"Check It Out" for Wednesday, February 25th
Juan Cole at Informed Comment writes about the $900 million the US will announce it is giving to Gaza at the donors' conference next week.
"Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will announce at the Gaza donor's conference next week that the US will give $900 million to help rebuild the Gaza Strip. That is about a billion dollars.
"It is obvious why Clinton is making this gesture. The United States's name is mud in much of the Muslim world because Washington supported to the hilt Ehud Olmert's brutal assault on the people and civilian infrastructure of the Gaza Strip. Gaza was already a blockaded and abused slum before the war, where 15% of the children were undernourished. Bush urged Olmert on, and Obama has been silent.
"So at least the US can spend some money to restore to the Gazans the basic prerequisites for a decent life."
Dave Lindorff at Counterpunch writes about Ben Bernanke and Wall Street or as he subtitles the piece: "The Blind Leading the Blind."
"Free market aficionados, particularly in the media, have long been wont to tell us that the "market knows best." That was always the line when progressives (remember when there used to be progressives in government?) would come up with some do-good scheme like a public jobs program during the Johnson War on Poverty, or Medicare, or bigger subsidies for urban mass transit. If the stock market sank, they'd pronounce whatever program or bill it was as a bad idea, because "the market" (meaning investors), had nixed it by selling shares.
"The same kind of analytical brilliance has been routinely ascribed by economic pundits to investors when it comes to business decisions--particularly mergers and acquisitions, or divestments and breakups. If Bank of America announces that it is going to buy the foundering Merrill Lynch and shares of B of A fall, then the merger is a bad idea. If the shares rise, it's a good idea. And so it goes.
"The whole idea that a bunch of people who sit around at computer screens betting on stocks and eating cheese doodles all day really know much of anything, or that taking their herd responses collectively as some kind of delphic oracle has always seemed the height of folly to me.
"There was every reason to expect the downward trend to continue, but up stepped Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke, and, in a statement presented in Congress, said that in his considered view, the current recession could be over by the end of this year.
"But wait a minute! Isn't Ben Bernanke the same guy who was chair of the Fed last year and the year before? The same chair who completely failed to see the coming credit crisis and global financial collapse? And if that's the case, why on earth would investors take seriously anything he says about the future direction of the economy?
"You'd have to be in a state of glycemic overload to believe anyone who told you that this recession, which is just starting to really roll downhill, is going to be over by the end of 2009...
"I'm no economic prognosticator, but I do know that this economy is not about to bounce back. The whole American public is now in a hunkered down, defensive position, hoarding money, worrying about losing employment, struggling to pay bills. Consumers, whose activities accounted until recently for 72 percent of US GDP, have lost upwards of $8 trillion in lost investments and shriveled home equity. That's not an environment that sets the stage for a recovery.
"Bernanke is talking through his hat."
Marcus Stern at ProPublica writes about the hubris of former number 3 at the CIA, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, who will be sentenced this week for his role in the Randy "Duke" Cunningham criminal scandal which touched CIA covert operations.
"Court documents released this week in advance of Thursday’s sentencing of former CIA Executive Director Kyle "Dusty" Dustin Foggo provide a remarkable glimpse into the mindset of the key players in a sordid drama involving corruption that reached the highest levels of the CIA and touched the agency’s most sensitive and secret covert operations [1]in the war on terror.
"Depositions show that Foggo had his sights set on succeeding Randy "Duke" Cunningham in Congress, even after the former war hero and champion of defense spending had fallen from grace, bilking – for years – the very same defense budgets that he defended passionately from the well of the House. They show that Foggo was appointed to the CIA’s No. 3 post despite a checkered history with the agency. And they show that even as Foggo was defrauding the government the agency gave him three monetary performance awards worth a total of $24,280.
"While Foggo was serving as chief of support at "an overseas location" from 2001 until 2004, his station chief, John Doe # 2, was summoned by the U.S. ambassador to that country. The ambassador had received a diplomatic protest from local law enforcement authorities who said Foggo had blocked a bicycle path with his car. A bicyclist who had to dismount and walk his bike around Foggo’s car slapped the hood of the car in irritation. Foggo rushed the bicyclist from behind, knocked him off his bike and hit him in the face, the police alleged.
"More from John Doe # 2: "In addition to the incident of the assault on the foreign national, Mr. Foggo came to my attention because he failed to report a number of his contacts with foreign national women. As a matter of security, the Agency requires overseas personnel to report any ’close and continuing contacts’ with foreign nationals, to guard against espionage and compromise of national security information. I made clear to my staff that the 'close and continuing contacts' included any romantic or sexual encounters with foreign nationals. Mr. Foggo on several occasions failed to report his ongoing contacts with local women."
"And John Doe #2, again: "I was flabbergasted when Mr. Foggo was selected as Executive Director. I found Director Goss’s selection to be quite revealing, that Mr. Goss would be taken in by a 'con man' like Mr. Foggo."
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