Sleaze on Wall Street

I was struck reading Michael Lewis' book Boomerang about how sleazy Wall Street salesmen are.  Basically they are worse than used car salesmen, but are selling stuff worth billions.  Lewis says one of the main problems the Germans ran into during the 2008 economic crisis was that they believed the salesmen.  He says reports a conversation with Dirk Rothig, a German banker, talking about the German Landesbanks:

"The people in these banks were never spoiled by any Wall Street salesmen.  Now there is someone with a platinum American Express credit card who can take them to the Grand Prix in Monaco....  He has no limit....  All of a sudden a very smart guy from Merrill Lynch shows up and starts to pay a lot of attention to you.  They thought, 'Oh he just like me!'"

At bottom, he [Rothig]  says, the Germans were blind to the possibility that the Americans were playing the game by something other than official rules.  The Germans took the rules at their face value; they looked into the history of triple-A-rated bonds and accepted the official story that triple-A-rated bonds were completely risk-free. 

It's a shame that America has become such a corrupt country, while the Germans seemed to have maintained their moral standards.  Perhaps their terrible failings during World War II have made them more moral today, while our relatively easy course through WW II made us less concerned about our morals.  In particular Wall Street appears to have become a snake pit that has attracted some of the lowest types of humanity. 

 

The Rewards of Military Service

I've decided there are relatively few rewards for military service beyond those of any other job.  If the pay is good and you are not getting shot, then it's as good as any other government job.  But any idea of patriotism or idealism is out the window.  There is a lot of talk about the importance of those serving in the military, but I don't think most Americans believe it, or even if they claim to believe it, they don't act on it.  Companies tout giving jobs to veterans, but it's not because they really care about veterans; it's because it's good publicity for the company. 

If there is any psychic benefit to military service, it is only for the person who serves.  He or she can be personally proud of serving and protecting the nation but don't expect anybody else to share in that feeling.  With the rise in income inequality in the US, soldiers are not protecting their own homes and families so much as they are being paid to protect the enormous wealth of the few at the top of the pyramid.  Neither Romney, nor any of his five sons served in the military, but they are willing to pay some poor, dumb redneck to go shoot some Afghans for them. 

Things have changed for the better.  Veterans returning from Vietnam, like me, were reviled as psychotic baby killers.  After 9/11 there was a genuine increase in patriotism and a desire to protect the US from another, similar assault.  The diversion into the war in Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11 tended to waste that feeling and discredit the service of those who volunteered after 9/11.  The military is still more respected than it was after Vietnam, but the spirit of 9/11 is mostly dead. 

Keystone Pipeline

The Keystone pipeline is mostly out of the news now, but it's still an important issue.  Romney brings it up occasionally; Obama tries to hide it under the rug.  Obama is wrong on this issue.  The real debate is about use of fossil fuels, not possible pollution from the pipeline. The pipeline itself will have little environmental impact. There are many pipelines crisscrossing America. Most don't leak, and if they do, it's not the end of the world.

The complaints about possible pollution of Nebraska's aquifer is a red herring. Environmentalists just want to break America's dependence on oil.  Because they pipeline makes oil cheap and easy to use, they want to stop it, not because the pipeline itself will pollute.  Environmentalists argue it would be easier and safer to build a pipeline to the Pacific and ship the oil to China.  If the Chinese burn the oil, the world gets the same pollution, but America gets none of the benefits.

It's fine to have a debate about the use of fossil fuels, but it should be a straightforward debate, not one obscured by fake, legalistic arguments about an environmental impact statement for an oil pipeline. 

Congressional Email re Foreign Service

I hope that in the light of the killing of Amb. Christopher Stevens and the attacks on the American diplomatic missions in Libya, Egypt and Yemen, you will stand up for the Foreign Service.  Gov. Romney and the Republicans have been very critical of the Foreign Service, and actually seemed to imply that Foreign Service officers deserve to die because they are wimps.  This attitude was illustrated by former Sen. Norm Coleman, Romney's surrogate on the PBS NewsHour last night, who strongly criticized the statement issued by Embassy Cairo, which PBS said, "appeared aimed at calming tensions in Egypt over an anti-Muslim film made in California."  Fortunately Amb. Nicolas Burns defended the Foreign Service, saying that Romney should not have attacked Embassy Cairo for "the actions of an embassy under siege, under great tension." (See PBS report at - http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2012/09/candidates-spar-over-foreign-policy-following-attacks-in-libya-egypt.html)

When I was in the Foreign Service many years ago, Republican Sen. Jesse Helms hated it, and would have done almost anything to eliminate it, starting with cutting the State Department budget as deeply as possible.  I worry that this same attitude persists in Washington today. 
I hope that you will stand up for the Foreign Service and not put the lives of Foreign Service officers needlessly at risk.  The Foreign Service was already under great stress because of the burden of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars; now the general increase of tensions in Middle East appears likely to increase that burden and the dangers that FSOs face.  Please support them.