Well yes, apart from...

DC emailed me a link to an article about Luxembourg. Somebody had leaked/published details of tax deals arranged between PriceWaterhouse Coopers and Luxembourg. Instead of doing something about the tax evaders, Luxembourg charged the whistlebower with theft and other criminal offences.

The countries who think they've lost out are all complaining like mad and demanding that Luxembourg stops this nonsense, but the best part is right at the end of the article:

Luxembourg’s finance minister, Pierre Gramegna, struck a conciliatory note on the international stage, telling a meeting of European finance ministers: “We are a country that wants to combat abuse … If we want to find solutions to this issue we have to tackle it together.”

Speaking to a domestic audience, however, he has described the affair as “the worst attack Luxembourg has experienced in its history”.

Reminds me a bit of the famous George W Bush quote from 2002:

My trip to Asia begins here in Japan for an important reason. It begins here because for a century and a half now, America and Japan have formed one of the great and enduring alliances of modern times. From that alliance has come an era of peace in the Pacific.

Bush, Blair: Sorry, did we say "Iraq"? We meant "Syria".

From the BBC:

Former US President George W Bush has spoken out to justify his 2003 invasion of Iraq, admitting that his poor grasp of written Arabic in intelligence reports led him to confuse the two neighbouring Arab states.

"We knew there were chemical weapons round there somewhere," said Mr Bush, "Our satellites can't actually recognise state borders, so give or take a few hundred miles, there were chemical weapons exactly where we thought they were."

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair interrupted his hectic speech-giving and fund-raising schedule to point out that his claim that the UK was "45 minutes away from mass destruction" was in fact understating the case.

"Syria is closer to Europe than Iraq, so strictly speaking we were only about 41 minutes away from mass destruction. People say I sent in our troops to invade the wrong country? As a Prime Minister with our country's best interests at heart, I feel I did what was right."

Mr Blair also hastened to underline the Iraq invasion's humanitarian credentials: "Assad has shown the terrible death and suffering which WMDs can cause when used on innocent civilians. If our liberation of Iraq helped prevent a single such incident, then it will have been worthwhile."

"Tony Blair and George W. Bush are reunited at the opening of former President's library"

From The Daily Mail:

Ten years after embarking on the bloody Iraq War with bosom buddy and former American president George W. Bush, ex prime minister Tony Blair cut a lonely figure at a presidential reunion yesterday.

As he sat surrounded by empty chairs the former Labour leader, whose government went to war claiming Iraq had 'weapons of mass destruction', Blair looked on as the five living American presidents gathered in Dallas to honor the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Center.

The tanned former prime minister, who George Bush famously called out to as 'Yo, Blair!' at a G8 meeting in 2006, soon cheered up once seats were filled by other past and present world leaders at the ceremony in Texas...

Speaking to the press after the event, the multi-milionaire warmonger Blair revealed that the Bush Library contains the copy of "The Pet Goat" which George Bush was reading to school children on 9/11, as well as the finest and most extensive collecton of Peanuts annuals and colouring books "this side of Alexandria".

Victimhood Poker

Politician Joe Wilson, who is white, shouts "You lie!" at President Obama. That's racist, according to Jimmy Carter.

Journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi, who is Iraqi, throws shoes at President George W Bush. George W Bush gives a sheepish grin, gestures to everybody to calm down and gets on with the press conference (video).

Fun Online Poll: Obama's trillion dollar bail out

I just don't get it.

In the UK, the Labour Party appear to have accepted that they've lost the next General Election and have gone for a economic scorched earth policy - interest rates are low (so can only rise); house prices are crashing; unemployment is soaring; sterling is at rock bottom and government deficits are off the scale. Fair enough, I'd classify that as 'bad' (as a taxpayer who will have to live through the recession/depresssion) but tactically, why should they make life any easier for the next Tory government?

Similarly, before he left office, George W Bush pumped hundred of billions of taxpayers' dollars into banks, presumably to help out his wealthy friends. Nobody in their right mind can imagine that this was for the benefit of 'Main Street', I'd classify that as 'sad' - it's a depressing fact that most politicians are in it to fill their boots.

Meanwhile, incoming US President Obama Bin Laden had a clean sheet. He could have done the sensible thing, blamed everything on George W Bush (fairly or unfairly) and, for example, gone for tax-cuts aimed at lower earners. But he didn't - he just doubled the size of the 'stimulus package' (a mixture of bail-out and pork barrel spending). So he has, effectively, scorched his own earth for the next four or eight years.

But why?

Is he really so stupid as to think it will help ('mad'); is he at heart a socialist who aims to keep the economy in ruins ('bad') or is he basically just corrupt ('sad')?

Click to vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Poll Results: Excuse me sir, where were you born?

With a day or so to go, the opinions on where Obama was born (opinions and beliefs being far more important than facts nowadays, two can play at that game) on a good turnout of 132 votes (thanks to everybody who voted, as ever) are as follows:

Runaway winner: Planet Krypton (33%)

Leaving that possibility aside, 37% reckoned he was disqualified from being US President:
Mombassa, Kenya (24%)
On an aeroplane from somewhere to somewhere else (4%)
It's irrelevant, he lost US citizenship when he was adopted by an Indonesian (9%)

And only 31% are True Believers:
Kapi'olani Medical Center, Honolulu (13%)
It's irrelevant, he will still Save The World (10%)
Queens Medical Center, Honolulu (7%)
Washington State (1%)

We remember how George W Bush took the shoe-throwing incident with good grace - I look forward to seeing how The Chosen One reacts when the first question at every press conference for the next four years is something along the lines of "Excuse me sir, where were you born?"

To lighten the mood a bit - this week's Fun Online Poll is Who is your favourite celebrity Kate?

"Time to go"

Robert Mugabe has joined the international community and called for US President George W Bush to step down within six weeks and appoint a Son Of Africa as his successor. Or else.

Iraq, WMD and The Dodgy Dossier

I know that this is all old news, but the topic is raised regularly on programmes like Question Time*, so I'd just like to see how far we get by applying logic. From the foreword to The Dodgy Dossier, signed off by the then Prime Minster Tony Bliar himself:

... the document discloses that his military planning allows for some of the WMD to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them. I am quite clear [sic] that Saddam will go to extreme lengths, indeed has already done so, to hide these weapons and avoid giving them up... I believe that faced with the information available to me, the UK Government has been right to support the demands that this issue be confronted and dealt with. We must ensure that he does not get to use the weapons he has, or get hold of the weapons he wants.

My issue is that there is an inherent contradiction here:

1. Let's assume it were true that Saddam could have wiped us all out within 45 minutes; in that case, invading Iraq would be a suicidal project unless the whole country could be overrun within say half an hour and without warning. During The Cold War it was widely accepted that each side had the technical capability to annihilate the other side within half an hour or so. Which is why NATO and The Warsaw Pact fought no end of proxy wars (Africa, Central America, Afghanistan and before then in Korea and Vietnam) but the chance of either side attacking the other directly was negligible.

2. Alternatively, we know that Bush & his poodle Bliar were itching to depose Saddam. We will never really know whether that was because Saddam tried to assassinate George H W Bush, allegedly; whether it was to try and secure access to Iraq's oil (unlikely, even though David Frost once tricked Donald Rumsfeld into admitting that it was); general macho bravado; or simply because it was to the advantage of the US 'military industrial complex' (as Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, warned in his farewell address as US President back in early 1961; "The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."). But surely they would not have contemplated an invasion - having announced it months in advance -  if it were really true that Saddam could have retaliated by rendering vast swathes of the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean countries uninhabitable?

* e.g. last Thursday, where Jack Straw refused to concede that he would have voted against invasion had he known then what he knows now. It was nice to see Lib Dem spokesman Brian Eno and UKIP Leader Nigel Farage at one on this issue.

"Bush says economic panic easing"

Panic? Are we supposed to panic? Or stop panicking?

Pork! Pork! Pork!*

Breaking news: Bush Signs Bailout After House Passage

Hmm, what does it take to get fifty-seven Representatives to change their minds?

Four hundred and forty eight pages of pork barrel spending, is all, introducing an additional $150 billion's worth of tax breaks, subsidies, exemptions, import curbs, preferences and other protectionist and/or interventionist measures!

In old money, that's about eight pages of legislation and $2.6 billion per Representative. OK, we could apportion some of that to Senators who may have been wavering, but my point stands.

* As ever, no offence meant to this 'blog's many Jewish readers, who by rights shouldn't be reading this anyway, it being the Sabbath and all. Shabbat Shalom, you guys!

George W Bush makes a fool of himself (part 94)

Jonathan Pearce over at Samizdata commends GWB warmly for this parting shot:

The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter." He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.

Nice try, George, but didn't you know that the USA have been overtaken by The People's Republic of China?

Y I H8 G8

Jock Coats did a fine post under this title (which is so good I had to nick it), all I can add to his post is that I am familiar with most of the 'leaders' attending (apart from Fukuda and Harper) and, at the risk of generalising, what they represent to me is Statism, Corporatism, corruption, high taxes, high subsidies, protectionism, interventionism and being in thrall to this Climate Change nonsense.

As a pragmatic libertarian, it strikes me that the best thing they could do is pretty much the opposite of whatever it is that they are doing. In other words, they ought to be scrapping trade barriers, subsidies, high taxes etc, not inventing excuses for new ones.

"US to send out $100bn in rebates"

Just how stupid is George W Bush?

You only get positive dynamic or Laffer effects if you cut tax rates going forward, in particular sales taxes or payroll taxes. Merely sending people money just leads to inflation and/or if they are paid for by increasing government debt, this just increases the future tax burden in an equal and opposite manner to the original boost (Ricardian Equivalence*).

* The theory is disputed, but it makes sense to me.