[Seven plus One]

When I looked at Obama shortly after the election, with his economic advisers behind him, I had a powerful sense of looking at a Politburo: gray-faced old men, tried and tested—which is not quite the same as successful, of course, except in the most careerist terms.

Ignorant? Not at all. Perceptive is the word.

[1066AD]

Agreed, Dalrymple misses very little, a by-product of his training and work experience I suppose.
BTW, this is quite a short piece for him, he’s usually very wordy indeed !

[Buchal]

I think the great misperception characteristic of our age is misperceiving incompetence (”not quite the same as successful”) for evil (”ruthless men bent on world domination”). Can Henry Paulson really believe that the answer to excessive and crumbling debt is to push more of it? Can Timothy Geithner? Can they believe that the problem of banks too big to fail is to loan them money to make themselves bigger? Is there not a Politiburo? Is its aims for America really good?