Global Paradigms

Business Times - 26 Jun 2010 No quick way out of Afghanistan By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT OFFICIAL Washington has been riveted in recent days by a bureaucratic infighting inside the Obama administration that ended with the abrupt relief on Wednesday of General Stanley McChrystal of his command in Afghanistan. Gen McChrystal's boss, General David Petraeus, commander of the US forces across the Middle East and the former leader of the American troops in Iraq, replaced him. While Gen McChrystal had established a good relationship with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, he antagonised some of the leading US civilian leaders, including the commander-in-chief, President Barack Obama. His dismissal came after the publication of a profile of the 55-year-old general in Rolling Stone magazine in which Gen McChrystal and his top aides criticised President Obama and mocked Vice-President Joe Biden and some members of the White House's national security team. While Mr Obama had provid...

Business Times - 24 Jun 2010 Doubts mount over impact of Beijing's yuan reform By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT FOR close to a year, Obama administration officials have resisted pressure from the US Congress to punish China for refusing to adjust its tightly controlled currency, the yuan. At the same time, US President Barack Obama and his aides, led by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, have been working behind the scenes to persuade the Chinese government to move in that direction. And now, it seems that Washington's exercise in quiet diplomacy has proved to be successful after China announced on Saturday that it decided to take the yuan off its peg to the US dollar and let it trade freely. The Chinese made the announcement against the backdrop of growing anti-China sentiment on Capitol Hill and on the eve of the summit of the Group of 20 economies in Canada at the end of this week. The G-20 members have agreed in their last two summits that any serious response to th...

Business Times - 22 Jun 2010 Republicans seem to be their own worst enemy Republican Joe Barton's apology to BP's Mr Hayward only served to help the Democrats By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT THE conventional wisdom in Washington after US President Barack Obama's televised Oval Office address on the Gulf of Mexico's oil spill was that Mr Obama and the Democrats were going to suffer a lousy political week. Opinion polls continued to reflect diminishing public support for the Democratic White House occupant. So, considering the zero-sum nature of current American politics, the bad news for the Democrats could only mean that the political week would end up with a huge win for the opposition. Indeed, the expectation on Capitol Hill and the media last Tuesday was that the Republicans were going to exploit the ineffective performance of the president and the American people's anger over the environmental catastrophe in the Gulf Coast - not to mention the sluggish ec...

The Collapse of Israel's 'Periphery Doctrine':Popping Pipe(s) Turkey Dreams and read the rest of my post on the Huffington Post.

Business Times - 17 Jun 2010 Obama government sinking in two major quagmires President is in danger of losing balance and falling over the Gulf oil spill and Afghan war By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT US PRESIDENT Barack Obama addressed the nation from the White House Oval Office yesterday - the dramatic backdrop has been used by other presidents to address the American people in times of major crises - to outline his ambitious plans for cleaning up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This huge environment catastrophe is threatening to become 'Obama's Katrina', a political disaster and an economic mess that could jeopardise the electoral future of the Democratic president and his party. Accusing BP plc of 'recklessness', Mr Obama pledged to press the oil company to compensate the victims of the environmental disaster. 'We will make BP pay,' he said. And he announced that he wanted BP to finance a long-term Gulf Coast Restoration Plan that would rely ...

Business Times - 15 Jun 2010 Americans in search of new economics By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT ASK a Republican politician or a free-market pundit whether the Keynesian oriented approach of Obamanomics - using fiscal policy to boost the economy during a downturn - was working and he or she would probably respond with a resounding 'No'. The revival of conventional Keynesianism to fight the Great Recession reflects short-term political considerations by providing quick fixes to the crisis and creates the illusion of economic growth and declining unemployment, they argue. They say that the government's efforts to stimulate aggregate demand and reduce unemployment by manipulating spending has not - and will not - work and that it will end-up producing negative side effects, including rising debt and higher inflation. The recent jobs numbers, suggesting that most of the job created last month were the temporary jobs of workers conducting the census, seemed to be playin...

Business Times - 09 Jun 2010 Romance ends between Obama and Americans By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT IF you want to get a sense of the depressing mood that has been overwhelming President Barack Obama and his aides these days, all you need to do is listen to the old hit sang by the musical duo of Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield a while ago. When it comes to the fading love affair between the young and attractive White House occupant and the American people, the melancholic lyrics of The Righteous Brothers seem to say it all: 'You've lost that lovin' feeling.' It does get sad for an American president when it gets funny; when he or she becomes the butt of the jokes of television late-night comedy shows, as Mr Obama has been in recent weeks. Comics has been mocking what is seen more and more as his somewhat lethargic response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and his ineffective handling of the never-ending crisis as well as of other domestic and foreign polic...

Business Times - 02 Jun 2010 Oil spill could 'top kill' Obama presidency Poll shows over 50 per cent of Americans rate his response to disaster as poor or very poor By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT WITH the failed 'top kill' operation of British Petroleum (BP) to plug the gushing oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, US President Barack Obama and his aides are now bracing themselves for the worst. Indeed, it seems that the most devastating environmental catastrophe in American history is gradually becoming Mr Obama's most destructive political crisis. It could not only damage the efforts by the Democrats to maintain their control in Congress after November's midterm election; the political aftershocks of the oil spill, coupled with public discontent over a high unemployment rate and rising government spending as well as general cynicism over the conduct of politicians, could make it more difficult for Mr Obama to return to the White House for a second term. Foll...

Business Times - 26 May 2010 Financial bill falls short on big-banks issue By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT AND they said it could not be done. Following months of debate, last week the US Senate in a 59-39 vote approved its version of the financial reform legislation. The measure that supporters say could have dramatic effects on the way Wall Street operates was another major step towards Congressional passage of the most far-reaching revamping of the financial regulatory system since the dramatic overhaul in the aftermath of the Great Depression of the 1930s. So it's done! (Well, almost). The expectation on Capitol Hill is that the financial legislation could be signed by President Barack Obama before July 4. Mr Obama and the Democrats want to use the bill as an issue in the November midterm Congressional elections, by exploiting the populist sentiments among voters and painting themselves as the party that protects Main Street - as opposed to the Wall Street-type Republic...

Business Times - 25 May 2010 Changing narrative on midterm polls Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have a clear advantage in the November election, at least for now By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT US CONGRESSIONAL and gubernatorial elections that take place at the end of the second year of a presidential term - midterm election - serve as a referendum on the performance of the sitting president and the incumbent political party. History suggests that voters tend to 'punish' the party of the president during this election that takes place on Nov 2. Indeed, in the last 17 midterm elections, the president's party has lost an average of 28 seats in the House of Representatives, and an average four seats in the Senate. The conventional wisdom in Washington has been that the coming midterm election - for 36 of the 100 seats in the Senate, for all the 435 seats in the House and for 37 gubernatorial races - will prove to be a major electoral blow to President Barack ...

Please read my new Multipolarism sans the EU Pole? The Geopolitics of Europe's Economic Mess and the rest of my commetaties on The Huffington Post.

Business Times - 13 May 2010 Now it's Europe's turn, but there's no joy in the US By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT IN THE aftermath of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the ensuing meltdown on Wall Street, some Europeans took a certain pleasure over the economic mess across the Atlantic. French commentators suggested that the US financial crisis highlighted once again the structural flaws and the moral failings of the Anglo-Saxon economic system (as opposed to the more statist version practised in France). The Germans contrasted their more conservative social market model with the free market principles guiding policymakers in Washington. And the European Union's technocrats were more than willing to dispense constructive advice to their colleagues in Washington while expressing initial (and very brief) sense of confidence that the growing troubles facing the US economy were not going to spill over into Europe. In fact, some analysts predicted that the US econom...

Business Times - 11 May 2010 Possible payoff from the Gulf Coast oil spill? Obama could press for an energy bill and its cap-and-trade provisions more strongly now By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT FIVE years ago when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, then president George W Bush was criticised for waiting much too long to act. The Bush administration had failed to provide the kind of decisive leadership required for dealing effectively with an emergency, said Democratic lawmakers and media commentators. That negative assessment was magnified by media images of Mr Bush presenting a birthday cake to Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona in Phoenix on exactly the same day the hurricane hit. Indeed, Mr Bush's handling of the 2005 disaster - which resulted in the death of 1,800 people and caused close to US$100 billion in damage - turned out to be the lowest point in the history of his administration. The debacle of Katrina helped erode much of the remaining support for Mr Bu...

Business Times - 05 May 2010 Arizona law fuels immigration debate While there's broad support for new law, other states are unlikely to follow Arizona before November's midterm polls By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT IT IS starting to sound like a cliche. But it is also true. A politically polarising debate dominates the United States and, by extension, Washington these days. Ranging from the major policy issues of the day - federal deficit, healthcare reform, financial regulations and climate change - to the silly, if not infantile - President Barack Obama's birth certificate or Sarah Palin's latest Twitter comments - Americans seem to be split between two hostile camps - Democrats vs Republicans; Liberals vs Conservatives; Left vs Right; Blue States vs Red States. So it was interesting that after the state of Arizona had passed a new and very tough immigration law which grants new powers to police to stop and detain suspected illegal immigrants, the animated and ...

Business Times - 29 Apr 2010 'Clash of the Titans' on Capitol Hill In addition to obscenities, what made Goldman's Senate hearings so exciting was the Hollywood-like cast of characters By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT WAS he playing the role of the unrepentant villain of the Capitol Hill production 'Clash of the Titans'? Or was he the Good Guy who turned out to be the Bad Guy and who was now pleading for forgiveness, or at least for some empathy from angry lawmakers in the Senate hearing room and the American people who were watching the financial/political crime drama at home? Or will he remain an enigma for most of the audience long after the film credits are shown? There are no simple answers to these and similar questions. But one thing was clear. Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein was the star of the Washington vs Wall Street show - all 10 hours and 40 minutes of it. Other proposed names for the spectacle included 'Lawmakers vs Bankers', 'Uncle...

Business Times - 27 Apr 2010 Again, Obama shows that he prefers evolutionary change By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT DURING a much anticipated speech in New York last week, US President Barack Obama made a push for Wall Street reform just as the US Senate was preparing to debate legislation on overhauling the financial regulatory system. Against the backdrop of the recent fraud charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against financial giant Goldman Sachs, some pundits expected Mr Obama to deliver a hard-hitting populist message against Wall Street, blaming the financial industry for the Great Recession, and calling on an angry American public to support the White House and the Democrats in their efforts to impose tough regulations on the greedy bankers. Listening to President Obama in the audience estimated to be 700 at Cooper Union in lower Manhattan (a venue just a short ride from Wall Street) were America's top financial leaders, including much-disparaged G...

Business Times - 21 Apr 2010 Republicans put on the defensive by Obama Goldman fraud case seen as providing Democrats with leverage to press GOP to help approve financial reform bill By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT ONE of the major turning points in the Congressional debate over the legislation to reform healthcare was the decision on Feb 12 this year by a California-based healthcare insurance company, Anthem Blue Cross, to raise premiums by 39 per cent. US President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies on Capitol Hill seized on the announcement as proof that healthcare insurance reform was needed and launched a series of devastating attacks on the insurance industry. The campaign helped produce political momentum in support for the legislation that eventually was approved by Congress, despite strong Republican opposition. Now Mr Obama and the Democrats are finding themselves once again entangled in another legislative gridlock with Republicans - this time over financial regul...