I'm going to try another diary. The second in six months after a time when I used to be a top recommended diarist on DKos.
I tried one a couple of days ago about the anxieties of the generals about proposed troop deployment from Iraq and what it told us about the "success" claimed by Bush and the Republicans today in Iraq. A claim of success that even Obama seemed in his O'Reilly interviews to be unable or unwilling to firmly reject. It told us also of the increasing difficulties in Afghanistan. It had only a dozen responses before disappearing.
Well, I'll have one more go. This time it is the breaking news that 40% has been wiped off the shares of Lehman Bros, the Wall St bankers because hopes of a financial lifeline from Korea Development Bank (KDB) have been called into question after South Korea's financial regulator urged the bank to carefully consider any investment. Now. today, its financial viability is being questioned.
Is this news and discussion of its implications not sexy enough to be recommended on DKos anymore? Have we so lost touch with the real world and what truly affects all our citizens that it no longer occupies our mind. Has personality, the airbrushing of McCain's hair and the per Diem residential allowances of an Alaskan governor, taken over complete control of the debate?
Daily Kos used to be at the leading edge of what really affects ordinary people. It still could be and it could still play this role in the few weeks left to influence decisions. But it will take good people on here to be prepared to start serious discussions on issues that do not have prominence in our current diaries. We react to polls, react to personalities, react to gaffes on the campaign trail, react to to our own reactions.
Please, fellow Kossacks, let us give more room to promoting the issues that will affect every ordinary person.
What are the implications of Lehman Bros?
Some analysts believe that the whole of the western world financial operations are at the tipping point of complete meltdown. It sounds a distant thing, an airy fairy piece of stuff understood only by economists and something that our governments will sort out. It isn't. It will affect every country and affect us all individually.
Coming immediately after the US takeover of the two mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, I am getting frightened for everyone. And I don't panic about financial markets easily. I think that it is seven banks that have also had to be bailed out in the US. I find it scary, very scary.
A political point is being made that Vice President hopeful Sarah Palin made a gaffe about the two mortgages lenders by saying over the weekend that they needed to be taken over because "they were becoming too expensive for the taxpayer". This was in ignorance that to date no US tax payer money has been involved. What worries me is that, scoring political points aside, I do not believe that most of our politicians have an understanding of, and thereby any hope of controlling, what is going on.
Although Google will give you tens of thousands of respones to an enquiry on the subject, let me give you just one example reference for what is going on if you want to read more. Be worried that it is dated August. It is the way that predictions are now becoming fact that should give us the greatest concern.
Really, though, I want to hear from those people on DKos who are concerned about what is happening and how it is being felt on the street. I want to hear from the excellent economists on here about the state of the interlinked global markets. I want to hear about what should be central to our politics instead of the American Idol type of voting that passes for politics in our countries.
I want to hear it not just in this diary but from countless diaries over the next few weeks on DKos. Political commentators are pleading with the Democratic campaign to become less reactive, to lead the agenda. Let the recommended list of DKos begin this process.
Right now, I am posing the question: how real is the global financial market meltdown, what measures should be taken by our governments and how does it feature as a key issue for November?
If Dkos takes a lead in these discussions, it will change the nature of the debate. Let us start here and now.
You can be certain that Bush won't talk about it and you can be certain that McCain won't talk about it and you can be certain that Palin can't talk about it.
They won't and can't because they don't have acceptable answers and they want to hide from the electorate the full scale of the financial disaster that threatens more than a thousand Hurricane Gustavs. Please don't let us aid them in this, yet another of their disingenuous slights of hand.
Let us take the lead.