With pro-democracy demonstrators demanding the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak for a sixth day, the military sent conflicting signals about where its loyalties lie. On the streets, soldiers curried favor with demonstrators. But F-16 fighter jets streaked through the sky, and in images on state-run television, the nation's military brass appeared alongside the embattled president.
We don't like to think of it this way, but governments in Egypt and the US are not that different. Here, too, our politics are largely determined by a huge interlocking network of money and the defense industry. How do we really feel about this? We are ambivalent, edging towards cowardly and submissive. We are increasingly prone to nasty niceties like "thank you for your service" which, translated, becomes "why am I thanking you for fighting wars I don't want against people with whom I have no beef." Egyptians are in a similar pickle as its army tries to decide who to put in power even as the protesters are thanking them for not cracking down.
Egypt has a military also made up for the most part of young people who just needed a job and directed by people at the top who have power and just want to keep it. The young political protesters, at least for the moment, have more courage than ours do. Right now they're engaged in fighting for more than they'll get. Ironically, much of the money supporting the "security establishment" that runs their lives comes from us. It's bittersweet for many Americans watching events in Cairo, particularly for those of us who suspect that our government and the powerful in Egypt are allied in bringing a convenient, if not righteous, end to protests.
Egyptians, no less than Americans, are likely to wind up with the status quo ante, albeit with a cosmetic fix.
All across Egypt, troops in tanks fanned out to work with residents in chasing down marauding bands of knife-wielding thugs and to impose some semblance of order after the nearly complete disappearance of uniformed Egyptian police.
Egyptians of all political persuasions accused the much-maligned police of being behind a campaign to terrorize the country - either by perpetrating the violence themselves or by standing aside and allowing it to occur.
As hatred toward the police grew, so did admiration for the army - which may be the intent of Egypt's security establishment as it struggles to find a way out of the crisis. The apparently contradictory signals from the army suggested that the question of who will rule Egypt remains very much in doubt, nearly a week after protesters turned this country's political universe upside down with a mass mobilization that appears to be growing stronger. ...WaPo
Even as the show winds down in north Africa, we are faced with our own battles. The powerful here are getting restive again.
Last Saturday, reported The Financial Times, some of the world’s most powerful financial executives were going to hold a private meeting with finance ministers in Davos, the site of the World Economic Forum. The principal demand of the executives, the newspaper suggested, would be that governments “stop banker-bashing.” Apparently bailing bankers out after they precipitated the worst slump since the Great Depression isn’t enough — politicians have to stop hurting their feelings, too.
But the bankers also had a more substantive demand: they want higher interest rates, despite the persistence of very high unemployment in the United States and Europe, because they say that low rates are feeding inflation. And what worries me is the possibility that policy makers might actually take their advice. ...Paul Krugman
Oh, and bankers want to be more popular, more officially popular. Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan/Chase rose to new heights of chutzpah in Davos.
Mr. Dimon said at the World Economic Forum that he was sick of “this constant refrain — bankers, bankers, bankers.”
“We try to do the best we can every day,” Mr. Dimon said during a panel discussion.
Later, Mr. Dimon urged Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France, not to let bank regulation be driven by anger toward bankers, and he warned that bad policy-making would impede growth.
Mr. Sarkozy, in turn, reminded Mr. Dimon of the severe pain inflicted by the financial crisis. “Let’s not forget what happened,” he said. “The world has paid for it with tens of millions of unemployed who had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with it and yet paid for everything. It created a lot of anger.”
Referring to the enormous leverage used by banks before the crisis, Mr. Sarkozy said, “We have to ask ourselves, are we in a market economy or a madhouse?” ...NYT
Poor Jamie. He just wants us to to back to telling bankers, "Thank you for your service!"
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