print“A member of this global, glamorous elite; people who are at home in London and New York” is how Byron York wryly (and aptly) described economist Niall Ferguson (6 minutes into this clip). Ferguson has penned a Newsweek article, “Hit The Road, Barack: Why We Need a New President,“ which has infuriated the Obama-Head media. The Washington Examiner’s York set the scene for Ferguson’s defiance: “It is very fashionable among [this global elite] to support President Obama.”
From the perspective of the libertarian, Professor Ferguson’s piece is unremarkable (although, as I have said before in covering him, Ferguson’s knowledge is formidable).
On foreign policy, Ferguson accuses Obama of not being enough of a statist, which this neoconservative equates with statesmanship.
However, for a member of establishment intelligentsia to openly admit that Barack Obama doesn’t understand the issues about which he is supposed to decide; to intimate that he is the affirmative action appointee: Now, that is remarkable.
“You can’t just march in and make that argument and then have him make a decision,” Summers told Orszag, “because he doesn’t know what he’s deciding.” (I have heard similar things said off the record by key participants in the president’s interminable “seminar” on Afghanistan policy.)
Except, I have to wonder who’s the real Schmo? The man who was led to believe that he was up to the task throughout his “career” trajectory, or the enablers and sycophants who enforced Barack Obama’s self-delusions.
I recall that when, in April 15, 2011, I wrote ‘You Can’t Fix Stupid,’ readers patiently explained to me that BHO was not stupid, only evil. (Even IQ ace Steve Sailer might have been gulled.) No. I’ve always maintained that Obama was cunning, but not clever.
But there is much more to the article. Read it.
(*Schmo: From Yiddish, dull, stupid, fool.)
UPDATE: Non-writers, or armchair scribblers, will be cavalier about the comprehensiveness of the Ferguson piece. I am not, for obvious reasons. I disagree with Ferguson on many issues—for example, he cites “official” unemployment figures, rather than real joblessness, which not even the U6 statistic covers.
In addition, his notion of GDP is in all likelihood off too; official GDP numbers are a gambit.
And, as far as the Killer Drone’s actions abroad go, Ferguson objects not so much to the stealth killing of innocents, but to the loss of “crucial intelligence” assets caused by BHO’s “assassination program.”
As for Ferguson’s China fear mongering; that was addressed in an earlier critique: “Chinese mercantilism is not free trade, but is it not better than American militarism?” You bet it is.
On and on.
I understand that all Ferguson’s condemners believe they could have bested the Prof. Still, Ferguson has done a serious service in so far as he has offered the first damning case against BHO from the perspective of mainstream.
…the total number of private-sector jobs is still 4.3 million below the January 2008 peak. Meanwhile, since 2008, a staggering 3.6 million Americans have been added to Social Security’s disability insurance program. This is one of many ways unemployment is being concealed.
…In his fiscal year 2010 budget—the first he presented—the president envisaged growth of 3.2 percent in 2010, 4.0 percent in 2011, 4.6 percent in 2012. The actual numbers were 2.4 percent in 2010 and 1.8 percent in 2011; few forecasters now expect it to be much above 2.3 percent this year. Nearly 110 million individuals received a welfare benefit in 2011, mostly Medicaid or food stamps.
…Welcome to Obama’s America: nearly half the population is not represented on a taxable return—almost exactly the same proportion that lives in a household where at least one member receives some type of government benefit. We are becoming the 50–50 nation—half of us paying the taxes, the other half receiving the benefits.
…By the end of this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), [government debt] will reach 70 percent of GDP. These figures significantly understate the debt problem, however. The ratio that matters is debt to revenue. That number has leapt upward from 165 percent in 2008 to 262 percent this year, according to figures from the International Monetary Fund. Among developed economies, only Ireland and Spain have seen a bigger deterioration. Under this president’s policies, the debt is on course to approach 200 percent of GDP in 2037—a mountain of debt that is bound to reduce growth even further.
…Yet the public mistakes his administration’s astonishingly uninhibited use of political assassination for a coherent strategy. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London, the civilian proportion of drone casualties was 16 percent last year. Ask yourself how the liberal media would have behaved if George W. Bush had used drones this way. Yet somehow it is only ever Republican secretaries of state who are accused of committing “war crimes.”