The Last Vicious Gasp Of A Failed Political Generation

Buddy: I liked what you wrote on Hullaballoo about Obama, McCain, etc.

I’m a weird mix of everything, Russian-Jewish-Latino-English Jewish (father’s mother grew up in Whitechapel). I live in South America but I’ve lived in London before, so I understand English English! Gearing = Leverage y tal tal tal…

I watch the debate and analysis on CNN with my girlfriend who speaks no English but tries to pick it up here and there. I’m fluent in Spanish of course so it’s much easier for us to have adult conversation in Spanish.

At any rate, she says to me “Que significa la frase ‘That One’?”

I replied “Ese”

She goes “Que va? Es senador el senor Don Barack Obama, no es “ESE”…que falta de educacion de la parte del gringo viejo, si o pa’ que?”

“educacion” means “good manners” not education, btw. But man she was horrified.

My English relatives despise New Labour having grown up in a Labour home. When Blair won the Leadership race in 1994, they switched to Liberal Democrat.

But to your points. You give the Gringos way too much credit. The progressive Democrats and conservative Republicans in the House deserve credit for killing the thing the first time, but that’s it. This was always going to go through. No matter what.

As a “foreigner” to the US (although I got BA and master’s there) I agree with you wholeheartedly about Obama. He’s leading in world polling 93-7 because of his intelligence and calm after 8 years of madness, not because he’s a savior. He’s very Blair-like actually. I can’t vote but I preferred Kucinich and Paul to Obama. I think Obama’s an easy winner though. I backed him off-shore pretty good at the bottom laying 5/4 and then 13/8.

On the question of monetisation, I tend to disagree with you because if there’s capitalism, there’s fungibility of money. I didn’t make that up. That’s a fact of human life. There will be more oversight and regulation that takes away a lot of the fraud involved and makes things more transparent (PERHAPS) but cash flows are basically modelling clay.

I’m a speculator, investor, fund manager and professional sports punter, just to let you know my perspective.

Thanks for taking the time to comment in such depth; I too have an odd relationship with American politics, as I lived there for a number of years and both my grown children are citizens and have the vote. So I do feel I have a personal stake although I’m not a citizen myself; my kids’ futures.

Alhough of course we do all have a stake in this anyway, all of us worldwide. We all are affected by the US’ actions, economic or military, but only some us have a say. Odd from a country whose revolutionary battle cry was ‘no taxation without representation’. In the meantime all that those who don’t have the vote can do is rant or take the piss. So I do:)

As for New Labour and Obama’s resemblance to Blair – yes, he’s very like in some ways, but luckily for you, Obama lacks Blair’s vanity and his awful creepy sycophancy towards other politicians. Oh and his wife Michelle seems like a decent, clever, upright woman, unlike our dear Cherie who never saw a luxury item she didn’t try to grab as a freebie.

I was against young bambi Blair right from the outset of the leadership election (which awkwardness got me drummed out of Labour) but many people I once had respect for fell for his youth and telegenicity in 1997 and voted for him, thinking he was a socialist and that they’d ride the wave leftwards. They’ve been bitterly, bitterly disappointed every day since, but they made a rod for their own backs. I’ve little sympathy and mostly contempt.

Re regulating banks; who is to do the actual oversight? Time and time again those set in place to watch over the financial industries have been shown to be corrupt themselves, having been tempted by lax regulations and the massive sums to be made. Who watches them? Politicians who are unqualified to know their accounts receivable from accounts payable, let alone understand a complicated balance sheet. and even if they’re honest they’re either befuddled or bamboozled.

Unless a lost Amazonian tribe of forensic accontants with perfect morals, the power to prosecute and absolutely no self or party interest at all is suddenly discovered and elected to office, enhanced and more strictly enforced regulation is not going to happen. The entire global banking industry is one gigantic Enron and the regulators and auditors have not just enabled it they are are hip deep in it. As you say all cash flow is indeed just so much fungible stuff and they’ve all been funge-ing away for years.

Because of it money has become totally divorced from value, and until the two reach some kind of rational equilibrium again and we acknowledge that growth is not unlimited, resources are finite and so is profit, and that you can’t pluck money out of thin air, there’ll continue to be chaos.

Presidential politics aren’t helping the chaos any; to have the free world’s self-styled leader at war with itself, with demagogues like Palin and O’Reilly whipping up violence and worse still, to have the prospect of a venomous batshit crazy old man like McCain in the White House and to be able to nothing to stop it, well it’s deeply unsettling the whole world. I listen to the World Service in the middle of the night sometimes and the uncertainty of it all’s a constant refrain.

I don’t think there’ll be any certainties about anything, least of all the markets, until this election is decided one way or another. If it’s Obama we may at least get some stability to work out where we go from here, and maybe even some actual leadership; but if it’s McCain the future looks grim indeed. If there’s no election, for whatever reason, all bets are off.