As it turns out, my mother was wrong. Or was it Madison Avenue? (I always get the two confused.) You can get too much of a good thing.

Case in point: the Republican presidential debates. Admittedly, there is something oddly compelling about them. It's kind of like watching the middle-aged country club dining room version of the food fight from "Animal House." (Romney=Neidermeyer, Perry=Blutarski, Bachman=Mandy Pepperidge) But they're on more frequently than most infomercials and they contain even less intellectual substance.

Every so often however, I give in to temptation and tune in for a fix of comic mayhem. Last night, I settled in to watch the exchange regarding foreign-policy. I can't quite decide whether it was more embarrassing or frightening. The panderdates were crawling all over one another to declare their fierce opposition to foreign aid and their love for defense spending. Even Ron Paul, who as best as I can tell is for shrinking the entire government down until it can be run out of an abandoned Fotomat booth in a parking lot somewhere near Galveston, Texas and who thinks foreign aid carries the ebola virus, found the tiptoeing around the Pentagon pocketbook to be intellectually dishonest.

Here are the facts: We spend less than 1 percent of the federal budget on foreign aid. We spend roughly $50 billion a year on the entire State Department and the foreign aid budget. We spend about 11 times that on the Defense Department plus another three or so times that on "overseas contingency operations" like fighting wars and firing drones into various compounds and convoys and that sort of thing. (Let's not count the Veterans Administration or the Department of Homeland Security or the intelligence community in these budgets though they certainly might be thought of as part of our broader national security establishment.) As it happens we spend a smaller percentage of our GDP on aid than almost any developed country and we spend roughly 10 times on defense what the next biggest spender, China, pays out to defend itself. (Go get a pencil and figure how that works out in terms of per capita defense spending. It won't take you long.)

Cutting foreign aid drastically diminishes our influence. It also sends the message, articulated last night by the most "reasonable" Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, that we have made the decision as a society that the richest nation on earth doesn't feel any responsibility to help other countries with their humanitarian needs. For a bunch of candidates who seem hell-bent on proving their essential Christian-ness, that's a heck of a message for the richest family in town to be sending to those that are in need ... especially when it is the one clear way to support those who support our interests and expand good will toward America while supporting the stabilization of troubled regions. Whatever happened to those "what would Jesus do" wristbands? I'm certainly no expert but I'll tell you one thing, Jesus would not be cutting U.S. foreign aid.

As for cutting defense spending, where do you think Jesus would come out on that one ... especially if they taught any arithmetic in the Nazareth public school system of the Galileean Unified School District. Might he suggest that spending say, only eight times more than our next biggest rival was sufficient to maintain the peace and that we could use the extra $140 or so billion that saved us per year ... $1.5 trillion over a decade, to meet the budget cutting goals of the Supercommittee in one fell swoop? Might he note that there is no way to make the big cuts we need by chopping away at comparatively small programs? Or that somehow cutting the programs that help the rest of the world versus those that are designed to blow it up might send the wrong message?

Heck, it doesn't take being the Prince of Peace or a guy with a knack for stretching a budget (see the whole fishes and loaves thing) to recognize that this approach of eviscerating U.S. smart power while blindly protecting the brute sort is kind of dumb not to mention dangerous.

There is no path to American recovery that does not involve very significant defense spending cuts. Just like there is no path to recovery that does not involve rationalization of entitlement spending. And just as there is no way to where we need to be that doesn't require new sources of revenue. You've got to do all three. And while last night's food fight did indeed have all the low comic appeal of "Animal House" while bearing an uncanny resemblance, as "Morning Joe" noted, to a showdown among the Real Housewives of New York, it skirted reality like Lindsay Lohan dodging community service on her way to another night clubbing. But it did so by offering approaches that were grossly irresponsible and, on their face, should have disqualified each and every one espousing them from occupying any office with responsibility for America's economic or physical security.

Where is Rick Perry when you need him? Just when I thought it was safe to embrace science, comes a news story in The Guardian entitled "Aliens may destroy humanity to protect other civilizations, say scientists." The subhead adds, "Rising greenhouse emissions could tip off aliens that we are a rapidly expanding threat."

Holy shit. I thought it was bad enough that the ice was melting off Antarctica so fast that golf resort developers are already drawing up blueprints and plans for holding the McMurdo Sound Open in 2020 or so.

Now, we now only have to fear rising sea-levels that will displace millions, submerge Wall Street (yet again), and wipe out most of Florida (ever cloud has its silver lining ... even if it is a cloud of ozone), but if the flood waters don't get us, E.T. will!

That's really too much.

Given the news, I hardly blame the president for spending a little time with his family on Martha's Vineyard. We need to be with our loved ones. And besides, Martha's Vineyard will be gone soon one way or another.

If only I had the absolutely disregard for science of a man like Rick Perry. After all, this is a presidential candidate who not only rejects the proven science that demonstrates the human contribution to global warming, he boasts that in Texas they teach both evolution and creationism. He is practically running on the same anti-science platform that was embraced by the Papacy around the time of Galileo. And if only I could bring myself to buy into his nonsense, then perhaps I wouldn't have to worry about both global warming and being obliterated by a little green man with a ray-gun.

According to the Guardian:

The authors warn that extraterrestrials may be wary of civilisations that expand very rapidly, as these may be prone to destroy other life as they grow, just as humans have pushed species to extinction on Earth. In the most extreme scenario, aliens might choose to destroy humanity to protect other civilisations.

"A preemptive strike would be particularly likely in the early phases of our expansion because a civilisation may become increasingly difficult to destroy as it continues to expand. Humanity may just now be entering the period in which its rapid civilisational expansion could be detected by an ETI because our expansion is changing the composition of the Earth's atmosphere, via greenhouse gas emissions," the report states.

A pre-emptive strike? Gak! But wait! There is a bit of good news in this. While the Rick Perrys of this world don't believe in actual science based on millennia of data and sophisticated analysis in hundreds of laboratories worldwide, they do have a proven track record of accepting as gospel, so to speak, impossible to prove stories about invisible creatures in outer space. So while the data about climate change may not persuade them to work to change our destructive behavior, perhaps speculative scenarios about how greenhouse gases may trigger an alien Armageddon might just get them to take the problem seriously. Even if those scenarios were actually dreamed up by scientists...

While President Obama's comments on the debt ceiling standoff on Friday morning were pretty much a non-event, there was one thing he said that was so dead on target it is likely to live on. When -- and I don't think it's "if" -- the U.S. gets downgraded, it will not be because the United States does not have the ability to meet our obligations it will be because the U.S. does not have a AAA political system.

While the president meant this as a commentary on the current situation, the more disturbing element of the comment is that the flaws to which he was referring to are likely to endure and  exacerbate the economic problems already burdening the nation. It would be a mistake to think that those flaws are simply a matter of the misguided views of one party or another or even the extremism of one wing or both.

The system is fundamentally structurally damaged. While we would benefit from having a third party, plans to introduce a third party candidate for president ignore the fact that our more urgent need for a third party is in the Congress. Further, adding parties won't address the money cancer that has corrupted the system and which is getting worse with each passing election's growing demands for more and more cash.

In addition, the structural problems are more deeply ingrained in the processes that drive the political system, such as having an upper house of Congress that requires supermajority votes to get almost anything done and yet also allows individual senators to hold up nominations for critical offices indefinitely without rationale. Budget problems are associated with Byzantine collection of appropriating and authorizing committees and made worse by the self-interested behavior of chairs and ranking members who see the gavel as an ATM card that enables them to fund campaigns and stay in power.

No, as President Obama rightly observes, when the downgrade comes it is likely to be less due to the size or cost of our government than it is its shape, structure and the personalities of those who are mismanaging it. But we shouldn't let ourselves off the hook so easily. Those personalities serve at the behest of the American people and to the extent those people do not demand productivity and reason from their representatives then ultimately the downgrade is a verdict about the judgment of the U.S. electorate.

Crazy peaked too early. The fringe candidates pre-marginalized themselves. And that's why my money is on the longest of long-shots in American politics, not a candidate, but a process: A 2012 presidential campaign featuring a serious debate about the issues between thoughtful candidates.

In part, we can thank the first wave of Republican presidential "candidates" who arrived on the scene crowded into a clown car and proceeded to climb all over themselves to distinguish their particular form of high-functioning lunacy from that of the human punch line next to them. 

Among the earliest of these was Sarah Palin, shooting from the hip and usually hitting herself in the foot or causing collateral damage to her family, English syntax or our national dignity. But given what followed her into the race, and how much more statesmanlike the Trumps of this world make her look, one conclusion we can't help but draw is that this is a woman who is best viewed in retrospect.

Palin after all was only ignorant, badly educated, hopelessly inexperienced and wrong on the issues. The Trumps and Gingriches of this world see her those defects and raise her a few. Trump seemed to want to prove that in modern America all you needed was fame, no matter how it was achieved. Yet somehow running beauty pageants, casinos, and guest hosting reality television shows was enough to take this buffoon and launch him to front-runner status among Republican candidates. All this despite the fact that he seems intent on proving that there actually is something more ridiculous than his floppy, chemically enhanced comb-over ... that being what comes out of his mouth.

Read on

When I read the Washington Post's story "Palestinians Seek Recognition through South America" this morning, all I could think of was Sarah Palin. Now, some might think that is a kind of a disorder that calls for therapy more than it does another blog post. But I suspect you are probably jumping to the wrong conclusion about what I think about either issue.

In defense of my mental health (which needs all the defending it can get), one reason I thought of Palin was that as I was reading the article, she appeared on the television. She was being asked what she thought about birther claims that President Obama was not born in the United States. Without the hesitation or weasel words that have made recent statements on this subject by Michele Bachmann and John Boehner such indictments of their ability to lead, Palin said that it wasn't an issue for her and that we ought to be talking about how to fix the economy. In this instance, she got it precisely right.

But the Palin comment and the birther debate also resonated with the story of the eight Latin American governments that in December and January recognized Palestinian statehood. representatives of the Netanyahu government including the prime minister himself apparently vigorously tried to persuade the region's leaders not to join the almost 100 nations that have also acknowledged the legitimacy of the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people.

Once again, the issue seems like a distraction to me. The response of Israel ought to be like the response of Palin, "Of course, the Palestinian people have a right to a state." In fact, it's only a bit of an over-simplification to say, the right response ought to be literally what Palin's was: That it's not an issue for them and we ought to be talking about how to fix the economy -- that is we ought to be focused on how you go from the indisputable right of the Palestinians to have their own state to working together to create one that is self-sustaining and can do a better job creating opportunities for the Palestinian people than neighboring states (other than Israel) have done for their citizens. That's the critical challenge for both Israelis and Palestinians together.

That of course, also requires that the Palestinian leadership actually get serious about both negotiating a deal and providing fundamental services to the Palestinian people. An honest debate about this subject, stripped of the distractions upon which both sides have depended on as cover for so long, would turn more to such practical issues.

Read on

WikiLeaks provides few revelations but many resonant reminders. The reminders put into language stark enough to reawaken the senses information that we long ago knew but had repressed. For example, take today's multiple reminders that so-called "friendly" governments in the Persian Gulf remain cash machines for the worst people on earth, terrorist groups dedicated to the slaughter of innocents.

"More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups," declared a document that went out a year ago under Hillary Clinton's signature, "Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide."

Other cables describe how the group responsible for the Mumbai bombings, Lashkar-e-Taiba, raise cash through Saudi front businesses, and how the Taliban and their allies work through networks in the United Arab Emirates. They report fitful progress in reducing these cash flows, the use of religious pilgrimages as cover for illicit cash transfers from the Gulf to militants and the quiet if pointed methods the United States uses to press our so-called friends for assistance.

Here we are coming up on a decade since 9/11, two years since Mumbai, bogged down in horrifyingly costly conflicts against these terrorists and the stark, perverse reality remains that the countries of the Gulf are getting rich selling us oil and then passing part of the proceeds on to bands of murderers who have sworn to attack us and our allies. They are worse than drug dealers who kill only through the deadly addiction they promote. These terror bankers and their fat, arrogant, callous royal protectors have for years placed us in double jeopardy by both promoting a different kind of dangerous addiction and then using the proceeds from that to fund efforts to kill us.

Read on

It is conventional wisdom that U.S. elections seldom turn on foreign-policy issues. Armies travel on their stomachs and so do American voters. It's all about the pocketbook. But every so often the pocketbook has a foreign-policy component, which is the case this year -- and it has led to a rather extraordinary shift.

This is the first election in U.S. history in which the most important foreign-policy issue is China. It won't be the last.

Two years ago we had one of those rare elections in which foreign policy mattered. But back then, even in the midst of an historic economic crisis, the foreign-policy focus was on the Iraq War, which served as a referendum on the Bush administration's handling of the war on terror. In 2004 and 2006, the war on terror was the dominant foreign-policy issue. In 2000 foreign policy was not central, but to the extent it played a role, it was it was all about the vision for U.S. leadership in the post-Cold War era. The 1996 vote had a similar theme, plus some focus on the ongoing small wars, notably the upsets in the former Yugoslavia. The 1992 election was influenced by the end of the Cold War and the first Gulf War. During the Reagan Era Cold War issues drove the agenda. Jimmy Carter was bounced from office largely due to his impotence in the face of the Iranian hostage crisis. Prior to that Vietnam and the Cold War were central from 1964-1972.

But during this election cycle the subject of the United States' two wars hardly came up. It is in fact, a tribute to the Obama administration's handling of those wars that, despite their potential to create the formation of political fault lines, they have not. On the contrary, they are one of the few areas in which there is a seeming confluence of views between the parties.

But if you look at campaign ads and listen to campaign rhetoric, China repeatedly arose. China was cited as our top economic rival and as an unfair competitor because of its currency policy, its potential to overtake the U.S. as a global economic leader, and especially its impact on U.S. workers. The giant sucking sound is coming from across the Pacific these days. But unlike that sound in the days of wacky Ross Perot, this time the giant sucking sound is accompanied by the ominous rumblings of a rising superpower -- that many politicians running this year had no problem framing as the United States' natural enemy in the 21st Century.

Much of it was demagoguery. But there was no other foreign policy issue that competed with it for prominence … with the exception of immigration in the border states; a coincidence that reflects a broader theme of turning inward, protectionism and isolationism that threatens to alter the fundamental nature of U.S. international engagement in the long run.

Call it what you will, but this election won't be the last in which China plays such a central role. This administration is also the first, as has been noted here in the past, for which the relationship with China was paramount among all those the United States has worldwide. It was also the first during which China played a central role in an issue outside its region -- as in the case of its important role in the Iranian nuclear issue. It was also the first during which Chinese views began to play a central role driving important international discussions -- from climate, to currency, to coordinating the global economic recovery.

It looks like President Obama's first major visitor of the new year will be Chinese President Hu Jintao. That is no coincidence either.

There are big shifts afoot this election day. And despite what you may read in tomorrow's papers, they have precious little to do with how many House seats the Republicans pick up in these midterm elections.

As I was leaving Paris on Tuesday morning, the city was hunkering down preparing for another national strike. Transport workers were going to be expressing their dissatisfaction with adjustments in their pension schemes through making commutes to the city and travel across France very difficult. But it was only the latest in a series of such protests. The country that gave the world the word aplomb responded with plenty of it, some workers staying home, others finding others means of transportation, and one seasoned Parisian explaining to me that "we have to get used to this, there will be many more to come before all this is over."

What is "all this?" He was speaking of French political battles, but he could just as easily be addressing the current wave of coming to grip with fiscal realities that is buffeting Europe, causing protests from Greece to Britain. Indeed, as Europe seeks to address the underlying causes of the crisis that nearly sent world markets into an even deeper tailspin months ago, it is clear that so much belt-tightening needs to be done and so many programs that have been taken for granted will need to be cut, that for all Europe there will indeed be many more strikes and protests to come.

In Britain, which I visited before my stop in Paris, the news was dominated by headlines from the Conservative Party Conference and the backlash to the announcement by Chancellor George Osborne that child benefits for wealthier families would have to be cut back. Notably, and with considerable courage, equanimity, and grace, Prime Minister Cameron did not sidestep the issue and indeed pushed in his keynote address for more resolve to undertake even the painful reforms that would be necessary to restore British fiscal health. "I'm not saying this is going to be easy, as we've seen with child benefit this week. But it's fair that those with broadest shoulders should bear a greater load."

At the core of his deservedly well-received speech was the message that in order to cut a deficit of 155 billion pounds, sacrifices were required, regardless of their political costs. Furthermore, and importantly, he suggested this was a national challenge, not just one for the government, "The point I want to make is this, the state of the nation is not just determined by government and those who run it. It is determined by millions of individual actions, by what each of us do, and what we choose not to do."

In today's Washington Post, Ruth Marcus, has an excellent piece entitled "The True Conservatives: Britain's Realists vs. America's Wishful Thinkers" in which she wishes that she could summon up Christine O'Donnell-like witchcraft to transform American conservatives into British Tories. She makes a powerful point. But she does not go far enough. Because if we are conjuring here, let's transform the Democrats too, please.

Read on

Reading this weekend's New York Times's article on the deftness and ease with which the rich in Pakistan avoid paying taxes, an idea struck me. Well, actually to be perfectly honest, it struck my father -- who passed it along to me. The fact that he is currently lying in a hospital being pumped full of mind-altering drugs doesn't in any way undermine the quality of the idea. In fact, it just makes me want some of those drugs. 

Because it is an idea of striking clarity and manifold levels of appeal.

In short, it may well be that two of the biggest threats facing the United States America -- the decay of nuclear Pakistan and the rise of the Tea Party movement here at home -- suggest a grand solution fraught with opportunity (and delicious ironies). 

We need to keep an eye on Pakistan, but can't officially send troops there. Further, we can't afford to keep the ones we have in Afghanistan (who are actually there to keep an eye on Pakistan ... shhhh ... don't tell anyone) there indefinitely. And beyond that, we don't want to put our valued troops needlessly at risk.  

At the same time, at home we are confronted by a new political movement whose leaders drape themselves in the flag and then proceed to espouse a worldview that is alternatively un-American (anti-immigration in a nation of immigrants, anti-personal freedoms like choice, pro-infusion of politics with religion) and ante-diluvian (anti-science, pro-vigilantism, pro-solving problems at the point of a gun). They are out of place here and lord knows -- given our history of success without them -- they are expendable.

The tea-baggers want a country? Let's give them one: send them to Pakistan. 

It's a marriage made in heaven. Admittedly, there may be some disagreement as to which heaven, but let's leave that to them to work it out.

Think of the ways the Tea-bagger worldview makes Pakistan a much more natural place for them to live than America:

• Tax Policy: As noted at the outset and in the Times article, inequality in Pakistan is growing at least in part due to one of the reasons that it is here: the rich don't have to pay taxes. Here, we can thank George W. Bush for that. There, they can thank inefficiency and corruption. But the result is the same: the U.S. government has got to cut big checks to make up the difference in both places -- as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised to do again this week while visiting Pakistan. But if the tea-baggers left and that eliminated political obstacles to actually implementing sensible tax policies in America, perhaps we could stop kiting those checks and starting writing ones we can actually cover.
• Gun Control: Sharron Angle will be in hog heaven in Pakistan. (Except for the absence of hogs, given Islamic prohibitions on the consumption of pork, of course.) But Harry Reid's certifiably loony gun-loving opponent will love the fact that there ain't no silly debates about the meaning of the Second Amendment in Pakistan. There are probably more AK-47s in the country than there are books (see how perfect this fit is?). What's more, in places like Baluchistan and Waziristan, it makes a heck of a lot of sense to actually have one than it does say, well, anywhere in the United States.  What's more, returning fire in a gun-battle with extremists seems a lot more ethically defensible than hunting moose from a helicopter. (You helicopter hunters know who you are. You can't deny it. It's irrefudiatable.)
• Religious Tolerance: Pakistan offers many provinces where the level of religious tolerance is seemingly the same as that of the tea-baggers-roughly zero. Admittedly, tea-bagger intolerance is manifest in the factually-dodgy assertion that America is a "Christian nation" founded on "Christian principles," whereas extremist intolerance in Pakistan is manifest in stoning non-believers to death.  But the distance between these two views is actually must less than it appears to be at first glance.
• Love of Foreigners-- Again, nearly zero. Angle and her Teabuddies want to shut down our borders and criminalize looking Mexican. The Pakistanis have long had their own border problems and, the recent "trade deal" with Afghanistan aside, they have had real problems getting along with their neighbors.  In fact, they are as allergic to foreign influences as America's extreme right -- and both are united in their hatred of Hollywood values and Lady Gaga.
• Foreign Policy: Quite apart from all the above reasons, there are probably mountaintops in Pakistan from which you can see the former Soviet Union. Which we know is all it takes for tea bag political hobbyists, including the Queen Tea Bag herself, to assert foreign policy expertise and affords yet another link between these two seemingly different but actually remarkably similar groups.

Here is a country with a large population committed to policies rooted in the values and outlook of centuries ago and a large group of Americans with a similar nostalgia for hangings, gunfights, superstition, racial and religious conflict and witch hunts. So theoretically, despite Pakistan's historically documented, deeply rooted strain of anti-Americanism, this may well be the one group of Americans with whom they have the most in common and thus, the ones with the best chance of building the bridge we need between our two cultures. And if we had to learn to live with less of the mean-spirited, misguided shrillness of the bagger rhetoric, I think we could handle it. And if it all ended badly for all involved, well, we could probably live with that, too.

You've got to love the 21st Century. So many interesting and unexpected twists and turns ...

Here are just a few from the past few days:

1.) From the Mother of Parliaments, Labour Pains and Something Newish

From the country that gave us Marmite and the Austin Healy comes further proof of British innovation via a watershed election that produces the ultimate in 21st Century outcomes.  After much chatter about the parts of the election that were copied from the broken U.S. political system, comes the unexpected twist of a result that American voters could only dream of: an election in which all the candidates lose. What better way to express public discontent with politicians? And really, isn't it much better than the Lib Dem victory so many people hoped for? That would have just been splitting the difference between two parties that weren't very different in the first place. The hung parliament expresses and institutionalize public disgust in ways only possible in the United States by voting professional wrestlers and stand up comics into office.

2.) And Yet, The British Vote Is the Second Most Important Election in Europe This Week

Gordon Brown squanders 13 years of Labour rule, the Lib Dems challenge the status quo and the Tories get by some measures their best result in almost 80 years and the whole thing is trumped by regional elections in Germany. Why? Because if those elections are seen suggesting a growing sentiment among Germans to further distance themselves from their EU obligations then they raise the likelihood of further unraveling in the Eurozone. Indeed, it may be seen by some as the latest evidence that the EU experiment is failing. And who can blame the Germans for not wanting to pay for extended vacations for Greek government officials with plush compensation packages after all those years the Greeks have soaked the Germans when they came to visit on their own vacations?

3.) Which Would Mean...

There is a wonderful irony hidden in Germany's reluctance to bail out its EU cousins. Could it be that the biggest problem Europe faces in the 21st Century is Germany's inclination to mind its own business? That the greatest German threat is that they actually focus their attentions within their own borders? All of a sudden the 20th Century seems so much longer than just 10 years ago. And although the German parliament voted for the bailout, German politicians will spend weeks interpreting the results of the local elections to see whether they indicate a growing resistance to such initiatives in the future.

4.) But One Continent's Crisis is Another's Boon, Part I

Of course, if we were to play out the current European crisis, we see not just problems for Europe but potential benefits for others -- benefits that is if you overlook the giant threats to the entire world economy. For example, if Greece is just Bear Sterns and Spain is Lehman Brothers and the U.K. is A.I.G...well, you get my point. Greece is floored by the Ouzo Crisis and the rest of Europe wakes up with a hang-over ... or much worse. Markets are jittery. The Eurozone is unwilling or unable to defend itself against those doubts. And the Euro itself continues to weaken for months and months to come. That's a passel of bad news in the increasingly irrelevant coulda-been capital of Europe, Brussels, and its resident bureaucrats and its lousy for European markets and economic performance but, come on, Europe, don't just think about yourselves. For example, think about the happy Chinese. The Euro going down means the RMB goes up ... and all of a sudden the Chinese currency is automatically "adjusted" for a big chunk of the world economy and the United States loses an ally in its pressuring Beijing. After all, why pressure the Chinese now when they will need their investment flows more than ever.

5.) But One Continent's Crisis Is Another's Boon, Part II

While the United States may not like that particular benefit for the Chinese, don't despair, America. There's plenty of good news here for everyone. Oh sure, a falling Euro means a rising dollar and that may be bad for our trade balances ... but we've learned to live quite happily with trade deficits for decades now. Let's keep our eye on the silver linings. The Euro falls and the dollar rises. Investors, like the Chinese, can no longer so easily make rumblings about a new reserve currency. When it comes to the dollar, the old Thatcher-era Acronym get's dusted off.  TINA: There Is No Alternative. As Europe struggles...even if the U.S. does somewhat as well ... the dollar will be seen as the only true safe haven (other than Gold which continues to rise). Investor interest in U.S. securities markets ... even U.S. Treasuries ... and U.S. real estate markets goes up. And given the correlation between the price of the dollar and the price of oil ... and faltering demand in Europe ... the price of oil goes down, thus partially blunting the upside pressure on our trade deficit while also taking the air out of inflation's tires. 

Imagine just 12 months ago if someone had told you that the dollar might be heading up right now ... and that it might be doing so for quite some time? Imagine if someone had told you that the United States could do everything "wrong" -- build huge fiscal deficits, build huge health care related deficits, spend fecklessly, endure a massive financial crisis to corruption, greed and regulatory incompetence, respond with massive deficit-building stimuli, bailout companies left and right-and that at the end of it all markets would "reward" them.  

You don't get to be the head of a country without a little luck being thrown in the mix.  (Except in the U.K. where the "winner" of the current "none of the above" referendum is almost certain to face horrific choice, be put in the position of taking much away from his "supporters" and go down in history as a victim of circumstance.) But, Barack Obama clearly has a guardian angel somewhere. He might well someday be seen as having faced a series of crises that actually end up leaving the United States --at least temporarily -- strengthened. Actually, it'll only be temporary...but it could leave us with a little breathing room to get our own house in order. 

Unless it ushers in a global depression. 

But why think about that? It's such a last century sort of a downer. This is The Silver Lining Century. So kick back, relax, go long the dollar, don't worry about your credit cards America and, while you're at it, keep buying up that vacationland in Siberia. Because as we have discovered, all it takes to make other brewing disasters -- like global warming -- our friends, is that perfect combination of a good attitude and a willingness to overlook the misfortunes of others.