Shades of gray, Nixon and the Israeli-Egyptian peace

This article is an example of inability to distinguish "shades of gray" (a topic addressed in several of my posts: here and here). The article describes President Sarkozy's re-election problem. Therefore one is struck by the following irrelevant line:
"In 1974, the French (to no avail) urged Americans to overlook Richard Nixon’s Watergate misdeeds and to concentrate instead on foreign policy successes such as the opening to China and Middle East peace talks (even though those talks were really the handiwork of the late, lamented and lamentable Anwar Sadat)."

My comments:
1. This is a popular kind of a cheap attack at Nixon (here is another example). These attacks succeed precisely because of inability to perceive that there are many nuanced views fitting between "liberal" and "conservative", as they described in respectively "conservative" and "liberal media"; or good and bad, as described in Hollywood movies.

Nixon is uniformy reviled by both extremes of the political spectrum. Yet, though he was not a "good guy", there is too much evidence against squarely describing him as a "bad guy" - I wrote here about his achievements, which define modern America more than the contributions of most other presidents.


2. There is also a curious omission in the quote paragraph - the contribution of the Israeli prime minister Menahem Begin. This betrays anti-Israeli bias, completely uncalled for in the article about President Sarkozy. Yet, as the saying goes, "It takes two to tango" - unsurprizingly this was recognized by the Nobel committee, which awarded the two men the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize.

In this context, degrading Nixon's contribution also means dismissing the achievements by the Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who, for example, was behind the agreements that ended the 1973 Yom Kippour war, initiated by no one else, but Anwar Sadat himself.

3. The two points outlined above are a coherent part of a certain liberal stereotype. I find it therefore somewhat unsual that the article does not mention Jimmy Carter, whom left-wing extremists often credit with everything good that has ever happened in the Middle East (he did though oversee the Camp-David accords that led to the Israeli-Egyptian peace - not a small achievement!)

Economic Valentines

Economic Valentines: I am generally weary of this holiday, but these are very funny. Pay attention to the one that has to do with the game theory (remember my posts here and here?)

Has economics cured poverty?

I have just began readings Sylvia Nazar's "Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius" - the book that has been recently on many bestseller lists. What struck me from the very beginning is the emphasis from the very beginning that the development of the economics (meaning the economic theory) in the last two centuries has lifted the mankind from the poverty.

I have met this thesis previously and it seems to me rather controversial - after all, according to the World Bank most of the mankind still live in poverty (the poverty threshold is currently set at $1.25 a day, which is very different from what is considered "poverty" in the Western countries.) Ironically, most of the reviews of the book fail to notice this obvious problems, obviously assuming that it is of no interest to the rich Western audience. Indeed, even New York Times criticizes Ms. Nazar not for neglecting the rest of the World, but for being insufficiently attentive to the kinds of problems that have been experienced in the West - particularly the Great Depression and the recent economic crises.


Whether the economics can cure the poverty or whether it merely succeeds in providing high standard of living to "the more fortunate among us" (using the President's Obama language) remains to be seen.

The President's new budget

President Obama is about to submit to the Congress the new budget proposal, the key feature of which is higher taxes on "the rich":
"The president’s blueprint calls for reductions in spending on federal health programs and the military, a small raise for federal workers and more than $1.5 trillion in new taxes on corporations, hedge-fund managers and the wealthy, in part through the expiration of the George W. Bush-era tax cuts on annual incomes of more than $250,000.

Obama also has called for changes to the tax code that would require households earning more than $1 million a year to pay at least 30 percent of their income in federal taxes, but senior administration officials said Friday that the blueprint will provide no additional details on how such a levy would be structured."


My comments:
1. Regardless of whether one supports higher taxes or not, we are all aware that none of these tax proposals has a chance to be approved by the Congress. Hence, expect the next round of the government near-shutdowns, credit downgrade threats and so on. At best this is simple politicking, at worst - political extremism.

2. Pay attention how the language regarding the "Buffet tax" transforms as the tax creeps into the tax code: while previously it was about taxing the fortunate individuals, who make more than a million a year, now it is about households, which more often than not consist of several individuals (e.f. parents and children) with income per person much less than a million.

Not going along with the crowd...

I re-post this photo from the Facebook. Here is the comment that it came along with:
"Ordinary people. The courage to say no.

The photo was taken in Hamburg in 1936, during the celebrations for the launch of a ship. In the crowed, one person refuses to raise his arm to give the Nazi salute. The man was August Landmesser. He had already been in trouble with the authorities, having been sentenced to two years hard labour for marrying a Jewish woman.

We know little else about August Landmesser, except that he had two children. By pure chance, one of his children recognized her father in this photo when it was published in a German newspaper in 1991. How proud she must have been in that moment."

General strike in Israel

The Histadrut (the unions) has declared the general of the Israeli government workers, due to the failure of its negotiations with the Finance ministry over the status of the contract workers.

My comments:
1. I generally oppose the strikes, especially those by transportation and medical workers. My reasons are: a) such strikes hold the rest of the country hostages to the whims of a small, but vital for the country's functioning, group , and b) the overall economic damage from such strikes far exceeds the benefits to the strikers.

2. Yet, I have more sympathy for the strikers than for the participants of the "social protests". If you have been reading this blog, then you know the reason: the strikers have clearly formulated demands. In addition, their grievances are legitimate - the contract workers in Israel are a hard-working group of the population, often saddled with the families, who have few reasons to expect a change in their employment status and significant improvements in the near future. These contract workers range from the cleaners to the non-permanent university lecturers (the latter are being fired every Spring and re-hired in the Fall, so that they do not attain the right for the permanent employment benefits.)

Money, money, money...

A big piece by Washington Post about bi-partisan corruption in the United States Congress. This will probably dominate the American news for teh week to come.

On this background the decision by President Obama to start taking the money from the rich in order to help fund the class war that he is fighting against them looks like a minor hypocrisy.