State-haters

This trend of nationalizing financial entities in the Unites States (Fanny, Freddie, AIG) really makes me wonder what happened to all those people afraid of the state. Weren't markets supposed to be taken care of themselves on their own? I do realize that the radical argument could be that there still has been too much state-interference and that this is the reason for the current shit hole (excuse my French, am moving to Paris soon, should be allowed to use it) that we seem to be stuck in. Yet, we will most likely (und das ist auch gut so) never have a perfect market (even if that might be an economist's wet dream), we have to adapt to reality then and that means oversight, government regulation and not letting markets completely off the leach. Otherwise, we have crashing financial markets with no one truly knowing who owns or owes what to whom. Truly libertarian markets are as much of an utopia as communism was.

The German government has decided that a likely recession in the US coupled with falling stock indexes and a financial market whom describing as in turmoil sounds like a euphemism will not affect Germany. Gee, thanks Angela and Peer, I'll take y'all's word for it. (taz, Zeit)

Al Gore might have invented the internet (yes, I know, just a misunderstanding, he did contribute valuable political support and never really claimed more, it's pretty funny nonetheless), but McCain was responsible for people who think they are important being able to show it to everyone, he created the _blank">BlackBerry. Thank you Mr McCain.

Finally, I feel like he exaggerates at times (the 'under god' reference for example really has nothing to do with race), but he makes a couple of really valid points on race and racism in American politics. I am growing increasingly worried about Obama's chances for election by the way, the United States' electorate really disappointed me (us, Europeans, the world) in 2004 and I am wary of actually getting my hopes up once more. Furthermore, as I've said again and again, race does matter and it could just tip the scales in favor of McCain/Palin (worst VP-candidate I've ever read/heard about in my life btw, substantially speaking, not in political terms sadly enough). I guess the upside of that would be that the Austin-boy owes me a six-pack if Obama doesn't win.