tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-191844182024-03-09T22:15:09.222-08:00Global ParadigmsPolitical and economic analysisLeon Hadarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07074306142674999554noreply@blogger.comBlogger953125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19184418.post-11355602283562544402014-05-01T13:04:00.002-07:002014-05-01T13:06:15.998-07:00My new post in TAC<a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/rand-paul-should-go-on-offense/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rand-paul-should-go-on-offense">http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/rand-paul-should-go-on-offense/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rand-paul-should-go-on-offense</a>Leon Hadarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07074306142674999554noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19184418.post-12734925367037396922012-04-09T13:18:00.000-07:002012-04-09T13:19:42.863-07:00my new op-ed in Haaretz<div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: 100%; ">ניצחון הטכנוקרטים</span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: 100%; ">לי-און הדר , וושינגטון 09.04.2012 05:03</span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: 100%; ">מיט רומני הוא כל כך משעמם, שכדור השינה נוטל אותו כשהוא מתקשה להירדם. זוהי אחת הבדיחות שרצות כאן על המועמד הרפובליקאי לנשיאות, שהפרסונה הכמו-רובוטית שלו היתה גורמת אפילו לספוק מ"מסע בין כוכבים" להרגיש אנושי. למבקריו רומני מזכיר בובה מכנית שתוכנתה להיראות ולהתנהג כמו נשיא אמריקאי מהסרטים - פוטוגני, נעים הליכות, איש משפחה ומצליחן - שפולט את כל הקלישאות הפטריוטיות ותמיד מבטיח פתרון לבעיה זו או אחרת.</span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: 100%; ">ייתכן שאחת הבעיות של רומני נעוצה במה שמומחים לרובוטיקה מכנים "תיאוריית עמק המוזרות": אנשים מרגישים לא נוח כשהם מסתכלים ברפליקה כמעט מושלמת של בן אדם. הרובוט הכמעט-אנושי מזמין אמפתיה, אך התחושה שמשהו עדיין חסר, מטרידה.</span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: 100%; ">רומני, המושל לשעבר של מסצ'וסטס, מצטייר כפוליטיקאי לכל עת, אחד שיודע לשחק את התפקיד אך חסרה לו אותנטיות. בעבר הוא תמך בזכות לביצוע הפלות (כאשר רצה לזכות בתמיכתם של הבוחרים הליברלים בניו-אינגלנד), אך כעת, כשהוא מנסה לקנות את לבם של השמרנים הרפובליקאים, הוא סבור שיש להוציאן אל מחוץ לחוק. כמושל, רומני יזם תוכנית לביטוח בריאות ממלכתי במסצ'וסטס אך כעת, כשהנשיא הדמוקרטי ברק אובמה מנסה ליישם את המודל של ביטוח הבריאות ברמה ארצית, רומני מכנה אותו סוציאליסט.</span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: 100%; ">עשו לנו לייק בפייסבוק וקבלו את מיטב הטורים והפרשנויות ישירות אליכם</span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: 100%; ">תומכיו של רומני מנסים להדוף את הביקורת על מועמדם, בטענה שמה שנראה כחוסר עמוד שדרה פוליטי מוכיח שרומני הוא מדינאי פרגמטי שסולד מדוקטרינות פוליטיות, וכן שכמושל ואיש עסקים הוא הוכיח את יכולתו לפתור בעיות קונקרטיות. מזכיר מישהו? למרות מאמציהם של הרפובליקאים לתאר את אובמה כאיש שמאל רדיקלי, המדיניות שלו שיקפה עמדות פוליטיות מרכזיות בנושאי פנים וחוץ, כולל הרפורמה בבריאות, שנשענת על המודל של רומני ושקודמה בצורה פרגמטית ביותר על ידי יועצים המקושרים לוול-סטריט ולפנטגון. זה מסביר מדוע, כפי שהרפובליקאים החלו לחשוד ברומני שהוא לא אחד משלהם, הפרוגרסיבים במפלגה הדמוקרטית התאכזבו מאובמה.</span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: 100%; ">יש בבחינת אנטי-קליימקס בכך ששני המועמדים לנשיאות הם טכנוקרטים, לאחר שכמה שנים של משבר כלכלי קשה הצמיחו תנועות פוליטיות בעלות ממד אידיאולוגי ברור, כמו "מסיבת התה" של הימין ו"לכבוש את וול-סטריט" בשמאל. בבחירות בנובמבר יתמודדו על נשיאות ארצות הברית שני אנשים שהם בוגרי בית הספר למשפטים בהרווארד, פוליטיקאים שמעדיפים לעיין בניירות עמדה ובנתונים סטטיסטיים מאשר לקיים דיונים אידיאולוגיים חובקי עולם.</span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: 100%; ">גם המשברים הכלכליים והחברתיים שעברו על אירופה באחרונה, לא רק שלא גרמו לחיזוק ממשי בכוחן האלקטורלי של תנועות אידיאולוגיות, אלא הביאו למינויים של בנקאים חסרי צבע כראשי ממשלה ביוון ובאיטליה. הם גם עשוייים להביא לבחירתו של טכנוקרט משעמם לנשיא הבא של צרפת. בסין הצליחו האפרטצ'יקים של המפלגה הקומוניסטית לסלק מהשלטון פוליטיקאי עם מסר פופוליסטי, ברוסיה חוזר לשלטון ביורוקרט לשעבר בק-ג-ב, ובישראל קציני צבא ואנשי ביטחון לשעבר ממשיכים לשמש כעתודה המרכזית למנהיגות.</span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: 100%; ">האם ניצחון הטכנוקרטים בארצות הברית ובמדינות אחרות מבשר את מה שהפילוסוף הפוליטי האמריקאי, דניאל בל, כינה בשנות ה-60 "קץ האידיאולוגיה", או שמדובר במעין אינטרמצו בין עידן אידיאולוגי אחד למשנהו? אין לדעת. מה שברור הוא, שמי שסובל מנדודי שינה יכול לפתור זאת כעת ביעילות רבה: הוא יכול לצפות בוויכוחים הטלויזיוניים בין אובמה ורומני. אפילו מיסטר ספוק היה נרדם.</span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: 100%; ">הכותב הוא מנתח בכיר ב-Wikistart, חברה לייעוץ גיאו-אסטרטגי</span></div>Leon Hadarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07074306142674999554noreply@blogger.com54tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19184418.post-14730195658943227292012-04-09T13:14:00.001-07:002012-04-09T13:14:52.758-07:00Beware of instant narrativesBusiness Times - 10 Apr 2012<br /><br /><br />Beware of instant narratives<br /><br />They're fickle, dictated by vested interests - and hold far from the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth<br /><br />By LEON HADAR <br />WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT<br /><br />NOT so long ago in the pre-Internet era and at a time when print media reigned supreme, members of the chattering class in the West were looking forward to reading the cover story of the new issue of Time magazine to find out how the political and cultural zeitgeist was shaping up.<br /><br />Today's young readers and the media in general continue to pay some attention to whom Time chooses as its 'Man' - oops! - ' Person of the Year'. But in mid-20th century America, the magazine had an enormous power to shape the nation's agenda - and, by extension, that of the rest of the world - by constructing the Current Narrative.<br /><br />Not only did Time's cover stories inform Americans and the entire global village about who was 'in' and who was 'out' in the worlds of art and literature (yes, that was a time when people actually read books); the magazine would also devote the occasional cover story to what its editors considered to be mega political-cultural trends - for example, the then rising power of the feminist movement or the growing violence in the inner cities.<br /><br />In that context, one of the most famous (or infamous) cover stories in the magazine was Is God Dead?, which was published on April 8, 1966 and which focused on the increasing secularisation of Western societies and the responses to that development by religious institutions and theologians.<br /><br />Revisiting that 1966 story more recently on the occasion of the death of its author, some writers suggested that Time may have misjudged the long-term trends about the fate of religion in America, noting that the majority of Americans continue to profess their belief in God.<br /><br />So perhaps it was a rush of judgement on the part of Time at that moment in history. But remember - that and other Grand-Narrative cover stories would be a reflection of serious efforts to study a major and complex issue in depth, involving a lot of research and writing (and rewriting, by the magazine's editors) and igniting a lively debate in other media outlets.<br /><br />Consider now our contemporary media environment in which hundreds (if not thousands) of Internet sites and blogs, Facebook posts and twitters, and even the surviving representatives of the 'old' media (including Time) are competing for our attention. Click this minute on the link to your favourite blogger and you'll find out that he or she have just constructed an Instant Narrative that tries to make sense of the world at exactly this, well, minute.<br /><br />Recall how many times since the start of the Great Recession the same blogger who insisted again and again that the world-as-we-know-it was coming-to-an-end was also predicting again and again that the recovery was around the corner.<br /><br />If it was Monday, Sept 5, 2011, then President Barack Obama was 'finished' - end of story; three days later, Mr Obama was on a roll and heading towards victory. In our media universe, God would be dead - and then be back alive - depending on the blog you read and on the time of day.<br /><br />This kind of rush to judgement by the Internet and the 24/7 cable television news shows came into full view after Trayvon Martin, a black Florida teenager, was shot dead by George Zimmerman, a neighbourhood watch volunteer. Based on a set of Florida's permissive gun laws (aka Stand Your Ground), Zimmerman claimed he had acted in self-defence and has not been charged by the police with anything. In states where the Stand-Your- Ground type of laws don't exist, Zimmerman would have been arrested and brought before a judge where the prosecutor would have announced his decision on whether to charge Zimmerman with one of various legal gradations that apply to 'homicide'. A trial would have ensued under which the jury and a judge would have had to decide whether Zimmerman was guilty and, if guilty, what type of sentence to impose on him.<br /><br />Zimmerman argues that he acted in self-defence after Martin attacked and injured him. Martin's family accuses Zimmerman of killing an unarmed young black man in cold blood and being driven by racist animosity.<br /><br />These and related issues would have been resolved in a trial with judgement being rendered based on the evidence and the testimony of witnesses as they apply to the law. But since Zimmerman wasn't arrested and no trial is planned, what Americans were exposed to was trial by the Internet and cable news - with bloggers, radio talk-show hosts and television pundits serving as judges, juries and executioners.<br /><br />Reflecting the political polarisation that dominates the online political exchange, bloggers and media types who identify themselves with the political left drew up an instant Grand Narrative which helped transform the killing in Florida into another case of race-based violence perpetrated by a white racist and tolerated by a racist white community and the police force.<br /><br />At the same time, conservative Web news sites and pundits portrayed Martin as a young black thug and drug dealer and Zimmerman as a law-abiding citizen protecting his community, and accused African American activists of exploiting the issue to advance their political interests and of engaging in an Internet 'lynching' of Zimmerman.<br /><br />The reality, however, didn't seem to fit into either instant narrative. Zimmerman turned out to be a Hispanic man who lived in an integrated community and maintained close social ties with many blacks but who may have uttered anti-black epithets before the shooting. Martin was a high-school student with no police record who had hoped to go to college. What happened, or so it seems, is that Zimmerman (a wannabe cop who was trigger-happy) operated in a permissive legal environment that encouraged him to shoot at a young black man wearing a hood whom he perceived as a 'threat'. Â<br /><br />In any case, only a trial - or, short of that, a long and exhaustive research of the incident by a serious media organisation committed to the standards of objectivity - could be relied on to come up with a fair judgement on what really happened.<br /><br />Don't expect the same kind of performance by your favourite blogger who might provide you with an exciting and biased storyline - but not with the hard facts.<br /><br />Copyright © 2010 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.Leon Hadarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07074306142674999554noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19184418.post-28388938906027759442012-04-05T13:15:00.000-07:002012-04-05T13:16:16.611-07:00Election fever grips AmericaBusiness Times - 06 Apr 2012<br /><br />PERSPECTIVE<br />Election fever grips America<br /><br />Romney's latest primaries victories and Obama's admonition for Republicans make it clear general election campaign is underway, if not in full swing<br /><br />By LEON HADAR <br />WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT<br /><br />IT'S War! Just a few hours before Mitt Romney captured the Republican presidential primaries in Maryland, the District of Columbia and Wisconsin - and was clearly on his way to clenching his party's nomination as its presidential candidate - Democratic President Barack Obama unleashed an overwhelming election-year assault on the Republicans and their presumptive presidential nominee.<br /><br />He accused the Republicans and the man who would challenge him for control of the White House in November of promoting a 'radical agenda' for America's future.<br /><br />Mr Romney's primaries victories on Tuesday and Mr Obama's harsh admonition for the Republicans - and for Mr Romney's vision of the nation - made it clear that although Election Day is seven months away, the general election campaign is under way, if not in full swing.<br /><br />Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, a social-cultural conservative who has emerged as the main Republican challenger to Mr Romney's presidential aspirations, made it clear on Tuesday that he was planning to remain in the race despite his electoral defeat in Wisconsin where he could not even count on the support of his base of blue-collar and Evangelical Christian voters.<br /><br />Mr Santorum and his aides have suggested that they would still be able to slow down Mr Romney's electoral momentum by beating him in the Republican primaries in Mr Santorum's home state of Pennsylvania and in several southern states.<br /><br />But despite the refusal by Mr Santorum, as well as by Texas Representative Ron Paul and former House speaker Newt Gingrich, to withdraw from the race, the general consensus in Washington is that Mr Romney will be crowned as his party's presidential nominee in the convention in Tampa, Florida in June.<br /><br />But if Mr Santorum continues to attack Mr Romney from the right, forcing the former Massachusetts governor to continue discussing social-cultural issues such as abortion, Mr Romney would be deprived of the opportunity of concentrating the focus of his campaign on the issue that seems to matter to the majority of the voters - and, in particular, the critical electoral bloc of independent voters - the economy.<br /><br />There is no doubt that the perception that Mr Romney is a member of the wealthiest one per cent of Americans - enhanced by the Republican candidate's numerous disclosures and gaffes about his wealth during the campaign (the recent one was a report that Mr Romney was planning to add a 'car elevator' to his mansion in California) - is not helping Mr Romney win the support of the financially distressed middle-class voters.<br /><br />Moreover, Mr Romney's tough stand on illegal immigration - he has called for the 'self deportation' of illegal Mexican immigrants - has sunk his support among Hispanic voters to single digit, while the Republicans' continuing obsession with whether women should have access to contraception explains why a majority of women voters are planning to vote for Mr Obama in November.<br /><br />Public opinion polls are indicating that the long and bruising Republican presidential primaries have hurt the presumptive Republicans nominee with more voters telling pollsters that they were having 'unfavourable' impression of Mr Romney who seems to be falling behind Mr Obama in the daily tracking polls in swing states such as Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio.<br /><br />Same policies<br /><br />Indeed, Mr Obama demonstrated on Tuesday that while Mr Romney continued to be distracted by the Republican primaries, he was able to start setting the terms and the agenda of this year's general presidential campaign. He portrayed the Republicans and Mr Romney as being out of touch with the concerns of America's middle class and accused them of embracing economic policies that favour the wealthiest one per cent of Americans. He said there seemed to be an attempt to return to the same policies - reducing taxes on the rich and lessening regulation on the big corporation - that created the conditions for the Great Recession. These policies were bound to devastate the middle class by expanding social-economic inequalities in America.<br /><br />'It's nothing but thinly veiled Social Darwinism', is the way Mr Obama portrayed the Republican policies during a 40-minute address before editors and reporters on Tuesday.<br /><br />'It's antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity and upward mobility for everyone who's willing to work hard for it, a place where prosperity doesn't trickle down from the top, but grows outward from the heart of the middle class,' Mr Obama stressed. He added: 'It is a prescription for decline.'<br /><br />Mr Obama blamed the rising deficit on the economic policies pursued under his predecessor, George W Bush, pointing out to 'two wars, two massive tax cuts and an unprecedented financial crisis'.<br /><br />Faulting Republican policies, including tax cuts for the wealthy and lax financial regulation, for leading the country into the Great Recession, Mr Obama said: 'You would think that after the results of this experiment in trickle-down economics, after the results were made painfully clear, that the proponents of this theory might show some humility, might moderate their views a bit.'<br /><br />But 'that's exactly the opposite of what they've done. Instead of moderating their views even slightly, the Republicans running Congress right now have doubled down'.<br /><br />After spending most of his term in office trying to bridge the differences with his Republican opponents and strive to come up with bipartisan solutions to the major economic problems, including the swelling federal deficit - with the Republicans dismissing his many proposals as 'radical' and 'socialist' - Mr Obama has decided to embrace now the more populist approach favoured by the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.<br /><br />And, indeed, during his speech on Tuesday, Mr Obama went out of his way to link Mr Romney to the set of deficit-cutting proposals advanced by the Representative Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, and that have been adopted by the Republicans in the House, and which call for drastic cuts in the major government-backed retirement and health-insurance programmes, including the privatisation of one that provides assistance to elderly Americans.<br /><br />Budget blueprint<br /><br />At the same time that it advocated slashing these social-economic programmes, the same Republican budget blueprint also calls for preserving and in, some cases, expanding tax-reduction schemes for the wealthy and for the big corporations.<br /><br />'One of my potential opponents, Governor Romney, has said that he hoped a similar version of this plan from last year would be introduced as a bill on day one of his presidency,' Mr Obama said. 'He said that he's very supportive of this new budget,' he noted, adding sarcastically that Mr Romney 'even called it marvellous, which is a word you don't often hear when it comes to describing a budget'.<br /><br />Mr Ryan is from Wisconsin where he was campaigning for Mr Romney on the eve of the Republican primaries there and pundits speculated that he was one of the Republicans that Mr Romney was considering as a possible vice-presidential nominee. Mr Ryan responded to Mr Obama's attack by suggesting that the president chose 'tired and cynical political attacks'. History would 'not be kind to a president who, when it came time to confront our generation's defining challenge, chose to duck and run', Mr Ryan insisted.<br /><br />But Mr Ryan refrained from responding to Mr Obama's detailed critique of his budget proposals. Hence, listing the consequences of the Ryan budget were implemented - 10 million college students with higher loan payments; 200,000 children denied early-education programmes; 4,500 fewer federal grants to fight crime - Mr Obama argued that the coming election posed fundamental choice for the American people on what kind of future their country should have.<br /><br />In tough times, Mr Obama insisted, 'the debate gets sharper; it gets more vigorous'. And that was 'a good thing', he said.<br /><br />In November, we will find out whether it was, indeed, a good thing for him - or for the Republicans.<br /><br />Copyright © 2010 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.Leon Hadarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07074306142674999554noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19184418.post-70081274583242850762012-04-02T13:06:00.001-07:002012-04-02T13:06:41.136-07:00Latest example of a success storyBusiness Times - 03 Apr 2012<br /><br /><br />Latest example of a success story<br /><br />Korea-born doctor's nomination as World Bank chief highlights Asian-Americans' contributions in various fields in the US<br /><br />By LEON HADAR <br />WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT<br /><br />THE unexpected nomination of Jim Yong Kim as the next president of the World Bank has been hailed as a welcome departure by the White House from the tradition of appointing professional economists or American political figures to the prestigious position.<br /><br />Dr Kim is neither an economist nor a politician, but a medical doctor and an anthropologist who is clearly qualified for the job of managing the world's leading development organisation.<br /><br />A former head of the World Health Organization's HIV/Aids department, Dr Kim will be able to utilise his experience in providing healthcare to developing countries as he tries to promote new thinking on development work in poor countries.<br /><br />And Dr Kim, who was born in Seoul in 1959 and moved with his family to the United States when he was a child, who was educated at Harvard and who has served as president of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire for several years, is also the most recent example of the success story of the rising Asian-American community.<br /><br />Comprising around 5 per cent of the American population (about 15 million) - and considered to be the fastest-growing immigrant group in the US - Asian-Americans have been making extraordinary contributions to their adopted country in science and technology (in 2009, two Asia-Americans were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics and Chemistry) as well as in education, arts and entertainment, and are now occupying leading positions in business and public life and of course in sports, as demonstrated by the continuing media fascination with basketball player Jeremy Lin.<br /><br />It may be considered a stereotype, but based on overwhelming evidence of their high household income (and low incarceration rate) and educational and professional achievements by comparison to other minorities and the declining white majority, it is difficult not to come to the conclusion that Asian-Americans are, indeed, a 'model minority'.<br /><br />Hence, the large majority of Americans of Chinese, Japanese and Korean descent between the ages of 20-21 are in college (compared to about a third of whites in the same age).<br /><br />In California, for example, the majority of undergraduate schools in prestigious public universities such as UC Berkeley are Asian-Americans.<br /><br />Indeed, according to the available statistics, nearly three out of five employed Asian-Americans aged 25 and above have earned a bachelor's degree or higher; this is 60 per cent greater than whites and more than double and triple the proportions of blacks and Hispanics, respectively.<br /><br />And the high education rates among Asian-Americans translate also into higher rates of income. Hence, the median income for Asian-American households is around US$70,000 compared with US$52,000 for all households.<br /><br />It's not surprising that a study issued by the US Department of Labor in 2011 pointed out that one reason the median wages are higher for Asian-Americans is a much larger number of Asian-Americans are college graduates: 57.5 per cent of employed Asian-Americans who are 25 or older have a degree. This proportion is 60 per cent higher than among whites, and more than twice that of blacks.<br /><br />The study, The Asian-American Labor Force in the Recovery, provided some interesting data on the relative success with which Asian-Americans have adjusted to the recent economic recession.<br /><br />The study noted that Asian-Americans have the lowest unemployment rate compared with other groups.<br /><br />In 2007, the year in which the recession started, the unemployment rate for Asian-Americans was 3.2 per cent which was lower than the figure of 4.1 per cent among whites, 5.6 per cent among Hispanics and 8.3 per cent among blacks.<br /><br />Three years into the recession in 2010, the Asian-American unemployment rate averaged 7.5 per cent (and has been falling since then), with the lowest unemployment rate among Japanese-Americans (4.6 per cent), Korean-Americans (6.4 per cent), Chinese-Americans (6.5 per cent) and Indian-Americans (6.6 per cent).<br /><br />In comparison, unemployment rates were 8.7, 12.5 and 16 per cent for whites, Hispanics and blacks, respectively.<br /><br />The study also found that Asian-Americans are more likely than either whites or blacks to be employed in the private sector, with more than 8 to 10 per cent of employed Asian-Americans working for private companies.<br /><br />At the same time, according to the most recent survey of business owners, the number of Asian-owned businesses expanded at the rate of 40.4 per cent, a rate that more than doubled the national average between 2002 and 2007.<br /><br />Similarly, the median wage of Asian-Americans is higher than any other racial group. Half of Asian-Americans working full-time earned US$855 per week in 2010. This median weekly wage exceeds that earned by whites by nearly 12 per cent for every dollar.<br /><br />In fact, Asian-Americans' median weekly earnings have been greater than those earned by whites during the last decade; the difference reached a high of 16 per cent in 2008 and 2009 before declining in 2010.<br /><br />The Labor Department study concluded that with the economic recovery accelerating, the professional, scientific and technical industry is expected to grow the that fastest, and that is clearly good news for Asian-Americans.<br /><br />Indeed, in 2012, 7.8 per cent of jobs in this high-growth industry went to Asian-American workers, making them well-represented there compared with their overall representations in the labour force (5 per cent).<br /><br />Asian-Americans are similarly well represented in science, technology, engineering and math (Stem) occupations, accounting for more than 9 per cent of jobs there.<br /><br />Asian-Americans occupy more than 16 per cent of the jobs in math and science-related occupations, such as computer and mathematical occupations, 11 per cent of the jobs in life, physical and social science occupations, and 9 per cent of the jobs in architecture and engineering occupations.<br /><br />Overall, Asian-Americans are expected to be in a strong position to see a major growth in their representations in the good and high-wage professions of the future in the US.<br /><br />Much has been said and written about the reasons for the Asian-American success story, with most explanation centring on the value that Asian-Americans attach to family, tradition and education, the kind of traits that helped American Jews in the past to make major contributions in science, technology, education and the arts.<br /><br />More recently, a book written by Asian-American academic Amy Chua, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which purported to explain 'Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior' in raising children, with her emphasis placed traditional, strict 'Chinese' upbringing, has helped ignite public debate on whether American education should adopt some of the methods that prove to be successful in encouraging Asian-American children to excel in school.<br /><br />Whatever the reasons for this Asian-American success story, it should come good news not only to members of this community but to all Americans who have been expressing growing concerns in recent years about the erosion in the nation's educational standards and in its ability to maintain its global economic competitive age vis-a -vis the emerging markets of China, India, Korea and the rest of Asia.<br /><br />Ironically, the immigrants arriving to America from these same countries are going to serve as a powerful engine for a new American scientific, technological and economic renaissance in this new Pacific Century.<br /><br /><br /><br />Copyright © 2010 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.Leon Hadarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07074306142674999554noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19184418.post-17411716771927464732012-03-29T14:11:00.001-07:002012-03-29T14:11:50.738-07:00Two wonks and a right to become US PresidentBusiness Times - 30 Mar 2012<br /><br />THE BOTTOM LINE<br />Two wonks and a right to become US President<br /><br />By LEON HADAR <br />WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT<br /><br />AMERICAN comedian Bill Maher describes the presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney as 'the most boring man in the world'. Romney is so boring, he quips, that 'the paint on the wall looks at him when it dries' and 'Ambien (a drug for the treatment of insomnia) takes him when it cannot fall asleep'.<br /><br />Well, the comedian may be exaggerating a bit. Mr Romney is probably not the most boring man in the world but he certainly could compete for the title. Indeed, there is something about his robotic persona that makes human beings feel uncomfortable about him. He does look and sound like an automaton that has been programmed to look and talk like an American president who reiterates his love for family, country and God, and promotes this or that plan to solve this or that problem.<br /><br />In fact, during his long career in public service, Mr Romney seems to have been all over the place when it comes to his policy ideas, at times sounding like a liberal (he once supported the women's right to abortion) and at other times repackaging himself as a conservative (he now wants to criminalise abortion) or is somewhere in between (perhaps the states and not the federal government should decide on the abortion issue).<br /><br />Mr Romney is, after all, attacking President Barack Obama now for adopting the same government-backed healthcare programme on the federal level that he himself helped pass as Governor in Massachusetts. And he pledged, if he becomes president, to repeal Obamacare - something that only Congress can do anyway.<br /><br />So no one is shocked when some of his critics accuse him of being a 'flip flopper', or of pandering to voters and interest groups, of lacking an 'ideological underpinning' and a 'political backbone'. But then this same kind of criticism can be turned on its head and be applied to suggest that Mr Romney is 'pragmatic' and 'open minded', a 'non-ideologue' and 'problem fixer'.<br /><br />'Do we really need a moral crusader in the White House?' ask supporters of the former governor and financial business executive. Which is exactly how he likes to paint himself - someone with experience in state government and in the private sector who would be able to come up with 'solutions' to US economic problems. He even has a Power Point presentation that details those policy solutions - just right for those who suffer from insomnia.<br /><br />And the irony is that much of the criticism and the praise directed against Mr Obama as a president and as a candidate is that, like Mr Romney, the present president has been a man for all political seasons, sounding at times as the man of the political left (let's get out of Iraq and regulate the financial system) or the political right (let's expand our military presence in Afghanistan and refrain from nationalising the banks). He uses populist rhetoric - but gets his economic advice from free marketers; he won the Nobel Peace Prize - but has expanded the use of drones to attack suspected terrorists.<br /><br />Indeed, even his Obamacare plan that conservatives like to hate was modelled after the healthcare programme that the Republican Romney implemented in Massachusetts - under which private insurance companies remain in control. And unlike his Republican predecessor, he ended-up killing Osama bin Laden as well as other leading terrorist figures around the world.<br /><br />Mr Obama is younger than Mr Romney and may be more attuned to contemporary popular culture and, therefore, scores higher than his Republican challenger on the 'cool' barometer. But in many ways, if you forget that Mr Obama is bi-racial and has an exotic name, the current White House occupant is not so different from the former Massachusetts governor in terms of Ivy League education and of their non-ideological and pragmatic modus operandi, if not technocratic approach to policy issues.<br /><br />Notwithstanding all the talk about his charisma and his being a transformational president, Mr Obama is not really a very inspiring president. He is not a bad orator who knows how to read his prepared speeches that sound as 'wonky' and robotic as those of Mr Romney with their emphasis on the management of policies as opposed to rousing the people with new ideas.<br /><br />It may be a paradox. But at a time of ideological polarisation in US politics, dominated by the rhetoric of the likes of the Tea Party and 'Occupy Wall Street', America's two major political parties will be running for the president in the coming election two political figures who are not driven by any grand ideology. Both are detached policy intellectuals who like to build coalitions and manage things.<br /><br />Indeed, Barack Obama is not FDR - and Mitt Romney is not Ronald Reagan. The two remind us of the men and women who run for the Prime Ministership of governments in Europe. So don't be surprise if the televised debate between these two wonks will be very, well, boring.<br /><br />Copyright © 2010 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.Leon Hadarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07074306142674999554noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19184418.post-9635371152945531552012-03-27T13:18:00.001-07:002012-03-27T13:18:27.195-07:00Bernanke out to prevent repeat of Great DepressionBusiness Times - 28 Mar 2012<br /><br /><br />Bernanke out to prevent repeat of Great Depression<br /><br />By LEON HADAR <br />WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT<br /><br />IT is one of the decisions made by the US Federal Reserve in the past that has intrigued contemporary economic historians. The tightening of credit by Marriner Eccles, the head of the Fed in 1936-37 has been blamed for the collapse of the US stock market in 1937 and the ensuing return of the Great Depression - after several years during which the New Deal policies pursued by President Franklin D Roosevelt had been leading the economy towards recovery.<br /><br />One of the economists who have studied the ramification of that Eccles decision has been former Princeton professor Ben Bernanke who, in his current job as the Fed chairman, seemed to be trying to apply the lessons of his academic research.<br /><br />Mr Bernanke has stated in the past that he considered Mr Eccles' decision to tighten monetary policy - at the time when the US economy was showing signs of getting out of the depression - to be a colossal mistake and insisted that as the head of the US central bank he was not planning to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor.<br /><br />Mr Eccles and his colleagues at the Fed were worried that rising wages of American workers by more than 10 per cent at the time were igniting inflationary pressures and responded by tightening monetary policy (by doubling reserve requirements by banks).<br /><br />The Fed policies were mirrored by the fiscal approach embraced by the federal government in 1936-37 which concluded that against the backdrop of an economic recovery it was time to bring an end to the policy of deficit spending and take steps to balance the budget.<br /><br />'The war against the Depression had required deficit spending,' then treasury secretary Robert Morgenthau said. 'But the emergency is ending, and the domestic problems we face today are essentially different from those which faced us four years ago,' he stated. 'We want private business to expand. We believe that one of the most important ways of achieving these ends is to continue toward a balance in the federal budget.'<br /><br />Economists continue to debate whether the stock market crash of 1937 and the Great Depression II were the result of the Fed's tightening monetary policy or the attempt by the Roosevelt Administration to balance the budget. Or perhaps both were to be blamed for what happened.<br /><br />What is becoming clear, however, is that history seems to be repeating itself. As the American economy is starting to recover from the Great Recession much of the debate in Washington seems to be focusing now not on whether to start cutting the federal deficit - but on how big that cut should be (with Republicans demanding a big cut as opposed to the Democrats who are pressing for a small one).<br /><br />No leading Republicans or Democrat is calling for more deficit spending in the form of a new economic stimulus. They are all sounding like Mr Morgenthau did in 1936.<br /><br />So that may explain why Mr Bernanke doesn't want to sound like Mr Eccles did in that year and be blamed for creating tightened monetary conditions that would exacerbate the effects of the deficit contraction policies of Washington which, in turn, could bring about a Great Recession II. It is from that perspective that one needed to examine Mr Bernanke's comment on Monday that improvement in the US labour market might not be able to be sustained - a clear indication that inflation doves were in charge in the Fed and would continue to maintain an expansionary monetary policy.<br /><br />And Mr Bernanke may be right. The slight improvement in the nation's labour market last month could be temporary and may not be a sign that the American economy was entering into a sustainable recovery. Wages are certainly not rising. That could happen in the future, he said, but 'we have not seen that in a persuasive way yet'. 'And I think it remains important for us to remain cautious and see how the economy develops.'<br /><br />In fact, Mr Bernanke was sending a message to investors who may have been confused by the recent rhetoric coming from the inflation hawks in the Fed and was hinting that the central bank would be even open to a new round of quantitative easing (QE3). It was certainly not ready to put its foot on the monetary brakes.<br /><br />But what if much of the recent economic growth has been driven by fiscal policy and that the Fed's loose monetary policy would have very little effect on the economic recovery - and may actually ignite some inflationary pressures? In that case, the conditions of the American economy would look less like that of the 1930s and more like that of the 1970s when the explosive mix of economic recession and inflation brought us the dreaded 'stagflation'. That would certainly be a case study that would intrigue future economic historians.<br /><br />Copyright © 2010 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.Leon Hadarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07074306142674999554noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19184418.post-48642249601084642432012-03-23T13:20:00.001-07:002012-03-23T13:20:26.922-07:00Disseminating American idealshttp://www.businesstimes.com.sg/sub/storyprintfriendly/0,4582,483334,00.html? <br />Business Times - 24 Mar 2012<br /><br /><br />Disseminating American ideals<br /><br />The US should know that the best way to spread its ideals is not by forcing them on other nations, but by perfecting its own political and economic model<br /><br />By LEON HADAR <br />WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT<br /><br />AMERICANS are once again surprised to learn that the rest of humanity doesn't always share their hopes and dreams - or even their basic set of values. Hence, in the aftermath of the massacre in Afghanistan of 16 people in the hands of an American soldier, some pundits have been trying to resolve what they consider to be a paradox of sorts.<br /><br />While the accidental burning of Qurans by US government employees in Afghanistan last month triggered violent protests outside Nato (North Atlantic Treating Organisation) that took at least 29 lives, the intentional mass murder of Afghan civilians, including nine children in Kandahar on March 11 have led to a few and mostly peaceful anti-American demonstrations.<br /><br />That most Afghans seemed to have supported the February 2006 decision by a judge to execute an Afghan aid worker for converting to Christianity or that many Pakistanis refused to condemn the assassination of leading politician Salman Taseer by his own security guard who disagreed with Mr Taseer's opposition to Pakistan's blasphemy law, are two other examples of incidents that have dramatised the wide gap between what we tend to regard as the American secular tradition and the continuing powerful role that religion tends to play in the lives of Afghans, Pakistanis and other people who, on paper at least, are considered to be America's allies in the war against terrorism.<br /><br />Indeed, it is difficult for Americans to understand that the so-called Enlightenment Project of the 18th Century - with its rejection of the received truth of religion and faith, of church and traditional authorities and its emphasis on individual rights and the liberating power of reason - which sparked a major philosophical and political revolution in the West and provided the ideological foundations for the establishment of the United States - has never become a unified and universal undertaking.<br /><br />In fact, the growing power of the theocratic political right in the Republican Party, represented by presidential candidate Rick Santorum and his supporters among Christian Evangelists, conservative Catholics, and ultra-Orthodox Jews - who have expressed strong opposition to abortion, homosexual relations and even contraception - is a sign that even in the American Republic that enshrined the separation of religion and state in its Constitution, religious faith and traditions continue to play a major role in public life.<br /><br />At best, even in the US, in the Anglosphere and in much of Europe, the Enlightenment Project and the philosophical traditions, political movements and social and economic systems it sparked (secularism; liberalism; democracy; capitalism; socialism) has been a work in progress, adapted in different ways by different national and cultural traditions.<br /><br />Hence, advancing women's rights, religious freedom, racial equality, political rights, and free markets has certainly not been uniform process in the West. For example, Catholic nations like Italy and Ireland had banned abortion and divorce and blacks had suffered discrimination in the US until the 1960s.<br /><br />And the American version of democracy and capitalism have not been cloned in the rest of the West, including in Canada that with its government-controlled health care programme and European-like parliamentary system is probably regarded as 'socialist' by the leading Republican presidential candidates, while Canadians and west Europeans believe that the continuing American practice of executing convicts is not very, well, enlightened.<br /><br />At the same tine, non-Western nations such as Japan, China or India have embraced some elements of the Enlightenment Project that seem to respond to their history and traditions as well as their current needs - while rejecting others. Call it Enlightenment a la carte.<br /><br />Yet since the end of the Cold War, members of the American political and intellectual elites have been operating under the illusion that the rest of the world should and wants to be like them.<br /><br />Promoting the free-market economic model aka Washington Consensus in the emerging markets; celebrating the so-called Colour Revolutions in Ukraine and other parts of the former Soviet empire; and pressing the Freedom Agenda based on liberal-democratic values in Afghanistan, Iraq and the entire Middle East were all part of an American-led ideological crusade that seemed to recall in its ferocity - including through the use of military power - the global revolutionary campaigns launched by the Soviet Union not so long ago.<br /><br />But the fact is that many non-Western societies are either not ready or are not interested - or both - in being 'like us'. The notion that Afghanistan - a society where the family, the tribe, and religion dominate the lives of most individuals - recalling Europe on the eve of modern age - was going to transform itself into a Western nation thanks to American assistance and guidance - helped create the high expectations that were never going to be fulfilled.<br /><br />Moreover, Americans have deluded themselves into thinking that if non-Western nations adopt some of the instruments that were employed in the West as part of the process of democratisation and liberalisation - for example, free elections in Iraq and free markets in China - they are signalling their intentions to embrace the Enlightenment Project - and become, indeed, exactly like us. But democracy and free elections in Iraq was seen by Iraqis as a means to empower the majority religious sect (Shiite) and dispossess the ruling minority group (Sunnis), a process that would be mirror imaged in Syria if and when free elections there would allow the majority Sunnis to come into power and repress the minority Alawaites who run the country now.<br /><br />And, if anything, much of the celebrated Arab Spring in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East is strengthening political Islamist groups whose commitment to respect the rights of women and religious minorities is questionable.<br /><br />Similarly, pursuing the capitalist road to creating wealth and strengthening the economic base of the country is not a reflection of the commitment on the part of political elites in East Asia and elsewhere to the ideals of Adam Smith. It is, in many cases, part of a national economic strategy that helps China and other countries to compete more effectively with the US.<br /><br />It is true that free markets and free elections can help create the foundations of a middle class whose members challenge the old ruling elites. But as events in Russia demonstrate, that process can be slow and uneven, or like in the case of Turkey, it could even set back secularisation and other forms of Western-style liberalisation.<br /><br />Americans are free to celebrate, cherish and preserve their values of democracy and liberalism that have helped attract millions of immigrants to their country and make their nation economically prosperous and politically stable.<br /><br />But they should recognise that the most effective way to spread their ideals worldwide is not by forcing them on other nations, but by perfecting their own political and economic model and making it more attractive to other nations.<br /><br />btworld@sph.com.sgLeon Hadarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07074306142674999554noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19184418.post-41852138238692635452012-03-22T13:57:00.002-07:002012-03-27T12:09:39.407-07:00my new op-ed on Iran in HaaretzHome News Diplomacy & Defense<br /><br /><br />Published 21:49 22.03.12 Latest update 21:49 22.03.12<br />Gambling on wars<br />Israel would be wise to learn the lessons of Iraq before it embarks on a risky adventure in Iran.<br /><br />By Leon Hadar<br />Tags: Iraq Iran Iran nuclear George Bush<br />Get Haaretz on iPhone<br />Get Haaretz on Android<br />If there's even a one percent chance that terrorists will attack the United States, American decision-makers have to treat it as a certainty in terms of their response,and mustlaunch a pre-emptive attack against the state or the individuals that may be behind such a terrorist act. That was the main conclusion reached by former U.S. DefenseSecretary Richard Cheney in the aftermath the 9/11 attacks in 2011, according to American journalist Ron Susskind,who termed it the “One Percent Doctrine.”<br /><a href="http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/gambling-on-wars-1.420259?trailingPath=2.169%2C2.223%2C">see the rest</a>Leon Hadarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07074306142674999554noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19184418.post-55723907554608975292012-03-19T13:08:00.001-07:002012-03-19T13:08:57.314-07:00Energy prices, the economy and the electionBusiness Times - 20 Mar 2012<br /><br /><br />Energy prices, the economy and the election<br /><br />Unfortunately for Obama, rising oil prices will cost votes whatever he does<br /><br />By LEON HADAR <br />WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT<br /><br />WHEN one considers the Federal Reserve's recent outlook, the rise in retail prices, the creation of more new jobs, and the relatively bullish stock market, it is possible for your average American voter to conclude that the US economy is showing some new signs of momentum - or is expanding 'moderately', as the Fed put it. And that could play into the political hands of President Barack Obama.<br /><br />But former Massachusetts Governor and the leading Republican presidential candidates believe that they have discovered a political-mathematical formula of sorts to help them beat the president in November: The more gas prices go up, the more President Obama's poll numbers go down.<br /><br />Even President Obama seems to get it. 'As long as gas prices are going up, people are going to feel like I'm not doing enough,' he said last week. 'And I understand that, because people get hurt when they're going to that gas station and seeing those prices rise every day,' he added.<br /><br />Indeed, the most recent New York Times/CBS news poll indicated that President Obama's approval rating is now at 41 per cent, a drop of nine points in just one month. And guess what has been the most significant economic development that took place in that month? Fuel costs have been getting higher - gasoline went up 30 US cents a gallon in the past month - and have been impacting those blue-collar workers and low-income households in key 'swing' electoral states who have yet to recover from the financial devastation of the Great Recession.<br /><br />You don't have to be an economist or a political expert to figure out that there is a relationship between energy prices and the president's approval rating. Hundreds of millions of Americans - most of them own cars and rely on them to commute to work and everyday transportation - think that presidents can do a lot to control oil prices. The New York Times/CBS News poll concluded that 54 per cent of Americans share that belief. Only 36 per cent of them believe that what they pay at the pump is beyond a president's control.<br /><br />Most experts tend to agree with those 36 per cent of Americans and point to economic and political factors that are beyond the control of any White House occupant in an age of global energy markets. In particular, changes in demand and supply of commodities explain the jump in oil prices. The conventional view is that about 75 per cent of the price of petrol at the pump reflects the global price of oil. And the fact is that consumption (demand) of oil in emerging markets and the industrial economies has been rising; while there have not been new major sources of supply.<br /><br />At the same time, the continuing political instability in the oil-producing region of the Middle East (including the prospect for a war with Iran), financial speculation (or 'oil speculation') and seasonal factors have combined to push oil prices to new highs. But President Obama's Republican rivals are exploiting public fears about rising petrol prices and insist that the a lack of domestic drilling and various regulations on energy companies, driven supposedly by the White House's environmental agenda are the main culprit. If only President Obama would have allowed the oil companies to open new domestic energy reserves, the prices Americans are paying at the pump would go down, way down, argue GOP leaders. 'Drill, Baby! Drill!' is one their favourite campaign slogans.<br /><br />In fact, the policy pursued by the Obama Administration and its Democratic and Republican predecessors - maintaining low taxes on gas - is the main reason why Americans use more gas than consumers in other industrialised nations. And assuming that Washington agreed to expand domestic drilling, the immediate impact on gas prices would be negligible.<br /><br />Ironically, the kind of foreign policy agenda being promoted by the Republicans, including their calls for escalating the military tensions with Iran, has been responsible in part for the rising in global energy prices. A full-blown US war with Iran would probably raise those prices to the stratosphere.<br /><br />If the costs of the interventionist military policy that Romney and the other Republicans want to pursue in the Middle East are factored into the prices that Americans pay for petrol at the pump, it is possible to conclude that consumers end up with a higher financial burden. Not to mention the fact that extracting and burning more gasoline - the favourite Republican policy prescription - create costly 'externalities' in the form of environmental cleanup and health costs for American consumers.<br /><br />Yet former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, another Republican presidential candidate, has been blaming President Obama for the high oil prices and pledges to reduce the price of a gallon of petrol to US$2.50 from the current US$4 through some undefined energy policy; and that despite the fact that going to war with Iran - an approach that Mr Gingrich advocates - would raise it to US$6. Indeed, a study issued by the Council on Foreign Relations last month suggested that a war with Iran could under certain circumstances triple the price of a barrel of oil.<br /><br />President Obama could use the US strategic petroleum reserve and put some of it on the market and pressure Saudi Arabia to put a downward pressure on oil prices. But the impact of such moves would be temporary and small and may have only limited impact on voters' attitudes.<br /><br />Unfortunately for President Obama, presidential election campaigns do not take the form of a serious economic symposium and voters are not expected to pay attention to the evidence that White House's policies are not responsible for the rising price at the pump. And continuing rise in energy prices - with or without a new war in the Middle East - are bound to reduce economic growth and cost the Democratic president even more votes in November.<br /><br />Copyright © 2010 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.Leon Hadarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07074306142674999554noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19184418.post-25160517491227007092012-03-14T13:12:00.000-07:002012-03-14T13:13:35.641-07:00China bashing par for the course in heat of US electionsBusiness Times - 15 Mar 2012<br /><br /><br />China bashing par for the course in heat of US elections<br /><br />By LEON HADAR <br />WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT<br /><br />IT may not have been surprising that on the same day the Republican presidential candidates were taking part in major primary races in Alabama and Mississippi and public opinion polls pointed to more Americans being dissatisfied with the job that the current Democratic White House occupant was doing, US President Barack Obama decided to demonstrate he was getting tough with China.<br /><br />In a sign that Washington was escalating its trade offensive against Beijing, Mr Obama told reporters that his administration was filing a trade ruling case against China as part of an effort to protect American companies against Chinese restrictions on exporting the rare-earth minerals that are used to build high-tech products such as hybrid car batteries and flat-screen television sets. 'We want our companies building those products right here in America. But to do that, American manufacturers need to have access to rare earth materials, which China supplies.'<br /><br />He made it clear that he saw the issue as integral to his election-campaign narrative of rebuilding the American manufacturing base and strengthening US global economic competitiveness vis-a-vis China and other leading economic powers.<br /><br />The perception that unfair trade practices by the Chinese were responsible for their success in getting American manufacturers to move their operations to China and in having the upper hand in trade competition with the US is shared by many Americans and has been exploited by the leading Republican presidential contenders.<br /><br />Hence, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has engaged in China-bashing during the election campaign, accusing Mr Obama of failing to stand up to China in the global economic arena and pledging that, if elected as president, he would retaliate against Chinese trade practices by imposing economic sanctions against Beijing.<br /><br />At the same time, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have urged the White House to take punitive action against China in response to Beijing's continuing effort to undervalue the yuan to improve the ability of Chinese exporters to out-compete American manufacturers.<br /><br />In fact, the notion that China was posing a threat to US economic interests is also very popular among members of the trade unions, a powerful political force in the Democratic Party as well as among blue-collar workers. The unemployment rate remains very high among blue-collar workers, who tend to be concentrated in critical electoral 'swing' states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania.<br /><br />The recent New York Times/CBS News opinion poll suggests that the support for Mr Obama among these voters has slipped to an all-time low, and could continue to fall as oil prices continue to rise. The results of the same poll also point to rising dissatisfaction among all voters with his management of the economy.<br /><br />During his State of the Union Address in January, he announced the formation of a new trade task force that would investigate China's trade practices while calling on the Chinese to remove market restrictions to American exporters and respect international business standards. He reiterated these positions during his meetings with Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping last month.<br /><br />Demonstrating that he would continue to protect the interests of American business and workers by standing firm vis-a-vis China makes a lot of political sense for Mr Obama. So does Chinese politicians' resistance to this American pressure in a year when the Chinese Communist Party chooses its new leadership.<br /><br />'We've got a constructive economic relationship with China, and whenever possible we are committed to working with them to addressing our concerns. But when it is necessary, I will take action if our workers and our businesses are being subjected to unfair practices,' he stressed, touting the new case brought before the World Trade Organization. 'We will keep working every single day to give American workers and American businesses a fair shot in the global economy.'<br /><br />Strengthening the US hand in the new trade dispute was the fact that the European Union and Japan have joined Washington in filing the complaint with the WTO that China was restricting its export of 17 rare earth minerals. Beijing gave environmental concerns as the main reason for cutting export quotas of these minerals.<br /><br />But US Trade Representative Ron Kirk claims that the Chinese have restricted the export of these minerals in recent years to provide their companies with an unfair advantage in the production of high-technology products.<br /><br />No one expects a WTO ruling on this issue soon. But Mr Obama would be able to point to his assertive posture in this new trade dispute with China during the coming presidential debates with his Republican rival who can be expected to accuse him of appeasing the Chinese.<br /><br />So far, it's all going on a very predictable trajectory.<br /><br />Copyright © 2010 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.Leon Hadarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07074306142674999554noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19184418.post-71859699732855815532012-03-12T13:27:00.000-07:002012-03-12T13:28:19.248-07:00Recovering US job numbers offer Obama little cheerBusiness Times - 13 Mar 2012<br /><br /><br />Recovering US job numbers offer Obama little cheer<br /><br />By LEON HADAR <br />WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT<br /><br />THAT the American economy added 227,000 jobs in February has to be construed as good news for President Barack Obama as he heads into the general election in November.<br /><br />While it's true that according to the US Labor Department's jobs report issued last Friday, the unemployment rate remained at 8.3 per cent - and this is the number that the Republicans will be focusing on - the White House has to be content because it is now in a position to assert that the performance of the American economy has been making a slow but steady progress.<br /><br />It should be recalled that before Mr Obama took office, America had lost 4.4 million jobs. At that time, the unemployment rate was only 6.7 per cent, but the American economy was losing 800,000 jobs a month. And the main concern among economists at the time was that unless the trend of long-term unemployment was arrested, the Great Recession could eventually turn into another Great Depression.<br /><br />But that hasn't happened. The fiscal and monetary policies pursued by the Obama administration may have not resulted in a swift economic recovery, but it seems that even though the unemployment rate is higher than it was in November 2008, the trend of the recession-induced job losses may have eased.<br /><br />The American economy has added 730,000 jobs in the last three months - an average of 245,000 new jobs a month - with the last 12 months of job growth being the strongest in five years. After adding 1.6 million last year, the economy is in a position to add close to three million jobs this year.<br /><br />In fact, that the unemployment rate itself hasn't changed is explained by the fact that more laid-off American workers who for a long-time had stopped looking for jobs now are re-entering the work force, reflecting a growing sense of optimism about their prospects of finding employment.<br /><br />Hence, according to the Friday job report, there has been a 0.2 per cent increase in the number of people re-entering the labour force - or about 476,000 more people - in February. But then, only 227,000 new jobs were added in the same month.<br /><br />Or to put it differently, as new jobs are created, more discouraged workers are starting to look for work again; and until they find jobs they could actually swell the ranks of the unemployed and leave the unemployment rate unchanged.<br /><br />So if the American economy continues to create 227,000 jobs a month until November, the unemployment rate could in theory fall to about 7.5 per cent. But if, at the same time, 476,000 people re-enter the labour force each month, the unemployment rate could stay about 8 per cent on the eve of the election.<br /><br />Unfortunately for Mr Obama, American voters who are unfamiliar with the intricacies of estimating the unemployment number may not feel a sense of economic security if the unemployment rate gets stuck at 8.3 per cent until November.<br /><br />And the Republican presidential candidates are expected to point to that number, as former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney did last Tuesday. 'Eight per cent unemployment is not the best America can do; it's the best this president can do,' he said.<br /><br />Indeed, the American economy recovery is continuing in a steady pace under Mr Obama - but the progress remains slow. That explains why Mr Obama's economic policies have yet to be translated into a political win. Opinion polls suggest that while Mr Obama's approval rating is improving, most Americans are impressed by his achievements in foreign policy and national security but are much less impressed with his performance in the economic arena.<br /><br />Mr Obama's policies may have been responsible for halting the trend of mass lay-offs, but much of the job growth in the coming months would not amount to a return to normalcy in terms of hiring by the private sector, with unemployment among blue-collar workers in construction and manufacturing continuing to remain high above 12 per cent.<br /><br />And a major crisis in the eurozone and/or a war in the Middle East could put a downward pressure on the economic recovery in a way that would make even the slight improvement in the job market seem insignificant at best.<br /><br />All of which explains why despite the not-so-bad job numbers, Mr Obama and his aides remain subdued as they consider the economic and political forecasts. One nightmare scenario: Mr Obama's policies are finally starting to energise the American economy in March 2013. And the main beneficiary is the newly elected President Romney.<br /><br />Copyright © 2010 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.Leon Hadarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07074306142674999554noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19184418.post-28069608248659054362012-03-08T08:19:00.001-08:002012-03-08T08:19:32.816-08:00Will Obama Bow to Netanyahu? (IN TNI)Published on The National Interest (http://nationalinterest.org)<br />Source URL (retrieved on Mar 8, 2012): http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/will-obama-bow-netanyahu-6613<br />Will Obama Bow to Netanyahu?<br /><br />Share on email Share on twitter Share on facebook Share on digg | More Sharing ServicesMore [1]<br />|<br />March 8, 2012<br />Leon Hadar [2]<br />Since entering office three years ago, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has demonstrated that he was familiar with Colson Principle. The idea is named after President Nixon’s general counsel Charles (“Chuck”) Colson, who according to legend had a plaque in his office that would have made even Machiavelli blush with embarrassment: “If you got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.<br /><br />Bibi has indeed turned up the pressure on President Obama during his meetings in Washington this week. With members of the Israel lobby and the Republican presidential candidates adding to the squeeze, Netanyahu has been operating a political remote control that could determine the outcome of the November election.<br /><br />In a way, Netanyahu has delivered an ultimatum to Obama. The White House can either ratchet up its war rhetoric against Iran and insist on more unequivocal and precise nuclear “red lines” that Tehran must not be allowed to cross—with the United States using its military power to prevent the Islamic Republic from reaching even a nuclear capability—or Israel will have no choice but to launch a unilateral military strike against Iran’s nuclear sites.<br /><br />Bibi has been squeezing Obama by proposing two options: green lighting a gradual but sustained American pull into a military confrontation with Tehran or yellow lighting an Israeli attack on Tehran. Either of these two options could result in devastating consequences for U.S. strategic and economic interests.<br /><br />The Fallout in Washington<br /><br />At a time when the United States is trying to get out of the military quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan and stabilize a weakened position in the Middle East, getting embroiled in a new and broader regional war is bound to ignite more anti-Americanism and play into the hands of radicals. And the expected rise in global energy prices would be a major blow to the weak European economies who depend on Persian Gulf oil supplies. A new war would also bring to a swift halt the fledgling American economic recovery.<br /><br />In response to this concern, Netanyahu has embraced a Churchillian pose: he portrays himself as a courageous statesman who is standing up against a Nazi-like menace to the West, manning the trenches alone as he and his nation wait patiently for the Americans and the rest of the civilized world to join them in a global crusade against evil. In reality, Netanyahu’s main strategic goal is to secure continuing Israeli nuclear and military hegemony in the Middle East by preventing Iran from getting the bomb.<br /><br />But despite Netanyahu’s rhetorical bombast and political pressure, Obama’s heart and mind are not following. He is not singing soprano. The bottom line is that Obama doesn’t see in Iran an “existential threat” to the United States of the kind that the Axis Powers posed in the early 1940s. The White House concluded that notwithstanding Bibi’s rhetoric, the current tough U.S. diplomatic approach vis-à-vis Iran is not a form of appeasement and responds to core American strategic interests, including the commitment to protect Israel. That is what is engraved on Obama’s heart and mind.<br /><br />After a period of time in which the White House allowed the Iran War hawks to dominate the discourse in Washington and the media, Obama-administration aides and Pentagon officials have publicly rebutted the Israeli case for an attack on Iran. Indeed, one of Netanyahu’s major goals during his recent visit was to ensure that the Israel lobby, the Republican warriors and the neoconservative pundits persist in countering the White House’s spin. The Democratic president is being threatened: if he refuses to tow the Israeli line, he could suffer electoral retribution in November.<br /><br />Tel Aviv’s Teleprompters<br /><br />Playing into Obama’s hands has been the continuing debate inside Israel, including in its national-security establishment, over the cost-effectiveness of a military attack against Iran. Representing this more moderate point of view has been Israeli president Shimon Peres. Like Netanyahu, he met with Obama and addressed the AIPAC conference in Washington this week, trying to counter the Israeli PM’s statements with a more nuanced message that places more confidence in the wisdom and effectiveness of Obama’s approach.<br /><br />Netanyahu is presidiing over a coalition of ultranationalist and ultraorthodox political parties and thus represents the views of the neoconservative and theocratic wings of the GOP, which seek to turn modern Israel into an armed Jewish ghetto, a crusader state that is engaged in a never-ending struggle against Islamic fascism and sharia law.<br /><br />Obama, on the other hand, is not “anti-Israeli” but a proponent of a more enlightened and optimistic vision of Israel’s future. Obama’s vision is along the lines advocated by Peres and others. This view insists on the need to contain the security threats posed by Iran but also recognizes that the long-term “existential” threat to the Jewish state lies in losing its democratic and secular Zionist identity as Arab Muslims and ultra-Orthodox Jews become a demographic majority in the area that encompasses Israel and the Palestinian territories.<br /><br />So would Obama follow in the footsteps of President Lyndon Johnson, who decided not to veto the Israeli preemptive attack on Egypt in 1967 and provide Israel with a blinking yellow light to attack Iran? Or would the response of the current White House recall that of President Dwight Eisenhower, who threatened to punish Israel as well as France and Britain when they rejected advice from Washington and launched an attack on Egypt in 1956?<br /><br />Or perhaps if and when Israel decides to attack Iran, Obama could turn out to be more like Colson’s boss, President Richard Nixon. After providing Israel with enormous military and diplomatic assistance during the 1973 Middle East War, Nixon used the newly acquired leverage over Israel to force it to make major territorial concessions in the Sinai Peninsula and th Golan Heights. This was part of a U.S. strategy that eventually led to a renewal of diplomatic relations with Egypt and ultimately to an Israel-Egypt peace process. If he acted similarly, Obama would be in a position to squeeze Bibi—and ensure that the Israeli PM’s heart and mind would follow.<br /><br />Leon Hadar, senior analyst at Wikistrat, a geostrategic consulting group, is the author of Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).<br /><br />Image: Truthout.org [3]<br /><br />More by<br />Source URL (retrieved on Mar 8, 2012): http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/will-obama-bow-netanyahu-6613<br />Links:<br />[1] http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=nationalinterest<br />[2] http://nationalinterest.org/profile/leon-hadar<br />[3] http://www.flickr.com/photos/truthout/Leon Hadarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07074306142674999554noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19184418.post-53626926837420606832012-03-07T12:08:00.000-08:002012-03-07T12:09:16.020-08:00Romney nomination will favour Obama Romney nomination will favour ObamaBusiness Times - 08 Mar 2012<br /><br /><br />Romney nomination will favour Obama<br /><br />His Wall Street-made wealth and performance during primaries only helped to accentuate his negatives to voters<br /><br />By LEON HADAR <br />WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT<br /><br />HERE is a central political paradox of this American presidential election season: The more Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney gets closer to winning his party's nomination, the less are his chances of beating Democratic President Barack Obama in the general election in November.<br /><br />The outcome of the 10 Republican presidential primaries on Super Tuesday failed to provide Mr Romney with a breakout moment. Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum's victories in the primaries in Tennessee, Oklahoma and North Dakota ensures that he will continue to pose a serious challenge to Mr Romney. But after winning seven of the first 12 Republican contests, the Super Tuesday's wins by Mr Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, in the states of Virginia, Massachusetts, and Vermont - and a very narrow victory over Mr Santorum in Ohio - suggest that if he maintains the current momentum, he will be on his way to collect enough delegates to win the nomination.<br /><br />Moreover, Mr Romney, a centrist Republican figure, continues to enjoy the support of his party's establishment whose members have been worried over the electoral surge of Mr Santorum, a social-conservative Republican. Mr Santorum, reflecting a sentiment shared by many of the party's rank-and-file, has raised questions about Mr Romney's commitment to conservative principles and has appealed to many blue-collar voters who perceive the former Bain Capital executive as an 'elitist'.<br /><br />While Mr Santorum, as well as the two other Republican presidential candidates, former Speaker of the House of Representative Newt Gingrich, who has won the primary in his home state of Georgia on Tuesday, and Texas Congressman Ron Paul, the leaders of the libertarian wing of the party, are expected to remain in the race, the conventional wisdom in Washington continues to be that Mr Romney would be nominated as the presidential candidate in the Republican convention in Tampa Bay, Florida, in June.<br /><br />But Mr Romney's expected victory would come with a very high political price tag. The long and gruelling Republican primaries has ignited bitter fights between Mr Romney and his numerous more conservative challengers, which only helped to highlight some of the vulnerabilities of the former governor. He is seen as a charisma-challenged and humourless multi-millionaire in an election year when independent middle class voters - who are going to determine the outcome - feel financially distressed and blame Wall Street - where Mr Romney had made his millions - for the country's economic problems and its growing social-economic inequalities.<br /><br />If anything, Mr Romney's performance during the primaries, including his reference to his large fleet of luxury cars and several homes around the country and his willingness to make a US$10,000 bet with a rival, only helped to accentuate his negatives. And Mr Romney's opposition to President Barack Obama's successful programme to save the American car industry has certainly not made him a popular figure among unemployed blue-collar workers.<br /><br />As a general rule, the more Americans get to know Mr Romney, the less they like him. Indeed, according to a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC opinion poll, 40 per cent of Americans view Mr Romney negatively with only 28 per cent viewing him positively. The same poll suggests that Mr Romney would lose, 44 per cent against 50 per cent, in a electoral matchup with Mr Obama.<br /><br />Other opinion polls point out to an even wider margin of loss for Mr Romney in the general election.<br /><br />One of the main challenges facing Mr Romney and the Republicans is the growing perception that the economic recovery is beginning to gain steam. At the same time, there is rising public concern with the issue of social-economic inequalities that have been dismissed by Mr Romney and other Republicans as a product 'class warfare' - a campaign being instigated by Mr Obama and the Democrats.<br /><br />At the same time, the Republican primaries campaign has also been drawing public attention to the rising influence of the members of the conservative social-cultural wing of the party. The leading Republican presidential candidates, including Mr Romney, have expressed their opposition to abortion and gay rights. They have also blasted a regulation approved by the Obama administration that requires that all Americans with private health insurance, including those run by religious groups opposed in principle to birth control (such as the Catholic Church), to have access to contraception. The issue of contraception coverage has become a major issue in the campaign, with the Republicans accusing the White House of launching a 'war on religion' and Rush Limbaugh, a popular conservative radio talk-show host referring to women using contraception as 'sluts'.<br /><br />But according to polls, more than 90 per cent of American women, including a majority of Catholic women, use contraception and other means of birth control, and the continuing Republican pre-occupation - if not obsession with the issue is probably going to weaken support for the Republicans among women voters, especially white suburban women who tend to vote in large numbers.<br /><br />And the fact that Mr Romney - who during his term as Massachusetts governor had adhered to moderate social-cultural positions - is allying himself with the social-cultural conservatives in his party is going to hurt him in November. Similarly, his echoing of the views of anti-immigration Republicans is not going to help Mr Romney win many votes of Hispanics - an increasingly important electoral group.<br /><br />Yet it is important to remember that the presidential election will take place nine months from now and that the attention span of most American voters is very short. Indeed, most Americans tend to pay serious attention to the election campaign and the leading candidates only after Labour Day in the beginning of September. By then a lot can happen in America and the world, including another crisis in the eurozone or a war in the Middle East triggered by an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. These and other developments could put downward pressure on the economy and lead to a major rise in energy prices which in turn could bring to a halt the fledging economic recovery.<br /><br />In any case, despite the improving economic conditions and a slight drop in the unemployment rate, Americans are still worried about their jobs, the declining values of their homes, and the perception that America's global position vis-à -vis China and other emerging markers is declining.<br /><br />All of which would provide Mr Romney with an opportunity to question Mr Obama's contention that he was leading the country towards economic recovery and growth.<br /><br />Indeed, Mr Obama's job approval rating continues to be lower than 50 per cent in some of the major battleground states such Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Colorado, Florida, and Indiana which he had won in 2008. If Mr Romney could win back two traditionally Republican states - Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana, and beat Mr Obama in the three major 'swing' states of Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania, he could win the White House in November.<br /><br />That would certainly be a challenge for Mr Romney. But despite all the current problems that Mr Romney is facing now, that would not be mission impossible.<br /><br />Copyright © 2010 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.Leon Hadarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07074306142674999554noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19184418.post-19772585670728220062012-03-01T13:29:00.001-08:002012-03-01T13:29:45.263-08:00Business Times - 02 Mar 2012 Saving carmakers could save Obama It will be difficult for pro-bankruptcy Romney and Santorum to challenge the pro-bBusiness Times - 02 Mar 2012<br /><br /><br />Saving carmakers could save Obama<br /><br />It will be difficult for pro-bankruptcy Romney and Santorum to challenge the pro-bailout president in November polls<br /><br />By LEON HADAR <br />WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT<br /><br />AFTER their impressive Congressional victories in 2010, including the taking over of the House of Representatives, Republicans seemed to be on a roll and on their way to the White House in 2012.<br /><br />Against the backdrop of a very slow economic recovery, an all-time high unemployment rate and exploding budget deficits, Democratic President Barack Obama was seen to be vulnerable.<br /><br />Mr Obama had been losing support among independent voters who had helped him win the presidency in 2008 and whose backing remains crucial to his re-election in November, and it seemed that he could not even count on his Democratic fans among the young and the educated professionals to get out and vote for him on Election Day.<br /><br />At the same time, the enthusiastic base of the Republican Party, fired up by the Tea Party movement and its anti-government agenda, was ready to rock and get out and vote for whomever the GOP elected as the party's presidential candidate this year.<br /><br />Everyone expected that candidate to be Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and a financial business executive, who was seen as representing the moderate wing of the party and as such would be able to muster support from those centrist independent voters in November.<br /><br />But the Republicans refused to fall behind this presumptive presidential nominee. Despite the fact that Mr Romney looked like Hollywood's idea of an American president and had impressive academic credentials and professional experience, the majority of the Republican presidential primary voters were not ready to fall in love with him.<br /><br />A member of a politically powerful and wealthy family, Mr Romney seemed to be too cold, too aloof, too elitist; a billionaire who was not able to 'connect' with the 'average guy' in an election year dominated by the populist rage against the political and business elites.<br /><br />Moreover, the members of the Tea Party movement represented the ideologically radical elements on the political right with their social-conservative agenda. Then there are those with the libertarian economic-libertarian approach. And they all regarded Mr Romney - the former governor of a 'blue state' who had helped pass a government-backed health-insurance programme in Massachusetts that had served as the model for the much-derided Obamacare and who not so long ago supported abortion and gay rights - as being too liberal to their taste. And that despite the fact that Mr Romney has gone through a major ideological metamorphosis in recent years and embraced the extreme positions favoured by social-conservative Republicans.<br /><br />And let's not forget that Mr Romney is a Mormon. Many Christian Evangelists who constitute an important voting bloc in the Republican Party, especially in the South, still regard Mormonism as a 'cult' whose religious values and rituals (including, until the early 20th century, polygamy) are antithetical to those of mainstream Protestantism (which explains why Mr Romney hasn't been doing so well in the South).<br /><br />So since the start of the presidential primary season, Republican voters have been searching for what has come to be known as the 'anti-Romney' candidate.<br /><br />While libertarians have all but anointed Representative Ron Paul from Texas as their candidate, social-conservatives have been flirting with the Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, Pizza business executive Herman Cain, Texas Governor Rick Perry and former House speaker Newt Gingrich from Georgia (who had won the primary in South Carolina and could do well in other southern states).<br /><br />But the latest and most surprising and controversial 'anti-Romney' figure has been former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum - a devoted Roman Catholic whose immigrant grandfather had worked in the coal mines in that state - who after winning the Republican races in Iowa, Missouri and Colorado has emerged as the Republican candidate who had a real chance of beating Mr Romney and getting his party's nomination. Mr Santorum has succeeded in marketing himself to the Republican voters as the 'real thing' - an authentic social-conservative who has always been opposed to legalising abortion and gay marriages and who, unlike the blue-blooded Mr Romney, can relate to the blue-collar workers and other economically distressed Americans, and would have a better chance than Mr Romney in carrying key 'swing' states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan, that have a large concentration of working-class voters - who also tend to adhere to more traditional cultural and religious values.<br /><br />So it was appropriate that the defining electoral battle between Mr Romney and Mr Santorum would take place in Michigan, a state that experienced a devastating economic blow, including rising unemployment during the Great Recession that had hurt its manufacturing sector, including its huge car industry.<br /><br />And here is where it got really interesting. Mr Romney was raised in Michigan, where his father, George Romney, was the president of American Motors Corporation and the Republican governor of the state. If there was one state that almost everyone expected Mr Romney to win - in addition to Utah, with its majority of Mormon voters - it was Michigan.<br /><br />But Mr Romney found himself under criticism by Democrats as well as many Republicans for his opposition to Mr Obama's support for bailing out General Motors (GM) and Chrysler through financial support from the federal government. In fact, Mr Romney even published an op-ed in The New York Times in 2009 in which he proposed that Washington allow the two car companies to go bankrupt.<br /><br />Mr Santorum also opposed the bailout. But he proved more successful than Mr Romney in wining support from blue-collar voters in Michigan, especially after Mr Romney continued to make one gaffe after another that tended to accentuate his 'elitism'; for example, by mentioning that his wife owned two Cadillacs.<br /><br />Moreover, while Mr Romney has failed to excite the conservative base of his party in Michigan, Mr Santorum proved to be a hit with these same Republicans by stressing not only his rejection of abortion and gay marriage but also his opposition to the use of contraceptives and his scepticism about the principle of separation of state and religion.<br /><br />Mr Santorum's neo-theocratic views have helped him with the conservative Republicans but are bound to hurt him in the general election, and especially with independent voters who reject his agenda.<br /><br />While Mr Romney may have avoided an electoral defeat in Michigan on Tuesday, his narrow victory over Mr Santorum points to a long primary battle between them that would go all the way to the party's nomination convention in Florida in June. Mr Paul and Mr Gingrich will probably remain in the race and continue collecting delegates that they could use as bargaining chips during the convention.<br /><br />Mr Romney also won the primary in Arizona on Tuesday but he has probably lost his status as the party's presumptive presidential nominee.<br /><br />And that the victor in the Republican primary in Michigan will probably lose the general election in the state in November - in a recent NBC/Marist poll, Mr Obama beats Mr Romney by 18 per cent in Michigan and Mr Santorum by 26 per cent - dramatises the problems facing the Republicans this year. The main reason for Mr Obama's electoral momentum in Michigan was his decision to save GM and Chrysler - while the Republicans campaigned against the bailout.<br /><br />The result is that the three major American car companies are making money, with the car industry adding around 170,000 new jobs in the last two years. So it is not surprising that a large majority of voters in Michigan support the bailout and give the White House credit for reviving the economy in the state.<br /><br />Preventing GM and Chrysler from going bankrupt was the kind of policy that Mr Obama would highlight during the campaign - that the government should play an active role in re-energising the American economy - challenging the Republican view that the private sector can do the job by itself, that the government should get out of the way and allow the free-market to do its magic - even if that means allowing companies such as GM and Chrysler to go bankrupt.<br /><br />Both Mr Santorum and Mr Romney have supported the let-GM-go-bankrupt view, which would make it difficult for them to challenge Mr Obama who in November will be running with the slogan: 'Osama (bin Laden) is dead and GM is alive.'<br /><br />Copyright © 2010 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.Leon Hadarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07074306142674999554noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19184418.post-35433032955813787502012-02-27T12:17:00.000-08:002012-02-27T12:18:14.387-08:00Obama's proposed tax reforms face challengesBusiness Times - 28 Feb 2012<br /><br /><br />Obama's proposed tax reforms face challenges<br /><br />By LEON HADAR <br />WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT<br /><br />SO what's not to like about President Barack Obama's proposed changes to the US corporate tax structure? After all, both Democrats and Republicans, as well business executives and labour leaders, seem to agree that the current US corporate tax code is useless and riddled with loopholes, breaks and credits that are crafted by Washington lobbyists to favour their powerful clients. At the end of the day, all these loopholes reduce the tax revenues that the federal government is supposed to collect.<br /><br />Moreover, since the current corporate tax of 35 per cent is higher than in most of the other major industrialised nations, it seems much cheaper to do business in Asia and Europe, placing the US economy at a disadvantage at a time when very few politicians and analysts disagree on the need to increase the global competitive edge of the American economy and ensure that American companies expand their operations at home as opposed to doing it in China.<br /><br />Indeed, under the current tax code, some companies spend more resources on paying lawyers and accountants who help them circumvent the tax rules than on financing new research and development programmes, while investors are drawn to put their money in low-tax industries and not in the high-tax ones that in many ways are more productive.<br /><br />At the same time, there is something rotten in a system in which the oil and gas industries tend to benefit from special subsidies and end up paying less in taxes than manufacturers that are investing in job creation at home. From that perspective, the Obama administration's proposed reforms, the Framework for Business Tax Reform including the lowering of the maximum rate from 35 per cent to 28 per cent (and to 25 per cent for manufacturers), providing incentives to boost hiring and ending tax preferences that favour special interests, make a lot of sense.<br /><br />Indeed, the leading Republican presidential candidates also favour changing the corporate tax code, with former House speaker Newt Gingrich calling for cutting the rate to 12.5 per cent and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum proposing that the rate on manufacturing companies be lowered to zero.<br /><br />In a way, the formula for reform is quite simple. Washington lowers the top corporate tax rate and in order to make up for the loss in federal revenues, it reduces the many tax loopholes.<br /><br />Productive American businesses and workers win. The lobbyists, the lawyers and the accountants lose.<br /><br />The result: more hiring of new workers and more tax revenues to help reduce the federal deficit. Indeed, what's not to like?<br /><br />Not much, except perhaps for the timing. You don't have to be a political genius to figure out that not much is going to be achieved in the US Congress - especially when it comes to a major plan to reform the tax system - before the November election. So what's the point?<br /><br />The point is that both Mr Obama and his Republican rivals are promoting their respective tax reform proposals as part of election- year campaigning. Mr Obama and the Democrats would argue that their plan to reform corporate tax code fits into their overall economic policy that aims at rebuilding the American economy and creating new jobs while getting rid of tax loopholes and shelters that favour the rich.<br /><br />Mr Obama also proposed an alternative minimum tax on the overseas profits that American companies make. The Republicans will counter by proposing even lower corporate tax rates (and not explaining how they would pay for that) and by suggesting that Mr Obama's plans to raise the rate of income taxes on the wealthy 'job creators' - for example, by raising taxes on buyers of corporate jets and taxing overseas profits - will provide the same kind of disincentives for creating new American jobs as the current corporate tax code does. And it is not even clear that the modest changes in the corporate tax structure would have a dramatic impact on the expansion in American manufacturing or would deliver a major blow to the lobbyists in Washington.<br /><br />After all, the current system of loopholes, breaks and credit does reduce the tax burden on many manufacturing companies, and eliminating these tax preferences and replacing them with a lower tax rate is not going to make much difference as far as what the companies pay the government in taxes is concerned. Those lawyers and accountants do - and will continue to do - a good job. Just ask the executives of companies such as General Electric (GE).<br /><br />And stay assured that lobbyists for GE and other companies which provide financial support for both Republican and Democratic candidates would not only fight tooth and nail against any proposed reform. They would also make sure that their clients would be able to play and circumvent the new tax system, proving once again that the more things change, the more they remain the same.<br /><br />Copyright © 2010 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.Leon Hadarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07074306142674999554noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19184418.post-23893697769663314782012-02-22T12:54:00.001-08:002012-02-22T12:54:46.819-08:00'New jobs for jobless' pledge a white lieBusiness Times - 23 Feb 2012<br /><br /><br />'New jobs for jobless' pledge a white lie<br /><br />US firms look for young, energetic and tech-savvy workers, not those middle-aged ones yet to learn how to surf Internet<br /><br />By LEON HADAR <br />WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT<br /><br />WE are all familiar with, and occasionally have even uttered one of those common white lies such as 'Thanks so much for that wonderful gift!' or 'You really look great in that dress' or 'Your baby is so cute'. So let me add another one to the list - 'Most of America's unemployed workers will eventually find new jobs'. They won't.<br /><br />Indeed, this white lie is being articulated by both US President Barack Obama and the leading Republican presidential candidates. While Mr Obama and the Democrats suggest that government-backed program-mes to train unemployed workers would help those who had lost their jobs in the manufacturing industry, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his supporters argue that an unregulated and untaxed private sector would create those new jobs for the jobless.<br /><br />But does anyone really believe that men and women between the ages of 45 and 65 who after having worked for 20 years or so in a shrinking manufacturing industry - both as a result of automation and outsourcing and find themselves without a job - will be able to acquire the skills that would help land a job in the growing high-tech sector? These high-skill and high-wage jobs require more than just six weeks of retraining. And let's face it, what private businesses in the new sectors of the economy are looking for are young, energetic and tech-savvy workers - and not middle-aged men and women who have yet to learn how to surf the Internet.<br /><br />The slight fall in the unemployment numbers does not change this picture in a dramatic way. The American economy is now producing the same amount of goods and services it did in 2007, but doing so with 6.3 million fewer workers. And most of the industries that have been shedding blue-collar workers are construction, transportation, warehousing, waste management and manufacturing.<br /><br />Overall, the manufacturing sector now employs two million fewer workers than it did just four years ago - though the output of US factories is up about 3 per cent since 2001.<br /><br />According to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, industries that are most likely to hire workers these days include agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting, mining, retail trade, finance and insurance, healthcare, educational services and information technology. But the few expanding areas of the economy, such as education and healthcare, certainly do not need workers with the 'old' industrial skills.<br /><br />But no one needs to read a long study of the US labour market to figure out that among the growing number of unemployed blue-collar workers in the Midwest and the South, the lucky ones are those who land up in low-paying and non-skilled sales jobs in companies such as Wal-Mart.<br /><br />And again, those are the lucky ones. Other jobless middle-aged blue-collar workers try to find part-time employment or just stop looking for new jobs, and survive by taking advantage of government unemployment benefits, including food stamps, or subsist for the rest of their lives on the money they can draw from their federal retirement and healthcare insurance programmes.<br /><br />These permanently unemployed blue-collar workers - and add to them the blue-collar workers who are still employed but scared about their jobs - are concentrated in districts in all states that are in play in the November election. And they tend to exhibit complex and sometimes confused political attitudes.<br /><br />One assumes that considering their economic problems, these blue-collar workers would be leaning to the political left and support Democratic candidates who call for narrowing the social-economic gap, for strengthening the power of the trade unions, for imposing more regulations on the 'fat cats' in Wall Street and for imposing more taxes on the super rich.<br /><br />But at the same time, many of these blue-collar workers are also less educated and more traditional in their religious orientation and tend to embrace conservative positions on social-cultural issues such as abortion and gay rights and are less sympathetic to the environmental and anti-gun agendas of the political left. From that perspective, they could be natural allies of the Republican Party.<br /><br />Indeed, one of the reasons for the expanding electoral base of the Republican Party in recent decades has been the success on the part of the GOP in recruiting cultural conservative blue-collar workers - including many Catholics and Orthodox Christians - in key swing states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio who felt alienated by the growing power of the social-liberal wing - feminists, gay activists, African-Americans and environmentalists - in the Democratic Party.<br /><br />But in the aftermath of the financial crisis and the ensuing Great Recession, some Democrats were hoping that many of these Reagan Democrats, who were facing growing unemployment and were angry at the bankers responsible for the mess and the business executives who were shipping their jobs abroad, would abandon the pro-free market Republican Party and return to the pro-labour Democratic Party.<br /><br />Yet many of these blue-collar voters, who saw Mr Obama as a representative of the liberal Democrats they resent so much, ended up supporting the Republicans in 2008. At the same time, Mr Obama refrained for a long time from embracing a populist anti-Wall Street agenda that could have attracted support from unemployed workers who were angry at the 'elites'. Instead, many of them joined the ranks of the Tea Party movement that directed their frustration against Mr Obama and the federal government.<br /><br />Democrats are now hoping that the rise of the Occupy Wall-Street movement, which has focused more public attention on the issue of social-economic inequality and the decision by Mr Obama to use a more populist rhetoric - for example, calling for increasing the tax rate on the wealthy - could help them win more support among those blue-collar voters in the states that could determine the outcome of the presidential election.<br /><br />Playing into the hands of the Democrats is the likelihood that the Republicans would choose Mr Romney, a former financial executive and a member of the wealthiest one per cent of Americans (who looks and sounds the part), as their presidential candidate.<br /><br />Interestingly enough, the emergence of former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum as the leading anti-Romney figure among the presidential candidates reflects in part the support that this devoted Catholic and ultra-social-conservative enjoys among blue-collar Republican voters.<br /><br />In fact, opinion polls suggest that while Mr Romney is winning the votes of wealthy and upper-class Republican primary voters, Mr Santorum's support comes from lower middle-class blue-collar workers who find Mr Santorum appealing not only because of his commitment to traditional values.<br /><br />Mr Santorum, who was actually raised in a blue-collar family, is also promoting a nationalist economic platform that calls for using tax benefits and other inducement to get US companies to invest in the United States and not in China. And he is arguing that contrary to the conventional wisdom, his blue-collar appeal would make him more electable than Mr Romney the billionaire. And he may well be right.<br /><br />Copyright © 2010 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.Leon Hadarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07074306142674999554noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19184418.post-57551238812910819862012-02-20T17:06:00.006-08:002012-02-20T17:12:35.058-08:00My take on Robert Kagan's thesisBusiness Times - 21 Feb 2012<br /><br /><br />The reality of America's global power<br /><br />No great power can retain military superiority with weakening economic superstructure<br /><br />By LEON HADAR <br />WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT<br /><br />AS a life-long hypochondriac, I was laughing out loud when reading the tragic-comic inscription on the tombstone located in the cemetery in Key West, Florida: 'I Told You I Was Sick!'<br /><br />I could imagine the poor guy confronting family and friends and insisting to no avail that what he had was more than just the common cold or the seasonal flu.<br /><br />'You are not sick,' is the kind of reassuring message that Robert Kagan is sending to the nation's foreign policy hypochondriacs aka 'declinists' in his new non-fiction book The World America Made, contending that America is in tip-top military and economic health and ready to take care of the rest of the world. He recalls that the same kind of hypochondriacs had complained that America was really, really in decline in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.<br /><br />But, as the sad case of our late Key Westerner demonstrates, even hypochondriacs do get sick. In the same way, great powers do decline, both in relative and absolute terms. Hence American global economic power started to decline relative to rising economic players like Japan and Germany in the post-1945 era, and relative to China and India more recently.<br /><br />And while in absolute terms the US continues to maintain the largest economy - and remains the pre-eminent military superpower based on any standard one applies - it still has to operate by the realist axiom that in the long run, no great power can preserve its military superiority on the basis of a weakening economic superstructure.<br /><br />Kagan, the son of a renowned historian who had studied the Peloponnesian War and the brother of the author of a book on the Napoleonic Wars, likes to present himself as a hard-core Realpolitik analyst of foreign policy, and tends to bash his intellectual rivals, the so-called 'declinists' as idealists. He says they place their faith in the dreamy notions of an evolving international community and the abolition of war through peaceful diplomacy and international law.<br /><br />Not unlike your average hypochondriac who dismisses the advice of the medical doctor, these declinists refuse apparently to face reality and listen to a rational scientist of power like Kagan, and instead assume that the US interests and values would continue to prosper in the more multipolar system in the kind of post-American world that commentator Fareed Zakaria imagined in his book on the same subject.<br /><br />His views matter now as he is a top foreign adviser to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.<br /><br />But if anything, it is Kagan who refuses to face the reality of current American global power. He also misrepresents the views of Zakaria and other realist foreign policy analysts who believe that the most ineffective way to maintain American power and influence is by continuing to do what Kagan has been advocating since the end of the Cold War - engaging in unnecessary and wasteful wars in the Middle East and picking-up costly diplomatic fights with China and Russia while raising US defence budget to the stratosphere, igniting anti-American sentiment worldwide and eroding US credibility.<br /><br />Which brings me back to the inscription in the Key West cemetery. Imagine now that the physician who was taking care of that very sick Key Westerner - let's call him Dr Kagan - was not only dismissing the dangerous symptoms exhibited by his patient. How would we have reacted when we found out that the medical doctor was actually the one who had recommended that his patient take an health-inducing (and democracy promoting) trip to the Greater Middle East - with a long stay in Iraq - where the poor man contracted the deadly virus that led eventually to his demise?<br /><br />Military quagmires<br /><br />Indeed, there is an element of the theatre of the absurd in the spectacle of Kagan, the geo-strategist who was the leading intellectual cheer-leader for the decisions to invade Iraq and launch the Freedom Agenda in the Middle East that were so central to the erosion of US global position. He is now lashing out at others for their lack of faith in American power that he had so helped to diminish so much.<br /><br />Kagan also fails to recognise that the policies he and other neo-conservative intellectuals advocated - that were embraced by the Administration of George W Bush - played directly into the hands of the Chinese, who were delighted to see the Americans drown in the military quagmires in the Middle East while they were spending their time and resources in opening new markets for their trade and investments, including in Afghanistan and Iraq where security was being provided by US troops.<br /><br />And much of what Kagan writes about the potential threat to the post-World War II international system created by the US makes little sense. The policies pursued by the second Bush Administration based on the unilateral and pre-emptive strikes against against real and imaginary aggressors with weapons of mass destruction, and right and obligation of the US to do 'regime changes' in other sovereign nation-states, were the ones that ran contrary to the set of international rules promoted by the US and its allies after 1945.<br /><br />In fact, these policies violated international rules established by the Westphalian Peace of 1648 to which China and Russia continue to adhere (hence, their most recent opposition to Western military intervention in Syria).<br /><br />Moreover, it seems that Kagan believes that continuing to accumulate power and using it more often is the surest way prevent American decline. Pre-occupied with the high-brow discourse about high-power he refrains from engaging in such 'boring' subjects, like how to fix America's fiscal problems, to revive its manufacturing base, and to reform its ailing public education system.<br /><br />All Americans need to do is to believe in their power - and it will come to be.<br /><br />It is quite depressing to see that despite the fact that Kagan the geo-strategist has been so wrong in the past and helped to contribute so much to the decline in American power, he continues to be taken seriously by American policymakers and the media.<br /><br />Dr Kagan, our imaginary medical doctor from Key West, would have lost his licence to practice medicine a long time ago.<br /><br />Copyright © 2010 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.Leon Hadarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07074306142674999554noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19184418.post-22059018697853537972012-02-17T13:00:00.001-08:002012-02-17T13:00:31.986-08:00China can help speed up US economic growthBusiness Times - 18 Feb 2012<br /><br /><br />China can help speed up US economic growth<br /><br />But economic, geo-strategic components in the complex Sino-American relationship are tangled<br /><br />By LEON HADAR <br />WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT<br /><br />IT is not surprising that China bashing is being embraced by US politicians campaigning for votes in this election year dominated by nationalist, xenophobic and anti-immigrant sentiments.<br /><br />Indeed, when you are targeting the financially distressed American electorate, angry that their well-paid manufacturing jobs are allegedly being stolen by scheming foreigners, one effective way to win votes is by stirring up resentment against China's prosperity - seen by many Americans as an outcome of a well-coordinated strategy aimed at destroying the American economy.<br /><br />That may explain why Michigan Republican Senate candidate Peter Hoekstra decided to launch his campaign against incumbent Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow on Super Bowl Sunday by running a television ad which introduces a young Chinese woman who against the backdrop of rice paddies and in broken English 'thanks' Senator Stabenow for helping to weaken the American economy and strengthen China's.<br /><br />The irony is that such a crude form of China bashing comes at a time when US politicians are recognising that there is not much that they can do to 'punish' China for its alleged economic transgressions. More subtle forms of China bashing are also going on: Those advanced by the White House and the Republican presidential candidates who are depicting China's economic competition as either a 'threat' (the Republicans) or a 'challenge' (the White House) to US interests. Yet, everyone realises that, if anything, enhancing cooperation with the Chinese would be one way to accelerate American economic growth.<br /><br />President Obama has used his recent State of the Union Address to pledge that he would take a tough stand to force the Chinese to end manipulating its currency and subsidising its exporters. The White House has also launched a new trade enforcement task force that is largely aimed at China. And a number of trade disputes, including one over solar panels, has increased tensions between the two countries.<br /><br />And Democratic and Republican lawmakers are continuing to threaten to act against China in retaliation for undervaluing its currency as part of its effort to increase its exports.<br /><br />So what to make of China's Vice-President Xi Jinping being greeted in Washington this week like the head of state that he is expected to become next year? Well, its just one example of the way that both the White House and Congress are also trying to solidify the economic and diplomatic ties with Beijing. Anti-China rhetoric may be helpful in winning elections but not so if you are trying to encourage Chinese investment in the American economy.<br /><br />Indeed, out of US$68 billion in China's overseas investments - expected to grow to US$1 trillion by the end of the decade - only a small slice goes to the US - around US$1.13 billion which amounted to about 2 per cent of all the total foreign investment in the American economy (and even though the US currently receives about 15 per cent of total global investment).<br /><br />According to James M Lindsay, senior vice-president at the Council on Foreign Relations, a New York-based think tank, Chinese investments could underwrite new plants and factories and stimulate growth and create new jobs in the US. But more Chinese investment in the US 'means more Chinese access to US technology' and that, according to Dr Lindsey, continues to be a concern to American officials and business executives who have encouraged the enactment of trade barriers to Chinese investment for both US high-tech and national-security industries.<br /><br />Indeed, back in 2005, the Chinese state-owned oil company CNOOC pulled out of an US$18.5 billion takeover bid for the US oil company Unocal, citing a US political environment that presented an 'unacceptable risk'. And a year ago, Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies backed off a patent deal before the White House could block the deal citing national security concerns.<br /><br />Removing obstacles to Chinese investment in the US while pressing China to respond to American complaints about Chinese hacking into US companies and alleged theft of American high-tech secrets were discussed during Mr Xi's meeting with officials and business executives during his visit. But no one expect that the visit would produce a dramatic change in Chinese investment in the US.<br /><br />Instead, as economist David Marchick of the Carlyle Group points out in a recent paper The Renewing America initiative, Washington needs to work with the Chinese on the issue by removing misperceptions about American intentions and eliminating unnecessary legal and bureaucratic obstacles.<br /><br />Mr Marchick recalls that despite the fact the Japanese markets remained largely closed to US exports, economic relations between Japan and the US actually improved in the 1980s after the Japanese started investing heavily in the US and helped in creating new American manufacturing jobs.<br /><br />One result of this expanding Japanese investment in the US has been the growing political ties between US lawmakers and Japanese companies that built new factories in their districts. In a way, by investing directly in the American economy and creating new jobs in the country, the Japanese also helped bring an end to the Japan bashing campaigns on Capitol Hill and in state capitals.<br /><br />The Chinese could certainly draw a lesson from this Japanese experience and conclude that by helping create American jobs they could change public sentiment and political attitudes. But there is one major difference between US relationship with Japan and China. Tokyo has been a important strategic ally of the US since the 1950s, while China is regarded as a leading geo-strategic competitor.<br /><br />The issue has been highlighted recently as the Obama Administration announced its plans to 'pivot' towards East Asia and increase its military presence in the region which Beijing regards as part of a US strategy to contain its rise as a military power. It shows how tangled economic and geo-strategic components are in the complex Sino-American relationship.<br /><br />btworld@sph.com.sg<br />Copyright © 2010 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.Leon Hadarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07074306142674999554noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19184418.post-52551497131677440282012-02-14T12:24:00.001-08:002012-02-14T12:24:43.920-08:00Obama's budget: it's about politics, not economicsBusiness Times - 15 Feb 2012<br /><br /><br />Obama's budget: it's about politics, not economics<br /><br />By LEON HADAR <br />WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT<br /><br />THE way to examine US President Barack Obama's proposed budget for the government's fiscal year of 2013 is by recognising that its main goal - perhaps the only one - is to ensure that Mr Obama remains in the White House in 2013. Indeed, notwithstanding all the admirable plans for stimulating the US economy and narrowing the growing social-economic gap that were included in the president's budget proposal, the chances that the Republican-dominated Congress would embrace them before the November election are very low.<br /><br />For Republicans, the idea that the federal government should pursue another fiscal stimulus programme or use its power to increase the tax burden on the wealthy in order to help the middle class and the poor are antithetical to their free-market agenda.<br /><br />Promoting the main themes of his budget proposal (AKA election campaign themes), Mr Obama said on Monday that all Americans should contribute their 'fair share' in taxes and play by the rules. He added that a short-term plan of boosting the economy through federal spending would not be an obstacle to a long-term strategy of controlling the US federal budget deficit. And he cautioned that the kind of massive cutbacks in government spending coupled with tax cuts for the rich that are being advanced by the Republicans could threaten the current recovery and hurt the financially stressed middle class.<br /><br />'The last thing we need is for Washington to stand in the way of America's comeback,' Mr Obama said. He called on Congress to approve his proposed 2 per cent cut in payroll taxes that would help working Americans and energise the economic recovery. 'Congress needs to stop taxes from going up on 160 million Americans,' he added.<br /><br />Mr Obama's 2013 budget proposal calls for reducing the federal deficit by US$4 trillion over the next 10 years through major cuts in federal spending, including by slashing the defence budget and by reducing government support for the large retirement and heath insurance programmes, and by raising taxes on people who make at least US$250,000 a year. According to the White House's projection, the federal deficit would fall next year to 5.5 per cent of the GDP from the estimated 8.5 per cent of the GDP this year.<br /><br />When it comes to increasing government revenues that Mr Obama wants to be raised through taxation - amounting to an increase of about US$1.5 trillion over 10 years - his budget plan calls for allowing the tax cuts for wealthier Americans approved under Republican President George W Bush to lapse by the end of the year. And the Democratic President also wants to ensure that any US household with annual income of more than US$1 million would pay a minimum federal tax rate of 30 per cent and to increase the tax burden on big banks which the White House calls 'Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee'.<br /><br />At the same time, Mr Obama also called on Congress to approve his proposal for raising more than US$350 billion by extending, and even expanding, the payroll tax and by continuing to support unemployment benefits. He argued that the new revenues could also be used to help rebuild the nation's crumbling infrastructure and help local governments to retain teachers and police personnel. And Mr Obama is also urging Congress to provide new tax credits to small businesses that hire new workers and to the large companies that create jobs in the US.<br /><br />Indeed, Mr Obama will be trying to convince Americans that his policies are aimed at creating jobs and assisting the middle class while taking steps to control the federal deficit, while all the Republicans want to do is to impose painful austerity programmes on working Americans in the name of reducing the deficits while continuing to help their rich supporters in Wall Street. 'Reining in our deficits is not an end in and of itself,' Mr Obama said, in introducing his budget proposal. 'It is a necessary step to rebuilding a strong foundation so our economy can grow and create good jobs. That is our ultimate goal. And as we tighten our belts by cutting, consolidating, and reforming programmes, we also must invest in the areas that will be critical to giving every American a fair shot at success and creating an economy that is built to last.'<br /><br />But Mr Obama's plans for short-term stimulus programme and for taxing the rich are igniting the ire of the Republicans. Their presidential candidates would probably bash them as 'European-style socialism' and as 'class warfare'. The White House and the Democrats will respond by portraying the Republicans as the lackeys of the 'fat cats' that brought on the 2008 financial crisis.<br /><br />Meanwhile, expect Congress to continue passing short-term budget bills and to activate the automatic, across-the-board spending cuts in the months leading to the November election. Ultimately, American voters will decide whether to approve Mr Obama's economic plans or to support the Republican programme.<br /><br />Copyright © 2010 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.Leon Hadarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07074306142674999554noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19184418.post-40846024896383953632012-02-13T12:17:00.000-08:002012-02-13T12:18:19.551-08:00Republicans won't beat Obama by alienating white middle-class votersBusiness Times - 14 Feb 2012<br /><br /><br />Republicans won't beat Obama by alienating white middle-class voters<br /><br />By LEON HADAR <br />WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT<br /><br />ONE of Mitt Romney's electoral assets as a Republican presidential candidates has been what could be described as the 'nostalgia factor'.<br /><br />A tall and fit white man, with broad shoulders and a strong jaw, exuding energy and optimism, the former Massachusetts governor reminds many white Americans of the baby boomer generation of America's post-1945 Golden Age, when political leaders and business executives who looked like Romney ruled America - and the world.<br /><br />It was time of prosperity and you even didn't have to lock the door when you left home - a reflection of strong social solidarity.<br /><br />Indeed, Romney, former house speaker Newt Gingrich and the other Republicans seem to relish in this Politics of Nostalgia, suggesting that they could revive the spirit of the good old days of the 1950s, make America militarily and economically strong again, and return the country - in danger of being taken over by a confederation of blacks, Hispanics and other alien groups led by that Kenyan/Muslim White House occupant - to its rightful owners.<br /><br />But there is one Republican presidential candidate who resists this nostalgia for the 1950s. Instead, former Pennsylvania Rick Santorum who, after coming first in the recent Republican races in Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota, seemed to have displaced Gingrich as the anti-Romney candidate of the week.<br /><br />Santorum longs for the pre-Enlightenment Era of, say, the 1550s, when women stayed at home raising traditional families, when birth control was unknown, when religious institutions and not secular governments set the standards for social behaviour, when homosexuals did not enjoy legal protection, when the community and its values took precedence over individual rights.<br /><br />The notion that Santorum, a leading member of the Republican Party's social-conservative wing could emerge as a serious presidential candidate would have been frowned upon by most political experts a few months ago when the conventional wisdom had it that economic policy would dominate the election campaign and that the Republicans would place issues like abortion, gay rights, and the campaign against the 'secular-liberal elites' on the back burner.<br /><br />What the Republicans needed to do was to elect a presidential candidate who could fix the economy, as opposed to electing someone who could lead them in the culture wars. But with only ten months to go when the American people were supposed to decide whether to choose a president that gives a precedence to cutting taxes (a Republican) or one who wants to narrow the social-economic gap (a Democrat), it is starting to look as though the presidential race would revolve over which candidate is for or against birth-control contraceptives.<br /><br />After the Obama Administration proposed that religious-affiliated organisations, such as universities and hospitals had to pay for mandated health insurance plans that offer birth control, representatives of religious groups, including the Catholic Church that opposes most forms of birth control, accused the White House of infringing on their religious rights.<br /><br />Obama Administration officials defended their plan by noting that many, if not most, employees working for, say, universities and hospitals owned by the Catholic Church are not Catholic and that most of them - like the majority of Catholics in America - do practice birth control.<br /><br />But Santorum, who like Gingrich, is a practising Catholic, and joined by the other Republican candidates, lashed at President Obama and accused him of persecuting people of faith, suggesting that Obama's alleged anti-religion campaign was the first step on the road to bringing back the guillotine. (The Obama Administration has tried to quiet the criticism by announcing on Friday a relaxation of the requirement on contraception.)<br /><br />The hysteria fanned by Santorum is part of an effort to exploit the fears of many practising Christians in America who believe that their faith is under attack by the secular elites, atheists, Hollywood, the mass media, and let us not forget the Muslims - like-you-know-who - who want to replace the US constitution with the Shariah law.<br /><br />Santorum has been very consistent in his condemnation of social-cultural norms that have been accepted by the majority of Americans in recent years, He has warned against the 'dangers of contraception in this country' which he described as 'a license to do things in a sexual realm, that is counter to how things are supposed to be.'<br /><br />'Radical feminism's misogynistic crusade to make working outside the home as the only marker of social and self-respect' explained why women were not staying home to take care of their kids, Santorum wrote in his book, It Takes a Family.<br /><br />And Santorum who has pledged to renew the ban on gays serving in the military and to make gay marriage illegal has even compared homosexuality to bestiality. 'If the Supreme Court says you have the right to consensual gay sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery,' Santorum said, adding: 'That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be.'<br /><br />While Santorum's social-cultural views may be popular among many Republican activists and primary voters and could help him win votes in the so-called Bible Belt in the South with its large number of Christian evangelists as well as among other conservative Christian voters it could alienate many independent white middle class voters, especially women, who by a large majority support making birth-control contraceptives available.<br /><br />These are exactly the kind of voters that the Republicans need in order to beat President Obama in November.<br /><br />These voters whom have yet to recover from the Great Recession are looking for a Republican candidate with a plan to fix the economy, not a plan to outlaw abortion. Some of these voters may be nostalgic for the 1950s, but certainly not the 1550s.<br /><br />Copyright © 2010 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.Leon Hadarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07074306142674999554noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19184418.post-30981532072812759622012-02-09T12:44:00.001-08:002012-02-09T12:44:53.257-08:00Silver lining in an Iran-Israel war?Business Times - 10 Feb 2012<br /><br /><br />Silver lining in an Iran-Israel war?<br /><br />A short-term military conflict could well turn out to be the catalyst for long-term stability, cooperation and peace<br /><br />By LEON HADAR <br />WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT<br /><br />NOTWITHSTANDING the never-ending stream of all those based-on-reliable-intelligence-sources analyses, it is doubtful whether these same analysts would be willing to bet whatever is left of their 401K retirement accounts on their predictions that Israel will - or will not - attack Iranian nuclear sites this year.<br /><br />And while research institutions have conducted interesting exercises to try to figure out the military, diplomatic and economic repercussions of a confrontation between Israel and Iran, the dictum that no military plan survives the contact with the enemy applies also here - in addition to the unintended consequences, blowbacks and the proverbial 'black swans' that are bound to show up even in the unlikely scenario under which Israel achieves all or most of its military goals.<br /><br />If I can put my ten cents worth of strategic thinking, it seems to me that the ousting of Saddam Hussein and the American fiasco in Iraq helped tip the balance of power in the Persian Gulf and the Levant in the direction of Iran and its allies. And that made it more likely that Israel and other Sunni Arab players that regard the Islamic Republic as a threat to their core national interests would use all their available resources to deprive Iran from having access to a military instrument that would allow it to formalise the new regional balance of power.<br /><br />In his magisterial study of the 1812-1814 military campaigns in Europe, 'Russia Against Napoleon', historian Dominic Lieven suggests that while Tsar Alexander recognised that France would never be able to control Europe, he also concluded that the price of adhering to Napoleon's Continental System would have undermined Russia's position as a great power and that the Russians had no choice but to use the full power of their military to prevent that from happening.<br /><br />My guess is that Israel, as well the Saudis and their Arab-Sunni allies, know that it would be possible to contain a nuclear Iran - in the same way that Russia could have embraced a cost-effective strategy to contain Napoleon's France. But as long as Israeli leaders believe that they have a realistic option of blocking Iran's nuclear programme - and by extension, of setting major constraints on its ability to assert its position as a regional power - they will probably use their military capacity. The Saudis and their Gulf partners would probably cheer them behind close doors while publicly condemning them.<br /><br />But as quite a few Israeli and American military experts have warned, a military strike on Iranian facilities would not achieve the declared Israeli goal of ending Iran's alleged nuclear military programme and the expected costs in terms of Israeli casualties could be very high.<br /><br />Moreover, if Iran gives the green light to its Shiite Hizbollah allies in Lebanon to attack Israel and mobilise the Shiites in Iraq and the Persian Gulf to retaliate against American and Saudi targets, Teheran would be in a position to strengthen its regional power. The ayatollahs would also be able to exploit an Israeli attack to ignite Iranian nationalism and win support even from those Iranians who actually oppose the ruling clerics and would like to see them removed from power.<br /><br />And while the Obama administration insists that it wants to apply peaceful means to get Iran to freeze its nuclear enrichment programme, it is not clear that Washington and its Europeans allies would succeed in coming up with a diplomatic formula that would be acceptable to Iran and to Israel (and its supporters in Washington) or that the Americans would be able to prevent Israel from taking military action against Iran. Those of us who believe that an Israeli military attack would not serve American and Israeli interests and may actually help consolidate the power of Iran in the Middle East and that of the clerics in Teheran should also recognise that President Barack Obama - who probably agrees with these assumptions - is not in a position for a diplomatic confrontation with Israel during a presidential election year.<br /><br />In fact, even in a non-election year, there will be very little incentive for Mr Obama to launch a creative diplomatic opening to Iran at a time when the Iranian leadership does not have the power to make a deal with Washington and is facing strong opposition at home from liberal and conservative forces alike (who, despite their differences, want Iran to acquire nuclear military capacity).<br /><br />And at a time when the Middle East is going through the political turmoil of the Arab Spring and the US is engaged in a steady drawdown from its military occupation of Iraq, the shaky balance of power in the region would make it difficult for Washington to try to reach a 'grand bargain' with Iran. Such a move, coming in the aftermath of the collapse of the pro-American regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, would be perceived by the Saudis and other Arab-Sunni governments as another sign of US weakness.<br /><br />If Israel decides to attack Iran, expect the Obama administration to provide it with logistical and other support, including by vetoing a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel (unlike the Reagan administration which did join the Security Council's censure of the Israeli attack on the Iraq nuclear reactor in Osirak in 1981).<br /><br />Leaf from history<br /><br />Yet, in the same way that the outcome of the 1973 Middle East War provided the then Nixon administration with an opportunity to protect and even strengthen its position in the Middle East, by renewing diplomatic relations with Egypt and working to bring peace between the Egyptians and the Israelis, the Obama administration could find itself in a position to advance its interests in the aftermath of an Israel-Iran military confrontation and an ensuing Middle Eastern war. A potential leading player in such a post-war scenario would be Turkey which until now has played a clever diplomatic game vis-Ã -vis Iran. In the most significant act of military cooperation between Washington and Ankara since 2003, Turkey agreed last year to station sophisticated American radars, part of a US-led system to defend Europe against a potential Iranian missile attack, and has expressed strong opposition against any move by Iran to acquire nuclear military weapons.<br /><br />At the same time, the Turks have also been in the forefront of the diplomatic opposition against a military strike against Iran and, working with Brazil, it proposed a diplomatic deal to freeze Iranian uranium enrichment in exchange for ending the US-led sanctions against Iran.<br /><br />And while Turkey is a member of Nato and remains a close military ally of Washington, its recent diplomatic assertiveness and its tensions with Israel coupled with its strong support for democratic activists in the Arab World, has strengthened its status in the Middle East and could allow it to play the role of grand mediator between the US and Iran in a post-war scenario. Indeed, working with Turkey and Saudi Arabia and the Arab League, as well with the permanent members of the UN Security Council and the European Union, the Obama administration could propose the convening of a Middle East Conference chaired by Turkey that would bring together all the Arab states, Iran and Israel and that would set the stage for the establishment of a nuclear-free zone in the region (which would apply also to Iran as well as to Israel's nuclear arsenal) and to a series of diplomatic initiatives to help stabilise Iraq, Syria and Lebanon and revitalise the Israeli-Palestinian peace process along the lines of the old Arab League proposal.<br /><br />In that context, the US and Iran could also start repairing their diplomatic ties and Teheran would be encouraged to support any resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is agreed on both sides. Not for the first time in history, the end of a war could help create the conditions for stability, cooperation and peace. It could be worth the try.Leon Hadarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07074306142674999554noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19184418.post-6145067018296879332012-02-06T12:32:00.001-08:002012-02-06T12:32:39.125-08:00New job numbers could be a political 'game changer'Business Times - 07 Feb 2012<br /><br /><br />New job numbers could be a political 'game changer'<br /><br />By LEON HADAR <br />WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT<br /><br />WHILE addressing new economic numbers showing 243,000 new American jobs in January - including 50,000 manufacturing jobs - US President Barack Obama seemed to be going out of his way to contain the expected enthusiasm manifested on the same day in the rising Dow.<br /><br />The new numbers showed that the 'the economy is growing stronger' but there remained 'still far too many Americans that need a job', Mr Obama told an audience in Virginia on Friday.<br /><br />But if Mr Obama sounded a somewhat restrained note in public there is no doubt that he and his economic and political aides were in a good mood in private last week. Currently at 8.3 per cent, the unemployment rate is in its lowest level since Mr Obama has entered office. That unemployment has been falling consistently for several months may not a sign that the economic recovery is finally taking off. But if the rate of job creation continues to accelerate in the coming months, there is a good chance that more voters will assign better grades to Mr Obama's management of the economy.<br /><br />Indeed, last month's results of a New York Times/CBS News opinion poll suggested that for the first time in a year, more Americans were saying that the economy was improving rather than getting worse. And the survey also pointed out to a slight increase in the number of Americans who believed that Mr Obama was making progress in dealing with the economy.<br /><br />One should recall that a sense of political foreboding was descending on the White House late last year when the American economy's jobless rate was stuck at 9.1 per cent, many economists were warning of the possibility of a double-dip recession and Mr Obama's public approval ratings were falling to new lows. That the job numbers and the state of the economy could still take a turn for the worse before November remains a possibility - especially if the crisis in the eurozone brings about the collapse of that monetary system. An Israeli or American military attack on Iran would trigger a war in the oil-rich Middle East and bring about rising global energy prices - and that could derail the US economy.<br /><br />And Mr Obama's overall approval rating remains below 50 per cent in most polls, which is a dangerous place to be if you want to get re-elected for a second term.<br /><br />But with the leading Republican presidential candidates being drawn into a political bloodbath and as the prospective nominee Mitt Romney is being attacked by all sides as a super-rich business executive out of touch with financially distressed Americans, the perception that the economy is improving is playing into the hands of Mr Obama.<br /><br />He also continues to enjoy wide public support, especially among independent voters, for his handling of foreign policy and national security. It was not surprising therefore that Mr Romney and other Republican politicians were not congratulating Mr Obama for the better-than-expected jobs numbers and blamed him for not getting the economy even better.<br /><br />'Last week, we learned that the economy grew only 1.7 per cent in 2011, the slowest growth in a non-recession year since the end of World War II,' Mr Romney said in response to the new numbers. 'As a result, the percentage of Americans in the job market continues to decline and is now at a level not seen since the early 1980s. Nearly 24 million Americans remain unemployed, underemployed, or have just stopped looking for work. Long-term unemployment remains at record levels.' He added that the new job figures 'cannot hide the fact that President Obama's policies have prevented a true economic recovery'.<br /><br />The Republicans have also been provided with new political ammunition after the release of the new budget outlook by the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) last week which highlighted that the American economy will remain in bad shape in the short term. According to the CBO's forecasts if the current tax cuts are allowed to expire and the planned cuts in federal spending are implemented, the economy will grow by 2 per cent in 2012, and then by 1.1 in 2013.<br /><br />The economy will grow by a higher rate in 2012 and in 2013 if the tax cuts remain in place and the spending cuts are not carried out. But that could raise the federal deficit into the stratosphere and force the economy into bankruptcy. These forecasts help dramatise the economic dilemmas facing Washington as recessionary aftershocks and mounting deficits leave policymakers with very few attractive choices.<br /><br />Mr Obama will argue during the campaign that short-term fiscal stimulus financed in part through tax increases on the super wealthy are needed in order to ensure continuing growth and the protection of the interests of a struggling middle class, and that what the Republicans are offering in the name of fighting deficits is an austerity programme that would only help wealthy Americans like Mr Romney and devastate the rest. A continuing stream of good economic news is bound to help Mr Obama sell this message while making the job of the Republican candidate more difficult. From that perspective, the new jobless numbers could amount to a political 'game changer' or they may be recalled after a Republican victory in November as a one-day celebration.<br /><br />Copyright © 2010 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.Leon Hadarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07074306142674999554noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19184418.post-23881211635236652312012-02-01T12:33:00.001-08:002012-02-01T12:33:37.836-08:00Florida voters bring Gingrich back to earthBusiness Times - 02 Feb 2012<br /><br /><br />Florida voters bring Gingrich back to earth<br /><br />Former House speaker's grandiose planetary vision fails to find much of an audience there<br /><br />By LEON HADAR <br />WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT<br /><br />WELL, it seems that Republicans in Florida have not warmed up to Newt Gingrich's plan to establish an American colony on the moon during the next eight years and turn it into America's 51st state.<br /><br />The former speaker of the House of Representatives had hoped to exploit the political momentum generated by his earlier victory in the Republican presidential primary in South Carolina, and was trying to woo Floridians who work in the space industry in the state by pledging that 13,000 Americans would be living on the moon by the end of his second term as president. And, as president, he would grant them statehood.<br /><br />But notwithstanding his grandiose planetary vision, Mr Gingrich was back on earth on Tuesday, after voters denied him victory in the Republican presidential primary in the Sunshine State. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney - who won close to 50 per cent of the vote - displayed renewed confidence that he would be elected as the party's presidential nominee at the convention that will take place in Florida in June.<br /><br />Mr Gingrich compares himself to Ronald Reagan (he is Reagan's 'political heir', he insists), Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill (among others). Mr Gingrich also describes himself as an 'Ideas Man' and relishes in his grandiosity.<br /><br />'You're right,' Mr Gingrich explained during a recent televised debate with the other Republican presidential candidates. 'I think grandiose thoughts,' he insisted, adding: 'This is a grandiose country of big people doing big things, and we need leadership prepared to take on big projects.'<br /><br />In addition to his plan for establishing an American moon colony and a space station on Mars, Mr Gingrich, the former chairman of the 'Congressional Space Caucus', has also promoted the idea of placing a large number of mirrors in space that could provide extra light and allow 'farmers in high altitudes to plant their wheat earlier' and could be arranged to 'light metropolitan areas only during particular periods, so there would be darkness late at night for sleeping'.<br /><br />When it comes to our own planet and the North American continent, Mr Gingrich has proposed a return to the gold standard and the employment of children as school janitors.<br /><br />He thinks that 'people like me are what stands between us and Auschwitz (the Nazi-era death camp in Poland)'.<br /><br />Mr Gingrich has bashed his political rivals as ideological fanatics and evil-doers. Hence, he described Mr Romney as a 'Massachusetts moderate'. Now he calls Mr Romney a 'Massachusetts liberal' and a 'vulture capitalist', and an 'anti-immigrants'.<br /><br />Mr Gingrich says that President Barack Obama exhibits 'Kenyan, anti-colonial behaviour' and was 'outside our comprehension'.<br /><br />Mr Gingrich argues that an intolerant 'elite' made up of 'secular judges and religious bigots' was trying to promote 'radical Islam over Christianity and Judaism', and he describes homosexuals as 'pagans'.<br /><br />By 'going nuclear', as some pundits described Mr Gingrich's campaign rhetoric, the former House speaker has been capturing the imagination of some Tea-Party activists and religious fundamentalists in Florida who continue to regard Mr Romney as too moderate and too centrist for their ultra-conservative tastes.<br /><br />At the same time, Mr Gingrich's pandering to backers of Israel helped him win the financial support of Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire who owns casinos and hotels in Las Vegas and around the world and who is a radical Zionist.<br /><br />But even if Mr Gingrich comes first in the primaries in some of the southern states where he is popular, it is inconceivable that he would succeed in winning the Republican nomination. If anything, Mr Romney has responded quite effectively to Mr Gingrich by using his organisational power and financial base. Mr Romney launched a series of television commercials aimed at exposing Mr Gingrich as a Washington insider and lobbyist.<br /><br />Mr Romney's backers include the so-called 'Super-PACs' who can spend without any limits since they are funded by individuals and groups that are not listed as part of the candidate's campaign.<br /><br />Moreover, the introverted and somewhat low-key Mr Romney has become more aggressive during the recent televised debates. He launched a feisty counter-attack against Mr Gingrich, recalling that the latter was forced to resign by his colleagues following revelations about his unethical conduct, and mocking the plan for a moon colony, during the second televised debate in Florida.<br /><br />'If I had a business executive come to me and say I want to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on the moon, I'd say: You're fired,' said Mr Romney, a former business executive.<br /><br />Indeed, Mr Romney's carpet bombing of Mr Gingrich has demolished him in Florida where the former speaker lost among all the major demographic groups, with the exception of very conservative voters. Mr Gingrich did especially badly among women - 51 per cent of them voted for Mr Romney. Female voters apparently empathised with Mr Gingrich's first two wives.<br /><br />But Mr Gingrich is a very angry man who feels that he has been unfairly clobbered by Mr Romney and the Republican Party establishment.<br /><br />Vengeful and relentless in his populist attacks on Mr Romney and the 'elites' in Wall Street and Washington, Mr Gingrich is promising to continue the challenge against the 'Massachusetts moderate' in all the coming primaries and caucuses and until the nominating convention in June.<br /><br />The continuing civil war among the Republicans - and in particular, Mr Gingrich's vulture-capitalism criticism of Mr Romney - can only play into the hands of Mr Obama and the Democrats who want the American voters to perceive Mr Romney, the former financial executive, as a close ally of the elites in Wall Street and Washington. The Democrats want voters to identify the Republicans as political demagogues with grandiose but silly ideas. At the moment, the Republicans seem very obliging.<br /><br />Copyright © 2010 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.Leon Hadarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07074306142674999554noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19184418.post-2079696432758384752012-01-30T12:25:00.001-08:002012-01-30T12:25:35.860-08:00Business Times - 31 Jan 2012<br /><br /><br />Economic nationalism is back<br /><br />This time round, it's bipartisan, with both the Democrats and Republicans standing up to China<br /><br />By LEON HADAR <br />WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT<br /><br />WE TAKE it for granted that the current political discourse in the US is dominated by the struggle for power between the Democrats and the Republicans, and the ideological clash between the 'liberals' and the 'conservatives' - and their many respective sub-groups and orientations.<br /><br />But a more traditional way of studying the major battles in American politics is to apply an ideological dichotomy that goes back to the founding of the republic and the great political divide between 'Jeffersonians' and 'Hamiltonians' - which seems to be more relevant than ever these days as the American political and economic systems are going through another historic transformation once again.<br /><br />The conflict between the Federalists who were led by Alexander Hamilton (who would become the first US secretary of the treasury) and Thomas Jefferson (who would be elected as the third US president) and his anti-Federalists, reflected contrasting philosophical visions and policy agenda about the role of the federal government.<br /><br />Hamilton, a New Yorker, favoured a strong central government that would help provide order and support for the growth of business and industry. His vision was that of an America as a strong industrial power - with productive enterprises rather than speculation. And he believed that - not unlike Great Britain and other European nations - the US should have a national bank to fund the national debt and should promote an activist industrial policy through selective tariffs, subsidies to targeted industries, and investment in infrastructure.<br /><br />The Virginian Jefferson, on the other hand, was opposed to a concept of a strong central government and wanted to devolve power to the states ('states' rights') and local and private entities, and promoted a vision of America as a peaceful nation of farmers and small businesses that refrained from pursuing the mercantilist and realpolitik foreign policy of the major European governments. Jefferson's America was one that was ruled by the people as opposed to the educated and the wealthy who would be in charge in Hamilton's America.<br /><br />So imagine these two Founding Fathers listening to President Barack Obama's State of the Union Address last week, in which he was promoting a message of economic nationalism, promising to rebuild American manufacturing and to fix the country's infrastructure while asserting the right of the US to challenge other nations' unfair trade practices.<br /><br />And now try to guess which of these two political and intellectual giants - Hamilton or Jefferson - would be applauding a speech in which the president decried that America has become a nation of 'outsourcing, bad debt and phony financial profits' and promised to rebuild 'an economy that's built to last'.<br /><br />'Our workers are the most productive on Earth,' President Obama said, stressing that 'if the playing field is level, I promise you, America will always win.'<br /><br />Mr Obama celebrated his decision to use the power of the federal government to bail out Chrysler and General Motors in 2008, noting that the two Detroit car companies are now booming, and pledged to pursue similar government intervention in the economy in other areas.<br /><br />'It can happen in Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Raleigh,' Mr Obama said, referring to places in the country that once upon a time used to be the symbols of American economic strength, where thousands of workers were employed in flourishing factories that exported their products worldwide. Today, many of these jobs have disappeared as a result of technological changes and globalisation, and are being outsourced to Asia.<br /><br />'We can't bring every job back that's left our shore,' Mr Obama admitted, but stressed that the US has 'a huge opportunity, at this moment, to bring manufacturing back'. 'But we have to seize it,' he added, laying out concrete plans for ending tax breaks for US corporations that move offshore and for imposing a tax on their overseas profits, and at the same time, cutting taxes on domestic US manufacturers.<br /><br />There is no doubt that the economic nationalist Hamilton who had laid the foundations for the modern American industrial policy would have been smiling during President Obama's speech. Mr Obama seemed to compare America to a military unit that can marshal its resources to win the war.<br /><br />Mr Obama did not reject the ideals of individualism and free markets that were seen by Jefferson as embodying the American spirit. But he argued that at a time when the structure of the post-1945 American economy is crumbling and the global status of the US is being challenged, there is a need to revive the Hamiltonian approach - under which Americans are brought together as one people where a more activist federal government provides incentives and support through initiatives to promote manufacturing, clean energy, infrastructure, education and research.<br /><br />And as part of creating the basis for a functioning national community, the federal government would need to narrow the widening social-economic gaps and bring more fairness into the system under which every American would have a 'fair shot' at achieving his or her dreams. The tax code would demand more of the wealthiest Americans, not only as part of an effort to achieve fairness but also in order to provide for more revenues to finance government 'investments' in the common good. Hamilton would have approved.<br /><br />In fact, Hamilton may have been winking not only at Mr Obama's speech but also during the debates between the Republican presidential candidates. Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum called for eliminating taxes on domestic American manufacturers and taking steps to encourage American businesses to relocate their factories back to the US, while former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney portrayed the emerging Chinese economy as a major threat to long-term US economic security and urged the imposition of retaliatory tariffs on Chinese imports if the Chinese continued to hold down the value of its currency.<br /><br />In a way, even the Republican presidential candidates who continue to preach the gospel of free markets and denounce government intervention in the economy have come to the conclusion that in the aftermath of the financial meltdown and the ensuing Great Recession, it is becoming more difficult to win the votes of blue-collar workers and economically distressed members of the middle class by continuing to promote laissez faire economics at home and free trade policies.<br /><br />These are the kind of policies that are seen by more and more Americans as contributing to the mess in Wall Street, the economic 'squeeze' of the middle class, the shrinking of the manufacturing industry, and the outsourcing of American jobs to China and elsewhere.<br /><br />Both President Obama and his Republican challengers recognise that the US is facing similar challenges to the ones that it confronted at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century when the rise of manufacturing, the expansion of the large urban centres, growing social-economic inequality and the changing dynamics of the global economy forced major changes in national economic policies and led eventually to the Progressive Era, to the New Deal and the evolution of the welfare state.<br /><br />Get out of the way<br /><br />President Obama believes that the federal government needs to maintain and revitalise the welfare state while trying to help create a new industrial base. The Republicans, on the other hand, seem to be playing defence in response to the president's Hamiltonian strategy by insisting that private businesses should and could play the leading role in the process, and the best that the government can do is to get out of their way.<br /><br />Both sides have yet to come up with a coherent strategy to achieve what seems to be the most perplexing issue: How to encourage Apple and other advanced high-tech industries to continue thriving while creating more American jobs at home, as opposed to creating more jobs in China.<br /><br />But there is one area on which the Democrats and the Republicans seem to agree, and that is the need to take a more aggressive approach towards China and other emerging economies that are seen as not playing by the rules of global free trade. In particular, the White House - which has been promoting the idea of creating new 'green' industries - regards China's state subsidies to solar and wind power companies as a major threat to its plans.<br /><br />Hence, President Obama's proposal to establish a trade enforcement unit to investigate foreign violation of trade rules and to propose legal actions against the violators read: China.<br /><br />So expect both President Obama and his Republican challenger to be campaigning on an aggressive economic nationalist platform this year.<br /><br />Democrats and Republicans have yet to provide a lot of details on how they plan to create new jobs in America. But they seem to think that by standing up to China, they would convince American voters that they do have a plan.<br /><br />Copyright © 2010 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.Leon Hadarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07074306142674999554noreply@blogger.com0