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It's Time for a Kendel!
Enjoy the NYT
on your Kindle |
August of 1010
Bush tax cuts through 2020: $3.5 trillion.*
Income tax cut < $250,000 $1,184 billion
Income tax > $250,000 a year or more: $700 billion
Alternative minimum tax change: $584 billion**
Marriage tax relief: $360 billion
$1,000 child tax credit: $359 billion
Capital-gains and dividend tax cuts: $238 billion
Other: $71 billion
* This analysis excludes the estate
and gift tax cuts.
** Without this patch, the AMT would
snatch back the Bush cuts from many higher-income taxpayers
Data: Joint Committee on Taxation, Treasury Dept. and Bloomberg
Businessweek |
Free
Trade Doesn't Work book review
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Story of
the Month July, 2010 Do we really have too much debt?
GDP for 2009 estimated at $14.0 trillion
Debt is 3.697 x 14.0 = about $52.0 trillion
About 13 trillion each for Households, Governments,
Financial Corporations, Non-financial Corporations. |
Household and
Nonprofit equity = $54.0 trillion see chart
2005 value of American companies $21.0 trillion
source
Valve of federal, state, and local governments, unknown
but certainly
over their share. |
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Story of the Month, July 2010
The High Budgetary Cost of Incarceration
June 2010, John Schmitt, Kris Warner, and Sarika Gupta
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Story of the Month 2,
June 2010Saving Social Security
12 ways to fix Social Security MSN
A report (.pdf file) recently issued by the Senate
Special Committee on Aging outlines policies Congress
could institute to lower or eliminate Social Security's
projected deficit. Options include tax increases,
benefit cuts and program tweaks that could be
Here's a look at possible Social Security fixes:
Reduce benefits by by 3% for new
beneficiaries beginning in 2010
Lower shortfall by 18%
Lower shortfall by 30% with a 5% cut
Increase from 35 the number of years use for
calculate SS
Lower shortfall by 14% for 38 years
Lower shortfall by 23% for 40 years
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Raise pending retirement age to
67 right away or
Raise retirement age to 68 or higher or
Index retirement age to longevity
Lowers shortfall by about 30%
Increase 6.2% contributions from workers and
employers
7.3% would eliminate deficit
Increase 6.2% to 7.2% in 2022 and 8.2% in
2052
would eliminate deficit
Increase contribution by .05% per year for 20
years
Lowers shortfall by about 70%
Increase income base from 106,800 to 100%.
Illuminates shortfall if increase didn't count toward
benefit
Lowers shortfall by 95% if increase counts toward
benefit
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Story of the Month, June 2010
The Sagging of the Middle Class
 
See Also
The Great Deprivation,
How Much Do We Spend Caring for Family?,What
We’ve Learned: Our (Increasingly) Non-Market Economy,
What We Don’t Know, and Perhaps Can’t,
The Disservice Economy |
Story of the Month, May 2010
In 2009, U.S. Treasury Debt held
by foreigners was only 5.8%
(3,162/64,464)x100 of U.S.
Households and Nonprofit
Organizations Net Worth.
China, Mainland 744
Japan 768
United Kingdom 2/ 234
Oil Exporters 3/ 219
Brazil 171
Hong Kong 152
Carib Bnkng Ctrs 4/ 144
Taiwan 121
Russia 120
Total-all countries 3,162
Cash, Savings, Money 7,750
Markets of U.S. Household
and Nonprofits
Their Net Worth was 54,176
Net Worth was 64,464
in 2006.
Editors Note: So much for the U.S. needing
China to finance our federal debt.
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Story of the Month, April, 2010
Don’t believe the hype on GM’s loan. repayment. |
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Story of the Week,
March 28, 2010
Older Americans Made the Recession Look Better (Excerpts) by Marianna
Kudlyak, Devin Reilly and Stephen Slivinski of the Federal Reserve Bank
of Richmond.
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Story of the Week March 22, 2010
No One is Paying More Federal
Taxes
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Story of the Week
Feb 8, 2010 Since 1945,
State and local government taxes have
doubled, Federal taxes until the Great Recession
were
fairly constant. Note
that the feds pass many Medicare
and Medicaid costs to the
state.
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Story of the Week March 15, 2010 
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Story of the Week March 15, 2010
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| Story of the Week Feb15, 1010
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Story of the Week Feb22,2010
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Story of the Week
Feb1, 2010
Formal Education Beyond High School
Not Required for 66% of the Job Openings
from 2008 to 2018
Bureau of Labor Statistic
PDF (3.5M) |
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Story of the Week
Feb8, 2010
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Story of the Week Jan 25, 2010
from the The Big Picture
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Story of the Week Jan 18, 2010
The Economist Magazine,
p32 of 1/16/10 |
Story of the Week
Jan 18, 2010
Bernanke's
Double Bubble Bind
(Series/The
Government We Deserve)
C.
Eugene Steuerle |
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January 4, 2010
Story of the Week
Source:
The lost decade for the economy
NEIL IRWIN, CRISTINA RIVERO AND TODD LINDEMAN
Washington Post, January 1, 2010 |
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December 28 Story of the
Week
Health Care Basic Data from Advanced Countries
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December 21
Story of the Week
The Party is Over: Copenhagen Devolved,
Ricky Rood is a professor at U of Michigan and course leader on
climate change and how it interplays with business and policy. This is
his Blog to
www.wunderground.com/
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December
14
Story of the Week
Household Debt Problem
Editors Note: When home improvement loans became
home equity loans, we were doomed by the housing cycle which was a
major contributor to the Great Depression.
 
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Chart courtesy of
NYT
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December 7 Story of the Week
NFIB Jobs Statement: Expect Coal in
Small Business
Stockings
National Federation of Independent
Business (hat tip reader Scott, who
points out that this report is very
much at odds with Friday’s
employment release). Editors Note: The federal government
spends so much time seasonally
adjusting data that understanding
what is happening is difficult. |
November 30
Story of the
Week
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Why You'd Better Beware of the 'Big Shift' from Business
Week of November 23, 2009
Conventional wisdom says productivity is a key driver of
corporate profitability. Yet this long-held assumption is challenged by a
report from Deloitte's Center for the Edge. The study, led by John Hagel III
and John Seely Brown, finds that despite major improvement in labor
productivity over the past four decades, many U.S. industries have
experienced "alarming" declines in return on assets (ROA), a key metric of
corporate performance. The authors say that trend is being driven by what
they term the "Big Shift"—a tremendous increase in competitive pressures,
combined with the increasingly pervasive digital infrastructure.
In a follow-up report released on Nov. 10, Hagel & Co. delve
deeper into the numbers to figure out how the Big Shift is playing out in
nine U.S. industries. Surprisingly, the steepest declines in ROA came in
technology, telecommunications, and media—sectors traditionally regarded as
innovation hotbeds. The auto industry also had a poor showing, though that's
not so startling. Banking, retail, consumer products, and insurance fared
better. But only two sectors, health care and aerospace/defense, saw ROA
climb. Keep in mind that these industries are subject to heavy government
regulation, which tends to muffle competition.
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Overall, the Deloitte report provides fodder for
those, like BusinessWeek's Michael Mandel, who argue that the woes of
the U.S. economy extend beyond the financial sector and began showing up
well before the housing bubble. (Deloitte's Center for the Edge, "2009 Shift
Index") —Edited by Harry Maurer & Cristina Linblad |
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November 9 Story
of the Week
Krugman on the Need for Jobs Policies from Naked Capitalism |
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November 2 Story
of the Week
Unemployment hits 10.2% and
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| Long-Term Unemployed Are Losing Skills
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As The Economy Improves, Some Will Get More Hours Before Hiring
Begins |
Others Will Re-Enter The Labor Force
So
Both
Employment And The Rate of
Unemployment
Will Go Up For A While.
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October 26 Story of
the Week
Jon Stewart takes on Fox News |
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October 19 Story of the
Week
State Revenues Fall
Fiscal 2009 Brought Record Overall Decline of 8.2
Percent, or $63 Billion
Rockefeller Institute of Government |
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October 12, 2009
from
Credit Write downs |
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The Debt Issue
A Brief look at the Asset-Based Economy at
economic turns by Edward
Harrison
Summary
Author believes borrowing by financial companies since early 80's
has kept U.S. economy growing
though people and business have done their
share. Comments to the post show not everyone agrees with the conclusion
that borrowing by financials could help avoid a second economic dip. Many
agree that debt servicing is a long term problem.
We Have Lots of Debt!
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But It's Not Government
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It's Non-Financial Business
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People
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Financial Services
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October 5, 2009 NYT
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9/20/09
CEO Panel on
FOX News Sunday talk about the
recession, Chris Wallace ...
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9/13/09 USA Today
Story of the Week
Salaries Down, Governments Not That Affected! |
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While USA Today did not think these stories were
related, I do!
Orlando is talking about laying off firefighters but with
government big headline
about layoffs usually are followed by a small page 20 story of "we found the
money."
It is not big government that people are against, it's that when things get
tough,
everyone has to suffer except the government!
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Our
Experts Can Help With Difficult Assignments
History
Literature
Psychology
Sociology
Social Science
 |
Economics
A Brief History of U S Banking
7/24/10
"The Global Jobs Competition Heats Up" Economist's View 7/1/10
Jobless recoveries econbrowser,
J6/30/10
America's Ten Most Corrupt Capitalists
AlterNet,
Zach Carter
5/13/10
entitlements-picking-up-in-u-s
and
Entitlements Part II 05/10
How to walk the fiscal tightrope that lies before us (FT)
2/18/10
MIT World Videos on Economics
for 2009
Hard Road Ahead
Hoisington Investment Management, 1/15/10, is a concise explanation of
why this economist feels there will be little inflation.
The Year's Biggest Ideas in Economics NYT from The New Republic,
12/30/09
Paul Volcker Finds a Hammer
December 17, 2009
Econ Talk
This Week
covers many ineresting current economic topics. December 14, 2009
What America Needs is an Economic
Strategy from Michael Porter of Business
Week October 30,2009
Are Federal Workers Overpaid? NYT 10/13/09
Bill Moyers
10/9/09
Marcy Kaptur
Simon Johnson rep from Ohio and Simon Johnson
professor of Global Economics and Management at M.I.T.'s Sloan School of
Management think Wall Street is still running
the show?
American inequality
has its magnitude of been
exaggerated? 9/23/09
Long Term Unemployment Rate 9/9/09
Recession Job Losses: 3 Views
9/9/09
Unemployment: The Harder You Look, The
Uglier It Appears
9/2/09
The lost decade shows how growth
has been slow for a while. Comments are very interesting. 08/20/09
Broad Unemployment Across the U.S.
Check out this interactive map from the July 14,
2009 NYT.
Where Are We Now? Five Point Summary
written by Simon Johnson, June 13, 2009 at 9:01 am
from baselonesenario.com
The new global balance: Financial
de-globalization, savings drain, and the US dollar
clearly explains what might happen to interest
rates and what might have happened with little government involvement.
Fed Watch: Turning Which Corner?
05/11/09 -Tim Duy
Recession, Far From Over, Already Setting
Records
4/25/ NYT
Four Markers to an Economics TurnAround
"Just How Progressive Is the Tax System?"
US families lost $11 trillion in 2008
"Household assets as a whole fell 15% to $65.7 trillion,
unadjusted for inflation, compared with a decline of less than a
percentage point to $14.2 trillion in total household liabilities.
The net worth of American households -- the difference between assets
and liabilities -- was $51.5 trillion, down $11.2 trillion, or nearly
18%, from 2007. That sets Americans' total wealth back to levels lower
than in 2004. It was the first decline in American household net worth
since 2002."
Analysis: Since 2008 started at the end of both a housing and a
stock market bubble, it seems to me American families are still
much better off than they were before the bubbles and spending slow down
should not be dramatic and as soon as unemployment stops increasing,
spending should begin to rise at a sustainable rate. |
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Current data on
The Business Cycle.
Radio Economics
A new dynamic for the Middle East
Jim Hamilton, Econbrowser Jim Hamilton, Econbrowser
U.S. Expansion May Be First in Six Decades to
End Without Income Recovery
Bootstrap Theory of OilPrices by Anthony de
Jasay explains why speculators are not causing high oil prices.
Obama vs. McCain on Taxes, Economy,
Social Scurity
Podcast from Bloomberg
The Shock Doctrine: The evil of “Disaster
Capitalism”, a book report video was posted
to
the
Crooks and Liars
blog on December 1, 2007
Income Inequality Gap Widens
By GREG IP
October 12, 2007; Page A2 of the Wall
Street Journal
Who has the Oil
from the Energy Bulletin
Help Not Wanted, Congress is doing its best to lose
the global talent war from The
Economist Magazine of April 8, 2008
2008/05/Paul Volcker
on the 2007-08 financial crisis and the Federal
Reserve bailout of Bear Stearns.
Investing in college: Is it worth it? |
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The prophets of doom Meet the Cassandra's, 14
economists, bloggers, politicians and businesspeople of all political
stripes who have become the most strident critics of President Obama's
stewardship of the economy. Source:
The prophets of doom Andrew Leonard mSalon, Apr. 16, 2009
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| Critique |
Employment |
Stimulus |
Bank Plan |
Alternate Plan |
| P Krugman, Princeton |
Economist |
Too Small |
Won't Work |
Nationalize |
G Mankiw
Harvard |
Economist
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tax cuts better, buy American is bad part |
bank creditors need
to accept loss |
|
S Johnson&
R. Kurtz |
Blog founder
MIT Professor |
Too Small |
Won't work |
Oligarchs should be put into receivership |
| N Roubini, NYU |
Economist |
fewer tax cuts, better international coordination |
Changed mind, plan is viable |
Nationalize |
W. Buiter
London Sch of Econ |
Economist |
Won't work |
Its financial shenanigans |
close zombie banks |
M Wolf
Fin Times |
Ass Ed and
Fin Commentator |
Not large enough if others don't help more |
Won't work |
close zombie banks |
W Black
U of Missouri |
Economist |
Too Small |
designed to cover up fraud by banker |
put into receivership |
D Baker
Center for Econ
&Policy Research |
Co-director |
Too Small |
Won't Work |
banks getting too much, taxpayers too little |
The War
Guest Post: Instead of Fixing the U.S. Economy or Creating Jobs for
AMERICANS, Obama Will Spend The Money in Afghanistan and Iraq
4 Nov 2009 11:34 AM PSTThe Economist,
November 3-9,2007, page 17 of A special report on religion and public
life.
" One great irony of the war on terror is that although George Bush has
declared war on jihadism, his enemy devote very little energy to fighting
him.
The jihadists' main war is not against the West but against apostate
Muslim regimes [those that reject the faith]: where they do battle with
outsiders,
it is mainly against occupying powers--Russia in Chechnya,
America in Iraq, India in Kashmir, and Israel in Pakistan."
The Limits of Power: Democracy Now interview Andrew Bacevich, a conservative historian who spent
twenty-three years serving in the US Army.
Some Facts from Wikipedia
A Concise 20th Century History of Iran
A Concise 20th Century History of Iraq
Sunnis and Shiites at War
Al-Qaeda, Taliban, and Muslim Fundamentalism
Militant Hamas versus Moderate Fatah
in Palestine
Historical Timelines collected by George
Emery a librarian at Canisius College.
Iraq Timeline
Iraq History Timeline
The Iraq Crises Timeline
- MidEastWeb
First Gulf War Timeline
September 11, 2001: Timeline of Terrorism
- InfoPlease
Terrorist Attacks in U.S. Timeline
- InfoPlease
History of Terrorism : Timeline of Terrorist Acts
Book Reviews
from the New
York Times, Crooks and Liars, and The Economist
Blackwater
The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary
Army
Book Review-- American Dynasty
Aristocracy,
Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush
Book Review-- HOUSE OF BUSH, HOUSE OF SAUD
The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful
Dynasties from the New York Times
Book Reviews-- Presidential Courage
summary of the first eight chapters from
How jihad went freelance is
a review of three recent books. Al-Qaeda
has evolved from a single group to an amorphous movement.
Does that make
it less dangerous or more so?
Jan 31st 2008 of The Economist.
Book Summaries from
21st Century Learning Products
American Dynasty
Aristocracy,
Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush,
by Kevin Phillips
Second Chance
Three Presidents and the Crisis of
America Superpower, by Zbigniew Brzezinski
Presidential Courage
Brave Leaders and How They Changed America 1789-1989,
by
Michael Beschloss
Social Security
To
Improve Social Security, "Follow the Money"
by Walter Antoniotti Data is from
The Center For Retirement
Research at Boston College
Effects of
long-term care
on Medicaid costs.
The recent trend towards
later retirement.
Will people be healthy enough to
work longer?
Social Security Benefits are Progressive
Our Experts Can Help With
Difficult Assignments
History
Literature
Psychology
Sociology
Social Science
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|
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Education
edited by
21st Century Learning Products
Thoughts on President Obama's
Educational_Plans
The Sagging of the Middle Class.
Technology and Trade are destroying good jobs.
Weighing the Value of an Elite-College Degree
Pay Scale Com
has useful career information.
Lies My Teacher Told Me Audio Book
6 reasons not to save for kids' college
10/13/09
Best Undergrad College
Degrees By Salary
The months since the collapse of
Lehman
Brothers have been disastrous for
professionals, except those in the fields of health care and education. From
August to April, there was an overall drop in employment of 4.3%. More
significant, however, were the steep declines in highly skilled occupations:
9.3% in computer and math jobs, 10.3 For more read % in engineering and
architecture occupations, and a whopping 11.5% in arts, design,
entertainment, sports, and media occupations.Economy Takes White-Collar Workers to the
Cleaners
Tue Jun 9th, 2009,
www.minyanville.com,
Ryan Goldberg
Good social skills enhance earning potential.
Book Reviews of Real
Education Real Education
1
and 2
Real
Education 2
by
Alan Murray, bestselling author of The Bell Curve.
Education and Income Inequality,
chapter 21 of The Age of Turbulence, Adventures in a New World, by Alan Greenspan
From the Department of Labor
About13.9 million( 25%)
of
the 54 million job openings to be filled by workers entering
an occupation for the first time between 2004 and 2014 will be by college
educated workers. . Only 6.9
million(12.8%) of the openings will be for "pure college
graduate" occupations, "... those where at least 60 percent of current
workers aged 25-44 have a bachelor’s or higher degree, fewer than 20 percent
have a high school diploma or less education, and fewer than 20 percent have
taken college courses but do not have a bachelor’s degree." For economic
analysis by
different occupations read
No Bachelors Degree
and
Sundry Material
Did You Know
explores the future with interesting
statistics.
College Graduates
from the Fall of
2006 Occupational Outlook Quarterly. From the Washington Monthly
"Is
Our Students Learning?"From Forbes Magazine
Five Reasons To Skip College
Click here to see the five more reasons not to go to
college.
From the National Center on Education and the
Economy
Tough Choices’: Radical Ideas, Misguided Assumptions
is a good
summary with an incorrect conclusion. Do no harm means take
no risks and "Creative Destruction' requires we take risks.
From
Walter Antoniotti,
Every Child Employable,
not "No Child Left Behind", should be our educational slogan.
Governors Wrong, College Prep Not For Everyone
provides information on how many need a college degree.
Education is Up For All, Wages are Up For Some
Women
Education Reform
explains why educators, not academicians
should design our educational system.
Investing
In Education, An Economic View
is provided by leading economists and managers.
Not All College Majors Are Created Equal
Interesting Thoughts Concerning Education from
Business Experts
A little humor?
The 5 Minute
University
Health
America lags behind its peers in
preventing avoidable deaths.
www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10499177
-
Similar pages |
The Urban Institute
estimates that
137,000 people died between 2000 and 2006 because they were uninsured. NYT
Editor:
Walter Antoniotti
curator of the
Free Internet Libraries
author of the
Quick Notes Learning Systems free books series
President of
21st
Century Learning Products
|
Who has the Oil from The Big Picture blog of December 22, 2007 For
more info read the
Energy Bulletin.
|
The Shock Doctrine: The evil of “Disaster Capitalism”
Posted: 01 Dec 2007 06:40 PM CST
 Download
(1076) | Play
(1167)  Download
(610) | Play
(657) (h/t Logan)
There has been no shortage of books chronicling the dystopia
that is the Bush Administration. And in this job, I’ve read
quite a few of them. None of them have made as powerful an impact
as Naomi Klein’s
The Shock Doctrine. I promise you, it will change how
you look at government policy and responses. It also finally
sealed forever, for me at least, the coffin of the utter bollocks
of Friedman economics. Listen to me carefully, you free market
fanatics: FRIEDMAN. POLICIES. DO. NOT. WORK. PERIOD. His version
of ‘free market economics’ STIFLES democracy. They create an
oligarchy that is the opposite of democracy.
Don’t believe me? Author Naomi Klein gives compelling examples
in history proving that “Disaster
Capitalism” has been the foundation of government’s actions
and how none of it has been done for the benefit of the populace.
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Al-Qaeda
How jihad went freelance
Jan 31st 2008
From The Economist print edition
Al-Qaeda has evolved from a single group to an amorphous movement.
Does that make it less dangerous or more so?
Panos
TERRORISTS are a bit like you and me, or so Marc Sageman suggests. It
might be comforting to think that angry young Islamists are crazed
psychopaths or sex-starved adolescents who have been brainwashed in malign
madrassas. But Mr Sageman, a senior fellow at the
Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, explodes each of
these myths, and others besides, in an unsettling account of how al-Qaeda
has evolved from the organisation headed by Osama bin Laden into an
amorphous movement—a “leaderless jihad”.
Mr Sageman is a leading advocate of what is called the “buddy” theory
of terrorism. He has spent much time asking why well-educated young men,
from middle-class backgrounds, often with a secular education and wives
and children, become suicide bombers. He suggests that radicalisation is a
collective rather than an individual process in which friendship and
kinship are key components.
The process has four stages. The initial trigger is a sense of moral
outrage, usually over some incident of Muslim suffering in Iraq,
Palestine, Chechnya or elsewhere. This acquires a broader context,
becoming part of what Mr Sageman calls a “morality play” in which Islam
and the West are seen to be at war. In stage three, the global and the
local are fused, as geopolitical grievance resonates with personal
experience of discrimination or joblessness. And finally the individual
joins a terrorist cell, which becomes a surrogate family, nurturing the
jihadist world-view and preparing the initiate for martyrdom. Many Muslims
pass through the first three phases; only a few take the final step.
Mr Sageman has unusual credentials: a former CIA
officer, he is also a forensic psychiatrist and a counter-terrorism
consultant. He published the first version of his theory three years ago
in an influential book, “Understanding Terror Networks”. His aim, to put
the study of this new kind of terrorism on to a scientific footing, has
not changed. But al-Qaeda has, and the task of analysing it has become
more complex.
In his new book Mr Sageman's sample of militants has grown from 172 to
500. He gives more prominence to Europe, where, after the London and
Madrid bombings and other thwarted attempts, a new front-line has opened
up. He devotes a chapter to the internet. Crucially, he argues that most
of today's suicide bombers have little or no link with the original
al-Qaeda (dubbed “al-Qaeda central”) but are part of a broader, more
amorphous phenomenon which he calls the “al-Qaeda social movement”. Mr
Sageman is sceptical of the view, which gathered weight last year, that
“al-Qaeda central” is resurgent. Rather, it is the mutual attraction of
freelance jihadists, outraged by the Iraq war and increasingly mobilised
online, which should worry us most.
Like others, Mr Sageman believes the Iraq war, which appeared to
legitimise the idea of a rapacious West in conflict with Islam, was a
spectacular own-goal for America. Unless that idea can be successfully
countered, he says, America may find itself confronting not just a
terrorist fringe but a substantial segment of the Muslim world, which
would intensify and prolong the conflict to disastrous effect. A
successful hearts-and-minds campaign, on the other hand, would stiffen
moderate spines and help take the glory out of jihadism; eventually, “the
leaderless jihad [would] expire, poisoned by its own toxic
message.” It is an optimistic conclusion, given all that has gone before.
There is much common ground between Mr Sageman and Daniel Byman, a
counter-terrorism expert at Georgetown University and the Brookings
Institution who was at one time on the staff of the National Commission on
Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (also known as the 9-11
Commission). He too laments the Bush administration's lack of a coherent
strategy, the needless alienation of allies, the failure to win Muslim
hearts and minds, and the deadly fall-out from Iraq. Both authors believe
that in the war of ideas Americans should focus on jihadist brutality
rather than trying to burnish their own image. Both regard Europe as the
main battleground, and they also question just how useful democratisation
can be as a tool of counter-terrorism; indeed Mr Sageman believes it is
entirely irrelevant.
Mr Byman argues that America must do better on five fronts: the
military, the war of ideas, intelligence, homeland defence and, in a
nuanced way, democratic reform. Many of his policy proposals are eminently
sensible, though some people will decry his advocacy of Israeli-style
targeted killings. But where Mr Sageman is plain spoken, Mr Byman is often
hesitant and diffuse. He has a disconcerting knack of undercutting his own
arguments. Moreover, his remorseless concentration on prescription, with a
minimum of explanatory background, will put off all but the most dedicated
experts.
Counter-terror specialists are seldom knowledgeable about the
intricacies of modern Islam, and vice versa. Those looking for a reliable
guide to the currents of political Islam, of which al-Qaeda-style jihadism
is but one, could do worse than turn to a young American scholar, Peter
Mandaville, an associate professor at George Mason University, near
Washington, DC. Mr Mandaville's primer, “Global
Political Islam”, is a well-informed account of the origins of mainstream
Islamism, the strategies of Islamisation, the emergence of the radical
fringe, the competition for authority among Muslim elites and the impact
of globalisation on Muslim politics. This is a study which sets out to
transcend the “narrow moment” of al-Qaeda. Given our current obsession
with global jihad, this book is a welcome companion to Mr
Sageman's work.
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A Brief History of the Gains from
Deficits and Debt.
In 1940, the federal gross debt was
about 42 billion dollars or 40+% of GDP and the U.S. was facing
the first axis of evil, Germany, Japan and Italy. By 1946 the federal
debt was 270 billion dollars or 120+% of GDP. This addition to
the debt had been raised by the sale of bonds to Americans using
massive bond drives. The U.S. still faced an axis of evil, the Soviet
Union. Most of the physical items bought with this debt had been
destroyed by the war though the worlds largest and most technically
advanced industrial complex which would rule the free world until the
oil embargos of the 1970's had been built. Soon to President General
Eisenhower would later warn that this industrial complex might be taken
over by those with strong military interests.
In 2008 the gross debt was about 10
trillion dollars or 70+% of GDP and the US was still facing an
axis of evil. This time it was Iran, South Korea and others. The new
president wants to increase the debt to grow the economy. Some don't
like the bigger debt. Others don't like wasting it on energy and
green projects. Still others fear the new debt will cause a great
inflation.
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