Only 14 percent of registered voters in the United States believe the country’s foreign policy has made them safer since 2001, according to a poll of 1,000 Americansreleased today by the Charles Koch Institute and the Center for the National Interest. More than half believe that both the U.S. and the rest of the world are less safe today as a result of the nation’s foreign policy choices over the last 15 years.
Likewise, only 25 percent of American voters feel the next president should expand the use of military abroad, while over half feel that the next administration should use the military less than it has been used since 2001.Neoconservatism and liberal interventionism going out of favor?
Charles Koch Institute
Over half of Americans believe the military should be used less overseas during next administration
Also
The National Interest
A New Poll Shows America's Reluctance for New Foreign AdventuresDaniel DePetris, fellow at Defense Priorities
John Allen Gay | executive director of the John Quincy Adams Society, a national network of student groups centered on a vision of foreign policy restraint, and a former managing editor of the National Interest
3 comments:
Tom Hickey: This is off the subject but you know a lot about money and I have been reading Hamilton't report on credit and in it he wrote, "But there is a consequence of this, less obvious, though not less true, in which every
other citizen is interested. It is a well-known fact, that, in countries in which the national
debt is properly funded, and an object of established confidence, it answers most of the
purposes of money. Transfers of stock or public debt are there equivalent to payments in
specie; or, in other words, stock, in the principal transactions of business, passes current
as specie. The same thing would, in all probability, happen here under the like
circumstances." Can I interpret this as saying that debt is money? What do you say it means?
"Specie" means coin rather than notes or bullion. It was used when coins were minted in precious metals.
Debt is the equivalent of specie if people are willing to exchange one for the other at par. This happens to the degree that the credit instrument is viewed also as "sound money" in the same way as specie, like a gold coin.
Credit is deemed as sound as money when the collateral is equivalent of the debt. Then the credit instrument trades at par rather than at a discount owing to default risk and inflation risk.
The idea is that the government issuing credit instruments, whether paper notes or interest-bearing securities, has to ensure that it is always "properly funded" for the unit of account to denominate "sound money."
This is a statement of the sound money view that is characteristic of gold standard thinking.
So in a properly funded system under sound money, the "money" is backed by gold reserves as collateral. If the issuer also issues term debt denominated in the unit of account, it also has to be properly funded, that is, backed by gold as collateral, too, if the debt is to be exchanged for specie at par rather than discounted.
For example, central banks discount short term treasuries that are money-equivalents in a sound money system that is "properly funded" by increasing the interest rate as a risk premium when the market perceives that the funding is not "proper." Under sound money, the central bank loses control of the interest rate since it uses the rate to discount risk and prevent runs on gold reserves.
In this view debt is money to the degree it is "properly funded" and the issue of the debt has high credibility in standing behind the debt, as it "the full faith and credit of the United States."
This would be important for a new country whose government did not have a credit history and previous governments had a poor history, e.g, "not worth a Continental."
This I system no longer applies after Nixon cut the cord to gold in August 1971. Dollar inflation wrt to gold did increase since then, but by then the USD was the reserve currency and the conditions that Hamilton faced no longer applied.
thank you
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