Doing Business With The Enemy

I am a Giants fan. I have been really happy the way the teams been playing this year, and as I'm sure anyone who follows football knows there is a big game against the Saints tomorrow. Well here's my confession, my friends got me into fantasy football this season. I've never played in any fantasy league before and in all honestly didn't completely understand how it worked. But now, for better or worse, I am addicted.

I need to win every week. I know every Tuesday I am the first one looking to see which player I can get off waivers, who did well the past week, and figuring out if there are any trades I should propose. So this week a few of the players on my team have the week off, most notably Ronnie Brown so I needed a running back. So I'm looking to see who I can get, and guess who is projected to do well, Mike Bell on the New Orleans Saints.

Mind you, Brandon Jacobs and Steve Smith are both on my team. I do not want Mike Bell to have a good game against the Giants, not one bit. So now when he scores a touchdown I will not boo, but will not cheer either. I will sit on my couch stoic.

Now the point of the story is this: Sometimes, you have to do business with people we don't like. The New York Times had an article in today's paper about why the stock market reached 10,000 this week. It talked about all the bailouts (excuse me, TARP) and how using tax payer money to replenish the system, banks were given room to give out and invest in areas where they could possibly recoup their losses. The program also had to be initiated because if they did not, credit cards would have been useless and the entire economy would have crashed.

Then of course came the fallback. While some banks paid back the money the government gave them, most still have not, but did decide to pay their CEO's their multi-million dollar bonuses. Oh, and yeah, unemployment is probably going to reach 10% this year.

So there was another headline that read "Obama Drops Plan to Isolate Sudan Leaders." When campaigning, the President said he would try and use economic tools such as sanctions and divestment against Sudan's government to stop the violence in the region. Now, he has changed his mind and will instead:

make use of a mix of “incentives and pressure” to seek an end to the human rights abuses that have left millions of people dead or displaced while burning Darfur into the American conscience.

General Gration said the administration would set strict time lines for President Omar al Bashir of Sudan to fulfill the conditions of a 2005 peace agreement that his government signed with rebels in southern Sudan.

The fact of the matter though is that the situation in the Darfur region has changed. In May of 2006, the Sudanese government signed a peace accord with one of the rebel groups in the region. But there are two other groups still causing violence and millions of people are still displaced from their homes. Not to mention that President Omar al Bashir has been indicted on crimes against humanity.

So why do I think President Obama should engage talks with Mr. Bashir? Well Sudan's unemployment rate is 18.7% with 40% of the population under the poverty line. The country does have oil though, and has gained billions from it. Still, 80% of the countries economy relies on agriculture and the Darfur region in particular is known for droughts.

Imposing sanctions would not do any good to help the people in that country. President Bashir is in a weak position, and if that can be taken advantage of to get him to actually do something good for his country, I think it's worth a shot.

And for the moment I'm still able to use my credit card, and most economists are predicting a recovery starting next year. So yeah, we bailed out people who we didn't like, but it was necessary.

In the mean time I'm still projected to lose fantasy football this week by more then 40 points. But those projections have been wrong before. If Mike Bell has a good game and I win this week that would be good. If he has a good game and the Giants win that would be great. The only thing I know right now is that either way Bell helps me win. And if it means working with him, so be it.