SURRENDERING SOVEREIGNTY
By DICK MORRIS
TheHill.com
While all eyes were on the rantings of Ahmadinejad at the United Nations, the
United States -- under President Barack Obama -- was surrendering its economic
sovereignty at the G-20 summit. The result of this conclave, which France's
President Nicolas Sarkozy hailed as "revolutionary," was that all the nations
agreed to coordinate their economic policies and programs and to submit them to
the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for comment and approval. While the G-20
nations and the IMF are, for now, only going to use "moral suasion" on those
nations found not to be in compliance, talk of sanctions looms on the horizon.
While the specific policies to which the U.S. committed itself (reducing the
deficit and strengthening regulatory oversight of financial institutions) are
laudable in themselves, the process and the precedent are frightening. We are to
subject our most basic national economic policies to the review of a group of
nations that includes autocratic Russia, China and Saudi Arabia. Even though our
GDP is three times bigger than the second largest economy (Japan) and equal to
that of 13 of the G-20 nations combined, we are to sit politely by with our one
vote and submit to the global consensus. Europe has five votes (U.K., France,
Germany, Italy and the EU) while we have but one.
And the process will be administered by the IMF, whose counsel to less developed
nations over the past two decades has consistently called for social pain and
economic austerity. The IMF's misguided policies have been responsible for more
revolutions than Marx, Engels and Lenin combined. Its bureaucrats' arrogance is
legendary and their search for appropriate punishments to fit the crime of
spending too much on the poor smacks of colonialism and imperialism. They are
our new overseers.
This combination of the IMF and the G-20 will not only work to structure
national economic policies but to limit executive compensation at financial
institutions. The watchful, wise leaders of such nations as Turkey, Saudi Arabia
and Indonesia -- among others -- will monitor Wall Street to assure themselves
that its compensation is not out of line. One particularly looks forward to the
views of the Saudi monarchy on this question of excessive personal enrichment.
Perhaps as part of his public spasm of apology, President Obama also strove,
successfully, to increase the voting strength of the debtor nations on the IMF
from the current 43 percent to 48 percent. This is the economic equivalent of
giving deadbeat debtors more votes on their bank's governing board of directors.
Thus, the world's most successful economy -- ours -- which is the only one that
has produced reliable economic growth for three decades and has lifted real
personal incomes almost every year, is going to subject itself to the burden of
justifying its own economic policies in front of a global community of 20
nations, some of which do not even embrace free-market economies in the first
place. Indeed, it is only through access to our markets that nations have been
able to escape poverty. Japan, Germany, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, China
and India have sequentially trod this path into prosperity.
Obviously, we live in a global economy. But the United States is 24 percent of
it. We are entitled to more than one-twentieth of a voice, and it is the world
that should be following our policies -- not the other way around.
Much of the damage of the Obama administration can be undone at the next
election. But such grants of sovereignty to autocratic, backward, bureaucratic
and even communist nations will be hard to undo. The world is recovering from
its leftist obsession -- e.g., the Merkel victory in Germany. But by the time
the voters discover how phony, failed and fraudulent these policies are, we may
have given it all away already. Irrevocably.
Home | Articles | BLOG | Quotes | Photo Gallery | Favorites | Stupid Frogs Game | Store | Feedback | Search | Subscribe | About Us