Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
According to Haaretz:
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is very critical of U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama’s positions on Iran, according to reports that have reached Israel’s government.
Sarkozy has made his criticisms only in closed forums in France. But according to a senior Israeli government source, the reports reaching Israel indicate that Sarkozy views the Democratic candidate’s stance on Iran as “utterly immature” and comprised of “formulations empty of all content.”
In their BusinessWeek column, Mr and Ms Welch respond to a reader’s question:
How does today’s financial crisis compare with the beginning of the Great Depression and the 1930s?
In response, the Welches say that while “real global pain” lies ahead, the situation is unlikely to wind up in a catastrophe on the Great Depression level. Their reasoning is interesting–basically, they offer 4 factors that differentiate the Depression era from our own:
1)”In 1930 the protectionist Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act ushered in years of international retaliation and discord. Today’s crisis is marked by a high degree of free trade and global cooperation.”
2)”In 1933 the National Industrial Recovery Act encouraged labor and industry cartels. The result was a decline in U.S. competitiveness—again, hardly the current case: American companies have never been in better fighting form.”
(The NIRA was passed in 1933 and was in force until it was found unconstitutional in 1935. It involved cartelization and extreme micromanagement of the economy, and is generally considered to have been one of FDR’s more unwise innovations, delaying rather than assisting the recovery from the Depression. Interestingly, NIRA was strongly backed by Gerard Swope, one of Jack Welch’s illustrious predecessors as head of GE.)
3)”Finally, a second Great Depression is unlikely because of the institutions created to prevent one, foremost being the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., with its authority to insure deposits, critical to stabilizing the banking system.”
4)”Others say we’re marching into French-style socialism. Au contraire. The U.S. government has a century-long history of handling interventions with a fast-in, fast-out approach. In 1984, to take a recent example, it bought 80% of Continental Illinois National Bank but sold it just 10 years later to Bank of America. In 1989 it created the Resolution Trust Corp., which cleaned up the savings and loan crisis, then quickly packed up. TARP, the federal bailout plan, looks to be no exception, as its loan terms give banks flexibility and strong incentives to pay off the government within five years.”
I agree with Jack and Suzy Welch that we should not be panicking about the economy and that comparisons with 1929 are overdrawn. However, I also think that the economic future will be tremendously influenced by the election results–and that an Obama administration, combined with a strong Democratic congressional majority, would, very likely, dilute or negate three of the four factors that they list as separating us from the Depression era. While the result would probably not look as grim as 1929, it would still be pretty bad.
Iowahawk has a Midwestern perspective on Joe; he now speaks as that other beleagured Midwesterner, Hyde Park’s leading resident, in I am Bill. Thanks, Iowahawk.
We’re going to need all the Zucker and Iowahawk they can create during the next few years. Even great genius of this kind is uneven (Zucker’s new movie is). But at the top of their game, they make my day – or week. National treasures, they restore proportionality; the serious-minded transcendentalists thought that was a great poet’s task, but my vote is for comedy.
…most of them do, anyhow. Polls show that 70% of Israelis would vote for McCain if they were eligible to vote in the U.S. election.
And some of them are. There are an estimated 40,000 Americans residing in Israel who are eligible to cast absentee ballots, and many of them will be voting in swing states. The chairman of Republicans Abroad in Israel predicts a 75% vote for McCain, although other reports show a large number of undecideds.
From a Weekly Standard article via Soccer Dad:
We respect war heroes in Israel, especially those like McCain who were POWs,” notes Mitchell Barak, managing director of the Jerusalem-based Keevoon Research, Strategy & Communications. “We see Obama fantasizing about how he wants to sit down and talk to the terrorists, and he loses a lot of Israelis right there. He comes off as unrealistic and insensitive to the existential challenges facing the Jewish state, and as naïve.”
Naïve, indeed. It’s a theme that popped up frequently when I mentioned Obama’s name. Obama lacks experience. Obama doesn’t understand how to deal with terrorists in general, and radical Islamic terrorists in particular. Obama thinks a court of law is the right forum for dealing with terrorists. Obama thinks the U.N. is a dandy place to solve difficult problems. Obama would have happily lost the Iraq war. Obama would cede regional hegemony to the Iranians. And so on.
Mickey Kaus is a Liberal who will actually try to find out the facts. Kudos to him for that.
But he does occasionally descend into Left wing incoherence. A prime example is a short post entitled Ride My See-Saw. (Click on this link, and scroll down to the post at the 1:21 PM mark.)
Mr. Kaus is taken with the concept of “vertical ticket splitters”, people who don’t automatically cast all of their votes for one party. He attributes their motivation for doing this to guilt. People might vote for Obama in this election, but then carefully cast their remaining votes for Republicans because they feel guilty about…
Well, I’m not really sure why anyone feels guilt. Mr. Kaus seems to think that the bad feelings all flow from racism.
“M suggested that voters (especially white, swing voters) who don’t vote for Obama may feel guilty about it and compensate by voting for Democrats in downballot races (Senate and Congress). But the converse of this theory is equally interesting–voters who do pick Obama, may compensate or hedge for what they feel is a bold, guilt-expiating risk by picking Republicans downballot.”
(snip)
“…more people will be vertical ticket splitters because of the presence of Obama, who is not only an African American candidate–whom you might feel guilty about not picking–but a relatively unknown candidate whom you might want to hedge against, especially if you voted for him to avoid feeling guilty about not picking him (and then felt guilty about that).”
(An attempt was made to keep the original emphasis intact. The above is how Mr. Kaus wants you to see his work.)
This seems extremely odd to me. If someone is a racist, then by definition they genuinely believe that a person’s race disqualifies them in some way. Makes the minority candidate unable to do a decent job simply because of their heritage, so to speak.
Seen in this light, it becomes obvious that racists are not going to be effected in any way by guilty feelings. Why would anyone, racist or otherwise, feel guilty about voting for what they see as the more capable choice? If anything, racists would feel pride in voting for their prejudices because they would think that they are acting for the greater good. So why go on and on about how racists would feel guilt?
The constant harping on racism from the Left during this election appears to me to have two root causes.
It seems to me that one cause is pure projection from Liberals. They are going to vote for Obama not because they genuinely believe him to be the best qualified for the job, but due to some bizarre self loathing. White guilt, if you will. Since guilt is the most powerful motivator when they make their political choices, it seems obvious to them that everyone else must also have simmering pools of white hot shame bubbling just beneath the surface. If people just listened to the voice in their heads that said they must make up for being a piece of crap, then everyone would make the same choice. The correct choice!
The other is a cynical attempt to manipulate swing voters, a propaganda effort to make the Bradley Effect work for the Democrats. If swing voters can be convinced that they will be perceived as racists by voting for anyone other than Obama, maybe a significant percentage will vote for the candidate that they would otherwise feel is too inexperienced to handle the job. Pretty much force people to vote for the least qualified candidate.
I must confess, dear reader, that it makes me feel distinctly uncomfortable to climb up on my analyst’s couch and try to plumb the mental depths of complete strangers. Not only am I obviously unqualified, it also strikes me as the height of arrogance to even try. But I feel justified since the Left in general, and Mr. Kaus specifically, are not constrained to keep to their area of expertise.
To close, I would have to say that the only people who should be feeling guilty are the Liberals who scream “Racism!” at the drop of a hat. Have they no shame?
(Hat tip to Glenn.)