Fratricide, troglodytes and Neanderthal Man..

Fratricide is the order of the day as our four paragons of hedonism assassinate each other's character at the Florida debates. Ron Paul seems to be the only one enjoying himself. Rick Santorum shows positive signs of improving, but remains too wet behind the ears, to earnest and too much like junior grade candidate.

New was seriously holed in the Thursday debate by a renewed, testier and invigorated Romney who had clearly, and finally, done his homework. Not once was he caught flat-footed although he and Newt both looked a bit meek when Rick Santorum chastised them for pursuing irrelevancy through their personal attacks on each other.

Just as Newt has his debating 'moment' in South Carolina and went on to win, the pundits say Mitt has countered with several 'moments' and is slated to win hands down. This is an important win because in Florida, whoever wins takes all the delegate votes. You may recall that by comparison, South Carolina apportions them to each candidate.

Yes, the Haditha raid was a travesty as was the military tribunal that only managed to slap a wrist or two. My call is that such things happen in war, and indeed in peace, as our race still contains traces of troglodyte and Neanderthal behavior. I am afraid there is a lot of it in some of us and a little of it in most of us.

The lesson we will not learn from Iraq is that we engaged ourselves militarily in a civil war and caused massive death and destruction, and departed leaving the country still in the throes of its civil war. Afghanistan is the same thing all over again. One would think that after Korea and Vietnam, we would have been the wiser.

State of the Nation

The recent SOTU speech proved a microcosm of O himself; a world class con man or a dedicated reformer. I admit to a certain vulnerability when it comes to believing profound oratory skills, and O certainly possess them.

His critics charge O with stirring up class warfare in his efforts to balance national incomes which are currently and decidedly favoring the wealthy. We suffered heavily from Wall Street greed, falling stock markets and depreciating investment values and I directly blame the finance and banking people for our losses. We are not alone and the reduction of the middle class in American is becoming legendary.

The rightists argument is that they need tax breaks and incentives to generate income to create and upgrade American commerce and industry and in the process create jobs. There is some historical evidence to suggest this strategy has proven itself, e.g. under President Reagan's tax cuts back in the 80's. Today, every single candidate on the right is an avowed, dyed in the wool acolyte of Reagan economics.

A case in point. Last year, Gingrich paid taxes to the tune of 30% which is the legislated level for millionaires. Few, like Romney, pay at this level as loop holes such as reduced capital gains tax assessments and write-offs from charitable investments legally permit them to pay less. Romney paid about 14% of his income in taxes. His income, by the way, was almost entirely from capital gains and he donated heavily to church and charity.

I believe in a progressive income tax in a capitalist and democratic society. We have such a system, but it is riddled with exemptions, exceptions, and loop holes legislated by the rich and favoring the rich. Thus, Warren Buffet, one of our richest, pays income taxes at the 15% level; less, he notes, than the level paid by his secretary.

I agree with O's appeal to the people that the wealthy should pay their fair share of income taxes. This means closing loop holes. It also means that churches and charities will seriously suffer. I believe we need to rebuild the middle class and do more to improve the lot of our expanding poor population. I don't mean more in the sense of welfare, handouts, food stamps and other entitlements, but rather job training, job creation, reducing outsourcing with a view toward employing that part of the population willing and able to work.

Many commentators have oft observed that one of America's great strengths as a nation is its strong middle class. I see the wisdom in this and am content to tolerate a fringe group of slackers on the lower side of the economic scale and another fringe of super rich on the other. This equation has been seriously altered as you know and we are now in need of redressing the balance. In short, I support O's plan to exact greater tax payments from Americans earning more than a million a year who pay less than their tax bracket demands.

Aid to Pakistan, abuser of women?

Inevitably a case of a young woman having her nose and lips cut off in Pakistan has brought out the usual crop of SIFS who maintain that the offence is normal, acceptable, and part of Islam. True this is not an isolated case but the fact that it made the front pages is alone a contradiction of this view.

A frequent error when commenting on current affairs is to draw a general conclusion from a particular circumstance, setting off a chain of faulty logic.

Violence and atrocities are committed against women in Pakistan. Pakistan is a Muslim country. Therefore Muslims commit violence and atrocities against women, therefore Muslim men are evil, therefore Islam is an evil religion. Therefore Pakistan is not entitled to foreign aid because we should not support such a regime.

Muslims don’t speak out against the many evils committed by their co-religionists, therefore they sympathise with them, even support them.

So let’s first try to get a perspective and understanding of Pakistan..

Pakistan is ungoverned and mostly ungovernable. The FATA where the Talban was left to its own devices even under the Raj. Pakistan has never been a viable state; it has been run by the military for a very large apart of its history; civilian governments have always been irredeemably corrupt. The civil administration is rotten from top to bottom. Cruelty abounds in an almost casual fashion. The economy is controlled by the ‘400 families’; the two main political parties are family fiefs.

There are two Pakistani states; one is the formal administration; the other is the military.

If there is a reason not to give aid to Pakistan it is not because of appalling acts of individual cruelty.  The majority of people live a primitive life in a state of abject poverty. Children suffer from skin diseases because they are unable to wash because their rotten landlord charges them to take water out of the river. Slavery abounds under the guise of indentures labour. The illiteracy rate amongst rural women is enormous.

The kind of cruelty to women now reported is a consequence of primitively and casual  cruelty amongst a class of people who have not been allowed to become fully-functioning humans by their lords and masters, because it suits them to keep their tenants poor and ignorant. It is not because they are Muslims.

So should we give aid to the Pakistan government? My opinion is ‘no’. My reasons are that: aid should not be given to any country that is a nuclear power; that spends a disproportionate amount on the military; that is endemically corrupt and may therefore divert aid money into private pockets; and that is despite its rural poverty, a middle income country.

Should we give any aid to Pakistan? Yes, but only where it is specifically targeted; and monitored and audited by the donor directly; and in particular to the rural areas and to women.

And does the silence of British Muslims over such awfulness as reported, or, indeed, terrorists crimes imply that silence means approval? I guess that in some cases ‘yes’; in other cases it may imply ‘I hate what they are doing but I’m keeping my head below the parapet’.

Should not decent Muslims be up in arms? Perhaps. But I note that the Haditha incident - 24 unarmed people gunned down by US Marines, including women, children, a patient sick in bed and an old man in a wheel chair, the worst American atrocity since Mai Lai – passed of with no punishment and scant mention in the Western media.

MULTAN, Pakistan — A teenage Pakistani woman Monday told of her terror as her husband chopped off her nose and lips in a furious marital row, and threatened to kill herself unless the police brought him to justice.

The horrifying case underscores the brutal violence suffered by some women in Pakistan, where a domestic violence bill lapsed in 2009 after being held up in the Senate due to objections from religious parties.

Salma Bibi, 17, said her husband, 22-year-old Ghulam Qadir, subjected her to a beating, then bound her hands and feet with rope and hacked into her face with a razor in a remote village in the southwestern province Baluchistan.

"He repeatedly slapped my face and then went into the room and brought with him a locally made, sharp razor," she told AFP, speaking Baluchi in remarks translated by her uncle from a hospital bed in central Multan city.

"I started shouting in panic. He tied my hands and foot with a rope and chopped off my nose and lips," she added.

The teenager said police refused to register a case when her family complained about the attack, and threatened to kill herself without justice.

"I want justice and if it is not delivered to me, I will immolate myself in front of the Supreme Court.

"I will not sit in peace until my husband is brought to justice and gets punishment for the crime he committed," she added.

Ghulam and Salma married last year and live in the village of Karkana, 475 kilometres (300 miles) southwest of Islamabad.

Local officials insisted they were searching for Ghulam and would arrest him when caught.

"They often had quarrels as the girl used to spend more time with her parents," said Nadir Khan, an administration official in Musa Khel district, part of violence-torn Baluchistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has demanded action in the case, but many cases of violence against women in Pakistan go unpunished.

Human rights groups say Pakistani women suffer severe discrimination and widespread domestic violence, including so-called "honour" killings when a victim is murdered for allegedly bringing dishonour on her family.

Ali Dayan Hasan, Pakistan director at Human Rights Watch, told AFP that domestic violence is a "serious, endemic problem in Pakistan" and called on the government to revive efforts to outlaw domestic violence.

But he praised the current parliament for a "fairly impressive" record on passing other legislation designed to protect women's rights.

A recent law against sexual harassment, for example, is "some of the most progressive and cutting edge in the region," he said.

Copyright © 2012 AFP. All rights reserved.

The reaction of the authorities seems to be correct, although their chances of finding the culprit in Baluchistan, a war zone itself in rebellion against Islamabad, is pretty remote.

‘The Most Unforgettable Character I ever met’....Cap'n Bob

Do you remember the old series in Readers Digest called ‘The Most Unforgettable Character I ever met’?

I was mulling over this and thought about the many great personages I have met during my long and totally misspent career.

I came up with three names; Robert Maxwell, Desmond Plunkett, and Hastings Banda.

Cap’n Bob first.

When I came out of the army, I decided that a career in publishing sounded free of any  form of physical effort, so I joined the Pergamon Press, prop. Captain I.R. Maxwell MC.

He was a person of extraordinary ability, and, from my brief acquaintance, considerable charm.

He was born Jan Ludvik Hoch in Czechoslovakia into a Yiddish-speaking family, but he scarpered to the UK in 1940 at the age of 16 when the Nazis arrived. The remainder of the family was not so lucky; they all went to the gas chamber in Auschwitz.

He joined the army, fought through France to Germany as an infantry officer and was awarded the MC by Monty.

His business career really started in Hamburg after the surrender. He was guarding barges in which the Nazis hoped to spirit away some of their treasures before the beastly British arrived. Amongst them was the entire stock of Axel Springer, one of the world’s most important scientific publishers. Legend has it that Bob ‘liberated’ the lot, which I can well believe, as the Pergamon Press was healthily stocked with Springer books.

His next move was r to acquire a zombie firm of printers called Simpkin Marshall, which although nominally bankrupt was asset-rich because of its prime-site location. Bob thus became one of the first asset-strippers.

His next big break-through was when he acquired the rights to the proceedings of the International Geophysical Year around 1956. This meant that he had a captive monopoly as every university and scientific body in the world would have to buy the various publications. The scuttlebutt was that he got the Russian rights by going to see Khrushchev personally (amongst his many talents was fluency in 7 languages, including Russian. It was also rumoured that he was a KGB agent, like a number of prominent members of the Labour Party at that time). Each small paperback cost about £7, a large amount for a small book nearly 50 years ago.

All were printed in Poland at low cost and avoiding the militant printing unions of the time.

I was assigned to the rare book department, and one morning as I was salivating over a complete and original set of the Proceedings of the Royal Society back to Volume 1, Cap’n Bob, tall, very handsome with wavy dark hair wearing a double breasted blue pin-stripe of Saville Row’s finest, appeared in my room and said that he wished to speak to me.

Now it so happens that 1958 was election year. My old man, who was a life-time member of the Labour Party and Chairman of the Buckingham Constituency Party, confidently expected to be the next candidate for what was then a relatively safe Labour seat.

To the anger and consternation of the local party, Bob Maxwell was parachuted in by Transport House. He was not even qualified because he had not been a member of the party for the necessary minimum period.

The merde really hit the fan when the nomination papers were published. The old man had seconded the nomination paper of the Tory Candidate!

Of course he was booted out of the party forthwith. But he also had his 15 minutes of fame when he was splashed all over the front pages of the red-tops. It was a major kick in the slats for Bob, although he did win the seat.

So Bob said to me that the differences between him and my father were nothing for me to worry about and that my career was assured. I knew then that it was time to seek fame and fortune elsewhere.

As we know, it all ended badly when he disappeared off his yacht.

Did he jump? Highly unlikely; people with an ego that big don’t top themselves.

Did he have a heart attack and fall over the side? Possibly; by this time the handsome young man of my acquaintance had turned into a gross monster.

Was he bumped-off?

Possibly; it is now pretty certain that he was a Mossad agent (which is where the lion’s share of the MGN pension fund ended-up – allegedly) and he may have outlived his usefulness.

We shall probably never know for sure.

Border bullies...

One aspect of the faltering US economy that has not had much mention is tourism. It looks pretty dire, which is odd because the tourism industry worldwide has stood up pretty well to the recession. So what is it with America?

I am guessing that much of it is due to the appalling press which border security accumulates on almost a daily basis; 86 year-old given internal cavity search; searchers burst colostomy bag; and so it goes on. I am told that one of the worst is Miami, one of the main gateways to the US for tourists.

And they have never yet caught a terrorist.

As for visas, here is a complaint published in the Bangkok Post from an American married to a Thai woman, about her visa application to visit the US

‘The interviewer asked why she had married an old guy. Before she could answer, he said ‘Because of the money’. He asked her why she wanted a visa. She said for a holiday with her husband and to visit her sister who is married to an American in Hawaii. He then said ‘All Thai young ladies marry older men simply for the money’ and refused the visa!’

It is difficult to think of a more deeply offensive, sexist and racist remark. Had he made it in the US the writs would have been flying around.

I reckon that the cause is giving authority to understrappers, jobsworths and little jacks-in-office that they should never have but which they are only too eager to abuse. The worst tyrants in the army were Lance Corporal drill instructors who could chuck their weight around with impunity but who would never have to fight alongside anybody.

A case in point concerns the  cook at our hotel here in Chiang Mai.

She is 42, small, pretty with a limited command of English.

Last year she was due to accompany her mother to England to have a well-deserved holiday.

Her visa application took months and involved several expensive visits to Bangkok 400 miles away. (What the local British Consul here does if not issue visas I am at a loss to say).

The upshot of this was that her mother had to travel without her, leaving her to catch up a few days later. She had never been out of Thailand or on a plane, so the journey itself must have pretty stressful.

But when she arrived at Heathrow her troubles really began. Immigration ignored her visa and detained her for questioning for more than 3 hours before finally releasing her.

Why?

Could it have that she was female, small and vulnerable, and therefore good sport for bullies?

Fewer Ghurkhas, more foreign 'aid'...

Andrew Mitchell, our Overseas Development Minister, informed us this week that aid ‘makes us safer’. He was speaking in Nepal where he had just announced a considerable increase in dosh for that benighted country.

Coincidentally, the Government also announced that 400 Ghurkhas were to be sacked.

Now I may be missing something, but frankly I have this feeling that a Ghurkha is more likely to make me ‘safe’ than clean-water projects in the Himalayas.

Call me simple-minded but I would have thought that the pay and pensions of 400 Ghurkhas and their families was a rather better source of money and better value, too. A sergeant retiring on pension would have about the same income as a senior civil servant. Foreign remittances from Ghurkha soldiers are a pretty important part of the economy.

So, Andrew, how much of your £10.6 billion budget would you have to give up to keep 400 soldiers? As your budget is set to increase by 36% when all the others are getting the chop, how about an internal transfer to the Ministry of Defence to keep them employed instead of scrapped?

By the way, Andrew, the rural poor solved the problem of water supplies years ago. They put gutters around their houses and built large concrete storage tanks for modest cost. They also tackled the firewood problem by making methane gas from human and animal waste.

Too simple for your civil servants, though, and nothing in it for consultants, either!

By the by, Andrew, a recent poll suggests that 79% don't think that 'aid' is a good use of taxpayers' money.

Bring on the clowns...

 I am an admirer of America and Americans, but...........

I am now convinced that American politics is populated by loonies.

Newt and Perry are trying to undermine Mitt for being a – er – conservative! And it’s a cardinal sin in their eyes to speak French.

I have read Perry’s comments about Turkey that prove he is a moron. Turkey to be kicked out of NATO, indeed. There would be nothing left but the  Yanks, the Brits and the Frogs, never mind the US advance missile defences there.

Looks as if Mitt is a least in with a chance. What I have seen and heard suggests that he is good CEO material – a successful businessman; an experienced politician; one who knows what a balance sheet is; understands that you can’t borrow your way out of debt; no baggage; and boring.

Does the American electorate not want to hear about the candidates’ views on foreign policy, the world economy, the public debt, healthcare, education, defence, unemployment, climate change, China, and other trivia? Are they content with lurid accounts of the candidates’ sex-lives, tax dodging, pocket-lining, lovely children, devoted wives, sporting prowess 40 years ago, devotion to creationism, and other information essential to being able to judge whether or not they are electing a POTUS who will declare war on Iran, screw the fiscus, pack the Supreme Court with mates, and appoint his mistresses to key public posts?

What have the candidates had to say about the fact that 75% of people between the ages of 17 and 24 are ineligible to join the military through poor education, criminal record or unfitness?  Or about an education system that is so dysfunctional that 47% of the population of Detroit is illiterate – 200,000 people who will never get a job in the motor plants because they can’t even read the safety warnings?

Or an immigration system that is so screwy that it allows entry to West African unskilled hotel staff and Yemenis taxi drivers but takes 10 years to process an application from an Indian PhD because of the quota system that allocates visas according to nationality, not value to America?

Beating Obama does not feature on the agenda at this time.

I am beginning to feel that America is evolving into two parallel societies – the political system and the people. US politics depends on compromise, since there is no UK-style whipping to make the buggers behave, and there is now uber-partisanship that prevents anything being decided. The outcome must be that the American people will rise from their troubles despite their politicians, not because of them.

And since Medicare features so large in US politics, I thought I should try to understand it.

Now I do, and it’s nuts.

If I’ve got it right it has the following characteristics.

It is unbudgeted. Nobody really knows what goes in and what comes out of the exchequer.

It is unfunded. The Treasury just pays the bills.

It is uncontrolled and uncosted. The medical fraternity charges what it likes and the Treasury stumps up. There appear to be no checks and no vetting. In the NHS, these do not apply to Doctors because, of course, health care is free at the point of delivery, but certain treatments will be banned if they don’t represent value-for-money. An outfit called NICE determines whether certain treatments should be disallowed on VFM grounds and this quite frequently applies to drugs if it is considered that the cost outweighs the benefits or the NHS is being ripped-off by the big pharma. However, for some bizarre reason it allows treatments of dubious or no medical benefit – cosmetic surgery; IVF even though sterility is not a disease; hip-replacements for 90-year-olds, etc.

It has no priorities. 30% of the money is spent on patients in the last year of their lives.

And another thing.

When I was digging around for stuff about the real state of the nation, I discovered that the Fed debt ain’t half of it. It seems that many of the States are totally boracic, skint, broke, in Queer Street, bankrupt and generally in deep merde.

For 30 years the unions and state officials have been bleeding the revenues until they are as dry as the Kalahari. They have been giving themselves eye-watering salaries, pension benefits that are almost beyond belief and generally living high on their neighbour’s hog. And since the revenues don’t support all this it has been funded with someone else’s money. They are drowning in debt. The excessively generous pensions (taken in full at 50 and then on to another public service job) are largely unfunded. They are unaffordable. I have seen a figure of $3 trillion in zero-collateral debt.

The Golden State is not only broke, but ungovernable to boot on account of its crazy political system, but it pays its fire-truck drivers $144,000 a year against an average national wage of $52,000.

The upshot is that public services are collapsing.

Of course, we have seen this all before.

In Third World countries.

Cannibal act.......

The Republicans continue to perform their cannibal act minus Mr. Huntsman who just bolted leaving his votes to Mitt Romney; all four of them. Further to the ultra conservative uppity, uppity meeting here in Texas to identify someone, indeed anyone, capable of replacing Romney, a selection has been made.

They chose Rick Santorum. Rick is pretty far to the right. He would make Louis XIV look like a Bolshevik. He is also a Catholic which certainly grated all the Evangelical Protestants present and voting. Since Newt recently converted to Catholicism, they had little choice.

My point is that in spite of Mitt's remarkable polling performance to date, he is not the popular choice of the Republican right which, it appears, has the Party by the short and curlies. They pose a similar problem to Speaker of the House John Bhehner. Every time he negotiates a compromise with Obama, the right wing, Tea Party, and evangelical faction undermines his agreement.

Our forefathers stated that a proper democracy would be one of majority rule without tyranny against the minority. Too bad these lads failed to mention anything about minority tyranny in which a very small percentage of the people are able to successfully block almost any legislation, action plan or proposal put forward by their party.

Meanwhile, Mitt is stretching his lead among South Carolina voters while his opponents continue to debate whether he is a good capitalist or a bad one. Not that it makes any difference. The main event of South Carolina is to learn whether or not this deep southern state will accept the leadership of a moderate Yankee who happens to be a Mormon. By rights, its vote should go to Newt Gingrich. But Newt has fouled his nest so often that all the southern charm in his repertoire could not sanitize his record.

Newt is like an errant teenager who having made a bad call, continues to justify it to the point of absurdity.

Election special.....

Along the campaign trial an interesting event is taking place. Rivals have mounted a strong campaign against Romney consisting of accusations that as the CEO of Bain Capital, he performed evil deeds including asset stripping, firing slackers, ruining unproductive companies that Baines had purchased and generally behaving like a bloody capitalist.

Wait a minute, says Mitt, isn't this the sort of criticism I should expect from Obama and his democratic party minions? Why is it coming from my fellow Conservatives? Well, say his fellow contenders, we don't really have a good answer for that. Gov. Perry from our beloved Texas says Bain was not a venture capital company, but rather a vulture capital one. Newt adds that Mitt ventured into croney capitalism. At present, Mitt's enemies are chinking his armor more effectively than the democrats could.

For some reason, and I suspect religion, our stock in trade Republicans do not want Romney as their leader in Washington. They are taking more and more stringent measures to unseat him. News broke yesterday that a high powered conservative group is now meeting somewhere in Texas to develop a strategy to find and support someone else to run for the Republican Party nomination. Another wonderful example of democracy in action.

The last time such a group met was to fabricate a story about Sen. John Kerry's performance as captain of a fast boat during is tenure on the Mekong Delta.

The conservative core of the Republican Party is characterized as super rich, super conservative and super fundamentalist. One might think they converse regularly with God.

The plot thickens dramatically as we head into the South Carolina and Florida primaries. Then, a period of rest during February until all hell breaks loose culminating in Super Tuesday. The latter is a day in which there are some 25 primaries or caucuses held.

This year it falls in early March.

Best of British........but don't brag about it!

The British have always made a virtue of self-deprecation; we were brought up to despise boasters, blow-hards, show-offs, swankers and bull-shitters of every stripe. Secretly, of course, we believed that we ‘had won God’s lottery’ as Rhodes put it. But over the last 30 or 40 years we have begun to regard ourselves as natural losers. The sports headline that was never taken down was ‘England collapse’.

Now here’s funny thing.

We are actually rather good at a lot of things – better than most.

In the field of sport, we keep winning at cricket, produce gold medals galore at everything from athletics to swimming; we have the world’s richest soccer team in Man United (actually I think it is the world’s richest anything-team, ahead of the Yankee behemoths); we are always up-front in F1 motor racing and the industry itself is virtually an English monopoly. A member of the Royal Family is one of the world’s top equestrians and married to an international rugger player. She will represent England in the upcoming Olympics.

BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year was a Manxman; he is the world champion cyclist and winner of the Tour de France.

We have more world class symphony orchestras, musicians, artists, writers, et al than you can shake a stick at.

Two of the world’s top 3 universities are English.

We have one of the only two armed forces in Europe that is functional.

We produce more motor vehicles than we did during the heyday of the 50’s and 60’s. Rolls Royce has just had a record year (30% up in UK also). Jaguar is expanding rapidly and creating lots of new jobs. A component made in Cambridge is fitted to every mobile phone in the world.

And we have the world’s greatest brand; the Royal Family. Imagine if you had a brand that could rake in 2 TV billion viewers like the nuptials of Flight Lieutenant Wales RAF and Kate Middleton. It is said that the quickest way to make a fortune right now is for Kate to buy a dress designed by you.

But of course we won’t brag about it, will we?

Eggstrordinary

The last British battery hen has been released from captivity. The poultry industry has invested £400 million to comply with EU regulations banning battery cages. Guess who hasn’t spent one Euro yet? No prizes.

Here is some cheery news. The Economist’s ‘misery index’ shows that the top 3 most miserable countries are Macedonia, Venezuela, and Iran. UK only comes in at 47 and US at 50.

US Elections: fever or nausea?

Life in the US remains under the spell of interminable electioneering. We are being systematically bored to tears by posers willing to do or say anything to achieve political power. Newt Gingrich fouled his nest and is out of the picture. He was doing fairly well for a while in the debates, especially when speaking about governmental, procedural, Congressional and American historical matters. People liked his style and admired his knowledge and intelligence. Then, he began to whinge and moan and instead of capitalizing on his very obvious strengths, he resorted to behaving like a spoiled child. You can write off Newt.

And while your at it, write off Perry as well. After spending something like 4 million to woo the Iowans, they failed to respond and he rode back to Texas to think things over. Almost upon arrival in the Lone Star State, he announced his intention to become a player in the South Carolina primary while giving the New Hampshire primary a miss. Bad, bad, bad. Save your donor's money Rick, ride into the sunset, become a missionary or whatever, but your hour upon the stage has transpired.

Ron Paul, the champion of quick and absurd solutions, is still contending but will not ever expand his political base. His ideas are far too radical and off the cuff to withstand scrutiny. If people in the world don't appreciate our efforts, he argues, cut off their aid. Indeed, cut off all foreign aid and regress into a state of beloved American isolationism with Ron Paul, as Guru-in-Chief. Everyone knows that Paul is a fluke and nobody takes him seriously with the possible exception of Rick Perry who railed against him in Iowa for some unknown and unproductive reason.

There is another issue that is somewhat off-putting. Ron Paul has toyed with the idea of running for President as an Independent if he does poorly in the primaries. Such a move would act to take votes away from the Republican opponent to Obama and may well swing the election in O's favor. We can only wait and see.

Right now, it is Mitt all the way, but the situation could change. Rick Santorum is making some headway after having wallowed in the backwaters for several months. He is the arch-conservative of the hour and bears a striking resemblance to Dr. Strangelove. Diametrically opposed to Ron Paul, Santorum is ready to bomb Iran and anyone else that might harbor terrorists or express anti-American feelings. He will inherit much of the waning Newt Gingrich supporters along with those of the recently and thankfully bowed-out Michele Bachmann.

So, we have the super right in the form of Santorum against the moderate right in the form of Mitt Romney. But be careful, because Mitt cannot claim title to the moderate right; he cannot even use the word moderate. He is in a position where he must appear hard-line conservative to win his party's nomination and them appear moderate to win the presidential election.

One thing for sure. The electioneering will be among America's most heated. Emotions are high, nerves are tense and opinions entrenched. The Republican primary has become a cat fight and when a winner is declared, the tension will undoubtedly increase as Obama goes head to head with the eventual candidate. Heavy artillery is already being employed partly in the form of Democratic Party adds demonizing Romney. The Dems fully expect the race to be between Romney and Obama, but as the wise man said, there is many a slip between the cup and the lip.

A very old friend who is a financial journalist of some 50+ years standing comments thus on the ‘crisis’:

For years apologists for poorly-performing economies have argued that the outperformers such as China and Germany are just as much to blame for the fundamental imbalance in world trade because they depress their consumer demand and so save too much.

That’s equating the thrifty with the profligate, which is outrageous. If the over-spenders curbed their excesses, that would slash demand for the exports of the trade-surplus countries and bring the system back into balance.

One important reason why the Germans, for example, are unable to stimulate their domestic demand is that its consumers, who already enjoy high living standards, are unwilling to indulge in the spending sprees fuelled by personal debt that have distorted and disfigured the US and UK economies.

The latest example of seeking to blame those who stick with the virtues of thrifty behaviour is the accusation that the Germans are responsible for the imbalances within the Eurozone, where the Club Med countries have been able to develop big foreign trade deficits without suffering any run on their currency that would force them to act to curb the deficits.

I have to disagree. There are two quite separate issues involved.

Let us take Germany first.

Germany has quite properly pursued its own national interests, as do all countries.

It has one of the strongest, efficient and prosperous industrial economies in the world. The Club Med has been increasingly unable to compete. Germany has held back wages and increased efficiency. But according to Dumas and Choyleva of Lombard Street Research, most of the proceeds were invested where there was no consumer stimulus (including Greek bonds and sub-primes); not enough money found its way back to the people for them  to spend on consumer-goods so an imbalance between the supply side and the demand side increased.

In a normal market situation, corrections would have taken place – the DM would have strengthened to reduce the imbalance with other economies. But in the ‘one size fits all’ Eurozone, this was not possible. The effect was that Germany was able to forge ahead on artificially cheap money.

This would not have caused a crisis on its own.

But this cheap money encouraged the Greeks to go on a spending spree effectively with other people’s money by borrowing exorbitantly to finance an unaffordable life-style, just like so many individuals throughout the West who led the good life on the proceeds of mortgage refinancing and credit cards until the ceiling fell in. Well, they would, wouldn’t they?

In Spain and Ireland, cheap money enabled banks and developers to create a huge and unsustainable property bubble while their governments stood helpless, unable to impose the corrective mechanisms through interest rate control because they had none.

The cause of the crisis was neither Herman the German nor Zorba the Greek.

It was the Euro.

I will return to China anon.