It’s the return of malaise.

More confidence building, from the “indispensable” tax dodger who is now in charge of collecting our taxes:

Where was Geithner the Technocrat when you needed him? Because that is just what the markets need right now: a detailed, technocratic explanation of the way forward. This might have been the clincher as far as investors are concerned: “We are exploring a range of different structures for this program, and will seek input from market participants and the public as we design it.” In other words, “We have have concrete and high detailed plan to develop a concrete and highly detailed plan. We’ll get back to you.”

Oh, and it would be nice if he could do all that without painting such an unremittingly bleak picture of the economy. But more important is to change the mark-to-market accounting rules that are needlessly driving the financial system into the ground. Former FDIC Chairman William Issac has told the Securities and Exchange Commission that every money center bank in the 1980s would have gone bust had they been forced to sharply write down the value Latin American debt: “If we had followed today’s approach during the 1980s, we would have nationalized nearly all of the largest banks in this country and thousands of additional banks and thrifts would have failed. I have little doubt that the country would have gone from a serious recession into a depression.” Sound familiar?

And along with that change, how about embracing the private sector as the surest path back to prosperity? Cut corporate taxes. Suspend capital gains taxes. Indeed, one reason why Geithner may have been so vague about the bank rescue plan is that ultimately the plan may entail such high government borrowing that announcing it now would have derailed the current $800 billion Obama stimulus plan.

And wouldn’t that be a shame?

Speaking of cutting corporate tax rates, what would really help would be to simply eliminate them. A simple reduction in rate does nothing to reduce the high costs of bookkeeping and accounting that are made necessary by the need to sort out taxable deductions from other expenses. I’m sure that this is a huge drag on the economy (though it would still exist, unfortunately, for individuals). Eliminating the tax completely would free up vast amounts of corporate wealth for more productive activity.

[Mid-afternoon update]

Well, people do laugh at clowns:

The laughter was at its height when Obama officials explained that the White House planned to guarantee a wide swath of toxic assets — which they referred to as “legacy assets” — but wouldn’t be asking Congress for money. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), a bailout opponent in the fall, asked the officials to give Congress the total dollar figure for which they were on the hook. The officials said that they couldn’t provide a number, a response met by chuckling that was bipartisan, but tilted toward the GOP side. By guaranteeing the assets, Geithner hopes he can persuade the private sector to purchase a portion of them.

Financial messes like this are fundamentally a crisis of confidence. The Dow plunged 400 points after the news conference. I think that the Geithner pick is turning out to be a disaster, on multiple levels.

[Another update]

More thoughts from Megan McArdle:

I don’t envy Geithner his position. But he’s known this was coming for months. I expected a little more than telling us that he wanted to spend a lot of money to help banks clean up their balance sheets. We knew that much already.

I’m glad I don’t have his job, but I wish that someone else did. And the buck stops with the man who appointed him.

The Obama administration is going to continue rendition:

The European Parliament condemned renditions as “an illegal instrument used by the United States.” Prisoners swept up in the program have sued the CIA as well as a Boeing Co. subsidiary accused of working with the agency on dozens of rendition flights.

But the Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard.

See, it’s only evil when Chimpy McHitler does it.

[Tuesday morning update]

The case for the hypocrisy of the leftists’ defense of Obama is made:

Here’s a summary: the liberal defense is strained, dishonest, surprisingly nuanced, and contrary to true progressive politics because it elevates “party” over principle.

You don’t say.

As a commenter there notes, these people don’t give a goddamn about human rights (as evidenced by their blind eyes toward people like Fidel Castro). It’s all about partisan politics.

[Bumped]

Melanie Phillips on Jews who hate their Jewishness.

“Gaza is Hamas’ fault.” Not an unusual sentiment (though not usual enough), but scrape your jaw off the floor when you hear that it was said by an EU official. The usual suspects aren’t pleased, of course:

A Hamas official, Mushir al-Masri, was quoted by Reuters as saying his group was “shocked” at Michel’s comments. He lambasted the official for “giving cover to massacres and terrorism committed by the Zionist enemy against the Palestinian people… Palestinian resistance is as legitimate as the resistance of European countries that fought against foreign occupiers.”

Well, I have to admit that I share their shock. But not their dismay. I guess their mendacious game isn’t working as well as it used to.

[Evening update]

As long as they’re having a fit of sanity, the EU might want to consider the fungibility of money, and whether or not they’re fueling violence with foreign aid to the so-called Palestinians.

How long are we going to tolerate security theater, and behave like the sheep that the government wants us to be?

Can George Mitchell bring it? I doubt it. As the article notes, the comparison of Hamas to the IRA is spurious, and the Democrats in general, including George Mitchell, seem to think that it’s possible to engage in diplomacy with someone whose goal, and in fact primary motivation in life, is to kill you. What does that “dialogue” look like? What would be the “compromise”? That only half the Jews go into the sea?

I have a piece up at PJM today on the revival of the old cult of child sacrifice in the Middle East.

First time as tragedy, second time as tragedy again — Europe’s continuing estrangement from Israel:

I am standing in a queue waiting to buy a train ticket from London to Canterbury. A well-dressed lady standing behind me informs her friend that she “can’t wait till Israel disappears off the face of the earth.” What struck me was not her intense hostility to Israel but the mild-mannered, matter-of-fact tone with which she announced her wish for the annihilation of a nation. It seems that it is okay to condemn and demonize Israel. All of a sudden Israel has become an all-purpose target for a variety of disparate and confused causes. When I ask a group of Pakistani waiters sitting around a table in their restaurant why they “hate” Israel, they casually tell me that it is because Jews are their “religion’s enemy.” Those who are highly educated have their own pet prejudice. One of my young colleagues who teaches media studies in a London-based university was taken aback during a seminar discussion when some of her students insisted that since all the banks are owned by Jews, Israel was responsible for the current global financial crisis.

It’s looking like the 1930s again in more ways than one. Let’s hope it ends better this time.

The left has been pretending to support the war in Afghanistan ever since we went into Iraq, as a cudgel against the Bush administration. Obama himself played that game. Well, now that he’s got the keys to the White House, and the actual responsibility for foreign policy, what will he (and they) do?