INTERMEX POWER

BIRNBAUM: Why this election will matter - for a change

Washington is in a tizzy over the failure of the supercommittee. Well, the city hasn’t seen anything yet. Wait until Election Day next November when voters will decide what to do about the capital’s incompetence.
Yes, incompetence. The primary reaction to the supercommittee’s inability to agree on a deficit-reduction plan was, “What else is new?” Americans have grown accustomed to watching lawmakers and government officials fail to deliver whenever they take on major projects. And they are tired of the pattern.
That’s not to say that Congress and President Obama don’t enact new laws. They do. They’ve blended to approve many - from the stimulus program to health care reform. But whether Washington acts or doesn’t act, voters see the same result: The nation’s problems remain unsolved.

GHEI: Eurozone free-fall U.S. taxpayers may bankroll Old World’s big spenders

There’s no end in sight for Europe’s debt crisis - unless it is the end of the euro itself. The finance ministers of the 17 eurozone countries are meeting in Brussels this week, desperate to come up with a solution as Italy heads toward financial chaos. The world’s central banks, spearheaded by the Federal Reserve, are coordinating efforts to provide liquidity to global markets.
Investors are fleeing. Italy had no choice but to entice bondholders with a record 7.89 percent yield for three-year bonds, up from the high but still bearable 4.93 percent it paid as recently as October. The cloud of recession looms over the Continent, with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development slashing its prediction of Europe’s economic growth to 0.2 percent.

Bye-bye, Barney Rep. Frank shuffles off

By R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.

Illustration: Barney Frank by Alexander Hunter for The Washington Times

When Barney Frank announced Monday that he was shuffling offstage after three decades in the congressional limelight, I was brought back to 1980, when some very thoughtful friends from Harvard told me to watch him. Paul H. Weaver had been an aide to Irving Kristol, the godfather of neoconservatism, which was lustrous in those days, and rightly so. Paul was one of the brightest young neocons of his generation. I always took him seriously. He thought Rep. Frank was principled, stupendously intelligent and of good cheer - a wit. It seemed Mr. Frank was going to be another Daniel Patrick Moynihan or at least an Allard Lowenstein, the former congressman and principled liberal activist who had been murdered recently.
Boy, were Paul and the others up there at Harvard wrong. I followed Mr. Frank’s trajectory for years, and it always proceeded downward. If he was principled, it was the principle of sticking with your team, however far to the left it might go. If he was intelligent, it was the intelligence of the banal. There was never anything fresh or surprising about him. He followed the liberal herd, and if he was clever, it was in implementing the herd’s desiderata. As for wit, all I noticed was a clownish demeanor, somewhat reminiscent of W.C. Fields, though without the booze. A specimen of it was presented on National Public Radio for us to savor the other day. In responding to a contrary constituent in 2009, Mr. Frank said, “Trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table.” Oscar Wilde he was not.

Keeping Up with Newt's Evolving Views

Bank of England Warns of Systemic Crisis

China's Superior Economic Model The free-market fundamentalist economic model is being thrown onto the trash heap of history.

By ANDY STERN

Andy Grove, the founder and chairman of Intel, provocatively wrote in Businessweek last year that, "Our fundamental economic beliefs, which we have elevated from a conviction based on observation to an unquestioned truism, is that the free market is the best of all economic systems—the freer the better. Our generation has seen the decisive victory of free-market principles over planned economies. So we stick with this belief largely oblivious to emerging evidence that while free markets beat planned economies, there may be room for a modification that is even better."
The past few weeks have proven Mr. Grove's point, as our relations with China, and that country's impact on America's future, came to the forefront of American politics. Our inert Senate, while preparing for the super committee to fail, crossed the normally insurmountable political divide to pass legislation to address China's currency manipulation. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Gov. Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama all weighed in with their views—ranging from warnings that China must "end unfair discrimination" (Mrs. Clinton) to complaints that the U.S. has "been played like a fiddle" (Mr. Romney) and that China needs to stop "gaming" the international system (Mr. Obama).

By DANIEL HENNINGER

In what all say is an "historic" election, the GOP is fielding its B team while the A team sits in the locker room. Since when does that win the big games?
Mitt Romney, stuck forever at 25%, has been a front-runner out of a Henny Youngman joke. Take my candidate—please. Gov. Romney has been such a front-runner that virtually any new face in the race momentarily catches him—Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Perry and now even an old face, Newt Gingrich.
The question asked everywhere is, Why is this the field? How did it come to this? Desperate questions bring desperate answers, such that I have been overheard mumbling of late: "Maybe it's time to bring back the smoke-filled rooms."
This was the nearly mythical system of selection in which party leaders and party bosses gathered over cigars, bourbon and branch to pick a candidate "who could win." The most famous smoke-filled room pick was William McKinley, anointed for the 1896 election by Ohio kingmaker Mark Hanna (though in fact Hanna got McKinley nominated over the opposition of GOP party bosses).

Dan Henninger on why repealing campaign finance laws could improve the crop of presidential candidates.

While I merely grumbled, my former Wall Street Journal colleague Robert W. Merry explicitly wrote "Bring Back Those Smoke-Filled Rooms" last month on the website of the National Interest magazine, which he edits. Notwithstanding distaste for the politicians picking candidates, he wrote, "consider the dangers inherent in our system now, when candidates emerge based on their own judgment of their overwhelming talents and virtues, rather than those of their political peers, and when the vetting process has been truncated to a point where it relies on happenstance to save the system from people nobody really knows and who may be hiding serious flaws"—he was writing about Herman Cain—"that add up to political liabilities. It was a pretty good system we had in the old days."

For Better Government, Don’t Kill All the Lawyers: Noah Feldman

Most everyone hates lawyers. So it probably isn’t a surprise that many people hate law professors, too. A recent front-page article in the New York Times, much discussed in legal circles, was the latest salvo in what is now a long line of attacks depicting the legal academy as impractical and unworldly.
I think the dislike, though, is a result of law professors being too much in the world. You see, law professors -- and I should disclose here that I am one -- very nearly run the world, or at least certain parts of the U.S. government. When you include Justice Anthony Kennedy, who taught nights, they make up the majority of the Supreme Court.

Taylor Swift as Counterculture Icon for Teen Girls: Amity Shlaes

What is teen rock music for? To shut out parents. Or so it always seemed.
The donning of the ear buds marks the beginning of teen life, when children set off on their own for the passage through adolescence. Boom boxes performed the same function in the old days.
Even back then, the content of the songs was anti-parent, or at least parent-free. Adults were generally depicted as not understanding: “Suzanne, the plans they made put an end to you,” as James Taylor put it decades ago, describing what adults did to a troubled girl. The angry anti-them bias has been the rule since the days of the screaming girls at New York’s Kennedy Airport, waiting for the Beatles.
“Help, I need someone!” Just not my mother.

Fed Lays Trap for Itself With Bank Stress Tests: Jonathan Weil. By Jonathan Weil

Last week gave us one of the oddest pairings of financial news stories in some time. The better the earnings of U.S. banks, it seems, the more nervous investors get about the banks’ health.
First, we learned from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on Nov. 22 that U.S. lenders had their most profitable quarter since mid-2007. The same day, the Federal Reserve sought to bolster confidence in the financial system with new stress tests at the 31 largest U.S. banks. The Fed said it will publish the results for the 19 biggest bank-holding companies next year, marking its first such exercise since spring 2009.

U.S. Jobless Claims Unexpectedly Rise. By Shobhana Chandra

More Americans than forecast filed applications for unemployment benefits during the holiday- shortened week, signaling limited recovery in the labor market.
Jobless claims climbed by 6,000 to 402,000 in the week ended Nov. 26 that included the Thanksgiving holiday, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The median forecast of 43 economists in a Bloomberg News survey called for a drop to 390,000. The number of people on unemployment benefit rolls and those getting extended payments increased.
Some companies are still trimming staff and others are reluctant to add workers until demand picks up and there’s more clarity on tax breaks due to expire at year-end. Faster hiring is needed to spur consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the economy, and reduce a jobless rate stuck near 9 percent that’s a concern for Federal Reserve officials.

Fed Dollar-Funding Cut Shows Limits of Action. By Scott Lanman

The Federal Reserve-led global effort to ease borrowing costs for financial firms shows both the central bank’s power to jolt markets -- and the limits of its ability to alleviate the European debt crisis.
Stocks rallied worldwide, commodities rose and yields on most European debt fell after the Fed and five other central banks yesterday cut the cost of emergency dollar loans to banks outside the U.S. At the same time, the action falls short of more-drastic moves that central banks are reluctant to take, including purchases or guarantees of countries’ bonds.

Ron Paul's Greatest Interview - Gold & Silver With Mike Maloney

Ron Paul's Plan for Monetary Freedom

Ron Paul: There Are No "Cuts"

La llave hispana de la Casa Blanca

Ha empezado la disputa por el voto latino entre los dos principales partidos de Estados Unidos, que hacen ya ofrecimientos y prometen acciones en temas como el empleo y la inmigración.

Inmigrantes protestan en Homestead, Florida, enarbolando banderas de México, Guatemala y Estados Unidos, el primero de mayo de 2006. Foto: Lynne Sladky/ AP

Los votantes latinos volverán a ser decisivos en las próximas elecciones presidenciales de Estados Unidos (EU) en 2012, pero esta vez pasarán a examen la gestión económica y de inmigración de Barack Obama. Estos votantes hoy tienen dos opciones: apoyar al presidente, a pesar de que el manejo de la economía los ha perjudicado especialmente, o dar su voto al que resulte elegido candidato republicano, pese a la dura retórica de ese partido en materia de inmigración.