“By continuing to support American Treasury instruments the Chinese are recognising our interconnection. We are truly going to rise or fall together,” Clinton said at the US embassy here.

Clinton had sought to focus on economic and environmental issues in Beijing, saying Washington’s concerns about the human rights situation in China should not be a distraction from those vital matters.  Beijing’s human rights record emerged nonetheless as an issue, as Chinese activists on Saturday reported being harassed or intimidated by Chinese authorities in a bid to stop them speaking out or meeting Clinton while she was here.

“Plainclothes police blocked me from leaving my home. They were afraid I would try to meet with Hillary Clinton or others in her delegation,” democracy campaigner Jiang Qisheng told AFP by phone on Sunday.

Clinton and Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi largely agreed to disagree on human rights as they pledged future joint action on the economy and climate change.The goodwill, also on display in her talks with President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, could raise hope for a new era of cooperation between the two largest greenhouse gas emitters and two of the world’s top three economies.

“Now it is more important than any time in the past to deepen and develop China-US relations amid the spreading financial crisis and increasing global challenges,” Hu told Clinton, according to state media.

Clinton began her day Sunday by attending a Protestant church service in western Beijing at which an AFP journalist saw plainclothes police taking away some visitors who attempted to enter the church.Their identities could not be confirmed. Later, Clinton met Chinese women’s rights advocates at the US embassy but continued to steer clear of speaking on contentious human rights issues.Instead, while taping an interview on a Chinese talk show, she focused on the need for China to help finance the massive 787-billion-dollar US economic stimulus plan by continuing to buy US Treasuries.

“Because our economies are so intertwined the Chinese know that in order to…” <<<Read Full Story>>>

Left to its own devices, the credit crisis, which began in August 2007, would have crushed economies as severely as did the Great Depression.

Belatedly, but thankfully, governments recognized that the only way to get credit flowing again was for them to make quick and direct massive infusions of new equity into beleaguered banks, as well as commit to other emergency measures hitherto unimaginable.

If sensible rescue efforts continue–and they will–the immediate crisis will quickly pass. Shell-shocked businesses and consumers won’t recover rapidly from the trauma of recent months, especially as we now cope with recession. But the downturn shouldn’t be prolonged: The economy here and those overseas should start to pick up no later than next spring.

That soon? Despite the crisis, the global economy still retains enormous strengths. Between the early 1980s and 2007 we lived in an economic Golden Age. Never before have so many people advanced so far economically in so short a period of time as they have during the last 25 years. Until the credit crisis, 70 million people a year were joining the middle class. The U.S. kicked off this long boom with the economic reforms of Ronald Reagan, particularly his enormous income tax cuts. We burst from the economic stagnation of the 1970s into a dynamic, innovative, high-tech-oriented economy. Even in recent years the much-maligned U.S. did well. Between year-end 2002 and year-end 2007 U.S. growth exceeded the entire size of China’s economy. Obviously China’s growth rates were higher, but China was coming off a much smaller base.

The world is flush with cash. It’s frozen because of fear, but the cash is there. Productivity gains are burgeoning.

So, will this global boom resume next year, slowly at first and then with increasing momentum? It should. Whether that happens, however, depends on the next, highly dangerous phase: <<<Read the Full Story>>>

>>>Learn more about Capitalism and becoming a capitalist

AFP (Breitbard.com) | US President George W. Bush said in an interview Tuesday he was forced to sacrifice free market principles to save the economy from “collapse.”

“I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system,” Bush told CNN television, saying he had made the decision “to make sure the economy doesn’t collapse.”

Bush’s comments reflect an extraordinary departure from his longtime advocacy for an unfettered free market, as his administration has orchestrated unprecedented government intervention in the face of a dire financial crisis.

“I am sorry we’re having to do it,” Bush said. Bush said….<<<Read the Full Story>>>

“We are now closer than ever before. I’m not going to break the confidentiality of certain conversations, but some British politicians have already told me: ‘If we had the euro, we would have been better off’,” Barroso told a weekly French news programme, referring to the fall in the pound’s value since markets and liquidity meltdown earlier this year.

“The British have an enormous quality, one of many, that is they are pragmatic,” he said on the panel of a joint RTL-LCI radio and television broadcast. “This crisis has emphasised the importance of the euro, and also of Britain,” he added.

“I don’t mean this will happen tomorrow, I know that the majority (of British people) are still opposed, but there is a period of consideration underway and the people which matter in Britain are currently thinking about it,” the former Portuguese prime minister said.

Barroso pointed to the case of Denmark, another EU state which has so far refused to accept the euro but is now planning another referendum on the single currency. The Danish voted against joining in 2000.>>>>Read the Full Article

Of course, things look entirely different to members of “free-market advocacy groups,” as they like to be called. One such group is the Ayn Rand Institute, named after the matriarch of the movement, whose antigovernment and anti-regulation views are embodied in her best-selling novels “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.” Indeed, Greenspan himself was a friend of Rand’s, and a devotee of her extreme free-market philosophy…[Read Full Article]

Gennady Zyuganov told the party’s annual congress the Communists should make maximum use of the growing public discontent caused by the economic downturn to try to restore their political strength.

“The wind of history is blowing in our sails again … At this time of crisis the world of imperialism is starting to die. We are standing on the threshold of political and social shifts,” Zyuganov said in a 2-hour speech opening the congress.

Russia’s Communists ruled the Soviet Union for eight decades and remained a major opposition force for several years after the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991.

But the party has since lost much of its authority and many analysts say it is too weak to seriously challenge for power.

The Russian authorities are trying to minimise the impact of the financial crisis by promising billions of dollars of state aid. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has pledged higher social payments to the needy and lower taxes for business.

“The authorities are clearly not coping with managing the country … A mass social protest is brewing and it is hard to predict now when and in what shape it will explode,” Zyuganov said.>>>>Read the Full Article

The state’s revenue gap is expected to hit $28 billion over the next 19 months without bold action. The emergency declaration authorizes the governor and lawmakers to change the existing budget within the next 45 days.

Without quick action, the state is likely to run out of cash in February.

Schwarzenegger and Democrats have proposed a combination of tax hikes and spending cuts, but Republican lawmakers are steadfast in their refusal to raise taxes.

Lawmakers failed to reach a compromise during the special session Schwarzenegger declared last month, pushing the problem to a new Legislature that was being sworn in Monday.

The crisis worsens each week, so the Republican governor did not want to waste any time in declaring a special session, said his spokesman, Aaron McLear.

“It’s important that we start on Day One so the new Legislature can start immediately to solve our fiscal crisis,” he said.

There appeared to be little reason to believe that Republican lawmakers would budge on their opposition to tax increase.

“If anything, I think our resolve (against raising taxes) is deeper than it has ever been because of the economic realities,” Senate Minority Leader Dave Cogdill said Monday.

Democrats don’t have the two-thirds majority in either the Assembly or Senate that is required to pass tax increases or a state budget.>>>>Read the Full Article

Since the 1930s, U.S. banks were the flagships of American economic might, and emulation by other nations of the fiercely free-market financial system in the United States was expected and encouraged. But the market turmoil that is draining the nation’s wealth and has upended Wall Street now threatens to put the banks at the heart of the U.S. financial system at least partly in the hands of the government.

The Bush administration is considering a partial nationalization of some banks, buying up a portion of their shares to shore them up and restore confidence as part of the $700 billion government bailout. The notion of government ownership in the financial sector, even as a minority stakeholder, goes against what market purists say they see as the foundation of the American system.

Yet the administration may feel it has no choice. Credit, the lifeblood of capitalism, ceased to flow. An economy based on the free market cannot function that way.

The government’s about-face goes beyond the banking industry. It is reasserting itself in the lives of citizens in ways that were unthinkable in the era of market-knows-best thinking. With the recent takeovers of major lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the bailout of AIG, the U.S. government is now effectively responsible for providing home mortgages and life insurance to tens of millions of Americans. Many economists are asking whether it remains a free market if the government is so deeply enmeshed in the financial system.

Given that the United States has held itself up as a global economic model, the change could shift the balance of how governments around the globe conduct free enterprise. Over the past three decades, the United States led the crusade to persuade much of the world, especially developing countries, to lift the heavy hand of government from finance and industry.

But the hands-off brand of capitalism in the United States is now being blamed for the easy credit that sickened the housing market and allowed a freewheeling Wall Street to create a pool of toxic investments that has infected the global financial system. Heavy intervention by the government, critics say, is further robbing Washington of the moral authority to spread the gospel of laissez-faire capitalism.

The government could launch a targeted program in which it takes>>>>Read the Full Article

The staunch leftist said the world financial crisis had forced his U.S. counterpart to recognize flaws in the economic system that he had been pointing out for years.

“I am sounding like Bush, more or less. What a novelty!” Chavez said, after quoting from Bush’s warning that the United States was in the middle of a serious financial crisis that could push the economy into a long-term recession.

He then serenaded startled journalists before settling back into more familiar criticism of the “imperialist” regime he said had brought the current crisis upon itself.

“The president of the United States has finally recognized there is a crisis…that they are the ones who are responsible for the collapse that is happening the in world at the moment, the financial tsunami,” he told a news conference in Beijing.

“Socialism is the only route to the salvation of the world.”

Outspoken Chavez says Venezuela’s socialist economic system, based around state-owned national champions, has protected it from the worst of the turmoil now roiling global markets.

The self-proclaimed Maoist was in China to boost oil sales and secure extra cash for development programs in China.

SALT LAKE CITY, Sept. 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Overstock.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: OSTK) chairman and CEO Patrick M. Byrne comments on President Bush’s September 24, 2008 speech outlining the President’s market rescue plan.

Dr. Byrne commented: “This bailout is necessary to save the bacchanal that is our US financial system. However, at the core of the administration’s plan is the assumption that Wall Street is worth saving. It is not. For years Wall Street has bossed Washington, DC around like they’re hired flunkies, while preying on Main Street businesses and investors. The federal government should use this opportunity to extract from Wall Street concessions that could never be extracted were Washington in its customary subordinate position.

“If American taxpayers are to bailout the Power Elite, they should attach conditions. Taxpayers should share in any upside, and gaping flaws in the current system should be fixed. Towards that end, I believe that any bailout legislation should include at least the following protections:

1. Taxpayers need to share in the upside if the bailout works, to compensate them for the risk that the administration is forcing them to take. This could be accomplished through warrants on shares in the firms being bailed out, such as those Mr. Buffett extracted from Goldman Sachs.

2. The government should impose a tax on those that benefit most from bailout — Wall Street itself. Perhaps a 0.25% transaction tax on all securities trades is in order? Such a tax would be insignificant to investors, while be largely borne by those that are merely speculators – including those that churn trades in an attempt to manipulate the markets.

3. Bailout or none, the government must fix underlying problems in our capital market. The fixes includes:

a. Reforming our stock settlement system so that trades actually settle promptly, precisely as Congress stipulated in 1934. This can be accomplished by putting in place a market-wide mandatory pre-borrow requirement (like the SEC did in the 30-day July 15, 2008 emergency order that protected the 19 financial institutions);

b. Creating the obligation that if a naked short seller fails to deliver a share, the broker-dealer must force a mandatory buy-in (as is done in civilized countries, such as Canada);

c. Tracking trades cradle-to-grave (rather than net blocks of trades against each other), so that it is obvious who the naked short sellers are and the total amounts they are stealing;

d. Providing regular, timely disclosure of when and how many shares have failed to deliver;

e. Enforcing the rules, including significant monetary penalties and jail time.

“Keynes said that an ocean of productivity can support a bubble of speculation, but an ocean of speculation cannot support a bubble of productivity. Washington has been captured by speculators at the expense of producers. I have long been talking about systemic risk and potential financial crisis (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIHw7C73s3E for a three- minute video from as early as October 2005). I am proposing specific steps to fix the system. For those that agree with these fixes which protect Main Street Americans, I ask you to sign the electronic petition at http://mainstreetamericans.info.”