For the major parties, a Bloomberg run could be their worst nightmare.

The two consultants, Douglas Bailey and Gerald Rafshoon, told reporters Tuesday that Bloomberg’s name recognition, independent political affiliation and personal fortune make him unusually well positioned to break the partisan gridlock in Washington. “Michael Bloomberg, if he runs,” said Bailey, “will be elected president of the United States.”

Maybe. But tell me, how could someone that neither party is beholden to be able to break gridlock? It could just as easily be that both parties gang up on him and he has no allies. And for someone who claims to be centrist, we still have no idea what his views on the issues are.

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“The Clinton presidential campaign’s apparent blind ambition for power runs the risk of destroying Clinton’s reservoir of earned political integrity and affection among black people.”
– Clarence B. Jones, the former personal counsel, advisor and close friend of Dr. Martin Luther King:

Remind me again why Hillary is different from Dubya. It’s the same scorched earth policy against anyone perceived as  an obstacle. We don’t need eight more years of nasty, vicious partisan politics, we need a genuine discussion of the issues and then real solutions.

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How could the Iraqi defense minister possibly prognosticate that Iraq will not be able to defend itself until 2018? That’s 10 years away! There’s no way a prediction like that can accurately be made so far in advance.

Answer: He’s throwing Bush a slow pitch, like a cabinet member of a government subservient and beholden to the US should.

Mr. Qadir’s comments are likely to become a factor in political debate over the war. All of the Democratic presidential candidates have promised a swift American withdrawal, while the leading Republican candidates have generally supported President Bush’s plan.

“And it’s 1, 2, 3, what are we fighting for / Don’t ask me I don’t give a damn.” Country Joe sang that about the Vietnam War and it’s just as true today.

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Shootouts with police by heavily armed gangs. High level governmental and police involvement with criminal gangs. Police shot dead. Corpses booby trapped with IEDs. Mexico is getting wobbly.

What happens when the violence spills over across the US border? And it will.

Why is the US such a huge consumer of drugs? Without a US market for cocaine, heroin, meth, and weed, such drug cartels would not exist. All that money has to be going into banks and investments somewhere. What do they own?

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The world’s biggest car maker, General Motors, believes the global oil supply has peaked and a switch to electric cars is inevitable.

Thus, it becomes crucial to create electricity from renewable, clean sources. Millions of autos powered by electricity from coal plants is obviously no solution at all. Let’s hope all automakers now move full speed ahead towards building hybrids and EVs.

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Chart from an interview with Matt Simmons, who “has been an investment banker for 40 years. He is the founder and chairman of the world’s largest energy investment banking company, Simmons & Co. International. In 2005, he published ‘Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy,’ a book that has galvanized the peak oil debate.”

The production curve hasn’t rolled over yet, but when it does, oil production will start declining. Simmon’s primary point is that nothing, no new production or technology, will get us back to the peak again.

Hybrid cars are one solution here, as they will cut demand for oil once widely used. Instituting workable mass transit in as many areas as possible is another. In other words, solutions do exist. We just need to implement them.

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(How a CDS works. From PIMCO.)

The financial rot has spread from subprime to other areas like credit card and auto loan debt and to Credit Default Swaps too.

CDS are where the issuer of a financial instrument pays an income stream to the buyer who in turn, guarantees it against default. It can’t be called insurance, although it clearly is, because only insurance companies can sell insurance.(Got that?) Yet another example of the sleazy dealings that have been allowed in the unregulated shadow banking system.

Not only is it clear that some buyers of CDS will not be able to pay, the dollar amount of them is beyond enormous.

The CDS market is worth about $45,000 billion. This is not an easy figure to imagine. It is more than three times the annual gross domestic product of the US.

Does your “enhanced” money market fund contain CDS? How about your pension fund? Or your local and state government funds?

It is not difficult at all to see how the CDS market has the potential to cause serious financial contagion. The subprime crisis came fairly close to destabilising the global financial system. A CDS crisis, under a pessimistic scenario, could produce a global financial meltdown.

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