The Re-education of Alan Greenspan- Neandertal Economics- Arab Views of the US Election: Why Jihadists and Potentates Prefer McCain
One silver lining to the current economic mess: hopefully this should discourage American voters from ever again voting in an MBA for president. I have nothing personal against MBAs, they are cousins to us economists, very distant cousins. Sort of like Neandertals were close cousins to us Homo Sapiens,before they became extinct. I have worked with many MBAs and I probablyeven managed to like one or two of them, and I don't expect them tobecome extinct. Only in politics: because you can't run a country as acorporation. They don't even study countries as cases in businessschool, and we know how much they love their cases. But MBAs are a resourceful bunch in their own way: think year-endbonuses and public bailouts. They have the tools of analysis that couldhelp run a country into the ground if they try to run it like acorporation, after milking it of course. Say like Lehman, or MerrillLynch, or Wachovia, or Enron, or Worldcom, or AIG, or Countrywide, orWAMU, or even Citicorp (the favorite corporation of Prince al-waleedal-Saud)....etc.
Which they have been doing for a quarter of a century, but hopefully no more, unlesssome hundred million voters develop a severe case of national amnesianext week, in the middle of the worst crisis of the American marketeconomy since FDR rescued it by reforming it.
EvenAlan Greenspan, the child of Reaganomics, looked stunned in Congressyesterday, and admitted to something like that. He even opined thatthe CEOs of the banking and investment firms were not looking for theinterests of their shareholders and clients. Shocking to almost everyone, except perhaps the late Milton Friedman!
Middle East public opinion in general largely tilts toward Obama, simply because he is considered a novelty in terms of US politics. They are actually amazed that someone like him can be on the threshold of the US presidency. That is the case in almost every other country in the world now with the exception of Georgia, because McCain is a closet Georgian although he does not look like Georgia's all-time favorite son Joesph Stalin, the one time tseminarian from Tbilisi. He did once say something to the effect that "today we are all closet Georgians, my friends".
al-Qaeda type Salafi extremists prefer McCain whom they expect, rightly, to continue with a neocon agenda overseas as they have been doing for eight years to disastrous effect in the Middle East. Thisis what the neocons call a 'robust policy' and most people in theMiddle East see as an 'aggressive policy'. The jihadists want the US tocontinue being mired in failed regional projects which erode Americanprestige and influence, and encourage recruitment among the bored and frustrated youth.
The Arab potentates, especially in the Persian-American Gulf region, prefer McCain and the neocons who are now all around him. They like to see the same old faces, the reassuring faces of the big white fathers, the older white men (but like Hillary, they never knew what to make of Bill Clinton). They don't trust Joe Biden's good idea of a federal Iraq because they are programmed on a culture of centralized power- it is in the genes of all Arab oligarchs. They do not expect McCain to put any pressure on them for reform and democracy, and they think, rightly, that he will side with their vision for the Middle East, which is basically more of the same. No change you can believe in.
"I hope it will be a landslide, a huge landslide...." Also sprach Rush Limbaugh with a deep sigh early October on my car's radio.
It looks like he may get his wish in terms of the magnitude of the electoral landslide but not in terms of the the direction he was hoping. It looks like November 4th may usher in a landslide of the kind he and his ilk of radio warriors will not like at all. Maybe they'll demand to renegotiate his $400 million 8-year contract, given that his base is shrinking and its excitement is gone with the winds of eight years of disastrous Republican management.
Cheers
mhg
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