Laura Rozen's latest Cable post suggests that the Obama administration might be falling into the same trap that befell the Clinton and Bush administrations: 

[There are] only a dozen or so positions to be filled [at the NSC] immediately, given that much of the NSC staff is seconded from other federal agencies who will hold over in the new administration's early months. Not only that, but the Obama team reportedly plans to scale back the NSC from its Bush/Cheney days. Under Bush, the NSC had six deputy national security advisor positions; the Obamans are looking to a more traditional, flatter model, my sources tell me, with as few as one deputy national security advisor and senior directors for different regional and functional areas below that (Europe, etc.).

Now, a flatter model may or may not be a good idea.  If "scaling back" includes cutting the NSC staff more generally, however, it would be a boneheaded move.  Worse, it would replicate the exact same boneheaded move made by the previous two administrations.  When Condi Rice came to the NSC, she pruned the staff by a third.  Similarly, the NSC was cut in the first years of the Clinton administration to honor candidate Clinton's pledge to cut White House staff by 25%. 

In the end, the NSC has no resources except access to the president and staff.  To actually coordinate or implement foreign policy, the NSC needs to be on top of what other agencies are doing.  A smaller staff makes that task much more difficult.  Indeed, after policy coordination miscues in the early years of their administrations, both Clinton and Bush wound up reversing course on the NSC.   

Hopefully, Obama will learn from their mistakes -- because nobody likes shrinkage.

Clearly, I enjoy teasing John Bolton and John Yoo as much as the next blogger. In The New Republic, however, Nina Hachigian makes an argument about global governance that inches towards their caricature of how progressives think about international institutions. Consider this paragraph: 

Creating effective architectures of global order requires three kinds of intervention--extensive improvement of existing institutions and rules, limited creation of new mechanisms, and reliable American engagement. The agenda is both complex and controversial. In terms of security, it includes the reform of voting rules and membership of the U.N. Security Council, the founding of a workable non-proliferation regime, belated American leadership on climate change, and a fortification of the World Health Organization. In terms of the global economy, we must develop new mechanisms to regulate international banking and finance, as well as update of the roles and governance of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. In terms of human rights and justice, the U.S. must join the U.N. Human Rights Council to help make it a serious forum for scrutiny and also engage in the International Criminal Court. As daunting as these steps may be, they are just the beginning.

Maybe it's just me, but I think Hachigian forgot the fourth thing that's necessary for global governance to work -- the great powers have to have preferences that are near enough to each other for there to be a zone of possible agreement. Otherwise, you might as well add "free ponies" to this kind of wish list. 

That might exist on the financial and economic front (though I have some doubts about this). There's a chance that it exists on nonpoliferation. It's nonexistent, however, on global warming and on the reform of existing global governance structures (and, trust me, I'm a fan of the latter). 

This doesn't mean that the Obama administration should not engage with international institutions. I'm just unconvinced that Hachigian's approach would yield the foreign policy dividends she thinks it would. 

The global economic downturn is not just affecting manufacturing output or the financial sector. I'm afraid that shameless PR gestures by Latin American thugs are also going to be curtailed: 

Houston-based Citgo Petroleum Corp., the U.S. fuels and refining unit of Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA, plans to suspend its program to provide discounted heating oil to poor U.S. communities, according to Citizens Energy, a nonprofit which helps Citgo distribute the heating oil.

Citizens Energy chairman Joseph Kennedy said in a statement Monday that Citgo was calling off its heating oil aid programs in the United States due to "falling oil prices and the world economic crisis."

Last month 303 prominent Chinese intellectuals signed Charter 08, a document consciously designed to evoke Czechoslovakia's Charter 77. The content of the charter itself, as well as the government's reaction to it, can provide a few hints about what to expect from the Middle Kingdom this year.

Reading the two charters back-to-back is revealing. The Czech document was clear in detailing the repressive nature of the government, but ended on a conciliatory note: "It does not aim, then, to set out its own programmes for political or social reforms or changes, but within its own sphere of activity it wishes to conduct a constructive dialogue with the political and state authorities."

Charter 08, in contrast, says nothing about dialogue. The charter does say quite a bit about the nature of Beijing's regime:

In 1998 the Chinese government signed two important international human rights conventions; in 2004 it amended its constitution to include the phrase "respect and protect human rights"; and this year, 2008, it has promised to promote a "national human rights action plan." Unfortunately most of this political progress has extended no further than the paper on which it is written. The political reality, which is plain for anyone to see, is that China has many laws but no rule of law; it has a constitution but no constitutional government. The ruling elite continues to cling to its authoritarian power and fights off any move toward political change.

The stultifying results are endemic official corruption, an undermining of the rule of law, weak human rights, decay in public ethics, crony capitalism, growing inequality between the wealthy and the poor, pillage of the natural environment as well as of the human and historical environments, and the exacerbation of a long list of social conflicts, especially, in recent times, a sharpening animosity between officials and ordinary people.

The document then goes on to offer a concrete program for political and social reform. It's an ambitious list. These Chartists are not only asking for political and civil liberties. They also want private property rights, separation of powers, a federated republic, social security, and environmental protection.

The tone of the document also makes it clear that these Chartists do not expect to achieve their goals not through a constructive dialogue. Instead, they appear to be banking on a mass social movement that forces the government in Beijing to capitulate to its demands.

According to the New York Times Book Review's Perry Link, "Chinese authorities were apparently unaware of [Charter 08] or unconcerned by it until several days before it was announced on December 10." This might explain their initial reaction, which, by Beijing's standards, was relatively tame. As Charter 08 picked up more online signatures, however, the government's reaction has hardened. The government is also upgrading the software it uses to censor the Internet on issues like this.

So, it would appear that the Chinese government and the Charter 08 dissidents do agree on one thing: a dialogue between the two sides is not going to happen. Absent that option, will there be a mass social movement. Could it topple the communist government?

Authoritarian governments always look like they can maintain their grip on power -- right up until the moment that the coercive apparatus falls apart. Beijing's coercive apparatus has a track record of not falling apart, so the smart money might be on the government. Still, as industrial production in the country continues to tank, the implicit social compact trading political quiescence for rapid economic growth appears to be cracking.

Furthermore, the dissidents are getting cheekier. In addition to Charter 08, China's highest-ranking dissident, Bao Tong, just leveled a broadside against Deng Xiaoping, timed to disrupt the regime's 30th anniversary celebration of the economic reforms launched by Deng. 2009 also marks the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests/crackdown -- and the Chinese love to mark anniversaries.

Question to readers: is 2009 the year that China's government collapses? Or is it just another year in which there will be a crackdown of a mass uprising? Because those may be the only two options.

Let me be the first FP blogger to welcome Shadow Government into the fold. As the Democrats take over the executive branch, it will be good to have some critical voices around to push and prod their foreign policies.

That said, I'd also love it if Shadow Government could also provide some evaluation on any criticism provided by other former Bush officials as the changeover commences. Do these criticisms have validity, or are they merely tactical justifications given the GOP's minority status?

For example, consider today's New York Times op-ed by John Bolton and John Yoo:

The Constitution’s Treaty Clause has long been seen, rightly, as a bulwark against presidential inclinations to lock the United States into unwise foreign commitments. The clause will likely be tested by Barack Obama’s administration, as the new president and Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton, led by the legal academics in whose circles they have long traveled, contemplate binding down American power and interests in a dense web of treaties and international bureaucracies.

Like past presidents, Mr. Obama will likely be tempted to avoid the requirement that treaties must be approved by two-thirds of the Senate. The usual methods around this constitutional constraint are executive agreements or a majority vote in the House and Senate to pass a treaty as a simple law (known as a Congressional-executive agreement).

Executive agreements have an acknowledged but limited place in our foreign affairs. Congressional-executive agreements are far more troubling.

Now, on the one hand, one could interpret this advice as a warning about the dangers of implementing international agreements without the broad support of Congress and the American people.

One could also, however, interpret this advice as awfully strange, as it emanates from officials who have, heretofore, been mostly concerned with the augmentation of the executive branch's power at all costs (and implemented plenty of congressional-executive agreements while in office).

It is terribly convenient, now that they are out of power, to be suddenly concerned with Obama running roughshod over the legislative branch. The domestic parallel would be if Bush officials who embraced No Child Left Behind and intervened in the case of Terry Schiavo suddenly developed a Strange New Respect for federalism.

So, Shadow Government, should one take Bolton and Yoo at face value?

UPDATE:  Drezner gets results from Shadow Government.  [Has the ten-year old in you has always wanted to type that sentence?--ed.  Yes.  Yes, he has.]

No pressure.... no pressure... it's just the first blog post on your fancy-pants new mainstream media blogsite... just imagine that the audience is naked and you'll do fine....

Wait, am I typing this out loud? [Yes. And now they're all imagining you imagining them naked--ed.] Uh... right! Let's get to it, then.

Hi, my name is Dan Drezner, and I'll be your blogger at this website. Longtime readers of danieldrezner.com will know what to expect of this site. Readers coming here via the foreignpolicy.com portal might not know me as well. I therefore toyed with the idea of writing a Declaration of Principles or something like that, but that's not really how a blog functions.

So, here's the primary thing new readers should expect of me -- I'm going to get a fair amount of stuff wrong. In the six years I've blogged, I already have gotten a great deal of stuff wrong.

So why do I continue to blog? Because world politics is, at best, an inexact science. Even the experts who get some big things right also get a lot of big things wrong. Many realists, for example, like to crow about how they were right about the war in Iraq -- and they were. On the other hand, many of these same realists predicted that the end of the Cold War would crack up NATO and the European Union. Unfortunately, in international relations, one out of two ain't bad.

So I'll be wrong a lot -- but hopefully I'll be wrong in interesting and productive ways. All I ask from my readers is that when you tell me that I'm wrong in the comments, you explain why you think I'm wrong. 

Oh, and don't say anything bad about Salma Hayek.

Today I received the following e-mail query: 

There is a lot of talk about in Pakistan media that American think tanks have issued a map about dividing Pakistan. I have read some where that you were on that team. If you have made such a report can you kindly send me a copy of that report and map, I ll also like to know about the research mathodolgy of that report. If I am wrong about that can you kindly give me any whereabouts from where I can get that report.

Based on press reports, I suspect that this query was about the Pakistan Policy Working Group, which did release a report in September about Pakistan.  I have no idea why it took three months for this to permeate the English-language Pakistani press. Anyway, for the record, I was not a part of that report.  Indeed, the only way I would ever be a part of a report on Pakistan is if a crackerjack terrorist group managed to knock off the plethora of economists, political scientists, and sociologists who actually know something about Pakistan.  That is all. 

As George W. Bush's policy advisors give their exit interviews, I suspect that we are going to see sentiments similar to this one from Josh Bolten: 

Bolten said another of his goals when he took over was to try to get the country to see the likable boss he and other aides saw in private, convinced that would boost Bush's popularity. "I failed miserably," he conceded. "Maybe in the beginning of the sixth year of a presidency, that's a quixotic task. . . . But everybody who has actual personal exposure to the president, almost everybody, appreciates what a good leader he is, how smart he is and, especially, how humane he is."

Whenever I read something like this, I always go and get my copy of Jeff Greenfield's diverting political novel, The People's Choice, because he has a great take on this kind of statement from a politico: 

When a political aide says, "He's really good in small groups," it means, He is so completely incapable of understanding the power of words or ideas that I can barely restrain myself from leaning across his desk, grabbing his lapels, and screaming, "Wake up, schmuck!" into that lean, beautiful face of his.

Indeed. 

My latest column for Newsweek International is now up, and focuses on the ways in which fiscal policy can lead to renewed protectionism across the globe: 

What is truly worrisome, however, is that a lack of cooperation on trade could spill over into a lack of coordination on fiscal policy. Coordination on these two issues are linked. States running trade deficits worry that export engines like Germany and China will free ride off of their own fiscal expansions, boosting the growth prospects of these exporters without any serious fiscal expenditures on their part. Already, other Europeans are upset over Germany's inaction on the fiscal front. German Finance Minister Peer Steinbruck's warning against "crass Keynesianism" to NEWSWEEK's Stefan Theil has merely stoked these concerns even more. If this fear persists, there is a danger that any Keynesian boost will come attached with protectionist provisions to ensure that the benefits remain within national borders. Some reputable economists are already advocating this kind of action in the absence of global policy coordination. As the global downturn persists, these political pressures will become harder to ignore. What has been a mild backlash against trade liberalization could quickly turn into a tsunami. If trade wars break out in the wake of the global financial crisis, they will not take the form of Smoot-Hawley—but they will be equally dangerous.

And, hey, on cue, the New York Times' Louis Uchitelle reports the following on the U.S. steel industry in the United States: 

The industry itself is turning to government for orders that, until the September collapse, had come from manufacturers and builders. Its executives are waiting anxiously for details of President-elect Barack Obama’s stimulus plan, and adding their voices to pleas for a huge public investment program — up to $1 trillion over two years — intended to lift demand for steel to build highways, bridges, electric power grids, schools, hospitals, water treatment plants and rapid transit. “What we are asking,” said Daniel R. DiMicco, chairman and chief executive of the Nucor Corporation, a giant steel maker, “is that our government deal with the worst economic slowdown in our lifetime through a recovery program that has in every provision a ‘buy America’ clause.” (emphasis added)

What it truly disturbing about this request is that it contradicts the narrative about the U.S. steel sector in recent years, a narrative tat Uchitelle comments on later in his story: 

Not since the 1980s has American steel production been as low as it is today. Those were the Rust Belt years when many steel companies were failing and imports of better quality, lower cost steel were rising. Foreign producers no longer have an advantage over the refurbished American companies. Indeed, imports, which represent about 30 percent of all steel sales in the United States, also are hurting as customers disappear.

The political economy implications of this are pretty disturbing.  Steel, which can compete with the rest of the world, should be one of the last sectors to seek protection from foreign competition.  With its mini-mills, Nuxor is one of the most competitive firms within the U.S. steel sector.  If this is how Nuxor is behaving, however, how much protectionist lobbying will come from the less competitive sectors of the U.S. economy? Developing.....

Consider this an open thread for predictions of what will happen in 2009.... which movie will win Best Picture?  Which team will win the World Series?  Who will win the Nobel Peace Prize?  Which Obama cabinet member, if any, will step aside before the end of the year?  Looking back on my 2008 predictions, I only batted .500.  Therefore, I'm not making any predictions for next year, except that this blog will cease to exist -- which is as predictable as saying that Gazprom will, like clockwork, cut off gas to a former Soviet republic in early January. 

Christopher Beam has an entertaining story in Slate about the various backroom machinations TV bookers must undergo in order to get the right set of talking heads.  

There are some guests who simply refuse to go on the air with other particular people or with anyone at all. Likewise, there are some people who no one else wants to appear with. It's rarely discussed, because the bookers who mediate these ego wars are bound by contract—and their own interests—to keep quiet. And hosts rarely mention the snubs on-air, since they want guests to come back. But snubbing happens all the time, and conversations with bookers, producers, and guests reveal that some divas are especially notorious.

This part stood out for me: 

The biggest offenders are usually the ones whose egos are too big to accommodate any company: Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Alexander Haig, and others who figure they have better uses for their time than debating some flack on the air. "They would only go on if they could do the show alone," says a former producer for Crossfire. "Brzezinski won't debase his cable currency by being a two-box," explained a current booker, referring to the practice of displaying guests on a split screen. Another booker cited Brzezinski's refusal to go on with Pat Buchanan—"probably because he thinks he's an anti-Semite." (An assistant to Brzezinski says: "It isn't true that he will only appear alone. He has appeared many, many times with other guests." Maybe so. But bookers say he doesn't do so willingly.)

Here's a piece of advice to TV bookers -- surprise these mooseheads with another guest just before they're going to go on.  Why?  Because, in my experience, when mooseheads at the Kissinger-Brzezinski level are alllowed to pontificate at will, they are unbelievably boring and rote.  On the other hand, they are at their best precisely when they are challenged by someone.  Maybe they get riled up at having their authority questioned, or maybe they want to smack down the young whippersnapper tring to unseat the Pundit King.  All I know is, when they are poked and prodded, the analytical sharpness that got them to their exalted position comes out, and then the fun starts.  I've seen this in person -- but Josh Marshall David Kurtz captures an example of this on video.  Zbigniew Brzezinski doesn't like it when he's challenged on the Middle East -- watch what happens: 

 

Oh, and it makes for good TV -- though in this case it has the added frisson of Mika Brzezinski's uncomfortable body language. 

Cullen Murphy, Todd Purdum, and Philippe Sands have compiled a long oral history of the Bush administration in Vanity Fair.  It's depressing reading, for obvious and not-so-obvious reasons.  The obvious reasons are the monumental clusterf%$ks committed by this administration over the past eight years. The not-so-obvious reasons are that Vanity Fair needlessly stacked the deck against the administration.  They talked to a lot of people, but very few current supporters of the administration.  This was stupid, because even with a few more supportive interviews, the history itself is just damning.  Still, it will be too easy for some to dismiss.  Even with a stacked deck, this is very sobering reading.  Two quotes stand out.  The first comes from Henry Paulson, who sounds like a broken man: 

I easily could imagine and expected there to be financial turmoil. But the extent of it, O.K., I was naïve in terms of—I knew a lot about regulation but not nearly as much as I needed to know, and I knew very little about regulatory powers and authorities. I just had not gone into it in that kind of detail. 

Sweet Jesus.  Finally, the last lines in the story, from Matthew Dowd:

You know, the headline in his presidency will be missed opportunity. That is the headline, ultimately. It’s missed opportunity, missed opportunity.

 UPDATE:  Just one more quote -- because it's by a sympathetic oberver of Bus and therefore more devastating.  It's from Noelia Rodriguez, Laura Bush's press secretary:  

I wish that more people could have seen the president the way I experienced him. Even if you don’t agree with him or respect his opinions or his decisions—strip that away, if you’re able to—he is a caring human being. I brought my mom to the White House, to get a tour the day before Thanksgiving. The president came in and greeted her—it was a total surprise. And on the spot he invited us to go to Camp David for Thanksgiving. Of course, we went, and it was Disneyland for adults. We went to chapel services before dinner. I remember we got there early. A few minutes later the president walks in with Mrs. Bush and the family, and you could see him looking around, and he sees my mom in the distance, and he literally shouts at her from across the chapel, “Grace, come sit over here with me.” And at dinner, again, he sees her, and he says, “Grace, you’re going to sit over here next to me.” And he tilted the chair against the table so that nobody would take her place.

In the context of screw-up after screw-up, this is like the standard media quote from the next-door neigbor of a felon saying, "Gosh, George was always nice to me."  ANOTHER UPDATE:  On the other hand, if Vanity Fair had managed to cram every screw-up like this one into the essay, it might have been an even longer history. 

This blog has been silent about Caroline Kennedy's shadow campaign for a Senate appointment, mostly because he was convinced that this was just some effort by karma to tap dance on those partisans who took too much glee mocking the qualifications of Sarah Palin.  As someone who thought Palin was unqualified for VP-dom and thinks Kennedy is unqualified for the Senate, I nevertheless feel a massive twinge of sympathy for Caroline Kennedy after her New York Times interview.  Several media outlets are mocking her verbal tic of saying "you know" a lot in that interview.  Longtime watchers of my bloggingheads and other media appearances are well aware that I've owned that tic for several years now.  That's my thing.  That I do.  When I'm formulating what I am about to say.  When a live mic is close by.  Anything Kennedy can do to make it acceptable to the mainstream would be good for my media whoredom, and therefore a Manifestly Good Thing for the Republic. 

That line from The Simpsons came to my mind when I read this Financial Times essay by Jonathan Guthrie: 

If you can fake authenticity in the new year, you will have it made. Authenticity was already a buzzword in business and politics before the credit crunch. It will become an essential virtue following the curtain twitch that revealed so many Masters of the Universe to be Wizards of Oz. At one executive leadership seminar I attended recently, the trainer explained that authenticity was the main attribute delegates needed to radiate, including “different types of authenticity for different audiences”. This means being a technocrat in the boardroom, a pragmatist among middle managers and an Average Joe on the shop floor.

One does wonder if this increases the likelihood of bloggers -- who were in on the ground floor of this whole "constructed authenticity" deal -- making it in the corporate world. 

Consider this an open thread on the Israeli attacks on Hamas in Gaza.  One piece of this analysis by Ethan Bronner in the New York Times struck me as symbolizing the political difficulties of achieving any kind of negotiated settlement in the region: 

It was Ehud Barak, the defense minister, who directed the preparations, and politically it is Mr. Barak who stands to gain or lose most. As chairman of the Labor Party, he is running for prime minister in the February elections and polls show him to be a distant third to the Likud leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Kadima leader, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. But if Hamas is driven to a kind of cease-fire and towns in Israel’s south no longer live in fear of constant rocket fire, he will certainly be seen as the kind of leader this country needs. If, on the other hand, the operation takes a disastrous turn or leads to a regional conflagration, his political future seems bleak and he will have given Hamas the kind of prestige it has long sought.

So, let me get this staight:

1. The odds of Israel being a flexible negotiating partner would be highest if Barak was PM;
2. Barak's chances of being PM ride on the success of the offensive against Hamas;
3. If the attack fails -- which suggests that a there is no military solution to Gaza -- then the person most open to non-military solutions will be eliminated from serious contention in Israeli politics. 

Am I missing anything? UPDATE:  The Guardian's Rory McCarthy has a good roundup of Israeli opinions -- I tend to side with those who believe that there is no military solution to this problem.  ANOTHER UPDATE:  Shadi Hamid has a good post on what Hamas was thinking. 

This has not been a good week for American intellectuals.  As I blogged before, Rabbi Arnold Wolf passed away earlier this week.  It turns out that Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington has died as well.  I got to know Huntington when I was a post-doctoral fellow at Huntington's Olin Institute for Strategic Studies.  He might have been the most socially awkward political scientist I ever met -- not an easy task given my field.  This awkwardness disappeared in his writing, which was fluid, cogent, and usually disconcerting to accepted wisdom.   This is not to say I always agreed with Huntington -- I most certainly did not (here's me not agreeing with him yet again).  But I will miss pushing back at his ideas.  One could always debate Huntington's hypotheses, but only fools would dismiss them out of hand.  Here's a link to Harvard's press release, and here's a link to Robert D. Kaplan's excellent Atlantic profile of Huntington from 2001.  This paragraph of Kaplan's rings true: 

Sweeping and icy statements dominate Huntington's books. These blunt judgments contrast sharply with Huntington's unimposing physical presence and unaffected demeanor. He looks like a character from a John Cheever story, someone you might forget that you had ever met. He blinks. He plays nervously with keys. He is balding, and stares intently at his palms as he talks. The fragile exterior conceals a flinty core. "Sam is very shy," Brzezinski says. "He's not one of those guys who can shoot the breeze at a bar. But get him into a debate and he is confident and tenacious." A former student says, "Sam is a geek with a backbone of steel." Another of his students demurs: "Sam isn't a geek. He's a quintessential Victorian man of honor—very quiet and contained, yet extraordinarily tough when the occasion demands."

I don't know if there's an afterlife, but if there is I hope that Wolf and Huntington are having a rip-roaring debate.  UPDATE:  Here's the Boston Globe's obituary (surprisingly, the New York Times just runs the AP version).  As pointed out in the coments, most of the write-ups of Huntington focus on The Clash of Civilizations, which is unfortunate, since The Soldier and The State is probably his best book.  Of course, even if Soldier had the greatest effect on political science, Clash has probably had the greatest effect on world politics.  ANOTHER UPDATE:  Foreign Affairs has a nice tribute page to Huntington, consisting of his Foreign Affairs articls and reviews of his major books. 

Megan McArdle and I recorded this podcast for the Atlantic on the current global recession:

 

My favorite part is the initial B-roll, during which Megan towers above me. 

It kills me to write this post, but I'm about to defend the New York Yankees.  I do it only to make a point about the American economy and free competition, so bear with me.  In the Philadelphia Inquirer, Phil Sheridan writes the following about the Yankee signing of Mark Teixeira: 

The New York Yankees represent the very worst of America. Overstatement? Consider the times. Cornerstone industries are faltering, taxpayers are being asked to bail out mismanaged financial institutions and their overpaid CEOs, and decent, hard-working men and women are being laid off or worrying that they could be next. Now consider the eight-year, $180 million contract the Yankees reportedly handed first baseman Mark Teixeira Tuesday. Stack it on top of the $161 million deal signed by pitcher CC Sabathia and the (relatively) modest $82.5 million promised to A.J. Burnett and you have the most egregious display of financial irresponsibility in the history of sports. The Yanks' insane overspending would be bad for baseball in the best of times. These are not the best of times.... What's wrong here is obvious. It's also not really new. Unlike the NFL, NBA and NHL, baseball has no salary cap. Those leagues do not have caps for the sheer, unbridled joy of finding loopholes and exceptions. They have them as part of an effort to maintain some kind of competitive balance among teams from different-size markets in disparate parts of the country.

Sheridan's response is pretty typical of non-Yankee fans -- which is disturbing, because it's so wrong on so many levels.  First, it would be awesome if American corporations acted more like the Yankees.  One cause of the deepening recession is that firms are afraid to do anything other than hold cash in hand at the moment.  The smart ones should invest in expansion -- capital is ridiculously cheap right now and they'll be well-poised once the economy takes off again.  If enough firms acted that way, the economy actually would take off again.  In signing these players, the Yankees have made long-term investments while keeping their expenditures constant relative to last year's payroll.  Given their move to a new stadium, their revenues should increase.  They have made these moves in order to improve their chances of competing.  That's how corporations should behave.   As for Sheridan's point about competitive balance -- well, let's go to Joe Posnanski, who has some useful data on this point:

it always gives me great comfort to see the following facts: -- Over the past 10 years, eight different teams have won the World Series. In all, 15 teams made the World Series -- half of the teams in baseball. -- Over the past 20 years, 14 different teams have won the World Series. In all 22 teams made the World Series. Now, we're at more than two-thirds who have reached the Series. -- Over the last 30 years, 20 different teams have won the World Series, and only four -- Cubs, Mariners, Rangers and the Expos/Nationals -- have failed to get there... I'm not saying that the Yankees will not win in 2009 -- that's an awfully good team now, absolutely the best that money can buy. But just remember that key fact: 20 teams have won a World Series in the last 30 years. And by comparison: -- Only 14 teams have won the Super Bowl over the last 30 years. -- Only 14 different men have won Wimbledon over the last 30 years. -- Only 13 teams have won the Stanley Cup over the last 30 years. -- Only nine teams have won an NBA title over the last 30 years.

It is telling that the team sports with salary caps actually have more dynasties than baseball.  In baseball, more money can make the Yankees better, but it can't guarantee them anything.  As a Red Sox fan, I'm perfectly happy to have the rest of America hate the Yankees along with me.  Holding them up as the symbol of what's wrong with the country, however,  is pretty ludicrous.  UPDATE:  Thanks to YFSF, I see that Dan Szymborski has made a similar argument over at Baseball Think Factory: 

The Yankees do spend more money than other teams in MLB, but the differences would be less drastic if the payrolls of many teams had been rising up to the waves of new cash that have entered baseball in recent years. Going by the NFL formula, very generous considering the MLBPA is far more powerful an entity than any other union in sports, the payroll floor for 2009 would almost certainly be in the $100 million range. 58% of league revenue, as the players in NFL get, would be, in baseball, an average team payroll of a hair under $120 million. It's pretty clear that while the Yankees are outspending everyone comfortably, the rest of baseball has just as much to do with the payroll disparity as the Yankees do. Now, what about the Yankee mindset? The Steinbrenners aren't anywhere near as rich or as liquid as some other owners in baseball such as Carl Pohlad of the Twins. The difference is that the Steinbrenners have always invested in their team, always striven to put the best product possible out on the field. The Yankees have certainly made some terrible trades, especially when King George was hands-on the most, but they were done with the motive of making the team better. Yes, the Yankees got a huge, undeserved payday from the locals for their stadium, like most teams in baseball did, but it's a mitigating factor that they're actually plowing those funds back into the on-field product. And the team never threatened to not compete until they got their sweet check. Perhaps a small difference, but I see it as a good bit more ethical than Kevin McClatchy demanding taxpayer moneys to help the Pirates compete and then turn around and use all the money to fund his failing media empire. 

I participated in Marketplace's Weekly Wrap with Kai Ryssdal and Business Week's Michael Mandel to talk about the economy in 2009.  Click here to listen, but be warned.... neither Mandel nor I are terribly upbeat. 

If you had asked me to come up, in my head, with the perfect embodiment of a rabbi, I would have thought of Arnold Wolf.  He was the rabbi emeritus at KAM Isaiah Israel synagogue in Hyde Park, and one of the most interesting individuals I have ever met.  As reporters began covering Hyde Park during the Obama campaign, they found Wolf worth quoting at length. Rabbi Wolf was always able to combine his formidable erudition with a genuine curiosity about the opinions of other people, making him the perfect rabbi for the university community of Hyde Park.  He flattered me as an early reader of this blog.  Some of the my most pleasant interactions in Chicago were random encounters with him on the street.  He simultaneously rekindled my interest in Judaism and ruined me for other rabbis.   Earlier this week, Arnold Wolf passed away.  The Chicago Tribune has his obituary.  He will be missed.  UPDATE:  President-elect Obama issued a statement on Rabbi Wolf's passing: 

I am deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, who was not just our neighbor, but a dear friend to Michelle and me. We are joined in this time of grief by the entire Hyde Park community, the American Jewish Community, and all those who shared Rabbi Wolf's passion for learning and profound commitment to serving others. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family. Throughout Chicago and in Jewish homes and classrooms across our country, Rabbi Wolf's name is synonymous with service, social action and the possibility of change. He will be remembered as a loving husband and father, an engaging teacher, a kindhearted shepherd for the K.A.M. Isaiah community, and a tireless advocate of peace for the United States, Israel and the world.