THE MERKEL SPYING STORY: “I WISH YOU COULD HAVE INVENTED A MORE CONVINCING STORY; I FELT DISTINCTLY LIKE AN IDIOT REPEATING IT.”

10/28/13

If we are to believe the White House, the NSA had been spying on 35 world leaders since 2002 but the spying stopped after the White House found out about it earlier this year.  So Angela Merkel is not alone in being the subject of great interest by American spies, which should surprise no one.  But the President knew absolutely nothing about the program for over five years but put an immediate end to it as soon as he got wind of it, which should surprise everyone…if it were true.

Why do I doubt the White House on this one, and you should as well?

First, Mr. Obama and his henchmen are politicians and, as such, are rarely, if ever to be believed because a politician lies at least as easily as s/he tells the truth.   It seems as if this tendency to lie reflexively springs from an inability to make a moral distinction between deceit and honesty when the only legitimate moral standard is the advancement of one’s political career and the obvious benefits such continuation and furtherance will bring to the benighted masses.  But who knows what goes on in the febrile minds of these narcissistic fops?

Second, the reason given for the President’s not knowing about the program is that it wasn’t, as the Wall Street Journal put it (Monday, 10/28/13, page A1),  “practical to brief him on all of (the eavesdropping operations).”

Hmm…

While it might not be practical to brief the President on all the NSA’s eavesdropping operations, wouldn’t it make sense to take the time to brief him on an operation so important as that conducted against Angela Merkel, given that Germany is one of our closest allies, one of the world’s preeminent economic powers, and the de facto ruler of Europe?  One would think the NSA would have time to brief the President on such a trifling matter, right?

Third, let’s assume for a moment that the NSA really didn’t brief President Obama on its eavesdropping on Germany and 34 other countries.   Wasn’t the President sufficiently curious to wonder where all the juicy intelligence the operation garnered was coming from?   Though the President is not half as smart as his cheering section would have you believe (Nobody is.), he’s a pretty smart guy.  One would think that access to the information one hopes such an operation would be able to gather would pique his curiosity.

Interestingly, unless I have missed something, no one at the NSA or the White House has commented on whether President Bush was briefed on the eavesdropping on, inter alia, Angela Merkel and her predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder.  (Note that the operation had been going on since 2002.)   Given Mr. Bush’s having been nearly entirely free from the burden of intellectual curiosity, or even rational thought, no one would be at all surprised if, had he not been briefed, Mr. Bush displayed no curiosity whatsoever regarding the source of the intelligence he was getting on Mr. Schroeder and Mr. Merkel.   But I digress.

Two further points…

First, it is entirely possible, one supposes, that the NSA felt no need to brief the President of the United States on one of its most important, or at least one of its most high level, spying operations.  If this were true, the good news would be that the White House is not lying…but only about not being briefed on, not about its complete ignorance of, the operation.  The bad news is that the implications of a spy agency that does not feel that it ultimately reports to the President are genuinely horrifying. 

Second, on a slightly less frightening note, maybe the whole story about the NSA’s not briefing the President on a successful plot to bug the personal phone of the leader of a loyal ally and the second most consequential nation in the Western hemisphere is a load of horse excrement, as is the tale of the President’s being completely unaware of the caper.  Maybe the reason that the NSA and the White House are trying to force us to dine on such equine detritus is that, as many have suggested, the real story is that everyone spies on everyone but no one can admit it.   Maybe this is just the way “diplomacy” is conducted…trust but verify, as the Gipper put it in a related context. 

“Everyone does it” is never justification for a course of action desired by one’s teenage children.  And “everyone does it” does not seem like sufficient justification for spying on a good and faithful friend; it still offends our, or at least yours truly’s, sensibilities.  But the rules of international diplomacy do not necessarily comport closely with the ethical rules by which individuals conduct their lives.   But, as hypocrisy is the tribute immorality pays to morality, the politicians’ not being able to speak freely about what really goes on in international relations is an admission that ethics, as commonly understood, are at best an afterthought in such matters.

EXTENDING TREASURY MATURITIES: A BIGGER STRETCH THAN COMMON SENSE WOULD INDICATE

3/4/13

The Opinion section of the today’s (i.e., 3/4/13’s, page A15) Wall Street Journal features an attention grabbing article entitled “Treasury Needs a Better Long Game” by Professor John H. Cochrane of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.  One could certainly nit-pick at the article; for example, in his major calculation of the impact of rising interest rates on the federal deficit, Professor Booth seems to assume that the Treasury (Being an older guy not given to fashionable trendy piffles, I insist on calling that department “the Treasury,” as we did when America was great.   This latest moniker “Treasury,” seems to be grounded in the hopeless cutsey-pieness that seems to have high-jacked our language, but I digress.) pays 0% interest on it debt load currently and that it finances everything over night, or nearly over night.   Despite its mechanical flaws, though, the article makes a compelling argument, i.e., that the Treasury should take advantage of the currently prevailing near record low yields by substantially extending the maturity of its liabilities.

The real problem with Professor Cochrane’s argument, though, is not its mechanical shortcomings; the real problem is that Mr. Cochrane is applying common sense and reasoned analysis.   He is thinking like a responsible person rather than like a Congressperson.

The typical bloviating, self-aggrandizing Congessperson does not give even a hair on a rat’s hindquarters about what is good for the future of the Republic or the prospects for its long run fiscal soundness.   The typical politicaster in Washington cares only about continuing the ceaseless ego trip s/he calls a career, i.e., about getting reelected.  Since the voters, to the extent they take time off from engaging in such intellect enriching pastimes as watching situation comedies, “reality” shows, and such drivel as “Dancing with the Stars” and “American Idol,” are clamoring for deficit reduction, the typical politician is looking for ways to reduce the deficit painlessly for the only time period that matters, i.e., the period between now and reelection, which ranges from, at this juncture, about a year and a half to about five and a half years.   If the politician were to do the right thing, i.e., extend the Treasury’s liability maturities out to 10 or 30 years, that would involve moving out the curve and thus paying more interest as long as the curve has even a measure of steepness to it. 

Right now, the curve is neither inordinately steep nor inordinately flat, but refinancing three month bills with 30 year bonds would involve paying an additional 299 basis points, or just short of 3%, in additional interest.    If the Treasury were to do so with the 40% of its debt that it rolls each year (according to Mr. Cochrane), admittedly an extreme case, that would cost the Treasury an additional $216 billion per year.   This would increase the projected deficit of about $950 billion by about 23%.  What self-serving politician (Yes, I know; “self-serving politician” is perhaps the ultimate redundancy.) in either the executive or legislative branch would sanction a 23% increase in the deficit in the only time frame that matters—before his or her campaign for reelection—even if doing so is in the long run interests of the nation?   To ask the question is to answer it.

One could almost legitimately argue that decisions on the length of the Treasury’s maturities are not in the hands of the politicians but rather in the hands of career people at the Treasury.   This is true to a certain extent.  But those career people serve not at the pleasure of but almost at the whim of the elected politicians.   If the career people were to embark on the sensible course that Professor Cochrane prescribes, folks in the White House and especially in Congress would be screaming the Washington equivalent of “bloody murder,” if bloody murders, having become rather commonplace of late, still drew the attention they once did, but again I digress.   There would be investigations and hearings into the “gross irresponsibility of the bureaucrats” who would only be trying to do the right thing but, in so doing, imperiling the lifelong sinecures to which our elected “public servants” feel entitled.