Note to Washington: On cutting spending when you need growth

“The austerity that is going on in Europe, America and so forth is effectively a suicide pact for our economies. “Greece does not have much scope, but the United States and Germany and a number of other countries do have considerable space for stimulating their economy, and it is absolutely essential that they do that.” --Joseph Stiglitz, economist, professor at Columbia University and former chief economist at the World Bank. Links: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/government-stimulus-measures-too-feeble-stiglitz/article2213385/; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stiglitz

Quote of the day--on poverty

"But I think everyone must realize unless one deals with the question of poorest people of the world, it will not be safe.  It cannot be safe.  Apart from the humanitarian and the moral issue, you cannot have 2 billion people who are trailing the rest of the world so substantially.

--James Wolfehsohn, KBE AO, American financial executive, former, 9th president of the World Bank Group, nominated by then-President Bill Clinton

A bullet, dodged

Did you hear that sound?

It was the sound of all of us, here in the US, dodging a bullet.

I believe that was done this past long holiday weekend when the international markets tumbled on news of Dubai's default on their loans.

Actually, I guess it's technically not a default, they just asked if they could not repay their loans for 6 months. If you're the banker, it's a default, though.

Anyway, the markets tumbled Wednesday night.

Luckily for us and the world, it was our national Thanksgiving holiday so our trading markets were closed. Had they been open, I feel sure our markets would have emotionally, psychologically and, really, understandably reacted to this news and been set back with a down trading day. There's no telling how much it would have dropped, if at all, if I'm right.

Then, the next international trading day (our Thanksgiving night), the markets came back and were mostly up so by the time we had our partial trading day on Friday, all the bad news was buffered by this second round of better news.

A friend and I predicted a down day on the markets Friday and, as it turned out, we were right.

What I'm saying is that, with the international markets taking a hit last Wednesday, if ours had been open the next day, we likely would have tumbled--and a good deal, I believe--and then, that night, there could was likely a strong chance those same international markets would have reacted to that, too, and negatively.

Of course this is all speculation but I will say that I'm not the only one that thinks that if there is one more big financial problem any time soon, the whole international deck of cards is in fairly precarious shape and it will be tough on this already-weak system.

Here's hoping we skate by.

Link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20091130/wl_time/08599194339200

More reasons why, maybe, we should also "come down a few notches"?

Thanks to Skippy the Bush Kangaroo and his blog for this.