Some current-events commentary from the peanut gallery:
Newt Gingrich was slammed today by allegations in a Bloomberg article that he earned more than $1.6 million from work his consulting company did for Freddie Mac — an amount that “is significantly larger than the $300,000 payment from Freddie Mac that Gingrich was asked about during a Republican presidential debate on Nov. 9 sponsored by CNBC, and more than was disclosed in the middle of congressional investigations into the housing industry collapse.”
Only in the alternative reality of GOP Land — the same parallel universe in which mandating a vaccine against cervical cancer treads on some constitutional right to ignorance — would working for Freddie Mac be an impeachable offense. Considering Gingrich has led the charge to cast the mortgage agency as the cause of the 2008 financial meltdown, he has been hoisted on his own petard. In the debate, he claimed to have served only as “a historian,” which would make him a pretty well-paid historian. The Times describes Freddie Mac as “a longtime conservative whipping post” and “an anathema” to Republicans, who subscribe to what Washington Post columnist Barry Ritholtz calls “The Big Lie.” More specifically, Ritholtz calls out Michael Bloomberg for making the counterfactual claim that “It was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis. It was, plain and simple, Congress who forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp.” As usual, Paul Krugman of the Times sums it up best:
The thing I think people find hard to wrap their minds around is the following non-contradiction:
1. Freddie Mac was a deeply corrupt institution
2. Freddie and Fannie did not cause the financial crisis
These are not opposing statements. Those of us attacking the Big Lie about the financial crisis are not defending Freddie.
(Ironically, the Big Lie hews to the same version of events pushed by the Times’ own Gretchen Morgenson, who is inexplicably still allowed to cover the same mortgage giants she eviscerates in her latest bestseller.)
Perhaps the lesson to Gingrich is not to be a hypocrite, though I doubt the former Speaker will take the hint. After all, this is the guy who was cheating on his wife while spearheading the Monica Lewinsky witch hunt against Bill Clinton. As for that cool $1.6 million — well, we can only hope it went to pay off his $1 million Tiffany bill.
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In other news, President Obama announced today that the U.S. will increase its military presence in the Pacific, deploying 2,500 Marines to a base in Australia. The Times reports that the president has promoted the increase as “a cornerstone of a strategy to confront more directly the challenge posed by China’s rapid advance as an economic and military power.” Despite the predictable liberal hand-wringing over any proposal not branded with a peace sign (sample comment from a Times reader: “Now that we are withdrawing troops and presence from Iraq and Afghanistan, our military needs to find other reasons to justify their enormous budget”), in my mind this is actually an intelligent use of our military. There were no American interests in play when President Bush invaded Iraq; by contrast, China’s rise will impact both foreign and domestic policy. China feels it can act with impunity, stonewalling attempts at the UN to sanction Iran and making investments that prop up dictators in Africa and the Middle East.
The Times reported just yesterday that China’s far-reaching claims in the South Sea have irritated nations from Japan to the Philippines. The country makes “disputed claims to island territories in the sea that would, if recognized, give it sway over developing resources in large parts of the sea, which are among the world’s busiest shipping lanes.” Over $1 trillion in American trade passes through the South China sea every year, according to the Times. Given that China’s economic leverage over the U.S. will only increase with the size of our national debt, Obama’s decision to shore up American forces in the Pacific seems not only prudent but a far better use of resources than the increasingly futile excursion in Afghanistan.
. . . So Well Read. . . 