before -- I didn't find it in a search. It's from September 30, but I just happened on it. It's from the English-language version of Der Spiegel, and from an American point of view is chillingly blunt:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,581502,00.html

There are days when all it takes is a single speech to illustrate the decline of a world power. A face can speak volumes, as can the speaker's tone of voice, the speech itself or the audience's reaction. Kings and queens have clung to the past before and humiliated themselves in public, but this time it was merely a United States president.

Or what is left of him.

George W. Bush has grown old, erratic and rosy in the eight years of his presidency. Little remains of his combativeness or his enthusiasm for physical fitness. On this sunny Tuesday morning in New York, even his hair seemed messy and unkempt, his blue suit a little baggy around the shoulders, as Bush stepped onto the stage, for the eighth time, at the United Nations General Assembly. ...

"Absurd, absurd, absurd," said one German diplomat. A French woman called him "yesterday's man" over coffee on the East River. There is another way to put it, too: Bush was a laughing stock in the gray corridors of the UN. ...

Is it only President George W. Bush, the lame duck president, whom the rest of the world is no longer taking seriously, or are the remaining 191 UN member states already setting their sights on the United States, the giant brought to its knees? UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon referred to a "new reality" and "new centers of power and leadership in Asia, Latin America and across the newly developed world." Are they surprised, in these new centers, at the fall of America, of the system of the Western-style market economy? Even America's closest allies are distancing themselves -- first and foremost the German chancellor.

[elleng]

1. Thank you!

.

[HillbillyBob]

2. He never WAS pResident it was a stolen office with the help of

the religious right, the money party who has spent years and years and billions to bring us to this point for an easy fix that would be worse than what has already happened.

[melody]

3. What arrogance?

America's people aren't arrogant (well, the Democrats aren't).

We're the ones who'll have to deal with the repercussions they're all laughing about. And we had no say in the matter. And by the way, we hate him more than y'all do. lol

[trthnd4jstc]

4. It is a shame that what is good about us is lost to the world because of what was wrong about us was

So excessively overplayed. We have some great aspects to our Nation-Good rules, Good Guidelines, Good Oversight (When the Republicans could not destroy it), We once had manufacturing providing some of the best goods of the world-Now Mostly sold out to the PRC and elsewhere. Many of the Rich sold us out with all of their outsourcing, mergers and downsizing. Some of them cared, but most hate and distrust American Labor, and welcomed destroying America's Industrial Base.

Grover Norquist, "My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years," he says, "to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub...", quoted in the Nation, http://www.thenation.com/doc/20010514/dreyfuss , had this desire to reduce the size of the government. Maybe it is conspiritorial to claim that maybe Bush wanted to have the Economy fail, just as he wanted 9-11 to happen. If it is discovered that Bush intentionally helped bring our nation down, would not he have deserved impeachment?

Bush has damaged us. The Republicans and Democrats that assisted our nation becoming despised, weaker, and poorer, are all guilty of either negligence or treason. And those guilty, at a minimum, need to be removed from office.

We have to take control of our destiny and struggle, possibly for 20 to 60 more years, just to restore our nation from our decline. This will take new ideas being implemented, I have one which is to end Money derived from credit, and have currency derived from an Hour of Labor, Time Money: http://www.siue.edu/~rblain/index.htm . We should start creating collectives, cooperatives, and other means to help us create a means to our own existence. We are going to become poorer. We need to start with other methods in order to restore our national greatness. Our destiny is up to ourselves. Please doubt that any other part of the world will assist us when we finally become poorer. Our nation has stepped on billions of toes. It is Karma Time Baby.

[Beregond2]

5. The election of Obama is going to go a long way toward restoring

our standing in the world. People WANT to believe in America; that is why they get so furious with us when we fail to live up to our ideals.

[Waiting For Everyman]

6. No... arrogance is alive and well in Germany (and Europe)

I read the whole 5-pg. article. Here are some more quotes. It didn't get to mentioning derivatives until page 3, even though it acknowledges that they ARE the problem... not an American problem btw, but a global one. They all took part in the drunken spree, and thought it was just fine b/c they made additional profits on gouging our homeowners and consumer debtors with predatory policies which we all know were going on long before the subprime problem - all of them did it. And then when our h/o's and borrowers could no longer pay their jacked-up interest, fees, penalties and whatnot, they blame the victim - typical. WE don't save? Uh, wait a minute... what are 401(k)'s then? what are pension funds? what is Social Security?

____________________

Over the last 15 years, Greenspan was opposed to oversight and control over those companies that used the ready cash made available by his policies to introduce a wave of so-called financial innovations.
...
The financial assets that economies hold abroad have grown more than sevenfold in the past three decades. By late 2007, the market volume for derivatives, which are used to bet on interest rate, stock and credit risks worldwide, had reached a previously unthinkable level of $596 trillion (€411 trillion).

At the same time, the number of players has multiplied. The banks stopped being the only ones in control of the industry some time ago. Nowadays, hedge funds bet on falling stock prices and mortgage rates, private equity companies buy up failed banks and bad loans, and wealthy pension funds keep the fund managers afloat.
...
The inventors of these complex securities hoped that they could be used to distribute risk more broadly around the globe. But instead of making financial transactions more secure, they achieved the opposite effect, increasing the risks. Today the notion of using "many shoulders for support," the constant mantra of the gurus of financial alchemy, has proved to be one of the catalysts of the crash.

American economist Raghuram Rajan, whom ECB President Trichet is frequently quoting these days, had a premonition of the current disaster three years ago. The total integration of the markets (through derivatives) "exposes the system to large systemic shocks," Rajan wrote then in a study.
...
There was certainly no shortage of warnings, and there were many voices of caution. As long ago as 1936, John Maynard Keynes recognized the risk that "speculation may win the upper hand" in the markets. Its influence in New York, the British economist wrote, was "enormous," and the situation would become serious "when the capital development of a country becomes the by-product of the activities of a casino."
...
At the same time, the experts also warn against intervening too much in the financial markets... the government is usually not up to the task of owning and operating banks. Simply banning certain financial market operations also makes little sense, they believe, as such prohibitions are often easily circumvented.
...
Despite the anger felt toward Bush, there is little enthusiasm in Europe's capitals for the political consequences. The financial crisis will reinvigorate America's tendency toward isolationism, which never quite disappeared.

The triumphalism of the Bush years could easily be followed by the "I'll-sit-this-one-out" years of an Obama administration committed to a strict policy of belt-tightening. If that happens, both old and new Europe will have to demonstrate whether the European Union can rightfully claim to be on an equal footing with the United States.

In the past, the US government's solo efforts provided the Europeans with an all-too-comfortable excuse for simply doing nothing. But that excuse is no longer valid.

_____________________

Notice (if you read the article) that the lauded ECB President Trichet is quoting an American economist for Trichet's enlightened statements!

Notice that Germany (and the EU) still isn't willing to outlaw derivatives. Why not, I wonder? Could it be... they like the friggin' game and the profits themselves? STILL. Oh, Enlightened Ones, school us!!!

Bullshit.

Also notice that Keynes predicted this in 1936. Did all the world's bankers and economists somehow fail to be aware of that? And yet, the statement's quoted in the article, so then, I guess they WERE aware of that after all. Then that means they (the experts) DID know full well exactly what they have been creating - on Wall St., and in London, and Paris, and Berlin, and Asia, and Dubai, and everywhere else... the ultra-rich elites. This isn't a downfall of America, it is a downfall of the global elites' financial schemes. And the elites in Europe are hoping that the American middle class loses sight of that fact, and fails to insist on outlawing these derivatives and practices which they all pretend to be against, and pretend are of American creation. But of course, that's a little fiction they're selling us, now, isn't it?

I fervently hope that American DOES become "isolationist" and "nationalistic" about our economy... to lead the middle class of other countries in the right direction on what to do. I know those are dirty words lately, just like the word "liberal", but so what? We shipped our jobs around the world to bring up THEIR standard of living by lowering ours... and what do we get for it? Ridicule, in a time of crisis. Fine. Let's drop the stupid trade agreements and rebuild our own nation now, the right way. Let "the world" show us how it's done on their own, as we "sit this one out".

Our "tendency toward isolationism, which never quite disappeared" - you mean our tendency to mind our own business? Gee again, I wonder why "the world" is so against that, since we're so horrible? You'd think they'd want us to.

Go ahead, Merkie and Germany, you criticize us so - take the stage. Impress us. No, nevermind. That last time you did that, it didn't work out so well.

Yes, we have arrogance and stupidity and hate and wingnuts, but so does the rest of the world, including Europe, thank you very much. At least we own up to ours... Europe doesn't. Their snottiness is just as annoying. And to gloat at what our people are going through now? Then I'll reserve no sympathy for Europe either.

America is its own market, that's what they forget. The only other countries capable of being that are not within reach of it yet. I'm for keeping our consumer power and our debts right here. I want a National Bank of the United States to own all of them. I want our payments and tax revenues to fund everything we do. THAT is the structure this country was founded on, it's still the right way to proceed. And I hope we do it that way. I couldn't care less if we'd be the biggest economy in the world that way - we'd be the most secure, and the most beneficial to our people, and the hardest for the elites to exploit. That was idea of it. That's why it was set up that way. The alternative has been tried, and failed. Time to return to the way we know and the way that works, and let others "innovate" on other shores if they want to. I'd rather have a stake in what we can do here. Any day.

The bankers, economists, insurers, accountants and other sundry financial wizards involved in this have no credibility compared to that solid blueprint of ours, which has worked for us in the past and is still just as solid and just as valid.

Thanks but no thanks for that globalization to nowhere.