America's Business

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

Politics is show business for ugly people. - Paul Begala

Mitt Romney and Herman Cain are in the forefront of the Republican nomination race. They both have experience in business with varying degrees of success. Many see this as a driving force for a candidate for the Presidency of the United States. People that subscribe to this believe this will be the panacea that fixes the economy. However the principles that guide government and business put their missions in deep conflict with each other.

( How So? )

Iran, Saudi Arabia, America and the future of the Middle East

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

By now, most of you have heard at least something about the administration announcing it had broken up an alleged plot by elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to assassinate the the Saudia Arabian ambassador to the USA in Washington, D.C. Iran has, of course, denied the allegations in their entirety and denounced the United States for even bringing the matter up.

To some, reasonably impartial observers, the alleged plot does not add up. While Iran and Saudi Arabia are intense rivals vying for regional dominance and while Iran has carried out assassination plots overseas before, the current operation, allegedly tied to the Qud's Force in the Revolutionary Guard is bizarrely amateur. The conspiracy involved payment of a Mexican drug cartel in the amount of 1.5 million to travel to D.C. and murder the Saudi official, preferably at a restaurant where the bomb might have the added effect of killing prominent Washingtonians. It is notable that skeptics of the plot are not limited to Iranians and their proxies, but a principle in the Chertoff Group and and academic experts on Iran. Iranian analyst Meir Javedanfar suggests the possibility that the plot was set in motion by a faction within Iran hoping to damage Khamenei enough to oust him from power.

( But maybe the most interesting aspect of the alleged plot is how it highlights the emerging dynamics of the Middle East for an American public that has not been paying attention. )

Cause of the Financial Crisis

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Apparently despite having the most detailed information available for the last 3 years, there is still some debate about the origins of the financial crisis. I hope to (who am I kidding?) put this to rest. The OWS protests in particular have spurred many pundits into declaring that they should be mad at themselves or the government, not at banks or Wall St. or anything like that. Such comments a gross revision of history, and I'm not talking about the early 1900s or 1950s, but 3 years ago!

In the beginning of the 1990s, the financial industry invented derivatives. Derivatives are bundles of different types of debt (credit card debt, student loans, mortgages, etc). The debts are bundled up and then sold to investors. These bundles of debt are called Collateralized Debt Obligations or CDOs. Investment banks then sold these CDOs to individual investors like people buying stocks with their 401k retirement funds etc.

( Read this if you want out of Plato's Cave )