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The Corner gives us Krauthammer’s take on BO’s most excellent european adventure.
Mark Steyn has a summit summary.
… Well, we all hate “the rich,” don’t we? Last week, David Paterson, the governor of New York, said that if he’d known his latest tax increase would persuade Rush Limbaugh to sell his Manhattan apartment and leave the city, he’d have raised taxes earlier. Ha-ha. Very funny. In New York City, as Mayor Bloomberg has pointed out, the wealthiest 1 percent contribute 50 percent of municipal revenue. How tiny a number of people does Gov. Paterson have to drive out before it causes significant shortfalls in the public coffers?
On the other hand, the rich can only be driven out if they’ve got somewhere to be driven to. At the ludicrous G-20 summit in London last week, the official communiqué crowed over a “clampdown” on tax havens – those British colonies in the Caribbean and a few other offshore pinpricks in the map. “The era of banking secrecy is over,” the G-20 proclaimed.
Does anyone seriously think a Swiss bank account or a post office box in the Turks and Caicos are responsible for the global meltdown?
No, but the world’s governments have decided to focus on irrelevant scapegoats. In the current crisis, Japan, Germany and Italy (plus Russia) are in net population decline that’s only going to accelerate in the years ahead. So, unlike the U.S., they can’t run up the national debt and stick it to their kids and grandkids, because they don’t have any kids and grandkids to stick it to. If New York is running out of rich people, Germany is running out of people, period. The Chinese and other buyers of Western debt know that. If you’re an investor, and you’re not tracking GDP versus median age in the world’s major economies, you’re going to lose a lot of money. …
… If government has a role in this crisis, it ought to be to reverse the combination of unaffordable social programs and deathbed demographics that make a restoration of real GDP growth all but impossible in many European nations. But that would involve telling the citizenry unpleasant truths, and Continental politicians who wish to remain electorally viable aren’t willing to do that. President Sarkozy, The Times of London reported, “said that the summit provided a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to give capitalism a conscience.” What he means by “a conscience” is a global regulatory regime that ensures there’s nowhere to move to. If you’re France, which has a sluggish, uncompetitive, protectionist, high-unemployment business environment whose best and brightest abandon the country in ever-greater droves, it obviously makes sense to force the entire planet to submit to the same growth-killing measures that have done wonders for your own economy. But it’s not good news for the rest of the world. The building blocks for a global regulatory regime and even a global central bank with an embryo global currency (the IMF and the enhanced role of “Special Drawing Rights”) are an ominous development. …
Mark claimed the summit was involved in exporting their mistakes throughout the world. The start of the baseball season is a good time to look at another bogus world export. Jonathan Tobin reports in Contentions.
… the Times piece is a reminder of just how alien pro soccer is to Americans. Soccer fans here are forced to root for American teams that have names ending with the initials FC (Football Club). Other team names are distinct echoes of other foreign sports traditions, and feature the word “United.” Fans also wear scarves with their team colors, just like the Euros. In other words, the whole deal is a phony European import that will never succeed as an American game despite all the puffery it gets from the mainstream media.
As the season begins on Sunday, let the cry of “play ball” resound throughout this fair land, and by that I mean baseball and not a game in which fans have to pretend to be Europeans in order to properly enjoy themselves.
David Warren contemplates the American/European divide.
… What I instead wished to bring, to my reader’s attention this morning, is Bruce Hutchison’s observations on the phenomenon of anti-Americanism, circa 1954.
From his first page he refers to “the dry rot, something intangible developing within the minds of nameless millions, that is steadily undermining the friendship of the old world and the new, on which the fate of both must hang.”
Plus ça change. What Hutchison goes on to describe — the European perception of Americans as crass, childish, stupid, dangerous; and the reciprocal American perception of Europeans as profoundly ungrateful hypocrites and snobs — is still with us.
Moreover, the “root cause” seems still to be what Hutchison believed. For immediately below the surface he found a remarkable inability to understand each other, masked by the illusion of sharing the same broad culture. Europe draws a wicked caricature of America; America’s cartoon Europe is a preposterous fairy tale. …
Jennifer Rubin wonders why Labor can’t figure out they’re beat this year on card-check.
Roll Call reports, “Labor leaders are giving President Barack Obama a pass — for now — on his failure to put ‘card check’ legislation at the top of his to-do list, but they are preparing to demand immediate action if Democrat Al Franken is seated as Minnesota’s Senator.” And we hear that Big Labor is preparing some sort of “blitz” on the issue during Congress’s two-week recess.
But to what end is all this fuss? Even the Los Angeles Times conceded that Senate defections have put the bill in “deep trouble.” Arlen Specter has said “no way.” Democrats from Diane Feinstein to Ben Nelson to Mary Landrieu and Balnche Lincoln have given card check supporters the brush off. Even if all of those Democrats were to cave and Al Franken were to gain entry to the Senate, Big Labor would have only 59 votes.
Perpetuating the issue must make those Red state Democrats quite uncomfortable. Would Blanche Lincoln like to run for re-election with card check as a “live” issue or a dead one? Certainly the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Virginia is milking this issue for all it’s worth against three Democratic contenders who would rather change the topic. …
Jennifer also reports on the congressional election in NY 20.
Speaking of card check, The Corner has stunning piece of NY Times hypocrisy.
David Harsanyi is tired of advice.
… Now, the government has set up a site to help us get through the coming depression (although, really, it’s done enough). At www.samhsa.gov/. economy, you will learn more about the possible health risks associated with an economic downturn.
Do you feel “depression”? “Anxiety”? (And, considering your 401(k), if you’re not, perhaps you’re a sociopath.) Are you engaging in compulsive behavior? How about “Substance abuse”? (Fingers crossed; I’m only one fiscal quarter away!) Or, is there “persistent” crying going on?
Hey, why not? In the eyes of Washington, we are children, after all.
If we’re not, how about doing us a public service and leaving us alone?
Shorts from National Review. Don’t miss the item on the Japanese man who survived both WWII nukes.
… Mr. Yamaguchi, now 93 years old, has been formally certified as one of the very few to have survived both nuclear blasts; and, of that few, to have been closest to both — about two miles in each case.
Tonight’s NCAA final reminds of one 30 years ago starring Magic Johnson and Larry Bird.
I put in a DVD the other day and watched that 1979 NCAA championship game — Michigan State vs. Indiana State, Magic Johnson vs. Larry Bird, still one of the most-watched games ever, college or pro.
I knew how it would turn out. Michigan State, stronger and deeper than the Sycamores, would go ahead early, then hold off a second-half challenge to win by 11. But at the opening jump I could still feel the charge so many people felt that day. There they were, those two sublime athletes, long-haired boys again on the screen, slender in the old short trunks, yet commanding. They were why so many watched.
They were still beautiful. But as a Midwesterner, I turned off the set feeling a little sad. Somehow the meeting of those two boys struck me as the high point of a certain stretch of time that we took for granted until we realized — just now, really — that it was over. …
Dilbert’s here.
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