Bank Robbery (erweitert)

[1 November 2015]  A new wrinkle has appeared, in the matter of transAtlantic economic strong-arming.  Excerpt from a richly detailed report, on a site that is nowise salonfähig  but which apparently sometimes does its due research:

https://www.compact-online.de/angriff-auf-made-in-germany/

Der VW-Skandal hat nicht nur Wolfsburg erschüttert, sondern wird als Rammbock gegen die deutsche Wirtschaft insgesamt missbraucht. Der Skandal ist medial inszeniert und hilft einzig der maroden Supermacht USA bei der Schwächung eines Konkurrenten.

Die Bild-Zeitung gab, wie so oft, den Takt vor: «Das Beben bei Volkswagen – warum tut es uns allen so weh? Weil es eben nicht nur um ein Auto geht. Es geht um Made in Germany.» Die Londoner Times, eines der Sprachrohre der dortigen Börse, stieß ins selbe Horn: «Unmittelbar ist der Skandal ein schwerer Schlag für einen zentralen Pfeiler der stärksten Wirtschaftsmacht Europas.» Auch in Italien wurde kolportiert, dass der VW-Skandal «den guten Namen von ganz Made in Germany zu untergraben» drohe (La Stampa).

Aber was war eigentlich geschehen? Der Börsenexperte Dirk Müller («Mr. Dax») war einer der Wenigen, die kühlen Kopf behielten. Unter der Überschrift «Volkswagen-Skandal ist gar keiner» schrieb er auf n-tv: «Volkswagen hat die Tests für Diesel-Abgaswerte manipuliert. An dieser Stelle ist es völlig unstrittig, dass dies intolerabel ist und Konsequenzen haben muss. Aber es sei noch einmal betont, dass wir über geschönte Abgaswerte reden und nicht etwa über funktionslose Airbags, versagende Bremssysteme, über die die Fahrer nicht rechtzeitig informiert wurden, oder wissentlich defekte Zündschlösser, die zu zahlreichen Todesfällen geführt haben.“ Im letzten Fall war General Motors der Schuldige gewesen – der Anlasserdefekt kostete 174 Menschen das Leben.

Ein anderes Beispiel: Seit Jahren ist es bei allen Automobilherstellern gang und gäbe, dass der Kraftstoffverbrauch unter Testbedingungen im Labor stark von dem unter alltäglichen Verkehrsbedingungen abweichen kann. Die Softwaresteuerung, die dafür verantwortlich ist, entspricht jener, die jetzt bei der Manipulation der Abgaswerte durch VW aufgeflogen ist. Die südkoreanischen Autobauer Hyundai und Kia mussten für die Angabe des falschen Spritverbrauchs 100 Millionen Dollar Strafe bezahlen, General Motors kam mit 900 Millionen Dollar für die 174 Toten im Zündschloss-Skandal davon. So billig wird es für VW nicht werden: Der Absturz seines Aktienkurses vernichtete zwischenzeitlich Papierwerte in Höhe von 30 Milliarden Euro – und von der US-Umweltbehörde droht ein Bußgeld von 16 Milliarden Euro. Es ist offensichtlich, dass hier mit zweierlei Maß gemessen wird.

Interessanterweise gab es nach dem Auffliegen der Manipulationen bei VW kurzzeitig auch Spekulationen über ähnliche Tricksereien bei anderen Automobilherstellern mit Sitz in Deutschland, nicht aber bei US-Herstellern wie Opel oder Ford. Auch die mehrheitlich im US-Besitz befindliche Daimler-Benz AG blieb verschont. (…) Beschäftigen uns etwas ausführlicher mit dem amerikanischen Hintergrund des sogenannten VW-Skandals. Die USA stehen wirtschaftlich mit dem Rücken an der Wand:

■ Da sie für ihre Staatsanleihen kaum noch Abnehmer finden, drängen sie diese europäischen Notenbanken auf oder kaufen sie selbst. 500 Milliarden US-Dollar, die die Volksrepublik China seit Frühjahr abgestoßen hat, wurden von europäischen Notenbanken übernommen und etwa bei der Banque Nationale de Belgique «zwischengeparkt».

■ Das jährliche Handelsbilanzdefizit von Uncle Sam ist auf annähernd eine Billion US-Dollar angewachsen, weil seine Exporte auf dem Weltmarkt immer schlechter abzusetzen sind. Hinzu kommen die Verteuerung der für die heimische Automobilindustrie nötigen chinesischen Importgüter durch die Yuan-Aufwertung und die Tatsache, dass die US-Industrie weiter Marktanteile an europäische Hersteller verliert.

■ Die US-Wirtschaft insgesamt kommt trotz Nullzinspolitik – sprich: kostenloser Kreditvergabe – nicht in Schwung. Die seit Langem angekündigte Erhöhung des Leitzins durch die Notenbank Federal Reserve (Fed) wird immer wieder verschoben.

■ Selbst die alles dominierende US-Rüstungsindustrie fällt als Lokomotive aus, da ein großer Krieg, der ausreichend Nachfrage generieren könnte, entweder nicht in Sicht ist, oder das Pentagon davor zurückscheut.

Beispiele hierfür finden sich zur Genüge. Im Sommer 2014 verpflichtete die US-Justiz in einem zweifelhaften Verfahren die französische Großbank BNP Paribas zu Strafzahlungen von rund neun Milliarden US-Dollar, weil das Geldinstitut Handel mit Staaten wie dem Iran, Kuba oder Sudan getrieben habe, über die Washington Sanktionen verhängt hat. Der Schlag traf Frankreich an seiner derzeit empfindlichsten Stelle, dem überschuldeten Bankensektor. Im August 2015 verursachten amerikanische Hedgefonds den größten Börsencrash in der chinesischen Nachkriegsgeschichte. Über Leerverkäufe – sogenannte short sales – setzten sie einen Abwärtsstrudel chinesischer Aktien in Gang, der von der Regierung in Peking nur mit Mühe aufgefangen werden konnte. Die Folge war ein regelrechtes Börsenmassaker in Shanghai und Shenzhen.

[Reposted below, our original take on the Paribas affair, from May 2014]

 

We earlier commented on the improvised foray into foreign policy on the part of the NYPD, backed by an unlikely alliance of local Erinnyes and the New York Post.   The result was a tremendous disruption of French politics, of which most Americans are unaware, nor do they care.

This week, another drama has been playing out, scarcely reported save in the usual bland manner of the fleeting financial bulletins (BNP stock falls on the news; meanwhile in Malaysia …), and analyzed from a political and legal perspective, almost not at all.   

In brief:  The Justice Department is demanding payment from the French bank Paribas, roughly equal to twice its annual income last year (and enough to tip it into the red for the present), for conduct that was quite legal in Europe, where the transactions in question were conducted, but which runs afoul of US regulations.   The purported legal basis for this:  the transactions were denominated in dollars (libellés en dollars).   That is rather as though we were to demand damages from some Indian pop-star, claiming jurisdiction simply on the grounds that the song in question was sung in English, over which we claim a kind of worldwise conservatorship.

Outre l'amende, BNP Paribas a fait appel aux meilleurs avocats de Wall Street pour éviter une autre sanction potentiellement lourde: la suspension temporaire de son droit à mener des transactions en dollars. Une telle limitation, outre son caractère humiliant, affecterait sérieusement nombre d'activités de la banque, pas simplement aux États-Unis. La loi de l'État de New York interdit à une banque de maquiller la documentation de transactions en dollars qui viennent se dénouer auprès de la Fed de New York, même si elles ont eu lieu hors des États-Unis. Or BNP Paribas est accusée d'avoir caché aux autorités américaines de multiples transactions en dollars, pourtant conformes au droit européen.

http://www.lefigaro.fr/societes/2014/05/29/20005-20140529ARTFIG00244-washington-reclame-plus-de-10milliards-de-dollars-a-bnp-paribas.php

Adding spice to the ragout is the detail that the regulations in question, far from being an application of generally recognized ethics or equity, were pushed through by particular political lobbies, whose agendas are purely their own, and do not align with American interests save now and then by accident.   To wit:  the pariah status of Nation X (pushed through by partisans of what, during Iran-Contra, might not be named, other than as “Country A”), and of Nation Y (in obeissance to an even tinier but quite violent core of operatives bent upon restoring the Casino Culture to Country C).

Upon these narrow fanaticisms, the tip of the world’s inverted financial pyramid  now wobbles.

 “Nice little bank y’got there…

Be a shame if somefing was to happen to it.”

That this development goes uncommented at home -- a nation with a historically casual attitude towards breaking other people’s china -- is unsurprising; but foreign reporting has likewise been surprisingly muted.   We must delve into the Readers Comments section  to find opinions of the sort we might seek on the editorial page, though they be mentioned only to refute them:

Wie lange noch wollen sich die Banken der Welt von den USA vorführen lassen, und mit welchem Recht? So lange jede Bank für sich kuscht, werden die USA ihre Erpressungen fortsetzen können. Vielleicht hören wir ja aber bald mal: Banken aller Welt, vereinigt Euch...

http://www.nzz.ch/wirtschaft/wirtschafts-und-finanzportal/jetzt-ist-bnp-paribas-dran-1.18312831

Il y a une chose très pourri sur le fond (indépendamment que certaines transactions de la BNP soient condamnables ou non).

Les Américains nous ont imposé dans le passé le dollar US comme monnaie de référence après l'abandon du standard or (Bretton-Woods) en forçant ainsi, tous les banques de travailler en USD. Maintenant, ils prétendent que toute transaction en USD tombe sous le coup de leur justice. Le moindre chose qu'on puisse dire, que cette manipulation est extrêmement hypocrite.

Monsieur Hollande ferait bien d'annuler l'invitation officielle de M Obama pour le 6 Juin (s'il veut venir à titre privé, c'est son affaire). C'est la seule chose qui ferait réfléchir tout le monde.

http://www.lefigaro.fr/societes/2014/05/29/20005-20140529ARTFIG00244-washington-reclame-plus-de-10milliards-de-dollars-a-bnp-paribas.php

There have long been grumblings about replacing the dollar as the unique reserve currency;  this sort of overreach may hasten the day.

A Suisse financial journalist comments here:

http://www.medi1.com/player/player.php?i=4886933

"We'd like to make a withdrawal."

~

~  Posthumous Endorsement ~

"Seems like I had it all backwards:

Don’t rob a bank from the sidewalk like I did;

rob it from the boardroom.

Oh well, too late now.

But never too late for an exciting mystery --  "

I Don't Do Divorce Cases

Murphy on the Mount.

(My name is Jesse James, and I approved this message.)

~         ~

~

Ten billion big ones  is not chump change.  One reader puts it in perspective:

10 Milliarden Dollar, das entspricht dem Jahreseinkommen von 400.000 arbeitenden Otto-Normalverbrauchern.

www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/bnp-paribas-usa-fordern-zehn-milliarden-dollar-strafe-a-972429.html

 [Note:  "Otto-Normalverbraucher" = Joe Bloggs.]

Ah well -- A deadbeat raises the lolly however he can.  And ten billion is just about what Britain has just awarded itself, with some creative accounting:

The British Government has just announced, through the statistics office the ONS, that they will be adding around £10 billion to estimates of what the UK’s GDP actually is. This is to account for the activity going on in the drugs and prostitution sectors.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/05/31/adding-5-billion-to-uk-gdp-for-prostitution/

[Update]  It now appears that, in addition to a whopping fine, the U.S. is demanding that Paribas fire certain employees that have displeased their foreign masters.   The demand seems extraordinary -- what possible jurisdiction could apply? -- but a parallel does spring to mind, from the current offering of “24”, “Live Another Day”.  Here, some terrorists have hijacked a fleet of drones and have threatened to incinerate thousands unless U.S. President Heller give himself up.

Not a pleasant parallel.

[Flash update]  This just in!

The Supreme Court of China has found the U.S. banking sector guilty of doing business with Taiwan, and has assessed damages of ten trillion yuan.  Failure to promptly comply will result in an immediate cessation of Chinese purchase of T-bills, and calling-in all its loans, resulting in a swift collapse of the American economy.

In other news, OPEC has determined that the United States is guilty of commercial dealings with Israel, contrary to Islamist law.    Oil exports have been halted until the guilty parties are turned over to Hizballah for trial.

Sauce for goose, is gander-sauce

In another unexpected development, the Neighborhood Association of Monogamy Lane, Littletown USA, where Dr Justice and his bride and their companion-hamster make their home, has assessed the worldwide media the round figure of 10 quadrillion euros, for having repeatedly violated the airspace above their sylvan cul-de-sac with unauthorized transmission of electromagetic waves.  Early analysis suggests that the Association might be willing to settle for a lower figure in return for lifetime free streaming of “Leave it to Beaver”.

[Classroom assignment:  Figure out which portions of this post are satire, and which are straight news.  Harder than you might think.]

[Update 1 June 2014]  Finally, some politically alert commentary is appearing in the mainstream press, to probe beneath the lid.  Turns out the Credit Suisse shakedown was also questionable:

In Europe, people are beginning to question the continual stream of investigations, indictments and regulatory fines involving European banks. Some even go so far as to accuse US regulators of pursuing a “vendetta” against European banks to appease public anger about the banking industry without harming the US industry. The dominance of European banks on the US regulators’ hit list is indeed noticeable, and not just for sanctions-busting: European banks also feature prominently in regulatory investigations into rigging of benchmark rates.

But the US regulators don’t need to be “picking on” European banks for those banks to feature prominently in criminal prosecutions for sanctions breaking and tax evasion. Internationally, there is no consistency of law. The offenses for which these banks have been fined are not necessarily offenses in their countries of origin.

Consider Credit Suisse’s recent conviction for “conspiracy to evade taxes”. Credit Suisse helped US citizens to evade tax. Under US law, both Credit Suisse and the customers involved were guilty of a crime. But Credit Suisse is a Swiss bank, and tax evasion is not a crime in Switzerland – but disclosing customer information is.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/francescoppola/2014/05/31/bnp-paribas-sanctions-fines-and-politics/

In these two cases,  then, the United States is not merely acting as international traffic cop, but as enforcing its own local regulations abroad -- ticketing Englishmen for driving on the left, as it were.

Now, I am not arguing from any position of blanket anti-interventionism. There are indeed a few unfortunate nations that seem perennially incapable of managing their own affairs.   But France and Switzerland are not among them.

[Update D-Day]   A disparity in press coverage across the Atlantic:

Une amende atteignant 16 milliards de dollars a été évoquée dans le cadre des débuts des négociations entre BNP Paribas et les autorités américaines, rapporte ce vendredi Reuters. De son côté, la presse américaine continue d'évoquer un montant compris entre 8 et 10 milliards de dollars.

http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-eco/2014/06/06/97002-20140606FILWWW00045-bnp-paribas-l-amende-pourrait-atteindre-16mds.php#xtor=EPR-31-[bnp-paribas-l-amende-pourrait-atteindre-16-milliards-de-dollars]-20140606-[titre]

And an interesting reader’s-comment on that page:

Déjà le 16 avril 2014 (www.latribune.fr) Le "diktat" du président américain oblige Renault à cesser toute activité en Iran. Faute de quoi, l'Alliance Renault-Nissan risquerait de ne plus pouvoir commercer avec les Etats-Unis. Renault a produit à travers ses partenaires 100.000 voitures en Iran l'an dernier... Déjà, PSA avait dû se retirer en 2012 sous la pression de GM. Un manque à gagner pour l'industrie tricolore!
Après 14 ans à l’Elysée et juste avant de mourir Mittérand écrivait:
« la France ne le sait pas, mais nous sommes en guerre avec l’Amérique. Oui une guerre permanente, une guerre vitale, une guerre économique, une guerre sans mort, apparement.
Oui, ils sont très durs les Américains, ils sont voraces, ils veulent le pouvoir sans partage sur le monde.
C’est une guerre inconnue, une guerre permanente, sans mort apparemment et pourtant une guerre à mort ». 27/1/97 le dernier Mitterand de Georges Marc Benamou.

~

We commented here on the bizarre American mishandling of the reparations and interallied-debt question after WWI.  (Usually this issue is depicted with France as the intransigent, and Wilson as the voice of reason.  Wilson was the voice of reason on this issue, but the rest of the country was not.)  This was more than a fleeting kerfuffle;  a distinguished chronicler who worked much of his life in France and Germany during the crucial years, summarizes the matter thus:

For more than a decade, the wrangling over war debts blew ill-feeling to and fro across the Atlantic.  By the time Hitler came to power in Germany at the beginning of 1933, the great alliance of the three Western democracies, which had humbled the Nazi dictator’s predecessors in 1918, was in ashes.  It was not to be revived, so far as the Americans were concerned, until Hitler had conquered France, put Britain in mortal peril, and declared war on the United States.

-- Wm Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969), p. 152

Have a care, gentlemen;  have a care …

Parallel Lives (protracted)

What was originally merely an occasion-note, has ballooned to Plutarchean proportions, and is accordingly reposted under a different name.

We begin with the relevant portions of our original post from June the sixth.

~   ~   ~

A factoid for D-Day

I’m currently reading William Shirer’s The Collapse of the Third Republic (published in 1969).  The title might be confusing;  unlike for his better-known book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer did not retain the political term in the original language;  he means La Troisième République.  Anyhow, regarding the aftermath of the first World War (whose groaning later echo  we commemorate today), he writes as follows  about the much-derided reparations, often pointed to as a burden on Germany that fueled the resentments that eventually led to WWII (p. 150):

Actually, Germany never had to pay a single mark out of her own resources.  Her borrowings from America bankers, which were never repaid, amounted to more than her total reparation payments.  Naïve American investors footed the German reparations bill.

The matter is even more curious in light of a companion fact mentioned on the next page:

Though the United States refused to take a cent of reparations from Germany, its government and Congress insisted that its Allies, especially Britain and France, pay their war debts in full and with interest.

Meanwhile, we are once again not being very gentle with our former French ally:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/05/bank-robbery.html

[Update, 7 juin, D-Day’s “Boxing Day”, or “D+1-Day”.  AKA le lendemain du Débarquement.] 

During that post-War period of wrangling over debts and reparations, France and Germany each repeatedly stomped, stabbed, and shot themselves in the foot:  bitterly remarking, “Take that!”

Intent on not letting a cent of reparations to go to France, after the Ruhr occupation the German “government deliberately organized the destruction of the currency, the mark falling to … 25 billions [to the dollar], becoming worthless” (id, p. 148).  (The folk term for this is:  Cutting off your nose to spite your face. )  France, facing much larger infrastructure reconstruction costs than did Germany (a point often forgotten, since France was ultimately the nominal victor:   but the war had been fought largely on its own soil), was left in the lurch by the French rich, who vigorously evaded such direct taxes as there were, and squirreled their capital abroad (p. 154).   The State was allowed to teeter on the brink of bankruptcy for years.  The tacit strategy of the wealthy was:  fiat opulentia, et ruat respublica :  for if the Republic did fall (as, in 1940, it did) “were there not other forms of government possible which promised more security for entrenched wealth?  The thoghts of some of the biggest entrepreneurs began to turn to the Fascist ‘experiment’ in Italy, and to the growing success of the Nazi Party in Germany” (p. 157).  Meanwhile, “instead of raising taxes, the government raised loans, a habit it had acquired during the war.”   As for those (mostly the thrifty French petite bourgeoisie) who were foolish enough to buy those government guarantees, “In the end, the state, in effect, repudiated most of it  by allowed the franc to fall to] one-fifth of its prewar value” -- an 80% haircut for those who had retrieved their savings from beneath the mattress, and entrusted them to the stabilization of the State.

~

At this point, a light-bulb begins dimly to flicker, in the mind of the suspicious reader.  “Wai-ait a minute!  Is this whole thing intended as some kind of allegory of the Bush Administration, and subsequent obstruction/destructivism of the Tea-Party types?”  Well, it didn’t start out that way;  but as you read along, the parallels become stark.

And the point here, indeed, is not to rake over the chronicles of another place, another time, but to remind ourselves that “He who forgets History is condemned to …” …. to … darn it  it was on the tip of my tongue … something-something …  Forgotten.  Anyhow (to quote our gnomic ancestors again), “If the shoe fits, wear it.”  

(Note, and not:  “If the shoe fits, buy it on credit and stash it in your fashion-closet and then go out and buy a dozen more pairs.”

-- Though actually, that was exactly the scene in Paris, in July of 1926:
“Along the boulevards, large crowds of women were storming the department stores  and the smart shops  in a frenzy to convert their falling francs into something more durable” [p. 162].)

[For our essays touching on this Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose aspect of things, click here.]

~

And so to the parallels:

The bankers and businessmen, and even the more thriving peasants and shopkeepers, came to believe, with a certainty that brooked no compromise, that the political “Left” -- which, aside from the small Communist Party, was in reality little more than reformist and middle-of-the-way, -- was incapable of governing the country.

-- Wm Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969), p. 166

(Cf. the meme of the centrist Obama as “socialist”.)

The employers’ associations, having lost their fight to prevent Parliament from enacting the modest social-security legislation, continued their well-financed campaign  in rthe press and on billboards  to render it ineffective  and to get it repealed.

-- Wm Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969), p. 167

(Compare the continued assaults on “Obamacare” -- a program that Congress itself passed not long ago.)

There are even parallels in the sideshow characters.   On the magnate François Coty:

Flattered by the politically discontented,  who used his money to assault the Republic, Coty began to conceive himself as a savior of the nation who one day  not too far off  might be called upon to take over the helm of state and save it from democracy.  Ridiculous as the thought was, for Coty was a political nincompoop, he seems to have taken it with growing seriousness.

-- Wm Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969), p. 158

Remind you of someone whose name rhymes with “rump”?   (A further parallel:  Both Coty and Trump made their fortunes in the degraded armpits of the Lucullan-Bacchanalian economy, the former in fancy perfumes, the latter in casino gambling.)

~

So, then as now, the picture isn’t pretty.   But the wan hope is, that if the Plutocratic Party ever manages to get rid of that Nigerian-born socialist and control both houses of Congress,  they will immediately cease their antics and their Wrecker strategy, and begin to govern responsibly.  Something like that did happen in France in 1926, with the election of the sensible conservative Raymond Poincaré.

[Note:  Readers of this blog will feel their ears prick up at the surname.  Any relation to Henri, eponym of the Poincaré Conjecture, and one of the immortal heroes of both physics and mathematics?  Indeed;  they were cousins.  And since I’m not especially fond of Cousin Raymond, I’ll post a photo of Cousin Henri instead.]

To restore national solvency, the new French President  “rushed through Pariliament, practically without debate, a number of laws calling for new taxes, and increase of old ones, which the bankers and businessmen and the political Right  would never have accepted from a less ‘conservative’ government.” (p. 164)

Such is the fond faint hope of the Left and Center, that by knuckling under and electing a ‘conservative’, some necessary reforms might be enacted (as happened under Nixon and under Reagan) which the same party would oppose hysterically they came from the Democrats (compare the very different treatment of those twins, Romneycare and Obamacare).

The whole financial crisis had been a charade (again, compare the Republican push to go over the “fiscal cliff”):

In six months, Poincaré had stabilized the franc. … There was -- there had been all along -- plenty of French money to restore the finances of the state.

-- Wm Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969), p. 165

~

Back when I was a grad student at Berkeley, the fashion in the Generative Semantics circle  was to construct politically-slanted example-sentences to illustrate some basic semantic/pragmatic point.  Perhaps the best-known was:

John called Mary a Republican, and then she insulted him

(with contrastive accent  indicated by italics).   Here the sentence as stressed and worded  necessarily implies a presupposition that (for John, for Mary, and probably for the speaker of the sentence as well), for John to call Mary “a Republican” constituted an insult (to which she replied in kind).   Contrast

John called Mary a Republican, and then she [went and] insulted him

where the presupposition is reversed.  (This sort of thing was considered quite amusing in the student lounges of the time.)

Anyhow, what dredged from memory that moss-worn anecdote, was seeing Shirer write of President Poincaré,

Though conservative, he was a man of utter integrity.

The expression sounds quaintly prejudiced, coming from the pen of a historian.  But Shirer knows his materials;  and perhaps things stood then as now, on the Right.  For the likes of Boehner, Trump, Perry, Rove, Delay, et alia, are not “men of utter integrity”.    The hope of the Center, that the next Republican President might be a Poincaré -- or a Nixon, with all his faults -- may be a pipe-dream.  Instead of a Nixon, we might get an Agnew;  instead of a McCain, a Palin.

And not only have the ranks of potential Republican leaders  degenerated after years of stewing in the vile juices of ressentiment,  so too the electorate has taken an ugly turn.  Again, a parallel from late-1920s France:

A certain proletarianization of a good many solid citizens of the middle class took place at this time.  Like the workers, they found it increasingly difficult to make ends meet, but  contrary to the workers  they turned politically  not to the Left  but to the extreme Right  in hopes of salvation.

-- Wm Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969), p. 165

This is the old problem of “false consciousness”, which in America (both in this century and the last) has gone under the catch-phrase of “What’s the matter with Kansas?”

~

Yet another parallel, between something in France of the 1920s, that makes no sense, and something that makes no sense in our own day:  yet together, they may illuminate each other, with their spectral swamp-spawned light.

The weakness of the presidency,  and the mediocrity of the politicians who held it  in the last years of the Third Republic,  contributed to the instability of French governments.  We have seen Clemenceau confessing that, in the elections of the National Assembly  for President of the Republic, he always voted for the most stupid candidate.

-- Wm Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969), p. 170

But -- Why would anyone do that?  Because “The members of Parliament preferred  … weak and mediocre men for President” -- men they could control.  (George Dubya, without an idea in his head, was a reliable mannequin for Cheney and Rumsfeld -- and whoever-all lay behind those. -- Hugenburg had thought that the comic-opera Hitler would fill that bill;  but Hitler got out of hand.)

So, seriously, ideology aside -- Let us all agree for the sake of argument, that we all subscribe to the doctrines of Calvin Coolidge, Alexander Hamilton, Kaiser Wilhelm, Attila the Hun -- whoever you please.   Why should the party carrying on that illustrious tradition, be reduced to the present pack of morons?  

It’s effing embarrassing, for one thing.  And though I have satirized it, I don’t really understand it.  How did the party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Richard Luger, manage to drive out all men of substance from its ranks?

~

The scene in 1937, in the waning days of the premiership of Léon Blum:

As the first Socialist -- and Jewish-- Prime Minister in the history of France, he was determined to keep his word, as he said, “to exercise power only within the framework of capitalism.”  His scruples do him credit.  But in a harsh world of conflict, in which it was evident that the economic and financial elite were out to destroy his government --at whatever cost to the country -- his lack of boldness, of toughness, proved his undoing.

-- Wm Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969), p. 323

Remind you of anyone we know?

Note:  It is no part of the purpose of this post, to criticise or second guess, from the plush comfort of hindsight or the sidelines, either Barack Obama  or Léon Blum.  Both are admirable statesmen.   Merely, their predicaments are similar.

Further:   For anyone who imagines that the perverse obstructionism which our President has been dealing with, is anomalous,  check out Shirer’s account of the premiership of Blum.

Foot-Note:  Well aware (alas) of our shallowness and deficiencies  in matters of historical commentary, we can at least play to our long suit -- linguistics -- in offering this:  The surname Blum  is pronounced “Bloom” in French.