Arkady's Thoughts

In a rather telling headline, the WSJ reports today that the Christians of Egypt are worried what might happen with Mubarak's departure.  Consider  Coptic Christians Worry About Future Without Mubarak and think about this for a moment.  Why would about 8 million people willingly accept an autocratic tyrant who has turned Egypt into a police state?  The same 8 million people who have been beaten, persecuted, blown up and marginalized by the virtue of them being Christian?  People who in some areas are relegated to the trash heaps of Egypt, literally .  What can possibly be worse than what they already have? Answer:  Islamists. Plenty of people across the world are calling Egyptian's Muslim Brotherhood a humanitarian movement that is destined to bring democracy, freedom and liberty to Egypt  Oh really?  This is why Coptic Christians prefer a tyrant?   Who do you suppose understands the dynamics of Egypt better, people who li...

Demonstrators have poured onto the streets of Cairo and brought the city to a stand still.  Reports suggest that hundreds of protesters have clashed with police over mounting concerns of corruption.  Several fascinating things have happened over the past few days. First, two days ago a giant gold shipment was intercepted at the Egyptian airport.  This raised speculation that the ruling class is preparing for an exit strategy a-la Tunisian president Ben Ali.  Secondly, there have been online calls of solidarity for an Egyptian revolt organized on Facebook/Twitter .  The protests coincided with a national holiday honoring the country's much-feared police. In another parallel with the Tunisia protests, the calls for rallies went out on Facebook and Twitter, with 90,000 saying they would attend As of today, we have learned that the Egyptian government has taken steps to snuff out organization by restricting online communication.  According to Zero Hedg...

Virtually partisan passage here , with only three Democrats voting yes. There was actually some lively discussion on the floor with both parties pretty much clinging to exactly the same notions and ideas that were presented during the last several years prior to passage.  A summation; Republicans maintaining this bill would kill jobs and Democrats extolling the virtues of eliminating pre-existing conditions and filling in the dreaded senior doughnut hole.  Both parties are correct and both parties are presenting useless arguments as they pertain to the nation's health care. Nobody is talking about the true cause of spiraling costs and how to fix them, instead the two parties are arguing over how to best shaft the American people - through Government run healthcare via Medicare/Medicaid or mandated insurance purchases. What the Republicans are doing in reality is buying political points while doing nothing and I believe they are doing this by design.  This newly elected ...

As riots spread through North Africa I find it incredibly important to use the existing knowledge we have to pinpoint and explain in the most simplistic manner of what is happening in the world.   Our historical texts have been filled with a rich assortment of observations, observations that often carry an incorrect conclusion as an explanation to certain events.  Hopefully with the Internet gaining influence we can avoid the errors of history and lay down accurate observations that can serve future generations going forward. Still, even to this day reports and journalists will attempt to explain certain events through the simplicity of observations and certain people will still reach the wrong conclusion thus instigating and agitating for the wrong solution to our world's most vexing problem, inflation. Tunisia Consider the rioting happening right now in Tunisia.   Reports provide a litany of explanations including Internet freedoms, dictatorships, infra...

Previously we looked at the Chinese currency and discussed the possibility that a majority who believe the Yuan is undervalued may be wrong.  Indeed the idea that the Yuan is actually overvalued given the rampant inflation is far more logical.  We will see a tremendous slowdown in what was largely fake growth coming out of China, growth that was primarily fueled by a central government directive and has no economic basis what so ever.   You may have heard of China's ghost cities, entire cities built for the sake of building that stand largely unoccupied with investors holding on to properties as a means to protect themselves from inflation.   What you may not have heard of, is China's ghost mall.  This happens to be the biggest shopping center in the world too a label the Chinese owners announce with pride, but it is also the emptiest.  PBS ran a story, the video can be found here .   The mall, called the South China Mall was constructed in 2005...

America witnessed another tragedy over the weekend when a member of the U.S. Congress and others around her were shot while she was attending a meeting of her constituents.  Reports suggest that although Congresswoman Giffords may survive, six were dead and many others injured.  In a sick and ironic twist, the weekend has been filled with highly charged and partisan rhetoric over the cause of the shooting and accusations have been leveled at everyone including: talk radio, TV pundits, Sarah Palin and the Tea Party.  The people doing the accusing need to recognize that their premature and sometimes baseless accusations consist of the same vitriolic speech that they themselves are bemoaning. The suspect is Jared Lee Loughner and information coming out suggests that this 22 year old youth was incredibly deranged and mentally unstable.  However because Gabrielle Giffords is a Democrat, some have simply assumed that this was a partisan attack.  Yet Loughner's ...

An interesting story, but I am rather skeptical.  Fred Upton suggested to Fox News that a bipartisan effort to nix the recently adopted ObamaCare is viable and that a good number of Democrats will join the process.  Conventional wisdom suggests that with Obama as president any effort to repeal his flag ship legislation for which so much political capital has been expended is impossible, however there may be enough votes to overturn the veto.  A very timely discussion indeed as three new ObamaCare taxes have kicked in yesterday. This is very significant for several reasons. First, Republicans must understand that starting with Scott Brown's election the majority of Americans to this day would like to see ObamaCare repealed. The entirety of the 2010 GOP wave (sans Massachusetts) rested primarily on ObamaCare and spending.  Although the weak and ineffective GOP Pledge does commit to repeal the rhetoric has been transformed to repeal-and-replace (troubling), but th...