Whoever pulled the grenade pin or fired the gun that killed Benazir Bhutto, it’s now pretty obvious that the Pakistani state was at least a half-partner in the assassination. That was unintentionally confirmed by the bizarre explanation of the interior ministry spokesman who cobbled together the completely incredible official account of her death in 48 hours without the benefit of an autopsy. So we’re to swallow the absurd tale that Bhutto hit her head on a metal bar and died of a concussion while people standing around her were splattered with her blood and immediately reported that she had been shot through the neck.
The Independent of London notes that the entire area around the assassination point was promptly washed down with high-powered hoses, which conveniently removes key evidence and is also par for the course in Pakistani political hits, including that of Bhutto’s own brother while she was prime minister. The mounting evidence that Musharraf and his secret police are complicit makes even more repugnant the facile crap mouthed by our own presidential candidates about the need for Pakistan to ‘continue on the path to democratization’ (Edwards, who should know better).
The reality-based candidates (i.e. not including McCain who thinks Musharraf has done a heckuva job) are now recognizing that the credibility of the Pakistani regime is approaching absolute zero. But their policy suggestions don’t rise to the occasion.
We should be hearing much more about restoring the independent judiciary recently trashed by Musharraf as a minimum first step both toward finding out the truth about the Bhutto assassination and any chance of building a system based on the rule of law. Instead, the candidates are far too focused on U.S. security needs to be distracted by anything as dull as the well-being of Pakistanis.
It’s the same exact error committed 30 years ago with the bitter-end support for the Shah of Iran, and the consequences were and are neither security nor well-being for anyone. I will be dumbfounded if the endgame in Pakistan leads in any other direction.
Sunday, 30 December 2007
Friday, 28 December 2007
Yucks from the Huck
I have a confession to make: I’ve been secretly rooting since October for Mike Huckabee to pull off an upset and take the Republican nomination. I admit it’s perverse, but there’s a twisted logic to it. First of all, his positions on a lot of domestic issues have been remarkably sane compared to the rest of the australopithecus-heavy field. He says reasonable things about prisons and the war on drugs and other nuts-and-bolts state government issues.
Second and most importantly, I am convinced Huckabee would be annihilated by any credible Democrat, especially when people hear his hard-line wacko religious beliefs, which are not as slicked up as Bush’s were. Huckabee is a true believer and capable of saying shrill, punitive things through which he imprudently shows the true face of the theocrats.
Huckabee would run on what the religious right actually thinks and believes, rather than a prettified version of it, and that would be extremely inconvenient for the Republicans because I think the great American middle is pretty much fed up with their fanatical, holier-than-thou shit and ready to give them a licking they won’t forget.
But the limelight hasn’t been kind to ol’ Mike. One of the things that first attracted my attention was his entirely decent comments about the immigration issue in which he focused on the real human beings who have poured into his own state rather than the abstract Illegal Alien [organ chords!]
But the sudden pressure of being a frontrunner has pushed Huckabee over the edge. Friday, he picked up on the Bhutto assassination to say that it showed how we need a solid wall on the Mexican frontier and an ‘immediate, very clear monitoring to make sure if there’s any unusual activity of Pakistanis coming into this country.’ Huh?
We periocially see those stories about how most Americans can’t find Canada on a map, but I’d have thought a presidential candidate would know that Pakistan doesn’t lie in South America.
But aside from the dubious geography lesson, here’s the Huck’s new religion on the topic:
The fact is that the immigration issue is not so much about people coming to pick lettuce or make beds, it’s about someone coming with a shoulder-fired missile.
Um, no, Mike, it’s actually about coming to pick lettuce and make beds, which you know perfectly well because you grow lettuce in Arkansas, along with psilocybin mushrooms, apparently.
And I recommend strict limits on the hours you’re spending on the Book of Revelations, my man. Time to stick to Third John and Habbakuk.
Once upon a time, Huckabee was grounded in reality on immigration. The fact that he could so suddenly lift off into the ionosphere is a good measure of the utter irrationality that the issue stirs in the hearts of his fellow fantasists.
Second and most importantly, I am convinced Huckabee would be annihilated by any credible Democrat, especially when people hear his hard-line wacko religious beliefs, which are not as slicked up as Bush’s were. Huckabee is a true believer and capable of saying shrill, punitive things through which he imprudently shows the true face of the theocrats.
Huckabee would run on what the religious right actually thinks and believes, rather than a prettified version of it, and that would be extremely inconvenient for the Republicans because I think the great American middle is pretty much fed up with their fanatical, holier-than-thou shit and ready to give them a licking they won’t forget.
But the limelight hasn’t been kind to ol’ Mike. One of the things that first attracted my attention was his entirely decent comments about the immigration issue in which he focused on the real human beings who have poured into his own state rather than the abstract Illegal Alien [organ chords!]
But the sudden pressure of being a frontrunner has pushed Huckabee over the edge. Friday, he picked up on the Bhutto assassination to say that it showed how we need a solid wall on the Mexican frontier and an ‘immediate, very clear monitoring to make sure if there’s any unusual activity of Pakistanis coming into this country.’ Huh?
We periocially see those stories about how most Americans can’t find Canada on a map, but I’d have thought a presidential candidate would know that Pakistan doesn’t lie in South America.
But aside from the dubious geography lesson, here’s the Huck’s new religion on the topic:
The fact is that the immigration issue is not so much about people coming to pick lettuce or make beds, it’s about someone coming with a shoulder-fired missile.
Um, no, Mike, it’s actually about coming to pick lettuce and make beds, which you know perfectly well because you grow lettuce in Arkansas, along with psilocybin mushrooms, apparently.
And I recommend strict limits on the hours you’re spending on the Book of Revelations, my man. Time to stick to Third John and Habbakuk.
Once upon a time, Huckabee was grounded in reality on immigration. The fact that he could so suddenly lift off into the ionosphere is a good measure of the utter irrationality that the issue stirs in the hearts of his fellow fantasists.
Blowback and Bhutto
Jimmy Carter, champion of human rights, led the charge way back in 1979 to pour billions through the CIA into the hands of all sorts of Pakistani reactionaries, the ancestors of the suicide bombers who blew a hole into the country’s yearning for a modern, democratic state on Thursday.
But back then in the 1970s world communism led by the USSR was the principal bugaboo driving American policy, and Carter faithfully fell into line behind that campaign—not that it did him any good. He wasn’t nearly far enough on board for the organized military-industrial complex, which mobilized through things like the Committee on the Present Danger to pave the way for a more enthusiastic shifting of national priorities into war preparation and warmaking under Saint Ronald of Malibu.
It’s certainly ironic to learn decades later that Carter’s Condi Rice, Zbigniew Brzezinski, worked hard to provoke the Soviet invasion in the first place, hoping to snooker the Russians into a Vietnam-like quagmire. As ZB himself put it (Le Nouvel Observateur, 1998) ‘We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.’
They got their wish, and it only took a million Afghan deaths to provide Zbig with his Cold War triumph. Cheap at half the price.
There were moderate forces involved in the resistance to Soviet occupation of Afghanistan way back then, but they attracted little interest from the CIA handlers who were much more excited by people like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and other Islamic fundamentalists from the Seven Party Mujahideen Alliance and their eager volunteers like one Osama bin Laden.
Why is it that the ‘moderate’ types we supposedly need and want to be in charge, like the late Mrs Bhutto, only get a hand from Washington when their true favorites, military dictators who can deliver on demand with a flick of the baton, begin to stumble?
The body-blow taken to Bush’s schemes in Pakistan reveals yet again why a policy led by the intelligence services and based on secret dungeons around the world is doomed to implosion sooner or later. Bush and Cheney were delighted with Musharraf because he could deliver key targets to the CIA interrogators, and the regime in Washington could then beat interesting facts out of the prisoners and trumpet their successes, thus justifying the eclipse of the rule of law once and for all.
No matter that Musharraf simultaneously cut deals with the fundamentalists, which allowed them to regroup and carry on their war in Afghanistan. Now Bush & Perv are stuck with each other, and the Taliban are laughing all the way to Tora Bora.
But back then in the 1970s world communism led by the USSR was the principal bugaboo driving American policy, and Carter faithfully fell into line behind that campaign—not that it did him any good. He wasn’t nearly far enough on board for the organized military-industrial complex, which mobilized through things like the Committee on the Present Danger to pave the way for a more enthusiastic shifting of national priorities into war preparation and warmaking under Saint Ronald of Malibu.
It’s certainly ironic to learn decades later that Carter’s Condi Rice, Zbigniew Brzezinski, worked hard to provoke the Soviet invasion in the first place, hoping to snooker the Russians into a Vietnam-like quagmire. As ZB himself put it (Le Nouvel Observateur, 1998) ‘We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.’
They got their wish, and it only took a million Afghan deaths to provide Zbig with his Cold War triumph. Cheap at half the price.
There were moderate forces involved in the resistance to Soviet occupation of Afghanistan way back then, but they attracted little interest from the CIA handlers who were much more excited by people like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and other Islamic fundamentalists from the Seven Party Mujahideen Alliance and their eager volunteers like one Osama bin Laden.
Why is it that the ‘moderate’ types we supposedly need and want to be in charge, like the late Mrs Bhutto, only get a hand from Washington when their true favorites, military dictators who can deliver on demand with a flick of the baton, begin to stumble?
The body-blow taken to Bush’s schemes in Pakistan reveals yet again why a policy led by the intelligence services and based on secret dungeons around the world is doomed to implosion sooner or later. Bush and Cheney were delighted with Musharraf because he could deliver key targets to the CIA interrogators, and the regime in Washington could then beat interesting facts out of the prisoners and trumpet their successes, thus justifying the eclipse of the rule of law once and for all.
No matter that Musharraf simultaneously cut deals with the fundamentalists, which allowed them to regroup and carry on their war in Afghanistan. Now Bush & Perv are stuck with each other, and the Taliban are laughing all the way to Tora Bora.
Thursday, 27 December 2007
Death of Benazir Bhutto
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto is a reminder of how quickly conditions can change for the worse when you’ve spent a decade wasting your resources in the pursuit of fantastic dreams based on telegrams from God.
Bhutto as Bush’s last-ditch effort to save the sinking Pakistani ship was never a great bet; now it’s gone entirely. Pakistan’s January elections, if held at all, will be meaningless, and the Musharraf dictatorship, which now lacks any semblance of fig leaf over its unlovely nether regions, will have to fall back on the support of the discredited army and intelligence apparatus, at least portions of which must loathe him. Nothing in the present scenario suggests that the comparisons with Iran circa 1979, much dismissed a month ago, are off the mark.
Meanwhile, the unexpected event blew the skirts of the U.S. presidential candidates up over their heads as well. Most of them showed signs of megalomaniac dementia in announcing that Bhutto’s death was really about them, a reflection of their core belief that the United States is the center of the known universe and that the republic’s heart in fact beats within their own hoary breasts.
Giuliani promptly scheduled more Twin Tower ads, proving the truth of Joe Biden’s mock that he couldn’t form a sentence about Bhutto or anything else without ‘9/11’ appearing as a particle. For his part, Biden at least threw down the gauntlet at Musharraf and suggested that security for Mrs Bhutto was lax, a hint at negligent collusion in her death.
But Biden couldn’t resist mentioning that he had told Perv as much personally twice—just so we see how awesomely plugged in he is.
McCain and Clinton said the event proved the need for ‘experienced’ pols at the helm, i.e. themselves, while the untutored Romney said there was plenty of good advice to be had at the State Department without actually citing any of it.
Obama sounded unconvincing and lost, declaring that ‘we’ve got a very big problem there.’ Thank you for sharing that, but I’d say the Pakistanis have rather a larger problem there.
After Biden, only Richardson showed any substantial grasp of the situation and addressed it rather than the mirror bearing his own likeness. He was the only Democrat to offer a policy shift and a bold one at that, saying that U.S. military aid should be suspended and Musharraf step down.
In response, Edwards echoed the Bushite line and sounded like the noon briefer at the State Department with some facile, holiday b.s. about letting Pakistan ‘continue on the path to democratization.’ Ho ho ho!
The United States, whether led by Bush, a Democrat or Balthazar of Smyrna, is likely to have damn little to say about what goes on in Pakistan for the foreseeable future. The war on Al-Qaeda was never popular there, but Bush went ahead and then pursued it in the worst possible way, half-heartedly, while his real passion was the conquest of Iraq. So now we have a fine mess and nothing much left in the policy arsenal to do about it. Musharraf, like the Shah of Iran in 1979, was the Americans’ default position because policymakers in Washington thought that anything that followed him could only be worse. So they dug their, and our, grave deeper and deeper. The results have been with us ever since.
Bhutto as Bush’s last-ditch effort to save the sinking Pakistani ship was never a great bet; now it’s gone entirely. Pakistan’s January elections, if held at all, will be meaningless, and the Musharraf dictatorship, which now lacks any semblance of fig leaf over its unlovely nether regions, will have to fall back on the support of the discredited army and intelligence apparatus, at least portions of which must loathe him. Nothing in the present scenario suggests that the comparisons with Iran circa 1979, much dismissed a month ago, are off the mark.
Meanwhile, the unexpected event blew the skirts of the U.S. presidential candidates up over their heads as well. Most of them showed signs of megalomaniac dementia in announcing that Bhutto’s death was really about them, a reflection of their core belief that the United States is the center of the known universe and that the republic’s heart in fact beats within their own hoary breasts.
Giuliani promptly scheduled more Twin Tower ads, proving the truth of Joe Biden’s mock that he couldn’t form a sentence about Bhutto or anything else without ‘9/11’ appearing as a particle. For his part, Biden at least threw down the gauntlet at Musharraf and suggested that security for Mrs Bhutto was lax, a hint at negligent collusion in her death.
But Biden couldn’t resist mentioning that he had told Perv as much personally twice—just so we see how awesomely plugged in he is.
McCain and Clinton said the event proved the need for ‘experienced’ pols at the helm, i.e. themselves, while the untutored Romney said there was plenty of good advice to be had at the State Department without actually citing any of it.
Obama sounded unconvincing and lost, declaring that ‘we’ve got a very big problem there.’ Thank you for sharing that, but I’d say the Pakistanis have rather a larger problem there.
After Biden, only Richardson showed any substantial grasp of the situation and addressed it rather than the mirror bearing his own likeness. He was the only Democrat to offer a policy shift and a bold one at that, saying that U.S. military aid should be suspended and Musharraf step down.
In response, Edwards echoed the Bushite line and sounded like the noon briefer at the State Department with some facile, holiday b.s. about letting Pakistan ‘continue on the path to democratization.’ Ho ho ho!
The United States, whether led by Bush, a Democrat or Balthazar of Smyrna, is likely to have damn little to say about what goes on in Pakistan for the foreseeable future. The war on Al-Qaeda was never popular there, but Bush went ahead and then pursued it in the worst possible way, half-heartedly, while his real passion was the conquest of Iraq. So now we have a fine mess and nothing much left in the policy arsenal to do about it. Musharraf, like the Shah of Iran in 1979, was the Americans’ default position because policymakers in Washington thought that anything that followed him could only be worse. So they dug their, and our, grave deeper and deeper. The results have been with us ever since.
Monday, 24 December 2007
Mr White's blackness
It must be vaguely disturbing to be born with dark skin, even today, even in this supposedly hip and liberal city. One goes about one’s business, interacts with whites, Chinese, Latins and Azerbaijanis, but there is always that subtle question of who or what will come to one’s aid in a pinch or what will be the outcome of a clash with the majority ethnicity or the powers of the state.
A black man, John White, was convicted Dec 21 of manslaughter for shooting a young Italian kid, and I can’t help thinking that if the skin colors were reversed, the guy facing prison would have been hailed as a hero in the tabloid press and his prosecution denounced by the chattering nabobs on CNN. The man had guns in his Long Island house for his family’s protection (that alone would give him NRA points) and pulled one out when a screaming carload of white guys pursued his own teenager up to their doorstep shouting racist threats. There’s a dispute about exactly what happened next, but if a white suburbanite had faced down a posse of drunken black hoodlums, something tells me he wouldn’t be facing 30 years.
Meanwhile, the trial of the three cops who shot at Sean Bell 50 times outside a Queens club in 2006 the night before his wedding are about to go to trial, too, and you can bet there will be plenty of support for them from the newspapers and from their uniformed colleagues, who invariably pack courtrooms to express their collegial solidarity. The three plainclothes detectives say they thought Bell and his friends had weapons (they didn’t) and blasted them without further ado. Bell might have mistaken them for muggers and tried to drive away. Even Mayor Bloomberg said at the time that 50 shots against unarmed suspects seemed a little excessive. Bell died, and his fiancée is leading the campaign for justice. The cops’ defense lawyers want the venue moved away from Queens so they can get an unbiased trial.
That doesn’t happen, however, when a police officer is gunned down, and fellow cops pour into the courtroom every day to glare. Then they mass outside to roar their approval at the police union head Patrick Kelly’s hysterical news conferences calling for the attacker’s head on a platter. A juror would think twice about that if he planned to live in the same city after the trial was over.
I’m reading about Cicero again (Imperium by Robert Harris) and his attempts to use the Roman courts against the powerful aristocrats who were used to bribing everybody and getting their way. It’s a reminder that the rule of law as a way of resolving disputes depends heavily on the relative balance of forces within a society. If things are too skewed one way or the other, the assumption that there is a set of rules that everyone must obey really doesn’t hold up though even the illusion sometimes can work in your favor if Cicero is your lawyer.
The one bright spot in the local judicial panorama is the new trial being granted to Martin Tankleff, who’s now spent 17 years in prison for killing his parents, which he didn’t. As a dazed 19-year-old he wandered downstairs in his Long Island home one morning in 1990 to find his parents’ bodies and then was tricked by the police detectives into thinking he’d blacked out and done it himself. The prosecutors did no forensic work since they had somebody to charge and then ignored ample evidence that someone else was behind the crime. Finally, an appellate court gave the whole system a tongue-lashing for caring so little about the facts and ordered a new trial. Tankleff, whose story was featured on a one-hour, prime-time investigative special a few months ago, may soon be a free man, and the long-suffering relatives are cheering at last.
On the other end of Long Island at the White trial, the attitudes outside the courtroom were a study in contrasts. Both before and after White’s conviction, he and his lawyers spoke with regret about the loss of the young man’s life; the Italian family high-fived each other as if they had just won the state basketball championship. This, they told reporters, proves that Daniel wasn’t a racist.
A black man, John White, was convicted Dec 21 of manslaughter for shooting a young Italian kid, and I can’t help thinking that if the skin colors were reversed, the guy facing prison would have been hailed as a hero in the tabloid press and his prosecution denounced by the chattering nabobs on CNN. The man had guns in his Long Island house for his family’s protection (that alone would give him NRA points) and pulled one out when a screaming carload of white guys pursued his own teenager up to their doorstep shouting racist threats. There’s a dispute about exactly what happened next, but if a white suburbanite had faced down a posse of drunken black hoodlums, something tells me he wouldn’t be facing 30 years.
Meanwhile, the trial of the three cops who shot at Sean Bell 50 times outside a Queens club in 2006 the night before his wedding are about to go to trial, too, and you can bet there will be plenty of support for them from the newspapers and from their uniformed colleagues, who invariably pack courtrooms to express their collegial solidarity. The three plainclothes detectives say they thought Bell and his friends had weapons (they didn’t) and blasted them without further ado. Bell might have mistaken them for muggers and tried to drive away. Even Mayor Bloomberg said at the time that 50 shots against unarmed suspects seemed a little excessive. Bell died, and his fiancée is leading the campaign for justice. The cops’ defense lawyers want the venue moved away from Queens so they can get an unbiased trial.
That doesn’t happen, however, when a police officer is gunned down, and fellow cops pour into the courtroom every day to glare. Then they mass outside to roar their approval at the police union head Patrick Kelly’s hysterical news conferences calling for the attacker’s head on a platter. A juror would think twice about that if he planned to live in the same city after the trial was over.
I’m reading about Cicero again (Imperium by Robert Harris) and his attempts to use the Roman courts against the powerful aristocrats who were used to bribing everybody and getting their way. It’s a reminder that the rule of law as a way of resolving disputes depends heavily on the relative balance of forces within a society. If things are too skewed one way or the other, the assumption that there is a set of rules that everyone must obey really doesn’t hold up though even the illusion sometimes can work in your favor if Cicero is your lawyer.
The one bright spot in the local judicial panorama is the new trial being granted to Martin Tankleff, who’s now spent 17 years in prison for killing his parents, which he didn’t. As a dazed 19-year-old he wandered downstairs in his Long Island home one morning in 1990 to find his parents’ bodies and then was tricked by the police detectives into thinking he’d blacked out and done it himself. The prosecutors did no forensic work since they had somebody to charge and then ignored ample evidence that someone else was behind the crime. Finally, an appellate court gave the whole system a tongue-lashing for caring so little about the facts and ordered a new trial. Tankleff, whose story was featured on a one-hour, prime-time investigative special a few months ago, may soon be a free man, and the long-suffering relatives are cheering at last.
On the other end of Long Island at the White trial, the attitudes outside the courtroom were a study in contrasts. Both before and after White’s conviction, he and his lawyers spoke with regret about the loss of the young man’s life; the Italian family high-fived each other as if they had just won the state basketball championship. This, they told reporters, proves that Daniel wasn’t a racist.
Thursday, 20 December 2007
Bush's thugs & Schumer's complicity
We’re getting a first glimpse of the Attorney General whom Bush named to replace the historically corrupt and partisan lapdog Alberto Gonzales, and guess what? He’s eager to continue the cover-up, defend torture and deepen the irrelevance of the legislative branch. Surprise, surprise!
But in the long and depressingly predictable article in today’s NY Times about Michael Mukasey’s aggressive defense of Bush’s CIA torturers and the ensuing cover-up, there isn’t a single line about who is responsible for this new creep: New York’s liberal Democratic Senator, Charles Schumer.
Schumer pushed Mukasey to replace Gonzalez just as he had earlier peddled his name as a Supreme Court nominee. Mukasey was appointed to a federal judgeship by Ronald Reagan, contributed to the political campaigns of Rudy Giuliani and Joe Lieberman and still serves on Giuliani’s Justice Advisory Committee.
Mukasey’s confirmation hearings were truly appalling coming on the heels of the wholesale dismantling of the rule of law led by his predecessor. Even the usually supine Democrats finally turned against him, only to see Schumer and the loathesome Dianne Feinstein throw him a lifebuoy. They provided the swing votes to allow the Republicans to vote him into office.
Camera-horny Chuck likes to be in the limelight, but he’ll probably try to stay out of the coverage of Mukasey’s tenure at Justice. It’s good to be reminded that whatever the Bush administration’s lawyers do now, Charles Ellis Schumer of New York made it all possible.
But in the long and depressingly predictable article in today’s NY Times about Michael Mukasey’s aggressive defense of Bush’s CIA torturers and the ensuing cover-up, there isn’t a single line about who is responsible for this new creep: New York’s liberal Democratic Senator, Charles Schumer.
Schumer pushed Mukasey to replace Gonzalez just as he had earlier peddled his name as a Supreme Court nominee. Mukasey was appointed to a federal judgeship by Ronald Reagan, contributed to the political campaigns of Rudy Giuliani and Joe Lieberman and still serves on Giuliani’s Justice Advisory Committee.
Mukasey’s confirmation hearings were truly appalling coming on the heels of the wholesale dismantling of the rule of law led by his predecessor. Even the usually supine Democrats finally turned against him, only to see Schumer and the loathesome Dianne Feinstein throw him a lifebuoy. They provided the swing votes to allow the Republicans to vote him into office.
Camera-horny Chuck likes to be in the limelight, but he’ll probably try to stay out of the coverage of Mukasey’s tenure at Justice. It’s good to be reminded that whatever the Bush administration’s lawyers do now, Charles Ellis Schumer of New York made it all possible.
Wednesday, 19 December 2007
Capitalism and the Alien Hordes
The Federal Reserve’s issuance of rules Tuesday to prevent further mortgage lending abuses makes it abundantly clear that Alan Greenspan could have done the same years ago and refused to, despite ample warnings that the practices were dangerous. It will be interesting to see if the revered AG, who spoke only with gods and presidents during his excessive tenure, will now get a sound licking for his responsibility in the current credit mess that has drilled a hole in the U.S. economy.
Greenspan has been so slavishly lathered in the press for so long that one could be forgiven for not knowing that some economists think his reign was perfectly appalling. They point at the total abandonment of the Fed’s regulatory role, and even the Dec. 18 flip-flop doesn’t really mean all that much given that the industry already realized that it had shot itself and not just in the foot. So much of what Bernacke’s team is proposing is already being done—a day late and a dollar short.
Ideology rules our lives today, ironic since the Cold War was fought partly over its oppressive role in the enemy camp. But according to marketplace econ 101, the mere thought of restraining the cash-handlers in any way is nanny-statism and party-pooping. So the standard response is to give the financiers (or the industrialists or the traders) free rein to do whatever makes short-term sense, and that’s a pretty good recipe for catastrophe given the inherent, periodic irrationalities of markets, of which the latest meltdown is a fine example.
***
Given the hysteria about ‘aliens’ and illegal immigration these days, I have been surprised to see so few references to the seizure of the commanding heights of U.S. capitalism by foreign communists and Islamic fundamentalists. The Chinese government’s investment vehicle took a $5 billion piece of Wall Street firm Morgan Stanley today due to that entity’s huge losses after being suckered by the subprime mortgage market just as badly as Aunt Myrtle and Uncle Ed. This follows the November news that a 4.9 percent equity stake in Citibank was snapped up by the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, i.e. a couple of guys in long gowns. As long as they don’t try to do our yard work!
Greenspan has been so slavishly lathered in the press for so long that one could be forgiven for not knowing that some economists think his reign was perfectly appalling. They point at the total abandonment of the Fed’s regulatory role, and even the Dec. 18 flip-flop doesn’t really mean all that much given that the industry already realized that it had shot itself and not just in the foot. So much of what Bernacke’s team is proposing is already being done—a day late and a dollar short.
Ideology rules our lives today, ironic since the Cold War was fought partly over its oppressive role in the enemy camp. But according to marketplace econ 101, the mere thought of restraining the cash-handlers in any way is nanny-statism and party-pooping. So the standard response is to give the financiers (or the industrialists or the traders) free rein to do whatever makes short-term sense, and that’s a pretty good recipe for catastrophe given the inherent, periodic irrationalities of markets, of which the latest meltdown is a fine example.
***
Given the hysteria about ‘aliens’ and illegal immigration these days, I have been surprised to see so few references to the seizure of the commanding heights of U.S. capitalism by foreign communists and Islamic fundamentalists. The Chinese government’s investment vehicle took a $5 billion piece of Wall Street firm Morgan Stanley today due to that entity’s huge losses after being suckered by the subprime mortgage market just as badly as Aunt Myrtle and Uncle Ed. This follows the November news that a 4.9 percent equity stake in Citibank was snapped up by the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, i.e. a couple of guys in long gowns. As long as they don’t try to do our yard work!
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