It's a comedy. It's a tragedy. No one is sure who deserves top billing. There's a massive debate over what would constitute a happy ending. The frenzy over the edition of Cirque du So Lame headlining in Washington has turned everyone into a theater critic. Jackie Calmes, writing in the New York Times, sent the White House into a tizzy, for example, with her assertion that President Obama has in fact become a supernumerary in the current drama. 

Personally, I think the whole thing was scripted not by Boehner nor Reid nor Norquist nor even by the elusive Master Teabagger writing from his secret retreat somewhere near Black Helicopter, Montana, but by Eugene Ionesco, writing in Paris in the late 1950s. Back then, the play was called "Rhinoceros" and with it Ionesco helped introduce the public at large to the theater of the absurd in much the same way the denizens of the swamplands of the Potomac are doing for America and the world today. 

In the original version of the play, a town is gradually destroyed as each of its citizens, save one independent minded fellow with a healthy appreciation for wine and conversation, is transformed into a rhinoceros. Ionesco captured the thrust of what he was getting at in an interview for Le Monde in January of 1960 when he said:

I have been very much struck by what one might call the current of opinion, by its rapid evolution, its power of contagion, which is that of a real epidemic. People allow themselves suddenly to be invaded by a new religion, a doctrine, a fanaticism. ...  At such moments we witness a veritable mental mutation. I don't know if you have noticed it, but when people no longer share your opinions, when you can no longer make yourself understood by them, one has the impression of being confronted with monsters-rhinos, for example. They have that mixture of candour and ferocity. They would kill you with the best of consciences."

That was all half a century ago and in France both of which would in other moments make it all seem wildly alien to most Americans. But despite Ionesco's own observation that "you can only predict things after they have happened" he would see much that is painfully familiar in Washington today. Lines from "Rhinoceros" ring as true in 2011 as they did 51 years ago (when the play was seen as an allegory about the rise of extremist movements like Nazism). 

"There are many sides to reality," he wrote as if prescribing the game plane adopted by many players in the current battle over the role and size of American government, "Choose the one that's best for you."  Surely, this approach, used by everyone in this town in which the most dangerous entitlement program is the one that leaves everyone believing they are entitled to their own facts, is taking the theory of relativity to new depths, previously unimagined by science.    

Or, as the United States hurtles toward outcomes that were once unimaginable -- like debt downgrades and withering gridlock in what was once the world's most outstanding set of government institutions -- Ionesco offers the following dry acceptance of what follows when the absurd becomes the commonplace: "I can easily picture the worst, because the worst can easily happen."

In Washington today, the rhinoceroses are winning. Our extremists are not murderers like the jihadists we are at war with or Anders Breivik, but they are nonetheless at work on America's political system in a way that follows the pattern about which Ionesco warned.  They promote a doctrine that is a kind of solvent for facts-breaking them down and distorting them until they become unrecognizable.  They argue in the true absurdist tradition that somehow they offer a superior form of mathematics that involves only subtraction.  They deny history-whether it is the compromises of Reagan, the big-government spending of every recent Republican president, the debt-ceiling extensions of the past, or the culpability of failed Republican tax cuts and spending n unnecessary wars for creating the problem we face.  They view reason and compromise as weakness. And they claim they are helping those who they are irreparably hurting.

Magnificently ... from an absurdist perspective...they are combining inexperience, ignorance, intolerance and intransigence into a formula by which they are setting the rules for America.  They recognize that, as military strategist Ed Luttwak once observed to me, "In most wars, it's the dirtiest fighter...or the craziest...who sets the rules of the game." Regardless of the final outcome of the debt ceiling drama, a few things are emerging as new realities in Rhino DC:

• Until the election nothing will happen that involves a major spending increase or a major revenue increase. With these off the table, that means essentially nothing will happen. And if we get into a further economic downturn, that will leave all responsibility for getting us out with the Fed. QE3 is becoming more likely all the time.
• Even more likely is a downgrade of U.S. debt. Where that leads-small increases in borrowing costs or big ones-is uncertain. (See David Wessel's excellent WSJ piece on this.) But if we're honest with ourselves, we should not be surprised. In fact, if the going forward policy of the U.S. is that we can't incorporate increasing revenues in our efforts to balance the budget, then we deserve to be downgraded.
• The decision by President Obama to support the extension of the Bush tax cuts may go down as one of the worst of his first term. It was a bad compromise that set an unfortunate precedent for future deals and it was lousy economics.
• Obama has been thoughtful, reasonable, constructive and not terribly effective. As presidents go, it increasingly seems as though he would make a terrific Supreme Court justice. Jackie Calmes had it right in her Times piece.
• We need a new edition of "The Federalist Papers" that deals with the issue of tyranny of the minority.

It was all put into perfect perspective for me in a conversation with one of the most experienced diplomats currently resident in Washington who, after expressing deep concern over the current follies on the Hill, recounted a cartoon that had recently run an international newspaper which showed Hamid Karzai and another leader from the region reading headlines from Washington and wondering aloud whether America was ready for democracy.  Or, as Ionesco, observes in "Rhinoceros", "Lunacy is lunacy and that's all there is to it."

Last night I attended a dinner of old Washington hands. Some had served in high government offices, some were lobbyists, some were think tankers, some were still running for office, others were active in campaigns of one sort or another.  These were seasoned players who had seen it all … and there was fear and outrage in their eyes.

They felt the leaders of both parties had lost any sense of accountability. They were appalled by the degree to which, at a moment of national crisis, twisted notions of ideological purity and cynical politics had obliterated any focus on solving the problems at hand, on public service. Whether or not the country averts fiscal default, that we had come to this point was a sign to all that a leadership default had already taken place.

Read on

Do you think somewhere in the mind of Christine Lagarde, the newly appointed head of the International Monetary Fund, there is a voice that recognizes the truth?

Lagarde is, as noted here before, a good if not optimal choice for the job, and it is certainly about time that a woman held the post. She also understands the players and the stakes and will no doubt work tirelessly to avoid the potential new global financial crisis that is the first item of business awaiting her at her new desk. Indeed, she has already started to do so.

But do you think that, despite a career that has seen her excel in the centers of orthodoxy and the established financial system, she is aware that there are other legitimate options besides those currently being proffered to Athens? Other ways to go that deviate from the conventional wisdom about what the system will and will not tolerate?

Do you think she recognizes that there are some perfectly credible reasons that Greece should consider defaulting and taking its chances as the first state to vote itself off the euro-island?

The pressure on the Greek leadership is enormous. From the other leaders within the eurozone and from the financial community, the relentless refrain is to tighten the national belt, to take the pain, to accept 40 lashes for their profligacy. From the people of Greece, the pressure is to protect their lifestyles, the services they count on, their jobs, their futures.

The formula being offered by the rest of the eurozone is to restructure, forcing Greece to borrow more to meet obligations and then using the new funds to pay lenders. There will no doubt be some restructuring and postponing of some debt. But the real question is this: Should the borrowers be the only ones on the hook here? Should the lenders bear any responsibility for the situation? Should they also accept a burden of pain?

And that then leads to another question: What is the best path for the people of Greece? Do what the lenders want, and the result will be years of recession and deprivation. Is that the only possibility? Can Greece dare default and not pay the debt and break away from the eurozone and not feel as much pain? Can they do it and recover faster?

The conventional "wisdom" is no. Default is too costly. But very often in the past, the warnings about default have proved to be much like the warnings of parents who threaten their children by counting to three. The approach is effective. The threat of what might come after three is too great to contemplate. The children usually give in before discovering that the vast majority of parents have little plan for what happens after three and would never do anything too grievous to their children under any circumstances.

Ask the people of Argentina. They ignored warnings and told the financial community to stuff it when they were too deeply underwater to breathe anymore. The warnings were dire. And the country faced tough times … before recovering far more rapidly than was considered possible.

So long as the lenders do not agree to take a haircut, there are very good reasons that many among the Greeks will argue that they should do nothing. Borrowers bear liability in lending. That is, of course, standard. But they do not bear exclusive liability, especially in cases where lending to those borrowers is clearly and obviously excessive and the lenders should know better. That is the case not only with Greece but with many other nations right now. The borrowers counted on the "nations do not go bankrupt" principle to pile on. And the eurozone financial gurus watched as excess put the entire euro experiment at risk, often in violation of underlying terms of the European agreements -- and they did nothing. Greece bears huge responsibility for its waste and excess. But so too do its enablers, whether from the financial community or the policy community.

Greece could default and might possibly be able to eke out a recovery somewhat more rapidly and without the domestic political costs were it to do so. And because it is a real possibility (unlike the insanity of America not lifting its debt ceiling), the new IMF chief needs to consider the forces that might bring it to pass carefully: to think beyond the numbers to the politics and the human costs and the reasons that perhaps a growing number in Greece will feel abused by the system.

Not because that's the right way to go for anyone. But because it is a set of concerns she is likely to face again and again in her new post as she seeks to help stabilize an international system in which the very system that produced her is far more responsible for the excesses and abuses that are currently troubling it than most among its leaders are willing to acknowledge.

With the news this week that the Fed pumped money into European institutions during the darkest hours of the recent and continuing economic crisis without so much as a press release or a demand for better cheese prices, it is clear that even with all those big geopolitical shifts we have been hearing so much about, the United States remains the world's sole Schmuck Superpower.

Oh sure, whoever it was that was stamping "Approved" on all those requests at the Fed's "Foreign Banks Only" teller window no doubt thought it was in the self-interest of the United States to keep the global economy from imploding. But look at all the grumbling that Europeans do when asked to help preserve their own common currency and the economic health of their own neighborhood. Or, if you wish to look in the other direction, consider the not exactly Kumbaya spirit of the currency "wars" that define trans-Pacific monetary relations. In the end, you've got to wonder, what're we thinking? After all, if China is the country sitting on the biggest pile of cash and the EU is China's number one trading partner, shouldn't they have responsibility for footing the bill for all those overly cushy European pension plans that promised retirement seemingly within weeks of graduating from college?

Beijing appears to have enough money to commit $1.5 trillion dollars to prime the pumps for seven "strategic" industries (as they announced they were considering doing this week)… while we don't seem to have enough cash to pay for extending unemployment benefits for victims of the economic downturn. Mull that one over for a second: We have enough money to bail out big European financial institutions and their fat, happy shareholders, but not enough to help out struggling American families? We're paying for euro problems and unwinnable wars in the Middle East and China is saving its yuan for other activities -- like figuring out how to clean our clocks in the global marketplace of five minutes from now?

We are not just the uncontested Megapower of Schmuckdom, we are a deeply confused nation led by people with profoundly twisted priorities -- who clearly believe they report to higher powers than mere American citizens.

Today we discovered that U.S. unemployment is at 9.8 percent, that we have broken the 1980's record for most consecutive months of unemployment above 9 percent, and we are nonetheless forced to stomach the current charade on Capitol Hill in which the Republican party fights for tax cuts for millionaires while callously allowing Americans in need twist in the wind. All this, while it turns out that across town in the Fed's corner of Foggy Bottom it doesn't even take a vote to provide handouts for rich foreigners in want?

Where are the pitchforks and torches people? Where is the outrage? Don't tell me that's what the Tea Party was about. The Tea Party was clearly all tiny plastic tea cups and doilies when it comes to the real issues America faces. Otherwise, wouldn't all those champions of average Americans actually be championing the interests of average Americans right now?

On a separate point, what does it say about the idea of "European Union" that as soon as troubles bubbled to the surface in a couple countries, the discussion turns to a question of whether the Germans are likely to bail on the whole idea? Or see today's New York Times piece on the North-South divide in Europe. The reality is that the "European Union" might be a nice branding idea, but it's purely an aspirational one and seems to actually be getting farther away from a reality every day.

It took the United States 100 years and the bloodiest war in the history of mankind to finally buy into the idea that we were all in it together. The Europeans have had plenty of wars, but since around the time of Charlemagne, none of the battles were won by those fighting for the principle of unification. (Given the goals of the unifiers, from Napoleon to Hitler, that's not such a bad thing.) In fact, it was always those who wanted to unite Europe that were defeated. Ultimately, when they accepted the idea of knitting themselves closer together it was based primarily on the idea that finding shared economic interests might keep them from each others' throats and it came, even in its most advanced forms, with multiple caveats, exclusions, and protestations that real independence laid beneath the fragile superstructure of links.

So we are faced with the prospect that the wheels might come off the eurozone cart sometime soon and what do you think we'll see when that happens? Do you think we'll see the Chinese volunteer to come in and help clean up the mess? No? Not even as a way of thanking the Europeans for siding with them recently in Seoul when they decided to make the G-20 meeting about U.S. monetary policy mistakes rather than Beijing's manipulations? Or, alternatively, do you think we'll see a call for the United States to help out again, to dig into our own pockets to help solve European economic and social problems, while we fail to take even the minimum required steps to take care of our own?

Since that flickering neon sign in the West Wing says "vacancy," it's probably worth doing a little thinking about the wrong ways and the right ways to make mid-term personnel moves.  

The rumors about who might replace Larry Summers have suggested (see the Wall Street Journal) that the president is making one classic error: focusing on specific traits rather than focusing on a specific person. It may well be that picking someone who is a woman and has business leadership experience is a good idea ... but over-emphasizing one or two traits often leads to ignoring real deficiencies or people with special gifts. (Similarly, for example, making the same mistake in reverse, blocking lobbyists from jobs in the administration was not only stunningly hypocritical when hiring their employers or the people they lobbied was commonplace, but it deprived the administration of some talents they could really have used.)

Taking another seeming pattern of this White House, hiring from within -- while sometimes the exact right thing to do (see below) and often a boost for team morale -- also perpetuate problems that exist and quash changes that may be desirable. It ensures having candidates who know players and processes and who are known commodities, but the benefits shouldn't be overestimated. New jobs change people, all new jobs have learning curves and sometimes fresh blood and/or special stature may be more important than minimizing the upheaval associated with a change. 

In other words, the evidence from the few changes that have already been made within this administration (the new DNI, replacing McChrystal, replacing Orszag, replacing Romer, the buzz about the slot atop the NEC or who might replace Rahm Emanuel, etc.) has revealed worrisome personnel predispositions. With all the changes likely to come, those predispositions could significantly weaken the administration. Alternatively, learning the lessons of mid-term replacements past might well help Obama 2.0 be full of the kind of big, positive changes we all can believe in.

Let's look at the past few presidencies and see if there aren't some useful lessons related to a handful of midterm hires that have been successful:

• Wherever possible trade up
  If a president can upgrade the occupant of the job, clearly that's where he should start. George W. Bush sent a strong message that he was seriously trying to change course when he moved from John Snow at Treasury to Hank Paulson or from Donald Rumsfeld to Bob Gates. Similarly, the markets saw the move from the accomplished but very Washington-oriented Lloyd Bentsen to Bob Rubin in the Clinton Treasury as a strengthened commitment to their concerns.   And back in the day, as with Paulson, hiring from the executive suite at Goldman Sachs added luster to an appointment. While Les Aspin's early departure from the Clinton cabinet might have been unsettling, his replacement by his highly respected deputy William Perry was widely and almost immediately seen as an improvement. In the same way, Ronald Reagan's replacement of Alexander Haig with the proven, estimable George Schultz was seen as a major move toward stabilizing his State Department.

• Wherever possible hire experience
  Experience at the cabinet level, experience with the problems being faced, experience running a major enterprise, the more experience the better. Paulson, Gates, Rubin, Perry, and Schultz were all seen as proven players who immediately won confidence. Condi Rice, whatever critics she may have had, brought a deep, long-standing relationship with the president and the other members of the national security team to the State Department when she took over. Experience is why hiring former cabinet members or high level officials like Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, James Baker, or Edmund Muskie immediately generated supported during the mid-term changes in which they participated. This is also why hiring deputies to fill their former boss' jobs can make sense...but the Peter Principle needs to be remembered. The fact is that not all good deputies make good principals.

• Wherever possible hire people who send a clear message
  All hires all send a message, intentional or otherwise. Picking former Wall Street leaders sends a message you care about markets. If Warren Christopher was grey, Madeleine Albright was anything but...sending a message of new vitality at State (underscored because she was the first woman in the job.) When Larry Summers was picked to replace Bob Rubin the message was Rubinomics would live on.  ice going to State after Powell who seemed estranged from the president by the time he left, sent a message that the department would reconnect with the White House. When George H.W. Bush hired his close associate, friend and former Secretary of State and former Treasury Secretary James Baker as White House Chief of Staff it sent a message that he was going with the A-team ... it also inadvertently sent a message that he needed a special kind of help politically which suggests that sometimes, high profile appointments carry multiple messages.
• Read on

Normally, were I to find myself inclined to agree with John Boehner, my first impulse would be to call a neurologist and arrange for a CAT scan. There are few more compelling reasons for America to resist turning the House of Representatives back to the Republican Party than the prospect of Speaker John Boehner. What could be more cynical than elevating a man to the third most powerful post in the land whose primary contribution as a politician -- beyond illustrating the perils of over-tanning -- has been his vigorous commitment to doing nothing?  In the chamber that made Daniel Webster great, he is the Jerry Seinfeld -- except instead of creating a sitcom about nothing, he seems dedicated to an effort to create a Congress about nothing.

Yet, today, by accident, he stumbled upon an idea that had some merit.  He advocated the resignation of Tim Geithner as treasury secretary. Boehner's reasoning was, as usual, not reasoning at all but pure, undistilled partisan boojwah. But the idea that the time has come for a change atop Obama's economic team is absolutely right.

Obama made a concerted effort to hire the best and the brightest and I consider both Tim Geithner and Larry Summers to be members of that group. What he neglected to do, however, was to hire the most compassionate or empathetic. (As I have said before, when David Halberstam coined the phrase "the best and the brightest"  it was not a compliment but a cautionary term.)

This county is in a dark place economically unlike any I have seen in my half century or so of life. While I worry about the fiscal deficit and the trade deficit, we have seen those before and handled them. The more serious deficit we face is one that cuts to the very core of America's character: it is an optimism deficit.

Read on

I can't wait for Barack Obama's second term. 

Oh I know, 2013 is a long time from now and it would be nice to have decisive leadership to help deal with the odd double dip recession, Iranian nuclear threat, massive fiscal imbalance, remaking of the world order, that sort of thing.

But honestly, I just don't expect it. It is clear from events of the past few weeks that while it's July in most of America, it's already November in Washington. Every decision is cast in the context of the mid-term elections. No risk is too small to sidestep. No decision is too trivial to triangulate.

Getting reports of growing unemployment rolls? Compounding them with signs of sluggish growth and appalling developments in the housing market? A time for action? You might think so. But instead this president and this Congress hem and haw and propose effectively nothing. It's not just the Republicans blocking with appalling callousness the extension of unemployment benefits (while also fighting hard to ensure that big banks don't have too much of a tax burden). It's that the Democratic leadership is content to let the Republicans beat back the bill figuring they can use it against them in the election. 

Lost in all this? Oh, right, the 9.5 percent of Americans who are "officially" unemployed not to mention the almost equally large number who don't make it into government statistics. 

Is the reason for this fear of the exploding budget deficit? While one can debate the merits of government intervention vs. battling that deficit, we know the president and his team are not letting the economically disenfranchised suffer purely for reasons of economic orthodoxy. We know because there are no moves to do anything about the deficit either, other than some not terribly believable statements at the recent G20 Summit by the president that he'd hold the rest of the world to their word that they address deficit problems. In fact, credible rumors have it that Peter Orszag left in part because he did not get a warm fuzzy feeling from the president that he was going to do anything about deficit reduction any time soon. 

On energy, we had a White House meeting with congressional leaders this week that featured the passionate leader of the Senate on these issue, John Kerry, offering to compound past compromises with future ones and observations by participants that despite the president's statements regarding wanting a price for carbon there was no real belief he was going to go to bat for anything on this front prior to the election. 

On Afghanistan, following the musical chairs at HQ, we returned to the doubletalk about deadlines that aren't deadlines and exits that aren't exits and commitments that aren't really sustainable commitments?

Read on

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.

Admittedly, it's only March and early March at that. Still the year has been full of surprises so far on the Washington politics and international policy beats. So, it's only fair that the surprise winners get the credit they so richly deserve. Here are ten of them, in no special order:

• David Patterson: I know, it is hard to imagine New York Governor David Patterson as a winner when his brief term in office has vacillated between being a complete shambles and much, much worse. But look at it this way, did you ever think it possible that one man could make his disgraced predecessor Eliot Spitzer look so good, so fast? Heck, this guy makes you yearn for the comparative competence and superior values of Rod Blagoevich. In fact, we predict that the next career for Patterson -- which is likely to begin very, very soon -- will be to assist those whose reputations have hit an unexpected downdraft. If he can do what he has done for Spitzer, you can only imagine the calls he is likely to soon be fielding from Tiger Woods and John Edwards. "Caddy for me, Governor," the Woods call might begin, "and I am sure of never being the most despicable guy on the course."
• Gordon Brown: It is truly a tribute to the odiousness and vapidity of Conservative leader David Cameron that Gordon Brown, a man whose prime ministerial career has been marked by scandal and economic collapse, seems to have a chance of holding on to his job in the upcoming British elections. Despite a personality that makes him appear only in shades of grey even on high-definition, full-color television broadcasts and as something worse than that in tell-all memoirs, Brown at least has experience, a degree of international stature and a grasp of political principles that clearly distinguish him from former spin-maven Cameron, who, if he loses, will be responsible for the most significant British missed opportunity since they let their American colonies slip away (or at least since they allowed Emily Blunt to become engaged to John Krasinski).
• The Mossad: At a time when the legendary stealthy accomplishments of Israel's intelligence service were slipping from memory, along come those great press agents from Dubai to remind the world just how much the Mossad is feared by Israel's Arab enemies. Admittedly, the amount of evidence of their apparent hit job on Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh left behind by the Israelis was rather slipshod, but the effort to stir up anger against the Israelis only really serves to remind the world what an effective, dedicated intelligence service can achieve. The fact that al-Mabhouh's former aide confirmed he was a weapons smuggler doesn't help the effort to stir up moral indignation at this skirmish in a bigger, on-going war much either. Further, if the governments of the Arab world showed a fraction of the outrage over the killing of innocents that have over the execution of this Hamas militant, they might both improve their image and save the Israelis the trouble of bringing the criminals within their midst to justice.
• Hamid Karzai: Just when you thought this guy had discredited himself and his sponsors to the point of insuring his irrelevance, further proof that the opposite is actually true. In the latest chapter of "you need me more than I need you" chutzpah from this out-of-control boss of Kabul's Tammany Hall, the international community simply has rolled over and played dead while Karzai has taken over the electoral oversight commission that was created to serve as an independent overseer of the country's dirty politics. The fox has reinstalled himself in charge of the hen house and all the American government can say is: "Look, over here! Victory in Marja." Victory for what in the long-run, that is anybody's guess.
• George W. Bush: Speaking of names you felt were safely buried in the scrapheap of history, the upcoming, seemingly promising Iraqi elections have raised the specter (ugly to some of a more partisan nature than I) that Bush's Folly may be producing a somewhat more positive outcome than many predicted -- even as a better result in, say, AfPak (despite temporary victories) seems far more elusive. I don't want to say more about this because frankly it is causing my lunch to come back up a little, but then again, sometimes the truth is a little hard to digest. The invasion was still a mistake, the war a ghastly combinations of errors of judgment and execution. But admit it, if you had to take a bet right now on which would prove a more effective semblance of a democracy, Iraq or Afghanistan, which would you pick?
• The Jewish Lobbies: For many of you, seeing Jewish lobbies listed among "surprise winners" is probably also a bit difficult to swallow since you probably think that's always the way. Of course, people who believe such nonsense tend to get most of their political information from the graffiti over urinals, so perhaps they're not reading this site. Nonetheless, there are a few academics out there who have sought to suggest that the American agenda in the Middle East has been hijacked by a monolithic, all-powerful Jewish lobby. These people seemed to be briefly in the ascendancy during the first months of the Obama Administration, but circumstances have worked to their detriment. First, the one sure antidote to the naïve views of the self-designated "realists" -- reality -- set in and an administration that wanted to reach out to the Palestinians in the worst way discovered that the Palestinian Authority actually didn't have that much authority due to internal divisions. Then, the reality of long-standing divisions in the American Jewish community also manifested themselves with the rise of J-Street, a Jewish lobby that is barely on speaking terms with the State of Israel. Result: more sensible views, about both the reason for strong U.S. relations with Israel and about the myth of the Jewish lobby in Washington are starting to prevail.  
• Goldbugs: The world is probably facing the most uncertain sovereign risk picture it has seen in two decades. In Europe it's not just the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) who are looking like they've come down with macro-economic swine flu, the pandemic seems to be spreading across the Eurozone leaving all at risk. (Except perhaps the Germans who have quarantined themselves from the problem... which is not exactly in the EU spirit feel many of their neighbors.) Meanwhile Jamie Dimon of J.P. Morgan Chase is saying, "Don't worry so much about Greece, California is in much worse shape," and if the state that is world's 8th largest economy is teetering at the abyss, can the rest of a country with potentially 1000 nearly-to-thoroughly insolvent regional banks be doing so well? And China and the rest of the emerging world have their own bubbles to worry about. Where do you go when investors will soon be taking the IOUs of recently floundering Wall Street houses rather than those of the countries who bailed them out? Invest in more gold maybe. Or real estate in rapidly-warming Antarctica. A nice igloo maybe, and lots of cans of soup...
• Small Cold Countries: Speaking of gold, Canada, Norway, and Austria beat Russia, China and all but two countries of the world in Vancouver Olympic medal totals. Host Canada produced as many medals as China and Russia combined and set a new record for most gold medals won in one games by one country. Norway continues to lead all nations in Winter Olympic medals won... and it has only 4 million people, which would make it the 13th largest city in China. And smallish, coldish Korea finished 7th among competing nations, but managed to field Kim Yu-na, who history will show is the greatest woman figure skater of all time (if in fact, it is proven that the ethereal, remarkable South Korean is in fact human, which seems unlikely given most of the humans I know.) 
• Jim Bunning: Senator Jim Bunning is a baseball Hall of Famer. He is used to winning. But who could have predicted that the soon to retire 78-year-old would save his greatest victory for the very twilight of his career... or that it would occur in the United States Senate, a place where victories of any sort are few and far between. Nonetheless, Bunning, facing stiff competition, has emerged as the most odious and unlikable member of a Congress that has already gone down in history as one of the least trusted, least-admired in U.S. history. Despite voting for countless indefensible tax cuts for the rich, Bunning earned his place by choosing to make a stand and block funding for extended unemployment benefits in the middle of a national economic crisis. He defended his position, saying he was trying to force the Congress to adopt saner spending policies -- but his decision to make the stand now at the expense of the most vulnerable Americans has earned him a place atop the list of the biggest creeps the perverse American political process has yet to produce.
• Perspective: Here is the greatest surprise winner of them all. But the fact is that perspective arrived in Washington, DC with a vengeance this winter... although it was, perhaps less surprisingly, acknowledged by virtually no one. How did this happen? Well, during this past winter Washington received more snow than it has in the past five winters combined, producing wonderful colorful headlines proclaiming Snowmageddon and the Snowpocalypse with some, of course, blaming it on Snowbama. But, despite the best efforts of flat-earthers like Matt Drudge to suggest that all this snow meant global warming was a sham, the reality was that even with all the snow in DC, January went down on the books as the warmest January on record. This just goes to show, that despite the bluster and the wind and all the snowjobs in America's capital, reality is quite another story indeed.

So, here we are at last, the big ones, my choices for winners and losers of the decade on the global stage.

While these selections are slightly less subjective than, say, the Golden Globe nominations (which are, I believe, selected by three drunken expat Latvian critics in a bar in West Hollywood), they do represent just the views of one man. If you agree with those views, please post your congratulations below ... or go ahead and add a few other names. If you disagree, just remember, there will be other lists -- only I decide whether to include you among the global losers of tomorrow (alongside, say, the Tiger Woods of 10 years from now when he is running Tiger's "Just Do It" Mini-Golf Course in Melanoma City, Florida) or the global winners of the future (alongside, say, President Timberlake in 2030 or so).

The Losers

The People of Iraq: George W. Bush was our Washington loser of the decade, but all he lost was his reputation such as it was. He's still rich and will probably never pay for a round of golf again. But somewhere between 100,000 and 800,000 Iraqis are dead as a consequence of the war, the country is shattered, its government held together with chewing gum and bailing wire and the random killing continues. Oh, and there was absolutely no justification for going in and breaking up the place from the get-go. This isn't a tragedy ... it's a crime, as I suspect international courts will conclude in the years to come.

The People of Afghanistan and Pakistan: These countries are no playgrounds, they are home to plenty of bad actors and, as Barack Obama has demonstrated, no U.S. president, regardless of party, could stay disengaged from the festering political sore on the planet that is AfPak. But while the pursuit of al Qaeda and the Taliban is justified, the wars that continue to percolate here will kill countless thousands, impoverish hundreds of thousands more and at the same time, support for terrorists and other enemies of civilization will grow. That there are no good choices here is a cliché ... that there are going to be no winners is a related tragic reality.

The British Government (Lifetime Achievement Award): Well, let's book at the worst problems the world has faced during the past decade -- Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel-Palestine...what do these diverse countries have in common? They were all cooked up or stirred up by those fertile minds at the British Foreign Office and their colleagues elsewhere up and down Whitehall, either as they were dismantling their empire or fiddling with the region after one war or another. Thanks guys for your creativity...and for the foresight you showed by actually bequeathing your handwork to yet another remnant of your empire as you shuffled off the world stage so you could focus on counterbalancing your past contributions to global culture by producing Simon Cowell and the likes of Susan Boyle.

The U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Dollar, and American Capitalism: It was a tough decade for the pillars of U.S. society. We should have seen it coming when the decade began with the Supreme Court fiddling with an election and when a central theme of the Bush years became undercutting the Constitution. Thanks to the U.S. government's similar callous disregard for the laws of economics and fiscal responsibility the dollar began a downward spiral that many experts see as a semi-permanent feature of our future.

Democracy: Oh, yes, we know that Churchill called it the "worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried"... but as my grandma would have said, "there's democracy and then there's democracy." In other words, some forms of democracy are worse than others, and among those that that have flourished during the past decade are Russia, Venezuela, Iran, Zimbabwe, and, yes folks, Honduras -- where leaders took advantage of the common misperception that voting equals democracy.  

Read on

"Wait a minute..."

Those were allegedly the final words of Pope Alexander VI back in August of 1503. I was thinking of fat, old, syphilitic, corrupt, murdering, adulterous Alexander just this morning. This particular Pope, known before his papacy as Rodrigo Borgia, who had so many mistresses he makes modern America's politicians and talk show hosts look chaste by comparison, is also distinguished by the fact that he was the father of, among many others, Cesare and the notorious Lucrezia Borgia. (To give you a taste for the man, upon becoming Pope he annulled his daughter's previous marriage so he could marry her off in a lavish Vatican ceremony to a relative of one of the cardinals who supported his papacy even as rumors circled of her incestuous relationship with one of her brothers. And the Heene family thought they had what it takes to make a good reality show...)

I thought of old Rodrigo as I flipped through a pile of clippings that I had set aside during the past couple of days. I started collecting the stories last week. The first were clippings about the record round of financial community bonuses in the U.S. and in the U.K. Then, as all this was happening, was Goldman Sachs' CEO Lloyd Blankfein's FT op-ed calling for financial reform. As I mentioned before I found the juxtaposition uncomfortably calculated.

A couple days later, there was the story announcing that former Goldman Sachs' VP Adam Storch was being named Chief Operating Officer of the "new and improved" SEC enforcement division. I have no doubt that Mr. Storch is an excellent fellow and a perfect choice ... other than the fact that he worked at Goldman. Does anyone think about the optics of these things? Or more than the optics, do they ever consider just how genuinely inappropriate such a hiring might be?

Of course, that's a rhetorical question. Some people do think about it. Just not people doing the hiring in the administration. Hence the articles in my pile of clips about the big bonuses that senior advisors to Tim Geithner got from big Wall Street houses prior to signing up to help devise the plans to "fix" Wall Street. I know some of these guys very well, consider them friends, consider them eminently qualified to be doing their jobs ... and yet, something gnaws at me about all this, an insensitivity on the part of the people who were putting together the administration team about what was really at stake in the financial crisis. It seems they felt the issue was more fixing the immediate problem than it was fixing the enduring problems in a system that once again has Wall Street executives lighting cigars with hundred dollar bills while unemployment hits record levels (see Mort Zuckerman's strong piece on this in today's FT) and home foreclosure are forcing former homeowners to live on the streets as never before. In any event it seems like they were really stopping to ask whether something big had changed ... or needed to.

Paul Krugman gets it, has all along and has written about it again in today's Times. Frank Rich, in yesterday's Times wrote a column capturing some of the anger that people feel about the power of Goldman and the other big banks and the utter unwillingness of Washington to do anything other than offer the occasional talk show tsk-tsk in response to the current return to profligacy (or the return of big lenders like Citi and Bank of America to losses after a momentary, bailout induced spate of profits). 

Meanwhile, John Harwood in the Times writes about Larry Summers' wise silence on sensitive economic questions while failing to go further and ask why it was that this week's tsk-tsking assignments went to Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, and Valerie Jarrett -- successors in function to the troika that once ran Ronald Reagan's White House (James Baker, Michael Deaver and Ed Meese). On the one hand the question is interesting because it leads one to other questions, like why the folks from the president's morning economic briefing who are being most prominently rolled out are not actually the ones who are the economic professionals? Could it be that the administration political brain trust feels the economic team has lost too much credibility by their minimalist, go-slow approach to reform? I think that would be a miscalculation because the future effectiveness of Geithner and Summers will depend on their being seen as the architects of substantially (and accelerating) reforms.

(Of course another question raised by the appearance of the Big Three on the Sunday shows is whether or not the administration really is being some so Office-of-the-President centric that it is all head and no arms and legs, kind of like one of those big-brained creatures from outer space or our future that we were led to believe would evolve from societies that didn't require physical exercise. The critique, provided to me this weekend by a prominent diplomat who has lived in Washington a long time, is that the administration has no trouble coming up with ideas or giving speeches but it has yet to put an effective implementation apparatus in place. It is kind of the Marvin the Martian model of governance.)

That particular aside aside, the pile of clippings grew this morning with the Wall Street Journal noting in its particularly "fair and balanced" way that the criticism of Wall Street from Emanuel and Axelrod was more tempered than in the recent past, suggesting that at least as far as the newspaper of record of the financial community was concerned, the White House wasn't too het up about all these fat pay checks. Apparently swine flu worries us but an epidemic of swinishness does not. At least the Journal seems to hope so.

And so, reflecting on all these clips, I started thinking to myself, is it capitalism? Could Michael Moore be right? (That seems so unlikely...) It's troubling to me, a dyed-in-the-wool practicing capitalist. And I'll have to admit I am still a long way from coming to a good answer about just how we have gone wrong and what needs to be done to fix a system that is producing greater inequality than ever and that is so apparently corrupt that even those from whom you expect big reform have either been co-opted or, alternatively, are simply reluctant to toss these particular money changers out of our particular temple (the small "d" democratic one). 

But my first instincts are what brought me back to good old Pope Rodrigo the Base and Repulsive. Because it strikes me that the issue isn't capitalism per se. Because 21st Century Wall Street is to capitalism as Pope Alexander VI was to the teachings of Jesus Christ. There was a connection but it was remote and observed more in the breach than in the honoring of the essentially good underlying ideas.

And that's where I take some comfort. It's not that we need a new economic ideology. We're just in dire need of a Reformation. (Although I for one could do without some of the wars, inquisitions, and public executions of the last one.)

EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images

In a world of self-help addicts who "just feel too much," the ultimate hero was Watergate burglar G. Gordon Liddy. Never mind that the guy was a few rounds short of a full clip of ammo. He is the man who held his hand over a flickering candle flame while his flesh appeared to roast and then, when asked how he did it, responded, "The trick is not caring."

I'm reminded of this because as we contemplate this week's G20 Summit in Pittsburgh and reflect back on the breathlessness with which the entire world viewed the last two such summits, it is clear that the trick they've seemed to accomplish is that this time around we all don't seem to care so much.

That could, of course, be partially due to the fact that this event is in Pittsburgh and that not that much really exciting has happened there since Franco Harris' "immaculate reception" during an AFC Playoff Game in 1972. At least for me, even recent Super Bowl victories have lacked the gritty drama of those by-gone days as the town has become spiffier and blander. (Have you been to Pittsburgh Airport recently? It's a shopping mall where they happen to land planes.) It's not that the city isn't grittier than say, Santa Monica. It's just that I feel some of that special Pittsburgh "let's have a beer and then punch each other in the faces until we fall down" kind of charm is gradually being lost. We're not too far from the day when a little kid asks, "Why do they call the team the Steelers, Daddy?" and the father then has to explain that once upon a time the steel that went into American cars and buildings was made right here in America. (More on this last point shortly.)

Of course, the reason the meeting is in Pittsburgh has to do with at least one respect in which the region is still seen as pretty exciting to certain types of folks -- like professional politicians, for example. Obama needed Pennsylvania to defeat John McCain. And the people of Pittsburgh like our current Ambassador to Ireland Dan Rooney helped deliver for the president and the president is therefore regularly looking for ways to deliver right back. (This is not to suggest that Rooney might possibly have gotten his job as a form of political payback. His years of experience as the principal owner of the Steelers made him an obvious choice for an important diplomatic position. After all, what riddles could dealing with the Irish pose that would be more complex or challenging than say, former Steeler quarterback Terry Bradshaw's break-up with ice-skater JoJo Starbuck back in 1983.)

Rooney wasn't the only one who helped Obama, however. Which, not surprisingly, brings us back to steel again ... and in particular to the United Steelworkers. Because it is clear that it is not an accident that Obama will be using this meeting to call for new initiatives against global trade imbalances in the hometown of one of his favorite unions. Just like it's not an accident that he primed the pump for his efforts with the recent decision to impose duties on Chinese tires, an issue that was pushed most vigorously by the steelworkers. Just like it's not an accident that Obama's new manufacturing czar is Ron Bloom, who was most recently the special assistant to the president of the United Steelworkers.

Which is all by way of saying, the G20 is not in Pittsburgh either because it's beautiful (and it has its charms) or because it's boring. The G20 is in Pittsburgh because of the domestic politics of U.S. international economics. Just as Marshall McLuhan once said "the medium is the message," in this case the location is the message.

And so we return to the "trick" of this meeting. It is no small feat that while last November's G20 meeting and the one that followed it in London in April were hot topics as the world careened through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, that this meeting is viewed in a more relaxed matter. There is an emerging consensus that things are slowly getting better, that we are probably even out of recession even you read this. (Feeling better yet?) No doubt this is largely due to the market working through its fears and repricing accordingly, but the speed and scope of interventions in the United States and China and even some parts of Europe undoubtedly had some positive effect. To the extent we are not still "falling off the table" in the words of Larry Summers, the G20 leaders deserve some of the credit.

And if this turns into a sustainable recovery, none of us should begrudge them the credit they get. But the problem with tricks is that they often involve some form of well, trickery. In the case of Liddy, the (not very well kept) secret was that he was bonkers. But in the case of most sleight of hand the secret is misdirection. We look in one direction while what is important is happening someplace else.

I hope that's not what is happening with the global economy. I hope we are moving toward both a sustainable recovery and toward enacting regulatory reforms that ensure we don't make the same mistakes that led to last year's market debacle. I hope we are not looking at one set of indicators while ignoring another. But there are warning signs.

One is that while the G20 will agree on an expanded role for the IMF, national governments including our own are moving too slowly to address root causes of the recent crisis from opaque, often-illiquid but massive global derivatives markets to effectively controlling the risk appetites and exposures of large financial institutions whose failures carry with them a large risk of damage to the public at large. That's not to say some measures aren't being considered or implemented. It's saying that many of the steps-like creating more transparent markets in some derivatives -- don't go far enough. The biggest banks are bigger. New risky behaviors are being embraced. Old ones are creeping back into vogue.

In fact, I can't help but wonder if the biggest problem with the recent crisis was that it wasn't painful enough. Or that perhaps it ended too quickly to deliver effectively the lessons we ought to have learned.

Further, on the macro level there's still plenty to worry about. First, recovery will be slow. Second, those who are depending on Asia to lead us out don't realize how limited their capability is to do that. Chinese consumers are many decades away from being able to make up for any substantial fall-off in demand from Americans. And there are risk factors out there ... relating to dollar or commercial real estate markets or simply a panic induced by an exogenous event ... that could lead to serious trouble...the dreaded "W."

And finally, there's Pittsburgh. Or rather the reason we are in Pittsburgh.  I'm not sure the Obama team has irreversibly set a protectionist course. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the issue is still something of an open question. Summers and Geithner are certainly not protectionists by instinct and USTR Ron Kirk is still getting his legs under him. But many of these decisions are getting made on the political side. So it might be that we will add to the cocktail of inadequate reforms and questionable macro trends policies that can only make things worse: like getting a series of trade scrapes and scuffles that will impede recovery and make key relationships much more complicated.

Which is why, just as with Liddy's little trick, this one creeps me out a bit. The world is letting out a sigh of relief at a moment that has me holding my breath. 

SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

It used to be that the Chairman of the Fed was regularly referred to as the most powerful man in the world. This was back in the day of Alan Greenspan and, at the time, it seemed it was in spite of the fact that people seldom understood what he was saying. Subsequently, we learned it was precisely because of the fact that we didn't understand what he was saying. And then, subsequent to that, we also learned ... largely because he had the good grace to admit it ... that he himself didn't understand what he was talking about.

The downward spiral of Greenspan from philosopher king of the global economy to mere mortal caught his successor, Ben Bernanke, in its vortex. He was handed an economy in which the doors and wheels were coming off as we drove and nothing like the power he needed to deal with it. Indeed, as the current crisis unfolded we saw that the Fed chair was not the most powerful job in the world, that title was reserved for current or former ceos of Goldman Sachs. This must be so because for a while people wanted to fire Bernanke after one term in office primarily because he had inherited a mess whereas when you screw up the global economy as the current or former ceo of Goldman Sachs, people want to help bail you out or make you Treasury Secretary or both. 

I kid. It is highly unlikely any ceo of Goldman Sachs is Treasury Secretary again for quite some time. Possibly years. 

And Bernanke did earn some of the flack he got initially, largely because he was swept along in the groupthink of Washington economic honchos, buying into the "leave it to the markets" regulatory philosophy that got us into the mess we faced for far too long. But when it became clear that approach not only did not work but that real change was needed, the quiet academic stepped up and became perhaps the leading dependable voice of reasonable change. That's why there is a consensus emerging today that Bernanke, who against all odds seems to be restoring the notion of Fed Chairman as Washington's most trusted economic oracle, should be reappointed when his term in office ends. Steven Pearlstein, in a typically thoughtful piece in today's Washington Post, gets on this bandwagon and adds a few suggestions as to how to modify the Fed (as well as an absolutely justified endorsement of David Wessel's terrific new book on the economic crisis called, "In Fed We Trust.")

The growing momentum of this bandwagon has put in doubt the once conventional wisdom that Larry Summers had accepted the reins of the National Economic Council as an interim step on his way to the Fed chairmanship. But Summers has done such a good job elevating the National Economic Council to unprecedented prominence in the day-to-day operations of the White House and has so effectively earned the president's trust, that it is now almost certainly better for all concerned (including those of us out here in tax-payer land) that he stay right where he is. If there was ever a situation that called for the president to have a strong economic quarterback at his immediate side in the White House, it is this one and in Summers, Bernanke, and Geithner, Obama has got a first-rate team that has the number one criteria you need for success in each of their respective jobs -- the trust of the president.

Now, as readers of this blog know, I don't think every move they have made is perfect. I am disappointed by the speed of regulatory reform here in the United States and internationally. I think they have not done enough to address some of the underlying causes of the crisis such as the creation of massive pockets of risk in the global economy related to the development of opaque derivatives markets. I think they have cut deals with Wall Street that are too sweet for the bankers. I think they have spent too much, bought into ideas (like tax cuts) in the stimulus that amounted to political pandering and they sure haven't given the president the kind of clear guidance he needs on how to sell the health reforms that are perhaps the economic reforms we most urgently require.

That said, their job was first to stop the bleeding and to stabilize the patient. It was no easy task and what they did in terms of swift and sweeping intervention, while imperfect ... almost necessarily imperfect given the speed at which they were operating ... has seemed to work. I still fear a second dip of the recession ... the "W" rather than the "V" shaped recovery. But today's papers show Germany and France creeping out of recession. Japan may too. Economists (a group with limited credibility at the moment, I must admit) seem to think we are at least plateauing here in the United States too. So I think it is fair that this team get credit for their efforts. 

Frankly, I hope that the initial success they seem to have achieved emboldens them. If anything they have seemed too deferential to the Congress and to Wall Street and once stability seems assured aggressive measures to rein in the budget deficit, further strengthen regulatory oversight and strengthen international regulatory mechanisms will be called for with the same urgency that stimulus measures were called for earlier this year. 

We have seen the dangers of too much deference to the markets, of regulatory indifference, of not believing that government could or should play a significant role in protecting our national interests by identifying and mitigating market risks with broader macro or social consequences. I hope the president makes the early decision to keep everyone where they are so that they can focus on the next wave of reforms that are so urgently needed.

(And to be clear, does the above actually suggest that I want a bigger role for governments in market regulation, stronger global governance mechanisms, tax increases if we need them in addition to substantial spending cuts and that I am a fundamental believer that government also needs to play a much expanded role in ensuring sustainable health care...which optimally would be through a single-payer system that is not even on the table at the moment ... and preserving the environment ... ideally through a simple, straightforward and substantial carbon tax? Yes, it does. Start rolling out your labels if you would like, but if the recent crisis has taught us anything it is that we can't afford the reflexive rejection of government solutions where they are needed ... rather we need to rise to the challenge of figuring out how to make governments more effective in these critical roles that only they can play.)

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

In its obituary of the famed and beloved Columbia philosopher Sidney Morgenbesser back in 2004, the New York Times wrote:

In the 1950's, the British philosopher J. L. Austin came to Columbia to present a paper about the close analysis of language. He pointed out that although two negatives make a positive, nowhere is it the case that two positives make a negative. 'Yeah, yeah,' Dr. Morgenbesser said.

Austin was clearly unprepared for Morgenbesser. But he was also clearly unfamiliar with diplomacy in which the double positive can be deadly. 

For example, on one level, if you are an ally like Israel, you might think that the only thing better than being visited by one senior U.S. official (say, Secretary Gates) would be another visit in the very same week from another senior official (say, National Security Advisor Jim Jones). Even better would be adding yet another bit or two of senior level attention, say that of Mideast Negotiator George Mitchell or NSC Mideast guru Dennis Ross. But four times the high-level visitors are hardly four times the fun, or to put it another way, one high level visit is an honor but four in a week is a serious sign of trouble.

While all the visits to date have produced upbeat official statements at their conclusion, behind the scenes it is clear that concerns about the Israeli stance on Iran and the Netanyahu stance on settlements has pushed this relationship to what may be one of its lowest ebbs in modern memory. As one Israeli said to me, "We spent half the Bush administration complaining our issues weren't getting any attention. Now, we're starting to look back on being neglected as the good old days..."

Also, of course, too many envoys raises another question, "if your government speaks with one voice, how come I am hearing so many voices?" This is related to another classic set of double-positives encountered in politics and diplomacy, the problem of too many chiefs. For example, having copresidents of an organization doesn't mean having twice as much leadership, it usually means half as much…or less. 

Which brings us to another instance this week in which the positives have been signs of the negatives: the U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue, which is cochaired on the U.S. side by both the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury. As Glenn Kessler wrote in the Post today:

On Monday, about 200 senior Chinese officials traveled to Washington and heard soothing words of reassurance from U.S. officials: The dollar is still sound, your investments are safe and we are working really hard to restructure our economy.

Such is the nature of the U.S.-China relationship today. Behind all the reassuring language is a nervous sense that the fate of the world economy is increasingly dependent on the United States and China working together.

In other words, it's our turn to sing "Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing" which, of course, means, in the best interpretation, that our partners the Chinese are worried and at worst means, "worry!" (How things have changed since we were beating them up about their economic management.) Certainly every reassurance we offer is more a sign of an underlying concern than it is a true positive statement about the economy. Thus, the more positives, the more worries. 

This, in turn, brings another Morgenbesser anecdote to mind, also recounted in his Times obit:

In the 1970's, a student of Maoist inclination asked him if he disagreed with Chairman Mao's saying that a proposition can be true or false at the same time. Dr. Morgenbesser replied, 'I do and I don't.'

Mark Wilson/Getty Images