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THE CONSERVATIVE REVIEW - December 21, 2010
Can Democracy Cope?
by: Pat Buchanan
For those who have read about or vaguely remember the
stolid British tribe of Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain
and the Blitz, which held out in its "finest hour," last
week brought a disgusting sight.
Mobs in Parliament Square set fire to the statue of 19th
century statesman Lord Palmerston and urinated on the
statue of Winston Churchill. Charlie Gilmour, son of Pink
Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, was swinging by a rope from
the Cenotaph that memorializes the 700,000 British dead of
the Great War.
At night, hundreds of these anarchists peeled off to appear
on Regent Street as the Rolls-Royce carrying the Prince of
Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, Camilla Parker-Bowles,
entered. The Rolls was pounded with boots, bottles, sticks,
fists and paintballs, as the mob howled "Tory scum!" and
"Off with their heads!"
A sign was pushed through an open window into Camilla's
side. So precarious was the situation Charles' security
detail was close to drawing guns to protect the first in
line to the throne.
What was the mob protesting? Tuition increases for students
who pay less for college than the parents of American
students. In Parliament, the ruling coalition's 83-vote
margin, after defections, was cut by three-fourths on the
vote to raise the tuition fees.
And Europe is only at the beginning of this age of
austerity.
Across the Irish Sea, the 50,000 protesters have departed
from the General Post Office where the Rising of 1916 took
place. But the government's budget to meet the demands of
the European Union for a bailout of Ireland passed in the
Dail by just five votes, 82-77
This is "the budget of a puppet government ... doing what
they have been told to do by the IMF, the EU Commission
and the European Central Bank," said Michael Noonan, the
probable finance minister in a new government after coming
elections.
Noonan said Dublin's letters to the IMF and European
Central Bank read as though the government had been
"waterboarded" into signing them.
Irish rage at having to suffer to save Europe's bondholders
of Irish banks, the anarchy in England, riots in France to
protest a rise in the retirement age to 62, the violence
that wracked Greece, the precarious condition of Portugal
and Spain, the anger of Germans at having to bail out their
profligate EU partners -- raise the question:
Can Europe's welfare states be downsized without violence
surging, governments falling and populists coming to power
who will default on debts rather than force the masses
that elected them to suffer to save the bank investors?
Can European democracy deal with the gathering storm?
Is not a national default and a collapse of banks across
Europe inevitable? And could such a collapse be contained
in Europe when America's big banks are all transnational
institutions?
And America is not without her own crises.
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This weekend, The New York Times reported on affluent
Nassau County on Long Island: "Now, with its bonds suddenly
downgraded and a state oversight agency preparing to seize
its checkbook and credit cards, Nassau is on the verge of
a full-fledged fiscal crisis."
California, Illinois, New Jersey and New York are facing
historic deficits, as the stimulus money that enabled them
to survive 2009 and 2010 runs out.
Illinois is facing a shortfall of $15 billion, a third of
the state budget. California is being compared to Spain. A
default by either could do to the credit rating of states
what a default by Italy or Spain would do to the European
Monetary Union.
Now the U.S. government is moving again in a direction
opposite of where the people voted to go on Nov. 2.
The deficit is not shrinking, but growing. Even before the
Barack Obama tax compromise -- price tag $857 billion --
the 2011 deficit is surging.
In November alone, the U.S. government spent $150.4 billion
more than it took in. For the first two months of FY 2011,
which began Oct. 1, the feds spent $585.7 billion and took
in $294.9 billion, a deficit for just one-sixth of the
fiscal year of $290.8 billion.
Spending is approaching 200 percent of revenue.
Obama's deficit for the first quarter of 2011 alone will
be the same size as the largest annual deficit George W.
Bush ever ran. Michael Fereli of JPMorgan Chase projects
the 2011 deficit at $1.5 trillion, after $1.4 trillion in
2009 and $1.3 trillion in 2010.
And the bond markets are flashing warning signals.
After Obama's tax deal was announced, U.S. government
bond prices tanked. Some folks are getting out to get
into stocks. Others think U.S. bonds just became a riskier
investment.
U.S. cities and states and the U.S. government, as well
as the governments of Europe, are facing a crisis of
confidence. Can their elected politicians reassure
investors who bought their bonds in good faith that those
bonds are still worth what they cost?
Or should bondholders bail out before they are burned?
We may be entering a crisis of democratic capitalism.
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