From this moment on

Jay Cost has a wonderful article at Real Clear Politics arguing that President Obama’s failure to make major policy changes arises not from the fact that “America is ungovernable” but because President Obama “has simply not been up to the job”. Cost believes Obama made two major mistakes, one strategic and the second tactical. Strategically [...]

Regrets, I’ve Had a Few …

Years ago I lived near a drinking establishment on the boundary of Quezon City and Manila where people essentially killed each other over nothing. The place in question was a really a roofed parking lot that had been converted to a beer garden. It was frequented by off duty policemen, enlisted men and [...]

Tiny bubbles

There were fears that a tide of lending by Chinese banks to keep the economy going was building up a “bubble” of uncertain proportions. Beijing-based Fitch Ratings said that it was difficult to estimate just how large the bad debts were because the Chinese banking system was so opaque. One party trying to peer into [...]

Beach head

The Washington Post’s Charles Lane describes Barack Obama’s rejection of Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln’s plea to move to the center in order to avoid an electoral catastrophe in November. Obama told Lincoln he was going forward — a strategy Lane ascribes to Obama’s political consultant David Plouffe. “Obama’s reply, in a nutshell: Sorry, Blanche. … [...]

The rain in Spain

Fears that Southern Europe could not maintain fiscal discipline has caused the Euro to plummet and sparked market losses worldwide. News of a Portuguese defeat of a proposed austerity measure, added to reports that Greece is balking at measures which can plug a hole twice the size of the Lehman Brothers abyss and reluctance [...]

Until Tomorrow

One of the standard reasons advanced whenever a terrorist attack occurs is that the Islamic world “hates us” for some reason or the other. An far simpler and more direct explanation is that terrorist attacks are fueled by their sympathizers in the West. They attack the West because they are given the tools to do [...]

Covered with a tarp

The TARP Inspector General’s report is out. The following is a verbatim extract from the executive summary. The penultimate paragraph of the summary states that the financial danger is not past. If anything it has gotten worse.  Reflecting on what lasting change TARP has brought to the economy, the report said: Stated another way, even if [...]

“It’s a trap”

Protesters have “demand(ed) an end to the Greece’s financial crisis” as the Greek government prepared to cut down on public spending. It had previously taken advantage of its EU membership to run up unparalleled deficits and borrow money on a monumental scale to increase its public spending, while concealing the true nature of its [...]

Tacks n’ spend

The AP says President Obama’s new budget would impose a host of tax increases, amounting in total to $1.4 trillion over the next decade. Taxvox calls it a “mind numbing budget” in which not only taxes but total debt will go up in absolute terms. Next year, according to Obama’s fiscal plan, spending would increase to [...]

Beat to Quarters

John Adams re-examines the Pacific War by asking himself what Alfred Thayer Mahan would have done if he had commanded either the Japanese or American fleets between 1941 and 1945? Adam’s book asserts that in one sense Mahan was already present in because his doctrines drove much of the Japanese and American thinking during the [...]