Global Paradigms

Business Times - 09 Feb 2010 Populist pressure could push Obama into China bashing Amid difficult economic ties, China has emerged as a convenient target for both Democrats and Republicans By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON ONE of the fantasies concocted by Obamaniacs in the aftermath of the 2008 presidential election was that the Chinese leadership would welcome the election of an African-American president with whom supposedly they shared a non-white heritage. Mr Obama, who was born in Hawaii and went to primary school in Indonesia, highlighted his 'civilisational' affinity with East Asians when he noted during his first visit to the region that he was the America's first 'Pacific president'. In fact, not many US watchers in Beijing were celebrating the change in the balance of power in Washington after the Republicans lost their control over the White House and Capitol Hill in 2008. Indeed, consider one of the ironies that have characterised the Sino-American relationship ...

Business Times - 06 Feb 2010 Should Geithner start looking for a new job? By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT WHEN "sources close to the White House" tell reporters that the US President remains "confident" about your "leadership" and "job performance", is it time for you to start looking for another job? Indeed, for several weeks, the American media has been reporting that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner retains the confidence of President Barack Obama as well as of leading Congressional Democrats even as lawmakers and journalists continue to raise questions about why the Federal Reserve Bank of New York held back information about the government's bailout operations at a time when Mr Geithner served as its president. They have been asking whether Mr Geithner, who came to his current job from the New York Fed, was behind the decision by the New York Fed in December 2008 to request that American International Group (AIG) keep secret certai...

Business Times - 05 Feb 2010 Obama needs a coherent strategy to deal with Iran By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT US President Barack Obama came to office promising to replace his predecessor's Axis-of-Evil approach to Iran with one based on diplomatic engagement. But against the backdrop of the stalled nuclear talks with Teheran and the rise of the Green Movement in Iran, Mr Obama's engagement policy has been coming under criticism - and not only from the neoconservatives. In a Newsweek commentary, Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass has called for 'promoting regime change' in Iran. Mr Haass is not a neoconservative but a self-described 'card-carrying realist' and a former official in the administrations of Bush I and Bush II. For a long time, Mr Haass seemed to be in agreement with Mr Obama's pursuit of diplomatic engagement with Iran. And while he is not in favour of using military force to achieve regime change in Teheran, he believe...

Business Times - 02 Feb 2010 Bernanke faces curbs on Fed's independence Confirmation for second term comes with political strings that may stymie policymaking By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT WITH supporters like this, who needs detractors? Take, for instance, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat from Nevada, who said after announcing his intention to vote to approve the confirmation of Ben Bernanke as Fed chairman for a second term: 'I made it clear that to merit confirmation, Chairman Bernanke must redouble his effort to ensure families can access the credit they need to buy or keep their home, send their children to college and start business.' Offering what sounded, at best, as a lukewarm endorsement of Mr Bernanke, Mr Reid added that Mr Bernanke 'assured me that he will soon outline plans for making that happen, and I eagerly await them'. Mr Reid, who had the task of mobilising the Senate votes to approve Mr Bernanke's re-nomination, seemed t...

Business Times - 29 Jan 2010 Obama's shift to political centre He seems to be moving his focus away from healthcare reform and climate change to rising deficit and joblessness By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT SHIFTING gears for the second year of his administration and responding to the growing economic discontent among American voters who seemed to be turning against him and the Democrats who now control the White House and Congress - demonstrated in the loss of the Democratic Senate seat in Massachusetts - US President Barack Obama seemed to be moving towards the political centre during his first State of the Union address late on Wednesday night. He shifted his focus away from healthcare reform and climate change to the more immediate concerns of the American people - the expanding deficit and the continuing high rate of unemployment. While he still remains a popular president, Mr Obama has spent much of his first year in office and most of his political capital on what ha...

Business Times - 26 Jan 2010 Obama's new populist push against Wall St President and his aides hope new approach will help boost his political fortunes By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT AFTER one year in office and against the backdrop of growing anti-Wall Street anger among Americans being fuelled by continuing high unemployment rates and the signs that the big banks are once again taking reckless risks in the pursuit of quick profits, US President Barack Obama has decided that the time has come to alter the political-economic narrative of his administration. Indeed, in the aftermath of the disastrous loss of the Democratic Senate seat in Massachusetts - a dramatic reflection of the populist mood around the country - and as he fights for his political survival (and that of his own Democratic Party), Mr Obama has decided that the time has come to get tough - really tough! - with Wall Street. Launching a verbal assault against the mega banks and stating that the current economi...

Business Times - 22 Jan 2010 Obama faces revolt of the independent Tea Party movement wants action on jobs, not healthcare reform - which they see as wasteful government spending By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT ON THE eve of the one-year anniversary of Barack Hussein Obama's historic inauguration as the 44th President of the United States - the first African-American to hold that office - the new president ended up getting clobbered, big time, in Massachusetts. No, President Obama was not running for any political office in the Bay State this week. But the fact that a little-known Republican politician (his main claim to fame was posing nude for Cosmopolitan magazine in 1982 when the magazine named him 'America's sexiest man') succeeded in defeating, by a decisive margin, a prominent Democrat in a special election to fill the US Senate seat that was held by the late Edward Kennedy (and before that by his brother, John F Kennedy) - was a devastating political blow...

Business Times - 19 Jan 2010 Channelling populist anger to Wall Street Obama's US$90b bank tax aimed at pacifying angry Americans, undermining Republicans By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT THE opening session of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) hearings on Capitol Hill - during which bankers from America's top financial institutions faced tough questions about the role that the banks had played in the financial collapse - looks like the first scene in a populist drama being staged by the Obama administration and its allies in Congress. The main villains in this political production are all those infamous Wall Street companies that, after being bailed out by the American taxpayer, are now getting ready to reward their employees with record pay - around US$145 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. Moreover, this is happening at a time when many Americans are losing their jobs and most of them are continuing to experience economic pain. There is no doub...

Business Times - 14 Jan 2010 Coming on TV: Congressional probe into financial crisis By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT IT is a production that will not cost as much as the American science-fiction epic film Avatar. And it is probably not going to attract as large a television audience as the reality shows American Idol and The Biggest Loser. But the televised hearings of the Congressional Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC), which holds its first public hearings on Capitol Hill today, could prove to be one of the most dramatic spectacles of the season, offering some of Washington's leading investigators an opportunity to confront Wall Street's top financial executives, and examine the root causes of the 2008 financial crisis. The year-long investigation by the FCIC, a bi-partisan 10-member panel established by Congress and which was allocated US$8 million for its work, has been compared to the work done by the 9/11 Commission which Congress formed in order to examin...

Business Times - 12 Jan 2010 It doesn't look good for jobs - and for Obama A weak job market is slowing the momentum of the economic recovery By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT FIRST, let us go to the bad news: the US Labor Department report issued on Friday indicated that with 85,000 jobs lost last month, the American jobless rate was unchanged at 10 per cent in December. These numbers have disappointed Obama administration officials and some economists who had expected fewer losses of about 10,000, with optimists predicting a slight growth in employment. US officials have tried to spin the depressing news as not-so-bad news, suggesting that taking into consideration the job growth in November - according to revised figures, 4,000 jobs were added in that month - points to a process of 'stabilisation' of the American economy. 'Today's employment report, though a setback from November, is consistent with the gradual labour market stabilisation we have been seeing...

Business Times - 06 Jan 2010 Reforming US financial regulation in 2010? Chances are not so great By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT FEDERAL Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke insists that more effective federal regulation of the financial industry - and not using the central bank's tool of higher interest rates in order to burst potential asset bubbles - is the best defence against future financial crises. Calling the recent financial crisis the 'worst in modern history', Mr Bernanke said over the weekend that tighter regulation, and not interest rate hikes, could have prevented the sharp downturn. 'Stronger regulation and supervision' of mortgage lenders 'would have been a more effective and surgical approach to constraining the housing bubble than a general increase in interest rates', said Mr Bernanke during an address before the American Economic Association's annual meeting in Atlanta. Indeed, Mr Bernanke's speech seemed to be an attempt to defen...

Business Times - 31 Dec 2009 Obama's real job: cleaner and group therapist By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT AS ONE of the most exhilarating - and yet depressing - years in the history of Washington comes to an end, many pundits are already writing the political obituary of the leading character in this chapter: Barack Obama is predicted to become a one-term president. Indeed, some of Mr Obama's former groupies have become very melodramatic, depicting him as the Fallen Messiah or as the God that Failed, and insisting that they will not be stuffing envelopes or knocking on doors in Iowa on his behalf if Mr Obama decides to run for a second term in 2012. It is certainly too early to start making political bets on the outcome of the next presidential race or, for that matter, on the Congressional midterm election in 2010. But the collapse of the Cult of Obama and the recognition that he has become a 'normal' political figure and will probably not turn out to be a ...

Business Times - 29 Dec 2009 Fall-out of Obama health-care reforms Despite passage of Bill, intense political fight over issue has weakened public support for US president By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT AFTER several months of nasty public debate and heated Congressional deliberations - marked by the political rise of Tea-Party crowd and the notorious 'birthers' and 'deathers' - the US Senate passed a modest but solid healthcare reform bill that could extend coverage to 31 million uninsured Americans. The final passage of the bill, on a 60-39 vote along party lines with no Republican support, is seen as a huge political victory and a historic achievement for US President Barack Obama. Most observers expect the Senate and the House of Representatives to fuse their respective versions of the health-care bill when lawmakers return to Washington early next year, and a final draft of the legislation will be signed by Mr Obama probably before he delivers his State of ...

Business Times - 25 Dec 2009 PERSPECTIVE Senate, US public hold card That the US and China reached an agreement not to agree and to impose it on all others at the climate summit is probably the only good news that came out of Copenhagen By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT CRITICS of former US president George W Bush's unilateralist approach to foreign policy had assumed that President Barack Obama's commitment to pursuing a more multilateralist global agenda would finally help produce international agreements on a variety of issues, including climate change. Hence, if the unilateralist Mr Bush opposed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and refused to submit the treaty for Senate ratification, then the multilateralist Mr Obama would play a leading role in getting a new climate-change accord approved in Copenhagen this year and would be able to mobilise American public and Congressional support for a new UN framework aimed at combating global warming. Or those at least were the expectati...

Business Times - 22 Dec 2009 Obama is doing all right; grade him well His admirers-turned-bashers should remember that he didn't promise to lead a revolution By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT IF YOU have been surfing American television news channels this past week, there is a good chance that in addition to commercials inviting you to take part in the shopping spree of the holiday season, you would have encountered another of those pompous pundits 'grading' US President Barack Obama's first year in office. In fact, Mr Obama himself was asked to grade his performance during an interview with television host Oprah Winfrey. Mr Obama graded himself a 'good, solid B+' and maybe an A- if his healthcare reform bill ended up being approved by Congress. 'I think that we have inherited the biggest set of challenges of any president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt,' Mr Obama explained. He was assigning himself only a B+ because of the things that remain undon...