Sunday Musings 10/25/15: The Fed, Ross Perot, and Islamic Terrorists

There are some tea party types that would like to abolish the Federal Reserve.  I don't understand that.    Without an institution to perform the Lender of Last Resort function, an economy is subject to periodic depressions that wipe out the savings and employment of everyone except those fortunate enough to be in the right place and 20 years before the event when people enter the work force, no one has a clue what the right place will be.

Imagine the state of the world if Ross Perot had not run for President in 1992.  Bush I would likely have won reelection.  Some other Democrat, possibly Al Gore, would have won the 1996 and 2000 elections.  We would not have had Bush II and Cheney with their Iraq obsession, but would have had the obsession with Osama Bin Ladan.  So Sadam Hussein would still be in Baghdad and ISIS would not exist.

We would also have a very different Supreme Court and there would be no Citizens United.  And we can hope that there would have been better regulation of the mortgage market and there would have been no Great Recession and no Tea Party today.

But Ross Perot did run and we have a country seriously divided.  About 20% of the voting population  is adamantly conservative (no matter what inconsistencies exist within that framework) and 20% of the population is adamantly liberal.  And once again, the 60% in the middle are tossed about in the storm created when one of the 20% on the fringe get to dominate with their views.

You would think a Presidential candidate could run on the views of that middle but we see almost every Presidential wanna be catering to the 20% of the fringe in their party.

This is pitiful and does a disservice to the electorate because they are neither lead nor allowed to vote for or against a realistic set of policies.

I am reading Henry Kissinger's book World Order.  It has very complex thoughts and I will have more to say about it when finished.  I am currently in his review of the Islamic World.  The instincts that support terrorism have been part of Arab Islam since Mohammed founded the religion, and the developments that have allowed the rest of the world to develop economically and socially within a peaceful (more or less) manner the last 50 years are a dire threat to people who have those instincts and desires.  But the autocratic regimes that either we or the Arab Spring over threw reveal a population divided into 3 relatively equal groups:  Conservatives who support a radically conservative Islamic State, a secular military, and an educated middle class that wants democracy but can't get the votes to defeat the conservatives.  If this book had been written 20 years ago, perhaps Bush II and Cheney would have had second thoughts about their confidence in nation building.

Nation building in the Arab World can only be done by Muslims as there is an insufficient body of people with democratic instincts within those countries.  And the borders were a colonial convenience.  Redrawing borders would seem inevitable to me if there is to be coherent government in some of these countries.