Your Turn: Financial Footing

(click to try on the next larger size)

I saw this shot in Wednesday's NYT Pics of the Day and found it particularly dark, or else cynically irreverent.

The situation is Bernanke testifying before Congress regarding the state of the economy.  Because it's so anomalous, I was surprised to see it leading the print edition yesterday.

I leave it to you to unlace.  BAG lurkers are particularly encouraged to jump in.

Fed Chief Signals He’s Open to More Rate Cuts (NYT)

(image: Doug Mills/The New York Times.  February 26, 2008.  Washington.  nytimes.com. caption: Testifying before the House Financial Services Committee, Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, signaled his readiness to further reduce interest rates even though inflation had picked up in recent weeks)

Comments

[Doctor Biobrain]

Uhm, you've got the wrong caption. That wasn't Bernanke giving the state of the economy. That was from last week when he announced the recent hire of Paul Bunyon as his economic advisor, and he was sitting right next to him.

His plan is to rip Florida off the bottom of the country and send it to Dubai where they'll use it as another of their tourist islands, in exchange for $100 million. They tried explaining to him that that just isn't a lot of money anymore, but he just wouldn't listen. Turn's out Bunyon is a very stubborn man, showing this to be yet another lousy Bush hire.

[donna]

Waiting for the other toe to - tap?

[guardrail]

The thing that struck me was the type of shoe. Yeah, they are wearing impressively dark suits, but the shoes are nothing special. I'd expect wingtips or maybe cap-toes. These shoes, though, are very plain and perhaps even rubber-soled. They are mid-level bureaucrat/analyst shoes. They are also disembodied, suggesting facelessness. So, Bernanke is backed up by faceless middle managers? Maybe this is supposed to make us feel better: 'conventional wisdom' supports him.

[black dog barking]

The Great Man as seen from the perspective of the sub-prime mortgage bond holder. See boot: lick.

[MonsieurGonzo]

The Australian => Iraq war 'caused slowdown in the US' :

“The Iraq war has cost the US 50-60 times more than the Bush administration predicted and was a central cause of the sub-prime banking crisis threatening the world economy” - Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz

. . . it's the War Economy, stupid !

[gasho]

guardrail - YES. These shoes are super plain. They don't even look shiny.. they're dull. I have a strong visual association between beat-up shoes (holes in the soles) and the Great Depression. Anyone else share that?

As for composition, this shot is interesting and seems to relate to Bernanke's current position and dilemma. He's wedged into a tight spot between two dark places. Like stagnation and inflation, the double darkness is closing in on him and his job is to keep his head up and guide us through.

The feet are big and heavy - with some butt kicking potential - and they are crossing the line.. putting pressure on Mr. B to keep dropping those rates; inflation or no inflation! The biggest shoes are still grounded, but some of the others have begun to get sucked into that void - Beware!!

Oh, and Black dog - you win for the "boot:lick" line, hands down.

[jtfromBC]

Listened earlier to this mind blowing interview;

EXCLUSIVE–The Three Trillion Dollar War: Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard Economist Linda Bilmes on the True Cost of the US Invasion and Occupation of Iraq

www.democracynow.org/2008/2/29/exclusive_the_three_trillion_dollar_war

[MonsieurGonzo]

Mr. McCain : cold Old War thinking for 'A New Kind Of War' hot not.

The only metrics IRAQ Occupation + escalation = "surge" supporters cite are the number of "insurgent" attacks against us, and our own rate of attrition.

Occupation forces are not waging War, they're sustaining Defense with fewer casualties after receiving (desperately needed apparent) reinforcements from the U.S. reserves, the Turkish military; as well as active, Sunni mercenary forces and passive for-the-moment Shi'ite militias, (apparently satisfied to become rival 'Occupiers', themselves ~ after conquering most of Baghdad and Basra).

On the ground, fwiw, "The Mission" has no strategic combat meaning apparent ~ save only the simple truth of comrade survival at the Unit level: time . . . is the grunt's real enemy. "Who hurt us?" remains unknown, and unknowable ~ until we kill or capture one of them 'en flagrante' = while the crime is burning. Anonymity is their armour, and no weapon we possess can penetrate their invisible uniforms of uniformity.

History reveals that Survival is sufficient for those one occupies to be victorious. Their only blessing being that they have no other choice but the struggle to remain. But an occupier must choose: either to vanquish before unraveling, and becoming irrelevant; or to vanish before a known-to-be eternal tide of active and passive resistance.

Even in raw, geopolitical terms: we can extract no profitable measure of treasure oil from IRAQ until we can extract ourselves from their bloody ore.

The Surge, a success? Not IMHO. All we have managed is to remain in this state of still being "forever more", over there. . . And that is their destiny, not ours, n'est ce-pas?

[Stella]

My only reaction is "at least we've got shoes."

[MonsieurGonzo]

the WAR.COMmodity bubble : note the genesis of OIL inflation = since ‘the war economy’; 2002-2003.

Energy Bulletin => “The US military is the biggest purchaser of oil in the world”

imho, what's galling is the chutzpah of the global military/industrial complex's campaign = message that YOU can/should reduce U.S. dependency on imported OIL & OREs by altering your personal consumption habits, without their tacit acknowledgement that, by doing so, YOU are making more resources available to sustain a ‘War Economy’. . .

. . . in which YOU, the home-makers are quite literally competing for scarce resources with THEM, the war-makers.