The Election, the Presidency, and Foreign Policy

Presidents make history, but not on their own terms

By George Friedman

The American presidency is designed to disappoint. Each candidate must promise things that are beyond his power to deliver. No candidate could expect to be elected by emphasizing how little power the office actually has and how voters should therefore expect little from him. So candidates promise great, transformative programs. What the winner actually can deliver depends upon what other institutions, nations and reality will allow him. Though the gap between promises and realities destroys immodest candidates, from the founding fathers' point of view, it protects the republic. They distrusted government in general and the office of the president in particular.

Congress, the Supreme Court and the Federal Reserve Board all circumscribe the president's power over domestic life. This and the authority of the states greatly limit the president's power, just as the country's founders intended. To achieve anything substantial, the president must create a coalition of political interests to shape decision-making in other branches of the government. Yet at the same time -- and this is the main paradox of American political culture -- the presidency is seen as a decisive institution and the person holding that office is seen as being of overriding importance.

Constraints in the Foreign Policy Arena

The president has somewhat more authority in foreign policy, but only marginally so. He is trapped by public opinion, congressional intrusion, and above all, by the realities of geopolitics. Thus, while during his 2000 presidential campaign George W. Bush argued vehemently against nation-building, once in office, he did just that (with precisely the consequences he had warned of on the campaign trail). And regardless of how he modeled his foreign policy during his first campaign, the 9/11 attacks defined his presidency.

Similarly, Barack Obama campaigned on a promise to redefine America's relationship with both Europe and the Islamic world. Neither happened. It has been widely and properly noted how little Obama's foreign policy in action has differed from George W. Bush's. It was not that Obama didn't intend to have a different foreign policy, but simply that what the president wants and what actually happens are very different things.

Street-Sign Statism

Born to be Wild?

By Mark Steyn

I've spent the last few weeks tootling round various parts of Britain and Europe, and, as always, it takes me a couple of days to acclimatize to local driving norms. I quickly appreciate being on a country lane and able to see the country, as opposed to admiring rural America's unending procession of bend signs, pedestrian-approaching signs, stop signs, stop-sign-ahead signs, stop-sign-ahead-signs-ahead signs, pedestrian-approaching-a-stop-sign signs, designated-scenic-view-ahead signs, parking-restrictions-at-the-designated-scenic-view signs, etc. It takes me a little longer to get used to the idea that I'm free to pass other cars pretty much whenever I want to, as opposed to settling in behind Granny for the rest of the day as the unbroken yellow lines stretch lazily down broad, straight, empty rural blacktop, across the horizon and into infinity. Want to pass on a blind bend in beautiful County Down or the Dordogne? Hey, it's your call. Your judgment. Fancy that.

Italian tanks may have five gears for reverse and only one for forward, but in a Fiat the size of your cupholder it's a different story. The French may plant trees on the Champs-élysées because the Germans like to march in the shade, but they'll still pass you at 120 on the Grande Corniche. When you've done your last surrender-monkey crack, that cloud in your windshield is a dinged deux chevaux leaving your fully loaded SUV for dust. Continentals would never for a moment tolerate the restrictive driving conditions of the United States, and they don't understand why Americans do. Mon dieu, is not America the land of the car chase?

Gitcha motor running

Head out on the highway

Looking for adventure . . .

America, the Law-crazed

The zeal for legislating has turned us all into criminals of one type or another

By John Stossel 

Over the past few decades, America has locked up more and more people. Our prison population has tripled. Now we jail a higher percentage of people than even the most repressive countries: China locks up 121 out of every 100,000 people; Russia 511. In America? 730.

"Never in the civilized world have so many been locked up for so little," The Economist says.

Yet we keep adding more laws and longer jail terms.

Lavrentiy Beria, head of Joseph Stalin's secret police in the old Soviet Union, supposedly said, "Show me the man, and I'll show you the crime." Stalin executed anyone he considered a threat, and it didn't take much to be considered a threat. Beria could always find some law the targeted person had broken. That's easy to do when there are tons of vague laws on the books. Stalin "legally" executed nearly a million people that way.

I'm not saying that America is like Stalin's Russia, but consider the federal laws we have. The rules that bind us now total more than 160,000 pages. The Congressional Research Service said it was unable to count the number of crimes on the books. Yet last week the feds added or proposed another thousand pages. States and cities have thousands more. Have you read them all? Have our "representatives" read them all? You know the answer.

Sports Socialism

Why London Is Yawning Over the Olympics

By Shikha Dalmia

On the eve of the 30th Summer Olympics, the most striking thing about this city was the complete lack of street buzz. In contrast to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when all of China was mobilized for the games, there was no discernible excitement in the air.

Commercial establishments are not planting new flowers or scrubbing old buildings to impress foreign guests. There are no giant screens in public squares hyping the extravaganza. Streets aren’t lined with posters of British athletes. Among the few signs that something is afoot—besides roving armed troops—are tacky plastic runners wrapped around park fences depicting stick figures in various sporting poses (a decoration more worthy of a high school prom than an international event). Many Londoners I’ve spoken to—taxi drivers, dry cleaners, residents—consider the whole thing a “bloody nuisance” that they are planning to observe from some other European city far from the traffic snarls and the madding crowds.

No doubt the many snafus in the run-up to the games have dampened public enthusiasm. But the bigger reason Londoners are so unmoved is that the era of nationalistic fervor whipped up through mega-projects is over in the West. The West, quite simply, may have outgrown these games.

The London Olympics, like every Olympics before them, are hopelessly over-budget. The city has already blown its original $4 billion budget target four times over on obligatory new stadiums and athlete villages. Meanwhile, G4S, the firm that was awarded the security contract for the games, failed to deliver enough personnel, forcing the military to be called in. British authorities have also perched surface-to-air missiles on rooftops of private apartment buildings, scaring the living bejeezus out of residents. As if that weren’t enough, a scheme to award tickets via lottery went horribly wrong when overburdened websites crashed, leaving people who had paid thousands of dollars up front hanging for weeks before finding out if they were among the lucky winners.

Hyper Mario And Germany On Verge Of All Out Warfare

Oh, and don't call him Super Mario any more

By Tyler Durden

Back in March we wrote "Mario Draghi Is Becoming Germany's Most Hated Man" for one reason: a few months after the former Goldman appartchik was sworn in to replace Trichet with promises he would not "print" Draghi did just that in a covert way via $1.3 trillion in LTROs, that immediately hit the economy and sent inflation across Europe soaring. We said that: "Slowly but surely the realization is dawning on Germany that while it was sleeping, perfectly confused by lies spoken in a soothing Italian accent that the ECB will not print, not only did Draghi reflate the ECB's balance sheet by an unprecedented amount in a very short time, in the process not only sending Brent in Euros to all time highs (wink, wink, inflation, as today's European CPI confirmed coming in at 2.7% or higher than estimated) but also putting the BUBA in jeopardy with nearly half a trillion in Eurosystem"receivables" which it will most likely never collect."

Israel catches Turkey in two minds

The Plot Thickens 

By M K Bhadrakumar 

The crisis in Syria has prompted the Israeli leadership to make a strong pitch for repairing the ties with Turkey. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu personally took the initiative. 

The Israeli leader's move most certainly enjoys American backing, while Netanyahu also felt emboldened by his consolidation within Israel's ruling coalition to press ahead with the initiative. But the clincher would have been that Turkey is a manifestly divided house with regard to the policies to be pursued over the Syrian crisis. The ball is now on the Turkish side of the court. 

On Monday, Netanyahu met in his office an eight-member team of senior Turkish journalists in a high-profile attempt to break the ice between Israel and Turkey. This is the first such meeting since the incident in May 2010 involving the killing of nine Turks by Israeli commandos who tried to stop the Turkish ship Mavi Marmarafrom breaking the Gaza blockade, which pushed the ties between the two countries into a free-fall. 

Turkey expelled Israel's ambassador when Tel Aviv refused to meet its demands, which included an official apology for the incident, compensation for the families of the victims and an end to the Gaza blockade. Ankara also froze all military and security cooperation with Israel and filed criminal charges against the chiefs of the Israeli armed forces. 

Washington tried in vain to cool down tempers while Turkish and Israeli diplomats negotiated behind the scenes to reach a mutually acceptable formula. But Israeli hardliners including Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman refused to countenance an apology or to allow Ankara a say in the blockade of Gaza. 

Doctors for Socialized Medicine

Government-guaranteed insurance is the equivalent of a public school

 

BY MICHAEL J HURD 

This is perhaps my favorite line from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged with regard to doctors who support, or tolerate, socialized medicine:

“Let them discover, in the operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of man who resents it—and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn’t.”

Don’t you want doctors who have initiative, confidence and self-esteem?

If it doesn’t matter, then what qualities are you planning to rely on when it comes time to cure your disease, or perhaps even save your life?

If you were in the middle of a natural disaster, you’d gravitate towards a leader with confidence, initiative and rationality (unless you were such a leader yourself). You wouldn’t gravitate towards someone who seems to think, “Well, whatever you do to me, I don’t care.”

A medical problem, especially a serious one, constitutes a crisis. It’s no less a crisis than a natural disaster, at least so far as you and your loved ones are concerned. Medical professionals are your leaders.

They need more than training and competence, although these are crucial.

Just as crucial is the fact that they’re left alone to think, rather than beholden to some incomprehensible government formula developed by a national health board at the Department of Health and Human Services in Rockville, MD.

Welcome to the Kurdish Spring

Follow the oil 

By Pepe Escobar 

Turkish foreign policy, codified by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, used to be known in shorthand as "zero problems with our neighbors". When Turkey started calling for regime change in Syria, it turned into "a major problem with one of our neighbors" (even tough Davutoglu himself admitted on the record the policy change failed).

Now, in yet another twist, it's becoming "all sorts of problems with two of our neighbors". Enter - inevitably - Ankara's ultimate taboo; the Kurdish question. 

Ankara used to routinely chase and bomb Kurdish PKK guerrillas crossing from Anatolia to Iraqi Kurdistan. Now it may be positioning itself to do the same in Syrian Kurdistan.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan came out all guns blazing on Turkish TV; "We will not allow a terrorist group to establish camps in northern Syria and threaten Turkey." 

He was referring to the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Party (PYD) - affiliated with the PKK; after a quiet deal with the Assad regime in Damascus, the PYD is now in control of key areas in northeast Syria. 

So Ankara may provide logistics to tens of thousands of Syria's NATO "rebels" - which include plenty of hardcore Sunni Arab "insurgents" formerly known as terrorists; but as long as Syrian Kurds - which are part of the Syrian opposition - demonstrate some independence, they immediately revert to being considered "terrorists". 

It's all conditioned by Ankara's immediate nightmare; the prospect of a semiautonomous Syrian Kurdistan very closely linked to Iraqi Kurdistan. 

This Swedish report [1] contains arguably the best breakdown of the hyper-fragmented Syrian opposition. The "rebels" are dominated by the exile-heavy Syrian National Council (SNC) and its Hydra-style militias, the over 100 gangs that compose the Not Exactly Free Syrian Army (FSA). 

India’s Socialist Mortmain

Why would we want the government to take over our health care system?

By Jeff Harding

[Kameswara Rao, head of the power and utilities practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers India,] said Indian policy makers didn’t anticipate how quickly electricity demand would rise in the past few years as economic growth has expanded the ranks of the middle class and created more consumers of power-hungry modern appliances like air-conditioners. He said state transmission utilities badly need investment and skilled manpower to cope with grid problems and provide protections against massive outages.

The above statement is the key to India’s energy problems.

One may ask why that is.

It is clear that India is still hobbled by the dead hand of Nehru and Gandhi, the socialist leaders of the one-party state that dominated India for more than 50 years. They took the model developed by the Soviets and embarked on years of 5-year plans that kept India in the economic dark age.

While the country’s new leaders profess a dedication to free market-based reforms, they are far, far away from releasing the potential of its people. India’s vast bureaucracy still exists, frustrating development or, at times conniving with crony capitalists. The reason that India’s policy makers didn’t anticipate demand is because bureaucrats never do. The reason that there isn’t sufficient capital is because there is not enough capital in India to tax away and built infrastructure. Those who have capital would be loathe to waste it by investing in a government run enterprise.

Holy war in Syria and the course of history

The Owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk 

By Dmitry Shlapentokh

Washington is clearly displeased with the intransigence of both Beijing and Moscow on dealing with the Syrian crisis and their unwillingness to justify a direct US strike against President Bashar al-Assad with the full authorization of the United Nations. The US representatives to the UN have described vividly the brutality of the Assad regime as an appeal to the moral fiber of the international community and in particular, of course, China and Russia.

The governments of both of those countries are unconvinced, and for a variety of reasons. One is that the moral indignation of Washington hardly stands the test of history. Washington was a good friend of Josef Stalin, Augusto Pinochet and the Shah of Iran. It has demonstrated that it had no prejudice when it comes to dealing with pressing geopolitical programs. It can deal with dictators on both the right and the left. It also has done nothing during genocidal slaughters, from the Jewish Holocaust to the Rwanda massacres.

At the same time, it would not be logical to assume that Washington has no foreign friends in its Syrian venture. One that seems an unlikely ally is Kavkaz Center, the major Internet vehicle of jihadis from the Russian North Caucasus. Recently, Moscow intensified its efforts against the website, but Kavkaz Center successfully dodges the Kremlin efforts and continues to function as a weblog. Its contributors praise the Syrian opposition as kindred souls and implicitly praise their efforts to get rid of the Assad regime. 

This is not an isolated occurrence. Iraqi authorities have informed the world that a steady stream of jihadis has been moving into Syria to join the fight against Assad. They have not just praised US pressure on Assad but actually encouraged direct military involvement of the US in Syrian affairs and, implicitly, direct confrontation with Iran. Indeed, confrontation with Iran would most likely be the end result of such a conflict. But while encouraging its direct involvement, these jihadis are hardly friends of the US. 

The Bipartisan War on Individual Liberty

Politicians on the both left and right want to restrict your freedom

A. Barton Hinkle 

The good people at Gallup perform a valuable public service by keeping track of what Americans consider the nation's most important problem. Five years ago, it was Iraq. Last summer, the economy weighed most heavily on the public mind. It still does this summer.

Or at least that is the view of the average men and women in the street. To their betters, however, the real problem facing the nation is something far different: Americans enjoy entirely too much freedom.

You can see this in the various proposals, which are legion, to take that freedom away. Late last month, there was a collective sigh of relief from the collectivist intelligentsia when the Supreme Court said Congress could force people to buy a consumer product. But within days, a writer for The Atlantic noted with a mixture of horror and dismay that the United States is "the only advanced country without a national vacation policy." He ginned up a handy infographic to illustrate the point.

Most Americans don't use all the vacation time they have now, but evidently federal mandates are needed nonetheless: The infographic quickly became a must-post item on approximately half the blogs in America. So did another infographic showing that the U.S. stands alone among advanced countries in the number of weeks of paid maternity leave it forces employers to provide (none).

We are all supposed to feel terrible about such marked contrasts, even though being unique implies nothing by itself. The U.S. also is the only nation in the world to apply an exclusionary rule. That rule says improperly obtained evidence cannot be used against a criminal defendant. In other advanced countries, a wrongful search can still nail you. America's way is better.

Free Trade

The Only International Economic Policy That a Country Needs 

John Bright

By Patrick Barron

The international economic scene is dominated by state interventions at all levels. Daily we read of disputes over exchange-rate manipulation, protectionist tariffs followed by retaliatory tariffs, highly regulated free-trade blocs that erect trade barriers to nonbloc nations, bilateral trade agreements, and more. For instance, Great Britain is a member of the European Union (EU) but not of the European Monetary Union (EMU), meaning that it abides by all the regulations and pays all the assessments to remain a member of the EU in order to trade freely with the other members of the 27-country EU. But it does not use the common currency, the euro, which is used by only 17 of the EU members. British industry chafes at the many seemingly meaningless and bizarre regulations that raise the cost of British goods just so Britain can trade freely within the EU. Some regulations are so onerous that some British manufactures will be put out of business. The pro-EU faction in Britain, such as the leadership of the three main parties — the Conservatives, Labour, and the Liberal Democrats — recognizes the damage but proposes to lobby for special exemptions on a case-by-case basis. The anti-EU faction, led by the United Kingdom Independent Party (UKIP), wants Britain out of the EU entirely, arguing that the cost of membership is too great and that the loss of sovereignty is unconstitutional. The same debate can be seen within every EU nation to some degree.

By now everyone is aware of the euro debt crisis — that is, that many members of the EMU are massively in debt. Lower borrowing costs and the ability of members to monetize their debts through the European Central Bank (ECB) by way of their captive national central banks created incentives that proved too powerful for governments to resist, so they embarked on profligate spending programs at the governmental level and enjoyed, briefly, a property boom that has come crashing down. Their way out of this mess is unclear. Some economists propose raising taxes and cutting programs, commonly called "austerity." Others have called for these countries to leave the EMU, reinstate their own national currencies, and devalue against the euro, supposedly to restore "competitiveness." Others have called for outright default on their euro-denominated debt.

Where’s Mel Gibson When You Need Him?

California: The Road Warrior Is Here

By Victor Davis Hanson 

George Miller’s 1981 post-apocalyptic film The Road Warrior ^[1] envisioned an impoverished world of the future. Tribal groups fought over what remained of a destroyed Western world of law, technology, and mass production. Survival went to the fittest — or at least those who could best scrounge together the artifacts of a long gone society somewhat resembling the present West.

In the case of the Australian film, the culprit for the detribalization of the Outback was some sort of global war or perhaps nuclear holocaust that had destroyed the social fabric. Survivors were left with a memory of modern appetites but without the ability to reproduce the means to satisfy them:  in short, a sort of Procopius’s description of Gothic Italy circa AD 540.

Our Version

Sometimes, and in some places, in California I think we have nearly descended into Miller’s dark vision — especially the juxtaposition of occasional high technology with premodern notions of law and security. The state deficit is at $16 billion. Stockton went bankrupt; Fresno is rumored to be next ^[2]. Unemployment stays over 10% and in the Central Valley is more like 15%. Seven out of the last eleven new Californians went on Medicaid, which is about broke. A third of the nation’s welfare recipients are in California. In many areas, 40% of Central Valley high school students do not graduate — and do not work, if the latest crisis in finding $10 an hour agricultural workers is any indication. And so on.

Our culprit out here was not the Bomb (and remember, Hiroshima looks a lot better today ^[3] than does Detroit, despite the inverse in 1945). The condition is instead brought on by a perfect storm of events that have shred the veneer of sophisticated civilization. Add up the causes. One was the destruction of the California rural middle class. Manufacturing jobs, small family farms, and new businesses disappeared due to globalization, high taxes, and new regulations. A pyramidal society followed of a few absentee land barons and corporate grandees, and a mass of those on entitlements or working for government or employed at low-skilled service jobs. The guy with a viable 60 acres of almonds ceased to exist.

The rise and fall of Turkey's Erdogan

In the final analysis, only Israel can resolve Erdogan's dilemma

By M K Bhadrakumar 

Israel's emergence from the woodwork can signal only one thing: the Syrian crisis is moving towards the decisive phase. The lights have been switched on in the operation theatre and the carving of Syria is beginning. What is going to follow won't be a pretty sight at all since the patient is not under anesthesia, and the chief surgeon prefers to lead from behind while sidekicks do the dirty job. 

So far, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have done the maximum they could to destabilize Syria and remove the regime headed by President Bashar al-Assad. But Bashar is still holding out. Israeli expertise is now needed to complete the unfinished business. 

Someone is needed to plunge a sharp knife deep into Bashar's back. Jordan's king can't do the job; he measures up only to Bashar's knees. The Saudi and Qatari sheikhs with their ponderous, flabby body are not used to physical activity; the North Atlantic Treaty Organization prefers to be left alone, having burnt its fingers in Libya with a bloody operation that borders on war crime. That leaves Turkey.

In principle, Turkey has the muscle power, but intervention in Syria is fraught with risks and one of the enduring legacies of Kemal Ataturk is that Turkey avoids taking risks. Besides, Turkey's military is not quite in top form. 

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is also unable to carry the majority opinion within Turkey in favor of a war in Syria, and he is navigating a tricky path himself, trying to amend his country's constitution and make himself a real sultan - as if French President Francois Hollande were to combine the jobs of Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault and Socialist Party chief Martine Aubry. 

Obviously, Erdogan can't risk his career. Besides, there are imponderables - a potential backlash from the Alawite minority within Turkey (which resents the surge of Salafism under Erdogan's watch) and the perennial danger of walking into a trap set up by militant Kurds. 

The New American Radicals

Lessons from another era

The populists who scapegoat intellectuals and trash civil liberties are Jacobins, not conservatives

By PETER VIERECK

During the Jacobin Revolution of 1793, in those quaint days when the lower classes still thought of themselves as the lower classes, it was for upper-class sympathies and for notreading “subversive leftist literature” that aristocrats got in trouble.

Note the reversal in America. Here the lower classes seem to be the upper classes–they have automobiles, lace curtains, and votes. Here, in consequence, it is for alleged lower-class sympathies–for “leftist” sympathies–that the aristocrats are purged by the lower class.

In reality those lower-class sympathies are microscopic in most of that social register (Lodge, Bohlen, Acheson, Stevenson, and Harvard presidents) which McCarthy is trying to purge; even so leftist sympathies are the pretext given for the purge. Why is it necessary to allege those lower-class sympathies as pretext? Why the pretext in the first place? Because in America the suddenly enthroned lower classes cannot prove to themselves psychologically that they are now upper-class unless they can indict for pro-proletariat subversion those whom they know in their hearts to be America’s real intellectual and social aristocracy.

On Milton Friedman's 100th Birthday

He's Needed More Than Ever

By THOMAS SOWELL

If Milton Friedman were alive today — and there was never a time when he was more needed — he would be 100 years old. He was born on July 31, 1912. But Professor Friedman's death at age 94 deprived the nation of one of those rare thinkers who had both genius and common sense.

Most people would not be able to understand the complex economic analysis that won him a Nobel Prize, but people with no knowledge of economics had no trouble understanding his popular books like "Free to Choose" or the TV series of the same name.

In being able to express himself at both the highest level of his profession and also at a level that the average person could readily understand, Milton Friedman was like the economist whose theories and persona were most different from his own — John Maynard Keynes.

Like many, if not most, people who became prominent as opponents of the left, Professor Friedman began on the left. Decades later, looking back at a statement of his own from his early years, he said: "The most striking feature of this statement is how thoroughly Keynesian it is."

Shame Is Going the Way of the Dinosaur

How Times Have Changed

by Walter E. Williams

Having been born in 1936 has allowed me to witness both societal progress and retrogression. High on the list of things made better in our society are the great gains in civil liberties and economic opportunities, especially for racial minorities and women. People who are now deemed poor have a level of material wealth that would have been a pipe dream to yesteryear's poor. But despite the fact that today's Americans have achieved an unprecedented level of prosperity, we have become spiritually and morally impoverished compared with our ancestors.

Years ago, spending beyond one's means was considered a character defect. Today not only do people spend beyond their means but also there are companies that advertise on radio and TV to eliminate or reduce your credit card and mortgage debt. Students saddled with college loans have called for student loan forgiveness. Yesterday's Americans would have viewed it as morally corrupt and reprehensible to accumulate debt and then seek to avoid paying it. It's nothing less than theft. What's worse is there's little condemnation of it by the rest of us.

Earlier this year, as a result of a budget crunch, the Philadelphia School District had to lay off 91 school police officers. During the 1940s and '50s, I attended Philadelphia schools in poor neighborhoods. The only time we saw a policeman in school was during an assembly period when we had to listen to a boring lecture about safety. Because teacher assaults are tolerated – 4,000 over the past five years in Philadelphia – school police are needed. Prior to the '60s, few students would have thought of talking back to a teacher, and no one would have cursed, much less assaulted, a teacher.

Feds Want to Help You

Whether You Want Help or Not

The FDA is trying to give food stamps to people who do not want or need them

By A. Barton Hinkle 

There are two powerful reasons for giving government aid to the poor, one good and one bad. It alleviates human suffering, which is good. And it increases dependence on government, which is bad.

Or at least it is bad if you believe in virtues such as personal responsibility and self-reliance. On the other hand, if you are (let us say) a Democratic congressman or a bureaucrat in the Department of Health and Human Services, then swelling the rolls of those who need your help could be a very good thing indeed. At least for you.

This might sound just the teeniest bit paranoid and nutty. But that does not make it wrong; even paranoids can have enemies. And the past few weeks have produced a passel of evidence that government and its principal cheerleaders would like very much to render Americans more rather than less dependent on them. Consider:

A few days ago the Department of Health and Human Services adopted a change in policy that “ends welfare reform as we know it,” according to Rep. Dave Camp, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. HHS has decided to grant waivers to states that will knock out the keystone of the welfare-reform arch: the work requirement. That requirement helped cut welfare rolls in half. But now states will be able to “test alternative and innovative strategies,” including “multi-year career pathways” and “a comprehensive universal engagement system,” whatever that is. Neoliberal Mickey Kaus calls it, probably correctly, a “stay-on-the-dole-while-we-keep-you-busy-with-anything-other-than-actual-work” system.

The Department of Agriculture also has been doing its part for the welfare state: It has been producing Spanish-language radio novelas dramatizing the desirability of signing up for food stamps, or whatWashington calls the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). “Will Claudia convince Ramon to apply for SNAP? Don’t miss our next episode of Hope Park!” concluded a typical spot. (Once word of the campaign spread, the department deep-sixed it.)

Corruption and Nepotism Haunt Southern Europe

The Origins of Crisis

Jobs for your friends, contracts for your relatives, cash handouts for everyone: that's how politics works in Sicily. Now the island is on the verge of bankruptcy. It's an example of the underlying problem plaguing many parts of the southern European countries now struggling to contain the euro crisis.

By Hans-Jürgen Schlamp

Marcello Bartolotta, a surgeon from the Sicilian town of Messina, has hit the jackpot. He has just been granted a seat in the regional parliament as a replacement for a parliamentarian from his party who recently died. The assembly will be dissolved in October ahead of regional elections. That, though, is hardly a problem for Bartoletta. After all, for the three or four remaining sessions he will attend until then, he will get some €40,000 ($49,000), in addition to expenses.

That, though, is if Sicily doesn't go bankrupt first. And there is a chance it may.

Bartolotta's 89 fellow lawmakers and their 400 assistants have already been told that their July salaries won't be paid out punctually. The "Onorevoli," the "Honorables," as Italian parliamentarians call themselves, are up in arms at the announcement and the Palazzo Reale, where the assembly has its seat, echoed with shouts of "We want our money!" Yet the parliamentarians themselves have contributed significantly to Sicily's financial misery.

The problem isn't just that they receive a monthly net salary of €10,000 to €15,000 -- more than members of the national assembly in Rome get -- without working terribly hard. The assembly rarely convenes and the turnout is usually quite low. Even the fact that almost a third of the Honorables have a criminal record, are being sued or are under investigation is a cosmetic blemish at most. The true problem lies in what they have been doing: The political class in semi-autonomous Sicily has been doling out jobs and cash so lavishly over the years that the region is at risk of financial collapse.

Too Many Public Sector Jobs

The politicians have proven particularly adept at finding public service jobs for their friends. Today, some 144,000 Sicilians get their salary from the state, and one in eight of them is the head of something or other. Many administrative offices are full of people who have no idea what they're supposed to be doing.

The Monetization of Everything

What the Federal Reserve System can do and what it will do are two different things

By Gary North

The Federal Reserve System can monetize anything. It can create digital money and buy any asset it chooses to buy. There are no legal restrictions on what it is allowed to monetize.

If it were to do this, and it continued to do this, the dollar would fall to zero value. This would produce hyperinflation. The result would be the destruction of all dollar-based creditors. Debtors could pay off their loans with the sale of an egg or a pack of cigarettes. This is what farmers did in 1923 in Germany and Austria.

The economists who advise the Federal Reserve System know this. The bankers who run the banks that own the shares of the 12 regional FED banks know this. Bernanke knows this.

The day will come when the decision-makers on the Federal Open Market Committee will have to fish or cut bait. They will have to decide: mass inflation (20%) or hyperinflation (QEx). They will have to decide: recession or hyperinflation.

Will they see that it’s really Great Depression 2 (not just mass inflation) vs. hyperinflation? I don’t think so. They have been able to manipulate the economy for over 90 years between recessions and booms. Only once did it become a depression: 1930-40. That depression became deflationary, 1931-34, because the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (1934) did not exist. Depositors took their money out and did not redeposit it. That created monetary deflation through the bankruptcy of banks. The fractional reserve process imploded.

A Cloud of Doom

Don't Believe In The Central Banking Theater Of The Absurd

The astounding hubris of central bankers is comical, but the consequences of their actions are playing out as needless tragedy.

By Charles Hugh Smith

Central bankers present themselves as Masters of the Universe. They are, but only in their own little Theater of the Absurd. In the real world, they are as clueless as any other mortals about the unintended consequences of their actions and the speed with which the corrupted, unsustainable financial Status Quo will decay and die. 

The only attribute they possess in abundance is hubris. Their claims to godhood are comical when viewed in their little Theater of the Absurd, but they become tragic when the consequences of their actions play out in the real world.

Their job, such as it is, is to deflate a tottering system based on phantom assets slowly enough that it doesn't implode. Stripped of mumbo-jumbo, their strategy to accomplish this is to inflate other phantom assets to replace the phantom assets that are falling to zero.

All their promises, preening and posturing boil down to patting their breast pocketand speaking vaguely about a "secret plan" to end the crisis without bringing down the system that spawned the crisis as a consequence of its very nature.

There is no secret plan, of course, and no secret financial weapons; all they really have is artifice and the hubris to present artifice as reality.

To admit the usustainable is not sustainable would bring the entire rotten edifice crashing down, so the central bankers invite us into their little Theater of the Absurd and evince a phantom confidence in their phantom solutions that depend on phantom assets.

A swollen cloud of doom hangs over the central banker's little Theater of the Absurd; all their chest-pounding hubris and empty confidence is artifice, as phantom as the assets they claim will replace the phantom assets that have been destroyed by exposure to reality.

On their absurd little stage, they claim the Emperor's robes are thick and fine; and we laugh, bitterly, for these threadbare lies are all they have to "save" a parasitic, predatory, anti-democratic financial Status Quo.