My studies

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

[1563] VICK- PAKISTAN AND THE GAMES WE PLAY- I really wanted to do a little more on Philosophy today-maybe I’ll get to it at the end. Let me talk about a few points of interest in the news right now.

First- the other day- right around Christmas- a Pakistani woman strapped a bomb around herself- had 2 grenades in her hands and walked up to a food distribution center in Pakistan and blew herself up- killing 45 people along with herself. The President spoke about it from his Hawaiian vacation spot and called the act cowardly. Now- what would cause a woman- possibly a mother- to do this? Cowardice? Desperation? A feeling of hopelessness and seeing our bombing in her streets as oppression? I obviously do not condone the act of the woman- but she was primarily looking for a way to retaliate against our remote control planes [drones] dropping bombs all over the damn place- killing women and kids in the process. This whole thing is a mess.

On a lighter note- the President made another announcement- a phone call from Hawaii- he called Tony Dungy and thanked him for giving Michael Vick a second chance with the Eagles. Michael is the quarterback who a couple of years back was caught doing the dog fighting thing [yes- bad stuff]. He was convicted and did 18 months in jail. The eagles picked him up and he has had a great season and has managed to redeem himself as a really good player. So some in the media have criticized the president for congratulating Dungy for hiring Vick. I must say, while I disagree with the president on lots of stuff- I agree with him 100 % on this. At the time of the Michael Vick story I wrote in favor of Vick- I thought it was nuts that we have had players involved with killing people- guns falling out of their sweat pants at the clubs- all types of stuff- their chauffeurs running people over when they are in the car- and lots of times these players keep playing and never do jail time- yet Vick did almost 2 years- and some people still want him to be punished. I’m happy for Michael and I thank God he’s doing so well- he had a real risk of maybe not being able to play well, when you go to jail for a couple of years during your prime- that can ruin your career. I thank God he has made the most of his second chance- and I too praise Dungy- a fellow Christian- for giving Vick the second chance.

Okay- last but not least. As 2010 comes to a close- these last few weeks investors have pulled over 8 billion out of the U.S. bond market. They see the writing on the wall- that inflation is very likely to rear it’s ugly head and interest rates are going to go up. Why? How many of you remember a few weeks back when the Federal Reserve [our nation’s central bank] bought billions of dollars of U.S. treasuries? At the time you had global trading partners condemn us for trying to manipulate the global market- many voices from our country also said it was a risky move- it might cause inflation [when investors think interest rates will rise- they pull money from the bond market and put it into stocks- that’s also why the Dow is up]. They seem to have been right. The other day I was talking to my brother in law- he was asking me about some of this stuff. I explained to him that if you were playing Monopoly- and you and a few other players did real well- but mid way thru the game the banker simply put another million dollars into the game- how would that affect you? Basically ‘printing money’ like this- out of thin air- will devalue the money that’s already in the game- it will create inflation- everything else would become more expensive because the extra money devalued the original money that was on the board. So it looks like we did this- they’re predicting gas to go up to around 4 dollars a gallon- and those of you buying food- you already have seen the prices go up. So the nation basically borrowed money from ourselves [monetized our own debt] and it seems like the world won’t get fooled again.

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