John Pilger certainly takes me out of my comfort zone. I would never presume to argue with this award-winning journalist, author, film-maker because his knowledge and experience would outclass anything I had to offer. The picture he continues to paint is so grim and depressing. But he does (for me at least) make me wonder - where does real power lie? Who makes the decisions? I always thought that the US was ruled by the power elite - that important decisions were made by powerful interests. So how much actual power would a US President have
and can he really be held responsible for decisions that may be out of his control?

Lexi asks:

>>..So how much actual power would a US President have and can he really be held responsible for decisions that may be out of his control?>>

I strongly recommend a recent documentary movie, Inside Job.

Here Katie Couric interviews the producer of the movie, Charles Ferguson:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJCWY-_gG2k

Although the movie focuses on US banks you should be in no doubt that similar comments may be made about most major banks in the world. The recent Greek "bailout" was not a Greek bailout at all. It was the German Government roping in the EU to act as debt collector for German bankers who knew exactly what they were doing and paid themselves enormous bonuses for doing it.

We in Australia are very fortunate to have escaped the worst of it thanks in large part to the regulatory reforms of John Howard and Peter Costello.

It seems an awful lot of people are totally missing the point about Obama and US politics. And in fact, politics in general.

Its (the) 'democracy' stupid. Governments can only enact policies that they can sucessfully sell to the general electorate. Obama is enacting policies that he believes are
1) right and
2) has (or will gain) broad community support.

He's realist enough to know that point 2 is the most important one.

As some australian politician put it. Only the impotent are truly pure. Everyone else has to make concessions to get anything done. Complaining about the fact that radical change is not on the agenda merely underlines the lack of understanding of the political reality. Most people don't want radical change. They want more money in their pocket at the end of the week.

This is illustrated perfectly in Australian politics at the moment. A large proportion of Australians sincerely believe that they are battling, despite having more of almost everything than their parent or grandparents did. Cost of living is THE issue of the day.

These are the people you need to win over. Complaining about politicians responding (as is their duty in a democracy) to a keenly felt and highly entrenched attitude is missing the point.

That we can't even get widespread agreement that households on 150 000 dollars a year shouldn't be receiving handouts from the government is staggering. Yet this is where we are at. The welfarism of labour, and the pork barrelling of howard got us here, and its going to be realy hard to find our way back.

Its the entitlement culture.

Hang on Steven,

The greeks borrowed the money. And now they want to avoid the consequences of having to pay it back. The confidence that backs the issuance of sovereign bonds is a VITAL part of our international financial system. Lending money to governements is different to lending money to a business venture. In general, investors get significantly lower returns and in return they don't expect any risk to their investment. (Although there may be a case that those investors who've come in late at high rates of return may well deserve to take a 'haircut' )

the germans, and other fiscally 'responsible' european countries are becoming more and more annoyed that the profligate PIGS (potugal, ireland, greece and spain) have lived beyond their means for too long, and are now wanting to shift the burden of this failure to investors who believed in the security of governement debt. why should the PIGS be allowed to do that?

The Irish are prepared to take German taxpayers money to pay off their debt, yet are demanding that they retain their low corporate tax to attract business away from germany and other european donors. Effectively asking these donors to pay for the privelege of sending business to Ireland? Its ridiculous.

Yes I think PaulL's analysis is right, although the problem of unprincipled pork-barrelling goes way back before Howard. We are looking at the inevitable consequences of democracy. You can't give government open-ended authority for unequal taxing and arbitrary forced redistributions of a thousand kinds, and expect to be able to keep any kind of restraint on it from doing and favouring whomever it wants. The very idea of expedience and pragmatism is opposed to the idea of principle. The welfare state and the warfare state are too sides of the same coin. The only difference is the location of the people they're attacking.

The only way out is on *principle* - the principle of liberty - to restrict the US government to within the limits of the Constitution. If you actually read it, it explicitly lists the permitted powers of government - and explicitly reserves all other powers to the states and the people. Constitutionally speaking, about 95 percent of US governmental activity is illegal.

For the left wing, the question is whether you are so committed to government's economic interventions (which are a disaster anyway), that you are prepared to accept as its price, a fascist empire of perpetual aggressive war abroad, and police state at home.

Lexi
"I always thought that the US was ruled by the power elite - that important decisions were made by powerful interests. So how much actual power would a US President have
and can he really be held responsible for decisions that may be out of his control?"

Just because important decision are made by powerful interests doesn't mean they're not made by the government. Obviously government is a key part of the power elite. And obviously they have enormous power, because that's the only way the non-governmental power interests can get their power.

(cont.)

For example, it's no use blaming the military-industrial corporation for the actions of government in making them rich. If government wasn't buying their stuff, they would have to beat their swords into ploughshares, or go broke, and that is as it should be.

Ron Paul's policy is to end the empire by withdrawing US troops within US borders, and using them only for the defence of the US if attacked. He reckons this would save about a trillion dollars a year. There is no question that the President, as the chief executive and commander-in-chief has the authority to do so even without Congress. But I wonder whether a President who tried it would be assassinated?