SAR #11204

Political deals at best only last until the next election.

Don't Want to Belong to a Club that Would Have Me as a Member: The only hope for Europe and the Euro is some form of political and fiscal union. Such a union has zero chance of passing a vote by the citizens of many European countries. But it would be economically ruinous to drop the euro and return to the nationalistic bickering and wars and persecutions of earlier years. In the end they will destroy the EU trying to save it.

Proportion: The attention of the US has been focused on the debt limit drama in Washington for weeks now, as the Republicans struggle to chop $3 billion out of entitlements and the Democrats want to get the debt limit up to $16 billion even if they have to starve granny and throw dad out of the nursing home. But back in 2007-8, the Fed handed out more than that – more than the entire federal debt – over $16 trillion in loans. Secretly.

Memory Lane: Housing isn't looking up, hasn't been and won't be for some time, because the real determinants in housing are the employment and wages of prospective house buyers. Etcetera.

Sound Familiar? Saudi Arabia's new 'counter-terrorism' law will give Homeland Security the Interior Ministry enormous powers to tap phones, search houses, arrest, interrogate, secretly try and indefinitely imprison any one criticizing the President king.

Bring Out Your Dead Pitchforks: The US has much greater inequality than Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Syria, Greece and Spain. Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff says that “high unemployment rate and high levels of debt in the U.S. will sooner or later trigger serious “social unrest from the income disparities in the U.S.” Sooner or later being relative terms.

Wheeling & Dealing: US taxpayers lost $1.3 billion bailing out Chrysler. Better luck next time.

The Bell Jar: In the early 20^th Century the nation's rich paid virtually nothing in taxes to the federal government and the government did virtually nothing to better the lives of average Americans. By the middle of the century the average American had forced the rich and their corporations to pay progressive taxes that went to better the lives of the many. By the end of the century the rich had taken back control of the government, had lowered their taxes to near invisibility and were intent on completely dismantling the social compact. Along the way there were unions, strikes, wars, market crashes, the rise and fall of the American empire, union busting, recessions, a great depression and the beginnings of a greater one. Now what?

A Piece of the Action: Ten million dollars a day gets smuggled out of Kabul every day. In suitcases. Sounds like a lot of theft and corruption until you remember that $18 billion in unmarked bills was sent to Baghdad, where it disappeared. Yawn.

Silver Horse: The question isn't why is there so much unrest in the Middle East nor why the citizens of Greece are rioting and those of Spain politely demonstrating. No, rather like the dog that didn't bark, the question is why Americans are so docile about being stripped of what little they have previously been allowed to keep.

One If By See: Massachusetts wants to equip cop cars (and intersections and so on) with scanners that would capture every license plate that passes by. And keep that information for years, in case they decide they need to know where you were, when. Key question: “What kind of a society are we creating here? There comes a point where the surveillance is so pervasive and total that it’s a misnomer to call a society free any longer.”

Porn O'Graph: In and Out the Briar Patch.