normally long run macro predictions are foolish-economists use models with little predictive power in the real world. The one macro prediction that I believe has serious merit, and one that I made (and published a paper on 2 years ago) is the inevitable rise in risk premiums for all USD denominated assets. I believe the greatest potential black swan, in Taleb speak, remains a speculative attack. You think about a guy like Soros, who saw the forest from the trees, and realized the Bank of England was defeding an indefensible currency...well, the U.S. may not peg it's currency, but there's a general risk blindness that many in charge of macro prudential policy help to propagate in the States, that will finally be called into question (well, it already has).
Except for that schmuck calling for the destruction of Israel! Oh that's right, he is the President of Iran!
Definition of Schmuck - A clumsy or stupid person. I don't know if he is clumsy, but he is not a stupid man. He's actually a pretty sly politician. Now you repeating things that are simply not true, that is stupid. He never called for the destruction of Israel (see my previous post). He simply said it should never have been created where it is and it should be moved. Now I don't think moving Israel is possible, but I think we can all agree that putting Israel where it is today was not a smart thing to do.
Iran's style has not been to invade - but to "meddle" When the Secular Sunni Saddam first came to power, the Fundamentalist Shias in Iran tried to mobilize the Shias in Iraq to destabilize Saddam. The Shia Iranians saw potential "edge" in this destabilization attempt since the Shias had the population edge in Iraq. Saddam decides to go "preemptive" in 1980 against Iran to send a "message." After 8 years and at least 500,000 (some say 1 million) combined casualties, Iran seemed to have trouble getting "the message" - despite all of Saddam's conventional and chemical assaults. It is 2007 - twenty years later. And Iran still "meddles." So what is the lesson? Killing 500,000 to 1 million Iranians is not enough to stop meddling. You can deal with this meddling with military force. They have already shown that their combined casualty threshold is at least 1 million. What if we kill 2 million and their casualty threshold is actually closer to 5 million? Do we kill 5 million Iranians because they are "meddling" in a war that we started on "shaky grounds" - at best? If you know a soldier that may have been taken out by an Iranian supplied IED - you may say "yeah." But that is a personal vengeance "yeah" - not a "what is the best U.S. policy, 'yeah.' " Joab - I think your heart may be in the right place. But war is not like a trade. There is rarely a nice neat conclusion via "capitulation." In Vietnam - the U.S. lost almost 60,000 troops. But we killed several hundred thousand if not over a million. Did the VC capitulate? Close a few times - but never all the way. So, no. It is reported that the Russians have eliminated close to 25% of the Chechen population. Capitulation? No. Attrition? Yes. But the Chechens started with only about 1 million. Iran has 70 million. Capitulation is very difficult to achieve in warfare. For perspective, in WW2, it took a multi-year ass kicking by a handful of developed nations (The U.S., The U.K, Russia, Canada and several European allies) plus TWO nukes to get Germany and Japan to capitulate. Research the losses the Russians absorbed in the contribution to the German capitulation. If you are still an advocate that the "throw down" needs to happen - then you have to be involved when it happens.
Sorry to tell you this, but you're missing the political side of the equation, which is what drives Ahmedinejad. There is no question that he would rather see every Jew on the planet dead, but he's just one in a huge group who feel that way. He never said that he would 'annihilate the U.S. off the face of the world'. It's all a game and he is playing his cards the best way he knows how. His goal is the same as that of all political leaders - to stay at the top. He's doing what he feels he needs to do to accomplish that. What prevents the oil-rich Muslim countires from invading Israel? The certain knowledge that it would precipitate WWIII. Why the hell wouldn't they have done it long ago? No sovereign will make an overt military move against the U.S., ever. It won't be necessary.