Opinions
Obama’s Dilemma
No surprise! Most Blacks are Democrats and over 90% have voted for previous white Democratic candidates. Why didn’t these morons complain before? The acid will not stop; it is big business and feeds on hatred and rage.
Obama’s transition has unfortunately coincided with the greatest American disaster since 1929. This will test his mettle just as the Depression challenged FDR in the thirties. Obama’s campaign promises become even more pertinent now, and fulfilling them could conflict with measures taken to tackle financial issues.
Obama’s transition has unfortunately coincided with the greatest American disaster since 1929. This will test his mettle just as the Depression challenged FDR in the thirties. Obama’s campaign promises become even more pertinent now, and fulfilling them could conflict with measures taken to tackle financial issues.
This raises serious concerns. Obama has too many Clinton people and Wall Streeters, on stage and in the wings, like Greeks bearing gifts. He must maintain focus on why and how he got there; if he forgets he’ll be dumped faster than a hot potato, and that would be a pity, for he has kindled hopes of better, kindlier times. His campaign said it all: Change! Change from the arrogance and deafness of the Bush administration. Change from an economy controlled by free-rolling Wall Street robber-barons to one that works for all, fairly and justly. Change in international affairs from policies based on corporate domination, from simplistic and doctrinaire segregation of nations into “us and “them”, from paternalism and cabals to rapprochement and partnership. Change to protect the middle and lower classes and consumers and improve education, health care coverage and accessibility. Change in energy policy and towards a green environment. Change from war to diplomacy and a halt to arms build-ups and the militarization of space. These are high expectations, massive challenges that call for patience, altruism and wisdom not evident so far among US leaders. Thus Obama must come up with CHANGE in key Cabinet appointments: Secretaries of the Treasury, State, Defence, Homeland Security, Energy, Justice and resist re-cycling tainted people from the Clinton period - Lawrence Summers, Robert Rubin, Tim Geithner etc. - who with Alan Greenspan must be blamed for current financial and other crises.
These men promoted and Clinton signed the repeal of FDR's 1933 Glass-Steagall Act and on November 12, 1999 he signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act. In 2000 just weeks before demitting office he signed the Gramm-Lugar Commodity Futures Modernization Act. (Gramm was McCain's first choice for Secretary of the Treasury.) These Acts allowed unregulated trading in financial services and commodities including credit default swaps (CDS, whereby financial institutions “could freely invest in each others businesses as well as fully integrate their financial operations”, and prevented regulators from scrutinising trades that were simply financial adventurism. These three Acts led to financial collapses of the past few years: from Enron in 2001 to today’s meltdown. The proponents were opposed by little-known Brooksley Born, head of Commodity Futures Trading Commission who advised regulation of trading in derivatives and CDS, doubting the ability or desire of wholesale traders (i.e. exchanges, commercial banks) to self-regulate when they could so easily hide their transactions and profits. Last October Greenspan admitted that Born was right.
The position of Treasury Secretary should be offered to Warren Buffet, (who five years ago remarked that derivatives were “financial weapons of mass destruction”), or failing him Laura Tyson (Haas School of Business, California) or Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairwoman Sheila Bair, or Born. In like vein Bill Richardson should be offered State, Powell Defence, and fresh talent found for other key appointments. Hillary could be offered Homeland Security or head of the FDA.
Wedding invite ingrained in handful of rice
Among the traditions ingrained in our lives when I was a boy in Trinidad was making preparations to attend a wedding. Now despite everyone knowing a wedding was happening in two weeks, and that entire villages were invited by default, the moment was still looked to when the actual invitation arrived.
In this time, when I was younger and not as sophisticated, a wedding involving intervening and numerous villages miles apart meant the invitees could be close to a thousand people. That meant a lot of invitations; but in my day this was no big deal – it did not take postage, the printed wedding invitation still reeking of ink as it was put in one envelope, the embossed RSVP a separate card in a smaller stamped envelope, and yet a smaller card indicating the location of the wedding registry.
In this time, when I was younger and not as sophisticated, a wedding involving intervening and numerous villages miles apart meant the invitees could be close to a thousand people. That meant a lot of invitations; but in my day this was no big deal – it did not take postage, the printed wedding invitation still reeking of ink as it was put in one envelope, the embossed RSVP a separate card in a smaller stamped envelope, and yet a smaller card indicating the location of the wedding registry.
Neither was it like today where a faceless invitation arrives via email, popping up in an Inbox as part of a general carbon copy mailout, the RSVP requiring a click of the Reply button, the wedding registry a hyperlink embedded in the email pointing to a securely encrypted website where gift choices can be browsed and purchased online using a credit card.
Fact is, when I was a boy a wedding invite was a simple event – I would be sitting in our verandah, and looking down the road to see a barefooted old man laboriously walking from house to house through the village. Since there were no doorbells in those days, he called out while rattling the front gate.
“Morning?” he would call in inquiry. This he did with toothless mouthing, throwing his voice up wooden front stairs pass me sitting in the verandah populated with drooping croton plants, and through a half-opened front door. It was apparent that he was experienced at penetrating through the long living room where our radio was blaring a Hindi love song and into the wood-smoky kitchen in the back. He received a reply from my mother pitched in the same inquiring tone, even as our old dog that was half-asleep under the house had pricked up its ears and opened a lazy, rheumy eye.
“Yes? Morning?” It was a typical response from housewives like my mother whose hands were buried in the suds of washing dishes. She would continue responding to his call as she walked to the front window to part the heavy curtain and peep down to the street.
“Yes?”
“I come to invite you to Ramlal daughter’s wedding, bahin.”
“I coming down. Just let me tie the dog – he bite the postman yesterday. I don’t have passage money to put you in a hired car to take you to the hospital.”
On the old man’s shoulder would be slung a large white cloth tied with a knot to make a sack. He would reach into this and take out a few grains of uncooked rice that had been dyed yellow. This he put carefully into my mother’s palm while he kept a cautious, discoloured eye on the dog.
It was a solemn moment, this transferring of the grains of rice. It was an act that came from a tradition that was reverenced in the arc of his hand as he dipped it officially into the yellow rice; it was evident in the meticulous way his long fingers retained a few grains while the others fell back into the sack. It was noticeable in the attentiveness from my mother to the information he was giving her about the location of the wedding. She was nodding her head as she examined the grains of rice. The old man would recite, as in a ritual, the details of the upcoming wedding: its participants, the Friday evening date for the exciting matikor, the time for the ceremonial trip with the bride-to-be to the river bank, the preparations needed for the cooking night; and details about the wedding day itself. This he all repeated despite that it was already known for miles around.
In our house, plans were already in place weeks before. The invitation itself was merely a subscript in an age where its delivery was part of an interlocking series of ceremonies and events we had always known and dutifully maintained. For us a trip had already been made to the market a few Saturday mornings before for new clothes, the cotton of the shirt and pants holding a delicious smell of the faraway place where it had been grown and spun in India. Too, my mother had bought “a dress length” of shiny cloth. For her, this meant long evenings coaxing a new dress out of a cranky, uncooperative sewing machine. She was unapproachable then, her mouth bristling with headpins, the floor dangerously littered with broken sewing machine needles among scraps of cloth; fine pieces of multi-coloured thread remained caught on the splinters on the floorboards for weeks after the wedding had come and gone.
This was all in place even as the steadfast old man delivered invitations – which in the end took less than a handful of yellow rice.
Fact is, when I was a boy a wedding invite was a simple event – I would be sitting in our verandah, and looking down the road to see a barefooted old man laboriously walking from house to house through the village. Since there were no doorbells in those days, he called out while rattling the front gate.
“Morning?” he would call in inquiry. This he did with toothless mouthing, throwing his voice up wooden front stairs pass me sitting in the verandah populated with drooping croton plants, and through a half-opened front door. It was apparent that he was experienced at penetrating through the long living room where our radio was blaring a Hindi love song and into the wood-smoky kitchen in the back. He received a reply from my mother pitched in the same inquiring tone, even as our old dog that was half-asleep under the house had pricked up its ears and opened a lazy, rheumy eye.
“Yes? Morning?” It was a typical response from housewives like my mother whose hands were buried in the suds of washing dishes. She would continue responding to his call as she walked to the front window to part the heavy curtain and peep down to the street.
“Yes?”
“I come to invite you to Ramlal daughter’s wedding, bahin.”
“I coming down. Just let me tie the dog – he bite the postman yesterday. I don’t have passage money to put you in a hired car to take you to the hospital.”
On the old man’s shoulder would be slung a large white cloth tied with a knot to make a sack. He would reach into this and take out a few grains of uncooked rice that had been dyed yellow. This he put carefully into my mother’s palm while he kept a cautious, discoloured eye on the dog.
It was a solemn moment, this transferring of the grains of rice. It was an act that came from a tradition that was reverenced in the arc of his hand as he dipped it officially into the yellow rice; it was evident in the meticulous way his long fingers retained a few grains while the others fell back into the sack. It was noticeable in the attentiveness from my mother to the information he was giving her about the location of the wedding. She was nodding her head as she examined the grains of rice. The old man would recite, as in a ritual, the details of the upcoming wedding: its participants, the Friday evening date for the exciting matikor, the time for the ceremonial trip with the bride-to-be to the river bank, the preparations needed for the cooking night; and details about the wedding day itself. This he all repeated despite that it was already known for miles around.
In our house, plans were already in place weeks before. The invitation itself was merely a subscript in an age where its delivery was part of an interlocking series of ceremonies and events we had always known and dutifully maintained. For us a trip had already been made to the market a few Saturday mornings before for new clothes, the cotton of the shirt and pants holding a delicious smell of the faraway place where it had been grown and spun in India. Too, my mother had bought “a dress length” of shiny cloth. For her, this meant long evenings coaxing a new dress out of a cranky, uncooperative sewing machine. She was unapproachable then, her mouth bristling with headpins, the floor dangerously littered with broken sewing machine needles among scraps of cloth; fine pieces of multi-coloured thread remained caught on the splinters on the floorboards for weeks after the wedding had come and gone.
This was all in place even as the steadfast old man delivered invitations – which in the end took less than a handful of yellow rice.