Cutting the Unemployment Line

Even in this economic chaos, some jobs remain recession resistant

There are three options government can pursue when the economy goes south. First, the Fed can cut interest rates, buy up assets, and extend credit, all of which the central bank has already done. Second, Congress can cut taxes on businesses and consumers in the hope they will spend more. The first effort—last year’s tax rebates—didn’t have the intended effect since consumers used much of the windfall to pay down debt or save. The substantial tax cuts that will be part of the Obama stimulus package would likely have a similarly muted effect. Businesses and consumers, facing a tough credit environment and needing to repair their balance sheets, will likely use proceeds from the tax cuts to tide themselves over. The third option is for the government to directly purchase goods and services, to substitute the demand that consumers and businesses aren’t providing.

The Washington remnant of the Republican Party—40 senators and 178 representatives—is all for Options 1 and 2, cheap money and tax cuts. But they’re having great difficulty with Option 3. They have forgotten Richard Nixon’s famous line that “we’re all Keynesians now.” To them, spending government funds to goose the economy is unacceptable, not just because of the possibility of poor execution —i.e., pork. No, many are rejecting it as a matter of principle. Even though several Republican governors are pleading for assistance in the form of federal spending, Washington Republicans are saying no.

Newly elected Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele laid down the party line on CNN: “Let’s get this notion out of our heads that the government create jobs. Not in the history of mankind has the government ever created a job.” Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina succinctly summed up his opposition: “We can’t keep spending and borrowing to get us out of a recession.” Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri concedes that some government spending—such as spending on highways—can create jobs but thinks that spending on mass transit or alternative-transit infrastructure isn’t stimulative.  Read More…

Will the Stimulus Plan Create Jobs? | Newsweek Voices – Daniel Gross | Newsweek.com.

Obama Sends Vice President to Build Bridges

US Vice President Joe Biden is the star guest at the Munich Security Conference this weekend. His speech on Saturday is supposed to form the basis of the new trans-Atlantic partnership. Instead of concrete pledges, experts await a bid to mend ties between Europe and the US.

It’s been little over three weeks since Joe Biden became deputy to the most powerful man in the world and he still hasn’t grown into his new role. The former senator can be seen at the State Department discussing foreign policy or dining with President Barack Obama in the White House. Sometimes he presents himself as a champion of the middle classes, at other times he appears in shirtsleeves at on a railway platform pleading for investment in infrastructure. “It is hard now,” he admitted in a recent TV interview. “What I have to think now is, everything I say, I am the vice president. I am not the president. So everything I say reflects directly on the administration.”

REUTERS

US President Barack Obama (L) and Vice President Joe Biden.

This Saturday Biden will be speaking explicitly on behalf of the United States. His speech at the Munich Security Conference will be the vice president’s first major international appearance — and the Bavarian capital is rolling out the red carpet for him. The conference organizers promise that his speech will provide the impetus for a new start in trans-Atlantic relations.

What are the expectations for the speech? “The tone is the message,” Laurie Dundon, who previously worked with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and is now at the Bertelsmann Foundation in Washington, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. “The right words would define the parameters for future cooperation, just as preparations are being made for Obama’s Europe trip at the beginning of April to the G-20 summit in London and the NATO summit in Kehl and Strasbourg.”

COMPLETE ARTICLE HERE…

Biden at the Munich Security Conference: Obama Sends Vice President to Build Bridges – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International.

A Harvard scholar takes a look at the Great Emancipator

Racial jokes? Shipping freed slaves to Africa? These aren’t the sorts of things most people generally associate with Abraham Lincoln, whose 200th birthday is on Feb. 12. In a new book, “Lincoln on Race & Slavery,” and a new series airing Feb. 11 on PBS, “Looking for Lincoln,” Harvard professor and documentary filmmaker Henry Louis Gates Jr. takes a fresh look at the 16th president. (For more on Lincoln, see Dorothy Rabinowitz’s television review and the book review.)

PBS

Henry Louis Gates Jr.

The Wall Street Journal: There have been 14,000 books written about Lincoln, according to you, more than any other American. Isn’t that enough?

Mr. Gates: The only person who has received more attention in print is Jesus, which is astonishing. But, no one has done a book or film from my particular perspective.

Which is?

Here’s the complicated truth: Lincoln was always opposed to slavery as an institution, [but] he was deeply ambivalent about the status of black people. He gave a speech [in 1858] in Charleston, Ill., in which he said he was opposed to interracial marriage, opposed to blacks serving on juries or serving in the military and said the difference between the white and black races was permanent and fixed by nature. This is a long way from being the Great Emancipator, man. He had a penchant for the n-word [before 1860] and he proposed a constitutional amendment funding the colonization of the freed slaves.

Yet you grew to like him even more after delving into his racial attitudes, correct?

The difference between Lincoln and everybody else is that he had a capacity to grow. In the last speech of his life, Lincoln said for the first time in the American presidency: “I want to give the right to vote to [a few] black men.” He thought the Declaration of Independence included black men. Thomas Jefferson didn’t do that.

We’re in the midst of a Lincoln revival. Steven Spielberg is in the process of doing a Lincoln movie with a screenplay by Tony Kushner and Barack Obama has been reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals,” about Lincoln’s cabinet. Why is he so enduringly popular?

There’s a Lincoln for all seasons in America. There are dozens of Lincolns. There’s Lincoln the atheist, the Northern Lincoln, the Confederate Lincoln, Lincoln the war criminal, Lincoln the savior of the union, Lincoln the humorous, Lincoln the melancholy. One guy wrote a book about Lincoln as gay, another of Lincoln the heterosexual lover. Lincoln the white supremacist; Lincoln the Great Emancipator…

In the film you criss-cross America, visiting a high-school class in downtown Chicago, the Ford Theatre, where Lincoln was assassinated, and the Harlem office of President Bill Clinton. In Lincoln’s New Salem, Ill., a recreated town inhabited by Lincoln devotees, a woman threatened to eject you for hinting that Lincoln had an affair with Ann Rutledge. Were you surprised?

New Salem is all reconstructed log cabins and [its people] are dedicated to protecting the myth of Abraham Lincoln — the idea that he did no wrong. I find it charming, but as a scholar, it’s ridiculous.

Barack Obama swore the oath of office on the Lincoln Bible and references Lincoln frequently in speeches.

Barack Obama is the logical extension of Lincoln’s decision to abolish slavery in the South and his embrace of black rights at the end of his life. Also, Lincoln was the Great Reconciliator “with malice toward none”: That’s Barack Obama.

In the film you show “Abraham Obama,” a work by street artist Ron English that melds Lincoln and Obama’s faces into a single image. Do you think the comparison is appropriate?

When we filmed they gave me a poster. I’m looking forward to having Abraham Obama sign it.

—Christina S.N. Lewis

Henry Louis Gates Jr. Takes a Look at Lincoln in His New Book and PBS Series – WSJ.com.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier plans to push for a “new trans-Atlantic agenda” during a meeting Tuesday with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. As part of a new start for US-German relations, Steinmeier is looking for progress on disarmament.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has high hopes for an improvement in US-German relations under the new administration of President Barack Obama. The chances of those hopes being fulfilled will become clearer over the next few days, after Steinmeier’s meeting Tuesday with his US counterpart Hillary Clinton and this weekend’s Munich security conference.

Steinmeier, who has been noticeably keener to engage the Obama administration than German Chancellor Angela Merkel, was upbeat about trans-Atlantic relations as he prepared for his trip. “I am now finding dialogue partners for issues where they were previously hard to find,” he said Monday before leaving for the US. He told reporters during his flight to Washinton that he wants to push for a “new trans-Atlantic agenda,” which would include arms control, energy security and climate change.

Steinmeier will be the first member of Merkel’s cabinet to be received by the new US administration. As well as talking to Clinton, who was sworn in on Monday, Steinmeier will also meet with Obama’s national security adviser, James Jones. It is not clear if he will also meet with the president. Among other issues, Steinmeier and Clinton are expected to discuss the forthcoming NATO summit in April, the global financial crisis, climate change, the situation in the Middle East, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Disarmament is also an issue close to Steinmeier’s heart. In an article to be published in the Wednesday edition of the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, Steinmeier expresses his hope that progress can be made on the issue “after a years-long blockade by President George W. Bush.” Specifically, Steinmeier would like to see action on producing a successor agreement to the START 1 treaty on strategic nuclear weapons, which expires in 2009, and also for the US Senate to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. During her recent hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Clinton said she would push for progress on both issues.

Steinmeier would also like to see the Obama administration roll back American plans for a controversial missile defense shield with installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. The missile shield, a brainchild of former President George W. Bush, has caused friction between the US and Russia. “I expect all the sides in the controversial question of the planned US missile shield in eastern Europe to get together to discuss the issue. My position remains: Where there is a common threat, common answers are also possible,” Steinmeier wrote in the article, which is timed to coincide with the Munich security conference. The closely watched conference starts Friday and will be attended by US Vice President Joe Biden and James Jones.

German Foreign Minister to Meet Clinton: Steinmeier Calls For ‘New Trans-Atlantic Agenda’ – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International.