Sharma Family Journal

Tom Friedman writes in NY Times about how US should sustain high oil prices to force research in alternative and domestic sources of energy.

This was disputed by Henry C.K. Liu of Asia Times in a lengthy four page article, full of interesting data and analysis, but rambling at times and lacking a sharp focus.

Select quotes.

In other words, higher energy prices do not take money out of the economy, they merely shift profit allocation from one business sector to another. More than $365 billion a year goes to foreign oil producers who then must recycle their oil dollars back into US Treasury bonds or other dollar assets, as part of the rules of the game of dollar hegemony. The simple fact is that a rise in monetary value of assets adds to the monetary wealth of the economy.

The fact of the matter is that the US already controls most of the world’s oil without war, by virtue of oil being denominated in dollars that the US can print at will with little penalty. Petro-war is launched to protect dollar hegemony, which requires oil to be denominated in dollars, not physical access to oil. Much anti-war posturing in an election year is merely campaign rhetoric.

For those of you not interested in reading this - his argument about “political economics” can be summarized as complex math, where you’re asked to do “2+2″ for variable values of 2. Another key argument is that the big guys (Wall Street, Arabs) are always going to protect themselves with “hedging” - so it’s the little guy who always loses. And a bunch of other insightful stats about money supply (translation: how you become poorer with constant bank balance and low inflation - which is manipulated by governments).

In the end, it’s clear that Friedman is a journalist and Liu is an economist.

AP article:

There are several examples like that, that we have to address without worrying about the fundamentalism in some of the open-source community,” he said. “One can be an open-source advocate without being an open-source fundamentalist.

– John Negroponte, Founder, OLPC project

Every time I’m apalled by the impotence of the “mainstream” US media, I’m equally impressed by Asia Times. They seem to ask all the critical questions that American journalists conveniently forget to ask.

Iraq is an ally of United States. We want to spread democracy in the middle east

It’s laughable. Any person with half a brain can see through the propaganda by reading about what Iraqis think.

AFP is carrying this article referring to India’s partition today.

When British colonial rule ended in 1947, India was divided along religious lines. Muslims settled in West Pakistan and East Pakistan — now Bangladesh — while India was dedicated for Hindus.

Since the article was about Pakistan’s independence, this is probably their Pakistani correspondent repeating the stuff in his text books. It shouldn’t be very hard to figure out the stats for yourself.

It seems to be widely accepted that the percentage of Hindus in Pakistan has dwindled to < 2%, whereas the percentage of Muslims in India has increased to 14%. The electorate (or whatever is left out of it through the years of miliatry dictatorships) was till recently partitioned between Muslims and non-Muslims.

I find it surprising that this passed through AFP's editorial scissors.

The more practical minded Pakistanis will realize that it's in their economic interest by working out some kind of a loose federation with India, instead of letting the country used as a tool by both western governments and Al-Qaeda.

You might be tired of reading about the credit crunch for the Nth time on your favorite financial website and you might still be scratching your head about making sense of all of this.

Asians make most of the goods consumed in the US, take all the money and invest it right back in American banks which lend the money to people who’re not credit worthy and that hurts Asian markets? There must be something wrong with this logic you think.

I’ve tried to make sense of all of this by compiling some data myself (I think all the data is out there, but is not presented this way because of the political sensitivities). Also, I’m not sure how trustable the data is i.e. has it been verified independently from multiple sources.

But here it is. Emperor’s clothes. So every month the US persuades other countries to sell goods/services that are really worth ~900B USD for around 500B, then pursuades them to buy things for around 300B.

At this rate, the US should be running a deficit of 200B per month = 2.4T per year. But it doesn’t. Why? Because some of the richest countries invest the money right back in the US.

Did you know that China is the richest country in the world already? This is according to the CIA, based on their bank balance.

I always thought MSNBC’s talk show guys were all right wingers trying to compete with Fox and O’Reilly. Then while following the CNN vs Michael Moore debate, I ran into this guy.

He does a pretty good job of going after Bush and Cheney , although the “Good night and good luck” stuff seemed to be a bit of a non-original overkill.

I thought Mr Moore was being obnoxious on purpose and nitpicking instead of debating the big points with CNN’s Sanjay Gupta. But I couldn’t agree with him more about the lack of responsibility that the media showed in the run up to the war.

Laws have been passed in France recently making it a crime to deny the death of 6 million Jews in Germany or 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey. It’s interesting to see Mr Bush denying that 600,000 people have been killed in Iraq due to his miliatry misadventures. Perhaps he’ll be taken into custody the next time he visits France?

If you were wondering who this Glenn Beck guy rambling on CNN headline news any time you tune in (by mistake?), I’ll save you some effort. Some selected Glenn Beck Quotes should leave you in no doubt about his thinking.

Another reason why I think people find “mainstream American media” (for those who thought that foxnews was right wing) totally out of touch with reality.

All this news hoopla about Condoleezza Rice doing this enormous amount of work to stop the violence seems to be utterly pointless and makes the American press look extremely stupid. How can the main party in the war be a part of the diplomatic solution, unless she has a speciality in negotiating with herself?

It seems to be clear to the rest of the world that IDF is pushing buttons on weapons made in the US and hastily supplied to them via UK.

All that is needed, is for Mr Bush to pick up the phone and talk some Texan with Mr Olmert - the way he did with Musharraf a few years ago.

Using people like Rice and Powell to put a diplomatic face on military offsensives are an insult to the intelligence of most readers.

What the policy makers in Israel and USA are overlooking in the clearly assymetrical war that’s going on in the middle east is: the rate at which deadly weapons are available to individuals wanting to inflict mass destruction.

That’s not to say that every country should give in to terrorist black mail. On the other hand, killing hundreds of civilians on the basis of military superiority, might create enmity that might last a few generations. The cost of this might be a lot more 50 or a 100 years from now.