Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo : August 6, 2011

Do you understand economics or politics? I don’t. So, help me.

US debt ceiling fiasco: Why did Obama allow the Opposition (the Republicans) to dictate terms? Till a few days back, I did think that they have a mature political system which allows for bipartisan deals. I do not know the finer details of the plan but a deficit reduction plan during a global crisis/recession which asks for cuts in spending without revenue generation via taxes or job creation seems like a stupid plan. The only silver lining for that dark cloud seems to be that the rich might escape taxes but the same might face wealth erosion via tanking stock markets and S&P’s downgrade of US from AAA to AA+. Obama could have used the power of his office to do much more. Why did he choose not to do so? For a layman like me, it seems to be that he has elections in mind, rather than economics. I bet he is going to use some version of “Mommy, those guys made me do it…”

Ref: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/05/opinion/the-wrong-worries.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

PM and the Lokpal Bill: I am waiting for August 16. Most probably, Anna Hazare (and, hopefully, his supporters, too) will start a fast-unto-death-or-whatever on that day. I will be studying how the story develops or fades in the media. Day one – front page, few columns; day two – front page, one column; day three onwards – inside pages, I suppose…I am not really interested in the views of the political parties. There are three types of political opinions, I think. One, the government (and some other parties with a PM-hopeful) will try to keep the PM out of the Bill (I do not trust this select group of people in the Lokpal with such an easy way to destabilize a government or, at least, an easy way to help the media create confusion and instability; and, I am quite satisfied with the existing ways to go after the PM). Two, there are political parties (who never did anything regarding the Bill when they were in power) that claim that they want the PM to be included in the Bill but they know that the government will not call their bluff. Three, there are political parties who will climb onto some moral high horse knowing that they will never have a PM from their ranks. Have I understood the politics correctly?

Ref: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/columns/b-s-raghavan/article2316739.ece

I would love to think more about these topics. But, this weekend, there is a bigger crisis in my life: I have to visit my mother-in-law. I think Oscar Wilde claimed that a man’s failure is that he wants his wife to be like his mother and his wife’s failure is that she turns out to be like her mother. I do not agree and I do think that that is Wilde’s feminine side doing the claiming. The last thing any man wants is for his wife to be like his mother – that is his wife’s assumption about what he wants; he obviously wants much more than that. And thankfully, in my wife’s case, genes mutated sufficiently and she is not like her mother either. I know that I will be fighting with my mother-in-law this weekend. She will poke at my many failures. I have already chosen my mode of attack. She was a Chief-something in the government before retirement. A few months before her retirement, she was sent abroad for training or to study new methods or whatever. Why did the government waste the money on her since she was close to retirement? Why did she accept that wasteful perk? See, I have my questions ready for her. Some guys (like those two-dimensional fools in ZNMD) go to Spain to experience danger via bulls. Some guys (like me) go to their mother-in-law’s house.