"We the people" tell the government what to do, it doesn't tell us. Our Constitution is a document in which "We the people" tell the government what it is allowed to do. "We the people" are free. Ronald Reagan Farewell Address 1989
Obama Admin. Says “Nothing Is Possible” To Help Struggling Economy As Jobless Claims Hit Nine-Month High, Employers “Scared To Death”; Gop Listening And Offering Better Solutions
With President Obama set to take off for Martha’s Vineyard in a matter of hours, the Obama Administration says “NOTHING IS POSSIBLE” (their caps, not ours) to help an economy showing new signs of job losses and employer uncertainty. (Now, this is a peculiar admission coming from a White House that is also saying, despite his vacation, that the president is “working hard to do everything possible to get this economy back on the right track…,” but mixed messages can be a problem for those folks these days.)
Unsurprisingly, the White House also told POLITICO Playbook it would “love to back additional stimulus,” but outside of that, “RIGHT NOW, NOTHING IS POSSIBLE…” to get our economy moving again. There you have it: the American people are asking ‘where are the jobs?’ and all Washington Democrats have to offer is more of the same failing ‘stimulus’ policies. How’s that been working out? Well, here’s how things are going a little more than two weeks after the Treasury Secretary declared “welcome to the recovery” in The New York Times:
The government reported this morning that jobless claim filings rose to their highest levels in nine months, “yet another setback” and a “sign that employers are cutting jobs again.” Welcome to the reality…
Recent quotations on the economy that may not put you to sleep….
President Obama: “All of us should be worried about the fact that we have been running the credit card in the name of future generations. We’ve got to get our debt and our deficits under control. That’s going to be our project for the next couple of years.”
Carnegie Mellon University economics Professor Allan Meltzer: “The administration’s stimulus program has failed. Growth is slow and unemployment remains high. The president, his friends and advisers talk endlessly about the circumstances they inherited as a way of avoiding responsibility for the 18 months for which they are responsible. But they want new stimulus measures — which is convincing evidence that they too recognize that the earlier measures failed. And so the U.S. was odd-man out at the G-20 meeting…,continuing to call for more government spending in the face of European resistance.”
Washington Post economics columnist Robert Samuelson: “What we’re seeing in Greece is the death spiral of the welfare state….Virtually every advanced nation, including the United States, faces the same prospect. Aging populations have been promised huge health and retirement benefits, which countries haven’t fully covered with taxes. The reckoning has arrived in Greece, but it awaits most wealthy societies.”
Nobel economist Gary Becker, a founder (with Milton Friedman) of the Chicago school of economics: “This belief in individual responsibility — the belief that people ought to be free to make their own decisions, but should then bear the consequences of those decisions — this remains very powerful. The American people don’t want an expansion of government. They want more of what (Ronald) Reagan provided. They want limited government and economic growth. I expect them to say so in the elections this November.”…]
CBO estimates, in its annual summer update of the budget and economic outlook, that the federal budget deficit for 2010 will exceed $1.3 trillion—$71 billion below last year’s total and $27 billion lower than the amount that CBO projected in March 2010 when it issued its previous estimate.
Relative to the size of the economy, this year’s deficit is expected to be the second largest shortfall in the past 65 years: At 9.1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), it is exceeded only by last year’s deficit of 9.9 percent of GDP. As was the case last year, this year’s deficit is attributable in large part to a combination of weak revenues and elevated spending associated with the economic downturn and the policies implemented in response to it.
This report presents CBO’s updated budget and economic projections spanning the 2010–2020 period. Those projections reflect the assumption that current laws affecting the budget will remain unchanged—and thus the projections serve as a neutral benchmark that lawmakers can use to assess the potential effects of policy decisions.
As such, CBO assumes that tax reductions enacted earlier in this decade that are currently set to expire at the end of this year do so as scheduled; it also assumes that no new legislation aimed at keeping the alternative minimum tax (AMT) from affecting many more taxpayers is enacted.
In addition, CBO assumes that the measures enacted in the past two years to provide fiscal stimulus to the weakened economy will expire as currently scheduled and that future annual appropriations will be kept constant in real (inflation-adjusted) terms. Under those assumptions, the federal budget deficit would decline substantially over the next two years—to 4.2 percent of GDP in 2012—and, consequently, the budget would provide much less support to the economy than has been the case for the past two years.
According to CBO’s projections, the recovery from the economic downturn will continue at a modest pace during the next few years. Growth in the nation’s output since the middle of calendar year 2009 has been anemic in comparison with that of previous recoveries following deep recessions, and the unemployment rate has remained quite high, averaging 9.7 percent in the first half of this year.
Such weak growth is typical in the aftermath of a financial crisis. The considerable number of vacant houses and underused factories and offices will be a continuing drag on residential construction and business investment, and slow income growth as well as lost wealth will restrain consumer spending.
All of those forces, along with the waning of federal fiscal support, will tend to restrain spending by individuals and businesses—and, therefore, economic growth—during the recovery. CBO projects that the economy will grow by only 2.0 percent from the fourth quarter of 2010 to the fourth quarter of 2011; even with faster growth in subsequent years, the unemployment rate will not fall to around 5 percent until 2014.
In CBO’s current-law projections, once the economy has recovered, the federal budget deficit amounts to between 2.5 percent and 3.0 percent of GDP from 2014 to 2020. Projected deficits total $6.2 trillion for the 10 years starting in 2011, raising federal debt held by the public to more than 69 percent by 2020, almost double the 36 percent of GDP observed at the end of 2007.
Those projections, which are similar in many respects to the ones that CBO prepared in March, reflect assumptions about spending and revenues that may significantly underestimate actual deficits. Because the projections presume no changes in current tax laws, they result in estimates of revenues that, as a percentage of GDP, would be quite high by historical standards.
Because of the assumption that future annual appropriations are held constant in real terms, the projections yield estimates of discretionary spending relative to GDP that would be low by historical standards. Of course, many other outcomes are possible. If, for example, the tax reductions enacted earlier in the decade were continued, the AMT was indexed for inflation, and future annual appropriations remained the share of GDP that they are this year, the deficit in 2020 would equal about 8 percent of GDP, and debt held by the public would total nearly 100 percent of GDP.
A different fiscal policy would also yield different economic outcomes. For example, CBO estimates that under an alternative fiscal path similar to the one mentioned above, real growth of GDP in 2011 would be 0.6 to 1.7 percentage points higher than it is in the baseline forecast, and the unemployment rate at the end of 2011 would be 0.3 to 0.8 percentage points lower. However, later in the coming decade, real GDP would fall below the level in CBO’s baseline because the larger budget deficits would reduce investment in productive capital.
Beyond the 10-year budget window, the nation will face daunting long-term fiscal challenges posed by rising costs for health care and the aging of the population. Continued large deficits and the resulting increases in federal debt over time would reduce long-term economic growth.
Putting the nation on a sustainable fiscal course will require policymakers to restrain the growth of spending substantially, raise revenues significantly above their average percentage of GDP of the past 40 years, or adopt some combination of those approaches.
Greek Orthodox leaders trying to rebuild the only church destroyed in the Sept. 11 terror attacks expressed shock this week after learning, via Fox News, that government officials had killed a deal to relocate the church.
The St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, once a tiny, four-story building in the shadows of lower Manhattan, was destroyed in 2001 by one of the falling World Trade Center towers. Nobody from the church was hurt in the attack, but the congregation has, for the past eight years, been trying to rebuild its house of worship.
Though talks between the church and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey stalled last year, church leaders say they’ve been trying to kick-start discussions ever since. But amid debate over whether a proposed Islamic community center should go forward near Ground Zero, government officials threw cold water on the prospect of any deal with the church — telling Fox News the deal is off the table.
Confronted with the Port Authority’s verdict, Father Mark Arey, of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, said it’s the first he’s heard that.
“Negotiations did break off last year. We were expecting to hear from their lawyers — we never did. We’re still expecting to hear from them,” he told Fox News. “We’re disappointed. … 130 Liberty Street was promised to us.”
Arey was referring to the address, about 100 yards away from the original site, where the government earlier proposed relocating the church. The Port Authority and the church announced a deal in July 2008 under which the Port Authority would grant land and up to $20 million to help rebuild the church — in addition, the authority was willing to pay up to $40 million to construct a bomb-proof platform underneath.
Within a year, the deal fell through and talks ended — apparently for good, according to the Port Authority…
The Obama administration is focused not just on health-care reform in the United States – but also on improving health care systems around the world, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced on Monday.
The new plan has a “woman- and girl-centered approach,” according to an administration fact sheet.
Speaking at Johns Hopkins University,Clinton outlined the six-year, $63-billion Obama administration initiative to bring global health care services “to more people in more places.” The administration’s Global Health Initiative has “everything” to do with foreign policy, she said.
“This is a signature of American leadership in the world today, Clinton said. “ It’s also an issue very close to my own heart.”
Clinton said in her world travels, she’s met “countless people who are proof of what successful global health programs can do.” She mentioned HIV-positive farmers in Kenya who are able to continue farming, thanks to antiretroviral drugs; children in Angola who now sleep under bed nets to ward off malaria; mothers of healthy babies who were delivered by trained midwives; and people who survived into adulthood because of childhood immunizations.
Clinton then outlined the “new approach” to global health care, which is aimed at “saving the greatest possible number of lives” by expanding existing health programs “to help countries develop their own capacity to improve the health of their own people.”
…Clinton highlighted the expansion of family planning services, saying that the administration would pressure other countries to reform child marriage laws and would also work to expand access to contraceptives and family planning education.
According to the government’s fact sheet, one of GHI’s goals is to “prevent 54 million unintended pregnancies by meeting unmet need for modern contraception.”
Clinton said family planning – including pregnancy prevention – not only will improve women’s health but also will reduce the poverty that often afflicts large families in poorer countries. She said women must be given more control over when they become pregnant.
“We are scaling up our work in family planning and maternal and child health, areas in which the United States can and must lead,” Clinton said. She noted “Every year, hundreds of thousands of women die from complications related to pregnancy or childbirth – nearly all of them in the developing world.”
“Family planning represents one of the most cost effective public health interventions available in the world today. It prevents both maternal and child deaths by helping women space their births and bear children during their healthiest years and it reduces the deaths of women from unsafe abortions.”
Clinton said that GHI will be “making up for lost time” in funding family planning services – boosting existing programs whose funding has diminished in recent years…
Please spread the word and post on websites. To add your name or organization as a supporter of this effort, please write to stop911mosque@gmail.com.
ALL OUT ON SUNDAY MORNING FOR MASSIVE PROTEST AT THE GROUND ZERO MOSQUE SITE
TELL PRESIDENT OBAMA, HAMAS AND IMAM RAUF:
NO SHARIAH ISLAMIC LAW AND JIHAD MOSQUES IN AMERICA!
MOTORCYCLISTS FROM ACROSS AMERICA, CONSTRUCTION WORKERS, FIREFIGHTERS, VETERANS, THE 9/11 FAMILIES AND FIRST RESPONDERS, AND RESIDENTS OF THE GROUND ZERO NEIGHBORHOOD WILL UNITE TO PROTEST AT THE GROUND ZERO MOSQUE SITE
PROTESTERS TO PUSH FOR ANSWERS: IS THE STATE DEPT SENDING IMAM RAUF AROUND THE U.S. AND TO ISLAMIC COUNTRIES AS AN ENVOY?
WHO: The Coalition to Honor Ground Zero and: Motorcyclists from across America; Andy Sullivan and the Blue Collar Corner; Tim Brown and The Bravest; Debra Burlingame and the 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America; Women United International (http:womenunitedcodered.org); Stop Shariah Now; ACT! For America and ACT! Manhattan; Human Rights Coalition Against Radical Islam; Florida Security Council; Roy and Niger Innis and the Congress on Racial Equality; Traditional Values Coalition; Laurie Cardoze-Moore of Proclaim Justice to the Nations; Action Alliance; Center for Security Policy; Dr. Herbert London, Hudson Institute; and many other organizations and leaders to be announced, as well as local residents living in the Ground Zero area. The Coalition to Honor Ground Zero is calling upon all patriots to show support for the missions of America’s 9/11 Foundation and of the Patriot Guard Riders, by joining the flag-line at Ground Zero in the morning. Further information about participating organizations and speakers will be released later this week.
WHAT: MAJOR PROTEST THIS SUNDAY MORNING
WHEN: Sunday, August 22nd at 10:30 a.m(Come early if you wish to join the flag line running from Ground Zero up to the mosque — American flags will be provided)
WHERE: AT THE NORTHEAST CORNER OF WEST BROADWAY AND CHURCH STREET AT PARK PLACE , MANHATTAN
WHY: To push back against those attempting to impose Shariah Islam, stealth jihad or terror on our nation. We will not be moved!
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
On September 11, 2001, over 3,000 Americans were taken from us by the evil acts of Islamic extremists bent on destroying our freedoms. Amid the thick smoke and choking ashes of that fateful day, the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church was reduced to dust.
Since 1922, St. Nicholas Church had stood as a quiet sanctuary of prayer and reflection amidst the tumultuous and bustling crossroads of commerce. For the past nine years the Port Authority of New York/New Jersey has used bureaucratic obstacles and false promises to hinder the rebuilding of the St. Nicholas Church.
This must end and it must end now!
What an outrage that our government has put roadblocks in the path of its own citizens trying to rebuild their beloved church destroyed by Islamic extremists, while Saudi Arabia, a nation that prohibits people from even wearing a cross or the Star of David, now provokes the families of those who lost loved ones by apparently funneling money to build a mosque at the same location.
As your congressman, I will always remember that our constitutional freedom of religion starts with respecting our own sacred Judeo-Christian heritage. Now is the time for the Port Authority to stop hiding behind its bureaucracy and to facilitate the rebuilding of the St. Nicholas Church that was taken from us on that quiet September morning nearly a decade ago. The former St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church was destroyed when the World Trade Center fell on it.
George Demos is a Republican candidate for New York’s First Congressional District…
Following the success of “Picasso: Mosqueteros” in the spring of 2009 — an exhibition heralded by The New York Times as one of the best shows in the city since the turn of the century — Picasso biographer John Richardson will again partner with the artist’s grandson Bernard Ruiz-Picasso to curate “Picasso: The Mediterranean Years (1945-1962)” at Gagosian Gallery Britannia Street in London.
In the post-war years, Picasso began to spend more and more time in the South of France, marking a return to the Mediterranean heritage that had nourished some of the most important stylistic changes in the past. A vibrant social scene including bullfighters and poets, an international cast of friends and admirers, the return of Cocteau as his poet laureate and a renewal of family life with the birth of Claude and Paloma (with Françoise Gilot) joining their siblings Paulo (his son with Olga Khokhlova) Maya (his daughter with Marie-Thérèse Walter) and the love of Jacqueline Roque and her daughter Cathy provided the Mediterranean setting and the work produced there with new life.
Besides pitting himself against Delacroix, Manet and Velázquez and painting some of his most challenging works, in the 1950s Picasso revolutionized sculpture and ceramics and pushed boundaries in lithography, linocuts and other graphic techniques. At Vallauris, where he transformed a disused perfume factory into a series of studios, at La Californie, his great fin de siècle villa, and Vauvenargues, his magnificent château on the slopes of the Mont Sainte-Victoire, the work of the most widely-known artist in the world was reborn.
Including important portraits of Françoise , Claude, Paloma and his last great muse Jacqueline, linocuts, ceramics and several iconic sculptures (La guenon et son petit, 1951, Petite fille sautant à la corde, 1950, La femme enceinte I, 1950, and Sylvette, 1954), “Picasso: The Mediterranean Years” will be organized around generous loans from members of the Picasso family of works that have come to be known as Picasso’s Picassos. The exhibition will be installed in galleries transformed by architect Annabelle Selldorf and accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with new essays by John Richardson, Professor Elizabeth Cowling and Jean Cocteau biographer, Claude Arnaud.
With a focus on Picasso’s most intimate works, “Picasso: The Mediterranean Years” will provide an important contrast to Tate Liverpool’s exhibition “Picasso: Peace and Freedom.” Between these two exhibitions, visitors to Great Britain in the summer of 2010 will have an extraordinary opportunity to explore the public and private faces of this peerlessly multi-dimensional artist in the 1950s.
In recent years, Gagosian Gallery has partnered with the most distinguished scholars in their field to present critically acclaimed exhibitions at the galleries in New York and London, including the International Association of Art Critics award-winning “Picasso: Mosqueteros” (New York, 2009); “Manzoni: A Retrospective” with Germano Celant (New York, 2009); “Isabel and Other Intimate Strangers: Portraits by Alberto Giacometti and Francis Bacon” with Veronique Wiesinger (New York, 2008); “Francis Bacon: Triptychs” (London, 2006); “Cast A Cold Eye: The Late Work of Andy Warhol” (New York, 2006); and “Willem de Kooning: A Centennial Exhibition” (New York, 2004).
Pablo Picasso was born in Málaga, Spain in 1881 and died in France in 1973. Recent exhibitions of his work include “Picasso: Challenging the Past,” National Gallery, London (2009); “Picasso et les Maîtres,” Galeries nationales du Grand Palais (2008/2009); “Picasso and American Art,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2006); “Picasso: Tradition and the Avant-Garde,” Museo Nacional del Prado and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2006).
Rarely fate was also mixed. The young Dauphine Marie Antoinette began by seducing. When she became queen, she will be unpopular. Not without awkwardness, will eventually recover. But it was the Revolution and the ultimate test, faced with dignity, for this woman, this wife and this mother is admirable.
Le Figaro Magazine (English Translation)
In May 1770, when Madame la Dauphine appeared in France, it was a stroke of lightning réciproque. Nimbée a crown of blond hair, the girl’s face smiling at the innocent people who saw her as the queen that she had dreamed. She came into the glorious kingdom of Europe, secure the bright future that her marriage with the heir to the throne she foreshadowed. Her mother, Empress Maria Theresa, had chosen her fate to seal the alliance of Austria with France that she considered the masterpiece of her policy.
Marie-Therese had not seen her go without some concern. Certainly, moral training of her daughter was perfect and she knew the uses courtly, danced and played the harpsichord and pleasantly spoke French, the language courses, but she thought only of fun and had never shown the slightest interest in the study. Father Vermond, sent by Louis XV to perfect this neglected education, acknowledged that she had a fair trial, she listened willingly “when he showed bright ideas,” but she refused to go deeper.
The prince quickly fell in love with the Archduchess, because that little person exercising a real seduction. “God has showered so much grace, such sweetness and docility that everybody must love you: it is a gift from God, it must be preserved, not to glorify you, but keep for your own happiness and that of all those who belong to you, “he wrote his mother on 1 November 1770, the eve of the 15th anniversary. This charm unspeakable, Marie Antoinette held until the end of her life through the centuries, it still holds sway today.
Her new family is his sensitivity to the test. Louis XV shows her kindness touched, but her husband flees. “My little son is not affectionate,” recognizes the monarch. The Dolphin, which has never known a woman, is too intimidated by the foreign pledge of an alliance that his late parents criticized. Aunts, daughters of the king, embittered and spiteful, see the young Austrian woman as an intruder. They observe no indulgence, pretending to show him affection. Affection is what is missing in the Dauphine, still “well child”, as said the king: she does not think that loneliness is his lot.
As she grows nostalgic Viennese experiencing attachment increasingly hard for those she will always consider as truly his own. She waits for her mother’s letters overflowing with tips and questions. The old sovereign wishes to consolidate its diplomatic work thanks to his daughter, while fearing that she is not in keeping with the role she wants him to play.
Marie-Therese not hesitate to resort to emotional blackmail with her to try to get what she wants: to be a future Queen Service Officer Habsburg on the European stage. The Empress gave him a mentor in the person of his ambassador, Count Mercy d’Argenteau, which Marie Antoinette never hesitate to share. She often asked her advice on what to do. His warnings are always wise when it comes to how to deal with her husband, the king, princes, princesses and courtiers; will make a difference in politics.
Frustrated in her emotional life and love, the Dauphine feels no respect for the king who displays his liaison with Madame du Barry. She tries to tame her husband, but patience and resignation he will always be foreign. She takes refuge in his friendship for the Princess de Lamballe and revolts as a spoiled child stamping her feet to find her place. It is a rebellion against the label binding, a marked disdain for older courtiers, held a sometimes overlooked, the desire to ride like a man instead of quietly riding a donkey, as the respectable ladies of his retinue.
Marie Antoinette eagerly seek distractions. They are neither reading or singing lessons or harpsichord that pull his melancholy. It will allow the king to follow the hunt on horseback, and especially to go to Paris without ceremony she finds a kind of joie de vivre. She discovers an unknown world that gives the illusion of starting a new life. She returned to Versailles intoxicated by his discoveries and the love of Parisians who show him a real fervor. In the capital, it becomes a desired woman, is his way of being filled. The love of the people against the love of a prince, is his revenge.
Brief honeymoon! At the accession of Louis XVI after the death of Louis XV, May 10, 1774, Marie Antoinette was not yet 19 years old and her husband just 20. The king dream happiness of his subjects and the queen is willing to support her husband, she deals with “poor man”. However, the first emotion was over, she feels drunk with a freedom she never knew, without knowing the dangers that threaten it. In France, the role of the queen is not clearly defined.
Her duty is to give heirs to the kingdom and her conduct must be above suspicion. Marie Antoinette does not then the image of the perfect wife of the monarch. She rarely opens her room to her husband (maybe did a few apologies for that) and flees into a perpetual holiday. At Versailles, the royal mistresses were the stars shining with Louis XIV and Louis XV. The roles are now reversed. Lacking charisma, Louis XVI, who will never seeded or not shining by her presence or by his spirit. In all the splendor of her youth and her beauty as queen claims the leading role of the court with her husband willingly.
She wants a court young, fashionable, where we have fun. Surrounded by a few favorites, does not bother to show representatives of the old courtyard, and even the king’s aunts, they belong to a bygone world. She refuses to live in perpetual representation, like the queens that preceded it, and wishes to conduct her private life hidden from view.
During the day she retired to her apartments, received her friends in her Trianon Palace, Bagatelle in part to his brother the Comte d’Artois, bet on horses racing on the plain of Sablon and sometimes goes all night at the opera ball without the king. She dazed to deceive the void in her heart and spent the least time possible with her husband, who condones this disconcerting hyperactivity. Some men make her heart beat a little faster, but she knows she has no right to love, and her crazy friends to Madame de Polignac, a lot of talk.
Soon Marie Antoinette becomes a fickle queen and too extravagant. What is she doing for days on end in his area of Trianon, where the king himself comes only guest? What about his nights in Paris? It’s Versailles leave the gossip that quickly become songs, and pamphlets denouncing the misconduct of the wife of the ruler, which is now considered a cuckold helpless, unable to control his wife and therefore incapable of governing France.
When Marie Antoinette gives birth to her first child in 1778, the rumor that Louis XVI was not the father. It will be the same at the birth of her three other children. Her romance with the people has been completed for a long time. However, despite the unbearable lightness, Joseph II, her elder brother, who is without sin of indulgence, can write, after a long stay at Versailles: “A head-to-wind which is driven all day run of dissipation. She thinks only of fun. She feels nothing for the king. She is a kind and honest woman, a little young, ill-considered, but has a base of honesty and virtue. “
The emergence of Count Fersen in her life monotonous by futility, upset. She answered the call of her heart and followed the mysterious link that calmed down more than her motherhood. In 1785, she became aware of his unpopularity in the affair of the necklace. She released from its chrysalis. This is no longer the carefree princess, but a woman battered, morally supported by a man she loves, and who looks anxious about the future of their children.
While Louis XVI fell into depression, she prepares to defend the monarchy threatened. Marie Antoinette has never yet had a taste of power. She had only mixed with intrigue without measuring gravity, which had attracted much criticism. She was especially criticized for her overt support to Austrian claims on behalf of the sacred covenant. Her extensive interviews with Mercy Argenteau, her scenes in Vergennes, the foreign minister, had helped to discredit her, though the king had never yielded to his will. The damage was done: the nickname of “Austrian” became an insult. His new role as head of state still further increased his unpopularity. “The queen governance”, such was the public outcry which contempt competed with hatred.
Inexperienced, ignorant of the realities of the kingdom, the Queen trusts her instinct alone, in hopes of saving the monarchical system as she designs, immutable and absolute. She discovered in her a strength she did not know to defend its ideas and, later, to save her life and that of her husband and those of her children. The trouble intensifies its energy, the energy of despair. It takes initiatives, plays a dangerous game with double Mirabeau later Barnave to try to save the Crown.
On August 10, 1792, the day of the fall of the monarchy, she would remain in the Tuileries, but must yield to the will of the king who prefers to take refuge with the family in the Assembly. A prisoner in the Temple, she inspires compassion of the jailers. The horror of her captivity, the separation from her children, the enormity of the charge of incest during the trial grow. Climbing the stairs of the scaffold, she became a legend. It is a tragic heroine, sacrificed to the manes of the republic, a executioner brandishes her head before the crowd, October 16, 1793.
The blade of the guillotine made to Marie-Antoinette the majesty which her enemies had stripped and was transfigured into the holy of the Monarchy. She became “Queen martyrdom” of those courtiers who devoted themselves to public obloquy of her heyday and still criticized emigration, dark days of the Revolution. Therefore, they camouflage memories he might have been indecent to mention. Suspecting some weakness wife of Louis XVI returned to commit a crime against the monarchy. The devout royalist tradition continues today, while the revolutionaries and Republicans have continued to weave the black legend of the “wicked queen.
We rewrite the history of this tireless woman sensitive and reckless, nothing prepared to assume such a fate. The images show an overlap Princess radiating charm, fashion victim by lack of love, by frivolous idleness and a caring mother and a discreet lover, a sovereign of the ancient regime indiscriminately defending the principles of absolute monarchy, but also a queen humiliated as a woman, as wife, as a mother. Its fall and the misery of ordinary people closer, and his admirers, always numerous, would show her the love she has not received.
* Evelyne Lever is a historian. Author of Marie Antoinette was (Fayard, 2006) and Marie Antoinette. Diary of a queen (Tallandier, 2008).
The generations of American women who have grown up with, identified with and love Julia Roberts may relish her star turn in “Eat Pray Love,” one woman’s journey in search of herself and other things.
“Looking in all the wrong places,” she admits to her guru.
“Looking for what?” he asks.
“God.”
But “Glee” writer Ryan Murphy’s adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir isn’t anything as remotely deep as that. It’s a travelogue about an impulsive, self-absorbed travel writer who ditches her admittedly flighty husband (Billy Crudup) with a single line.
“I don’t want to be married.”
He eventually has a comeback for that — “That’s just QUITTING.”
Even though she has supposedly lost everything in her divorce, she has the cash for a year off — traveling the world, seeking something to fill the void in her 30something arrested-development soul.
She spends months in Italy. I am woman. Watch me eat. And buy fat jeans afterward.
She stays on an ashram in India.
She studies with her “medicine man,” a quirky, toothless little fellow (Hadi Subiyanto) who conveniently lives in Bali, aka “paradise on Earth.”
And along the way, before and after the eating, she meets a dreamy young actor (James Franco) who turns her on to his yogi, a crusty Texan who berates her into “doing the work” at the ashram (Richard Jenkins), and a sultry Brazilian (Javier Bardem) whose great gift seems to be holding his tongue about her shallow self-absorption.
This “Sex and the City” with Carrie shopping for spirituality. And it’s damn near as insufferable as Gilbert’s very popular book.
But Roberts — who, like Carrie Bradshaw, narrates Liz’s quest — makes most of the two hours and 15 minutes of eating, praying and loving pleasant enough. The Italian scenery dazzles, India impresses and Bali will make you swoon.
And the TV-trained Murphy peppers the screen with oddball bit players who come on, deliver some withering little bon mot and fade into the background.
“Americans know entertainment, but you don’t know pleasure,” an Italian lectures.
“Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation.”
“You want to get to the castle, you’ve got to swim the moat.”
And the kicker, the best in this collection of bumper sticker snippets — “God dwells within you as you.”
Murphy indulges in a little glee of his own when it comes to music, seasoning scenes with too obvious pop tunes — Sly Stone’s “Thank You Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin,” and Neil Young’s search song, “Heart of Gold.”
“Eat Pray Love” isn’t a bad movie — just a spiritually dead one, wearing and wearying. The cute supporting cast (Viola Davis is the wise-cracking best friend) tosses off cute one-liners and Roberts smiles broadly and tries to pretend the journey she takes isn’t rendered hilariously pointless by the finale.
It is a much better movie, one hour in, when Jenkins shows up. His character’s no-nonsense bluntness, labeling the indulgent Liz “Groceries” because here she is in a spartan spiritual retreat in the middle of India and all she does is eat, and his vulnerability, suggest a deeper but still amusing movie that might have been.
For a film about a woman whose motto is “I’m through with the guilt,” Roberts and Murphy & Co. have delivered a guilty pleasure. It’s great to see her in something this light again, looking much as she did 10 years ago. “Eat Pray Love” allows Roberts’ longtime fans to travel the world, and back in time with her. If only we all could eat until we pop and age in reverse and still have the glow of amber backlighting.
There’s a lively debate currently energizing the posts at Big Questions Online over whether a letter Flannery O’Connor wrote in 1958 to a friend troubled about his faith—especially the lines “You don’t serve God by saying: the Church is ineffective. . . Your pain over its ineffectiveness is a sign of your nearness to God”—provides a persuasive counter-argument to the reasons Anne Rice gives in her recent public announcement on Facebook that she is “quitting Christianity.”
Many readers find it difficult to reconcile O’Connor’s devout Catholicism with the dark often horrific comedy of her fiction. Brad Gooch, author of Flannery: The Life of Flannery O’Connor, addressed the question in an exclusive 2009 interview with The Library of America:
LOA:Your biography closely chronicles what a devout Catholic O’Connor was: a daily communicant who enjoyed reading and discussing scholarly theological treatises. Yet she didn’t entirely discourage writers who took contrarian readings of her works. For instance, you recount her telling John Hawkes that she “liked very very much” his essay “Flannery O’Connor’s Devil” in which he finds her “authorial attitude in itself in some measure diabolical . . . that is, ‘the disbelief that we breathe in with the air of the times’ emerges fully as two-sided or complex as the ‘attraction for the Holy.’” Was it her aim, do you think, to create works that could be interpreted in antithetical ways?
Gooch: O’Connor forever crossed wires in her life and work. Conan O’Brien wrote his senior thesis at Harvard on O’Connor. One night on The Charlie Rose Show he put the riddle succinctly: “You’d think it was this bitter old alcoholic who’s writing these really funny, dark stories. Then you find out that she’s a woman and that she’s devoutly religious. It’s the opposite of what you would expect.” She definitely designed her stories to be read in a world not as given as she to literal belief in God or the devil. Such a trick was not easy and took a while to develop. While at Iowa, she sought guidance from a local priest: how could a Catholic girl be writing about snarly types like Haze Motes, who calls on a town prostitute. The priest told her she didn’t need to write for 15-year-old girls. She slowly parlayed this advice into a more sophisticated apology, borrowed from Thomas Aquinas by way of Jacques Maritain: art is a habit of the practical rather than the moral intellect. As she put it: “You don’t have to be good to write well. Much to be thankful for.”
But the issue of contrary readings of O’Connor’s fiction is compelling, and has never been raised more provocatively than by her friend John Hawkes during her lifetime. Borrowing a line of reasoning from Dr. Johnson when he claimed that Milton was “of the Devil’s party” because Paradise Lost loses its zing when Satan is offstage, Hawkes finds the “diabolical” to be the guilty pleasure in O’Connor’s work. Privately—not to Hawkes—she judged the theory “off center.” But Hawkes was not alone in the camp that felt O’Connor was not the best reader of her own work, and her theological gloss perhaps spin, whether conscious or not. Firmly planted in this opinion was her progressive friend Maryat Lee, who found dissonance between O’Connor the story writer and O’Connor the theologian. “The writing is one thing and the thinking and speeches are another,” she wrote to a mutual friend. “Jekyll and Hyde if you will. Perhaps.”
I didn’t follow very closely the strange death of the actor David Carradine, a little over a year ago in a hotel in Bangkok. I never watched Kung Fu, and if I liked Carradine it was chiefly because of his father, who played the aristocratic card-sharp in John Ford’s Stagecoach, and other unforgettable personalities. But I remember he was found hanging naked in a closet. The Thai authorities soon ruled out murder, since the video cameras showed no one entering or leaving his room (I find as I look up the reports).
Suicide was suspected, and the idea was seconded by one of his ex-wives, who spoke of his “depressive character.” Then there was an old interview where he had said he kept a pistol in a drawer, and often thought of blowing his brains out. He added that suicidal thoughts often came to him in five-star hotels (perhaps because he never stayed in lesser ones?).
The mechanics of his possible suicide seemed complicated. The cleaning woman found him in the closet “crouching, with a nylon cord, probably from the curtain, tied around his penis, and another around his neck.” Both cords were tied to the actor’s hands, behind his back, according to some versions. According to others, however, “one cord was tied to the neck, another to the genitals, and both to the closet.” No sign of struggle, the room closed from the inside, no bruises on the body.
The conclusion was that, in a bizarre masturbation session, the actor had miscalculated. The press noted that such “extreme autoerotic practices, where ejaculation is meant to coincide with a feeling of asphyxia, are more common than is generally thought,” and had already taken lives “in the British parliament,” and in the person of the singer Michael Hutchence of the Australian group INXS, in 1997. Be all that as it may, Carradine suffered a “sexual accident,” or killed himself, and no one else had anything to do with it.
But now I read that his widow, Annie Bierman, is suing for negligence the producer who had brought the actor to Bangkok, and that the suit has been admitted to procedure by a Los Angeles court. She maintains that on the night of his death the actor was to have with the director of the film Stretch; and that the production assistant in charge of Carradine’s agenda and transport did not do his job properly. He called before the dinner, but Carradine did not answer, so he decided to go without him. Nothing would have happened, the widow says, “if the producer had treated him with the attention due to a star.”
I don’t know how far this lawsuit will go, but the fact that it is being considered at all is one more example of the attribution of absurd responsibilities, always to others, whenever anyone, acting on his own account, stumbles and falls and hurts himself. Others are supposed to be our babysitters — above all, the state.
“Why didn’t they stop me from stealing?” complains the failed bank robber. “Why didn’t they warn me that I couldn’t dry out the Pekinese in the microwave?” shrieks the distraught housewife as she removes the poor steaming little carcass from the convenient kitchen appliance. “How could they let me go into a war zone?” whinges the NGO worker as the guerrillas hold him hostage. “Why didn’t the police stop me when I went out on the road without chains on, in a snowstorm?” wails the driver from the bottom of the ditch.
“How is it that they didn’t call David Carradine ten times, when he didn’t pick up the phone? Why did the hotel have nylon cords in the room, when anyone could use them to hang himself?” In fact, I don’t see why the widow isn’t suing the hotel too. She has plenty of grounds for it given the prevalent lawsuit culture.
Sooner or later it will come to this: “They brought me into the world. It’s no fault of mine. My parents are responsible — and if they’re deceased, then the state has to pay.” And damn right too. After all, the state let them have children. It should have known better.
President Obama has abolished the position in his White House dedicated to transparency and shunted those duties into the portfolio of a partisan ex-lobbyist who is openly antagonistic to the notion of disclosure by government and politicians.
Obama transferred “ethics czar” Norm Eisen to the Czech Republic to serve as U.S. ambassador. Some of Eisen’s duties will be handed to Domestic Policy Council member Steven Croley, but most of them, it appears, will shift over to the already-full docket of White House Counsel Bob Bauer.
Bauer is renowned as a “lawyer’s lawyer” and a legal expert. His resume, however, reads more “partisan advocate” than “good-government crusader.” Bauer came to the White House from the law firm Perkins Coie, where he represented John Kerry in 2004 and Obama during his campaign.
Bauer has served as the top lawyer for the Democratic National Committee, which is the most prolific fundraising entity in the country. Then-Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., the caricature of a cutthroat Chicago political fixer, hired Bauer to represent the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. In the White House, Bauer is tight with Emanuel, having defended Emanuel’s offer of a job to Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa., whom Emanuel wanted out of the Senate race…
This perfectly captures the Obama White House’s attitude toward disclosure. Sure, the administration publish the names of all White House visitors, but, as the New York Times reported a few weeks back, White House folks just meet their lobbyists at Caribou Coffee across the street. Sure, they restrict the work of ex-lobbyists in the administration, but lobbyists who de-list aren’t questioned.
And we’ve seen just a few of the e-mails former Google lobbyist, now Obama tech policy guru, Andrew McLaughlin traded with current Google lobbyists using his Gmail account, but who knows what else the White House whiz kids are doing to avoid the Presidential Records Act — Facebook messages? Twitter direct messages?
Did I mention Bauer was a lobbyist? At Perkins Coie, Bauer lobbied on behalf of America Votes Inc., a Democratic 527 funded by the likes of the AFL-CIO and ACORN….
In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to let Marian Anderson perform before an integrated audience at Constitution Hall. The Board of Education of the then-segregated District also refused to let her perform in the auditorium of a white public high school. So Anderson turned to a symbol of freedom: the Lincoln Memorial.
That April, Anderson held an open-air concert on the steps of the monument to the end of slavery and the ideals of the Republic. Stepping up before a racially mixed audience of more than 75,000, Anderson began with “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee.”
Two months ago, at the same memorial, a group of students were confronted by a security guard for singing the national anthem.
The students, members of the conservative Young America’s Foundation, were told by U.S. Park Police that they were “were in violation of federal law and their impromptu performance constituted a demonstration in an area that must remain ‘completely content neutral,’” reports FoxNews.com.
“The area they were standing in and singing is an area that is restricted for this type of activity,” said Sgt. David Schlosser. “The United States Park Police is absolutely content-neutral when it comes to any sort of demonstrations in these areas.”
One of the students, Shawn Balcomb, said the singing was spontaneous, not planned, and was certainly not intended to be political. “We got maybe two lines in and a police officer came over and he was yelling,” he told Fox News. “I was dumbfounded.”
Evan Gassman, a spokesman for the group, said, “I was taken aback. You wouldn’t expect a display of national patriotism to be censored.” At that point, he said, it had become political – and the group kept singing as an act of civil disobedience.
“If their idea of civil disobedience is singing the national anthem, then so be it,” Gassman said. “Let them disobey.”
What else is the State Department larding out, at hard-pressed taxpayers’ expense, to facilitate “understanding” with the Muslim world?
What else, that is, in addition to Ground-Zero-Mega-Mosque Imam Rauf’s likely fund-raising gig in five, oil rich countries?
Just as it has greatly, very greatly, disturbed 68% of you registered voters to learn of plans to build a $100 million dollar mosque financed perhaps by the very ones who underwrote the 9/11 slaughter, it will likely disturb you to learn that the State Department has been hard at work – on your dime – rebuilding of mosques in foreign countries.
In April, U.S. Ambassador to Tanzania Alfonso E. Lenhardt helped cut the ribbon at the 12th-century Kizimkazi Mosque, which was refurbished with assistance from the United States under a program to preserve culturally significant buildings. The U.S. government also helped save the Amr Ebn El Aas Mosque in Cairo, which dates back to 642.
The mosque’s namesake was the Muslim conqueror of Christian Egypt, who built the structure on the site where he had pitched his tent before doing battle with the country’s Byzantine rulers. For those who think the Ground Zero Mosque is an example of “Muslim triumphalism” glorifying conquest, the Amr Ebn El Aas Mosque is an example of such a monument – and one paid for with U.S. taxpayer funds.
By what lights is U.S. citizens’ money being used to preserve and advance Islam? What of First Amendment considerations about the use of public moneys for religious worship? Our government claims murkiness on these issues but nonetheless forges ahead in constructing mosque abroad…
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2010 16:00:15 -0400
To: luckybogey@luckybogey.com
From: democraticparty@democrats.org
Subject: Luckybogey, it’s time to commit to vote
Luckybogey –Eighteen years ago, shortly after graduating from law school, I helped lead a voter registration campaign in Chicago that generated record turnout on Election Day.
That experience taught me one of the most important lessons I ever learned as a community organizer: When people promise that they’ll do something — like voting — they are far more likely to do it.
That’s why one key part of our Vote 2010 plan this year is to get folks like you from across the country to commit to vote, to make sure we get as many people as we can to cast their ballots this fall.
But getting the commitments we need starts with your own promise to make it to the polls and cast your ballot.
Over the next 82 days, volunteers across the country will spend countless hours calling voters and knocking on their doors, asking them the same question.
And you can bet that I am counting on you to join them in talking to voters in your community.
This election offers a stark choice. We Democrats are hard at work trying to move America forward, repairing a decade of damage and growing an economy based on the Main Street values of hard work and responsibility.
We’ve fought for and won historic reforms to our health care system, a victory 100 years in the making, and to Wall Street, the most sweeping overhaul of the financial system since the Great Depression.
But after years of policies that landed us in the worst recession since the 1930′s, the Republicans who got us there have not come up with anything different from the policies of George W. Bush.
We simply cannot afford to go backwards or let them repeal our reforms. And making sure we can continue moving forward starts with your own promise to cast your ballot in these elections.
Paid for and authorized by the Democratic National Committee, www.democrats.org.
This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.Democratic National Committee, 430 S. Capitol St. SE, Washington, DC 20003
Contributions or gifts to the Democratic National Committee are not deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes.
…”But let me be clear. As a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. (Applause.) And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan…”
The Congressional Oversight Panel’s August oversight report, “The Global Context and International Effects of the TARP,” recommends that Treasury collect data on cross-border flows of funds, increase the scope and frequency of stress testing on financial institutions, and collaborate with foreign policymakers on a cross-border resolution regime and for regular crisis planning and financial “war games.”
The financial crisis that began in 2007 exposed the interconnectedness of the global financial system. Although the crisis began with subprime mortgage defaults in the U.S., its damage spread rapidly overseas. The Panel found that policymakers were ill-prepared for such a worldwide crisis and that “the internationalization of the financial system has outpaced the ability of national regulators to respond.”
Executive Summary*
The financial crisis that peaked in 2008 began in the United States one mortgage at a time. Millions of people, attracted by the prospect of home ownership or refinancing and low initial rates, signed mortgages that they could afford only so long as home prices continued to rise. The mortgages were bundled, chopped into fractional ownership, sold and re-sold, and used as the basis for huge financial bets. When the housing market collapsed, many borrowers faced foreclosure, and many investors faced huge losses.
In an earlier era, a mortgage crisis that began in a few regions in the United States might have ended there as well. But by 2008, the global financial system had become deeply internationalized and interconnected. Mortgages signed in Florida, California, and Arizona were securitized, repackaged, and sold to banks and other investors in Europe, Asia, and around the world. At the same time, other countries were experiencing their own housing booms fueled by new financial products. The result was a truly global financial crisis.
The conventional wisdom in the years immediately before the crisis held that banks that operated across global markets were more stable, given their ability to rely on a collection of geographically dispersed businesses. The crisis showed, however, that links within the financial system could magnify, rather than reduce, risks, by, for example, allowing financial firms to become overexposed to a single sector in a single country.
When subprime borrowers began to default on their mortgages, banks around the world discovered that their balance sheets held the same deteriorating investments. The danger was amplified by the high leverage created by layers of financial products based on the same underlying assets and by the fact that banks around the world depended on overnight access to funding in dollar-denominated markets. When short-term lenders began to question the ability of banks to repay their obligations, markets froze, and the international financial system verged on chaos.
Faced with the possible collapse of their most important financial institutions, many national governments intervened. One of the main components of the U.S. response was the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), which pumped capital into financial institutions, guaranteed billions of dollars in debt and troubled assets, and directly purchased assets.
The U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve offered further support by allowing banks to borrow cheaply from the government and by guaranteeing selected pools of assets. Other nations‟ interventions used the same basic set of policy tools, but with a key difference: While the United States attempted to stabilize the system by flooding money into as many banks as possible – including those that had significant overseas operations – most other nations targeted their efforts more narrowly toward institutions that in many cases had no major U.S. operations.
As a result, it appears likely that America‟s financial rescue had a much greater impact internationally than other nations‟ programs had on the United States. This outcome was likely inevitable given the structure of the TARP, but if the U.S. government had gathered more information about which countries‟ institutions would most benefit from some of its actions, it might have been able to ask those countries to share the pain of rescue.
For example, banks in France and Germany were among the greatest beneficiaries of AIG‟s rescue, yet the U.S. government bore the entire $70 billion risk of the AIG capital injection program. The U.S. share of this single rescue exceeded the size of France‟s entire $35 billion capital injection program and was nearly half the size of Germany‟s $133 billion program.
Even at this late date, it is difficult to assess the precise international impact of the TARP or other U.S. rescue programs because Treasury gathered very little data on how TARP funds flowed overseas. As a result, neither students of the current crisis nor those dealing with future rescue efforts will have access to much of the information that would help them make wellinformed decisions.
In the interests of transparency and completeness, and to help inform regulators‟ actions in a world that is likely to become ever more financially integrated, the Panel strongly urges Treasury to start now to report more data about how TARP and other rescue funds flowed internationally and to document the impact that the U.S. rescue had overseas. Going forward, Treasury should create and maintain a database of this information and should urge foreign regulators and multinational organizations to collect and report similar data.
The crisis also underscored the fact that the international community‟s formal mechanisms to resolve potential financial crises are very limited. Even though the TARP legislation required Treasury to coordinate its programs with similar efforts by foreign governments, the global response to the financial crisis unfolded on an ad hoc, informal, countryby- country basis.
Each individual government made its own decisions based on its evaluation of what was best for its own banking sector and for its own domestic economy. Even on the occasions when several governments worked together to rescue specific ailing institutions, as in the rescues of European banks Dexia and Fortis, national interests often came to the fore. These ad hoc actions ultimately restored a measure of stability to the international system, but they underscored the fact that the internationalization of the financial system has outpaced the ability of national regulators to respond to global crises.
In particular, the crisis revealed the need for an international plan to handle the collapse of major, globally significant financial institutions. A cross-border resolution regime could establish rules that would permit the orderly resolution of large international institutions, while also encouraging contingency planning and the development of resolution and recovery plans. Such a regime could help to avoid the chaos that followed the Lehman bankruptcy, in which foreign claimants struggled to secure priority in the bankruptcy process, and the struggles that preceded the AIG rescue, in which the uncertain effect of bankruptcy on international contracts put the U.S. government under enormous pressure to support the company.
Additionally, the development of international regulatory regimes could help to discourage regulatory arbitrage, instead encouraging individual countries to compete in a “race to the top” by adopting more effective regimes at the national level. Such regimes would also provide a plan of action in the event that a financial crisis hit an internationally significant institution in a country that was too small to bear the cost of a bailout. In the most recent crisis, the Netherlands‟ rescue efforts totaled 39 percent of its GDP, and Spain‟s totaled 24 percent, raising the specter that a future crisis could swamp the ability of smaller nations with large banking sectors to respond in absence of an international regime.
Moving forward, it is essential for the international community to gather information about the international financial system, to identify vulnerabilities, and to plan for emergency responses to a range of potential crises. The Panel recommends that U.S. regulators encourage regular crisis planning and “war gaming” for the international financial system. This recommendation complements the Panel‟s repeated recommendations that Treasury should engage in greater crisis planning and stress testing for domestic banks.
Financial crises have occurred many times in the past and will undoubtedly occur again in the future. Failure to plan ahead will only undermine efforts to safeguard the financial system. Careful policymakers would put plans in place before the next crisis, rather than responding on an ad hoc basis at the peak of the storm.
*The Panel adopted this report with a 5-0 vote on August 11, 2010.
About the Congressional Oversight Panel
In response to the escalating crisis, on October 3, 2008, Congress provided the U.S. Treasury with the authority to spend $700 billion to stabilize the U.S. economy. Congress created the Office of Financial Stability (OFS) within Treasury to implement a Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). At the same time, Congress created a Congressional Oversight Panel (COP) to “review the current state of financial markets and the regulatory system.”
COP is empowered to hold hearings, review official data, and write reports on actions taken by Treasury and financial institutions and their effect on the economy.
Through regular reports, COP must:
Oversee Treasury’s actions
Assess the impact of spending to stabilize the economy
Evaluate market transparency,
Ensure effective foreclosure mitigation efforts
And guarantee that Treasury’s actions are in the best interest of the American people.
Lastly, Congress has instructed COP to produce a special report on regulatory reform that will analyze “the current state of the regulatory system and its effectiveness at overseeing the participants in the financial system and protecting consumers.”
Executive Summary*
The financial crisis that peaked in 2008 began in the United States one mortgage at a
time. Millions of people, attracted by the prospect of homeownership or refinancing and low
initial rates, signed mortgages that they could afford only so long as home prices continued to
rise. The mortgages were bundled, chopped into fractional ownership, sold and re-sold, and used
as the basis for huge financial bets. When the housing market collapsed, many borrowers faced
foreclosure, and many investors faced huge losses.
In an earlier era, a mortgage crisis that began in a few regions in the United States might
have ended there as well. But by 2008, the global financial system had become deeply
internationalized and interconnected. Mortgages signed in Florida, California, and Arizona were
securitized, repackaged, and sold to banks and other investors in Europe, Asia, and around the
world. At the same time, other countries were experiencing their own housing booms fueled by
new financial products. The result was a truly global financial crisis.
The conventional wisdom in the years immediately before the crisis held that banks that
operated across global markets were more stable, given their ability to rely on a collection of
geographically dispersed businesses. The crisis showed, however, that links within the financial
system could magnify, rather than reduce, risks, by, for example, allowing financial firms to
become overexposed to a single sector in a single country. When subprime borrowers began to
default on their mortgages, banks around the world discovered that their balance sheets held the
same deteriorating investments. The danger was amplified by the high leverage created by
layers of financial products based on the same underlying assets and by the fact that banks
around the world depended on overnight access to funding in dollar-denominated markets.
When short-term lenders began to question the ability of banks to repay their obligations,
markets froze, and the international financial system verged on chaos.
Faced with the possible collapse of their most important financial institutions, many
national governments intervened. One of the main components of the U.S. response was the
$700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), which pumped capital into financial
institutions, guaranteed billions of dollars in debt and troubled assets, and directly purchased
assets. The U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve offered further support by allowing banks to
borrow cheaply from the government and by guaranteeing selected pools of assets. Other
nations‟ interventions used the same basic set of policy tools, but with a key difference: While
the United States attempted to stabilize the system by flooding money into as many banks as
possible – including those that had significant overseas operations – most other nations targeted
*The Panel adopted this report with a 5-0 vote on August 11, 2010.
4
their efforts more narrowly toward institutions that in many cases had no major U.S. operations.
As a result, it appears likely that America‟s financial rescue had a much greater impact
internationally than other nations‟ programs had on the United States. This outcome was likely
inevitable given the structure of the TARP, but if the U.S. government had gathered more
information about which countries‟ institutions would most benefit from some of its actions, it
might have been able to ask those countries to share the pain of rescue. For example, banks in
France and Germany were among the greatest beneficiaries of AIG‟s rescue, yet the U.S.
government bore the entire $70 billion risk of the AIG capital injection program. The U.S. share
of this single rescue exceeded the size of France‟s entire $35 billion capital injection program
and was nearly half the size of Germany‟s $133 billion program.
Even at this late date, it is difficult to assess the precise international impact of the TARP
or other U.S. rescue programs because Treasury gathered very little data on how TARP funds
flowed overseas. As a result, neither students of the current crisis nor those dealing with future
rescue efforts will have access to much of the information that would help them make wellinformed
decisions. In the interests of transparency and completeness, and to help inform
regulators‟ actions in a world that is likely to become ever more financially integrated, the Panel
strongly urges Treasury to start now to report more data about how TARP and other rescue funds
flowed internationally and to document the impact that the U.S. rescue had overseas. Going
forward, Treasury should create and maintain a database of this information and should urge
foreign regulators and multinational organizations to collect and report similar data.
The crisis also underscored the fact that the international community‟s formal
mechanisms to resolve potential financial crises are very limited. Even though the TARP
legislation required Treasury to coordinate its programs with similar efforts by foreign
governments, the global response to the financial crisis unfolded on an ad hoc, informal, countryby-
country basis. Each individual government made its own decisions based on its evaluation of
what was best for its own banking sector and for its own domestic economy. Even on the
occasions when several governments worked together to rescue specific ailing institutions, as in
the rescues of European banks Dexia and Fortis, national interests often came to the fore. These
ad hoc actions ultimately restored a measure of stability to the international system, but they
underscored the fact that the internationalization of the financial system has outpaced the ability
of national regulators to respond to global crises.
In particular, the crisis revealed the need for an international plan to handle the collapse
of major, globally significant financial institutions. A cross-border resolution regime could
establish rules that would permit the orderly resolution of large international institutions, while
also encouraging contingency planning and the development of resolution and recovery plans.
Such a regime could help to avoid the chaos that followed the Lehman bankruptcy, in which
foreign claimants struggled to secure priority in the bankruptcy process, and the struggles that
5
preceded the AIG rescue, in which the uncertain effect of bankruptcy on international contracts
put the U.S. government under enormous pressure to support the company. Additionally, the
development of international regulatory regimes could help to discourage regulatory arbitrage,
instead encouraging individual countries to compete in a “race to the top” by adopting more
effective regimes at the national level. Such regimes would also provide a plan of action in the
event that a financial crisis hit an internationally significant institution in a country that was too
small to bear the cost of a bailout. In the most recent crisis, the Netherlands‟ rescue efforts
totaled 39 percent of its GDP, and Spain‟s totaled 24 percent, raising the specter that a future
crisis could swamp the ability of smaller nations with large banking sectors to respond in
absence of an international regime.
Moving forward, it is essential for the international community to gather information
about the international financial system, to identify vulnerabilities, and to plan for emergency
responses to a range of potential crises. The Panel recommends that U.S. regulators encourage
regular crisis planning and “war gaming” for the international financial system. This
recommendation complements the Panel‟s repeated recommendations that Treasury should
engage in greater crisis planning and stress testing for domestic banks.
Financial crises have occurred many times in the past and will undoubtedly occur again
in the future. Failure to plan ahead will only undermine efforts to safeguard the financial system.
Careful policymakers would put plans in place before the next crisis, rather than responding on
an ad hoc basis at the peak of the storm.
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