[kitchencabinetforum] STRAUSS-KAHN'S ADVENTURE REFLECTS THE MISERY OF EUROPEISM

IMF named the No. 2 official, John Lipsky, as acting managing director. The charges against Strauss-Kahn are a huge embarrassment for IMF that oversees trillions of dollars and euros. Strauss-Kahn reflects Europeism, a product of Eurokleptocrats. It is a product of the drones who do not want to go to work from 8am until 5pm during the week and to have a normal job. It is a product of the freaks who want to steer, command, patronize, and legislate others. On the one hand, they include politicians and to them related bureaucrats and on the other hand, eggheads operating in the public space and in the media who are attached to politicians. http://venitism.blogspot.com

Bruce Thornton points out the worldwide Great Recession that began in 2008 has taken much of the bloom off the European Union rose. These days, the enthusiastic pronouncements of recent years, when Fourth Reich(EU) was touted as a bold new experiment in living, one leading the way into a new era, sound premature if not delusional. Equally premature have been the prophecies of Fourth Reich's future dominance in the New European Century, or the prognostications that the the twenty-first century might yet belong to Fourth Reich, or the argument that the European way is the best hope in an insecure age.

Strauss-Kahn's day of infamy immediately threw France's presidential race wide open. He had not yet declared his candidacy but Strauss-Kahn was widely expected to run for the Socialist Party and early opinion polls showed him with a big lead over the conservative incumbent, Nicolas Sarkozy, who is seeking a second term at the election next April. http://venitism.blogspot.com

France's government as well as Strauss-Kahn's political allies and rivals called for caution and respect for the presumption of innocence, but his presidential hopes appeared to be dead unless the case against him quickly unravels. Marine Le Pen said her rival's presidential hopes had been crushed, while Christine Boutin suggested Strauss-Kahn may have been set up.

Europeans are very tolerant of kleptocrats' extramarital affairs, but the allegations against Strauss-Kahn are entirely different, and much more serious. In 2008, Strauss-Kahn apologized for an error of judgment after an affair with a female IMF economist who was his subordinate.

The Fund's board of member countries warned him against further improper conduct, but cleared him of harassment and abuse of power and kept him in his job. It will now face new scrutiny over whether that response was too weak, especially as there have been persistent rumors about Strauss-Kahn making sexual advances to women. The assaulted woman was treated in Roosvelt hospital for minor injuries. She has worked at the hotel for three years and the property's manager said she has been a very good worker.

Thornton notes Greece's expected default on its sovereign debt, the humiliating multibillion-dollar International Monetary Fund contribution to Fourth Reich's near-trillion-dollar bailout fund, and the looming similar economic crises threatening other Fourth Reich states like Ireland, Spain, and Portugal have laid bare the contradictions long underlying the Fourth Reich economic project of greater integration through a common currency and centralized policies, putting at risk its very existence. This economic failure complements Fourth Reich's unmet geopolitical ambitions. Given its limited military capabilities, Fourth Reich has been unable to project global power and fulfill its promise to be an important pole in the multipolar world that was presumably created by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Strauss-Kahn has postponed Greece's expected default for three years. Yet despite these failures of the Fourth Reich project — greater prosperity, peace, and international influence through increased economic and political unification — many leftists in America continue to pursue policies, both domestic and foreign, that are moving the United States closer to the Fourth Reich paradigm. Indeed, many on the Left approve of the European model as something to emulate. Partly, this reflects the place Europe has traditionally held in the imagination of some Americans. Like the Yankee ingenues in a Henry James novel, they have admired the Old World of sophistication, culture, and civilization that contrasts with the New World of crude, go-getting, frontier brashness. But these days, this admiration more fundamentally reflects the belief that Europe provides a more humane and sophisticated set of social and political values. http://venitism.blogspot.com