gmar chasima tova!
Annonymous wrote:
Annonymous wrote:
Dear Rabbi Eidensohn,I just wrote this up, if you want, feel free to post it as you wish. No accreditation please.Wishing you and yours a Shana Tova and a Gemar Chasima Tova!
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Today's Drudge Report, Erev Yom Kippur, is sobering: "FINANCIAL CRISIS 'WORST WORLD HAS EVER FACED'"and it links to this story in the UK Telegraph (Friday 07 October 2011) : World facing worst financial crisis in history, Bank of England Governor says.
The world is facing the worst financial crisis since at least the 1930s “if not ever”, the Governor of the Bank of England said last night...after the decision by the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee to put £75billion of newly created money into the economy in a desperate effort to stave off a new credit crisis and a UK recession...the Bank had been driven by growing signs of a global economic disaster..."
The same thing is happening in the USA, and it has already happened in the "PIIGS" countries: Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain and in almost all Western countries!
This is NOT how modern day Capitalism was supposed to work out.
After all, the recovery years after World War Two and during the Reagan Era, pure Capitalism with its free trade and enterprise, low taxes and less government bureaucracy, with proper care of the lower classes via Social Democratic benefits was supposed to help everyone in the West get along. But that is not how it has worked out and everyone is to blame, and then some.
First of all modern times have seen the utter collapse of Monarchies, Feudalism, Fascism, Imperialism, Communism and Liberalism -- their downfall all resulting in the betterment of humankind.
Capitalism was the last great hope of mankind, not because Ayn Rand said so, but because it's natural for people to both create and yes SHARE wealth. So far so good.
Along came the Shah of Iran and raised the price of crude oil, blackmailing the West. Thus began the transfer of untold trillions of petro-Dollars to the Muslim oil rich Islamic totalitarian states. Then, while Red Russia created Red China, along came Nixon and Kissinger and welcomed Red China into the family of nations. 40 years later, mainland China is still Red, a cruel dictatorship but it has prostituted and indentured its labor force and citizenry to factory owners from the West who produce goods for pennies and share the untold trillions of profits with the Peking Politburo. Added to which, defeated Japan and Nazi Germany instead of being demolished as states, as they would have done had they won WWII, were allowed to rebuild and focus on building machines which they are good at to sell to the West sucking in more untold trillions.
That was NOT meant to be the "high point" of Capitalism so that the Arabs, Chinese, Japanese and Germans become the modern world's economic superpowers. They are cruel to their own and do not share their wealth with any other nations, giving virtually no foreign aid like the US still does even though it's broke itself.
And in the West, greedy Labor Unions wanted more money for less work and not caring about shoddy performance. They want to be paid for sleeping and vacationing.
But, MOST guilty of all are what Tom Wolf, the writer, in his "Bonfire of the Vanities" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bonfire_of_the_Vanities
calls the "Masters of the Universe" the young punk financially savvy new super rich. Armed with MBAs and all sorts of fancy new-fangled financial and technological skills and education with access to esoteric financial arts known only to their initiated, often conjuring up masses of untold trillions of money like proverbial magicians pulling rabbits out hats, their education was just there to express their pure raw GREED, and THEY, being in the West and of the West, are the ones who bust the West's banks, financial houses, insurance companies, corporations, all manner of investments, and ultimately its governments. Like a "legal" Mafia and like swarms of locusts the very savvy young Capitalists who were supposedly at the helm of the West's economies pissed away its monies and stashed away the rest.
Ironically and cynically they were actually launched by the heavily Marxist influenced university faculties of the West's universities, who hated Capitalism and helped create the monsters who ultimately destroyed Capitalism from within! So of course they saw no reason or ECONOMIC MORALITY to stand up to the oil rich Arabs, the emboldened Chinese, the rebuilt Germans and Japanese, the corrupt Unions with untold trillions in "pension funds" at home, rather, they worked with THOSE powers because, hey, that's where the dough was right? and now see the results, the West is broke, its economies are BROKEN, and Capitalism is DEAD!
Mashiach is on his way, the last of the big "isms" is on its way out forever. No one should complain if ordinary people demand a fair share of life.
A Gemar Chatima Tova! May the coming year 5772 be a year of Shalom!
This has got to get the award for the most worthless pile of verbiage ever dumped on this blog. It is not worth picking apart in detail and should just be discarded in favor of something worthwhile like blank screen or the weather report.
ReplyDeleteAna Alan, here's another headline you may have missed that proves the point:
ReplyDeleteTelegraph (UK):
"By Telegraph View
8:04PM BST 07 Oct 2011
An entire system of global trade is at risk
Next month’s G20 summit must go beyond the usual rhetoric. Confidence in the eurozone’s banking system has to be restored through recapitalisation of its banks.
Sir Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, this week called the current financial crisis “the most serious… since the 1930s, if ever”, in justification for a further £75 billion of “quantitative easing”. Since Sir Mervyn cited the chaos of the inter-war years, it seems appropriate to quote Winston Churchill: “Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusions of counsel, until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong – these are the features that constitute the endless repetition of history.”
We are at just such a moment again. Little more than two years ago, global leaders were happily congratulating themselves on having avoided the mistakes of the 1930s, thereby averting a depression. But now it appears that the difficulties of 2008 were but a foretaste of what was to come. With the European banking system again on the verge of collapse, there is a sense that politicians and economists are out of options, that governments and central banks are powerless before events. The best of the cavalry has been sent into battle, and it has come back in tatters. The fiscal armoury has been exhausted, the support offered by the boom in emerging markets such as China and India over the past two years seems to be on its last legs, and there is but the small rifle fire of the central bank printing presses left to defend us.
If it has been obvious for some time that we are caught up in an extreme financial crisis, the extent of its severity has acquired greater clarity in being described by the Governor of the Bank of England. Never before has the global financial system been so interlinked and integrated, which means that problems in one part of the world are capable of causing severe stress almost everywhere else. We once more face a perfect storm of cascading default, contracting credit and collapsing economic activity..."
Hashem yerachem aleinu ve'al baneinu ve'al kol Yisroel, Omein!
For the unemployed in Queens, there is a program to help get them back in the workforce sponsored by the UJA, Met Council, and the Queens Jewish Community Council that is basically controlled by a bunch of Queens Vaad rabbis. It is supposed to be accommodating to all streams of Judaism including Orthodox. They recently deviated from the usual job fairs and resume building seminars to instill some "ruchniyus". They had some "rabbis", including women, give speeches at the Samuel Field Y in Little Neck, Queens. One "rabbi" with a very frum sounding name who spoke is Manes Kogan who is Conservative. This ausvarf once wrote a position paper on intermarriage. He said he couldn't come to any hachlotos because he doesn't know the answer if a Yid's feelings for a shiksa are less important than issur chasnus. He also can't make up his mind if the Yid should try to arrange a (phony) gerus for the shiksa because of the novel argument that it might be as intrusive as a shiksa asking a Yid to become a meshumad to Yoshka. He harps on the "Fiddler on the Roof" story with Tevya's youngest daughter running away with a goy. At this all day event, it would be tzugepasst if the "kosher" catered lunch featured Rubashkin's Tevya's Ranch, the favorite meat producer of someone at the Queens Vaad. During the morning, the coffee is advertised as kosher. If it is not from a kosher caterer, no one should trust the urns at the Y.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Kogan, he is the leader of the Hillcrest Queens Jewish Center. Some Queens Vaad shuls list Kogan's preschool as acceptable in their shul directory.
A macher at a Queens Vaad shul got in gantzen excited when Kogan took the shteller in Queens and was telling everyone mit hislahavus that Kogan is "so frum that he leaves his tzitzis hang out".
Is this what the Agudah has sunk to?
ReplyDeleteBenny Rogosnitzky who comes from a long line of choshuva rabbonim in the heim was once a yeshivishe guy. He became modern orthodox and today is not very frum at all.
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2010-02-14/local/27056177_1_gateways-federal-suit-claims-credit-card
He was behind a scam that defrauded frum organizations out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
He is twice divorced and is accused by women of chasing after them at shidduch events even when he was still married. There is also a picture circulated of him with a shiksa Puerto Rican girlfriend at the airport going to visit her parents on the island. In case the picture was forged, I have not heard Rogosnitsky deny it is real.
Rogosnitsky started a "support group" for frum people who are divorced.
http://www.frumdivorce.org/images/divorcejpadrev1_crop.jpg
They held an event in Boro Park last week that was given legitimacy by the Agudah. The key speaker was Rav Lieff of Agudah of Ave L
More depressing financial news in America, this time from the New York Times, Business Day:
ReplyDelete"Banks Brace for Fallout on Earnings
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ and ERIC DASH
Published: October 9, 2011
The protesters who have gathered for weeks near Wall Street and the highly paid investors and analysts in the buildings that surround them don’t agree on much.
But when it comes to the nation’s biggest banks, they have a lot more in common than you would think. Both are deeply frustrated with financial institutions in general and have little faith in the message coming from bank executives.
Earnings season is about to upset one of those groups even more. Never popular to begin with, the nation’s biggest banks are rapidly becoming a focus of public dissatisfaction with the economy, uniting opponents including consumers upset about new fees, protesters who blame the banks for the nation’s economic woes, and lately, Wall Street types who have dumped their bank shares en masse.
For banks, the situation is likely to get worse before it gets better. They are due to begin reporting earnings this week, and the numbers are likely to leave investors as frustrated as ever, making the banks even more desperate to impose new charges on consumers’ accounts and rack up bigger trading profits. Over all, revenue is expected to fall 4 percent in the third quarter, slipping back to 2005 levels, according to data from Trepp. The industry’s earnings are expected to be about what they were in late 2002.
The biggest banks are expected to be hit hard by a sharp slowdown in their Wall Street-related businesses because of the chaotic third quarter in the markets. But the growth prospects for traditional banking are not great either. Tough new federal regulations restricting overdraft charges and other penalties are already taking a big bite out of profits. And then there are the government-mandated cuts in once-lucrative debit-card swipe fees, which have prompted banks to try to recoup billions of dollars in lost revenue with increases like Bank of America’s controversial new $5 monthly debit card fee.
Besides leaving consumers infuriated, the debit card fees have also drawn the wrath of the White House, with President Obama warning last week that customers should not be “mistreated” in pursuit of profit, while Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. characterized moves to hit consumers with new charges “incredibly tone deaf.” Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, took the unusual step of denouncing Bank of America on the Senate floor, urging customers to “vote with your feet, get the heck out of that bank.”
Investors certainly have. Bank stocks are at lows not seen since the wake of the financial crisis, and shares of Bank of America, the nation’s biggest bank, are down more than 50 percent since the start of the year, while Citigroup is down more than 40 percent...investors...are increasingly focused on the consequences of prolonged unemployment of around 9 percent and an almost daily drumbeat of other grim economic data.
What is more, worries are rising that the debt troubles in Europe could infect the balance sheets of American financial institutions. Even though the banks insist their exposures are not a cause for alarm, investors have so little faith in the numbers banks have provided that their first reaction is to sell shares first, and ask questions later..."
Hard to remember such bitter financial chaos in the USA and Europe AT THE SAME TIME in the last 60 years if ever, and we need Rachamei Shomayim!