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Spengler is here with kudos for the economic prescience of Pope Benedict.
“President Roosevelt is magnificently right,” John Maynard Keynes wrote of president Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s decision to devalue the American dollar in 1933. If any economic policy stance deserves such praise today, it is that of Pope Benedict XVI, whose views on ethics and economics occasioned a flurry of comment last month. Italy’s Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti observed, “The prediction that an undisciplined economy would collapse by its own rules can be found” in a 1985 paper (see Market Economy and Ethics, Acton Institute) by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, which Tremonti called “prophetic”. I don’t know whether it was prophetic, but the future pope was right, and magnificently so.
An unethical economy, he argued, will destroy itself, and economics cannot determine whether any activity is ethical or not. Internet stock valuations, the market delusion of a decade ago, presumed that pornography, gaming, music downloads and shopping would be the driving forces of the future economy. It is easy to ridicule this Alice-in-Wonderland accounting after the fact, just as it is easy to laugh at television advertisements that even today urge Americans to buy homes because their prices double every 10 years (for example this commercial by the National Association of Realtors posted on YouTube). But what should we say of an economy based on consuming as much as one can without troubling to bring children into the world?
Here is what then Cardinal Ratzinger said about it more than 20 years ago: …
… Americans spent the 1990s in a fantasy world, where technological change supposedly would transform the human condition, taking as their intellectual guide science-fiction writers like William Gibson. There was nothing wrong with the market mechanism as such; what went haywire was the childish imaginings of the American public.
The future pope’s 1985 paper insists that it is mere moralizing, not morality, to dismiss what economics has learned about the market mechanism. But economics cannot find a remedy for the imagination of an evil heart, or a foolish one, for that matter. Ethics founded on religion are the precondition for long-term economic success, if for no other reason than economies depend on family formation. If the present economic crisis helps the West to reflect on its moral weakness, the cost well may be worth it.
Camille Paglia’s monthly Salon column is here. Among other things, she wants to know what the Clintons have on Obama. And she sees Mumbai as a warning.
… Because seven years have passed since 9/11 without another attack on native soil, many Americans, particularly urban professionals, seem to have been lulled into a false feeling of security. But jihadism as a world movement — even if its membership is a tiny fraction of young Muslim men — will continue to pose a serious threat to every open democratic society over the next century and more. Anyone who has studied ancient history knows that great civilizations, from Egypt and Persia to Rome and Byzantium, broke down in stages separated in some cases by many superficially tranquil decades. Because of the unprecedented fragility of our intertwined power grid and complex transportation system, the technological West is highly vulnerable to sabotage and chaos.
The tragic fate of so many innocent victims in Mumbai deserves our pity. But what should live in special infamy was the ruthless execution of the Lubavitcher rabbi, Gavriel Hertzberg, and his lovely wife, Rivka, who was 5 months pregnant. These were two idealistic young people of obvious warmth and humanity, who sought only to serve. The rescue by their Indian nanny of their orphaned 2-year-old son, Moshe, crying and smeared with his parents’ blood, is already legendary. Was this zeroing in on the Chabad Jewish Center in Mumbai about Israel, or was it simply a gruesome eruption of the medieval tradition of anti-Semitism? Why have Muslim organizations, very quick to protest insulting cartoons, been mostly silent about the atrocities in Mumbai?
The slaughter of the Hertzbergs and other Jews at Chabad House should be a wake-up call to Western liberals who believe that jihadism can be defeated through reason and happy talk. Only other Muslims can launch the stringent internal reform necessary to stomp this barbaric extremism out. But the events in Mumbai confirmed my opinion about the looming problem of a nuclear Iran: While I oppose all American military operations and bases in the Mideast, I continue to believe that Israel, whose security is directly threatened, has every right to take preemptive military action against Iran. …
John Fund says that maybe now Barack Obama will find the courage to speak out against Chicago corruption.
… To date, Mr. Obama’s approach to Illinois corruption has been to congratulate himself for dodging association with it. “I think I have done a good job in rising politically in this environment without being entangled in some of the traditional problems of Chicago politics,” he told the Chicago Tribune last spring. At the time, Mr. Obama was being grilled over news that he bought his house through a land deal involving Tony Rezko, a political fixer who was later convicted on 16 corruption counts. Rezko is mentioned dozens of times in the 76-page criminal complaint against Mr. Blagojevich.
Mr. Obama has an ambiguous reputation among those trying to clean up Illinois politics. “We have a sick political culture, and that’s the environment Barack Obama came from,” Jay Stewart, executive director of the Chicago Better Government Association, told ABC News months ago. Though Mr. Obama did support ethics reforms as a state senator, Mr. Stewart noted that he’s “been noticeably silent on the issue of corruption here in his home state including, at this point, mostly Democratic politicians.”
One reason for Mr. Obama’s reticence may be his close relationship with the powerful Illinois senate president Emil Jones. Mr. Jones was a force in Mr. Obama’s rise. In 2003, the two men talked about the state’s soon-to-be vacant U.S. Senate seat. As Mr. Jones has recounted the conversation, Mr. Obama told him “You can make the next U.S. senator.” Mr. Jones replied, “Got anybody in mind?” “Yes,” Mr. Obama said. “Me.”
Starting in 2003, Mr. Jones worked to burnish Mr. Obama’s credentials by making him lead sponsor of bills including a watered-down ban on gifts to lawmakers. Most of Mr. Obama’s legislative accomplishments came as result of his association with Mr. Jones. …
David Warren looks at Obama’s appointments.
Now that Barack Obama is making the sort of appointments John McCain would have made — mainstream centrists from the political establishment — I can perhaps stop worrying about “change we can believe in.” The president-elect himself will be the only unknown quantity in the mix, and the appointments suggest he may turn out to be little distinguishable from George W. Bush both in foreign policy (force where necessary, but diplomacy when there is any hope for it at all), and economic policy (throw money at problems, in proportion to the public perception of the problem’s urgency).
Mr. Obama will say and sometimes do ghastly things in social policy — be verbally as “pro-choice” as Mr. Bush has been “pro-life” — but this is unlikely to make much difference. Social policy is out of a president’s hands. He makes symbolic statements, to assuage his key constituencies, as all politicians do. But as we are reminded by the California court challenge against the result of the state referendum on same-sex marriage, the real decision-making has been taken out of the hands of voters, and put in the hands of elite judges and lawyers. The will to confront this extra-constitutional migration of power was not there, even under Reagan.
Mr. Bush was a typical centrist politician, who suddenly had to face unprecedented circumstances on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. He distinguished himself (according to me) by the courage and decision with which he addressed the issue thus raised. America and the West had just proved extremely vulnerable to large-scale terrorist assault by low-tech Islamist fanatics, and we would have to go after them. …
CNN’s Jamie McIntyre says Shinseki’s “speak truth to power” reputation is overblown. Makes sense that he would be nominated by someone with similar overblown qualifications.
… “When he had his disagreements with the administration, he wasn’t afraid to speak up,” Vietnam Veterans of America’s John Rowan told CNN on hearing of the nomination.
It’s an appealing narrative, but the facts as we know them are not nearly so complimentary to the retired Army chief.
You see, Shinseki never made any recommendation for more troops for Iraq. In fact, as Army chief of staff, it wasn’t really part of his job to take part in direct war planning.
But as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he did owe the president his best military advice. And if he felt strongly enough that the advice was not being taken, he could have resigned.
According to senior military officers who were in the pre-war meetings, Shinseki never objected to the war plans, and he didn’t press for any changes.
When the joint chiefs were asked point-blank by then-Chairman Gen. Richard Meyers if they had any concerns about the plans before they went to the president, Shinseki kept silent. …
John Stossel says we should worry about the deficit.
President-elect Obama says don’t worry about the federal budget deficit.
“The consensus is this: We have to do whatever it takes to get this economy moving again — we’re going to have to spend money now to stimulate the economy. … [W]e shouldn’t worry about the deficit next year or even the year after; that short term, the most important thing is that we avoid a deepening recession”.
It must be music to a politician’s ears when a “consensus” tells him not to worry about deficits. He can spend without limit. So Obama talks about a “stimulus package” that he says will rebuild the infrastructure and “green” the energy industry. That won’t happen, of course. Government performance consistently falls far short of its goals. Forgive me for again pointing out that President Jimmy Carter’s Synthetic Fuels Corporation cost taxpayers at least $19 billion without giving us an alternative to oil and coal. …
American.com wonders if our airports should be privatized.
In 1977, as a group of policymakers attempted to apply economic theory to the regulation of airlines, future American Airlines (AA) chairman Robert Crandall was not happy. Then an executive at AA, Crandall claimed that the economists’ ideas would ruin the airline industry. Things came to a head when he confronted a Senate lawyer prior to a hearing, reportedly shouting: “You f—king academic eggheads! You don’t know s—t. You can’t deregulate this industry. You’re going to wreck it. You don’t know a g——n thing!”
Thirty years after a bipartisan coalition passed the Airline Deregulation Act (in October 1978), the subject is still hotly debated. Supporters of deregulation claim that it worked mostly as predicted: fares fell dramatically in real terms as new entrants clamored to serve competitive markets. Critics such as Crandall point to numerous bankruptcies, industry upheaval, and the increasingly miserable experience of air travel as evidence of its failings. …
Al Gore must be in Houston with warming warnings because snow there ties a record.