Friday, July 3, 2009

Friday, July 3rd Bullets - Obama's Lose-Lose

Sports:
  • The Lakers upgraded the 3 spot with Artest, Bynum at the 5 is looking for a strong return from 2 years of injury, and Kobe didn't go anywhere. But what about the point-guard position which was the most glaringly inconsistent of the 2009 Lakers?
  • Shannon Brown is seemingly locked up for slightly over $1 million dollars in a qualifying offer. With all this trade talk involving the mid-level exception and qualifying offers and unrestricted/restricted free agents and sign-and-trades, it would be useful to read up on the NBA Salary Cap.
  • Tiger Woods is looking poised at the tune-up Memorial to have a good shot at capturing the 2009 British Open next week, what would be his 15th major.
Politics:
  • Palin resigns as Governor to "effect change outside of government". Sounds like something's up on her agenda, and I don't think it's about effecting change anywhere.
  • People are criticizing Obama for taking a soft stance against the injustices in Iran, but what can he do? Using any sort of military force to hold a re-election or remove Ahmadinejad would bring up the memories of a mistaken Iraqi war to the general public, and not doing anything attracts the scorn of all conservative hard-liners AND liberals who want democracy for Iranian citizens. If he acts, most criticize, at least in the long-run, if he doesn't act, all criticize to some extent. Maybe this is how conservative war-hawks usually get their way, by constructing lose-lose situations...
  • Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announces his intent to liberalize the banking and investment in the country and free it from Malay-favorable ethnic quotas and other limiting reagents.
Economics:
  • Asian countries have absorbed the blow of the worldwide recession much better than their western counterparts. This is due to the theory/concept of "decoupling" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoupling#Economics).
  • The US economy doesn't seem to be going in any particular direction. 1 piece of good news is met by 2 pieces of bad quarterly profits, which is then followed by 2 reports of credit markets opening, and then one bad employment outlook. Obama's policies are still in the wait-and-see column; not successes yet, but not failures either.
  • Come November 2010 Obama's policies are going to be a large part of either the Democratic platform if the economy recovers and his policies had some part in that, or the Republican platform if the economy is either 1) sluggish or 2) recovering but his policies had no part in that.

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