Given CATO's theory that trade deficits are linked to low unemployment, Egypt should have a severe worker shortage by now.
Posted on 07/05/2013 8:58:48 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The sequel — call it “Dumb and Dumberer” — is still playing on CNN and Fox News. No matter: the important matters are now in the competent hands of Prince Bandar, whose judgment I prefer to that of John Kerry or Susan Rice or John McCain any day of the week. The best-case scenario would be for the grown-ups in the region to ignore the blandishments of the Obama administration as well as the advice of the Republican establishment, and to do what they have to do regardless.
Americans who want to conduct a great experiment in democracy will have to take their laboratory somewhere else.
Update:
Why can’t we get 14 million people into the streets to proclaim that Obama is an idiot like the Egyptians did? Over at ZeroHedge, Jim Quinn posts pictures of the banners in the mass demonstrations. They are inspiring. One read: “Obama you jerk, Muslim Brotherhoods are killing the Egyptians, so how come they can guarantee you the security of Israel. Hey Obama, your deal with the Muslim Brotherhood is unsuccessful. Obama you idiot, Keep in mind that Egypt is not Muslim brotherhoods and if you don’t believe that go and see what’s happening in Tahrir Square now.” Another reads, “Obama, your bitch is our dictator.” A picture of Hillary Clinton read, “Hayzaboon [ogre] go home.” Many banners simply read, “Obama supports terrorism.” Others were too harsh to mention in a family site. Happy 4th of July!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Spengler is channeled by David P Goldman. His book How Civilizations Die (and why Islam is Dying, Too) was published by Regnery Press in September 2011. A volume of his essays on culture, religion and economics, It’s Not the End of the World – It’s Just the End of You, also appeared that fall, from Van Praag Press. He is an Associate Fellow of the Middle East Forum.
Morsi was elected with 9 million votes. If the MB has 40 million supporters, why didn’t they vote?
Have you seen any of the big-mouthed imams leading the cheers for Morsi? Of course not; they only encourage others to die. The crowds aren’t so big when the Egyptian Air Force is flying over them.
Morsi was never beloved even by the MB. He was their Mitt Romney and they wanted someone more radical. Morsi was seen as an American puppet.
No good will come of any of this at all.
The other thing to remember is Morsi was elected with 9 million votes in a run-off in which the only other choice was an old Mubarak crony, and only after promising all the sorts of things Obama and the nit-wits in Foggy Bottom though Egyptian democracy would bring, on which promises he and the Muslim Brotherhood promptly reneged, most egregiously drafting a constitution without any input from non-Sunnis (or even non-Muslim-Brotherhood non-Salafist Sunnis) and forcing its adoption by a simple majority vote.
The folks who didn’t vote for Morsi in the first round (and even some who did), representing a sizable fraction of those 9 million, turned against him over those broken promises and his failure (noted in stark terms in the article) to do anything to fix the Egyptian economy, so the Egyptian Army chiefs, I think rightly, decided that they had majority support to remove him. Recent events there are some odd mixture of military coup and informal recall election.
Given CATO's theory that trade deficits are linked to low unemployment, Egypt should have a severe worker shortage by now.
Given CATO's theory that trade deficits are linked to low unemployment, Egypt should have a severe worker shortage by now.
Socialist governments have a long history of disposing of segments of the population they don’t want or who doesn’t support them. The question is what does the democrats and rinos have planned for the Conservatives?
FYI
True but Spengler leaves out the key examples.
In Europe, the efforts of the ruling class to replace Europeans with Moslems/Third Worlders. "A people can recover from an economic crisis or a war but not from the replacement of its native population: without French, there's no more France." Génération Identitaire
In the US, the same thing, begun by Teddy Kennedy's immigration "reforms" and to be continued by the current ones.
Off hand I’d have thot international payments was pretty low on Egypt’s list of concerns, but no way we can say it was their trade deficit that caused the coup...
The notion that this band of Jew-hating jihadi thugs might become the vehicle for a transition to a functioning Muslim democracy was perhaps the stupidest notion to circulate in Washington in living memory.
He's right on the above...not even second stupidest - but absolutely THE stupidest.
Something that we're starting to lose over here with our thuggy FBI, IRS and Homeland Insecurity.
Well it’s the unemployment and high food costs that caused the coup.
The question is what caused the unemployment and high food costs?
In Egypt’s case, I think their is a spiritual cause that trumps economic policy. Their land is a desert, like most Muslim lands, because they have rejected God’s truth in favor of a lie.
But I bet Egypt has pursued the same free trade policies that the U.S. has been practicing and recommending to others. Thus the lack of other industries and the high trade deficits.
Well it’s the unemployment and high food costs that caused the coup.
The question is what caused the unemployment and high food costs?
In Egypt’s case, I think their is a spiritual cause that trumps economic policy. Their land is a desert, like most Muslim lands, because they have rejected God’s truth in favor of a lie.
But I bet Egypt has pursued the same free trade policies that the U.S. has been practicing and recommending to others. Thus the lack of other industries and the high trade deficits.
As Communist writer Bertolt Brecht offered after East German workers rose against their Moscow-backed masters in 1953, perhaps the Egyptian government should dismiss the people and elect a new one. Don’t laugh. Mexico did this after the debt crisis of the early 1980s: it dismissed the fifth of its population that moved to the United States. China has dismissed its rural population and recreated a new urban population, by 2020 shifting the equivalent of twice the American population from countryside to city. Egypt’s problem is that it has no practical way of acting on Brecht’s advice. The Egyptian people are dying; the question is whether they will die slower or faster. I prefer slower, so I am pleased by this turn of events. Starvation is the unstated subject of this week’s military coup. For the past several months, the bottom half of Egypt’s population has had little to eat besides government-subsidized bread, and now the bread supply is threatened by a shortage of imported wheat. Despite $8 billion of aid from Qatar and smidgens from Libya, Turkey, and others, Egypt is struggling to meet a financing gap of perhaps $20 billion a year, made worse by the collapse of its major cash earner -- the tourist industry. Malnutrition is epidemic in the form of extreme protein deficiency in a country where 40% of the adult population is already “stunted” by poor diet, according to the World Food Program. It is not that hard to get 14 million people into the streets if there is nothing to eat at home.
For the past several months, the bottom half of Egypt’s population has had little to eat besides government-subsidized bread, and now the bread supply is threatened by a shortage of imported wheat. Despite $8 billion of aid from Qatar and smidgens from Libya, Turkey, and others, Egypt is struggling to meet a financing gap of perhaps $20 billion a year, made worse by the collapse of its major cash earner -- the tourist industry.
That's pretty awesome.
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