The Nation Newspaper

Category: Brian Browne

  • In what direction goes black leadership?

    In what direction goes black leadership?

    Finding a great leader is less difficult than replacing one

    The world stood still last week to say farewell to one of its greatest sons. For Nelson Mandela, it was plaudits well deserved. Yet, in a few brief days, this globally reflective moment will fade as if belonging to the distant past or never having occurred at all.

    Mandela is the heroic figure of our age. His stature eclipsed that of another world leader. This spoke much about the man’s greatness. It revealed much more about the tepidity of other leaders. Because of the distance that separated Mandela from others, we verge on a mistake that will do Mandela and us significant injustice. We have been tempted by his departure to elevate his evident superiority into an impression of completeness or of infallibility.

    This would be a mistake. To acclaim a hero is our civic duty and moral obligation; it is symbolic recompense for deeds and sacrifices that can never be repaid. However, to lavish blind adulation without an objective assessment is tantamount to a lie. It distorts the legacy of the subject of the adulation and cripples the historic perspective and future actions of those committing the overreach.

    Black people should always pause when the mass media celebrates a Black hero and liberator. The metamorphosis of Western thought about Madiba parallels the evolution of American thought about Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. As he entered into leadership of the Civil Rights Movement, the established proclaimed king was obsessed with thrusting the nation into the jowls of a race war. The charge was libelous yet represented the conventional wisdom and the operational truth of the American government and much of the political establishment. Similarly, Western nations branded Mandela a communist-influenced terrorist intent on massacring Whites.

    After King was assassinated, White America’s perspective of him mellowed. The dead cleric could not threaten what remained their strong hold on power. When he became the first Black president of his nation, Mandela transfigured into the Black leader the White world loved to love. On the surface, this appears to be a wonderful story of bygone hatreds and present compassion. Sadly, the truth is not this ersatz morality play now presented. Cold self-interest is more the author of this tale than is brotherly love.

    Clearly, those who once casted King and Mandela as foul embodiments now lionize them. They do so from their high perch not from their humbled hearts. Henry Kissinger, the archangel of Machiavellian international relations, attended Madiba’s memorial service. One had to wonder if the amoral Kissinger actually knew where he was. Perhaps he had nothing else to do that day and was the beneficiary of a free plane ride to picturesque South Africa. More likely, he was there to assure himself that Madiba was dead and inwardly gloat that he had survived this Black African who was his moral superior yet mortal enemy when both men actively occupied the arena of world events. A brilliant man, Kissinger is nonetheless a warehouse of banal prejudices that lends him a penchant for evil. That this bulwark against Black progress at home and abroad attended the ceremony signals something that warrants closer scrutiny.

    The elite propaganda machine disseminates the tale Mandela’s show of unmatched compassion won them over, even the reptilian Kissinger. For the most idealistic among them, this may be true. However, idealism runs in short supply among the deeply affluent and powerful. For most of the elite, the story has the opposite plot. Mandela did not win them with the power of his compassion. Instead, they forced Mandela to channel his compassion and restrain his drive for justice in ways that safeguarded their pecuniary interests. They did not come over to Mandela’s side. By the sheer force of their ever hovering, destructive military and clandestine abilities and obvious economic power, they forced Mandela over to theirs.

    His harsh critics, and there are many among South African leftists, say Mandela capitulated. His former wife Winnie purportedly criticized the deal with the apartheid establishment as a deep wound to the Black community. She and others anguished that Blacks obtained the ballot but Whites kept the bank.

    True, South African Blacks won political equality only to retain apartheid’s economic fetters.

    This tracks the fate of Black America when the Civil Rights Movement ended. Blacks were legally free to go anywhere and do anything. However, most lacked money to see to the new opportunities. The liberty they sought might as well have dwelled on the far side of the moon. The bulk of Black American poor stayed in the modest tenements of their disintegrating urban communities or in their shacks on dirt-scratch farms along the rural back roads of rich, vast and powerful America. Likewise, most Black South Africans remained in their shanties in townships that look no better now than under the harsh hand of racist governance two decades ago.

    What changed in America and South Africa was the birth of a small, unprincipled Black elite that attached itself as a weak, dependant appendage to the conservative White establishment. The hard nut had been found but is yet to be cracked. What happened is a tragic lack of foresight to understand the vast distance to be crossed to complete the trek to justice and liberty. In America and South Africa, Blacks mistook victory in an important campaign for winning the entire war. We walked off the battlefield before the day was done.

    Because of this, we have produced an ambivalent Black leadership with no objective greater than its self perpetuation. It knows nothing other than how to manage and profit from things as they are. This elite does not know whether its raison d’être is to represent Black interests to the White power bloc or to explain the imperatives of White power to the Black masses. On a daily basis, they tend to follow the money by turning the shoulder of indifference to their people. More at home being the junior partners in an elite enterprise, the distance between the Black elite and Black masses grows.

    What also grows is Black relative poverty in both nations. In a general sense, a large portion of the scant prosperity that was once more evenly shared among the Black populace has been cornered by the new elite. This unregenerate process has become infectious, afflicting Black leadership on a global basis. Whether in minority enclaves in Western nations or as heads of nominally independent African states, Black leaders have fallen to this siren’s beckoning. They lavish in the emoluments of political independence but yoke the people to deep penury because they dare not challenge the unfair political economy that provided their soft seat at the high table. That their benefactor is unjust causes them no grief just as long as they its beneficiaries.

    Critics blame Mandela for this shortfall in South Africa. I can no more blame Mandela in South Africa than blame King for Black America’s current afflictions. Both men did all they could; but this can never be construed that they did all that was needed. Some challenges had to be left for those who followed them. Sadly, those who followed them temporally failed to do so in spirit.

    On the arduous approach to obtaining power, Mandela wrestled with a decision freighted with historic magnitude. Should he insist on the ANC platform of radical economic restructuring or be content with gaining political independence now and hope for economic justice later? The fate of previous Black leaders who dared press for both must have shaped his fateful answer.

    An idealistic Patrice Lumumba actually believed the Congo had gained independence from its sadistic Belgian masters. When he began acting like an independent leader, little did he understand he had issued his own death sentence. His bones are yet to be found and his nation yet to recover five decades after his exit. Malcolm X and Dr. King were killed when they began to focus on economic justice. Nkrumah was hounded from office because of his socialism. For seeking an independent economic base, Sekou Toure’s Guinea was punished with draconian French sanctions that have mired the nation ever since. The mourning Dr. Kissinger once intrigued against Allende’s Chile until Allende was no longer and his dream of a more just nation was buried with him and the thousands of martyrs who believed as he did.

    From further back in history comes the benighted example of Haiti, the tiny speck of an island that became the first Black republic by overthrowing a violently oppressive White planter society. For their desperate lunge at freedom, Haitians were rewarded with harsh trade sanctions by the great powers and the infliction of a massive war indemnity by France. The indemnity was so steep, cutting a large chunk of the infant nation’s GDP, that there could be no other destiny for the tiny country than perpetual debt peonage and the poverty and political instability spawned by such abysmal economic conditions.

    Mandela did not want to follow these examples. His contemporary Robert Mugabe took a different approach. For that he has become an international pariah. Mugabe is a despot and his politics should be excoriated as such. Yet, the story of Zimbabwe’s economic collapse s not the straightforward calamity the media portrays. Western propagandists would have us believe Mugabe’s policy of economic affirmative action for Blacks broke the economic spine of his nation. Surely, his clumsy, often cynical, implementation of this policy caused hardship. However, the hardship his policies caused was probably no greater than the hardship emitted by Ian Smith’s supremacist policies when the nation was Rhodesia. However, the West did not complain about Smith’s errant tutelage.

    The bulk of the hyperinflation that deracinated the economy was not from Mugabe’s hand alone. Reacting to Mugabe’s recalcitrant independence in forging ahead with land redistribution despite Western opprobrium, the international financial institutions (IMF and World Bank) refused to rollover over Zimbabwe’s loans as was established custom. To repay these dollar loans, Zimbabwe was forced to print enormous amounts of its currency in a pitiful attempt to buy dollars to repay the financial houses. This was the strong engine of the nation’s horrendous inflation. Mugabe has committed enough wrongs to fill a book. Yet, in this important instance, he was more victim than perpetrator.

    Now we hear little about him because he has been whipped into economic submission. Having forfeited currency sovereignty, the South African rand and America dollar are legal tender in his nation. This means Zimbabwean monetary policy is determined more by Pretoria and Washington than in Harare. The dictator is being dictated to.

    For all of our long history of struggle, the bitter truth is no Black community or nation has yet won both full political and practical economic independence from its former masters. This harsh fact had to influence Mandela into accepting a couple of slices of bread instead of gambling on snatching and being able to keep half the loaf.

    Had he gambled, the weight of Western economic and political power would have descended on him like a ton of bricks dropped from high altitude. His government would have been ambushed and its failure would have been recorded under the familiar theme of Black inability to rule a complex nation. Thus, Madiba accepted the smaller victory, hoping it would forestall a larger defeat.

    It would be left to those who came after to initiate the economic reform he could not do. Sadly, it is easier to find a great leader than to replace one. What was necessary strategic restraint for Madiba became a blind way of life for his successors. They moved not a muscle to alleviate the burden on the people. Instead, they turned from the people. Thus, many socio-economic indicators for Black South Africans today are worse than under apartheid. How can that be?

    All one needs to do is look at the mummified performance of Jacob Zuma at the Mandela memorial service. The man appeared to have overdosed on depressants. It is hard to determine which man least belonged on stage: Zuma or the fake deaf/sign interpreter. lt was not that Zuma was overcome by grief. He was overwhelmed by his own inadequacy. In a sense, Zuma had died before Mandela. Thus, the people bristled at watching a talking corpse eulogize their lost father. They booed Zuma. The breach of protocol was justified.

    Today, Madiba is to be buried. Buried with him shall not go our best hopes. He did enough to bequeath them to us, frail but alive and intact. Lamentably, the leaders who have followed him throughout the Black world have not advanced from where he left off; they have backtracked. He faced down one challenge that they may face down another. Instead, they return to where he trod, claiming they seek to defeat that which he already conquered.

    The Western world and its media machine extol this practice because it keeps us in stagnant place. They want us to believe the battle Mandela waged was the last one for Black people to fight. The end has been achieved. The telegenic Obama’s ascendance to the American White House is proof of this, they say. They want us to believe that Mandela’s transitional compromise decision represents the zenith of race relations and the final answer regarding racial reconciliation. They want you to believe this because it neither hurts their ample pocketbook nor fills your empty purse.

    Mandela epitomized greatness. Yet he was as mortal as the rest of us. The time for his leadership has come and gone. There are issues left undone. In the spirit of his greatness, let us dedicate ourselves to doing them.

    Those who consider themselves Black leaders must now grapple with the fundamental challenge of our period. They must devise prudent yet bold strategies to achieve genuine economic independence and fairness but do so in a manner that does not attract punishing blows from the heavy hand of the major economic powers. Neither reckless stridency nor sheepish compromise has a place here. We need smart leaders courageous enough to take the steps required but astute enough not to attract destructive backlash. Those who fail to tackle this challenge have done just that – they have failed us.

    When a selfish leader peers into a mirror, he sees nothing he dislikes. As the mirror peers back, it views things it would rather not see. With the passing of Madiba, it is time that we all take a long look into the mirror that looks back.

     

    08060340825 (sms only)

  • The Pope versus professor no hope

    The Pope versus professor no hope

    Before getting to the meat of this article, a thought about Nelson Mandela is due. It would smack of ingratitude to see a bright sun in the night sky yet not comment on its rarity. That star has been extinguished but we shall all remember witnessing it. Before he became myth and legend, Mandela was a man. That is how I will remember him. As a man, he is more valuable a lesson to us. A legend must do great things; its intrinsic nature compels this. A man must choose, from among all things possible, the path that he takes. Madiba could have selected a different life. History trebles at the notion of him selecting one of quiet and comfort. Instead, he chose to be great, to endure the sacrifices greatness would place on him. He did not have to be heroic but he decided to be so. This makes the man better than the myth. This also means we have no excuse; he was of the same clay that made us. We are all Mandela but only if we choose to be.

    As a man, he could not do it all but he did all he could. There is nothing more to expect of any person. He was the last of the great 20th century leaders, helping to dismantle, a great racial evil of that period; he harvested new hope to replace old hatreds. As such, no one could reasonably be expected to fill his shoes; but, at least, other leaders should strive to follow his direction. To humanity’s chagrin, they have not.

    Madiba was a moral force, a noble beam of dignity, justice and compassion. He has exited the stage. Now, we will realize the profound being he was. Not only is he gone, the stage itself will no longer be the same. It has become a darker, lesser one.

    World leaders will eulogize him. Their praise will be fulsome yet feigned. The tears will be those of the guilty and meretricious. They acknowledge his example but shy from following its tough but right course. Instead, they chose the easy way for themselves which is the harder way for the people they lead. His departure signals the absence of transcendent leadership from this planet at a time when such leadership is most needed.

    In that they failed to follow his example when alive, what power will so compel them now that his light has been extinguished? A vacuum has been formed. The clouds coalesce to form the approaching storm that shall fill the void. Because the current ensemble of world leaders is collectively of a lower quality than their high office, they shall not shield us as Mandela did. In fact, their alloyed traits invite the rain. We can only hope that the gaining storm washes clean more than it destroys that which lies in its wake.

    Because our leaders choose not to follow his example, we shall miss him the more. He gave of himself by contributing more to mankind than his fair share. He has not failed us in death for all men must pass. By the way we now govern ourselves, the greater fear is that we may fail him by how we live. Thank you, Madiba. Thank you.

    Last month, two men gave widely divergent perspectives of the global economy. One, the Pope, did so in the spirit of Mandela, the other, former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, did so in a manner akin to a master vulture instructing others of his species how to descend on a plumb carcass.

    In his first papal exhortation, the Evangelii Gaudium – The Joy of the Gospel – Pope Francis described the current global economy as one of exclusion. He said “such an economy kills.” As many know, there exists a fairly unambiguous divine commandment against homicide. For the Pope to draw this connection is a jarring indictment of our economic processes. To ensure that no one would think he inadvertently misspoke, Pope Francis criticized the economy for being under the aegis of the “laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless.” He said the economy has gone beyond where the poor are exploited and oppressed. Now, they are excluded. They are castaways left to drift into nothingness

    He lamented that the ‘trickle down’ economic theories that rule most economic thinking and policies have proven to be disastrous yet the leadership elite continues in this direction because it profits them.

    The harsh truth is that we have allowed money to take dominion over us, the Pontiff cautioned. He described a condition where the income of a small group multiplies exponentially as does the gap between this minority and the rest of society. Having their fun and fill of things, the rich and powerful reject government’s moral duty to redistribute economic benefits to care for the unfortunate and poor. He advocated major financial reform that encompasses the more than naked profit but gives account to morality and the poor. He declared that “money must serve man and not man serve money.”

    The Pope’s critique was not the pastoral words and phrases commonly used by the religious establishment which tends to walk cheek to jowl with the moneyed elite. If he used language any more robust, he would have been accused of trying to exorcise the financial class. The reforms he seeks track those raised in previous columns. He is to be saluted for his evident courage and humanitarian concern. Something new might just come out of that old church after all. In fact, it will not be new. It will just be a return to that which the hand of Providence showed mankind from the beginning. Thus, to the Pope, all we should say is “Amen.”

    To Professor Summers, decency restrains us to a loud, “Ahem.” Yet, the heart so wants to bellow a stream of expletives. President Emeritus of Harvard University, Mr. Summers rendered his view of the global economy at the IMF Annual Research Conference held in the city and by the international financial institution most responsible for hoisting on the world the “Washington Consensus,” that awful menu of supply-side, trickle-down economics which have strangulated the economies of numerous developing nations and the hopes of hundreds of millions of the world’s powerless and poor. The Pope lamented that the current global economy kills. From the IMF and in Washington is where the assassin procured its lethal ideological weapons.

    In his address, Mr. Summers cried the global economy appeared in “secular stagnation,” meaning low growth, a flaccid real sector and concomitant unemployment are now built into the system. They seem to be inherent outcomes of the economy we now occupy or, more accurately, of the economy that now occupies us.

    Contrary to popular belief, he remarked the global economy was not characterized by easy money. If a period of cheap money, inflation would soar but it is stable or declining. He commented central banks in developed nations had done all they could to stimulate the economy through manipulation of interest rates. In these economies, rates now approach zero. Thus, they can descend no lower; negative rates would create the nonsensical condition of lenders paying interest to borrowers. Even with interests near zero, which means borrowers now pay scant interest, banks are not lending enough to stimulate growth and activity in the real sector (industry, agriculture, etc.) where most people and jobs reside.

    Since central banks no longer have room to fiddle with interest rates, Summers concluded we were resigned to central banks continue to engaging in extraordinary policies like Quantitative Easing (QE). Pursuant to this policy, central banks inject massive sums of cash into the financial sector by purchasing bonds and other securities from private investors. Summers acknowledged this will create potentially dangerous asset bubbles. Still, he saw this as the only sliver of hope in an otherwise dismal setting.

    Mainstream media and economists automatically shot praise high into the air as if Summers had revealed the Holy Grail or the Philosopher’s Stone. His address was labeled a thing of brilliance and foresight. In fact, it was a treatise in sophistry, more a stumbling block than a gateway to genuine economic progress. That the establishment lauded his verbal prestidigitation is unsurprising. He is a member of that country club and will say nothing to harm his membership or standing therein.

    Although feigning concern for the general populace, the remedy he resigns us to is decidedly pro- financial sector elite. If government’s sole policy is reduced to QE-style monetary interventions, the investor/speculator class will benefit richly indeed. This policy gives money only to this class, allowing them to purchase more financial paper. The increased demand drives up the price of financial paper. Thus, more financial paper will be produced. Then, the more they shall buy. This cycle increases the nominal wealth of the actors in the financial sector. However, little of the funds trickle into investment in industry or jobs for regular people. The rentier class will smell greater nominal wealth while the rest of the economy will smell the brackish scent of protracted stagnation. This is why the bulk of the small growth that has occurred in mature economies after the 2009 recession has been in the financial sector. Banks and big corporations are as profitable as ever. The common person wades in low wages or is awash in high debt.

    What Summers vaticinated was more of the same. To him, there is no other choice. In other words, the rich are destined to become more of the same and the poor are fated to a purer poverty. While faking concern, his speech was intended to cast a sentence of penury over the bulk of humanity. He stood as the cruel prophet for a global economy that kills. Sadly, the media and other economists applauded him for outfitting such a cruel and fierce outcome in the garb of intellectual finery.

    Even purportedly liberal economists joined the choir. Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman claimed his only grouse was that Summers’ analysis was more concise than his. For that statement alone, Krugman should return his Nobel Prize from whence it came. Krugman knows full well that monetary policy is effete in current economic conditions. Economist like John Maynard Keynes revealed this empirical fact eighty years ago. When the 2009 recession fell on us, Krugman rightly advocated fiscal stimulus. For him to abandon this charge because it is politically sensitive is the wrong thing at the wrongest of times. His thinking is redolent of a man exposed to the sun too long. Having desperately searched for water (fiscal stimulus as the only effective approach) and finding none, he now sees water everywhere and in everything. He has been taken by mirages.

    Curiously, Summers mentioned fiscal policy but once in his address, then only dismissively. However that which he ignored — active fiscal policy where government runs a prudent deficit — is the lone effective tool. It can increase aggregate demand that fillips productive industry leading to growth in jobs and wages which, in turn, brings healthy, sustainable consumption spurring further activity and job growth.

    In comparing the two men and their addresses, the Pope would always best the flint-hearted Summers in the moral sphere. I chuckle that the Pope has proven also to be a better economist when that is Summers’ forte and entry into greatness.

    Summers’ rational collapses like a castle in the clouds. More accurately, he reveals himself to be a poor physician because he confuses the symptom of the economic malaise with its cause. For Summers, the problem is low interest rates have not produced the level of aggregate borrowing he expected. Without sufficient borrowing, economic activity is dormant and the real economy slumbers. For him, the crux of the problem is that interest rate policy is not as effective in inducing borrowing as he wants it to be.

    Here, he is misguided on two accounts. Although claiming to be a master economist, a fundamental truth seems to have evaded him all these years. Interest rates are never the prime determinant in a decision to borrow. Businesses do not borrow chiefly because of the available interest rate. They borrow based on their subjective expectation of the rate of return that can be had from the money lent. For example, the interest rate may be 100 percent, which seems high. However, if a firm calculates it can make a 200 percent return, it will eagerly take the loan. Conversely, the interest rate may be only three percent. However, if the firm thinks it will only make a one percent return, it will forego the loan, even at the modest rate. All things being equal, of course the lower rate would lead to expectations of higher profits; however, rarely in life are all things equal.

    We can tinker with interest rates until the cows walk home or find wings to fly back, the activity will be futile. The most efficient way to lift expectations of profit is to boost consumptive demand. In a time of stagnant wages and high unemployment, there is only one agency capable of this task: Government fiscal policy. Active fiscal policy to build infrastructure and encourage industry will produce jobs and increase wages. With more money in their pockets, people consume and spend more. As this escalating consumption parallels business’s profit expectations, more firms will go the bank’s window to take loans thus sparking more activity.

    If we are serious about spurring the real economy, this is the answer. Summers’ prescription is a trick to lull people into accepting the luxuriant welfare now being given the investor class via monetary policy. Contrary to what Summers posited about the paucity of lending, there is significant lending occurring. It is just going to the wrong place. Too much of the new lending/borrowing is to purchase investments in the financial sector. Because returns and profits are low in the real sector, borrowed funds remain and recycle in the financial sector seeking the higher yields that sector promises.

    In the end, Summers’ address is illogical folly. It is like tossing a stone through a glass window. With the window broken, flies and mosquitoes are bound to enter the room. Yet, it makes little sense to conclude that the rock produces insects. The insects are not inherently linked to the rock; their presence is a consequence of the broken window. Put another way, Summers cried the economy appears not to be flying at sufficient altitude. His is a curious remedy: dig a deeper hole. By no means am I a Catholic, but, as between the Pope and Prof. Summers, I shall follow the former on this matter and seek for the people an economy that shall not kill.

    08060340825 (sms only)

  • The fiscal imperative of economic development (Part Two)

    The fiscal imperative of economic development (Part Two)

    As the wealthy sip the stilled wine, the poor gulp the driving rain.

    Last week, we took axe to several pillars of economic orthodoxy. These assumptions are wrong but so powerfully constructed that they make the truth seem to be the rickety, disheveled edifice. Most people believe these false tenets without critically thinking about them.

    For example, when an alleged expert pontificates that government deficit spending inevitably leads to government bankruptcy, most people nod in sheepish unison, commending the learned fellow for his fiscal sobriety and abstemious wisdom. Fearing to appear dumb or inane, no one stands to ask the fundamental question: Why does a government with unlimited authority to issue currency borrow that very currency and pay interest on this artificial debt? The true answer startles. It is a massive form of financial sector welfare that dwarfs anything government ever contemplated for the weak and poor.

    More people should stand to ask piercing questions if only because the caretakers of the political economy pray that you not do so. Time is overdue that we examine the integrity of the pillars upon which our economic fate rests. What we thought was sturdy and true is but tumbling sand.

    I don’t expect this exposition to dispel the economic fables that parade as wisdom and truth. Most readers have embraced orthodoxy so long that they resist the ideals and things that resist their compounding impoverishment. Knowledge is never completely an intellectual enterprise nor are people entirely rational. We become emotionally attached to what we believe we know.

    The more a belief is repeated the more it becomes engrained in our minds. The more engrained an idea, the harder its removal becomes, its lack of veracity notwithstanding. Even when reality refutes a notion, many still cling to it out of custom. The unknown, uncertain truth is more frightening than the accepted lie.

    Thus, I suffer no illusion this essay can debride the conventional ideas that make our economic lot worse than it should be. Of those who read this piece, many will recoil, feeling nothing but deep consternation that it can’t be true. They will say the custodians of the global political economy are not so venal and cold as to perpetuate such dire, massive fraud against the welfare of so many people for so long. Yet, slavery existed for several millennia as major cog of the world economy. As it subsided, feudalism, indentured servitude and other forms of compulsory, low-wage labor took its place. The elite has suppressed the bulk of humanity for most of history, why should the present be excepted?

    My hope is that some will read this with openness of mind and spirit. Don’t reject what is written but objectively compare these ideas to those mainstream economics promotes. If faithful to this exercise, you will question conventions you have been led to accept. You will begin to see that economics is less an objective science and more an ideological wrestling match between competing interests.

    The common man has almost always lost the match because he never understood he was in a contest. He trusted the elite to engineer things for the best of everyone when all the elite does is sculpt things to its advantage. Inordinate greed now makes the elite so sloppy that it consumes too much even for its own good. The cat is now out of the bag and it has turned out to be a rather feral, untamed one.

    If the people want an economy that works for them, they better get about the task of redefining economic processes in a way that promotes their interests. To wait for the elite to do them justice is to sit with cup in hand beside a closed spigot. If people want economy justice, they must craft the ideas and draw the diagram on how they will reach this objective and force the elite to oblige.

    One of the first things people must revise is a concept of money. Generally, we think of money as wealth. This is a vestige of the gold-standard when paper money actually represented a nation’s gold holding. During that prior era, a person could theoretically demand to exchange the paper money he held for actual gold. This is no longer the case.

    Paper money now has its value not because of gold but simple because government, by sovereign fiat, says it has value. We exist in an era of fiat money as opposed to money tied to gold or silver. This change is a massive, liberating one, opening the door to growth and prosperity impossible under the restrictive gold standard. Ironically, the world has the maligned President Richard Nixon of Watergate notoriety to thank for this benign aperture.

    When Nixon took America off the gold standard, he did not realize the future he might create. His action was born of short-term economic imperative. Due to heavy war and domestic programs expenditures as well as America’s position as the world’s reserve currency, the nation was exporting more money than its intake. America’s gold holdings were decimating as a result. To halt the diminution before the cupboards went bare, Nixon divorced the world’s largest economy from the gold standard. As is often the case, in the face of a dire emergency, logic comes to triumph over tradition. The rest of the world could do nothing but follow America’s lead in the new economic world.

    Many people, including mainstream economists, lamented this would end modern civilization. They were as wrong as they were unduly melodramatic. They had deceived themselves that gold was inherently money. Although experts, they seemed to have ignored recent as well as ancient monetary history. During World War I as well as the Great Depression, the major nations suspended the gold standard and resorted to fiat money as an emergency measure. They did this to avert catastrophic deflation and allow themselves the leeway to increase government expenditures to levels needed to address the dire circumstance that stalked them.

    The gold standard was a manacle to the global economy. It did not produce “sound and stable’ money as its adherents professed. Depressions and crippling deflation were more frequent under the gold standard than after it. Moreover, there is nothing inherent about gold that makes it the best form of money. Gold is not found in the ground in pretty ingots. To the untrained eye, un-mined gold looks like dirt. Mankind did not use gold as money until we acquired the technological ability to mine and refine it. Prior to that, many things from animal skins to cowry shells functioned as money in different places at different times.

    As such, terminating the gold standard was not so much a radical departure from tradition but a return to an older truth. Money itself is not wealth. You cannot eat, wear or drive money. As such, it is merely a representation of wealth and value. Essentially, money is but the idea that value can be reduced to socially accepted units of uniform proportion then transported across time and space. Currency is but the physical symbol used to represent this valuable concept.

    Those who seek a new economics must avoid mistaking money for wealth. They must come to see it as a means of assigning economic value to people, assets and resources in a way that helps us create additional wealth. In this new mindset, wealth consists of those things we use, eat, consume, wear, make, give, hear and see that make life more pleasant and worth living.

    This changed mind-set is of paramount importance. Under the gold standard, governments were compelled to save money in order to maintain their caches of the precious metal. Freed from this artifice, governments no longer are slave to hoarding metal in order to maintain their economic place. The major objective of government economic policy is no longer to stash money (gold). The prime objective now should be maximizing national wealth by integrating as many heretofore idle and inactive people, assets and resources into the productive economic mix.

    This should be the objective of economic policy of a just government and society. An unemployed person earns no wages. He has no economic value because he has no money assigned to him since he has produced nothing of value. Yet, morally and economically no person is worthless. Everyone has value. The extent that we have reduced people to having no economic value is an indictment of the political economy more so than of the unemployed person. To the extent an economy becomes efficient at employing its people and resources, then that economy can be said to be developing in an enlightened fashion.

    Here, government becomes the fulcrum of development. During the American economy’s formative period when it became the world’s largest, the American government ran budget deficits. These deficits fueled the construction of the greatest infrastructural network the world had then witnessed. This feat was performed under the strictures of the gold standard. A century later, China would learn from this example by setting a similar course for its national development. Due to its larger size and being liberated from the chokehold of the gold standard, China launched a period of economic growth unprecedented in modern history. A key feature of this grand strategy was government spending on infrastructural development that brought theretofore idle people and resources into productive gait.

    In modern times, any large nation that seeks to develop must do two essential things. First, government must dare engage in deficit spending toward the creation of modern, efficient infrastructural architecture and place that network at the service of the rest of the economy. This not only employs multitudes. A national economy cannot expand beyond the limits of its infrastructure’s ability to provide cheap, efficient transportation, energy and water. By enlarging the infrastructural base, government catalyzes further private-sector economic growth. Second, government must promote industry and manufacturing that employ additional people and resources. This requires a formal or informal national industrial policy.

    These activities rest on government fiscal policy. Sadly, the current global trend is to emphasize monetary policy and downplay fiscal activism. This is no surprise. Monetary policy is the province of the rich and powerful whereas fiscal policy can be tailored toward more egalitarian ends. Consequently, the moneyed elite would rather leave fiscal policy behind the locked door.

    America’s central bank has engaged in a policy called quantitative easing (QE) for several years. Through this policy, it purchased trillions of dollars of financial paper from the financial sector. Ostensibly, the policy is meant to jumpstart the whole economy. In reality, the program has only inflated and enriched the financial sector. Stock market prices and bank profits have expanded; but the rest of the economy stagnates. The American economy is now growing but the expansion is misleading. Growth is basically limited to the investor class. The vast majority of people tread the deep black water or slowly sink into it.

    Conventional economics says monetary policy, through interest rate changes or market transactions like the extraordinary QE, sends funds into the financial sector. The financial sector then will distribute the funds to the real sector. This may have been the case before. Not anymore. The financial sector has become bloated with too many speculative opportunities promising yields unknown to real sector investment. Consequently, the receipts of monetary policy first enter the financial sector and stay there. This accords with the general principle that the economic sector to which money initially flows is usually the greatest beneficiary of the government policy that generated the monetary flow.

    Monetary policy benefits the financial sector more than any other. In other words, not enough money really gets transmitted to the real sector. The money repeatedly cycles within the financial sector, inflating assets prices, causing the investor class to increase its nominal wealth. However, there is no equal increase in real wealth or production. There is no increase in employment. Relative to the annealed financier class, the rest of the economy has slightly lessened.

    This phenomenon repeats itself in Japan. That nation has embarked on a program more egregious than America’s QE. The central bank buys almost all types of financial paper, including stocks. Since the purchases are made at the nominal and not lower market value of the financial paper, these government purchases subsidize investor mistakes. The Japanese government, not the investor, now bears the loss in the real value of the purchased instrument. Predictably, the stock market has soared but the outlook for growth in the real sector remains bleak. The financial class has benefited at the expense of the rest of the economy.

    At its worse, monetary policy sinks us all. At its best, it more directly benefits the financial sector than any other. Fiscal policy represents the only chance for the average person. Fiscal policy can direct government expenditures to certain groups of people. Jobs programs provide money directly to the unemployed, Social Security to the elderly poor, tax relief or production subsidies to certain farms or industries as the case may be. In these instances, fiscal policy inures no direct gain to the financial sector because fiscal policy can completely bypass that sector. The financial sector only incidentally benefits from fiscal policy. For the financial sector, this is too little gain to be worthwhile. Thus, the financial sector abhors fiscal activism and we must remember that the financial sector now defines conventional economics.

    No surprise that orthodox economics downplays the utility of fiscal policy and eschews budgetary deficits as a bête noire. The aim of conventional economics is to keep the humble and poor as they are while allowing the affluent to multiply their affluence.

    In the end, the people struggle for their economic lives and fate. They lose more often than they win in this war because they look to economists and the financial elite as their generals. But the economists and elite head the opposing army. To follow them is for the people to tag themselves to the certain defeat of their economic aspirations.

    Unless people agitate for fiscal policy that stirs the economy toward greater productivity and shared prosperity, the financial elite will have their fill while most others will know only a depleted condition. The more champagne the elite buys and drinks, the less water the poor will be able to afford. While the financial elite will bask in nearly perpetual enrichment, economic night will cast darkness over the majority of people even at the height of the daytime sun.

     

    08060340825 (sms only)

  • The fiscal imperative of economic development (Part One)

    The fiscal imperative of economic development (Part One)

    Economics is the elite’s attempt to masquerade greed as rational science.

    At a carnival, the performers using numbers to predict human behavior or fate are known as fortune tellers. In the corridors of government and higher education, they are called economists. Laymen give them wide berth because their elucidations are so arcane and contorted that few of the uninitiated have the courage or dexterity to offer challenge. Over the decades, the pontifications of the economists have been elevated to the status of secular canon; governments slavishly tie themselves to their utterances without due assessment of the utility of what is proposed.

    Standard economics reduces the world of complex, ambivalent humans to sterile mathematic formula. While the constructs of brilliant minds, these equations have but a tenuous relationship to the way the world turns or to how the cavalcade known as the human race proceeds. The very smart can be as wrong as the very slow; however, we have been cowed into believing complex thought begets correctness. Sometimes complexity begets nothing other than a sophisticated mess.

    Believing a field of knowledge that explains a world which does not exist is as grave an error as trying to plow a cloud or winnow the wind. In searching for prosperity and a better life on this precious ellipsoid of limited resources known as earth, man cannot long afford dreams of flirting with mermaids or dining with unicorns. The construct of our political economy should be based on something more solid than highly intelligent fancy. It should be built on humanitarian vision and theories based on empirical fact and tempered by mental rigor.

    Instead, the policy boundaries of the global political economy have been delineated by an ideology based on theories largely discredited by practical experience. Yet, this ideology persists in pushing itself on us, unfairly holding center stage like an inebriated extravert at the reunion of an otherwise shy family.

    This column periodically turns to the theme of a national government’s ministration of the political economy. We conduct this refrain because the quality and type of economic governance pursued will determine whether a nation develops or diminishes. We make this occasional revisit so that you will not accept the bromides of economic orthodoxy and thus shackle yourself to an artfully constructed edifice of lies. If an untrue tongue is about, we cannot prevent ourselves from hearing its falsehoods. However, we can insulate ourselves from adopting the lies as our truth. We have been told the current system is the only way to structure a society that it might prosper. We are told this so that our minds and heart might seize with foreboding at the slightest hint of significant reform, freezing us from seeking redress when redress is the only humane, noble reply to the injustice faced.

    Instead we are encouraged to soldier on, through mud and thicket, into the quicksand if we must; if there is fault in our economic position, we caused it. By the reasoning of classical economics, we are both victim and perpetrator of our weakening economic condition. This is a lie built upon falsehood cloaked in deception.

    The current economy order is no more insuperable than the feudalism and enforced servitude of past epochs. The political economy is not rendered to us by divine appointment. It is both mankind’s tool and manacle. The operation of the political economy is how the benefits and costs of human activity are produced then distributed among the people. Order society one way, a certain constituency or class benefits and others suffer relatively to the input they make. Order society in a materially different manner, the identities of its beneficiaries and of the disgruntled also will change in a material way.

    In today’s world, those who control the large financial houses earn more than they contribute to actual production of wealth. Meanwhile, the average worker gains much less than he contributes. The overall net result is that society prospers. When that net gain is critically examined, a voracious elite gulps most of the addition. The majority of the people are left as they were. To remain in place as time conducts its inexorable march is to digress. In other words, the political economy is designed that most people work hard to fall behind.

    Their lone reward is the pitiable assurance that their sweat and labor have served to enrich those who are already flush. Average people are allowed to vicariously enjoy the life of the wealthy from afar or in the cheap comfort of their humble parlors via television reality shows. The poor and modest are coaxed into aspiring to be rich and, more importantly, to be like the rich. Once you aspire to be as someone, you worship them. The rich become protected from the people they exploit by the exploited people themselves. This is a smug composition for those it profits for it is a smart, smooth sleight-of-hand played on the unwitting majority. To me, it is an unjust arrangement. Should one summon the curiosity to peer through this miasma, it shall not be clarity he finds. All he will discover is denser smoke and fog.

    Here, I register no pretense to be a neutral or objective observer for I never knowingly embark on the impossible. No person can be completely neutral or objective in adjudging how best to order the political economy. Assessing the political economy is not comparable to measuring the world of physical objects where operation of forces such as gravity, electricity and magnetism do no favors, evoke no biases and are inviolate. Such is the world of inanimate things. But the things of man are different for his world is populated by the uncertainties caused by the imperfection and frailty of his conduct.

    Not everything man says is a lie but nothing he says is the full truth. His ideas may work but never perfectly. What he builds may be beautiful but it is never complete. Thus, he continually strives. To be alive is to trek towards endless journey. This is our plight and greatest triumph. For every human victory, there is also a vanquishing. Within the combination of the two, the architecture of our political economy is devised. Unlike an electron which is nigh indistinguishable from its fellow, a man is distinct from his fellow.

    More to the point of this writing, some of us are rich. Many are poor. Most are neither. The story of our political economy is the story of why the distribution of wealth is as it is. Nothing is cast in stone save the stone itself. The workings of man and his society are mostly matters of conscious choice. Yet, man’s conscience is often smothered by a thick batter of ignorant belief congealed with fortuitous chance. We tend to do what we think but do not always think cleverly about what we do.

    Now, we come to the proverbial fork in the fated road. We can persist in the current direction or go a different route. Justice recommends we seek a more equitable world where poverty retreats and prosperity is more broadly shared so that society’s humble, modest and broken receive more than now they do for their efforts. Let the currency of wealth be recalibrated so that more worth is attached to a person’s actual labor than to the machinations brought about by the masked yet real dictatorship of financial paper over our economic lives. If we seek such a new world, we must adhere to the new path.

    Hewing the better path requires the defeat of several economic misperceptions. First, we must understand the nature of modern money. What we have been taught about the function of money are outdated notions based on the idea that the value of a nation’s currency is tied to the amount of that nation’s holdings in gold, i.e., the gold standard. The gold standard has been obsolete over forty years. Yet, so enamored by their intricate theories, mainstream economists hold to them though the nature of money has radically changed. This is like teaching a person to drive a car by asking them to walk about with a steering wheel in their hand.

    No longer is a currency’s value based on gold. Value now is determined by a nation’s importance and function in the global economy. Because currency is divorced from gold, the amount of currency a nation can produce is no longer limited by the country’s gold holdings. No longer fettered by these gold standard strictures, a nation can issue an unlimited supply of its currency. To the extent a nation’s monetary obligations are denominated in its currency, the nation cannot fall insolvent. This observation does not lend free rein to issuing currency mindlessly. Currency issuance that outpaces the increase in the actual productive capacity of the nation is almost as wrongheaded as causing economic contraction due to lack of money in circulation. In other words, to issue currency without connecting it to productive endeavor will debase the currency and hurtle the nation toward the tilted lance of inflation.

    We come now to another cardinal falsehood. The economic mainstream postulates that a national government must behave and balance its books like an individual or a private business. It must save money by seeking budgetary surplus. At the very least, it must balance the budget. This theorem is more hog than wash and it has caused undue harm in many nations for too many years. This position, which most people accept as an article of faith, is nothing less than a compound fallacy. First, every person and entity cannot have net savings at the same time. It is outside the realm of possibility and of legitimate accounting principles. For someone to run a surplus, another has to incur a deficit. This is an inescapable reality but the lords of economics will not allow you this fundamental truth because it points in a direction they loathe.

    A governmental surplus requires a proportionate private sector deficit. In other words, for government to enjoy a surplus requires the private sector to tender to government more than it receives from government. This deflates the private sector. Where the private sector has become febrile and inflation has mounted its stalking horse, such a tactic makes sense to keep the economy from hyperventilating. But where a society suffers from significant idle capacity and unemployment such a tactic amounts to national masochism in its purest form. It destines an already asthenic economy and its people to a worsened fate.

    For growth to exist, a surplus must exist. We are left to determine whether it is better that government or the private sector enjoys the surplus and the other runs the deficit.

    If the private sector experiences the deficit, the private sector must deflate of necessity. Unemployment will mount as economic activity shrinks. Firms will lose and eventually go out of business. Bankruptcy courts will see brisk activity and things will indeed appear dismal for most people. The private sector cannot cure this deficit position by and for itself. The financial industry cannot come to the rescue. In most nations, private banks do issue new money when they make loans. However, a loan, by definition, is a debt or deficit for the loan recipient. Thus, the new money created is effectively cancelled out by the new debt the new money gestates. This means that private- sector creation of money is a neutral transaction that cannot serve to reduce a net private-sector deficit.

    Why then are the advocates of free market capitalism so enamored by government fiscal restraint if it produces such dire results? The blunt truth is that the mainstream financial elite benefits from the misery of others. The funds that come into the private sector in the above deficit scenario first go to the financial houses. There are net gainers within the sector even in a situation where the private sector as a whole suffers a deficit. Big Money will gain and always cover itself. Once it takes its unfair share, there will be even less to go around for the average and poor.

    The deflationary influence of a private-sector deficit means that the smaller amount of money will be worth more. In that this lesser amount is first gripped by the well moneyed, the elite profits handsomely from economic contraction. They can buy property and firms at distress prices and hire people at suppressed wages that steadily reduce the average person to the modern equivalent of a debt-ridden sharecropper. While the financial elite benefits, the rest of the private sector suffers a dual deficit — the one between the private sector and government, then another imposed on them by the private sector’s own financial elite.

    This reveals an obvious but overlooked fact: the sector that experiences surplus will grow. Given this reality, it makes greater sense for the private sector to enjoy the surplus since the private sector, by itself, cannot cure the deflationary effect of an internal deficit. Because of its currency issuance power, government will not crumple should it run a deficit. Government’s ability to issue currency means it can always keep insolvency at bay provided its debts are written in its own currency.

    Deficits do not bankrupt government as they do private sector entities. Thus, the default position of government should not be a balanced or surplus budget as either would stagnate or collapse the non-financial side of the private sector in the long term. If government wants to promote private sector expansion, it must engage in long-term deficit spending. Only when inflation kicks should government tame that beast by pulling in more money sector than it gives to the private sector. As such, balanced or surplus budgets are not objectives in themselves; they are merely tactics and tools to be deployed toward a greater purpose – the prosperity of a broad spectrum of the people.

    Here, Money Power and its hired minstrels will scream “dangerous inflation” and decry government “printing of money.” Ignoring historic fact, they claim government deficit spending is inutile and always inflationary. They are wrong. They are also hypocritical. If made aghast by government deficit spending, they should be paralyzed by fear at the track record of private-sector money creation. Private-sector money creation and the debt inherent to it caused the global 2008 recession and mostly all financial crises since the very advent of money. If government deficit spending is inept, then private-bank money creation is both hircine and minatory.

    By creating an interest-bearing debt obligation, private-bank money creation can be riskier than government money creation. Because it carries an interest bearing debt requiring a payoff larger than the principal lent, money created by a private bank is worth incrementally less than the same nominal amount of government-issued money because that publicly- issued money is not attached to an interest-bearing debt. In simpler terms, government deficit money is intrinsically no more inflationary than private bank money. If government deficit funds are used to generate productive activities at par with the value of the deficit incurred, then inflation will be held in check. If government spending is on frivolous activity or enterprises, then inflation will loom. Yet, this is no different than if money created by private banks is profligately deployed as the recent 2008 financial bubble and bust can attest. At bottom, the dispositive element is not the existence of deficit spending. Government deficit spending is necessary to long-term private sector expansion. What determines whether a government deficit will be beneficial is the productive quality of the endeavor for which the deficit funds are used.

    Government deficit spending shall be consonant with economic growth and development as long as the funds are prudently deployed.

    This article has been a bit thick on economic concepts and principle. Hopefully it has been digestible by those intrepid enough to wade through it. This theoretic underpinning is important because it forms the basis for the second part of this exercise. In that piece, we shall explore the vast differences between the fiscal activism I propose and the fiscal conservatism of mainstream economics. One way leads to a more equitable distribution of economic benefits that will improve the lives of the stooped, the struggling and the poor. The other leads to greater disparity where society creates more wealth for too few and more penury for too many. I know the road I prefer. Until next week…

    08060340825 (sms only)

  • The role of government: to roll over the people?

    The role of government: to roll over the people?

    Where the light of evil pervades, the people suffer life in the deepest darkness.

     

    My first intention was to write on economic theory and I hope to honor fully that intention – next week. I would be remiss if I failed to analyze the past week in American politics. Even though the past two articles have been about America, it may be instructive to again follow the unwinding strands in American politics. If perceptive, you will see clues that might help resolve some of inner mysteries impeding the just development of this political economy.

    Two weeks ago, President Obama held trumpet in hand, blowing notes of political triumph. He had finessed hard-line Republicans over the federal government shutdown and the deficit ceiling. Fellow Democrats barely contained their glee; many gloated like a Cheshire cat happening upon a saucer of warm milk. They shouldn’t have grinned and cooed so much. Fate never remains loyal to those who take it for granted. Fate always repudiates those who believe they have so won its full favor. To believe you have mastered fate is to become its next victim. The surest way into a sticky predicament is loudly to boast you have resolved one.

    The music of victory was sonorous to Obama and fellow Democrats. Yet, they erred by ceding to the temptation of listening to it. Their séance with fleeting victory deafened them to the footsteps of political calamity at their door. Even if they heard the stalking ogre, they could not have avoided its reproach for they had invited it themselves. They had given it birth. It bore their name: Obamacare.

    The initiation of Obamacare has been disastrous. Inexplicably, yesterday’s technology was used to launch the website for the millions of citizens applying for insurance. This was like asking scores of people to walk simultaneously through a narrow portal barely suitable for the passage of one person. The result has been frustrated hugger-mugger. Making matters worse by eagerly snorting profit when more profit stands in poor taste, insurance companies have cancelled policies of tens of thousands, if not millions, of people. The costs of subsequent policies will rise.

    Leaked, as well as officially published, government documents reveal the Administration knew these troubles would beset the public. Yet senior officials, including the President himself, publicly dissembled the new law would usher in a period of rainbows and tulips for the sick and uninsured in the land of the free and home of the brave.

    Obama and his health officials have been place on the defensive. Their excuses for the law’s technological and substantive defects are limp and unconvincing. There is a sense of unease. It is as if someone everyone thought was an outstanding student failed to complete his homework, not because he forgot the assignment but because he proved incapable of it.

    The Republicans have pounced like vultures on carrion. They complain the law went a stride too far; it is too grand a government intrusion into health care which they deem a private matter better left to marketplace. My grouse is the law does not travel far enough. The Republican notion of health care as an ordinary private commercial transaction is inapposite. A person can shop and compare prices among different sellers when purchasing a car, a coat, or leasing a residence. One can negotiate with the sellers. Still, the consumer gets the short end of the stick because the seller almost always has greater leverage.

    A sick person does not even have this poor leverage. An ill person can’t venture from hospital to hospital, doctor to doctor comparing who will give appropriate attention at a more modest price. In other transactions, the buyer can threaten to walk from the deal or buy a reduced amount, say 2/3rds, of the goods in question. Yet, few sick people can defy a hospital or a doctor by protesting that costs are too high. Imagine a bleeding man bargaining that they should reduce costs because he has decided he only wants 2/3rds of the complete treatment or that he believes he is only 2/3s as injured as they say. Such a conversation would be nonsensical; it would go far toward convincing the physician that his recalcitrant patient may have a psychiatric ailment more severe than the physical one in question.

    The best fix would have been a single-payer system akin to what exists in most other developed nations. Government simply should pay for a decent minimum level of health care for all. Sadly, the Administration tried to assuage vested interests more so than it tried to provide health care for the entire public. The byproduct is a bureaucratic web rich in complexity, lackluster in results. The thing is both fish and fowl yet it may never be able to swim or fly.

    For the sake of ordinary Americans and of the president, I hope the plan recovers from this fretful start. If not, the already cumbersome American health care system will become an unintelligible heap. People will suffer. The president’s legacy will be brusquely escorted to the gallows. People will be relieved to return to the old way although that way is a burden unto them. Conservatives will be seen as rescuing the nation from reformer’s folly. The idea of government-led social reform in any context – poverty and economic justice, education, environment – will suffer caustic defeat that progressives will be forced to chew for decades as if trying to eat a plank of hardwood. The aftertaste will be even more acidic because the health care plan was not reform in the truest sense. The plan has many parts and is highly complex but none of the parts was intended to move the process very far. The plan is one of great lateral motion and minimal forward advantage. This is not major reform; it is an elaborate complexity resulting in piecemeal refinement. However, it was labeled reform and the label stuck. Now it is in danger of giving genuine reform an unwanted reputation.

    The conservatives now stick hot pokers in this wound, trying to make President Obama wince without respite. They also take him to task on other issues with vengeful eagerness. They are keen to mount a frontal assault on his presidency the likes of which have never been seen. The theme of their attack is slick and vile-hearted attempt to cast a new perception of Obama based on historic racial stereotypes.

    The wrongs Obama committed in trying to convince the public that his flawed health plan was nearly perfect have been no worse than the usual hyperbole employed by conventional politicians when promoting their wares. However, the Republican machine casts Obama’s statements as things vitally sinister. They expostulate that his statements demonstrate a singular incompetence or craven dishonesty on a grand scale. In this vein, they have revived their investigation into the Benghazi consulate tragedy. They hope to obtain testimony from mid-level intelligence operatives that the White House left the slain Embassy officials to their saturnine fate. Given that most mid-level operatives are of the highly conservative bent and disdain this president for what they believe his skin color represents, such testimony will likely be forthcoming. Add to this the Administration’s waffling over the revelations of the National Security Agency’s global eavesdropping.

    The central theme of conservative attack is becoming pronounced and visible. It is a more subtle racism than that normally deployed but racism all the same.

    They claim Obama is incompetent because he pleads ignorance over the details of many of the current policy controversies. They say his lack of knowledge reveals a lack of commitment to the actual gruel and tasks of governance. He lavishes the limelight and knows how to talk sweetly but shies from the pedestrian hard work essential to good governance. In other words, the conservatives paint Obama as a lazy executive with a gift of gab. Thus, he has used his verbal gifts to bamboozle the electorate into buying a fraudulent bill of goods called Obamacare. As such, he is nothing more than an elegant confidence man, a refined street hustler.

    This portrait Republicans work at feverish pace to complete. They have the 2014 congressional electoral calendar in mind. In 2014, all House of Representative seats and 1/3 of the Senate are up for election. The Republican grand strategy is not so much to contest and highlight their differences with the Democratic candidates in each individual congressional race. Their plan will be to run against Obama, particularly given the troubles with Obamacare and other policies. However, they will not just run against Obama’s perceived misdeeds. They will cast his errors and omissions as so ominous as to define him as too incompetent to remain in office. The Black man is too lazy, dumb and unfit to finish his term. In all they do, Republicans cast the suggestion of impeachment. Rarely do their strategists meet without impeachment on the menu and in their minds. Increasingly, Republican officeholders publicly raise the prospect.

    Removing Obama from office via impeachment is as unlikely an event as a tuxedoed aardvark directing traffic at busy urban intersection. However, reality and logic have little to do with this effort. This is about a mean element called political ambition teamed with an even darker emotion known as hatred. Republicans have a few short- and longer-term goals. They want to maintain control of the House. Incidentally, presidential impeachment proceedings are initiated by the House. The Republican rallying cry for the 2014 elections will be the need to vote for hardliners eager to tar Obama with the brush of impeachment. Impeachment cannot be achieved without the Senate where the Democrats hold a slim majority over the Republicans. A change in two-three seats can make the difference there.

    Thus, the Republican political machine will now work overtime to highlight Obama’s personal deficits. They seek to paint him as so reckless and insouciant as to be criminally negligent and unfit for office. They care not that they lack provable legal grounds for the attempt. Racial hatred provides ample political staging for the turbid undertaking. Their objective is not to remove Obama from office. His removal is the pot at the end of the rainbow. If they don’t get the pot, the emotion and fantasy elicited by chasing the rainbow will suffice.

    The Republicans want to maintain control of the house. By rousing the hard-line electoral base in this crusade against Obama, they believe they will spur a coalition of arch conservatives, Tea Partiers and fringe racists to the polls that Republicans will maintain their hold on the House. If they perform this task with sufficient aplomb, Republicans may steal one or two Senate slots, changing the partisan balance of power in the upper chamber to their favor. Also, Republicans want to permanently taint Obama as a failure. By embroiling his name in protracted discussion or even the formal initiation of impeachment proceedings, they believe they will forever scar him.

    (They tried something similar against President Clinton who actually committed an arguably impeachable offense. The ploy worked in the short-term. Clinton was wounded and disgraced. He was only rehabilitated when the Bush presidency became a fiasco and people started longing for the halcyon decade of the 1990s. Moreover, Clinton is more of a natural politician than Obama and Clinton never had to face the racist undercurrent that stymies Obama’s walk.)

    Mainstream media now joins the Republicans in attacking Obama. Several weeks ago, this column predicted the media would launch an increasing stream of opprobrium. Indeed, the lever has been turned. The canal of adverse commentary has opened. Obama-bashing will become the cardinal pastime of many journalists, just a few weeks removed, appeared friendly to his cause.

    While the particular facts are unique to America, this situation offers lessons for all. Reform in miniature is always dangerous and rarely works. Lukewarm, minor reformers also are an endangered species as leaders. They get pilloried by those who think they have gone too far and lambasted by those who don’t believe they have ventured far enough. Those who support them do so from pragmatic, short-term self interests. However, such support is never deep or resolute. It wanes with the first sign of rain or strong wind. If problems with Obamacare persist, much of his support will evaporate because it was never fully committed to an overarching political cause or humanitarian effort. His health care constituency was the sloppy cobbling of numerous constituencies many of whose self-interests contradict the interests of other members of this improvised procession.

    Obama and his team erred by yielding too much to short-term expedients without gauging the longer-term substantive effects of these steps. Serial compromises whittled down reform until it became a motley stew of stale bromides and not a cohesive plan. Next week, I will do the piece on economic theory as it relates to government fiscal policy. But will offer a bit of a primer now. Obamacare’s core flaw is the malady of the economic theory buttressing this unwieldy construct. Obama and team believed the federal government could become insolvent in dollars. This is no more plausible than belief in the Fountain of Youth. However, this belief is a fountain of folly from which significant ill-advised policies can spring.

    Because of this error, Obama and team never felt confident in making a case for serious reform such an expanding government-funded Medicare/Medicaid to all. Believing themselves handcuffed by fiscal constraints, they hamstrung themselves by believing that the current private insurance based system was inviolate. Thus, the alleged reform because a paean to the insurance industry by mandating that everyone purchase insurance instead of mandating that everyone is entitled to health care. These things seem synonymous but are not.

    In the end, the Obama Administration constructed a system whereby the insurance companies get higher profits from a higher volume of coerced business. Government will spend comparably the same on health care as before. The public will be forced to spend more on insurance at a moment when the wages of the common man are stagnate and most Americans are worse off now than at the advent of the historic 2008 recession.

    In effect, the health care reform is an indirect tax on the people by transferring more money to the insurance companies. The measure effectuates this transfer more so than it expands and improves public health care. In other words, Obamacare needs some critical surgery if it is to work well. That surgery is unlikely in the current environment because the president will be preoccupied with guarding his political flank from nasty Republican assaults. So busy keeping the wolves from his throat, he will not have time for much else in the foreseeable future. Most of this predicament can be distilled to an error in economic theory and how that theory shapes fiscal policy. Next week, we explore how better theory can lead to better policies helping those who really need it.

     

    08060340825 (sms only)

     

  • America: A convergence of the politics of ignorance and hatred

    America: A convergence of the politics of ignorance and hatred

    Anyone who looks at present course of American politics as a model for modern governance engages in the rather quixotic exercise of searching for a tiny pearl among a herd of chortling swine and those who, for whatever reason, pretend to be swine. Perhaps because America has enjoyed such a protracted run of relative safety and prosperity, its current politicians suffer two degenerative illusions.

    First, they believe their nation invulnerable to challenge in the global order. They harangue about terrorism but do not really see it as other than a costly nuisance. It will beget expenditure of trillions of dollars to enlarge the already behemoth military corporate network just for the sake of fighting an amorphous, minor foe. Money and profit are to be had from portraying this sometimes lethal sideshow as a major war when it is not.

    Because, most American politicians do not see any serious foreign threat, they view domestic political opponents as their most ardent foes. When borders seem inviolate from external threat, internal opposition becomes the wretched bogey. This is because most politicians are irrational bundles of hopes and hatreds. Hatred rarely dissipates. It usually gets redirected at another target. Such is the human condition. Some people feed on anger as if a choice buffet. For them, to live is to hate.

    Second, because they have personally been successful, these politicians believe their peculiar notions and actions contributed to national greatness. They dub themselves architects of the national order. Thus, they acquire a sense of personal superiority that may have a most tenuous link to reality. Never do they contemplate that national progress may have come despite their ideas and actions.

    Every nation is an imperfect mixture of fitness and indirection, of wise action and embarrassing folly. Great nations tip the balance toward the positives. Yet, every nation holds the sublime and ridiculous within. Thus,

    not every well-heeled citizen is great. Princes are to be found in the gutter and buffoons walk the most princely courts and tony boardrooms. Many American politicians are not javelins of achievement. So many are but polished mud — the incidental beneficiaries of a national greatness to which they contributed little but of which they have tasted much.

    To study their nostrums is to engage in a fool’s inquest akin to listening to a lottery winner give counsel on how to build a complex financial empire. Anything these folks hold of worth, they did not create and anything they create is of little worth. These people cannot advance a nation any more than a toothpick can prod uphill a massive boulder.

    What this sanctimonious group of men with ambitions and appetites far exceeding their abilities does best is cling to position. They thwart change and reform whenever possible so that people occupying lower aspects of the economic ladder do not invade their club. Often the rich man is not concerned he will lose his fortune. He is often more concerned the poor will become rich, thus revealing him for what he is: nothing more than a poor man in disguise.

    Unfortunately, American politics is densely populated by these baser characters. Politics does not function to make things better. It is now a game of tricking the people to see one political group’s pursuit of its elite interests is better for the nation than another group’s dash toward its own narrow desires. All tricks are to be employed in this contest for this is no longer about reality. The game is one of deception; prestidigitation is the field upon which it is played.

    Thus, the Democratic Party has adopted traditional Republican Party economic doctrine only to falsely retag it “liberal or progressive.” Democrats engage in this false flag operation not because the adopted notions are condign. Democrats embrace these notions because they are so simplistic that they average person can easily understand them; most people more readily believe to be true that which is easier to comprehend. More importantly, these notions also benefit corporate donors upon whom the party relies.

    The Democrats speak of the people but that is the craft of a cunning ventriloquist. The master puppeteers have the party dancing a jig that conflicts with the tune of their rhetoric.

    Meanwhile, the Republican Party has not been satisfied with winning the important battle over nation’s political ideology. The national political economy bears the Republican stamp even if the one doing the stamping is a Democratic President. But that President is Black and this fact has accelerated the Republican descent into an orgy of bias.

    Republicans seek to redraw a national tableau so estranged from reality that it courts danger. Anything that does not accord with rule by conservative White men, Republicans reject as foreign and subversive. However, the Republicans fight the tide of demographic inevitability. Soon, the White majority will become a minority as the growth of the Latino community and, to a lesser extent, the Black community outpaces that of White America.

    The Republicans cannot escape this fact. Because this process is inescapable, they fight it with greater vigor than reason. Like the pro-slavery confederates during the American Civil War, the Republican Party believes it fights to save a noble way of life from assault by lesser humans. In effect, today’s Republican Party is the cultural equivalent of the confederate leadership that sparked gruesome civil insurrection. Like those rebels, Republicans fight with desperate courage, knowing that fate runs against them. Like the rebels, they proclaim they would rather die than surrender. Again, like rebels of lore, they will eventually break and surrender to the inevitable. Until that moment, they will engage in political guerilla warfare against the Democratic Party establishment that now holds the White House.

    Thus, American politics has become a battleground between the sophisticated corporate establishment and Money Power allied with the economically conservative/socially centrist Democratic Party and the arch-conservative White cultural alliance represented by the Tea Party faction of the Republican grouping.

    Despite their growing numbers, other political constituencies and ethic groups are mere platoons and expendable foot soldiers in this historic encounter. Because they have been convinced that their fate rests upon joining one or the other of these competing power nodes, these other groups are lesser than they should be.

    The evolution of and political contest over health insurance reform (Obamacare) must be viewed in this context. Having outflanked Republican attempts to shutter government, President Obama should now face sunny days and moonlit nights ahead. Instead, he walked into an ambush over the rollout of his landmark measure.

    The current major trouble is with the website created for people to enlist in Obamacare. People cannot access the site. If not enough people register, then the entire system will collapse because it was built on an unnecessarily risky economic model. It was built on such a model because the Democrats who constructed it had as their overriding priority the interests of the corporate world instead of the people’s health.

    Roughly 50 million of 300 million Americans are uninsured. This is the highest percentage among developed nations. For the richest nation on earth, it is a travesty. Ostensibly, the basic benefit of Obamacare was to provide insurance to people heretofore uninsurable because they had pre-existing illnesses or could not afford then existing insurance plans. (Yes in America, insurance companies could refuse to insure someone if seriously ill before. They could also terminate a person’s insurance if medical costs exceeded a certain amount.) The plan would insure to this prohibited group by forcing uninsured but healthy people to purchase insurance.

    Expanding the number of healthy people who purchased would increase revenues of the private insurers. This revenue would allow for them to incur the costs of medical payments for people with extant medical conditions. In essence, Obamacare is an indirect government tax or redistribution scheme wherein one set of private citizens are to help fund the health care of another set. If it works, then the number of uninsured will be reduced by 20-25 million people.

    Unfortunately, for the plan, not enough healthy people can access the website to purchase the insurance. If the site’s technological problems are not timely cured, the entire plan might collapse because there will be an insufficient number of healthy new insurance buyers to pay for the influx of people with preexisting conditions. If this happens, the system might implode or government will be forced to subsidize it.

    Now we come to the real fault in the system. All other developed nations have health care systems funded by government. In fact, America funds health care for senior citizens under the Medicare program. This program works well. If the nation would merely expand the principles of Medicare to the rest of the population, America would be in line with the rest of the developed world. Its citizens would be much the better. However, big insurance companies would no longer occupy the enriched position they now hold. Some highly paid executives would be cast from the penthouse into the unemployment lines. This could not be allowed to happen.

    The plan to reform health care hit a detour. Instead of reforming health care, it merely reforms how citizens procured health insurance. The plan was devised not so much to help people but guarantee insurance companies a certain level of profit.

    This overly complex plan was developed because mainstream Democrats dared not look at the most effective and straightforward solution. Government should operate the health care system as in other nations. Democrats flinched not due to Republican opposition but because their corporate donors threatened to pull the plug if the Democrats placed public interest over those of the corporate structure.

    Consequently, Democrats inaugurated this heavily bureaucratic scheme. To work, the multiple parts of this plan must move in complete synchronicity. However, the first portal – website access – now fails, placing the entire edifice in jeopardy. The situation is like inviting guests to a party at a faraway mansion only to find, after travelling the long distance, that no one can open the entry gate.

    Ironically, President Obama unnecessarily exposed his flank to mortal danger through an abundance of misplaced caution. Not wanting to offend the corporate network, he agreed to serial tactical compromises when drafting the health reform law. One layer of bureaucratic complexity was laid upon another in an attempt to assuage the insurance firms. However, the President’s team did a poor job assessing the overall impact of this patchwork, piecemeal aggregation. The tactical compromises, when amassed, constitute a risk to the operation of the law and thus the man’s political legacy. This is a classis instance of starting with so much that the person believes he can eagerly give away half of what he has yet still retain all of what he needs. Before too long, he has yield so often that he winds up with half of almost nothing.

    Chaos with the website has rejuvenated Republican atavists. They should have been contrite after fumbling the government shutdown. They have quickly returned to the attack. They rant that the website fiasco demonstrates government can’t operate complex systems and should not attempt big things. This is pure sewage but people tend to be duped by enthusiastic repetition of categorical statements regardless of the inaccuracy thereof. War is the most complex venture known to man and the American government is singularly adept at that enterprise. Had government funded and treated the website like it does the Pentagon, things would not be as they now are. Additionally, the government managed the space race and the construction of the very internet for which the website was built. One transient technical failure does not mean the government is inherently capable of such efforts any more than the bankruptcy of one firm peal the demise of the private sector.

    Hard-line Republicans have exploited the initial troubles with the new program to revive calls for President Obama’s impeachment. The man has done nothing remotely illegal or impeachable but most Tea Party members believe he must be impeached. Their goal is not to allow the Black man to finish his term in office. They seek to impeach him not for what he has done but for what or who he is. They will cite Obamacare as the battle cry for this rude and foolish gesture.

    Their racial hatred is so intense that some Republicans can barely contain their anger. During a meeting between Republican Congressmen and President Obama, one Republican reportedly told the President he “could barely stand to look at him.” No other president in recent history has tasted such disrespect, particularly when the substance of his policies is not far off the Republican compass. Something else is at work.

    Recently, a Republican Party official in North Carolina gave a television interview wherein he described Black people as lazy and wanting government to given them everything. That the vast majority of Blacks work for a living and get paid less for doing equal work did not seem to discomfort the man.

    Worst, the Republicans have again trooped out a Black man to cover their own racism. During last year’s presidential campaign, the buffoonish Herman Cain served as the prop. This year, the Republicans selected a person with a better intellectual pedigree and no skeletons in his personal closet, Dr. Ben Carson, the globally renowned surgeon. Speaking before an eager Republican cohort, Carson described Obamacare as “the worst thing since slavery.” With that, he legitimized every extremist claim against Obama. If Carson were as unskilled at medicine as he is unacquainted with the history of his own race, the man would be barred from coming within twenty miles of the nearest hospital. His statement was abject. What ambition or motive drove Carson to say such a shameless, false thing is unclear. Hopefully, it was for something valuable; otherwise, it is difficult to understand why he would so publicly sell his integrity.

    To criticize Obamacare for its failings is appropriate; to equate it to slavery is the cheapest slander a Black man could do. The moment Carson uttered his remark, he estranged himself the majority of Black Americans. For his efforts to please the conservative throng he will find his reward a bitter one. He will find himself on the growing heap of black opportunists discarded by the Republicans upon finding their latest Black marionette had little traction with most Black people.

    All in all, American politics is a dismal mess. President Obama’s victory on the government shutdown thrust straight into an intense fusillade over the actual rollout of his signature health law. His penchant to compromise principle at the drop of a hat placed himself in this awkward position. Last week, he was on the offensive and hopefully prepared to move a bit more boldly and a bit more to the left of his usual cautious stance. Now that he has been again bitten, he will likely return to his haltering way.

    Obama’s self restraint will encourage the Republicans not to curb themselves. They will highlight the trouble surrounding Obamacare, hoping their attention adds to its woes and sends it to an early demise due to lack of sufficient public participation. In the meantime, they will also use it as leverage to push the President on other issues, particularly further trimming the federal budget which has already sunk too low to sustain the current level of economic activity. If he takes their bait, he will agree to measures capable of deflating the American economy as will has sabotaging his health measure.

    Already, he has presided over the contraction of the number of federal government employees and a reduction in food assistance for poor people, both firsts for any American president. This conservatism is not the legacy he should strive for because it is more malignant than helpful. But it will be legacy that he writes for himself should he persist in trying to befriend people who will be consoled only if he were to make an ungracious and quick exit from office.

     

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  • America and its debt showdown: Mad dash into lunacy

    The course of recent events has again reveals that racism persists as a staple in the American political diet. The notion that the Obama presidency ushered in a post-racial harmony where skin color is irrelevant lies crumpled in brittle failure after having dashed headlong into the fortifications of mean reality.

    For over two weeks, Republicans shut down the federal government and threatened to cause America to default on its debt. The ostensible reason was their opposition to the health insurance reform known as Obamacare. The true cause of the obstinacy was something more visceral; it was a thing almost primitive in its dereliction to modernity and etiquette. Republicans hate the eponymous Obamacare with a passion usually reserved for foes in wartime. They detest the measure not so much because of the color of its provisions but because of the color of the man whose name it bears. After all, the bulk of the new law was authored years ago by conservative Republicans. The legislation, effective, is one of their own. Yet, Republicans are the greatest opponents of something they themselves previously had written.

    Their opposition is because of the man who now proposes the law. Once again, Republicans have shown they hate Obama not for what he is doing but because of the color he is. While Obama has been the obedient manservant of elite interests, the Republicans cannot see beyond his skin color. Although he seeks to be their man, they cannot help but see him as a boy who has forgotten his true and inferior place. They see him as they perceive most other Black men – as a crime waiting to happen, a belated slave insurrection in process. Thus, they hate him and everything he does, even when he serves them the very thing they ordered.

    Rarely, do I commend President Obama. I do so now. After five years of bowing and diffident bumbling attempting to gain approval from those who would rather evict him from the White House at the wrong end of a red-hot pitchfork, the President stood his ground. When the Republicans closed the government by refusing to pass a budget unless he agreed to inter his health care plan, he told them to walk the plank. He refused to blink when they also threatened default on the public debt by not raising the government’s artificial debt ceiling. Good for him.

    Overall, President Obama is too conservative politically and too cautious strategically to be a great leader. When the better path is a new or progressive one, he shuns that way. His inclinations would rather tread that road which others have walked before. Yet, the man is intelligent and has a nose the scent of impending disaster. He might not recognize the best worse of action; but, he is certainly aware when the worse approaches his portico. In 2009, he realized the economy was heading toward severe depression. Clearly wanting to avoid such a dank blot on his legacy, the man did just enough to avert disaster yet not enough to save the economy from its own excesses. The American economy did not collapse but it remains shaky and hard-pressed five years thereafter.

    On the present occasion, he realized the game the Republicans crafted was akin to inserting his head in the mouth of a firing cannon. He refused to follow their twisted logic; it would lead to nothing less than the failure of his presidency and a totally avoidable debacle for the American political economy.

    This combative state of affairs came to ferment because, every time they view Obama’s black skin, Republican eyes turn to crimson anger. Reason flees when hatred mounts its frenetic steed. Off the racist conservatives go, galloping toward a tryst with witless disaster. Should they bring the entire country down, they care not. To them, a nation with a Black president is a nation not worth having.

    The battle over health insurance reform was a pretext masking the more intensely personal confrontation. The real targets of the Republican shutdown of government and the threat to default on the debt were Obama and the very idea of liberal government itself. After Obama won reelection, conservative politicians conspired, concocting a noxious plan to divest the President of any meaningful legacy. They vowed to fight tooth and nail against anything he did or proposed. So filled with venom are they, staunch Republicans would likely rebuff Obama even if his counteroffer were the identical mirror image of their initial policy offer.

    In part, they hope to so discredit the Obama presidency that the nation will reject the notion of another Black President for, at least, two generations. When they say they want to work with Obama, they don’t have in mind the normal give-and-take of democratic governance. What they have in mind is more akin to how a vengeful hammer treats a recalcitrant nail. They seek to pound him into the woodwork. They see this as their holy secular mission. In the deepest chambers of their hearts where they speak the truth to themselves, they believe God intended America as a White nation. In effect, they see Providence as a founding member of the Ku Klux Klan. With this in mind, a Black president becomes an act of blasphemy; ousting him takes on the aspect of a religious crusade. Thus, the hard-core Republicans care little if their attempts against Obama appear clumsy or seem to backfire politically. They follow a calling higher than immediate political gain. They seek to return the nation back to its herrenvolk origins.

    Thus, the most racist wing of the Republican party, the Tea party, dared to shut down the government although the majority of Americans thought the act mean, if not insane. Just in case, they also have taken precautions that insulate them from political backlash. They have engineered and sculpted many congressional districts in a manner that only hard-line Republicans can win elections in these districts. Thus, their conservative radicalism will not drive them from office. Voters in this rapid districts will reward their racism with reelection and another stint in Washington to tear down the walls of liberal government friendly to racial and ethnic minorities and return it to its origin purpose as a bastion for White men.

    Conservative white men are now a minority report in American politics but Republican seek to revisit the day when all that mattered was the voice and vote of that group. America now lives in the second decade of the 21st century. These men would return her to the fifth decade of the 19th century, right before the nation warred against itself regarding that sticky little matter of slavery.

    The other objective of Republican brinksmanship is to dismantle the liberal portions of the American government. They detest the organs of government that provide social services to the old, the destitute, the sick, and the despondent. They seek to disinter the bones of President Franklin Roosevelt, the author of the New Deal programs that established the social safety net for the people at the bottom of the economic totem. The Republicans want to cast Roosevelt and his New Deal into the darkest part of the deepest sea.

    Obama and Roosevelt are the Democratic presidents the Republicans most reviled. They hate Obama for who he is and despise Roosevelt for what he did. If they could torch the legacies of both in one fell swoop, the Republicans would have achieve their historic mission. Thus, they were willing to shun popular will to shut down government and even court debt default. They figured if their racist god is with them, then that skittish Black man standing against them would ultimately buckle and fold.

    Obama did not blink. He could not afford the weakness. He understood his political life and legacy hung in the balance. In the end, the Republicans caved on both points. They agreed to reopen government and to lift the debt ceiling. Obama won a decisive victory. He embarrassed and outflanked his foes or so a reasonable person might conclude.

    Herein, lies the future high jinks. Hardline Republicans are not reasonable. Having been struck to the marrow by the vocation of hatred, they are like lunatics wandering the marketplace, fanatics blind to but one thing. Normal political considerations are no guide to predicting their behavior. They will eagerly risk sinking the ship again if this tack brings them closer to their benighted grail.

    A careful reading of the deal struck with the Republicans shows that Obama won a major battle. But the outcome of the larger war remains cloaked in uncertainty. Under the deal, the budget and debt deadlines were merely pushed forward several months to give the two sides time to negotiate a plan to reduce government spending.

    In other words, this present deal merely brings Obama to the spot he occupied in late 2011m when he failed in negotiating a “grand bargain” with the Republicans. That time, the Republicans left him with egg on his face by rebuffing his overture although it favored their interests greatly. Ironically, Obama was saved by the refusal because there was nothing grand about bargain save its reliance on economic principles that had been discredited by the recent recession. If enacted, the bargain would have helped the moneyed but been an injurious exchange for working class and poor Americans who comprise the bulk of the population. Under this initiative, President Obama proposed significant cuts to social services in pursuit of the counterproductive goal of balancing the federal budget.

    While Obama has gotten the better measure of the Republicans during this recent tempest, they also have his measure regarding how far he will bend on these fiscal matters. In 2011, he exposed a willingness to jettison chunks of the New Deal. In this, he walks in lockstep with the Republicans. Before, their racism blinded them to that fact.

    There is no reason to believe he will not bend again, if doing so will avert the twin disasters of a government shutdown and debt default. A shutdown and default are immediate calamities all will see and feel quickly; the whittling of the social safety architecture is a longer, more understated process impoverishing the people in gradual stages. Obama is susceptible to entering such an exchange for he is more adept at avoiding impending disaster than in navigation the country toward progressive, long-term economic policies and programs.

    I fear President Obama will see his recent victory over the Republicans not as a validation of the principle that he must combat their arch conservatism but as a validation of his gradual brand of the same economic and fiscal ideology. If so, his recent victory will be short-lived for he will quickly tender it in exchange for a longer-term strategic defeat of liberal and progressive principles. He would have won the recent war of nerves only to forfeit the ground won by surrendering to Republicans in the war of thoughts, the war of economic ideas.

    The notion that the federal budget should always be balanced or in surplus is inimical to sustained economic growth for America and the world. It is a simple matter of accounting. For government to enjoy a surplus inevitably means it attracts more revenue than it surrenders. This excess has to come from some place other than government. The surplus comes from the private sector. In other words, a government surplus requires the private sector collectively run a “fiscal deficit.” The private sector must shrink accordingly. Instead of escorting in a period of economic growth and stability, there are few measure more certain to reduce growth or spur recession than this.

    Moreover, the American dollar is the world’s reserve currency. This very status almost always requires America to run trade and fiscal deficits in order to keep the rest of the world supplied with enough dollars to lubricate global commerce. Attempting to run surpluses, yet stand as the reserve currency, is to seek contradictory objectives. It will be somewhat akin to reimposing the gold standard on global commerce. This will tend toward harmful deflation not handsome growth.

    Also the notion of a debt ceiling is a relic. The debt ceiling was created during World War I to curb war profiteering by merchants and industries converted from normal trade to fabricating and selling war materiel. This reason no longer exists as expenditure for war is no longer an extraordinary item. The American military expenditure has graduated from its ad-hoc nature during WW I to becoming one of the most complex, assiduously planned industrial endeavors known to mankind. Defense spending is now integral to the budget. War profiteering is no longer a special case to be held under close scrutiny. It is the norm; such spending is central to the institution of government and core to the American economy. It is no longer scrutinized but exalted.

    Also, the nation functioned under the gold standard at that time. Under the gold standard, deficits had to be resolved by a transfer from the nation’s limited stock of gold to an eager, awaiting creditor. Today, deficits are paid by the currency the government can readily print. To believe the American government can actually exhaust itself of the very currency it alone can print is to be believe in fables and useless canards. Lack of funds is something politicians say to deceive the people that government cannot afford to fund popular programs the politicians themselves dislike.

    American cannot run out of dollars any more than the ocean can be devoid of water. As the issuer of its own sovereign currency and a nation that pays all of its debts in that currency, America cannot go bankrupt unless it chooses to do so. Insolvency is not a problem. The nation can “print” a nearly inexhaustible supply of money. The more genuine problem is how to exercise the wisdom and discipline to know when to stop printing additional money because the marginal increase in money supply produces more inflation than it adds to real economic growth. Inflation, not insolvency, is the real barrier and concern.

    Thus, this crisis should have stoked debate exploring why a government that prints its own currency endures a system whereby it incurs additional debt to borrow the currency it prints. This issue was never raised during the crisis because establishment politicians, the orthodox media and the Money Power than finances the media and politics do not want ordinary people contemplating this question. If they understood the dimensions of the ruse played against them, the people might well demand such a refund as to shake the political economy to its elitist core.

    Government borrows its own money as part of an elaborate scheme to ensure profits to the biggest players in the financial system. These large financial houses hold most of the bonds government issues. These bonds are virtually risk free. Government has the unlimited ability to redeem them because government can issue currency to pay the debt obligation. Through this round-about system where government borrows its own money, government guarantees sure profits to large bondholders. This is a form of corporate welfare dwarfing the welfare the poor and destitute obtain. Politicians dare not question the spendthrift welfare given to Money Power; yet they excoriate, as inflationary and wasteful, the welfare given to those so poor that they still find it hard to survive even with the benefit of this public assistance. Imagine the misery if they were to go it alone without the meager aid now given.

    In the end, the tussles over the government shutdown and debt default were distracting sideshows. A false morality play offering false choices between bad and worse has been presented to the people. All established politicians are co-conspirators in the subterfuge, some wittingly, most unwittingly. The debt default and government shutdown have been cast as villains that could wreck life as we know it. To avoid the villainy, “hard choices” must be made to curtail budget deficits by smiting social services to the working class and poor.

    Having once stared down the Republicans, Obama and establishment Democrats will tell the people that the coming deal is the best that can be had; sadly, the people will believe the lie and acquiesce in their own impoverishment. In so many ways, American democracy has cast mean incantations upon itself. No longer is it democracy of the people. It has regressed to being a democracy of the elite.

    The hard-line elite, the powerful Republicans, seek to blanch everything in sight. They seek a nation that once again resembles itself during a simpler, less complex time when the conservative White man stood supreme and none challenged that supremacy. The other elite, the powerful Democrats, believe in social justice but tempered with an economic doctrine so akin to the Republican’s that the goal of social justice flees at the sight of a hardening economic reality. As such, the American people live a democracy that offers them a choice between bad and worse, sad and mean. The most depressing thing is the people know they have been had yet continue to seek rescue from the very people who have orchestrated the theft against them. Thus, beware of those who say they wish to bring the spirit of today’s American democracy to your shores for that spirit is now a mercenary, venal ghost of its former self.

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  • The General Assembly: Recasting the global system

    The General Assembly: Recasting the global system

    War may not be the answer but it never seems to be out of the question

    Last week, world leaders gathered at the United Nations General Assembly, delivering speeches laden with platitudes and mostly devoid of deeper substance. Yet some real work, reflecting the establishment of a boundary against unilateral Western militarism in the Middle East, was done. Although it does not herald regional placidity, this boundary will likely prove condign. Confrontational fault lines in the Middle East are too numerous, too jagged, and run too deeply for a more roseate prognosis. This boundary is the child of vague strategy and ad-hoc, tactical opportunity. Those who constructed it may not even fully comprehend the significance of what they have done. This unawareness does not diminish what was accomplished.

    In 1928, diplomats from the major powers signed the auspicious Kellogg-Briand pact thereby denouncing war in international affairs. It was a quixotic artifice, out of touch with reality and giving false hope to the naïve and ignorant. As such it was dangerous. Reliance on its false promise blinded some nations from dealing with the gathering problems facing the global system. Within dozen years, the lustrous pact was revealed to be fool’s gold. The very signatories of that dainty instrument of peace plunged the world into mankind’s most lethal belligerency. Seven decades after World War II, we still live in world shaped and scarred by the destruction it unleashed. When mighty nations declare war, we can rest assured the declaration and will be implemented with fierce integrity. But it remains an uncertain thing when nations proclaim peace.

    While “peace in our time” has not been grasped today, the boundary now drawn is more appropriate than the contrived chemical weapons “red line” America tried to impose on Syria. This new colourless and invisible geopolitical boundary does not bring peace; but it may halt gestation of wider conflict in this pivotal region. As such, it represents a stride toward progress in a world and region sorely needing forward movement.

    Ironically, the leader most responsible for this small push could not attend the proceedings. The reason for his nonappearance was excusable and inviolate: He is dead. Many people missed the extinguished Libyan despot Muammar Gaddafi and the weird bemusement generated by his flambouyant presence and incontinent, nigh indecipherable pronouncements. While the man was absent, his ghost walked the halls, influencing deliberations more than the actual man ever had. In death, Gaddafi proved to be more of an important statesman yielding more influence than all his exertions and meddling did while he lived.

    On Libya, America and its NATO allies bamboozled the weaker, informal countervailing international grouping headed by Russia and China. America and its friends painted Gaddafi as a despot intent on massacring his people, particularly those in Benghazi. Gaddafi was indeed a despot. However, the claim of impending massacre was a lie to justify a decision made years ago to remove the man from power because he had defied the West too many times in too many ways.

    Neither in word nor deed did Gaddafi embrace a strategy of genocide. The authentic transcript of his announcement on Benghazi reads that he promised no harm to the innocent and unarmed but to vanquish those fighting against him. While this may not be the height of high society etiquette, this is the language of civil war, any civil war. The man did not go beyond the pale. When amassing against Benghazi, he remained true to his strategy by leaving his foes an eastern route to depart the city and escape into Egypt. A man bent on mayhem would not have left the opening. He employed this pragmatic strategy, because he wanted to win the war and not simply kill people for killing’s sake.

    The man was brutal and more than capable of killing those whom he had no cause to kill. However, in the several towns recaptured from the retreating rebels, he did not commit wanton massacre. If he did not do so while advancing toward Benghazi there was no reason to do so in taking Benghazi. The assertion of genocide against him was simply a pretext to prevent the victory he had nearly in hand. Had the West not started its bombing campaign, he would have reclaimed control of the Benghazi and the dwindling areas under rebel control within weeks. He would have appeared at the General Assembly in full regalia. Instead, he can only attend as the ghost of a despot past.

    During the Libyan crisis, Russia and China went somnambulant. They had no direct strategic interests in Libya. For them, Gaddafi himself was an outlier, too vain and erratic to befriend or treat as a serious statesman. The Bedouin committed an obvious strategic gaffe that would have lethal consequence for him. Poised against the underbelly of NATO and separated from it only by the easily-crossed Mediterranean, he had cultivated no allies or protectors among the larger nations. He was a weak but loud, lone wolf. When the pack of larger wolves turned on him, he became a rabbit with nowhere to turn. He was devoured.

    Only after his demise did Russia understand it had been outflanked. By agreeing to the Security Council resolution against Libya, Russia allowed the UN to become the cleat of American martial ambitions against a designated foe in the Middle East. Not only did this help lay waste to Libya, it enhanced America’s strategic profile while reducing Russia’s to that of a secondary, hesitant player. There is nothing like a blunder to jar one’s memory.

    Awakening to the blunder into which it stumbled, Russia recalled that America had long fostered designs against Libya, Syria, Iraq and Iran. With Iraq and Libya down the maw, Russia realised the shoe would soon drop on Syria or Iran. It was adamant not to allow America to repeat in either nation what it had accomplished with Libya. America gave away the element of surprise by showing its true colours in Libya.

    Not only Russia but much of the rest of the non-western world and many in the west became concerned about American military overreaching. Instead of learning constructive lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan, America seemed to have learnt a most cynical one. In Iraq and Afghanistan, America and its friends gave the pretense of nation building. In Libya, they would dispense with the superfluous ware. All they were interested in was regime destruction. What would follow concerned them not at all. America’s new policy had jettisoned the pretense of post-war nation building. America would now destroy the foe then leave the supine nation and its people to fend for themselves against the unleashed jackals of war.

    An indiscriminate, somewhat careless juggernaut intent on decimating nations it deems to be foreign monsters and demons should scare the rest of the world. In the crisis regarding Syria, that fright became apparent. Russia had to make a stand or be relegated to the sidelines while the Middle East was being reshaped in a manner that would impair Russian interests in that region and into Central Asia, Russia’s traditional sphere of influence. The Clinton Administration engaged in strategic overreach when expanding NATO to Russia’s doorstep in the 1990s. Obama’s Administration committed a similar encroachment by trying to steer the Syrian crisis in a way that would snatch Russia’s lone Arab ally and an importation warm-water naval installation from it.

    Learning from its Libyan miscue, Russia would incite already smoldering global opinion against another American armed misadventure. Russia stood firm, using its Security Council veto to thwart American military designs by denying those designs international legitimacy. Then showing its diplomatic flexibility Russia opportunistically exploited America’s indecisive statesmanship in the face of widespread global and domestic opposition to direct intervention in the Syrian civil war. Russia maneuvered its more powerful opponent toward a diplomatic solution on chemical weapons that removed the rationale for an American incursion in Syria. By Friday, the diplomatic agreement was approved by the Security Council. The agreement left Syria at war but moved the world a step away from enflaming the conflagration into something that might assume a much wider dimension.

    In the imperfect world of power politics, halting the march to broader war is often the only victory possible. Here, Russia got what it wanted. Its client Assad remains on seat, if uneasily. America is disappointed but not wholly. Assad remains in such a weakened, preoccupied state that he can’t help Hezbollah strengthen its foot hold in Lebanon or snipe at Israel. In fact, Hezbollah is now too busy helping Assad retain office to do much else.

    Israeli policy in the Syrian war has always been to weaken Assad but not depose him in fear hat radicals might fill the vacuum. Thus, Israel is pleased with the turn of events. As long as Israel believes its strategic interests are satisfied, America will not be too sad.

    Progress was also made on Iran. A change of leadership can be more than fortuitous. At the right moment, it can be historic. A congenial and pragmatic President Rouhani has replaced the abrasive Ahmadinajed. This change opens the door to negotiations between Iran and America. During his maiden General Assembly speech, Rouhani spoke of peace and dialogue where Ahmadinajed would have stressed the perfidy of America and Israel. Rouhani also stated Iran has not aggressed another nation in centuries; more importantly, he affirmed Iran’s long established policy that it has no intentions to seek nuclear weapons. Its nuclear programme is but for peaceful uses. Thus far, the truth holds more to his side than his accusers’.

    Despite the dire apocalyptic statements from Western foes, Iran has not breached the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Under the treaty, Iran has the legal right to do what it has done and more. In effect, the West seeks to curb Iran’s legal right to maximize its peaceful nuclear programme as contemplated under the NPT out of subjective fear that Iran may develop a nuclear weapon at some point in the future. Thus far, Iran has abided the letter of the NPT. The West is breaching the NPT by giving it a more restrictive interpretation with regard to Iran.

    Iranian construction of a nuclear weapon would be illegal and destabilising. It should not be allowed. However, preventing the nation’s legal right to develop a peaceful nuclear programme is also illegal and destabilising because it makes Iran suspect that it is line for the “Iraqi or Libyan treatment” from the West. This discrimination against Iran is the outcrop of the storming of the American embassy in Tehran and the ensuing hostage crisis 34 years ago. As with Cuba, American policy toward Iran is built less on reason and more on the coagulated hatred generated by the pent-up desire to avenge rare defeat.

    Stung by world reaction to its aborted Syrian bombing caper, America seeks to behave with more circumspection at least temporarily. The confluence of a new Iranian President and transient American contrition presents a small window of opportunity through which peace may enter before the usual builders of war place brick and mortar before the narrowing aperture. Friday’s 15-minute telephone call between the American and Iranian president symbolises the promise of peace. However, both men will have to exercise a combination of vision and stubborn courage to overcome their respective hardliners and their chants of war. Until then, peace will be a will-o-the-wisp; easy and wide is the boulevard to war and breakage; strait and difficult to traverse is the way of peace.

    The most bellicose UNGA speech was delivered by Israeli PM Netanyahu who claimed Iran was hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons and vowed that he was hell bent on stopping this acquisition. He spoke like a man possessed yet petrified. Thus he spoke of the uncertainty of Iranian nuclear weaponry as if it were a biblical certainty. Pounding fists for war, Netanyahu eschewed dialogue and left no room for compromise. His speech was but one word short of a declaration of war. As he descended the podium upon ending his diatribe, one had the uneasy sense of having listened to someone intent on becoming the avenging angel of nothing and thus the most dangerous man on the planet.

    Sadly, the world’s most dangerous spot did not warrant a sigh from assembled leaders. Chemical weapons in Syria claimed hundreds. Possible Iran’s nuclear weaponry lies somewhere in the uncertain future. Today, lurks a nuclear disaster that will surely kill thousands and stain our planet for generations to come. However, no mention was made of this grave danger because it does not behoove the global elite to inform you what their avarice has brought.

    Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant is the most dangerous place on earth. A person may enter an active war zone and survive by luck, guile or skill. However, should you enter Fukushima without protective gear, you will surely die. If only a localised danger, Fukushima would be sufficiently tragic. The more ominous thing is that Fukushima is slowly moving everybody’s way.

    Fukushima is the prime example of free market terrorism. The plant has been a global threat for two years. However, neither the Japanese government nor any other government has been wise enough to sound the alarm much less intervene to arrest the situation from further slippage. Governments all sat idly waiting for the private company, TEPCO, to clean the mess. However, containing the threat is a complex and costly endeavour beyond the reach and pocketbook of any single company. To handle this properly, the company would have to go into financial ruin. Thus, TEPCO has dealt with this on the cheap and on the fly. Now the world may suffer irreparable harm.

    At Fukushima unit 4, 1300 nuclear fuel rods are in precarious position inside a weakened structure. The rods have to be removed before the rickety building collapses. The rods are capable of releasing into the atmosphere and ocean 15,000 times the radiation unleashed by the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. The plant also houses tanks filled with tons of irradiated water. The tanks now leak toxins in the ground and sea. These toxins will effect life on earth for thousands years. The unhappy paradox is that TEPCO has to continue to pour water over these rods lest their rising heat cause a disastrous meltdown. Yet the more water used, the more irradiated water seeps into the ocean. The trade-off is we exchange a fast–developing global disaster for a slower-moving one but disaster is certain if things are left as they are.

    All this seems distant now. But the oceans essentially are one vast pool. Water in the Pacific eventually comes to the Atlantic. It may take years. For radioactive toxins with a shelf life measured in thousands of years, a few years means little. In parts of Japan, levels of radioactive toxicity in certain foods exceeded the maximum. A cynical bureaucratic fix was applied to solve the problem. They merely raised the maximum permissible level. What was dangerous on Monday became allowable by Tuesday. Recent toxicity measurements of rain in parts of California show levels multiple times above the safety limits. Toxicity of fish on America’s pacific coast has climbed in almost geometric progression. Some experts warn that by next year the harvest of the vast fisheries off America’s Northwest coast will be unsafe for human consumption. All of this is due to the relatively minor problem of incessant leakage of tons of tainted water into the ocean. Should the 1300 fuel rods in unit 4 proceed to melt down, releasing a stream of radioactive particles into the atmosphere, the resultant catastrophe will make Chernobyl look as inconsequential as a baby dropping his milk bottle.

    That leaders of the global powers focus so much attention on whether Iran may acquire a nuclear weapon in the dimly-lit future is fine but in a way it seems misplaced when there is an accidental atomic bomb on the loose already. Chances are that the worse case will not happen. However, the worse case is not just a bad dream. While not a probability it remains a distinct possibility. Every day that bomb is left to fester without proper attention, is a day we inch closer to an incident that changes the history of this planet. Instead of fighting over divisive things that can wait, world leaders should do a better job uniting to resolve an accidental but serious threat to all of us. The chance, thus far, has been left fallow.

    Unless governments pool expertise and resources to resolve this common threat, the hand of Providence might be all saving us from our failure to realise mortal danger is not limited to wartime use of nuclear weapons. Danger can also arise due to the improvident marriage of the nuclear negligence joined to the love of corporate profit. The world be aware!

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  • Stumbling out of war? Syria, the media and lessons learned

    Stumbling out of war? Syria, the media and lessons learned

    A mistake timely made can often be more profitable than a perfect answer tardily had.

    Syria remains at the point of war and thus continues at the tip of global attention. There are important lessons embedded in this crisis that transcend the art of war and touch on how we come to know what we think we know. We should use this crisis to examine how we fashion opinions on public matters. I raise this issue because of comments received from among this column’s readers.

    Many readers oppose the position I have staked on Syria. That does not trouble me. My weekly expositions are not draft that you might agree with them. Their greater utility is in offering an alternative, progressive viewpoint. This column’s perspective differs from mainstream media but is equally valid. I like the back-and-forth of keen discourse. Sharp debate adds more than it ever subtracts. The disquieting thing is that almost all opposing comments were emotive outbursts. Disagree; yes by all means, but have reasons that reason can articulate.

    Most comments favoring American intervention were of this variety: “If your family was being gassed you would bomb Assad!” or the slightly less ad hominem “How can you stand to watch people be gassed to such a grisly death?”

    These are expressions of emotion not of reason. As a race, we must do better in how we make decisions. If not, we will not recover lost ground in our race for political and economic development. For instance, in a government worth its salt comprised of leaders worth theirs, an officeholder would recuse himself from the matter if his family were place in unique danger different than that of the rest of the nation. Otherwise, he would be acting under duress. Nations are not to be governed in such an unstable fashion. To do so would be to exalt frailty and rashness over caution and wisdom.

    Here, I assume these comments roughly parallel overall opinion. If my assumption is true, good percentage of us do not sufficiently scrutinize the information transmitted to us by global corporate media. For a race and people who have been subjected to an encyclopedia of negative stereotypes and half truths, it is startling how easily we imbibe the message of the very same global informational condominium that has libeled us. This informational architecture historically has been erected against our interests yet we so easily believe rather than question it. Thus, my fear is not that we disagree over Syria. My fear is that if this same machine that can so easily persuade so many o f us to become emotional over Syria it may be able to accomplish the same feat on matters more germane to our political and economic fortunes as Black people.

    I have assiduously watched mainstream media coverage of Syria for weeks. Not once have I heard any news reporters or the hirelings paraded as neutral experts question whether Assad’s government actually committed the attack. It is treated as incontrovertible as a mathematic proof that Assad’s is the guilty hand.

    Western governments and the vested economic interests they serve have wanted to topple Assad for years. They certainly want to prevent his imminent victory over the weakening rebels. These same economic interests own the news networks. The media houses work not to disseminate truth, advance honest debate or promote objective analysis. Their task is to promulgate the opinions of those who fund their payrolls. Such is how the world currently turns.

    The media houses are the butlers and stevedores of the powerful and mighty who seek to perpetuate their control of the world by controlling a good portion of our mind and opinions.

    At this moment, I am skeptical about the claim against Assad for particular act. He has done enough to consign himself to a terrible afterlife. There is no need to attribute to him the wrongs of others for he has enough of his own. The evidence adduced against him is not wholly convincing. There is also a quantum of evidence leading to a different conclusion but that information has been embargoed by corporate media.

    In the end, I could be wrong. However, I might be right. The bigger point is that we should allow reason and facts to guide us and forbid propaganda-fueled emotions from turning us into the instruments of other people’s designs. As much as possible, I came to my position based on the facts as I know them.

    That Assad would plot such an attack is illogical. He was winning the war and decisively so. Also the opinion the rebels had not capacity for this atrocity is unfounded. The UN already concluded rebels used sarin gas months ago to lethal effect. Neutral military analysts also believe rebel arsenals possess rockets with gas-filled warheads.

    America claims over 1400 people were killed in the incident. However, the France-based medical NGO, whose doctors were on the ground, estimates fatalities at 350. The discrepancy is too large to ignore.

    American political leaders have stood before the world claiming the evidence against Assad is “beyond a shadow of a doubt.” Yet, the American intelligence community is divided because there are many shadows and even more doubts. Some believe Assad is the culprit. Yet, some analysts working in the American government believe their own clandestine agency, in league with the rebels and other dark operatives, concocted the incident to pull America into the conflict. Yet, corporate media has boycotted this jarring news because it does not fit their thematic narrative and the rush to war against Syria.

    Last week, a group of retired intelligence officers, Veteran Intelligence Officers for Sanity (VIPS) sent President Obama a disquieting memorandum. The missive’s dozen signatories warned the President not to embark on war based on dubious conclusions founded on incomplete evidence. VIPS members claimed contact with intelligence analysts still in government employ. These analysts have informed VIPS that the preponderant evidence points to a conclusion contrary to the one dominating the airwaves. The memo mentions a subtle but important point the laymen would overlook. The non-classified document the American government published to defend its push for military action was released by the White House and not an intelligence agency. This is not standard procedure. The deviation is because the American intelligence community is strongly divided on the matter. Thus, the White House made a political decision against Assad but that decision might not accord with the true facts.

    The memo also reveals a secret meeting in Turkey on August 13-14, the week before the fateful incident. The meeting was attended by American, Israeli, Saudi and Turkish clandestine officers as well as by rebel leaders. Allegedly, the rebels were told they would soon benefit from a massive influx of weapons and war materiel. There was talk of a mysterious event that would soon occur in Syria, bringing America actively into the war.

    If this report is true, the intelligence agents at the meeting apparently are as gifted in prophecy as they are in dark operations. The simpler explanation is that they could forecast this peculiar future event because they were its authors.

    The VIPS memo is not to be summarily dismissed. VIPS wrote a similar memo to President Bush cautioning against the dash to war in Iraq based on dissimulation. Bush ignored the advice. He was wrong. VIPS was right. Ten years later, Iraqi is mess. Perhaps the most strategic military blunder of the last fifty years, the primary result of the war has been to turn Iraq into a client of Iran. Rarely has a nation so unnecessarily and unwisely expended so much just to benefit a mortal foe.

    If media houses were objective, they would report the VIPS memo. They would investigate the claimed divergence within the intelligence community and the secret meeting in Turkey where intelligence agents demonstrated a remarkable clairvoyance. However, corporate media has buried these and other reports that don’t mesh with the yarn they want to spin. As such, they act not as objective news outlets but as instruments of government. They are the private sector equivalent of a ministry of information.

    In the end, Assad may have committed this atrocity. However, the evidence is not as convincing as portrayed. There is substantial evidence pointing in the other direction. Yet, global corporate media has no stomach to show us things that may lead to independent thought and weighing of complex facts. Instead, they show us videos that may be staged in whole or part. Then point and keep pointing an accusatory finger at the sinister figure we all love to abhor. This rouses emotions yet dulls the mind. They manipulate our decency and humanity to make us feel Assad must be punished in the worse way. We have been manipulated into a subtle trap where our emotions work against our mind.

    Another important lesson is that we must adjust our perspectives of America. It is a great nation but one with a government handicapped by narrow-minded, often banal politicians. The current crop of leaders is so much less than the nation they lead. Statesmen are few; political journeymen abound. Ambition is more abundant than wisdom. We are used to looking at a nation’s leaders as a symbolizing the nation’s greatness. This is no longer the case in America. Collectively, the nation’s leaders are the most ineffectual group since the Vietnam War. They do not represent greatness’s continuity. They prove greatness is not guaranteed even to the high and mighty. It is a rarity to be nurtured and cultivated, not a commodity to be purchased at auction by the highest bidder.

    America is undisputedly the most powerful nation on earth. However, this week’s events affirm that those controlling the American helm are not the wisest of statesmen. Thus far, only one American looks wise, almost prescient, in this matter: Hillary Clinton. The former Secretary of State had the presence of mind to refuse a second term as the nation’s top diplomat. She jumped ship before it ran aground amid a storm much of its captain’s own making. She did not foresee the approaching squall. In fact, her diplomacy or lack of it contributed to the desultory course the American ship has meandered. However, the consummate political survivor if not an astute diplomat, Clinton exited office unscathed if not free of culpability. At times, it is better to be the recipient of good fortune than it is to be skilled.

    Her successor John Kerry will not be as lucky. His name forever shall be tarnished by his bombast and inconsistency during this complex international crisis. A diplomat’s inherent responsibility is to tongue and measure his words. Kerry evidently misread that section of the diplomat’s handbook. Here is a man who measures his word by how far he can sling them, not by how closely he holds them to his chest or limit them to their precise meaning. America has selected as its head statesman a person who splashes words about like an avant-garde artist does paint. In the average man, the consequence of this condition is his alone to bear. In a diplomat, the condition portends trouble for his nation. In the primary American diplomat, such a condition causes the world to shudder for it could bring us all close to the lips of steep crisis that need not be.

    Thus, we had the spectacle of Kerry attempting to be two men at once. Responding to questions about the efficacy of America’s intended strike, Kerry said the attack would be sufficient enough to degrade Assad’s capabilities and deter future chemical weapons use. Responding to those wary of America entering headlong yet into another war, Kerry promised the threatened strike would be “incredibly small.” The statements reveal a man who responds to the moment not a person with an intimate relationship with veracity. Both statements can be false but both can’t be true.

    This is the rustling of an awkward but powerful man trying to thread the delicate needle. However, he is abjectly ignorant the needle can only be coursed by wise, truthful policy. Instead of navigating the narrow channel with truth, he has tried to thread the needle with two plumb lies. The man was making a grand mess of this affair.

    Fate sometimes smiles on those who don’t deserve its benevolence. It has come to Kerry’s rescue in the nick of time. During a press conference, Kerry blurted Assad could avert the military strike if he relinquished the chemical weapons. Kerry meant the statement as a lark. The Russians seized his unguarded utterance as a basis for a new policy, thus corralling the American war machine by the words of its very own public embassy.

    As I write, American military action has been forestalled by the Russian initiative that Syria quit its chemical arsenal. The outline of an agreement between Russia and America has been reached. Syria will hand over its chemical weapons and America will sheathe its sword. If the deal works, Syria will still be at war with itself but the world will be safer. The possibility of the conflict growing will be forestalled for the moment.

    The reluctant warmonger, President Obama, will get a fortunate reprieve from lunging into war as did his predecessor. John Kerry can return to re-reading the diplomat’s handbook or a work on the finer points of circumlocution. Meanwhile, a formal KGB agent and hatchet man will emerge as the man who out maneuvered America’s best and brightest. While Russian President Putin acted in his national interests and not for any utilitarian motive, he has been the peacemaker. On the other hand, America claims a humanitarian motive for its incessant talk of war. On this occasion, American leaders slipped on their own arrogant inconsistency and the Russians took advantage this clumsiness to outwit them with their own words, thus averting a broadening tempest. Putin is far from an angel; he is the quintessential anti-hero but what he has done is to counterbalance the American government’s militarism.

    In the end, the cold-blooded Russian prevented the American Nobel Peace Prize winner from attacking a nation that posed no threat to his. This is the elemental truth of the matter. This is true news because it shows a steady reshaping of the global configuration and roles of nations. America has been too quick to pounce on nations it considers its enemies. Wisdom dictates one should not war with all those whom you dislike. It makes for a rather dangerous neighborhood and an unsettled world. Hopefully, America has learned this lesson. Sadly, the lesson the American government will likely glean is not this pacific one. The American war machine bristles at being stalled. The next time it will leap faster to the attack. The world may have dodged great danger this time but danger shall return and the warmongers will be poised to take quicker advantage of it. And that is the real news!

     

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  • G-20 summit: More questions than answers

    G-20 summit: More questions than answers

    The St. Petersburg G-20 summit will be recorded as one of the recent history’s most important non-events. Nothing happened at the summit which is par for these gatherings. But the diplomatic context of this summit was material different than most others. President Obama needed action at the summit to halt the quickening erosion of his domestic and international standing precipitated by his awkward Syrian policy and his increasingly incoherent rationale for that policy. President Obama came to the fine old city hoping to gain the endorsement of most summiteers. He fell short of that aim.

    The summit took place in the most inauspicious venue possible for the American. Summit host and Russian President Putin has been the most vociferous international opponent of America’s Syria policy calling for military action against the Assad government for purported misuse of chemical weapons. Breaking normal diplomatic etiquette by calling America’s top diplomat Secretary of State Kerry “a liar,” Putin declared the rebels, aided by foreign clandestine agencies, deployed the chemical weapons so that America and other western nations would blame Assad. Putin claimed it insane for Assad, who had gained a decisive strategic advantage in the war, to use chemical weapons. Assad surely knew deployment of said weapons could bring American involvement in a way tipping the balance of war against Assad. It was more probable the despairing rebels, losing ground by the day, concocted this situation to give America a colorable pretext to intervene, literally saving the rebels at the final moment of the eleventh hour, according to Putin. As evidence of his position, Putin pointed to the UN report attributing a prior incidence of chemical weapons use to the rebels.

    Despite the usual primacy of economics at such gatherings, this summit’s climax came when participants discussed Syria. President Obama stated his case as did Putin. President Obama sought to isolate Putin in his own house. It did not happen. Summiteers divided also equally between those supporting Obama and those holding closer to Putin. America and the richest western nations craved military action. Russian and the more populous nations rejected a forceful strike against Assad.

    The same dichotomy has been paralleled in American politics. The elite Washington-New York axis of political and financial power lusts for martial action as if addicted to war. Most ordinary Americans bitterly oppose war action in Syria as if tired of it.

    In his post-summit press conference, Putin barely concealed gloating over the turn of the summit. He talked with the roguish look of a burglar who barely absconded with the purloined booty the moment before the detectives could apprehend him. In front of the world, he had withheld something the most powerful man in the world dearly wanted. In most cases, a thief is morally and legally in the wrong. With allegations about Assad’s government culpability still unproven and with the wisdom of aerial bombardment less than certain, it remains an open question whether the thief is right this time. If this is one of those rare occasions where the thief is right, Putin might have saved the world from a nasty turn expanding the Syrian civil war into a regional conflagration or worse.

    In his press conference, President Obama looked tired, somehow appearing diminished yet swollen at the same moment. Clearly, he had been stung by the considerable domestic and international rejection of his Syria policy. He assumed he could convince the world of the rightness of his dubious cause by virtue of his eloquence and by basing his war appeal on humanitarian grounds. He has been taken aback by his failure to garner support despite the intense, high-priced public relations campaign mounted by Western governments and their agents, the largest global corporate media houses such as CNN and BBC.

    Even critics of President Obama must feel a certain sympathy for him. Before the world, stood a man stewing in a cauldron of his own design or, at least, one designed by the vested, penumbral interests he so faithfully has served. He struggled to construct persuasive arguments much like a drowning man clutching at straws, hoping the harder he clutched the straw might turn into the rope that could save him.

    He argued Assad’s purported recourse to chemical weapons was a dire breach of international law, warranting a martial reply. The assertion contradicts the predominant weight of international law. Chemical weapons use constitutes a breach but the breach is not the only pertinent legal factor. In its rush to action, the American government now behaves as if the weapons abuse is the only factor worthy of consideration. Fixated on punishing the terrible Assad, America caricatures the world as if it is based solely on one legal norm. That single norm, if viewed in isolation, would neatly place Assad on the scaffold constructed by America.

    However, the world is a complexity where almost nothing can be assessed in isolation. The prohibition against chemical weapons must be read in consonance with the larger body of international law. Here, America runs afoul of the very corpus of international law it purports to protect. There are tenets of international law more established and more central to the conduct of global affairs than the chemical weapons prohibition. First, the most well established principle in international law is the restriction against interference in the internal affairs of another nation. Second, nations are disallowed from unilaterally using force against another state except in valid self defense. Third, where the law of self-defense is inapplicable, military action must be sanctioned by the United Nations.

    America can’t claim self-defense; Syria poses less of the threat to it than America does to Syria. Under established law, America has no right to attack Syrian unless approved by the world body. Reading the prohibition against chemical weapons in harmony with other legal principles leads to one conclusion. To punish Syria’s purported use of chemical weapons, America can only unilaterally impose sanctions short of military action. If it seeks to legally apply a military sanction, America must gain approval from the global organization. However, since the world body rejects America’s position, America has decided to ignore canons of international law that America had previously authored in order to superimpose this presently favored legal precept over the entire body of international law. Because it believes Assad’s government has breached the law, America believes it has the right to distort that law for its own purposes. As such, both regimes are outlaws albeit committing somewhat different crimes.

    President Obama opined that other despots will rush to deploy illicit weapons if Assad is not quickly punished. This position is nothing but dangerous conjecture clothed as statecraft. America winked when Saddam Hussein used deadly gas against Iran and against portions of Iraq’s population in the 1980’s. The rest of that unfortunately large club of despots did not rush to deploy such weapons. If the evildoers did not break the door to deploy chemical weapons at a time when America seemed to approve their use why would they now do so when America now seems hell-bent in opposition?

    Despite the American political elite’s attempts to shape global opinion by depicting its enemies as evil incarnate, these enemy states have been more circumspect in the large-scale use of military power than has been the American government. Even the most wanton leaders do not frequently embark on large-scale military operations against their populations or against other nations. They would rather maintain power by employing the more mundane, daily tools of repression. Such tactics are less expensive and less of a gamble than massive endeavors that might backfire, squandering their regimes and lives.

    Sadly, President Obama has become too slick. The danger in becoming too well-versed in the arts of verbal fabrication is that the accomplished hypocrite becomes the last person to recognize his cover has been blown. During his press conference, President Obama likened the chemical weapons incident to the Rwandan genocide. Twice, he criticized that the world watched idly as Rwanda turned itself crimson. Shame on any American leader for drawing this analogy. Either America’s present crop of leaders is ignorant of recent history or they believe the world has a grave memory deficiency. During the Rwandan carnage, much of the world wanted to act in concert to halt the slide. The UN was poised to do more. It was President Obama’s political mentor, Bill Clinton, who made sure the UN remained passive. Clinton did not want to bear the domestic political costs of UN involvement in Rwanda. In that instance, the world did not prevent America from taking morally and legally responsible action. It was America that prevented a unified world from doing the right thing. Attempting to justify an illegal strike against Syria, America no tries to whitewash its sad history of tolerating inhumane atrocities where America has no economic or political interests in thwarting the nightmare.

    Further trying to justify his position yet absolve himself of personal responsibility, Obama had the temerity to claim he never said Assad government use of chemical weapons was a “red line” for him which if crossed would cause him to respond with muscle. Now, Obama’s tune is that the world community, America and the American congress drew this line and everyone’s credibility is at stake if no response is had. Someone should do him the favor for replaying his prior statement to him. He would quickly drop this revisionary tact as few leaders have publicly assumed such personal responsibility for a matter outside the ken if his country’s vital strategic interests.

    Sadly, Obama has gone so far as to assert, because of this fictional red line, America’s credibility and thus national security has been placed at risk. This argument diminishes the man’s personal stature and that of his office. Clearly, the localized use of chemical weapons in a suburb of distant Syria is not an imminent national security threat to America. In fact, Obama undermined his own argument in the same press conference by later saying the world would have forgotten about this issue had not his Administration pressed it to the forefront. If the issue was so compelling and important, his government would not have had to work to keep it newsworthy. In other words, Obama admitted that his government has overinflated a serious local issue to become one of artificial global importance. As tragic as the lethal incident was, it is equally troubling for the most powerful man in the world to say the death of 1000 people in a distant civil war constitutes a grave threat to his nation’s security and, in fact, global security. In that case, every war no matter where is a matter of grave national security for America. In that case, America should commit half of its military to single-handedly resolve the civil war in the Congo which has consumed the lives of over 5 million Africans. However, America remains opposed to funding a sufficiently robust international peacekeeping force to resolve that perennial crisis.

    Fortunately, most Americans and much of the world remain unconvinced by the hasty presidential expostulations. Opinion polls reveal the overwhelming majority of Americans regardless of race and party oppose unilateral action in Syria. Congress seems in lockstep with public opinion. President Obama has asked Congress to approve his desire to attack Syria. Unless the beneficiary of a political miracle, President Obama will suffer a dramatic, wholly unnecessary setback when the majority of congressional Republicans and a large minority of Democrats vote down his war request.

    This is the second week I have dedicated this column to the Syrian crisis. I have done so for two reasons. First, if handled imprudently, what is essentially a local civil war can transmogrify into something larger, more sinister, and much more dangerous. Second, I am concerned about how easily our people are taken by western media and propaganda. Nigeria and Africa will never develop as they ought unless we can think more independently and objectively. If our collective mind is so easily moved in the direction determined by the western press and the vested interests the western media represents, we are sunk.

    Last week, I received emotional comments that America was justified to seek retribution because of the civilian deaths caused by the incident. People just wanted to strike out emotionally, indiscriminately. These people uncritically swallowed that Assad’s government committed the crime. That allegation may eventually prove true. For now, it remains unproven. Thus, there should be no haste in action. In fact, the purported intelligence President Obama and his officials deem so convincing has been unable to persuade America’s own Congress.

    Moreover, Russian President Putin has released his own report implicating the rebels and anti-Assad foreign intelligence agencies. General Colin Powell’s former Chief of Staff has implicated Israeli. An Associated Press reporter wrote a compelling piece wherein he interviewed people on the ground in the affected Damascus suburb. Rebel fighters and relatives rebels were interviewed. Although this area is in rebel control, the rebels and others admitted that the chemical weapons were in the possession of rebel factions financed by outside intelligence agencies. These agencies supplied the weapons which were inadvertently ignited by negligent mishandling by the rebels during an untimely conventional artillery shelling of the area by Assad’s forces. Why aren’t these reports being seen and considered as credible as the ones America backs? These and like reports never are revealed by the western media because that media’s primary mandate is not to present all or objective news but to project a subjective viewpoint promoting the interests of the vast powers behind the throne.

    For the second time in less than ten years, those entrenched powerful interests have enticed the most visible, influential Black American political figure to stand before the world to promote needless war or military action. Wanting so much to belong to the global elite, both Black men chomped the bait and got hooked. First, Colin Powell lied to the world for his masters. His reward was to lose his reputation and later to be dismissed from his post. Failing to learn the lesson, Obama has allowed the puppeteers to dance him before the world, placing false arguments for false war in his mouth. This episode will likely diminish him permanently. If he attacks Syria, the world will conclude that his Nobel Peace Prize was improperly given. He will join the ranks of American warmongers no different than those of Bush Administration infamy. If he fails to carry out the attack, the entrenched interests will turn their vast wealth and media against him. They shall whittle him down before our eyes. It shall be a painful thing to watch. Again, those Black leaders who seek personal gain by giving faithful, blind obeisance to established interests move smoothly along at first. However, the powers will ultimately ask the Black leader to sacrifice himself because they don’t want that leader to become an independent force. Thus far, Black leaders have sacrificed themselves for interests not their own. As it is with individual Black American leaders so it has been with Black African nations. When shall we ever learn?

     

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