about that 123 agreement...

[blr_p]

Lol, looks like i was beaten to it.Interesting take on liability.

 

[gregory house]

Things have been happening thick and fast over the last couple of days in the world of finance and politics.Alan Greenspan has come out with a book criticizing the Bush administration for its fiscal indiscipline. And he says the war in Iraq was about oil. I really didn't expect a person of his stature take such a simplistic position. On the other hand he has been accused of not foreseeing the severity of the sub prime mortgage crisis.Anil Kakodkar is in Vienna for negotiations with the IAEA and here Karat has dug his head into the sand saying nothing is going to convince him about the merits of the case. Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, on the other hand, has his own views on nuclear power. I sometimes feel he is a capitalist born by mistake in a communist household, just like Mowgli.Further, the financial crisis triggered by the sub prime mortgage crisis in the US has crossed the Atlantic and Northern Rock is its first casualty. Now the govt. is going to try to rescue it. A slowdown in the US now seems more or less imminent. People are now going to stop spending and that is going to hurt businesses. I don't think the world is ready for a US slowdown. If governments had learnt to keep their hands to themselves instead of meddling in financial affairs, these things might just not have happened.But the politicians in India don't seem to be aware of such things. Currently, they are fighting on whether Ram existed and whether the Setusamudram project should go ahead. It seems Karunanidhi has said some not-so-nice things about Ram. Ignore him. The dravidian parties' atheism stems from anti-brahmanism and that of the communists from pure hatred towards religion in general (particularly hinduism). And everybody knows what the BJP is all about.This is a message for the political class in India. Get the nuke deal done, people, before Bush loses interest. He will soon have other things to worry about and you will rue a missed opportunity. Nehru and his Himalayan blunder redux.

 

[blr_p]

Is there any reason to think the deal won't get done ?I was under the impression that the majority of ppl 75% (informally polled) were in its favour.Kakodkar is on time in Vienna, he can't really say anything yet as i expect the negotiations are ongoing and this is a harder group of ppl to please i think. Let the left continue with their antics, the only time this will get precarious if it comes down to a vote, which it should not have to, since the current PM is well within his rights to sign a treaty of such a nature.Greenspan said the chance of a recession in the US was higher than 33% but still less than 50% if i recall correctly. So that's a little more pessimistic than what he said a few months back. Let's see how it goes.

 

[gregory house]

Karat has given a warning - stall the negotiations for six months or there will be an election. Political parties don't care what the people actually think. They only care about their perception of what people think. I watched the 9 pm news (for just five minutes or so) across the four english channels just to see what their points of view were. Not surprisingly, everybody (except NDTV) was talking about Dhoni. If this is the state of affairs with the media, why should the politicians bother about people and their views. Mulford too has spoken on the issue and he is in favor of upping the tempo.Regarding Greenspan and his comment on oil, he has clarified that what he meant was the war was necessary to prevent Saddam from taking control of the Strait of Hormuz, thereby controlling world oil supplies.

 

[blr_p]

the straits of hormuz are several hundred miles to the south-east of Iraq. After 12 yrs of what must have been excruciating sanctions, i doubt the Iraqis were capable of taking control of anything beyond their own borders.

No, the most capable player of pulling that off was & always is Iran.

Which is why there has always been carier fleets patrolling the gulf to guard against such a maneuver.

As to why they got into Iraq in the first place, i can't after several attempts fashion a coherent answer.

 

[gregory house]

I don't think anybody is capable of answering that question. Everybody is stumped, but yet has a for-or-against view on the subject. Greenspan has given that as his reason. Don't know what lies behind that.As for the war itself, the US never learned from the Vietnam debacle. An army can only get you inside a country. It can't set up a government for you. Don't know why people didn't think of that. But everything we say now is part of hindsight. Who knows what someone else might have done when faced with a similar situation.

 

[blr_p]

Given the exact same set of conditions & objectives..might i say..the same.Lots was said about the peak-oil theory, that oil would peak around the end of this decade and that there would be a scramble to get more of a dwindling cheaply produced resource. Well then you have to shift to natural gas. It was also forcast that there were abundant reserves of natural gas in central asia. But it has always been costly to tap it as there was never a easily guarded route to the sea. So positioning garrisons in the proximity helps to alleviate that somewhat. If the US can get at those resources affordably, it stands to reason that the rest of the world will too if albeit a smaller share. I can't imagine any other reason that the US was able to get off so lightly on trumped charges aginst Iraq. That the world to some extent stands to gain too from this adventure, and the US bears the costs of blazing this path.Ultimately helps to offset an imminent energy crunch and its expected consequences if only for a few decades.

 

[gregory house]

I have never been a big fan of the global warming and resource crunch theory coz I believe that humans (at least some of them, and they are the only ones that matter) are too clever to let that happen. Conservation is okay. But not at the cost of economic disaster.

And yes. The US has spent so much on the war that they could have done something really concrete with that money. Why not take a look at Alaska? But is there a chance of that happening? The world needs the US. But if they admit to it, they will have eggs on their faces. So, even as they abuse it in public, they eat the fruits in private.

I was writing the following before I read your post and though it seems a bit off topic now, I don't feel like deleting it.

Greenspan clarifies Iraq war, oil link | Politics | Reuters
CapitalistImperialistPig: Senior Moments

The funny thing is Greenspan was close to Ayn Rand (I am a big fan, as you might have already guessed from my not-so-subtle hints) and her philosophy of objectivism. He has even written some pieces in Capitalism - An unknown ideal. And then he went and joined the FR.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/15/business/15atlas.html
Alan Greenspan Timeline

 

[blr_p]

Seems to me, he is trying to cover his involvement or contribution to the invasion. Unless he has been misquoted, it makes no sense whatsoever.Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, i read over 10 yrs ago when a friend passed me a copy. It was more the ideals of the principal actor (the architect) & its parallels to software architecture that drew my attention more than the libertarian ideals espoused within. Working in nyc at the time was an added bonus.

 

[gregory house]

No misquote that. I personally saw him say that on CNBC today. Maybe he wanted to clarify his statements in his book. But clarification seems absurder than the claim.And the book you are talking about is the Fountainhead. Atlas Shrugged is a different one by the same author and a comprehensive one at that. It took her twelve years to write it.