EUROPEAN LEADER BLASTS BANKERS AS “MONSTERS”
CHINA DEATH TOLL TO RISE
BIDEN LABELS BUSH REMARK “BULLSHIT”

The flight was later, my email seems to be down and jet lag is sapping my blogging energy.

One of the pleasures of traveling in Europa is that newspapers are made available for free in every departure lounge. That lets you compare and contrast coverage.

I don’t get to see the International Herald Tribune often enough. Even though it is owned by the NY Times, it seems livelier. Check out iht.com. Enjoyed Garrison Keilor’s latest:

“I grew up in a country where we all knew the same songs and watched the same TV shows, and now we live in tiny niches. Most famous people are people most people have never heard of. Which is fine by me. A nation of individualists….

What ties us all together is the fact that each of us had a mother, and she brought us up to get along with the others and be kind to odd ducks (who might turn out to be swans) and to take turns….

Another is a dark imagination that magnifies danger, conflict, the opposition of other people, the evil that lurks in the heart of man.

It’s what pays Stephen King’s light bill up in Bangor, Maine, the lurking thought that your toaster might attack you one morning, the driver of your children’s school bus may be psychotic, your iPod might rewire your brain to become the slave of the first person you meet who uses the word “invidious.”

FINANCIAL TIMES AND THE TIME WE LIVE IN

I also don’t get to read the Financial Times as much as I should. (TOO MUCH INPUT, TOO LITTLE TIME.)

The FT is not just shilling for business but featuring fierce criticisms of a kind you really see given prominence in our press where every sign of “economic recovery” ((Sic) is in the news with little analysis about who caused our economic crisis.

GERMAN PREZ GETS DOWN

On Thursday, the President of Germany Horst Kohler, a former head of the IMF lashed out at bankers, calling them, get this: MONSTERS.

In a page l story, he said Global financial markets have become a “monster” must be “put back in place” for their “massive destruction of assets.” He called for tougher and more efficient regulation.

This is the strongest criticism of bankers by a European leader since 2005 when German Vice-Chancellor Franz Muntefering attacked Hedge Funds as “SWARMS OF LOCUSTS whose profit maximization strategies…posed a danger to democracy.”

No one was listening.

The locusts won that round….will the MONSTERS win this one?

You never see most politicians here using this language although Hilalry Clinton did indict Wall Street sharply even as much of her money (and Obamas’) comes from Hedge Fund billionaires.

Also in the FT:

A Swiss banker has lodged a case with the European Court of Human Rights against Switzerland’s rules on bank secrecy.

Rudolf Elmer, a former manager with Julius Baer, the private Swiss bank, told reporters in Berlin the country’s banking law permits finance institutions to cover up their “criminal support for white collar crime” such as tax evasion, and allows witnesses in legal cases to remain anonymous if bank secrecy is at risk. “

“White Collar Crime”…now that’s a term we don’t hear enough these days even as these criminals have done more damage to the West and its economy than Al Qaeda.

The FT on Friday also reported that the Federal Reserve Bank may be changing its policies of tolerating this scum:

In the aftermath of the dotcom crash in 2002, Alan Greenspan famously argued that central banks had little power to stop bubbles inflating and then bursting. All policymakers could do, said the then Federal Reserve chairman, was to “focus on policies to mitigate the fallout when it occurs”.

His most vocal supporter was Ben Bernanke, then a Fed governor. As an academic, Mr Bernanke had championed the view that central banks should ignore asset prices except insofar as they affect forecasts for inflation and growth. “Even putting aside the great difficulty of identifying bubbles in asset prices, monetary policy cannot be directed finely enough to guide asset prices without risking severe collateral damage,” he said in 2002.

Mr Bernanke added a caveat: central banks could use regulation to reduce the incidence of bubbles and minimise the threat they pose. But this argument was never embraced by Mr Greenspan, who had little faith in the ability of regulators to prevent crises.

Six years and another bubble – this time in housing – later, Mr Bernanke is Fed chairman and the US central bank is taking another look at its hands-off approach to asset prices. Mr Bernanke is open to the possibility that it may have to make fundamental changes to its strategy.

Other News:

China quake toll ‘could reach 50,000’
Authorities call on overseas experts for help –

Califonia’s top Court legalizes Gay Marriage.

House rejects bill funding Iraq, Afghanistan wars -

Olbermann to Bush: SHUT THE HELL UP

JOHN MCCAIN: IRAQ WAR CAN BE WON BY 2013

THE GEEZE: “In Karl Rove’s own words, as spoken by George W Bush: “Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is - the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”
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On the occasion of 60th anniversary celebration in Jerusalem, and Palestine’s 60th Anniversary of Nabka (the catastrophe), on the floor of the Knesset, Bush bombshelled Barack with attack on Obama and other Democrats, as per CNN, “suggesting they favor ‘appeasement’ of terrorists in the same way some Western leaders appeased Hitler in the run-up to World War II”

REACTIONS IN THE CARPETBAGGER REPORT:

The response has been swift. John Kerry called Bush’s remarks part of a “disgusting and dangerous political game.” Joe Biden said, “This is bullshit. This is malarkey. This is outrageous. Outrageous for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, sit in the Knesset…and make this kind of ridiculous statement,” before adding that Bush’s Secretary of State and Defense Secretary seem to agree with the Dems on this.

UPDATE: As Bush equates diplomacy with “terrorists” as appeasement, conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks wonders whether Obama was in in “Noamchomskyland”–at least Noam now has country status at the Times which may mean they will report on what he actually says. Brooks then speaks to Obama, not Chomsky and finds out that Barack backs diplomacy in the same way that President Bush’s dad did and so is actually living in “Geoge Herbert Walker Bush land.” Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s opponents pushed for diplomacy and so talks are starting at the airport in Beirut with Arab diplomats taking part. By the way, Noam Chomsky wrote an excellent report on his trip to Lebanon after the 2006 war, actually interviews Hezbollah’s leader Nazrullah and demystifies the situation with great clarity and passion.

Now that’s a book the three B’s–Bush, Barack and Brooks–might learn something from.

Chance of them “letting the facts get in the way of their bluster:” O%.

Sorry, but pandering is what the candidates are doing on this and other issues—as HDS Greenway explained in the Boston Globe in a piece called “The Heirs of Pandarus.” For the origins of this type of obsfucation, see Homer’s Illiad, Chaucer and then Shakespeare’s “Troilus and Cressida.”

“U.S. Role in Iraq Threatens Security”
by Charles V. Peña

SERBIA; TADIC WINS BUT RIGHT GAINS LEVERAGE

Serbia: Battles Yet to Come

Pro-Europeans have won a major battle in Serbia. Now they need to win a two front war - in Belgrade by forming a government and in Brussels where they hope to secure a candidate status.

MEDIA

‘Twitters’ Beat News Media in China Earthquake

The world had real-time news about China’s massive earthquake as local victims dashed out “twitter” text messages while it took place, spreading the news before it was reported by mainstream news outlets. The event “has the potential to bring mainstream media into the Twitter world.”

RELIGION: TOP BUDDHIST LEADER TOURS US FOR FIRST TIME (IHT)

NEW YORK: The 22-year-old living Buddha seemed joyfully aware to feel no jet lag whatsoever. So far.

“Maybe tonight,” he said in English on Thursday. “But not yet.”

He had just arrived at a New York hotel with his security detail after a 14-hour flight from New Delhi to Newark, New Jersey.

“It is the first time I’ve ever visited the United States, and it’s a bit like a dream,” said His Holiness, the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, one of the most important leaders in Tibetan Buddhism.

Despite his youth, he is revered by followers as a master teacher, and Thursday he began an 18-day visit to the United States, a whirlwind tour of New York, New Jersey, the Colorado city of Boulder and Seattle that ends June 2.

CULTURE: “I’M YOUR MAN” IS BACK (IHT)

Leonard Cohen received a standing ovation from a sold-out house when he stepped onstage this week for his first show in 14 years, The Globe and Mail of Toronto reported. The appearance by the 73-year-old singer and songwriter at a 700-seat center in Fredericton, New Brunswick, began a 48-date tour that will take him to 14 countries in coming months. Songs performed included 1960s standards like “Suzanne,” “Bird on the Wire” and “So Long, Marianne.”

Ok, that’s all I have in me tonight. Have a great weekend. Again, happy 40th anniversary to the North American Congress on Latin American (NACLA). I missed their gala because of the the plane/luggage hassle. Its a great organization worth supporting.

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