American Leadership/Financial Crisis

[SirSaxa]

There was some excellent TV this weekend on CNN and MEET THE PRESS. It demonstrated some terrific leadership from key members of each party. The most encouraging thing to me was these were very smart, experienced people who ALL put pragmatism and country ahead of ideology.

Sat. night. CNN aired a show hosted by Frank Sesno and Christian Amanpour with 5 former Secretaries of State. The premise was, "how would you advise the next president" on a series of issues and crises facing the country. There were 3 Republicans (Powell, J. Baker, Kissinger) and 2 Democrats (Albright, Christopher), and 1 Ground Rule -- no politicking about current candidates.

There was a remarkable level of agreement and not a lot of disagreement.

Among their common conclusions:
The new president needs to set a new direction and attitude for the US in the world. We need to start engaging and listening to the global community if we are to have a chance to solve global crises like Terrorism, Nuclear proliferation and energy.

The US needs to take the lead on dealing with the climate crisis -- and all 5 were in agreement that climate crisis is real, that humankind is a major contributor, and that action must be taken.

We need to engage more with Russia. Not to give in, but there is no rush to get additional countries into NATO. Kissinger pointed out it was Georgia that fired the first shot, though he thought Russia over-reacted.

Several mentioned, and none disagreed, that the next president has to take some immediate steps to demonstrate to the world that we are going in a new direction to regain global respect. This included immediately shutting down Guantanamo and making a rock solid commitment to stopping waterboarding and other means of torture, and to dealing with the climate crisis.

The show is available to view on the CNN website:

CNN Part 1

CNN Part 2

The other show was MEET THE PRESS

The two primary guests were Sec. of the Treasury Hank Paulson, and NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg. The USA is incredibly lucky that we have Paulson and Bernanke in their key positions right now. Hank talked about how crucial it is to take action immediately with this Wall St. Bail out and why, and Mike endorsed it. Too bad Mike Bloomberg can't be our next president. We could soooo use someone smart and knowledgeable to clean up the utter disaster the current team is leaving behind for the next president to face.

[vcjack]

"Too bad Mike Bloomberg can't be our next president. We could soooo use someone smart and knowledgeable to clean up the utter disaster the current team is leaving behind for the next president to face."

I've seen other people say this or something similar. Imagine if Bloomberg was running as an independent like some thought he would, he might have had a shot

[jerseyhoya34]

Sept 21, 2008 19:32:34 GMT -5 vcjack said:

"Too bad Mike Bloomberg can't be our next president. We could soooo use someone smart and knowledgeable to clean up the utter disaster the current team is leaving behind for the next president to face."

I've seen other people say this or something similar. Imagine if Bloomberg was running as an independent like some thought he would, he might have had a shot

I'm not sure how much traction Bloomberg has outside of NY/NJ/CT. Many thought Giuliani, who had more name recognition and gravitas by virtue of 9/11, would be a viable candidate. But, he wasn't close even in the one state he campaigned in.

[GIGAFAN99]

Agreed. How many electoral votes does the Upper East Side get? Oh, alright then, he has no shot.

[FewFAC]

Unfortunately, had America had actual leadership, it could have largely prevented/avoided this crisis to begin with. I always love how Greenspan is brought into these discussions because people judge his record solely as the byproduct of the growth developed while he sat in the Chairman's seat, while consistently extrapolating the consequences of his service.

Simultaneously, many of the principles (Paulson, Bernanke) jawbone a good game that will eventually be disproven. There is a tremendous amount of unnecessary risk that is being injected into the financial system in an attempt to save it, a la 1980s Japan, that a more measured and understanding principle would not allow to happen, things like allowing "financial supermarkets" to suspend the limits on deposits they use to fund investment banking. What we are likely to see is even more risky behavior in an attempt to cover losses that result in larger losses, losses that will be explicitly federally insured (as opposed to the implicit insurance behind FRE, FNM, AIG), and massive losses to the average taxpayer while we bail out executives with multimillion dollar bonuses and golden parachutes.

All Treasury and the Fed have done is slow the train wreck, so that watching it is even more spectacular than we have already witnessed.

[vcjack]

Sept 21, 2008 19:44:49 GMT -5 @jerseyhoya34 said:

Sept 21, 2008 19:32:34 GMT -5 vcjack said:

"Too bad Mike Bloomberg can't be our next president. We could soooo use someone smart and knowledgeable to clean up the utter disaster the current team is leaving behind for the next president to face."

I've seen other people say this or something similar. Imagine if Bloomberg was running as an independent like some thought he would, he might have had a shot

I'm not sure how much traction Bloomberg has outside of NY/NJ/CT. Many thought Giuliani, who had more name recognition and gravitas by virtue of 9/11, would be a viable candidate. But, he wasn't close even in the one state he campaigned in.

Except that Giuliani thought his strength was national security so he reduced his image to a bunch of buzz words until he became a caricature of himself. And he ran a comically bad campaign

there's probably no elected official in America who can claim Bloomberg's buisness and economic credentials. However, I do shudder at the thought of the nanny state we would become under him

[theexorcist]

Sept 21, 2008 18:57:55 GMT -5 SirSaxa said:

There was some excellent TV this weekend on CNN and MEET THE PRESS. It demonstrated some terrific leadership from key members of each party. The most encouraging thing to me was these were very smart, experienced people who ALL put pragmatism and country ahead of ideology.

Sat. night. CNN aired a show hosted by Frank Sesno and Christian Amanpour with 5 former Secretaries of State. The premise was, "how would you advise the next president" on a series of issues and crises facing the country. There were 3 Republicans (Powell, J. Baker, Kissinger) and 2 Democrats (Albright, Christopher), and 1 Ground Rule -- no politicking about current candidates.

There was a remarkable level of agreement and not a lot of disagreement.

Among their common conclusions:
The new president needs to set a new direction and attitude for the US in the world. We need to start engaging and listening to the global community if we are to have a chance to solve global crises like Terrorism, Nuclear proliferation and energy.

The US needs to take the lead on dealing with the climate crisis -- and all 5 were in agreement that climate crisis is real, that humankind is a major contributor, and that action must be taken.

We need to engage more with Russia. Not to give in, but there is no rush to get additional countries into NATO. Kissinger pointed out it was Georgia that fired the first shot, though he thought Russia over-reacted.

Several mentioned, and none disagreed, that the next president has to take some immediate steps to demonstrate to the world that we are going in a new direction to regain global respect. This included immediately shutting down Guantanamo and making a rock solid commitment to stopping waterboarding and other means of torture, and to dealing with the climate crisis.

The show is available to view on the CNN website:

CNN Part 1

CNN Part 2

(SNIP)

The problem with this approach is that they were all Secretaries of State. OF COURSE SecStates want a good relationship with everyone in the world and to work with the UN - that's when the Department of State is the most respected and people bring in former SecStates to pontificate about what the current one should do.

I'd be much more interested in a group of national security advisors - power has slowly been coalescing closer to the White House for a while, and the NSC is the real power center.

[rosslynhoya]

Sept 21, 2008 19:32:34 GMT -5 vcjack said:

"Too bad Mike Bloomberg can't be our next president. We could soooo use someone smart and knowledgeable to clean up the utter disaster the current team is leaving behind for the next president to face."

I've seen other people say this or something similar. Imagine if Bloomberg was running as an independent like some thought he would, he might have had a shot

The other mindbogglingly brilliant and knowledgeable messiah running for president would instantly see 10% of his base stolen out from under him and that idiot McCain would win by a landslide.

[SirSaxa]

Sept 22, 2008 9:12:22 GMT -5 theexorcist said:

The problem with this approach is that they were all Secretaries of State. OF COURSE SecStates want a good relationship with everyone in the world and to work with the UN - that's when the Department of State is the most respected and people bring in former SecStates to pontificate about what the current one should do.

I'd be much more interested in a group of national security advisors - power has slowly been coalescing closer to the White House for a while, and the NSC is the real power center.

If the NSC is the real power center, that would only be in the last 2 years.... and that is a big IF. Do you really think Stephen Hadley is the power center? Clearly, Rumsfeld at DoD and VP Cheney were the power center for the first 6 years of the Bush term.

Secondly, two of the three Republican Secretaries of State, Kissinger and Powell, also served as National Security Advisors in their careers, and Powell was also Chair of the JCS. And James Baker was Chief of Staff under Reagan. Their perspective is quite a bit wider than State.

I think the point is, this was a remarkably qualified and knowledgeable group that represents both parties. Their perspectives showed far more areas of common ground than differences.