Some quotes from WSJ and others

In "The Quiet Coup," Simon Johnson's (A former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund) article in Atlantic magazine, Johnson warns that America's "financial industry has effectively captured our government" and is "blocking essential reform." Worse, he says that unless we break Wall Street's stranglehold (unlikely in the new Washington) we will be unable "to prevent a true depression". 

Matt Taibbi, author of "The Great Derangement," captured this drama in a Rolling Stone piece, "The Big Takeover, how Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution." A must-read: "As complex as all the finances are, the politics aren't hard to follow. By creating a crisis that can only be solved by those fluent in a language too complex for ordinary people to understand, the Wall Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into non-participants in their own political future. ... in the age of CDS and CBO, most of us are financial illiterates."

Wall Street "used the crisis to effect a historic, revolutionary change in our political system -- transforming a democracy into a two-tiered state, one with plugged-in financial bureaucrats above and clueless customers below."

Seriously, here's how bad Taibbi sees it: "Paulson and his cronies turned the federal government into one gigantic half-opaque holding company, one whose balance sheet includes the world's most appallingly large and risky hedge fund, a controlling interest in a dying insurance giant, huge investments in a group of teetering megabanks, and shares here and there in various auto-finance companies, student loans, and other failing business."

And let's include $5.5 trillion in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Wall Street's greed and stupidity resembles the self-destructive reigns of banana republic dictators.

Naomi Klein, author of "The Shock Doctrine: Rise of Disaster Capitalism," was warning us that "during boom times it's profitable to preach laissez faire, because an absentee government allows speculative bubbles."

But "when those bubbles burst, the ideology becomes a hindrance and goes dormant while big government rides to the rescue." Then, free-market "ideology will come roaring back when the bailouts are done. The massive debts the public is accumulating to bail out the speculators will then become part of a global budget crisis." TARP paybacks: Obama has a new "disaster capitalism."

WSJ's Paul Farrell wrote:

Do you see the parallels: Jack and Starkwood, Hank and Goldman? Jack's a great mythic hero. We need to believe a hero will defend the little guy, stand between us and total annihilation. But Jack Bauer's "dead." Yes, dead. Jack's not real. Never was "alive." Jack's a fiction, a figment of Main Street America's vivid imagination, the symbol of "hope" for a populist revolution. Hope that Jack, Barack or some other new hero will emerge, take power back from Wall Street and return it to the people.

Unfortunately that won't happen, folks. Yes, on TV Jack will come back from near-death, again. But in real life, Hank, Goldman and Wall Street's mercenaries are winning the war. Read and weep Portfolio's chilling finale: "Obama's victory and Geithner's appointment are the completion of Goldman's meticulously crafted plan to become a superpower. The firm now has the clout to impose its will on the financial markets, and the world."

GOP or Dems? Conservatives or liberals? It doesn't matter. We'll all controlled by "The Conspiracy." So why not surrender, let them have the power? The truth is, through their lobbyists and surrogates in Washington, they already rule America. Surrender is a mere formality.

My comment: So who's in control of America? heheh.......

U.S. Highspeed train and China

Finally, America has come to her senses and decided to develop a clean transportation system featuring highspeed train. The potential is great, though US is a late comer just as in other field of green tech. However, in the president's speech, he only mentioned France and Japan for the achievement in high speed train system. China is a relatively respectable player in the field as well. But I guess nobody in the West wants to recognize it. Or, maybe US is deliberately excluding China in the possible future market here. France and Japan have shorter lines than China. They may have better technology but China should have more experience in long distance travel as well as diversified terrain construction. There's one more opportunity for cooperation and I sure hope President Obama won't miss it. 

Cultural Contradiction of Liberal Foreign Policy

Why? On the one hand, the LFP pursues its idealistic goal of forging democracy everywhere, while on the other hand, their realistic goal is their own peace and safety. Kant said that there is no conflict between the two, actually, they are mututally supportive. Guess what? Not true.
Pushing democracy and nation-building regardless of socioeconomic conditions, let alone culture and religfious conditions, has been causing failed states, rogue states, therefore terrorists and pirates, and chaos and anarchy of the world system. No one is happy about human rights abuse or dictatorship, but if the solution is "too simple and naive", then we can expect lawlessness and collapse of security boundaries. Some analysts believe that the globalization, or tech development contributed to and empowered non-state actors. That's only partially true. LFP's drive to elevate human rights and democracy above sovereignty and security did the work of deconstruct states, which directly releases those factors into the global stage. So here's the dilemma, if LFP denies the legality of other forms of government than their own, they will undermine these regimes and increase the possibility of failed states, but if they balk before these regimes, they are violating their own democratic decrees. It's time for the LFP to get real "smart", like openning up to Cuba and negotiate with Iran, trying to engage and listen before they scream around.
It's a hard choice. Effective government may not be a democratic majority government in the short run and the result of nation-building very much depends upon local tradition, culture and economic reality. In the end, what's more important?