Iceland Freezes Us Out
Iceland needed 5 billion dollars to help them deal with the same kind of over-leveraged financial crisis we’re dealing with. 5 billion. Less than 1% of the 700 billion Congress and the President just authorized to (hopefully) help rescue/bail out the US banking system.
For 5 billion dollars we could have endeared ourselves to a small but strategically located country, a country that has geothermal technology that makes it less dependent on foreign oil than any other western nation.
But we can’t help right now. Not because we can’t print up another 5 billion, but because politically we can’t appear to be helping others when we’re in such dire straits ourselves.
So we can’t think or act long term. We can’t make friends and influence people. We can’t, for a very small price, get an edge in the world of geothermal energy.
But the Russians can, and just did.
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Lets throw money at a man with a gambling problem and hope it saves him.
while i get your point, the larger point, i think, is that while we tie up troops and resources in Iraq, and clean up the world wide economic mess that our leaders, both in government and wall street, initiated, we miss a gigantic opportunity to incur good will and new energy technology. LK