To A Mousie
“In the next four years, an unforeseen crisis, challenge or conflict is going to seize the country. Whose leadership, whose judgment, whose values do you want in the White House when that crisis lands like a thud on the Oval Office desk?” — Rahm Emmanuel at the DNC convention
Rahm was describing to those who were listening what lay down the road they were kicking the can along after election day. The sense of temporizing was palpable. CNN’s Frida Ghitis sensed it when she asked “Is Obama’s re-election delaying action on Syria?”
If Barack Obama could make three wishes, he would probably ask for the crisis in Syria to go away. That would help him receive another wish: Getting reelected as president of the United States.
He was delaying a whole lot of things, keeping the ice on as many unpleasant truths as long as he could. The New York Times described how everything was consciously subordinated to the single, overarching goal re-electing Obama.
With the White House in campaign mode nearly 24/7, many of the administration’s biggest foreign policy initiatives have been pushed to the back burner until after the election. From Syria and Iran to nuclear arms reductions and peace talks with the Taliban, the administration is mostly playing for time, trying to avoid decisions that could land the president in trouble or be exploited by his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney.
That’s what the national interest amounted to: re-electing Obama. A Independent says Obama had even asked European officials to keep Greece in the Eurozone until after election day. The lengths to which Obama would go to stay in office became public in the famous open microphone exchange with Russia’s Medvedev. President Obama candidly asks the Russian leader to wait for an unpopular decision — whatever that might be — until after he is re-elected.
But it looks like he’s not going to make it. The make-up didn’t survive long enough for him to prance up the stage to receive his trophy. Under the harsh heat of reality, the masacara, foundation and the false eye-lashes has melted on his face. The carefully crafted illusion is now nothing but a grotesque smear under the pressure of events.
In the words of James Taranto “suddenly Obama’s foreign policy does look feckless.” Suddenly all of it — from his Green energy initiatives to his stimulus to his “new beginning” with the Muslim world — looks stupid, ridiculous and vain. Maybe because it was.
The optics are now very bad; or say rather that the rose-colored spectacles have fallen off. The mob outside the US Embassy in Cairo is chanting “Obama, Obama there are still a billion Osamas”. Across the middle East, embassies are surrounded by crowds making it almost impossible for the President to fulfill his famous pledge. “I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.” The movie showing Obama boldly directing the SEALs to end 9/11 where it began is not going to look as good as they thought.
The degree to which his administration has miscalculated was expressed in Hillary Clinton’s plaintive expostulation at news that the Ambassador to Libya had been brutally murdered. “How can this happen in a country we help liberate, in a city (Benghazi) we helped save from destruction?”
That ain’t the half of it sister. Besides Libya and Egypt, there’s the Chicago teacher’s strike, the looming public pensions crisis, the spiraling unemployment numbers, the rising gas prices and oh yes, there’s Syria, Iran, Pakistan and lest one forget — a major war in Afghanistan. The Obama administration is in the grip of a cascading failure which threatens to worsen beyond even the media’s ability to conceal.
It leaves even the ruling elite with a cruel choice: to go down with his ship or git while the gittin’s good. The Muslims have done it. Israel is open conflict with Obama. No one can even pretend the economy will get better. Even the unions are looking out for number one. Why be the last man in the bunker?
No matter what happens now the Obama era is effectively over. Even if the media by a supreme effort of misdirection heaves his administration past the post in November the accumulated avalanche of consequences will not be long in coming. The first months of 2013 will probably consist of one long and an unending string of crises, from the Levant to the Pacific, from the bourses of Europe to the New York Stock Exchange, from the Detroit to California.
In short, every can the President has kicked down the road has come to a stop. It’s over, no room left to kick the can. At some point in the downfall of every ruling elite comes the cruel choice of whether to stay with the sinking ship or head for the lifeboat. And the lifeboat in this case means simply to call things as they are. For that is our only chance now. It’s not a about talking points any more. The battle for survival is truly on.
Besides, why not stick Romney with the problem? Yes, why not? Why not? Misfortune and incompetence have brought everyone alike to this pass. And maybe Romney does know something … why not? Yes why not? The only thing that matters now is if we can survive the catastrophe which vanity created. Robert Burns wrote a very famous poem to a mouse and their brotherhood to men. We are all of us in the inexorable grip of events. Pity the mouse, but even more, pity the man.
You saw the fields laid bare and wasted,
And weary winter coming fast,
And cozy here, beneath the blast,
You thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel plough passed
Out through your cell.
That small bit heap of leaves and stubble,
Has cost you many a weary nibble!
Now you are turned out, for all your trouble,
Without house or holding,
To endure the winter’s sleety dribble,
And hoar-frost cold.
But little Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often awry,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!
Still you are blest, compared with me!
The present only touches you:
But oh! I backward cast my eye,
On prospects dreary!
And forward, though I cannot see,
I guess and fear!
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Remember the Clinton quote after he was re-elected – “Mistakes have been made…”. The same holds true today but we already know a bunch of them. Biggest mistake happened four years ago.
Yeah but Bernanke is going to put $40b/month into MBO until the jobs situation improves. That boosted the Dow today, especially the bank stocks. I am KICKING myself for not loading up on BofA stock right after Warren Buffett did, I could have got a better price! But other than giving away billions to the banksters, I can see NO link between this move and jobs. But a happy Dow should help Obambus, right?
Except that now Romney can point out that Obambus is “buying the election”.
Gang aft agley.
Wretchard, don’t you mean “the first few months of 2013″ above?
Yes 2013,thanks for pointing out the typos.
The question I’ve been thinking about (and don’t worry, I’m voting for Romney) is whether the country would be better off with Obama. Not in the general sense, but in the specific sense. Obama will be able to do things and get away with things that a Republican president can’t. The press will on Obama’s side, no matter what.
If there is a crisis — a need for war with Iran or a need for intervention in Syria, God forbid — Obama will have the power to do it with only minimal hand-wringing. That is, if Obama needs to use force, he’ll face a more united America than if Romney is president. The press and other elites will back his every move.
It’s deeply unfair to Republicans, of course. But many Democrats (and I hate to say this) are so blinded by partisanship that they will take sides with our enemies against a Republican president. There won’t be a near-majority fifth column if Obama is president.
@ 5. IB Bill
I agree. Obama’s continuation, even expansion, of the Bush-era policies that the Democrats objected to the most met with at most halfhearted hushed-tone complaints from the previously outraged MSM and mainstream Dems.
Because they view Republicans as a greater danger than our foreign enemies, they will always defend Democrats against Republicans first and foremost. A side effect is that Dems presidents have more political cover than Republican presidents, which comes in handy if an unpopular, costly but necessary ’3 am’ decision is needed.
The Dems attacks on Romney for his rebuke of Obama are astounding in their hypocrisy and lack of self-consciousness given the relentless vitriol the Dems poured onto Bush in his foreign affairs when soldiers and foreign service officers were also in harm’s way.
to W.
”the masacara, foundation and the false eye-lashes has melted on his face”
mascara maybe
SF
The Democrats new strategy post Obama: It was George Bush’s fault, but now it’s all Romney’s.
Off topic:
Bernanke has just goosed the markets with QE3. Greenbacks will be openly printed at $40 billion/month (how much undisclosed money printing will occur for illegal market manipulation is another question). As expected, the PPT did the follow through manipulation of the stockmarkets with a 200 point jump in the DJIA. The US$ will AGAIN be debased by at least a trillion dollars. If the price of gold were not already sky high, it would sky rocket some more.
This shot of economic heroin will probably keep the stockmarket alive for 2 more months.
Obama’s reelection has just been guaranteed by Bernanke. By doing so, Bernanke has also guaranteed some sort of economic calamity to occur in the next few months.
Our fate has been sealed. The good news is that Obama will probably not serve out his full four years since the system will have imploded before 2016.
Looks like the Washington Post might be jumping ship: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-is-obama-skipping-more-than-half-of-his-daily-intelligence-meetings/2012/09/10/6624afe8-fb49-11e1-b153-218509a954e1_story.html
At some point in the downfall of every ruling elite comes the cruel choice of whether to stay with the sinking ship or head for the lifeboat.
I can’t see Obama pulling an LBJ, not at this late date, and not with his twisted DNA.
This morning the House Natural Resources committee teed up two underlings for contempt of Congress charges for their refusal to produce documents relating to the offshore drilling moratorium. They cited chapter and verse of acourt decision that will send those two to jail. http://tinyurl.com/8qnegw2
Then they read into the record a McClatchky news report on BP’s desire to use a “junk shot” contemporaneously with the late night machinations of the White House, May 27, 2010. Did the White House deliberatately prevent BP efforts to plug “the damn hole” in May 2010 from succeeding? Did the New York Times accurately document Steven Chu’s sabotage? http://tinyurl.com/8gez9ow
CHU LIED!
DOLPHINS DIED!
10. Sirius
It’s not the WaPo, but an AEI columnist writing in the WaPo.
Eggplant #9:
In my opinion they are really hoping the chugging contest with energy drinks keeps things excited and flying high until late December. Mutual funds will report their earnings by then. This may encourage people with such investments to spend more, due to the Wealth Effect, but it certainly will create esentially false data that will translate into greatly increased taxes. The fact that the supposed income will disappear by 15 April does not matter, since there is no mechanism by which you can write a note to Mr. IRS and tell him it was all a big mistake and you need the tax money you paid back, since the gains have all evaporated and then some.
This occurred in the 2000 tax year and again in 2008. I call it investor pumping.
Of course, if Obama wins the gains will likely never occur. And that might in turn be used as a basis to seize 401K’s to save the poor people who got took.
ALMOST THERE
“In the next four years, an unforeseen crisis, challenge or conflict is going to seize the country. Whose leadership, whose judgment, whose values do you want in the White House when that crisis lands like a thud on the Oval Office desk?” But Rahm was speaking of UNFORSEEN crises and challenges, and this one was entirely foreseen.
I tell you, Rahm, Obama said
His face a mask of gloom
That we knew this would come about
Must never leave this room
It all fits in with our big plan
The timing though’s not right
I thought I’d have the crisis come
After election night
But now the cat’s escaped the bag
Advantage we must take
Our friends at NBC will claim
That for our country’s sake
We must maintain the status quo
Must keep Obama there
He knows the Middle East unlike
That Mitt who doesn’t care
How many embassies are torched
How many staff are killed
How poor the starving Muslims are
So long as he has filled
The coffers of his Mormon friends
With gold and silver coins
Nor does he care about the folks
In places like Des Moines
Advantage, Rahm! Those chanting mobs!
The burning flags, the screams
Of death to all Americans
Have hastened both our dreams
Of power over all the world
A thousand years to come
Is now within our grasp, dear friend
With all beneath my thumb
I tell you, Rahm, Obama cried
Fist pumping in the air
Another embassy or two
And Rahm, by God we’re there!
Most people I know, who also understand basic conservative economic principles, will not be doing much consuming until the US is on much firmer standing. I predict the squeeze will produce little juice as they keep using the same lemon.
Now is the perfect timing for Romney to announce the addition of Dr. Paul to his cabinet with the specific duty to audit the Fed, banks, and SEC. Get a positive endorsement from Dr. Paul and it is game over. The Paul-bots are nothing if not loyal and will answer their master’s call to arms. His understanding of and contempt for the levers of economic manipulation is the one thing he has ABSOLUTELY CORRECT. Turn him loose.
Things have still got a long ways to go before… 0bama is still likely to win, if its close expect massive roiting and 0bama refusing to leave, then watch as the world burns, if Romney gets the Landslide it should be the trouble will still come knock’n.
Hmmmm, I see wholesale prices are climbing rapidly, commodities like oil, wheat, corn, and bacon are really getting expensive. Tell me Tonto, does that look like inflation getting ready to do a tsunami this October? It kind of looks like the money printing , ghost foreclosures, shadow banking, medium and small businesses that have gone Galt, EPA over reach, and a host of leftist furious fancies are on the glide path to the White House lawn.
As for me whoever the MSM hates these days gets my approval and I curse the livers of all the “concern trolls.”
Wo ist Steiner?
Except that now Romney can point out that Obambus is “buying the election”. – Josh
Depends on how far Mittens wants to go in criticizing that holy of holies among the Establishment, the Federal Reserve. His former Bush econ advisor Hubbard flat out contradicted that sop to the Ronulans in the GOP platform when he said on CNBC or Bloomberg that Bernanke was doing a fine job. A la Rich Lowry.
http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2012/09/12/when-do-we-get-to-attack-obamas-character/#comment-69492
“Romney’s advisors are stuck on Cold War stupid, so much that they can’t even notice the Russian army buying Israeli drones contradicting their grand no. 1 geopolitical adversary narrative, or that the type of people who just attacked our Embassies in Libya and Egypt are precisely the ones that Putin’s guns have thus far prevented from conquering Syria.”
IB Bill @ 5 – your post presumes that Buraq wants to do the right thing and will do so in a crisis. That’s a very dubious proposition at best . Bases on his track record, Buraq resists doing what is good for the country, and pushes what is good for him or his apparently traitorous cause to the exclusion of all others.
They’re all going down. The collapse of the Arab Spring, the impending economic tsunami are all catastrophes not just for the Obama administration but for the Western System — and its periphery — as a whole. South Korea is experiencing its own bubble; China is heading for a hard landing. There is a dire ruin everywhere one looks. Yet even the ruin of the Western world looks good beside the horror overtaking the Muslim world.
No one should think that Romney-Ryan will bring back the good old days. Those days are gone. The only possibilities open now are “new good days” or catastrophe. The world is changing. The immediate problem will be survival. And the operative question is what political solutions are available to help reach that goal.
I am no fan of Romney. He has one foot in the system. But he seems fundamentally rational, and even his entanglement in the status quo may help if it doesn’t go too far. It will prevent him from moving in wild-eyed directions. Yet he will know, if only from common sense, what the direction of improvement is. There is no guarantee of survival under Romney; but there’s a chance.
However doom is certain under Obama. He doesn’t know which way is up. All he understands is spin and campaign. The world of bauble and illusion; of smoke and mirrors. Well the smoke is clearing and the mirrors are shattered.
That is the bottom line which the current crisis is underlining. Four more years of Obama and there won’t be a New York Times; maybe not even a democracy as there will be a clamor for extraordinary powers to meet crisis after crisis that spawns nothing but more of the same. The Black Community will be reduced to absolute and total poverty. The Mexicans will go back to Mexico — to escape.
If the media wants to salvage some vestige of its prestige: let them think this. These are the last days of a declining order. Do they want to yoke themselves to it? Or are they willing to take a chance?
Been to the supermarket lately? The price of everything is up. Bernanke printing monopoly money can only speed that up. I don’t see this helping Obama.
#22 Wretchard, exactly what I was thinking this a.m., but better said. My feeling was there were so many tipping points happening simultaneously and there were no good endings in sight. I think you have caught it well: “…The only possibilities open now are “new good days” or catastrophe. The world is changing. The immediate problem will be survival. And the operative question is what political solutions are available to help reach that goal.”
All the media has to do in order to save itself is to rediscover the obvious. It’s a lot easier and requires far less literary talent than putting make-up on a pig. Here’s the Washington Post’s Editorial Board on the Chevy Volt.
There are many other instances just like this. It is a bonfire of money, the squandering of the American inheritance. Bankrupt companies. Wasted taxpayer money. Handouts to China, handouts to Russia. All pointless. And all of it bound to continue with the Second Coming of the One.
It is wholesale doom and destruction not just for corporate America, but for the poor and yes, the black community too. Do they think they will escape the general impoverishment? Can they think this? Not far behind them on the road to the poorhouse will be all those hundreds of thousands of young graduates without hope of a job and saddled with debt, but they will have to step over the shriveled old folks eating the cardboard dogfood packaging.
The worst thing about this editorial is it’s true. Obviously true. In writing it, the Washington Post has simply done its duty as a newspaper. Why is it then a shock? This editorial should been written months ago. But better late than never.
Wow Wretchard, I don’t think I’ve heard you this negative before! on another note where toadold (#18) mentions “ghost foreclosures” I see several of these, homes that look empty, yards are mowed but the Flyer/free newspapers sit in the driveways for days, no cars ever… one of them did get a for sale sign after several months, not sure how long it was empty before I started noticing the weird events. Yes like I and many more have said even if Romney wins the rain will come, it only looks like Romney will at least be grounded in reality and have understanding of how to rescue a “Failing Business” where as 0bama has no clue where the ground is or what a Business is…
22. wretchard
I agree that the old order is dying and something new and probably nasty is incubating. The single and key difference that I see between present circumstances and past circumstances is the amount of wealth that now exists in the world.
I have seen estimates that world gross product has increased by 50 times over the past 180 years. The Economist magazine used to say that in the 50 years after WWII we created six times as much wealth in the world as all mankind had created in all the preceding millenia. We are richer than ever before because world wealth has increased much faster than world population.
Now, I haven’t a clue how this will affect any chaos that might be bearing down on us. The relative distribution of all that wealth will certainly determine the survival chances for big segments of the world’s population, but that was always true. I do assume that chaos among today’s riches will yield more opportunities to survive than chaos in the historic past provided.
How’s that for optimism?
I presume that Don51 was doing some trolling when he asked “Wo ist Steiner?”. Things are bad but we need some context, refer to:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Bundesarchiv_Bild_101I-126-0347-09A%2C_Paris%2C_Deutsche_Truppen_am_Arc_de_Triomphe.jpg
Imagine how depressing it must have been for our grandparents to see the newsreels of Nazis marching through Paris. Nearly all hope must have died.
Unfortunately this week’s events are the beginning of a long storm. Things are going to get much worse. It’s conceivable that Islamic Fascists will someday dynamite the Arc de Triomphe like they did the Buddhas of Bamiyan. The West needs a wake up call about Islamic Fascism just as it does about socialism.
Chamberlain is still prime minister and about to serve another term. However I believe a Churchill will appear.
I think we could be on the brink of a Golden Age. But the operative word is “could”. Usually when an old era collapses the new era is better because it taps into productive trends that are yearning to be set free. But Golden Ages don’t emerge without disruption because all the former relationships are deranged.
There is an inevitable period of realignment, perhaps even chaos, before things come back to some sort of stability. But to get past this you need two things: some way of recognizing the emergent trends and a determination to adapt to the new.
This has happened many times in American history. The tension between the coasts and those who wanted to expand into the interior; the rivers versus the railroads, indeed the birth of America itself. The devil that is haunting the ancien regime is technological change.
Obama had a chance to show he could face this challenge. But he chose to buy into a European social welfare model that is dying even before our eyes. His ideology is from the early 20th century; from Karl Marx, Franz Fanon, Patrice Lumumba and Regis Debray.
The results you can see for yourself. Calamity everywhere. Well he’s had a chance. He’s had four years. Nobody stopped him from changing the world for the better. If any President has had a smoother ride with the press, been more insulated from criticism, spared from impugnment then his name does not come to mind.
Fair’s fair.
Now the voters are facing the choice between more of the last four years or whether that’s been the wrong road. If they take the correct road, then the path to the Golden Age may be descried eventually. But if they take the wrong road, they may wander in the wilderness for forty years.
People are going to make their choice. But those are now or soon will be the stakes. This is a pivotal election. “No ordinary time”.
“But better late than never.”
I wouldn’t hold my breath. Today the Atlantic online is featuring a photo spread of Muslims “apologizing” under the headline “This doesn’t represent us”. It’s being trotted out right on cue like a bromide for a cancer. If you take a close look at the images, which prominently feature a few dozen at best, women, children and feeble old men, you’ll notice thuggish looking young men with scowls on their faces looking like undercover agents. I’m pretty sure it’s staged. A cheap apology using free chattel, and about $10 in sharpies and white cardboard, designed to push the stupid buttons of the stupid infidels, and apparently it works! Even PJM, which at least features a few Islamoskeptics, links to this propaganda as “some good news”.
Bullshit.
When 1.5 billion Muslims stop inciting genocide, and 100 years have passed without terror, then I’ll believe they are sorry, or that raging, raping, slashing burning, and terror do not indeed represent them and their hideous worthy-of-complete-annihilation civilization…
In short, too many people have too much invested in their pretend cures (even you, I fear, dear Wretchard) for a metasticizing cancer. This is going to get much, much worse.
All you doom and gloomers are overlooking the obvious. All we need to fix the economy is a short victorious war. Start in Morroco and go east until there are no mosques left on earth. Anybody in America has a problem with that, try them for treason, then hang them. Start with the owners of the New York Times.
Haji can’t shoot.
Mice fare poorly when rats run free.
“No one should think that Romney-Ryan will bring back the good old days. Those days are gone. The only possibilities open now are “new good days” or catastrophe. The world is changing. The immediate problem will be survival. And the operative question is what political solutions are available to help reach that goal.”
Here’s how I laid it out for someone.
We’re all on United Airways Flight 1549.
Both engines are out, gone, and we are over one of the most densely built and populous cities in the word.
Even were we granted by God a Captain Sully at the controls, a super-hero of skill with nerves of steel and years of experience, the plane IS going down.
It WILL crash.
What remains to be seen is whether an incredible feat or miracle can spare us any further death or destruction.
Do we dare hope for a belly landing? Do we deserve one?
nuj @ 20: Depends on how far Mittens wants to go in criticizing that holy of holies among the Establishment, the Federal Reserve. His former Bush econ advisor Hubbard flat out contradicted that sop to the Ronulans in the GOP platform when he said on CNBC or Bloomberg that Bernanke was doing a fine job. A la Rich Lowry.
Well, what one says in a campaign doesn’t have to be all that well-founded in fact or logic. Lordy knows this campaign is proving that on both sides.
As a matter of fact, *I* even tend to, amazedly and grudgingly, think that Bernanke has done a fine job. Sometimes it pays to be lucky rather than good, and he’s got a lot of that going for him. Plus, almost alone in the free world, he stood there and made decisions and acted. I’d buy him beer on that much alone. Which brings us to his actions today, which frankly I think are a complete smokescreen. The amounts are tiny (!??!!), the destination dubious, the effectiveness zilch – and yet the Dow jumps 200 points on the news!? There has been a lot of talk in the past few weeks on jawboning, as they used to call it. I think this is a new phase of Bernanke, his version of voodoo economics.
So, what can and should Romney do with all that? I dunno.
s @ 31: All we need to fix the economy is a short victorious war.
And the irony is, it would probably be even shorter than that, we could barely begin and all resistance would vanish, and probably we’d be free to stop and maintain for a generation. But the half-measures we’ve been taking do not have that salubrious effect, quite the opposite.
wretchard @ 29 said:
“I think we could be on the brink of a Golden Age. But the operative word is “could”.”
Is this Paris in 14 June 1940 or Constantinople in 29 May 1453?
We’ll know 10 years from now.
Josh @ 34:
Bernanke opted to kick the can down the road, one more time. He gave us another heroin fix to deaden the pain. The debt has not been cleared. The bad actors are not in jail and still in control.
One horrible thought I have been having is the severe downside of a Romney presidency — When all this excrement does hit the fan, the MAC Axis of Evil (Media, Academia, Culture) WILL blame it on the new Republican President (they will do so if it hits on January 21st), and here’s the kicker…. MILLIONS of people will believe them. The patent obviousness that, not only Obama’s personal role in the nightmare, but that far far bigger issues of progressive rule that are bringing down the domino’s in lands far from Mr. Bush or Mr. Obama’s rule will mean NOTHING to them, nothing. For them to accept the most basic truths of what Obama and ideas far older and more powerful than Obama have brought us to is akin to a Muslim concluding that Mohammed was nothing more than a sun-crazed lunatic – they will not, they CAN NOT go there. Too much of their soul would be stripped away. Ergo, of course the whole thing is the new Republican President’s (and Congress’s) fault. Of course it is.
It is preposterous, it is embarrassing, it is childlike. And MILLIONS will swallow it whole – millions.
Welcome to my nightmare.
“….we could barely begin and all resistance would vanish….”
Oh, sure. Home before the leaves fall, and all that. We’ve heard that before.
“Whatcha got ain’t nothin new. This country’s hard on people, you can’t stop what’s coming, it ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity.”
http://www.cnbc.com/id/49022934
Maybe QE3 is rather broader and larger than first reports.
And also more problematic in many ways.
Uh-oh.
r @ 37: Oh, sure. Home before the leaves fall, and all that. We’ve heard that before.
The Iraqi regular army did a swell vanishing act in 2003, and not much better back in 1991.
King Hussein of Jordan just had to make his position clear to the Palestinians back in 1970/1, and then had minimal problems with them for the next generation.
Even Israel’s half-hearted battle against Hizboolah in Lebanon in 2006, has stayed mostly quiet now for six years.
Frankly, this is my hope, that our half-hearted efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan were sufficient to keep the overall peace for the next decade or three. Of course this week’s events make that look none too likely, but it’s the vacuum that is Obambus that is causing the resurgence.
“For among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised, and this is one of those ignominies against which a prince ought to guard …”
In the last five years inflation was disguised by the collapse in real estate prices. Your house is worth half as much but your food cost twice as much. The really good news is inflation is low. Also, much of the decline in real estate prices was concealed in the increase of other prices — at the expense of the nation’s most vulnerable, of course. Inflation is the original stealth tax.
Stocks go up because interest rates will remain low while inflation takes off, yielding negative returns on savings. Stocks are an inflation hedge as long as inflation does not break out (go above 6 percent). Companies have assets that will increase in value and can increase prices to keep up with “moderate” inflation. However, inflation will break out and the stock market will deflate along with the rest of the economy as it tries to find a new equilibrium.
I’m still working on my novel and I’m playing with the idea of money. In this tale a series of mega blizzards herald a new age of glaciers (ice is a metaphor for hyper-regulation). The economy is literally frozen and not producing (while demands from special interests increase) so the Federal Government turns to hyper inflation to wipe out its debts and finance itself for a few months while they think of something.
A group of businesses have bound together to help fight disaster but can no longer use the dollar as a medium of exchange. So they develop an “obligation backed currency.” At first it is for use among themselves — they form a Trust and have their own bank. They contract with each other for goods and services. The bank creates currency to finance the contracts. Though nominally tied to gold, the currency is backed by their mutual obligations. It creates a market for future commitments. Of course if you can’t meet your obligations you cannot play. Despite the unfairness of the last requirement, use of the unit quickly spreads — much to the chagrin of the Fed. What is a chagrined Fed like, I wonder?
Andrew X @ 36 said:
“One horrible thought I have been having is the severe downside of a Romney presidency — When all this excrement does hit the fan, the MAC Axis of Evil (Media, Academia, Culture) WILL blame it on the new Republican President…”
I understand that the Republicans are the “Stupid Party” while the Democrats are the “Evil Party”. I also accept Hanlon’s Razor, i.e. “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”.
Caveats aside, I’ve long suspected the reason why we are stuck with Romney as the Republican candidate is because no one else wanted to be Captain of the Titanic. Also, I have a strong hunch that the people on the inside know that TSHTF is just about to happen and Obama is the perfect guy to be left holding the bag.
Given all of that: We do need to have a strong leader to pickup the pieces after TSHTF. Obama is NOT that leader.
Maybe the reasoning goes that democracy has failed fundamentally and the next leader needs to be a dictator. I hope it hasn’t gone that far.
(#4 out of 4 and too depressed to continue)
Bernanke, as a serious student of the Great Depression, did apply one lesson from that fiasco – don’t shrink the money supply. Milton Fredman also thought this a great mistake by the Fed of the time. TARP was executed to do that following the collapse of the commercial paper market.
But he’s moved beyond that goal. Today, he’s monetarizing the Congressional deficit spending. A publicly announced 40% of QE3 will go to buying fed bonds which will be used for federal spending. Perhaps more will used through back channels.
He’s now co-conspiring with the Democrats in Congress to allow them to keep spending $1 trillion+ annual deficits.
For that alone he should not be reappointed.
What I don’t see happening is the Fed recapturing those moneys when the economy picks up. Will they start selling their stock of T-bills and T-bonds at the discount that comes from higher interest rates? That hurts the Fed’s balance sheet. They could hike reserve requirements on commercial banks, causing a shrinkage of money supply in the private sector.
Both those are painful – ergo, I don’t see either happening to any large degree. Inflation seems inevitable.
What else can the Fed do once the economy picks up?
Barring a catastrophe during the last few months, the America economy will likely survive Buraq’s first term. Battered and bruised to be sure, but in tack in large part because many of Buraq’s initiatives aren’t scheduled to be fully implemented until his second term.
Romney and Ryan will be a vast improvement over the current loon in the White House and just undoing Buraq’s damage will help a bunch. But whether we could enter a Golden Age will depend on whether Romney ,with the help of Ryan has the fortitude, to get our punitive, ever intrusive Nanny State off America’s back, and out of the way.
Some believe that if only we could revert to pre-Obama conditions that the economy would get going again, and if his campaign literature is to believed one of those people is Romney. The problem with that line of thinking is that we went into a serious debt bust type recession/depression prior to Obama’s stewardship. So all of our problems cannot be blamed on just Obama, and there were a mountain of Nanny State intrusions slowly strangling this economy prior to his rein.
Far too many people, conditioned by the Media’s lies and incessant leftist propaganda, and often their own insulated view of the world as employees, think starting a new business and keeping it going is no big deal.
That perception is horribly wrong. Behind all the benevolent sounding promises of our Nanny State, lies a criminally punitive beast that often, particularly in Blue States and Cities, that is out to snuff out new businesses, and put the rest under their tight control.
The Ruling Clerisy of the Blue Model want a controlling market share over all economic activity, public and private, to insure and maintain their power and control. It’s that simple. A thriving, independent private sector is a threat to their power, as they see it. So to snare the private sector in their web, the Clerisy have embedded our regulatory systems with more than enough gotchas to rein in and humble any private concern that gets too big for its britches in the eyes of the Clerisy. Ridding our regulatory bureaucracy of these burdensome, punitive edicts and traps will not be easy or simple. Only one tough hombre will be able to survive the beat down the Clerisy will throw at he or she who tries to curtail their power.
Wretchard is right. We possibly are on the threshold of a Golden Age. With the internet, computers and the information age, great advances in human knowledge and efficiency may be just around the corner, but those advances will only happen if our government allows our fledgling start ups to pursue their dreams unencumbered by a mountain of ambiguous regs that hamper their every move.
coming bumper sticker
on the right an image of Obama
words underneath: “AFFIRMATIVE ACTION” – DO YOU STILL BELIEVE?
Re: “sufficient to keep the overall peace”
This (what we have now, today) is “overall peace”?
In OIF the Iraqi regular army melted away but the Saddam Fedayeen and other irregular forces continued the fight through and well past the end of what was termed major combat operations. Together the two conflicts comprise the longest war ever fought by the U.S. and neither has achieved its strategic objective. Operational victory in Iraq may yet turn to strategic defeat and we may be on the verge of defeat in Afghanistan. As for the Hezbollah War–Israel’s enemies regard it as a clear tactical and strategic victory for themselves and many Israelis agree with that assessment.
IB Bill
I think you have the cart in front of the horse here. The Media is in love with Barak “Jimmmmmah” Obama because he believes as they do. IF he were to change his beliefs or act against them, they would turn on him like the snakes they are. More precisely, they are not in love with him, but his ideas. That is because they share those ideas.
“Short Victorious War” is a running joke amongst Military Historians. While they do happen, nobody plans for them. WW1 was planned to be over by the end of 1914, or 4 months. The Germans planned on fighting just the French and the French being the same Army they defeated in 1870. It didn’t quite work out that way.
IN ’67, the IDF planned for a month long war. They figured the UN wouldn’t let them fight any longer then that. It was over in 6 days because the IDF got very lucky and were flexible enough to take advantage of that luck.
The USA could defeat (destroy?) Islam with no real problems. It would not be short. It would take at least 2 years to prepare the logistics. WE would need to drill and refine huge amounts of Petrol. Train 5 to 10 Million troops ( the available military age population is 21 million, using just males. 32 million including females.) and Manufacture weapons. The US army is armed today for fighting insurgency. Conventional war would require a different force structure.
Or we could withdraw from the NPT and go with FO Ripley’s advice;
“I say we pull out and nuke ‘em from orbit. It’s the only way to make sure.”
- FO Ripley
That would shorten the war considerably. Half an hour, including flight time.
My take is that if any latent disaster hits if Romney wins the election may help him to do his job. Yes, a crisis to exploit. See, he is a fix it guy and if the government isn’t broken then the fix-it guy won’t get a chance to fix it. Suspend regulations wholesale, start a Man on the Moon style energy independence program in 10 years, and close the government down. Fire everybody but military and domestic security then ask them to give a proposal why they should be rehired. If they do not succeed with proving why they will help rebuild America, then relegate them into the dustbin of history like they have done to the middle class. Not America first, American’s first. The help has eaten all of the seed corn. F them.
The way I see it the United States can probably muddle through the next few years if we can keep two sectors up and productive — the energy sector and the food sector. Obama has been trying to shut down the energy sector but I don’t think he will be able to finish the job in the next two months. That means that the new oil and gas fields will fully come online in the next few years despite his best efforts.
The food sector has been under attack since Obama took office. Family farms are under attack by the FDA, and the administration has been diverting as much agricultural production to gasoline ethanol as possible. If you want to really kill off a nation, the two magic words to get it done are Agriculture Reform. Reduce the food supply and the population drops like a stone. Note that Michelle Obama has vowed to fundamentally change what you can buy in the grocery store over the next four years, so believe me, if Obama wins a second term, agricultural reform is coming and millions of Americans will starve to death. If Romney is elected, he can put a stop to it easily enough by calling off the FDA and eliminating ethanol quotas.
Given enough fuel and food production, I think that the United States can survive the coming turmoil of the consequences of the Obama years.
36 @Andrew X
That’s pretty much what I’ve been counting on to happen. It’s a real double-bind. Another 4 years of Obama will probably be the coup de grace for our country. But as 33 @Weary G said, the plane is going down one way or another. If Romney gets in, there’s no stopping the shit-storm headed our way, the best he can do is perhaps mitigate the damage a bit. The general public might have a feeling that something is amiss right now, but the level of ruin won’t hit the American zeitgeist until the next Presidential term. I’m pretty sure that even if Romney pulls a Capt. Sully, things are still going to be fairly ugly and free markets/limited government is going to get the full measure of blame. The enemedia has already been prepping the battlespace for this. If Obama loses, expect Nov. – Jan. to be a huge escalation in that campaign. I don’t see a clear path through this nightmare.
I add that there is a lot of pent up energy in the business sector that is going to unwind like a spring if Obama loses. It will help mitigate some of the looming disaster as will the fact that we are doing poorly in an even poorer global economy. As far as as I am concerned, one of the best things that can happen to us, happen for us, is that our credit ratings will tank, we declare bankruptcy, and finally adopt a pay as you go balanced budget. Every addict must hit rock bottom before there is recovery.
Borrowing money from your grandchildren to pay for super-sizing your Happy Meal today is no fiscal policy. Let it rot.
r @ 44: This (what we have now, today) is “overall peace”?
That’s why I added, that today’s events seem to make that hope vain, and we will not be forgiven our errors of the last ten years.
In OIF the Iraqi regular army melted away but the Saddam Fedayeen and other irregular forces continued the fight through and well past the end of what was termed major combat operations.
Do you really want me to catalog the errors that allowed this to happen? The errors I was hoping we could slide by?
Together the two conflicts comprise the longest war ever fought by the U.S. and neither has achieved its strategic objective. Operational victory in Iraq may yet turn to strategic defeat and we may be on the verge of defeat in Afghanistan.
We have been unwise in both strategy and tactics, neither Bush nor Obambus have been well-served by our uniformed chiefs. The burdens this puts on the frontline troops is terrible, and they have borne them heroically. I suppose it is thus in most wars, but in this one – even with overwhelming power, we use so little of it, we may indeed “lose”.
As for the Hezbollah War–Israel’s enemies regard it as a clear tactical and strategic victory for themselves and many Israelis agree with that assessment.
Res ipsa loquitur, Israel has had six years of relative peace there, to date. That’s more than it seemed like would result, at the time. At some point you have to discount the claims and just evaluate the events.
This was after all Israel’s strategy, they warned Lebanon that they would bomb the country beyond the frontier, if Hizboolah was not prevented. After a few days, they did so, at least modestly. The prosecution rests.
Andrew X @36
You’ve touched on something I’ve been thinking about for a number of years now.
I hope you don’t mind if I riff off of it.
With the expanding counter-cultural rejection of the Judeo-Christian moral principles upon which the common law framework our founder’s established was supported, there has emerged a cohort of many millions of Americans who derive their sense of being “better” and “smarter” than mere gun-clinging Christian folk, wholly through their political self-identification as progressives. For these equaller folk, being absorbed into the body of the state is a feature, not a bug. It’s a shortcut to self-esteem that the democrats have conveniently provided for their constituents, wherein whenever their collective fantasy world is threatened by reality, they are given to doubling down on the charade. They have freely, if unwittingly, given themselves no choice but to do so because not doing so would necessarily mean breaking their sense of self which resides in the party. They’d set themselves adrift and alone on a pitiless sea.
As our host has mentioned before, the decidedly uncreative destruction of their war against reality could, for a time, be absorbed by a society which had accumulated a socioeconomic margin of error that was unprecedented in all of human history. Never before had so many lived so comfortably, well, and so freely. With such a design margin, the miseries that had long plagued mankind could be cast aside where they remained virtually unseen for generations…But that time has passed. That time has been made to pass.
Having watched these self-styled ‘Progressives’ demonstrate their capacity for moral inversion during the Clinton years, and having watched as they further exposed their fever-swamp of projected venom for all but themselves to see through 8 years of deceit and hypocrisy during the Bush years -where they leveraged their counter-cultural hegemony to create and deepen the very [exploitable] crises that gave us 0bama- these clamoring deluded millions have since given me no cause to believe that they would, or even could, face reality. There is no reason whatsoever to believe that Romney won’t get the same treatment as the reviled Bushitler…Plus compounded interest. Is there anyone left who still has reason to believes that they’d rather give up their utopian road to perdition and try a different path, than watch the Republic their esteemed leaders set afire, burn to ash? …Bueller?
Do these minor movers and hope/change pimps really ‘believe’ that the man who has thrown his own kin under the bus, gives a crap about them?
In the absence of some new uncharted frontier where a man can freely chase after God, Family, and Liberty, there is but to prepare for that which has been prepared for us.
Four years ago I would have laughed at this scenario. Now, not so much.
http://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2012/09/03/bracken-when-the-music-stops-how-americas-cities-may-explode-in-violence/
If you believe that The Bernack’s QE-III is leading to inflation, hang on to your mutual funds and pay off your mortgage with the otherwise worthless dividends. On the other hand, if you believe the market will crash, then get out now, on top, and make 5% per year on every dollar you put against your mortgage.
Then again, silver jumped a buck and a half per once to $34.68 this afternoon. Of course, if you want real silver, that will cost you almost $39.00 for a maple leaf.
What to do, what to do, what to do. Well, at least we have real choices to make even if they are based upon imperfect information. These decisions will be made, one person, one family, one by one.
The world will change and The Bernack will simply have to live with the consequences.
You go broke slowly at first, then all at once.
The neo-elite have been going broke slowly for decades, now they’re in the all at once phase, out of money, time, design margin, patience, and good will. They never had much in the way of ideas, but they’re out of those too. They’ve got nothing left to bribe anyone with, and nobody who matters will take their IOUs any longer.
Like Wretchard said, Romney has half a foot in that crowd, but it’s a foot that’s been willing to kick the legs out from under unstable fabrications. He “turned around” companies by dismantling what they had been and making them (or allowing someone to make them) into something else.
All it would take to get the US economy back growing would be to furlough 90% of the EPA, FTC, NLRB and EEOC. Keep on staff just enough lawyers to sue states for regulations that interfer with interstate commerce, and just enough clerks to rubber stamp whatever permit applications come in. The turnaround would happen in 6 months.
#52 dlsada
There are more than a few people for which that is the equivalent of a middle case staff study scenario to spark further discussion.
There are non-obvious, but vital, implications in that article.
Subotai Bahadur
It looks to me like there may be a low level civil war going on in the US government. CIA, State, the Executive, FBI, DHS and of course DOD all seem to be working at odds to each other. Hillary completely skipped out on the Democrat convention and seems to be only interested in putting together oil and gas deals for her crony-capitalist buddies. It looks like they all know the ship is going down and its all hands for looting for themselves.
In any case everyone knows that the quadrillion of derivatives is the ticking time bomb and both the Fed and the ECB can pull the trigger and blow the whole thing up in a matter of days by raising interest rates. Apparently the banks/elites aren’t ready yet, they are kicking the derivative can one more time by implementing QE in the ECB and the Fed to keep those interest rates low and the derivatives above water, perhaps just until after the election.