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While it comes as no surprise that the usual media idiots such as Friedman and Cohen are doing their best to cast the situation as Berlin in '89 and their own idol 0bama as another Reagan, in fact they are as silly and irrelevant as U.S. foreign policy has been in this particular matter. It won't stop them from being even sillier, their object being to win an American election in 2012. The Egyptians are only interesting to our media insofar as they are useful in that regard.

But in fact, Egypt is for sale. And the list of buyers is being constrained by food, if Spengler is correct, and the usual suspect, China, will be unlikely to bid inasmuch as she would be bidding against her own domestic market by enabling the Egyptians to compete. That leaves the U.S., the IMF, which is to a great degree the same thing, the Europeans, and the Russians, to squabble over power and prestige while the common people in Egypt cinch their belts up another notch.

What we will hear from the U.S. media - and this isn't so much a prediction as a tiresome repetition of past performance - is a championing of 0bama for proposing to place the burden on the U.S. taxpayer and a condemnation of the evil Republicans in Congress for failing to bankroll the thing from empty pockets. That 2010 election is starting to appear to have consequences that PR can't wash away. And that's all fine, but who then will bid for the bellies, and hence the hearts, of the Egyptians? Russia? They do, after all, have a long track record in that area. But do they have the cash, and what will they be buying if they do? Iran? A long history of steadily draining support for Islamism in Israel's environs and a ruinous nuclear program have emptied that purse as well. So who has the money?

The Saudis, more specifically the Wahabbi, have. Cleverly spent they might provide a temporary bulwark in Egypt against a similar populist tide in Saudi Arabia. Spent in pursuit of a Sunni Islamism, which is far more likely, it bodes well for the Islamists and poorly for the common Egyptian, because as the latter becomes more desperate, it will take less and less money to procure more and more influence over him. The starving who cannot be fed can still be made to be angry against a customary scapegoat; it's cheap and it worked well in Germany before the war.

That is the theme here, whether one is looking at the Democrats in Washington D.C. or the Iranians in Tehran or the Wahabbi fanatics in Mecca. Where wealth cannot feed, hatred can still confer political power.