Africa: The new Chinese Colony

It now appears the fate of the African people is to be looted and taken over by the Chinese. The Chinese have quickly discovered that they cannot maintain their economy and population burdens within their own borders. They have been very busy signing exclusive contracts all over Africa for raw good and materials to bring back to China in order to keep factories humming along. And the icing on the cake is that Africa is now China's best new market to sell their goods to. So its like saying 'Hey sorry we took all your minerals, metals, timber, and oil, but look on the bright side - you can buy it all back from us in the form of Chinese goods !!'

Here is the article I read that has a more detailed overview of this serious issue:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1036105/How-Chinas-taking-Africa-West-VERY-worried.html

The Latest Bailout Request: U.S. Automakers

Seems that GM/Ford/Chrysler and the good old UAW were in Washington this past week to beg for some of that taxpayer honey. The problem is that how do they think they are ever going to be able to pay these loans back? I mean their business has been shrinking for years thanks to the innovations and quality of the Japanese automakers building cars here in the U.S. I have to admit some of the latest vehicles to come out of Detroit are truly world class and its a shame that they are in the position they are in. But really it was their own fault. They knew they could not sell to the SUV crowd forever given the massive appetite for petroleum in developing nations and that it would have an eventual effect here. So here they are in midst of a credit crisis with the wrong product mix for the times combined with unsavory union contracts that guarantee that a heavy slice of anything they make goes to pay pension and healthcare costs. People argue that we must not let these companies fail, that it would have a catastrophic affect on the economy and employment in this nation. But is that really prudent to toss good money at a failing business model and hope on a wing and prayer that they can pay the government back in the future? They must be allowed to fail and reorganize into tightly run, competitive and innovative companies that can thrive in the long run.

No more bailouts please!!!!

It seems that government cannot let the markets function properly like they were designed to do and that both parties are to blame. When times are good and people make nice profits investing in real estate or companies rake in the profits, do these individuals suddenly share their fortune with U.S. taxpayers? Hell no. But suddenly when people are loosing their homes because of risky real estate investments or companies are going under because of poor planning and financial insight they are all in line for bailouts. Its ridiculous and undermines the way the free markets are supposed to work in this nation. Here are some articles about my point:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122463178413656455.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122506830024970697.html

The Greed Bubble

"Greed is good - greed works" proclaims the character Gordon Gecko in Oliver Stone's 1987 movie Wall Street. The current crisis facing the U.S. financial market and citizen is what I like to call the collapse of the 'Greed Bubble'. People are scrambling madly around now trying to find out who is responsible for this mess when the whole time they should be looking at themselves. It was greed that led people to apply for loans they knew they could not afford by standard lending practices and to take out large home equity loans to pay for fancy cars and big screen TV sets. It was greed that drove mortgage brokers to qualify people for no money down, interest only loans, etc with the crazy belief that home prices would keep rising to the moon so they could make their fat commissions. It was the banks that packaged these stinky loans and sold them to investment houses because of greed. It was the investment houses that made these into securities and gave them an AA bond rating to sell to investors because of greed. And at last the investors who bought these securities in the hopes of making high interest returns. It was a great scheme that worked until the mortgage rates started adjusting on people and the rest was history. The whole moral is that if something is too good to be true, it probably isn't. The age of accountability is here now that the greed bubble has popped. A time of reflection for both the Government and the American public over how greed can get out of control and ways to recognize it in the future. Greed is good, but in the future it will have to play by the rules and live within its means.

Seven years later

Today is the seventh anniversary of 9/11. In many ways in my life it seems like it was just yesterday but at the same time long ago. I remember driving to work in Reston running late and getting a call from my Mom that there was an accident in NYC, that a plane had crashed into the WTC building. As soon as I reached work however, I found everyone huddled around a big TV upstairs and saw the 2nd plane hit myself. Everyone was strangely silent, only gasping when replays of the impact played over again. We witnessed the plane hitting the Pentagon on the news and at that point everyone was dismissed from work and heading home to loved ones. I went to my window office downstairs instead of leaving and sat at my desk with only the light from the outside coming in, thinking to myself in silence. A strange calmness soon took over me then. So many chaotic things were happening in my life on a personal level at the time that just seemed to parallel the destruction of the towers themselves. It was a big turning point for me, a return to recognize my needs that I had been ignoring for a long time and the same time I think for a country to recognize some things it had been ignoring. That time in my life and the people in the office I worked at will always be etched in my mind because of the date 9/11 alone. I wish all the best to those whose lives were affected directly that day seven years ago.

Nav System

I am traveling in New England this week on vacation and making good use of my $120 super cheap Chinese made navigation unit. It has been pretty good so far except for the couple of times it froze up completely and a few times it completely got confused. I keep seeing ads for expensive models that have the ability to reroute you around backups which at first seems like a great feature. But the reality is as more and more of these devices get onto the road and become affordable for everyone, the route around backups will become the new route because everyone will be taking the side road. So I guess its a matter of enjoy it while you can, since there are a limited amount of optional routes that can be used by an ever increasing amount of vehicles.

A Food Contradiction

I was reading today on CNN that oceanic dead zones are increasing rapidly and becoming a global problem. One of the biggest contributors to the growth of dead zones is the use of large amounts of fertilizer which eventually leech off the land and into the water, eventually traveling to the sea. Corn, which is the largest crop in the U.S., is especially fertilizer intensive. When in the ocean, this fertilizer causes the production of huge algae blooms which starve the water of oxygen, killing the seafood around it. So basically in the quest to grow more and more grain to feed the population of the world, we are inadvertently killing the seafood we depend on as well. If it continues, we would see a future when a seafood meal would be a very rare delicacy, something the average person could not even experience. Being a person who loves to eat Maryland crab, this is a very sobering thought indeed.