[Assam] The engine must be rebuilt for the car to run..............

[Chan Mahanta]

I agree.

We have become a nation of  MANIPULATORS!  Making money with smoke 
and mirrors. That does not bode well.

>We need a buildup. We need to get back to making stuff, based on 
>real engineering not just financial >engineering.

Exactly!












At 9:53 AM -0700 9/28/08, Dilip and Dil Deka wrote:
>This article makes sense to me. The engine must be rebuilt for the 
>car to run, while the broken transmission is being fixed.
>Dilip
>====================================================================
>>From the NYT
>Thomas L. Friedman
>
>The late 20th century saw an Internet boom, bubble and bust. Some 
>people made money; many people lost money, but that dot-com bubble 
>left us with an Internet highway system that helped Microsoft, 
>I.B.M. and Google to spearhead the I.T. revolution.
>The early 21st century saw a boom, bubble and now a bust around 
>financial services. But I fear all it will leave behind are a bunch 
>of empty Florida condos that never should have been built, used 
>private jets that the wealthy can no longer afford and dead 
>derivative contracts that no one can understand.
>Worse, we borrowed the money for this bubble from China, and now we 
>have to pay it back - with interest and without any lasting benefit.
>Yes, this bailout is necessary. This is a credit crisis, and credit 
>crises involve a breakdown in confidence that leads to no one 
>lending to anyone. You don't fool around with a credit crisis. You 
>have to overwhelm it with capital. Unfortunately, some people who 
>don't deserve it will be rescued. But, more importantly, those who 
>had nothing to do with it will be spared devastation. You have to 
>save the system.
>But that is not the point of this column. The point is, we don't 
>just need a bailout. We need a buildup. We need to get back to 
>making stuff, based on real engineering not just financial 
>engineering. We need to get back to a world where people are able to 
>realize the American Dream - a house with a yard - because they have 
>built something with their hands, not because they got a "liar loan" 
>from an underregulated bank with no money down and nothing to pay 
>for two years. The American Dream is an aspiration, not an 
>entitlement.
>When I need reminding of the real foundations of the American Dream, 
>I talk to my Indian-American immigrant friends who have come here to 
>start new companies - friends like K.R. Sridhar, the founder of 
>Bloom Energy. He e-mailed me a pep talk in the midst of this 
>financial crisis - a note about the difference between surviving and 
>thriving.
>"Infants and the elderly who are disabled obsess about survival," 
>said Sridhar. "As a nation, if we just focus on survival, the demise 
>of our leadership is imminent. We are thrivers. Thrivers are 
>constantly looking for new opportunities to seize and lead and be 
>No. 1." That is what America is about.
>But we have lost focus on that. Our economy is like a car, added 
>Sridhar, and the financial institutions are the transmission system 
>that keeps the wheels turning and the car moving forward. Real 
>production of goods that create absolute value and jobs, though, are 
>the engine.
>"I cannot help but ponder about how quickly we are ready to act on 
>fixing the transmission, by pumping in almost one trillion dollars 
>in a fortnight," said Sridhar. "On the other hand, the engine, which 
>is slowly dying, is not even getting an oil change or a tuneup with 
>the same urgency, let alone a trillion dollars to get ourselves a 
>new engine. Just imagine what a trillion-dollar investment would 
>return to the economy, including the 'transmission,' if we committed 
>at that level to green jobs and technologies."
>Indeed, when this bailout is over, we need the next president - this 
>one is wasted - to launch an E.T., energy technology, revolution 
>with the same urgency as this bailout. Otherwise, all we will have 
>done is bought ourselves a respite, but not a future. The exciting 
>thing about the energy technology revolution is that it spans the 
>whole economy - from green-collar construction jobs to high-tech 
>solar panel designing jobs. It could lift so many boats.
>In a green economy, we would rely less on credit from foreigners 
>"and more on creativity from Americans," argued Van Jones, president 
>of Green for All, and author of the forthcoming "The Green Collar 
>Economy." "It's time to stop borrowing and start building. America's 
>No. 1 resource is not oil or mortgages. Our No. 1 resource is our 
>people. Let's put people back to work - retrofitting and repowering 
>America. ... You can't base a national economy on credit cards. But 
>you can base it on solar panels, wind turbines, smart biofuels and a 
>massive program to weatherize every building and home in America."
>The Bush team says that if this bailout is done right, it should 
>make the government money. Great. Let's hope so, and let's commit 
>right now that any bailout profits will be invested in 
>infrastructure - smart transmission grids or mass transit - for a 
>green revolution. Let's "green the bailout," as Jones says, and help 
>ensure that the American Dream doesn't ever shrink back to just that 
>- a dream.
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