Kudos to Paul Starr for writing a piece that correctly frames the debate of whether or not the election of 2008 is a realignment one in a provocative piece entitled The Realignment Opportunity. He’s right for recognizing that true realignment is a series of elections each building upon the last to constitute an epoch of American politics. We may be on the cusp of a Democratic era but we won’t really know until 2012 or 2016 to see if the inroads made in 2008 can be made permanent.
Conservatives say that America remains a center-right country and Obama won only because of special circumstances, while some liberals claim that the election marks a historic realignment. Neither is the right way to read the returns.
It is long been thought that the Gulf Coast Countries (GCC — Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman) are immune to the global financial crisises or the impact would be mild if any cushioned by high oil prices. But with oil prices falling hard and fast, this perception may be about to change as the long-lived economic boom in the GCC starts to fizzle out. No where is the bloom off the boom more than in the United Arab Emirates showcase trophy city of Dubai. With debts of up to $80 billion, Dubai could be in need of some urgent financial help.
This city’s six-year property boom appears to be over, with asking prices for some homes falling as much as 19% in October from the previous month, according to a closely followed survey.
The property market here isn’t important just to buyers, sellers and lenders. The government, through a handful of big developers, is the largest player in the sector. A sharp slowdown could crimp its financing as worry grows about its ballooning foreign debt.
Home prices were climbing sharply as recently as the first half of this year. But over the summer and fall, tightened local lending collided with the global financial crisis to choke off easy credit. That scared away buyers, especially local and international speculators who have helped fan years of price increases.
Other factors were at work. Dubai has been rocked by a series of arrests and probes at several big property developers and financial institutions. No charges have been filed, but the dragnet alarmed investors. Government officials moved to tighten regulations in order to slow down run-away speculation and property flipping.
Day one was once March 4th. It’s now January 20th and it’s clear that such a long interlude between election and inauguration no longer serves the country well as demonstrated by recent events and the fast-moving financial crisis that lingers over this Autumn like a persistent and noxious economic fog. We are not only about to have a change of Administration but (I would hope) a deep and profound change in approach and ideology and yet we have to await it while the world around us moves in a dizzying speed much to the general consternation. That Obama is to inherit a mess has been clear for sometime now but that mess has only become ever more intractable over the past two months.
Today David Lightman writing for the McClatchy Newspapers finds President Bush and President-elect Obama are behaving like co-Presidents. I am not reassured by the notion of a co-Presidency nor do I actually think it factual. President Bush is President and setting policy. That’s unfortunate to begin with but the larger problem is that President Bush is now irrelevant. As the President walked down the steps of the Treasury Building this morning with Secretary Paulson to announce the bailout of Citibank, all eyes were actually focused on the President-elect in Chicago who was announcing his economic team an hour later.
But that team remains sidelined awaiting the call to duty still 57 days from today. So the current team is the one still calling the shots and serving up what are likely stop gap measures. Stop gap measures are not just silly, but likely counter-productive and only likely to cause more near-term economic dislocation. The truth of the matter is that Obama should have assume the Presidency as soon as possible but Constitutionally that’s not possible so Congress should act and pass legislation enabling the next President of the United States to assume the Office of the President within ten days after a general election. That’s being ready on day one.
America has never seen anything quite like this: The president and president-elect acting like co-presidents, consulting and cooperating on the day’s biggest crises.
“It’s pretty unusual,” said George Edwards , a presidential expert at Texas A&M University, in College Station .
What Princeton University professor Julian Zelizer calls “the split-screen presidency” is the result of several historic forces converging this fall:
— The 24-7 nature of the global economy, which demands timely reaction.
— Incoming and outgoing presidents who have personal and political reasons to show that they can manage a crisis.
— A president-elect, Barack Obama , who “believes in strong government and wants to get things under way immediately,” said William Leuchtenburg , a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor who’s written extensively about the presidency.
— A lame-duck president, George W. Bush , who’s leaving office voluntarily. “Bush was not defeated. That makes for an easier relationship,” Leutchtenburg said.
This transition lacks the formality — and the coolness — of the last two transfers of power that occurred during tough economic times, the 1980-81 change from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan and the 1993 end of George H.W. Bush’s term as Bill Clinton took office. Both new presidents then had defeated the former ones.
India is both a major energy producer and consumer. India currently ranks as the world’s eleventh greatest energy producer, accounting for about 2.4% of the world’s total annual energy production, and as the world’s sixth greatest energy consumer, accounting for about 3.3% of the world’s total annual energy consumption. Despite its large annual energy production, India is a net energy importer, mostly due to the large imbalance between oil production and consumption. In the past 15 years, the gap between India’s Total Primary Energy Production (TPEP) and Consumption (TPEC) has widened to over 6 quadrillion BTUs from a net deficit of 1.75 quadrillion BTUs in 1993.
Oil & Gas
India’s proved oil reserves are currently estimated (as of January 2005) at about 5 billion barrels, or about 4.5% of the world total. Most of these reserves lie offshore near Mumbai and onshore in the northeastern state of Assam. However, exploration is still on-going, and there are hopes that India’s off-shore and on-shore basins may contain as many as 11 billion barrels. India presently ranks as the 25th greatest producer of crude oil, accounting for about 1% of the world’s annual crude oil production. About 30% of India’s energy needs are met by oil, and more than 60% of that oil is imported. A strong growth in oil demand has resulted in India’s annual petroleum consumption increasing by more than 75% from what it was a decade ago, and petroleum consumption is projected to climb to about 3 million barrels per day by 2010. India is currently the world’s sixth greatest oil consumer, accounting for about 2.9% of world’s total annual petroleum consumption. ndia’s natural gas reserves are currently estimated (as of January 2005) at about 29-32 trillion cubic feet (tcf), or about 0.5% of the world total. Most of these reserves lie offshore northwest of Mumbai in the Arabian Sea and onshore in Gujarat state. India does not yet rank in the top 20 of the world’s greatest natural gas consumers, but that will soon change. Natural gas has experienced the fastest rate of increase of any fuel in India’s primary energy supply; demand is growing at about 4.8% per year and is forecast to rise to 1.2 tcf per year by 2010 and 1.6 tcf per year by 2015.
Electricity Generation
India is the sixth-greatest electricity generating country and accounts for about 4% of the world’s total annual electricity generation. India is also currently ranked sixth in annual electricity consumption, accounting for about 3.5% of the world’s total annual electricity consumption. Overall, India’s need for power is growing at a prodigious rate; annual electricity generation and consumption in India have increased by about 64% in the past decade, and its projected rate of increase (estimated at as much as 8-10% annually, through the year 2020) for electricity consumption is one of the highest in the world. India is currently ranked fifth in the world in terms of total installed electricity generating capacity, and accounts for about 3.5% of the world total. Hydroelectric capacity represents about one-fourth of India’s total installed capacity, and overall, India is currently ranked sixth-largest in the world in that category (accounting for about 3.7% of the world’s installed hydroelectric generating capacity). There is a large amount of hydroelectric capacity in construction and planning stages, and in particular, hydropower development in the Brahmaputra river basin in eastern India is expected to result in six large power plants, which will add nearly 30,000 megawatts (MWe) of generating capacity. The largest of these will be the 11,000 MWe Dihang Upper project, which, when completed in about 2012, would become the world’s third-largest power plant. India’s nuclear programme has also expanded almost three-fold in little over a decade. In 2005, India generated 16.84 billion kilowatt hours of electricity from its nuclear programme up from just 6.5 billion in 1995. At the moment, India has ambitious plans to double the number of its 17 nuclear reactors by 2030.
With increased net imports of oil already biting into GDP growth and increasing inflationary pressures, what options exist for India that balance its energy appetite and climate change?
Discussion Leaders
• Tejpreet Singh Chopra, President and Chief Executive Officer, GE, India
• Nand Khemka, Chairman, Sun Group, India
• Nicholas Stern, IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government, India Observatory, London School of Economics, United Kingdom
• Tulsi R. Tanti, Chairman and Managing Director, Suzlon Energy, India
• Adil Zainulbhai, Managing Director, India, McKinsey & Company, India
Chaired by Shekhar Gupta, Editor-in-Chief of The Indian Express.
The source for the data used in this post came from Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum, a forward-thinking energy analysis group looking at realistic energy options.
Governor Ruth Ann Minner of Delaware is to name Edward Kaufman to the US Senate upon the resignation of Senator Joe Biden. Mr. Kaufman is the long-time Chief of Staff to Senator Biden and will serve two years before a special election will be held to fill the balance of the six-year term. The appointment will a good one and a fair one is likely to come under criticism as being a placeholder one that allows Senator Biden’s oldest son Beau Biden, currently the Delaware Attorney General but serving in Iraq with the Delaware National Guard, to run for the seat in 2010. From the New York Times:
Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware will be replaced in the United States Senate by his longtime aide, Edward Kaufman, when Mr. Biden resigns the seat to become vice president.
Delaware Governor Ruth Ann Minner announced on Monday that she would name Mr. Kaufman, the senator’s chief of staff for 19 years and a close personal friend, to fill the vacancy through 2010. Mr. Kaufman, 69, said he intended to retire after two years, leaving opening the possibility that Senator Biden’s son Beau, the state’s attorney general, could run in 2010.
In remarks made in Wilmington, Del., after his pending appointment was made public, Mr. Kaufman said he wanted “to make clear that I that I am very comfortable with retiring after two years. I don’t think Delaware’s appointed senator should spend the next two years running for office.”
Aides to Mr. Biden, who said he welcomed the appointment, said he intends to resign in the next 40 to 50 days but that an exact date has not been announced. He won re-election to a seventh term in November, running simultaneously with his vice presidential bid, and would begin that term on Jan. 6.
In his statement, Mr. Biden did not hide the fact that he would like to see his son take the seat, but the younger Biden said he would not accept an appointment and wanted to fulfill a military obligation with the Delaware Army National Guard in Iraq.
“If he chooses to run for the Senate in the future, he will have to run and win on his own,” the elder Biden said in his statement, noting that the appointment of Mr. Kaufman will mean a “level playing field” for those who choose to compete for the seat in two years. “The voters will make that decision.”
Both Gover Minner and Senator Biden noted Mr. Kaufman’s deep familiarity with Delaware issues from his experience in the Biden office. “His political views are close to Senator Biden’s, and he doesn’t need any on-the-job training,” the governor said in a statement.
Mr. Biden was elected to the Senate at age 29 and has chaired both the Judiciary and Foreign Relations Committee.
The President-elect held a news conference this morning in Chicago to introduce his economic team.
Timothy Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury
“offers not just extensive experience shaping economic policy and managing financial markets – but an unparalleled understanding of our current economic crisis, in all of its depth, complexity and urgency. Tim will waste no time getting up to speed. He will start his first day on the job with a unique insight into the failures of today’s markets – and a clear vision of the steps we must take to revive them.”
“Growing up partly in Africa and having lived and worked throughout Asia; having served as Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs – one of many roles in the international arena; and having studied both Chinese and Japanese, Tim understands the language of today’s international markets in more ways than one.”
Lawrence Summers as Head of the National Economic Council
“Larry helped guide us through several major international financial crises – and was a central architect of the policies that led to the longest economic expansion in American history, with record surpluses, rising family incomes and more than 20 million new jobs. He also championed a range of measures – from tax credits to enhanced lending programs to consumer financial protections – that greatly benefited middle income families.”
“As a thought leader, Larry has urged us to confront the problems of income inequality and the middle class squeeze, consistently arguing that the key to a strong economy is a strong and growing middle class. This idea is the core of my own economic philosophy and will be the foundation for all of my economic policies.”
Christina Romer as a Member of the Council of Economic Advisers
“Christina is both a leading macroeconomist and a leading economic historian, perhaps best known for her work on America’s recovery from the Great Depression and the robust economic expansion that followed. Since 2003, she has been co-director of the National Bureau of Economic Research Monetary Economics program. She is also a member of the Bureau’s Business Cycle Dating Committee – the body charged with officially determining when a recession has started and ended – experience which will serve her well as she advises me on our current economic challenges.”
“Christina has also done groundbreaking research on many of the topics our Administration will confront – from tax policy to fighting recessions. And her clear-eyed, independent analyses have received praise from both conservative and liberal thinkers alike. I look forward to her wise counsel in the White House.”
Ms. Romer is a Professor of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley.
Melody C. Barnes as Director of the Domestic Policy Council
“brilliant legal mind” and is “one of the most respected policy experts in America, will be serving as director of my Domestic Policy Council.” She will be “working hand-in-hand with my economic policy team to chart a course to economic recovery. An integral part of that course will be health care reform – and she will work closely with my Secretary of Health and Human Services on that issue.”
“As executive vice president for policy at the Center for American Progress, Melody directed a network of policy experts dedicated to finding solutions for struggling middle class families. She also served as chief counsel to the great Senator Ted Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee, working on issues ranging from crime to immigration to bankruptcy, and fighting tirelessly to protect civil rights, women’s rights and religious freedom.”
President-elect Obama said that an integral part of Ms. Barnes’s job will be working closely with the Secretary of Health and Human Services on health care reform. She has previously worked as Chief Counsel for Senator Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee.