CHRYSTIA FREELAND: SOMEONE TO PAY ATTENTION TO

It is quickly becoming more impressive to see competent women effectively taking a stronger role in politics and giving educated opinions. One such who has impressed me recently is Chrystia Freeland, of the Financial Times

While someone was commenting on European reactions tpo and impressions of Obama, she commented that he was indeed making a favorable contact there. More importantly, she said that Europe was somewhat disillusioned with the American people that they voted Bush in for a second term (apparently fairly and squarely). Now, the Europeans think more favorably of the American people for having the wisdom to have voted Obama in as President.

A recent column by her sheds a bit of light on the way she thinks:
View from the Top - Felix Rohatyn, president of FGR Associates
By Chrystia Freeland

Published: April 3 2009 03:00 | Last updated: April 3 2009 03:00

Wall Street veteran Felix Rohatyn shot to international prominence in the 1970s when he managed the negotiations that enabled New York City to restructure its debt and resolve its financial crisis.

Mr Rohatyn was born 80 years ago in Vienna and grew up in France. His family fled the Nazis during the second world war and he ended up in the US, where he studied physics at Vermont's Middlebury College.

A long-time Democrat, Mr Rohatyn was appointed by US President Bill Clinton to serve as ambassador to France from 1997 to 2000. He was chairman of Lehman Brothers' international advisory committee and an adviser on Europe from 2006 until the bank went bankrupt last September.

The financial crisis and the muscular government intervention in the economy it provoked have lent Mr Rohatyn's views fresh currency. He is a long-time advocate of stepped-up state spending on infrastructure and this year published a book, Bold Endeavors: How Our Government Built America, and Why It Must Rebuild Now . Edited highlights of an FT.com video interview appear below.

Was it right to require General Motors' Rick Wagoner to go?

Yes. You might ask whether it should have been a little bit gentler. But you have all these people, they're under a lot of pressure, they want to make sure what they do registers. So there was no really good way out for the management here.

What about the Chrysler- Fiat deal? Is that going to work out for both parties?

It will certainly work out for Fiat. They're not putting up any money as I recall and they're going to get 30 per cent of the company. It will be quite good for both. I used to be on the board of Fiat and Fiat never really had a decent presence in the US . . . and the man who runs it, I think, is very good.

You were at Lehman in the final days. With hindsight, what went wrong? You know, you may find this hard to believe but I haven't a clue. I was at Lehman as an adviser, mostly to advise them on their European things, for about a year, a year and a half and I had very little contact. It was a very large place, but essentially there were five or six people who ran it, but things were getting tighter, things were getting more tense . . . But what it was I only found out once it was over, and it was dramatic. And I felt very, very sorry for them, for Dick Fuld, for the 24,000 people in this business. Could they have done things differently? Of course, one can always do things differently. Could they have done it in time? Could they have done it in scale? Could they have done it in a credible way? I don't know. Was there a confidence in the back of people's minds that they wouldn't be allowed to fail? Certainly, in the back of some people's minds there was the notion that this wouldn't be allowed to happen. And in hindsight that was correct because by it happening you began to see what terrible damage you could wreak by not taking care of it. What about the government treatment of Lehman? Was it a mistake to let it fail and do you think the government, in particular Tim Geithner and Hank Paulson, had any other options?

Certainly, it was a mistake to let it happen. I believe their position has always been they didn't have the authority to [behave differently] . . . I have no reason not to believe that but certainly if they could have done [so] I think they would have but I can't be sure. And then AIG coming so soon after, that was a painful thing . . .

Will the stimulus plan that was passed in January be enough? Probably not, but it was a good first step. I would have wished to see a little more infrastructure investment, but we'll maybe get it later. So I would think probably there is some room for an increased next step but the president has a lot on his plate with dealing with the Europeans, who are not at all enthused about more stimulus and are really looking for more regulation.

How do you interpret this European-American conversation right now? From a cultural point of view, financial culture if you will, the issue of regulation is much more important to the Europeans than to us. In the wake of this crisis will we understand capitalism and the relationship between markets and governments differently or will it be back to business as usual? I don't think it will be [back to business as usual]. Too many people have gotten hurt. We don't even know at this point how many people have been wiped out in terms of their savings, their 401ks. So I don't think we can ever go back to that. What will be the single biggest lesson and the single biggest change? The biggest lesson will probably be to support the new regulations. Whatever they are, they are going to be constraining and they are going to be tough. And they should be. And making the public understand why that is a good thing, when all of the instincts of Americans is freedom and lack of regulation and having to make a U-turn of this type is going to be difficult. What about the role of America in the world? There will be contradictory feelings about us. On one hand you'll have a lot of people who were always nervous about our type of runaway capitalism and will say: "Ah, we told you so, should have been careful, we don't need all of this, we're serious people." And the other that says: "God, if America goes down we go with it." So, it's important to us to have a positive reaction from the Europeans, from Asia, etc, to help us get back on our feet and to help the world because ultimately what we do affects the world more than anything else.

Chrystia Freeland

THE MEDIA SHIES AWAY FROM SHOWING HUMAN SUFFERING IN THE US DUE ECONOMY

Is anyone, other than I, surprised that our media shows little of the suffering of the common people, the poor, the homeless, the unemployed, the ones without medical insurance.it seems similar to the Bush ban on showing flag draped caskets of the military dead.

A 9 year old, whose parents had divorced, died after his mother failed to give him needed medication. by his mother with whom he resided, that was prescribed. Doctors had custody returned to the father, but by then it was too late to save his life. On TV I recall having heard mother say she had not the money to fill the prescriptions. I may have misheard since the topic was only briefly mentioned but I note that she had no religious or other reasons for withholding medication.

Tonight the news showed security camera film of a 41 year old man holding up, at gun point, a convenience store at 3 AM, accompanied by his terrified looking 9 year old daughter. After he was handed the contents of the cash register, he told the clerk that he had been out of work for months and needed the money to feed his daughter.

Without doubt, both of these parents had choices that would have been more desirable to most intelligent people. However, when people live in poverty, they are not usually well-nourished or thinking their most clearly. They do not often have the problem solving resources required in such situations, either for lack of experience, ability to problem solve, fear of repeated rejection and many other reasons that are less likely to happen to well-educated, mentally and physically healthy, bright experienced people. Alas that latter description is not given to the majority of our population.

"Homelessness and poverty are inextricably linked. Poor people are frequently unable to pay for housing, food, childcare, health care, and education. Difficult choices must be made when limited resources cover only some of these necessities. Often it is housing, which absorbs a high proportion of income that must be dropped. Being poor means being an illness, an accident, or a paycheck away from living on the streets. While I was not able to find current statistics, in 2005 1 in 50 children would be homeless."

ONE WAY THE MEDIA GETS THINGS WRONG

Today on PBS I heard someone interviewing Sam Donaldson. He confessed that he is saddened by the attrition of newspapers in print because he read them and made up his program from the information he got from them. The disillusionment I felt was massive. He chuckled as he said that they let the AP do the work of digging up the stories and facts and just culled out what they wanted to use, many years ago to date, and mentioned Nixon's era.

I'm not sure that I wasn't more shocked to realize that he was sad to see newsprint less available and that good source leaving us. Did the man not ever use the Internet? Did he never chase down information from many sources to try to find the truth? If anyone has ever been involved with a newspaper story in which they had been an eyewitness or have someone writing about them, they cannot understand the distortions that get printed. Reporters lie frequently to get a story. Today I think the first source to print something is eagerly picked up by everyone else and like the 'parlor game' it spreads through the system that is supposed to be enlightening the public as to what is really happening in the world.

While I struggled with absorbing that bit of information from Sam Donaldson, which certainly explained much of my current disappointment with the network news as well as the printed news, (I won't even mention Time, Newsweek, and those magazines that are frequently outdated by the time they get into print and reach the reader). Something within me feels that my time has been wasted when the 'news' I am reading has already been publicly retracted, replaced with new facts or action, and is too recent to even take its place as history value.

Listening further, I heard an afternoon show in which a caller phoned in to say that he was upset that the government asked the CEO of GM to step down but the government had not asked the AIG CEOs to do the same. That the caller was ignorant of facts was less surprising than that the show moderator agreed. Did either of them listen to Liddy being grilled by the incompetents in the Congress? He just came on board to take the place of the CEO who had left. Cassano in London, the man probably most responsible for the sub-prime fiasco (really wanted to say 'fubar', but I figured lots of people would be too lazy to Google the meaning) had left more than a year ago. Many AIG top brass saw the handwriting on the wall and all too many of the culprits jumped ship early so that there was no necessity for the government to ask them to resign. Does no one wonder that the CEO would consider retaining bonus to keep a few people who know what they did there and what to do to wind things down?

It is amusing and annoying to hear so many people see the employees who have remained at AIGFP as interchangeable with any able bodied people trained in a similar job function elsewhere. It ignores the learning curve it would take for someone to step in and know what to do to shut down a facility that requires another year, at minimum, to wind down all its activities, and that is with people who know exactly what they are doing. Would someone like to double that time while the trainee or experienced-but-new-on-the-job takes that year to learn what they are supposed to be doing. It is learning about the work of the company and its demands that takes time. Lots of people know computers...it is what you do on them to satisfy the employees, the accountants, the tax people, and (in the future) the regulators. That takes time to learn in a company. Even trash collectors have to learn a route and how to separate recyclables from regular trash, and what toxic products not to accept. While that learning curve may be shorter, you would not send an untrained worker out on the job without some training. Go up the food chain and the training takes longer.

Perhaps having trained myself for more than 50 years not to rush to judgment about people in my work as a therapist, I expect others to refrain from passing judgment before they know what they are talking about. Alas, it will never be so. Bush was able to get enough followers to start the war in Iraq by appealing to their impulse to violence as a solution, confident that we had the greater military strength....and look where that got us!

MORE OLDEST

World's Oldest Person Turns 128 (and dies, in 2003)
by Thomson Fontaine
"Dominicans yesterday celebrated the birthday of the World’s oldest living person Elizabeth (Ma Pampo) Israel who turned 128 even as government vowed to increase pressure on Guinness World record officials to officially confer the title on the Dominican.

Unfortunately, the Guinness World record has not officially recognized Ma Pampo since they are still in the process of verifying the claim. A Baptismal certificate has been issued by the Roman Catholic Church with her birth date stated as January 27, 1875, but since it is not an official record, it cannot be used to authenticate the claim."



In 2001, this 31 year old cat died. It seems odd that a family can have a cat longer then it takes their kids to be born, grow ujp, and move away.

SOME OF THE OLDEST LIFE IN NATURE'S WORLD

Nature can be tenacious. Here is the oldest tree found on earth...not so much above ground but, in fact, the oldest root system..more than 9,000 years. The world's oldest known living tree, a conifer that first took root at the end of the last Ice Age, has been discovered in Sweden, researchers say.

The visible portion of the 13-foot-tall (4-meter-tall) "Christmas tree" isn't ancient, but its root system has been growing for 9,550 years, according to a team led by Leif Kullman, professor at Umeå University's department of ecology and environmental science in Sweden.

In this lovely coral, we find age under the ocean.





















I don't speak clam. I can't imagine what a boring 400 years this poor creature might have lived.





Since many of each species has not survived as long as these specimens, we as humans must continue the quest to understand why some living things last longer than others.

DREAMWORKS: MONSTERS VS ALIENS

While I repeat myself, movies that entertain, have happy endings and make me feel good are the only ones I find are not a waste of my time. Consequently, Dreamworks and Pixar are real favorites when they push their imaginations as they do. Fortunately I have family members who have seen things I have not and can fill me in on the amusing take-offs from other movies. This film is apparently full of them. Even though I missed those at the time, I thoroughly enjoyed the beauty of creativity and wild ideas. These people really thought outside the box.

While it may not meet the needs of intellectuals like Science Fiction so frequently does, it makes fun of so many things. Stephen Colbert is the voice of the President of the Unites States. Reese Witherspoon is the voice of Susan, what one might call the heroine. One of the monsters, a PhD scientist who has become, or always was, a cockroach of enormous proportions for his species, delightfully voiced by Hugh Laurie (Dr. House).

Interestingly, while people are suffering economically, the 3D version was sold out, all 272 seats! Families brought their little ones and not a peep was heard during the movie from any of them that distracted. Speaking with the 20-ish couple beside me, they were unbelieving when I told them they had 3D movies in the 50s. Granted the technology was different then, but the feeling that you were having something thrown at you felt the same.

For those who liked the misery portrayed in the films chosen for the Oscars, I say, "To each his own." I will never see any of them no matter how well written or beautifully acted they are. I see life all around me in its heartaches, suffering, hardships, and cruelty that man inflicts on man, so to speak. It would offend me to pay for the privilege to wallow in more. If only Hollywood could see that people need relief, not the mind dump of some great writer and director's idea of the most emotionally draining reality movie of the year.

LEGALIZING MARIJUANA WOULD BOOST THE ECONOMY OPINION

There are lots of arguments pro and con about legalizing marijuana. One Harvard Professor believes it would make 77 billion dollars for the Treasury of the USA in 2 years.

Listen to the argument here.

CNN ran a poll and found voters were overwhelmingly in favor of legalizing marijuana.

This Obama's position at this time.