#1
They are cooking the numbers as hard and as fast as they can to keep the government looking like it is doing positive for the economy instead of just borrowing money and spending into oblivion.
#2
If the government can convince the people they are doing better, then the people are likely to BEHAVE like they are doing better, and borrow/spend money again, which will (at least temporarily) actually stimulate the economy.
The other somewhat successful approach they have taken is to create serious inflationary pressure, which convinces those with financial assets that their assets are going to decrease in value, and that they should go ahead and spend them NOW, before that happens. Again, that spending stimulates the economy.
On the other hand, that which cannot continue forever will not. And eventually lies kill people.
#2
The time in future when a geopol retreating America may use Earthquake Bombs to destroy strategic Pacific Islands to deny to potent enemies is still many years away.
[1960-1970's GUAM TAOTAMONAS = HUGO CHAVEZ here].
AS OLD SAYING(S) GO, "THE PAST IS PROLOGUE", + "ALL POLITICS [+ God = Heaven]] IS INTENTIONAL".
America's enemies intend to subvert the marketplace
American capitalism - led by and caricatured as the financial industry centered on Wall Street - is predicated on the notion that the market is driven by fundamentally economic motives. To its admirers, that means its dynamics are dictated by profit motivation. Wall Street's critics call it greed.
The rules and regulations that govern our stock transactions largely reflect this assumption. We discourage undesirable behavior primarily by levying fines and otherwise making it costly to engage in it.
Forgive the obviousness of this question but, what if actors who are interested in affecting our stock market and economy more generally are motivated not by making money but by some larger strategic interest? In that case, financial disincentives are likely to prove completely ineffectual.
For example, would our present Maginot Line of financial defenses - much of them constructed by legislators bearing names such as Christopher Dodd, Barney Frank, Paul Sarbanes and Michael Oxley - protect us if avowed enemies of this country sought to inflict a major, and possibly decisive, blow against us and didn't care if they lost money in the process?
This proposition is explored in a riveting book that will be published this month by one of my colleagues, Kevin D. Freeman, a senior fellow of the Center for Security Policy. In fact, as the title of "Secret Weapon: How Economic Terrorism Brought Down the U.S. Stock Market and Why It Can Happen Again"suggests, Mr. Freeman's thesis is that it already has occurred, with devastating effect, and that worse may be in the offing.
By training a certified financial analyst who worked for a decade with one of the giants of modern finance, investment maven Sir John Templeton, the author knows his stuff. Among other things, Mr. Freeman reminds us that U.S. enemies - potential and actual - have served notice repeatedly that they understand our market's vulnerabilities to attack.
For instance, in 1999, two senior Chinese colonels wrote an officially sanctioned book titled "Unrestricted Warfare." It identified "bear raids" on stocks to trigger a market collapse as the first in a long list of unconventional weapons that could devastate America.
Another threat of financial warfare was issued by al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who boasted that his jihadists were as "aware of the cracks in the Western financial system as they are aware of the lines in their own hands." That from a man who selected the World Trade Center as a target for the Sept. 11 attacks so as to do massive economic harm to the United States. It was not lost on bin Laden - or America's other enemies - that when the U.S. economy declines, calls intensify for cutting back spending on America's defenses.
No less troubling should be the fact that a very-much-alive spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, has described the use of proceeds from Shariah-compliant finance as "jihad with money."
Worse, Sheik al-Qaradawi is a top Shariah authority for the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar. That position and his preeminence in Islamic jurisprudence worldwide (thanks in part to his popular jihadist program broadcast by Al-Jazeera Arabic TV) has helped make Sheik al-Qaradawi a driving force in what is now said to be a trillion-dollar "Islamic finance" industry. Under his influence, Islamists have successfully enlisted Western capitalists to help them exploit free markets as a strategic tool for promoting and insinuating their toxic, supremacist politico-military-legal doctrine throughout the Free World, including the United States.
Incredibly, this stealth jihadist is the man the Obama administration reportedly has tapped to help broker peace talks with the Taliban on Afghanistan. It is presumably no accident that the latter has chosen to set up a diplomatic mission in Sheik al-Qaradawi's adopted hometown, the Qatari capital of Doha.
Is it a coincidence that, as the Wall Street Journal reported in August 2007, Shariah authorities gave their blessing to the practice of "short-selling" just as the stock market was peaking?
As even former Obama economic guru and Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers has observed, sovereign wealth funds serve the interests of the sovereign first, and profit second. Mr. Freeman believes we face a particular danger from the fact that most of the world's wealth-fund sovereigns are in China and the Middle East - the latter increasingly governed by the dictates of Shariah-compliant finance.
I have accompanied Mr. Freeman in briefings he has conducted at senior levels in official Washington and with top financial players in New York, Dallas and Houston. Those of his interlocutors in the national security community seemed, without exception, to accept that economic threats to the United States could come from quarters not interested in monetary returns. Unfortunately, such folks typically lack Mr. Freeman's deep understanding of financial markets, their vulnerabilities and how they could be exploited.
By contrast, when Mr. Freeman has presented his findings to financial market participants, they rarely get it. They typically fall back on the traditional assumption that anyone who buys Credit Default Swaps, stocks or bonds has an exclusively economic motive. The idea that these instruments could be used as weapons is so foreign to them that they often push back angrily, denying the obvious.
Despite willful blindness and blistering attack, Mr. Freeman's warnings stand up to scrutiny. His "Secret Weapon" should receive it at the highest levels of both the national security and financial security communities and at once.
Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy (SecureFreedom.org), a columnist for The Washington Times and host of Secure Freedom Radio, heard in Washington weeknights ii 9 p.m. on 1260 AM.
#1
they often push back angrily, denying the obvious. That's par for the course with the Pig Men. They've been denying the obvious for years now. The US doesn't need a foreign enemy to subvert its marketplace. Domestic enemies, including those within & around the government, like Jon Corzine, have done a bang-up job of destroying the American economy.
Those who dismiss it miss the point: the issue isn't financial Jihad vs. US irresponsibility, it is the former taking advantage of the latter. Flopping Aces has a good summary/analysis of the report here.
[Dawn] FORMER French president François Mitterrand used to deride Charles de Gaulle`s Fifth Republic as a "permanent coup d`état".
He might as well have been talking about Pakistain, the only country in the world that seems almost permanently trapped between military coups. The spectre of the next putsch continuously haunts elected governments. The question is not if there will be a coup, but when. The most recent `near` coup over the memo scandal is only the latest example of how deeply entrenched coup politics is in our political process.
From the ISI chief`s autonomous investigation into the mysterious memo to the army chief`s politically insubordinate affidavit in the Supreme Court, the generals have clearly revealed their utter disregard for democratic norms.
Still many analysts in Pakistain (and outside) view the `military in politics` from a `voluntarist` perspective. Democracy in Pakistain survives, we are told, mainly because of the present army chief`s professional restraint. Had an Ayub or a Musharraf been in Kayani`s ... four star general, current Chief of Army Staff of the Mighty Pak Army. Kayani is the former Director General of ISI... place, the PPP-led government would not have survived as long as it has.
Personalities are not inconsequential to the military`s involvement in politics. But in any bureaucratic organization, where you stand, depends primarily on where you sit. When the organization at hand is a disciplined army, focusing on individual idiosyncrasies impoverishes our understanding of the organizational drivers of military behaviour.
The coup is not so much a power grab by an ambitious chief of staff, as it is a calculated military institutional response to exceptional crises (always) caused by civilian governments.
Military intervention in politics is not reducible to the `authoritarian-feudal` nature of society or the characteristic of a particular civilian government or party either. It is shaped primarily by internal military attributes -- the officer corps` shared ideology and interests, which create the self-serving biases vis-Ã -vis civilians that legitimate military political action.
Let history speak for itself. The institutional base and power of each of Pakistain`s four military regimes was the military as an institution, not some personality cult or even a fabricated political party.
Generals Ayub, Zia, Yahya and Musharraf were as different in their personalities and social backgrounds, as one can imagine. But when they subverted constitutions, stole elections, silenced dissidents, and in Yahya`s case, oversaw atrocities in East Pakistain, they were all acting in their capacity as chiefs of the army.
The stain of politics is institutional, which cannot simply be washed away by one army chief being seen as more democratic than others. Of course, military political meddling is not simply the result of military factors either. In fact, it is sustained by the perceived acquiescence of elements in political and civil societies, as well as the state. Consider the Supreme Court`s dogged pursuit of the memo case on behalf of what the chief justice calls the "man who protects our borders".
It is important not to muddle the causal sequence. Militaries rely on, and benefit from, the cooperation of civilians in preserving or advancing their institutional interests. But military coups, and the authoritarian regimes that tend to follow them, are not simply products of civilian consent and compliance.
In fact, civilian weaknesses are never enough to mobilise an army for a coup. Successful coups happen when those who carry guns and wear uniforms want to make them happen.
Admittedly, the coup is not the only potent weapon in the military`s political arsenal. The generals are equally adept at smothering democracy slowly, with each tightening of the noose suffocating elected governments just enough to sap their capacity to challenge the military`s vast `reserve` domains in the national security arena.
And by making itself available as an alternative political formula, or by sponsoring right-wing political proxies, the military can create compelling incentives for politicians to take their opposition to the government outside the limits of constitutional propriety.
The military`s media machine has also mastered the art of manipulating the imagery and content of the 24/7 news cycle to enhance `national security`, both by badgering partisan politics as an enterprise and by polishing or tarnishing the reputations of specific leaders or parties.
Compare the aggressively negative coverage of President Zardari with the obsequious attention showered on Imran Khan ... aka Taliban Khan, who who convinced himself that playing cricket qualified him to lead a nuclear-armed nation with severe personality problems... , the new messiah of `clean` politics, national honour and what not.
Besides, the security agencies have become the easiest sport in town, so is it any wonder that many politicians` loyalties are fickle and their interests only short term? Consider the `tsunami` of political turncoats flocking to the pro-military hodgepodge aka Tehrik-i-Insaf.
Of course, the generals` classic refrain, since the time of Ayub Khan, has been that they intrude in politics because politicians knock on the army`s doors for political salvation.
But this line of reasoning conceals more than it reveals the truth about military intervention. It is not clear why the generals so generously open the door almost every time civilians come knocking. And most of the times, the military does not really need solicitation by `bloody` civilians to intervene.
For example, as leaked American diplomatic cables indicated, ousting President Zardari in March 2009 during the deadlock over the sacked judiciary was an option for Kayani. Who begged him to intervene then? It could not have been Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... , whom Kayani distrusted (at the time) even more than Zardari. The point is that the generals made their own determination to remove the president. Nobody had put a gun to their heads.
If Pakistain is to ever have a chance at democratising its civil-military relations, the military`s hegemonic narrative must be challenged. A necessary first step in that direction will be to focus our analysis and interpretations of military intervention as much on its institutional `causes` as we do on its individual military or civilian `causers`.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/06/2012 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
By Max Boot
[Dawn] FORMER French president François Mitterrand used to deride Charles de Gaulle`s Fifth Republic as a "permanent coup d`état".
The coup is not so much a power grab by an ambitious chief of staff, as it is a calculated military institutional response to exceptional crises (always) caused by civilian governments.
It is important not to muddle the causal sequence. Militaries rely on, and benefit from, the cooperation of civilians in preserving or advancing their institutional interests. But military coups, and the authoritarian regimes that tend to follow them, are not simply products of civilian consent and compliance.
Compare the aggressively negative coverage of President Zardari with the obsequious attention showered on 
Nawaz Sharif
