Cyreenik Says
As this 27 Apr 10 WSJ article Hobson's Choice for Germany, ECB by Richard Barley points out, we are entering into new and strange financial waters -- new, strange and very scary. These scary times are laying the foundation for the start of a blunder chain -- watch now for an acute crisis which will propell a hasty decision. That decision will be a blunder, and it could be the start of a blunder chain.
These trying fiscal times are also laying the foundation for a serious change in social direction. The conventional solutions enacted by the coventional leaders have not saved Europe from this fiscally painful moment. That means that more and more people will be receptive to what have previously been too-wacky ideas promoted by too-wacky people. Some vivid historical examples of communities trying out too wacky ideas because their governments loose control of their finances are the American and French Revolutions in the 1780's and 90's, and the Central and Eastern European Revolutions of the 1920's and 30's.
If this crisis continues to worsen and spread, it could be that the world is about to enter another era of exciting times.
Update: another WSJ article talking about how deeply this bond crisis is changing the global financial climate: Bond Volatility Takes Its Toll by Richard Barley 30 Apr 10.
The new Arizona immigration law is the product of deep frustration... but it is the wrong product. The law gives Arizona lawmen the power to stop and question people who look like illegal immigrants and arrest them if they are. Up until now, it has been federal immigration officers who have been on the front line of enforcing immigration, and the state law officers have not been involved. Here is a 27 Apr 10 WSJ journal editorial describing the situation: Arizona's Immigration Frustration.
The difference is enfranchisement. Up until now, illegal immigrants could work with state law officers to keep their community orderly -- they could work with each other.
If this law is enforced, it become Arizona's custom version of the War on Drugs, and it will lead to similar disasterous results on community enfranchisement -- the people of the community won't be able to work with the police.
According to the editorial even the state law officers realize this, and don't want to get involved in this quagmire.
This is a blunder, plain and simple, and it is going to get more and more expensive for Arizona the longer it is not fixed.
Ah... the ghost of Richard Nixon will rest easier soon. Back in the 1960's he fought inflation with wage and price controls. It took Jimmy Carter shooting his own political career in the foot in the late 1970's to finally correct that siren song way of fighting inflation.
But that was long ago, so that lesson doesn't apply now. Now we get to learn this lesson in futility again from President Obama and the Democrats who passed Obamacare. This 26 Apr 10 WSJ editorial Obamacare Mulligan describes the first shot at using price controls to make Obamacare reality happen. A law is being proposed in the Senate which will give the state regulators power to reject insurance premium increases.
Ah... what a slippery slope we ride when we let our heart lead our way through the harsh reality of a marketplace.
What is the root of the Tea Party movement? I contend the root is a larger than usual disconnect between Beltway Thinking and Main Street thinking. It is a symptom, and one that US government at all levels needs to take notice of. The peril of not responding well to the Tea Party symptom is losing enfranchisement.
The Tea Party movement is of interest to politicians and media people mostly because they can't understand it. It looks crazy to them, and unlike the G-20 Meeting protesters, it looks crazy in a scary way -- they can't figure out how to oppose it or pander to it well.
The heart of the Tea Party movement is that Washington and the state governments are suffering even more delusion than usual. This 19 Apr 10 WSJ editorial by Andrew Kohut, Americans Are More Skeptical of Washington Than Ever, about the results of a Pew Research Center poll descibes the situation.
What the American community -- politicans, media people, and others -- need to understand is the inverse relation between skeptisism and enfranchisement. The more people are skeptical and discouraged, the less they care about their community, and the less they think their community cares about them. This discouragement is the root of crime, chronic feuding, slow growth, and many other social ills.
It is important for the well-being of all America that politicans and media people figure out what the Tea Party movement represents, figure out how to reconnect with the American community, and keep Americans enfranchised.
Update: Here is a WSJ 22 Apr 10 Daniel Henninger editorial commenting on the depth of the current disconnect -- Democrats at the Edge of the Cliff.
Pedophile priests have probably been around as long as there have been priests, but for the last month there has been an acute crisis surrounding the Vatican about their existence. Here is a 4 Apr 10 WSJ article Vatican Defends Pope Benedict by Stacy Meichtry about some ongoing attempts at damage control.
This strong interest of the public in pedophile priests is new, scary and strange for the Vatican, which means the Vatican leadership is ripe for a blunder. Certainly there have been warnings. There was great interest in this in America beginning serveral years ago. But for reasons that still mystify me as well as the Vatican, this interest has upsurged dramatically over the last month and moved from primarily American to Europe-centered.
These are interesting times, indeed, for the church. Watch for a blunder.
Terror is back in the news. I suspect this is because the drama of Obamacare is ready to be replaced as the American community's center of attention.
It is interesting that this new interest centers on a different unfolding of terror. Even though there are still bomb attacks happening in Iraq, the center of interest now is on homegrown terror. This means the chronic nut cases that are always part of the American community scene are now getting mainstream media attention. The current oddest in this new list of usual suspects is FBI and media attention being stirred up by a crank letter sent to the governors of all 50 states, as outlined in this 2 Apr 10 WSJ article FBI Warns on Extremist Letters Sent to Governors. As this article points out "Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty said he received one of the letters but wasn't overly alarmed. 'We get all kinds of shall we say, 'interesting' mail, so it's not out of the norm.'"
What is out of the norm is that the media and the FBI are getting interested in these groups in a public way. They've been around a long time without getting any national media or public FBI attention. I hope this is just a slow news day phenomenon as America transitions off of the Obamacare drama and on to other interesting topics.
Terror is much more a part of the Russian landscape than it is the American landscape. Contemporary terror attacks in Russia, such as that on the Moscow Metro, are the latest incarnation of hundreds of years of anti-government violence perpetrated by homegrown extremists who have plotted against the Russian government. And, compared to their American counterparts, these Russian terrorists seem to be really mean!
This leads to the question, why is anti-government violence such a fixture in Russian culture?
Part of the answer may be enfranchisement. Historically, the Russians have supported a strongly patronizing government, and one that has always paid a lot of attention to finding internal betrayers. The two are likely to be closely linked in a self-fulfilling prophecy sort of way.
Enfranchisement is the feeling that the community is paying attention to you, and what you do matters to the community. When enfranchisement is high, crime of all sorts is low because the community cares and the people of the community feel they have a strong stake in the community. In such an environment crime is clearly betraying the community, so not many community members will engage in it. When enfranchisement is low, community members don't care about what is happening around them, and those community members who betray non-community members aren't censured in any meaningful way by the community. In such an environment the criminals do not feel they are betraying their community very much, so many more will engage in it.
Russia has a long tradition of having a lot of disconnect between the government and the communities being governed. In Russia the third of the three famous lies -- "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you." -- describes the normal condition of government-community relations. One symptom of this is the high Russian cynicism towards their government. Another is the notoriously corrupt and ineffectual police forces. They are ineffectual because they have no habit of working with the community to solve community problems, and they are corrupt because no one really cares, so no one expects them to do better.
In such an environment, politically-related violence comes easily.
How can the Russians fix this? Well, the Russians are already taking giant strides in the right direction. World War II is not called The Great Patriotic War in Russia for no reason, and breaking up the USSR in the 1980's was another giant step -- giving up the far-flung empire let the government attention focus more on the local communities. What has to happen now is more tolerance -- more belief that there is more than one right way to run the program. And more dedicated work on enfranchising the local communities by giving more power to the communities by lifting the often arbitrary hand of the national government.
Finally, there is a lot of learning to do. Enfranchisement is a learned form of community relations, it's not instinctive. It has to replace tribal relations -- under which betraying those outside the tribe is OK -- with the understanding that, no, you can't betray those around you and not bring damage to your community.
This is not an easy lesson, but it is enormously valuable when you live in a small, small world.
-- The End --