I find it interesting . . .

(note: this is mostly political stuff)


-- that an American billionaire paid $35 million in order to fly to space on a Russian rocket, the Soyuz; I believe it's his second trip -- wonder if he gets frequent flier miles :-)

-- that on Tuesday President Obama interrupted American Idol programming for the second time in recent weeks. I've not watched much AI this year so it didn't hurt my feelings. I just read that evening. Or uploaded pictures to my blog. Can't remember actually.

-- that several companies receiving bail-out money actually owe federal taxes! Two companies owe over $100 million each.


-- that Daniel Hannan, a British politician, spoke up against Gordon Brown for Brown's response concerning the global financial crisis. I heard Hannan's 3-minute speech and was amazed at his strong words. Apparently the world was, too, because Wikipedia reports

A video clip of the speech went viral on YouTube that evening,^[4] attracting more than 630,000 views in 24 hours on YouTube. It became the 'most viewed today' youtube video worldwide. ^[5][6][7]

Wow, check it out! "The devalued Prime Minister of a devalued government." "Every British child is born owing about 20,000 British pounds. .. You cannot borrow yourself out of debt!" What a speech!


-- that the current European Union president, Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, spoke out against the United States' plan for getting over the recession.

OK, check this out.

Europeans leaders hope the new U.S. administration will agree with them on tightening oversight over the global financial system — which they see as crucial to fixing the global economy.

Instead, the United States is focusing its efforts on economic stimulus and plans to spend heavily to try and lift itself out of recession with a $787 billion plan of tax rebates, health and welfare benefits, as well as extra energy and infrastructure spending.

To encourage banks to lend again, the U.S. government will also pump $1 trillion into the financial system by buying up treasury bonds and mortgage securities in an effort to clear some of the "toxic assets" — devalued and untradeable assets — from banks' balance sheets.

We are going to spend ourselves out of the recession. The US government is going to spend all this money it doesn't have in order to do what exactly?

Obama insisted Tuesday that his massive budget proposal will put the ailing U.S. economy back on its feet. "This budget is inseparable from this recovery," he said, "because it is what lays the foundation for a secure and lasting prosperity."

But Topolanek took aim at Washington's deficit spending.

"All of these steps, these combinations and permanency is the road to hell," Topolanek said. "We need to read the history books and the lessons of history and the biggest success of the (EU) is the refusal to go this way."

"Americans will need liquidity to finance all their measures and they will balance this with the sale of their bonds but this will undermine the liquidity of the global financial market," Topolanek said.

Source: Yahoo News

I tend to agree with the Czech PM. I guess time will tell. I just don't see how spending more money that we don't have will improve things in the long run. *shrug* But what do I know? I'm not an economist or a brainy politician. Maybe it'll work out somehow.

-- that Turkey has not been as affected by the global crisis. I saw on CNN yesterday -- while at McDonald's -- that they had their own crisis in 2001, cleaned up the banks afterwards and haven't had to deal with the mess that most western nations are facing now.

-- that several Asian nations are discussing a different world currency since the US dollar has been devalued greatly in recent months. Also China has bought so much of our debt, and it seems they have expressed concern over our ability to work out our faulty finances. I really hate being in debt to anyone. Why are we in debt to Communists??

Just some thoughts lately.