Friday, October 05, 2007
Posted: 09:26 AM
(RTTNews) - On Friday, The Carlyle Group announced that it completed its third and largest venture and growth capital fund, which is launching with a $605 million war chest for early stage venture capital, expansion stage growth capital and growth buyout transactions.
The Carlyle Venture Partners III L.P., 'will help its portfolio companies expand by using Carlyle's global platform and domain expertise in such sectors as telecom and media, defense and aerospace, automotive and logistics, energy, technology and business services to help its companies expand internationally and grow sales,' the private equity firm said.
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When is the corruption of this White House going to stop? When will someone impeach Bush and Cheney? After all, whom is going to profit from the surveillance in the first place ?
White House Fights Democratic Changes to Surveillance Act (click here)
By Dan EggenWashington Post Staff Writer Thursday, October 11, 2007; Page A04
President Bush and other Republicans stepped up their attacks on Democratic legislation that would require more oversight of surveillance within U.S. borders that is directed at foreign targets, escalating a partisan battle over the boundaries of U.S. spying.
In separate votes along party lines, the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees approved bills that would require the government to get approval from a special intelligence court for blanket surveillance of targets overseas. Supporters say the legislation is needed to safeguard the rights of innocent U.S. citizens who may be caught up in such surveillance....
Carlyle's way Making a mint inside "the iron triangle" of defense, government, and industry. (click here)
By Dan Briody January 8, 2002
Like everyone else in the United States, the group stood transfixed as the events of September 11 unfolded. Present were former secretary of defense Frank Carlucci, former secretary of state James Baker III, and representatives of the bin Laden family. This was not some underground presidential bunker or Central Intelligence Agency interrogation room. It was the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, D.C., the plush setting for the annual investor conference of one of the most powerful, well-connected, and secretive companies in the world: the Carlyle Group. And since September 11, this little-known company has become unexpectedly important.
That the Carlyle Group had its conference on America's darkest day was mere coincidence, but there is nothing accidental about the cast of characters that this private-equity powerhouse has assembled in the 14 years since its founding. Among those associated with Carlyle are former U.S. president George Bush Sr., former U.K. prime minister John Major, and former president of the Philippines Fidel Ramos. And Carlyle has counted George Soros, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Alsaud of Saudi Arabia, and Osama bin Laden's estranged family among its high-profile clientele. The group has been able to parlay its political clout into a lucrative buyout practice (in other words, purchasing struggling companies, turning them around, and selling them for huge profits)--everything from defense contractors to telecommunications and aerospace companies. It is a kind of ruthless investing made popular by the movie Wall Street, and any industry that relies heavily on government regulation is fair game for Carlyle's brand of access capitalism. Carlyle has established itself as the gatekeeper between private business interests and U.S. defense spending. And as the Carlyle investors watched the World Trade towers go down, the group's prospects went up....
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
NYSE hits all time high and Carlyle gets 'bailout' from Bush in Telecom Industry ! (click on)
Best & Worst Performing Industries (last 3 months)
Best Performing
There is NOTHING in the profits to stockholders of the NYSE that interprets into good paying jobs in the USA. NOTHING.
And with a NYSE this good to a small percentage of American stockholders, I think they can pay more taxes. It in no way interprets into growth in the USA economy so much as 'balouts' through lower interest rates from 'The Fed' to the losers of the exploitation of the American housing sector, so Bush can 'float' his economy at the expense of the future of all Americans.
Worst Performing
I have heard it all now ! This is amazing. Bush has no economy and what does Brooks say? "The Odyssey Years"
Most conservative journalists go to the extreme to make a point, otherwise there wouldn't be any point to make. Right now, mothers all over the country are reading David Brooks' Op-Ed as reassurance their family is not the ONLY one with a twenty-something that is MEANDERING throught life.
To protect and give excuse of a USA economy without direction for their young adults in the job market place, David Brooks without the assistance of Erik Erikson (click here) has 'invented' a new stage of life. "The Odyssey Year."
According to Erik Erikson the twenty somethings are supposed to be engaged in life and making their way to bigger and better things:
Young adulthood: 18 to 35
Ego Development Outcome: Intimacy and Solidarity vs. Isolation
Basic Strengths: Affiliation and Love
In the initial stage of being an adult we seek one or more companions and love. As we try to find mutually satisfying relationships, primarily through marriage and friends, we generally also begin to start a family, though this age has been pushed back for many couples who today don't start their families until their late thirties. If negotiating this stage is successful, we can experience intimacy on a deep level.
If we're not successful, isolation and distance from others may occur. And when we don't find it easy to create satisfying relationships, our world can begin to shrink as, in defense, we can feel superior to others.
Our significant relationships are with marital partners and friends.
Ego Development Outcome: Intimacy and Solidarity vs. Isolation
Basic Strengths: Affiliation and Love
In the initial stage of being an adult we seek one or more companions and love. As we try to find mutually satisfying relationships, primarily through marriage and friends, we generally also begin to start a family, though this age has been pushed back for many couples who today don't start their families until their late thirties. If negotiating this stage is successful, we can experience intimacy on a deep level.
If we're not successful, isolation and distance from others may occur. And when we don't find it easy to create satisfying relationships, our world can begin to shrink as, in defense, we can feel superior to others.
Our significant relationships are with marital partners and friends.
What Brooks exuse making for Bush indicates is that indeed our young adults are isolated from the rewards of life and the chance for assets building because there simply is no economy for them. Just that simple !
Well this mother isn't interested in any decade whereby young adults flounder around the landscape of America looking for a career path while Republicans make lame excuse and write 'feel good articles' to parents don't feel alone in their plight.
No different than the administration of George H. W. Bush, this Bush has caused the collapse of the American infrastructure that provides good paying jobs to young adults.
What next?
Honestly, will people buy anything or what?
October 9, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
The Odyssey Years
By DAVID BROOKS
There used to be four common life phases: childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. Now, there are at least six: childhood, adolescence, odyssey, adulthood, active retirement and old age. Of the new ones, the least understood is odyssey, the decade of wandering that frequently occurs between adolescence and adulthood.
During this decade, 20-somethings go to school and take breaks from school. They live with friends and they live at home. They fall in and out of love. They try one career and then try another.
Their parents grow increasingly anxious. These parents understand that there’s bound to be a transition phase between student life and adult life. But when they look at their own grown children, they see the transition stretching five years, seven and beyond. The parents don’t even detect a clear sense of direction in their children’s lives. They look at them and see the things that are being delayed.
They see that people in this age bracket are delaying marriage. They’re delaying having children. They’re delaying permanent employment. People who were born before 1964 tend to define adulthood by certain accomplishments — moving away from home, becoming financially independent, getting married and starting a family.
In 1960, roughly 70 percent of 30-year-olds had achieved these things. By 2000, fewer than 40 percent of 30-year-olds had done the same.
Yet with a little imagination it’s possible even for baby boomers to understand what it’s like to be in the middle of the odyssey years. It’s possible to see that this period of improvisation is a sensible response to modern conditions.
Two of the country’s best social scientists have been trying to understand this new life phase. William Galston of the Brookings Institution has recently completed a research project for the Hewlett Foundation. Robert Wuthnow of Princeton has just published a tremendously valuable book, “After the Baby Boomers” that looks at young adulthood through the prism of religious practice.
Through their work, you can see the spirit of fluidity that now characterizes this stage. Young people grow up in tightly structured childhoods, Wuthnow observes, but then graduate into a world characterized by uncertainty, diversity, searching and tinkering. Old success recipes don’t apply, new norms have not been established and everything seems to give way to a less permanent version of itself.
Dating gives way to Facebook and hooking up. Marriage gives way to cohabitation. Church attendance gives way to spiritual longing. Newspaper reading gives way to blogging. (In 1970, 49 percent of adults in their 20s read a daily paper; now it’s at 21 percent.)
The job market is fluid. Graduating seniors don’t find corporations offering them jobs that will guide them all the way to retirement. Instead they find a vast menu of information economy options, few of which they have heard of or prepared for.
Social life is fluid. There’s been a shift in the balance of power between the genders. Thirty-six percent of female workers in their 20s now have a college degree, compared with 23 percent of male workers. Male wages have stagnated over the past decades, while female wages have risen.
This has fundamentally scrambled the courtship rituals and decreased the pressure to get married. Educated women can get many of the things they want (income, status, identity) without marriage, while they find it harder (or, if they’re working-class, next to impossible) to find a suitably accomplished mate.
The odyssey years are not about slacking off. There are intense competitive pressures as a result of the vast numbers of people chasing relatively few opportunities. Moreover, surveys show that people living through these years have highly traditional aspirations (they rate parenthood more highly than their own parents did) even as they lead improvising lives.
Rather, what we’re seeing is the creation of a new life phase, just as adolescence came into being a century ago. It’s a phase in which some social institutions flourish — knitting circles, Teach for America — while others — churches, political parties — have trouble establishing ties.
But there is every reason to think this phase will grow more pronounced in the coming years. European nations are traveling this route ahead of us, Galston notes. Europeans delay marriage even longer than we do and spend even more years shifting between the job market and higher education.
And as the new generational structure solidifies, social and economic entrepreneurs will create new rites and institutions. Someday people will look back and wonder at the vast social changes wrought by the emerging social group that saw their situations first captured by “Friends” and later by “Knocked Up.”
Op-Ed Columnist
The Odyssey Years
By DAVID BROOKS
There used to be four common life phases: childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. Now, there are at least six: childhood, adolescence, odyssey, adulthood, active retirement and old age. Of the new ones, the least understood is odyssey, the decade of wandering that frequently occurs between adolescence and adulthood.
During this decade, 20-somethings go to school and take breaks from school. They live with friends and they live at home. They fall in and out of love. They try one career and then try another.
Their parents grow increasingly anxious. These parents understand that there’s bound to be a transition phase between student life and adult life. But when they look at their own grown children, they see the transition stretching five years, seven and beyond. The parents don’t even detect a clear sense of direction in their children’s lives. They look at them and see the things that are being delayed.
They see that people in this age bracket are delaying marriage. They’re delaying having children. They’re delaying permanent employment. People who were born before 1964 tend to define adulthood by certain accomplishments — moving away from home, becoming financially independent, getting married and starting a family.
In 1960, roughly 70 percent of 30-year-olds had achieved these things. By 2000, fewer than 40 percent of 30-year-olds had done the same.
Yet with a little imagination it’s possible even for baby boomers to understand what it’s like to be in the middle of the odyssey years. It’s possible to see that this period of improvisation is a sensible response to modern conditions.
Two of the country’s best social scientists have been trying to understand this new life phase. William Galston of the Brookings Institution has recently completed a research project for the Hewlett Foundation. Robert Wuthnow of Princeton has just published a tremendously valuable book, “After the Baby Boomers” that looks at young adulthood through the prism of religious practice.
Through their work, you can see the spirit of fluidity that now characterizes this stage. Young people grow up in tightly structured childhoods, Wuthnow observes, but then graduate into a world characterized by uncertainty, diversity, searching and tinkering. Old success recipes don’t apply, new norms have not been established and everything seems to give way to a less permanent version of itself.
Dating gives way to Facebook and hooking up. Marriage gives way to cohabitation. Church attendance gives way to spiritual longing. Newspaper reading gives way to blogging. (In 1970, 49 percent of adults in their 20s read a daily paper; now it’s at 21 percent.)
The job market is fluid. Graduating seniors don’t find corporations offering them jobs that will guide them all the way to retirement. Instead they find a vast menu of information economy options, few of which they have heard of or prepared for.
Social life is fluid. There’s been a shift in the balance of power between the genders. Thirty-six percent of female workers in their 20s now have a college degree, compared with 23 percent of male workers. Male wages have stagnated over the past decades, while female wages have risen.
This has fundamentally scrambled the courtship rituals and decreased the pressure to get married. Educated women can get many of the things they want (income, status, identity) without marriage, while they find it harder (or, if they’re working-class, next to impossible) to find a suitably accomplished mate.
The odyssey years are not about slacking off. There are intense competitive pressures as a result of the vast numbers of people chasing relatively few opportunities. Moreover, surveys show that people living through these years have highly traditional aspirations (they rate parenthood more highly than their own parents did) even as they lead improvising lives.
Rather, what we’re seeing is the creation of a new life phase, just as adolescence came into being a century ago. It’s a phase in which some social institutions flourish — knitting circles, Teach for America — while others — churches, political parties — have trouble establishing ties.
But there is every reason to think this phase will grow more pronounced in the coming years. European nations are traveling this route ahead of us, Galston notes. Europeans delay marriage even longer than we do and spend even more years shifting between the job market and higher education.
And as the new generational structure solidifies, social and economic entrepreneurs will create new rites and institutions. Someday people will look back and wonder at the vast social changes wrought by the emerging social group that saw their situations first captured by “Friends” and later by “Knocked Up.”
Like I said, Iraq has no sovereignty. Iraq will be devoured by it's neighbors.
Military trucks carry tanks toward Sirnak near the Turkish-Iraq border, Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2007, two days after Kurdish rebels killed 15 Turkish soldiers at the Turkey-Iraq border. Turkey said Tuesday it had begun preparations for a military operation into Iraq to chase Kurdish rebels whose deadly attacks on soldiers in recent days triggered public outrage. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)
Turkey issues fresh warning of military incursion into Iraq (click here)
20 hours ago
ANKARA (AFP) — Turkey on Tuesday threatened a military incursion in northern Iraq as part of stepped up measures against Kurdish rebel bases there following the deaths of 15 soldiers in weekend attacks.
The government said in a statement that it had given orders allowing for all legal, economic and political measures, "including a cross-border operation if necessary," against a "terrorist organisation in a neighbouring country".
The statement was taken to refer to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) presence in Iraq.
Earlier, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had met senior government and military officials to discuss tougher action against the PKK after the rebels killed 15 soldiers in weekend attacks. The group is listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community.
Ankara says the PKK enjoys free movement in northern Iraq and obtains weapons and explosives there for attacks across the border.
It has also accused Iraqi Kurds of tolerating and even supporting the rebels....
This ought to be interesting. The USA invades Iraq illegally and now the 'idea' that Turkey is taking over in the northern regions is typical of the anarchic Bush White House. No structure, just shoot from the hip and let's profit in the aftermath.
Iraq is a battlefield. At the time when the USA Executive Branch is finally coming to terms with the civilian element in Iraq, when Maliki FINALLY stood up for his citizens against the USA's military and mercenaries; the country that was once Iraq is turning into "The Battlefield of the Ethnicities."
What a mess. The USA military needs to leave Iraq to prevent a war with Turkey !
It goes like this. The Kurds and Turkey have been enemies for a long time. When Bush invaded Iraq, the Kurds never wanted it because they had set up a democrary under the northern no fly zone and it worked for them. They had their own economy, shadow government and military. The PKK, no matter how unpopular and viewed by most diplomats as a terrorist group, have always wanted to establish a Kurdistan.
Iraqi Kurds warn Turkey (click here)
By Jim Muir BBC correspondent in Erbil, northern Iraq
The Kurds of northern Iraq have warned that there will be clashes if troops from neighbouring Turkey cross the border.
Ankara is demanding that Turkish forces should enter the north of the country to secure Turkey's interests if the US and Britain go ahead with an attack on Iraq.
Kurdish spokesmen have said that their guerrillas who control the north will oppose any Turkish intervention.
Regional tensions are rising in advance of expected military action by the US and its allies and the atmosphere between two of those allies - the Turks and the Iraqi Kurds - is becoming increasingly embittered....
To cut to the bottom line, Bush was never able to build the military of Iraq from the ground up. Quite the contrary. After destroying Saddam's military every self respecting citizen of Iraq ran the other way when Bush attempted to assemble a significant force called Iraqi police and military. There are lots of reasons for that, but, one of the reasons the Kurds don't throw in enthusiastically is because a large force in Iraq would dampen any authority they already have established.
Besides that, Bush is still hoping for his war with Iran. So if he can't put together a substantial Iraqi military that will ally with the USA, he'll settle for a Turkish military allied with the USA to invade Iran. See, with Turkey invading already identied 'terrorist' territory in northern Iraq and southeast Turkey it will 'appear' as though there are actually three allies working together to rid the area of PKK. The three would be the USA, Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds. Therefore, when it comes down to invading Iran there will be a coalition of supposedly three countries, Iraq, Turkey and the USA and it's coalition. But, that isn't the case. Iraq has turned away from putting together an autonomous military as it would overpower and control the outcomes of the already victimized populous of Kurds and Shi'ites.
What is occurring in Iraq today, is a slight of hand by many. By Turkey, by Bush's military and by the Iraqi Central Authority in the Green Zone. If Bush is able to 'pull off' this deception to the American legislature, he'll again take it to the UN and then proceed to override the initiative at the UN as he did with Iraq and invade Iran, but, this time with not just his contingent of military but also a full compliment of ambitious Turkish military INSTEAD of a allied Iraq military. That is why the Petraeus strategy won't work. The so called insurgency will be a predominantly Shi'ite military with loyalities to their religion before their government and they will more than likely 'turn on' the Turks and USA rather than fight along side of them. With that will enter the picture Iran backed, if not allied with Russia and China and then the Middle East will turn into a blood bath.
The Turks don't belong in Iraq, they belong at their borders protecting their sovereignty.
End of Discussion !
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