Global Paradigms

Business Times - 06 Apr 2010 Obama will still face angry voters in Nov Despite favourable recent news, the rate of long-term unemployment is still climbing By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT PRESIDENT Barack Obama 'has kept all his promises' and was 'truly the greatest president ever', declared the Republican National Committee last Thursday, April 1. The statement issued by the governing body of the Republican Party went on to praise Mr Obama for solving global warming 'by replacing cars with low-emission unicorns' and achieving an unemployment rate of 'negative 39 per cent', among various 'accomplishments'. And if you still didn't get it, the statement concluded by reminding the readers that it was, well, an April Fools' Day joke from your very funny Republican Party. But President Obama himself was probably not laughing a lot this week. A new USA Today/Gallup survey issued the same day was not a joke. It suggested that the number o...

No Tea Parties for "Bibi" on IPS Right Web.

Business Times - 26 Mar 2010 Pumped up Obama heads for Wall St He is ready to press for immediate legislation to reform the financial sector while resisting Republican pressure By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT IN THE aftermath of their impressive legislative victory in getting the healthcare reform Bill approved in Congress over the weekend, US President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies on Capitol Hill seem to be in a fighting mode. They have made it clear that they are ready to press for immediate legislation on comprehensive reform of the financial sector's regulatory system. And they are resisting the pressure from Republicans to slow-down the legislative process. Mr Obama and the Democrats hope to complete it even before the November mid-term Congressional election. The Democratic majority in the House of Representative has already succeeded in getting that legislative branch to pass a bill last December. And on Monday, the action moved to the Senate where the key b...

Showdown at the Settlements Corral: Can Obama Remake the Bush-Baker Classic?,"

Business Times - 23 Mar 2010 Healthcare win gives Obama new momentum He's now in a position to press ahead with rest of his domestic and foreign policy agenda By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT SINCE Barack Obama entered the White House, Republican leaders have vowed to turn the debate on his ambitious plans to restructure America's healthcare system into the new president's 'political Waterloo'. It was a plan to tear down what has been seen as the centrepiece of his domestic policy agenda. The Republicans would then be able to destroy his presidency and regain control of Congress in the 2010 midterm elections. They would then ensure that President Obama would not be re- elected for a second term. And indeed, a powerful coalition of Republican lawmakers, lobbyists for the health insurance and pharmaceutical industry and the agitated Tea Party protesters marshalled their enormous political and financial resources - and through the sophisticated manipulation of th...

Business Times - 20 Mar 2010 Time to cool China, US tempers A failure may result in another economic recession, and perhaps even a new cold war, from which no side would be able to decouple By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT MEMBERS of a bipartisan coalition of US lawmakers are accusing the Chinese of a plot to manipulate the value of its currency in order to boost its exports and make American imports harder to sell in China. And the lawmakers have introduced legislation that would force the US Treasury to impose stiff penalties against China and other countries that are engaged in such unfair currency manipulation. In the House of Representatives 130 members of the House of Representatives signed a letter protesting China's manipulation of its currency while in the Senate, a group of 14 Democrats and Republicans are pressing the Obama Administration to act against the Chinese. The senators, led by liberal Democrat Charles Schumer from New York and conservative Republican Lind...

Interview on Norway TV

Business Times - 17 Mar 2010 Obama's balancing act on US trade policies His thrust for exports shows he is adopting a more activist stance on global trade issues By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT MOST of the purveyors of the conventional wisdom in Washington concluded a while ago that President Barack Obama would not be able to make any significant move on global trade any time soon. Against the backdrop of rising populist sentiments around the country and in Congress that reflect the economic distress afflicting much of the country, the current White House occupant is not in a position to start promoting an energetic free trade agenda that would require removing the remaining restrictions on foreign access to American markets. To put it in very simple terms, the American people who have been at the receiving end of daily reports about the loss of American manufacturing jobs to foreign competitors - dramatised by the expanding US trade deficit - are certainly not in a mood to ...

Business Times - 16 Mar 2010 Taking the populist route would win him political points, but he'd rather do what's right By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT PRAGMATISM, the philosophical movement, assumes that the purpose of philosophy is to develop ideas that help us in practical ways. It has been called the American philosophy. It's not only that this school of philosophy was founded by prominent American thinkers (CS Pierce, William James and John Dewey); more significantly, there is something in pragmatism's focus on what works, in its fusion of the practical and the philosophical, that reflects the 'just do it' elements of the American character. European thinkers may be attracted to grandiose but unworkable - or sometimes - destructive ideas. Americans, on the other hand, are supposed to embrace ideas that were tested and seemed to work satisfactorily. Or, as the saying goes: 'The proof in the pudding.' The quality, effectiveness or truth of somet...

My new post on the Huffington Post on Biden's trip to Israel, etc.

Business Times - 09 Mar 2010 Roadblocks to Obama's financial reform plan Wall Street sees plan to create powerful watchdog for consumers as a threat to its profits By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT LEGISLATION for financial reform that gives the federal government a larger role in regulating financial products such as securities and derivatives seems to be making some headway in Congress in recent days. In the Senate, where it has been stalled for quite a while, reports now suggest that the Senate Banking Committee appears closer than ever to a bipartisan agreement on a bill that could lead to major reform of the US financial sector. The House of Representatives, where Democrats maintain a clear majority, has already voted in favour of a financial regulation bill. But in order to get Congress to approve legislation on this issue, the more conservative Senate, where Republicans exert more legislative power, has to pass a similar legislation. One of the most contentious issues i...

Business Times - 02 Mar 2010 How long can Bernanke keep up the juggling act? By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT US FEDERAL Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke's semi-annual report on the state of the American economy last week was comforting. He reassured everyone that the economy was slowly getting better. But, he added, it would take a long time for unemployment to start edging down and thus the Fed had to keep interest rates low to help keep the economy going for a while longer. Bravely, he also said that the Fed would prepare to exit from this period of loose monetary policy. Mr Bernanke's comments during the Congressional hearings on Wednesday and Thursday underlined the need for the Fed to juggle its two primary but conflicting mandates - maximising employment and keeping prices stable. With America's unemployment rate hovering around 9.7 per cent, leaving 14 million people unemployed - nearly half of the unemployed have been out of work for at least six months - Congre...

Business Times - 26 Feb 2010 US climate change legislation loses puff By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT EVEN before the electoral loss that the Democrats suffered in the Massachusetts special Senate race, depriving them of their filibuster-proof majority of 60 seats, most political analysts seemed to agree that the climate change legislation mandating industry reductions in greenhouse gas emissions was facing serious obstacles on Capitol Hill. Although the legislation was promoted by the White House for most of the year, public opinion polls suggested that many Americans, pained by the economic recession, were concerned that it would lead to a rise in energy prices. Moreover, the same polls also indicated that less than 30 per cent of American voters regarded global warming as a top policy priority now. Thus, while the Democrats in the House of Representatives were able to win a narrow approval for an energy bill that included a cap-and-trade mechanism in it - requiring companies ...

Business Times - 24 Feb 2010 Obama drifting into war with Iran He's more dependent on support from conservative Democrats and Republicans who want tougher action against Teheran By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT IT is quite possible that confounding the conventional wisdom, the Obama administration has been conducting secret negotiations with Iran that could open way to a diplomatic detente between the two governments. It is also possible that Washington is working behind the scenes with the Israelis and Palestinians to create the conditions for bringing about a peace accord between these two peoples. It's possible but not so probable. Even if something has been going on in that not-that-much-utilised sphere of 'secret diplomacy' - and once upon a time diplomacy used to be secret and went 'public' only after the deals were made - one would expect in this era of 24/7 news coverage opponents of American-Iranian dialogue in Washington and Teheran and Israeli a...

Business Times - 20 Feb 2010 Trapped in a political gridlock Americans could find themselves facing financial bankruptcy, but there seems to be very little political will on Capitol Hill to do anything about it By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT THE announcement by Democratic Senator Evan Bayh, 54, from Indiana that he would not be seeking re-election this year is continuing to send political shockwaves across Washington. After all, the relatively young and very telegenic lawmaker, who had served as a successful governor of Indiana and was elected in 1998 to the Senate seat once held by his father, was considered to be one of the leading stars in the American political scene. Almost everyone seemed to agree that he was destined to run for, and even get elected, as president sooner or later; in fact, Bayh was on the top of the list of President Barack Obama's choices for the position of vice-president. And as a conservative Democrat representing a traditionally Republican-leanin...

Business Times - 16 Feb 2010 PERSPECTIVE Snowstorms fail to blow away Fed chief's exit strategy There are some novel tools in Bernanke's plan. But how effective will they be? By Leon Hadar US FEDERAL Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke is considered to be one of the world's most powerful public figures. But not even he could overcome the might of Mother Nature that took the form of what has been described by pundits as a 'historic' snowstorm or the 'Snowcalypse', as Washingtonians refer to the mess that hit the US capital last week. Indeed, not even the head of the US central bank was spared from the Washington area's unprecedented winter weather last week with the House of Representative's Financial Services Committee being forced to cancel Mr Bernanke's much-anticipated testimony which was scheduled for Wednesday. He was expected to detail the way he was planning to unwind the Fed's liquidity programmes - trillions of US dollars of aid that have ...

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...