By Paolo von Schirach May 14, 2012 WASHINGTON – An item in the May 14 News Hour on PBS caught my attention, for two reasons. The first one was the issue itself: long term unemployment in America, something that is becoming a real tragedy, with millions of people out of a job for so long that [...]
By Paolo von Schirach May 7, 2012 WASHINGTON – Watching on C-SPAN, (the meritorious public affairs TV channels), a session of the US House Budget Committee was quite depressing. There was no real debate on the issues aimed at getting to some constructive policy outcome. I heard only prepackaged slogans and a lot of predictable posturing.
By Paolo von Schirach May 5, 2012 WASHINGTON – The long scheduled US-China Summit in Beijing, part of an established practice aimed at having periodic high level contacts between the two countries, interestingly enough morphed into the “Chen Guangcheng Story”. Forget about currency and investment issues, we want to know about the daring escape of this Chinese lawyer protesting against [...]
By Paolo von Schirach May 4, 2012 WASHINGTON – A really lousy jobs report. Only 115,000 new jobs created in the US in the month of April. And the unemployment ticked down to 8.1% just because 300,000 Americans dropped out, and so they are no longer counted as unemployed. But the really scary item is the percentage of Americans [...]
By Paolo von Schirach Related story: http://schirachreport.com/index.php/2012/05/02/obama-did-not-need-to-fly-to-kabul-to-announce-new-afghanistan-policy-this-was-a-cheap-publicity-stunt-osamas-death-changed-little-in-this-conflict/ May 3, 2012 WASHINGTON – I stated (see link above) that President Obama is trying to get way too much mileage out of the (otherwise totally appropriate) killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan (Operation Neptune Spear) on May 1, 2011. While an important event that allowed some closure with the 9/11 attacks [...]
By Paolo von Schirach May 2, 2012 WASHINGTON – The connection between the killing of Osama bin Laden and the conflict in Afghanistan today exists only in the mind of Obama’s pollsters hoping to score something here at home on the almost forgotten notion that “9/11 started there and Obama brought it to a close”. Of course, [...]
By Paolo von Schirach May 1, 2012 WASHINGTON - In the never ending Greek fiscal debacle saga, everybody’s focus has been on the unfolding drama. Will this Eurozone-IMF rescue package work? Or will it be the next one, until finally something that would stick is cobbled together? But, while not unreasonable, this focus on crisis management and related countermeasures took all [...]
By Paolo von Schirach April 28, 2012 WASHINGTON – The interview on the Charlie Rose show broadcast on PBS (US Public Television Stations) and Bloomberg TV sounded intriguing. The two authors, Nick Hanauer and Eric Liu were there to discuss their new book “The Gardens of Democracy, A new American story of citizenship, the economy [...]
By Paolo von Schirach April 26, 2012 WASHINGTON - Trying to minimize the Secret Service Colombia prostitution scandal, as President Obama did on a TV show (“just a couple of knuckleheads”) may be politically expedient, just a few months before the elections. But it is not a good way of disposing of an egregious episode revealing a surprising level [...]
By Paolo von Schirach Related story: http://schirachreport.com/index.php/2012/04/08/why-is-obama-so-timid-about-syria-because-there-is-no-more-money-to-get-into-a-confrontation-that-might-escalate-into-another-conflict-pentagon-already-on-a-cost-cutting-path-this-dog-wont-bite/ April 25, 2012 WASHINGTON – Fouad Ajami is a keen observer of key developments in the Middle East and US policy towards them. He just wrote a compelling piece in The Wall Street Journal, (America’s Syria Abdication, April 25, 2012), in which he deplores US lack of leadership in [...]