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The issues of NSA security surveillance that confronts U.S. president Obama and how it affects his legacy as president.

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This editorial in the Washington Post describes the ballistic missile test by Iran in December 2015, and says the Obama administration has not responded effectively to this because of President Obama's effort to protect his legacy in the nuclear agreement.

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Jimmy Carter dies peacefully at his home in Plains, Georgia, at age 100 in Christmas week 2024. He was president following Nixon-Gerald Ford and a crisis of confidence in the US after Watergate scandal and as a southern peanut farmer from Georgia brought a period of renewal to political life in the country. He became a one term president with the election of Ronald Reagan during a period of high inflation and a challenge from Edward Kennedy during the primaries. His greatest success was after leaving office when he tackled health epidemics in Africa and helped stabilize democratic governments by acting as observer in elections around the world. His legacy is a lasting one and shows the power of good works as shown in the spiritual heritage of the Nation. Reagan, Bush Sr and Bush Jr, Obama either started the wars or failed to end the wars that dragged on after Jimmy Carter left office sapping the vital energies of the Nation. Only now under Biden and Trump are these wars coming to an end. And new effort is going into reviving America as an economic powerhouse improving the lives of its people. ...

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This article in Zeit Online emphasizes that the deep sense of unease and anxiety about the future among working class white people is behind the shift in American politics. This shift has a lot to do with the basic identity of the U.S., the borders, and  the ability to generate decent jobs at decent wages. The populous states of the midwest in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin helped tilt the outcome to Trump. It is pointed out that this shift is not simply a result of tax breaks for wealthy people and corporations. It goes a lot deeper than that- a growing anxiety about identity, borders and decent wages with decent jobs is what worries non college educated people who make up a larger proportion of voters in some midwestern and eastern states. Democrats also put themselves in an unsustainable position by pushing trade agreements such as TPP as an Obama legacy- even in the face of strong evidence that core working class Democratic voters, unions, and other working class groups had fervently opposed it. It is not that there are fewer liberals today- about 21% in 2012 and the same in 2016. Simply that the anxiety was too high about issues such as borders, identity, and manufacturing jobs that Democrats lost sight of. ...

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Over 50% of Israelis support Iran war, only 30% oppose. As Israelis see it Iran under religious clerics is the only real threat to Israel in 2025 because of Iran's policy of proxies for attacking Israel in Lebanon and in Gaza, and because of it's development of nuclear weapons and openly threatening Israel. The US involvement in Iranian politics dates from the Dulles and Eisenhower era with the CIA's involvement in the overthrow of the democratically elected Iranian prime minister Mossadegh in 1953. Working with British intelligence and for British oil interests, US oil interests, the US made a serious mistake as seen from today's perspective. The moral is British or French colonial policy stay from it America- George Washington himself would advise. Israel is paying the price and is asked to correct what was done by the British in Iran since 1850's- to bring back a peaceful democracy with the kind of struggles even Greece experienced. The unelected wholly unrepresentative government of the Shah who was put in the place of a democratically elected government was a serious mistake. The British and French colonialism and oil interests of Britain plus American oil companies have led to US getting on the wrong side of the Vietnamese people in the war in Vietnam against the French that ended at the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. It had repercussions in the Vietnam war under Kennedy and Johnson. This has happened in the case of Iran where the US has gained so little and lost so much in lives and resources sunk in the ensuing was in Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Yemen. The European Union suffered from the huge migrant flow from Syria with splits in its ranks. The distractions of these 30 years through Reagan and Rumsfeld who supported Hussein in Iraq against Iran in a balancing act is now foolishness, of elder Bush as he diverted attention to a long desert war in Kuwait, of Bush and then Obama in Afghanistan, who wasted enormous resources and impoverished the American people. Leaving legacy wars for Trump and Biden to handle. After Vietnam another failed chapter of Iran in the US for the American people by incompetent leaders who were taken in by French and British colonial and oil interests in wrong directions.   ...

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Scott Sperling, co-president of THL Partners, one of the oldest private equity firms, says rather than be anticapitalist the Obama administration is capitalism at work, as the restructuring is rebuilding two auto companies through bankruptcy by reducing unsustainable legacy obligations and making the bankruptcy process work right for these two companies. It also helps these firms get a new start. The process of "creative destruction" that helps make capitalism work is put to work in an enlightened way so there is creation as well as destruction, destruction through the tough choices that all stakeholders had to make, and creation through the new structures that are coming up. Preservation also works here through keeping what was good in these firms, which are the employees who had no part in management's mistakes, and workers who may be just as badly trapped in union ways. Scott also explains why the government's offer of 10% ownership shares to debtholders is fair, considering that without the government's money Chrysler would be worth little....

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U.S. president Obama calls Hillary Clinton more qualified for the job of president than himself or Bill Clinton, in his speech at the Democratic National Convention. He made a strong effort to rally the party behind Hillary Clinton in his speech, and thanked Bernie Sanders in a separate phone call for helping bring party unity. Vice President said that Trump did'nt have a clue to what would help the middle class, that the truly passionate supporter for the middle class was Hillary Clinton. Kaine and Bloomberg built on this theme.

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This WSJ report sees Angela Merkel as leaving an international legacy of cooling relations with America. It says Angela Merkel turned down US president Biden's first call after his election as president because she was going to her cottage in the country that weekend. This report says after 4 terms Merkel is to be seen as dramatically increasing her country's economic dependence on China, pushing through a energy deal with Russia, joining France in challenging US political influence in Europe, rejecting American requests on economic policy and setting Berlin's openness to Chinese technology.  What happened with her youthful fascination with America during the years growing up in East Germany asks the WSJ? It also says of the Bush years of unregulated banking leading to the 2009 US banking crisis- that left her with a distaste for Anglo-Saxon banks and Wall Street lobbying. Of the Obama years it says Merkel found Obama unsteady, verbose, and sometimes meddling, with the spying on Merkel's phone also giving her a sense of disrespect to Germany. The result was that Merkel increasingly was fascinated by the Chinese experiment in development, visiting China 13 times while in office, studying Chinese history, politics and economics.  Merkel over this period met with the Dalai Lama and had questions about one party rule by CCP. Yet she became more and more resigned to Germany as a country of 80 million, not the EU and Europe as one group united in vision with a population of about 500 million, larger than America that could be a force for good in its own right. She said "we can be as hardworking, awesome,  as super as we like, but as a country of 80 million we won't be able to prevail if China ever decided that it no longer wants to have good relations with Germany." She ignored the experience of Sweden and Scandinavian countries in their relations with China. In saying this she ignored the potential of India and its neighbors in south-east Asia that make up about 2 billion people or about twice the population of China. She also seemed unaware of the role Woodrow Wilson, FDR, have played in realizing the democratic vision of the German revolutionaries of 1948 who failed to bring democratic government to Germany. And she had forgotten of the role Harry Truman, the commoner president of the US, who played a major role in establishing German democracy and its dignity during the Berlin Crisis after the blockade of Berlin by the Soviets in 1948. The mediocrity of presidents from Bush to Trump has bothered Merkel. Yet it may very well be that there is nothing mediocre about Mr. Biden and America's vision about its future as it grapples with the social and economic problems of the last three decades, as it has done before in its history and come through. ...

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Biden has put forward a new initiative to strengthen democracy by getting increased commitments to key features for democratic processes in the world. The idea is not to limit partnerships with other countries says Anthony Blinken, Mr. Biden's main adviser and secretary of state. This means India a key partner in both democracy and the Indo-Pacific can for defending its thousands of miles of border in the high Himalayas with enroachment of China into border areas such as Tibet, maintain its good legacy relationships with Russia as happened in last weeks Modi-Putin meeting.  The idea says Blinken is- "The US does not want to limit your partnerships with other countries. We want to make your partnerships with us even stronger." This means the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, can maintain economic and development related ties with China which contribute to their economy, and build stronger relationships of culture and democratic processes with the US, India, European Union and Japan. For this reason the White House has emphasized that this is not about the US giving stamp of approval or disapproval of which country is a democracy and which is not. Too much of that happened under previous governments including Reagan, Carter, Bush, Obama.  The situation of Turkey relates to independence of judiciary and the unwillingness to take another look at problems. There is also the issue of technology is to be used so that citizens are protected from undue surveillance. Mistakes can be made but judiciary acts as an independent branch under the arrangements of checks and balances in American, British and now European frameworks of democracy built over centuries of struggle between monarchies and the people dating back to the Magna Carta in Britain. Neglect of workers and families also is an issue for democracies as for instance the effort now taking place in Germany under Scholz to "respect" workers and families. Lack of this led to the movements in US and European democracies giving room to vent that could ultimately lead to subverting democracies in the homeplace of democracies in the US or Britain. Why such a large gathering of 100 countries? Biden understands that the processes of democracy are always being improved and are a work for each new generation. For this reason there is no perfect scorecard- an ever renewing effort to make the process work in the best interests of the people of the country one generation at a time, to improve the quality of life and do this by preserving the right of peoples to choose their governments.  Why exclude China and Russia, till recently China had a consultative arrangement to run the country and Russia has elections? On this question the response of the Biden administration is that countries commit to the process and back initiatives to "counter authoritarianism. combat corruption, and promote respect for human rights."   Pakistan because it struggles with a long legacy of shortfall in the area of education after the collapse of Mughal rule that was seen under the British, and the general poverty of the Indian subcontinent that is striving to preserve the practice of elections, judiciary, and other democratic processes that were introduced in the Punjab and Sind provinces, and elsewhere since 1900. This is true for much of Africa, and also in parts of India, where aspirations of the people are for democratic process but faced with difficulties, corruption and poverty. In India the efforts of Naoroji, Gokhale, Gandhi, Nehru and Rajagopachari, Govind Pant, almost all leaders of the period since the 1850's, and able well meaning administrators since Lord Mayo in 1868 were to let democratic processes gradually find deep roots. Biden see aspirational in the face of difficulties as acceptable, even truly remarkable, with a willingness to learn from other countries to strengthen its own processes for democracy. It is no longer an Anglo-Saxon model alone as Germany and Europe are part of this process to be renewed by each generation. So are India and Japan. India after a century of elections since 1900 gradually expanding voters from one million to 5 million in the 1930's and to 900 million in 2019, with independent judiciary in a system of checks and balances as in the US.    ...

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The first budget of the Obama government makes a sharp swing away from decades of earlier policy, and puts America on a new direction focussed on priorities in education, health care for all, and energy. The 134 page doocument on the budget defines the governing principles and priorities of the new government. "This is the legacy that we inherit- a legacy of mismanagement and misplaced priorities, of missed opportunities and of deep, strutural problems ignored for too long," the document says. It declares that "government must lead" in contrast to Reagan's "government is not the solution, government is the problem." In contrast to "trickle down" policies of Reagan it proposes "trickle up" policies- shifting income from rich to the poor. It creates a $630 billion fund towards a national health insurance program built with the help of savings and cuts elsewhere. Government takes over most student lending, and dramatically expands Pell grants for poor college bound strudents, transforming it into something like Medicare that is automatic rather than approved each year by Congress. Businesses that emit carbon and heat trapping gases will have to purchase permits to do so starting in 2012. Hundreds of billions of dollars from these permits will pay for clean-energy technology and for tax credits for working couples. Income tax rates will rise for couples earning more than $250,000 beginning in 2011 and will have lower personal exemptions, lower itemized deductions, and higher capital gains tax rates. The estate tax will be preserved. Hedge fund and private equity managers wil have to pay income tax rates for that compensation as high as 39.6% after 2010, not the low 15% capital gains rate they pay now. The Defense Department would see a $20.4 billion boost or a 4% increase in 2010 over 2009, it will request an additional $75.5 billion in 2009 for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and an additional $130 billion for 2010. The budget is for $3.6 trillion for 2009, and projects a deficit of $1.75 trillion for 2009, or 12.3% of GDP- a level see in 1942 when the US entered World War II. Under optimistic White House assumptions for a strong economic rebound, the deficit would drop to $533 billion by 2013....

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Michelle Obama delivers a rousing speech in Pheonix, Arizona, as she campaigns across the country for Hillary Clinton, saying "they are trying to take away your hope." And by reminding voters Obama lost the state in 2012 by only 208,000 votes or 63 votes per precinct, so voters should not stay home. She tried to revive the 2008 campaign theme of "hope" of the Obama campaign in that year.

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This leader in The Economist reviews an essay in the magazine's October 8-14th, 2016 edition by U.S. president Obama. In it Obama points to the unfinished tasks of his presidency and what comes next as tasks to be done for the U.S. economy. The Economist points out the problems in the 2016 election campaign where there is a lack of discussion of economic issues as a serious problem. Obama lists as priorities efforts to improve conditions of people left out in the recovery, reducing inequality, offering more job opportunities, and increasing productivity.

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This editorial in the WSJ in June 2016 points out the dangers in the U.S. president Obama not facing up to the threat in the Middle East since 2013 leading to the fall of Mosul,  and in not clearly focussing on the threat since then. This has created divisions inside Europe and the U.S. in internal politics, and is being exacerbated with the rise of far right groups in Europe and by Trump in the U.S. It points out that by not clearly identifying the threat president Obama has given "illiberal" policy a boost. It says Hillary Clinton should be careful to formulate her own position in line with policy that has been pursued since FDR.

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George Will points to the most important aspect of Scalia's legacy, that of putting down court opinions mostly in the minority, that could shape decisions by the court in the future. He says Scalia has provided a new generation of students of the law with the basis of future interpretations of the constitution, including chapters of the Federalist Society.

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The last days spent at a West Texas ranch by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in Feb. 2016.

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The FDIC acknowledges that it has not been able to get banks interested in a pilot program called the Legacy Loans Program. That program was designed to give the banks an opportunity to sell off $1 billion of troubled mortgages. Since November with the efforts of the Troubled Asset Program under Secretary Paulson to have the banks sell off these assets in an auction or some other way, the whole issue of getting the toxic or troubled assets off the books of the banks has been effectively shelved. The Obama administration's version of this was the Geithner Public Private Partnership program, but this like Paulson's TARP never really got off the ground. Instead several things have happened that have enabled banks to show higher profits and improve stock prices. The period from March 2009 to June 2009, a period of several months has seen bank stock prices recover and banks are now able to raise capital on their own from investors. The government's "stress tests" gave the banks credibility with investors and they were designed not to be so stringent as to affect confidence. The mark to market rule has also been relaxed so that banks are no longer required to show these toxic assets at prices that reflect large losses. Bank executives also are wary of the new executive compensation rules of the government. All of these things have combined to create asituation where some confidence has been restored, but at the same time experts are pointing out that the underlying problems of an estimated $1 trillion in troubled assets remains. Banks are even less likely to want to part with these assets at lower prices now that some semblence of confidence is returning, as they would then have to show large losses. What this implies is that if the economy suffered a setback, these problems would return and be just as intractable as ever....

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The relations between the former president Obama and the current president Trump have soured in the first 100 days. Obama lauded activists opposing the travel ban, and Trump sees leaks being conducted for his administration by Obama supporters. Obama was clear from the beginning that he would voice his opinion when it came to systematic discrimination, right to dissent, and deportation of children. Trump's claims that Obama ordered his offices to be wiretapped during the election have caused a rift. Trump took to Twitter to says that Affordable Care Act was "a total disaster," and made it personal by saying "How low has President Obama gone to tap my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!" Attorney General Sessions said he will recuse himself from the investigations into Russian efforts to influence the election.

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Jenna Wortham asks the question do tech companies have undue influence in Washington especially when they are pursuing their own ecosystem expansion, citing an example from Facebook app Free Basics. There is another question that comes with the election campaigns of Sanders, Trump and Clinton, and issues of upward mobility. With this issue raised also by Janet Yellen of the U.S. Federal Reserve of the loss of intergenerational mobility in the U.S. at a conference in Oct. 2014. This question is whether the tech world in California can be sensitive to the problems of cities depending on manufacturing in the midwest and the eastern U.S. that are recovering from deep recession, because the environments are so different. Working in the tech world in California is so different from the rest of the country, almost a different way of life. It also has deep political implications, because the priorities are different. Sometimes as with the TPP trade agreement they may conflict- this includes an industry such as the auto industry that also is incorporating technology at an accelerating pace and which has employed many times more people than does the tech industry in California, and in many states. This leads to president Obama's support for the TPP trade agreement, an agreement which analysis by some experts shows is more beneficial to the tech industry in California than to the auto industry in the midwestern states. The NYT's Krugman says overall for the U.S. it is marginally helpful as most of the gains in free trade are already behind us. See Lyrarc using search terms-Trans Pacific Trade Agreement, Trans Pacific Partnership. Yet it remains a mystery why president Obama has made it a part of his legacy, when Hillary Clinton realizing the issues in this election has clearly stated she will not support it. It has other implications as well, as it has given rise to demagogic rhetoric in this election, where other issues far more significant such as the condition of western democracy are at stake. ...

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The political warfare between the two parties Republicans and Democrats complicates help to the automakers being released from the TARP $700 billion by Bush in the months before January transfer to the President elect. Bush is purported to want the Democrats to support the Columbia trade agreement which Obama vigorously opposes on the grounds of violence against union workers in Columbia. Complicating the situation further Obama and environmentalists including Al Gore wnat to see the auto industry help in the light of promoting energy conservation and environmental goals, whereas the industry and the unions and their Michigan supporters like Rep. Dingell and others want to see the aid given without any strings attached. This leaves the danger that both sides may be caught in a situation they could not control, the Bush people with a outgoing President who is struggling to preserve something of his legacy amid dismal ratings, and the Obama people without the experience to handle a situation such as this which is getting increasingly complicated. See the editorial pages of the WSJ on November 10 which said government help should only be given if the current management and board are replaced with new management and board, suggesting government receivership for GM. The management and board of GM which have hung onto their jobs through thick and thin are not likely to volunteer for a change. And the public perception is that the automakers management is responsible for this mess having dragged their feet all the way and used lobbyists to delay having to make the fuel efficient automobiles customers want. And another intractable factor that remains in the background is the collapsing sales of automakers which if it continues would require even bigger amount of government aid to keep operations running and pay workers way beyond the $50 billion that is being discussed, almost unrestricted help. In the meantime the Center for Automotive Research athink tank based in Michigan says about 3 million jobs depend directly of indirectly on the automotive industry and suppliers and services and goods providers to autoworkers. At the rate things are going a further deterioration in the conditions of the industry and further sales losses look likely, and GM's share price has already been placed at zero value by auto analysts at Deutsche Bank. It may well turn out that no one is in control and as the situation lurches from crisis to crisis, both the outgoing and incoming administration might find events happening in rapid fire mode one after another may take GM' s share price down close to zero before any solutions are found to an impasse and action taken. This happened with Lehman Brothers where in the end the failure of Fuld to take decisive and correct action early led to a collapse which the Fed and Treasury let happen. The danger to the economy is that when the story of these events is written years hence it may be recorded that very liitle action was taken to prevent foreclosures and action taken was not taken early or decisively. And individuals like Fuld at Lehman in October and Waggoner at GM in November failed to provide the leadership in the months and years leading into the crisis, leading to its steep and worsening nature on the credit front and on the auto front. ...

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This editorial in the New York Times is strongly critical of former president Barack Obama for accepting $400,000 in speaking fees from Wall Street for a single speech. It says the news is causing people to question the ideas and words presented by Obama in his books about the dangers of losing sight of the interests of ordinary people. It gives the impression says the NYT, that Obama is cashing in like everybody else, and that his talk was empty. The editorial says the millions raised by Hillary Clinton led to her defeat in the election. Obama is reported to plan a foundation with the work of training a new generation of political leaders. This NYT editorial says it would be better to stay true to vision and purpose, to walk the talk for president Obama, especially now that a recent poll shows two thirds of voters, including about half of Democrats say that the Democratic Party is out of touch with the interests of the American People. By associating this closely with wealthy donors leading Democrats contributed to this. During a period when some of the remarkable achievements of the last fifty years such as the European Union are being called into question, when ordinary working people, young people and older people are struggling, this is all the more a tone deaf approach by politicians. The idea of helping train a new generation of political leaders through a foundation sounds bizarre in this context, and seems to suggest politicians believe there is always a solution through marketing their audacity and money.   ...