Buffett: Balance the Budget in 5 Minutes

Harrisburg PA (Reuters:  Daniel Shanken).

     I was pleased to learn that billionaire Warren Buffet is an advocate of establishing term limits for Congress if they fail to end irresponsible budgetary decisions.  Readers of the Village Elliot’s column may be aware that he proposed virutally the same idea a few weeks ago.

      "I could end the deficit in 5 minutes," Buffett told CNBC. "You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election. The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in 1971...before computers, e-mail, cell phones, etc. Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the land...all because of public pressure.

            Although I like what Buffett had to say,  3% of GDP is a whopping 450 billion dollars.   Although under some conditions a deficit may be necessary, I think some sort of special permission should be required to have a budget that far out of balance.  On the average, the budget should be balanced.   But certainly if the Congresspeople feel that strongly about the need for a deficit they should be willing to give up their office to prove how important it is.  Getting new people to serve is not a bad thing.  In fact, it’s probably downright healthy.

            This whole thing is underscored by a local crisis in Pennsylvania.  Somehow, the little city of Harrisburg has managed to spend itself 300 million dollars in debt.  Now they are trying to declare bankruptcy, although the mayor doesn’t want to face that humiliation. 

          Harrisburg is a city of some 50,000 people, meaning that their debt is an amazing $6000 per person, or $24,000 for a family of four.  That’s real money that has to be repaid.  Harrisburg is just not going to be given magical loans or issue its own currency, and nobody is going to buy their piece of **** bonds.

          What’s sickening to me is that the mayor is going to run for re-electiion and will be opposed by their top financial official.  Just as at the national level, they are loving the national attention as they seek to blame each other and point fingers at one another.  Excuse me, but these people should be too embarrassed to run for dog catcher, never mind mayor.  New people need to be brought in, not the same old faces.   And Harrisburg should never ever be allowed to run a deficit budget again.  Period.

          Harrisburg typifies the same problem which exists at the national level.  Too many white collar crooks.  Too much crooked math, and not enough supervision from the people.
        If it is this clear at the level of Harrisburg, perhaps it will also become clear that the national economy  is susceptible to greedy politicians and excessive borrowing.  At the national level too, we need some additional checks and balances.  When our politicians spend too much money, they should be made to depart.  Let's let some new people have a try, and not re-elect these comedians. 

The Policy Shift in the Middle East

   
     The Obama Administration is now willing to take a pro-active stance in the affairs of other countries, particularly in the Middle East.  Until now, we used to take pains to say that we were not going to meddle in the affairs of other countries.  Or if we did meddle, we tried to do it secretly, perhaps with the help of the CIA or some other cloak-and-dagger operation.
   Now, however, we are willing to tell foreign leaders when it is time to pack it in and yield to revolutionaries.  "Regime change" was first invented by President Bush as a sort of public service that the United States was willing to perform on behalf of Iraqis seeking a better government.
    This policy has continued in the Obama administration.  
Mubarak, out!  Gaddafi, out!  We've also ordered Assad out of Syria, and we are in different stages of supporting opposition movements in Iran, Yemen and other countries.  
    Somehow, it has become the national interest of the United States to support tribal factions in Islamic countries, based on the mistaken belief that one tribe or the other will become the ally of the United States.  So far however, the only "allies" we have our our commerical trading partners like Saudi Arabia.  No one in that region of the world likes us or looks up to us, although for the moment they like selling oil to us. 
   Our investment in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is approaching several hundred billion dollars if not more.  Now we are seeking additional involvements in Libya, Syria, Iran and othe countries.  
    So, is this a bargain?  Are we really suited for refereeing tribal politics in these regions? Apparently, the American people are willing support these policies by re-electing the advocates of interventionist policies. 


 









 

Leaving Iraq

 

(Photo:  AP/Susan Walsh)

   President Obama has made the correct decision to withdraw American troops from the hellhole known as Iraq.  The Village Elliot's only question is:  What took you so long?

    Usually TVE, like many other bloggers, write in order to criticize current policies and to propose an alternative.  However, when our leaders do something right (I know, I know, it's rare!) they deserve praise.
     In this case, TVE is very happy (with some reservations) that President Obama has announced an end to America's military being stationed in Iraq.  There are no Weapons of Mass Destruction.  Sorry, conspiracy fans.   It is indeed time to go home.
     What we did well in Iraq was to knock the place flat after wrongly believing that Iraq was building nuclear weapons to threaten the United States.  What was terribly wrong was the notion that we would make it all up by rebuilding the place and becoming friends with the peoples of Iraq. Retroactively, we decided that the reason for invasion was "regime change," namely that Saddam was a crummy dictator, and it was the job of the US to improve the Iraqi government, as a public service.   
    Yes, this move could backfire in the sense that Iraq will not develop along the lines of a Pro-American Shi'ite Republic.  But the ideo that the Shi'ites would create a Pro-American Shiite Democratic Republic of Iraq was sheer folly from the very beginning. 

     You don't stabilize countries, particularly in the Muslim world, by invading them, and you don't use the military as a tool to make the people friendly to Americans.  The job of the military is to shoot those who threaten us.  So those who say we need to stay in order to have a stable, Pro-American Shiite Democratic Republic of Iraq are blowing smoke.  
     Our objectives have been disfunctional from the start.  We put  the Shi'ites in power (these are the same folks that run Iran) and then despaired and wrung our hands because they had trouble playing nice with their bitter enemies, the Sunnis and the Kurds.  These are basically tribal conflicts that have existed since at least the seventh century, and for some reason the US decided it was our job to get involved.  But our presence probably only makes things worse, and if there is any unit in that part of the world it is to get us out of their country. 

     Obama's timing of the announcement to coincide with the death of Gaddafi may cause a few Middle Eastern leaders to defecate in their pantaloons.  The clear signal is that dictators are in trouble, and perhaps the US is not going to feel indefinitely responsible for coddling the country after we remove the SOB.  Mubarak and Gaddafi are gone, and we've ordered Assad out as well. Who's going to be next?  We might wonder if President Zardari of Pakistan feels confident about his support of terrorists in Afghanistan, for example.       At the same time, the announcement that the US is pulling out of Iraq may allay concerns that the US is going to colonize Libya.  That may help a new government to form.  Conversely, had we decided to stay in Iraq indefinitely, we would have only heightened anti-American sentiment in the region. 
     It's been 9 years and 700 billion dollars (and probably twice that much, but the government minimizes its estimates of the cost of the war), and 4500 American lives with another 32,000 wounded. Enough is enough.   We've shot all the people worth shooting.  The idea that the military is going to contribute to a stable Pro American Shi'ite Democratic Republic is just a disfunctional fantasy of idiotic bureaucrats.
    We can only hope that our leaders resist the temptation to involve ourselves in additional conflicts.  Our own politics are strange enough without participating in tribal conflicts in countries that do not share our values.