Peter's Viewpoint

I must admit that the television show Dr. House offers fantastic dialogue and that the actors promote the issues of care and hope for all who happen to fall under the care of Dr. House.

While the television show provides mental entertainment with it's quip and glib puns at the medical profession and the pharmaceutical companies, it gives one the idea that hospitals are calm and smoothly run facilities.  I think that many people know that this is not the case especially where the hospital in this series is not a public hospital.

If people are to have hospitals facilities like those percieved to be run by Dr. Cutty rather than the existing public facilities that are like those we see on the television series ER (emergency room), then we would need to train groups like the unsatious staff that Dr. House has for every hospital in the world.  This of course would mean that the management strategy would be instilled in hospitals where only a minor segment of management now exists especially in the public sector.  The opposite would be humanistic.

Businesses have tried to adopt globalization and many have failed but as many doctors around the world are trained in western countries and many doctors from western countries are working in third world countries for experience, maybe the medical profession should try to globalize.  The basic parameters for medical globalization are more in tune for such a possibility for medical professionals and pharmaceutical companies that are already making profits based on lower costs of raw materials and manpower.  The economic crisis around the world is changing people and that includes medicine and doctors adjusting to the lesser fortunate.

More and more these days we are hearing new stories about the loss of freedom.  From China restricting and censoring youtube videos and forcing journalists to have chaperons to inhibit the publishing, to news about children being strip searched in the United States.  Now the latest news is that Germany has raided the home of Domain Owner Wikileaks.de to stop the information release of internet censorship lists.

There is a movement regarding the freedom of the Internet by a few groups that are campaigning to protect the rights of free speech and therefore the freedom to publicize, privacy issues and the Internet, transparency to protect against forms of corruption and illegal activities, the international freedom of the Internet, intellectual property and innovations.

Some are starting to believe that governments have begun a trend towards Internet censorship to reduce our freedoms.  We have seen the policies placed in effect by Bush administration that took the opportunity to do so as a protection against terrorism.

I believe that we must all keep a watchfull eye on all the governments of the world to avoid the big brother extreme nightmare of becoming a police state.

The New York Times posted "YouTube Blocked in China, Google Says".

The Chinese government is very clever.  They provide us with inexpensive labor enticing businesses to invest billions so that they can build factories with money that foreign investors provided to local companies.  They want to give the impression that communism is gone allowing Chinese millionaires to flaunt themselves to western misconception that capitalism reigns.  Yet, when it comes to spending money during a world-wide economic depression, they put their money safely in the bank and claim that they must continue the internal progress of their country.

Through our investments they provide us with extremely low cost products that people will buy without questioning quality for the most part and like adding honey to what the goods like an assassin bug they await until the moment that westerners will be overcome by the sweet smell of honey that they offer in pretence until the moment is right to violate our trust.

The latest loathsome news is a slap in the face of the economic crisis is the failure of company management to sincerely use funding to save businesses and therefore jobs.
Instead many of the companies endeavor to use public funding to issue bonuses to the people that created the problems.

Let’s recall what the major problems associated with this economic crisis.
Selfish greed by investors demanding excessive ROI – returns on their investments forcing management to tolerate and burgeon shekels or accept being a failure, over zealous bankers to secure insecure loan patrons and consequentially induce the housing crisis, the automotive industry and companies that have a guaranteed customer, the government, failing to control costs and affect change towards environment friendly issues that have been forthcoming for years, the over empowered unions that fail to act as a whistle-blower and simply abused the exceeding overpaid management as a leverage to increase their own wages assisting in the over pricing of US auto products, and let us not forget the fact that the majority of the US citizens voted an imbecilic ex-president into power for two consecutive periods, may they meet their Rhadamanthys.

The current failure of management to SERIOUSLY accept that no bonuses be paid to anyone associated with a company that has requested the assistance of the government is what I consider a major insult to the people in the USA and around the world, not to mention a smack in the face to President Obama.
Of course since the USA has become a tribunal society, there is absolutely nothing that anyone can do when legalities are involved and that means that any break in the current situation will mean requiring an exception to the rule to revoke agreements.

Consider the terribly painful situation that New Yorker’s faced on September 11th.  In 2005 I spent a few months back in NY and found something that I had not seen since my childhood, more caring and helpful New Yorkers.  Yes, the disaster created a psychological effect on the people of NY.  That effect returned characteristics of friendliness and a much warmer attitude among them that had been slowly lost because of the over bearing pressure that New Yorker’s faced as the financial capital of the world.  This exemplified the fact that greed became a rolling stone engulfing the humanity of people.

At the moment this situation is not about New Yorker’s only but the entire world and the fact is that the USA is still a leader even when China dissembles to be the capitalistic savior of the day.  If the USA throws the reset switch, then it will be the USA that will pay the heaviest price for the mistakes that it has made.

During the 80’s in the USA, we were all learning the meaning of saying NO.  We can use this psychologically accepted method of denial as a reset switch.

Does that mean that the reset switch should be thrown?  Doing it could bring humanity, dignity, and respect back.

The world is in an economic crisis and here we are watching the news.

It can be any country but it appears that the news media besides losing it's objectivity, fails to see the consequences that it may produce by stiring an uprising in people.

The news media in Greece has decided that President Obama is showing favoritism towards Turkey and has created turmoil on it's own between the three countries.

This reminds me of a movie "Dog Day Afternoon" where a bank robbery is turned into a media madness by a reporter creating a top story and having devastating results in the end.

The Greek media acts like children and should be punished by the Greek government for instigating political vexation at a time when grievous matters concern the welfare of people in all the countries of the world.

Greece and Turkey played the roles of good guys versus bad guys during the 1980's to manipulate political funding from the USA.  Those days are over and they should both consider their own solutions to their internal problems and should not attempt to use a visit by a President for their own political gain among their constituency.

I had a look at what the President of the United States of America receives as a salary and found that it is now around $400,000.00 dollars per year.

Many people might think that this is extremely low considering the responsibility that the job carries.  The logic of this salary level is that this person serves the country as a patriot and therefore should not and must not receive anything of inordinateness.

Considering the economic disaster that the board of directors, the c-level management, and other management of the companies that want to be saved by the governement, I beleive that the best management decision that should be  taken by the U.S. Government is not only to take a share in the businesses that will be supported by taxpayer money but to demand that all of the upper management of the companies recieving such support reduce their superfluos salaries to a maximum of $200,000.00 dollars with no additional incentives until they are able to repay the people of the USA and produce more conscientious stability.

At the same time, investors should not be forgotten as they have also played a major role in the greed of forcing management to produce extraordinary returns on their investments.  Investment short-term periods should be changed to make short term trading over a longer time period thereby stabilizing the market shares of companies and markets.  We no longer live in a world where information requires long time periods for verification and transactions to be effected.

Everyone knew that energy conservation was an idea started from the 70's when the oil industry started to use it's power as a monopoly with one of the world's natural resources that affected industrial growth.

These days we are reminded of that by the extremely right capitalistic pricing that raised oil prices to the $150 per barrel mark.

Isn't it amazing how after so many years we have to be reminded in the same disturbing way that we not enough research into other energy sources should have become a priority.  So why is that?  The answer is simply that the oil industry has a stranglehold on governments and this must be stopped.

While discussing this issue with other peers, one viable answer is that a price be set for oil that will allow it to be fair but at the same time be high enough to force everyone to use this resource in moderation.

On the business side, we have seen cyclical patterns of new ventures come and go and it appears that energy efficiency will be no exception.  As a by-product of the competition that will follow, hopefully the western nations will learn to conserve energy even though they maybe instilled with the idea that new energy sources means wasting is not only possible but good.

This planet called Earth has it's limitatons for every resource that we use.

When things get tough in Europe, the tough consider a new approach, the possibility of separation of states.

Europe has been divided industrially and economically as the USA was during the civil war era.  These days just when the results of improvement in the southern areas of Europe are more evident, the effects of the economic crisis produced faster results of decline then is obvious in the more afluent northern countries.  This displays how important it is for a country to have funding just as it is for individuals to have a healthy bank account for hard times.

At one time or another, Europeans knowing the above have considered having a northern and southern separation but never did with the thought of having one united states of Europe.  Until recently no member state would even consider the idea that once a member was instated, that there was no thought of being expelled.  Now again it appears that the European Parliament is returning to the "only the strong will survive" and as such the less fortunate member states may find themselves creating a secondary EU union of the south. 

Maybe we'll all get to see a newer production of "Gone with the wind" soon.

Just like bad bankers and other management of companies racing to take their bonuses while the taking is good. Could it be that they are reeling in the last of their big time funds for the rainy days to come?

Bloomberg the Mayor of New York City plans on increasing taxes at a time when people are hurting the most. These days when cities in the USA should be stream-lining to limit their populations and growth, and smaller cities increasing their own "market" share to attract both new business and people are failing to see the light.

Another group of politicians, namely the European Parliament and those of the European States have also kept their taxes extremely high around 18 to 20 percent as if taxes cannot be raised or lowered for the amount of work that they do. Ouuu, I hope that Bloomberg won't see this as he might consider doing the same.

Then they wonder why people revolt and I imagine that if the economies of the world continue to fall that so will the politicians, right off their podiums.

The idea to a better economy is to attract more spending and one more way to do this is to lower taxes.

We went to Madrid for the Christmas holidays and while there, we went to the Reina Sofia modern art museum.   I happened to come across a short continuous video clip produced by a Russian (difficult name sorry) that depicted the collapse of the Russia.  That video clip showed a metallic statue of Lenin being ripped off a pedestal with the people cheering on while not knowing what tomorrow might bring.  The artist managed to get his point across, at least I think so.

What will happen if tomorrow the people of America in Washington head to the Lincoln Memorial with a crane and rip Mr. Lincoln off his seated foundation?

America must rethink the degree of capitalism that has currently overstepped its bounds so that we do not have to witness an act like the one that has happened in Russia.

Sadly, a police officer shot and killed a 15 year old boy and that should not have happened.  The riots have extended to about 10 days and they are the beginning of the rebirth of democracy.

It was about time that this happened, and I know that this will be very hard for foreigners to understand, but it has to do with the problems that are created by the politicians, the church, and life styles.

Greed is a terrible thing and that is the spark that has started the fire.  There are too many corrupt politicians, and these days even the churches have joined in on the corruption.  The USA is not far off from having the same problems from what I have been seeing on Bloomberg, CNN, and the BBC.

Europe is facing another revolution these days since they continue to try to hold onto their medieval style calling it socialism while the politicians tax people to the hill and fail to reciprocate in many areas.  The riots here have already started to flow into France and will most likely head into other EU countries.

Unemployment is and will be higher because again unfortunately the European leaders play follow-the-leader while sadly the leader (the USA) is going off a cliff and the EU leaders are going blindly with them.

I could go on and on but there are too many issues.

Good to see you go Mr. Bush.

Once again, the temptation was just too great for what has to be the worse president in the history of the United States.

Mr. Bush will be leaving the presidency after creating one of the largest bills to taxpayers in the USA.

As any good business person knows, you never pump more funds into a dying or dead prospect but Mr. Bush couldn't care less because he knows that the problem will not be his but that of Mr. Obama and the American public.

Many assumptions are now being formulated but the truth of it is that it is better to have cut off a cancerous limb than to have it spread.

As for the American auto industry:

• reduce car engines to 1000, 1600, and 2000 cc's
• reduce auto workers salaries to about $40 per hour
• reduce executive pay, bonuses, and eliminate expense accounts

just  for a start and maybe you will have a chance at competing to stay alive.