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 April 14, 2012 WASHINGTON – Sebastian Mallaby, (The Buffettt rule is a sorry excuse for tax reform, The Financial Times, April 13, 2012), correctly points out that President Obama’s insistence in pushing the idea of tax increases for the rich (the “Buffett rule”) is bogus tax reform. Surely we could and probably [...]
By Paolo von Schirach April 10, 2012 WASHINGTON – By dropping out of the Republican Party nomination process, Rick Santorum did the only sensible thing he has done in a campaign founded mostly on preposterous, sentimental and hopelessly archaic themes. The scary part is not that another out of step with the modern world politician wanted to run on family [...]
By Paolo von Schirach April 9, 2012 WASHINGTON – Professor Walter Russell Mead believes that all this talk about “American decline” is incorrect. (The Myth of America’s Decline, The Wall Street Journal, April 9, 2012). The real issue –he claims– is the decline of the Trilateral System, ( the US, Europe and Japan), that shaped the [...]
By Paolo von Schirach April 3, 2012 WASHINGTON – After primary wins in Maryland, the District of Colombia and Wisconsin, it appears that Mitt Romney has turned a corner. It seems now that the Republicans are finally getting the message that this acrimonious and bitterly contested primary season is not advancing their objective of creating a compelling anti-Obama [...]
By Paolo von Schirach March 21, 2012 WASHINGTON – House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan is a courageous man. He came forth with a Republican budget proposal that would actually do something substantive about entitlement and tax reform. He already did this with his 2011 “Path to Prosperity” budget proposal. But that got nowhere because the [...]
By Paolo von Schirach March 14, 2012 WASHINGTON – Listening to the pundits debating the upcoming presidential elections, the consensus boils down to this: if the unemployment rate stays as is (8,3%) or trends down between now and November, president Obama gets re-elected. If it goes higher, then he is in trouble and may not make [...]
By Paolo von Schirach March 9, 2012 WASHINGTON – At the very beginning of his long campaign it seemed as if Mitt Romney had all it takes to get the Republican nomination, augment his base with the support of most moderate independents, and then win the November elections. Having been a key contender in 2008, Romney had name [...]
By Paolo von Schirach March 8, 2012 WASHINGTON – The most striking, truly dissonant effect of an American anemic economy, growing only a little and burdened by an epic $ 15 trillion national debt, and of the 8.3% unemployment is that president Barack Obama, just months before the elections, is back, with almost 50% favorable ratings. This is rather astonishing. Rightly or wrongly, Americans [...]
By Paolo von Schirach February 29, 2012 WASHINGTON – If you listen to most commentary about the US economy, it seems that we have turned a corner and that things are looking brighter every day. Unemployment is down, growth is up, manufacturing is doing better and, yes, president Obama is looking good. His ratings are up. [...]