It isn’t January yet.
[Indy and his father have boarded the airship]Indiana Jones: Well, we made it!
Professor Henry Jones: [looking out from behind his newspaper] When we are airborne, with Germany behind us, then I will share that sentiment.
And the borrowed trillions have to come from somewhere. Because “the saving rate [in America] is zero,” says Stiglitz, “that means that you have to finance [the war] by borrowing abroad. So China is financing America’s war.” The US is now operating at such a deficit, in fact, that it doesn’t have the money to bail out its own banks. “When Merrill Lynch and Citibank had a problem, it was sovereign funds from abroad that bailed them out. And we had to give up a lot of shares of our ownership. So the largest shareowners in Citibank now are in the Middle East. It should be called the MidEast bank, not the Citibank.” This creates a precedent of dependence, “and whether we become dependent on Middle East oil money, or Chinese reserves – it’s that dependency that people ought to worry about. That is a big change. The amount of borrowing in the last eight years, on top of the borrowing that began with Reagan – that has all changed the US’s economic position in the world.”
- The War in Iraq is even more expensive than you think it is
Obama has shown a real commitment to open government. When putting together tech policy (to take an example close to home for xkcd) others might have gone to industry lobbyists. Obama went to Lawrence Lessig, founder of Creative Commons (under which xkcd is published) and longtime white knight in the struggle with a broken system over internet and copyright policy.
Yes! When you want to talk copyright reform, the only person you should be talking to is Lawrence Lessig (who also supports Obama). Brilliant! I’m officially pulling for Obama on ‘08.
