It is clear from the events in Libya (where a declaration of freedom has just been proclaimed) and Tunisia (where free elections are being held--the first in living memory) that there is some kind of essntial change that is happening in the region. As stated in an earlier post there is little evidence that these fragile events will produce anything like a working democracy. But having said that, it has become apparent that the forces of the masses--peaceful in Egypt (well mostly peaceful) and Tunisia and bloody in Libya have given hope to the thousands in the region. Some, like Syria, are still a work in progress but I believe that is now a matter of time rather than of substance.
For any meaningful government to take hold there must be a social contract that is entered into between the electorate and those that represent them. There must be an open forum where policies are debated and actions taken that are consistent with the general ethos of the population. That process of trust between the population and their elected representatives may take years (in English democratic terms, almost 800 years) to develop. Too much say by a fragmented electorate leads to the kind of factionalism that is killing Israel. Too little say leads to a disconnect between the electorate and their elected leaders. New democracies don't much like transparency--the internal care and feeding of a democracy may be too much for an electorate to accept. So the fragility continues until either the electorate or their representatives win out. If the electorate gets too frisky their representatives declare that the population is ungovernable and a strongman--or woman--takes over.
And now on to Greece. For a long time there has been a disconnect between Greece's politicos and the population. It reminds me of the old Russian joke about workers who are standing around drinking vodka. When asked why they were not working they said, "They pretend that they are paying us and we pretend that we are working". In Greece the government paid for programs with money they didn't have. This gave rise to a level of expectations that kept rising until the money ran out. Now the population is left with their expectations and the politicians can only respond with harsh measures. No amount of money will fill the void. And to make matters worse, whatever money there is comes in the form of Euros given, largely by the Germans. At some point you have to admit that you are broke. Governments have defaulted on debt before and will do so in the future. Start with a new slate rather than piling up debt, the interest on which will leave Greece in penury for generations. Someone--and not the old guard--has to tell the king that he has no clothes. It might as well be now. Any course of action is likely to give rise to more civil unrest and, until the country comes to believe that it has to practice restraint and rebuild its future, no near term resolution of the problem can even begin.
The same problem exists for the United States. They are now borrowing more than 75% of GDP. For many years interest on the debt--and particularly if interest rates rise--will consume much of the working capital that the government needs to address any reasonable domestic agenda that it puts forward. Technically speaking, the US is broke. What is more, it went broke on the backs of largely middle class people. The banks were preserved. The auto companies were preserved. The people--ordinary people-- shouldered the brunt of the collapse. When citizens complain that the profits are made by business and the losses are sustained by the middle and lower classes, this is not far from the truth. The Occupy Wall Street is just the tip of the iceberg. Politicians are gridlocked--locked in their ivory tower with the inability to do anything meaningful to aid those most in need. It is shameful that 48 million Americans are on food stamps and 10 million homes--representing more than 20 million people--are in foreclosure. Those populations who were disadvantaged before the collapse are now mired in the mud. There is no social program money to be had. States and municipalities are broke. It's only a matter of time.
The OWS gang is misdirected. Banks are easy to blame. What appears more to have happened is that government is to blame. For not acting sooner. For not acting in a meaningful way when most of the economy was in distress. President Obama spent his political capital on healthcare--a worthy cause. But it should have been spent on job creation. He had a majority in both Houses of Congress and could not even get his Public Option through. The recent initiatives on mortgage financing is too little too late. The country needs a moratorium on mortgage foreclosures. An occupied house is worth more than a vacant and vandalized one. Banks should eat their losses and get help with liquidity. And let's get on with rebuilding the housing sector. These kinds of initiatives should be undertaken by a Democrat-Republican coalition where nobody takes the blame and nobody takes the credit. It won't happen. Until government is forced into some kind of action. The upcoming election makes it unlikely that such far sighted action with be undertaken. So the clock is ticking.
How it will come and from where it will come is unknown. Islam has already wrecked the American economy on 9-11. Islam could have a hand in fostering unrest in America. That was part of Bin Laden's plan. It could come from the inner cities where people without hope have little to lose. It could come from the middle classes many of whom are hopeless and living on benefits that are sure to run out. But it will come. Believe me.
Bernie.
Wednesday, 26 October 2011
Friday, 21 October 2011
The Death of a Tyrant
I guess you have to live long enough. In my lifetime I have seen the death of a myriad number of tyrants. From Hitler to Gadhaffi tyrants seem to come and go with little or no long term effect on the world. It seems that we have collective memory lapses when it comes to the grand injustices. Armenians seethe about the genocide inflicted by Turks, Jews seethe about the genocide inflicted by Hitler and so it goes. I distinctly remember the hope with which the death of Nasser was received by the world. Egypt was to emerge as an exemplary democracy that was going to galvanize the region. Never happened. Sadat took over. More wars were fought. The death of Hussain in Iraq resulted in years of bloodshed giving birth to a dysfunctional government. The death of Bin Laden has had little effect on the government of Afghanistan (even if you believe that Al Qaeda and Afghanistan were separate entities). Eventually the Taliban will prevail and the country will fall into the same kind of tyranny that was there before the Nato forces arrived History has an imperfect memory and history teachers blend into the past with little to show for their efforts. Why is that?
On the one hand you can say that mankind (with apologies to my women readers) is a fundamentally fractious bunch that is territorially and clan challenged. From the very first dawn of time clans had to be cohesive in order to survive and territories had to be defended lest game and later arable land be lost to raiders. But, you would have thought that the institution of agriculture and a relatively sedentary population would have seen that aggression was wasteful of both human and emotional resources. The Bible is redolent with acts of aggression by which the Children of Israel conquered Canaan. This in the name of God. In Biblical times the Israeli clan was quite open to integration with outsiders but in recent times outside integration through intermarriage is seen as lethal to the prospects of Judaism long term. History has taught us that relatively heterogenous populations survive better than inbred ones. Interbreeding results in strength. Darwinian theory applies as much to nations as to turtles. The strength of the United States is largely the product of the best that newcomers brought to the table. England is a polyglot of aboriginals, Saxons and French. Germany is a polyglot of northern tribes that eventually overtook the more gentrified southern Europe. Hitler was highly focused on the "purity" of race in a country whose very origins were very muddied with many clans and factions.
One theme that runs through the history of tyrants is greed. Whether greed of material things or greed of territory it seems that tyrants can't seem to get enough of them. However, history should have taught these tyrants that the shroud has no pockets and "you can't take it with you". Far flung territories was the undoing of the Romans. The Greeks (even today) could not keep it together. Smaller territorial units did better but tyrants believed that if they were doing better at home, new territories were even better. They weren't.
Another theme that runs through history is the dehumanizing of the victim before his or her undoing. Every object of genocide has been dehumanized so as to make annihilation palatable to the rank and file doing the killing. Tyrants have also been known as gentle family men. Religious too. And yet orders went out to slaughter millions of Jews or Ethiopians or whoever seemed to be the flavour of the day. For Muslims to say that Jews are the devil is to dehumanize Jews so that they be destroyed. Same for the Tutsis. Same for the driver that cuts you off to whom you give the "finger". I would bet that you would never do that in polite society. The very act of bullying is one that is preceded by dehumanizing the victim. It's never Johnny but a "fag"--a nameless dehumanized form that is worthy of ill treatment in the eyes of the bully.
I have very little confidence that the African spring offensive will produce any fundamentally positive results. We in the West believe that democracies and self determinations are the hallmark of advanced societies. So did the Greeks of old. But we seem to forget that our democracies are about 900 years old and we still don't get it right most of the times. Democracies depend on the ability of a person to trust an elected official to do his and his neighbour's will. That trust is eroding in the United States and is the subject of the 99% who say politicians don't represent their needs. In fragile countries like those in the middle east trust is hard to come by. Eventually these movements peter out and a strongman emerges to put the country back together again. Tribal or religious factions emerge. The Christians in Egypt are suffering at the hands of the Muslims. The various factions of Islam can't seem to get along.
And so we are back at the beginning. Is mankind genetically encoded with fractiousness and ill will? Probably.
Bernie
On the one hand you can say that mankind (with apologies to my women readers) is a fundamentally fractious bunch that is territorially and clan challenged. From the very first dawn of time clans had to be cohesive in order to survive and territories had to be defended lest game and later arable land be lost to raiders. But, you would have thought that the institution of agriculture and a relatively sedentary population would have seen that aggression was wasteful of both human and emotional resources. The Bible is redolent with acts of aggression by which the Children of Israel conquered Canaan. This in the name of God. In Biblical times the Israeli clan was quite open to integration with outsiders but in recent times outside integration through intermarriage is seen as lethal to the prospects of Judaism long term. History has taught us that relatively heterogenous populations survive better than inbred ones. Interbreeding results in strength. Darwinian theory applies as much to nations as to turtles. The strength of the United States is largely the product of the best that newcomers brought to the table. England is a polyglot of aboriginals, Saxons and French. Germany is a polyglot of northern tribes that eventually overtook the more gentrified southern Europe. Hitler was highly focused on the "purity" of race in a country whose very origins were very muddied with many clans and factions.
One theme that runs through the history of tyrants is greed. Whether greed of material things or greed of territory it seems that tyrants can't seem to get enough of them. However, history should have taught these tyrants that the shroud has no pockets and "you can't take it with you". Far flung territories was the undoing of the Romans. The Greeks (even today) could not keep it together. Smaller territorial units did better but tyrants believed that if they were doing better at home, new territories were even better. They weren't.
Another theme that runs through history is the dehumanizing of the victim before his or her undoing. Every object of genocide has been dehumanized so as to make annihilation palatable to the rank and file doing the killing. Tyrants have also been known as gentle family men. Religious too. And yet orders went out to slaughter millions of Jews or Ethiopians or whoever seemed to be the flavour of the day. For Muslims to say that Jews are the devil is to dehumanize Jews so that they be destroyed. Same for the Tutsis. Same for the driver that cuts you off to whom you give the "finger". I would bet that you would never do that in polite society. The very act of bullying is one that is preceded by dehumanizing the victim. It's never Johnny but a "fag"--a nameless dehumanized form that is worthy of ill treatment in the eyes of the bully.
I have very little confidence that the African spring offensive will produce any fundamentally positive results. We in the West believe that democracies and self determinations are the hallmark of advanced societies. So did the Greeks of old. But we seem to forget that our democracies are about 900 years old and we still don't get it right most of the times. Democracies depend on the ability of a person to trust an elected official to do his and his neighbour's will. That trust is eroding in the United States and is the subject of the 99% who say politicians don't represent their needs. In fragile countries like those in the middle east trust is hard to come by. Eventually these movements peter out and a strongman emerges to put the country back together again. Tribal or religious factions emerge. The Christians in Egypt are suffering at the hands of the Muslims. The various factions of Islam can't seem to get along.
And so we are back at the beginning. Is mankind genetically encoded with fractiousness and ill will? Probably.
Bernie
Thursday, 13 October 2011
Something's Happening Here
In a recent column in the New York Times Thomas Friedman looks at many of the issues raised in my last post. Read his article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/opinion/theres-something-happening-here.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Bernie
Bernie
Wednesday, 12 October 2011
The 99 Percent
It is fitting that the recent marches in New York and Canadian Thanksgiving should coincide. One of the things for which you can be thankful is that you don't live in the United States or some of the other countries that are experiencing genuine social action. However, there is another side to this story. I firmly believe that the March of the 99 Percent--or the have nots--is closely linked to the Arab spring. Both are examples of entitlement-whether political or social-denied. Not since the hunger marches of the dirty 30s has there been such a display of solidarity against what has become a significant imbalance in the socio-economic composition in the Western world. How did this happen?
To put these events in context the marches and civil disobedience associated with the Vietnam war were of a different character. These marches were the provence of either the hippies of the 1960s or college students. They had come to the conclusion that the government had lied to them and the "nobody over the age of 30 can be trusted". They marched and some of them died for the cause of making government more transparent. In this regard nothing has changed. The United States and in some regard Canada are fighting wars that do not advance the interests of the people at home. Government is unresponsive to its constituents and has become largely dysfunctional. Lunatic fringe parties can become operative because nobody believes that anyone in Washington will make a difference. Voting in elections is at an all time low in Ontario. Indifference is the hallmark of lost rights.
Let's go back to Margret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. This was the beginning of "trickle down" economics that assumed that deregulation and support for the rich was a sure fire way to make the whole economy fatter. The truth was that the only ones that got fatter were the rich and the multinational corporations that were granted large tax subsidies. These conditions prevail today. Reagan's reaction to a homeless person was, "Why doesn't he get a job". The Conservative doctrine of the day was to shrink government (which never happened), reduce taxes and deregulate industries (which did happen) including the banking industries. The argument was that deregulation lead to better competition and lower prices. What happened in fact is well known: deregulation lead to an obscene and predatory chapter in economic history. And the poor got poorer.
Fast forward to the current younger generation. They were adolescents through boom times. When family income could not come up with the cash to subsidize extravagant lifestyles parents could always borrow against the pent up value of the home. Values were always going up so why worry. Unlike the the folks in the dirty 30s who were working class poor some of the the current down-and-outers are coming down from a lifestyle that was subsidized by easy money and instant gratification. When all that ends there is complete breakdown in the social structure. The marchers want jobs that are "fulfilling" and "relevant". They want to live at home until age 30+ and put off becoming a tax paying and contributing member of society. They want what they had as kids and it is unlikely that they will every return to the lifestyles of the past. Of course that is not true of all the displaced persons. Job erosion has hit all socio-economic classes. There are the hardworking folk who worked in car factories that no longer exist, in construction that has largely gone silent, and the banking system that is saddled with a raft of bad loans. They have lost their jobs and many have lost their homes. More that 48 million Americans receive food stamps. That is ore than 10% of the population.
There is no political help. Once a staunch supporter of President Obama I now have the feeling (along with many others) that he is lost; overwhelmed by events that he cannot correct. He has largely become disengaged with the House and the Senate and he sits, isolated, hoping that the Republicans field presidential candidates that are bizarre enough to insure his re-election. President Roosevelt, in similar circumstances, took the people into his confidence and offered the Americans the "New Deal". President Obama has no "New Deal". He doesn't even have an Old Deal. Instead he speaks to like minded Americans in a style that is reminiscent of electioneering or lectures his constituents in a manner that is completely unconvincing. His solution to a deadlocked Congress is to encourage write in emails. He is seen as having subsidized the banks and under assisted the common man who was saddled with a mortgage and a house that was financially "under water". His advisors appear to be policy wonks who tinker with solutions but won't tackle the root cause of the problem: jobs. Tackling the hard problems should have been undertaken early in his presidency--not know when he is virtually electioneering for re-election. Instead he took on Medicare--a problem that certainly needed fixing but not in priority to a job package. When he had both the House and the Senate he squandered his political capital. He could have gotten his tax on the rich when he had a majority. Instead he abdicated to Congress and watched, largely from the sidelines. His bad.
So, what are the marchers marching about? There is no doubt that there is a socio-economic disparity in the US as there is in many other Western countries. Nothing new there. But, in prior years, there has always been the hope that the American Dream--or the Canadian Dream or the European Dream would pay off. That pay off seems remote indeed. It is very unlikely that the present generation in Western societies will be better off then their parents. It is also likely that transfers of wealth through inheritance will suffer as many savings plans have been savaged by the stock market. Like the Egyptians and the Tunisians they want to be stakeholders. Unlike the Egyptians and the Tunisians the Americans were, formerly, stakeholders but appear to be losing their stake in unemployment and financial chaos. People who lose their stake take to the streets. People who lose their stake take up extreme positions (viz the Germans in the 1930s). It is no accident that hate crimes are on take rise.
All of this is reminiscent of the Chinese Curse: "May You Live in Interesting Times".
Bernie.
To put these events in context the marches and civil disobedience associated with the Vietnam war were of a different character. These marches were the provence of either the hippies of the 1960s or college students. They had come to the conclusion that the government had lied to them and the "nobody over the age of 30 can be trusted". They marched and some of them died for the cause of making government more transparent. In this regard nothing has changed. The United States and in some regard Canada are fighting wars that do not advance the interests of the people at home. Government is unresponsive to its constituents and has become largely dysfunctional. Lunatic fringe parties can become operative because nobody believes that anyone in Washington will make a difference. Voting in elections is at an all time low in Ontario. Indifference is the hallmark of lost rights.
Let's go back to Margret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. This was the beginning of "trickle down" economics that assumed that deregulation and support for the rich was a sure fire way to make the whole economy fatter. The truth was that the only ones that got fatter were the rich and the multinational corporations that were granted large tax subsidies. These conditions prevail today. Reagan's reaction to a homeless person was, "Why doesn't he get a job". The Conservative doctrine of the day was to shrink government (which never happened), reduce taxes and deregulate industries (which did happen) including the banking industries. The argument was that deregulation lead to better competition and lower prices. What happened in fact is well known: deregulation lead to an obscene and predatory chapter in economic history. And the poor got poorer.
Fast forward to the current younger generation. They were adolescents through boom times. When family income could not come up with the cash to subsidize extravagant lifestyles parents could always borrow against the pent up value of the home. Values were always going up so why worry. Unlike the the folks in the dirty 30s who were working class poor some of the the current down-and-outers are coming down from a lifestyle that was subsidized by easy money and instant gratification. When all that ends there is complete breakdown in the social structure. The marchers want jobs that are "fulfilling" and "relevant". They want to live at home until age 30+ and put off becoming a tax paying and contributing member of society. They want what they had as kids and it is unlikely that they will every return to the lifestyles of the past. Of course that is not true of all the displaced persons. Job erosion has hit all socio-economic classes. There are the hardworking folk who worked in car factories that no longer exist, in construction that has largely gone silent, and the banking system that is saddled with a raft of bad loans. They have lost their jobs and many have lost their homes. More that 48 million Americans receive food stamps. That is ore than 10% of the population.
There is no political help. Once a staunch supporter of President Obama I now have the feeling (along with many others) that he is lost; overwhelmed by events that he cannot correct. He has largely become disengaged with the House and the Senate and he sits, isolated, hoping that the Republicans field presidential candidates that are bizarre enough to insure his re-election. President Roosevelt, in similar circumstances, took the people into his confidence and offered the Americans the "New Deal". President Obama has no "New Deal". He doesn't even have an Old Deal. Instead he speaks to like minded Americans in a style that is reminiscent of electioneering or lectures his constituents in a manner that is completely unconvincing. His solution to a deadlocked Congress is to encourage write in emails. He is seen as having subsidized the banks and under assisted the common man who was saddled with a mortgage and a house that was financially "under water". His advisors appear to be policy wonks who tinker with solutions but won't tackle the root cause of the problem: jobs. Tackling the hard problems should have been undertaken early in his presidency--not know when he is virtually electioneering for re-election. Instead he took on Medicare--a problem that certainly needed fixing but not in priority to a job package. When he had both the House and the Senate he squandered his political capital. He could have gotten his tax on the rich when he had a majority. Instead he abdicated to Congress and watched, largely from the sidelines. His bad.
So, what are the marchers marching about? There is no doubt that there is a socio-economic disparity in the US as there is in many other Western countries. Nothing new there. But, in prior years, there has always been the hope that the American Dream--or the Canadian Dream or the European Dream would pay off. That pay off seems remote indeed. It is very unlikely that the present generation in Western societies will be better off then their parents. It is also likely that transfers of wealth through inheritance will suffer as many savings plans have been savaged by the stock market. Like the Egyptians and the Tunisians they want to be stakeholders. Unlike the Egyptians and the Tunisians the Americans were, formerly, stakeholders but appear to be losing their stake in unemployment and financial chaos. People who lose their stake take to the streets. People who lose their stake take up extreme positions (viz the Germans in the 1930s). It is no accident that hate crimes are on take rise.
All of this is reminiscent of the Chinese Curse: "May You Live in Interesting Times".
Bernie.
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