Wes Clark is top quality! I hope to see him as a Nat. Security Advisor or head of Pentagon in an Obama administration.

Be interesting if Gen. Clark mentions the national security implications of climate change. Not sure if this is the right forum but can you ask him to comment on what climate change impacts will mean for state and regional stability (especially China, the Horn, and C./S. America)? Many thanks.

Steve, will you be attending the Clark/Rove debate in Buffalo,
NY on the 26th or will you be watching or attending the
significantly less interesting scripted Obama/McCain snoozer?

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Easily the most fascinating figure in American politics today & a
true Renaissance man (has accomplished more since "retiring"
from the military than most accomplish in a lifetime),
Wes Clark is a man who understands how things work.

He understands, not only because of his educational background
in Economics from Oxford after earning his way into West Point
as a child of humble means - but also from living on and raising
a family on a military salary. Working & living with people who
had to get by on military wages while he himself was responsible
at times for budgets larger than that of some small cities.

Here Wes speaks about how in his mid-40-s, he couldn't afford
to pay $2,000 to repair a car damaged in a crash. So he buys a
manual & learned how to do fix it himself. And for $99 bucks &
about 100 days worth of work, he does it.

This is my favorite short clip of him on YouTube, explaining
what happened:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXU3J80ctxU

So I'm eager to hear General Clark explore further the topics
here- economy & national security as intertwined- since he is
usually commenting strictly in the capacity of foreign affairs or
national security & we rarely get a chance to hear from him
directly in other areas where he has unique insight &
background.

Thanks so much for providing a venue for this important event.

Steve,

Will the discussion with General Clark be posted afterwards as a
video? It's great to have live streaming, but many times it isn't
possible to be at the computer just then.

There's my president.
Second, I hope the discussion can also be posted. Thanks.

On the U.S. economy, I wonder if Mr. Clark has looked long and hard at this culprit.

Sorry, I posted this elsewhere on TWN, but IMO it's way to-oo-oo important to get passed by.

"Who's to blame for the biggest financial catastrophe of our time? There are plenty of culprits, but one candidate for lead perp is former Sen. Phil Gramm. Eight years ago, as part of a decades-long anti-regulatory crusade, Gramm pulled a sly legislative maneuver that greased the way to the multibillion-dollar subprime meltdown. Yet has Gramm been banished from the corridors of power? Reviled as the villain who bankrupted Middle America? Hardly. Now a well-paid executive at a Swiss bank, Gramm cochairs Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign and advises the Republican candidate on economic matters. He's been mentioned as a possible Treasury secretary should McCain win. That's right: A guy who helped screw up the global financial system could end up in charge of US economic policy. Talk about a market failure."

see --
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/07/foreclosure-phil.html

Rachel and others -- yes, I will post the video after the event -- may take us a few hours to process the digital file and then I'll post here on the site.

best, steve

Gen.Clark was one of the generation who stayed in service when the Army was trying to restore the prestige and confidence, coming off Viet Nam, and in an era that was supposed to put an end to hot wars.

His service record in southeast Europe was stellar, it highlighted the new security model of shared risk. The Dayton Accords were historic from the perspective of divergent interests being brought to agreement as a result of crisis, and the effort to prevent that crisis from widening.

As for security issues, domestic issues, foreign policy issues, they're unified now under the umbrella of technology and the global economy.

Climate change and its most crucial impact will do with scale pricing for commodities and trade. Along with peak oil, these threats run parallel and shape rising costs of an inflationary spiral that morphs into a larger stagflationary macroeconomic mushroom cloud.

You cannot address imbalances in trade without addressing currency valuation, which tends to work contra-positively to development at the low or high volume spectrum. So, a carefully balanced approach to try and ride a similar yield curve must be implemented.

There probably needs to be a large reorganization of fiscal infrastructure that could support massive scale commodity pricing to a level that would water down major shock or setback. Although such structure might limit high end return, the net result would be far greater from insulating negative scale loss and having aggregate capital for other scale transactions resulting from saved money in the commodity sectors.

Such saved monies can then be fashioned into the service sector. Particularly health care. Our economy is moving that direction already.

Essentially, it would be a world food bank. This could serve as a currency hedge in fundamental terms. It could pattern wider economic development along the lines of the track it sets for one sector of world business.

Then you'd basically have scale transactions, development(a key necessity to shaping stability in nation states), along with currency valuation pegged on items that would counterbalance market swings. Oil has been pegged on a dollar forever, why not peg currency to other resources? We need to do this as a way of moving off the petrodollar and rooting values in items that are of longer supply curves. With new technology, we should start phasing oil and fossil fuels out anyways.

This should accelerate that adjustment.

We should pattern universal health care after the care afforded members of Congress, and military members should always have the same kind of coverage available to them out of respect for their service.

This would be the starting point.

That's one reason that a two faced policy of "support our troops" and denying them coverage continues. There's a standard not met, as an obligation to those in service, as insualtion from having to honor the social contract, in other sectors of civilian life.

The Bidens, the Obamas, the McCains all want to make insurance available as a way of replacing universal coverage.

This is where we were headed already, I told a friend to expect major inusrance sector buyouts by the US gov't. Anybody hear about AIG today? See where we are headed?

Joe Taxpayer and John Q.Public will foot the bill, insurance companies will skirt decades of built obligation and leave with the capital in CEO compensation, and we'll do what should have been done long ago in terms of setting up a government health structure.

The only first world nation lacking universal coverage, we'll simply draw it out of your check, appoint the insurance bailout types to civil jobs on something of size to dwarf even the DoHS, and continue the dance between mandated insurance(notice how car and house insurance goes up after floods?) and compliance addled citzenry.

Let them eat mandates!

Americans lived off of the Clinton year gains. going into Bush's Dade Co. coup, Americans had the most personal savings in American history.

That, eventual 401k, a Mortgage refinance shell game, all carried tax cuts for the wealthiest on their backs.

Those backs are now broken.

Many of the banks helping with these loan bundles and packages also use Diebold as the transaction format.

Follow the Money.

I have to laugh now that Paulson and the entire CNBC clown show have made "moral hazard" the buzzword. Bush *is* the moral hazard. Two open-ended wars off the books while arguing for permanent tax cuts. Bush has been rescued from every failure in his life and his picture should appear in the wikipedia entry for the term.

--bks

Iran can be our way of triangulating other interests from client states.

Use them plausibly.
When the hostage crisis was going on, IBM's Asian multinational marketing HQ was around the corner from the embassy and went untouched.

That indicates similar motivations and aspirations exist within the land.

Let's engage that fundamental trait as a cooperative basis, make it the starting point.

Iran's own influence will spread monetarily as we up the cost of oil and its demand rises. Let's buy into that so the dollar can regain some strength. Regional allies and adversaries can end up working to agreements and shared values in the form of transactions.

Let's develop an arrangement with allied countries, in their sphere of influence that overlap Iran's, that can strengthen engagement.

Instead of rate freezes there should be a sliding scale of compensation that includes buybacks if certain benchmarks are reached, rate reductions, accelerated tables, etc.

More or less make payments part of a tax rebate or pay back and include it with an actual transaction from the lender side. The companies essentially pay selves back through the borrower's faith of meeting agreed marks for extending the time before a contract is fulfilled.

Usde incentive with Iran to try and get Iraq to accept the oil concessions we want. It's the only benchmark America really cares about in terms of whoever is directing policy.

Engage Iran to secure the Iraq concessions.

Petraeus announced he'll be leaving and Yemen was bombed a few days later. He read the writing on the wall.

Palin's natural gas pipeline in AK will be the spigot for Afghanistan's exports. Get used to being there 100 years also.

AIG will pattern the compliance arm for universal insurance mandates. Get used to it. Our tax dollars for golden parachutes.

Thank you Steve for organizing, hosting and making the event available for us to listen to. Can you imagine either of our presidential candidates speaking off the cuff, on such short notice with the clarity and logic this man possesses? Should have been a contender, should be our president.

This is second time I've heard the General say that he counciled
NATO against assuming the task of Afganistan. Of course as we
found out the General knew what he talking about: bush had no
plan for success. I'm sure that Cheney heard about that bit of
"truth to power" by Clark. Ah...to be a fly on a vice-presidential
undisclosed wall.

Thank you for organizing this talk. With all of the TV blather
about fixing the top, it was refreshing to hear a clear thinker
point out that when the problem comes from the bottom, that's
what needs to be fixed first...like now.

One of the above comments mentioned the impact of energy on
the global situation and Clark's not addressing the issue. They
might be interested to learn that Gen. Clark, a director of a
wind-energy company, just returned from a major wind
conference in Germany. He is also key-noting a solar conference
soon. Maybe Steve could invite him back....please?

No notes....well well well.

Thanks again.

Dear Steve,

Thanks a million for organizing this on such seriously short notice, and making it available for streaming!

As usual, Wes was remarkable...and absolutely correct. God, it would be so nice if our culture could do a tad better at celebrating such intellect and ability, rather than ignoring it.

Thanks to Wes too - amazing job!

Seven US soldiers die in helicopter crash in Iraq.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hwK_CSpBxsNuVUEaDuOwmSSCiqGwD938SH2G0

50 more years of this?

--bks

Obama/Clark '08!

http://obamaclark.com/

Steve can you ask General Clark if the Five Former Secretaries of States recent announcement that they all support sitting down and using diplomatic means with with Iran changes the situation for those who have been pushing for a pre-emptive strike on Iran for the last four years.

Combined with the recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. One would think that this would throw out another logical roadblock in front of the warmongers.

But we know "logical" does not matter to the warmonger zealots

I think that to receive the home loans from creditors you should present a great motivation. However, once I've got a consolidation loan, because I was willing to buy a bike.