Thursday, February 12, 2009
The Open-Door Bailout
Here is a very good article on how to stimulate the economy... none of which is being pursued by the present Obamafied Administration
Op-Ed Columnist
The Open-Door Bailout
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: February 10, 2009
Bangalore, India
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Thomas L. Friedman
“All you need to do is grant visas to two million Indians, Chinese and Koreans,” said Shekhar Gupta, editor of The Indian Express newspaper. “We will buy up all the subprime homes. We will work 18 hours a day to pay for them. We will immediately improve your savings rate — no Indian bank today has more than 2 percent nonperforming loans because not paying your mortgage is considered shameful here. And we will start new companies to create our own jobs and jobs for more Americans.”
While his tongue was slightly in cheek, Gupta and many other Indian business people I spoke to this week were trying to make a point that sometimes non-Americans can make best: “Dear America, please remember how you got to be the wealthiest country in history. It wasn’t through protectionism, or state-owned banks or fearing free trade. No, the formula was very simple: build this really flexible, really open economy, tolerate creative destruction so dead capital is quickly redeployed to better ideas and companies, pour into it the most diverse, smart and energetic immigrants from every corner of the world and then stir and repeat, stir and repeat, stir and repeat, stir and repeat.”
While I think President Obama has been doing his best to keep the worst protectionist impulses in Congress out of his stimulus plan, the U.S. Senate unfortunately voted on Feb. 6 to restrict banks and other financial institutions that receive taxpayer bailout money from hiring high-skilled immigrants on temporary work permits known as H-1B visas.
Bad signal. In an age when attracting the first-round intellectual draft choices from around the world is the most important competitive advantage a knowledge economy can have, why would we add barriers against such brainpower — anywhere? That’s called “Old Europe.” That’s spelled: S-T-U-P-I-D.
“If you do this, it will be one of the best things for India and one of the worst for Americans, [because] Indians will be forced to innovate at home,” said Subhash B. Dhar, a member of the executive council that runs Infosys, the well-known Indian technology company that sends Indian workers to the U.S. to support a wide range of firms. “We protected our jobs for many years and look where it got us. Do you know that for an Indian company, it is still easier to do business with a company in the U.S. than it is to do business today with another Indian state?”
Each Indian state tries to protect its little economy with its own rules. America should not be trying to copy that. “Your attitude,” said Dhar, should be “ ‘whoever can make us competitive and dominant, let’s bring them in.’ ”
If there is one thing we know for absolute certain, it’s this: Protectionism did not cause the Great Depression, but it sure helped to make it “Great.” From 1929 to 1934, world trade plunged by more than 60 percent — and we were all worse off.
We live in a technological age where every study shows that the more knowledge you have as a worker and the more knowledge workers you have as an economy, the faster your incomes will rise. Therefore, the centerpiece of our stimulus, the core driving principle, should be to stimulate everything that makes us smarter and attracts more smart people to our shores. That is the best way to create good jobs.
According to research by Vivek Wadhwa, a senior research associate at the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, more than half of Silicon Valley start-ups were founded by immigrants over the last decade. These immigrant-founded tech companies employed 450,000 workers and had sales of $52 billion in 2005, said Wadhwa in an essay published this week on BusinessWeek.com.
He also cited a recent study by William R. Kerr of Harvard Business School and William F. Lincoln of the University of Michigan that “found that in periods when H-1B visa numbers went down, so did patent applications filed by immigrants [in the U.S.]. And when H-1B visa numbers went up, patent applications followed suit.”
We don’t want to come out of this crisis with just inflation, a mountain of debt and more shovel-ready jobs. We want to — we have to — come out of it with a new Intel, Google, Microsoft and Apple. I would have loved to have seen the stimulus package include a government-funded venture capital bank to help finance all the start-ups that are clearly not starting up today — in the clean-energy space they’re dying like flies — because of a lack of liquidity from traditional lending sources.
Newsweek had an essay this week that began: “Could Silicon Valley become another Detroit?” Well, yes, it could. When the best brains in the world are on sale, you don’t shut them out. You open your doors wider. We need to attack this financial crisis with green cards not just greenbacks, and with start-ups not just bailouts. One Detroit is enough.
Op-Ed Columnist
The Open-Door Bailout
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: February 10, 2009
Bangalore, India
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Thomas L. Friedman
“All you need to do is grant visas to two million Indians, Chinese and Koreans,” said Shekhar Gupta, editor of The Indian Express newspaper. “We will buy up all the subprime homes. We will work 18 hours a day to pay for them. We will immediately improve your savings rate — no Indian bank today has more than 2 percent nonperforming loans because not paying your mortgage is considered shameful here. And we will start new companies to create our own jobs and jobs for more Americans.”
While his tongue was slightly in cheek, Gupta and many other Indian business people I spoke to this week were trying to make a point that sometimes non-Americans can make best: “Dear America, please remember how you got to be the wealthiest country in history. It wasn’t through protectionism, or state-owned banks or fearing free trade. No, the formula was very simple: build this really flexible, really open economy, tolerate creative destruction so dead capital is quickly redeployed to better ideas and companies, pour into it the most diverse, smart and energetic immigrants from every corner of the world and then stir and repeat, stir and repeat, stir and repeat, stir and repeat.”
While I think President Obama has been doing his best to keep the worst protectionist impulses in Congress out of his stimulus plan, the U.S. Senate unfortunately voted on Feb. 6 to restrict banks and other financial institutions that receive taxpayer bailout money from hiring high-skilled immigrants on temporary work permits known as H-1B visas.
Bad signal. In an age when attracting the first-round intellectual draft choices from around the world is the most important competitive advantage a knowledge economy can have, why would we add barriers against such brainpower — anywhere? That’s called “Old Europe.” That’s spelled: S-T-U-P-I-D.
“If you do this, it will be one of the best things for India and one of the worst for Americans, [because] Indians will be forced to innovate at home,” said Subhash B. Dhar, a member of the executive council that runs Infosys, the well-known Indian technology company that sends Indian workers to the U.S. to support a wide range of firms. “We protected our jobs for many years and look where it got us. Do you know that for an Indian company, it is still easier to do business with a company in the U.S. than it is to do business today with another Indian state?”
Each Indian state tries to protect its little economy with its own rules. America should not be trying to copy that. “Your attitude,” said Dhar, should be “ ‘whoever can make us competitive and dominant, let’s bring them in.’ ”
If there is one thing we know for absolute certain, it’s this: Protectionism did not cause the Great Depression, but it sure helped to make it “Great.” From 1929 to 1934, world trade plunged by more than 60 percent — and we were all worse off.
We live in a technological age where every study shows that the more knowledge you have as a worker and the more knowledge workers you have as an economy, the faster your incomes will rise. Therefore, the centerpiece of our stimulus, the core driving principle, should be to stimulate everything that makes us smarter and attracts more smart people to our shores. That is the best way to create good jobs.
According to research by Vivek Wadhwa, a senior research associate at the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, more than half of Silicon Valley start-ups were founded by immigrants over the last decade. These immigrant-founded tech companies employed 450,000 workers and had sales of $52 billion in 2005, said Wadhwa in an essay published this week on BusinessWeek.com.
He also cited a recent study by William R. Kerr of Harvard Business School and William F. Lincoln of the University of Michigan that “found that in periods when H-1B visa numbers went down, so did patent applications filed by immigrants [in the U.S.]. And when H-1B visa numbers went up, patent applications followed suit.”
We don’t want to come out of this crisis with just inflation, a mountain of debt and more shovel-ready jobs. We want to — we have to — come out of it with a new Intel, Google, Microsoft and Apple. I would have loved to have seen the stimulus package include a government-funded venture capital bank to help finance all the start-ups that are clearly not starting up today — in the clean-energy space they’re dying like flies — because of a lack of liquidity from traditional lending sources.
Newsweek had an essay this week that began: “Could Silicon Valley become another Detroit?” Well, yes, it could. When the best brains in the world are on sale, you don’t shut them out. You open your doors wider. We need to attack this financial crisis with green cards not just greenbacks, and with start-ups not just bailouts. One Detroit is enough.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
De-Obamafy me
One would think we have just coronated a King (sorry about the play on words). However, it is only another President of the United States - "Leader of the Free World", but not a king. Yes, he is the answer to many liberals dreams, and many dreams of the black nation in the USA. It apparently resonates with many of the other races in the US which have a liberal basis for being excited.
That said, I still believe there are some fundamental issues I am unable to overlook. Like the fact that one of his first actions as president has been to repeal the Abortion Laws and Gag Rules on other countries who accept abortion. At first, I thought ok, it is good for the nation that all are being brought together. But killing unborn babies is still murder in the womb, or murder partially out of the womb. Our nation is under the PALL of the Culture of Death. It is certifiably, undeniably, positively, absolutely so. He is agressively seeking the most liberal stance to have our culture accept abortion/murder as the norm. It is not the norm, but un-natural.
The rate of abortions per day in the US is approximately 43,836, or 1824 per hour or 30.44 per minute - IN THE USA alone - not counting the rest of the world. AND we are at the lowest point since 1974 according to a Jan. 18, 2008 recent report from the Guttmacher Institute.
In addition to this, King Obama has decreed that the government will pay for it. With MY tax dollars. I did not vote for Obama, and in fact wrote my candidate in, as he was not on the ballot.
Let us be clear, not only will this exceed FDR's wildest dreams, it will exceed the imaginations of those who put him in power.
That said, I still believe there are some fundamental issues I am unable to overlook. Like the fact that one of his first actions as president has been to repeal the Abortion Laws and Gag Rules on other countries who accept abortion. At first, I thought ok, it is good for the nation that all are being brought together. But killing unborn babies is still murder in the womb, or murder partially out of the womb. Our nation is under the PALL of the Culture of Death. It is certifiably, undeniably, positively, absolutely so. He is agressively seeking the most liberal stance to have our culture accept abortion/murder as the norm. It is not the norm, but un-natural.
The rate of abortions per day in the US is approximately 43,836, or 1824 per hour or 30.44 per minute - IN THE USA alone - not counting the rest of the world. AND we are at the lowest point since 1974 according to a Jan. 18, 2008 recent report from the Guttmacher Institute.
In addition to this, King Obama has decreed that the government will pay for it. With MY tax dollars. I did not vote for Obama, and in fact wrote my candidate in, as he was not on the ballot.
Let us be clear, not only will this exceed FDR's wildest dreams, it will exceed the imaginations of those who put him in power.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Let's not forget about Jihadists
As always the Blog "Jihad Watch" is on the mark. Check out the latest in-credible remarks and responses from around the world about Islamic Terrorism.
Also watch the free video "FITNA" down below on this site or in the Links area.
Also watch the free video "FITNA" down below on this site or in the Links area.
President Bush: What took you so long to take action?
President Bush,
Why have you waited so long to remove the ban from drilling in our own country?
- Duh! Imagine the drop in price if we start producing oil here. Why have we waited so long? Why allow the dependence on foriegn oil. We got what we deserved with the present values in oil prices. Thanks to lack of innovative action on your part and thanks to greedy speculators.
Why haven't you opened Diplomatic Relations with Iran before now?
- I am not a liberal. But I do think we need to box the Iranians in diplomatically to up-level their visibility in the diplomatic world. I am sure we are doing plenty behind the lines and covertly, but we need to do plenty on the visible level, IMHO.
Why have you waited so long to remove the ban from drilling in our own country?
- Duh! Imagine the drop in price if we start producing oil here. Why have we waited so long? Why allow the dependence on foriegn oil. We got what we deserved with the present values in oil prices. Thanks to lack of innovative action on your part and thanks to greedy speculators.
Why haven't you opened Diplomatic Relations with Iran before now?
- I am not a liberal. But I do think we need to box the Iranians in diplomatically to up-level their visibility in the diplomatic world. I am sure we are doing plenty behind the lines and covertly, but we need to do plenty on the visible level, IMHO.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Our Candidates for President Have BOTH Missed the Mark
While I will never vote for Obama - mainly due to his leftist views with little or no substantiation to support them, I am not over convinced about McCain either. While McCain's values are conservative, I am not sure they are progressive enough. Or sure they represent my views.
Is our country really ready for progressive politics or is it simply seeking "historic moments" through a thinly veiled core of Kennedyesqe planks.
I am not a swing voter, but a saddened voter due to the lack of substance and leadership on either side. Ron Paul may not be relevant in this election, but he does strike a chord with me. I am still undecided, but simply due to sheer lack of any hope or vision for any of my values, I may have no choice but to vote for Dr. Paul. Because he speaks to the original nature of our country's founding documents, he is considered out of step, shrill, and irrelevant. Perhaps he is not the right guy to have the job, but we can listen and hope for the right combination of dynamics within a candidate who could be elected.
So with this in mind, is McCain going to lag behind because of votes like mine? Do I just vote for McCain to add to the effort to prevent Obama from being in the White House? Once again, I am voting for the least of evils. Once again for the THIRD TIME!
We all know the issues, and the stands taken by both candidates - we are bombarded with it minute by minute. I am suffering from campaign news media fatigue.
It is not that hard to understand the principles on which our country was founded. Why have we deviated into a policy based purely on present day political spin. Our great leaders understood our core values and had the backbone to stand up for them. Where are these leaders with vision?
Is our country really ready for progressive politics or is it simply seeking "historic moments" through a thinly veiled core of Kennedyesqe planks.
I am not a swing voter, but a saddened voter due to the lack of substance and leadership on either side. Ron Paul may not be relevant in this election, but he does strike a chord with me. I am still undecided, but simply due to sheer lack of any hope or vision for any of my values, I may have no choice but to vote for Dr. Paul. Because he speaks to the original nature of our country's founding documents, he is considered out of step, shrill, and irrelevant. Perhaps he is not the right guy to have the job, but we can listen and hope for the right combination of dynamics within a candidate who could be elected.
So with this in mind, is McCain going to lag behind because of votes like mine? Do I just vote for McCain to add to the effort to prevent Obama from being in the White House? Once again, I am voting for the least of evils. Once again for the THIRD TIME!
We all know the issues, and the stands taken by both candidates - we are bombarded with it minute by minute. I am suffering from campaign news media fatigue.
It is not that hard to understand the principles on which our country was founded. Why have we deviated into a policy based purely on present day political spin. Our great leaders understood our core values and had the backbone to stand up for them. Where are these leaders with vision?
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