Elaine Meinel Supkis
It was just last June that the G7 Dwarves wondered outloud, what sovereing wealth was. So I wrote a long article explaining this. Now they are demanding sovereign funds be restrained by DRACONIAN rules! The US Treasury wants $75 to $100 billion so they can buy their buddy's bad mortgage CDOs. China's sovereign wealth grows another 45% and we still can't figure out how they do this. Hint: capital investment in labor-added manufacturing. Pure Adam Smith, guys! China's trade surplus rises and the US budget deficit rises! And Wall Street pirates switch gears and are now betting food and energy prices will shoot much higher thanks to the Treasury spending money wildly. Thanks, Paulson and Bernanke!
The United States is to call for draconian rules to control sovereign wealth funds, the vast, opaque, state-backed financial powerhouses that hold assets worth about $2.5 trillion (£1.2 trillion).The proposal will be made this week in Washington at the meeting of finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of Seven (G7) nations, The Times has learnt. Observers question whether such regulations will be able to rein in the funds.
There is increasing concern in Britain over the influence of sovereign funds. About half the shares in the London Stock Exchange are held by Qatar and Dubai, with the former close to acquiring J Sainsbury, the supermarket chain. Temasek, of Singapore, and the Chinese Development Bank both have stakes in Barclays.
This is part of the insideous plan to make me laugh to death. HAHAHA. Click here to see my article from early last summer, discussing the Treasury Department's discovery of 'sovereign wealth funds':The Treasury:
But reserves do not tell the whole story as they generally do not include Sovereign Wealth Funds. Sovereign Wealth Funds are not new – they have existed for over three decades, even if the term as such was only coined to my knowledge in 2005. What is new is the number of Sovereign Wealth Funds and their sheer current and projected sizes. Private analysts put current Sovereign Wealth Fund assets in a range of $1.5 – 2.5 trillion, which would bring total foreign assets held by sovereigns to roughly $7.6 trillion, or 15 percent of global GDP.
This old article of mine mocks the Treasury and the Federal Reserve for gravely misunderstanding the concept of 'Sovereign' and 'Funds'. Seems they think a mountain of debt is the same as a mountain of wealth. They think a sea of red ink is better than a sea of profits. But it isn't only our top officials who are blind to economic reality, our top economists are equally clueless.
http://elainemeinelsupkis.typepad.com/money_matters/2007/07/elaine-meinel-s.htmlHere is yet another story from even earlier last summer where I go bezerk, laughing at a Harvard story where they discuss the stupidity of holding giant FOREX reserves
From Harvard Magazine:Furthermore, as Summers points out, the real returns on these reserve investments, measured in those countries’ local currency and after adjusting for inflation, are close to zero. Why these countries are sending us their money—while choosing investments with returns so low that they could easily turn negative if the dollar were to depreciate significantly—is, he says, “a very profound question, in my judgment.”How these lenders to the industrialized world decide to act in the future has large implications for whether the imbalances sort out gradually or violently. Although their desire to lend and export is aligned for the moment with our consumerism, we cannot expect that they will want to keep accumulating dollar-denominated debt forever.
The “rational reason” for reserve accumulation by countries like China, says Kenneth Rogoff, Cabot professor of public policy and professor of economics at the KSG, “is that they are terrified of having a financial crisis and, by stocking up on Treasury bills, the government puts itself in a position to bail out banks and bail out companies in an emergency.”
Arf. I will laugh to death. This is just too silly. If there is any country on earth who should be worried about a fiscal melt-down, it isn't China. It is the US. But of course, the Federal Reserve can save everyone who is in debt by printing up dollars! All you have to do is add more zeros! Voila! Instant wealth. This way, the debtor nation can pay off everyone with worthless script. Germany tried this after WWI. Then they did route #2: bankruptcy. This destroyed all of Europe's banks. And the US, too! Then they used option #3: World War.
As these two articles clearly show, some of us figured out the painfully obvious without having pins stuck in our eyeballs or baseball bats applied to our foreheads. Now that professors of economics and government officials have finally figured out how wealth works, what are they doing?
They are trying to force our trade rivals to give us access to their private accounts! We want to know what the Dragon is doing. I am immensely amused to see the word 'draconian' used in the latest G7 Dwarves story! This is actually reverse-dragon talk. The Dragon does NOT want us to see what they are doing. We have to guess. Or the State Department and the White House can read my news service. They know very well who I am. We have chatted (they have spied on me) frequently in the past and they obviously need some guidance here.
First: the G7 Dwarves cannot ask for rules and regulations of other nation's Sovereign Wealth Funds when Her Majesty of England, the lady who is hitch hiking on the back of the US empire, runs aroun 30 island tax haven-pirate cove-hell hound caves all over the Seven Seas! If we want everyone to play open and let everyone see into everyone's finances and bank accounts, we should first apply this to OUR OWN DAMN FINANCES! Since nearly all the major corporate entities and financial wizard houses all sneak off to these DAMN islands to hide their books and to conceal what they are doing financially, we should first force them to obey rules, pay taxes, etc., etc., etceratatatata. Gads. My god. This just flabbergasts me.
England's stock market is half owned by Arab oil entities? Well, welcome to Lawrence Owned By Arabia! If the English wish to have the Queen squat in her palace while her fellow royals in distant lands the English tried to conquer and rule, end up ruling the English, this is merely that evil and bloody lady in charge of tracking and writing about our fates, Miz History, amusing herself. She likes to laugh at ironic turns of events. England, unable to tax the huge financial giants who park all their wealth far from Parliament's reach, has run up such huge debts, per capita, the English are deeper into debt than any other nation on earth. Their national debt is nearly as great as the US. The English live well beyond their means, individually, just like the US.
Here is another old article I wrote about all this: China And Arab Sovereign Wealth Troubles Our Rulers Again
Just the other day, I covered the amusing story about our Treasury officials and Reseve officers being puzzled about what 'sovereign wealth' really was. I got very sarcastic and suggested they look into the antique institution called 'FOREX reserves.' I was very annoyed about all this because these are the same liars and traitors who tell us debts don't matter, they are joined by a host of top economics professors like the fools I wrote about at Harvard, telling us we can run up debts to 100% (yikes in hell!) of our GNP and have no worries or problems. We will be super rich!
Well, these guys also claim leveraging everything in sight by dropping $533 trillion in debts on it all is a good thing, too, because it makes us (read: the guys snagging 10% off of these deals) very rich. Indeed, there has been a huge push on the part of the non-sovereign wealth nations to convince Japan, China, Russia and the oil pumping nations, it is bad to build up huge FOREX reserves. Indeed, our clever, lying, conniving little weasels in the economic pundit industry have been shrieking that big FOREX reserves are no good and foolish, they claim at Harvard, 'Why would anyone do this?'
Debts are now equal to 110% of their worth. Namely, they don't have any sovereign wealth. This is true of the US, too. Both nations have ruled the Seven Seas, first Britain and now the US and this is hideously expensive and both are still struggling to do this WITHOUT COLLECTING TAXES FROM THE RICH! This ludicrous situation is coming to an end: bankruptcy. Either we stop patrolling the planet or we take our fine navy and sail to all those islands and storm the banks and corporate offices there while parachuting paralegal accountants into every corporate Big Glass Tower in the US and England and then arrest the CEOs and seize all the books and then tax them to the point, we get around $17 trillion. Then we can pay off our collective national debts and begin working on our own Sovereign Funds!
But this won't happen. This stupid course we are charting will be our fates. The G7 are going to bark and fume and yell at Saudi Arabia and China until blue in the face. Of course, on top of this, Japan will join this barking while she madly figures out how to match China in this game. Then she will stab the other 6 dwarves in the back.
The short-term funding markets in the US and Europe might be starting to show signs of recovery but the sector that comprises one of their biggest groups of customers is still struggling to gain re-entry.The structured investment vehicles (SIVs) that just three months ago represented a more-than-$400bn industry have been struggling to raise new short-term commercial paper since about mid-July, and consequently have been forced to sell assets - sometimes at firesale prices.
All our corporate entities made lots of money for off-shore tax haven trillionaires by piling on an epic amount of debt. All businesses need to roll over debt. It allows them to run their finances without having to save any sovereign wealth. They just have a bank forward some cash so they can then use it in the short run. This means the CEOs can give themselves giant pay raises. I remember when the president of Home Depot messed up that company to the point, I hate shopping there and I have spent many thousands and thousands of dollars there over the years, he got a $300 million golden parachute. Obviously, there is a lot of money sloshing around the executive suites. But they don't want to use this money for running things, so they get these short-term loans. Now there is no money for this process because OUR DAMN BANKING SYSTEM HAS COLLAPSED.
Several of the world’s biggest banks are in talks to put up about $75 billion in backup financing that could be used to buy risky mortgage securities and other assets, a move designed to ease pressure on a crucial part of the credit markets that still looms over the broader economy.
*snip*
Senior executives from each of the banks have attended meetings in Washington and New York hosted by Robert Steel, the Treasury undersecretary for domestic finance and a former Goldman Sachs banker who is a close adviser to the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson.The group has also sought input from others. Several big international banks, including Barclays and HSBC, have been asked about their interest in participating. The group has also reached out to several of the major structured investment vehicles, as well as big institutional investors in the money markets, like Fidelity. The Federal Reserve has been aware of the talks but has not been playing an active role in the discussions.
The effort to create a backup fund began at the behest of Mr. Paulson. The freeze in markets for commercial paper had shown very limited signs of thawing, but Wall Street firms were having almost no luck finding buyers for mortgage-backed securities and derivatives.
So they have to make up something to replace the dying banking system and make money out of thin air since the banks can't create it anymore, their magic wands are broken, their magic chants, even doing things backwards, don't work. All the dark arts are failing. So they are meeting frantically to figure out some way of saying, 'Hocus pocus, we need $400 billion right away, thank you, Lord Demon of the Dark!' They just boosted inflation by magically producing nearly a trillion dollars from mid-August to mid-October. But it wasn't enough.
So we have a situation whereby China and the Arabs are producing huge sums of Sovereign Wealth while the US/EU/UK produce huge sums of debts and red ink. I see a bad ending to all this. Paulson should demand his stupid buddies who have tax haven funds, the trillion and billionaire buddies who hang out at Goldman Sachs, he should have THESE clowns buy up all the crappy mortgages and the crappy derivatives they created themselves. They benefitted from the sales of these stupid things, they should take them back. But the plan is for they all to stay trillion and billionaires while we get stuck with all this garbage they created. All the thrashing about by the bankers and the speculators isn't about them eating losses but their desperate attempts to unload this mega-mess on YOU AND ME.
Ergo: this is a crime. The crooks want to stick us up and then run off to their tax havens and laugh at us. The financial system is in collapse because THEY refuse to buy these junk bonds. But they can't unload them. I am just enraged at all this. There is a simple solution: they eat these bonds, they die and then we sail off to their islands and confiscate their bank accounts. Voila! We get 'Sovereign Wealth' and they are gone. Make honest men of these rich guys who think they are so smart. But this won't happen.
China's foreign exchange reserve had reached 1.43 trillion U.S. dollars by the end of September, up 45.1 percent year-on-year, the People's Bank of China announced on Friday.A total of 367.3 billion U.S. dollars were added to the country's foreign exchange reserve in the first nine months of 2007, said the central bank.
The Dragon laughs at the G7 talking about 'draconian laws.' Draco will write our laws in the bitter end when the Dragon wins the struggle for economic dominance. Inevitably, the Chinese will best us despite all their present problems. This is a certainty because China has...SOVEREIGN WEALTH. And we have a mountain of debts and the Treasury is run by crooks who plot to keep our own wealth in the hands of tax cheats using English Crown territories run by Queen Elizabeth II.
Group of Seven financial chiefs will rack their brains to find ways to quell fears of a credit crunch stemming from the U.S. subprime mortgage loan problem and prevent a recurrence of such ills when they gather for a regular meeting in Washington next week.Market players are also closely watching how finance ministers and central bank governors from the G-7 industrialized countries will assess the current state of the global economy and the outlook amid lingering effects of the subprime loan-linked turmoil in global financial markets.
The Japanese are watching all this with bated breath. They wonder, will the US/EU/UK Axis figure things out and turn on them before they finish building Fortress Japan? Should the Bank of Japan make a secrect visit again with the Dragon to discuss secret schemes dealing with sovereign wealth and huge FOREX reserves? I would think the other 6 dwarves better sit down with the Depressed Dwarf and have a little chat. The subprime turmoil isn't 'lingering' except in the sense of La Traviata, the soprano dying of consumption lingering as she dies. *cough* *cough*
If the G7 want to prevent housing bubbles, all they must do is have DRACONIAN laws about mortgages: 20% down and no more secondary mortgages the go above 80% of the value of the house plus the first mortgage. Then there is this 20% cushion to prevent panic sales as the value of a house drops. And of course, draconian laws about income verification, etc. And all those Depression-era laws must be reinstated and finally, arrest all the people who created this bubble in the first place starting with Alan Greenspan. Then we might see improvement in the banking systems. But this won't happen.
China's trade surplus hit 185.65 billion U.S. dollars in the first nine months, surpassing the full-year figure in 2006, the General Administration of Customs said Friday.September's trade surplus, though 1.06 billion U.S. dollars less than the previous month, reached 23.91 billion U.S. dollars, up 56.3 percent from the same period a year ago.
Last year, China's trade surplus soared 74.2 percent to a record 177.47 billion U.S. dollars.
Exports in the Jan.-Sept. period rose 27.1 percent year on year to 878.2 billion U.S. dollars, while imports were up 19.1 percent to 692.6 billion U.S. dollars.
This year's trade volume is likely to reach a record two trillion U.S. dollars, compared with 1.76 trillion U.S. dollars in2006, said analysts.
And this is what history is all about: China surging forwards while the US and Europe fall backwards. Our finances are increasingly messy and antiquated while China runs a totally different game. The US doesn't even have a national bank. The Fed is a private bank complex that gets to operate above and beyond the government while the rich looters who are refusing to pay taxes while our government overspends, run the Treasury. Europe is hopelessly fractured and can't marshal its own funds to protect its own currency from overvaluation while England is Sleepy, the Dwarf who can't wake up from its mad imperial dreams. So China and others imitating the UAE are building up Sovereign Wealth and or industrial bases while jobs drain out of the US/EU/UK sector. The Axis of Empires in the West are engaged in wars all over the Muslim world hoping to steal or control oil or holy lands and this is bankrupting them and they wonder why the banking system is collapsing. They imagine, if they just talk a lot, saying that things are under control, the banking system isn't collapsing and there is no inflation and the sudden loss of 'liquidity' was a mere glitch, but this won't do the trick.
Sales of Treasuries may increase for the first time since 2004 as the U.S. federal budget deficit expands, jeopardizing the biggest bond rally in five years.Government auctions of bills, notes and bonds in the fiscal year that started this month may rise more than 50 percent to $220 billion, according to UBS Securities LLC, one of the 21 primary dealers that underwrite Treasury auctions. The first decline in corporate tax revenue since 2003 increased the shortfall by 12 percent to $162.8 billion for the year ended in September, from $144.8 billion in the 12 months through April.
What can I say? Many years ago, I was laughed at for yelling about running huge budget deficits during good times. As the rich got much richer, we were told, the extra $8 trillion in red ink we accumulated since Ronnie Reagan took over, was no big deal. Our debts grew eight fold and this was no problem. Now we are running more in the red which is what happens when things go bad. So what does our government do? Does it run out and dig out the wealth accumulated offshore by these guys? Or does it dump MORE debt on top of the mountain of debts? And we want to control China's Sovereign Wealth? Hahaha.
AS chief operating officer of the California Department of Finance, Fred Klass gets pitches from Wall Street bankers as often as the rest of us might get cold calls from telemarketers or insurance agents. But when Kathleen Brown of Goldman Sachs came to his office earlier this year and suggested privatizing the state lottery, Mr. Klass listened closely.t wasn’t merely because Ms. Brown happened to be a former state treasurer as well as the daughter of one famous California governor and the sister of another. What really appealed to him was the bonanza that Ms. Brown said the state might snare by leasing its lottery: a cool $14 billion to $18 billion.
Gambling spread along with the red ink. Everyone at first resisted this force because wise people could see, gambling is a curse, not a blessing. But the need for tax revenues as more and more US traitors ran off shore to hide their profits, so gambling was seized upon as a great way to get money without raising taxes. One by one, laws prohibiting gambling fell. Las Vegas became one of the hottest real estate markets in America. Gambling barges that had to be offshore, swept inland by hurricanes, were rebuild on land. Insidiously, this debilitating vice spread until all our convenience stores are ipso facto lottery machines and our entertainment centers are gambling houses.
This doesn't increase wealth, it fritters it away. And since it rewards dumb luck, it undermines the work ethic. Now the government is giving up on the pretense of doing this for school lunches, etc. It is now 'farming it out' and then the money vanishes into the maw of the government. In turn, the corporate pirates with their offshore accounts will run these lotteries...so they can skim them for loot and this means taking as much money of the winnings for THEMSELVES. So if you won a jackpot of $50 million, it will be minus another $10 million skimmed off the top of the total. How dare they do this?
Click here to see an ad for learning how to gamble in FOREX differentials:
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I remember when no one did this. Changing money was a pain in the neck. You did it only when you had to do it, if you were an American. Then, by 1974, sudden lurches in the value of the dollar made money games a vital tool in staying ahead of the game. The more unstable world currency values are, the bigger this game gets and it is now ballooning vastly. Everyone and their neighbor is doing this now. It is very much like gambling. Betting on which way a currency might move is a fool's game. Some people get very rich doing this, they are usually people 'inside the know' who know the chief players. They are the ones who are friends of Paulson and can get phone calls right on the heels of Paulson twisting Bernanke's arms.
As more people enter this game and as it grows, it gets more dangerous. Sudden lurches in money value are going to increase as everyone rushes the exits when a panic sets in and the whole world is on the verge of a massive panic attack.
From Gold Eagle via reader Scott:
"More fund investment in agricultural markets in 2008," says Lehman Brothers, now launching a "Pure Beta Index" to buy long-dated futures in 20 soft commodities..."Funds' take-up of commodity indices to rise 20%," says the Financial Times, quoting Eric Kolts at Standard & Poor's. Global pension-fund investment in commodities will reach $160 billion, he believes, in 2008...
I-N-F-L-A-T-I-O-N. Bernanke could announce that he is going to include food and fuel in all inflation calculations. This would help a great deal. The need to tell the truth is of great importance. It is hilarous that the G7 want China to tell the truth about its funds and finances but they all turn around and lie about their own. The Fed's excuse for not including food and fuel is, 'They are unstable.' Well, they seem to be 'unstable' in one direction: up. Time to fez up and bring the numbers back to reality-land. Indeed, many of the spiralling problems that are now ripping apart the world's banking systems can be ultimately traced to this business of lying about statistics.
Via reader Jim, the NY Housing Bubble Blog links to my own. Enjoy.
Last of all, here is a White House release I find darkly amusing:
Fostering Cooperation and Reducing Regulatory BurdensIn light of our shared commitment to removing barriers to transatlantic commerce; to rationalizing, reforming, and, where appropriate, reducing regulations to empower the private sector; to achieving more effective, systematic and transparent regulatory cooperation to reduce costs associated with regulation to consumers and producers; to removing unnecessary differences between our regulations to foster economic integration; to reinforce the existing transatlantic dialogue structures in regulatory cooperation both by intensifying our sector-by-sector EU-U.S. regulatory cooperation and our dialogue between the U.S. Office of Management and Budget and European Commission services on methodological issues: we resolve to achieve the goals set out in Annex 1 in a timely manner.
The US and Europe all want China and the Arabs to have MORE regulation while the US and the other dwarves want LESS regulations! As the US and its weaker colonies in Europe try desperately to merge, they imagine this will give them more power. But alas, the merger is only going to weaken them all since they are all bent on running up huge debts as if they are still able to enslave Africans, steal all the wealth of Africa, enslave South Americans and steal all the gold and silver there and of course, loot China and India. This stubborn refusal to face reality and understand, we are all overspending and we are all trying to have our cakes and eat them, too, well, some of us. This inability to face reality means we will be contradictory and childish.
The White House document about these negotiations is pure hogwash from top to bottom. Europe is flailing away at Russia right now while trying to figure out how to get more energy from the Middle East yet also wanting to control the Sovereign Wealth of the Middle East and then conspiring with the US to do this via warfare, etc. It is all so pathetic.
Given the churning turmoil of global markets sparked by the U.S. subprime crisis, soaring oil prices and a renewed strength by foreign currencies, it might seem appropriate that any of those issues could figure in determining the winner of this year's Nobel economics prize.
So far, they haven't contacted me. My dad was part of their ceremonies a few years ago. But they won't call me. Rats. I could use the money. But this story turns hilarious:
"It is so hard to predict. Last year it went to the labor market area, so perhaps it will be statistics this time, but then again the securities market hasn't won for about 10 years," said Hubert Fromlet, the chief economist of Swedbank in Stockholm.Speculation on this year's prize has included economists who deal with international trade, macroeconomics and the labor market, among others.
Fromlet said Jagdish Bhagwati, a noted proponent of free trade and critic of opponents of globalization, was one of his favorites.
They should give it to Hu. He, not this Jagdish guy, is the true revolutionary who has taken politics and economics and welded them into a massive, powerful machine. He, not Jagdish, has figured out how to create and then use Sovereign Wealth! He has figured out how to use diplomacy and private arm twisting to get things moving in directions that lead to greater wealth and power. Jaddish needs to go to a WTO meeting with no military or cops to protect him from screaming mobs of residents in the G7 dwarf nations.
As for handing out an award for the securities markets: arrest warrants are called for, rewards should be put on posters, 'For the Capture and Arrest of Paulson and Bernanke, notorious train robbers, $500'. And statistics: we don't need some genius figuring out the obvious. That award should also go to the Chinese. They invented both paper money and the abacus.
I believe the arrest warrants is called Mandate of Heavens (by the Chinese). Hyperinflation is also a Chinese discovery during the Yuan dynasty - they had a similar system to Central Bank...all gold and silver belongs to central authority and ordinary folks uses the paper currency..
And a belated Happy birthday to u!!
Posted by: OC | October 15, 2007 at 03:39 AM
Elaine, the Riksbanken prize of economics in honour of Alfred Nobel, has been awarded since 1969 to mostly Americans. I bet they have had a big hand in shaping the economic system that we will have to suffer the consequences of. Probably the world would have been better off if this fake prize never had seen the day. Understanding economy is really a lot of common sense, and you won't get the prize for that. No, it should be extremely complex magical formulas and vague theories suitable for the ivory towers. Maybe you get the prize when the ivory towers fall, and you might be able to buy a loaf of bread with the money. :)
Posted by: Neuro Artist | October 15, 2007 at 05:23 AM
Elaine, the difference between the Western elite and the Eastern elite factions (China, Russia, India, notice no Japan) can be clearly seen in this latest piece of yours. The Western elite operate on entitlement without ownership. They are there to take without giving anything back, as they believe it is their God-given right.
The Eastern faction is of another mindset, they accept and believe the concept of productivity and growth being part and parcel of the symbiotic relationship between the masses and the elite. They know that strangling the goose that lays the golden egg is counter-productive, unless you are stupid or shortsighted. I suspect the Western faction is both.
In China, if you decide to invest in a factory, the Chinese government will sell you the property for the factory site (they being the only landowners). If you pay them in full with foreign exchange, the the Chinese banks will offer you a loan using the property as collateral (using a valuation based on a 5 year forward appreciated value), at 80% of property value, with an interest rate of 2% per annum! Yes, 2%! Of course, they also put in an auditor to monitor your operation (to keep you honest), no Wall Street hell hound free money shenanigans at the expense of the unwashed masses here.
They will also loan you money against your forward purchase orders at 2% interest per annum. What a deal! This way they create jobs, productivity, collect taxes, and spur economic growth. Their government is behaving as all governments should for the people of the country; not for the elite only. Oh, and the Eastern elite ARE nationalistic. They are not mercenary like their Western counterparts. It is capitalism at its best.
I am not saying their system is perfect or corruption free, but it openly and clearly makes an effort visible to all with eyes,
to serve the people they govern.
Btw, I still believe Japan is playing pretend with the US; they will be completely assimilated into the Eastern mix, soon. By design, not the lack of it. When one plays for keeps, one has to play the role they're given to the hilt.
Posted by: Carlos | October 15, 2007 at 05:47 AM
Thanks, Carlos.
Japan gives its JAPANESE home investors 2% or less interest loans, too. This is how they subsidize industrialization. The Americans and Brits pile on debts at the highest rate of interest possible but then they see this is failing so they want the Fed to misstate inflation so they can get money cheap, here.
The free trade game is being played by different rules by all the major parties. And it amuses me that the West is screaming for clarity and openess even as they refuse to practice what they preach.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | October 15, 2007 at 08:26 AM