The decline of US’s superpower status?

Some commentators have been writing even before the global financial crisis took hold that the US was in decline, as evidenced by its challenges in Iraq and Afghanistan, and its declining image in Europe, Asia and elsewhere.

The BBC also asked if the US’s superpower status was shaken by this financial crisis: The financial crisis is likely to diminish the status of the United States as the world’s only superpower. On the practical level, the US is already stretched militarily, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and is now stretched financially. On the philosophical level, it will be harder for it to argue in favor of its free market ideas, if its own markets have collapsed. Some see this as a pivotal moment.

The political philosopher John Gray, who recently retired as a professor at the London School of Economics, wrote in the London paper The Observer: “Here is a historic geopolitical shift, in which the balance of power in the world is being altered irrevocably.“ The era of American global leadership, reaching back to the Second World War, is over… The American free-market creed has self-destructed while countries that retained overall control of markets have been vindicated.” “How symbolic that Chinese astronauts take a spacewalk while the US Treasury Secretary is on his knees.”

Paul Reynolds, US superpower status is shaken, BBC, October 1, 2008 Yet, others argue that it may be too early to write of the US: The director of a leading British think-tank Chatham House, Dr Robin Niblett … argues that we should wait a bit before coming to a judgment and that structurally the United States is still strong. “America is still immensely attractive to skilled immigrants and is still capable of producing a Microsoft or a Google,” he went on. “Even its debt can be overcome. It has enormous resilience economically at a local and entrepreneurial level.“ And one must ask, decline relative to who? China is in a desperate race for growth to feed its population and avert unrest in 15 to 20 years. Russia is not exactly a paper tiger but it is stretching its own limits with a new strategy built on a flimsy base. India has huge internal contradictions. Europe has usually proved unable to jump out of the doldrums as dynamically as the US.“But the US must regain its financial footing and the extent to which it does so will also determine its military capacity. If it has less money, it will have fewer forces.”

Overview of Global Financial Crisis - Part 3

There is the argument that when the larger banks show signs of crisis, it is not just the wealthy that will suffer, but potentially everyone. With an increasingly inter-connected world, things like a credit crunch can ripple through the entire economy.

For example, people may find their mortgages harder to pay, or remortgaging could become expensive. For any recent home buyers the value of their homes are likely fall in value leaving them in negative equity, and many sectors may find the credit crunch and higher costs of borrowing will lead to job cuts. As people will cut back on consumption to try and weather this economic storm, yet other businesses will struggle to survive leading to further fears of job losses.

The real economy in many countries are already feeling the effects. Many industrialized nations are sliding into recession if they are not already there.

Overview of Global Financial Crisis - Part 2

Some of the bail-outs have also been accompanied with charges of hypocrisy due to the appearance of “socializing the costs while privatizing the profits.” The bail-outs appear to help the financial institutions that got into trouble (many of whom pushed for the kind of lax policies that allowed this to happen in the first place).

Some governments have moved to make it harder to manipulate the markets by shorting during the financial crisis blaming them for worsening an already bad situation. (It should be noted that during the debilitating Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, Asian nations affected by short-selling complained, without success that currency speculators—operating through hedge funds or through the currency operations of commercial banks and other financial institutions—were attacking their currencies through short selling and in doing so, bringing the rates of the local currencies far below their real economic levels.

However, when they complained to the Western governments and IMF, they dismissed the claims of the Asian governments, blaming it on their own economic mismanagement instead.) Other governments have moved to try and reassure investors and savers that their money is safe. In a number of European countries, for example, governments have tried to increase or fully guarantee depositors’ savings.

In other cases, banks have been nationalized (socializing profits as well as costs, potentially.) In the meanwhile, smaller businesses and poorer people rarely have such options for bail out and rescue when they find themselves in crisis. There seems to be little sympathy—and even growing resentment—for workers in the financial sector, as they are seen as having gambled with other people’s money, and hence lives, while getting fat bonuses and pay rises for it in the past. Although in raw dollar terms the huge pay rises and bonuses are small compared to the magnitude of the problem, the encouragement such practices have given in the past, as well as the type of culture it creates, is what has angered so many people.

Overview of Global Financial Crisis - Part 1

The global financial crisis, brewing for a while, really started to show its effects in the middle of 2008. Around the world stock markets have fallen, large financial institutions have collapsed or been bought out, and governments in even the wealthiest nations have had to come up with rescue packages to bail out their financial systems.

On the one hand many people are concerned that those responsible for the financial problems are the ones being bailed out, while on the other hand, a global financial meltdown will affect the livelihoods of almost everyone in an increasingly inter-connected world. The problem could have been avoided, if ideologues supporting the current economics models weren’t so vocal, influential and inconsiderate of others’ viewpoints and concerns.

Following a period of economic boom, a financial bubble—global in scope—has now burst.

A collapse of the US sub-prime mortgage market and the reversal of the housing boom in other industrialized economies have had a ripple effect around the world. Furthermore, other weaknesses in the global financial system have surfaced. Some financial products and instruments have become so complex and twisted, that as things start to unravel, trust in the whole system started to fail.

The extent of this problem has been so severe that some of the world’s largest financial institutions have collapsed. Others have been bought out by their competition at low prices and in other cases, the governments of the wealthiest nations in the world have resorted to extensive bail-out and rescue packages for the remaining large banks and financial institutions.

CERN : Is it going to affect us?

Recently the big bag enacting is conducted, it the biggest scientific experiment in this world. The main aim of this experiment is to know about the evolution of universe, mass, particles and so on. But unfortunately this experiment is not going in the way as like expected. It is started to work in some other way, in turn it's causing so many changes in the earth. Because of this they temporarily stopped the experiment. What you people think about this? Is it going to affect us?

How far blogging helps you?

Here I am going to share my blogging experiences with you all. There are so many plus and minus in blogging. But compared to plus, minus is less. Ya for me so many plus things are there through blogging. I am some what improved my English this is the very first point I should say here, second important point is earning money from blogging. Ya to say the truth blogging really helped me a lot to earn money and in turn it entirely changed my lifestyle now. Earning money is not only my aim, because even though i am earning money from blogs, at the same time i am really trying my best to put some useful and interesting posts in my blog. I hope that this post will help other bloggers a lot to know about earning money from blogs. Here i will list out some sites from which I am earning,

1. PayPerPost ,
2. SponsoredReviews ,
3. Smorty ,
4. Bloggerwave etc.,

These sites are just keep on increasing my bank balance. Still lot more are there......

For further details contact me at my mail ID, I am ready to clear all doubts.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::

....:::::.... Blogging, Earning, Enjoying ....:::::....
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.....::::: A common language to Speak :::::......

Many people in this world have different kind of tastes, trends, culture, customs, lifestyle, language and so on. The only thing which is commonly used as a language through worldwide by every one is Music. Language in the sense a medium to express our feelings, thoughts, expressions of our soul, love etc,. I don't know how many you will accept that "Music is the Global language which is common to every one". Many of us like certain kinds of music, artists, instruments.

In this post we will share our thoughts about music, our favorite songs, favorite music director and so on. Because for the last few months we all got really bored by seeing many different kinds of international problems and issues here in this blog, so for a change let us try this now. I want all of your cooperation particularly in this post. Read the below lines and then start to comment,

• First share your thoughts about music.
• Put the name of your favorite music director
• List out the songs that you like very much and if possible try to put some links to download those songs. So that all of us can enjoy it.

My comment

• It is a global medium which can be liked every where irrespective of culture, language, people, color and so on.
• My favorite music director is A R Rahman(in the photo).
• Some of the Songs that i like very much (Click on the songs to download) :

1. Dil Se - Dil Se
2. Maula Mere Maula - Anwar
3. Maa Tujhe Salam - Vande Mataram
4. Pray for me Brother - A R Rahman : Video
5. Pray for me Brother - A R Rahman : Audio
6. From the Inside - Meteora - Linkin Park
7. Addicted - Enrique Iglesias
8. Cleaning out my Closet - Eminem
9. Yellow - Coldplay
10. Engel - Rammstein

:::: I hope that all of you will enjoy it :::::

World : What's the Solution for Terrorism?

Our world is now facing so many problems because of so many things. But the main threat to our world is "Terrorism". Each and every part of our world is affected by terrorism. Because of the crisis between the countries, many innocent people are getting affected by this. From a new born baby to a old man are affected by terrorism. There is no exceptions for this. Many people have lost their lives and every thing.
Why it's happening like this?

What they are going to achieve through this?

Why the innocent people should get affected?

Each and every country and every one in this world should join their hands together to save our world from terrorism. But the sad thing is even some countries are supporting the terrorists to gain some thing through that.


I want you people to share your views about the terrorism from your point of view and the things that you have experienced in your country because of terrorism.

What's the solution for Terrorism?.

F.R.I.E.N.D.S

F.R.I.E.N.D.S

This is the best one that i have ever seen so far. It is the only entertainment for me with blogging too. No words to express our enjoyment that we had while watching the series. I think many of you know about this famous series, so there is a need to explain more about this, right? I am recommending this series to all the bloggers. Just watch it and have fun. All the seasons are really nice. It just depicts the friendship circle with lots of comedy, gossips and every thing. This is the must one to watch for all of us. It really helps me a lot to spend my free time in a joyful way. So people just try this....

Click here to get entire series .torrent file.

Blogging : Is it the right place to express our thoughts openly?

Now a days blogging is becoming very popular and mostly many people have started blogging today. But the main problem is how far this blogging world is giving freedom to write and to express our thoughts to this outside world. I don't know about other countries, but I am ready to talk about India. Here in India the freedom to write and the freedom to speak is really less. If we start to write any thing bad about politicians or some other thing means, then by the next second itself police will come and catch us regardless of not knowing any thing. This is the reason why many people are not interested to talk about the national issues here in India. Even though if we talk there is no use, that is secondary case. My point is if there is no freedom to do the thing whatever we like means, then what's the use of living in a country. So from this the politicians are concluding that "We will do whatever we like and we don't want any one to criticize us".

Recent issue : In India one boy wrote in his blog that "I hate these so and so poli***ns". Then using the IP address the police tracked him and he is arrested.

This is the reason i put this post here. You people just tell whether blogging is really the right media to express our thoughts openly to this outside world.

Are we running out of resources?

Because of our modernized society, increase in population, natural disasters, increase in more needs etc,. has changed ever thing in this planet. Many countries are running out of resources such as Electricity, Water, Food etc,. Due to these things our future is questionable now. And still we don't have any idea what we are going to do for our future. The answer is "No". We all should join our hands to make some arrangements for this and to bring our planet out from all the demands. That is our first duty now. But how many are willing to join their hands now? It's for sure that we all will live comfortably for next 10 or 15 years after that, no one knows what will happen?

What's the solution for this?

One World One Dream

Still one more week to go for Olympics 2008 to kick start. All preparations are ready and all sports persons are well prepared to face the challenges. Many countries are expecting this event a lot amidst of Terrorist attacks, Natural disasters and so on. Each and every citizen of the respective countries are expecting their country to win more medals in this competition. I think many of us are well known about the Olympic morale.

...::::: Participation is important, wining is not important ::::....

I want my fellow bloggers who are from various countries to share their thoughts about this event. And also share that how many medals you are expecting from your country. We will see that whether it's coming true or not.

Good Luck to every one

Rt Rev. Gene Robinson: The Gay Bishop

The Rt Rev. Gene Robinson
I believe all of us have ever heard of one of the most controversial figures in our present-day world. This person goes by the name Gene Robinson.

This is a rather controversial person because he is best known for being the first openly gay, non celibate priest to be ordained a bishop in a major Christian denomination.

He has caused such a stir in the Anglican Church that his being “an ordained gay bishop” threatens to break the church (The Anglican Church). This does not go down well with dyed-in-the-wool Anglican adherents.

This was well exhibited when he was not invited to the 10-yearly Anglican meeting led by the Archbishop of Canterbury sometime this month. Around 650 Anglican bishops were invited. But up to a quarter of those invited boycotted the meeting for they were angered at the presence of US bishops responsible for Bishop Robinson’s consecration. A controversial figure, isn’t he?

But this man, Gene, still sticks to his guns. There is no wavering in him. He believes that his sexual persuasion (homosexuality) augurs well with his tastes.

At this juncture it would be well to ask: Why would anyone choose to be gay? Is it a matter of choice or does this “trait” run in the DNA? I am in the dark about it.

The Notebook 2004

Many people got really bored by reading so many topics that are always based on international politics, problems etc,. So for a change here i am going to share my thoughts about this beautiful movie. This is undoubtedly the best love story I have ever seen. It is a masterpiece. Last week only i watched this movie it's really a superb one. No words to explain my joyness. The acting of Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams is awesome. After the last scene all of my friends some what cried, especially the girls (Are they too sensitive?). Ok let us come to our point, then i tried to gather some information about the film. Here some points about it,

"The Notebook is a 1996 American romantic novel by Nicholas Sparks that was later adapted into a popular romance film by the same name in 2004".

Click here to get .torrent file.

Happy Friendship Day

Happy Friendship Day to all of my fellow bloggers

World : Global Warming - Big Threat to us!

I don't how much importance you people are going to give to this topic. Anyway, fine, we will try to share our views about this main and critical issue that the whole world is facing now. It's none other than Global Warming. To say frankly, I really don't know what steps my country has taken till now to reduce global warming.

Our world was is so much affected by Global Warming. As we all know, it is caused by so much pollution, deforestation and so on. Very few people (and countries) are showing any interest towards this issue. One sad thing is even the world's most important countries are not ready to sign the agreement to get rid of Global Warming.Wham!

I know it's hard to get rid of it. What is your country doing towards reducing global warming?

What you think about Pre-Marital Sex?

I don't know how many of you will accept this concept "Pre-Marital Sex". If two people are loving each other means it's upto them whether they should have sex or not before marriage. No one is having rights to involve into that thing, because it's their personal matter. Here i am not going to tell or give any suggestions about Pre-Marital Sex, it's upto the people who involves in it. The thing that i needed from my fellow bloggers is what they think from their point of view about this issue. Are they ready to accept pre-marital sex concept in their life time? As i already told in one of my previous posts just leave the Broadminded thinking, Developed countries, Under developing countries etc,. Just say what you people think about it and what you feel about it.

My answer is : It's not needed for me

Note :

One World One Dream

Still one more week to go for Olympics 2008 to kick start. All preparations are ready and all sports persons are well prepared to face the challenges. Many countries are expecting this event a lot amidst of Terrorist attacks, Natural disasters and so on. Each and every citizen of the respective countries are expecting their country to win more medals in this competition. I think many of us are well known about the Olympic morale.

...::::: Participation is important, wining is not important ::::....

I want my fellow bloggers who are from various countries to share their thoughts about this event. And also share that how many medals you are expecting from your country. We will see that whether it's coming true or not.

Good Luck to every one

2012 - THE END

There is one rumour that is on many minds. It's none other than the predictions about "The End of our World in 2012". I don't know to what extent this is true. I read the book of Nostradamus, in which he predicted so many things that are going to happen in future. So many incidents have happened as he predicted, for example World Trade Center demolition in 2001 which is given in his book as a painting. He predicted that the World War 3 will be the end of this world, in which India is going to conquer every thing. In addition to this, the predictions based on Mayan Calendar says that 2012 is the end of our world.

Click on images for more information

Note : This post is fully based on the Nostradamus book and the articles that i have seen so far in net. I too don't have any idea about these predictions. So In Ritch's World is not responsible for any thing.

2012 - Is it the End of our World?