MADRID - Hundreds of thousands of disillusioned Indians cheer a rural activist on a hunger strike. Israel reels before the largest street demonstrations in its history. Enraged young people in Spain and Greece take over public squares across their countries.
Call it the austerity death trap.
Under these circumstances, the harder a country works to cut its debt, the worse the ratio becomes - because the economy shrinks even faster.
Greece is already in the trap. Spain and Italy are perilously close. Even Britain, France, and Germany are tip-toeing up to it. And now us.
Deficit hawks have to understand: The first step must be to revive growth and jobs. That way, revenues increase and the debt/GDP ratio drops. Only then - when the economy is back on track - do you start cutting.
Anyone who pledges unconditional, absolute fealty to a politician -- especially 18 months before an election -- is guaranteeing their own irrelevance.
Indeed, as I've documented before -- virtually every country that suffers horrible Terrorist attacks -- Britain, Spain, India, Indonesia -- tries the accused perpetrators in its regular court system, on their own soil, usually in the city that was attacked. The U.S. -- Land of the Free and Home of the Brave -- stands alone in being too afraid to do so.
By Glenn GreenwaldHere again, we see one of the principal and longest-lasting effects of the Obama presidency: to put a pretty, eloquent, progressive face on what (until quite recently) was ostensibly considered by a large segment of the citizenry to be