{"id":8430,"date":"2009-03-09T21:27:58","date_gmt":"2009-03-10T05:27:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=8430"},"modified":"2009-03-10T17:53:44","modified_gmt":"2009-03-11T01:53:44","slug":"dennis-prager-loves-taken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=8430","title":{"rendered":"Dennis Prager Loves ‘Taken’"},"content":{"rendered":"

This movie stars Liam Neeson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dennis says on his radio show today<\/a> that he loves simple movies of good guys hurting bad guys.<\/p>\n

He notes that the critics hated this movie. It is too simple for them. They’re jaded. They love complicated movies such as "The Departed<\/a>" and "Boogie Nights<\/a>" and "Casino<\/a>." Dennis couldn’t understand the film ("The Departed") and gave up on it halfway through.<\/p>\n

Dennis says he prefers reviewers on the internet, just as he prefers book reviews by customers on Amazon.com to the professional reviewers (such as the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times).<\/p>\n

Dennis calls daylight savings time nonsense. He prefers the "real time."<\/p>\n

"Prager H1: You think our banks are in bad shape? They look rock solid next to the banks of Europe, especially Eastern Europe… Climate change skeptics meet in New York… If Islam is a religion of peace, why don’t the clerics promote it?"<\/span><\/p>\n

Dennis says: "People got loans they could not repay unless their house kept going up forever [in value]. On the other hand, the government did not regulate enough these derivatives and tranches where loans were packaged with other things and sold to banks and other houses until you get a leverage of 50-1, where you owe 50 times more… The reason for this was not because of a philosophical opposition to regulation…It was not conservative philosophy that stopped the regulation of these things, it was because they were so new. The government had not caught up to these practices. The proof is Europe. They have more regulations in Europe. They are far more inclined towards a national bank and socialism and they did not regulate their banks. Europe’s banks are in worse shape than ours."<\/span><\/p>\n

Austria’s banks loaned 70% of Austria’s GDP to Eastern Europe which can’t repay the loans. Now France and Germany are being asked to bail out Austrian banks.<\/span><\/p>\n

Liaquat Ahamed writes in the New York Times Opinion section:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

For while losses on Eastern European debts may be only a small fraction of those on subprime mortgages, the continent’s problems are politically harder to solve, and their consequences may prove to be much worse.<\/p>\n

Much as in our subprime mess, Eastern Europe’s problems began with easy credit. From 2004 to 2008 Eastern Europe had its own bubble, fueled by the ready availability of international credit. In recent years countries like Bulgaria and Latvia borrowed annually the equivalent of more than 20 percent of their gross domestic product from abroad. By 2008, 13 countries that were once part of the Soviet empire had accumulated a collective debt to foreign banks or in foreign currencies of more than $1 trillion. Some of the money went into investment, much of it into consumption or real estate.<\/p>\n

When the music stopped last year and banks retrenched, the flow of new capital to Eastern Europe came to an abrupt halt, and then reversed direction. This credit crunch hit the region just as its main export markets in Western Europe were going into free fall. Moreover, with so much of the debt denominated in foreign currencies, everyone in Eastern Europe has been scrambling to get their hands on foreign exchange and local currencies have collapsed.<\/p>\n

Most of the Eastern European debt is held by Western European banks. It also turned out that some of the biggest lenders to Eastern Europe were Austrian and Italian banks — for example, loans by Austrian banks to Eastern European countries are almost equivalent to 70 percent of Austria’s G.D.P. Now, Italy and Austria can’t afford to bail out even their own banks.<\/p>\n

The debt crisis in Eastern Europe is much more than an economic problem. The wrenching decline in the standard of living caused by this crisis is provoking social unrest.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Dennis tackles the Octomom. He criticizes the doctor for implanting a woman who already had six kids. A single woman. Because he does not make judgments? That is not true. He made a judgment to do it. You either judge that you should or you judge that you shouldn’t.<\/span><\/p>\n

"This cracks me up. She has a publicist. Food stamps and a publicist. Only in America."<\/span><\/p>\n

Last week, Octomom’s publicist defended an emergency 9-1-1 call from the family. The Octomom threatened to kill herself. The police responded eight times to those calls.<\/span><\/p>\n

"If every woman demanded from society what this woman does, society would collapse. She’s quite something. I blame the doctor. The doctor’s the enabler."<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This movie stars Liam Neeson. Dennis says on his radio show today that he loves simple movies of good guys hurting bad guys. He notes that the critics hated this movie. It is too simple for them. They’re jaded. They … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,19],"tags":[16645,16649,16648,29761,16647,16646],"class_list":["post-8430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dennis-prager","category-hollywood","tag-climate-change-skeptics","tag-conservative-philosophy","tag-daylight-savings-time","tag-dennis-prager","tag-liam-neeson","tag-professional-reviewers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t