The propaganda campaign by the US government is trying to mask the fact that the economic recovery plan is failing and that America is rapidly losing confidence in Team Obama.
You cannot have a sustained recovery without changing the underlying conditions that caused the failure in the first place.
In addition to the media blitz dissected by Yves Smith in the essay excerpted below, I have never seen such a load of rubbish being put forward with regard to the markets in US financial assets and commodities, and I have seen quite a bit in the last twenty years. In particular, the campaigns against gold and silver in particular are heavy-handed, obvious, and reaching the point of hysteria.
The shorts are trapped, hopelessly trapped, and unable to deliver on their massive short positions. They are only able to manipulate the price in short term bursts, and continue to dig themselves deeper as the world demand continues to drain them.
Whoever heard of a bubble in which the major money center banks are so perilously short it? A bubble requires a broad participation and belief, and the encouragement of the market makers. And now a statement from an "SEC official" that there is a gold bubble. This, from the very people who allegedly could not see the tech, housing and credit bubbles until they fell on top of them.
And of course there are the funds and the wealthy, who mouth the same party line while lining their portfolios with huge positions and personal holdings.
Various exigencies can compel the big players to make statements swearing gold and silver are no good, no store of value against all the evidence of history. But the fact remains that the US dollar reserve currency regime is falling apart, tumbling like the humpty-dumpty construct that it is. And the status quo is shitting their collective pants about it, and the likely backlash from the public when their deceptions are exposed.
Don't expect the Ancien Régime fiancier to fall easily, quietly, or quickly. But it will change; change is the only inevitability. And we all suspect what will remain standing when the dust settles. All this noise seems more like haggling over a larger quantity for a better price, and a clearer path to the exit. Even the liberals are beginning to notice and take heed.
#1
These morons in Washington have screwed up the economy royally. You can't have a sustained recovery without a manufacturing base that provides good long-term jobs for people. About the only people doing well in this recession [depression] are politicians, government workers, and the financial people on Wall Street that helped get us in this mess. You cannot have a healthy economy when it is all directed from Washington and when it ignores the private sector.
#2
JohnQC and all knowledgeable Ranties, can someone explain what kind of manufacturing base is even possible in this day and age that would provide large scale job potential?
It seems that all the mass employment areas have long since been transferred to computerized equipment and that there are no auto-industries that could gainfully employ large numbers of relatively untrained workers. This isn't the depression when thousands of backs with shovels are needed.
I'm not a luddite and not averse to progress but I don't have a vision for a new economy with a high number of well paid jobs. Heck, there's even less need for programmers than 25 years ago do to the amount of automation in that business. (30+ years in software here so I know what I'm talking about)
Where are the jobs that make good money in the new world and how are people going to be trained to fill them? It seems that high paying jobs for most people was also a bubble that is bursting.
#4
People who are obsessed by things in boxes (manufacturing) and exports know nothing about the real economy. If there's not a demand for things in boxes then making them is pointless.
The real economy functions on the individuals reciprocally exchanging their time and the comparative advantage this creates. This naturally maximises demand fulfilment and quickly responds to shortage.
In September 2006, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic legislative leaders treated AB 32's enactment as a huge milestone. Meant to reduce the emissions that contribute to global warming, the law forced a shift to cleaner-but-costlier forms of energy. This shift would be accomplished with a "cap-and-trade" system in which companies would buy and sell their emission rations, creating market incentives to reduce pollution.
The landmark legislation was meant to inspire other states, the federal government and the rest of the world to follow suit with similar laws. The governor was so sure this would happen that he declared the bill "will change the course of history."
Forty-two months later, this claim looks silly. No other state has imposed a similar law. The Senate has grown increasingly cold to a measure the House approved last summer. Most tellingly, a December summit in Copenhagen meant to build a global cap-and-trade consensus went nowhere.
Why? Because there is a widespread assumption that it is not a good idea to suddenly force the use of costlier energy during an economic downturn that has wiped out tens of millions of jobs around the world.
This common sense is on display in Washington. On Jan. 20, seven Senate Democrats -- including California's Dianne Feinstein -- called for "cap-and-trade" to be put aside in favor of an intense focus on jobs and reviving the economy.
But in Sacramento -- even with unemployment at a 70-year high of 12.7 percent -- this common sense is assailed. Even as the respected, nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office warns that AB 32's implementation would force the loss of jobs, proposals to suspend AB 32 by Republican lawmakers and GOP gubernatorial candidates are ridiculed by the governor and the likely Democratic candidate to replace him.
Schwarzenegger calls the idea a throwback to the "Stone Age." Attorney General Jerry Brown is similarly contemptuous.
What is driving this immense disconnect?
Why would they dismiss what looks like common sense to the rest of the world?
Why are they so blithe even as the LAO warns AB 32 is likely to make the state's astronomical unemployment rate even higher?
The answer with Schwarzenegger lies in his abiding conviction that the 2006 law will lead to his being remembered as a global green giant -- even as the evidence accumulates that its main effect was not to inspire the world but to kneecap California's economy.
The answer with Brown lies in his determination to woo greener-than-thou West Los Angeles and Bay Area liberals -- even as the evidence accumulates that AB 32 will destroy blue-collar jobs held by the folks Democrats are supposed to care most about.
Either way, these key leaders aren't helping Californians. Perhaps when state unemployment reaches 15 percent, what's common sense to the rest of the world will finally register with the governor and his would-be successor.
What will it be, Mr President? So asked the full-page advertisement by the American Civil Liberties Union in Sunday's New York Times. The ACLU was responding to reports that Barack Obama might reverse the decision by Eric Holder, US attorney-general, to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his alleged September 11 co-conspirators in a civilian court and send them instead to a military commission. Beneath panel images of Mr Obama morphing into President George W. Bush, the ACLU noted Mr Obama's campaign pledge to change Bush-era terrorism policies, and urged him to "remind the world that America stands for due process, justice and the rule of law".
If this is surprising to some inside and outside the US, it is because they do not share the US government's view that it is at war and must use the tools of war -- including military commissions and military detention -- to defeat its enemies.
The problem for the ACLU is that America's conception of due process, justice and the rule of law includes military commissions. Commissions are politically damaged and still raise legal questions. But their pedigree reaches back more than 200 years and they have the support of every branch of US government. The Supreme Court invalidated Mr Bush's commissions in 2006 on technical grounds but affirmed their validity in theory. That same year, Congress reinstated commissions after addressing the Court's concerns. It made further revisions in 2009. The Obama administration embraced commissions last year and plans to use them for lower-level alleged terrorists.
American law also permits military detention without trial against members of the Taliban, al-Qaeda and its affiliates until the end of the country's conflicts with these groups. As with commissions, Congress has approved military detention; courts have upheld it; and the administration has embraced it and plans to use it for several dozen alleged terrorists.
Thus when Mr Holder was considering last autumn how to handle Mr Mohammed and associates, he had three options: a military commission, military detention or a civilian trial. His choice of the latter was pragmatic and not required legally. He based it on the overwhelming evidence against the alleged 9/11 plotters, which should make conviction relatively easy, and on the symbolism of using the most demanding standards of American justice. His decision had the effect of distinguishing Mr Obama from the Bush administration in a high-profile case and tamping down criticism by the ACLU and similar groups of Mr Obama's underlying embrace of the basic Bush approach to terrorism.
"This was a tough call," Mr Holder said at the time, "and reasonable people can disagree with my conclusion that these individuals should be tried in federal court rather than a military commission." Reasonable people did disagree -- strongly. Security for the proposed Manhattan trial turned out to be outlandishly expensive and disruptive, and local politicians who originally supported the trial asked the administration to reconsider. Many Republicans argued that the administration had a criminal law mentality and was soft on terrorism -- a position that gained traction after the seemingly passive handling of the underwear bomber in December. Calls have been growing in Congress to cut off funding for the New York trial.
So New York politics and the politics of appearing soft on terrorism are leading Mr Obama to reconsider what to do with Mr Mohammed. Another factor is Mr Obama's desire, three months after a blown deadline, to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. This goal, too, has aroused charges of weakness on terrorism. The administration is reportedly negotiating with Republican senators to move Mr Mohammed to a military commission in exchange for their support in closing Guantanamo.
It is not obvious, however, that commissions are the best choice for Mr Mohammed. They have not been used for a high-profile trial in 70 years, and many legal issues, some thorny, will need to be ironed out over many years before a final judgment on Mr Mohammed can be reached. This is not the ideal setting for what Mr Holder called the "trial of the century".
It might be more prudent to continue to hold Mr Mohammed under the military detention rationale that has justified his imprisonment for more than seven years. Military detention is easier, quicker and no less legally legitimate. Compared with commissions, it would give Mr Mohammed a smaller stage on which to make political mischief.
Using a commission or military detention to put Mr Mohammed away will anger the ACLU and others on the American left who insist on civilian trials, as well as many around the world who expected something different from Mr Obama. It would be the latest in a string of disappointments caused by the continuation of Bush-era policies such as commissions, detention, limited habeas corpus, targeted killing and rendition.
Mr Obama has embraced these policies because the realities and domestic politics of war and the responsibilities of the presidency have led him to use every legally available option to keep America safe. These policies mark a change from the campaign trail, but they enjoy broad political support in the US.
If this is surprising to some inside and outside the US, it is because they do not share the US government's view that it is at war and must use the tools of war -- including military commissions and military detention -- to defeat its enemies.
The writer, an assistant attorney-general in the Bush administration, teaches at Harvard Law School and is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/10/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
Dusty hypotheticals make for interesting books I suppose. I must be the only one who isn't writing one. Does all of this mean we can no longer...blame Bush?
#1
But this election is a big deal because Iraqis with the help of the U.N., the U.S. military and the Obama team, particularly Vice President Joe Biden overcame two huge obstacles. - Thomas Friedman
nuff said. A$$hole of the day award. The man loves authoritarian China over the rough and base politics of American democracy. He lauds his masters, to whom he's sold his soul to, ignoring the blood and sacrifice of the American soldier and W's surge effort his masters denounced as failed. Note to NYT, there is no memory hole with the internet.
#3
I'm no Friedman fan, but at least he does give some credit to Bush:
Former President George W. Bushs gut instinct that this region craved and needed democracy was always right. It should have and could have been pursued with much better planning and execution. This war has been extraordinarily painful and costly. But democracy was never going to have a virgin birth in a place like Iraq, which has never known any such thing.
As for those who, "argue that nothing that happens in Iraq will ever justify the costs.", they are either willfully ignorant or think nothing is worth fighting for. What do they have to say about the cost and sacrifice incurred to give birth to our own democracy? What do they have to say about the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, WWII? Were those not worth the costs, as well?
"War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
-John Stuart Mill
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
-Samuel Adams
#5
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
-Samuel Adams
Makes me yearn more for the writings of our founding fathers. We have strayed too far away from their wise guidance...
#6
Methinks Obama needs to read less of Saul Alinsky and more of Sam and John Adams and Thomas Payne and Jefferson and Hamilton...but he won't he's an America hater from way back and we were played by the media who were played by the Obama team who were played by Obama.
Newsflash to all of you dingbats that voted for the moron that is President....ITS TIME TO SCRAP OFF THE BUMPER STICKERS. You don't want anyone to know you willingly voted for him!!!
Posted by: Karl Rove ||
03/10/2010 10:13 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Former President George W. Bush's gut instinct that this region craved and needed democracy was always right. It should have and could have been pursued with much better planning and execution.
My take on the whole thing is that W didn't want to fight both wars at the same time. The region and the type of enemies we are fighting demands the kind of fighting we are doing today with restrictive ROEs and therefore insane numbers of troops. Can't do both at the same time. So he fought to settle the war in Iraq first, and left Noblahblah to figure out how to deal with Afghanistan since his mouth already wrote the check that "Afghanistan is the right war" and Noblahblah's political promises wouldn't allow him to walk away from it without crushing results. I'd say W did as well as anyone could possibly have imagined once he saw the path through the chaos, which was impossible to foresee. With as many armchair generals as we have, myself included, some of them will see it before the rest but the trick for those in charge is to recognize whose vision is correct in foresight, not hindsight.
#8
Good job Iraqis, doin just fine, lots to do still, keep it up.
I know much has been made concerning Obama's Dad's view of the British. Those names listed were not exactly fond of the British as well. Would it be irony or (classical) tragedy for Obama to ruin a country designed and built by men who shared some deep opinions and/or goals similar to his dad?
#10
The reason the Left hates Bush is that according to Marxist theory, individulas can't influence the course of history, only social forces can.
Bush's invasion of Iraq was a project to shape the 21st century in the ME by bringing democracy to the region. It may yet fail and you can argue it wasn't worth the cost, but GW Bush has done more to influence the course of the 21st century than any other man.
Succeed or fail in Afghanistan, it will and can never be more than a sideshow.
This is the reason for the deranged hatred of Bush on the Left.
#11
It needs to be said, apparently again and again, for the amnesiacs who were pushing containment as the alternative to going in. By the time of the two major sweetheart oil deals in late 2002 between Saddam and a) ChIrak's TotalFinaElf and b) Putin's LUKoil, the containment regime was kaput, finito, shredded. Saddam was signing major, multi-billion $$$$$$$$ oil deals with two of the five UNSC members who had pledged not to do business with him! He was most assuredly out of the "box" that, we were told, containment had placed him in.
#12
Bush's invasion of Iraq was a project to shape the 21st century in the ME by bringing democracy to the region. It may yet fail and you can argue it wasn't worth the cost, but GW Bush has done more to influence the course of the 21st century than any other man.
That right there sums up the strategy in a nut shell. We could have done the status-quo, or tried to change things in a way that hasn't been tried before. It may fail, it may work, but now Iraq's future is in the hands of Iraqis.
The only other option we have is to slaughter vast numbers of the guilty and the guiltless. Rubble don't make trouble.
#13
The only other option we have is to slaughter vast numbers of the guilty and the guiltless. Rubble don't make trouble.
This would be my preferred approach. Not only does rubble not make trouble, but the Victor gets to dictate to the Vanquished how their rehabilitation proceeds. Additionally, stomping your adversary flat sends a powerful message to other would be miscreants.
Might always makes right...always. That is natures law.
In Beck's defense, the title on this YouTube video is misleading, Beck doesn't explicitly call Wilders a fascist. He does (after labeling Wilders "far-right") claim in Europe, all of the far-right is fascist. Still, Beck is talking out his ass, how many so-called "fascists" like Wilders have unwavering support for the Jewish state? What is Beck thinking? Have some knowledge of what you're talking about before making an ass of yourself in front of millions of informed people... When he said that he read the qur'an front to back and came away that islam is unequivocally a religion of peace told me all I needed to know how he feels about islam.
#2
I think Beck did a great job explaining Progressivism to an ignorant audience of millions. While they give him a lot of rope, he does have to toe the line.
#3
What does fascism have to do with support or opposition to Israel? If you're talking about Nazism it's a different story.
Actually in the (small) portion of France occupied by Italy, the Italian authorities banned the enforcement of Vichy's antisemitic legislation. I don't know if the initiative came from Italy's (fascist) civilian authorities. from the (monarchist) Army with Mussolini looking the other way.
Anyway, most of post-war fascist movements have lent to antisemitism. Also, the left has used the F bomb on anyone it disliked. We shouldn't brand somenone with it just because the left has told so.
#5
"He does (after labeling Wilders "far-right") claim in Europe, all of the far-right is fascist.
Ummm no Mr. Weaselzipper he didnt. Beck was attempting to illustrate the difference between the American experiment and the polarized governing of old Europe. His thrust was that by adhering to constitutional principles America has, thus far, avoided the pendulum of extreme governing ideologies. Moreover, the context of his presentation was to show how by the Progressive movements penchant for shifting the US to a European style might result in dramatic swings both to the left and right. In this context using The Dutch Party of Freedom as an example of a movement that, in a crisis, could move towards fascisism is not unreasonable. And its hardly the same as insinuating that Wilders himself is a fascist.
#6
It's too bad that Fox News tends to generate more heat than light. I never watch it. It's not that I trust ABC. I just can't stand all the shouting.
Fox's news shows are pretty good. Brit Hume's show was full of WIN. I haven't it in the last few years (in Europe), but from what I hear, it's become the video version of talk radio.
#9
Politics has little to do with this. Viewed accurately, Beck is a successful entrepreneur in the entertainment industry who from time to time will reposition his product so as to maintain/extend market share.
#10
OTOH compare wid TOPIX > WHO IS OUT TO GET [obstruct, kill, destroy, divert, etc] BARACK OBAMA?
ARTIC > iff MAHA-RUSHIAN "HISTOIRE" is any measure, DEM POTUS BAMMER is highly likely to be done in by HIS OWN PARTY ANDOR SUPPORTERS OF SAME + HIMSELF, NOT BY ARROGANT FASCIST MALE BRUTE DESPICABLE CAPITALIST, ETC. CONSERVATIVE GOP-RIGHT'ERS???
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 Thomas Friedman
