Reading the newspapers today made me see what a deep economic but also moral crisis the United States has fallen into.
Here are some of the things I saw:
" IT’S dispiriting indeed to watch the United States financial system, supposedly the envy of the world, being taken to its knees. But that’s the show we’re watching, brought to you by somnambulant regulators, greedy bank executives and incompetent corporate directors.
A week ago, Bridgewater Associates, a research firm, estimated that losses from the credit crisis we’re now mired in might amount to $1.6 trillion when all is said and done.
We’ll have to wait years to see if this is accurate. But whatever the number is, it will also represent, in stunning red ink, the cost to society of financiers who are shortsighted and greedy and regulators who don’t regulate. (Gretchen Morgenson, The New York Times)
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Nearly three out of five middle-class retirees will probably run out of money if they maintain their pre-retirement lifestyles, a new study from Ernst & Young has concluded.
The study, set to be released tomorrow, finds that Americans will have to drastically reduce their standard of living before retirement to live comfortably, or even avoid destitution, later in life. The study, set to be released tomorrow, finds that Americans will have to drastically reduce their standard of living before retirement to live comfortably, or even avoid destitution, later in life. (The Washington Post)
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"Since embarking upon its global war on terror, the United States has blatantly disregarded the Geneva Conventions. It has imprisoned suspects, including U.S. citizens, without charge, holding them indefinitely and denying them due process. It has created an American gulag in which thousands of detainees, including many innocent of any wrongdoing, have been subjected to ritual abuse and humiliation. It has delivered suspected terrorists into the hands of foreign torturers. " (Post Book Review Section, review of Jane Mayer's 'The Dark Side')
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"Standard Operating Procedure is a devastating critique of the Bush administration. It inspires outrage at everything and everyone from the Bush Doctrine to former attorney general Alberto Gonzales to the CIA. Yet, Gourevitch laments, "the stain is ours, because whatever else the Iraq War was about, it was always, above all, about America ... (Post review of "Standard Operating Procedure" By Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris)