Barack Obama’s Merlin Dust supply must have run out when he
arrived in Moscow last week. On previous trips to Europe crowds
swooned and the news media gasped in awe, but in Moscow this
didn’t happen. He was treated politely, but as if the folks on
the street saw heads of state every day. It was quite a contrast
to the heroic reception Ronald Reagan received in 1988 and 1990.
He went on to Italy for one those Grand Kabuki meetings of the
heads of the Group of Eight leading industrial states. He
regained some of the approving respect of the social democrats
among them by apologizing once again for the United States, this
time in terms of carbon emissions. He returned home claiming that
he and the others had reached yet another historic agreement,
this one to reduce those carbon emissions sharply by 2050. Of
course the agreement was not binding and China and India rejected
the notion of limits. So, in sum, the Merlin Dust was
ineffective.
The Obama Merlin Dust doesn’t seem to be working with stimulus
packages, either. Of the $787 billion one he got from an obliging
Congress in February, only about 10 percent has been spent so far
and most of that on extending unemployment payments and other
“safety net” services. Regardless of how worthy those efforts may
be, they do not stimulate the economy.
Earlier in the year the president was pressing many other
nations, especially those in Europe, to adopt stimulus packages
à la the U.S. model. There was general reluctance to
rely on these historically dubious devices to jump-start flagging
economies, but several did develop them.
Mr. Obama, in effect, said to his international colleagues, “Ours
is going to work just fine, so you should try it.”
Now comes Kroll, the world’s largest risk consultancy, with a new
study showing that with a world total of $5 trillion in stimulus
spending out in process, governments can expect as much as $500
billion, or 10 percent, to be lost to fraudulent procurement
practices (such as bribes or selection of less efficient vendors)
and/or waste. The study warns that, in the face of economic
downturns, many governments have cut back on compliance budgets.
The Kroll report pegs capital improvement projects (the
“shovel-ready” projects Obama et al. touted) as especially
vulnerable to corruption. The reports states, “Governments need
to be aware of the heightened risk of corruption that goes along
with stimulus funding, and for companies to ensure [that] robust
anti-corruption and compliance practices are in place.”
According to the watchdog group Transparency International,
companies are most likely to be pressed for bribes in Russia,
China, Mexico and India.
While the Obama Merlin Dust may have passed its sell-by date, the
U.S. Department of Justice is actively pursuing 29 corruption
investigations under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
As for the Merlin Dust, we can imagine the president calling
Chief in Staff Rahm Emanuel in for a stern talking to: This
damned stuff isn’t working. Get me a new supply by tomorrow so I
can sprinkle it around town hall meetings to sell my health
reform plan. The polls are beginning to show that people think
it’s a thinly veiled attempt to drive private insurance and
medical practice out of business. Imagine!
