The Exploitation of Trayvon Martin

Shelby Steele wades into the Trayvon Martin quagmire to opine that agitators for justice--vigilante, if not kangaroo--are appealing to poetic truth, a deviation from actual truth.

Rather than correspond to reality, poetic truth is crafted to preserve an effect.  The poetic truth at stake is that white America is ferociously bigoted.

Unduly Provocative

I know that President Obama is cool, and everybody just loves him personally.  But, does it ever seem as if he's going out of his way to poke his finger in your eye?  Not that you'd mind, of course.

Well, it turns out you're most probably right.  Rule for Radicals #10 (no, I'm not joking) is "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition."

The dark lord of discord, Saul Alinsky, explains:

It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign.  It should be remembered not only that the action is in the reaction but that action is itself the consequence of reaction and of reaction to the reaction, ad inifinitum. the pressure produces the reaction, and constant pressure sustains action. (Ch. 7, p. 129).

He expounds on this theme in different variations, and summarizes shortly thereafter in three bullet points (p. 136):

• The real action is in the enemy's reaction.
• The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength
• Tactics, like organization, like life require that you move with the action.

Aren't you happy to know that your President is schooled in this stuff, and that he's on more than one campaign: a political one to retain power, and an ideological one, Antonio Gramsci's final long march through the institutions of Ronald Reagan's last, best hope of man on earth?  I thought so.

So, how are we to react?  Let me suggest by voting him and his Party out of office in November before this whole thing blows from excessive pressure.

Zuccotti Intestine

There is much concern about the filth and disease, e.g., Zuccotti Lung, infesting various Occupy Wall Street sites around the country.  Repeated incidents of personal waste elimination in public has Noman wondering if a new illness doesn't afflict protestors, Zuccotti Intestine.

Occupy Wall Street is compiling quite a rap sheet.  In a couple of months, this phenomenon has generated 248 "incidents of sexual assault, violence, vandalism, anti-Semitism, extortion, perversion and lawlessness."

Skipping over the headlines concerning run-of-the-mill predation, indecent exposure and exhortations to bestiality, it is the recurring reports of scatological incidents at protest sites that especially tie OWS to the godfather of community organizing, Saul Alinsky.

Yesterday's incident was captured by neighbors on video taken in Washington, D.C.  This protestor curbed himself, or nearly did, beside a garbage can.  So, Noman will assume that he was raised badly, but nevertheless tried to answer nature's call responsibly.

Not so with the protestor who relieved himself on the American flag.  The intent there was definitely to engage in Constitutionally protected speech.

Americans can thank five Liberal-thinking Justices on the Supreme Court in 1989-1990 for establishing this precious right of flag desecration in Texas v. Johnson and U.S. v. Eichman.

The first excrementous OWS incident reported also evinced an intent to communicate.  There is definitely a message for police and society here.  But, what is it?

Thankfully, we have a a brief disquisition on this form of community-organized protest in Alinsky's magisterial tome on the subject, "Rules for Radicals."

In his chapter on Communication, Alinsky writes:

Every now and then I have been accused of being crude and vulgar because I have used analogies of sex or the toilet.  I do not do this because I want to shock, particularly, but because there are certain experiences common to all, and sex and toilet are two of them.  Furthermore, everyone is interested in those two--which can't be said of every common experience. 

His recounting of community action in Rochester, NY--the home of Eastman Kodak, a then-great (but now bankrupt) company that was in Alinsky's crosshairs--is instructive.  Noman quotes at length from the chapter on Tactics.

It should be remembered that you can threaten the enemy and get away with it. You can insult and annoy him, but the one thing that is unforgivable and that is certain to get him to react is to laugh at him. this causes an irrational anger.

The resources of the Have-Nots are (1) no money and (2) lots of people.  All right, let's start from there.  People ... have physical bodies.  How can they use them?  Now a melange of ideas begins to appear.  Use the power of the law by making the establishment obey its own rules.  Go outside the experience of the enemy, stay inside the experience of your people.  Emphasize tactics that your people will enjoy.  The threat is usually more terrifying than the tactic itself.  Once all these rules and principles are festering in our imagination they grow into a synthesis. 

I suggested that we might buy one hundred seats for one of Rochester's symphony concerts.  We would select a concert in which the music was relatively quiet.  The hundred blacks who would be given the tickets would first be treated to a three-hour pre-concert dinner in the community, in which they would be fed nothing but baked beans, and lots of them; then the people would go to the symphony hall--with obvious consequences.  Imagine the scene when the action began!  The concert would be over before the first movement!  (If this be a Freudian slip--so be it!) 

First, the disturbance would be utterly outside the experience of the establishment...  Not in their wildest fears would they expect an attack on their prize cultural jewel, their famed symphony orchestra.  Second, all of the action would ridicule and make a farce of the law for there is no law, and there probably never will be, banning natural physical functions.  Here you would have a combination not only of noise but also of odor, what you might call natural stink bombs... The law would be completely paralyzed. 

People would recount what had happened in the symphony hall and the reaction of the listener would be to crack up in laughter.  It would make the Rochester Symphony and the establishment look utterly ridiculous.  There would be no way for the authorities to cope with any future attacks of a similar character... Such talk would destroy the future of the symphony season.  Imagine the tension at the opening of any concert!  Imagine the feeling of the conductor as he raised his baton! 

To start with, the tactic is within the experience of the local people; it also satisfies another rule--that the people must enjoy the tactic... The reaction of the blacks in the ghetto--their laughter when the tactic was proposed--made it clear that the tactic, at least in fantasy, was within their experience.  It connected with their hatred of Whitey.  The one thing that all oppressed people want to do to their oppressors is shit on them.  Here was an approximate way to do this (emphasis added).

Noman bets that you never knew that about oppressed people.  Doesn't it make you wonder whether, and how many, disciples of the master in Zuccotti Park and the White House share Alinsky's sentiment and feel that way towards "the enemy"?

I must emphasize that tactics like this are not just cute; any organizer knows, as a particular tactic grows out of the rules and principles of revolution, that he must always analyze the merit of the tactic and determine its strengths and weaknesses in terms of these same rules.

Alinsky goes on to discuss the possible affects of similar bodily-function tactics in diverse fora such as the Chicago Seven's federal trial court, and Chicago's O'Hare Airport.

Given Alinsky's stress on black hatred toward Whitey as a psychological laxative, Noman notes that the incidents referred to above involve young, white men.  That's to be expected, as OWS is decidedly a white-bread affair.

Beyond that, Noman supposes that everybody hates somebody, or something.  And, these incidents are that: an expression of the utmost contempt.

America and capitalism have always served as especially reviled objects of Leftist hatred.  Why should that change now just because the White House and the Democratic Party have underwritten, praised and encouraged the movement?

With respect to the overall rap sheet, you certainly cannot accuse community organizers of not trying to provoke violence, arrests, and altercations with the police.

Anything to help the President.

And, those are just the reported incidents.  Occupy Portland organizers recently encouraged victims of sexual violence to keep the assault confidential and to report it internally rather than to the police.

Such is the character of OWS, which has paid agitators to thank for tactics regarding how best to manifest contempt, provoke reaction, and shock the populace into capitulation.

Ironically, the more outlandish OWS gets, the more boring it gets.  These tactics are old hat.

Protestors represent the status quo rather than the Have-Nots.

Their leading lights already control the White House, Senate, the Courts, academe, media and, ironically, Wall Street.  These institutions have already colluded to set the country on the fast track to bankruptcy and decline.

Protesters represent the past fifty years, when Alinsky's antics were startling and risque.  They were always an outsider's tactics, and never intended for one entrusted with the responsibility to lead the nation.

Community organizing is only good for tearing things down, taking things from others and pitting people against each other in crude dichotomies, e.g., The Haves. v. The Have Nots.  It is useless for building up things like an economy, nation or people's spirit.

America needs elected officials who can govern in reality, and not just plot tactics on blackboards and in back rooms; who know better than to publicly cheerlead for people that defecate in public.

The electorate will definitively pass judgement on OWS and all that preceded it in November of 2012.  At that time, fear of reaping what one sows might well provoke a resurgence of Zuccotti Intestine at the White House, and on Capitol Hill.

Trick or Treat, Mr. Cain

How fitting for the media to stage its first Republican lynching this political season over the Halloween weekend by revealing skeletons in Herman Cain's closet.

As No-wife said this evening, they must be really scared of him.

Who'd have thunk it?  The straight-shooting man with the engaging smile is apparently a lothario.  Or was.  Or, so suggest reports that he sexually harassed two women in the 1990s.  Or, was it three, or more?

One of the accusers who settled with the National Restaraunt Association that Cain headed wants to step forth and speak out candidly, now that she has let herself be used anonymously to smear him and he has had the temerity to defend himself.  Or, maybe she doesn't.  

A person close to the situation said Wednesday that no decision has been made about asking the National Restaurant Association to release the woman from a confidentiality agreement that was part of her settlement. Cain led the trade group while the woman worked there. 

The person spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the accusations and says the fact that the incident has become public is very unsettling to the woman.

Noman can imagine how he feels.  Whether or not she is released from her confidentiality agreement--the condition of her receipt of a modest sum in order to drop the matter and go away--Cain's reputation has been tarred and feathered.

Sexual harassment settlements are a commonplace feature of the contemporary American business scene.

Extreme care is always taken when terminating an employee that is a member of a protected class. Protected classes include women, anyone who can claim a disability, anyone over 40, and anyone who is not Caucasian. 

Claims of sexual harassment by an employee about to be terminated are the easiest to make, the most difficult to refute, the most expensive to defend, and the most damaging to any executive on the receiving end of false charges. Hence, settling these charges, even when blatantly false, with a small payment and a mutual confidentiality and non-disparagement agreement is an everyday occurrence in the corporate world.

The Politico story made a great deal of the fact that the separation agreement given to the two accusers entailed a payment in the “five-figure” range. Having approved many of these agreements myself I can tell you that five-figures is what you pay when the separation is amicable, as it is a bargain compared to defending false charges in litigation... The going rate to cover up guilt is at least six figures, sometimes even seven. Just ask former presidential candidate John Edwards. 

Insinuations that five-figure payments somehow corroborate the truth of accusations are an extreme act of reckless journalism. Or worse, they are not journalism at all but, rather, classic dirty campaign politics. Who can forget the story of one of Lyndon Johnson’s early Congressional campaigns in which he spread the rumor that his opponent had sexual relations with barnyard animals. “It couldn’t possibly be true!” a staffer complained. “I know,” said Lyndon, “but let’s make the bastard deny it.”

Cain is campaigning to re-write the tax code, reform government, take on better heeled and more experienced opponents, and shake up the Left's monopoly on minorities' fealty.

The media prefers to focus on more substantive issues such as whether he is a black man with an overactive libido, a sort of manicured Eldridge Cleaver.  They want to make the bastard deny it.

One of the accusers is a spokeswoman for various federal agencies.  The other works as a registered lobbyist in New Jersey.  That is, they are both handsomely paid, establishment Lefties with vested interests in Statist governance.  That doesn't address their veracity.  But, it does contextualize their roles in the smear.

Is any man safe from accusations by political women--or women being used by political men to eliminate adversaries--who may have felt uncomfortable with something he has said, gestured or expressed on his face at one time or another?  Is there any man safe from the accusation that he had made a woman uncomfortable, even if he hadn't?  The questions are rhetorical, as every American man, and woman, knows that the answer is "no."

The legal standard is that of the reasonable woman.  To articulate it--that which would make the reasonable woman uncomfortable--suffices to highlight the eggshell sensitivity under which men labor in today's professional world.

Reports have now surfaced of an Iowa radio host accusing Cain of making inappropriate remarks to station employees.

Pressed about what exactly Cain said to the employees of his show, Deace responded by describing how he himself treats his staff. 

"Many a man has been done in by the inability to control his urges,” Deace wrote. “I am no different and just as vulnerable as any other man, which is why I put safeguards around me and hold myself accountable to my wife and other men in my life. Especially since I have very talented employees that happen to be women. I go out of my way to treat them like my sisters. For example, I wouldn't tell them or any other woman I am not married to nor related to how pretty she is."

That's all prudent advice by Deace.  And Noman is sure that Cain, and every man, wishes that he'd lived by it every moment of his under-the-microscope life.

In these matters, in our world, sinless, platonic perfection is the standard that men (not women) are ironically held to.  Neither are the mercy of God, reconciliation through sacraments, nor credit for reform available to him.

The worst motives are imputed to the most innocent of actions, and attributed to a man's innermost heart as a frozen testimony to his perpetual depravity.

A sixth sense for perceiving these things is even routinely and unquestioningly attributed to women, as if they are immune from the distortions of vanity, self-delusion, confused feelings, bitterness, or mere human fallibility.

Paradoxically, the motives so evidenced have been preached for decades as being the normal, natural and healthy response to interactions with the opposite sex, which only a repressed troglodyte would resist or deny.

On the substance of the allegations against Cain--motioning to a woman's height, flattering her looks, and inviting her into his apartment--it sounds pretty serious to Noman, much more so than a credible allegation of rape.

Expressing admiration for a woman's beauty is right up there with intoning "long dong silver."

Moreover, Noman cannot understand how Cain might have gotten the idea that it was acceptable to make advances to a woman--if that is what he did--during the Clinton 90's.

True, Gloria Steinem did articulate the "one free grope" rule in the Op-ed pages of the New York Times.  But, that's no excuse for letting a woman know that she's attractive.

Noman recalls media reluctance to address any of these issues--in contradistinction to its present gusto--during President Clinton's perjury-littered performance in 1998 and 1999.

Michael Issikof's original story on Monica Lewinsky was spiked by Newsweek and only saw the light of day because Matt Drudge got wind of it and posted it on the fledgling Drudgereport.com.

Juanita Broaddrick's exclusive pre-impeachment-vote interview about the rape was shelved rather than rushed onto the tube by NBC at a precarious time for the Democratic President.

Had NBC aired the interview during the Senate impeachment trial and the furor over Monica S. Lewinsky, it might have had a significant impact on the political climate. Whether the story has any lasting significance now, outside the context of any legal or impeachment proceeding, is unclear. NBC executives say the Myers report needed further checking and corroboration before it could be broadcast. 

Broaddrick told NBC she considered coming forward last year, after Kathleen E. Willey accused the president of groping her in the Oval Office. But, she said, "I just wasn't brave enough to do it."

Dabbing at her eye with a tissue, Broaddrick said she agreed to go on camera because "I just couldn't hold it in any longer." She said she did not want her grandchildren to ask: "Why didn't you tell what this man did to you?" 

NBC interviewed four friends who say Broaddrick told them about the alleged assault soon afterward, including Norma Kelsey, who said she saw Broaddrick's swollen lip and torn pantyhose that day. 

Broaddrick said she is pursuing no book deal or lawsuit, but that "all of these stories are floating around . . . and I was tired of everybody putting their own spin on it." 

Myers asked: "What is the purpose? Do you want to destroy the president?" 

"No, I don't want to do anything," Broaddrick said. "I do not have an agenda. I want to put all of these rumors to rest."

David P. Schippers, chief investigator for the House Judiciary Committee Republicans during the impeachment proceedings, said Tuesday that his staffers interviewed Broaddrick more than once and "have assured me that she is the most credible witness that either one of them have ever talked to."

A final caution is in order about getting swept up into Cain's alleged hormonal lapses.  This year's sexual assault drama involving Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a man for whom Noman makes no brief, is instructive.

For the accuser, Nafissatou Diallo, a 33-year-old Guinean immigrant, the result caps a precipitous fall. Prosecutors initially portrayed her as a credible and powerful witness, but then said that her myriad lies about her past — including a convincing, emotional but ultimately fraudulent account of being gang-raped by soldiers in Guinea — ended up undermining the case.

So, Naffissatou Diallo is a convincing and emotional fraud, and a repeated liar.  She is also a calculating woman as evidenced by her strategizing with a convict (whose money she holds in trust) about how to best take advantage of her sexual encounter with a famous man.

Behold, the victim.  Unless Diallo is one of a kind, there is much to consider, and regret, about Pavlovian social responses to salacious accusations.

But, at the end of June 2011, prosecutors said they no longer believed much of what she had told them about her circumstances or about herself. Since her initial allegation in May, Ms. Diallo had repeatedly lied, officials said. Within a day of the incident, she was recorded discussing the possible benefits of the case with an incarcerated man who was part of a group that had deposited about $100,000 in bank accounts controlled by the accuser. But Ms. Diallo's lawyer said translations of the taped conversations, two of them made a day after the encounter, misquoted his client. She had no intention of exploiting the charges against Mr. Strauss-Kahn to make money, he said.

Of course not.  And, ACORN had no intention of applying for $4.2 billion in Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) funds made available in 2009's stimulus bill.

The tawdry subject of sexual impropriety reminds Noman of a debate at Harvard Law School circa 1991 in which the evolving standards of evidence in sexual harassment cases were the topic of discussion.

Alan Dershowitz argued against the feminist position, which was guilty until proven innocent: an inversion of the traditional presumption of innocence, one of the keystone safeguards of liberty in America.

At one point in the debate, he leaned forward conspiratorially and said that he would explain why the proposals being discussed--and which were eventually adopted--were a very bad idea.

You could have heard a pin drop when he vituperated: "Women lie."

It was more than an inconvenient truth.  It was a politically incorrect one for which he was not to be forgiven.

Noman doesn't recall ever feeling a more palpable sensation of laser-focused hatred than that directed at Dershowitz by the overwhelmingly female, nearly exclusively feminist audience at that moment.

The problem in Cain's case, which is simply too politically convenient for the Left, is that Leftists also lie: not exclusively, but habitually and without pang of conscience or restraint by principle.

It bears repeating that Chapter 2 of Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals"--the bible of the community organizing left--is entitled "Of Means and Ends."

The classical, philosophically-realist position on the matter is that the end does not justify the means.  Some means are legitimate.  Some means are always and everywhere unjustifiable by virtue of their being intrinsically, objectively evil.  Illicit means vitiate otherwise moral ends and action.  They can never be sanitized by putatively noble ends.

Thus, one cannot resort to murder, or slander, in order to achieve a desirable end because, by their moral object, these means are always and everywhere morally wrong.  The overall action would be immoral.

Not so, teaches Alinsky.

That perennial question, "Does the end justify the means?" is meaningless as it stands; the real and only question regarding the ethics of means and ends is, and always has been, "Does this particular end justify this particular means?"

 Life and how you live it is the story of means and ends...Whenever we think about social change, the question of means and ends arises.  The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms.  He has no other problem...  He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work.  To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles.

The practical revolutionary will understand Goethe's "conscience is the virtue of observers and not of agents of action"; in action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one's individual conscience and good of mankind.  The choice must always be for the latter.  Action is for mass salvation and not for the individual's personal salvation.  He who sacrifices the mass good for his personal conscience has a peculiar conception of "personal salvation; he doesn't care enough for people to be 'corrupted' for them.

Therein lie so many problems with contemporary American politics.

First, it is folly, and dangerous folly at that, to seek salvation from political action.  Salvation in this world is achieved by the transformative affect of hope in the next, and faith in God, not by hope in the utopia following political (or technological) revolution. We should all know after the fall of communism that the latter path is a Marxist chimera rather than a guide to sane action.

Second, Alinsky does not address the "immaculate conception" of means, ends and principles other than to appropriate a Catholic religious doctrine and sneer at it.  Rather, he merely addresses the pragmatic and strategic value--not ontological and ethical value--of means and ends.  Because of the primacy of his ends--the good of mankind, mass salvation--he is willing (heroically, to his mind) to be corrupted (Alinsky's term) by using foul means.

He can deny that such a thing as objectively foul means exists, and Alinsky does, though he is willing to risk personal corruption to demonstrate his care for people in the event that he is wrong.  His blitheness indicates his ignorance about the gravity of ethics.

He can no more avoid the affect on his character, his co-nature, of evil means' use than he can avoid the affect of gravity on his body when stepping off a ledge.  Denying it won't preserve him from the dire consequences.

Once man is personally corrupted, how is he to know that his ends are worthy, or that he perceives reality correctly, or that it is care for people and the good of mankind that is driving him?  How does he know that he's not merely fooling himself, or brain-washed, or acting under the influence of self-righteousness or -assertion?

He doesn't.  He is just corrupt, a malfunctioning perceiver of reality.

Third, how can one ever trust a man who is not willing to be bound in his actions by adherence to objective reality?  He can justify any action to himself as a necessary means to his ends: sabotage, slander, false accusations, fomenting violence, you name it.

One cannot, which is why the President and his Party are in political trouble.  They are self-identified opportunists who will say and do anything to achieve their political ends.  Such men are not trustworthy.

Therein, too, lies the problem with the insinuations leveled against Cain.  They come from the side of the political aisle--Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton's side, the Chicago side--that engages in this type of muck-raking without either qualm of conscience or commitment to truth.

It is all just hardball politics and cost-benefit analysis to them.  And, when the media is your ally, indeed your alter ego, there are never any significant political costs to constrain action.  No tactic is too low, too costly to engage in.

Herman Cain has some soul searching to do about the way he treats women, or treated them in the past.  He would do well to review a number of instructive articles published during the Monica nightmare highlighting the pitfalls to powerful men of breathless, admiring, doe-eyed vixens drawn to power and wealth as metal is to a magnet.

Should Cain shake off the media's body block to his political aspirations, and win nomination and election to the Presidency, he will face these demons again.  Better to repudiate them now, to erect safeguards, and to hold himself accountable to a higher standard of behavior than he is alleged to have done before.  Whether guilty or not, that would be a positive good to come from this slime job.

Noman wishes him the best of luck.  We are all only human.  And, that predicament  weighs more heavily, and unevenly, on men than on women these days, as it most probably always will on Republicans than on Democrats, and Conservatives than on Liberals.

Occupy America's Wallet

There is entirely too much to say about the phenomena of Wall Street protesters springing up across the land claiming to speak for 99% of the population.  Noman imagines that his first reply should be, please don't.

Though belonging to the 99%, he has nothing else in common with Occupy Wall Street.  He pays taxes; they don't.  He works in the private sector; they don't.  He thinks America is just great; they don't.  He bathes...  

Unlike the various students demanding subsidized education, and others insisting on free whatever-they-think-they-are-entitled-to, Noman doesn't believe that anyone owes him anything more than common courtesy, and space within the confines of common decency to be who he is.

The one constant in this metastasizing phenomenon has been the futile search for a causal nexus between the protester's actions, aims and the various injustices they point to in order to explain themselves.

One young woman on the radio was willing to risk her scholarship to medical school in order to protest 1.5 million homeless children living in America.  Granting the number, ad arguendo, Noman scratched his head trying to connect her risking her scholarship, going to New York to protest Wall Street, desire for higher taxes and more spending, and how any of it would address the problem of homeless children--or even had anything to do with it.

It was classic Liberal: clutch onto a tear-jerking problem and cite it righteously to demand the policies you favor.  If the reader, for instance, is against the policies, it is because you want the problem to fester.  You probably profit from it, too.

Add Saul Alinsky to this mix and hopeless polarization ensues.  You are a "Have" trying to keep power away from the "Have-Nots."  Moreover, you are "the enemy."

In any event, and at all costs, ignore the obvious causes of the problem, which would recommend policies that Liberals oppose and spent decades deconstructing.

For example, the primary causes of child poverty in the US are the breakdown of the family, especially in black, single-parent families, and the breakdown of traditional sexual morality.  Policies addressing these root causes would undoubtedly spur Occupy Maternity Ward protests, chants of "get your rosaries off my ovaries," and invocation of child poverty as the raison d'être for their outbreak. 

Noman might focus with justice on the rank hypocrisy angle.  For instance, Nancy Pelosi--The Speaker of the House who shepherded Hank Paulson and Ben Bernnanke's bailout of Wall Street through Congress over the objections of House Republicans (who voted it down the first time, and took a beating from the media and a Republican Administration for torpedoing the stock market)--is magically the scourge of Wall Street.

She called down God's blessings on the protestors saying: “The message of the American people is that no longer . . . will the recklessness of some on Wall Street cause massive joblessness on Main Street.”  Really?  Who will prevent it?  Government?  Her?

Perhaps Nancy forgot her role in the January 24, 2010 deal to increase Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's loan limits in high-cost areas from $417,000 to $729,750.

Packing in that last trillion-dollars-plus of sub-prime, Alt-A mortgage-backed debt before the system froze up from cascading defaults didn't work out too well for Main Street.  But, Wall Street and the GSE's sub-prime confederates loved it.  [n.b. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are "government sponsored entities," or GSE's.]

She also colluded with Chris Dodd and Barney Frank to omit the GSE's from Dodd-Frank's ambit.  Another big win for big finance at the expense of the 50%-of-the-99% who continue to pick up the tab for the 49%-Party's formerly government-subsidized, now government-owned, cash cows.

Noman supposes that it is Minority Leader Pelosi's theatrical outbursts, not governing actions--what she says, not what she does --that count.  Like her oft-repeated, yet never-substantiated (nor questioned by the mainstream media) accusation that tea party protesters spit on members of Congress, it is her words, not reality, that matter.  (They presumably did so as they picked up garbage leaving Washington, DC cleaner than when they arrived en masse.)

There is also President Obama himself, who despite talking protesters onto the streets and winking at them for encouragement is the leading recipient of Wall Street contributions among all politicians in the 1989-2010 period.  That's impressive, especially considering that he's been a candidate for less than a decade.  Nevertheless, he leads the pack of pols with decades more campaign experience, and expenses, reaping $16 million of Wall Street lucre into his coffers.

Then there is a matter that George Soros complained about recently.  The Government--President Obama's government, and before that Senator Obama's government with House Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid running it--injected capital into banks, effectively relieving them of their bad assets and allowing them to earn their way out of a hole.  This allowed banks to earn bumper profits, and pay bumper bonuses once they had paid off their TARP loans.

Banks have earned these profits on President Obama's watch in relatively risk-free fashion courtesy of access to Fed money at record low interest rates held down for a record long period, and capturing the generous spread on tight-money loans in the marketplace even while dragging their feet on lending to small businesses and to the middle class.

Noman doesn't want to dwell on any of that, however.  For now, he's happy just to sit back and enjoy the spectacle.

Taking the longer view, some kind of taxonomy would help to put the disparate pieces of this puzzle together, and describe it.  Aristotelian causation provides one; Michael Novak's tripartite components of modern political economy provide another.  A hybrid of the two ordering devices provides us with a map to survey the scene.

Aristotlte's four causes are the material (that out of which a thing is); formal (that into which a thing becomes); efficient (that by which a thing becomes); and final (that for the sake of which a thing exists).  While they apply specifically to physical objects, e.g., tables, they are useful, though less definitive, for analyzing non-physical phenomena.

Novak's three elements of the American political economy are the political system (which is liberal), the economic system (which is market driven), and the cultural-moral system (which is pluralistic).  Putting the two together, one gets the following matrix:

Cause/System	Political (liberal)	Economic (market driven)	Cultural-Moral (pluralistic)
Material (that out of which)
Formal (that into which)
Efficient (that by which)
Final (that for the sake of which)

Political:

Materially, these protests are a legitimate expression of 1st Amendment rights.  This is the way we do things in America, and it is to be welcomed, even if not appreciated.

That said, there is a question about whether conduct is law-abiding.  If not--and, let's be real--then the right is conditioned, curtailed by arrests, etc.

Additionally, the movement has caught on.  We can expect some manifestation of it to be with us throughout the election season.

The interesting, and troubling, prospect is of what will happen when opposing Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party throngs encounter each other in earnest on the streets.

Formally, these political phenomena are being shaped by narrators, talking heads like Barbara Walters who exalted that "it has spread to more than 250 American cities, more than a thousand countries," despite there being only 195 nation states in the world.

It bears mentioning that the mainstream chattering class, people like Barbara Walters, works for big media corporations.

Also worth mentioning is media's importance to Saul Alinsky's first rule of power tactics: "Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have."  As Walter's cheer-leading indicates, there is no force comparable to media for creating illusions.

Otherwise, there is no unified narrative, as protesters clamor for everything from egalitarian utopia, to gay rights, to the freeing of convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.  Occupy Wall Street is decidedly a left-fest.  Its general message is "I want.  Gimme.  I'm entitled.  It's fair.  Tear something down."

Just as the Musllim brotherhood will shape the outcome of the Arab Spring despite the participation of idealistic protesters, Occupy Wall Street is already being shaped by the professional community organizers from SEIU, ACORN's successors, and others operating according to Alinsky's rules.

On this latter point, a look at Chapter 7 of "Rules For Radicals," provides an illuminating glimpse into tactics: e.g., "The real action is the enemy's reaction"; "The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength"; "Tactics, like organization, like life, require that you move with the action."

Recall that ACORN received access to $5 billion of community stabilization funds in the first stimulus bill, though its leader disclaimed any intention of availing himself or the organization of it; AmeriCorps received $6 billion; state employees unions received hundreds of billions of dollars in redistributed loot, as did recipients of transfer payments.

Despite high-brow protestations to the contrary, it stretches credulity--all but Liberals'--to maintain that none of this money is finding its way back into organized initiatives supportive of federal redistribution.

The trigger was President Obama's fiery oratory in support of a jobs bill that was legislatively dead on arrival but rhetorically alive with populist bombast to fuel combustable dispositions.

His speeches to the joint session of Congress and the Congressional Black Caucus bear special mention, though his every utterance since his return from Martha's Vineyard has defiantly fanned the flames of class warfare.  He is even proud of it.

Nor is the President alone.  Today, Vice-president Biden blamed an increase in the number of murders and rapes in Flint, Michigan--the communist city that drove GM away to its own detriment, and nurtured the chip on Michael More's shoulder as well as the scars in his soul--on Republican obstructionism.

Despite the VP's failure to establish causation (as opposed to correlation), and to explain when, how and why local police became the financial responsibility of every US citizen including those in law-abiding communities (as opposed to local citizens who generally pay for local police), the red meat will undoubtedly feed an Occupy Flint movement, and encourage escalating tensions elsewhere.

Finally, Occupy Wall Street is dedicated to greater federal spending and higher taxes.  It is a protest geared towards stimulating Congressional action along Democrats preferred lines, and establishing its fiscal (and social) priorities into law.

Note this contrast with the Tea Party movement.  Occupy Wall Street is dedicated to the use of government power to confiscate wealth from others in order to redistribute it to protesters and their preferred recipients.  The Tea Party is dedicated to the abstention of government power so that those who earn or have wealth can put it to their own preferred uses rather than surrender it to the uses preferred by government-favored third parties.

With respect to those who create wealth, their uses are far more likely to prosper society than the uses of politically connected cronies, e.g., Solyndra.

It takes a peculiar outlook, the Alinsky perspective for instance--i.e., "How can the Have-Nots take power away from the Haves"?--to consider Occupy Wall Street claims sympathetic, or to call a Tea Party leader a nazi for upholding the rule of law.

Economic:

Populist rage is the matter from which this movement springs.  It is easy to despise Wall Streeters (if one lets oneself, which is never advisable) who profited wildly from participating in schemes that nearly bankrupted the global economy.

This particular genie, however, once coaxed out of its bottle, can be devastatingly destructive and well nigh impossible to put back in.  Unstable minds are already at work drawing crude connections and making incendiary remarks.

One problem with Alinsky's tactics is that goading enemies into impolitic reactions can be done by anybody, not just the politically correct, which is already bad enough.

Lost in the protests is the nuance doggedly insisted upon by Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) dissenter Peter Wallison, who writes in today's Wall Street Journal that protestor's rage springs from a false narrative.

It was primarily the government's housing policies, specifically Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's engineering of the sub-prime bubble that bears the blame for our financial misery.   Wall Street was merely a willing accomplice, not its principle architect.

Research by Edward Pinto, a former chief credit officer of Fannie Mae (now a colleague of mine at the American Enterprise Institute) has shown that 27 million loans—half of all mortgages in the U.S.—were subprime or otherwise weak by 2008. That is, the loans were made to borrowers with blemished credit, or were loans with no or low down payments, no documentation, or required only interest payments. 

Of these, over 70% were held or guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie or some other government agency or government-regulated institution. Thus it is clear where the demand for these deficient mortgages came from. 

The huge government investment in subprime mortgages achieved its purpose. Home ownership in the U.S. increased to 69% from 65% (where it had been for 30 years). But it also led to the biggest housing bubble in American history. This bubble, which lasted from 1997 to 2007, also created a huge private market for mortgage-backed securities (MBS) based on pools of subprime loans.

Naturally, when one is trying to "pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it" ("all issues must be polarized if action is to follow"--a teaching whose classical expression Alinsky finds in Christ's dictum that "He who is not with me is against me"), nuance gets in the way.

Formally, the idea of a planned, targeted and government-directed economy drives this movement.  Command and control is its essence.

Noman finds this curious as the notion has been thoroughly discredited in management and organizational behavior literature, even in the military, for its suppression of private initiative, reduction of personal responsibility and dependence on centralized actors who cannot possess the omniscience required to make the system work efficaciously.

Ironically, protesters favoring government power over private initiative operate under the cloak of speech and assembly freedoms granted by the same constitution that protects commerce, in its body, not in an added amendment.

The economic trigger was the badly sagging fortunes of the command and control idea.   Despite Newsweek's famous 2009 cover declaring that "We Are All Socialists Now," we are not.

And with persistently high unemployment, skyrocketing deficits and debt, an impending double-dip recession and a proliferation of crony corporatism and corruption, there are daily fewer voices that confidently advocate for top-down economic power.

The discrediting of this economic panacea is all the more alarming to the President's Party as it is accompanied by the President's sinking poll numbers, doubts about his re-election, and concomitant fears of losing Congressional power, which was so opposrtunistically deployed against popular majorities, e.g., ObamaCare.  There is fear of payback, and even of merely justifiable roll back

The momentum to cut spending and lower taxes--a trajectory diametrically opposed to the Democrat's thrust--is on the ascent.  Repeated legislative and budgetary confrontations have only served to raise the profiles of smaller-government proponents such as John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan.

The final cause of Occupy Wall Street's economic thrust is Statism.  Under present conditions, this requires utilizing corporatist intermediaries such as General Electric, Dow Chemical, Pfizer and Walmart: public-private partners that, unlike Chamber of Commerce members, have grown comfortable in bed with the federal government.

Notably, these companies are not the target of protestors' rage.  That could change quickly should the government decide to dispense with their services.

There is nothing in the rhetoric or actions of Occupy Wall Street to indicate where, to protestors' minds, the limits to collectivism, if any, reside.


Cultural-Moral

Materially, the movement's moral impulse is grievance at perceived unfairness.  Income disparities are unseemly to many, and Wall Street is a haven for the exorbitantly paid and lavishly pampered.

Noman does not share Occupy Wall Street's aversion to economic difference, or think that there is no economically meaningful distinction to be drawn between an investment banker and a shoe-shiner.  So, he is not convinced that both should earn roughly the same pay for their efforts--something sundry protestors have suggested, and that he has heard from undergraduates for years.

This implicates at least a touch of self-interest--convenient moralizing, say, or easy virtue--given that protesters, unlike Warren Buffet, are not clamoring to pay more taxes.  Rather, they are demanding more benefits paid for by other's taxes.

The conflicts of interest inherent in the frustrated sentiments expressed have largely escaped protestors' self-examination, which does not excuse public sympathizers from Fed Chairmen Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to short seller George Soros for failing to recognize and acknowledge them.

Formally, the tendency is towards an equal distribution of resources.  It is an article of faith for some that equality of outcome will end injustice and suffering, and usher in heaven on earth.  The pedigree for this notion runs from Rousseau through Marx to Lenin.

But, will redistribution ever achieve its lofty aims?  Noman thinks not given the evidence of history, which leads to the opposite conclusion.

No system geared towards equality could ever ensure that everybody had something because it could never guarantee supply under demotivating conditions.  It could only ensure that nobody (besides the rulers) had anything.

Do you remember Liberals waxing eloquent about Cuba? The Soviet Union?  Nicaragua?  How has the equal distribution of resources worked in those worker's paradises?

Naturally, perfect equality proves elusive because those who effectuate the balancing, the Party, always reserves the lion's share for itself and its members.

What would be different should Occupy Wall Street and the Democratic Party have its way with the people's morals, and wallets?

The efficient cause of this movement is opportunity, specifically opportunism provided by our proximity to the financial crisis.  The relevance of occupying Wall Street as opposed to Beverly Hills, where arguably more millionaires and sub-prime/Alt-A mortgages might be found, is the financial capitol's psychological connection to the still-profusing economic wound.

Moreover, Liberals are so close, yet so far from consolidating massive gains.  The Wall Street Journal editorialized in January of 2009 about Democrats' 40 year wish list.  Today, this article serves primarily as a grim testament to Democrat's faulty prognosticative powers, and untrustworthiness to manage the nation's finances and affairs.

The adoption of the 40 year wish list in the first stimulus bill was followed by countless Liberal conquests including most notably, ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank.  All that remains to accomplish--besides establishing a blue state entitlement to red state taxes--is to pay for these spend-and-tax victories before capital markets definitively protest, and credit default swaps on the nation's debt render them Pyrrhic.

To Occupy Wall Street, these legislative triumphs make America more fair.  They redistribute money and power from the Haves to the Have-Nots.  The Have-Nots are entitled.  Consequently, taxes must be raised now, regardless of the consequences, or all will be lost.  Carpe diem.

Resentment, unemployment and malaise also trigger this moral response.  Things are not going well economically.  As it sounds less-and-less credible to blame the mess on the other guys the further they recede from memory, it must be the fault of systemic injustices.

When the going gets tough, the Left capitalizes on its opportunity for big change, even when its policies are the cause of the tough sledding.  Perhaps especially then.

Finally, the cause is the demand for social justice.  Who doesn't want that, you ask?  But, along whose, and what lines are we talking?

Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre highlighted the problems besetting contemporary moral discourse and suggested means to surmount them in a landmark series of books commencing with "After Virtue" (1981) and ending with "Dependent Rational Animals" (1999).  The second of four books, entitled "Whose Justice? Which Rationality?" highlighted the incommensurability of moral positions predicated on disparate foundations, each rooted in separate and distinct historical epochs.

To the extent that mere words such as "social justice" and "fairness" bind listeners in their spells, it behoove us to discern the roots of their varying articulations.

Noman will attempt to ground those roots in varying conceptions of "Hope" in a subsequent post on the topic.

Populist Winds Blowing

Senators--mostly Democratic, but not exclusively--are incensed at China's artificially low currency, which reduces the value of its exports to the US, and increases American firms' propensity to source overseas.  Taken as an isolated phenomenon, this costs the US manufacturing jobs.

Critics of China specifically, and global sourcing generally, are reluctant to recognize the domestic benefits flowing from outsourcing, e.g., lower domestic consumer prices; money flowing to more efficient and competitively advantageous domestic uses thereby creating jobs in new growth industries.

Neither do they care that a stronger Chinese Yuan will merely shift the venue of sourcing, not its incidence.  The latter won't happen until US union wages fall back to earth, as evidenced by Ford's recent announcement pending union approval of a newly negotiated contract.

Many manufacturing jobs are union jobs.  Union jobs pay a lot, often more than the companies providing them can afford.  That's how the Big-Three automakers were driven to penury.  Incidentally, unions are Democrat, vote Democrat, fund Democrats, and provide muscle for Democrats, e.g., marching on New York to protest capital, capitalists and capitalism.

The Democratic Senate's response to these interconnected phenomena is to propose tariffs on Chinese imports.  If China won't let the market float the value of its currency, then the US will forcibly increase costs associated with doing business in China.  Those costs will fall onto companies and ultimately consumers.  Nicholas Hastings thinks this is a desperate response to recent dollar appreciation due mainly to Euro disintegration.

The trouble is the U.S. is getting desperate. 

It is looking for any solution to stop unemployment from rising and its economy from heading back into recession. And China, with its weak yuan, is back in the firing line. 

For most of last year and much of this one, the dollar itself had been under heavy selling pressure and China was essentially off the hook. 

With the weakness of its own currency being accused of causing ‘currency wars’ by countries such as Brazil, the U.S. was hardly in a position to point the finger of blame anywhere else.

President Obama has joined the chorus despite cautioning Senators recently to proceed with respect for international norms.

"China has been very aggressive in gaming the trading system to its advantage and to the disadvantage of other countries, particularly the United States," Mr. Obama said. He acknowledged China has allowed some appreciation in the yuan, but said "it's not enough." 

Senate lawmakers, voting almost at the same time as Mr. Obama spoke, moved a step closer to passing legislation that would target Beijing for its exchange-rate policies...

"We are in a trade war (emphasis added). We have our clocks cleaned every day and lose jobs every day because of unfair Chinese practices," Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) said on the Senate floor before the vote... 

"They don't outwork us, they don't outperform you, they steal our intellectual property, they manipulate their currency, they subsidize their industries," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) said during debate, referring to China as a "communist dictatorship who cheats" (emphases added).

The President cautioned the Senate not to punish American companies by exposing them to WTO sanctions.  Punishing them with higher prices, and squeezing their margins, apparently doesn't bother him, at least in principle.

“I don’t want a situation where we’re just passing laws that are symbolic, knowing that they’re probably not going to be upheld by the World Trade Organization for example, and then suddenly U.S. companies are subject to a whole bunch of sanctions,” he said.

“I think we’ve got a strong case to make, but we’ve just got to make sure that we do it in a way that’s going to be effective,” the president said. Chinese officials this week threatened a trade war if the bill is enacted. 

In a key procedural vote Thursday, the Senate moved the currency bill a step closer to passage. The chamber could hold a final vote on the bill later Thursday. It faces an uncertain fate in the House where Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) has called it “dangerous.” 

The legislation is a popular political symbol for lawmakers concerned about the faltering U.S. economy. With unemployment still above 9%, many politicians see targeting China as an issue that will resonate with voters in next year’s elections.

Mechanisms already exist for the Treasury Department to officially designate China a "currency manipulator" in its periodic currency report, which would have legal trade trade implications.  That Tim Geithner hasn't done so indicates to Noman that the President and his Party are more interested in drumming up populist passions for political gain rather than in addressing China's currency peg.

Presumably, Americans should not be concerned about the resurrection of yellow-peril scapegoating.  Korematsu was such a long time ago, and it couldn't happen again, not here.  In any event, the end of resonating with voters in next year's elections justifies pretty much any means (see  "Rules for Radicals" below).

The WSJ strikes a somber note regarding the potential consequences of the proposed Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act.

Unlike America's last great trade blunder, the Tariff Act of 1930 (aka Smoot-Hawley), the China bill wouldn't raise tariffs across the board, but would instead allow companies to seek countervailing duties by treating a "misaligned" currency as a subsidy. This would nonetheless open the floodgates to applications from American companies, and the resulting tariffs would violate World Trade Organization rules. China would undoubtedly retaliate, meaning companies and consumers in both countries would lose.

If other countries follow suit, there would be knock-on effects throughout the global economy. As the erstwhile leader of the world's trading system as well as one of its main beneficiaries, the U.S. bears a special responsibility to avoid this outcome. 

One reason we are so close to this ledge is that Washington has not led on global and regional liberalization. Free trade is like a bicycle, which needs to be pedaled forward or it tips over. When a President is AWOL on trade as Mr. Obama has been, U.S. politicians succumb to populist temptations. Instead of concentrating on domestic reforms to restore growth, Congressmen tell Americans that their lost prosperity was taken by China rather than by poor policy decisions. So now the U.S. will punish the biggest developing nation, and one of America's main goods suppliers, for its economic success. 

With respect to China's allegedly undervalued currency and its role in exacerbating trade imbalances, the evidence is mixed.

The last six years are proof that revaluing the yuan is not the key to reducing China's large and persistent trade surplus with the world. The yuan has appreciated by almost 30% since the middle of 2005, when Mr. Schumer was pushing for a 25% revaluation. But the Chinese surplus has mostly grown and occasionally shrunk during this period in response to other forces... 

Democrats want to appease labor to hold the Senate next year. The White House wants to appease Senate Democrats and labor, so it has failed to speak against the tariff bill. White House spokesman Jay Carney says only that it is "reviewing" the legislation and that "we share the goal." 

Senate Republicans aren't about to stand in the way, especially when their Presidential front-runner, the supposedly business savvy Mitt Romney, is also calling for unilateral trade duties against China to give his candidacy a populist edge. John Boehner's House Republicans may be the last obstacle to such a destructive bill passing.

Boehner is paying a high price in populist bashing for it, too.  Senator Schumer's response to the House Speaker's description of the proposed legislation stopped just short of calling him a traitor:

"The only thing that would be dangerous would be to continue turning he other cheek while China mounts its assault on U.S. jobs, U.S. wealth, U.S. manufacturing," Schumer said on the Senate floor. He said that "I'm aghast at that notion that the Speaker says fighting for American jobs against unfair practices that China foists upon is us well beyond what Congress should be doing ... There is nothing else Congress should be doing except rising to defend American jobs."..." 

For some inexplicable reason, the Republican leadership in the House is siding with the Chinese government," Schumer said. "This is not the time to go soft on China."..

Though Boehner's position suggests he won't allow a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives, "there's going to be huge pressure for him to do so," Schumer said. Schumer said that the only answer is to get tough with China, saying that "the Chinese only understand one thing: being tough, telling them if they don't discontinue these actions we are going to take action unilaterally on our own."... 

"There's already a trade war going on Mr. Speaker -- China is cheating to gain unfair advantage," Schumer said. "It's about time we do something about it."... 

"China has more to lose in a trade war than we do," Schumer said. "They may take a few sanctions in response," he said, but "they're not going to create a trade war -- absolutely not."

Timing is everything.  With things not going well for the President on the offensive and facing public scrutiny of his ideas, it's better to change the subject, demagog, and let Senate surrogates and street smart union organizers take the lead.

Noman alludes to the twin populist pressure-whistles blowing from Democratic kettles in recent days.  China-bashing is one.  The other is Wall Street bashing.

Noman finds this amusing as it was President Clinton who mined the Chinese Communists for campaign contributions in return for sensitive military technology, and the Democratic Party which reaps the majority of Wall Street contributions.  Perhaps these confrontations have all been prearranged in back rooms, like a staged bout of Big-Time Wrestling.  Do you think?

The Senate vote puts the White House in a delicate position. Like previous administrations, the Obama White House is wary of antagonizing Chinese leaders, whose cooperation it needs not just on economic issues but also on an array of national security matters. But criticizing China remains popular with the public, and many Democrats, including those from big industrial states, say China's currency policy is unfair to U.S. workers...

Opponents of the bill say that instead of potentially sparking a trade war, the U.S. should face its own problems, such as the burgeoning federal budget deficit. "It's like we know what we've got to do but we won't do it," said Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.). "It's like we've got to find a bogeyman."

Readers of Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals"--the community organizer's and practical revolutionary's bible--will immediately recognize his handiwork in current events.

Specifically:

Rules for Power Tactic: 

#2 - Never go outside the experience of your people. 

# 8 - Keep the pressure on with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose. 

#13 - Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.


Rules to test whether power tactics are ethical: 

#3 - In war the end justifies almost any means. (n.b., the minor premise is that everything you consider important is war.) 

#7 - Generally, success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics. 

#8 - The morality of means depends upon whether the means is being employed at a time of imminent defeat or imminent victory. 

#10 - You do what you can with what you have and clothe it in moral garments.

Americans are frustrated with a collapsing economy and high unemployment despite assurances of a government-driven turnaround.  They are disgusted with the trillions of dollars that have been wastefully larded into government-selected troughs since the President's election.

The people are looking for a convenient bogeyman, but don't want to look too closely at their President who might not be the nice, clean-cut fellow they imagined him to be.  It is crucial for Democrats to deflect their frustration, disgust and desperation onto a perceived enemy and away from their governance.  The Chinese (and Wall Street bankers) are straight out of central casting.

Democrats are hoping that populist demagoguery along Alinskyite lines will turn the trick.  Defeat has been looking rather imminent, with a recent poll  indicating that any Republican candidate is preferable to President Obama.

It is evident from Alinsky's ethics rules that his disciples are not bound by classical-Christian notions of reality (being), truth, goodness, virtue, the moral object, etc.   In essence, they reduce to one rule: metaphysics are what you make them.   Demonizing third parties while throwing world markets into chaos as the global economy teeters on the brink of a double-dip recession are perfectly acceptable means.  You've got to break a few nest eggs to make a Statist omelet.

As one might expect, China is disturbed by the scapegoating.  It pledges to continue its exchange rate reforms, and despite noises about trade wars, is leaving the door open to reconciliation.  Yet:

Senior Chinese officials have become increasingly forceful in their approach to the U.S. since the global recession, with many convinced that China is now in the ascendant and the U.S. is in permanent decline. Some feel China has the upper hand as the largest holder of U.S. debt—and the only major economy still growing rapidly.

Chinese leaders say the U.S. is to blame for plunging the world into crisis as a result of economic mismanagement, and resent moves that America has taken to boost its recovery, including buying bonds to hold down interest rates—so-called quantitative easing—which they argue is debasing the U.S. dollar and pumping up inflation in China and other emerging economies...

Chinese leaders also recognize that in a globalized economy, their own fate is closely linked to that of the U.S., and a trade war would likely be as damaging to China as the U.S.—perhaps even more so given China's greater reliance on exports.

Noman wonders why the Senate and White House don't recognize that in this globalized economy with a universal capital market, America's fate is closely linked to that of China's.

If he understands Americas's economic predicament correctly, it is that America--especially its Blue States, and federal government--refuses to live within its means, and insists that China and other foreign nations finance the profligacy on our terms, even to the point of their own detriment.

At the risk of desdcending into arcana and boring the reader to distraction, Noman thinks it worth the digression to contextualize this controversy, and situate it in reality.

Peter and Andrew Schiff have written an informative little economics allegory illustrated with comic book drawings entitled "How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes."  It is imminently accessible, and will help to shed light.

America doesn't under-consume sufficiently to generate enough savings to create capital--that which is used to increase productivity and supply future consumption.  On the contrary, Americans are negative savers--America spends more than it earns.  It borrows from other producers, China for instance, in order to consume more.  America's consumption addiction adds little to US productive capacity, and drives the country deeper into debt.

Government compounds matters by inserting itself into the process of credit allocation via guarantees, credits, taxes and penalties, which is to say that it directs how savings (loanable funds) are to be allocated.  For instance, it threw its full weight behind an "affordable housing mission" that led to an overallocation of economic resources to housing, generally, and sub-prime housing specifically.  America and the world are still suffering the affects of this public-private partnership.

Government further influences the flow of credit through the Federal Reserve Bank--a supposedly independent entity that actually functions as an adjunct of the US Treasury--which sets the base interest rate upon which all rates rest.  Lower rates are politically popular, and consequently tend to be the norm. This further encourages borrowing, and retards necessary savings.

Artificial booms and busts follow investment choices predicated upon artificially set rates that send false signals to borrowers, i.e., that consumption has been deferred thereby pushing rates lower, indicating pent-up demand for future consumption.  Capital investment made to supply this future consumption is likely to underperform, if not be lost altogether, because the demand won't actually materialize.

Since the Fed's creation in 1913, the dollar has lost 95% of its value to inflation!  The Schiffs write that "the Fed now exists for the sole purpose of providing the inflation necessary to allow the government to spend more than it collects in taxes."

In 1971, President Nixon terminated the dollar's gold backing.  Consequently, America's currency is supported by nothing other than government's power to tax savings away from citizens who under consumed, risked, and produced them.  It has neither intrinsic nor convertible value.

The money supply, consequently, is inflatable at will.  While doing so deflates the purchasing power, or value, of the currency, it defers hard choices regarding spending and taxes.

The money supply is presently rocketing under the Fed's various quantitative easing initiatives.  Because only some prices are rising (e.g., food, energy, resources), and others are remaining stable in the recessionary economy, inflation is masked.  Yet, prices should be falling as people pay down debt and reign in their spending.

The economy is being prevented by government action from rebalancing at lower prices that will give relief to consumers, and eventually settle at a level where purchasing will resume.  That is when the economy will sustainably expand.

China provides the US with cheap goods and cheap loans, which enables America to defer saving and to spend.  The Chinese work, under consume, save, invest, produce and lend.  Yet, they don't borrow; they consume meagerly.  The majority of China's population lives in poverty, while America's lives in relative opulence.  In return, China accumulates increasingly inflated (decreasingly valuable) dollars.

Low interest rates in the US are made possible by high savings rates abroad.   Because the US dollar is the world's official reserve currency, every country needs dollars to conduct trade.  Dollars are consequently always in demand for reasons not directly related to the health of the US economy.  Many dollars held by foreigners are done so in US banks, where they can be lent easily to Americans.  Others save, we borrow cheaply.

Without China's savings, America would find it much harder to borrow, even at much higher interest rates.  How would that work for the federal government given its $14 trillion debt--over $1 trillion of it held by China, America's largest creditor?  Additionally, China is estimated to hold in excess of $2 trillion of dollar denominated assets.

The US has run persistent trade deficits since 1976, which is only possible due to the built-in demand for dollars occasioned by its world reserve currency status.  The US trade deficit averaged roughly $600 billion per year between 2000 and 2010, or $2,500 per citizen.  Reserve currency status is neither permanent nor guaranteed.

This dynamic should strengthen the currencies of countries, like China, that enjoy big trade surpluses.  Because the Chinese peg the yuan to the dollar at a relatively fixed rate, however, Chinese dollar holders are discouraged from consuming and are essentially obliged to save them.  Consequently, US borrowers have dollars available to them at low rates.  This is what DC presently is excoriating China for.

China keeps the Yuan artificially low.  Perhaps it might be said with equal justice that foreign demand for America's currency due to its reserve status keeps the value of the dollar artificially high.

America borrows recklessly, and has used available credit to consume and to create a housing boom.  When credit stopped expanding and eventually tightened in 2007-2008, the bubble burst.   Falling prices have been partially arrested--thereby preventing a necessary rebalancing of the economy--by deficit government spending.  The government is borrowing $1.6 trillion per year, more than half from foreigners, and faces similar or greater deficits far into the foreseeable future.

DC has made no effort to seriously cut government spending.  Quite the contrary, it has dug in to preserve prerogatives, expand entitlements, and balloon spending.  China is continuing to extend credit, albeit more reluctantly, to a debtor that is decreasingly likely to pay with anything but near-worthless dollars.  It is also moving to forge consensus on the need for an alternative reserve currency.

Eventually, China will cease lending to America and refocus its productivity on domestic consumption.  It will then enjoy the fruits of its labor, rather than make them available to us at low rates in return for depreciating paper currency and political abuse.

America is inflating its way out of its debts with rounds of quantitative easing and other weapons of mass distraction, which ensures it will pay debts off with diluted currency.  The money China gets in return will not buy as much as what it lent.  Consequently, China partially protects itself  and its present advantages by pegging the Yuan.

In sum, Inflation transfers money from savers in a currency (China) to debtors in that same currency (America).  DC is mad ostensibly because China takes steps to prevent the full brunt of Americas's backdoor devaluation strategy from falling on it.

Senators Schumer, Graham and company appear to Noman not only to be biting the hand that feeds America, they are shooting America in the foot.  Because the dollar is the reserve currency, it is widely accepted regardless of America's economic fundamentals.    Either hyperinflation, or a loss of reserve status, however, will change that, and thrust America into abject penury.

The proposed Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act does nothing to address those horizontal concerns, but rather does much to hasten their onset.

Noman has sufficient doubts about the wisdom of this course to hope that the Senate will desist from its populist exercise before it hastens America's comeuppance in return for political gain, and alienates those who permit the Senators to maintain illusions of government omnipotence.  At the very least, Noman hopes that if Senator Schumer must play with guns, he learns to shoot straight.