Congress' Disdain for National Security

The word is that the Democratic Congress (Senate and House) passed the revision to the overseas wiretapping law requiring FISA review because it was afraid it would be labelled weak on national security by Bush if it didn't. Maybe it would have been, but the questionable law it passed opens it up to the same criticism, albeit not from Bush, but from freedom loving Americans. The NYT reports that the new law may give Bush more latitude for spying than he had, and not only for wiretapping. It didn't just correct an oversight, it opened new loopholes for the Administration to drive through.

The bad thing is that the Congress cared so little about what the law said that it passed it without debating it, without even reading it closely, if at all. The lesson: August vacation is more important to Congress than America's national security. Congress is a national disgrace!

China's Economic Nuclear Option

There has been talk of China using it's economic "nuclear option" against the US, that is dumping its US dollar holdings, thus killing the value of the dollar against other currencies, as for example in this report. But this would be sort of mutually assured destruction, a MAD economic doctrine. The US would be hurt, but so would China. It would lose its best customer, the US, which would no longer be able to afford all the stuff it now imports. Plus, it would be hard for China to dispose of all of its US dollar denominated assets before the dollar started to crash; so, China would take a big loss on whatever it got caught holding as the dollar tanked. In addition, as the article points out, the US has been trying to get China to increase the value of the yuan relative to the dollar, albeit not by so much; so, China would be to some extent doing what the US wants it to do, delink the yuan from the dollar and let the yuan float up versus the dollar.

In short, this seems like something that it would be very unlikely for China to do. It would hurt the US, but at a great price for China. The only scenario might be if there was a huge financial crash in China, so that adding to it would be relatively unnoticeable; then China might say, "If I'm going down, I'll take America with me."

Iraq War Czar Considers a Draft

CNN reports that Iraq war czar General Lute said that restoring a military draft should be considered as an option to provide enough troops to maintain the US military's ability to fight the Iraq war.

I think we need a draft. Too much is being asked of our all volunteer Army. Bush and Cheney, two draft dodgers, would never propose to restore the draft, although their war is the reason we need to do so. They are perfectly happy to destroy the Army, for which they have no respect, and let their successor figure out how to defend the US. We need to start planning for the future now, and the all volunteer Army won't meet the needs of the future unless we get out of Iraq now and let it start recuperating.

Insider Trading Common on Wall Street

The Financial Times did a study that showed that insider trading is common on Wall Street. This should be no surprise, given that Wall Street is populated by greedy, dishonest people. I was already mad with Wall Street because of its disregard for the war in Iraq. The Dow Jones index went through the roof as more and more Americans and Iraqis died in the war. Wall Street didn't care although to hear George Bush tell it, we went to war for Wall Street, because of the 9/11 attacks, despite the fact that smarter people have found no connection between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the 9/11 attacks. The attacks on the World Trade center were directed at the US financial district. Since we can't find Osama bin Laden, we don't know exactly why, but part of the the reason was probably to make a high visibility attack that would get the world's attention, and part of it was probably because of the large role played by Jews in America's financial district.

In any case, the Financial Times study tends to reinforce the negative impression of Wall Street. The violent fluctuations currently going on in the market no doubt allow savvy traders, maybe not doing anything illegal, but just using their intimate knowledge of how trades are made these days by computer programs, to make money when the market goes up or down. Add to this the fact that many staffers, high and low, in banks and brokerages are aware of merger and acquisition (M&A) activity, and can probably do some small trades using their inside knowledge that will not show up on the SEC's radar screen, but may show up on the overall statistical study done by the Financial Times.