Books: Day Walks Near Tokyo
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A Manga Guide to Akihabara
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Maid In Japan
|
Japanese Slang
Copyright © 2008 lemon.soju.co.uk - All Rights Reserved | Front | Contact
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This is Lemon Soju, in Tokyo.
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Background: Miyajima, Hiroshima.
Copyright © lemon.soju.co.uk 2008 - All Rights Reserved.
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Books: Day Walks Near Tokyo
|
A Manga Guide to Akihabara
|
Maid In Japan
|
Japanese Slang
Copyright © 2008 lemon.soju.co.uk - All Rights Reserved | Front | Contact |
I never quite understood this. Did people dislike the US because of its foreign policy or because of the individual W Bush? If it’s the former then the US isn’t any different from the other 2 main superpowers, Russia and China. Why not hate China and Russia the same way? If it’s the latter, then it sounds silly to me to hate (or like) an entire nation and its citizens because of not liking the personality of their president. Is there any other such case in the world today? Do you view and judge the French for example through the personality of Sarkozy?
For me it is:
1. Policy - not just foreign policy.
2. GWB personally.
3. The stupidity of Americans for electing a monkey who had never been abroad and is about as intelligent as a peanut.
4. Lots of little things, like Americans never answering the question “Where are you from?” with “America”.
Now:
1. There is hope that significant parts of policy will change.
2. The president is no longer a monkey.
3. Americans have decided to think before voting this time.
4. I can forgive #4 because without such little things, there perhaps would be no Jerry Springer.
Now if I was to choose reasons to dislike China and Russia, they would be completely different - but actually, I have nothing against China and Russia. China has many cute girls - and without Russia, Bond villians’ female assistants would have been far less sexy.
1. So you have nothing against Chinese human rights violation, freedom of speech oppression, torture, occupation in Tibet, support of military Juntas (e.g. Myanmar), role in preventing any real action in Darfur. Also nothing against Russian atrocities in Chechnya, invasion of Georgia, supply of weapons to UN declared terrorist organizations, state sponsored corruption and the list goes on, but you dislike US policy..
2. ok, granted, bad personality.
3. So all Americans were stupid and all brightened up suddenly? :-) People elect wrong leaders all over the world, all the time. Nothing unique there, but it seldom attracts the kind of reaction as towards the US.
4. Ok.
So it looks like we’re left with a president’s bad personality, annoying replies to “where you’re from question” and romanticizing China and Russia.
I’m not saying Bush was good and everything American is great. But in my opinion people like hating the US because it is rich and powerful and there’s little they can do about it. The US is often help up to standards not applied to any other country but people who do it don’t like admitting it.
Woah dude! Other people might dislike the States because it is rich and powerful, but *I* never used those words. You’re skim reading what I wrote (1-4) and looking at it with the prejudice that everyone must hate American because of foreign policy or because it is rich or because it is powerful.
Stupid policies, stupid president, stupid for electing him. No mention of rich and powerful. No mention of Iraq or foreign policies. So don’t assume that rich and powerful is any part of the reason.
As for #1, let’s not even mention Israel, and for #4 I think you’ll find that there was record turnout this election so partially at least more people are getting up off their fat asses to vote - and hopefully some of the rest have had their eyes opened and realised that America needs to change. It is a big thing for American’s to vote a black president I believe, so yeah, I think people have become brighter and focused on different things.
Actually I was writing more in general rather than directed at you. So I may have not understood which policies you were talking about and jumped on foreign policy as the typical thing other people normally mention in relation to the US and Bush. I suspect foreign policy played a not so insignificant role in shaping the attitudes of people who responded to that BBC poll you quoted. But I could be wrong and it may have been completely other reasons.
Well Israel has its share of haters and problems with foreign and domestic policy, and the US/Russia are not the only countries sending their boys to kill and die thousands of miles away from home but I was focusing on the main superpowers and the world’s attitude towards those main 3.
p.s. check this out, hilarious!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM2xHggg7Uk
I think if I was an outsider looking at America, I’d feel sad seeing a great country falling apart. That’s what it’s felt like for a while, but today it seems like we’ll be able to start fixing things.
I think a lot of voters changed their minds once our economy started hitting the fan and effecting all levels of our country. Americans couldn’t escape the fact that people were losing their businesses, their jobs, their money and their homes and all against rises gas and food prices. It may have been different if it was just say the middle class and poor working class, but it was the high class too which I think really was a wake up call to conservatives. The last thing they want is to get screwed.
Americans - a good number of us - wanted a change. People associated McCain way too much with Bush even though McCain tried so very hard to separate himself from him and the party.
A lot of Americans voted on a young black man because we finally decided it was time. It was time for hope, time for a new face, and time for a president that we want to listen to. So we all lined up and made a change with votes yesterday.
Now let’s hope that Obama can slowly get us through the mess that America is currently in …
Imelda, I think you’re right about the background to why Obama was voted in. Had the economy been going well it would have been a different story I think this week. Any Democrat could have won in a cake walk given the current fear, uncertainty and suffering. However, Bush had nothing to do with creating the current economic situation. If anyone needs to take the blame for it then it’s Greenspan (nominated by Reagan and renewed in office by both Republicans and Democrats all the way till his retirement in 2006). Bush did the right thing when the sh$t hit the fan and stepped aside supporting and letting Bernanke and Paulson do their job.
I think we’ll all soon find out that many of the promises for hope and change that Obama has been making pre-elections can’t be delivered. Because they were either unrealistic or cost too much. This vote was far more a knee-jerk rebuke of Bush than a thought out election on agendas, the issues on hand and the proposed solutions.
I do hope Obama can step up and handle the situation. As a young and relatively unknown but charismatic senator moving up to presidency with few achievements to his name, he sure has his work cut out for him.
Imelda,
Nice to see you again. Your site is blocked from my work (fascists!) so it’s difficult for me to view it.
I think your comments are completely correct - my American friends made similar points. People are now directly affected by the economic situation and realise there are issues and that real change is needed. That in itself is a big step forward and gives hope.
Eyal,
> Bush had nothing to do with creating the current economic situation.
As you rightly say, Bush had nothing to do with the SOLUTION - he just stepped aside when the $hit hit the fan.
However he was in charge of the country for 8 years - you cannot seriously say he had nothing to do with the problem. The financial industry was tying itself in knots with ridiculous structured products and his government never had the procedures in place to spot it.
And before you think I’m just Bush-bashing, I have the same criticism for Thatcher when she drove Britain to recession and caused negative equity. At least Thatcher had balls though - whenever anything hit Bush he’d just make a speech about being patriotic.
In my view, the American system of “two terms” is also at fault. Presidents have no real reason to try in their second term.
I could write forever about the financial situation but just briefly. The crisis didn’t come about because of structured products. It came about because of 3 main issues:
1. lending practices
2. valuation and rating practices
3. over-leverage
Underlying the above were 3 main themes, the first 2 put in place by Greenspan way back:
1. cheap money supply (thru very low interest rates for extended period of time)
2. belief that markets and participants regulate themselves efficiently and do not need external government regulation.
3. over-consumption of the American public at the expense of a growing deficit (exporting national debt)
None of the above is unique to Bush’s era. It was exactly the same during Clinton’s years. Furthermore, although the problem first erupted in the US, the underlying reasons and subsequent crisis existed similarly in other countries (not just a follow-on effect).
Not trying to meddle with the Fed and Treasury technical work while helping to push forward the budget for fixing the problem was the best thing Bush could have done. At least I can’t personally think of anything else he, or any other president, could have done at this point to contribute to the solution of a situation that has been brewing for a couple of decades.
Very few people foresaw the current meltdown (mainly, at the time - obscure economists). That is true for Bush, Clinton as well as other governments all over the world.
> None of the above is unique to Bush’s era. It was exactly the same during Clinton’s years.
And Bush did nothing about it. So if the new president does nothing about the current problems, he’s not to blame?
I disagree with you about what you said are the 3 main issues. Eg, “sub prime mortgage backed securities” has in it’s name “crap rating”, so nothing to do with rating agencies. And “over-leverage” is exactly what government regulations should be preventing - they are supposed to ensure banks have adequate resources.
Anyway, I don’t really want to continue arguing about this - there’s no point since neither of us are experts.
Ok. Just a correction, the rating refers to the institutions rating, not the specific instruments. For example S&P rating Lehman or Bear at A-/A+ almost all the way till their collapse. The same in the cases of Wamu and AIG. These rating agencies were one of the mechanisms by which markets evaluated risk (for anything from stock investments to bond purchases and interest payment and swaps) and those rating agencies were a serious part of the failure of the system.
I think partially there is a user misunderstanding about rating agencies. For example, if a company says “I will default on bond payment next month” they will not be given a rating of Default by any rating agency, because Default can only be given AFTER a company defaults.
The problem isn’t the ratings agencies - it’s the traders etc who forget what ratings actually mean. Too many just accept that rating xxx means “safe” as a fact without doing their own evaluation of the risks involved. It’s the equivalent of me going into a bookmakers and thinking that the favourite is a safe bet.
It is a well known fact that ratings agencies never downgrade unless they have no option to do otherwise - partially because of the knock on market effect it will have. Rating agencies don’t “predict” - they have to base on hard fact to protect themselves. Ratings agencies are also paid by the companies who rate them - does that give the ratings agencies incentive to downgrade when they want?
I also think that the rating agencies are being used as scape-goats. So what if they rated Lehman highly before collapse (because of the way ratings work, which should be understood by those that rely on them)? Ratings for Lehman, Bear, etc were not the cause of the crisis. The market had already crumbled by then, starting with mortgage backed securities.
I think all you can really say at this point is Obama has a huge burden on his shoulders now and no matter what party you’re on or your what your political views, we hope he can start the wheels moving on fixing things, both domestically and internationally.
I don’t think anyone envy’s the position he’s in …