May 12, 2010
Egypt's Renewal of State of Emergency. By Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State. Washington, DC, May 11, 2010
http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/05/141736.htm
Club-K Container Missile System - See video
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/05/11/video-the-very-real-short-range-missile-threat-obama-is-ignoring
How to Prevent Another Trading Panic - The SEC should require price limits for sell orders
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703880304575236303198364676.html
Pennsylvania Kids Deserve School Choice - Bad public schools hurt poor and rural children the most. By Anthony H Williams, state senator from Pennsylvania and a candidate in the May 18 Democratic primary for governor.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704448304575196191596419272.html
The Minnesota Prelude - Land of 10,000 tax increases
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704250104575238213436787960.html
OTC derivatives market activity in the second half of 2009
http://www.bis.org/press/p100511.htm
Finally, a passing grade in DC
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/11/AR2010051104207.html
Myths of Cap-and-Trade and Clean Energy Policies
http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/2010/05/11/myths-of-cap-and-trade-and-clean-energy-policies/
Microsoft gets more aggressive with free software
http://www.japantoday.com/category/technology/view/microsoft-gets-more-aggressive-with-free-software
Deadly Rotavirus Vs. Harmless Pig Virus
http://www.acsh.org/factsfears/newsID.1422/news_detail.asp
The Price of Wind - The 'clean energy revolution' is expensive
http://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2010/05/price-of-wind-clean-energy-revolution.html
Fannie the Unreformable - Democrats leave Chris Dodd alone to defend the indefensible.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704250104575238641146885632.html
Press Briefing by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/press-briefing-press-secretary-robert-gibbs-and-fema-administrator-craig-fugate
Extend the Bush Tax Cuts—For Now —— Deficits are a real problem but the recovery is still too fragile to choke off growth with higher rates
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704370704575228123196462504.html
Shahzad and the Pre-9/11 Paradigm - In the 1990s we mocked the ineptness of jihadists and were confident civilian courts could handle them. Look where that got us.
http://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2010/05/shahzad-and-pre-911-paradigm-in-1990s.html
On Elena Kagan: "She is certainly a fan of presidential power." By Radley Balko
http://reason.com/blog/2010/05/10/she-is-certainly-a-fan-of-pres
Our Unsustainable Debt, by Veronique de Rugy - America is on the verge of financial disaster
http://reason.com/archives/2010/05/11/our-unsustainable-debt
Side Effects: Higher Premiums from Adult “Children” on Parents’ Health Plans
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/05/11/side-effects-higher-premiums-from-adult-children-on-parents-health-plans/
Side Effects: Get Ready to Lose Your Doctor
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/05/10/side-effects-get-ready-to-lose-your-doctor
Side Effects: Let the Employer Penalties Begin
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/05/04/side-effects-let-the-employer-penalties-begin
Side Effects: Physician-Owned Hospitals Face New Regulations, Limits on Growth
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/05/06/side-effects-physician-owned-hospitals-face-new-regulations-limits-on-growth
Will the Obama administration enable more of Hosni Mubarak's autocracy?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/11/AR2010051104204.html
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Shahzad and the Pre-9/11 Paradigm - In the 1990s we mocked the ineptness of jihadists and were confident civilian courts could handle them
Shahzad and the Pre-9/11 Paradigm. By MICHAEL B. MUKASEY
In the 1990s we mocked the ineptness of jihadists and were confident civilian courts could handle them. Look where that got us.
WSJ, May 12, 2010
Some good news from the attempted car bombing in Times Square on May 1 is that—at the relatively small cost of disappointment to Broadway theater-goers—it teaches valuable lessons to help deal with Islamist terrorism. The bad news is that those lessons should already have been learned.
One such lesson has to do with intelligence gathering. Because our enemies in this struggle do not occupy a particular country or location, intelligence is our only tool for frustrating their plans and locating and targeting their leaders. But as was the case with Umar Faruk Abdulmutallab, who tried to detonate a bomb aboard an airplane over Detroit last Christmas Day, principal emphasis was placed on assuring that any statements Faisal Shahzad made could be used against him rather than simply designating him an unlawful enemy combatant and assuring that we obtained and exploited any information he had.
On Sunday, Attorney General Eric Holder said that in regard to terrorism investigations he supports "modifying" the Miranda law that requires law enforcement officials to inform suspects of their rights to silence and counsel. But his approach—extension of the "public safety exemption" to terror investigations—is both parsimonious and problematic. The public safety exemption allows a delay in Miranda warnings until an imminent threat to public safety—e.g., a loaded gun somewhere in a public place that might be found by a child—has been neutralized. In terror cases it is impossible to determine when all necessary intelligence, which in any event might not relate to an imminent threat, has been learned.
The lesson from our experience with Abdulmutallab, who stopped talking soon after he was advised of his rights and did not resume for weeks until his family could be flown here to persuade him to resume, should have been that intelligence gathering comes first. Yes, Shahzad, as we are told, continued to provide information even after he was advised of his rights, but that cooperation came in spite of and not because of his treatment as a conventional criminal defendant.
Moreover, once Shahzad cooperated, it made no more sense with him than it did with Abdulmutallab to publicize his cooperation and thereby warn those still at large to hide and destroy whatever evidence they could. The profligate disclosures in Shahzad's case, even to the point of describing his confession, could only hinder successful exploitation of whatever information he provided.
The Shahzad case provides a reminder of the permanent harm leaks of any kind can cause. An Associated Press story citing unnamed law enforcement sources reported that investigators were on the trail of a "courier" who had helped provide financing to Shahzad.
A courier would seem oddly out of place in the contemporary world where money can be transferred with the click of a mouse—that is, until one recalls that in 2006 the New York Times disclosed on its front page a highly classified government program for monitoring electronic international money transfers through what is known as the Swift system.
That monitoring violated no law but was leaked and reported as what an intelligence lawyer of my acquaintance referred to as "intelliporn"—intelligence information that is disclosed for no better reason than that it is fun to read about, and without regard for the harm it causes. Of course, terrorists around the world took note, and resorted to "couriers," making it much harder to trace terrorist financing.
In the hours immediately following the discovery and disarming of the car bomb, media outlets and public figures fell all over themselves to lay blame as far as possible from where it would ultimately be found. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano suggested the incident was entirely isolated and directed her agency's personnel to stand down. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg sportingly offered to wager a quarter on the proposition that the bomb was the work of a solitary lunatic, perhaps someone upset over passage of the health-care bill, and much merriment was had over how primitive the bomb had been and how doomed it was to fail.
This sort of reaction goes back much further than this administration. Consider the chain of events leading to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and eventually 9/11.
In November 1990, Meir Kahane, a right-wing Israeli politician, was assassinated after delivering a speech at a Manhattan hotel by El-Sayid Nosair, quickly pigeonholed as a lone misfit whose failures at work had driven him over the edge. The material seized from his home lay largely unexamined in boxes until a truck bomb was detonated under the World Trade Center in 1993, when the perpetrators of that act announced that freeing Nosair from prison was one of their demands.
Authorities then examined the neglected boxes and found jihadi literature urging the attacks on Western civilization through a terror campaign that would include toppling tall buildings that were centers of finance and tourism. An amateur video of Kahane's speech the night he was assassinated revealed that one of the 1993 bombers, Mohammed Salameh, was present in the hall when Nosair committed his act, and the ensuing investigation disclosed that Nosair was supposed to have made his escape with the help of another, Mahmoud Abouhalima, who was waiting outside at the wheel of a cab.
Nosair jumped into the wrong cab and the terrified driver pulled over and ducked under the dashboard, at which point Nosair tried to flee on foot and was captured. Salameh was captured when the vehicle identification number on the truck that carried the bomb led investigators to a rental agency, where he showed up days later to try to retrieve the deposit on the truck so that he could finance his escape.
Despite the toll from the first World Trade Center blast—six killed, hundreds injured, tens of millions of dollars in damage—and the murder of Kahane, much sport was made of how inept the perpetrators were.
Nosair and the 1993 Trade Center bombers were disciples of cleric Omar Abdel Rahman, known as the "blind sheikh," who was tried and convicted in 1995 along with nine others for conspiring to wage a war of urban terror that included not only that bombing and the Kahane assassination but also a plot to bomb simultaneously the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels, the George Washington Bridge and the United Nations.
One of the unindicted co-conspirators in that case was a then-obscure Osama bin Laden, who would declare in 1996 and again in 1998 that militant Islamists were at war with the United States. In 1998, his organization, al Qaeda, arranged the near-simultaneous bombing of American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Despite the declaration of war and the act of war, the criminal law paradigm continued to define our response. Along with immediate perpetrators, and some remote perpetrators including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, bin Laden was indicted, and the oft-repeated vow to "bring them to justice" was repeated. Unmoved, and certainly undeterred, bin Laden in 2000 unleashed the attack in Yemen on the destroyer USS Cole, killing 17.
That was followed by Sept. 11, 2001, and it appeared for a time that Islamist fanaticism would no longer be greeted with condescending mockery. To the phrase "bring them to justice" was added "bring justice to them." The country appeared ready to adopt a stance of war, and to be ready to treat terrorists as it had the German saboteurs who landed off Long Island and Florida in 1942—as unlawful combatants under the laws of war who were not entitled to the guarantees that the Constitution grants to ordinary criminals.
There have been more than 20 Islamist terrorist plots aimed at this country since 9/11, including the deadly shooting by U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, those of Abdulmutallab and Shahzad, and those of Najibullah Zazi and his cohorts, Bryant Neal Vinas and his, against commuter railroads and subways in New York; of plotters who targeted military personnel at Fort Dix, N.J., Quantico, Va., and Goose Creek, S.C., and who murdered an Army recruiter in Little Rock, Ark.; of those who planned to blow up synagogues in New York, an office building in Dallas, and a courthouse in Illinois, among others.
Yet the pre-9/11 criminal law paradigm is again setting the limit of Attorney General Holder's response, even to the point of considering the inapposite public safety exception to Miranda as a way to help intelligence gathering. He continues to press for a civilian trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others who had long since been scheduled to be tried before military commissions.
A significant lesson lurking in Shahzad's inadequacy, and the history that preceded it, is that one of the things terrorists do is persist. Ramzi Yousef's shortcomings in the first attempt to blow up the World Trade Center were made up for by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. We should see to the good order of our institutions and our attitudes before someone tries to make up for Faisal Shahzad's shortcomings.
Mr. Mukasey was attorney general of the United States from 2007 to 2009.
In the 1990s we mocked the ineptness of jihadists and were confident civilian courts could handle them. Look where that got us.
WSJ, May 12, 2010
Some good news from the attempted car bombing in Times Square on May 1 is that—at the relatively small cost of disappointment to Broadway theater-goers—it teaches valuable lessons to help deal with Islamist terrorism. The bad news is that those lessons should already have been learned.
One such lesson has to do with intelligence gathering. Because our enemies in this struggle do not occupy a particular country or location, intelligence is our only tool for frustrating their plans and locating and targeting their leaders. But as was the case with Umar Faruk Abdulmutallab, who tried to detonate a bomb aboard an airplane over Detroit last Christmas Day, principal emphasis was placed on assuring that any statements Faisal Shahzad made could be used against him rather than simply designating him an unlawful enemy combatant and assuring that we obtained and exploited any information he had.
On Sunday, Attorney General Eric Holder said that in regard to terrorism investigations he supports "modifying" the Miranda law that requires law enforcement officials to inform suspects of their rights to silence and counsel. But his approach—extension of the "public safety exemption" to terror investigations—is both parsimonious and problematic. The public safety exemption allows a delay in Miranda warnings until an imminent threat to public safety—e.g., a loaded gun somewhere in a public place that might be found by a child—has been neutralized. In terror cases it is impossible to determine when all necessary intelligence, which in any event might not relate to an imminent threat, has been learned.
The lesson from our experience with Abdulmutallab, who stopped talking soon after he was advised of his rights and did not resume for weeks until his family could be flown here to persuade him to resume, should have been that intelligence gathering comes first. Yes, Shahzad, as we are told, continued to provide information even after he was advised of his rights, but that cooperation came in spite of and not because of his treatment as a conventional criminal defendant.
Moreover, once Shahzad cooperated, it made no more sense with him than it did with Abdulmutallab to publicize his cooperation and thereby warn those still at large to hide and destroy whatever evidence they could. The profligate disclosures in Shahzad's case, even to the point of describing his confession, could only hinder successful exploitation of whatever information he provided.
The Shahzad case provides a reminder of the permanent harm leaks of any kind can cause. An Associated Press story citing unnamed law enforcement sources reported that investigators were on the trail of a "courier" who had helped provide financing to Shahzad.
A courier would seem oddly out of place in the contemporary world where money can be transferred with the click of a mouse—that is, until one recalls that in 2006 the New York Times disclosed on its front page a highly classified government program for monitoring electronic international money transfers through what is known as the Swift system.
That monitoring violated no law but was leaked and reported as what an intelligence lawyer of my acquaintance referred to as "intelliporn"—intelligence information that is disclosed for no better reason than that it is fun to read about, and without regard for the harm it causes. Of course, terrorists around the world took note, and resorted to "couriers," making it much harder to trace terrorist financing.
In the hours immediately following the discovery and disarming of the car bomb, media outlets and public figures fell all over themselves to lay blame as far as possible from where it would ultimately be found. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano suggested the incident was entirely isolated and directed her agency's personnel to stand down. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg sportingly offered to wager a quarter on the proposition that the bomb was the work of a solitary lunatic, perhaps someone upset over passage of the health-care bill, and much merriment was had over how primitive the bomb had been and how doomed it was to fail.
This sort of reaction goes back much further than this administration. Consider the chain of events leading to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and eventually 9/11.
In November 1990, Meir Kahane, a right-wing Israeli politician, was assassinated after delivering a speech at a Manhattan hotel by El-Sayid Nosair, quickly pigeonholed as a lone misfit whose failures at work had driven him over the edge. The material seized from his home lay largely unexamined in boxes until a truck bomb was detonated under the World Trade Center in 1993, when the perpetrators of that act announced that freeing Nosair from prison was one of their demands.
Authorities then examined the neglected boxes and found jihadi literature urging the attacks on Western civilization through a terror campaign that would include toppling tall buildings that were centers of finance and tourism. An amateur video of Kahane's speech the night he was assassinated revealed that one of the 1993 bombers, Mohammed Salameh, was present in the hall when Nosair committed his act, and the ensuing investigation disclosed that Nosair was supposed to have made his escape with the help of another, Mahmoud Abouhalima, who was waiting outside at the wheel of a cab.
Nosair jumped into the wrong cab and the terrified driver pulled over and ducked under the dashboard, at which point Nosair tried to flee on foot and was captured. Salameh was captured when the vehicle identification number on the truck that carried the bomb led investigators to a rental agency, where he showed up days later to try to retrieve the deposit on the truck so that he could finance his escape.
Despite the toll from the first World Trade Center blast—six killed, hundreds injured, tens of millions of dollars in damage—and the murder of Kahane, much sport was made of how inept the perpetrators were.
Nosair and the 1993 Trade Center bombers were disciples of cleric Omar Abdel Rahman, known as the "blind sheikh," who was tried and convicted in 1995 along with nine others for conspiring to wage a war of urban terror that included not only that bombing and the Kahane assassination but also a plot to bomb simultaneously the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels, the George Washington Bridge and the United Nations.
One of the unindicted co-conspirators in that case was a then-obscure Osama bin Laden, who would declare in 1996 and again in 1998 that militant Islamists were at war with the United States. In 1998, his organization, al Qaeda, arranged the near-simultaneous bombing of American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Despite the declaration of war and the act of war, the criminal law paradigm continued to define our response. Along with immediate perpetrators, and some remote perpetrators including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, bin Laden was indicted, and the oft-repeated vow to "bring them to justice" was repeated. Unmoved, and certainly undeterred, bin Laden in 2000 unleashed the attack in Yemen on the destroyer USS Cole, killing 17.
That was followed by Sept. 11, 2001, and it appeared for a time that Islamist fanaticism would no longer be greeted with condescending mockery. To the phrase "bring them to justice" was added "bring justice to them." The country appeared ready to adopt a stance of war, and to be ready to treat terrorists as it had the German saboteurs who landed off Long Island and Florida in 1942—as unlawful combatants under the laws of war who were not entitled to the guarantees that the Constitution grants to ordinary criminals.
There have been more than 20 Islamist terrorist plots aimed at this country since 9/11, including the deadly shooting by U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, those of Abdulmutallab and Shahzad, and those of Najibullah Zazi and his cohorts, Bryant Neal Vinas and his, against commuter railroads and subways in New York; of plotters who targeted military personnel at Fort Dix, N.J., Quantico, Va., and Goose Creek, S.C., and who murdered an Army recruiter in Little Rock, Ark.; of those who planned to blow up synagogues in New York, an office building in Dallas, and a courthouse in Illinois, among others.
Yet the pre-9/11 criminal law paradigm is again setting the limit of Attorney General Holder's response, even to the point of considering the inapposite public safety exception to Miranda as a way to help intelligence gathering. He continues to press for a civilian trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others who had long since been scheduled to be tried before military commissions.
A significant lesson lurking in Shahzad's inadequacy, and the history that preceded it, is that one of the things terrorists do is persist. Ramzi Yousef's shortcomings in the first attempt to blow up the World Trade Center were made up for by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. We should see to the good order of our institutions and our attitudes before someone tries to make up for Faisal Shahzad's shortcomings.
Mr. Mukasey was attorney general of the United States from 2007 to 2009.
Press Briefing
May 11, 2010
EIA's Annual Energy Outlook 2010
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/index.html
US Missile Defense and Regional Security. By Frank A. Rose, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Verification, Compliance, and Implementation. Remarks At the First Annual Israel Multinational Ballistic Missile Defense Conference. Tel Aviv, Israel, May 5, 2010
http://www.state.gov/t/vci/rls/141673.htm
What’s Worse Than Energy Taxes? Renewable Electricity Standards
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/05/11/morning-bell-whats-worse-than-energy-taxes-renewable-electricity-standards
$145 Billion and Counting - Fannie and Freddie lose it all for you
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703880304575236270385307174.html
Kagan and the Military: What Really Happened - As dean, she upheld a policy already in place
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703880304575236502953055276.html
The World's Dollar Drug - Expect the greenback to remain the world's reserve currency, but that won't be a sign of U.S. strength
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704342604575222701291563876.html
K[G]L 101: A Glossary of Terms
http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/2010/05/10/kgl-101-a-glossary-of-terms/
Rats fed Roundup Ready Soy —no effect on pancreas
http://academicsreview.org/reviewed-content/genetic-roulette/section-1/1-11roundup-ready-soy-is-safe-2/
Purposes and Principles of US Engagement in Burma, by Kurt M. Campbell, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Rangoon, Burma, May 10, 2010
http://www.state.gov/p/eap/rls/rm/2010/05/141669.htm
Defending Freedom Is a Choice, by Kim R. Holmes, Ph.D. Heritage Foundation, May 3, 2010
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/05/Defending-Freedom-Is-a-Choice
A Renewable Electricity Standard: What It Will Really Cost Americans. By David Kreutzer, Ph.D., Karen Campbell, Ph.D., William Beach, Ben Lieberman and Nicolas Loris. Heritage Foundation, May 5, 2010
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/05/A-Renewable-Electricity-Standard-What-It-Will-Really-Cost-Americans
EIA's Annual Energy Outlook 2010
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/index.html
US Missile Defense and Regional Security. By Frank A. Rose, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Verification, Compliance, and Implementation. Remarks At the First Annual Israel Multinational Ballistic Missile Defense Conference. Tel Aviv, Israel, May 5, 2010
http://www.state.gov/t/vci/rls/141673.htm
What’s Worse Than Energy Taxes? Renewable Electricity Standards
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/05/11/morning-bell-whats-worse-than-energy-taxes-renewable-electricity-standards
$145 Billion and Counting - Fannie and Freddie lose it all for you
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703880304575236270385307174.html
Kagan and the Military: What Really Happened - As dean, she upheld a policy already in place
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703880304575236502953055276.html
The World's Dollar Drug - Expect the greenback to remain the world's reserve currency, but that won't be a sign of U.S. strength
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704342604575222701291563876.html
K[G]L 101: A Glossary of Terms
http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/2010/05/10/kgl-101-a-glossary-of-terms/
Rats fed Roundup Ready Soy —no effect on pancreas
http://academicsreview.org/reviewed-content/genetic-roulette/section-1/1-11roundup-ready-soy-is-safe-2/
Purposes and Principles of US Engagement in Burma, by Kurt M. Campbell, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Rangoon, Burma, May 10, 2010
http://www.state.gov/p/eap/rls/rm/2010/05/141669.htm
Defending Freedom Is a Choice, by Kim R. Holmes, Ph.D. Heritage Foundation, May 3, 2010
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/05/Defending-Freedom-Is-a-Choice
A Renewable Electricity Standard: What It Will Really Cost Americans. By David Kreutzer, Ph.D., Karen Campbell, Ph.D., William Beach, Ben Lieberman and Nicolas Loris. Heritage Foundation, May 5, 2010
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/05/A-Renewable-Electricity-Standard-What-It-Will-Really-Cost-Americans
Monday, May 10, 2010
Press Briefing
May 10, 2010
http://digs.by/cgspol Remarks at the East-West Center's 50th Anniversary Celebration, by Judith A. McHale, Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Capital Hilton Hotel, Washington, DC, May 6, 2010
http://digs.by/bdNTtP One of the Nation's Leading Legal Minds: The President Nominates Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court
http://digs.by/ccFPg5 Kagan Nomination Launches Constitutional Debate + http://digs.by/9HoCRb Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan
http://digs.by/b4eau0 Five Reasons Not to Support a Bailout of Greece
http://digs.by/cr09j1 The Carbon Recession - CO2 emissions plunge, along with the economy. Washington rejoices
http://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2010/05/euros-tribulations-dont-blame-single.html The Euro's Tribulations - Don't blame the single currency for the failures of Keynesian economics
http://digs.by/alQbF1 The FCC vs. Broadband Investors - The last thing Internet entrepreneurs need is a new period of regulatory uncertainty
http://digs.by/drVDrs Corporate governance: much better job than they get credit for, but here are a few suggestions for improvement
http://digs.by/dfMg6B Weekly Address: President Obama Praises the Benefits and Successes of Health Reform Already in Effect
http://digs.by/dBb9JN ObamaCare's Phony Medicaid 'Deal' - The new health law unconstitutionally coerces the states.
http://digs.by/91RSgh The Euro's Tribulations - Don't blame the single currency for the failures of Keynesian economics
http://digs.by/bFfSuO Arizona's Real Problem: Drug Crime - Violence in the border is not committed by migrant laborers.
http://digs.by/bNbJdi Islam's Nowhere Men-- Millions like Faisal Shahzad are unsettled by a modern world they can neither master nor reject
http://digs.by/cgspol Remarks at the East-West Center's 50th Anniversary Celebration, by Judith A. McHale, Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Capital Hilton Hotel, Washington, DC, May 6, 2010
http://digs.by/bdNTtP One of the Nation's Leading Legal Minds: The President Nominates Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court
http://digs.by/ccFPg5 Kagan Nomination Launches Constitutional Debate + http://digs.by/9HoCRb Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan
http://digs.by/b4eau0 Five Reasons Not to Support a Bailout of Greece
http://digs.by/cr09j1 The Carbon Recession - CO2 emissions plunge, along with the economy. Washington rejoices
http://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2010/05/euros-tribulations-dont-blame-single.html The Euro's Tribulations - Don't blame the single currency for the failures of Keynesian economics
http://digs.by/alQbF1 The FCC vs. Broadband Investors - The last thing Internet entrepreneurs need is a new period of regulatory uncertainty
http://digs.by/drVDrs Corporate governance: much better job than they get credit for, but here are a few suggestions for improvement
http://digs.by/dfMg6B Weekly Address: President Obama Praises the Benefits and Successes of Health Reform Already in Effect
http://digs.by/dBb9JN ObamaCare's Phony Medicaid 'Deal' - The new health law unconstitutionally coerces the states.
http://digs.by/91RSgh The Euro's Tribulations - Don't blame the single currency for the failures of Keynesian economics
http://digs.by/bFfSuO Arizona's Real Problem: Drug Crime - Violence in the border is not committed by migrant laborers.
http://digs.by/bNbJdi Islam's Nowhere Men-- Millions like Faisal Shahzad are unsettled by a modern world they can neither master nor reject
The Euro's Tribulations - Don't blame the single currency for the failures of Keynesian economics
The Euro's Tribulations. WSJ Editorial
Don't blame the single currency for the failures of Keynesian economics.WSJ, Monday,May 10, 2010
Twelve years ago, economist Robert Mundell wrote a series of articles in these pages under the headline, "The Case for the Euro," touting the benefits of the single European currency due in 1999. The subsequent decade exceeded the rosiest scenarios set out by the "father of the euro." Sixteen countries came to enjoy prosperity and stability in the world's second most successful zone of sound money and free commerce (after the U.S.).
This year, the party has come to a crashing halt with Greece's financial meltdown, and one consequence has been a run on confidence in the euro. Last week, as the European Union and International Monetary Fund approved a €110 billion rescue and the Greeks adopted an austerity package, the euro tumbled to 14-month lows.
The euro will be tested in the coming months and years by policy makers and markets. The challenges ahead include continued economic weakness, particularly across a Mediterranean flirting with insolvency from Greece to Portugal, political tensions and calls to winnow euroland to the strong economies, or to shelve the euro altogether.
Europe's unprecedented monetary union can no doubt be improved, but its benefits in economic efficiency and monetary discipline should not be ignored, much less tossed away at the first serious challenge. It's also important to understand that the single currency is the scapegoat du jour for a crisis whose real causes are inconvenient for the political class.
***
In one anti-euro corner are weak-money neo-Keynesians. Greece was their model pupil, spending its way to supposedly drive growth. But when the time came to pay the piper, the lament now heard from Paul Krugman and elsewhere is that the Greeks are unjustly shackled by the euro. Take back national control over monetary policy and the EU's weak economies can once again devalue their way out of trouble. Blaming the euro for the failures of Keynesianism sets a new standard for chutzpah, and this prescription would debase not only the currencies but the middle class for a generation.
Then there's the idea to save the euro by creating a European super-state to set economic policy, harmonize taxes and ease transfers from rich countries to the poor. George Soros stands in this camp, as does prominent German central banker Otmar Issing, who earlier this year wrote that "starting monetary union without having established a political union was putting the cart before the horse." This is really a call for imposing on all countries the welfare state agenda that got Europe into this jam in the first place.
Before offering cures, let's diagnose the Greek disease properly. Joining the euro gave the poorer southern EU countries a perfect opportunity to "pull up their socks," in Professor Mundell's words. Some, like Italy and Spain, did so for a while. But sitting pretty inside the euro club, many politicians took the foot off the pedal of unpopular reforms, such as liberalizing labor codes or lowering costs to business.
Greek politicians in particular lived beyond their means and put much of this spending, in Wall Street parlance, off their balance sheet. The euro did enable bad habits by letting Greece borrow at German interest rates. This postponed the day of reckoning for the failures of reform, until a new Athens government last year came clean about the lies and the mess. But don't blame a currency for irresponsible leadership.
Europe isn't experiencing a currency crisis. It is a debt crisis driven by overborrowing, large and inefficient government, and insufficient economic growth. Some of the sickest countries use the euro as their legal tender, but others don't. Iceland, Latvia, Romania and Hungary were all forced into the arms of the IMF, though none of them is in the euro zone. Britain is also outside the euro bloc but is facing its own day of debt reckoning.
Iceland is a sobering might-have-been for the Greeks. The small Arctic island's financial crisis was compounded by a currency crisis. It's now fast-tracking an application to join the EU and the euro. The Icelanders understand that small countries with shallow capital markets are most vulnerable to currency volatility in a world of floating exchange rates.
Before Greece or Portugal seriously consider bringing back the drachma and escudo, and devaluing their way out of trouble, recall that Argentina took this advice in late 2001. Dropping its dollar peg, the Argentines beggared their people and avoided policy changes. They ended up defaulting and continue to fall behind Brazil and Chile.
The Greeks can leave the euro if they prefer, and neither Berlin nor Brussels would spill many tears. But the costs of dropping out would be substantial. The bulk of Greek financial contracts are in euros. Were a reconstituted drachma devalued by 50%, the public debt to GDP ratio would essentially double—in Greece's case to well over 200% of GDP. Our guess is that the Greeks restructure their debts or default before they drop out of the single currency.
***
While not the cause of this crisis, the euro has been tarnished by it. Greece's Madoff-like bookkeeping broke the mutual trust that is essential to any monetary compact, and this will take time to restore.
Shortcomings in the rules governing the euro zone were evident long before this crisis, and they now need to be addressed. In one of his 1998 Journal articles, Mr. Mundell wrote that the rules on fiscal deficits and public debts in the Stability and Growth Pact—adopted by euro-zone countries to govern the single currency—needed bite to guard against the obvious free-rider problem: Countries would be tempted to take advantage of a colossal and low-interest bond market believing that "when the chips are down the union will act as lender of last resort." He essentially predicted the problems of Greece and the proposed EU-IMF bailout.
Fines were decreased and the stability pact was never seriously enforced. Germany and France, which pushed hardest for strict penalties, were the first to break the rules without suffering any consequences. Five years ago, Berlin and Paris shot down the European Commission's proposal to oversee national statistical agencies to safeguard against Greek-like cheating.
On Tuesday, the Commission plans to unveil proposals on closer surveillance of euro-zone budgets. Next it should restore some teeth to the stability pact. These modest steps won't excite euro federalists as much as a grand and unrealistic political union, but they might do some actual good.
***
The future of the euro in the next decade depends on the will of European politicians. First the beggar-thy-currency crowd must be ignored. The European Central Bank has, at least so far, been a bulwark against such talk. On the other hand, the EU's decision to create a "bailout fund" tells creditors and borrower governments alike that they will always be rescued, increasing moral hazard and the odds of another crisis. If asked to foot the bill again, unhappy German or Dutch taxpayers may decide the euro isn't worth the price and themselves push for its dissolution.
Above all, the euro will thrive only if Europe thrives. Austerity plans intended to stem the fiscal hemorrhaging are no substitute for policies to promote growth. Should Europe use this crisis to make itself more competitive and rein in the welfare state, the Continent would be even better placed to take advantage of a huge single market underpinned by a stable currency and low inflation. And if that were to happen, the second decade of the euro could turn out to be better than the first.
Don't blame the single currency for the failures of Keynesian economics.WSJ, Monday,May 10, 2010
Twelve years ago, economist Robert Mundell wrote a series of articles in these pages under the headline, "The Case for the Euro," touting the benefits of the single European currency due in 1999. The subsequent decade exceeded the rosiest scenarios set out by the "father of the euro." Sixteen countries came to enjoy prosperity and stability in the world's second most successful zone of sound money and free commerce (after the U.S.).
This year, the party has come to a crashing halt with Greece's financial meltdown, and one consequence has been a run on confidence in the euro. Last week, as the European Union and International Monetary Fund approved a €110 billion rescue and the Greeks adopted an austerity package, the euro tumbled to 14-month lows.
The euro will be tested in the coming months and years by policy makers and markets. The challenges ahead include continued economic weakness, particularly across a Mediterranean flirting with insolvency from Greece to Portugal, political tensions and calls to winnow euroland to the strong economies, or to shelve the euro altogether.
Europe's unprecedented monetary union can no doubt be improved, but its benefits in economic efficiency and monetary discipline should not be ignored, much less tossed away at the first serious challenge. It's also important to understand that the single currency is the scapegoat du jour for a crisis whose real causes are inconvenient for the political class.
***
In one anti-euro corner are weak-money neo-Keynesians. Greece was their model pupil, spending its way to supposedly drive growth. But when the time came to pay the piper, the lament now heard from Paul Krugman and elsewhere is that the Greeks are unjustly shackled by the euro. Take back national control over monetary policy and the EU's weak economies can once again devalue their way out of trouble. Blaming the euro for the failures of Keynesianism sets a new standard for chutzpah, and this prescription would debase not only the currencies but the middle class for a generation.
Then there's the idea to save the euro by creating a European super-state to set economic policy, harmonize taxes and ease transfers from rich countries to the poor. George Soros stands in this camp, as does prominent German central banker Otmar Issing, who earlier this year wrote that "starting monetary union without having established a political union was putting the cart before the horse." This is really a call for imposing on all countries the welfare state agenda that got Europe into this jam in the first place.
Before offering cures, let's diagnose the Greek disease properly. Joining the euro gave the poorer southern EU countries a perfect opportunity to "pull up their socks," in Professor Mundell's words. Some, like Italy and Spain, did so for a while. But sitting pretty inside the euro club, many politicians took the foot off the pedal of unpopular reforms, such as liberalizing labor codes or lowering costs to business.
Greek politicians in particular lived beyond their means and put much of this spending, in Wall Street parlance, off their balance sheet. The euro did enable bad habits by letting Greece borrow at German interest rates. This postponed the day of reckoning for the failures of reform, until a new Athens government last year came clean about the lies and the mess. But don't blame a currency for irresponsible leadership.
Europe isn't experiencing a currency crisis. It is a debt crisis driven by overborrowing, large and inefficient government, and insufficient economic growth. Some of the sickest countries use the euro as their legal tender, but others don't. Iceland, Latvia, Romania and Hungary were all forced into the arms of the IMF, though none of them is in the euro zone. Britain is also outside the euro bloc but is facing its own day of debt reckoning.
Iceland is a sobering might-have-been for the Greeks. The small Arctic island's financial crisis was compounded by a currency crisis. It's now fast-tracking an application to join the EU and the euro. The Icelanders understand that small countries with shallow capital markets are most vulnerable to currency volatility in a world of floating exchange rates.
Before Greece or Portugal seriously consider bringing back the drachma and escudo, and devaluing their way out of trouble, recall that Argentina took this advice in late 2001. Dropping its dollar peg, the Argentines beggared their people and avoided policy changes. They ended up defaulting and continue to fall behind Brazil and Chile.
The Greeks can leave the euro if they prefer, and neither Berlin nor Brussels would spill many tears. But the costs of dropping out would be substantial. The bulk of Greek financial contracts are in euros. Were a reconstituted drachma devalued by 50%, the public debt to GDP ratio would essentially double—in Greece's case to well over 200% of GDP. Our guess is that the Greeks restructure their debts or default before they drop out of the single currency.
***
While not the cause of this crisis, the euro has been tarnished by it. Greece's Madoff-like bookkeeping broke the mutual trust that is essential to any monetary compact, and this will take time to restore.
Shortcomings in the rules governing the euro zone were evident long before this crisis, and they now need to be addressed. In one of his 1998 Journal articles, Mr. Mundell wrote that the rules on fiscal deficits and public debts in the Stability and Growth Pact—adopted by euro-zone countries to govern the single currency—needed bite to guard against the obvious free-rider problem: Countries would be tempted to take advantage of a colossal and low-interest bond market believing that "when the chips are down the union will act as lender of last resort." He essentially predicted the problems of Greece and the proposed EU-IMF bailout.
Fines were decreased and the stability pact was never seriously enforced. Germany and France, which pushed hardest for strict penalties, were the first to break the rules without suffering any consequences. Five years ago, Berlin and Paris shot down the European Commission's proposal to oversee national statistical agencies to safeguard against Greek-like cheating.
On Tuesday, the Commission plans to unveil proposals on closer surveillance of euro-zone budgets. Next it should restore some teeth to the stability pact. These modest steps won't excite euro federalists as much as a grand and unrealistic political union, but they might do some actual good.
***
The future of the euro in the next decade depends on the will of European politicians. First the beggar-thy-currency crowd must be ignored. The European Central Bank has, at least so far, been a bulwark against such talk. On the other hand, the EU's decision to create a "bailout fund" tells creditors and borrower governments alike that they will always be rescued, increasing moral hazard and the odds of another crisis. If asked to foot the bill again, unhappy German or Dutch taxpayers may decide the euro isn't worth the price and themselves push for its dissolution.
Above all, the euro will thrive only if Europe thrives. Austerity plans intended to stem the fiscal hemorrhaging are no substitute for policies to promote growth. Should Europe use this crisis to make itself more competitive and rein in the welfare state, the Continent would be even better placed to take advantage of a huge single market underpinned by a stable currency and low inflation. And if that were to happen, the second decade of the euro could turn out to be better than the first.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Press Briefing
May 07, 2010
http://bit.ly/a816l3 Yuriko Koike: How to Undermine an Alliance
http://digs.by/bz8N5M Future Nuclear Arms Control and Nonproliferation: New START and Beyond, by Rose Gottemoeller, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Verification, Compliance, and Implementation. Remarks at National Defense University, Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction 10th Annual Symposium. Washington, DC, May 5, 2010
http://digs.by/9uXyU7 Sergei Karaganov: The Dangers of Nuclear Disarmament
http://digs.by/cLRm3d The Next Capital Insurgency- In 1978 Jimmy Carter signed a cap gains cut to lift a sagging economy.
http://digs.by/dkxApG History is littered with tales of men who turned to violence because of bad real-estate investments
http://digs.by/aSKNOB Julius Caesar of the Internet - The FCC puts another industry under political control
http://digs.by/9rhbN8 At Last, More Jobs - The latest jobs report
http://digs.by/bcdSoY Moms to the Barricades - 'The tea parties are an extension of our need to protect the future for our children.'
http://digs.by/c0swOd The Markets Have Good Reasons To Be Nervous - Nobody will trust the euro like they used to.
http://digs.by/dvaCvj Cancer and the Environment
http://digs.by/a68PnA Deepwater Horizon - Focus on Cleanup, Not Politics
http://bit.ly/a816l3 Yuriko Koike: How to Undermine an Alliance
http://digs.by/bz8N5M Future Nuclear Arms Control and Nonproliferation: New START and Beyond, by Rose Gottemoeller, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Verification, Compliance, and Implementation. Remarks at National Defense University, Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction 10th Annual Symposium. Washington, DC, May 5, 2010
http://digs.by/9uXyU7 Sergei Karaganov: The Dangers of Nuclear Disarmament
http://digs.by/cLRm3d The Next Capital Insurgency- In 1978 Jimmy Carter signed a cap gains cut to lift a sagging economy.
http://digs.by/dkxApG History is littered with tales of men who turned to violence because of bad real-estate investments
http://digs.by/aSKNOB Julius Caesar of the Internet - The FCC puts another industry under political control
http://digs.by/9rhbN8 At Last, More Jobs - The latest jobs report
http://digs.by/bcdSoY Moms to the Barricades - 'The tea parties are an extension of our need to protect the future for our children.'
http://digs.by/c0swOd The Markets Have Good Reasons To Be Nervous - Nobody will trust the euro like they used to.
http://digs.by/dvaCvj Cancer and the Environment
http://digs.by/a68PnA Deepwater Horizon - Focus on Cleanup, Not Politics
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Derivatives Clearinghouses Are No Magic Bullet - Another kind of institution that's too big to fail?
Derivatives Clearinghouses Are No Magic Bullet. By MARK J. ROE
Will the Dodd bill create another kind of institution that's too big to fail?WSJ, May 06, 2010
As the Senate finalizes its financial reform legislation, a consensus is developing that if we could just get derivatives traded through a centralized clearinghouse we could avoid a financial crisis like the one we just went through. This is false. Clearinghouses provide efficiencies in transparency and trading, but they are no cure-all. They can even exacerbate problems in a financial crisis.
If I agree to sell you a product next month through a clearinghouse, I'll deliver the product to the clearinghouse and you'll deliver the cash to the clearinghouse on the due date. Let's say we both have many trades going through the clearinghouse and we've posted collateral to cover any single trade that fails. This is more efficient than each of us posting collateral privately for each trade. Moreover, we're not worried that I won't deliver or you won't pay because we both count on the clearinghouse to deliver and pay up if one of us doesn't.
This clearing system makes trading more efficient. If you default, the cost is spread through the clearinghouse so I don't get hurt severely. And if the clearinghouse has enough collateral from you, there's no loss to spread. But there's also a potential downside: The clearinghouse reduces our incentives to worry about counterparty risk. Your business might collapse before you need to pay up, but that's not my problem because the clearinghouse pays me anyway. The clearinghouse weakens private market discipline.
Still, if the clearinghouse is as good or better at checking up on your creditworthiness as I am, all will be well. But one has to wonder how good a clearinghouse will be, or can be.
Consider two of our biggest derivatives-related failures—Long-Term Capital Management in 1998 and the subprime market in 2008. When Russia's ruble dropped unexpectedly, LTCM was exposed on its more than $1 trillion in interest-rate and foreign-exchange derivatives. It could not pay up and collapsed. Ten years later the market rapidly revalued subprime mortgage securities, rendering several institutions insolvent. AIG was over-exposed in credit default swaps tied to the value of subprime mortgages.
Could a clearinghouse really have been ahead of the curve in getting sufficient capital posted before these problems became serious and well-known? I'm not so sure. Worse yet, major types of derivatives have built-in discontinuities—"jump-to-default" in derivatives-speak.
For a credit default swap, one counterparty guarantees the debt of another company to you, in return for you paying a fee for that guarantee. If no one goes bankrupt, the counterparty just collects the fees from you. But if the guarantee is called because the company you were worried about goes bankrupt, the counterparty must all of a sudden pay out a huge amount immediately.
Yet the guarantor is often called upon to pay in a weak economy, just when it can itself be too weak to pay. You get credit default protection on your real-estate investments from me, just in case the economy turns sour. But just when you need me the most, in a sour economy, I turn out to be so overextended I can't pay up. Collateralizing and monitoring such discontinuous obligations will not be so easy for the clearinghouse.
Moreover, if trillions of dollars of derivatives trading goes through a clearinghouse, we will have created another institution that's too big to fail. Regulators worried that an interconnected Bear or AIG could drag down the economy. Imagine what an interconnected clearinghouse's failure could do.
AIG needed $85 billion in government cash to avoid defaulting on its debts, including its derivatives obligations. Could one clearinghouse meet even a fraction of that call without backup from the U.S.? True, we could have many clearinghouses, each not too big to fail—but then maybe each would be too small to do enough good.
The Senate bill would allow a clearinghouse to grab new collateral out from failing derivatives-trading banks to cover old, but suddenly toxic, debts the banks owe to the clearinghouse. This could harm other creditors and cause the firm to suffer a run. Nevertheless, to protect itself in a declining market, a clearinghouse would have to make those big collateral calls. That's good if it protects the clearinghouse. But it's bad if it starts a run on a weakened but important bank.
One key but missing element in the search for reform has yet to gain traction in Washington. Derivatives players obtained exceptions from typical bankruptcy and bank resolution rules in the past few decades for their contracts with a bankrupt counterparty. This allowed them to grab and keep collateral other creditors cannot. That gives derivatives traders reason to pay less attention to their counterparties' riskiness and weakens market discipline. These rules should be changed before the Senate is done.
To say that a clearinghouse solution is very incomplete is not to say there is an easy solution out there. We may be unable to do more than to make incomplete improvements and muddle through.
Derivatives trades first of all should not just be centrally cleared, but should also be taken out from the government-guaranteed entities, such as commercial banks (or at least we need to impose tight capital requirements on those banks that deal in derivatives). Derivatives traders like doing business with Citibank because they know the government won't let Citibank go down. But this puts taxpayers at risk. It would be better to run those trades through an affiliate, not through the bank, so counterparties realize they might not be bailed out if the affiliate failed. If a banking affiliate's counterparty is the clearinghouse, then the clearinghouse will have incentives to make sure that the affiliate is well-capitalized. This is particularly so if the clearinghouse won't get any special priority treatment in a bankruptcy.
Critics of proposals to establish separate bank affiliates for derivatives trading complain about the large amount of capital that would be needed for such affiliates. But the capital that might be needed to buttress a bank affiliate indicates some level of the value (i.e., the taxpayer subsidy) to derivatives players of trading with a too-big-to-fail entity that they know the government will step in to save. They are implicitly getting insurance and should pay for it.
And, since a clearinghouse is itself at risk of being too big to fail, regulators need to police its capital and collateral requirements. If the derivatives market sees the clearinghouse as too big to fail, the potential for derivatives players making overly risky derivatives trades becomes real. Clearinghouses can help manage some systemic risk if they're run right. If not, they can become the Fannie and Freddie of the next financial meltdown.
Mr. Roe is a professor at Harvard Law School, where he teaches bankruptcy and corporate law.
Will the Dodd bill create another kind of institution that's too big to fail?WSJ, May 06, 2010
As the Senate finalizes its financial reform legislation, a consensus is developing that if we could just get derivatives traded through a centralized clearinghouse we could avoid a financial crisis like the one we just went through. This is false. Clearinghouses provide efficiencies in transparency and trading, but they are no cure-all. They can even exacerbate problems in a financial crisis.
If I agree to sell you a product next month through a clearinghouse, I'll deliver the product to the clearinghouse and you'll deliver the cash to the clearinghouse on the due date. Let's say we both have many trades going through the clearinghouse and we've posted collateral to cover any single trade that fails. This is more efficient than each of us posting collateral privately for each trade. Moreover, we're not worried that I won't deliver or you won't pay because we both count on the clearinghouse to deliver and pay up if one of us doesn't.
This clearing system makes trading more efficient. If you default, the cost is spread through the clearinghouse so I don't get hurt severely. And if the clearinghouse has enough collateral from you, there's no loss to spread. But there's also a potential downside: The clearinghouse reduces our incentives to worry about counterparty risk. Your business might collapse before you need to pay up, but that's not my problem because the clearinghouse pays me anyway. The clearinghouse weakens private market discipline.
Still, if the clearinghouse is as good or better at checking up on your creditworthiness as I am, all will be well. But one has to wonder how good a clearinghouse will be, or can be.
Consider two of our biggest derivatives-related failures—Long-Term Capital Management in 1998 and the subprime market in 2008. When Russia's ruble dropped unexpectedly, LTCM was exposed on its more than $1 trillion in interest-rate and foreign-exchange derivatives. It could not pay up and collapsed. Ten years later the market rapidly revalued subprime mortgage securities, rendering several institutions insolvent. AIG was over-exposed in credit default swaps tied to the value of subprime mortgages.
Could a clearinghouse really have been ahead of the curve in getting sufficient capital posted before these problems became serious and well-known? I'm not so sure. Worse yet, major types of derivatives have built-in discontinuities—"jump-to-default" in derivatives-speak.
For a credit default swap, one counterparty guarantees the debt of another company to you, in return for you paying a fee for that guarantee. If no one goes bankrupt, the counterparty just collects the fees from you. But if the guarantee is called because the company you were worried about goes bankrupt, the counterparty must all of a sudden pay out a huge amount immediately.
Yet the guarantor is often called upon to pay in a weak economy, just when it can itself be too weak to pay. You get credit default protection on your real-estate investments from me, just in case the economy turns sour. But just when you need me the most, in a sour economy, I turn out to be so overextended I can't pay up. Collateralizing and monitoring such discontinuous obligations will not be so easy for the clearinghouse.
Moreover, if trillions of dollars of derivatives trading goes through a clearinghouse, we will have created another institution that's too big to fail. Regulators worried that an interconnected Bear or AIG could drag down the economy. Imagine what an interconnected clearinghouse's failure could do.
AIG needed $85 billion in government cash to avoid defaulting on its debts, including its derivatives obligations. Could one clearinghouse meet even a fraction of that call without backup from the U.S.? True, we could have many clearinghouses, each not too big to fail—but then maybe each would be too small to do enough good.
The Senate bill would allow a clearinghouse to grab new collateral out from failing derivatives-trading banks to cover old, but suddenly toxic, debts the banks owe to the clearinghouse. This could harm other creditors and cause the firm to suffer a run. Nevertheless, to protect itself in a declining market, a clearinghouse would have to make those big collateral calls. That's good if it protects the clearinghouse. But it's bad if it starts a run on a weakened but important bank.
One key but missing element in the search for reform has yet to gain traction in Washington. Derivatives players obtained exceptions from typical bankruptcy and bank resolution rules in the past few decades for their contracts with a bankrupt counterparty. This allowed them to grab and keep collateral other creditors cannot. That gives derivatives traders reason to pay less attention to their counterparties' riskiness and weakens market discipline. These rules should be changed before the Senate is done.
To say that a clearinghouse solution is very incomplete is not to say there is an easy solution out there. We may be unable to do more than to make incomplete improvements and muddle through.
Derivatives trades first of all should not just be centrally cleared, but should also be taken out from the government-guaranteed entities, such as commercial banks (or at least we need to impose tight capital requirements on those banks that deal in derivatives). Derivatives traders like doing business with Citibank because they know the government won't let Citibank go down. But this puts taxpayers at risk. It would be better to run those trades through an affiliate, not through the bank, so counterparties realize they might not be bailed out if the affiliate failed. If a banking affiliate's counterparty is the clearinghouse, then the clearinghouse will have incentives to make sure that the affiliate is well-capitalized. This is particularly so if the clearinghouse won't get any special priority treatment in a bankruptcy.
Critics of proposals to establish separate bank affiliates for derivatives trading complain about the large amount of capital that would be needed for such affiliates. But the capital that might be needed to buttress a bank affiliate indicates some level of the value (i.e., the taxpayer subsidy) to derivatives players of trading with a too-big-to-fail entity that they know the government will step in to save. They are implicitly getting insurance and should pay for it.
And, since a clearinghouse is itself at risk of being too big to fail, regulators need to police its capital and collateral requirements. If the derivatives market sees the clearinghouse as too big to fail, the potential for derivatives players making overly risky derivatives trades becomes real. Clearinghouses can help manage some systemic risk if they're run right. If not, they can become the Fannie and Freddie of the next financial meltdown.
Mr. Roe is a professor at Harvard Law School, where he teaches bankruptcy and corporate law.
Time to Junk the Corporate Tax
Time to Junk the Corporate Tax. By MICHAEL J. BOSKIN
Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas says reform would deliver great benefits at little cost, making it "the largest genuinely true free lunch I have seen.'WSJ, May 06, 2010
President Obama has put tax reform on the agenda, but surprisingly little attention is being paid to fixing the most growth-inhibiting, anticompetitive tax of all: the corporate income tax. Reducing or eliminating the corporate tax would curtail numerous wasteful tax distortions, boost growth in both the short and long run, increase America's global competitiveness, and raise future wages.
The U.S. has the second-highest corporate income tax rate of any advanced economy (39% including state taxes, 50% higher than the OECD average). Many major competitors, Germany and Canada among them, have reduced their corporate tax rate, rendering American companies less competitive globally.
Of course, various credits and deductions—such as for depreciation and interest—reduce the effective corporate tax rate. But netting everything, our corporate tax severely retards and misaligns investment, problems that will only get worse as more and more capital becomes internationally mobile. Corporate income is taxed a second time at the personal level as dividends or those capital gains attributable to reinvestment of the retained earnings of the corporation. Between the new taxes in the health reform law and the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, these rates are soon set to explode.
This complex array of taxes on corporate income produces a series of biases and distortions. The most important is the bias against capital formation, decreasing the overall level of investment and therefore future labor productivity and wages. Also important are the biases among types of investments, depending on the speed of tax vs. true economic depreciation, against corporate (vs. noncorporate) investment, and in favor of highly leveraged assets and industries. These biases assure that overall capital formation runs steeply uphill, while some investments run more, some less uphill. It would be comical if the deleterious consequences weren't so severe.
Of course, the corporation is a legal entity; only people pay taxes. In a static economy with no international trade, the tax is likely borne by shareholders. The U.S. economy is neither static nor closed to trade, and taxes tend to be borne by the least mobile factor of production. Capital is much more mobile globally than labor, and the part of the corporate tax that is well above that of our lowest tax competitors will eventually be borne by workers. In a growing economy, the lower investment slows productivity growth and future wages.
There is considerable evidence that high corporate taxes are economically dangerous. In a 2008 working paper entitled "Taxation and Economic Growth," the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development concluded that "Corporate taxes are found to be most harmful for growth, followed by personal income taxes and then consumption taxes." Virtually every major tax reform proposal in recent decades has centered on lowering taxes on capital income and moving toward a broad-based, low-rate tax on consumption. This could be accomplished by junking the separate corporate income tax, integrating it with the personal income tax (e.g., attributing corporate income and taxes to shareholders or eliminating personal taxes on corporate distributions), and/or allowing an immediate tax deduction (expensing) for investment (which cancels the tax at the margin on new investment and hence is the priority of most economists). The Hall-Rabushka Flat Tax, the Bradford progressive consumption tax, a value-added Tax (VAT), the FairTax retail sales tax, four decades of Treasury proposals and the 2005 President's Tax Commission proposals would all move in this direction.
Reducing or eliminating the negative effects of the corporate tax on investment would increase real GDP and future wages significantly. Junking both the corporate and personal income taxes and replacing them with a broad revenue-neutral consumption tax would produce even larger gains. Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas concluded that implementing such reforms would deliver great benefits at little cost, making it "the largest genuinely true free lunch I have seen."
Reducing taxes on new investment could help strengthen what is a historically slow recovery from such a deep recession. It would also strengthen the economy long-term. American workers would benefit from more jobs in the short run and higher wages in the long run.
However, if a new tax device is used to grow government substantially, it will seriously erode our long-run standard of living. The VAT has served that purpose in Europe and, while better than still-higher income taxes, the larger-size governments it has enabled there are the prime reason European living standards are 30% lower than ours. Trading a good tax reform for a much larger government is beyond foolish. No tax reform can offset losses that large. Hence, a VAT should only be on the table if it is not only revenue-neutral but accompanied by serious spending control.
Further, the fraction of Americans paying no income taxes is approaching 50%. That sets up a dangerous political dynamic of voting ever-rising taxes to pay for ever-rising spending. We need more people with a stake in controlling spending. Replacing corporate and personal income taxes with a broad-based consumption tax could increase the number of those with "skin in the game." But some reforms, for example a VAT, might be much less transparent and may not serve this purpose.
Congresses (and presidents) seem unable to avoid continually tinkering with the tax code. A tax reform that is quickly riddled with special features would lose much of its economic benefit. We need a stable tax system that changes much less frequently, so families and firms can more reliably plan their future. Current fiscal policy, loaded with immense deficits, ever-growing debt, and the prospect of higher future taxes, is the biggest threat to such stability. To balance proposed spending in Mr. Obama's budget in 2015, his Deficit Commission's target year, will require at least a 43% increase in everyone's income tax. Thus, spending control is vital to tax stability.
American companies and their workers compete in the global marketplace saddled with a costly, anachronistic corporate tax system. To compete successfully in the 21st century, we will need to reform corporate taxation. There are several paths to doing so, each with its advantages. Unfortunately, tax policy is headed in exactly the wrong direction, raising taxes on corporate source income. Business investment is growing again after the collapse in the recession, which is usual in a cyclical recovery with very low interest rates. But eventually structural drags, from our antiquated tax code to massive public debt, will impede investment and economic growth.
Mr. Boskin is a professor of economics at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under President George H.W. Bush.
Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas says reform would deliver great benefits at little cost, making it "the largest genuinely true free lunch I have seen.'WSJ, May 06, 2010
President Obama has put tax reform on the agenda, but surprisingly little attention is being paid to fixing the most growth-inhibiting, anticompetitive tax of all: the corporate income tax. Reducing or eliminating the corporate tax would curtail numerous wasteful tax distortions, boost growth in both the short and long run, increase America's global competitiveness, and raise future wages.
The U.S. has the second-highest corporate income tax rate of any advanced economy (39% including state taxes, 50% higher than the OECD average). Many major competitors, Germany and Canada among them, have reduced their corporate tax rate, rendering American companies less competitive globally.
Of course, various credits and deductions—such as for depreciation and interest—reduce the effective corporate tax rate. But netting everything, our corporate tax severely retards and misaligns investment, problems that will only get worse as more and more capital becomes internationally mobile. Corporate income is taxed a second time at the personal level as dividends or those capital gains attributable to reinvestment of the retained earnings of the corporation. Between the new taxes in the health reform law and the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, these rates are soon set to explode.
This complex array of taxes on corporate income produces a series of biases and distortions. The most important is the bias against capital formation, decreasing the overall level of investment and therefore future labor productivity and wages. Also important are the biases among types of investments, depending on the speed of tax vs. true economic depreciation, against corporate (vs. noncorporate) investment, and in favor of highly leveraged assets and industries. These biases assure that overall capital formation runs steeply uphill, while some investments run more, some less uphill. It would be comical if the deleterious consequences weren't so severe.
Of course, the corporation is a legal entity; only people pay taxes. In a static economy with no international trade, the tax is likely borne by shareholders. The U.S. economy is neither static nor closed to trade, and taxes tend to be borne by the least mobile factor of production. Capital is much more mobile globally than labor, and the part of the corporate tax that is well above that of our lowest tax competitors will eventually be borne by workers. In a growing economy, the lower investment slows productivity growth and future wages.
There is considerable evidence that high corporate taxes are economically dangerous. In a 2008 working paper entitled "Taxation and Economic Growth," the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development concluded that "Corporate taxes are found to be most harmful for growth, followed by personal income taxes and then consumption taxes." Virtually every major tax reform proposal in recent decades has centered on lowering taxes on capital income and moving toward a broad-based, low-rate tax on consumption. This could be accomplished by junking the separate corporate income tax, integrating it with the personal income tax (e.g., attributing corporate income and taxes to shareholders or eliminating personal taxes on corporate distributions), and/or allowing an immediate tax deduction (expensing) for investment (which cancels the tax at the margin on new investment and hence is the priority of most economists). The Hall-Rabushka Flat Tax, the Bradford progressive consumption tax, a value-added Tax (VAT), the FairTax retail sales tax, four decades of Treasury proposals and the 2005 President's Tax Commission proposals would all move in this direction.
Reducing or eliminating the negative effects of the corporate tax on investment would increase real GDP and future wages significantly. Junking both the corporate and personal income taxes and replacing them with a broad revenue-neutral consumption tax would produce even larger gains. Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas concluded that implementing such reforms would deliver great benefits at little cost, making it "the largest genuinely true free lunch I have seen."
Reducing taxes on new investment could help strengthen what is a historically slow recovery from such a deep recession. It would also strengthen the economy long-term. American workers would benefit from more jobs in the short run and higher wages in the long run.
However, if a new tax device is used to grow government substantially, it will seriously erode our long-run standard of living. The VAT has served that purpose in Europe and, while better than still-higher income taxes, the larger-size governments it has enabled there are the prime reason European living standards are 30% lower than ours. Trading a good tax reform for a much larger government is beyond foolish. No tax reform can offset losses that large. Hence, a VAT should only be on the table if it is not only revenue-neutral but accompanied by serious spending control.
Further, the fraction of Americans paying no income taxes is approaching 50%. That sets up a dangerous political dynamic of voting ever-rising taxes to pay for ever-rising spending. We need more people with a stake in controlling spending. Replacing corporate and personal income taxes with a broad-based consumption tax could increase the number of those with "skin in the game." But some reforms, for example a VAT, might be much less transparent and may not serve this purpose.
Congresses (and presidents) seem unable to avoid continually tinkering with the tax code. A tax reform that is quickly riddled with special features would lose much of its economic benefit. We need a stable tax system that changes much less frequently, so families and firms can more reliably plan their future. Current fiscal policy, loaded with immense deficits, ever-growing debt, and the prospect of higher future taxes, is the biggest threat to such stability. To balance proposed spending in Mr. Obama's budget in 2015, his Deficit Commission's target year, will require at least a 43% increase in everyone's income tax. Thus, spending control is vital to tax stability.
American companies and their workers compete in the global marketplace saddled with a costly, anachronistic corporate tax system. To compete successfully in the 21st century, we will need to reform corporate taxation. There are several paths to doing so, each with its advantages. Unfortunately, tax policy is headed in exactly the wrong direction, raising taxes on corporate source income. Business investment is growing again after the collapse in the recession, which is usual in a cyclical recovery with very low interest rates. But eventually structural drags, from our antiquated tax code to massive public debt, will impede investment and economic growth.
Mr. Boskin is a professor of economics at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under President George H.W. Bush.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Drilling in Deep Water - A ban on offshore production won't mean fewer oil spills
Drilling in Deep Water. WSJ Editorial
A ban on offshore production won't mean fewer oil spills.WSJ, May 04, 2010
It could be months before we know what caused the explosion and oil spill below the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon. But as we add up the economic costs and environmental damage (and mourn the 11 oil workers who died), we should also put the disaster in some perspective.
Washington is, as usual, showing no such restraint. As the oil in the Gulf of Mexico moves toward the Louisiana and Florida coasts, the left is already demanding that President Obama reverse his baby steps toward more offshore drilling. The Administration has partly obliged, declaring a moratorium pending an investigation. The President has raised the political temperature himself, declaring yesterday that the spill is a "massive and potentially unprecedented environmental disaster."
The harm will be considerable, which is why it is fortunate that such spills are so rare. The most recent spill of this magnitude was the Exxon Valdez tanker accident in 1989. The largest before that was the Santa Barbara offshore oil well leak in 1969.
The infrequency of big spills is extraordinary considering the size of the offshore oil industry that provides Americans with affordable energy. According to the Interior Department's most recent data, in 2002 the Outer Continental Shelf had 4,000 oil and gas facilities, 80,000 workers in offshore and support activities, and 33,000 miles of pipeline. Between 1985 and 2001, these offshore facilities produced seven billion barrels of oil. The spill rate was a minuscule 0.001%.
According to the National Academy of Sciences—which in 2002 completed the third version of its "Oil in the Sea" report—only 1% of oil discharges in North Americas are related to petroleum extraction. Some 62% of oil in U.S. waters is due to natural seepage from the ocean floor, putting 47 million gallons of crude oil into North American water every year. The Gulf leak is estimated to have leaked between two million and three million gallons in two weeks.
Such an accident is still unacceptable, which is why the drilling industry has invested heavily to prevent them. The BP well had a blowout preventer, which contains several mechanisms designed to seal pipes in the event of a problem. These protections have worked in the past, and the reason for the failure this time is unknown. This was no routine safety failure but a surprising first.
One reason the industry has a good track record is precisely because of the financial consequences of accidents. The Exxon Valdez dumped 260,000 barrels of oil, and Exxon spent $3.14 billion on cleanup. Do the math, and Exxon spent nearly 600 times more on cleanup and litigation than what the oil was worth at that time.
As for the environmental damage in the Gulf, much will depend on the weather that has made it more difficult to plug the leak and contain the spill before it reaches shore. The winds could push oil over the emergency containment barriers, or they could keep the oil swirling offshore, where it may sink and thus do less damage.
It is worth noting that this could have been worse. The Exxon Valdez caused so much damage in part because the state of Alaska dithered over an emergency spill response. Congress then passed the 1990 Oil Pollution Act that mandated more safety measures, and it gave the Coast Guard new powers during spill emergencies. We have seen the benefits in the last two weeks as the Coast Guard has deployed several containment techniques—from burning and chemical dispersants to physical barriers. America sometimes learns from its mistakes.
On the other hand, Washington's aversion to drilling closer to shore has pushed the industry into deeper, more difficult, waters farther out to sea. BP's well is 5,000 feet down, at a depth and pressure that test the most advanced engineering and technology. The depth complicates containment efforts when there is a disaster.
As for a drilling moratorium, it is no guarantee against oil spills. It may even lead to more of them. Political fantasies about ending our oil addiction notwithstanding, the U.S. economy will need oil and other fossil fuels for decades to come. If we don't drill for it at home, the oil will have to arrive by tanker and barges. Tankers are responsible for more spills than offshore wells, and those spills tend to be bigger and closer to shore—which usually means more environmental harm.
The larger reality is that energy production is never going to be accident free. No difficult human endeavor is, whether space travel or using giant cranes to build skyscrapers. The rest of the world is working to exploit its offshore oil and gas reserves despite the risk of spills. We need to be mindful of such risks, and to include prevention and clean up in the cost of doing business, but a modern economy can't run without oil.
A ban on offshore production won't mean fewer oil spills.WSJ, May 04, 2010
It could be months before we know what caused the explosion and oil spill below the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon. But as we add up the economic costs and environmental damage (and mourn the 11 oil workers who died), we should also put the disaster in some perspective.
Washington is, as usual, showing no such restraint. As the oil in the Gulf of Mexico moves toward the Louisiana and Florida coasts, the left is already demanding that President Obama reverse his baby steps toward more offshore drilling. The Administration has partly obliged, declaring a moratorium pending an investigation. The President has raised the political temperature himself, declaring yesterday that the spill is a "massive and potentially unprecedented environmental disaster."
The harm will be considerable, which is why it is fortunate that such spills are so rare. The most recent spill of this magnitude was the Exxon Valdez tanker accident in 1989. The largest before that was the Santa Barbara offshore oil well leak in 1969.
The infrequency of big spills is extraordinary considering the size of the offshore oil industry that provides Americans with affordable energy. According to the Interior Department's most recent data, in 2002 the Outer Continental Shelf had 4,000 oil and gas facilities, 80,000 workers in offshore and support activities, and 33,000 miles of pipeline. Between 1985 and 2001, these offshore facilities produced seven billion barrels of oil. The spill rate was a minuscule 0.001%.
According to the National Academy of Sciences—which in 2002 completed the third version of its "Oil in the Sea" report—only 1% of oil discharges in North Americas are related to petroleum extraction. Some 62% of oil in U.S. waters is due to natural seepage from the ocean floor, putting 47 million gallons of crude oil into North American water every year. The Gulf leak is estimated to have leaked between two million and three million gallons in two weeks.
Such an accident is still unacceptable, which is why the drilling industry has invested heavily to prevent them. The BP well had a blowout preventer, which contains several mechanisms designed to seal pipes in the event of a problem. These protections have worked in the past, and the reason for the failure this time is unknown. This was no routine safety failure but a surprising first.
One reason the industry has a good track record is precisely because of the financial consequences of accidents. The Exxon Valdez dumped 260,000 barrels of oil, and Exxon spent $3.14 billion on cleanup. Do the math, and Exxon spent nearly 600 times more on cleanup and litigation than what the oil was worth at that time.
As for the environmental damage in the Gulf, much will depend on the weather that has made it more difficult to plug the leak and contain the spill before it reaches shore. The winds could push oil over the emergency containment barriers, or they could keep the oil swirling offshore, where it may sink and thus do less damage.
It is worth noting that this could have been worse. The Exxon Valdez caused so much damage in part because the state of Alaska dithered over an emergency spill response. Congress then passed the 1990 Oil Pollution Act that mandated more safety measures, and it gave the Coast Guard new powers during spill emergencies. We have seen the benefits in the last two weeks as the Coast Guard has deployed several containment techniques—from burning and chemical dispersants to physical barriers. America sometimes learns from its mistakes.
On the other hand, Washington's aversion to drilling closer to shore has pushed the industry into deeper, more difficult, waters farther out to sea. BP's well is 5,000 feet down, at a depth and pressure that test the most advanced engineering and technology. The depth complicates containment efforts when there is a disaster.
As for a drilling moratorium, it is no guarantee against oil spills. It may even lead to more of them. Political fantasies about ending our oil addiction notwithstanding, the U.S. economy will need oil and other fossil fuels for decades to come. If we don't drill for it at home, the oil will have to arrive by tanker and barges. Tankers are responsible for more spills than offshore wells, and those spills tend to be bigger and closer to shore—which usually means more environmental harm.
The larger reality is that energy production is never going to be accident free. No difficult human endeavor is, whether space travel or using giant cranes to build skyscrapers. The rest of the world is working to exploit its offshore oil and gas reserves despite the risk of spills. We need to be mindful of such risks, and to include prevention and clean up in the cost of doing business, but a modern economy can't run without oil.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
The State Department is sitting on funds to free the flow of information in closed societies
Mrs. Clinton, Tear Down this Cyberwall. By L. GORDON CROVITZ
The State Department is sitting on funds to free the flow of information in closed societies.WSJ, May 03, 2010
When a government department refuses to spend money that Congress has allocated, there's usually a telling backstory. This is doubly so when the funds are for a purpose as uncontroversial as making the Internet freer.
So why has the State Department refused to spend $45 million in appropriations since 2008 to "expand access and information in closed societies"? The technology to circumvent national restrictions is being provided by volunteers who believe that with funding they can bring Web access to many more people, from Iran to China.
A bipartisan group in Congress intended to pay for tests aimed at expanding the use of software that brings Internet access to "large numbers of users living in closed societies that have acutely hostile Internet environments." The most successful of these services is provided by a group called the Global Internet Freedom Consortium, whose programs include Freegate and Ultrasurf.
When Iranian demonstrators last year organized themselves through Twitter posts and brought news of the crackdown to the outside world, they got past the censors chiefly by using Freegate to get access to outside sites.
The team behind these circumvention programs understands how subversive their efforts can be. As Shiyu Zhou, deputy director of the Global Internet Freedom Consortium, told Congress last year, "The Internet censorship firewalls have become 21st-century versions of Berlin Walls that isolate and dispirit the citizens of closed-society dictatorships."
Repressive governments rightly regard the Internet as an existential threat, giving people powerful ways to communicate and organize. These governments also use the Web as a tool of repression, monitoring emails and other traffic. Recall that Google left China in part because of hacking of human-rights activists' Gmail accounts.
To counter government monitors and censors, these programs give online users encrypted connections to secure proxy servers around the world. A group of volunteers constantly switches the Internet Protocol addresses of the servers—up to 10,000 times an hour. The group has been active since 2000, and repressive governments haven't figured out how to catch up. More than one million Iranians used the system last June to post videos and photos showing the government crackdown.
Mr. Zhou tells me his group would use any additional money to add equipment and to hire full-time technical staff to support the volunteers. For $50 million, he estimates the service could accommodate 5% of Chinese Internet users and 10% in other closed societies—triple the current capacity.
So why won't the State Department fund this group to expand its reach, or at least test how scalable the solution could be? There are a couple of explanations.
The first is that the Global Internet Freedom Consortium was founded by Chinese-American engineers who practice Falun Gong, the spiritual movement suppressed by Beijing. Perhaps not the favorites of U.S. diplomats, but what other group has volunteers engaged enough to keep such a service going? As with the Jewish refuseniks who battled the Soviet Union, sometimes it takes a persecuted minority to stand up to a totalitarian regime.
The second explanation is a split among technologists—between those who support circumvention programs built on proprietary systems and others whose faith is on more open sources of code. A study last year by the Berkman Center at Harvard gave more points to open-source efforts, citing "a well-established contentious debate among software developers about whether secrecy about implementation details is a robust strategy for security." But whatever the theoretical objections, the proprietary systems work.
Another likely factor is realpolitik. Despite the tough speech Hillary Clinton gave in January supporting Internet freedom, it's easy to imagine bureaucrats arguing that the U.S. shouldn't undermine the censorship efforts of Tehran and Beijing. An earlier generation of bureaucrats tried to edit, as overly aggressive, Ronald Reagan's 1987 speech in Berlin urging Mikhail Gorbachev: "Tear down this wall."
It's true that circumvention doesn't solve every problem. Internet freedom researcher and advocate Rebecca MacKinnon has made the point that "circumvention is never going to be the silver bullet" in the sense that it can only give people access to the open Web. It can't help with domestic censorship.
During the Cold War, the West expended huge effort to get books, tapes, fax machines, radio reports and other information, as well as the means to convey it, into closed societies. Circumvention is the digital-age equivalent.
If the State Department refuses to support a free Web, perhaps there's a private solution. An anonymous poster, "chinese.zhang," suggested on a Google message board earlier this year that the company should fund the Global Internet Freedom Consortium as part of its defense against Chinese censorship. "I think Google can easily offer more servers to help to break down the Great Firewall," he wrote.
The State Department is sitting on funds to free the flow of information in closed societies.WSJ, May 03, 2010
When a government department refuses to spend money that Congress has allocated, there's usually a telling backstory. This is doubly so when the funds are for a purpose as uncontroversial as making the Internet freer.
So why has the State Department refused to spend $45 million in appropriations since 2008 to "expand access and information in closed societies"? The technology to circumvent national restrictions is being provided by volunteers who believe that with funding they can bring Web access to many more people, from Iran to China.
A bipartisan group in Congress intended to pay for tests aimed at expanding the use of software that brings Internet access to "large numbers of users living in closed societies that have acutely hostile Internet environments." The most successful of these services is provided by a group called the Global Internet Freedom Consortium, whose programs include Freegate and Ultrasurf.
When Iranian demonstrators last year organized themselves through Twitter posts and brought news of the crackdown to the outside world, they got past the censors chiefly by using Freegate to get access to outside sites.
The team behind these circumvention programs understands how subversive their efforts can be. As Shiyu Zhou, deputy director of the Global Internet Freedom Consortium, told Congress last year, "The Internet censorship firewalls have become 21st-century versions of Berlin Walls that isolate and dispirit the citizens of closed-society dictatorships."
Repressive governments rightly regard the Internet as an existential threat, giving people powerful ways to communicate and organize. These governments also use the Web as a tool of repression, monitoring emails and other traffic. Recall that Google left China in part because of hacking of human-rights activists' Gmail accounts.
To counter government monitors and censors, these programs give online users encrypted connections to secure proxy servers around the world. A group of volunteers constantly switches the Internet Protocol addresses of the servers—up to 10,000 times an hour. The group has been active since 2000, and repressive governments haven't figured out how to catch up. More than one million Iranians used the system last June to post videos and photos showing the government crackdown.
Mr. Zhou tells me his group would use any additional money to add equipment and to hire full-time technical staff to support the volunteers. For $50 million, he estimates the service could accommodate 5% of Chinese Internet users and 10% in other closed societies—triple the current capacity.
So why won't the State Department fund this group to expand its reach, or at least test how scalable the solution could be? There are a couple of explanations.
The first is that the Global Internet Freedom Consortium was founded by Chinese-American engineers who practice Falun Gong, the spiritual movement suppressed by Beijing. Perhaps not the favorites of U.S. diplomats, but what other group has volunteers engaged enough to keep such a service going? As with the Jewish refuseniks who battled the Soviet Union, sometimes it takes a persecuted minority to stand up to a totalitarian regime.
The second explanation is a split among technologists—between those who support circumvention programs built on proprietary systems and others whose faith is on more open sources of code. A study last year by the Berkman Center at Harvard gave more points to open-source efforts, citing "a well-established contentious debate among software developers about whether secrecy about implementation details is a robust strategy for security." But whatever the theoretical objections, the proprietary systems work.
Another likely factor is realpolitik. Despite the tough speech Hillary Clinton gave in January supporting Internet freedom, it's easy to imagine bureaucrats arguing that the U.S. shouldn't undermine the censorship efforts of Tehran and Beijing. An earlier generation of bureaucrats tried to edit, as overly aggressive, Ronald Reagan's 1987 speech in Berlin urging Mikhail Gorbachev: "Tear down this wall."
It's true that circumvention doesn't solve every problem. Internet freedom researcher and advocate Rebecca MacKinnon has made the point that "circumvention is never going to be the silver bullet" in the sense that it can only give people access to the open Web. It can't help with domestic censorship.
During the Cold War, the West expended huge effort to get books, tapes, fax machines, radio reports and other information, as well as the means to convey it, into closed societies. Circumvention is the digital-age equivalent.
If the State Department refuses to support a free Web, perhaps there's a private solution. An anonymous poster, "chinese.zhang," suggested on a Google message board earlier this year that the company should fund the Global Internet Freedom Consortium as part of its defense against Chinese censorship. "I think Google can easily offer more servers to help to break down the Great Firewall," he wrote.
A Centrist Agenda for Economic Growth
A Centrist Agenda for Economic Growth. By JIM OWENS
Freer trade plus lower corporate and investment taxes would go a long way.WSJ, May 03, 2010
The long-term health of the U.S. economy is at risk. There are signs of recovery from the worst recession since the Great Depression. But not enough.
We need a renewed, centrist political agenda to support economic policies that will enhance our global competitiveness. America cannot sustain itself as a great country without a strong economy. Yet significant economic decisions are made in Washington with little consideration as to how they will affect the global competitiveness of the small and large companies that employ our citizens.
Here are a few policy suggestions:
• Restore fiscal discipline. Simply stated, we must balance the books. This means deciding how much government we want and the best way to generate the tax revenues to pay for it.
To get there, federal and state governments must be required to use the same transparent accounting standards required of corporations for employee retirement benefits. With baby boomers retiring, we have a ticking time bomb on our hands. Transparency would make it clear to everyone just where the unfunded obligations are and get us on road to begin funding them. Further, we should mandate that federal budget deficits be balanced over a business cycle.
• Simplify the federal tax code with flat personal income taxes. This means incentivizing savings and investment with significantly lower rates for dividends and long-term capital gains. Use consumption taxes to raise additional funds to achieve social goals, such as lowering emissions or tobacco consumption.
• Tax business only on profits earned in the United States. This means adopting a territorial tax system for U.S.-based global companies, which will encourage them to repatriate global profits (billions await) to the United States and increase the likelihood of investment here. We should also recruit foreign direct investment to serve U.S. customers and to pay taxes to our government.
Recognizing that the U.S. has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, the government should not eliminate the current provision that allows companies to "defer" paying a U.S. tax on foreign income until it is brought back into this country. Over time this would destroy U.S.-based global companies.
• Increase infrastructure investment. Since the 1970s U.S. investment in infrastructure has grown at only half the rate of GDP growth. Today, our roads are crumbling, bridges are in need of repair, and our power grid is inefficient. Meanwhile, emerging economies (notably China, India and Brazil) are making huge investments in modern infrastructure.
Infrastructure is the foundation for an economy's global competitiveness. We don't want to wake up in 10 years and find ourselves hopelessly behind.
• Free up international trade. The U.S. needs to provide leadership for completion of the World Trade Organizations' Doha Development Round of Trade Negotiations. Moreover, Americans need to pressure Washington to ratify the three Free Trade Agreements (FTAs)—for Panama, Colombia and South Korea—that have already been negotiated. Passage of these agreements will show the world we're open for business, create immediate exports and related jobs, and it would also strengthen the economies of three important allies.
• Improve the health-care system's cost effectiveness. To get there, the country needs to further reform its tort system and to continue to adopt better information technology. It's also critical that consumers have access to better information on health-care prices and outcomes and to be able to purchase competitively priced insurance offered in other states. Finally, citizens must have a personal stake in the costs of their care, which will enable them to make prudent decisions.
• Reform immigration laws to make existing "guest" workers legal, tax-paying employees. We should provide legal avenues for guest workers to apply for U.S. citizenship. It is to our advantage to grant more visas to the best and brightest students from around the world who come to our best universities. Students receiving qualifying advanced degrees (such as in math and science) should get an automatic green card to work in our country.
• Maintain the independence of the Federal Reserve. The task of the central bank is to manage money supply to keep inflation low (0%-2%), employment high and the financial system healthy. Excessive political influence could prevent the Fed from taking decisive actions when needed.
These recommendations are not particularly novel. In fact, the majority of economists and business leaders I've talked to agree with virtually all of them. Real GDP growth of 3.5% over the next decade is an aggressive target—but achievable. We need to think like winners.
Mr. Owens is chairman and CEO of Caterpillar Inc.
Freer trade plus lower corporate and investment taxes would go a long way.WSJ, May 03, 2010
The long-term health of the U.S. economy is at risk. There are signs of recovery from the worst recession since the Great Depression. But not enough.
We need a renewed, centrist political agenda to support economic policies that will enhance our global competitiveness. America cannot sustain itself as a great country without a strong economy. Yet significant economic decisions are made in Washington with little consideration as to how they will affect the global competitiveness of the small and large companies that employ our citizens.
Here are a few policy suggestions:
• Restore fiscal discipline. Simply stated, we must balance the books. This means deciding how much government we want and the best way to generate the tax revenues to pay for it.
To get there, federal and state governments must be required to use the same transparent accounting standards required of corporations for employee retirement benefits. With baby boomers retiring, we have a ticking time bomb on our hands. Transparency would make it clear to everyone just where the unfunded obligations are and get us on road to begin funding them. Further, we should mandate that federal budget deficits be balanced over a business cycle.
• Simplify the federal tax code with flat personal income taxes. This means incentivizing savings and investment with significantly lower rates for dividends and long-term capital gains. Use consumption taxes to raise additional funds to achieve social goals, such as lowering emissions or tobacco consumption.
• Tax business only on profits earned in the United States. This means adopting a territorial tax system for U.S.-based global companies, which will encourage them to repatriate global profits (billions await) to the United States and increase the likelihood of investment here. We should also recruit foreign direct investment to serve U.S. customers and to pay taxes to our government.
Recognizing that the U.S. has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, the government should not eliminate the current provision that allows companies to "defer" paying a U.S. tax on foreign income until it is brought back into this country. Over time this would destroy U.S.-based global companies.
• Increase infrastructure investment. Since the 1970s U.S. investment in infrastructure has grown at only half the rate of GDP growth. Today, our roads are crumbling, bridges are in need of repair, and our power grid is inefficient. Meanwhile, emerging economies (notably China, India and Brazil) are making huge investments in modern infrastructure.
Infrastructure is the foundation for an economy's global competitiveness. We don't want to wake up in 10 years and find ourselves hopelessly behind.
• Free up international trade. The U.S. needs to provide leadership for completion of the World Trade Organizations' Doha Development Round of Trade Negotiations. Moreover, Americans need to pressure Washington to ratify the three Free Trade Agreements (FTAs)—for Panama, Colombia and South Korea—that have already been negotiated. Passage of these agreements will show the world we're open for business, create immediate exports and related jobs, and it would also strengthen the economies of three important allies.
• Improve the health-care system's cost effectiveness. To get there, the country needs to further reform its tort system and to continue to adopt better information technology. It's also critical that consumers have access to better information on health-care prices and outcomes and to be able to purchase competitively priced insurance offered in other states. Finally, citizens must have a personal stake in the costs of their care, which will enable them to make prudent decisions.
• Reform immigration laws to make existing "guest" workers legal, tax-paying employees. We should provide legal avenues for guest workers to apply for U.S. citizenship. It is to our advantage to grant more visas to the best and brightest students from around the world who come to our best universities. Students receiving qualifying advanced degrees (such as in math and science) should get an automatic green card to work in our country.
• Maintain the independence of the Federal Reserve. The task of the central bank is to manage money supply to keep inflation low (0%-2%), employment high and the financial system healthy. Excessive political influence could prevent the Fed from taking decisive actions when needed.
These recommendations are not particularly novel. In fact, the majority of economists and business leaders I've talked to agree with virtually all of them. Real GDP growth of 3.5% over the next decade is an aggressive target—but achievable. We need to think like winners.
Mr. Owens is chairman and CEO of Caterpillar Inc.
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