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Sorry, but history didn't end sometime between your birth
and your breakfast today...
BACK in
2009 when Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize just nine months after
becoming US president, he said he felt "surprised" and "deeply
humbled".
No such shock and
awe today for the European Union's unelected leaders, of course.
Self-assurance and pride are now the EU's hallmarks, at least at the
executive level. But its shiny new Nobel Peace Prize risks just the same
historical irony.
"Mr. Obama
decimated Al Qaeda's leadership," as Peter L.Bergen
noted in the New
York Times this
spring. "He overthrew the Libyan dictator. He ramped up drone attacks in
Pakistan, waged effective covert wars in Yemen and Somalia and authorized a
threefold increase in the number of American troops in Afghanistan. He became
the first president to authorize the assassination of a United States
citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki...And, of course, Mr.
Obama ordered and oversaw the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden."
That raid –
unsanctioned military action inside another country's sovereign border
– may have boosted Obama's Can Do image at home. (Bill Clinton and the
Democrats' marketing people sure
think so.) But
it jarred a bit with his Peace
Prize citation for "extraordinary
efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between
peoples."
It's also hard to
square drone strikes abroad, let alone his move to the all-seeing
eye-in-the-sky over US citizens at home, with the Nobel committee's 2009
claim that "Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened". And
let's not go near Guantanamo. Not unless the US secret service
decide that we should!
Still, let's not be
churlish about Obama's peaceable record. Not when the European Union is
taking its turn in the stocks, ready for its share of history's rotten
tomatoes. Today's award is "a great honour for
all the 500 million citizens of Europe," said the unelected president of
the region's executive commission, former Maoist radical Jose Manuel Barroso this morning. Here's hoping historical irony
leaves those 500 million other souls out of it.
"The union and
its forerunners," said the Nobel
committee Friday morning, "have
for over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and
reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe."
Never mind the
Marshall Plan, mutually assured destruction or NATO's army on the Rhine.
Witness peace on the streets of Athens...reconciliation between Catalonia and
the rest of Spain...democracy at all levels of the EU in Brussels...and human
rights in, say, relative newcomers to what was a free-trade zone but is
increasingly a political and soon-to-be fiscal union, Bulgaria,
Poland or Romania.
"The dreadful
suffering in World War II demonstrated the need for a new Europe," the
Norwegian trustees go on. "Over a seventy-year period, Germany and
France had fought three wars. Today war between Germany and France is
unthinkable."
Gulp! It's hard to
pick the most recent instance of such a flat-footed hostage to fortune.
Europe's mass central-bank
gold sales of
1998-2002 perhaps, right as a 20-year bear market ended and the price of the
relic began rising 7 times over? Or maybe Dubya
Bush's "mission
accomplished"
speech of May 2003, barely two months into the Iraqi disaster? Or how about
the IMF saying "financial innovation has helped make the banking and
overall financial
system more resilient"
in April 2006...?
Okay, so it's easy
to giggle at grand men making sweeping claims about what tomorrow will bring.
But only because it really isn't so hard to put yourself into history. Or to
realize that history
didn't end
sometime between your birth and your breakfast today. These buffoons could at
least try to spy the pride in their pronouncements – humbly or
otherwise – plus the leaf-covered bear trap ahead.
"In
retrospect," said the City of London's outgoing regulation chief, Adair
Turner, in a speech
Thursday night, "it
was a fool's paradise. The first eight years [of the UK's Financial Services
Authority regime, starting in 1999] seemed plain sailing, the ocean, iceberg
free. But that was a delusion. The vulnerabilities were relentlessly
growing, but we didn't spot them."
Wow, a senior
figure admits his mistakes! (And let's face it, such mistakes are invariably "his"
and not hers.) Here at least then is one man who's learned the ultimate
lesson of history – that it ain't finished
yet. But really? No. Because for as long as he has a hand on the tiller,
Turner sees historical icebergs only behind him, not in the present or
future.
"Quantitative
easing alone may be subject to declining marginal impact," his lordship
went on in his Mansion House speech last night – a speech coinciding
with Turner's application to become the next chief of the Bank of England,
thus piling central-bank joy onto his success as City regulator.
"Optimal
policy also needs to include a willingness to employ still more innovative
and unconventional policies..."
Gulp again! Because
the kind of innovation he apparently has in mind is all too common in
history. Turner wants the central bank to create and hand money straight to
the government, without ever getting it back – or so "it is understood," according to the BBC's Robert Peston,
briefed as ever at the top level no doubt.
This novelty
– "in effect, printing money to finance public spending," as Peston explains – is no such thing. France tried it
in the early 18th century, and again under the early Revolutionary Republic.
So did Weimar Germany immediately after World War I...Austria at the end of
WWII...and Zimbabwe at the start of the 21st century. The result every time,
and in every other example as well, was disaster. People lost all confidence
in currency. Because with government spending fed by money from nowhere, the
government's money quickly meant nothing, with a value to match.
There are other contenders, thank goodness, for top job at the Bank of England. But
their unconventional policies all look all-too familiar too – more
money creation, interest rates stuck at zero, direct lending to business,
choosing now this sector and then that to inflate, and all the while sailing
straight for the unthinkable iceberg in their unsinkable ship.
No, the European
Union doesn't look set for civil war today. Yes, it is hard to imagine one
set of cheese-eaters attacking its neighbors. Barack Obama himself, however,
was rightly surprised at his Nobel Peace Prize. History may well find the
European Union's award deeply ironic as well.
"The
stabilizing part played by the EU has helped to transform most of Europe from
a continent of war to a continent of peace," says the project's Peace
Prize citation, shoving a black hood over Europe's head and bundling it into
fortune's getaway car.
Adrian Ash
BullionVault
Gold price chart, no delay | Buy gold online at live prices
Adrian Ash is head
of research at BullionVault – the secure, low-cost gold and silver market for
private investors online, where you can buy
physical gold today
vaulted in Zurich on $3 spreads and 0.8% dealing fees.
(c) BullionVault 2012
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