President Sarkozy of France Calls Obama Weak and Overrated
America – are you listening? Who ever though I would agree with a Frenchman?
Mr Sarkozy is pouring cold water on President Obama’s efforts to recast American leadership on the world stage, depicting them as unoriginal, unsubstantial and overrated.
The American President’s call “to free the world of the menace of a nuclear nightmare” was hot air, Mr Sarkozy’s diplomatic staff told him in a report. “It was rhetoric – not a speech on American security policy but an export model aimed at improving the image of the United States,” they said. Most of Mr Obama’s proposals had already been made by the Bush administration and Washington was dragging its feet on disarmament and treaties against nuclear proliferation, the leaked report said.
Personal pique and French politics are also behind the souring of Mr Sarkozy’s self-promoted honeymoon with the United States. On the personal side, the French President is needled by the adulation for an unproven US leader whose stardom has eclipsed what he sees as his established record as a world troubleshooter. “The President is annoyed by what he sees as the naivety and the herd mentality of the media,” said a journalist who is privy to Elysée thinking.
Mr Obama’s favour for Ankara has irked but also helped Mr Sarkozy as his Union for a Popular Movement campaigns for European Parliament elections in June. Mr Sarkozy slapped down the US President on French TV after he publicly called for Turkish entry to the European Union.
Permanent refusal of Turkish membership is one of Mr Sarkozy’s policy planks and one of his most popular with voters. Mr Obama’s venture into EU affairs has enabled Mr Sarkozy to make political capital. He has shown that France can still stand up to the United States despite rejoining the Nato command last week.
Looks like Obama is a Bush retread mixed with a Clinton retread and just politics as usual on the national and international stage. That kool-aid must have been delicious for those sheeple thinking they would get change. The only change that is coming is moving further over to the left by expanding the government, spending more, and not defending ourselves in a time of major global volatility. If the French get that Obama is all talk and no substance why can’t the left?
Economic Update: Bartering Is Cool, George Soros Speaks and G20 Leans on Global Currency
The Great Depression brought various methods to the fold in order to keep some type of currency flowing and people consuming. In many ways this is being called the “Great Recession,” and there still is that feeling in the air that a Great Depression may again be heading our way. However, some of these old systems such as the barter system or local currencies are being used again.
The barter system became popular in recent years and has become more modernized for today’s society. Craigslist became incredibly popular when it first began but during these pressing times, Ebay and Craigslist have seen more traffic than usual and one statistic earlier this month had the traffic for Craigslist up by 100%. New barter sites are popping up during this downturn such as www.tradeaway.comwhere you can sell and buy real estate, boats, cars, land, etc. Even Match.com’s traffic has soared, because young people who may or may not be let go first if a company needs to downsize (due to less tenure on the job) say that dating sites are cheaper than going out to bars to meet people.
I find it incredibly intriguing that local communities have begun using a method from the Great Depression in which they issue and name their own “currency.”
The systems generally work like this: Businesses and individuals form a network to print currency. Shoppers buy it at a discount — say, 95 cents for $1 value — and spend the full value at stores that accept the currency.
Workers with dwindling wages are paying for groceries, yoga classes and fuel with Detroit Cheers, Ithaca Hours in New York, Plenty in North Carolina or BerkShares in Massachusetts.
This type of currency encourages consumers to buy and it also encourages consumption at a local level to support local businesses that are also cash-strapped.
This could be a good thing for people to see value in limited government. Local and state government, or Federalism, is truly the more appropriate form of government rather than a larger centralized organization.
However, you still have to pay your taxes on it…
By law, local money may not resemble federal bills or be promoted as legal tender of the United States, says Claudia Dickens of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
“We print the real thing,” she says.
The IRS gets its share. When someone pays for goods or services with local money, the income to the business is taxable, says Tom Ochsenschlager of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. “It’s not a way to avoid income taxes, or we’d all be paying in Detroit dollars,” he says.
Many still feel that bad times are ahead for the United States, our economy and the dollar.
George Soros is echoing what many conservatives and libertarians have been saying the past few months with the incessant government spending and bailouts. He foresees the U.S. becoming much like Japan in the 90′s, where they continued to spend in order to try and dig themselves out of a collapse, and their interventionist policies actually made things worse. Soros said that he believes the United States will go throw a period of relatively low growth coupled with high inflation…DUH!
Thank you Captain Obvious!
The recovery will look like “an inverted square root sign,” Soros said. “You hit bottom and you automatically rebound some, but then you don’t come out of it in a V-shape recovery or anything like that. You settle down—step down.”
“I don’t expect the U.S. economy to recover in the third or fourth quarter so I think we are in for a pretty lasting slowdown,” Soros said, adding that in 2010 there might be “something” in terms of U.S. growth.
The healing of the banking system and housing markets is crucial to recovery. “The banking system, as a whole, is basically insolvent,” Soros said.
“What we have created now is a situation where the banks who will be able to earn their way out of a hole, but by doing that, they are going to weigh on the economy,” he said. “Instead of stimulating the economy, they will draw the lifeblood, so to speak, of profits away from the real economy in order to keep themselves alive. This is the zombie bank situation.”
No NATO Support for Obama
Barack Obama couldn’t even garner a significant amount of support from his allies in NATO. Some said that his G20 summit and first real international introduction has been a disaster. Some of his foreign blunders this week have included, giving the Queen of England an iPod, Michelle Obama touching the Queen, Obama, flummoxed on several questions, one of which was in regards to the fault of the economic crisis, and without his teleprompter could not speak well, his town hall in France where out of the 5 questioners, 3-4 of them were American and his speech was done through a teleprompter again, bowing down to the Saudi’s, or his snub of President Sarkozy’s wife, Bruni.
Some said that if he couldn’t get more spending committed to by the countries at the G20 and couldn’t bolster more support for the War in Afghanistan that his trip could be considered a failure. It will be interesting to see how his pet media personnel spin this in his favor, since some Democrats were on panels recently state the same thing. He only got $1T from all the countries involved at the G20 and the media screwed up his schedule as well. That $1T is less than half of what Obama was hoping for and now he has been snubbed by many of the NATO countries, who will not commit to backing the United States by sending more troops into Afghanistan.
Barack Obama made an impassioned plea to America’s allies to send more troops to Afghanistan, warning that failure to do so would leave Europe vulnerable to more terrorist atrocities.
But though he continued to dazzle Europeans on his debut international tour, the Continent’s leaders turned their backs on the US President.
Gordon Brown was the only one to offer substantial help. He offered to send several hundred extra British soldiers to provide security during the August election, but even that fell short of the thousands of combat troops that the US was hoping to prise from the Prime Minister.
The Guardian U.K. Mocks Obama and his Oratory Skills
Finally! Some in other countries are catching on and mocking President Obama and his fallacious oratory skills, none of which he has, without a telemprompter!
Barack Obama, the World’s Greatest Orator (™all news organisations), didn’t exactly cover himself in glory when the BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson asked him a question about who was to blame for the financial crisis. Normally word perfect, Obama ummed, ahed and waffled for the best part of two and a half minutes. Here, John Crace decodes what he was really thinking …
Nick Robinson: “A question for you both, if I may. The prime minister has repeatedly blamed the United States of America for causing this crisis. France and Germany both blame Britain and America for causing this crisis. Who is right? And isn’t the debate about that at the heart of the debate about what to do now?” Brown immediately swivels to leave Obama in pole position. There is a four-second delay before Obama starts speaking [THANKS FOR NOTHING, GORDY BABY. REMIND ME TO HANG YOU OUT TO DRY ONE DAY.] Barack Obama: “I, I, would say that, er … pause [I HAVEN'T A CLUE] … if you look at … pause [WHO IS THIS NICK ROBINSON JERK?] … the, the sources of this crisis … pause [JUST KEEP GOING, BUDDY] … the United States certainly has some accounting to do with respect to . . . pause [I'M IN WAY TOO DEEP HERE] … a regulatory system that was inadequate to the massive changes that have taken place in the global financial system … pause, close eyes [THIS IS GOING TO GO DOWN LIKE A CROCK OF SHIT BACK HOME. HELP]. I think what is also true is that … pause [I WANT NICK ROBINSON TO DISAPPEAR] … here in Great Britain … pause [SHIT, GORDY'S THE HOST, DON'T LAND HIM IN IT] … here in continental Europe … pause [DAMN IT, BLAME EVERYONE.] … around the world. We were seeing the same mismatch between the regulatory regimes that were in place and er … pause [I'VE LOST MY TRAIN OF THOUGHT AGAIN] … the highly integrated, er, global capital markets that have emerged … pause [I'M REALLY WINGING IT NOW]. So at this point, I’m less interested in … pause [YOU] … identifying blame than fixing the problem. I think we’ve taken some very aggressive steps in the United States to do so, not just responding to the immediate crisis, ensuring banks are adequately capitalised, er, dealing with the enormous, er … pause [WHY DIDN'T I QUIT WHILE I WAS AHEAD?] … drop-off in demand and contraction that has taken place. More importantly, for the long term, making sure that we’ve got a set of, er, er, regulations that are up to the task, er, and that includes, er, a number that will be discussed at this summit. I think there’s a lot of convergence between all the parties involved about the need, for example, to focus not on the legal form that a particular financial product takes or the institution it emerges from, but rather what’s the risk involved, what’s the function of this product and how do we regulate that adequately, much more effective coordination, er, between countries so we can, er, anticipate the risks that are involved there. Dealing with the, er, problem of derivatives markets, making sure we have set up systems, er, that can reduce some of the risks there. So, I actually think … pause [FANTASTIC. I'VE LOST EVERYONE, INCLUDING MYSELF] … there’s enormous consensus that has emerged in terms of what we need to do now and, er … pause [I'M OUTTA HERE. TIME FOR THE USUAL CLOSING BOLLOCKS] … I’m a great believer in looking forwards than looking backwards.
This commentary was glorious!
Gordon Brown Hails the Beginning of the New World Order… Obama is Still Clueless
Using words like collective, meaning collectivism, this should be very concerning to those who are still very patriotic and take pride in knowing that their country is free, relies on capitalism and is the last super power in the world. However, this appears to be falling by the wayside as world leaders, including Obama, are set to “collectively” come together and possibly create a “one world economy” which could have tremendous negative consequences in the future. Regulation will occur under what? The guise of the United Nations for every business industry? This is some scary stuff happening in these tough times!
Meanwhile, there are still more protesters in Europe who plan on distracting and disturbing the meetings. They have estimated that anywhere from 30,000 to 60,000 protesters could show up for the NATO meeting at the end of this week. Police are ready with teargas. Police already used teargas on Thursday (European time) for a smaller rally.
It still never ceases to amaze me that Captain Obvious, Barack Hussein Obama, makes statements in his travels to Europe such as the following:
President Barack Obama says the world is a lot more complicated than it was in 1944.
That’s when the countries that were victorious in World War II met to establish the financial architecture for the postwar era.Obama says negotiating is easy if it’s just Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in a room, talking over brandy.
But he says that’s not the world we live in now.
Obama spoke at a news conference Thursday after a meeting in London of the world’s 20 largest and developing economies. The countries were meeting to address the worst economic crisis since World War II.
I didn’t realize that Obama was that old and knew how difficult or easy it was to negotiate with world leaders back then. You learn something new everyday!
