The first deals with our current foreign policy. Eliot A. Cohen, a State Department advisor to Condoleezza Rice, finds our foreign policy dismal, he says:
The Obama administration has managed to convince most countries around the world that we are worth little as friends and even less as enemies.
The balance of the Cohen article supports that view with depressing details from the last 18 months.
The second article, by economist Arthur Laffer, predicts another economic crash in 2011. The result will be a hard double dip recession. Why does he see this outcome?
Laffer demonstrates that people strive to avoid taxes and reminds us that the Bush tax cuts will disappear on January 1, 2011. A whole range of taxes will increase, from personal income taxes to estate taxes. Therefore, there will be a mini-surge in 2010 as people pull taxable income forward to avoid the higher taxes of 2011.
The result will be a crash in tax receipts once the surge is past. If you thought deficits and unemployment have been bad lately, you ain't seen nothing yet.
