Sunday, April 13, 2008
McCain and Charlie Black
While I was assigned to the US Embassy in Rome, an Italian contact whose little daughter had been denied a US visa under the Act remarked to me about how it penalized the children of those it targeted. I found its operation to be very similar to the way the Nazis targeted Jews in Italy during World War II as described by Herman Wouk in Winds of War and War and Remembrance. I was not happy that the US was punishing children for the "sins" of their parents.
Plus, as I said earlier, I am not happy about lobbyists having big roles in presidential campaigns, especially of someone like John McCain, who claims to be the king of straight talk. The Black connection seems to indicate that McCain has swung hard to the right. I worry that although he has a history as a maverick, he was neutered by George Bush in the 2000 campaign when Bush beat him in South Carolina by claiming that McCain's adopted daughter was actually a black bastard conceived out of wedlock. Now, to see McCain fawning over Bush is more than I can take. Plus, I hate seeing him get his Middle East policy whispered in his ear by Israel hawk Joe (Bomb Iran) Lieberman.
Barack, Hillary and the Deer Hunter
If Hillary knew about the movie, she would probably see herself as the Meryl Streep character, but she is more like the wealthy Meryl Streep character in "The Big Chill," who owns the ante-bellum plantation house in South Carolina where the movie takes place.
Anyway the Deer Hunter is certainly about Pennsylvania and guns, and to a lesser extent about religion. Ironically, Obama doesn't seem to know about it either. He could simply reply to Hillary that if she doesn't understand what he is talking about, she should watch the Deer Hunter.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
House Value Graph
The Fed and the Markets
The Fed may have prevented the onset of a major financial crisis due to the subprime mortgage situation. Nevertheless, America is still sitting out there -- exposed because of its huge indebtedness. Runaway inflation will reduce the size of the indebtedness over time, but not in the short term (hopefully). Therefore, we remain at the mercy of the Chinese and the Arabs, our largest creditors. It's unlikely that they want to destroy the US for financial reasons; they would stand to lose a lot of money by doing so. But if the political/military situation goes downhill, they might try to destroy the US economy for geopolitical reasons. China is now feeling a lot of international pressure over Tibet, as well as the traditional US pressure over Taiwan from the Republican right. There is some small risk that China could retaliate by dumping all of its US dollar investments, triggering a collapse in the dollar's value and perhaps pushing American interest rates into the stratosphere.
Alan Greenspan claims in the Financial Times that he's not responsible, and he's not the worst culprit, although the FT columnists have some legitimate gripes about his performance. But one thing he did which was very bad was to come out in favor of the dangerous Bush tax cuts because he claimed he was afraid that America would end up paying off its debt. In retrospect his claimed fears had no merit, and were no doubt expressed to please the political powers, Bush and company. By sacrificing his integrity for political expediency, he ensured his share of the blame for America's financial debacle.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Lobbyists and Presidential Candidates
The New York Times reported on the role of Hillary Clinton's chief strategist, Mark Penn's, lobbying firm's role in getting US approval of the Columbia free trade agreement. It sounds like his firm, Burson-Marsteller, has lost its contract with Columbia at the same time Mark Penn has lost his position with Hillary's campaign.
Meanwhile The Nation reports on the role of the lobbying firm of one of John McCain's insiders, Charlie Black, in making Ahmad Chalabi one of the most important men in Iraq. Black is a principal at Black, Kelly, Scruggs & Healey, another one of the most powerful lobbying firms in Washington, which is also owned by Burson-Marsteller.
It looks as if Hillary and McCain are not masters of their own destinies, but are rather tools of backroom masterminds intent on bringing Washington under their control. It appears that Burson-Marsteller is America's Rasputin.
Monday, April 07, 2008
Israel, Jews, and the US Election
Meanwhile, Mother Jones reports that Hillary is pandering to American Jews and Israel by taking a position that Israel should have "an undivided Jerusalem as its capital." This appears to mean that she believes the Palestinians have no right to any part of Jerusalem. By deciding one of the major issues beforehand, this makes talks on peace between Israel and the Palestinians virtually pointless. The problem with Hillary's position on Jerusalem is illustrated by Helena Cobban's recent posting on Jerusalem, for example.
Finally, John McCain's recent visit to Israel appeared designed to pander to American Jews. Besides visiting the Holocaust memorial in his yarmulke, he seemed to be getting his foreign policy advice from Sen. Joe Lieberman, who advocates an American war with Iran on behalf of Israel. The sight of Joe whispering in John's ear about what to say about al-Qaida in Iraq was not a pretty sight.
I'm reminded of the movie Bulworth, where Warren Beatty's senator character says something like, "My staff knows they always have to put the rich Jews on my campaign schedule." Hillary and McCain need that "rich Jew" money. Obama has enough money coming in from regular people that he doesn't have to pander to any particular group. Thus, it appears that the Jews fear him because they are afraid that they can't control him, as they do Hillary, McCain, and most Presidents, certainly including George Bush, whose Middle East policies are blatantly pro-Israel, to the point of arming Fatah Palestinians in the hope that they will kill Hamas Palestinians.
Friday, April 04, 2008
Wall Street vs. Main Street
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Pimco Loses Confidence in Bernanke
Monday, February 25, 2008
Bill Kristol's Patriotism
The most notable example is probably President Lyndon Johnson's Silver Star, a lapel pin that he wore most of his life, although it was probably undeserved. See this CNN story. Many true heros feel no compunction to wear their decoration, believing modestly that their actions were more important than any display. Because most of the politicians in Washington today were cowards who failed to serve their country, they don't have any military decoration to wear and therefore have chosen to wear the flag. No modesty for the Republicans!
I'm guessing that Bill Kristol is not a combat veteran, and probably not a veteran at all. He's a flag man, and a typical Republican coward, who has no hesitation about sending our troops to fight in Iraq, although he would not go himself. Barak Obama shows his patriotism and courage by standing up to cowardly bullies like Bill Kristol.
I still have bad memories of seeing Zbigniew Brzezinski introduce Vice President Al Gore to an audience of Polish World War II veterans at the Ambassador's residence in Warsaw, Poland. Brzezinski introduced Gore as a Vietnam veteran. The Polish veterans greeted the introduction with applause, but the Americans murmured, "Doesn't he know that President Clinton didn't serve in the military?" Military service is no longer admired in the US, especially by slackers like William Kristol.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Bushies Gut Non-Proliferation Effort
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Will America Repeat Japan's Recession
The people whom the NYT interviewed are probably smarter than I, but I am not so sure we can beat the downturn without following the Japanese example, although I don't think we should be doomed to stay in the doldrums for a decade as the Japanese have been. The NYT sees the big difference as fiscal policy. The Japanese used only monetary policy -- keeping interest rates at almost zero for almost a decade -- but apparently not so much fiscal policy.
First, the fact that the Japanese have kept interest rates at almost zero demonstrates the limits of monetary policy as practiced by the Fed. Secondly, the Republican tax cuts mean that we have been running our fiscal policy as if we have been in a recession for the last seven years. Now that we are in one, inplementing a strong anti-recession fiscal policy is likely to ignite inflation, because we are not starting with a balanced budget. We are starting with a budget already badly in the red. Printing money is a recipe for inflation.
I don't think the Republicans care much about inflation, because it allows them to decrease the value of the debt they have run up the last seven years. It allows them to pay if off in cheaper dollars. Of course, for everyone else, it means that they are stuck with cheaper dollars when they get paid, when they buy things and for everything else.
The lesson of inflation, and low interest rates in general, is don't save. Spend what you've got and borrow at low interest because you can pay it back in cheaper dollars. But look at Latin America: the chickens come home to roost. People won't invest in your country, because their investments lose money as the inflated currency depreciates. We are already seeing foreigners (Chinese, Saudis) talk about diversifying out of the dollar into the Euro or a basket of more stable currencies. At some point, inflation and the depreciating dollar will force interest rates to rise, back to the high rates of old days (the 1970s) of 15-20 percent, or more if things get really bad. Such high rates are very bad for domestic business. Maybe globalization will make the coming scenario different from the 1970s scenario, but it will be a first test; so, who knows.
I would like to know what Paul Volker thinks, who got us out of the 1970s stagflation painfully, but successfully.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Tom Friedman on Israeli Attitudes toward Race
The Lebanon invasion [in the 1980s] reopened the fundamental division in Israel over the questions: What kind of society is Israel to become? What kind of values does it stand for? Is it going to be a Jewish South Africa, permanently ruling Palestinians in West Bank homelands, is it going to be a Jewish Prussia, trying to bully all of its neighbors, or is it going to be a state with borders that will be based solely on considerations of what will preserve a secure, democratic, and Jewish society at peace with its neighbors?These are almost exactly the same questions Jimmy Carter raised in his book, Peace Not Apartheid, and for which he was severely chastised by the Jewish community.
Friedman also deals with Israeli attitudes toward the Holocaust a few pages later. He describes how fatalistic and pessimistic Israelis are, in part because of their connection to the Holocaust. But then he says:
If Israel wasn't founded on the basis of such a fatalistic outlook, then how did it take over? ... In the early years of the state of Israel it was common for nativeborn Israelis to feel contempt for the Jews who died in the Holocaust, and even for some of those who survived, because they were viewed as sheep who simply went off to slaughter, while the Zionists were men of bold initiative, who went ou and found the British and Arabs and built a Jewish state.Ruth Firer, an Israeli who came to Israel from Poland via Siberia during World War II said:
"When I was a student here [in Israel] in the 1950s, the Holocaust was a family secret -- a shame.... The feeling, the whole atmosphere, was that the future must triumph over the past. All of us, parents and kids, tried to cover up what had happened. When we taught the Holocaust then, we taught the heroism of the Warsaw Ghetto -- that was it."Friedman continues:
The change began, I believe, with the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Otto Eichmann in 1961, which brought both the Holocaust and the survivors out of the Israeli closet.... Today -- unfortunately -- the teaching of the Holocaust is an essential element of Israeli high-school education and in the Israeli officers' course. No one goes to Kibbutz Degania [an early kibbutz founded in 1909] anymore. Most Israeli younsters I met had no idea what it represented. dEgania is not viewed as the gateway to Israel. Instead, that role has been taken over by Yad Vashem, the massive hilltop memorial in Jerusalem honoring the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust.... Israel today is becoming Yad Vashem with an air force. The past has caught up with the Zionist revolution and now may be in the process of overtaking it. The Holocaust is well on its way to becoming the defining feature of Israeli society.
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Republicans Are the New Communists
While on the subject of X is the new Y, it looks like Israelis are the new Nazis. The turmoil in Gaza, with imprisoned Palestinians breaking out into Egypt, has shown that Gaza is the new Warsaw ghetto. Jews have all kinds of racist profiling methods that they use against Palestinians and other Arabs, but locking them in the Gaza ghetto is clearly reminiscent of Nazi policies against Jews during World War II. The race hatred that is seething in Israel is hard to fathom.
Monday, January 28, 2008
What about Inflation and the Dollar?
The US has a great incentive to allow inflation and devaluation of the dollar because of our huge debt. It's a common practice for third rate developing countries to run up huge debts with foreign lenders and then devalue their currencies so that they pay off the debt with cheaper money. Thus, if the dollar eventually is worth many less Chinese yuans, the US will have to sell a lot fewer goods overseas to pay off the billions we owe China. That's not going to happen immediately because the Chinese persist in pegging the yuan to the dollar, but if the dollar really starts to tank, they may change their mind. But it's a complicated case, like the one where if you owe the bank $1,000 and can't pay, you are at the bank's mercy, but if you owe the bank $10 billion and can't pay, the bank is at your mercy. Thus we and the Chinese each have leverage on each other.
The Economist magazine takes Bernanke to task for his precipitous cut in interest rates, mainly because it smacks of panic. But it's also likely to have some harmful long-term effects.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
The Bernanke Put
The Europeans so far seem to think that the stock markets and the rich investors can take care of themselves. If they make some bad investments, they should have to live with them. This runs the risk of being a drag on the economy in the short term, but it gets the trash out of the financial system and creates a foundation for future growth. Bernanke and Greenspan are acting in the present, but are they mortgaging the future? Greenspan had twenty good years, which argues that his approach may work out. But the turmoil we have today is at least in part due to Greenspan's decision to keep credit cheap and let the good times roll.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Banks in Trouble
The problem is that banks don't trust each other. Therefore, it's clear that there is another shoe to drop. Banks have expanded their risks enormously because they used securitization (selling loans as some kind of paper) to get loans off of their books. If the loans stayed on their books, the banks would have been limited in their loan making by their capital and their access to funds. Once banks were close to being limited in making loans by the size of their capital, the Fed could regulate new lending by expanding or limiting the banks access to additional funds.
If they moved the loans off of their books, however, they were never limited. Furthermore, at least in theory, moving the loans off of their books also moved the risk off. But now all of this junk that the banks thought they had gotten rid of is coming back home. Citibank has recently taken several of the "SIV" off-books sham entities it created back onto its own books, thus limiting the amount of new lending it can do.
To the extend that Citibank or other banks become capital limited, the Fed can help in its traditional way. However, if the majority of the loans are floating around as commercial paper being held by who knows who, there is not much the Fed can do. In essence the banks created money that was beyond the control of the Fed.
The rub is that the banks know how much trash is out there, because they know how much trash they sold. Therefore, banks are reluctant to lend to other banks, because they don't trust the other bank to stay solvent to repay the loan. The scary thing is that the banks know better than anybody what risk is out there, and they are too scared to lend to their colleagues. That makes it look bad.
Everybody talks about the subprime housing crisis, but what if there is other bad stuff out there. Banks have been "securitizing" everything, getting loans off their books. What about credit card debt? Car loans? Business loans? If banks lowered their lending standards considerably in these other sectors as they did for mortgages, won't some of them start to go belly up, too?
Paul Krugman has an article in the NYT saying that we are in more than a liquidity crisis. A liquidity crisis is when you have the capacity to pay off a loan, but you just don't have the cash on you. In this case, somebody (the Fed) can loan you the money to pay it off now, and then you can pay them (the Fed) off later as you continue to get salary paychecks, or your house finally sells, or whatever. But if you can never pay off the loan, it's a different problem. The money is gone for good. In this case the banks may have paid themselves huge profits on bad loans in a giant ponzi scheme. If the debtor can never pay, a Fed loan is not going to help. It may be that the banks believe this, and that's why they won't lend to each other.
If only a small percentage of the loans are bad, the system can handle it, but at some point this could grow from a liquidity crisis into a financial crisis.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Chalabi's Back
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
How Are Services in Baghdad?
The other question is what has happened to the neighborhoods? Has violence dropped because the neighborhoods have been ethnically cleansed, because neighborhoods that were once mixed Sunni and Shiite are now only one or the other?
And, has the violence dropped because we defeated al Qaeda and other opponents, or have they just faded into the woodwork until the surge is over? It appears that the surge is about over. Troops are coming home that are not being replaced, because there are no troops to replace them.
It looks like the surge proved that we needed more troops than we had for most of the war. Why did it take us four years to learn that? Just how bad are our military planners and leaders?
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Bush Lessens US Standing in the World
It adds, "Dethrone the 'war on terror' as the organising principle of US action - not because containing terrorism is unimportant, but because subordinating everything to that aim makes it harder to achieve."
But in general, even of the this report, the FT says, "there is a whiff of hubris about it."
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Send the State Department to Change Regimes
- Criticizes the State Department for a reorganization that was mandated by Sen. Jesse Helms, a Republican who hated State, and
- Implies that the main job of State should be regime change.
On both counts it is misguided. Helms mandated that USIS (the public affairs diplomatic arm) be merged into main State, along with AID and ACDA (which he doesn't mention). No doubt merging them into State has made them somewhat less desirable, but that's what the Republicans wanted because they generally hate State and what to see it stymied in whatever it's doing. But I doubt that separating them out again will make much difference in the short term.
He complains that State has not been involved enough in Iraq and Afghanistan, but part of that is due to Rumsfeld and his colleagues at Defense, who fought hard to keep State out of Iraq and to make Defense responsible for things that would normally be done by State. Only after Defense failed at these tasks did insiders start to call for State to take up the tasks and to criticize State for not having done it earlier.
Without specifically mentioning regime change, Max Boot calls for State to aid moderate Muslims, flex our political and diplomatic muscles to achieve vital objectives peacefully, gather intelligence, and build the rule of law in ungoverned lands.
I am one of those, who as he says will "object that to build up these capacities will encourage reckless 'imperialism' or 'militarism.' But improving our abilities in nation-building, strategic communications, security advising and related disciplines will actually lessen the chances that we will need to mount a major military intervention such as the one in Iraq."