Richard Rahn, former DI fellow now at CATO, has several trenchant recent columns on the economic crisis and they make unsettling reading. If you have the feeling that the Federal Government is making up policy as it goes along and that we are in uncharted territory--with no one fully aware of what is happening--Rahn will not cheer you up.
Further, Dr. Rahn calls our attention to the prospects of truly violent international mayhem as the economic crisis becomes a political and military crisis worldwide. People here are worried about their jobs and their retirement accounts, and those are serious concerns. But people in some emerging market countries are becoming worried about their next meal, and their physical safety as dictatorships squeeze and anarchists activate. (Shades of the '30s!) The Somali pirates story is an example of what has occurred in recent years because the West (including Washington) has been unable to deal with the root sources--in this case, Somalia. History suggests that we are for much more of this.
None of this is pretty. But surely the first objective of any correct policy is to understand the nature of reality. That objective is still illusive. Many are yet luxuriating in the afterglow of a domestic election shift.
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