WE NEED SOVEREIGNTY, HOWEVER, TO FEED.

A retrospect of last the ninety (90) years in the ones of the one dimension of the advantages that the capitalist system left to provide to the world, on the contrary of the clamorous disparity that created between rich and poor, with the increase of the concentration of wealth.

Little more than 50% of the world-wide wealth are being usufructed for less than 3% of the universal population. A billion of people is almost living in state of subnutrição and malnutrition. The feeding always was relegated to a secondary plan, while world-wide the financial speculation did not leave to extend its jointed powers, in the oil, the Stock exchange and the Comodities, through the Tradings that more than control 80% of the Warehouses and Silos, in Brazil. E the world-wide governing still continue passive and tolerant with as many irregularities that they directly affect the daily life of billions of citizens. The speculators, unquestionably, are great responsible for the generation and the management of the crisis that some poor countries and in development are facing desumanamente.

In 1918, Vladimir Lênin, ahead of the Petrograd Soviet, worried about the abusive financial speculation, as she is occurring today, mainly with foods, suggested its abates impious, as she was facing herself and abating terrorist in a war field.

In recent interview, the president of Germany and former-president of the FMI, Kohler, charges of the agency that demands of the World-wide Central bankings, a more rigid regulation for financial the speculative system, as she charged Lênin has 90 years behind.

“For Kohler,” the wild search for profits, became the financial market in a monster that it quickly needs to be rank in the coleira'. Little capital and easy profits, without measuring consequences, for being if putting into motion freely, privatizing profits and socializing damages, and with immunity to any type of fiscalization, regulation or efficient control of the State, the monster comes growing and devorando the economy and the finances of the countries weakkest and becoming the stronger forts each time. Alert of the German president the sample that really is in the alias process of the governing to organize the Cartel that widely defends the primary interests of more than six (6) billion human beings. E the feeding is the main item. As it is is that the world cannot be.

We are seeing that until the proper general secretary of the OPEP, in well recent declaration, it condemned the speculators for the unjustifiable increases in the prices of the Oil. Germany, exporting greater and one of the five bigger world-wide economies, also have a great abyss between rich and poor and more than 20% of its population alone escape of the poverty because it receives I assist of the State.

Countries as Brazil, that has the biggest agricultável area of the world and responsibility with 184 million people, could never leave to lack, in abundance, the basic Rice and Beans and other foods in the table of the Brazilians. E we are seeing that on behalf of these two products, that can quickly be produced in entire Brazil, the Brazilian Central Bank justified the increase of half porcentual point (0.5%) in the Selic tax, causing, in nominal values, a cost the greater of more than R$ 6.000.000.00 (six billion) in the consolidated debt of the National Treasure.

With an immediate availability of appropriate areas for the plantation of the rice, the beans and other agricultural products, the Government never will decide the problem of the production of foods and other goods, if to continue adopting the politics of raised interests to contain the access to the consumption of a population that in its majority already is poor. The United States, countries of the European Union and Asia, on behalf of the world-wide crisis, are paying to never superior agios 1% for the clod roller of its debts and here, without crisis, the agio that we pay is of 7%. Statistical data of the Brazilian economy in show them clearly that in last the 30 years, the Brazilian government used the primary surplus of many billions of Reals, generated with the sacrifice and sweat of millions of Brazilians, to feed world-wide the financial speculation, in detriment of the production, the job and the income.

With all the billions of Reals of primary surplus, with the increase of the US$ exportations 73 billion in 2003 for US$ 160 billion in 2007, the Movable debt of Brazil passed of US$ 734 billion, in 2003 for more than R$ 1,200. trillion in 2007. Soon, the prescription of the highest interests to contain the inflation, stimulates the speculation, it sacrifices the production and it comes benefiting the concentration of wealth and becoming the poor persons poor and the IPEA it can and it must show this reality in last the 30 years. We are seeing the growth of the indebtedness of the Nation and that it is not reflecting directly or indirectly benefits in more roads, hidrovias, more railroads, ports, urban collective transports of quality and a infinity of other services, as education, health and basic sanitation and job for the young.

Soon, before if divulging the importance of the creation of a Deep Sovereign, to guarantee job, income and consumption in other countries, we must think seriously about amortizing and reducing the financial incubencies on our debt, that must pass of US$ 180 billion Reals, to the year, coming back part of these resources toward the financing of the industry, the production of the Rice, the Beans and too much products that never must lack in the table of all the Brazilians. After all, Brazil, of continental dimension, not yet has alimentary sovereignty much less, resources sobrando to apply in a Deep Sovereign.

What does global warming have to do with this?

A rational and well thought out response to the question.

Let the market correct itself. It always does.

Yonkers, New York
25 March 2008

As far as the financial meltdown in the U.S. is concerned, probably Bill Emmott has spoken (or written) too soon.

Bear Stears is really only the tip of a huge iceberg. Percentage-wise it held only a small fraction of the total of around $173 trillion (yes, that's a "t") of those esoteric financial instruments called "derivatives."

J.P.Morgan Chase, the 800-lb financial gorrilla which is even now still negotiating to buy Bear Stearns at a garage-sale price, holds more than half of that total of $173 trillion in derivatives.

Other major U.S. financial institutions hold the balance in varying percentages to the total. But the exposure of each to this balance is also in the trillions of dollars. More likely than not several if not most of them are in the same predicament as Bear Stearns.

In the event, the question uppermost in the minds of those who are familiar with the issue is what the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury Department, acting in concert, can or will do to bail out those threatened with bankruptcy.

Recall that the Fed had to fork over the huge sum of $30 billion to bail out Bear Stearns. If five or more major financial institutions each holding those derivatives in the trillions of dollars threaten to go under, will the Fed be able to come up with the hundreds of billions of dollars to bail them out?

If the answer is, "No," then a U.S. financial meltdown of historic dimensions, certain to have disastrous global repercussions, would seem to be inevitable.

Mariano Patalinjug
MarPatalinjug@aol.com

If a recession would provide some global warming relief then the author jumping off a bridge would provide some overpopulation relief.

Economists are always seeing the "forest", without caring about the "trees". Of course, if an economic downturn were about to throw all the economist out of their jobs, cost them their pensions, destroy their life savings or cost them their houses, I doubt they'd be quite so sanguine about it.

The 'modest slackening' to which Mr. Emmott refers will result in millions of people thrust deeper into possibly irrecoverable hunger. Today, people in Egypt, Pakistan and Africa are rioting for food, food made too expensive due to the cost of shipping, the world-wide impact of the bio-fuel industry shifting production from wheat to corn and the fallout in capital markets due to bad loans to poor people. The instability in the worldwide food markets will prevent any short term 'tightening of the belts'. We are in this for the long term, and we will witness our poorest people wither in the face of our insatiable greed for petrol. Markets will 'recover' at the cost of millions of lives and possibly dozens of governments.

The Economist is a strange magazine. Most articles are printed without a writer, a compilation of editorial ghosts...from the UK.

This economist sees financial problems in the US, Ireland, and other regions. Cool off, take a break from global warming. True words, as he accepts quarterly dividends from British Petroleum, British Airways, and ...

Thank you for assessment of Wall Street greed.
Reality is a global pandemic.

This MUST be the keeper of the machine that goes "ping" (which I foolishly thought was satire).

In an old "Bloom County" strip, Binkley's closet produced the worst, worst monsters ever: two economists arguing over the state of the economy. Please note that all you need is two.

Another idiot telling us everything is good, no worries! Yet once again Mr. Emmot is not tell the truth about unemployment. He is not factoring in the people who still do not have jobs but ran out of unemployment insurance. Nor does he factor in people who had to take jobs making a lot less money than they did before. The unemployment rate is much higher than the government is tell us...There are so many Americans living from pay check to pay check, I should know for I am one of them. Now with gas and energy and food stuff so high, it is almost impossible to live in America. So much for the promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Yeah as long as you are one of the elite or a member of the Government! Our forefathers are rolling over in their graves...

During Bill Emmott's tenure as editor of The Economist, his leaders never stopped applauding financial innovations, especially "collateralized debt obligations." They greased the wheels of finance by "spreading the risk" around, he said, so that loans could be made and investment take place that would not have occurred otherwise.

Now, in 2008, the risk is well and truly spread. Mr. Emmott is no longer editing The Economist, which in each issue calls for tighter regulation of hedge funds, mortgage lenders, and others who have been foremost in exploiting these "innovations."

Why have employed economists become such purveyors of baloney? You don't actually know whether this is going to be a "sharp recession" or an outright collapse, so why make predictions and try to sound all honey-sweet about it? You can predict a range of probabilities but you don't know how deep the fraud and leveraging extended, nor how much of the real wealth of the economy has been hollowed out during this time of "Financial assets" with no basis.

Like with the sunny talk about internet stocks it sometimes seems to turn out to have been just a line of bs aimed at putting off the inevitable and hopefully forestalling a panic long enough for the smart money to move their money elsewhere.

It is easy to talk about how any of this is "good news" if one has a permanent unthreatened job. After all the layman's definition of a "recession" is when someone else is unemployed. But this is no ordinary recession, it is news that there has been years of systematic fraud and malfeasance.

"Let the market" decide is like letting the folks running a Carnival govern their own games. The house wins, everyone else loses.

Chris

Why have employed economists become such purveyors of baloney? You don't actually know whether this is going to be a "sharp recession" or an outright collapse, so why make predictions and try to sound all honey-sweet about it? You can predict a range of probabilities but you don't know how deep the fraud and leveraging extended, nor how much of the real wealth of the economy has been hollowed out during this time of "Financial assets" with no basis.

Like with the sunny talk about internet stocks it sometimes seems to turn out to have been just a line of bs aimed at putting off the inevitable and hopefully forestalling a panic long enough for the smart money to move their money elsewhere.

It is easy to talk about how any of this is "good news" if one has a permanent unthreatened job. After all the layman's definition of a "recession" is when someone else is unemployed. But this is no ordinary recession, it is news that there has been years of systematic fraud and malfeasance.

"Let the market" decide is like letting the folks running a Carnival govern their own games. The house wins, everyone else loses.

Chris

The author's comment is like saying, "Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down."

How incredibly removed he is from the harm that unregulated abuse by banks and other lenders, and by the Fed's (and Greenspan's) laissez faire policies caused.

Another comparison: Go down the steepest hill you can find and wait till the last 50 feet to brake as hard as you can and you still hit the dump truck at the stop. OR, brake gradually alll the way downhill and come to a stop well before disaster, when you can drive on again.

The ongoing "credit" crisis is frightening many of us, it's true, but perhaps it holds a lesson. I saw "deregulation" ruin my livelihood of 37 years at UAL. "Freedom" has become equated with a license to steal by those who have advantages of birth, fortune, or education denied to most.
People are being "farmed" much as their serf ancestors were, under perpetual obligation, not to the Lord of the Manor, but to credit extended in full knowledge of its detrimental effects on human societies.
Worldwide, we tolerate and ally ourselves with the most deplorable deniers of civil rights merely for the sake of profit; it should not be surprising that in commerce, the same hypocrisy abounds. Perhaps thinking that we will survive this kind of behavior perpetually is just the psychology of a race doomed by its own greed?

Being a resident of Harlem, N.Y. I can confirm an unspoken reality, when the newspapers, economists, politicians or alike, mention the word "Recession", it means that marginal neighborhoods such as mine, are heading into a depression. (We're always living at least one cycle below the norm, you know!) but I too believe it's a good thing. It's an economical correction, it's a re-adjustment of our spending habits, as well as a re-alignment of the cost of things. From the price of a Latte to the cost of a house. From the hourly rate of a carpenter, to the tip given to our favorite waitress. So, recession or depression (based on your neighborhood), WELCOME !!! It's about time...

If you're an economist... Why don't you know what the definition of a recession is?

2 consecutive quarters of negative growth (decrease in GDP).

The earliest we could be in a "recession" is June.

We may, in a few days, find out that we had negative growth in the first quarter of 2008.

But that is still not a recession!!!

The world economy has grown faster in the past four years than at any time since the 1960s. So virtually any slowdown is likely to seem alarming by recent standards. But actually, there's no need to panic.

It certainly doesn't include the USA especially Ohio. But China is having a field day. Wal Mart should relocate its corporate headquarters Accounts Payable Dept to Hong Kong China.

When I go grocery shopping I'm suppose to remain calm when I pay more now than I did last year. I'm suppose to remain calm when I pay more at the gas pump.

Now if I was a millionare, I wouldn't have to panic. Like millions of my fellow americans, I belong to the working class and proud of it.

If a depression is a good thing, the great depression must have been wonderful. My parents were obviously lying about life in the 1930s...it was a bed of roses. Emmott says so, so it must be true.

The author is an idiot. Is there any evidence Wall Street learned anything from the dot-com bubble? If not, then what he says is pure rubbish.

I'm calling you out - oh so wise economist - you are wrong. And exactly how do you know it won't be a long and deep depression? Your gut feeling? Ever hear of examining evidence?

So lets have a good ole' depression - it will help fight inflation, and as a rich person of course the author cares more about inflation than depression...

A smarter press please, this one is too dumb.

I tend to agree that recession is not necessarily a bad thing. It may hurt for a while, but all things tend to be cyclical. We cannot hope that things will always be rosy; intermittant lows are bound to come along. Ultimately, that is the natural course of things.

I've been puzzled over what seems to me to be overly panicked responses by the government, politicians and economic leaders and experts. I think they are mostly personally and politically driven. A tanking ecomonmy on the Republican's watch favors democrats' presidential prospects, etc. While a recession will be felt by everyone, the highest levels of alarm come from those who have the most money and power to lose.

A recession tends to shed light on mistakes, problems, and poor management within system, and with those who control and operate within it. Hopefully it will allow us to learn from them and address and correct them, so that a new and stronger period of growth ensues.

"The world needs a bit of a slowdown ....in the longer term, global warming--under some sort of control."

This may be the single stupidest statement I've ever heard. This sounds like something a Luddite would say. I'm surprised it came from a former editor of the usually sober and sane Economist. Perhaps that's why he is a FORMER, editor.

Clark

Government cheese...

It's neither good or bad - it's political economics at work. But I have to side with Geoff - it might be a good thing if only the management and regulators mostly responsible for the 'mortgage crisis' were held accountable. The U.S. govt. has absolutely no business propping up these financial houses. Hey, if you choose wrong, deal with it. I and others have already lost enough money due to the down turn in our portfolios, we shouldn't have to bail them out with our taxes too. Those people should lose their insane salary/benefits packages (some go to jail - at a minimum, pay a large fine (to go to a fund for the families that lost their life savings)) and lose their companies. The U.S. is not going to suffer too much due to the loss of a bank or five. That would benefit the world, as the industry might actually wake up and learn from previous mistakes. Of course I realize that things will never change. How can they when the people that devise these 'financial mechanisms' are the same people that write the regulations and oversight procedures.

I too am irritated that the Fed is stepping in to bail out Bear Stearns. A lot has been made about what a fine old institution it is -- well, apparently it isn't anything other than old. Its managers were greedy and shady, and certainly not fine. As for the stockholders and the employees that are about to lose their shirts because they had so much invested in Bear Stearns? Hey, ever hear of a little outfit called ENRON??? Sorry to be not quite as sympathetic as possible, but did the employee investors at Bear Stearns learn nothing from that debacle?

The investment bankers who knowingly bought securities that consisted of nothing more than mortgages that were given to people who couldn't afford the down payment, much less the monthly payment, the upkeep, the taxes, etc. deserve to lose their shirts and be brought up on charges.

$300K mortgages to a family that makes $30K -- I couldn't figure out how that could be happening these past few years, but now I get it.

The global economy will survive; we'll all get past this recession, the good times will roll, and people will once again put all their eggs into one basket and be shocked -- shocked! -- when the next recession comes along.

Sounds like Pollyanna still has the floor. My advice to all passengers on the Titanic: don't believe the crew when they tell you to ride out the storm. They just want to get to the lifeboats before you do. Remember what happened in 2000? Ordinary investors rode their stocks all the way to the bottom of the ocean, while the smart guys took their money and ran.

I read an interesting article in the NYT yesterday stating that we aren't headed for another depression, because all of the experts are so concerned we're headed for another depression that they will never let us get into another depression. An entertaining argument...

Face it, our financial system has become a house of cards, or more accurately, a huge pyramid scheme. For example, credit default swaps have far outpaced their original reason for existence and are now pure gambles. The total amount of outstanding credit swaps is currently $45.5 trillion, up from $900 billion in 2001 (source: NYT). It doesn't take much for the whole pyramid scheme to fall apart, which is why the Fed was in such a hurry to bail out Bear Stearns. They didn't want those insurers to have to default on their credit swaps.

Here's what we have in common with the last Great Depression: leverage. Right now, there is so much of it in the system that all it takes is one failure point to send the whole structure toppling to earth. Maybe we'll get lucky and squeak past the abyss, but miles-deep cracks are opening in the ground all around us at this very moment.

Unfortunately, one result of the Fed's recent actions is to discourage old-fashioned saving even further. While the value of your dollar is going through the floor, short-term interest rates are going down, down, down. Pretty soon it'll be the Weimar Republic all over again.

As I write, the stock market is up 245 points today. PT Barnum is right once again...

It was reported today in the NY Times that a third of the stock is owned by their employees, they could loose a most of their life savings and
you have the nerve to say 'it's a good thing'? What a putz.

This encouraging nod from the globalist is encouraging - why? Wouldn't it be marvelous if economist/apologists could be held accountable for their propaganda - in whatever ways were culturally appropriate for the local economies they support trashing? Pretense to some priestly linguistic vestals, because these vultures know that if our legislature goes protectionist the jig is UP, in order to mollify outrage at this massive UNPRECEDENTED BANKER/CORPORATE BAILOUT/WELFARE at PUBLIC EXPENSE --- doesn't get it! DOWN WITH USURIOUS BANKERS & IRRESPONSIBLE GET-RICH-QUICK SCHEMERS! Change Bankruptcy laws to help consumers, not banks! HARD Prison Time for Executives, Attorneys and Accountants! The Fed is out of control & far beyond its mandate! Pay for it all with OIL PROFITS! Rescind ALL TAX CUTS FOR MILLIONAIRES! RETURN TO THE 90% TAX BRACKET! SAVE AMERICA FROM BUSHCO!

People have been looking for a housing price correction for sometime which now creates opportunity for those having capital or credit to invest into existing real estate having been recently devalued.

I would guess rising oil prices will stimulate another wildcat period until producers can no longer meet normal profit. That situation occured in last reccession and Zapata Oil comes to mine as well as few other oil exploration outfits heavy in drilling ships and platforms. Downside was that the last boom to bust witnessed massive relocations spiking home prices overnight on local levels which then became worthless nearly overnight when the boom bottomed out.

If authorities do not effect an intervention between John Q. Public and mortage holders, the situation will continue to deteriorate reverbing around the world. People lose their focus pretty easily these days. The problem has been identified now what are the options for corrective action ?

I think it's a good thing too. The thing I'm upset about is that the Federal Government is bailing them out. Why shouldn't these companies be held accountable for their completely reckless and inane business practices? If they are the ones that made these bad decisions to lend money foolishly, they should suffer the consequences. It will affect other people, of course, but the message it sends when the government bails out people like this is, "go ahead and make more bad business decisions, we'll be there to catch you when you fall." We're so afraid of failure, so afraid of not holding this competitive edge that we're willing to excuse bad behavior at any cost. Way to go, U.S..

Yeah, right Mr. Emmot,

Or as Chief Wiggum would say:

Okay folks, show's over. Nothing to see here, show's... Oh my god! A horrible plane crash! Hey everybody, get a load of this flaming wreckage! Come on, crowd around, crowd around!