Jan 27 2009
What Price Peace Mr President?
Obama took and interesting, if impotent, move today by making his first press interview directed towards the Muslim World:
President Obama expressed optimism yesterday about the prospect of peace between Israel and the Palestinians, but he said a peace accord will take time and require new thinking about the problems of the Middle East as a whole.
…
“All too often the United States starts by dictating — in the past on some of these issues — and we don’t always know all the factors that are involved,” Obama told al-Arabiya. “So let’s listen.Â
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But in tone, his comments were a stark departure from those of former president George W. Bush, who often described the Middle East conflict in terms that drew criticism from Palestinians.
By contrast, Obama went out of his way to say that if America is “ready to initiate a new partnership [with the Muslim world] based on mutual respect and mutual interest, then I think that we can make significant progress.”
Emphasis mine. America has always been ready to partner with the Muslim world and has done so for decades. Our allies in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and Kuwait (to name a few) know this. Our new allies in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan know this. It has nothing to do with America. We are not the ones crying death to America, death to Israel. We do not use suicide bombers to wipe out markets, restaurants and schools. We do not attack ‘soft targets’.Â
We have spent our precious blood in Iraq and Afghanistan. What else do we have to give to send ‘a signal’ we are ready? President Bush ‘changed’ America. Instead of being seen as a clueless, weak and self absorbed target the world knows we can be a strong ally or deadly enemy. It is THEIR choice which side of America they want to deal with.Â
When Palestinians and other Islamo Fascists stop raising their children to be gruesome weapons, then maybe the other side will be ready to partner in common cause?Â
Are the liberals and Obama truly this naive? Its like watching 3 year olds playing with a scalpel.
Rich,
It is a fine line as it is auditing that drives accounting, more or less.
Have a look at this and you will get one idea of the mess it is causing.
You have cash but cant show any asset value because it is swamped by paper liabilities from something like employee stock options that you must pretend will ALL be exercised at the current market price in the current time period even though practically none of them will be and even if for some reason there was a rush to exercise them, many employees would elect not to exercise them all and others would not exercise any options at all. But the standards say a company has to carry them on the books as if every single one would be exercised at the current market and the business must pretend that the difference between the option price and the market price is some kind of a “loss”. It is absolutely silly and is what is sending companies away from US stock exchanges to overseas exchanges such as London where people are not required to adhere to those standards.
In short S-Ox causes a company to do their books according to a “doomsday” worst case scenario which is the opposite extreme from the “lollipops and rainbows” scenarios companies often used before. There needs to be some moderation toward splitting the difference and looking at what is likely in the context of reality.
Something I would support as a first step is marking to a moving average of the market over some period of time so that volatile market conditions don’t whipsaw asset valuation as much but the assets will reflect longer term trend changes in market behavior.
“Are the liberals and Obama truly this naive?”
Yes.