SCOTUS and the POTUS Agenda

Last week was great week for the President of the United States (POTUS). It may indeed have been the best week of his entire presidency. With a little help from the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), President Obama may have finally cemented a legacy for himself as President beyond the historical significance of him being President at all. I have been not this President's biggest fan for a number of reasons; basically a lot of sizzle, but little steak. Yet, some credit must be given here. The President's legacy as having presided over some genuinely transformative change is now secure.

There is plenty of commentary out there about this, including the story linked above, but having watched all of this closely for the past several years, I wanted to add my two (rambling) cents:

A Greek Tragedy is a Certainty

Update.... June 28. Buckle up. Talks between Europe (Eurozone members and the IMF) and Greece have collapsed. Greeks have lined up at ATMs around the country trying to get at their savings. The Greek government has announced a banking holiday. Where this goes is anyone's guess....

As of today, it looks as though Greece and its international creditors (the IMF and Euro Area governments) have reached a tentative arrangement that will allow Greece to meet a June 30 debt repayment deadline, avoid default, and continue on its current path of digging itself out of a deep financial hole. Yet, as the parties to this mess rush toward each successive precipice, peer over the edge, and back away again, it's difficult to see a path forward in which crisis management in the Eurozone doesn't become the default mode of operation.

What's been missing from the frenzied efforts to deal with short-run crises is a real discussion about how to fix the institutional mismatches in the Eurozone that contributed to the pickle Greece finds itself in. Assume Greece finds a way to stay in the Euro Area and dig itself out of the hole. What then?

U.S. Trade Policy Meltdown....

Meltdown Update.....June 24

The U.S. Senate is today expected to pass a measure granting President Obama the Fast-Track authority he has been seeking. Yet, it's very much a pyrrhic victory for the President since the final measure will reach his desk without Trade Adjustment Assistance. The Senate measure relied heavily on support from the GOP, most of whom are opposed to TAA, and many of whom have spent the better part of Obama's presidency opposing nearly everything he puts on the table. Only 13 Senate Democrats supported the bill, one the President had invested considerable time personally lobbying lawmakers.

Two other trade-related measures will be considered later this week, including Trade Adjustment Assistance, likely to be attached to an extension of a trade preferences measure for Africa. As noted below, TAA was considered separately from Fast-Track because Congressional Leadership thought it would be easier to thread together different coalitions in support of each (itself a sign of the modern challenges of trade liberalization). We'll see if this was wise, since TAA was historically seen as a way of "purchasing" additional openness by compensating the "losers" from liberalization.

This face-saving "compromise"in the Senate reinforces the challenges of contemporary trade liberalization and the strange coalitions that need to be put together to make it work. Making sense of it all requires one to tap their inner contortionist.....

Remember,..... this fight is just about authorizing negotiations. A huge fight remains if and when the President seeks Congressional approval of what he's done..... Buckle up!!!!

Grexit and IR Theory.... Arrgh!

Some of you may be familiar with the Monkey Cage, a scholarly blog run by the Washington Post that looks at current events through the lens of Ivory Tower research. I'm a fan, and have a link to the Monkey Cage in my blog list to the right.

In early May, Nicholas Sambanis (Yale University) and Ioannis Galariotis (Athens University) posted a very interesting take on the Greek financial crisis that looked at what was going on through the lens of contemporary International Relations theory (link here). I have written a thing or two in this blog about the Greek mess and there will be several cliffhangers in the summer of 2015 to keep us awake at night, the first of which comes June 5 when Greece is scheduled to make a 300 million Euro debt service payment to the International Monetary Fund (see link). Europe is having a rough go of it these days. In addition to the prospect for a Grexit, many Euro Zone economies are in serious trouble, and Britain has just returned David Cameron's Conservatives to power, in part, on a promise to hold a referendum on the UK's membership in the European Union by 2017. One barometer for some of the public anxieties over Euro Zone economies can be seen in the street demonstrations outside ECB headquarters in Frankfurt earlier this year and the April assault on ECB President Mario Draghi.