Check It Out for Monday, April 20th
Eminent Nobel Prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz in an interview with Bloomberg News says that Obama's economic "recovery" program is doomed to fail.
“ 'All the ingredients they have so far are weak, and there are several missing ingredients,' Stiglitz said in an interview yesterday. The people who designed the plans are 'either in the pocket of the banks or they’re incompetent.'
"Stiglitz said there are conflicts of interest at the White House because some of Obama’s advisers have close ties to Wall Street.
“ 'We don’t have enough money, they don’t want to go back to Congress, and they don’t want to do it in an open way and they don’t want to get control' of the banks, a set of constraints that will guarantee failure, Stiglitz said.
"Stiglitz was also critical of Obama’s other economic rescue programs.
"He called the $787 billion stimulus program necessary but 'flawed' because too much spending comes after 2009, and because it devotes too much of the money to tax cuts “which aren’t likely to work very effectively.”
“ 'It’s really a peculiar policy, I think,' he said.
“ 'This is a strategy trying to recreate that bubble,' he said. 'That’s not likely to provide a long-run solution. It’s a solution that says let’s kick the can down the road a little bit.'
"While the strategy might put a floor under housing prices, it won’t do anything to speed the recovery, he said. 'It’s a recipe for Japanese-style malaise.' ”
"Well, the Irish government now predicts that this year G.D.P. will fall more than 10 percent from its peak, crossing the line that is sometimes used to distinguish between a recession and a depression.
"But there’s more to it than that: to satisfy nervous lenders, Ireland is being forced to raise taxes and slash government spending in the face of an economic slump — policies that will further deepen the slump.
"How did Ireland get into its current bind? By being just like us, only more so. Like its near-namesake Iceland, Ireland jumped with both feet into the brave new world of unsupervised global markets. Last year the Heritage Foundation declared Ireland the third freest economy in the world, behind only Hong Kong and Singapore.
"One part of the Irish economy that became especially free was the banking sector, which used its freedom to finance a monstrous housing bubble. Ireland became in effect a cool, snake-free version of coastal Florida.
"Then the bubble burst. The collapse of construction sent the economy into a tailspin, while plunging home prices left many people owing more than their houses were worth. The result, as in the United States, has been a rising tide of defaults and heavy losses for the banks.
From Donald Kirk at Asia Times, the differences in the cases of the seized American journalists is Iran and North Korea.
"The coincidence between the jailing of these three American broadcast journalists who were by all accounts in aggressive pursuit of exclusive stories, goes to the larger issue of the nuclear programs of both Iran and North Korea - and their cooperation with each other.
"Saberi was interested in Iran's nuclear program, which the US charges has military implications well beyond the peaceful uses claimed by Iran. Ling and Lee were not necessarily going to report on North Korea's program, linked to that of Iran through exchanges of technology and the sale of North Korean Scud and Rodong missiles, but North Korean authorities can make up any story they want about what they were doing. Unlike Iran, they've manufactured nuclear warheads and vow to go on doing so now that the United Nations Security Council has condemned their launch of the long-range Taepodong-2 missile on April 5.
"The cases, however, have highly disturbing differences. Iran may seem like a forbidding place, to judge from reports of what's happening to Saberi, but it's a free and open society compared to North Korea.
"While Saberi's father remains in Tehran, pleading on his daughter's behalf with Iranian officials, diplomats and journalists, the parents of Laura Ling, of Chinese ancestry, and Euna Lee, Korean-American, are not able to see their daughters. Nor do Ling and Lee have a loquacious lawyer, as does Saberi, appearing on TV, arguing their case.
"In Tehran, as in Pyongyang, the US relies on diplomats from other countries to visit US citizens in jail in the absence of diplomatic relations with either Iran or North Korea. Swiss diplomats have seen Saberi behind bars in Tehran, and a Swedish diplomat has visited Ling and Lee at the "guest house", as it's described, near Pyongyang.
"Unlike Saberi, Ling and Lee are not believed to have had any other foreign visitors, certainly not their parents. North Korean authorities like to say they are following all the rules of diplomacy in dealing with criminal cases, but that single conversation that each of them has had with the Swede is the only chance they've had to get a message through to anyone on their side.
"Another enormous difference is that Ling and Lee had not spent years reporting from inside North Korea, as had Saberi - they had never been there until the guards detained them.
"One person does know what happened - or as much as he could tell from having been a part of the incident. That's cameraman and producer Mitch Koss, who was with Ling and Lee and escaped. He was arrested by the Chinese, but has left China, probably for San Francisco, the home of Current TV, an Internet-based operation.
"To judge from Koss' silence, he has been told in no uncertain terms to keep his mouth shut while negotiators try to spring Ling and Lee. It's assumed, if and when he does talk, that he will be able to clarify how the guide led them into what appears to be a trap and exactly where everyone was standing.
"It would not be correct, however, to think that Ling and Lee were not well briefed beforehand on the horrors of life in North Korea - or the risks they were taking by venturing down to the bank of the Tumen River, a shallow stream that defectors can cross by foot whether it is frozen or not. Nor did they rely solely on interviews with South Korean defectors, arranged through a South Korean non-governmental group called Durihana, whose leader, the Reverend Chun Ki-won, was imprisoned for 10 months in China years ago for trying to help defectors escape to Mongolia.
"Ling, at the age of 32, was following in the footsteps of her older sister, 36-year-old Lisa Ling, who's gained celebrity status as a far-ranging reporter for Oprah and National Geographic television. Lisa may well have encouraged Laura on her North Korean documentary after having scored one of her greatest coups three years ago with an epic "Inside North Korea" for National Geographic."
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