I was watching a recent speech by Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman on Fora.tv earier (awesome site btw). During the Q&A portion, he was asked how the United States can remain sovereign with how much we are beholden to other nations (specifically China) to finance our government debt. This is something I’ve thought about a lot but since I’m not an economist I never really knew the answer to. He quoted the old adage “If you owe the bank a thousand dollars, you have a problem, but if you owe the bank a million dollars, the bank has a problem,” and it made me think of our relationship with out debt financiers a bit differently than I had before. Its not entirely clear who has the upper hand in this relationship.

If you think about it, China has as much to lose as we do financially if the American economy tanks for a few reasons. If our dollar devalues, they are losing money are their investment because they are holding so many of our dollars, and if American’s consumption drops off a cliff as it has begun to do as the recession deepens, China’s own economy will suffer as people will be laid off due to lower revenue streams for their manufacturers. The USA needs China to make our crap, and China needs the USA to buy their crap. Its an interesting trade relationship.

I always kind of knew this part, but as Krugman explains, most countries have a debt as large as ours with regard to the size of their own economies. Not in real numbers of course, but our economy is much larger than say, France, so you can’t realistically compare them that way. Similarly, our ability to pay off that debt is so much greater because we have a much larger tax base than most countries of the world. I didn’t know that, and put into that perspective, it almost seems like the debt hardly matters at all.

One other thing that got me thinking about this was the news earlier in the week that said China has stated that they will keep buying US treasuries despite the fact that they know that the dollar is going to devalue. Here’s the exact quote from the article in the Financial Times:

“Except for US Treasuries, what can you hold?” he asked. “Gold? You don’t hold Japanese government bonds or UK bonds. US Treasuries are the safe haven. For everyone, including China, it is the only option.”

Mr Luo, whose English tends towards the colloquial, added: “We hate you guys. Once you start issuing $1 trillion-$2 trillion [$1,000bn-$2,000bn] . . .we know the dollar is going to depreciate, so we hate you guys but there is nothing much we can do.”

That was the director-general at the China Banking Regulatory Commission, which is the person that makes these kinds of decisions. Notice where he says “We hate you guys.”? China has no other choice but to finance our debt right now. Even if they wanted to stop, they couldn’t without devastating consequences in their own economy.

Sure its woefully irresponsible to be creating so much debt, but at this point we owe the bank a million dollars. The bank has a problem.

Never have I been so happy to see a man in a wheelchair, and nobody on the planet is more deserving of being (albeit temporarily) crippled. I know its wrong, but I’ve never laughed at someone in a wheelchair until yesterday. But it felt so right.

My dog died today. She was somewhere between 13 and 15 years old. We were never quite sure exactly what year she was born, even though her mother was another dog I had when I was a child. She was the runt of the litter, but she was the one we kept. Not because she was our favorite, but because when we sold her, the couple that took her brought her back because she could not stand being away from us and her mother. I’m thankful that is how it turned out.

She lived a very long, fruitful, and happy life, and for that I’m extremely grateful. In recent weeks though, mostly due to her old age, she had several health problems. Arthritis, kidney failure, a history of lime disease, and a nerve problem that had her lose feeling in her back legs causing her to fall over a lot. It was painful for us to watch her in this condition. She could no longer walk up or down the stairs to go outside, and we had to carry her. She was not a small dog either. Half black lab, half husky. We took her to the vet in October, and that is when she was diagnosed. The medication they gave us didn’t seem to make her much better. She wasn’t eating much either. We returned today to the vet. She had lost 7 pounds since October and she was losing her hair even more than usual. We decided it was time. The vet put her down.

Despite the tears and sobbing, I’m really very happy that she won’t have to suffer anymore. She just seemed so frail and fragile of late. She seemed ready to go herself, and she just never seemed happy anymore. She used to get up, tail wagging whenever you came home, or went for a walk. Lately she strained just to stand up and walk around the house. Although I’m not a believer in an afterlife, I think she is better off now. And I’m thankful for that.

Goodbye Rascal. You will always be my young pup.

Frank Schaeffer’s latest blog on the Huffington Post sums up pretty well my thoughts on the various liberal critics of Obama’s appointments who seem to be popping up all over the web, and a few on T.V. (Rachel Maddow anyone?). I consider myself a liberal, but at the same time I’m a political pragmatist, much like Obama, so personally I am not at all surprised by most of Obama’s appointments so far. Anyone who read The Audacity of Hope should know that Obama is not guided solely by an ideology. While he is definitely a liberal, his positions are also laced in nuance, and he likes to listen to other people’s ideas, even if they challenge his own. This was one of the things that made me enthusiastic about supporting Obama after Biden got knocked out of the running after Iowa.

Those ideological purists on the left are just as bad as those on the right, because they don’t understand how things really work. If anything, Bush’s presidency should be an example of how a purely ideological driven administration fails to lead anyone but their own side, and even eventually loses them. I may not be enthusiastic about Clinton as Secretary of State, but I’m willing to let her prove that she can do the job. If she turns out to be a failure though, I won’t be holding my tongue.

My brother is one of those ideological purists that I’m talking about. He voted for Nader in 2004 and 2008 because, according to him, our vote doesn’t matter anyway since NY always goes for Democrats (mostly true), but also because he sees being against gay marriage but for civil unions as hypocritical. I don’t disagree with that but its obvious to me that taking this position is just political posturing. In reality, anyone who is for gay marriage is unelectable in a national election in this day in age. It at least shows that their heart is in the right place on the issue, and that there’s a chance that they will show some political courage once in office to make the change. The alternative is someone who doesn’t believe in either, and in that case there is no chance for change. That isn’t acceptable to me, so I don’t think throwing my vote to a third party candidate who has no chance of winning is justified just to keep my ideological principles intact.

So how does that relate to Obama’s appointments? What I like to refer to as “Change trolls” seem to think that Obama should only appoint people who pass an ideological test, such as being against the Iraq war since the beginning, and people who agree with him on virtually everything. I submit to them, how is that any different than Bush’s appointments besides the fact that they be left wing ideologues instead of right? If Obama brought in an entire team of government novices like Bill Clinton did, the change he plans to implement via legislation would likely be hampered by people not knowing the ways of Washington. Having a lot of people who served under Clinton and come from the Senate or the House is a good thing in my eyes, because it proves that he cares about actually getting his agenda implemented as fluidly as possible.

To me, the most important change Obama can deliver (besides restoring the constitution) is competence in government. It sure would be nice to know that our leaders are once again working to do whats best for all of the American people instead of just “my” people or “their” people.

Now that the election is over, there are a few things I’m really happy won’t be around anymore polluting my television.

1: Sarah Palin – although apparently she isn’t going away.  Maybe she didn’t get the memo, but she lost! Why is she giving more interviews and press conferences in the week after the election than she did during the entire campaign?  Go away, and for the love of god don’t come back.

2: Joe the Plumber – seriously this guy is a moron.

3: Tucker Bounds – possibly the worst spin doctor any campaign has ever hired.  It was painful to watch this guy struggle daily through T.V. interviews.  Not only is he a smug prick, hes not even good at lying to the American people, which was his job.

4: Nancy Pfotenhaur – another spin doctor for the McCain campaign.  Not as obviously bad as Tucker Bounds but she has something else about her that irks me.  Her extremely long neck.  Seriously what the hell?

I’ll edit this if I think of anything else.

Just got back from voting.  I voted straight democratic, and skipped voting on some ammendmant because I didn’t really know what it was about.  The nice thing about living in a small town is that you don’t have to wait to vote.  I literally just walked in, signed the book, and got to vote.  Also I gotta say I’m glad we don’t use any of those shady touch screen voting machines in NY.  I would be sceptical that my vote even counted if we used those.  Thankfully we just have the old lever machines on paper ballots.

Now just gotta wait for the results to come in…

I’ve been watching a lot of T.V. news shows lately, and a lot of the discussion has been about undecided voters and how they will ultimately decide to vote.  A lot of the “experts” are predicting that a large majority of them will break for McCain rather than Obama.  Chuck Todd of NBC News says 70% will likely end up going for McCain, and others have said numbers close to that as well.  According to them, if you aren’t yet in the Obama camp, you probably will end up voting for McCain because hes the safe choice, or that the Bradley effect will cause these undecideds to vote McCain.

I’m not convinced.  I actually take the opposite view as most of these pundits.  I think most of the undecided vote will break for Obama, but not by huge margins.  Historically, the undecided voters tend to break close to even between the two parties, and I haven’t seen anything to suggest that this won’t happen this time.  In my view, if you aren’t yet decided, chances are you either aren’t motivated enough to get out to vote, or you just don’t care who wins.

The current political climate suggests to me that most of these voters aren’t going to stick with Republican rule.  When anywhere from 85-90 percent of the country believes the country is heading in the wrong direction, it would baffle me to think that undecided voters are going to stick with the status quo.  And no matter how much McCain tries to distance himself from President Bush, his policies, with only a few exceptions, are just more of the same.  McCain has given a lot of reasons for people not to vote for Barack Obama, but hes barely given any reason to vote for him.  That is a problem.

The race issue, at least in my opinion, has also been way overplayed by the pundits.  The pollsters say that the majority of undecided voters that they polled are white, and claim that race is likely going to be one of the deciding factors in the voting booth.  Again, I’m not convinced.  Sure, the undecideds might be largely white voters, but anyone that Obama’s race is an issue for is not undecided.  They are already firmly in the McCain colum.

So thats what I think.  Many of the undecided voters probably won’t even show up to vote, and for those that do, I’m predicting they break for Obama 54% – 45%, with 1% going third party.  Incidently, thats also my prediction for the popular vote total.  Its entirely possible that I’m wrong, but its just as likely that those so called “experts” are wrong as well.  Not long now before we find out.

Perhaps the only endorsement worse than Al’Qaeda:

Yep.  Cheney emerged from his secret bunker to stump for John McCan today.  I’m sure he is extremely grateful for the endorsement.

I don’t dream often but last night was different.  I had a nightmare.  It wasn’t a falling dream, or about being abducted by aliens.  No, in my dream last night, it was the evening of November 4th, 2008, and John McCain and Sarah Palin had just won the Presidential election.  I woke up feeling almost ill, and I’m worried that the dream might recur from now until this thing is decided, as nightmares often do.  But the truly scary thing would be if that nightmare were to become reality.

I didn’t have that feeling back in 2004.  I was very much looking forward to kicking the bums out of the White House back then, but I was not enthusiastic at all about John Kerry.  I didn’t really vote for Kerry as much as I voted against Bush, and when he lost, I was more angry than anything else.  This time is different.  I believe in Barack Obama.  I think he is a remarkable leader.  The right man for the right time, and I feel we are extremely lucky to have him as a choice.  But despite the leads in the polls, the money advantage, and all of the other factors that seem to favor Obama right now, I still have lingering doubts in the back of my mind about the outcome of this election.

If you asked anyone thats known me well to describe my personality, the word optimistic would likely never come up.  So it shouldn’t be any surprise about how I feel about this election, but the thought of John McCain winning is literally haunting my sleep.  Imagine what that would say about our politics if he were to pull this off.  The politics of character assassination, fear, division, and in some cases bigotry will be validated as the gold standard for success in American politics.  The democratic party would be so extremely demoralized, despite having won huge majorities in both houses of congress (a virtual guarantee), because the best, most inspiring, genuine, and competent nominee they have had in generations would have failed to win in such a great political climate for democrats, and against such a weak candidate in John McCain.  I would not merely be angry this time, I think I would literally break down in tears.

This doesn’t have to happen, and I don’t think it will, but we need to run through the finish line.  A lot of people voted against George W. Bush in 2004, but I think a lot of people are voting for Barack Obama this year.  I believe the opposite is true for republicans this time.  I just hope that I’m right, for all our sakes.