First, if anyone is wondering why one section in Part II is in different type, the answer is I don't know. When I prepared it and when I recall it into edit mode, it doesn't appear any differently than other entries. So, it was not done on purpose to highlight that section, just some kind of glitch. This is not the first glitch I have run into on this website.
BASIC PROBLEMS WITH THE US ECONOMY
If anyone had asked me in the last 3 years I would have told them that I believed that there are basic structural problems with the US economy. A year and a half ago I took all my 401(k) money out of mutual funds and into a low yield, secured fund that is guaranteed not to go down. I then got a first mortgage on my house which I had owned free and clear in order to have cash on hand. Am I a financial genius or what? The answer is NOT! I just happened to read the right book which crystallized some inchoate ideas which I had had for some time. I strongly recommend the book Wealth and Democracy by Kevin Phillips for anyone concerned with the direction which our country has been going in for the last several decades. Hopefully, Obama will change that direction.
As I mentioned previously, Phillips contends that our economy has gone from production to financialization (manipulation of money) and he uses several historical examples to show how this leads to a serious decline in national power. He gives further treatment to this theme in his books American Theocracy and Bad Money. The latter, although it seems to have been thrown together quickly, has some interesting recent economic data which show the nature and the depth of the problem. Latest figures are that the US has lost over 1 million manufacturing jobs in the last year and over 4 million since 2000. Even when the economy was doing okay and the manufacturing jobs were replaced with other jobs in the economy, these other jobs were largely service jobs that paid anywhere from 20 to 40% less than the jobs they replaced and had fewer benefits. This is why the number of people without health insurance steadily climbed during athe Bush administration. In addition, there has been a greater concentration of wealth in the top 1% and even more in the top one-tenth of 1%. This, imbalance, I believe has contributed to our economic meltdown. For example, this is why so many people refinanced during the real estate boom (using their equity like an ATM machine) and why so many people resorted to subprime loans with risky provisions--it was the only way they could qualify. Another problem is the concentration of business wealth in fewer and fewer mega-corporations. When was the last time that the government used anti-trust law to stifle or even modify a proposed merger or acquisition? The last one I am aware of involved the merger of two natural food chains, hardly a major impact on the economic system. In the meantime we have seen major financial institutions grow too big to fail. Citi Bank, for example, has millions of depositors in something like 140 countries. The LA Times 3/9/09, page B1 has an interesting article on AIG. In addition to having 74 million insurance customers world-wide, it has a subsidiary that leases commercial planes to nearly every major airline. Thus, should it go belly-up it would have serious repercussions on the airline industry. The failure of Lehman Brothers led to the credit freeze. One can cite still other examples, but this will suffice for now.
Additionally, as we have seen, while economic concentration has greatly increased, government regulation has greatly decreased. The SEC ignored Bernie Madoff despite getting a number of warnings for almost 10 years. The Federal Reserve could have reined in all those crazy loans but chose to look the other way, a serious mistake that Alan Greenspan now admits to. The Glass Steagall Act was repealed, a 1994 law lifted restrictions on interstate banking and in the late 1990's derivatives and futures trading in oil and financial instruments (bucket shops previously alluded to) were deregulated. The financial sector took advantage of the situation and maximized their short term profits by increasing their risks. Next, what to do?
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
It's the Economy, Stupid, Part II
WHY WERE THERE SO MANY BAD LOANS?
As we have seen, the crisis was set off by an increase in the foreclosure rate. What caused this? One of the reasons was the speculation in real estate and creative financing promoted by lending institutions. It used to be that you only got loans with 20% down and a good credit score, except for VA and FHA and some other minor government programs which required little down payment. However, in order to increase business, lenders, supported by builders and r.e. brokers, began offering exotic instruments , such as 10% down, then 5% down, then no down loans until I actually heard loans advertised for more than the value of the house. This was mixed with short term ARM's (adjustable rate mortgages), option ARM's (you chose how much to pay each month) and negative payments wherein you paid less than the interest and principle and the principle increased. Also, lenders began doing "stated income" loans. This meant you told the loan originator how much your income was and you didn't have to document it. Also, lenders began to loosen their credit requirements so that those with marginal credit were given loans. And finally, a lot of ARM's had low "teaser" rates. Again, I saw some as low as 1 or 2% to start. This meant that someone who might not qualify for the rate on a 30 year fixed loan would qualify under the "teaser" rate which could last anywhere from about 3 to 24 months or longer. Some builders would buy down loans so that teaser rates woud be lower and last longer so that more buyers could then qualify for the builder's new homes. It's not hard to predict that this could lead to trouble, especially for those who qualified only under the teaser rate. Reset means when the teaser rate expired and the loan adjusted to a new (usually higher) rate that was based on the prime rate or other standard rate, such as T-bills or LIBOR. Then the question is why would lenders make what should have been seen as very risky loans? The answer is because of derivatives and greater profit. The real risky loans are what are called subprime loans. Because there is greater risk associated with the loans, they carried higher interest rates and larger fees (called points). Because of derivatives, the lenders did not have to worry about the risk because the loans would be sold to an investor, some in foreign countries. The mortgage brokers and banks made their money off the fees, they didn't keep the loan and often didn't even service the loan. Thus, they actually had an incentive to make subprime loans because they made more in fees and did not have any of the risk. Why would someone take out such a loan? The assumption that both lenders and borrowers made was that real estate prices would continue to climb so that if the borrower was having trouble making payments, then he/she would just sell it for more than it cost originally (flipping). For the first couple of years of the boom there was no problem. However, there becomes a point at which the market becomes saturated--after most people have bought a new house they aren't going to run out and buy another one right away. Then inventory builds up and there are more sellers than buyers, prices start to fall and then people find that they owe more than the house is worth. And, as foreclosures increase they drag the market down even further.
WHY DID THE CRISIS SPREAD BEYOND HOUSING?
We have already seen how, because of derivatives and credit default swaps, the problem extended beyond the lenders. There is another important element in the problem. In 1999 Congress passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which rescinded the Galss Steagall Act that was enacted during the depression. This new bill allowed one entity to be involved in investments, commercial banking, and insurance. This is why the big Wall Street investment companies got entangled in derivatives and credit default swaps. They saw this as another profit center. Among the people who pushed for this, by the way, was the head of Goldman, Sachs, a man named Henry Paulsen, Bush's last Secretary of the Treasure. About a year ago the collapsing real estate market claimed its first victim on Wall Street: Bear Stearns, which started to have cash flow problems and auditors discovered that it was becoming a shell company. This led to a massive sell-off of its stock so that it went from $69/share to $2/share when it was bought by, I believe, J.P. Morgan/Chase. Then, six months later Lehman Brothers was in real hot water. Paulsen decided to let Lehman Bros. fail, as this is what conservative orthodoxy says you must do, let bad companies fail. This happened September 15, 2008 and this is what led to the serious problem becoming a major crisis as banks, having seen Lehman Bros. fail, decided it was too risky to loan money to anyone. And, of course, because a lot of these firms have interest in each other, when one and then another fails, it weakens other institutions and the whole economic system. This whole sequence of events was clearly presented on a Frontline program on PBS on Feb. 18, 2009. According to noted economist Jeffrey Sachs, he estimates that in bad loans, unemployment, and the drop in the stock market, the U.S. economy has lost approximately $13 trillion as of Feb. 20, 2009 (MSNBC show 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, 2/20/09). To paraphrase and update the late Senator Everett Dirksen (R-Ill.), a trillion here, a trillion there and soon you're talking real money.
As we have seen, the crisis was set off by an increase in the foreclosure rate. What caused this? One of the reasons was the speculation in real estate and creative financing promoted by lending institutions. It used to be that you only got loans with 20% down and a good credit score, except for VA and FHA and some other minor government programs which required little down payment. However, in order to increase business, lenders, supported by builders and r.e. brokers, began offering exotic instruments , such as 10% down, then 5% down, then no down loans until I actually heard loans advertised for more than the value of the house. This was mixed with short term ARM's (adjustable rate mortgages), option ARM's (you chose how much to pay each month) and negative payments wherein you paid less than the interest and principle and the principle increased. Also, lenders began doing "stated income" loans. This meant you told the loan originator how much your income was and you didn't have to document it. Also, lenders began to loosen their credit requirements so that those with marginal credit were given loans. And finally, a lot of ARM's had low "teaser" rates. Again, I saw some as low as 1 or 2% to start. This meant that someone who might not qualify for the rate on a 30 year fixed loan would qualify under the "teaser" rate which could last anywhere from about 3 to 24 months or longer. Some builders would buy down loans so that teaser rates woud be lower and last longer so that more buyers could then qualify for the builder's new homes. It's not hard to predict that this could lead to trouble, especially for those who qualified only under the teaser rate. Reset means when the teaser rate expired and the loan adjusted to a new (usually higher) rate that was based on the prime rate or other standard rate, such as T-bills or LIBOR. Then the question is why would lenders make what should have been seen as very risky loans? The answer is because of derivatives and greater profit. The real risky loans are what are called subprime loans. Because there is greater risk associated with the loans, they carried higher interest rates and larger fees (called points). Because of derivatives, the lenders did not have to worry about the risk because the loans would be sold to an investor, some in foreign countries. The mortgage brokers and banks made their money off the fees, they didn't keep the loan and often didn't even service the loan. Thus, they actually had an incentive to make subprime loans because they made more in fees and did not have any of the risk. Why would someone take out such a loan? The assumption that both lenders and borrowers made was that real estate prices would continue to climb so that if the borrower was having trouble making payments, then he/she would just sell it for more than it cost originally (flipping). For the first couple of years of the boom there was no problem. However, there becomes a point at which the market becomes saturated--after most people have bought a new house they aren't going to run out and buy another one right away. Then inventory builds up and there are more sellers than buyers, prices start to fall and then people find that they owe more than the house is worth. And, as foreclosures increase they drag the market down even further.
WHY DID THE CRISIS SPREAD BEYOND HOUSING?
We have already seen how, because of derivatives and credit default swaps, the problem extended beyond the lenders. There is another important element in the problem. In 1999 Congress passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which rescinded the Galss Steagall Act that was enacted during the depression. This new bill allowed one entity to be involved in investments, commercial banking, and insurance. This is why the big Wall Street investment companies got entangled in derivatives and credit default swaps. They saw this as another profit center. Among the people who pushed for this, by the way, was the head of Goldman, Sachs, a man named Henry Paulsen, Bush's last Secretary of the Treasure. About a year ago the collapsing real estate market claimed its first victim on Wall Street: Bear Stearns, which started to have cash flow problems and auditors discovered that it was becoming a shell company. This led to a massive sell-off of its stock so that it went from $69/share to $2/share when it was bought by, I believe, J.P. Morgan/Chase. Then, six months later Lehman Brothers was in real hot water. Paulsen decided to let Lehman Bros. fail, as this is what conservative orthodoxy says you must do, let bad companies fail. This happened September 15, 2008 and this is what led to the serious problem becoming a major crisis as banks, having seen Lehman Bros. fail, decided it was too risky to loan money to anyone. And, of course, because a lot of these firms have interest in each other, when one and then another fails, it weakens other institutions and the whole economic system. This whole sequence of events was clearly presented on a Frontline program on PBS on Feb. 18, 2009. According to noted economist Jeffrey Sachs, he estimates that in bad loans, unemployment, and the drop in the stock market, the U.S. economy has lost approximately $13 trillion as of Feb. 20, 2009 (MSNBC show 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, 2/20/09). To paraphrase and update the late Senator Everett Dirksen (R-Ill.), a trillion here, a trillion there and soon you're talking real money.
Monday, March 9, 2009
It's The Economy, Stupid!
I have been hesitant to write on this subject because everyone else is doing so. However, after reading a news forum this morning and various letters to the editor, etc. I see that there are a long of very angry people and a lack of understanding. Because this a long and complicated subject, I will break it up into parts, so that if there are some things you are already well-versed on, you can skip those parts.
Although I have taken only basic introductory classes in Econ., I have been attempting to come up to speed the past few years and have been trying to absorb all I can about the current crisis. I hope this proves helpful for someone.
BASIS OF THE PROBLEM
Although it is generally believed that the problem stems from bad loans made to people who couldn't afford them, I think that is a very big contributory factor, but is not the reason why the economic situation is so dire. The bad loans were the spark that got the bonfire going, but they did not determine the magnitude of the problem. There have been housing bubbles in the past and bank failures (remember the savings and loan problem 20 years ago and the Resolution Trust Corporation?) , but they did not result in anywhere near the kind of problem that we have now. What is different is derivatives, credit default swaps, and bucket shops. A derivative is a bundle of loans put together and then sold, similar to a bond, from one institution to another. Say for example, you have loans that average $200,000 each and you put 500 of them together. Maybe the loans pay, on average, 7%. The buyers know that historically maybe 2% of the loans will default and then figure in a worst case scenario of a higher rate of default to cover themselves. So you have a derivative with loans totaling $100 million dollars paying 7% which you pay a discount for to take into account expected defaults. The problem arises when it turns out that the default rate is much higher than was expected because of poor underwriting and lax enforcement of the rules. Say the default rate is 10% instead of an expected 2% and you bought the derivative with borrowed money. Now you can't pay the loan you got to buy the derivative. Now you have a derivative of $100 million that is toxic. If the loans had not been bundled, you would have had 10% of 500 loans go bad or 50 times $200,000 or $10 million in bad assets compared to $100 million in bad assets because of the bundling. It works as a negative multiplier effect. But wait, it gets worse. Some buyers said, wait, how do we know these derivatives will always be good? This is where credit default swaps came in. This is basically insurance to the buyers of the derivatives, but they didn't call it insurance. Why? Perhaps because insurance is a carefully regulated industry but credit default swaps are not regulated. So, sometimes the seller would insure the derivatives, sometimes a third party would do it, for an appropriate fee, of course. This is why AIG is in such trouble: they are being dragged under by bad derivatives which they insured with credit default swaps. The amount of the credit default swaps being called for is overwhelming the cash reserve set aside. It is like a run on a bank only worse as the failed derivatives are ending up having a greater value than the companies that insured them. This ends up destroying the company that issued the credit default swap and also the buyer of the derivative since their "insurance" isn't there any more. Thus, you have a cascading effect which greatly magnifies the original problem of a higher rate of bad loans. What are bucket shops? The show 60 Minutes had a good show explaining this. A bucket shop is like a gambling parlor in that people are allowed to put money on the futures of derivatives. Thus, if you bet that the values of derivatives will fall you can end up making money. This is an emblematic problem with our economy--so much of it is a speculative crap shoot, a zero sum game where money is manipulated but value is not added. Keven Phillips calls it the financialization of the economy. Bucket shops, by the way, were outlawed about 1907 but were made legal in the late 1990's as part of the deregulation frenzy that included repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act from the 1930's.
Although I have taken only basic introductory classes in Econ., I have been attempting to come up to speed the past few years and have been trying to absorb all I can about the current crisis. I hope this proves helpful for someone.
BASIS OF THE PROBLEM
Although it is generally believed that the problem stems from bad loans made to people who couldn't afford them, I think that is a very big contributory factor, but is not the reason why the economic situation is so dire. The bad loans were the spark that got the bonfire going, but they did not determine the magnitude of the problem. There have been housing bubbles in the past and bank failures (remember the savings and loan problem 20 years ago and the Resolution Trust Corporation?) , but they did not result in anywhere near the kind of problem that we have now. What is different is derivatives, credit default swaps, and bucket shops. A derivative is a bundle of loans put together and then sold, similar to a bond, from one institution to another. Say for example, you have loans that average $200,000 each and you put 500 of them together. Maybe the loans pay, on average, 7%. The buyers know that historically maybe 2% of the loans will default and then figure in a worst case scenario of a higher rate of default to cover themselves. So you have a derivative with loans totaling $100 million dollars paying 7% which you pay a discount for to take into account expected defaults. The problem arises when it turns out that the default rate is much higher than was expected because of poor underwriting and lax enforcement of the rules. Say the default rate is 10% instead of an expected 2% and you bought the derivative with borrowed money. Now you can't pay the loan you got to buy the derivative. Now you have a derivative of $100 million that is toxic. If the loans had not been bundled, you would have had 10% of 500 loans go bad or 50 times $200,000 or $10 million in bad assets compared to $100 million in bad assets because of the bundling. It works as a negative multiplier effect. But wait, it gets worse. Some buyers said, wait, how do we know these derivatives will always be good? This is where credit default swaps came in. This is basically insurance to the buyers of the derivatives, but they didn't call it insurance. Why? Perhaps because insurance is a carefully regulated industry but credit default swaps are not regulated. So, sometimes the seller would insure the derivatives, sometimes a third party would do it, for an appropriate fee, of course. This is why AIG is in such trouble: they are being dragged under by bad derivatives which they insured with credit default swaps. The amount of the credit default swaps being called for is overwhelming the cash reserve set aside. It is like a run on a bank only worse as the failed derivatives are ending up having a greater value than the companies that insured them. This ends up destroying the company that issued the credit default swap and also the buyer of the derivative since their "insurance" isn't there any more. Thus, you have a cascading effect which greatly magnifies the original problem of a higher rate of bad loans. What are bucket shops? The show 60 Minutes had a good show explaining this. A bucket shop is like a gambling parlor in that people are allowed to put money on the futures of derivatives. Thus, if you bet that the values of derivatives will fall you can end up making money. This is an emblematic problem with our economy--so much of it is a speculative crap shoot, a zero sum game where money is manipulated but value is not added. Keven Phillips calls it the financialization of the economy. Bucket shops, by the way, were outlawed about 1907 but were made legal in the late 1990's as part of the deregulation frenzy that included repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act from the 1930's.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
The Myth of "The Surge"
Although the surge in Iraq may seem like old news, it has a lot of ramifications for the war in Afghanistan, especially since General Patraeus is now in charge of the whole Middle East/Asia theater. Also, it is a wonderful case study of the failings of modern day journalism and commentary. Because there is much to discuss, this will be a long post, so bear with me. I haven't seen any analysis akin in depth to what I am presenting here, and I doubt if you have either.
First, let me begin with the ancient parable of the clan elder and the sun (which I have just made up). Many millenia ago while people were still hunter-gatherers and lived in small clans, a young boy was born who was small and sickly but very smart and observant. Because of his physical limitations he didn't go out hunting with the others, but, being smart and observant, he learned to make himself very useful in the clan. Because of these qualities, when he grew up he became the clan wise man. As such, he was not exposed to the dangers of hunting and after some years he was the oldest one in the clan. As he grew aged and his infirmities increased he became concerned that he soon would not be able to take care of himself, so he called the clan together and told them his story.
"You know, I am the oldest member of the clan and I am concerned that I may not live for much longer. I have always told you the truth before, haven't I?" And the people admitted this was so, not realizing that he had lied to them before, but had done so cleverly when he knew he could not be caught. "I have a secret which you must know."
"After I was born," he continued, "my mother told me that before I was born it was a time of darkness. The wild ravenous beasts who do their killing at night were hunting all the time instead of half the time as they do now. The edible plants scarcely grew and people were just barely surviving unlike now. However, after I was born, my mother told me, when I woke up that thing we call the sun mysteriously appeared in the sky giving us light and warmth." The elder was one who always went to sleep early and woke up shortly before sunrise. "As you know, I always turn in shortly after dark and after I wake up then, and only then, does the sun appear." And no one could remember differently so they believed it must be true.
"So," the elder concluded, "I fear that after my death the time of all darkness will return, bringing much suffering and hardship. The clan should do everything to keep me alive and store food and improve our shelters to prepare for this." And all of the clan agreed that this was indeed a wise plan. So the village elder was well cared for, never having to do a thing for himself for the rest of his life, having every whim catered to. Some years later the elder finally died and there was much fear with wailing and renting of garments. When the first night fell, the clan huddled, arguing about what to do next. The next morning the sun magically appeared and someone suggested that perhaps it would take a while for the sun god (for it must be a god) to realize that his son had left this earth so the clan probably had some time before the time of darkness returned. Well, the sun kept rising every morning and after a few weeks the clan finally realized that they had been conned.
The moral of this story is that even though two things may happen in conjunction (person waking, sun appearing), this does not mean that one causes the other, nor that they are even related, no matter how many times someone swears that they are.
One of the basic failings in popular commentary is the lack of recognition that variables may be dependent or independent and even in dependent variables there may be other factors involved in cause and effect relationships. Nowhere is this more evident than in the popular perception that "the surge" in Iraq was successful. Conservatives have pushed this idea so much that it has become accepted wisdom. Before the election I saw one news anchor (I believe it was Brian Williams) ask Obama something like "Since the surge has been so successful, weren't you wrong to oppose it?"
I have not seen any hard headed analysis of the surge either before or after its implementation. In fact, in the popular press seems to be an almost total ignorance of the major factors of guerilla war and successful counter-insurgency strategy. It is as if there has been a collective national amnesia about the lessons learned in Vietnam. There is a whole lot of experience and evidence about what works and what doesn't work. There is at least one journal devoted to counter-insurgency warfare and a number of academics who have spent their careers studying the subject but I never saw any of them consulted by the popular press. Patraeus, in addition to his own background, had an Australian expert as an advisor, but I never saw an independent expert evaluating the surge. For anyone interested, I recommend War in the Shadows by Asprey, a two volume history of guerilla war, dating back to pre-Roman times, as a good place to start. I have read other books that I can recommend if you are interested.
Everything we know about guerilla war and the war in Iraq tell us that the surge, by itself, could not have been successful. First, you need a soldier to guerilla ratio of about 10 to 1 to be assured of success. If you don't have that ratio you need the overwhelming support of the local populace so they will not give aid and comfort to the guerillas and will, instead, provide the anti-guerilla forces with valuable intelligence. The main problem of counter-insurgency warfare is not lack of firepower, it is finding the enemy and depriving him of sanctuary. Also, to be successful, the anti-guerilla forces (i.e., the government) need to be legitimate and at least moderately just in the eyes of the populace. There are other tactical military approaches, too, that may apply, but they need not be considered here for the issue at hand.
A good example of the opposite is the guerilla war in Yugoslavia in World War II. Originally there were two anti-German groups, the Chetniks and Tito's pro-communist partisans. The two groups feuded and the Chetniks sided with the Nazis against Tito's group. So Tito's guerillas had to fight both the Nazis and other Yugoslavs. Tito started out with just a few thousand followers and rifles, no heavy weapons. The Nazis had tanks, planes, and about 100,000 troops. The Nazis were utterly ruthless. If a German soldier were killed while patrolling a village, for example, the Germans would retaliate by killing 100 men from that village. An yet by the end of the war, Tito's guerilla group had swelled to over 200,000 soldiers and literally had the German army on the run. This shows the total failure of the military only option. There are many other similar examples throughout history.
Let's take a look at the situation in Iraq pre and post surge. Before the surge US troop levels were approximately 130,000; after the surge they were approximately 155,000. We don't know how many Sunni guerillas there were, but considering how many signed up for the US backed militia, Sons of Iraq, (up to 70,000) I think it is safe to assume that there were at least 20,000 part-time guerillas. Estimates of the Shiite Mahdi Army were that it contained about 60,000. Even assuming the Iraqi Army was effective (and only a couple of battalions were by all accounts), that addds another 70,000 to 100,000 troops to the anti-guerilla side (the lower number at the start of the surge, the higher number at the end).Thus, as we can see, adding 25,000 more US soldiers shouldn't have made much of a difference. The guerilla side would have had about 80,000 and the anti-guerilla side would have gone from abour 230,000 to 255,000, nowhere near the ratio needed. Although a lot of these numbers are estimates, it doesn't change the basic conclusion because the ratio is nowhere near large enough so that even if we overstate the guerilla strength the problem still remains. Additionally, these figures overstate the Iraqi Army and don't take into account that many of the 155,000 US soldiers were support, not infantry.
Next, let's take a look at it from the perspective of a guerilla. According to the US Army, 80% of its casualties were due to IED's, or roadside bombs. What did it take to produce those casualties? You need someone to fashion a bomb out of an old artillery shell (of which there are hundreds of thousands in Iraq since US forces failed to secure them after the invasion). Then you would probably need a team of 3 or 4 guys to go out late at night, dig a hole in the road or plant the bomb along the side of the road in some trash or debris. Then you would need one guy to stay within range of the remote control and wait until a US patrol comes by and then he pushes the button to detonate the bomb. As you can see, this is a very low risk operation requiring little time, effort or manpower. A dozen teams a night, especially before Hummers were given better armor, could easily result in 100 dead US soldiers a month. So, I ask you, how could a 20% increase in US troops, spread over the whole country, stop that?
Now let's look at it from the non-military perspective. Was the Iraqi government seen as legitimate and was the populace on our side? We know the answer to that was clearly no and no. While Maliki's negotiation of the status of forces agreement at the end of 2008 and the recent elections have greatly increased the government's legitimacy, at the start of the surge and throughout almost all of the surge, Maliki was seen as a US puppet, the Sunnis boycotted the government, and Sadr's followers were violently opposed. At a rough estimate, I think it would be fair to say that 40% of the population were strongly opposed to the Maliki government, another 40% or so were indifferent or considered him an ineffective stooge, and he had the active support of about 20%. If anyone has better numbers on this I would like to see them. One of the problems with Iraq is the paucity of meaningful information. How about US forces popularity and the likelihood that they would get aid and support from the local population? There have been a lot of polls done on this and the results are very consistent. From 75-80% of Iraqis want the US to leave and approximately 50% of Iraqis think it is okay to help the guerillas. Considering that we are very popular with the Kurds, among the non-Kurdish population these numbers are probably even much higher. Thus, as you can see, the major components of a successful anti-guerilla campaign are not present. Could it just be that it wasn't the surge at all that was the reason for the decrease in violence? Remember that waking up in the morning doesn't cause the sun to rise, or if you work all night the sun rise doesn't cause you to wake up.
What, then, are other variables that may have led to the lessening of violence? Approximately two years ago, at the beginning of the surge, Sadr's militia had a horrific gun battle with another Shiite group in a major mosque in, as I recall, Najaf (although the location is not that important). A number of innocents were killed and Sadr declared a cease fire because it was a terrible public relations disaster for him and his supporters. Although some small rogue groups defied him, this removed about 60,000 militia from participating in conflict.
Most of the civilian casualties in Iraq were due to death squads, both Sunni and Shia, which ethnically cleansed mixed neighborhoods. Those who weren't murdered were forced to flee their homes. Christians were expecially persecuted until most all of them fled the country. The result was that approximately 2 million Iraqis fled to other countries and approximately 2.5 million fled to other areas of Iraq, abandoning mixed neighborhoods. Where there used to be Sunnis and Shias living together you now had Sunni only and Shia only neighborhoods, patrolled by their own militias. This meant that 1 out of every 6 Iraqis was displaced from their homes in the space of about two years. In the US, that would be the equivalent of 50 million people forced to leave their homes and move somewhere else. Iraqi on Iraqi violence dropped precipitiously because ethnic cleansing was completed, not because of anything the surge did.
Another factor was the previously mentioned Sunni militas armed by the US. Previous US policies practically invited the insurgency. By disbanding the 400,000 man army and then outlawing the Baathists from employment, we created a vast army of unemployed, angry and armed young Sunnis who had no reason to support us and a lot of reasons to dislike us. The militias gave them a good, steady paycheck.When local tribal chiefs approached US forces in the summer of 2007 with the idea for the militias, it was maybe the best thing we could have done, much more important than the surge. And it wasn't supported by the Sunnis because of the surge but because of the excesses of the local Al-Aqaeda forces. The nihilism and excesses of Al-Qaeda may be the best thing we have going for us in our battle against them.
Thus, as you can see, the Sunni militias, Sadr's decision for a cease fire, and the completion of ethnic cleansing were most likely the major causes for the decrease in violence in Iraq. There is probably another causal factor, but it is only logical conjecture. People in Iraq can read newspapers and watch satellite TV. By the end of 2007 it should have been clear to any interested Iraqi that Bush was unpopular, the American people disapproved of the war by big margins, and the Democrats, who were anti-war, were likely to win the 2008 election. Also, they knew that the UN mandate for US occupation expired at the end of 2008 and that the US would have to negotiate a new agreement by then. If you were an Iraqi insurgent, wouldn't it make sense to lie low for a while and see what happens, figuring the US might leave soon even if you did nothing?
Finally, I keep asking, if the surge worked, where are the metrics? If it was the surge that reduced the insurgency, then we must have been killing and capturing insurgents at a much higher rate than before the surge. Having been in military intelligence, I know that the military keeps more statistics than a baseball junkie. They know how many patrols were done and by which units. They will have statistics on how many people were arrested, killed, etc., etc. During the Vietnam War the military announced enemy body counts after every battle and totals for evey month. And yet, from Iraq we have seen nothing. How many insurgents were killed and/or captured for 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008? I haven't seen any figures, have you? We have seen absolutely no solid evidence that the surge worked. Next time you hear somebody say the surge worked, just ask them, how many more insurgents were killed and captured, on average, per month, after the surge compared to before the surge. I'll be waiting for that answer.
First, let me begin with the ancient parable of the clan elder and the sun (which I have just made up). Many millenia ago while people were still hunter-gatherers and lived in small clans, a young boy was born who was small and sickly but very smart and observant. Because of his physical limitations he didn't go out hunting with the others, but, being smart and observant, he learned to make himself very useful in the clan. Because of these qualities, when he grew up he became the clan wise man. As such, he was not exposed to the dangers of hunting and after some years he was the oldest one in the clan. As he grew aged and his infirmities increased he became concerned that he soon would not be able to take care of himself, so he called the clan together and told them his story.
"You know, I am the oldest member of the clan and I am concerned that I may not live for much longer. I have always told you the truth before, haven't I?" And the people admitted this was so, not realizing that he had lied to them before, but had done so cleverly when he knew he could not be caught. "I have a secret which you must know."
"After I was born," he continued, "my mother told me that before I was born it was a time of darkness. The wild ravenous beasts who do their killing at night were hunting all the time instead of half the time as they do now. The edible plants scarcely grew and people were just barely surviving unlike now. However, after I was born, my mother told me, when I woke up that thing we call the sun mysteriously appeared in the sky giving us light and warmth." The elder was one who always went to sleep early and woke up shortly before sunrise. "As you know, I always turn in shortly after dark and after I wake up then, and only then, does the sun appear." And no one could remember differently so they believed it must be true.
"So," the elder concluded, "I fear that after my death the time of all darkness will return, bringing much suffering and hardship. The clan should do everything to keep me alive and store food and improve our shelters to prepare for this." And all of the clan agreed that this was indeed a wise plan. So the village elder was well cared for, never having to do a thing for himself for the rest of his life, having every whim catered to. Some years later the elder finally died and there was much fear with wailing and renting of garments. When the first night fell, the clan huddled, arguing about what to do next. The next morning the sun magically appeared and someone suggested that perhaps it would take a while for the sun god (for it must be a god) to realize that his son had left this earth so the clan probably had some time before the time of darkness returned. Well, the sun kept rising every morning and after a few weeks the clan finally realized that they had been conned.
The moral of this story is that even though two things may happen in conjunction (person waking, sun appearing), this does not mean that one causes the other, nor that they are even related, no matter how many times someone swears that they are.
One of the basic failings in popular commentary is the lack of recognition that variables may be dependent or independent and even in dependent variables there may be other factors involved in cause and effect relationships. Nowhere is this more evident than in the popular perception that "the surge" in Iraq was successful. Conservatives have pushed this idea so much that it has become accepted wisdom. Before the election I saw one news anchor (I believe it was Brian Williams) ask Obama something like "Since the surge has been so successful, weren't you wrong to oppose it?"
I have not seen any hard headed analysis of the surge either before or after its implementation. In fact, in the popular press seems to be an almost total ignorance of the major factors of guerilla war and successful counter-insurgency strategy. It is as if there has been a collective national amnesia about the lessons learned in Vietnam. There is a whole lot of experience and evidence about what works and what doesn't work. There is at least one journal devoted to counter-insurgency warfare and a number of academics who have spent their careers studying the subject but I never saw any of them consulted by the popular press. Patraeus, in addition to his own background, had an Australian expert as an advisor, but I never saw an independent expert evaluating the surge. For anyone interested, I recommend War in the Shadows by Asprey, a two volume history of guerilla war, dating back to pre-Roman times, as a good place to start. I have read other books that I can recommend if you are interested.
Everything we know about guerilla war and the war in Iraq tell us that the surge, by itself, could not have been successful. First, you need a soldier to guerilla ratio of about 10 to 1 to be assured of success. If you don't have that ratio you need the overwhelming support of the local populace so they will not give aid and comfort to the guerillas and will, instead, provide the anti-guerilla forces with valuable intelligence. The main problem of counter-insurgency warfare is not lack of firepower, it is finding the enemy and depriving him of sanctuary. Also, to be successful, the anti-guerilla forces (i.e., the government) need to be legitimate and at least moderately just in the eyes of the populace. There are other tactical military approaches, too, that may apply, but they need not be considered here for the issue at hand.
A good example of the opposite is the guerilla war in Yugoslavia in World War II. Originally there were two anti-German groups, the Chetniks and Tito's pro-communist partisans. The two groups feuded and the Chetniks sided with the Nazis against Tito's group. So Tito's guerillas had to fight both the Nazis and other Yugoslavs. Tito started out with just a few thousand followers and rifles, no heavy weapons. The Nazis had tanks, planes, and about 100,000 troops. The Nazis were utterly ruthless. If a German soldier were killed while patrolling a village, for example, the Germans would retaliate by killing 100 men from that village. An yet by the end of the war, Tito's guerilla group had swelled to over 200,000 soldiers and literally had the German army on the run. This shows the total failure of the military only option. There are many other similar examples throughout history.
Let's take a look at the situation in Iraq pre and post surge. Before the surge US troop levels were approximately 130,000; after the surge they were approximately 155,000. We don't know how many Sunni guerillas there were, but considering how many signed up for the US backed militia, Sons of Iraq, (up to 70,000) I think it is safe to assume that there were at least 20,000 part-time guerillas. Estimates of the Shiite Mahdi Army were that it contained about 60,000. Even assuming the Iraqi Army was effective (and only a couple of battalions were by all accounts), that addds another 70,000 to 100,000 troops to the anti-guerilla side (the lower number at the start of the surge, the higher number at the end).Thus, as we can see, adding 25,000 more US soldiers shouldn't have made much of a difference. The guerilla side would have had about 80,000 and the anti-guerilla side would have gone from abour 230,000 to 255,000, nowhere near the ratio needed. Although a lot of these numbers are estimates, it doesn't change the basic conclusion because the ratio is nowhere near large enough so that even if we overstate the guerilla strength the problem still remains. Additionally, these figures overstate the Iraqi Army and don't take into account that many of the 155,000 US soldiers were support, not infantry.
Next, let's take a look at it from the perspective of a guerilla. According to the US Army, 80% of its casualties were due to IED's, or roadside bombs. What did it take to produce those casualties? You need someone to fashion a bomb out of an old artillery shell (of which there are hundreds of thousands in Iraq since US forces failed to secure them after the invasion). Then you would probably need a team of 3 or 4 guys to go out late at night, dig a hole in the road or plant the bomb along the side of the road in some trash or debris. Then you would need one guy to stay within range of the remote control and wait until a US patrol comes by and then he pushes the button to detonate the bomb. As you can see, this is a very low risk operation requiring little time, effort or manpower. A dozen teams a night, especially before Hummers were given better armor, could easily result in 100 dead US soldiers a month. So, I ask you, how could a 20% increase in US troops, spread over the whole country, stop that?
Now let's look at it from the non-military perspective. Was the Iraqi government seen as legitimate and was the populace on our side? We know the answer to that was clearly no and no. While Maliki's negotiation of the status of forces agreement at the end of 2008 and the recent elections have greatly increased the government's legitimacy, at the start of the surge and throughout almost all of the surge, Maliki was seen as a US puppet, the Sunnis boycotted the government, and Sadr's followers were violently opposed. At a rough estimate, I think it would be fair to say that 40% of the population were strongly opposed to the Maliki government, another 40% or so were indifferent or considered him an ineffective stooge, and he had the active support of about 20%. If anyone has better numbers on this I would like to see them. One of the problems with Iraq is the paucity of meaningful information. How about US forces popularity and the likelihood that they would get aid and support from the local population? There have been a lot of polls done on this and the results are very consistent. From 75-80% of Iraqis want the US to leave and approximately 50% of Iraqis think it is okay to help the guerillas. Considering that we are very popular with the Kurds, among the non-Kurdish population these numbers are probably even much higher. Thus, as you can see, the major components of a successful anti-guerilla campaign are not present. Could it just be that it wasn't the surge at all that was the reason for the decrease in violence? Remember that waking up in the morning doesn't cause the sun to rise, or if you work all night the sun rise doesn't cause you to wake up.
What, then, are other variables that may have led to the lessening of violence? Approximately two years ago, at the beginning of the surge, Sadr's militia had a horrific gun battle with another Shiite group in a major mosque in, as I recall, Najaf (although the location is not that important). A number of innocents were killed and Sadr declared a cease fire because it was a terrible public relations disaster for him and his supporters. Although some small rogue groups defied him, this removed about 60,000 militia from participating in conflict.
Most of the civilian casualties in Iraq were due to death squads, both Sunni and Shia, which ethnically cleansed mixed neighborhoods. Those who weren't murdered were forced to flee their homes. Christians were expecially persecuted until most all of them fled the country. The result was that approximately 2 million Iraqis fled to other countries and approximately 2.5 million fled to other areas of Iraq, abandoning mixed neighborhoods. Where there used to be Sunnis and Shias living together you now had Sunni only and Shia only neighborhoods, patrolled by their own militias. This meant that 1 out of every 6 Iraqis was displaced from their homes in the space of about two years. In the US, that would be the equivalent of 50 million people forced to leave their homes and move somewhere else. Iraqi on Iraqi violence dropped precipitiously because ethnic cleansing was completed, not because of anything the surge did.
Another factor was the previously mentioned Sunni militas armed by the US. Previous US policies practically invited the insurgency. By disbanding the 400,000 man army and then outlawing the Baathists from employment, we created a vast army of unemployed, angry and armed young Sunnis who had no reason to support us and a lot of reasons to dislike us. The militias gave them a good, steady paycheck.When local tribal chiefs approached US forces in the summer of 2007 with the idea for the militias, it was maybe the best thing we could have done, much more important than the surge. And it wasn't supported by the Sunnis because of the surge but because of the excesses of the local Al-Aqaeda forces. The nihilism and excesses of Al-Qaeda may be the best thing we have going for us in our battle against them.
Thus, as you can see, the Sunni militias, Sadr's decision for a cease fire, and the completion of ethnic cleansing were most likely the major causes for the decrease in violence in Iraq. There is probably another causal factor, but it is only logical conjecture. People in Iraq can read newspapers and watch satellite TV. By the end of 2007 it should have been clear to any interested Iraqi that Bush was unpopular, the American people disapproved of the war by big margins, and the Democrats, who were anti-war, were likely to win the 2008 election. Also, they knew that the UN mandate for US occupation expired at the end of 2008 and that the US would have to negotiate a new agreement by then. If you were an Iraqi insurgent, wouldn't it make sense to lie low for a while and see what happens, figuring the US might leave soon even if you did nothing?
Finally, I keep asking, if the surge worked, where are the metrics? If it was the surge that reduced the insurgency, then we must have been killing and capturing insurgents at a much higher rate than before the surge. Having been in military intelligence, I know that the military keeps more statistics than a baseball junkie. They know how many patrols were done and by which units. They will have statistics on how many people were arrested, killed, etc., etc. During the Vietnam War the military announced enemy body counts after every battle and totals for evey month. And yet, from Iraq we have seen nothing. How many insurgents were killed and/or captured for 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008? I haven't seen any figures, have you? We have seen absolutely no solid evidence that the surge worked. Next time you hear somebody say the surge worked, just ask them, how many more insurgents were killed and captured, on average, per month, after the surge compared to before the surge. I'll be waiting for that answer.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Just A Coincidence? John Yoo, the ICC, and War Crimes
Earlier this week details of legal memoranda from the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department dating from early 2002 were released by the Obama Administration. The main author was John Yoo, who has often publicly defended his views. Approximately two years ago two other memos by Yoo became public. In these first two memos he argued that the congressional resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq and the President's inherent power as Commander-in-chief allowed him to do such things as conduct warrantless wiretaps, jail people without charge, etc. The more recently released memos used the same rationales to say that the President could also inhibit free speech and use regular military troops (as opposed to the National Guard) within the United States for civil enforcement. The interesting, even amazing, thing to me is that only very recently have I seen commentary that Yoo's legal analysis was, to say the least, suspect. You don't have to be a constitutional law attorney to recognize the total fatuousness of this argument. Regarding the congressional resolution, to argue that a resolution can invalidate statute, the constitution, and 200+ years of jurisprudence is beyond belief. Secondly, to say that an implied power can override an enumerated right, especially when it goes against historical precedence, is total nonsense. In the case Schecter v. U.S. (aka, the "sick chicken case"), Chief Justice Hughes, writing for a unanimous (and mostly conservative) Supreme Court said: "Extraordinary conditions may call for extraordinary remedies, " but "Extraordinary conditions do not create or enlarge constitutional power." (See A Traitor to his Class by H. W. Brands or The American Constitution by Kelley and Harbison, to name a couple of sources).
Having worked in a staff position in a large bureaucracy, I can tell you that Yoo did not write these memos for his own amusement or to try to persuade someone to take a position. Given the sweeping nature of these extreme views, the fact that they are ahistorical and have as much foundation as a house of cards built on sand, you can bet the mortgage on the fact that these memos were written in response to a directive from someone high up in the administration. It was most probably one of those "I want you to look into these issues and tell us what we can do", wink, wink, nod, nod. Yoo knew what answer they wanted and wrote accordingly.
Some of the first things the Bush Administration did was to repudiate the Kyoto Treaty on global warming, abrogate the Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia, and withdraw from the International Criminal Court. The last event got little notice and has been mostly forgotten. Even less noticed was the fact that the Bush Administration followed withdrawal from the ICC with a series of bilateral agreements with every country possible wherein US troops (and officials) were given immunity from local laws. When a country balked, the Bushies threatened to withhold any financial or other assistance from that country. Only a few countries failed to sign.
We know from Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and Richard Clarke that the Bush Administration was talking about invading Iraq even before 9/11. Even as far back as 1991 Cheney and Wolfowitz began pushing for Saddam Hussein's removal (see Fall of the House of Bush by Craig Unger, pp. 181-182).
So here's what we know. Bush officials were determined to invade Iraq regardless of the facts, Bush officials then used the war to justify crimes such as illegal wiretapping, torture, kidnapping and illegal detention, and before committing these crimes the Bush Administration withdrew the US from participating in the International Criminal Court and sought to remove any jurisdiction over US committed crimes by other countries. Just a coincidence? What do you think?
Having worked in a staff position in a large bureaucracy, I can tell you that Yoo did not write these memos for his own amusement or to try to persuade someone to take a position. Given the sweeping nature of these extreme views, the fact that they are ahistorical and have as much foundation as a house of cards built on sand, you can bet the mortgage on the fact that these memos were written in response to a directive from someone high up in the administration. It was most probably one of those "I want you to look into these issues and tell us what we can do", wink, wink, nod, nod. Yoo knew what answer they wanted and wrote accordingly.
Some of the first things the Bush Administration did was to repudiate the Kyoto Treaty on global warming, abrogate the Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia, and withdraw from the International Criminal Court. The last event got little notice and has been mostly forgotten. Even less noticed was the fact that the Bush Administration followed withdrawal from the ICC with a series of bilateral agreements with every country possible wherein US troops (and officials) were given immunity from local laws. When a country balked, the Bushies threatened to withhold any financial or other assistance from that country. Only a few countries failed to sign.
We know from Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and Richard Clarke that the Bush Administration was talking about invading Iraq even before 9/11. Even as far back as 1991 Cheney and Wolfowitz began pushing for Saddam Hussein's removal (see Fall of the House of Bush by Craig Unger, pp. 181-182).
So here's what we know. Bush officials were determined to invade Iraq regardless of the facts, Bush officials then used the war to justify crimes such as illegal wiretapping, torture, kidnapping and illegal detention, and before committing these crimes the Bush Administration withdrew the US from participating in the International Criminal Court and sought to remove any jurisdiction over US committed crimes by other countries. Just a coincidence? What do you think?
Friday, March 6, 2009
Why I Am A Progressive
Some may ask why I call myself a Progressive and not a liberal. While I do not shy away from the liberal title, I prefer Progressive for several reasons. First, conservatives have demonized the term liberal, equating it with un-American. They have not made progressive a pejorative term as they have the term liberal. Second, the meaning of liberal has changed according to time and/or place. A modern day liberal in Britain, for example, is a centrist. A liberal in 19th Century Europe was more like a modern day American conservative. The term Progressive has not really changed in meaning and has an American origin. Finally, the term progressive was affiliated with a third party and it transcends the two major parties. The earliest Progressives were Republicans and even FDR hoped someday to unite the progressives from both parties into one new entity. As a Progressive I am not beholden to either party, although I am a registered Democrat. Too many Democrats have abandoned progressive principles and I will not hesitate to criticize Democrats when they deserve it.
Now you know why I call myself a Progressive. Why do I espouse those principles? I think an easy way of explaining myself is to list policies that have been favored by Progressives and opposed by conservatives. Here is a quick and short list just off the top of my head. Anti-trust legislation, pure food and drug act, outlawing child labor, limits on hours worked (first 48 hour week, now the 40 hour week), minimum wage laws, anti-sweat shop laws, work safety legislation, clean water act, clean air act, other environmental legislation, social security, civil rights /anti-segregation laws, voting rights act, medicare, putting seatbelts and air bags in cars, auto mileage standards. In all of these cases conservatives warned of dire consequences if these bills were passed. Every time a minimum wage law is passed, for example, the right proclaims it is a job killer. Given the number of times they have proclaimed this, by now no one should be working if they were accurate. History has shown conclusively that on all of these issues and on many more, progressive policies were right and conservative policies were wrong.
Now you know why I call myself a Progressive. Why do I espouse those principles? I think an easy way of explaining myself is to list policies that have been favored by Progressives and opposed by conservatives. Here is a quick and short list just off the top of my head. Anti-trust legislation, pure food and drug act, outlawing child labor, limits on hours worked (first 48 hour week, now the 40 hour week), minimum wage laws, anti-sweat shop laws, work safety legislation, clean water act, clean air act, other environmental legislation, social security, civil rights /anti-segregation laws, voting rights act, medicare, putting seatbelts and air bags in cars, auto mileage standards. In all of these cases conservatives warned of dire consequences if these bills were passed. Every time a minimum wage law is passed, for example, the right proclaims it is a job killer. Given the number of times they have proclaimed this, by now no one should be working if they were accurate. History has shown conclusively that on all of these issues and on many more, progressive policies were right and conservative policies were wrong.
The Jeane Kirkpatrick Analysis Award
As promised in my last post, I am hereby awarding the 2008 Jeane Kirkpatrick Analysis Award. The late Jeane Kirkpatrick, like Paul Wolfowitz, was a neoconservative with a Phd. in Political Science who has brought shame on the discipline. Like Wolfowitz, she was a neoconservative who held a high position in a conservative Republican administration (Reagan's Ambassador to the United Nations). Also like Wolfowitz she had a knack for taking spectacularly wrong positions on important international issues. She favored U.S. intervention in the Lebanese Civil War in 1982 that led to the death of over 200 marines from a truck bomb and a withdrawal from a mission that achieved nothing positive. She also supported the Iran-Contra deal which, in addition to being bad policy, was also illegal. However, the position which has earned her everlasting discredit, in my opinion, came in the Falklands War between Great Britain and Argentina. She actually believed that the United States should support the Argentinians, then ruled by a brutal military dictatorship which would be thrown out of office shortly thereafter, instead of our closest ally, Great Britain. I still find this so incredibly stupid that 20 years later I have difficulty believing that someone with even a scintilla of knowledge about foreign affairs could take such a position. Thus, the Jeane Kirkpatrick Analysis Award is for the person who advocates a policy so incredibly stupid that they should lose all credibility and never be paid attention to again.
There are many deserving recipients of this award thanks to the Bush Administration's abject failure in almost all aspects of foreign policy. The aforementioned Wolfowitz, for example, was wrong in just about every prediction he made about the Iraq War. Other neoconservatives such as Douglas Feith and Richard Perle also belong in this category. I am bypassing these deserving candidates because they have largely been discredited. However, there is a neocon who has managed to continue to have influence despite voicing the same stupid blather about Iraq as Wolfowitz, Perle, and Feith. Not only that, he comes across as arrogant and smarmy. Why he still has a forum is something I find difficult to understand. The Award for 2008 goes to William/Bill Kristol, editor the the Weekly Standard. Since he has his own publication, one can understand how he remains in print. However, that does not explain why in the last few years he has managed to get gigs writing regular columns for Time magazine and the New York Times. Gee, if I am spectacularly wrong on the most important issues of the day, will someone pay me to write my opinions, too? I don't know if I could be as consistently wrong as Kristol has been, but if the price were right, I could try. Let's see, the best way out of this recession/depression is to cut government spending, reduce government intervention in the economy and let the free market recover on its own. It worked for Herbert Hoover, didn't it. Now will someone pay me for this opinion?
There are many deserving recipients of this award thanks to the Bush Administration's abject failure in almost all aspects of foreign policy. The aforementioned Wolfowitz, for example, was wrong in just about every prediction he made about the Iraq War. Other neoconservatives such as Douglas Feith and Richard Perle also belong in this category. I am bypassing these deserving candidates because they have largely been discredited. However, there is a neocon who has managed to continue to have influence despite voicing the same stupid blather about Iraq as Wolfowitz, Perle, and Feith. Not only that, he comes across as arrogant and smarmy. Why he still has a forum is something I find difficult to understand. The Award for 2008 goes to William/Bill Kristol, editor the the Weekly Standard. Since he has his own publication, one can understand how he remains in print. However, that does not explain why in the last few years he has managed to get gigs writing regular columns for Time magazine and the New York Times. Gee, if I am spectacularly wrong on the most important issues of the day, will someone pay me to write my opinions, too? I don't know if I could be as consistently wrong as Kristol has been, but if the price were right, I could try. Let's see, the best way out of this recession/depression is to cut government spending, reduce government intervention in the economy and let the free market recover on its own. It worked for Herbert Hoover, didn't it. Now will someone pay me for this opinion?
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