The World Map: Moral Decline of Empire

Amnesty's map is gray, so much of it, gray because people are arbitrarily imprisoned, tortured, and/or dissenters are violently repressed. There are a few white spots; France, Germany, Spain. Ironically, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary. And then there's Canada, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Australia, New Zealand.

The US is gray, as is the UK, China, India, Russia and South Africa, most of Africa, Asia and more than half of Latin America. Yes, America is not an exceptional island of humanity and civil liberties. Bolivia is, and so is Uruguay.

Two years after Obama pledged to close Guantanamo, it's still open for business, still holding people without charges and without justification. And there are still reports of abusive treatment of prisoners. June 3, 2009, Muhammad Ahmad Abdallah Salih succeeded in committing suicide, somehow, despite being on a suicide watch: he and five others had been force-fed through their noses for years.

And then, of course, there is Bradley Manning, who has been confined for almost a year now, has been held in solitary most of that time, with extreme isolation enforced (not even allowed to exercise in his cell, not even allowed clothes some of the time), yet he is still not charged--with anything! Many torture specialists say isolation like this is worse than physical torture; it melts the mind.

Until this spring, we also sent some of our detainees to Mubarak, have him overtly torture for us. Thanks, Hosni! Still, when the Egyptian Spring happened, we reluctantly climbed on and threw Hosni under the bus.

So, the US, even under Barack Obama, is no oasis of humanity. Canada is; Costa Rica is; Chile is; even Paraguay is, but it almost looks, when you look at this gray map of the world, that only minor nations, ones without imperial or regional ambitions--with the exception of France and Germany--can any longer "afford" to honor human rights.

Was there a time when an American President could truthfully say, "We don't torture," "We don't detain people arbitrarily?" FDR could boast the first, but not the second (the Japanese-American detainment camps), but after WWII we could boast both, with the possible exception of Vietnam, until George W. But now, still, with Obama, champion of human rights and peace, both practices are even admitted. Obama has drawn a line: excluding most direct physical torture, including water-boarding, but the treatment of Manning is on his watch, and it's torture, too: for an American citizen who has yet to be charged with a crime!

Such is the cost of Empire. Americans, struggling now to dominate the world, (remember Full Spectrum Dominance?) are now so insecure we have to torture our own to insure our "security." We have to give up our rights and allow our leaders to imprison and torture us arbitrarily (oh, there are rules and regs about how to do it, but still it's arbitrary).

This is life in the American Empire, in its rapid decline.

The Predator Class

The Senators of the Late Roman Empire stole wealth from everyone: the peasants, the middle class, the Emperor and the army, by avoiding taxes, sheltering those who couldn't pay, then enslaving them, and engineering corrupt deals with the army and the government.

Our selfish class has escalated the plunder of the rest of us to an order of magnitude that makes Roman Senators look like petty criminals in comparison.

Fraud permeated the housing market that collapsed in 2007-8; it was endemic at every level. But, the profits and risk escalated with each additional layer of resold, insured, sliced, repackaged, resold "mortgage securities." And where did the original money come from, the funds that underlay this whole wobbly house of cards? Mortgage payments, an increasing number of which were either sub-prime or of questionable soundness, with their fraudulent enticements of low starter rates and escalating payments, no money down but higher and higher interest rates.

The money that underpinned the great mortgage bubble came from the poor, and working middle class. Through bank swindles on those loans, the people were tossed out of their homes and the banks were left holding huge numbers of foreclosed properties.

This wasn't a great deal for the banks, initially, but before the crash, it transferred billions of dollars from the poor and near poor to the very, very rich. In the bailouts, the government handed the banks billions more, so that even if they were left holding hundreds of thousands of homes they couldn't sell, they were able to resume their speculation and create huge profits, mostly out of thin air--and made-up money.

As for the people thrown out of their homes, in many cases for clearly fraudulent reasons, they had nowhere to go. So, the collapse of the housing market, and of the financial system, threw millions out of work. But the so-called stimulus that was supposed to promote job creation--the green jobs touted by candidate Obama--was much too small, due to political timidity, to do much more than keep employment from falling off a cliff. It stabilized unemployment at below 10%. Since, it has slowly crept down to 9% or slightly lower (not counting discouraged workers).

Meanwhile, the bailed-out banks are profiting hugely, in the still largely unregulated financial markets. Corporations are posting huge profits, too, but hiring is very slow: employers would rather squeeze as much as they can out of existing employees.

As if to underline their client status to the banks and corporations, Republicans consistently advocate cutting corporate and high-earner taxes, while bewailing the huge debts incurred from similar tax cuts they adopted previously, and from their unfunded wars. To make up the difference, they propose draconian cuts to entitlements (running surpluses, so far) and to all programs serving anyone not rich.

Debtors prison has already resurfaced: will Republicans try to legalize serfdom next?

Should Dems Compromise Or Fight?

Republicans have thrown down the gauntlet: Ryan's proposal to turn Medicare into a voucher program, and Medicaid into a block grant essentially eliminates both popular programs. Earlier, Republicans forced the tax giveaway to millionaires by extending all Bush's tax cuts. Now, they seem to think that Obama and the Democrats will cave before their demands on the debt ceiling negotiations: for huge program cuts in any programs serving the poor, like food stamps, or the middle class, like the mortgage tax deduction, in order to cut taxes on the wealthy even more. In Texas, Republicans debate a major tax cut for yacht owners.

If the Republicans are intransigent, Obama and the Democrats should demonstrate that they attempted reasonable compromise, but Republicans refused, demanding only capitulation.

Ultimately, Republican sponsors, the financial firms and large corporations, will force the hardliners to blink: they don't want the US to default, either.

Democrats should not give up their principles, or let down their constituents, many of whom depend on governments for their livelihood or safety.

Where do these conservative ideas come from, which demand that Texas cut its budget by about a quarter ($23 billion), to meet its shortfall, at the expense of its children (and its future), while not raising taxes on corporations, or millionaires and billionaires by one cent--and cutting taxes on yachts? Even worse is the spectacle of Florida's Rick Scott, who simultaneously lowered "business" taxes by billions, to be paid for by corresponding billions of cuts in education and unemployment compensation.

In other words, to Republicans, people don't matter, unless they're worth millions or billions. Teachers are overpaid, they argue, and unemployment insurance just encourages laziness.

And what do corporations, millionaires and billionaires do with all this wealth for which they've avoided paying taxes? They speculate, or they buy more "property," or collect ancient coins, or gold bars. Corporations have used their profits to go private, by buying up their outstanding stocks at premium prices. Until this last quarter, they hardly spent any of their excess cash on "creating jobs," except in other parts of the world.

Kathy Hochul, a progressive Democrat, just won a special election for Congress in an upstate New York district that's about as Republican as Nebraska. She won nearly a majority, despite having three opponents, including a Tea Party candidate on the far right, a Republican who dutifully followed the party line on eliminating Medicare, and a Green candidate on the left.

Clearly, Newt was onto something when he backed away from Ryan's Medicare plan, but Republican hard-liners made him eat crow.

Maybe there's hope yet that the great muddled middle will understand that corporatists are not their friends: they represent what I've called "the selfish class" (on this website); supporting them will kill any possibility of democracy, or of a viable middle class. Their way will lead us to our own "476."

Schneiderman for President

We need leaders like Eric Schneiderman, because he's willing to pursue the big banks for driving us into the Great Recession.

I do mean that. The banks created the Great Recession. People were thrown out of work; people were thrown out of their homes, because big banks played such high-stakes fraud with all the nation's mortgages. They sliced them and diced them, sold them and resold them, and cut a lot of corners when they did all this, starting with the higher than usual number of fraudulent mortgages on which these securities were based.

Unemployment still has barely fallen to an official 9%, or a real 16%, the wave of foreclosures on homes seems unending, and is about to get even worse, now that "the paperwork" has been cleared up. Ordinary people are hurting, but it's because of the insane gambling by the banks, with depositors money, their money and money the Fed, a quasi-government entity, virtually gave to them, through extremely low cost loans.

When the banks were in danger of going bankrupt, the Government and the Fed offered $700 billion to bail them out with TARP, and then gave them extraordinary access to virtually costless money from the Fed. The program worked --for the banks and bankers. They're having one of their best years, bonuses are higher than ever, profits are soaring--

But we still have 9-16% unemployment, and we still have a sinking housing market, with millions of people ejected from their homes. During normal times, construction jobs are relatively plentiful. Now they are not; housing starts have fallen off a cliff.

All of this started because the wise-asses at places like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan thought they could play fast and loose with everybody's money. They thought they couldn't lose: until they did, beginning in mid-2007, when the bottom almost fell out of the whole global financial system, and it was because of their reckless behavior.

So far, no one has gone after the banks even for the fraud. I think they're responsible for much more, but at least the fraud has been documented. Still, neither Obama's DOJ, nor the 50 states attorneys general in their suit, have pursued the banks' massive fraud, even though it dwarfs any financial crime in history. That is, until now.

Enter Eric Schneiderman, New York's progressive Attorney General: he's going after Goldman, JP Morgan and Bank of America! I voted for him twice (first, in a five-way primary). The man's been busy in his first year: going after tobacco companies, Medicare fraud, corruption in state contracts, but now? Schneiderman has spurned the "deal" other AG's are negotiating. Instead, he's demanding documentation on the mortgage securitization that destroyed the housing market: he's looking for fraud. Finally, someone is!

Alert to Roman Senators! Slip some coke in Schneiderman's suit-coat; get a pimp to hook him! Your predatory schemes are suddenly at risk!

Medicare Voucher Madness

"Conservatives" persist in saying Medicare has to go! These guys really believe their own lies, the biggest one being that Medicare and Social Security cause the deficit.

An article by John Cogan in the Wall Street Journal (5/12/11), lays out what Republicans are trying to do: persuade us that for our own good, we just can't afford what we've been promised.

What we've been promised, Cogan claims, is an average of a million dollars per couple in combined benefits, while we've only paid in an average of $500,000. He doesn't bother to mention that the latter figure is dollars in the past, and the million is dollars in the future, i.e. inflated dollars with earned, compound interest.

It's true that Medicare was set up for fiscal disaster; that was done quite cynically by Republicans, with Bush's expansion into Medicare Part D, covering prescriptions, and overpaying insurance companies to participate in Medicare Advantage programs, without providing additional funding. Medicare still cannot negotiate drug prices, under the reform law, because big Pharma found enough Democrats, as well as solid Republican support, to block it.

Republican Ryan was touted, briefly, as "courageous" for daring to call for phasing out Medicare for private insurance vouchers, until he and his cohorts went to their districts and attempted to explain his plan. Then reality hit the fan. People don't believe their lies, or simply don't accept their conclusions: they don't want vouchers; they want Medicare.

And still, "pundits" opine that we can't afford Medicare, and Republican candidates must support Ryan's plan: Gingrich was almost disowned for opposing it.

Almost all other 'developed' nations have publicly provided, or heavily subsidized healthcare, not only for seniors, but for everyone. Their health outcomes are better than ours, yet they cost less, in some cases less than half what Americans pay.

So, why can't the United States, supposedly the richest, most powerful nation on earth, afford health care even for seniors, and retirements as generous as those of other 'developed' nations?

Because we have to spend so much on Defense, or on billionaires?

Let's be clear: Medicare was created because health care for an older person was too expensive for private insurance. Seniors do need more health care; age breaks down our bodies, although, because of superior medical care, more live longer than in past eras. Most seniors, including me, would be excluded from standard health insurance programs, because of "pre-existing conditions." So, our premiums would be sky high, our vouchers would pay only a portion of our real costs, and there is no way that the "magic of the market" would somehow make healthcare affordable.

Medicare replaced by vouchers? I know I'd be bankrupted by it, yet I'm pretty healthy.

But that's the idea: impoverish seniors: one more cohort to turn into serfs, so the new Roman Senators can have more money to play with in the money markets.

The US a Slum for the World's Wealthy

"…we're where Europe comes to slum--in the low-wage factories of the South and the run-down houses of South Los Angeles." LA Times editorial, 5/15/2011

It wasn't always this way. The United States, after World War II, modeled high wage, highly skilled union workers, producing goods for the world, and living well while doing so.

When the US occupied Germany and Japan after World War II, our government exported the highly unionized American model. Part of our rationale was that unions would foster democracy, thereby combating Japanese fascism and German Nazism. Unions would also improve lives, giving them a stake in postwar governments. Today, Germany runs a trade surplus: Germans earn high wages, work shorter hours, have long vacations and are relatively highly unionized (27% vs 9.6% in the US private sector).

And the US? Wages have at best stayed where they were in the early 1970's, while productivity has doubled. Work hours are longer in the US, and vacations get shorter. Meanwhile, our buying power erodes, and we have the priciest, least effective health care system among developed nations. Further, there are US states where unions are so scarce and so scared (like North Carolina: 3.2%) that workers effectively compete with the Chinese for lowest cost manufacturing sites. High unemployment drives down costs further.

The US competes with China for low cost work, while running huge deficits and cutting benefits. China has the largest surplus, but Germany sells high wage goods, and has the second largest surplus in the world; it even keeps its social democratic benefits largely intact under a "conservative" government!

Whether Germany will continue to do so well as union membership declines, is an open question, but greater union clout still makes a political difference. German firms setting up shop in the US, however, (mostly in the South) keep unions out and enforce work conditions unthinkable in Germany. Also, in the US, Deutsche Bank perpetrated mortgage rip-offs it could never have gotten away with in Germany.

All the American talk of cutting deficits and debts is a diversion. We're a mine of money for predatory capitalists the world over; we're also the center of predatory capital on Wall Street.

In the past 30 years, the US has almost done away with its New Deal legacy; coincidentally, unions have been losing ground since Reagan and regulations were stripped from financial institutions--freeing them to fail so spectacularly in 2007-8.

And who pays? Not the banks, not large corporations: everyone else, but especially our children and anyone dependent on government services: ultimately, anyone who is not wealthy.

America is so like Rome before its fall, when Senators governed in their own interests. They drove the peasants and middle class into serfdom, and monopolized the empire's wealth, laying it open to collapse, and, ironically in retrospect, to piecemeal takeover by Germanic invaders.

Osama bin Laden Wasn't Killed?

I know people who think the bin Laden assassination was a hoax, otherwise, they argue, why did the Seals ditch the body at sea?

The answer is probably two-fold: it was the Navy Seals, after all, which provided the muscle for the operation. But probably more importantly, a burial at sea, while it can be scrupulously correct in Islamic ritual--reportedly it was--also disposed of the body without thereby creating a martyr's shrine.

That's important on the Indian subcontinent: veneration of a martyr's grave, that becomes a shrine for a saint, in Islam, or an altar to a local god, in Hinduism, has a long and bloody history. Better, people have no specific place for pilgrimage--except the mansion in Abbotabad; that can't be avoided.

In the fifth century, people speculated that Attila didn't die, because he was buried in a secret grave beneath the river Tisza. All the captives who worked to divert the river, and to dig the grave, were summarily executed. Attila as Told to His Scribes on this site.

We've read or heard stories of Jesus's resurrection, or, in the case of Kazantzakis, succumbing to the temptation not to be crucified, and going on, living his life anonymously, somewhere else. There is also Elizabeth Cunningham's Passion of Mary Magdalen, in which Jesus rises again: Cunningham claims: "Maeve put the erection back into the resurrection."

Wait for it: Osama bin Laden will rise again.

What about the legality of the President ordering the assassination of someone who has publicly declared himself an enemy, and boasts that he's attacked us? It's probably stretching the elastic limits of Presidential authority as Commander in Chief, but unfortunately, there are precedents, at least since Wilson, and certainly since Kennedy. JFK apparently approved plots to assassinate Fidel Castro. His own assassination might very well have been blow-back. Lee Harvey Oswald had earlier defected to the USSR and later defended the Cuban Revolution.

The unreal world of government covert action and anti-government terror is a game that supposedly grown people play. Presidents are advised that they must, that it's their responsibility to Protect and Defend, that these super-secret operations are absolutely necessary.

And so, President Obama, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, acted as judge, jury and Commander of the executioner.

If Obama had ordered bin Laden's capture, instead of murder, bin Laden's trial might have become a cause célèbre worldwide, and al Qaeda would have exploited it--to recruit more suicide bombers. Any dispassionate coverage of the trial would have infuriated true believers.

I suspect there is another, simpler reason why bin Laden was killed in the raid: Navy Seals, especially special units like the one which carried out the raid in Abbotabad, are probably trained to kill, not to capture.

Anyway, enough people, including Republican Congressmen, saw the gruesome photos of bin Laden, that we can be sure: he's dead.

Crime and Revolution

Egyptian police are demoralized, according to the New York Times (5/13/11) and a crime wave has swept through the country. People blame the chaos on the revolution.

When you release pressure from a pressure cooker, there's a SWOOF, as air escapes in a rush. Egypt was under authoritarian rule analogous to a pressure cooker. When Mubarak was overthrown, not only human rights workers but also criminals escaped from jails: about two-thirds have been recaptured. However, the police literally don't know what to do, because they were trained for an authoritarian regime and their abuses were exposed (torture and corruption were routine).

Since the US sends billions in aid to Egypt, it's obvious what we should spend it on: re-training the remaining police and training new recruits in democratic procedures (there's a shortage of police; many fled during the Tahrir uprising).

Change causes unforeseen consequences. Unless there is a rational response, there will be an irrational one: reinstitute a dictatorship to re-establish order.

This happened in Russia. The transitional democratic system fell because of terror from the Chechen civil war, and the outrageous corruption of the transition from the Soviet's managed economy to a "free market system." Corruption, fear and Russia's history of powerful rulers, helped create the Putin/Medvedev authoritarian model.

The same thing happened in the late western Roman Empire: chaos (lasting almost a century), led to Diocletian (284-305) creating a totalitarian regime; it limped into the fifth century before it gave up the ghost--to more primitive monarchies first set up by the Goths.

Democracies are messy, as the American experience amply demonstrates, but they are ultimately less fragile; mistakes and disasters call for changes through elections, not complete upheaval. The advantage is that institutions like the police are not destroyed, although they may be reformed, if they have been abusing their power.

It took the French from 1789 to the 1950's, over 150 years, before a stable democratic political system was finally established. Why? The Bourbon regime was disastrous, but the radical revolution overthrowing it was absolute and horrific. Institutions were abolished; new ones started from scratch, while the animosities created by the ensuing regimes took generations to neutralize.

In other words, upheaval, of the wholesale kind, taking place throughout the Middle East, causes many unwelcome changes. It may be a long time before things settle down, but there are ways to promote stability.

Institution building is key. Whether a nation had a poorly functioning police force, or none at all, it needs a force that keeps the peace, is not corrupt, and does not abuse its citizens. Aid to create such institutions, and a civilian-led military, could be much more effective than billions for sophisticated weapons. That's what the US should be doing in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well, instead of occupying them.

Up Against the Wall?

Aren't we all!

Actually, some people are doing very well, thank you-and they want to keep it that way.

Do they worry about $4+ a gallon gas? Of course not. Do they worry that they can't afford to heat their home in the winter? Why should they? Heating bills are nothing, besides, The real question is: Tahiti or Crete? As for oil, they hope it goes higher--they own Exxon, or maybe StatOil: their dividends would rise even more.

A lot of people if they have substantial commutes and substandard wages, worry about $4 gas. Anyone in the northeast, who owns a home and lives near the edge of their income (most people), will worry about heating costs after a winter like the one we just survived.

Yet some people build huge houses: 40,000 square feet or more, and could care less if they cost a lot to heat. If they're also environmentally minded, they might install a geothermal/solar system, and never concern themselves about fuel costs again.

But the rest of us? I'm lucky to have a ready, sustainable supply of firewood, but I'm 72, so I don't expect to be able to get it myself too many winters longer. A lot of people turn their thermostats far below what's comfortable. And some are just cut off. Our power company was nasty when an old, transferred account was overdue.

And then there are the millions who have lost their homes, or are in danger of doing so: underwater, foreclosed, evicted.

The banksters, however, make out like bandits. They financed mortgages they knew were poor risks, made more so by the supercharged costs, and then sold them, over and over again. Their loans were fraudulent, the economy tumbled when their whole house of cards collapsed--and then Bush, succeeded by Obama, bailed them out.

Trillions for banksters, not enough billions for everyone else. The consequences: huge bonuses on Wall Street, soaring corporate profits, but continuing high unemployment and waves of mortgage defaults. The high joblessness keeps wages down, an advantage for any employer, which is why corporate clients--including virtually all Republican Representatives and Senators and many Democrats as well--scream about deficits and debts, but not about jobs, or middle class homes going into default.

Joblessness, and home foreclosures transfer trillions to the perpetrators of this whole scam, especially banks: joblessness keeps wages down, favoring employers, especially large ones, especially ones fending off unionization. Meanwhile, home foreclosures concentrate wealth in financial institutions.

This slow recovery, if it is a recovery, is what the elite prefer; it's why they press for cutting spending, while cutting their taxes. Profits are up and wages are down, so they have increasing power. Cut Food-stamps, public education, heating subsidies: the wealthy don't need them.

Soon, we'll be like Roman Senators and their serfs, but even now, the wealthy get more, and everyone else tries to make do with less.

So, the Wicked Witch is Dead?

Let's notice: Osama bin Laden was not killed in a conventional military operation, and no conventional American or NATO forces are in Pakistan, nor was it a drone attack.

Many opposing war in Afghanistan have advocated tactics like the assault on Abbotabad. I have. It was a military maneuver, to be sure, but it was the kind of action that police forces also do: swooping in on helicopters to take a criminal head of a crime family, which is really what Osama was. Further, the intelligence, while more sophisticated than most police forces, was similar to good detective work.

Meanwhile, we've spent over $1.5 trillion on two wars to "destroy" the terrorists, but covert operations and police work have been the most effective. The question therefore arises: why are 100,000 American troops in Afghanistan?

Why don't we boost our Special Operations forces, and our CIA covert ops, use the kind of surveillance that pinpointed bin Laden's hiding place, and withdraw our troops from a fruitless Afghan war? Even Karzai wants us to go, and there are indications that some Taliban are willing to negotiate: they know they can't win, but we can't either.

Our goal in Afghanistan was to "destroy al Qaeda," but most of its operatives are elsewhere, and we got its honcho in Pakistan, not with full-scale military action, but with covert police action.

AQ is "hiding in plain sight" in Pakistan, in Yemen, and probably in other places. Covert action like the assault in Abbotabad makes sense against a movement like the formless, territory-less al Qaeda.

The Taliban is not the same thing: it's confined to Afghanistan and northwest Pakistan, and is largely a Pashtun movement, aiming at Pashtun control of Afghanistan, or southern Afghanistan and the western tribal areas in Pakistan. It does not threaten the US--unless we're in Afghanistan.

The problem is: the US military doesn't want to forego an expensive war, or a foothold in central Asia. Further, we have clients there who don't want us to leave: they make billions on us. There's also a pipeline route.

Osama bin Laden has already accomplished a good part of his agenda: to bankrupt the world's superpower, and to terrorize us into doing away with a significant part of our freedoms: a beacon for Muslims as well as other peoples.

Our military in Afghanistan results in many civilian casualties, even if more of them are at the hands of the Taliban. Even our reluctant client, President Karzai, says we should leave. Further, our counter-productive actions drive Afghans into the arms of the Taliban--young men whose family-members are killed in poorly targeted attacks on their compounds, or on mistaken bombing raids, or when fathers are summarily hauled off to prison at Bagram.

But will an Empire withdraw before it's defeated? Osama's assassination would give us the excuse.

Jobs, Quantitative Easing and a Capital Strike

Americans elected a Republican House because Democrats let them down, especially on creating jobs. Yet, Republicans think you can make more jobs by radically cutting Government spending, especially for the poor. That hasn't worked for the Tories in Britain, and it makes no sense: there is too little demand for new jobs, already; cutting spending reduces the demand further.

The absence of a strong fiscal policy is at the heart of the problem.

Bernanke began the Fed's Quantitative Easing II (QE 2) as a monetary substitute for the stimulus and job creation the Government should have been doing; QE2 will be completed in June. The Fed will have injected $600 billion in new money into the economy, but unemployment is only slightly lower. The more direct effects are: the stock market has been toying with a 13,000 Dow, and corporations have been meeting and beating profit expectations. The flood of money helped drive gold and silver to historic highs, oil to over $113/barrel; food and other commodity prices are soaring.

QE2 may have driven some of these price hikes through speculation, but hiring was only weakly boosted, and with QE2 ending soon, official unemployment is only a shade under 9%.

The Fed could face a capital strike if it attempted more. It's maintaining interest rates at historic lows, and Bernanke claims inflation will remain low, or even go lower. With S&P threatening to downgrade US debt ratings, with the Street clamoring against monetizing the debt, and Paul Ryan chairing the House Budget Committee, the Fed is unlikely to do more.

QE2 could only accomplish so much, anyway. Bernanke implied at its inception that he preferred a rational Government fiscal policy. QE2 was adopted because it was unlikely Obama and House Republicans would be able to reach an agreement to stimulate the economy.

Instead, we face stalemate. Radical Republicans demand the cuts outlined by Congressman Ryan and more. Speaker Boehner already faced difficulty corralling votes for the 2011 budget compromise. Democrats know they'll lose their base if they cave further to Republican demands. What is needed is what Obama and the Democrats didn't have the courage, or votes in the Senate, to push through in 2009-10: a real jobs bill, and a real takeover of the housing mortgage mess.

Will we hang on until 2013? With no jobs program, only the payroll tax stimulus, and housing markets falling further? Would corporations hire more, with falling demand for goods? Would banks resolve their mortgage mess: admit their fraud and losses? Dream on!

A deadlock on the debt could slam us into a Depression, and a likely Republican takeover. They favor putting corporations in control, much like the monopoly of power held by the Senatorial class of the late Roman Empire. Americans would be reduced to surplus labor, competing with low-wage workers worldwide.

Maybe we'll get bread and circuses?