Irwin Stelzer - Times Online - WBLG

Venice, the Euro and the Struggling Americans

"Wonderful city. Streets full of water. Please advise" Robert Benchley wired his editor at the New Yorker over 50 years ago. Today's visitor might instead inform friends, "Wonderful city. Wallet empty of money. Stay away."

The New French Connection

Tony Blair thinks he has a soul-mate in Nicolas Sarkozy. So does George W. Bush. Which is understandable. Anyone would be a relief after the Anglo-Saxon-hating Jacques Chirac, who considered it a major political triumph to embarrass the United States, and thought it amusing to dismiss the British as a country with inedible food, and that had made only one contribution to world agriculture: mad cow disease. This from the man who presided over the most inefficient system of agricultural subsidies and protectionism that could be devised by any bureaucrat or politician, with dire consequences for the world’s poorest farmers.

Energy Policy, Corn Tortillas and Beer

A professor-friend of mine tells me that he is offering a course this semester on energy policy. What makes that noteworthy is that such courses were dropped from the curricula of most universities long ago because of lack of student interest. Oil gluts might produce angst in producing countries, but low prices and ample supplies produce joy and complacency in consuming countries.

The American Election Will Be About More Than Iraq

It is difficult for most people around the world to grasp two important facts about the US presidential elections, scheduled for November 2008. First, a crucial, if not the crucial phase will be just about over in less than a year. By next February about half of the delegates to the nominating conventions of the two parties will have been chosen in primary elections around the country. That means that right now the candidates are scrambling to raise the $10 million per month they will need to get their messages across. Which is why Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton are enganged in a battle for access to the deep pockets of Hollywood moguls.

London and New York City: Not the Only Place to Go For Money

The competition between New York City and London threatens to get out of hand. New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, a billionaire capitalist, recently trekked to London to see how Red Ken Livingstone, the communist-loving mayor of London, a fan of Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, hate-spewing Muslims and other such worthies, runs things. Well, not precisely. But he did come to see how London is managing to woo business from New York at an alarming rate. “London is gaining on us in area after area,” moans Bloomberg.

Father Christmas Heads for America

I won’t repeat here the outlook for Christmas sales reported in my Sunday Times column (26 November, 06) except to say that retailers seem to have big smiles on their usually sad faces. Porsche dealers in New York can’t wait until those multi-million dollar bonus checks begin raining down on Wall Street’s brokers and bankers. Property agents are scouring the market for “merchandise” to show customers interested in mini- and not so mini-palaces in New York’s finest buildings, especially those with spectacular views of Central Park. Five million gets you a “fixer-up” that your decorator might be able to turn into a habitable abode to which you will be willing to invite colleagues to view your latest acquisition-at-auction of a painting by an artist whose name might still be an art-world by-word a decade hence -- or who it is equally likely will have descended to the ranks of the obscure.

Raise Green Taxes, Lower Others

Sure we need green taxes.  But that’s not a green light for the Government to dip its fingers even deeper into our wallets and purses. Britain is already one of the highest taxed countries in Europe, and heading up while others are heading down. If the Government can’t get by taking over 40% of all the wealth the private sector creates, we should get a new Government.

Sharing the Gains of Creative Destruction

Change. Hero or villain? Love it or hate it? The unequivocal answer is -- it depends.

When it comes to the world’s economies, there is no question that change is the route to rising living standards. The great economist Joseph Schumpeter once called the changes that rip through most economies “a gale of creative destruction”. He was right.

The American Dream: Challenged But Not Defeated

America’s rich are getting richer, its middle class is treading water, and the poor aren’t climbing the income ladder as rapidly as they did in years gone by. Meanwhile corporate profits are breaking records, GM, Ford and Intel are laying off thousands, and executive compensation is on the rise. Is that reason to believe that the famous American dream has not turned into a nightmare? Perhaps, but only perhaps.

Turmoil in Oil Markets

Let’s look at what a period of relative calm and falling oil prices looks like.

The New Philanthropy

We should give two cheers for the Bill Gates-Warren Buffett decision to pool their fortunes for the good of mankind.  But only two, for the reason set forth in the linked article.

Inequality in America and at The Economist

In a nation in which news is often filtered through the relentlessly leftwing prism of the BBC, The Economist is an island of apparent balance. Or is it?

Brown vs Cameron

Sooner or later Britain's voters will have to make a choice: Gordon Brown, or David Cameron.  If Brown retains his high-tax, regulation-writing proclivities when he moves from No. 11 to No. 10, and Cameron his policy-lite campaign, potential voters would have good reason to wish a plague on both their houses.

But if Brown finally signs on to a reform agenda, and holds the line on taxes, while Cameron discovers a few deeply held beliefs, British voters will be spoilt for choice.

The Message of United 93

It’s a pity that more people in Britain won’t go to see United 93, a pitiless reconstruction of the fate of 40 passengers at the hands of four Arab Islamic terrorists aiming their flying bomb at my nation’s Capitol. Not because the movie would make them angry, which it probably, but not certainly, would. (I say “not certainly” because I have been at chattering class dinner parties at which otherwise intelligent people blamed September 11 on “America’s beastly treatment of the Arabs”, or on Israel.)

Italy's love affair with the euro is due to cool

The execrable Giscard d’Estaing is at it again, this time to offer a new definition of democracy. France, he argues, has not rejected his proposed European constitution – because 45% of the people voted for it, and only 55% said “no”. This effort to revive the constitution – or constitutional treaty as it was finally dubbed – should not go unnoticed. It comes at a time when the European project’s totemic creation, the euro, is under threat.

Neoconservatism Revisited

Francis Fukuyama's attemp to run away from his past positions, while denying he has done so, is only one flaw in his latest book.  The other is the lack of any plausible suggestion for a coherent foreign policy for America, as I point out it the Literary Review

Reviving Neoconomics

The Bush administration is in the process of refreshing its ranks with new – or almost new – faces. Good idea, as competent implementation and effective communication have not been its strong points. But it will also have to refresh its policies: what worked in 2000 won’t necessarily work for compassionate conservatives in 2006.

Legislative paralysis upsets US voters

Congress will soon be returning from its Easter recess, and if its members have been doing what they say they have been doing they will be a crestfallen lot. Before adjournment the Democrats in the Senate managed to scupper a compromise immigration bill that would have bolstered border security and laid out a path to citizenship for the 11 million illegal immigrants living and working in America. Result: no action.

A brawl between Republicans who want to rein in spending, and Democrats and Republicans who have never met a spending programme they disliked, stalled agreement on a budget. Result: no action.

Petrol prices soared 25 per cent while congress maintained swingeing tariffs on imported ethanol, an anti-pollutant additive, and at the same time mandated increased use of ethanol in petrol. Prices up, motorists angry, congress impotent because it cannot agree on a sensible energy policy. Result: no action.

There’s more, but you get the idea – a restless electorate, a paralysed congress, and an election approaching. We may well see some real changes in the makeup of congress come November.

The Doha round of trade-opening talks is stalled. The EU won't match America's offer to eliminate trade-distorting agricultural subsidies, the developing countries won't open their markets to services, and China won't stop stealing intellectual property. So America will concentrate on bilateral deals: those completed and in the works cover 54% of America's exports. And it will do some tough talking to China's president when he visits the White House on April 20.

Condoleezza Rice's Visit

American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s tour with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was scheduled to let her see what life is like for her UK counterpart. And different it is. Straw has a constituency to tend, and the people who sent him to Parliament want their potholes filled and their visa problems solved. Rice has a one-man constituency – the President of the United States, and he wants her to win support for US policies and help him craft a post-Iraq foreign policy. Right now, Rice needs Straw: Tony Blair’s popularity in America makes his continued support of US policy in Iraq crucial to its success.