Free Speech for All!
It seems that our reporting in yesterday’s DU of Oliver Stone’s remarks at the FCCT on Monday night have caused quite a stir all along the political Spectrum;
The far right have denounced our coverage – they seem to believe that freedom of speech shouldn’t be extended to Mr. Stone although they can’t really explain why not. The far left want to know why we didn’t take issue with his view of collective responsibility; if everything is society’s fault, even Hitler and G. W. Bush, then that seems to offend ultra libertarians who somehow want to reconcile freedom with protecting us all from ourselves. Again they don’t actually explain how…
Tonight at FCCT, the LUV debate maybe less contentious – but then again maybe not.
Politics is a duty business at all times but now more than ever – one of our major concerns is that documents and data that are available to us are now allowing us to form a view of Western government policy that wasn’t apparent at the times when key decisions were taken. Just focusing on the USA, the biggest but not the only offender, the following facts have emerged;
• The bailouts of 2008 were designed purely to transfer substandard debts from the balance sheets of incoherent banks and not to provide any broader and to the mainstream economy.
• Because of this, US$ willingly overpaid (by a factor of 3-6 times) for there assets.
• By not writing off bad debts, the shortfall of $3.5 trillion will be spread over time.
• The additional expansion of the US monetary base that paid for much of these commercial bank reserves locked in Fed Changed its rules to allow it to encourage this.
• Complicity by regional Fed/the Federal Reserve System. The Treasury needs to be thoroughly, investigated by official enquiry.
We’re not conspiracy theorists but we believe that the economic team in place in 2008 have consistently misrepresented their actions to Media, tax payers and above all to President Obama. We believe that the penny has just dropped that Obama has realized that while he was promising more banks per buck (Tiger Woods take note!) his economic advisors were undermining this though their policy actions. It’s hard to see where this goes but we don’t expect Timothy Geithner be able to keep his job. Ben Bernante will keep his but only now that he has been publicly humiliated. Paul Volker will keep a watchful eye on Fed and Treasury. We’re hoping for a clean sweep from a new broom even if the immediate consequences are severe. Obama seems to now realize the extent of the deception he has to decide whether to go along with it or push back against it. We play that it is the latter.