An earlier post covered the supposed cause of US economic crisis. There has been a tremendous amount of action in response to the current crisis in the US. Most of the actions have come from the the US Federal government and a quite a bit of it from consumers. US government has primarily tried so far to do things that it believes will strengthen the credit markets, reduce interest rates to allow home owners to be able to refinance, new mortgage lending regulations that make it difficult for flippers to operate, reduce toxic assets held by banks as well as shore up AIG which in turn helps stabilize the growing concerns of several businesses and local government agencies who have accounts with AIG where they store their cash.

President Obama and his economic team have been working at a heightened pace to find solutions that will resolve the crisis as well as to move to a more robust economy. Obama himself has talked extensively about the need to stop being a borrow and spend economy and become a save and invest economy. To this end, he has proposed a budget that emphasizes investments in the fields of healthcare, education and energy. He has also proposed changes and cuts to several programs that would save money for the government and help reduce the deficit in the long run.

Democrat Illinois Senator Barack Obama on Nov 4th won the US election over Republican Arizona Senator John McCain in what turned out to be a easy romp. John McCain had a tough road to the White House to begin with. A highly unpopular president in the White House who was a fellow Republican and the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan added to the economic meltdown that left McCain in an unenviable position. There was no way he could have pulled this off and that was apparent for several days before the elections itself. Looking at the raw numbers, Obama seems to have generated a wide coalition of voters. Of the 135 million votes cast in the election, 74% were white. This demographic leaned slightly toward McCain by about 12% (55-43). However, he more than made up with the remaining groups. African Americans make up about 14% of the electorate and came out strongly in his support. The split was unprecedented as Obama won the group by 90% (95-5). The Hispanic voters are a growing population. They are mostly in the southwestern states and in some northern states that are already democratic like Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania. Hispanic voters, about 8% of the electorate voted for Obama by a 33% (66-33) margin. As you can see from these numbers, Obama easily made up for his 12% gap amongst white voters (the 12% among that group translates to 10% of all electorate). African American voters gave Obama an overall margin of 17% by voting as a block for the first African American candidate of a major party. Obama received almost all of the 14% of this demographic.

The presidential election in the US is almost upon its citizens. With just 4 days to go, first term Senator from Illinois, Democrat Barack Obama holds a rather significant lead of 6-7 percentage points in the pre-election polls over Republican candidate John McCain. This is the most anticipated presidential election in the US in its recent history and some have even termed it historic because there is a chance that US might elect its first ever black President in Barack Obama and first ever catholic VP candidate Senator Joe Biden. It also has a chance to elect its oldest first term president in John McCain who will be 72 at the time of his inaguration if he were to win and first ever woman Vice President in Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin.

With so much of history waiting to happen, Americans seem to be looking backward in this election. The past actions and associations of the presidential candidates seem to be more a focal point rather than their policies. John McCain has basically tried to distance himself from his party's representative and sitting president George W Bush whose approval ratings are just about 20% - the lowest for any president since the war. However, McCain has voted 90% of the time with President Bush and his policies and has been a vociferous advocate of continuing the war in Iraq even if it takes "a hundread years". This position has got McCain in a world of trouble since even Bush administration is actively trying to end the war in Iraq and withdraw US troops from all combat operations as soon as possible. Obama on the other hand has opposed the war in Iraq and his position seems to be resonating with Americans much more than the McCain's.

The other major blunder committed by McCain was to say "the fundamentals of the economy are strong" on a Monday morning a couple hours after Lehman Brothers had filed for bankruptcy and just the day after Merill Lynch was sold to Bank of America in a last minute frantic deal negotiated by the Federal Reserve and the boards of the two companies in order to prevent Merill also filing for bankruptcy. The stock markets were down almost a 800 points at the time McCain uttered that infamous quote at a campaign rally. At the time, he had a small lead in the polls. In the days soon after, McCain came off as weak, trying to suspend his campaign to go to Washington DC to hammer out an economic bailout plan and asking to postpone the first presidential debate. When Obama rejected the suggestion, he reasoned his stance by stating that the president will often have to deal with more than one issue at a time. This won him several supporters. Obama steadily gained in the polls and built an mountain of a lead in several states that currently are showing in double digits.

As an issue goes, the issue of Pro-choice Vs Pro-life is one that divides the US into a very unruly, unfriendly and uncultured mess. While several other countries have accepted Pro-choice as their way of law and life, here in the US there is the tendency to intersperse the law of the land with the faith of its political leaders. Fortunately, this dangerous tendency to mix law and faith seems limited to a few issues such as choice. It also makes a civilized people behave in questionable ways.

Having seen the battle between pro-choice and pro-life groups over the last year-and-a-half in my neighborhood I've felt compelled to believe that both sides are on the wrong end of this issue. I've seen the so-called pro-life people hold up gory images depicting what can only be termed kindly as dead blood-bathed babies. This is highly hypocritical and condescending as well as compromises the central premise of their own position. The fact that they need such images shows their ignorance in understanding their own stance on the issue. In the final debate of the 2008 US Presidential election, Republican senator John McCain termed those who are pro-choice as "Pro-abortion". He also said the health of the mother is inconsequential.

As an impartial listener who does not want to take sides on this issue, I found those positions and terms used by Mr. McCain appalling. His running mate, Alaska Gov. Mrs. Sarah Palin opposes abortion even in cases where the woman has been a victim of rape or incest.

These attitudes and positions, unbelivably by a woman, underscore the lack of depth of compassion toward this issue with the singular narrow mindedness of beliving what their faith preaches to them. How does a civic society asks one of its weaker members (the rape/incest victim) to lead their lives through the most gruelling and nightmarish time to also carry the mark of their weakest, scariest, helpless moment around them for nine months and then care for an infant that should not ever be born?

Why is it that these pro-life proponents not understand the scars that such incidents leave on the victims? Why do they want to keep lengthening their agony for a lifetime? Why do they want to believe that it is ok do do this to other members of their own community? What gives them a moral highground to preach to others? What gives them the right to preach their religious values to people of other religions?

India and Australia have played some of the most memorable test matches in recent history. Ever since ACB and BCCI instituted Border-Gavaskar Trophy in 1996, the rivalry has been fierce. Many experts believe this series has eclipsed the intensity of the Ashes and rivals the India-Pakistan series in test matches. Since 1996, Australians have had Mark Taylor, Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting lead the team. On the Indian side there have been Mohd Azzaruddin, Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid and Anil Kumble to lead the team in this rivalry. Great players rise up to the occasion and all these captains have not only risen up, but have also inspired their teammates to do better.

The one-off home match in 1996 was won by India to win the innagural edition of the Trophy. India visited Australia in 1999-2000 season and fared poorly. Then came the epic series in 2001. India lost the first match and were on the verge of losing the second after following on. VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid put on a memorable batting diplay to stay at the crease for over 5 sessions and piled over 400 runs to force Australia into chasing a modest 270 on the fifth day at Eden Gardens. Harbhajan Singh mesmerazed and struck to the tune of seven wickets and won the match for Indians. India went on to win the third test and the series to re-claim the trophy.

India visited in 2004 and Australia didn't know what hit them. Sourav Ganguly was determined to do everything he could to win the series and led from the front with a splendid century in the first inning of the first test. Rahul Dravid scored over 300 runs in the second test to give India a rare test win in Australia. India lost the third test by a whisker. In the fourth test, Australia hung on to dear life as Kumble bowled his heart out on a wearing pitch in Perth that was supposed to aid the fast bowlers. Steve Waugh, playing his last series, had to summon his entire career's worth of experience to bail his side out of the woods.

Lately the US economy has been in a turmoil and the subprime mortgages are being blamed for it. The situation has been so bad that the government has had to already lend $85B to bail out AIG, $200B to prevent Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac from failing and a $700B bailout law that was just passed to buy up bad loans from financial organizations that are being suffocated by them. Already all five independent Wall St investment banking firms are either out of business (Bear Stearns, Lehmann Brothers, Merill Lynch) or have converted into commercial banks (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley). The $700B bailout package provides liquidity for the markets to begin lending again. However, that doesn't address the central issues of the problem - falling home values, subprime mortgages and foreclosures. I think the best possible alternative that the government should have pursued and both presidential candidates talked about recently is to create a federal agency that will act as a direct mortgage lendor to the people who are in trouble.

The White Sox did what they've been doing all year long - battle valiantly in the face of adversities. The team faced many injuries to key players - Carlos Quentin went down in late August when he was leading the majors in homers and RBI and was looking like the AL MVP leader; Jose Contreras was injured but came back for all of one inning and tore his ligaments running to first on a grounder; Joe Crede's recurring back injury shut him down midway through the summer after he had made the All-Star team; setup man Scott Linebrink got hurt in July - returned only in September and the bullpen was never the same again. White Sox however never shut it down.

Sunday July 6th 2008 has to just about rank amongst the most miserable days for me as a sports fan. Early in the morning, I eagerly woke up to catch the British Grand Prix. A quick cup of coffee followed the race. Then I logged on to watch the final of the Asia Cup between India and Sri Lanka held in Pakistan. After that I had to watch and wait out the multiple rain delays for the Wimbledon men's final between Rafeal Nadal and Roger Federer. Once the game ended, I switched over the catch the White Sox take on Oakland A's in the series finale on the south side. As an added bonus, there was the Cubs-Cardinals series finale in St. Louis and announcement of the All-Star rosters for next week's All-Star game at the historic Yankee Stadium which is going to be demolished after this season.

So if you're asking why its miserable to be a sports fan with all of these fantastic events happening, its simplye because of who I'm rooting for in those tossups and who ended up winning.

At the British Grand Prix, the Ferrari of Felipe Massa spun atleast 5 times and ended up last. This was a disappointing finish for Massa coming off the victory in the previous race two weeks ago in France. Kimi Raikonen, the other Ferrari driver, was 4th and missed a podium finish. This has to be a rare race for my favorite Ferrari team in which atleast one of its drivers didn't make it to the podium. To rub it in further, Lewis Hamilton and McLaren-Mercedes won the race. I started disliking M&M when Mika Hakkinen and his crash-wreck-do-anything-to-not-let-Ferrarii-win attitude came to fore a few years ago. It only intensified a few weeks ago when Hamilton clearly drove his car into Raikonen's car that was waiting for lights to turn green at the end of the pit lane.

At the end of India's disappointing World Cup campaign last year, many viewers wondered what could be done to not have the same result in the next edition. Many experts opined that it was a matter of not playing the youngsters who had showed promise that had led to the demise of the team. Some others said it could have been complacency as India had barely managed a tad over 180 against a pitiful Bangladesh team which had lost over 80% of the ODI matches it had played.

Some like Zee TV boss Subhash Chandra were ready to strike when the iron was hot and decided to create a competitive league that would offer to blood youngsters as a way to build bench strength. Seen in the light of the fact that Zee has had many a battle for telecast rights of BCCI, this was an interesting venture. It was soon termed a rebel league by the BCCI and it went so far as disallowing players participating in ICL to play for any organized matches it conducted. In the ensuing months, BCCI Vice President Lalit Modi launched Indian Premier League with the blessings of BCCI and many other member nations of the ICC. The format of both the leagues is Twenty20 games. Interestingly, India is the winner of the first ever edition of the T20 World Cup held in 2007 in South Africa even though India entered with a young squad and had only played one T20 game before the World Cup.