"Civilian National Security Force"?

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Spies, snoops and Gauleiters.

ruveyn

I've never seen such differing opinions over a person as I have with Obama. No other person has been both referred to as the second coming of Christ and the anti-Christ (which incidentally is actually a composite character of multiple evil figures in the Book of Revelation).

He's a mortal, just like the rest of us. I voted for him because I felt he would make a better president then McCain, not because he would wave a magic wand and fix all our problems instantly. And at the same time I know he's not a secret Muslim, terrorist, atheist, zombie, psycho as the far right would have you believe.

Since McCain was a bad joke Obama was the only choice. So far he's looking rather funny also.

Obama's goal was to be President. He has no idea of what to do. Or if he does have an idea it is not likely to work. His strategy is to throw money at our problems and hope that some sticks.

ruveyn

Maybe because the true power people are behind the president and unseen by most US citizens.

Actually the cabinet he has chosen is rather revealing.

It reveals, among other things, a bad vetting process. Imagine hiring a tax evader to be secretary of the treasury. His cabinet is a rag-tage bunch consisting of Clintonian retreads, affirmative action poster children and god knows what else.

ruveyn

There is more a structural than a personal problem: in modern democracies the voter assumes and demands from the government to do something. This tendency in Europe even stronger than in the US.

There is a severe crisis, in which I would say that the government could do currently is just nothing or minor thinks like easing the situation for newly unemployed. But image a president (prime minister, chancellor) standing in front the parliament or the press and say: "I can't do any ting here." His approval rates would drop drastically and this is for a modern politician worst than risking the middle term stability of the government finances.

But this the same after 9/11: If Bush would provide the US with a reasonable analysis, the only think he could say: Ok, such horrible thinks happen, we had to live with it and the government can't do here any thing. Instead ...

The problem is not Obama or Bush or Brown or Merkel how ever hold this offices, the problem are expectation of the people that the state can fix everything. The state can ease issues, sometime the state is needed for infrastructure etc, but there is a widespread misconception that the state has nearby magic powers.

You mean ... *dramatic music* ... the Men in Black?

As usual, you are right on the mark.l

The notion that the State is the most important or most efficacious element of society is one of the nastier memes that has developed over the last century (perhaps for even longer). What Hobbes postulated as a means of keeping people from killing each other has become the ruination of any kind of a free society.

ruveyn

Then shall we assume the elected government is totally powerless before economic events that descend like natural disasters and we should all rid ourselves of the function of voting or manipulating the economy and sit on our hands and await the blessings or disasters of an uncontrollable fate? Whatever happened to analysis and comprehension of cause and effect?

This would be the other extreme, which in my option also false. Governments have their influence, they can provide the framework in which economy can work: The legal system, the infrastructure, the education standards, I would also count a social security network into the frame work, because a worker which can "fall back" on such a system is more likely to take risks.

Governments have also a place in to ease consequences of e.g. a depression for the single person. But if governments try to fight against major corrections of the markets (and the current crisis is such a correction by a rapid re-valuation of asset prices) they will cause more problems than they can solve.

An other problem are mere political payments, especially, but not exclusive wars. Such payments must be in reasonable relation to the tax revenue. When e.g. the richer EU-States are paying for their poorer member states and it paid out of the 1% VAT the EU gets, the relation is still well manageable. When Germany paid over nearly the last 20 years in the excess of €1'000 Bio. for the unification, it was perhaps the absolute limit for a political motivated payment for Germany (with severe consequences for Germany). What the Bush-II-administration did was to lower the taxes and raised the political motivated spending without giving the tax payer the bill. This on the short term convenient way, which was instrumental for winning the second term, bounces back now. And here is the main difference to Germany: In Germany they borrowed money, but they also raised the taxes and cut public spending elsewhere, so the government finances are still quite sound and "German Bund" are still regarded as the fool-prove-lowest-interest investment within the Euro-Zone.

I do neither deny that government must play a role, nor I would say that government intervention is the cure for everything. But the current situation is caused primary by government spending and raising this spending can't hardly be the fix.