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Obama's leadership style is based on bullying but in doing so he only goes after the the low hanging fruit, ie. America's friends. Morally speaking Obama does not have the guts to go after our true enemies. Perhaps, his background and relationships distorts reality.
They certainly have shaped his thinking.(See 2, 2a and 2b below.)
A lot of 'no we cants' from a father who teaches his children to heed deeds and not embrace words. In doing so, he explains why most Israelis do not trust Obama. Avi you are joined in your dis-trust by a lot of Americans. (See 2c below.)
Is going after Goldman just another politically timed effort on the part of this administration to bolster legislation it seeks and another bullying tactic? (See 2d below.)
Damn our former ally full speed ahead. Obama is a man on fire. Though, likely to get burned in the process he will also singe a lot of others. (See 2e below.)
Baehr and 'The Ship of Fools.' (See 2e below.)
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In the ensuing weeks investors have three factors with which they must come to grips:
a) Easy earnings comparisons will soon end.
b) The implications of the Yuan rising creates uncertainty.
c) SEC attacks on key Wall Street firms beginning with Goldman Sachs.
What is even more disturbing is that our trade deficit is helping China finance Chavez in our own hemisphere.
What goes around is coming around and hitting us in the face. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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Balancing need for government with its amoebic growth. Obama's governance heightens concerns and proves self-defeating.(See 4 below.)
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Ayn Rand anticipated Soros when she wrote 'Atlas Shrugged." (See 5 below.)
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Response of a dear friend, fellow memo reader and a superb and caring doctor. (See 6below.)
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After all the above we need a little humor. (See 7 below.)
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Why should America care whether it is liked? What we should strive for is to be respected for our adherence to a consistent set of principles.
This is why, in my book, Obama is a disaster but Greg Sargent salutes. (See 8 below.)
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Dick
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1)Who Needs Apartheid?
By Mark Steyn
This
Moshe Ya’alon, a former Israel Defense Forces general who now serves as Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategic affairs minister, posed the following query in an interview published in the Jerusalem Post: “If we are talking about coexistence and peace, why the [Palestinian] insistence that the territory they receive be ethnically cleansed of Jews? Why do those areas have to be Judenrein? Don’t Arabs live here, in the Negev and the Galilee? Why isn’t that part of our public discussion? Why doesn’t that scream to the heavens?”
As Jonathan Tobin points out, the official goal of the Middle East "peace process" is a "two-state solution", in one of which Muslims live alongside Jews and have voting rights and representation in the legislature, while in the other there are no Jews at all and, as in "moderate" Jordan, to sell your house to a Jew is a crime punishable by death. There goes the neighborhood, right? When the western campus left holds its annual "Israeli Apartheid Week", presumably it's in philosophical support of the notion that you don't need to run an "apartheid" system if you just get rid of everyone who's not like you.
If Muslims are so revolted by Jews that they cannot tolerate any living among them, well, they're free to believe what they want. What is less understandable is the present position of the United States government. The President and his Secretary of State have made it very clear that they regard a few dozen housing units in Jerusalem as a far greater threat to Middle East peace than the Iranian nuclear program. Why is it in the interest of the United States to validate, enthusiastically, the most explicit and crudest bigotry of the Palestinian "cause"?
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2)The View From Jerusalem: Why Israel is anxious about the Obama Administration
Imagine that you're an Israeli perusing the past week's headlines. Senior U.S. military officials have told Congress that Iran may be a year away from producing a bomb's worth of fissile material. Efforts to sanction Iran are again bogged down at the U.N., even as the sanctions are watered down to insignificance. And senior Israeli officials now say that Syria has supplied Hezbollah with Scud-D missiles that can hit every city in Israel with a one-ton warhead to an accuracy of 50 meters.
Oh, and now the Obama Administration seems increasingly of the view that Israel is the primary cause of instability in the Middle East. In a press conference last week, President Obama said the U.S. had a "vital national security interest" in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, on the theory that "when conflict breaks out . . . that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure."
The remark, which echoes previous comments by senior Administration and Pentagon officials, is being widely interpreted as presaging a concerted Administration effort to press even harder for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement over territory. After the recent flap over Jewish settlements north of Jerusalem, concern is growing that the U.S. wants Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders. At their narrowest, those borders give Israel a nine-mile margin between the West Bank and the Mediterranean Sea.
Israel could conceivably withdraw to something close to that border if it had credible assurances that a future Palestinian state would be peaceful, stable and well-governed. But the Palestinian reality today is that it is riven politically and geographically between two camps, one of which (Hamas) is armed by Iran and sworn to Israel's destruction.
As for Israel's other neighbors, Syria has further entrenched its alliance with Iran, despite repeated entreaties by the Administration and its allies in Congress; Egypt is entering a period of political transition; and Turkey has gone from being an Israeli ally to an adversary under its Islamist government. None of this can inspire much confidence among Israelis that the time is ripe to withdraw from the West Bank.
Nor will Israel's fears be assuaged by paper guarantees of its security in some future settlement. In 2006, a senior Bush State Department official gave us similar assurances that the Security Council's resolution that brought the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah to a close would seal the Lebanese border at least to "heavy weapons" from Syria and Iran. The resolution even provided for a beefed-up international security force to enforce the resolution's terms. So much for that, and so much for the results of the solicitous visits to Syria in recent years by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry.
As for Iran, yesterday brought reports of a secret memo from Defense Secretary Robert Gates to the White House arguing that the Administration lacks a strategy for coping with Iran's drive to gain a nuclear weapon. We're not sure why this memo is secret, since it merely says what has been obvious to the world for months. Everyone in the Middle East has begun to assess how its interests and strategic calculations will change once Iran gets the bomb.
For all the current talk about Israel costing America lives and treasure, the striking fact is that the U.S. has never had to go to war to defend the Jewish state. This is more than can be said for Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Bosnia, Kosovo and the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. That's because for 62 years Israelis have provided for their own defense, in an alliance with the U.S. that has reflected American values and—in both the Cold War and the war on terror—advanced American interests.
The Obama Administration seems not to grasp this point, which is why these are anxious days for Israel and its American friends.
2a) Obama U-Turn on UN penalties for Iran, defensible borders for Israel: US pulls another rug from Israeli securityPresident
Barack Obama has done away with two key elements of US-Israeli strategic relations: His administration has given up on stiff UN Security Council sanctions on Iran over its nuclear drive, and gone back on the longstanding American commitment assuring Israel of recognized and defensible borders in any future accommodation with its Arab neighbors.
In the administration's message of congratulations to Israel on its 62nd Day of Independence, US Secretary of state Hillary Clinton mentions "recognized borders" while omitting the traditional "defensible."
Washington sources report that following the talks held by Presidents Obama and Hu Jintao in Washington last week, the Administration is apparently engaged in a debate about whether to push for tough sanctions against Iran at the Security Council and run into opposition from China and other countries - or go for a quick UN General Assembly resolution, which would be non-binding.
The view William Burns, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, offered the House foreign affairs committee last week was that a UN resolution would clear the way for the European Union and other countries to "amplify the impact" of whatever sanctions are agreed on. Burns avoided mentioning the Security Council and indicated that the administration had little hope of any effective action on Iran by the world body.
It will be recalled that President Obama twice asked Israel to ignore Iran's missed deadlines and promised to promote effective UN Security Council sanctions if Iran continued to spurn his diplomatic efforts for curbing its nuclear program.
The last deadline was in December, 2009.
Yet on Monday, April 19, clearly lagging behind events in Washington, Israel's defense minister Ehud Barak said: "Now is the time for sanctions (against Iran)."
He was answering questions in a radio interview on Israel's annual day of mourning for its fallen servicemen
Neither he nor any other Israeli leader commented on an equally serious setback for Israel in Washington, which emerge from a conspicuous omission in Clinton's message of congratulations for Israel's Independence Day, which is celebrated Monday night and Tuesday:
"I have a deep personal commitment to Israel," she said. "And so does President Obama. Our nation will not waver in protecting Israel’s security and promoting Israel’s future. That is why pursuing peace and recognized borders for Israel is one of our top priorities."
By omitting "defensible borders" from her message, she spoke for the first US administration to abdicate its guarantee of defensible borders as a fundamental component of Israel's security, thereby nullifying her and the US president's pledge not to "waver in protecting Israel's security."
This key omission led to another worrying question about Israel's future borders: By whom must they be recognized in the view of the Obama administration?
2b)The SEC vs. Goldman: More a case of hindsight bias than financial villainy
The Securities and Exchange Commission's complaint against Goldman Sachs is playing in the media as the Rosetta Stone that finally exposes the Wall Street perfidy and double-dealing behind the financial crisis. Our reaction is different: Is that all there is?
After 18 months of investigation, the best the government can come up with is an allegation that Goldman misled some of the world's most sophisticated investors about a single 2007 "synthetic" collateralized debt obligation (CDO)? Far from being the smoking gun of the financial crisis, this case looks more like a water pistol.
***
Let's deconstruct the supposed fraud, in which Goldman worked with hedge fund investor John Paulson, who wanted to bet on a decline in the subprime mortgage market. The SEC alleges that Goldman let Paulson & Co. dictate the mortgage-backed securities on which investors would speculate via the CDO, and then withheld from investors Paulson's role on the other side of the transaction.
The SEC also alleges that Goldman deceived ACA Management—a unit of the largest investor on the other side of the deal and the firm officially selecting which mortgage-backed securities everybody would bet on—into believing that Mr. Paulson was actually investing in an "equity" tranche on ACA's side of the deal.
Regarding the second point, the offering documents for the 2007 CDO made no claim that we can find that Mr. Paulson's firm was betting alongside ACA. The documents go so far as to state that an equity tranche was not offered by Goldman, as ACA must have known since it helped put the deal together and presumably read the documents. The SEC complaint itself states that ACA had the final word on which assets would be referenced in the CDO. And in some cases, ACA kicked out of the pool various assets suggested by the Paulson firm.
More fundamentally, the investment at issue did not hold mortgages, or even mortgage-backed securities. This is why it is called a "synthetic" CDO, which means it is a financial instrument that lets investors bet on the future value of certain mortgage-backed securities without actually owning them.
Yet much of the SEC complaint is written as if the offering included actual pools of mortgages, rather than a collection of bets against them. Why would the SEC not offer a clearer description? Perhaps the SEC's enforcement division doesn't understand the difference between a cash CDO—which contains slices of mortgage-backed securities—and a synthetic CDO containing bets against these securities.
More likely, the SEC knows the distinction but muddied up the complaint language to confuse journalists and the public about what investors clearly would have known: That by definition such a CDO transaction is a bet for and against securities backed by subprime mortgages. The existence of a short bet wasn't Goldman's dark secret. It was the very premise of the transaction.
Did Goldman have an obligation to tell everyone that Mr. Paulson was the one shorting subprime? Goldman insists it is "normal business practice" for a market maker like itself not to disclose the parties to a transaction, and one question is why it would have made any difference. Mr. Paulson has since become famous for this mortgage gamble, from which he made $1 billion. But at the time of the trade he was just another hedge-fund trader, and no long-side investor would have felt this was like betting against Warren Buffett.
Not that there are any innocent widows and orphans in this story. Goldman is being portrayed as Mr. Potter in "It's a Wonderful Life," exploiting the good people of Bedford Falls. But a more appropriate movie analogy is "Alien vs. Predator," with Goldman serving as the referee. Mr. Paulson bet against German bank IKB and America's ACA, neither of which fell off a turnip truck at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets.
.IKB describes itself as "a leading investor in CDOs" and "a leading credit manager in the German market." ACA, for its part, participated in numerous similar transactions. The Journal reports that ACA was known for embracing more risk than its competitors, because, with a less-than-stellar credit rating, it had a higher cost of capital.
By the way, Goldman was also one of the losers here. Although the firm received a $15 million fee for putting the deal together, Goldman says it ended up losing $90 million on the transaction itself, because it ultimately decided to bet alongside ACA and IKB. In other words, the SEC is suing Goldman for deceiving long-side investors in a transaction in which Goldman also took the long side. So Goldman conspired to defraud . . . itself?
As for the role this trade played in the financial crisis, its main impact was transferring $1 billion from the long-side housing gamblers to Mr. Paulson. Ultimately, this meant big losses for the Royal Bank of Scotland, which acquired one of the long-side players after the transaction and had to be rescued by a capital injection from the U.K. government. But RBS made more than enough bad choices of its own that contributed to its failure. These hedge-fund trades make for entertaining tales of financial derring-do, but they are hardly the root of the panic.
***
Which leads us to the real impact of this case, which is political. The SEC charges conveniently arrive on the brink of the Senate debate over financial reform, and its supporters are already using the case to grease the bill's passage. "I'm pleased that the Obama Administration is using all of the tools in its arsenal to bring accountability to Wall Street and standing up for homeowners and small businesses across America," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Friday about the SEC case. "This is also why we need to pass strong Wall Street reform this year." Of course, this case matters to homeowners not at all.
We have had our own disputes with Goldman, and we've criticized the firm for its explanations of its dealings with AIG. We have also urged the Senate to rewrite its flawed financial regulatory-reform bill precisely because it would benefit Goldman and other giant banks with explicit bailout powers available to assist them. There are serious questions about the role of Goldman and other too-big-to-fail banks in the American financial market. Yet this case addresses none of these questions.
Perhaps the SEC has more evidence than it presented in its complaint, but on the record so far the government and media seem to be engaged in an exercise in hindsight bias. Three years later, after the mortgage market has blown up and after the panic and recession, the political class is looking for legal cases to prove its preferred explanation that the entire mess was Wall Street's fault. Goldman makes a convenient villain. But judging by this complaint, the real story is how little villainy the feds have found.
2c) OBAMA – NO WE CAN’T! Open letter From Avi Ifergan, father of Alma (5), Shira, (3), Netta (1).
Rehovot, Israel
Dear Mr. President,
Earlier this month, your Secretary of State told a forum of Jewish leaders that ‘sometimes friends need to tell each other the hard truth’. Well Mr. President, allow me, on behalf of my people, to return the courtesy. You have always been rhetorically supportive of Israel, but the incongruence of your actions in the first year of your presidency have left us Israelis, and Jews worldwide, scratching their heads in bewilderment. Mr. President, here’s the hard truth from an Israeli father of 3 daughters, under the age of 6.
No we can’t take any chances when it comes to the physical security of our land, our people or my girls. There exists no room for error. Security is the primary priority. You see, we learn from our history, and it teaches us a simple truth:
No we can’t count on the promises or protection of other nations when our people face an existential threat. The world watched, immovable, as we were slaughtered by the Nazis; In every decade of Israel ’s existence, its neighbors, or the Palestinians waged war on us, and the world watched in relative silence. In the years after the so-called Oslo Peace Treaty, the world remained silent as Israelis faced hundreds of Palestinian suicide bombings, stabbings, drive-by shootings, and kidnappings. The world did however feel free to openly criticize us when we set up check posts and built a security fence to protect ourselves.
No we can’t understand how, in 2006, when over 4,000 Hezbollah missiles rained down on a third of the Israeli population, the leaders of the world found it important to criticize Israel ’s military reaction. Similarly we read their criticisms that were splashed across the headlines of the global media during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in 2008. They remained silent during the preceding 6 years that the Kassam rockets from Gaza forced Israel ’s Southern population to sleep in bomb shelters, and did not commend Israel ’s military restraint. Of course, that changed as the Israeli military went into Gaza to locate and destroy the Hamas rocket launchers.
No we can’t believe that you would expect your governments to react any differently, if you and your children were faced with the similar threats.
No we can’t stomach the thought of a holocaust-denying, Hezbollah- and Hamas-funding Iranian President, who in the same breath openly states that his intentions are for Iran to achieve nuclear capabilities, and for the destruction of the ‘Zionist entity’.
No we can’t imagine you doing anything more than proposing more painful sanctions on Iran – and what do you call it – ‘containment’? This is where he ends up getting the nuclear weapons he seeks, right?
No we can’t accept a divided Jerusalem . Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Israel , and of the Jewish people. It is not ‘the third holiest city’, as it is for the Moslems. It is the only holy city of the Jewish people. It has been so for over 2,000 years. Since coming under Israeli sovereignty all religions have been able to visit and practice openly and freely. Oh – and you should know that the ‘Waqf’, those Palestinians who control the Temple Mount in Jerusalem , do not allow any other religions, Jew or Christian, to pray there. I even hear that swaying or the silent moving of the lips is forbidden.
So, no we can’t have friends dictating to us where in Jerusalem we can or cannot build – or feeling insulted when we do as we please in our own land.
No we can’t believe that giving the Palestinian people a land of their own is such a high priority on your foreign policy agenda. Considering their civil rights and terrorist track-record, and the growing influence of Hamas as the likely ruling party. Mr. President, did you know that when the Palestinian Authority came to power in 1994, the first piece of legislation that it passed was the death penalty for any Palestinian who sells land to Jews. Over 100 Palestinians have died, under sentence or extra-judicially, for such sales in the last 15 years. Is this the ‘two-state solution’ that you imagine?
No we can’t comprehend why you would spend the first year of your presidency hugging, bowing and warming to those shining leaders of freedom and democracy Venezuela’s Chavez, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, or Mubarak of Egypt. I know you’re aware of the brutality and lack of freedoms in such non-democracies – the beheadings, the inability of a woman to bear witness in court, or to simply drive, the lack of tolerance when it comes to people who are different – be it culture, religion, or sexual orientation.
And No we can’t understand why ,in Israel , where the opposite is true, where Arabs enjoy more freedoms than in any Arab country in the world – freedoms of speech and expression, the press, religion, tolerance to the gay and lesbian community, gender equality, you choose to make a big deal about Jews building in their holiest city - Jerusalem ? We’re an easy target, we know, but please, how about finding something more substantial to make an issue of – and about a non-democracy.
No we can’t fathom why on earth you don’t get us Israelis yet. We Israelis and our governments have repeatedly demonstrated an unwavering commitment to peace, and a willingness to pay a high price for it. In 1947, we accepted the UN’s ‘two-state’ resolution on the partition of Palestine, despite the fact that we would not have had any control of Jerusalem or the surrounding neighborhoods; The Arabs rejected it, and instead 6 Arab nations declared war on our fledgling state. In 1979 we gave up a piece of land greater than the size of the state of Israel , the Sinai, for peace with Egyptians. In 1999, we unilaterally withdrew from South Lebanon , allowing Hezbollah to set up its bases in our stead. A year later, Israeli PM Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians ‘the deal of the century’ – 97% of the West Bank, 100% of the Gaza strip, the dismantling of 63 settlements and agreeing that the East Jerusalem neighborhoods would become the capital of their new state. This too, was rejected by the Palestinians. In 2005, Israeli PM Sharon, without negotiations or demanding of concessions, unilaterally pushed through his disengagement plan that led to the dismantling of 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip and 4 in the West Bank .
No we can’t trust you….yet. Trust is earned. You see, Mr. President, I teach my girls to pay little attention to words and close attention to deeds. My people have demonstrated by deed that we are willing to pay a high price for peace and security. On more than one occasion you have said that you are committed to the Israel ’s security and will not tolerate a nuclear-capable Iran . Now it’s your turn to match your words with deeds. A two-state solution with the Palestinian people is of little relevance if Iran achieves its nuclear goals.
2d), One Brick at a Time
Reagan asked his national security team to be prepared for incremental progress and not to invest U.S. power frivolously.
By ROBERT MCFARLANE
President Obama is reportedly considering a new Middle East strategy; a family of policies aimed not only at resolving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute but also at creating a new regional security architecture to take on the challenges posed by Iran and other threats to American interests.
It is a praiseworthy and ambitious undertaking. However, history cautions that few presidents achieve more than one significant reorientation in American foreign and domestic policy per term. Before committing to the enormous amount of time, resources and political capital needed to achieve goals of this magnitude, it is prudent to consider whether conditions on the ground warrant such an investment. If not, the president may wish to stake out interim goals so as to lay a foundation for a comprehensive settlement in the future.
The experience of the Reagan administration is instructive. In 1982, President Ronald Reagan tasked me and other members of his administration to analyze America's top foreign challenges and propose a long-term national strategy for them while concurrently launching a vigorous advocacy campaign for liberty, democracy and human rights throughout the world. President Reagan specifically asked us to lay out priorities, refrain from investing American power frivolously and, if a near-term solution was not tenable, solve a piece of each problem so that we could build later upon the initial successes. As policies, resources and diplomacy were applied, progress would create momentum that would lead toward concrete achievements over time.
During his first four years, President Reagan concentrated mainly on rebuilding U.S. military strength. Yet when he left office, Reagan had accelerated the end of the Cold War and achieved the first reduction of nuclear weapons in history. The lesson: Don't rush to tackle a problem until you've prepared the ground, minimized risk, and have reasonable prospects for success.
Fast forward to today, and President Obama has laid out a sweeping agenda of change for the Middle East with at most seven years to achieve it. For the president to succeed, he will require a sober assessment of his obstacles. For example, Hamas—the dominant power in Gaza—insists that Israel must be destroyed and negotiation is out of the question. This is likely an intractable position. How does this impact the president's vision for the region?
To improve his chances for success, Mr. Obama should focus on the building blocks essential to an ultimate settlement. This means, above all, preventing Hamas from taking over the West Bank. To that end, the U.S. is already working hard to shore up the Palestinian Authority security apparatus in that territory. Additionally, Israel has been working successfully with Palestinian security forces to crack down on criminals and terrorists that threaten both the Palestinian Authority and Israelis. While the Palestinians are not yet ready to do the job alone, this progress provides a basis for hope that eventually they may be able to do so.
With continued American help, other civil infrastructure can also be put in place, for example to combat corruption and establish the rule of law—necessary if the new Palestinian state is going to function and be self-sustaining. Models from other emerging countries (e.g., South Korea) suggest that this process takes at least a decade to accomplish and that expecting anything less may lead only to a failed state. There is a well-known expression in the U.S. military: "If you want it bad, you'll get it bad."
Another small but important step for the president would be to demand that both the Israeli and Palestinian delegations show up for a first round of talks, and sit down and behave as responsible leaders. For over a year, no Palestinian leader, including Palestinian Authority President and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas, has been willing to sit down at the same table with Israeli leaders. How can we move forward without someone representing the Palestinians at the negotiating table?
No one should underestimate how difficult it will be to reach a comprehensive settlement. While the terms Israel offered to the Palestinians at Camp David in 2000 (and again in 2008) are probably acceptable to the majority of Israelis and Palestinians, sticking points remain.
For example, the Palestinians seek their so-called right of return to territory in Israel and want the capital of their state to be in Jerusalem. Israelis believe that accepting a right of return would be demographic suicide. And they are loath to divide Jerusalem, not least because they recall that when Jordan ruled East Jerusalem prior to 1967 it was ethnically cleansed of Jews. They view Jerusalem as their ancient and "indivisible" capital. These issues, while not insurmountable, cannot be resolved easily or quickly. Papering them over is counterproductive, as we should by now have learned.
The president deserves credit for wanting to focus the energies of his administration on the manifold problems in the Middle East. As he does so, he would be wise to remember the lessons of President Reagan. Only by laying one brick at a time can a solid foundation for peace be built.
Mr. McFarlane served as President Reagan's national security adviser and is currently a member of the Leadership Council at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies
2e) The Jews of Silence
By Richard Baehr
The New York Times, in a front page article, described how President Obama appears to be reconsidering, if not turning away from, the historic strategic alliance between the U.S. and Israel. In remarks made at the end of the multinational nuclear security talks, Obama reinforced this message, saying the following:
It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower[.] ... And when conflicts break out, one way or another, we get pulled into them. And that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure.
It is almost impossible to exaggerate the significance of these two lines as to the president's thinking. It is also impossible to read these and not realize that this president is the greatest threat to the strategic alliance of the U.S. and Israel since the founding of the modern Jewish state in 1948. The first sentence is in some ways the more incredible. No prior American president has been resentful or unhappy about leading the world's greatest superpower. This can mean only one of two things:
1. The president is suggesting that he believes that America has used our military power improperly for the most part in the past and has not been a force for good in the world.
2. Obama thinks it unfair that America has power and others don't. He is, in other words, a redistributionist in everything, including military power, among the nations of the world.
So it is better, it would seem, to weaken the U.S. and spread power around. A lot of what has occurred the last fifteen months makes sense in light of this extraordinarily foolish statement. Obama appears to think that the world would be a better place if, say, Russia, China, or maybe Venezuela and Sudan had more power, and the U.S. less.
The second sentence is further evidence of how Obama is poisoning the well by implying, if not directly suggesting, that U.S. combat deaths (and our deficit, too) are due to Israeli intransigence. For over a year, the president has pushed hard against Israeli construction in Jerusalem and the West Bank, arguing that the settlement issue has been the reason for the failure to achieve peace or even get peace talks started between Israel and the Palestinians. This has been a colossal misreading of the history of the conflict.
Direct peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians have proceeded for years, despite Israeli construction in the territories or in Jerusalem, which has been a unified city and legally part of Israel since 1967. It was only after Obama demanded publicly that Israel halt all settlement construction east of the Green Line that the Palestinians refused to come to any talks with Israel without Obama's demands first being met. Why would the Palestinians appear to be more pro-Israel than the American president, who was working to deliver Israeli concessions to them before talks began?
The "blood and treasure" comment indicates that the president's approach to Israel has become far uglier and more ruthless. Not only has he driven the Palestinians away from any peace process, but he appears to be suggesting that the failure to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians -- which, of course, in the words of the president and his administration, is primarily due to Israeli stubbornness on settlement construction -- is causing U.S. combat deaths and imposing a heavy burden on our Treasury. When the president says we are "drawn into these conflicts," which ones does he mean? Which wars did Israel pull us into? Have American forces ever been called in to fight with or for Israel?
The president must mean Iraq and Afghanistan. This is a blood libel signifying that the president has gone even farther than Professors Steven Walt and John Mearsheimer, who in their book The Israel Lobby blamed the Iraq war on Israel. But Walt and Mearsheimer did not accuse Israel and its lobby of drawing the U.S. into war with Afghanistan. This new pattern of very cheap shots aimed at blaming Israel for combat deaths started with leaks about what General Petraeus supposedly said in a private briefing to Defense Department officials. It turns out that the leak of what Petraeus said was (surprise, surprise) not exactly what the general had argued.
More to the point, is there really anything new about Arab and Muslim majority nations having problems with Israel and mentioning them to every American official within earshot? For sixty years, U.S. ambassadors to these countries have been routinely sending messages to the State Department that America would be loved more in these countries if only the U.S. would abandon its support for Israel. Leaders in these countries have for decades used Israel to divert attention away from their own corrupt, totalitarian rule and economic failures. American ambassadors, practicing a bit of dual loyalty of their own, have served as mouthpieces in Washington for these regimes.
But the new dual loyalty charge is not for the people who spout the Arab or Muslim party line within the State Department, but for Dennis Ross, who was set up as the poster boy for dual loyalty for being sensitive to Israel's domestic political considerations when offering advice to the president on future policy in the area. Ross actually has some experience in this area of diplomacy, unlike many key Obama aides. Ross's experience has taught him that when the U.S. and Israel enjoy good relations, Israel is more willing to make concessions to the Palestinians because they can trust that America stands with them and has their back -- and won't stab them in the back. Obama has tried to abrogate agreements with the Israelis that previous presidents have made -- and that Congress has affirmed. Obama himself has a habit of breaking his own promises; he promised to keep disputes with Israel behind closed doors -- where, diplomatically, they belong. Instead, he has violated this pledge, and much more frequently of late.
Finally, some Jewish organizations and leaders are pushing back, including the Anti-Defamation League, The Orthodox Union, Ron Lauder and the World Jewish Congress, Elie Wiesel, and the America-Israel Friendship League. Regrettably, little has been heard from the Jewish Democrats in the House and the Senate, who seem reluctant to take on a president of their own party. They have signed on to AIPAC letters, but refused (with very few exceptions) to go public with any criticism. It is rare, to say, the least, for Chuck Schumer to hold his tongue on anything he cares about.
Increasingly, the president's approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems to mirror that of his former Hyde Park friend and mentor, Israel-hating Professor Rashid Khalidi, whose most recent article on the conflict appears to channel Obama's latest assault on Israel over Jerusalem.
During the presidential campaign, Obama's defenders in the Jewish community argued that Reverend Wright -- and Ali Abunimah, and Rashid Khalidi, and Bill Ayers, and Samantha Power, and Zbigniew Brzezinski -- really had no role in influencing the president's thinking on Israel and that he was as reliably pro-Israel as, say, Bill Clinton. It has turned out that Obama really is a man of the left, and his position on Israel reflects the dominant thinking on Israel in academia and other elite leftist circles. Israel does not move him (except to anger). But the Palestinian story (or at least the Palestinian narrative of their story) and the sympathy for the perceived weaker party do seem to drive his thinking. Despite the obvious, some Jews, such as Ron Kampeas, continue to carry water for him and parse his words to try to mask the blatant hostility to Israel.
If you were expecting any mea culpas from some in the Jewish community, you won't get them. Martin Peretz, Alan Dershowitz, and Ed Koch are among the very few Jewish Obama-supporters who have become very critical of the president's sharp turn against Israel. The Jews of silence greatly outnumber them. History, I think, will not judge the latter group kindly.
All of this serves as a backdrop for Iran and its nearly completed nuclear program. Iran was not the focus of the multinational nuclear talks last week. Increasingly, there is talk from the administration that sanctions may not do the job, but the alternative of military action is never discussed anymore, even as a fallback option. A New York Times story Sunday reveals that Defense Secretary Gates wrote a "secret" memo to administration officials in January, distressed that the U.S. lacked a strategy to curb Iran's nuclear program. It is hard to see how the Iranians would fear an American military attack when the president is at the same time pushing for a pullback in American commitments abroad and sees military strength as a burden.
Obama has worked to delay sanctions measures coming out of Congress. He seems willing to accept a lowest-common-denominator sanctions resolution from the Security Council, just to show that something was passed. The stage is set, I think, absent Israeli military action, for the U.S. to accept a nuclear Iran and the enormous strategic vulnerability that that outcome will bring to Israel (and other U.S. allies), given Iran's fanaticism and genocidal urges.
Iran already has a history of aggressive behavior to create death and destruction for American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it has used its proxy terror army Hezb'allah in Argentina, Lebanon, and with Hamas in Gaza. A nuclear Iran will test the West far more than the country does today. When the balance of power in the region changes and the threats grow, the administration's party line will be that more could have been done to win stronger international support to challenge Iran if only Israel had made our job easier by caving in to the demands of the president and the Palestinians.
The abandonment of an ally is on display. It is not a pretty picture. The people who may have some leverage with the president include the leaders and other elected officials in the Democratic Party, particularly the nearly four dozen Jewish House and Senate members. They need to do a lot more than sign letters. Of course, the hard left, including many Jews in that toxic environment, are thrilled with Obama's attacks on Israel.
What is more discouraging is that individual Jewish Democrats and organizations such as the NJDC, who maintain that they support a strong U.S.-Israel relationship, are blinded by partisan politics and continue to shill for the president and his pro-Israel bona fides -- a more ludicrous proposition each week. It is time for those who actually care about Israel's future to speak up and push back.
Unlike 1938, we cannot say this time that we could not anticipate the horrors that might be in front of us. A nuclear Iran is not just a game-changer, but a potential game-ender. The Obama administration chose to go to war with Israel over new housing in a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem, while Iran marches on towards becoming a nuclear menace. This suggests incredibly misplaced priorities. Or far worse.
Richard Baehr is chief political correspondent of American Thinker.
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3)China's $20 Billion Bolsters Chávez
By DAN MOLINSKI And JOHN LYONS
CARACAS—China has promised to lend $20 billion to Venezuela, the country's President Hugo Chávez said over the weekend, underscoring the Asian giant's push to deepen ties to oil-rich nations in the developing world.
The credit—which Mr. Chávez said ranks among China's biggest foreign loans ever—shows the growing importance of oil in China's energy mix, and the lengths the fast-growing nation is willing to go to secure it. Once a net oil exporter, China is now the world's third biggest oil importer.
Mr. Chávez, an outspoken U.S. adversary in Latin America, has long grumbled that the U.S. remains the biggest buyer of Venezuelan crude. The loan is a boost to his efforts to diversify sales of the major oil exporter away from U.S. refineries.
Mr. Chávez announced the loan package during a ceremony Saturday at the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas. The governments signed a half-dozen energy-related deals during the event. President Hu Jintao wasn't present, having cut his Latin America trip short to oversee earthquake recovery.
"Thank you, Hu Jintao, and thank you China," Mr. Chávez said.
China's state-run Xinhua news agency said the $20 billion in "soft loans" would be provided by state-owned China Development Bank. Chinese officials weren't immediately available to comment. In the past, some major international deals announced by Mr. Chávez haven't come to fruition.
The funds come at a key moment for Mr. Chávez, whose popularity has come under pressure as a crumbling infrastructure has led to energy shortages and other problems. Venezuela suffers the region's highest inflation rate of 25%. Making things worse, Venezuela's economy has been hit by growing energy shortages. Drought and chronic mismanagement of the country's hydroelectric resources have forced the government to impose rolling blackouts, further slashing economic output.
Mr. Chávez said the money will be used to build new power plants, highways and other projects and would be repaid with Venezuelan crude oil. The countries also formed a joint venture to develop an oil field in Venezuela's eastern Orinoco region.
China is deepening ties with resource-producing nations around the globe to fuel its rapid growth. But its rising appetite for oil is a top concern. While China is mainly powered on coal, oil demands have soared in recent years. Oil supply is now a crucial Chinese energy priority, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
"China is not as concerned as they used to be about irritating the U.S.," said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank. "I think they will continue to be very aggressive about investing in places like Venezuela."
The White House declined to comment on China's loan to Venezuela and the State Department didn't respond to requests for comment.
China's big state banks are a major weapon. By unleashing enormous loans, China can entice oil suppliers to lock in supply deals, as well as open up to Chinese companies. In recent years, China has signed tens of billions of dollars of commitments to countries such as Russia and Kazakhstan. Last year, China announced a $10 billion oil-for-credit deal with Brazil, in part to help explore massive offshore finds that could turn Brazil into a major global oil player.
The communist government's ability to sit down and negotiate broad loan agreements with foreign governments in places like Caracas or Brasilia may help it reduce the role of major oil companies at a time when much of the global oil reserves are in the hands of state controlled oil companies like Venezuela's Petroleos de Venezuela SA or Brazil's Petroleo Brasileiro SA.
If one counts heavy oil, Venezuela sits on the world's second biggest oil reserves outside Saudi Arabia, making it a prime target even if the country hasn't exactly been hotly disputed territory lately. Exxon Mobil pulled out of Venezuela after the Chávez government changed the terms of existing oil deals. Royal Dutch Shell PLC and BP PLC declined to participate in Venezuela's recent bidding round for contracts to develop its reserves.
China's imports from Latin American nations like Venezuela and Brazil remain tiny compared to its overall imports. The distance means such deals are more expensive. But the deals can bring other benefits: China often seeks to tie the loans to contracts for its oil services companies—a sector China is trying to develop.
Ultimately, U.S. consumers may benefit, experts say. Since most of the world's oil is sold on an international spot market to the highest bidder, Chinese willingness to extend credit to oil producers should boost supplies and keep prices from rising.
Boris Segura, a Latin America economist at RBS Securities, said the terms of the loan from China to Venezuela are essentially a promise to buy oil at a future date. He noted that neither country has indicated details of how the funds would be exactly paid back or any other conditions, except to say that Venezuela would offer oil.
"My impression is that China is making a commitment to Venezuela for this money, and the agreement is an expression of goodwill for the moment," Mr. Segura said. "It's the Chinese version of dollar diplomacy."
Mr. Chávez already has received, and spent, some $8 billion from China in recent years, which the nation has been paying back with crude oil. Mr. Chávez indicated last month he wanted to increase the credit-for-oil program.
Venezuela says it sends some 460,000 barrels a day of crude oil to China, although figures from the Chinese government indicate China only imported an average of 132,000 barrels per day from Venezuela during the first couple months of 2010.
Venezuela needs the Chinese funds to shore up its battered economy, which shrank 3.3%last year thanks in part to falling oil prices. Mr. Chávez also wants to reduce his country's dependence on the U.S.
The U.S. is home to most of the world's refineries that can process Venezuela's heavy crude. To change that, the Chinese government last year approved initial plans for a joint venture refinery between PdVSA and state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. to be built in Guangdong province.
Among the agreements announced Saturday, Venezuela's PdVSA and state-owned CNPC will develop the Junin 4 oil block in eastern Venezuela, which is expected toproduce 400,000 barrels a day of heavy crude.
Mr. Chávez's woes are growing ahead of important legislative elections in September.
Analysts say Mr. Chávez may need the Chinese money to prime the electoral pump as in recent months continuing economic recession and surging crime have eroded his popular support.
The government, which enforces strict currency controls, was forced to devalue Venezuela's currency in January.
But despite the devaluation and issuing millions of dollars in bonds to sop up dollar demand, Mr. Chávez has been unable to brake the sharp decline in the value of the Bolivar in the country's parallel, or black, market.
—José de Córdoba contributed to this article
3a)Leading indicators jump 1.4 pct, topping estimates
By TALI ARBEL,
NEW YORK – A gauge of future economic activity jumped 1.4 percent in March, the fastest pace of growth in 10 months.
The rise in the Conference Board's index of leading economic indictors suggests economic growth is likely to continue for the next three to six months.
Economists polled by Thomson Reuters had expected the index to grow 0.9 percent last month.
The report says the leading indicators' growth was 0.4 percent in February and 0.6 percent in January, up from previous estimates of 0.1 percent and 0.3 percent.
"The indicators point to a slow recovery that should continue over the next few months," Ken Goldstein, an economist at the Conference Board, said.
The gauge is made up of data on housing, jobs, manufacturing and financial markets, most of which has already been released. Seven of the 10 indicators increased in March, led by a big difference between overnight and 10-year interest rates, known as the interest rate spread, and a pickup in average weekly hours worked in the manufacturing sector.
A widening gap between short- and long-term interest rates is often a positive signal. It can mean investors expect economic activity to pick up.
Building permits for homes and rising stock prices also propped up the index. A decrease in consumer expectations, the money supply and manufacturers' new orders for capital goods weighed it down.
Some of the bounce was due to a rebound from the harsh winter that suppressed activity in the housing market and at factories in the Northeast, said economist Josh Shapiro at research firm MFR Inc.
But the stronger reading also reflects recent data about the economy, said Jennifer Lee, an economist at BMO Capital Markets. Consumer spending at shops, employment figures and corporate spending on technology have all improved.
The economy added 162,000 jobs in March, the biggest gain in three years, according to the government.
"A year ago, I don't think anyone would have seen such a nice recovery in the U.S. economy," Lee said. Last week, BMO raised its estimate for 2010 gross domestic product to 3.3 percent growth, up from 3.1 percent, because of stronger consumer spending, manufacturing and hiring.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4)Americans Are More Skeptical of Washington Than Ever
A desire for smaller government is especially evident since Barack Obama took office.
By ANDREW KOHUT
By almost every conceivable measure, Americans are less positive and more critical of their government these days. There is a perfect storm of conditions associated with distrust of government—a dismal economy, an unhappy public, and epic discontent with Congress and elected officials.
These are among the principal findings from a new series of Pew Research Center surveys. Rather than an activist government to deal with the nation's top problems, these surveys show that the general public now wants government reformed and a growing number want its power curtailed. With the exception of greater regulation of Wall Street, there is less of an appetite for government solutions to the nation's problems—including greater government control over the economy—than there was when Barack Obama first took office.
The public's hostility toward government seems likely to be an important election issue favoring the Republicans this fall. But the Democrats can take some solace in the fact that neither party can be confident it has the advantage among such a disillusioned electorate. Favorable ratings for both major parties, as well as for Congress, have reached record lows. Opposition to congressional incumbents, already approaching an all-time high, continues to climb.
The tea party movement, which has a small but fervent antigovernment constituency, could be a wild card in this election. On the one hand, its sympathizers are highly energized and inclined to vote Republican. On the other, many Republicans (28%), and Independents who lean Republican (30%), say the "tea party" represents their point of view better than the GOP.
.Over the course of the past decade we've seen a spike in intense antigovernment attitudes amongst a small segment of the public. The proportion saying they are angry with the federal government has doubled since 2000, increasing to 21% from 10%. And a larger minority of the public has come to view the federal government as a major threat to their personal freedom: 30% feel this way, up from 18% in a 2003 ABC News/Washington Post survey.
The Pew Research Center surveys provide a detailed picture of the public's opinions about government and how it differs from the climate of opinion in the late 1990s, when criticism of government had declined from earlier in the decade. At that time, the public's desire for government services and activism was holding steady.
This is not the case today. Just 22% say they can trust the government in Washington almost always or most of the time, among the lowest measures in half a century.
Opinions about elected officials are particularly poor. Just 25% have a favorable opinion of Congress while 65% have an unfavorable view—the lowest favorable ratings for Congress in more than two decades of Pew Research center surveys.
Favorable ratings for federal agencies and institutions have fallen since 1997-98 for seven of 13 federal agencies included in the survey. The declines have been particularly large for the Department of Education, the Food and Drug Administration, the Social Security Administration, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As in the past, poor performance is the most persistent criticism of the federal government. But increasingly Americans say that government has the wrong priorities and that has a negative effect on their day-to-day lives. Sixty-two percent say that government policies unfairly benefit some groups, while nearly as many (56%) say that government does not do enough to help average Americans.
There is also growing concern about the size and power of the federal government. The public is now evenly divided over whether federal government programs should be maintained to deal with important problems or cut back greatly to reduce the power of government.
A desire for smaller government is particularly evident since Barack Obama took office. In four surveys over the past year, about half have consistently said they would rather have a smaller government with fewer services, while about 40% have consistently preferred a bigger government providing more services. In October 2008, shortly before the presidential election, the public was evenly split on this question.
The public is now divided over whether it is a good idea for the government to exert more control over the economy than it has in recent years. Just 40% say this is a good idea, while a 51% majority says it is not. Last March, by 54% to 37%, more people said it was a good idea for the government to exert more control over the economy. The exception here is the undiminished support for the government to more strictly regulate the way major financial companies do business. This is favored by a 61% to 31% margin.
Record discontent with Congress and dim views of elected officials generally have poisoned the well for trust in the federal government. Public opinion about elected officials in Washington is relentlessly negative. Favorable ratings for the Democratic Party have fallen by 21 points—to 38% from 59%—over the past year and now stand at their lowest point in Pew Research surveys. The Republican Party's ratings, which increased to 46% in February from 40% last August, have fallen back to 37%.
Nonetheless, antigovernment sentiment appears to be a more significant driver of possible turnout among Republicans and independents than among Democrats. Perhaps most troubling for Democrats, independent voters who are highly frustrated with government are also highly committed to casting a ballot this year, and they favor the Republican candidates in their districts by an overwhelming 66% to 13% margin.
Mr. Kohut is president of Pew Research Center. He is a past president of the Gallup Organization and the founder of Princeton Survey Research Associates.
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5)George Soros's New Economy
By Andrew Foy and Brenton Stransky
There has been much talk of the opaqueness of the recent financial crisis. How could such a crisis come to fruition without forewarning from the multitude of economists, Wall Street advisors, and media soothsayers?
To address this troublesome question, the socially, politically, and economically liberal billionaire investment guru George Soros congregated some of the world's most prominent economic minds this past weekend for the inaugural meeting of The Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET). Soros is the largest financier of the group, donating $50M and using his influence to acquire the financial backing of others.
Meeting at King's College in Cambridge, England, the intellectual members of this new group grappled with the causes of the recent financial crisis. One of the keynote speakers of the event was University of California at Berkley professor of economics and 2001 Nobel Economic Laureate George Akerlof. In his address, Akerlof describes one of the core contributors of the financial crisis as the failure of capitalism:
Capitalism does work ... but unfortunately, capitalism sometimes works all too well, and then it also needs to be curbed ... We now need urgently to reestablish a financial regulatory system that works.
On the Institute's website, several of the leading advisory board members of the group share their interpretations of the mission of INET via video. Anatole Kalesky, Principal Economic Commentator for the Times of London and one of these board members, said,
Economics was created in its present form in 1776 when Adam Smith wrote the Wealth of Nations. The point of [Wealth of Nations] was to derive new ideas for public policy in order to make economies work better.
It is interesting that Kalesky chose to reference Adam Smith. Smith is considered the founder of political economics, and his seminal work Wealth of Nations' most oft-quoted passage refers to the "invisible hand" by which the free movement of the market can more efficiently promote economic growth than can a government regulated economy. This important idea is in direct contrast with Kalesky's statement.
Regarding economic theory and policy, there are really only two directions to chart: The first is toward less regulation and less government interference in the market, and the second is toward more regulation and more government intervention. Through Akerlof's and Kalesky's comments, we should understand that INET's mission is to influence world economic policy by suggesting means for more regulation and government involvement in the economy.
In reality, INET's "new" thinking is just promoting more of the same old type of Keynesian ideology that calls for greater regulation and government oversight of the free markets. For some reason, these highly regarded thinkers have failed to observe (or at least acknowledge) that it was this type of government regulation and intervention that helped cause the financial crisis in the first place.
As it happens, the financial crisis wasn't as opaque as George Soros, INET, or most financial news outlets would have you believe. The Austrian School of Economics and two of its greatest adherents (Ludwig Mises and Friedrich Hayek) postulated in the first half of the 20th century that large economies cannot be rationally planned because market prices (a function of supply and demand) cannot be perfectly known.
The recent financial crisis was to a large degree the result of the housing crisis, which in turn was the result of a reduction in the value of homes from over inflated values. Very basically, mortgages were given to borrowers, and then these mortgages were bundled into "mortgage backed securities," leveraged sometimes more than thirty times, and presented to investors as relatively safe investments.
When more homeowners than usual couldn't pay their mortgages to the investors because they overpurchased, the effect was significantly multiplied by the leverage. If only two percent of the mortgages went to foreclosure, but the portfolio of mortgage backed securities was leveraged at thirty times, then the effect would be a 60% loss. These foreclosures became known as toxic mortgages and were the contagion by which the financial crisis spread.
The above explanation is dangerously simple but important to touch on because to a large extent, the government intervention in the market directly caused this financial crisis through at least three interventions.
The first interference of the supply-and-demand dynamics of the housing market by the government came through the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act that was broadly expanded in 1993 by the Clinton administration. In his memoir My Life, Clinton says,
One of the most effective things we did was to reform the regulations governing financial institutions under the 1977 Community Reinvestment act. The law required federally insured lenders to make an extra effort to give loans to low and modest income borrowers ... After the changes we made between 1993-2000, banks would offer more than $800 billion in [loans] to borrowers covered by the law. A staggering figure that amounted to well over 90% all loans made in the 23 years of [the act].
This regulation artificially increased the demand for houses by adding more purchasers to the market. The increase in demand was artificial but temporarily increased the value of homes because more consumers were buying the same supply of houses, therefore bidding up the prices. When these buyers tried to sell their homes because they couldn't pay for them, a glut of houses (supply) hit a decreased market (demand). As a result, home prices today are regressing toward their more historical rate of growth.
The housing bubble partly created by a forced easing of lending standards was exacerbated by the Federal Reserve, who dropped interest rates to very low levels for an extended period. This second example of intervention allowed borrowers to get mortgages at historically low costs, but when the Fed increased rates, the cost of getting a traditional mortgage or keeping an adjustable rate mortgage increased greatly, further contracting demand.
The final and perhaps most important government influence in the housing market that led to the financial crisis was the creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 1968 and 1970, respectively. These quasi-government agencies provided the means for primary lending institutions (like your corner bank) to sell their mortgages, and with them, their risk. The idea was that if the bank didn't have the mortgage on its books, then it could make another mortgage, thereby increasing the money supply.
This practice reduced the corner bank's concern over the creditworthiness of the borrower, because the bank knew that it would be able to sell the mortgage to either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Because so many bad mortgages were sold to Fannie and Freddie, their balance sheets were crippled, and the Federal Housing Finance Agency took control of them in 2008. This takeover pushed the burden of the bad loans to the taxpayer and assured that future mortgages could continue to be sold to the government.
These three important interventions into the free market by well-meaning government policies led to the financial crisis from which we are recovering today -- the law of unintended consequences fully shown.
The Institute for New Economic Thinking will certainly soon propose new ways by which to guarantee future success through regulation or government planning. But as has been the case in the past, these regulations will lead only to future crises. The danger we face is that well-meaning but ill-informed regulators will follow the advice of these thinkers and ignore the lessons of the past.
George Soros's $50M investments would have been better spent by sending a copy of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and F.A. Hayek's Constitution of Liberty to everyone in his rolodex.
Brenton Stransky and Andrew Foy, M.D. are authors of The Young Conservative's Field Guide, which is recently available.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------6)We (our country) are in for a tough time, even if Obama has one term only; much of the damage has been done. As for me, if this next Medicare cut goes through, I'm finished - will call it quits. I love my work, and I do a reasonable job - but I can't support my practice in order to do good work, or essentially be paid to do inferior work.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------7) When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her.
David Bissonette
By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.
Socrates
Woman inspires us to great things, and prevents us from achieving them.
Anonymous
I had some words with my wife, and she had some paragraphs with me.
Sigmund Freud
'Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft music and dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays.'
Anonymous
'There's a way of transferring funds that is even faster than electronic banking. It's called marriage.'
Sam Kinison
'I've had bad luck with both my wives.
The first one left me, and the second one didn't.'
James Holt McGavra
Two secrets to keep your marriage brimming
1. Whenever you're wrong, admit it,
2. Whenever you're right, shut up.
Patrick Murra
The most effective way to remember your wife's birthday is to forget it once....
Ogden Nash
You know what I did before I married?
Anything I wanted to.
Anonymous
A good wife always forgives her husband when she's wrong.
Rodney Dangerfield
A man inserted an 'ad' in the classifieds: 'Wife wanted'.. Next day he received a hundred letters. They all said the same thing: 'You can have mine.'
Anonymous
First Guy (proudly): 'My wife's an angel!'
Second Guy: 'You're lucky, mine's still alive.'
Anonymous
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8)The Plum Line:Does The World Like America Again?
By Greg Sargent
The BBC reports on an exhaustive global poll finding that the world is tentatively beginning to look kindly on America again:
Views of the US around the world have improved sharply over the past year, a BBC World Service poll suggests.
For the first time since the annual poll began in 2005, America’s influence in the world is now seen as more positive than negative.
The U.S.’s global standing had reached a low point in 2007, the end of the Bush presidency. But now, the new findings led the polling director of the firm that did this survey to tell the BBC: “After a year, it appears the ‘Obama effect’ is real.”
This highlights one of the lesser-appreciated aspects of the Obama presidency: For all the valid criticism of Obama for continuing many of Bush’s national security policies, in a larger sense he really is succeeding in rehabilitating America’s global image. This is, of course, exactly what he promised to do.
What’s more, in theory, at least, Obama is doing this at considerable domestic political risk. Republicans and conservatives have attacked him relentlessly for nixing torture and moving to close Guantanamo. He’s also taking heavy fire for making substantial changes in the way American policymakers talk about the rest of the world, dropping phrases like “rogue states” and “Islamic radicalism.”
And yet, interestingly, there are no signs whatsoever that Obama is paying any price at home for this — quite the opposite. Obama consistently polls higher on foreign policy than on domestic policy. Majorities say they want Obama to concern himself with what foreign leaders think. Majorities continue to approve of his engagement with hostile foreign leaders, and simultaneously continue to rate him as a “strong” leader. The American people have rejected the right’s efforts to equate engagement with weakness.
Bottom line: For all the ways he has continued Bush policies, in a larger sense, Obama is, as promised, rebooting our relations with the rest of the world. The American people approve. And the rest of the world may be starting to come around, too.
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