Obama and the Markets

Obama is not responsible for the stock market’s daily ups and downs. Before this week, the pundits were blaming Obama for the stock market going down. This week they should be praising him because it went up, but the financial community is responsible for its own fate. Obama inherited a huge mess. He’s working to get out of it, but it’s going to take a while to dig out of the hole that the Republicans left for him. The financial executives just don’t want to take responsibility for their own failures.

Who knows why the market goes up or down. They claim it went up this week because big banks, starting with Citi, announced that they were making a profit so far this year. But what about all those toxic assets? They are still out there. Plus, as Jay Leno or somebody said, “Wow, we gave CitiBank $40 billion, and they made $8 billion profit.”

Plus, what’s going on in the rest of the world? If something goes wrong in some unexpected place, it may well affect the US market. On Fareed Zakaria, Niall Ferguson warned that the next problem might be the disintegration of Ukraine and some other eastern European countries that will allow Russia to reclaim some of its “near abroad.” Meanwhile, today China expressed concern about its investment in the US. To some extent we and China are tied together in a form of Mutually Assured Destruction because of the enormous amount we owe China. China can’t sell off its holdings without driving down prices and hurting itself, but it is certainly in a position to wreak havoc if it wants to.

The Jews Got Chas Freeman

This WSJ op-ed by Bret Stevens, formerly of the Jerusalem Post, is just one example of the Jewish attack on Amb. Chas Freemen, who was nominated to be head of the CIA National Intelligence Council. Freeman is a good, decent man who was maliciously maligned by the Jewish lobby. He's not bigoted, but even if he were, what do the Jews fear so much? Was it just to show their power? Do they know that Israel is involved in such dastardly activities that truthful intelligence about it would be greatly damaging in the world's eyes? I don't know, but I do know that the Jews screamed for blood and they got it. Freeman has withdrawn his name.

The following is more or less the text of an email I sent to my Colorado senators and my congressman:

I have just heard on CNN that Chas Freeman has withdrawn his name to be head of the CIA National Intelligence Council.

I served with Amb. Freeman at the US Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand, before I retired from the Foreign Service. I believe that he is a good man. I think it is terrible that he has been so viciously attacked by Jewish interests because he served as US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and might be somewhat evenhanded in his consideration of the Arab-Jewish/Israel-Palestine-Iran-Syria-Egypt-Iraq-Jordan... issue. In essence, he was damned by the United States of America because he was not a Jew.

This is not why I fought in the Army in Vietnam or why I served almost 25 years as a Foreign Service officer. This was a witch hunt, just like the ones carried out by Sen. Joe McCarthy years ago. I am outraged!

The WSJ also earlier printed a letter from several ambassadors, one of whom I worked with, Amb. Tom Pickering. They supported the choice of Amb. Freeman.

Raise Income Tax on the Rich

Obama said that he will limit CEO salaries. It's going to be hard to do. They get money so many different ways -- straight salary, stock options, bonuses, retirement largess, golden parachutes, etc. It's not only the bank CEOs that we are worried about anyway. It's all those obscenely compensated CEOs.

Plus, America has not in the past liked hereditary, moneyed royalty like the Rockefellers, Kennedys, Hiltons, etc. So, tax them when they make obscene amounts of money. A year ago some hedge fund guy named Paulson (not the Treasury Secretary) made over a billion dollars. Nobody needs to make more than say $50 million per year. After $50 million, increase the tax rate to 75% or more. From $10 million annual income the tax rate could be 50%, which is still less than it would have been 50 years ago. If most of the income goes to Uncle Sam, maybe CEO's won't work quite as hard to soak their shareholders, customers and employees. Another test would be the difference between CEO salaries and employee salaries. If a CEO makes more than 100 times what an average worker in his company makes, tax the overage at 100%.

Richard Perle's Ineffectiveness

While the WSJ on Wednesday was publishing the op-ed bashing Amb. Chas Freeman for not being Jewish, another columnist was ridiculing Richard Perle in the WSJ for an article in The National Interest claiming that the neo-cons had no influence on George Bush. Thomas Frank says Perle claims he cannot be "held responsible for the Bush administration's failures." Perle has had few rivals within the US government as a Jew who was one of the most hawkish defenders of Israel. Perle's article and his defense of it prompted the Washington Post headline, "Prince of Darkness Denies Own Existence." It's remarkable that men who were so powerful in George Bush's and previous administrations are now so thoroughly discredited. William Kristol, who was VP Dan Quayle's chief of staff, but who has now lost his column at the NYT, shares this distinction with Perle.

Richard Perle was at the pinnacle of power when he was Assistant Secretary of Defense under Reagan, where he and his minions were my nemeses, pursuing some kind of America-only foreign policy that abhorred any kind of treaty. There is a lot of schadenfreude felt here. Poor Richard! May you endure many more days of ridicule!