A new movie for March 2011
It is the Lawyer/Court Room story of old BUT with a difference.
Unique court-room thriller that has a few turns you do not expect.
Yes, I did enjoy this one - entertaining - will not go down in the "great movie" segment of Hollywood, but for the lawyer/court-room movies one of the best I've seen, come to think of it, they have not put out a lawyer/cout-room movie in quite a long time.
One of those movies that shows you how the bad guy can look and pretend to be so innocent, then a surprise turn at the end, that is unexpected.
Put it on your list of movies to see
..........
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
How to raise a Healthy Child #3
HOW TO RAISE A HEALTHY CHILD #3
by the late Robert S. Mendelsohn M.D.
Continued from previous page:
raised about commonly prescribed drugs, most doctors pay no
attention to them. The manufacturers of several of the drugs
doctors most frequently prescribe for children have been ordered
by the FDA to offer proof that they are safe and effective or
remove them from the market. The manufacturers have been sparring
with the FDA for years, while still selling these drugs. In most
instances they have yet to come up with proof that these drugs
are any good, yet doctors keep right on prescribing them. I'm not
talking about a handful of drugs but-literally-hundreds of them.
It seems almost incredible, but American parents spend millions
of dollars every year on drugs that their doctors have prescribed
without any evidence that the drugs are effective or safe or,
worse, in the face of responsible allegations that they are not.
Of the 30 drugs labeled ineffective by the FDA that were most
frequently prescribed in 1979, more than half-including the top
three-are often prescribed for children. Those on the list
include Dimetapp, Actifed, Donnatal, Ornade Spansules, Phenergan
Expectorant, Tuss-Ornade, Phenergan VC Expectorant with Codeine,
Actifed C Expectorant, Bentyl, Phenergan Expectorant Plain,
Benylin Cough Syrup, Marax and Marax DF, Dimetane Expectorant,
Ambenyl Expectorant, Dimetane Expectorant DC, and Teldrin. Next
time your doctor prescribes one of them for your child, ask him
why he is using a drug that the manufacturer has been unable to
defend as doing any good.
During the early years of my practice, when I was still naive
enough to believe what they had taught me in medical school, I
was guilty of the same sort of behavior. During my pediatric
residency I was taught to use x-rays to treat the tonsils, acne,
ringworm of the scalp, and enlarged lymph and thymus glands. No
one told me that I need to have any concern about the long-term
consequences of this treatment, nor did it occur to me to
question whether I might be causing my patients future harm.
In those days I took everything on faith and expected my patients
to do likewise. I'm ashamed of that now and suspicious of every
new medical fad, because those x-ray treatments were responsible
for a virtual epidemic of thyroid cancer among patients subjected
to them. The damage that was done is still being discovered every
day. Even more tragic is the fact that in the case of enlarged
lymph and thymus glands, we were treating nonailments. Their size
ultimately diminished without treatment, in the natural order of
things.
Who knows what the future consequences will be of the things
pediatric residents are being taught today? They, are learning to
use bilirubin lights to treat infant jaundice, tympanostomy for
ear infections, antibiotics for almost everything, hormones to
control growth, powerful drugs to modify child behavior, and
other drugs, tests, immunizations, and procedures whose long-term
effects are unknown. The consequences have yet to be fully
revealed, but if you reexamine the previous disasters that litter
the path of "medical progress" you can be sure they will be many
and tragic.
If there is a given about medical practice, it is that doctors
don't seem to learn anything from their mistakes and that most of
them seem oblivious to the basic tenet of the Hippocratic oath,
"First, do no harm." Doctors do a lot of . harm, but the very
structure of their medical education over time makes them
insensitive to the harm that they do.
"We want our doctors to be caring and sensitive," Daniel
Borenstein, of the UCLA School of Medicine, said recently, "but
if they are overly caring, it's difficult for them to continue to
function. Throughout medical school there's a hardening of the
spirit."
The pediatric resident may become quite skilled in certain
mechanical procedures frequently performed in hospitals, such as
inserting needles into veins and arteries, performing spinal
taps, and even inserting tracheal and bronchial tubes. However,
these skills diminish rapidly after he leaves the hospital and stops using them.
Within a year or two, you can't depend on him to retain many of the skills
he learned. Fortunately for him, and for his patients, it doesn't
make much difference because he rarely needs to use them. They
were typically learned while treating children in pediatric
clinics who were the victims of economic deprivation, inadequate
hygiene, and poor nutrition and consequently suffered ailments
rarely seen in middle-class or affluent pediatric practices.
Since most pediatricians go where the money is, there isn't much
chance that they'll continue to treat poor children when they
enter private practice. In fact, most of the time they'll be
treating kids who don't need treatment because they aren't
seriously ill.
WHAT DOCTORS ARE TAUGHT TO DO ABOUT MISTAKES
As part of my preparation for entering private practice I was
taught during my pediatric residency what to do if I made a
terrible mistake. I wasn't told what to tell the parents of the
child so that they could handle their grief more adequately, nor
was I given any ethical standards to adhere to. Instead, I was
admonished to call my malpractice insurance carrier immediately
and let him tell me how to proceed. If I had to say anything
publicly about a grievous-perhaps fatal-error, the magic phrase
was, "What happened to this poor child was one in a million."
That's why, when something goes wrong, you'll often hear a doctor
say, "It was one in a million." In Toronto there was the famous
case of Stephen Yuz, who entered the Hospital for Sick Children
and was diagnosed as having psychological vomiting. He died some
days later from an intestinal obstruction. It was one in a
million, of course, as was the death of a Chicago child as the
result of an asthma test.
I have attempted, in this chapter, to dissuade you from having
blind faith in your pediatrician and to point out that when you
seek medical attention that your child doesn't really need you
may expose him to greater risks. Medical attention should be your
last resort-not your first-when your child is sick. The vast
majority of childhood illnesses will respond to natural bodily
defenses, fortified by your own skills, loving attention, and
common sense.
..........
THIS IS A BLOCK-BUSTER OF A BOOK.
IF YOU HAVE YOUNG CHILDREN OR ARE PLANNING TO START A FAMILY,
***YOU NEED TO HAVE THIS BOOK ***
AND THE BOOK "CONFESSIONS OF A MEDICAL HERETIC "
BY THE LATE DR.ROBERT S. MENDELSOHN
..........
by the late Robert S. Mendelsohn M.D.
Continued from previous page:
raised about commonly prescribed drugs, most doctors pay no
attention to them. The manufacturers of several of the drugs
doctors most frequently prescribe for children have been ordered
by the FDA to offer proof that they are safe and effective or
remove them from the market. The manufacturers have been sparring
with the FDA for years, while still selling these drugs. In most
instances they have yet to come up with proof that these drugs
are any good, yet doctors keep right on prescribing them. I'm not
talking about a handful of drugs but-literally-hundreds of them.
It seems almost incredible, but American parents spend millions
of dollars every year on drugs that their doctors have prescribed
without any evidence that the drugs are effective or safe or,
worse, in the face of responsible allegations that they are not.
Of the 30 drugs labeled ineffective by the FDA that were most
frequently prescribed in 1979, more than half-including the top
three-are often prescribed for children. Those on the list
include Dimetapp, Actifed, Donnatal, Ornade Spansules, Phenergan
Expectorant, Tuss-Ornade, Phenergan VC Expectorant with Codeine,
Actifed C Expectorant, Bentyl, Phenergan Expectorant Plain,
Benylin Cough Syrup, Marax and Marax DF, Dimetane Expectorant,
Ambenyl Expectorant, Dimetane Expectorant DC, and Teldrin. Next
time your doctor prescribes one of them for your child, ask him
why he is using a drug that the manufacturer has been unable to
defend as doing any good.
During the early years of my practice, when I was still naive
enough to believe what they had taught me in medical school, I
was guilty of the same sort of behavior. During my pediatric
residency I was taught to use x-rays to treat the tonsils, acne,
ringworm of the scalp, and enlarged lymph and thymus glands. No
one told me that I need to have any concern about the long-term
consequences of this treatment, nor did it occur to me to
question whether I might be causing my patients future harm.
In those days I took everything on faith and expected my patients
to do likewise. I'm ashamed of that now and suspicious of every
new medical fad, because those x-ray treatments were responsible
for a virtual epidemic of thyroid cancer among patients subjected
to them. The damage that was done is still being discovered every
day. Even more tragic is the fact that in the case of enlarged
lymph and thymus glands, we were treating nonailments. Their size
ultimately diminished without treatment, in the natural order of
things.
Who knows what the future consequences will be of the things
pediatric residents are being taught today? They, are learning to
use bilirubin lights to treat infant jaundice, tympanostomy for
ear infections, antibiotics for almost everything, hormones to
control growth, powerful drugs to modify child behavior, and
other drugs, tests, immunizations, and procedures whose long-term
effects are unknown. The consequences have yet to be fully
revealed, but if you reexamine the previous disasters that litter
the path of "medical progress" you can be sure they will be many
and tragic.
If there is a given about medical practice, it is that doctors
don't seem to learn anything from their mistakes and that most of
them seem oblivious to the basic tenet of the Hippocratic oath,
"First, do no harm." Doctors do a lot of . harm, but the very
structure of their medical education over time makes them
insensitive to the harm that they do.
"We want our doctors to be caring and sensitive," Daniel
Borenstein, of the UCLA School of Medicine, said recently, "but
if they are overly caring, it's difficult for them to continue to
function. Throughout medical school there's a hardening of the
spirit."
The pediatric resident may become quite skilled in certain
mechanical procedures frequently performed in hospitals, such as
inserting needles into veins and arteries, performing spinal
taps, and even inserting tracheal and bronchial tubes. However,
these skills diminish rapidly after he leaves the hospital and stops using them.
Within a year or two, you can't depend on him to retain many of the skills
he learned. Fortunately for him, and for his patients, it doesn't
make much difference because he rarely needs to use them. They
were typically learned while treating children in pediatric
clinics who were the victims of economic deprivation, inadequate
hygiene, and poor nutrition and consequently suffered ailments
rarely seen in middle-class or affluent pediatric practices.
Since most pediatricians go where the money is, there isn't much
chance that they'll continue to treat poor children when they
enter private practice. In fact, most of the time they'll be
treating kids who don't need treatment because they aren't
seriously ill.
WHAT DOCTORS ARE TAUGHT TO DO ABOUT MISTAKES
As part of my preparation for entering private practice I was
taught during my pediatric residency what to do if I made a
terrible mistake. I wasn't told what to tell the parents of the
child so that they could handle their grief more adequately, nor
was I given any ethical standards to adhere to. Instead, I was
admonished to call my malpractice insurance carrier immediately
and let him tell me how to proceed. If I had to say anything
publicly about a grievous-perhaps fatal-error, the magic phrase
was, "What happened to this poor child was one in a million."
That's why, when something goes wrong, you'll often hear a doctor
say, "It was one in a million." In Toronto there was the famous
case of Stephen Yuz, who entered the Hospital for Sick Children
and was diagnosed as having psychological vomiting. He died some
days later from an intestinal obstruction. It was one in a
million, of course, as was the death of a Chicago child as the
result of an asthma test.
I have attempted, in this chapter, to dissuade you from having
blind faith in your pediatrician and to point out that when you
seek medical attention that your child doesn't really need you
may expose him to greater risks. Medical attention should be your
last resort-not your first-when your child is sick. The vast
majority of childhood illnesses will respond to natural bodily
defenses, fortified by your own skills, loving attention, and
common sense.
..........
THIS IS A BLOCK-BUSTER OF A BOOK.
IF YOU HAVE YOUNG CHILDREN OR ARE PLANNING TO START A FAMILY,
***YOU NEED TO HAVE THIS BOOK ***
AND THE BOOK "CONFESSIONS OF A MEDICAL HERETIC "
BY THE LATE DR.ROBERT S. MENDELSOHN
..........
How to raise a Healthy Child #2
HOW TO RAISE A HEALTHY CHILD
by the late Robert S. Mendelsohn M.D.
Continued from previous page:
What little doctors learn about breastfeeding, the most effective
long-term health protection a child can obtain, is usually taught
by male doctors who, for obvious reasons, have little interest or
experience in this vital function. Despite its enormous influence
on the development and ultimate health of your baby, which I will
discuss later, I heard only one lecture on breastfeeding during
four years in medical school. But the formula makers were wide
awake while my instructors slept, and I was brainwashed by a
deluge of literature that they supplied.
What students do learn in medical school seems to relate as much
to succeeding in business as to keeping their patients well. They
are taught to behave like doctors, to project the appearance and
demeanor of omnipotence, so their patients will hold them in awe.
You may assume that the inadequacies of medical school are
overcome during the pediatric residency, but they're not. There
the resident deals with hospitalized patients and learns to use
cannon to fend off mosquitoes because of the emphasis on
hazardous diagnostic technology, surgery, and other drastic
procedures that are typical of the hospital routine. He still
gets little or no experience in dealing with the vast majority of
childhood illnesses that are brought to a pediatrician for care.
That translates, in private practice, to a compulsion to
overreact to simple illnesses with dramatic forms of
intervention; it is a hazard that demands your constant
vigilance. I'll be more specific about that throughout this book.
When he completes his residency and opens his first office, the
typical pediatrician is poorly educated and largely unskilled. He
knows very little about the risks of the drastic treatments he
administers, the side effects of the drugs he prescribes, the
risks of the surgery he orders or performs, the possible
inaccuracy of the tests on which he relies, or the shortcomings
of the medical technology he employs. He knows virtually nothing
about the most critical items in pediatric health care--the
impact of nutritional, allergic, psychological, and emotional
factors on the well-being of his patients.
Pediatricians actually spend most of their time treating patients
who don't need treatment and refer to specialists most of those
who are injured or seriously ill. In fact, the referral of
patients to other specialists is such an intergral part of their
function that they are sometimes referred to as "access managers"
within the medical profession.
Perhaps because I've been a pediatrician for so long, I have
little remaining conviction that a specialist is needed to
perform this function. Most childhood illnesses can be treated
competently within the home, by informed and caring parents. When
medical treatment is indicated it can be provided as well by
general practitioners or family practitioners or by specialists
to whom their patients are referred. In fact, given the
opportunity, nurse-practitioners could perform most of these
functions equally well. That is actually the practice in many
other countries that have only a relative handful of
pediatricians yet produce medical outcomes that are better than
ours.
It may seem anomalous, but those outcomes are better because
there are fewer pediatricians. Children in those countries are
healthier because there is less medical intervention and thus
less exposure to potentially damaging drugs and medical
technology. Although American medical schools teach their
students very little about pharmacology, they do teach them to
exploit all of the new drugs and medical technologies that are
available. New drugs and equipment appear almost daily, spawned
by the laboratories of the pharmaceutical industry and the
medical equipment manufacturers. More often than not, they are
unproven and potentially unsafe. Most parents assume, as they
should have the right to, that they can rely on the federal Food
and Drug Administration to keep drugs off the market until they
have been proven safe for human use. Most doctors, who don't have
the right to because they know better, operate on that premise,
too. This confidence in the FDA is misplaced, because virtually
all drugs are released without appropriate or significant human
trials. They may have immediate or short-term effects of some
patients that have not been discovered. Even more likely is the
possibility of cumulative and long-term effects, which I will
discuss more fully in a later chapter. These long-term effects
are never known at the time new drugs are introduced and perhaps
not for decades after that, when untold harm has already been
done to unsuspecting victims.
The history of medicine, here and abroad, is replete with
examples of drugs approved for human use that were removed from
the market only after countless victims bore evidence of the
damage they caused. You may recall some of the more sensational
examples - DES, MER 29, thalidomide. To compound the problem,
although the FDA has the power to keep unproven drugs off the
market, it has virtually no authority to force their removal once
they have been approved. It also lacks an effective postmarketing
surveillance mechanism that would alert it and the public to the
appearance of destructive effects from the drugs that have been
released. That's why the hazards of drugs are most often publicly
revealed in European nations, which do exercise postmarketing
surveillance that brings their risks to light.
DOCTORS RARELY INVESTIGATE THE DRUGS THEY USE
It is a rare doctor, indeed, who investigates the tests to which
a drug or a treatment has been subjected before he begins to use
it on his patients. Even when doubts are
..........
YOU NEED TO BUY AND READ THIS BOOK BY DR. MENDELSOHN, IT WILL
ILLUMINATE YOU IN MANY WAYS.
To be contuned
by the late Robert S. Mendelsohn M.D.
Continued from previous page:
What little doctors learn about breastfeeding, the most effective
long-term health protection a child can obtain, is usually taught
by male doctors who, for obvious reasons, have little interest or
experience in this vital function. Despite its enormous influence
on the development and ultimate health of your baby, which I will
discuss later, I heard only one lecture on breastfeeding during
four years in medical school. But the formula makers were wide
awake while my instructors slept, and I was brainwashed by a
deluge of literature that they supplied.
What students do learn in medical school seems to relate as much
to succeeding in business as to keeping their patients well. They
are taught to behave like doctors, to project the appearance and
demeanor of omnipotence, so their patients will hold them in awe.
You may assume that the inadequacies of medical school are
overcome during the pediatric residency, but they're not. There
the resident deals with hospitalized patients and learns to use
cannon to fend off mosquitoes because of the emphasis on
hazardous diagnostic technology, surgery, and other drastic
procedures that are typical of the hospital routine. He still
gets little or no experience in dealing with the vast majority of
childhood illnesses that are brought to a pediatrician for care.
That translates, in private practice, to a compulsion to
overreact to simple illnesses with dramatic forms of
intervention; it is a hazard that demands your constant
vigilance. I'll be more specific about that throughout this book.
When he completes his residency and opens his first office, the
typical pediatrician is poorly educated and largely unskilled. He
knows very little about the risks of the drastic treatments he
administers, the side effects of the drugs he prescribes, the
risks of the surgery he orders or performs, the possible
inaccuracy of the tests on which he relies, or the shortcomings
of the medical technology he employs. He knows virtually nothing
about the most critical items in pediatric health care--the
impact of nutritional, allergic, psychological, and emotional
factors on the well-being of his patients.
Pediatricians actually spend most of their time treating patients
who don't need treatment and refer to specialists most of those
who are injured or seriously ill. In fact, the referral of
patients to other specialists is such an intergral part of their
function that they are sometimes referred to as "access managers"
within the medical profession.
Perhaps because I've been a pediatrician for so long, I have
little remaining conviction that a specialist is needed to
perform this function. Most childhood illnesses can be treated
competently within the home, by informed and caring parents. When
medical treatment is indicated it can be provided as well by
general practitioners or family practitioners or by specialists
to whom their patients are referred. In fact, given the
opportunity, nurse-practitioners could perform most of these
functions equally well. That is actually the practice in many
other countries that have only a relative handful of
pediatricians yet produce medical outcomes that are better than
ours.
It may seem anomalous, but those outcomes are better because
there are fewer pediatricians. Children in those countries are
healthier because there is less medical intervention and thus
less exposure to potentially damaging drugs and medical
technology. Although American medical schools teach their
students very little about pharmacology, they do teach them to
exploit all of the new drugs and medical technologies that are
available. New drugs and equipment appear almost daily, spawned
by the laboratories of the pharmaceutical industry and the
medical equipment manufacturers. More often than not, they are
unproven and potentially unsafe. Most parents assume, as they
should have the right to, that they can rely on the federal Food
and Drug Administration to keep drugs off the market until they
have been proven safe for human use. Most doctors, who don't have
the right to because they know better, operate on that premise,
too. This confidence in the FDA is misplaced, because virtually
all drugs are released without appropriate or significant human
trials. They may have immediate or short-term effects of some
patients that have not been discovered. Even more likely is the
possibility of cumulative and long-term effects, which I will
discuss more fully in a later chapter. These long-term effects
are never known at the time new drugs are introduced and perhaps
not for decades after that, when untold harm has already been
done to unsuspecting victims.
The history of medicine, here and abroad, is replete with
examples of drugs approved for human use that were removed from
the market only after countless victims bore evidence of the
damage they caused. You may recall some of the more sensational
examples - DES, MER 29, thalidomide. To compound the problem,
although the FDA has the power to keep unproven drugs off the
market, it has virtually no authority to force their removal once
they have been approved. It also lacks an effective postmarketing
surveillance mechanism that would alert it and the public to the
appearance of destructive effects from the drugs that have been
released. That's why the hazards of drugs are most often publicly
revealed in European nations, which do exercise postmarketing
surveillance that brings their risks to light.
DOCTORS RARELY INVESTIGATE THE DRUGS THEY USE
It is a rare doctor, indeed, who investigates the tests to which
a drug or a treatment has been subjected before he begins to use
it on his patients. Even when doubts are
..........
YOU NEED TO BUY AND READ THIS BOOK BY DR. MENDELSOHN, IT WILL
ILLUMINATE YOU IN MANY WAYS.
To be contuned
How to raise a Healthy Child #1
HOW TO RAISE A HEALTHY CHILD -
In Spite of your Doctor
From the book by the same name by the late
Robert S. Mendelsohn M.D.
GUIDELINES FOR DIAGNOSIS
If your child doesn't feel sick, look sick, and act sick, the odds are that he isn't sick, or certainly not sick enough to require medical attention. How many times have you been tempted to call the doctor when your child complained of a stomachache or headache and then were glad that you didn't when you found him roughhousing with his brothers and sisters within an hour or two?
I have just given you the first of three rules that you can use to guide you in diagnosis, but I'll repeat it because it is the most important:
Rule No. 1: If your child doesn't feel sick, look sick, and act sick, he probably isn't sick.
Role No. 2: Give Mother Nature ample time to work her magic before you expose your child to the potential physical and emotional side effects of treatments that your doctor may administer. The human body has a remarkable capacity to heal itself-a capacity that in most cases surpasses anything that medical science can do-and it doesn't produce unwanted side effects.
Rule No. 3: Common sense is the most useful tool in dealing with illness. Your doctor is less likely to employ it than you are, and certainly no more able, because that's not what they taught him in medical school!
Granted, there are infrequent illnesses of critical nature for which competent medical treatment is essential, but in the case of children they are the exception rather than the rule. The obvious question is "How can parents tell which ones are serious and which are not?"
The answer is that you can't always tell, and for that matter, neither can your doctor. However, when you have finished reading this book you will be able to determine the seriousness of most of your child's ailments and will need to consult a doctor only in the limited number of instances when you are in doubt.
I have observed, in both the teaching and the practice of medicine, that most doctors do a competent job of treating patients who are very sick and a miserable job of caring for those who are well. This is the major flaw in medical education. The medical student and the pediatric resident, for that matter, learn precious little about how to keep children well, because their education begins with the premise that everyone who comes to their office will require treatment.
In medical school the student gets about three months of pediatric instruction, devoted largely to the discussion of childhood diseases that had importance decades ago when the curriculum was written but now have virtually disappeared. He absorbs a lot of biased information about immunizations but is taught very little about pharmacology, despite the fact that as a practicing physician he'll hook more kids on drugs than the most diligent pusher in town.
Only about 60 hours are devoted specifically to pharmacology during four years in the typical medical school, and most of that time is spent absorbing irrelevant information about abstract pharmacological theory. Ultimately, most of what doctors know about the drugs they administer to their patients is taught them by an army of pharmaceutical salesmen/promoters euphemistically known as "detail men." If you were to equate this relationship to the distribution of street drugs, the detail man would be the supplier and the doctor the pusher.
DOCTORS AREN'T TAUGHT THE IMPORTANCE OF NUTRITION
Virtually nothing is done in medical school to teach students that nutrition may often be the most important element of diagnosis and treatment. Consequently, they begin their practice unaware that food allergies are the primary cause of many childhood ailments and that adequate nutrition is the basis of good health. This ignorance compels them to use drugs in the treatment of diseases that could have been cured with a simple change in diet.
If the medical student has the opportunity to get some brief hands-on experience in a well-baby clinic, he won't learn very much about the real world of medicine he is soon to enter. Virtually all of his time will be spent administering immunizations, dispensing vitamins, and passing out samples of infant formula supplied by the manufacturer's detail man. The patients he sees have come to the clinic for routine, periodic physical examinations, so he'll rarely see a patient who is really sick and isn't taught how to recognize one who is.
Fledgling doctors are taught to scoff at the holistic health practitioners, at nutritional therapy, and at any other form of health care that does not require an M.D. They learn to rail at "quackery," yet no one points out to them the abundance of quackery that exists within conventional medicine itself. How can any doctor rationalize condemning those who treat patients with Laetrile when he has been guilty of feeding his own patients Bendectin, Oraflex, Zomax, or thalidomide, until they were removed from the market because of the damage attributed to them?
..........
YOU NEED TO BUY AND READ THIS BOOK BY DR. MENDELSOHN
IT IS EDUCATIONAL, INFORMATIVE, AND WILL OPEN YOUR EYES TO THE SIDE OF THE MEDICAL WORLD YOU ARE NOT TOLD!
To be continued
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Crazy "holding back" in Libya
So Obama says MADghafi has to go, now they talk about holding back the attack - not to get too involves - stupid and silly and crazy. Speaking as being an Obama, or the Prime Minister of Britain or the President of France, I say blow this mad dog away - say indeed he must go, to 6 feet under, him and his crazies with him - Madghafi said he would show no mercy, so he should be shown no mercy. Bomb him to oblivion, send in the ground troops to finish him off and put him out of his misery. He said he would fight to the last bullet, so give his "Custer's last stand" and finish him off - no messing around Joseph Israel and Reuben France.
This INSANE VAIN mad dog MADhafi needs to go alright - go to where he will not be heard from again, until the Lord brings him up in the second resurrection, to give him a clean mind and a chance to REPENT of his sick mind-set and to know the Lord Jesus is the Messiah and Savior.
..........
This INSANE VAIN mad dog MADhafi needs to go alright - go to where he will not be heard from again, until the Lord brings him up in the second resurrection, to give him a clean mind and a chance to REPENT of his sick mind-set and to know the Lord Jesus is the Messiah and Savior.
..........
Monday, March 21, 2011
Once Upon A Time in the WEST!
Once Upon a Time in the West
Once upon a time, the West had it all: the money, the political
nous, the military might; it knew where it wanted to go, and had
the muscle to get there. Be it Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands
or England, this held true for 500 years. However, the story of
the West's dominance in the second half of the twentieth century
is the story of America.
Whether it was the US troops pouring on to the shores of Normandy
with the Allied forces or the Enola Gay dropping the bomb on
Hiroshima, by the end of the Second World War the baton of global
power (economic, political or military) passed from Great Britain
to the United States. While it took almost fifty years for the
Cold War to play itself out, for the most part the US firmly
maintained its paramount position for the next five decades and
into the twenty-first century.
Of course, in the prelude to the Second World War, the United
States had suffered the consequences of the 1929 Great Depression
(by 1933 the value of stocks on the New York Stock Exchange was
less than zo per cent of what it had been at its peak in 1919,
and US unemployment soared to around 25 per cent) and the trauma
and casualties of the First World War. Although it did not end
the economic crisis of the 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt's
New Deal was an attempt to reconstruct American capitalism, and
give the not so invisible hand of the government a new and more
dynamic role. At its core America would remain a supporter of
free enterprise, but the plan was for government to play a key
role in orchestrating, supervising and directing the faltering
economy, leading, not following, private enterprise and
administering large-scale endeavours. All this would prepare
America for and enable it to capitalize on the war that would
break the back of Western Europe.
Thus, despite any remaining weaknesses, with the advent of the
Second World War America was in a unique position to direct the
industrial, military and manufacturing sectors to its best
economic advantage. In this sense, the Second World War was not
seen simply as a political and military necessity, but as an
economic opportunity to which it was ready to respond.
For example, in 1941, President Roosevelt signed into law the
Lend-Lease Act which would sell, exchange, lease or lend to
America's allies any military equipment deemed necessary. From
1941 to 1945, under this programme, materiel worth US$50bn
(equivalent to US $700bn at 1007 prices) - battleships, machine
guns, torpedo boats, submarines and even army boots - were
shipped across the waters to its beleaguered allies. Europe took
on a heavy burden of future debt repayments to the US through the
Lend-Lease programme (Britain made the final payment of its
Lend-Lease loan of US$83.83m on the last day of 2006 - fifty
years later), and America peaked economically after the war, in
the 1950s, as a result. Because of Lend-Lease (the Marshall Plan
was, of course, a wholly different proposition) the US had become
the best-in-class manufacturer.
America's actions were a marriage of political imperative and
economic savvy. The manufacture of goods to be shipped abroad was
not just a political act to help the Allies; it also helped boost
the US economy. Indeed, the results of this `great American
intervention' were staggering on almost every level. Thanks to
the global need for US production, America's sluggish economy was
transformed into a manufacturing powerhouse.
By the end of 1944, US unemployment had shrunk to just 1.1 per
cent of the civilian labour force - a record low in its economic
history which has never been bettered (at the worst point of the
Depression more than 15 million Americans - one quarter of the
nation's workforce - were unemployed). The US GNP grew from
US$88.6bn in 1939 to US$135bn in 1944 - an 8.8 per cent
compounded annual increase in half a decade. All this meant that
everything was geared to manufacturing - and scientific and
technological changes intensified. By the end of the war, the
rest of the world was broke: Japan destitute,
Europe bankrupt and United Kingdom penniless, leaving the United
States as unquestionably the economic force.
In its crudest form, the only thing that America lost in the
Second World War was men. And even then, their losses compared to
those of other warring countries were small. Out of the more than
72 million people who lost their lives in the war, the United
States lost 416,800 - o.32 per cent of its population. But,
politically, militarily and economically America won hands down.
The war was, in the most perverse sense, a resounding success.
America came out of the Second World War hugely rich. As the
economic historian Alan Milward notes: "the United States emerged
in 1945 in an incomparably stronger position economically than in
1941 ... By 1945 the foundations of the United States' economic
domination over the next quarter of a century had been secured
... [This] may have been the most influential consequence of the
Second World War for the post-war world."
By the middle of the 1950s America was financing the rebuilding
of post-war Europe and beyond, while at the same time
establishing itself as the foremost exporter of cultural norms
and technological know-how. It was going to be America's century,
and indeed it was.
Not only had the USA avoided direct collateral damage on its own
soil (saving the outlay of potentially billions of dollars to
rebuild its own infrastructure), the very fact that America could
win the war, bankroll its allies during the war and institute the
Marshall Plan (aid to Europe worth US$I00bn in today's terms,
which was around 5 per cent of the 1948 US GDP) demonstrates) ust
how enormously wealthy the country had become.
Christopher Tassava wrote: `economically strengthened by wartime
industrial expansion ... possessed of an economy that was larger
and richer than any other in the world, American leaders
determined to make the United States the centre of the post-war
world economy.' The Cold War would continue for the next fifty
years, but it was this strategy that ultimately prevailed. Barely
scathed, fantastically rich, no country could come close to the
United States. The world was hers.
Rising America infused all aspects of society. Such was its
strength, its confidence, its energy, that it permeated and
infiltrated every sphere of Western-influenced human activity.
The ensuing decades, the 1950s and 1960s, seemed to bear this
theme out. Politically this was the era of social conscience and
the civil rights movement, culturally there was a revolution in
music, literature and art, and American innovation dominated in
science and technology, putting a man on the moon and further
developing the atomic bomb.
The success of the Manhattan Project and advances in the nuclear
arms race heralded an age when America's scientific and
technological mastery seemed unassailable in the West. United
States exports increased from US$9,993m in 1950 to US$19,626m in
1960. This expansion in exports in just one decade was supported
by the increase in US gross fixed capital formation, which grew
from US$58bn in 1950 to US$104bn in 1960.
The three decades from the 1950s saw America wield its influence
in every quarter. From the great industrial complexes such as
General Motors, Ford Motor Company, Mobil Oil, International
Business Machines, United Fruit Company and Dow Chemicals, to the
Hollywood film industry and the music business exemplified by
Motown, all came to symbolize the power of Americana, at home and
abroad. It did not just stop at business.
Through the Peace Corps, established in 1961, America stamped its
moral authority as it exported its values via its youth to
everywhere Americans believed was not like them; with a remit to
`promote world peace and friendship through a Peace Corps, which
shall make available to interested countries and areas men and
women of the United States qualified for service abroad and
willing to serve, under conditions of hardship if necessary, to
help the peoples of such countries and areas in meeting their
needs for trained manpower. And, of course, American values were
not just exported through the Peace Corps. Militarily, the US
invaded Korea, and Vietnam to this day remains the great blot on
America's conscience. The fact that America was growing bolder,
and wielded unparalleled power outside its borders, was
unquestionable.
All in all, this was the era that belonged to what the American
journalist Tom Brokaw calls the `Greatest Generation': the
generation of Americans who fought in the Second World War and
returned to build America into the greatest country in the world.
For the next five decades they appeared to have succeeded -
America was the epitome of wealth, power and cultural dominance,
its tentacles reaching to every part of the globe. The rest of
the West was firmly held in America's orbit - how could you not
be in its grip, mesmerized by its power and brilliance? It was
the sun around which other countries all revolved.
Good times, bad times, America was undeterred. From the oil
spikes of the 1970s, the debt burdens and the Wall Street crash
of the 1980s, and even the fall of communism in the 1990s, which
would spawn its fiercest economic competitors, America seemed
unassailable. Through its military might, its industrial
capability, helped by free-market capitalism, and its cultural
monopoly, America had planned it that way - Made in America was
the logo of the times.
But fast-forward to today. See how much has changed. Western
states are facing untold financial calamity, their populations
ageing with few resources to sustain them, much of the necessary
political reform remaining politically unpopular, and their
economic supremacy susceptible to challenges from around the
globe in a way never envisaged before. And while there have been
setbacks before, such as America's savings and loans crisis of
the 1980s and 1990s, the recent financial crisis and the policies
the USA continues to pursue are proof positive that America is
fast losing the hold it once had over the rest of the world. It
has become a region of financial weakness and economic
vulnerability in this, the first decade of the twenty-first
century, to such an extent that, like bad blood, it has infected
the rest of the Western body politic, making the story of
economic decline necessarily one of the West versus a number of
emerging upstarts. However, among the countries of the West,
there remain good reasons to bet on the US being economically
stronger than European countries in years to come.
But what exactly, in economic terms, drives growth?
THE PILLARS OF GROWTH
Much ado has been made of the seemingly inevitable economic
decline of the industrialized West - the United States, in
particular - and the rise of the rest, led by China......
..........
FROM THE BOOK "HOW THE WEST WAS LOST" BY DAMBISA MOYO - ***A BOOK
YOU NEED TO READ*** - AN EYE OPENER THAT TELLS YOU HOW THE SO-
CALLED "EDUCATED" DUMB LEADERS AND FINANCE GEEKS BROUGHT THE WEST
CRASHING TO ITS KNEES IN 2008.
..........
Once upon a time, the West had it all: the money, the political
nous, the military might; it knew where it wanted to go, and had
the muscle to get there. Be it Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands
or England, this held true for 500 years. However, the story of
the West's dominance in the second half of the twentieth century
is the story of America.
Whether it was the US troops pouring on to the shores of Normandy
with the Allied forces or the Enola Gay dropping the bomb on
Hiroshima, by the end of the Second World War the baton of global
power (economic, political or military) passed from Great Britain
to the United States. While it took almost fifty years for the
Cold War to play itself out, for the most part the US firmly
maintained its paramount position for the next five decades and
into the twenty-first century.
Of course, in the prelude to the Second World War, the United
States had suffered the consequences of the 1929 Great Depression
(by 1933 the value of stocks on the New York Stock Exchange was
less than zo per cent of what it had been at its peak in 1919,
and US unemployment soared to around 25 per cent) and the trauma
and casualties of the First World War. Although it did not end
the economic crisis of the 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt's
New Deal was an attempt to reconstruct American capitalism, and
give the not so invisible hand of the government a new and more
dynamic role. At its core America would remain a supporter of
free enterprise, but the plan was for government to play a key
role in orchestrating, supervising and directing the faltering
economy, leading, not following, private enterprise and
administering large-scale endeavours. All this would prepare
America for and enable it to capitalize on the war that would
break the back of Western Europe.
Thus, despite any remaining weaknesses, with the advent of the
Second World War America was in a unique position to direct the
industrial, military and manufacturing sectors to its best
economic advantage. In this sense, the Second World War was not
seen simply as a political and military necessity, but as an
economic opportunity to which it was ready to respond.
For example, in 1941, President Roosevelt signed into law the
Lend-Lease Act which would sell, exchange, lease or lend to
America's allies any military equipment deemed necessary. From
1941 to 1945, under this programme, materiel worth US$50bn
(equivalent to US $700bn at 1007 prices) - battleships, machine
guns, torpedo boats, submarines and even army boots - were
shipped across the waters to its beleaguered allies. Europe took
on a heavy burden of future debt repayments to the US through the
Lend-Lease programme (Britain made the final payment of its
Lend-Lease loan of US$83.83m on the last day of 2006 - fifty
years later), and America peaked economically after the war, in
the 1950s, as a result. Because of Lend-Lease (the Marshall Plan
was, of course, a wholly different proposition) the US had become
the best-in-class manufacturer.
America's actions were a marriage of political imperative and
economic savvy. The manufacture of goods to be shipped abroad was
not just a political act to help the Allies; it also helped boost
the US economy. Indeed, the results of this `great American
intervention' were staggering on almost every level. Thanks to
the global need for US production, America's sluggish economy was
transformed into a manufacturing powerhouse.
By the end of 1944, US unemployment had shrunk to just 1.1 per
cent of the civilian labour force - a record low in its economic
history which has never been bettered (at the worst point of the
Depression more than 15 million Americans - one quarter of the
nation's workforce - were unemployed). The US GNP grew from
US$88.6bn in 1939 to US$135bn in 1944 - an 8.8 per cent
compounded annual increase in half a decade. All this meant that
everything was geared to manufacturing - and scientific and
technological changes intensified. By the end of the war, the
rest of the world was broke: Japan destitute,
Europe bankrupt and United Kingdom penniless, leaving the United
States as unquestionably the economic force.
In its crudest form, the only thing that America lost in the
Second World War was men. And even then, their losses compared to
those of other warring countries were small. Out of the more than
72 million people who lost their lives in the war, the United
States lost 416,800 - o.32 per cent of its population. But,
politically, militarily and economically America won hands down.
The war was, in the most perverse sense, a resounding success.
America came out of the Second World War hugely rich. As the
economic historian Alan Milward notes: "the United States emerged
in 1945 in an incomparably stronger position economically than in
1941 ... By 1945 the foundations of the United States' economic
domination over the next quarter of a century had been secured
... [This] may have been the most influential consequence of the
Second World War for the post-war world."
By the middle of the 1950s America was financing the rebuilding
of post-war Europe and beyond, while at the same time
establishing itself as the foremost exporter of cultural norms
and technological know-how. It was going to be America's century,
and indeed it was.
Not only had the USA avoided direct collateral damage on its own
soil (saving the outlay of potentially billions of dollars to
rebuild its own infrastructure), the very fact that America could
win the war, bankroll its allies during the war and institute the
Marshall Plan (aid to Europe worth US$I00bn in today's terms,
which was around 5 per cent of the 1948 US GDP) demonstrates) ust
how enormously wealthy the country had become.
Christopher Tassava wrote: `economically strengthened by wartime
industrial expansion ... possessed of an economy that was larger
and richer than any other in the world, American leaders
determined to make the United States the centre of the post-war
world economy.' The Cold War would continue for the next fifty
years, but it was this strategy that ultimately prevailed. Barely
scathed, fantastically rich, no country could come close to the
United States. The world was hers.
Rising America infused all aspects of society. Such was its
strength, its confidence, its energy, that it permeated and
infiltrated every sphere of Western-influenced human activity.
The ensuing decades, the 1950s and 1960s, seemed to bear this
theme out. Politically this was the era of social conscience and
the civil rights movement, culturally there was a revolution in
music, literature and art, and American innovation dominated in
science and technology, putting a man on the moon and further
developing the atomic bomb.
The success of the Manhattan Project and advances in the nuclear
arms race heralded an age when America's scientific and
technological mastery seemed unassailable in the West. United
States exports increased from US$9,993m in 1950 to US$19,626m in
1960. This expansion in exports in just one decade was supported
by the increase in US gross fixed capital formation, which grew
from US$58bn in 1950 to US$104bn in 1960.
The three decades from the 1950s saw America wield its influence
in every quarter. From the great industrial complexes such as
General Motors, Ford Motor Company, Mobil Oil, International
Business Machines, United Fruit Company and Dow Chemicals, to the
Hollywood film industry and the music business exemplified by
Motown, all came to symbolize the power of Americana, at home and
abroad. It did not just stop at business.
Through the Peace Corps, established in 1961, America stamped its
moral authority as it exported its values via its youth to
everywhere Americans believed was not like them; with a remit to
`promote world peace and friendship through a Peace Corps, which
shall make available to interested countries and areas men and
women of the United States qualified for service abroad and
willing to serve, under conditions of hardship if necessary, to
help the peoples of such countries and areas in meeting their
needs for trained manpower. And, of course, American values were
not just exported through the Peace Corps. Militarily, the US
invaded Korea, and Vietnam to this day remains the great blot on
America's conscience. The fact that America was growing bolder,
and wielded unparalleled power outside its borders, was
unquestionable.
All in all, this was the era that belonged to what the American
journalist Tom Brokaw calls the `Greatest Generation': the
generation of Americans who fought in the Second World War and
returned to build America into the greatest country in the world.
For the next five decades they appeared to have succeeded -
America was the epitome of wealth, power and cultural dominance,
its tentacles reaching to every part of the globe. The rest of
the West was firmly held in America's orbit - how could you not
be in its grip, mesmerized by its power and brilliance? It was
the sun around which other countries all revolved.
Good times, bad times, America was undeterred. From the oil
spikes of the 1970s, the debt burdens and the Wall Street crash
of the 1980s, and even the fall of communism in the 1990s, which
would spawn its fiercest economic competitors, America seemed
unassailable. Through its military might, its industrial
capability, helped by free-market capitalism, and its cultural
monopoly, America had planned it that way - Made in America was
the logo of the times.
But fast-forward to today. See how much has changed. Western
states are facing untold financial calamity, their populations
ageing with few resources to sustain them, much of the necessary
political reform remaining politically unpopular, and their
economic supremacy susceptible to challenges from around the
globe in a way never envisaged before. And while there have been
setbacks before, such as America's savings and loans crisis of
the 1980s and 1990s, the recent financial crisis and the policies
the USA continues to pursue are proof positive that America is
fast losing the hold it once had over the rest of the world. It
has become a region of financial weakness and economic
vulnerability in this, the first decade of the twenty-first
century, to such an extent that, like bad blood, it has infected
the rest of the Western body politic, making the story of
economic decline necessarily one of the West versus a number of
emerging upstarts. However, among the countries of the West,
there remain good reasons to bet on the US being economically
stronger than European countries in years to come.
But what exactly, in economic terms, drives growth?
THE PILLARS OF GROWTH
Much ado has been made of the seemingly inevitable economic
decline of the industrialized West - the United States, in
particular - and the rise of the rest, led by China......
..........
FROM THE BOOK "HOW THE WEST WAS LOST" BY DAMBISA MOYO - ***A BOOK
YOU NEED TO READ*** - AN EYE OPENER THAT TELLS YOU HOW THE SO-
CALLED "EDUCATED" DUMB LEADERS AND FINANCE GEEKS BROUGHT THE WEST
CRASHING TO ITS KNEES IN 2008.
..........
How the WEST was LOST!!
HOW THE WEST WAS LOST!!
AN EYE-OPENING BOOK THAT GETS TO THE NITTY-GRITTY AND FRANK
TALK ABOUT HOW THE WEST HAS AND IS LOOSING ITS MIGHTY ECONOMICAL
POWER - A BOOK YOU NEED TO READ - Keith Hunt
Inside Jacket front:
Amid the hype of China's rise to global power, the most important
story of our generation is being pushed aside: how America's
rapidly growing population of the unskilled, unemployed, and
disaffected threatens the nation's wealth and stature.
In How the West Was Lost, the New York Times bestselling author
and economist Dambisa Moyo sheds light on how a host of short
sighted policy decisions have left the economic seesaw poised to
tip away from America and toward the emerging world. Faced with
this impending calamity, the United States can choose either to
remain open to the international economy or to close itself off,
adopting protectionist policies that will give the country time
and space to redress these pervasive structural problems.
Incisive and illuminating, "How the West Was Lost" not only
exposes the policy myopia of the West that has led it onto a path
of eco nomic decline but also reveals the crucial-and
radical-policy actions that must be taken to stem this tide.
Inside Jacket back:
Born and raised in Zambia, DAMBISA MOYO received a Ph.D. in
economics from Oxford University and a master's degree from
Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. A
former consultant for the World Bank and an investment banker
specializing in emerging markets at Goldman Sachs, she is the
author of the New York Times bestseller "Dead Aid."
......
Preface
On 9 July zoo8 the Chrysler Building, one of the best-loved icons
of the New York skyline, was bought for US$800m by a foreign
government. Thus one of America's most emblematic buildings,
symbolizing its power, its industry, passed into the hands of
outsiders. It was not just any foreign government; not Britain,
not Germany, not France; indeed not any economic power from the
West. The buyer came from the new power bloc of rapidly emerging
countries, which are today threatening the more than
500-year-long economic reign of the West. It was the investment
arm of the Abu Dhabi government. The Chrysler acquisition was a
part of the estimated US$1.8bn spent on commercial property in
the US by Middle Eastern investors in just the first six months
of 2008. It was not the first such purchase; nor will it be the
last. Indeed, after the zoo8 financial debacle, and the collapse
in asset prices that it brought with it, such purchases are only
likely to accelerate.
How the West was Lost is the story of how the world's most
economically powerful nations have seen their wealth and dominant
political position decline to the point where, today, they are
about to forfeit all they have strived for - economic, military
and political global supremacy. There are three main reasons why
the West has seen its substantial advantage erode; an erosion
whose pace is accelerating with every passing year.
First, through blinkered political and military choices, the West
(principally the US) has successfully managed to alienate the
very emerging countries with whom it now competes. Although these
countries continue to trade with their Western counterparts, it
is often done through gritted teeth and with an underlying sense
of mutual mistrust. Naturally, the net effect has been to
encourage polarization, rather than foment credible alliances.
Were it not for a profit motive, the real risk is that come the
day when the emerging nations don't have to trade with the West,
they won't.
Second is what Thomas Friedman describes as the `flatness of the
world' - the lowering of transport, communication and
manufacturing costs, which has made the transfer of technology
easier. Indeed, the technological and economic advantages of the
West have made this possible, and as a natural consequence
encouraged the worldwide adoption of best-practice technology and
governance standards. However, these advantages once held in
Western monopoly have, over time, dissipated, and will certainly
continue to do so.
However, it is the third cause which is the prime focus of this
book. How the West was Lost charts how, over the last fifty
years, the most advanced and advantaged countries of the world
have squandered their once impregnable position through a
sustained catalogue of fundamentally flawed economic policies.
It is these decisions that, along the way, have resulted in an
economic and geopolitical see-saw, which is now poised to tip in
favour of the emerging world.' Unless radical policy changes are
made over the next decade the controlling hand of who owns what
will quickly belong to China, India, Russia or the Middle East,
and today's industrialized West is assured a savage economic
decline.
Introduction
In September 2008, the world witnessed an unprecedented assault
on the financial structure that the West had taken for granted
for the previous fifty years. Shockwave after shockwave battered
the system. Every day seemed to bring a new calamity. In just
three weeks, Lehman Brothers, a stalwart of the US banking
system, collapsed; the prime US mortgage lenders, Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac, had to be nationalized; AIG, the world's largest
insurer, was brought to its knees and its very existence called
into question (the company would receive a hefty US$85bn
life-line from the American government to keep it afloat). And,
in Britain, the bailout of banking giants Lloyds TSB and the
Royal Bank of Scotland was running well above US$ 1.4tn (ú850bn)
in 2009. Through it all, trillions were wiped off stock exchanges
from New York, to London, to Reykjavik, and most places in
between, placing millions of people's pensions and savings in
jeopardy.
But however extraordinary and cataclysmic these events were, How
the West was Lost is not about the immediate whys and wherefores
of this shattering and unexpected financial disaster. It is
undeniable that the crash overwhelmed the world but just like a
tsunami that appears seemingly out of nowhere and leaves death
and destruction in its wake, the events of 2008 were the
inevitable consequence of fault lines and shifts in economic
tectonic plates that lay undetected under the seemingly calm
financial waters upon which Western economies had sailed smoothly
for the last half-century.
However, unlike the plates beneath the sea, had these economic
faults been detected and dealt with, the financial crisis of 2008
might never have happened; certainly not to the degree and with
the ferocity with which it did occur. The collapse was the
culmination of a catalogue of policy errors and mistakes that had
been gathering momentum over the last fifty years, erupting into
the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
Extraordinarily now, as if blind to the real causes of the
turmoil of 2008, many governments have kept these flawed policies
in place.
But there is a bigger story to be told. It is a mistake to view
what happened as an isolated and relatively contained episode. In
fact, what happened in zoo8 marked yet another step in a
fundamental transition from one economic power to another; from
the West, to the Rising Rest.
For many a political scientist, this shift has troubling
hegemonic consequences. To them, whether we live in a uni-polar
world (for example, where the US dominates), a bi-polar world of,
say, the Cold War era, or a multi-polar world governed by a
multiplicity of states with differing political ideologies, is a
matter of supreme importance.
But viewed through the narrow utilitarian prism of an economist,
what matters most is economic prosperity (for the West, coupled
with freedoms), rather than who ultimately rules the world.
Economics and economists are guilty of viewing the world,
economies and countries as if on a league table with only one
winner, although it is undeniable that it is the global financier
who decides who wields military and political might.
Should it really matter if some other country is richer and more
militarily powerful? Who cares whether a country has economic
supremacy, as long as your country is prosperous and can manage
its own internal affairs? For example, the societies of Denmark,
Sweden and Norway, each economically advanced, seem to have no
qualms about who rules the world as long as they are left alone
to be prosperous and peaceful, though their attitude might well
change were whoever held the purse strings to start to curb their
freedoms and encroach upon their way of life. But until that
happens, whether the global financier is China, Russia or America
seems, for them, largely irrelevant.
Obviously, the political-economic dichotomy is a false one. In
reality, politics and economics are bound together, and even
inextricably linked. That noted, however, in How the West was
Lost I will focus on the economic shifts and how they are certain
to transform the world in which we and future generations will
live.
Time is running out. Unless the West adopts radical solutions,
many of them offered in this book, and adopts them quickly, it
will be too late. Not because China will necessarily become so
much richer, but rather because of America's own folly in
policymaking. How did the West give its undeniable lead away?
..........
THIS IS QUITE THE BOOK THAT TELLS YOU ABOUT THE DIRTY UNDERCOVER
GREEDY CARELESS PEOPLE (AS LONG AS THEY WERE GETTING RICH THEY
DID NOT CARE), AND THE DUMB MIND-SET OF SO-CALLED "EDUCATED"
PEOPLE WHO WERE RUNNING THE COUNTRIES OF THE WEST OVER THE LAST
50 YEARS, UNTIL THEIR EDUCATION OR LACK THEREOF, BROUGHT THE WEST
TO A CRASHING FALL IN 2008, A CRASH THAT MAY TAKE A WHILE FOR
EUROPE AND THE USA TO DIG THEMSELVES OUT OF.
A BOOK WELL WORTH THE READ
..........
AN EYE-OPENING BOOK THAT GETS TO THE NITTY-GRITTY AND FRANK
TALK ABOUT HOW THE WEST HAS AND IS LOOSING ITS MIGHTY ECONOMICAL
POWER - A BOOK YOU NEED TO READ - Keith Hunt
Inside Jacket front:
Amid the hype of China's rise to global power, the most important
story of our generation is being pushed aside: how America's
rapidly growing population of the unskilled, unemployed, and
disaffected threatens the nation's wealth and stature.
In How the West Was Lost, the New York Times bestselling author
and economist Dambisa Moyo sheds light on how a host of short
sighted policy decisions have left the economic seesaw poised to
tip away from America and toward the emerging world. Faced with
this impending calamity, the United States can choose either to
remain open to the international economy or to close itself off,
adopting protectionist policies that will give the country time
and space to redress these pervasive structural problems.
Incisive and illuminating, "How the West Was Lost" not only
exposes the policy myopia of the West that has led it onto a path
of eco nomic decline but also reveals the crucial-and
radical-policy actions that must be taken to stem this tide.
Inside Jacket back:
Born and raised in Zambia, DAMBISA MOYO received a Ph.D. in
economics from Oxford University and a master's degree from
Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. A
former consultant for the World Bank and an investment banker
specializing in emerging markets at Goldman Sachs, she is the
author of the New York Times bestseller "Dead Aid."
......
Preface
On 9 July zoo8 the Chrysler Building, one of the best-loved icons
of the New York skyline, was bought for US$800m by a foreign
government. Thus one of America's most emblematic buildings,
symbolizing its power, its industry, passed into the hands of
outsiders. It was not just any foreign government; not Britain,
not Germany, not France; indeed not any economic power from the
West. The buyer came from the new power bloc of rapidly emerging
countries, which are today threatening the more than
500-year-long economic reign of the West. It was the investment
arm of the Abu Dhabi government. The Chrysler acquisition was a
part of the estimated US$1.8bn spent on commercial property in
the US by Middle Eastern investors in just the first six months
of 2008. It was not the first such purchase; nor will it be the
last. Indeed, after the zoo8 financial debacle, and the collapse
in asset prices that it brought with it, such purchases are only
likely to accelerate.
How the West was Lost is the story of how the world's most
economically powerful nations have seen their wealth and dominant
political position decline to the point where, today, they are
about to forfeit all they have strived for - economic, military
and political global supremacy. There are three main reasons why
the West has seen its substantial advantage erode; an erosion
whose pace is accelerating with every passing year.
First, through blinkered political and military choices, the West
(principally the US) has successfully managed to alienate the
very emerging countries with whom it now competes. Although these
countries continue to trade with their Western counterparts, it
is often done through gritted teeth and with an underlying sense
of mutual mistrust. Naturally, the net effect has been to
encourage polarization, rather than foment credible alliances.
Were it not for a profit motive, the real risk is that come the
day when the emerging nations don't have to trade with the West,
they won't.
Second is what Thomas Friedman describes as the `flatness of the
world' - the lowering of transport, communication and
manufacturing costs, which has made the transfer of technology
easier. Indeed, the technological and economic advantages of the
West have made this possible, and as a natural consequence
encouraged the worldwide adoption of best-practice technology and
governance standards. However, these advantages once held in
Western monopoly have, over time, dissipated, and will certainly
continue to do so.
However, it is the third cause which is the prime focus of this
book. How the West was Lost charts how, over the last fifty
years, the most advanced and advantaged countries of the world
have squandered their once impregnable position through a
sustained catalogue of fundamentally flawed economic policies.
It is these decisions that, along the way, have resulted in an
economic and geopolitical see-saw, which is now poised to tip in
favour of the emerging world.' Unless radical policy changes are
made over the next decade the controlling hand of who owns what
will quickly belong to China, India, Russia or the Middle East,
and today's industrialized West is assured a savage economic
decline.
Introduction
In September 2008, the world witnessed an unprecedented assault
on the financial structure that the West had taken for granted
for the previous fifty years. Shockwave after shockwave battered
the system. Every day seemed to bring a new calamity. In just
three weeks, Lehman Brothers, a stalwart of the US banking
system, collapsed; the prime US mortgage lenders, Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac, had to be nationalized; AIG, the world's largest
insurer, was brought to its knees and its very existence called
into question (the company would receive a hefty US$85bn
life-line from the American government to keep it afloat). And,
in Britain, the bailout of banking giants Lloyds TSB and the
Royal Bank of Scotland was running well above US$ 1.4tn (ú850bn)
in 2009. Through it all, trillions were wiped off stock exchanges
from New York, to London, to Reykjavik, and most places in
between, placing millions of people's pensions and savings in
jeopardy.
But however extraordinary and cataclysmic these events were, How
the West was Lost is not about the immediate whys and wherefores
of this shattering and unexpected financial disaster. It is
undeniable that the crash overwhelmed the world but just like a
tsunami that appears seemingly out of nowhere and leaves death
and destruction in its wake, the events of 2008 were the
inevitable consequence of fault lines and shifts in economic
tectonic plates that lay undetected under the seemingly calm
financial waters upon which Western economies had sailed smoothly
for the last half-century.
However, unlike the plates beneath the sea, had these economic
faults been detected and dealt with, the financial crisis of 2008
might never have happened; certainly not to the degree and with
the ferocity with which it did occur. The collapse was the
culmination of a catalogue of policy errors and mistakes that had
been gathering momentum over the last fifty years, erupting into
the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
Extraordinarily now, as if blind to the real causes of the
turmoil of 2008, many governments have kept these flawed policies
in place.
But there is a bigger story to be told. It is a mistake to view
what happened as an isolated and relatively contained episode. In
fact, what happened in zoo8 marked yet another step in a
fundamental transition from one economic power to another; from
the West, to the Rising Rest.
For many a political scientist, this shift has troubling
hegemonic consequences. To them, whether we live in a uni-polar
world (for example, where the US dominates), a bi-polar world of,
say, the Cold War era, or a multi-polar world governed by a
multiplicity of states with differing political ideologies, is a
matter of supreme importance.
But viewed through the narrow utilitarian prism of an economist,
what matters most is economic prosperity (for the West, coupled
with freedoms), rather than who ultimately rules the world.
Economics and economists are guilty of viewing the world,
economies and countries as if on a league table with only one
winner, although it is undeniable that it is the global financier
who decides who wields military and political might.
Should it really matter if some other country is richer and more
militarily powerful? Who cares whether a country has economic
supremacy, as long as your country is prosperous and can manage
its own internal affairs? For example, the societies of Denmark,
Sweden and Norway, each economically advanced, seem to have no
qualms about who rules the world as long as they are left alone
to be prosperous and peaceful, though their attitude might well
change were whoever held the purse strings to start to curb their
freedoms and encroach upon their way of life. But until that
happens, whether the global financier is China, Russia or America
seems, for them, largely irrelevant.
Obviously, the political-economic dichotomy is a false one. In
reality, politics and economics are bound together, and even
inextricably linked. That noted, however, in How the West was
Lost I will focus on the economic shifts and how they are certain
to transform the world in which we and future generations will
live.
Time is running out. Unless the West adopts radical solutions,
many of them offered in this book, and adopts them quickly, it
will be too late. Not because China will necessarily become so
much richer, but rather because of America's own folly in
policymaking. How did the West give its undeniable lead away?
..........
THIS IS QUITE THE BOOK THAT TELLS YOU ABOUT THE DIRTY UNDERCOVER
GREEDY CARELESS PEOPLE (AS LONG AS THEY WERE GETTING RICH THEY
DID NOT CARE), AND THE DUMB MIND-SET OF SO-CALLED "EDUCATED"
PEOPLE WHO WERE RUNNING THE COUNTRIES OF THE WEST OVER THE LAST
50 YEARS, UNTIL THEIR EDUCATION OR LACK THEREOF, BROUGHT THE WEST
TO A CRASHING FALL IN 2008, A CRASH THAT MAY TAKE A WHILE FOR
EUROPE AND THE USA TO DIG THEMSELVES OUT OF.
A BOOK WELL WORTH THE READ
..........
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