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Thomas Friedman's Obama Administration Update

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hyacine Avatar
hyacine
Posts: 5
Posted: 03.12.09, 03:36 PM
I found this talk pretty disappointing. I'm not a regular reader of Thomas Friedman's columns but I found his emphasis on fixing a system that at its best left millions of Americans disenfranchised while the rich just got richer disheartening.

What I want to see in future (from the Obama administration - though my hopes are quickly fading) is new ideas and the beginnings of a new system. We will not get the green and social justice changes the nation and world need through business as usual.

Friedman speaks of the banking and financial system as a benign force - the scaffolding we all rightly hang upon - when I see the system and many of the individuals who direct it as rapacious and amoral in their pursuit of profit. They have destroyed or are in the process of destroying everything.

Friedman correctly identifies the problems caused by a system based on consumption rather than production but has faith that the same heartless capitalists (only profit is important) would do better were they to turn their energies to greening the world. The reality is that it is the relentless pursuit of profit that has created our environmental problems - I have zero confidence that people with that frame of mind can fix them.

I guess Friedman just has more faith in the various players' good will than I do.
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Manna Avatar
Manna
Posts: 60
Posted: 03.12.09, 10:10 AM
Take-away quote from Thomas Friedman: "You put that much leverage, on that much globalization and wrap it in that much complexity and start it in America, and I tell you...Grandma never saw this before."
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And the knot comes loose...
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