General Motors Needs Bankruptcy

Excellent piece here from Justin Fox arguing  the benefits of bankruptcy in a capitalist system, the reasons this should be allowed outside of highly leveraged financial institutions, and why General Motors needs to face it.

He’s completely right. You can’t have a free-market capitalist society without letting some groups fail and, painful though it will be for a major, historic American institution to go, it’s necessary.

Full article right here.

Delusion or Terrifying Prophecy

Rick Davis, quoted on The Trail:

“We are witnessing, I believe, probably one of the greatest comebacks that you’ve seen since John McCain won the primary,” his campaign manager, Rick Davis, said in a conference call with reporters, adding that when it came to the electoral votes needed for victory, “We believe, with the combination of our base states and the states we’ve been able to put into play this week, we can achieve 270.”

Voting Cheat Tactics

Jezebel has a fantastic guide to swing-state tactics being used to attempt to cut down the massive voter registration drive for this year’s election. No doubt, there will be some dirty, likely semi-racist tactics being used to prevent the massive turnout this year.

Another Fairly Solid Theory Why McCain Can’t Win

From an article by Jonathan Rauch for the National Journal Magazine:

With only one exception since the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, no one has been elected president who took more than 14 years to climb from his first major elective office to election as either president or vice president.

Only one exception to the rule though, Lyndon Johnson with 23 years.

Murdoch Warning

From his own paper, of course:

News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch has warned that Barack Obama could worsen the world financial crisis if he is elected US president next week and implements protectionist policies.

House Market Upturn in Iraq

While the rest of the globe suffers from a downturn in housing markets, mortgages and the like, house prices in Baghdad have jumped to twice last year’s levels.

Sure, it’s not an ideal site for living still, but you can’t argue with the prospects of property development in Iraq. Those with money left after we’ve all been sent into negative equity should take comfort that they could make a mint with a condo overlooking the Green Zone.

Recession = Good Times for Oil Giants

FT Alphaville has a nice little list of the boffo profits achieved by oil giants over the past quarter. The majority of it is being attributed to falls in oil prices which have cut costs with nearly nothing of this being passed on to the consumer. Good that they are doing well as regards the wider economy. Bad that everybody else gets shafted to pay bonuses again.

Palin’s First Amendment Rights Impacted?

From ABC News Political Radar:

In a conservative radio interview that aired in Washington, D.C. Friday morning, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin said she fears her First Amendment rights may be threatened by “attacks” from reporters who suggest she is engaging in a negative campaign against Barack Obama.

Krugman Spells Out The Bad

Paul Krugman, op-ed-ing for The New York Times, comments on the likely recession for the US after consumers finally got scared enough.

The long-feared capitulation of American consumers has arrived. According to Thursday’s G.D.P. report, real consumer spending fell at an annual rate of 3.1 percent in the third quarter; real spending on durable goods (stuff like cars and TVs) fell at an annual rate of 14 percent.

BT Profit Warning

British Telecom, the bain of so many people’s lives in the UK, has issued a profit warning for second quarter earnings. Shares in the group dropped heavily, although the FTSE 100 offset that to go up 2%. BT getting into trouble could be a major issue in the telecommunications sector domestically, but provides a potential chance for other player to gain some foothold in the market and stop their relentless annoyances towards any consumers that don’t want to sign up to their services.

Lloyds TSB – HBOS Deal Cleared

The merger between Lloyds TSB and HBOS, which will create a super-retail-banking group in the UK, has been cleared by authorities over here. The deal is necessary but surely, in future years, this will cause some serious competition concerns, akin maybe to the recent problems thrown at BAA over its airport monopoly. The bank certainly won’t have anything like the influence over the domestic banking system that BAA has over its sector, but the merger will provide a major banking group that could, in the future, grow even larger and will have the capital backing to achieve such things.

Books Banning

USA Today has a piece about the books most requested in 2007 for banning from libraries across the US. The data, from the American Library Association, is priceless as regards the skewed viewpoints of parents across the states, notably given that the majority focus on the issues of sexuality, or homosexuality, and religious viewpoints. Apparently, it is not okay for children to read Philip Pullman’s Golden Compass because it has themes of atheist belief. Isn’t that somewhat taking away the freedom of children to choose their own religion in the land of the free?

The full list is here and it’s pretty fascinating reading. Just wait until they discover the Henry Millers and Philip Roths of this world.

Why Won’t Obama Reveal Donors?

I’m pretty sure there’s nothing sinister behind this but it does seem strange that Barack Obama has ostensibly refused to publish the list of donors of under $200 he has. The general line from party HQ is that such a task would be time-consuming and difficult and therefore, won’t happen.

John Dickerson (a superb political writer with Slate) along with Chris Wilson took up the challenge to produce a similarly sized list of data, taking only a few hours to do so. They also go through the advantages and disadvantages for Obama politically to reveal these, arguing  it could provide McCain with further fuel to scream yet more as-yet-unsubstantiated notions of donation fraud (which have mostly aided Obama) but could debunk this. Revealing is, as they point out, also in line with the Obama platform of having transparency in the voting and campaiging process.

Read their article here and puzzle yourself over the (likely logical) reasons why this information is being withheld.

Al Qaeda Militant Killed by US

The US has reportedly killed a mid-level Iraqi Al Qaeda leader in an airstrike in North West Pakistan today.

From Reuters:

The intelligence official identified the al Qaeda leader as Abu Akash.

“He is a mid-level al Qaeda man who was leading a high-profile life in Mir Ali,” said the official, who declined to be identified, referring to the second biggest town in the North Waziristan region on the Afghan border.

Heating Up in the Lead Up

From Politico:

Barack Obama and John McCain are evenly matched in the swing states of North Carolina and Missouri, though Obama is strongly outpacing McCain in two of those states’ crucial battleground counties, according to new Politico/InsiderAdvantage polls.

DR Congo Camps Burned

Not a great debut post but in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where rebel fighting has been progressing for the past few days, the UN has reported camps housing around 50,000 displaced people have been burned to the ground. Full report on the BBC.

Welcome

Politalking is a new blog which will focus primarily on politics, current affairs and business news through bitesize pieces of interesting items from around the net. More of this will be revealed in coming weeks as it gets moving but, until then, expect stories from across the ‘serious’ news space.

The blog has been prompted by a serious problem for me with the amount of coverage given to ‘soft’ news (most notably, the Russell Brand/Jonathan Ross ‘controversy’) and I just wanted to make something that I and my friends could read which tries to keep focus on the most important and interesting stories around.

I hope you all enjoy the blog and get involved in the comments space as and when you feel it necessary.