Who will police the regulators

It all started with Congressman Ron Paul attaching an oversight and audit amendment to HR 3996. This is on the top of HR 1207.

It seems that the FED is scared!! The Fed chairman writes an Op-Ed in Washington post, where he stated..

And a House committee recently voted to repeal a 1978 provision that was intended to protect monetary policy from short-term political influence. These measures are very much out of step with the global consensus on the appropriate role of central banks, and they would seriously impair the prospects for economic and financial stability in the United States. The Fed played a major part in arresting the crisis, and we should be seeking to preserve, not degrade, the institution's ability to foster financial stability and to promote economic recovery without inflation.

First lets restrain ourselves of the statement, "The Fed played a major part in arresting the crisis ...". However he states that "repeal short term political influence." The bill only expands GAO oversight. Perhaps he is scared of that! And he does not want to explicitly say that!

Then later he writes...

Congress, through the Government Accountability Office, can and does audit all parts of our operations except for the monetary policy deliberations and actions covered by the 1978 exemption. The general repeal of that exemption would serve only to increase the perceived influence of Congress on monetary policy decisions, which would undermine the confidence the public and the markets have in the Fed to act in the long-term economic interest of the nation.

So what are the "great 1978 exemptions"? The House document is here. But the real part of the "exceptions" are...

(1) transactions for or with a foreign central bank, government of a foreign country, or nonprivate international financing organization;

(2) deliberations, decisions, or actions on monetary policy matters, including discount window operations, reserves of member banks, securities credit, interest on deposits, open market operations;

(3) transactions made under the direction of the Federal Open Market Committee; or

(4) a part of a discussion or communication among or between members of the Board of Governors and officers and employees of the Federal Reserve System related to items.

Now the (2) is made to 180 days and the rest are made open.

As it should be,....

P.S.
Latest news! Ben has problems being reappointed and the Senate is "deliberating" :-)

Five Most Entertaining Outrage on Obama & the Nobel Prize

In India, if the sitting PM or President won the Nobel Prize, there would have been a month long celebrations amongst the people where every Indian would think that HE himself have won the Nobel Peace Prize.

However this is the partisan ridden United States ..

There was an outrage on Obama winning the Nobel prize! These are the most entertaining of the outrages. There were not any arbitrary comments. The were from reputed columnists publishing in reputed newspapers or web-sites.

Finally, we will show you an element of sanity in this insanity.

Here are the FIVE most entertaining outrages.

5: "Heckuva Job, Barack" by Ross Douthat in the New York Times.

The article requests (rather orders) the President to refuse the prize because "the prize makes every foreign-policy problem Obama faces seem ever so slightly more burdensome". The article keeps repeating this point. The tone was sarcastic but The NY times accepted it for publication!!

Pièce de résistance

People have argued that you can’t turn down a Nobel. ......

Would the world have been offended? Well, to start with, the prize isn’t given out by an imaginary “world community.” It’s voted on and handed out by a committee of five obscure Norwegians. So turning it down would have been a slap in the face, yes, to Thorbjorn Jagland, Kaci Kullmann Five, Sissel Marie Ronbeck, Inger-Marie Ytterhorn and Agot Valle. But it wouldn’t have been a slap in the face to the Europeans or the Africans, to Moscow or Beijing, or to any other population or great power that an American president should fret about offending.

4. Why President Obama Was Awarded the Nobel Prize

This article is more fun. Written by Dennis Prager and published in Real Clear Politics. The article parses the Nobel Committee announcement and writes a commentary. For example, parsing, "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples" to "Meaning: No more Lone Ranger America."

The article reads like a "commentary" of a sacred text. The words of Nobel Committee were first and then a commentary on this later.

The essential theme of the article is that this prize undercuts..

American exceptionalism -- the notion that America has a superior moral value system to that of the "world" (specifically the United Nations and the European Union) and America's willing to use its unique power, alone when necessary, in accordance with that value system.

Incidentally, this theme of surrendering American Exceptionalism is noted in virtually all right wing articles.

Pièce de résistance

6. "Thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting."

Meaning: To our delight, unlike the previous president, this one believes in global warming and in changing the American economy to combat it.

The "climate change" scare has become the most effective vehicle for compelling a transformation of Western economies along the lines that left-wing environmentalists have urged for decades.

3 . A Wicked and Ignorant Award

This article has been published in none the less but the prestigious Wall Street Journal Opinion Pages written by none other than Peggy Noonan. The quality of the English is exceptional. The content, none!! The article was nothing but polemics against the Nobel committee. Some of the polemics are:

• In one mindless stroke, the committee has rendered the Nobel Peace Prize a laughingstock, perhaps for as long as a generation. And that is an act of true destruction, because it was actually good that the world had a prestigious award for peacemaking.
• ... puts him at a disadvantage in his own country, because Americans don't really like it when flaky European politicians tell them how they ought to see him or the world.
• Hmm, can a president who just won the left's great peace prize decide to increase American troop strength and presence in a foreign war? What impact will this have on larger geopolitical considerations?

Anyway here is the ...

Pièce de résistance

It was always absurd that Ronald Reagan, whose political project led to the end of the gulag and the fall of the Berlin Wall, and who gambled his personal standing in the world for a system that would protect the common man from annihilation in a nuclear missile attack, could not win it. But nobody wept over it, and for one reason: because everyone, every sentient adult who cared to know about such things, knew that the Nobel Peace Prize is, when awarded to a political figure, a great and prestigious award given by liberals to liberals. NCNA--no conservatives need apply. This is the way of the world, and so what? Life isn't for prizes.

2. An Unconstitutional Nobel

From the funny we arrive at the ridiculous! This article actually says, with some interesting legal imagination. We begin with...

Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution, the emolument clause, clearly stipulates: "And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince or foreign State."

.......

The five-member Nobel commission is elected by the Storting, the parliament of Norway. Thus the award of the peace prize is made by a body representing the legislature of a sovereign foreign state. There is no doubt that the Nobel Peace Prize is an "emolument" ("gain from employment or position," according to Webster).

It is unfortunate that in this day and age, one is not aware that the Nobel prize is awarded by the Nobel Foundation which is a private institution based on the Will of Alfred Nobel. The selection could be subcontracted to whomsoever they Foundation feels like, and the award my be formally presented by whomsoever they choose, but at the end of the day the prize comes from the Nobel Foundation.

Or, Mr Obama can get Congressional approval for him the accept the Nobel Prize.

Pièce de résistance

An opinion of the U.S. attorney general advised, in 1902, that "a simple remembrance," even "if merely a photograph, falls under the inclusion of 'any present of any kind whatever.' " President Clinton's Office of Legal Counsel, in 1993, reaffirmed the 1902 opinion, and explained that the text of the clause does not limit "its application solely to foreign governments acting as sovereigns." This opinion went on to say that the emolument clause applies even when the foreign government acts through instrumentalities. Thus the Nobel Prize is an emolument, and a foreign one to boot.

Second, the president has indicated that he will give the prize money to charity, but that does not solve his legal problem. Giving that $1.4 million to a charity could give him a deduction that would reduce his income taxes by $500,000 -- not a nominal amount. Moreover, the money is not his to give away. It belongs to the United States: A federal statute provides that if the president accepts a "tangible or intangible present" for more than a minimal value from any foreign government, the gift "shall become the property of the United States."

The author needs to see a Tax Consultant! Please! Even if he donates the money, he has to still pay taxes. This is because the prize will show up as income the donation cannot be fully deducted. He would probably wish that the prize becomes "the property of the United States."

1. THE NOBEL PRIZE TO OBAMA: EUROPE’S BID TO RE-COLONIZE AMERICA

This article takes the cake! It has to be read to be savored...


Pièce de résistance

So, Lenin was right. Socialism cannot exist in just one country - or one continent. It must dominate worldwide or wealth and power will flow to those who remain committed to the free market. Europe realizes this reality and it makes Obama’s election as president of the United States all the more welcome.

The Nobel Prize is really Obama’s payback for disciplining the unruly United States and taming it to be a member of the European family of nations. Europe wants to reverse the American Revolution and re-colonize us and it sees in Obama a kindred spirit willing to do its bidding.

Return to Sanity

A prize that’s also for us

This article states the original intent of this blogger. "This is Our Nobel".

This is the feeling a Normal Person would feel when his Head of State (especially of a Democratic Republic) wins a prize like this.

Please read the article. Especially the final words..

The Nobel Committee clearly was awarding Obama the Nobel for hauling America out of the pits of unilateralism. What had to come first was America fulfilling a major portion of the dream of another Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Martin Luther King Jr. For that, America is worthy. The Nobel Committee in fact might have made a mistake. It said, “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.’’

It would have been better off proclaiming, “The Norwegian Nobel Committee awards its 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to the United States of America for having the courage to come full circle 233 years after a slave-owning nation declared independence by saying all men are created equal.’’

A Greek Tragedy in Silicon Valley

Preface
Are Silicon Valley professionals are manufactured as Narcissists. The author seems not only to find that out but also inexplicably he too is a part of that club. He places this in the toastmaster's meeting an Palo Alto and at the end asks the audience a question. The question was essentially how we could redeem ourselves.

A Greek Tragedy in Silicon Valley

[This speech was given to LEB toastmasters in Palo Alto on October 7, 2009. A question was asked at the end. Selected replies are given at the end!]

Thank you Mr Toastmaster to narrate a Greek Tragedy and then say how it is replayed amongst the Silicon Valley IT professionals - in a different way. Finally I shall ask the audience a question.

So, Mr. Toastmaster, my fellow toastmaster, members of the audience and welcome guests, I begin the evening to take you to Mythical Greece ....

A long time ago lived a very handsome smart with all the good looks he could possess. His name is Narcissus. Narcissus was sought after by all the maidens and the nymphs. But he rejected them all!

Among those ladies was a nymph, Echo. Echo had been cursed by Hera, the goddess of marriage, that she cannot speak on her own but can only repeat back what was told to her.

One day, Narcissus was in the forest lost from his friends. Echo was amongst the trees unable to call for him so she was following him. Narcissus heard the rustling leaves and asks, "Is anyone here?". Echo could only reply, "here here". Narcissus said , "come come". Echo ran towards Narcissus with outstretched hands. But Narcissus declined her love. Echo was so humiliated that she went and hid in a cave. She disintegrated and died there. Only her voice remained.

They say that even today, if you go inside a cave and calls out for her, she would reply only repeated what you said.

This made Nemesis the goddess of retribution angry and Narcissus was cursed to fall only in love with himself. So one day when he went to the river to drink he fell in love with his reflection on the water. He hopelessly fell in love with his beautiful face. But when he moved back the image disappeared. So he lay next to the water looking at his reflection till he dies. A beautiful flower grew where he died. It was called Narcissus.

Fast forward to twenty-first century Silicon Valley.

Narcissus has graduated from one of the worlds top engineering schools. His admission in the school was maybe 100 to 1 competition. When he got admission his extended family gave him the accolades. He was told that he was the bright star of the family. The school chairman welcomed him and his other freshmen as the creme de la creme of the Nation. These accolades he never forgot. He gets the best grades from this world class engineering school.

With this stamp he enters the workplace of Silicon Valley and commands a six-figure or near six-figure salary with an obscene amount stock option. He tastes success and but recognizes that this is a mere stepping stone for more money, more power, more attention. This ambition seems to be deemed good. But he goes to the extreme...

How do I go to the top? He asks. Friends are disposable objects. To be used and if failed rejected. There is mad drive to succeed, over succeed. To quote a technical term from Animal Planet channel - "The alpha male or female".

What is the beauty he posses? It is something more rare than the Greek Narcissus had. It is called intellect! That gives Narcissus the feel of being on the top of the world. He has friends amongst his tribe and they speak amongst themselves in a strange language. He does not like criticism but is free to criticize others for being slow and not upto his standards and even critizes himself.

One day, Society at large or Echo meets Narcissus. Echo needs his help for Societies many problems. But Narcissus cannot listen. He has lost his empathy. He leaves Echo by the wayside. He only can speak to his equals (if any). Echo is good as someone to speak to. Someone to dictate to. But not someone with a free will and free self.

The problems of Echo is not his problem. Narcissus sends Echo back. He can only use society but cannot give. Cannot listen. Echo realizes it and moves on.

Today's Echo may live on. But Narcissus will one day be old, be friendless, be lonely. He has not learned to listen but to control. He stands alone - loveless and asking the very question - I came to the world to be admired but why am I not admired?

So I ask the audience at large, what can Narcissus do to get Echo back, or removing the metaphor what can we the single-minded, victory-oriented, over-intellectual Silicon Valley IT demi-god can do to be considered acceptable to the the larger society. What can we (the speaker is a member of the crowd) do so not to sound very aloof, detached and unempathetic.

When you write your feedback, answer this question on the reverse side.

Thanking you and over to Mr, Toastmaster.

Selected replies

"They have to get in touch with their feelings. They, or most of them, live all their lives in the head"

"How can CEOs become equal to society? By showing social responsibility and become involved in the society?"

"IT professional should take time to 'smell roses'."

"They should think of others and not just of themselves. They should join a philanthropic foundation to give some of their money away."

..................

Please feel free to add your answers in the Comments Section

Dr Norman Borlaug (1914-2009) Requiescat In Pace

Preamble
Today, I am going to talk about a revolutionary in Agriculture. He took on the hungry world, waved hand magic wand, and saved over a billion lives. He is known as the father of the Green Revolution and won the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Congressional Gold Medal and also a recipient of the Padma Vibhushan, India's second-highest civilian honor. And yes, he was also awarded the Nobel Prize - in Peace! He left us untimely with millions still to be fed on 12 September 2009 at an age of 95 years.

Prologue
India. 1960s. The last vestiges of the British Empire have left and all political power are transferred to the common man of India making India into a Republic. But the Republic needs to be fed. It just cannot live on borrowed food. The Republic was on a "ship to mouth subsistence" and this was unsustainable. What could it do? Invest in mechanized farming, fertilizers or other capital intensive practices. The Republic was poor. It could not proceed on these costly lines. It needed a revolutionary. Someone who could think out of the box, wave a magic wand to feed its teeming millions....

Today, I would share with you the story of this extraordinary revolutionary agriculturist who is reported to have saved a billion lives and his fundamental philosophical position - - Dr Norman Borlaug.

Early Life
Dr Norman Borlaug was born on 25 March 1914 at Soude near Cresco, Iowa. At a young age, he was influenced my his grand-father who told him to "You're wiser to fill your head now if you want to fill your belly later on." Armed with a depression era program he joined the University of Minnesota where he transferred to College of Agriculture's forestry program.

During his young days, two incidents changed his life.

First, working to pay for his school, he was a leader in Civilian Conservation Corps, working with the unemployed on U.S. federal projects. Here he saw hunger. The men under his charge, many 17 and 18 years old, were starving. "At the camps they were able to recover some semblance of health and self-confidence,". He said in a later interview, "I saw how food changed them...All of this left scars on me."

His second incident was at a talk by E. Charles Stakman, a renowned plant pathologist from the University of Minnesota. It was titled "These Shifty Little Enemies that Destroy our Food Crops". Stakman studied the movement of rust spores - a parasite - that had devastated wheat, oat and barley production across the United States. He had discovered that special plant breeding methods created plants resistant to rust. When Borlaug got laid off from the Forest Service due to budget cuts, he went to do Ph.D in plant pathology & genetics under the same Stakman. He was awarded Ph.D in 1942.

There are two very key observations to make here. His empathy towards the problems of hunger. And, his understanding that plants can be bred to develop strains that fights the parasites. Or to extend - special plant breeds that solves the problem.

Miracle in Mexico
In 1940, then US Vice President Henry Wallace received a request by Mexican government officials. The Mexicans needed help with agrarian reforms. They had low yields and they felt that their agro-industry is left behind. The Cooperative Mexican Agricultural Program was inaugurated in 1943 and its charter was to increase the yield in corn, wheat and beans. Dr Borlaug arrived in 1944 with his family.

Mexico then had tall wheat plants. While tall and thin plants were good as the reached out to sunlight more, it had the problem that the wheat grains pulled down the weak stalkings . Furthermore, a new seed introduced by the scientists led to disastrous crops. No farmer in the right mind would consider any scientific experimentation after three years of disastrous crops. It is at this theater Dr Borlaug entered the scene!

He came to an abandoned research station in Northern Mexico, convinced the area farmers in broken Spanish and rented a tractor to plant some experimental crop. More out of amusement than pity they lent him a small tractor. That is how he started his work. The first thing he introduced was "shuttle breeding system" where the crop for summer in the central highlands would be taken north to plant in the winter in the Yaqui valley. This way he, at least on the experimental basis, created two back to back crop cycles per year.

A dramatic progress came when he introduced and crossbred the Japanese short stalk wheat plant. When the existing long stalk wheat were given more fertilizers it became taller, made more wheat grains and the weight pulled it down. The new dwarf varieties were bred for shorter and stronger stalks that could support more seed heads. The yields tripled.

We see another application of the basic philosophy of his work. Here he implemented special breeding techniques to produce a plant breed that could generate more yield and could "take care of itself" by short thick stalk. In 1944 when he arrived, Mexico were importing 60% of its food. In 1956 it was self-sufficient.

This leads to what we know as Borlaug's hypothesis - "Increasing the productivity of agriculture on the best farmland can help control deforestation by reducing the demand for new farmland.

Indian "Green" Revolution
In the 1960s situation in the Indian Subcontinent was grim. The specter of famine loom large. The memories of the 1943 famine loom large. Enter Dr Norman Borlaug self-made, sun-burnt American from the farmland of Iowa. What he had pulled off in experiments in Mexico was a miracle, that if successfully applied in India, would fill its granaries to overflow. Such was the hope when then Agriculture Minister Dr. Swaminathan invited him over in 1965. Punjab was selected as the testing ground and after the initial success, India imported 18 thousand metric tons of seed. The result. The harvest in 1968 - merely three years after the introduction the boom was so great that the underlying infrastructure - to carts, trucks, railway wagons and graineries could not handle the output.

Looking at the success of short-stalk wheat plant. It went forward with the short-stalk rice plant - known in India as IR8. In 1968, an Indian agronomist S.K. De Datta noted that IR8 produced 5 tons per hectare with no fertilizers and 10 under optimal conditions. Compare this to 2tonnes/hectare which was the yield earlier.

Some numbers would make this clearer. In 1961 India's population was 451million producing 87 million tons of grain. In 2001 it had 1 billion people producing 231million tonnes. Population increased 2.2 times but grains increased 2.7 times. In the 1970s, rice cost about $550 a ton; in 2001, it cost under $200 a ton. India became one of the world's most successful rice producers, and is now a major rice exporter, shipping nearly 4.5 million tons in 2006. All this with only an increase of 6% of farmland. It was truly a Green Revolution!

There is an economic angle to it. Dr Borlaug convinced the Indian govt. (a) to provide easy credit to farmers before harvest; (b) fertilizers and (c) fair price to farmers for their produce.

The agricultural philosophy - that short stalk high yield disease resistant plants is the way to go - fully nurtured here. What started at the lecture of Stakman - breeding plants resistant to disease evolved to breeding plants with high yields.

The Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel committee had a problem. Such a person must be felicitated. But how? His work does not match the pure sciences. So the answer was Peace. He did work on a topic that solved hunger - a major concern for a restive population. When his wife got the message at 4am she rushed to the field in Mexico where he was working. He did not believe the news. He thought that the whole thing is a hoax! He was presented with the Nobel Prize in Peace. His acceptance speech on December 10, 1970 is here. His Nobel lecture was on "The Green Revolution, Peace and Humanity".

Criticism
There were many criticism raised on the Green revolution.! The notable being the problem of Nitrogen waste. The overall answer to that is the fact that while there was a problem at that end the overall solution of food for the world and its increasing population outweighs the negatives. Try feeding 6.2 billion people, was his reply.

Epilogue
He left us on 12 September 2009 at an age of 95 years on a loosing battle with cancer. His obituary was published in The New York Times, The Times of India and El Sol de Mexico (English)

One last point, his grandfather once said, "You're wiser to fill your head now if you want to fill your belly later on." As per the belly to fill, his grandfather was a bit off - by one billion.

Money ... Money ... Money.. - I

I start a new line of thinking ... I grow as I learn.. I write as I grow... to share with the world my thoughts on Money!

Well what is money?? The books tell us what money does:

• It works as a means of exchange
• It works as a store of value
  
• It works as a unit of account and measurement of productivity etc.

But what is money? Historically it evolved as a middle-man of barter. It was an abstract object, or a maya, as Eastern Philosophy would say. It existed to facilitate barter. The production of the goods and services were paramount.

Money was a maya. It had no intrinsic value. If there was no goods and services on the table money would be of no use....

But as time progresses.. money became associated with Gold - a commodity with sex appeal. People thought having more Gold would get them more "wealth".

But that belief was laid to rest (paradoxically) by two bandits operating on a large scale - Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro popularly knows as Conquistadors. They plundered the New World for Gold killing civilians and destroying the country.

But the fun was the gold they brought to Spain. Influx of huge amount of precious metals led to a hyperinflation is Spain and Europe eventually destroying the Spanish economy.

Money is purely a medium of exchange - an illusion that Conquistadors chased - with neither the existing productivity to back the increased money supply up nor the need & interest for investments Spain was pushed to hyper-inflation.

Coming back to money .. today we are more interested in making money as if money is a product - commodity.

Today 40% of US GDP is financial services. Like the Spaniards we are drunk with money that can be created. There is a interesting article by Harris Kupperman where she says...

I find an uncanny resemblance between Spain’s slide from empire and our own situation. Over the past two decades, we’ve increasingly relied on cheap credit and money creation to finance both economic growth and a lifestyle that is beyond our means. When there is a problem, the easiest solution is to lower interest rates and add liquidity to the system. This is similar to Spain’s solution—send a larger flotilla to the New World and export more treasure. In the short run, this is a perfect fix. The downside is that it does not allow for the underlying issues to resolve themselves. Much like Spain, we’ve hollowed out our manufacturing base in this country and now increasingly rely on foreign production for many basic necessities. As long as this can be financed, there are no issues. At some point, our bankers in Asia will finally decide that we will never repay our debts and they will refuse to lend us any more.

All this is macro-economics. A good pointer of what has gone wrong. Last twenty years we built our lives on cheap credit and borrowing. Now the bill has come..

But our question is deeper. Is it the very nature that money has morphed itself into leads to these things to happen? Is money now a commodity that needs to be "produced"?

But the truth is, when the last grain of wheatfield has dried up, the last fish has been eaten - we would realize that we cannot eat Money.

But that may be too late!!

Obama and the Fourth Republic

What is a "Republic"? The word is so maligned by Republican Party's actions that we need to set the record straight.

A Republic is a form of government where the source of all political power lies with the people and they alone can exercise the power in a number of different ways. To enable this exercise, they install "public servants" depositing them temporarily with specific defined powers. Furthermore, not to trust these "public servants", the people have another sets of public servants to arrest the actions of each other if one exceeds its brief!

It is here that lies the essential crux of a Republic. It is a grassroots driven government and with the rise of technology and society the people need different "services" from the government. The Republic is no longer a static entity but evolutionary.

But like many evolutionary systems, it is not a monotonous growth. It is long periods of equilibrium or slow evolution punctuated by rapid change.

It is to this end Michael Lind wrote an article called "Obama and the Dawn of the Fourth Republic" after Obama's election. This article is an excellent history of the American politics from the Foundation of the Republic (or rather the current constitution) till date. Please read this article.

Mr Lind has followed up with two more interesting articles (the first two of a trilogy - the last one is forthcoming).

• The Next American System: He proposes "Henry Clay's American System" redux - a twenty-first century equivalet of active govt. participation of development and growth [Indian readers may note that "active government policy" of India development was planned on the lines of what Henry Clay did for the States]. Personally all I know of him is that Clay, (followed by) Lincoln etc. set a stage of active govt to foster development that was the historical guidelines for not only India's development but also its constitution. Furthermore, Clay's ideas were replicated in many ex-colonies that began its new life as republics.
  
• An Economic Bill of Rights: This starts on topics of social insurance like Universal Health Care and paid family leave. However, soon the author transcends into an "economic Social Contract". He insists that all programs need to be "universal" and not "means based" with the adage "Programs for the poor are poor programs."

This like of thinking is interesting as to show how the Republic progresses through time. Reason wins over ideology when the conditions are so desperate that we cannot afford ideology.

Please read the articles and comment!

An Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi = The Credit crisis bailout

To: Ms Nancy Pelosi
Speaker,
United States House of Representatives
Washington DC

Dear Madam Speaker:

As I write this small note, you are busy with the bailout plan. The plan proposed by people who want "Government should be off my back" but wants "to ride on the Government's back" at times of trouble!

Second, why did I select you. As I have seen, you have demonstrated the cool calculating sang-froid in this debate. Furthermore, the appropriation bill has to pass your house first and you have the power to stop this on the tracks.

I have some questions. They are sometimes moral and sometimes economic. They are fundamental questions that I feel that twenty-four percent of the taxpayers support and a whooping fifty-one percent consider it as a power-grab!

Where will the money come from - now?

With the budget projected to overshoot by $41o billion. We are issuing T-paper to obtain this money. Now I guess we need to issue another $700billion of T-paper. Who is going to buy this paper? The Federal Reserve banks?

Good part of it will be purchased by the Fed Reserve banks who will print the money for you.

By this excessive deficit financing, are we not asking for inflation. To tame this inflation, the feds would have increase interest rates and so won't that hurt our economy too?

Where will the money come from - later?

Sometime later, we have to pay back $700 billion or $2333.33 per American. Who is going to pay for these and when? Our children?

And why should they pay for it? What they are getting in return? High speed transcontinental railroad? Health care system? Education? By now many web-sites would be up and running on translating this money on more concrete terms.

Please note that we are handing our children a bill for the mistakes made by us!


What is the Taxpayer Protection to money given to the company?

Is the money given to the companies are given as purchase of junk mortgage bonds and then they can do whatever they feel like?

What steps have we taken to keep the investments senior-most?


What are you going to do if this happens again?

So two years from now we have another such a mess ! What would we do?


What are regulatory protections do we have to protect America from future Wall Street Greed?