The United States and the Holocaust IV.

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The most striking case for rescue comes from Hungary.  Holocaust-era Hungarian governments, under the dictator Miklos Horthy, oscillated between sincere and reluctant collaboration with the Germans, depending on the balance of forces in the larger war and the room for maneuver under German pressure.   Between 1938 and 1941, Hungary passed laws modeled on the German Nuremberg laws; supported Germany’s pre-war grabs for territory; and, in June 1941, joined the war against Russia. 

All the same, from March 1942 to March 1944, the government stalled anti-Semitic measures as much as it judged possible.  When, in September 1942, the Germans begin pressing Hungarians on deportations, they discovered that a screen of extremists covered a government determined not to deport the Jews. 

            By March 1944, the SS had become fed up with the Hungarians and tantalized by the huge pool of Jews who have remained safe all through the war in the heart of Nazi Europe.  The Germans forced Horthy to replace his prime minister, and German officials came to Budapest to direct the annihilation of the Hungarian Jews.  Under German direction the Hungarians completed the exclusion of Jews from the economy, Jews were required to wear the star, travel restrictions were imposed, and telephones were confiscated. 

Between April and July 1944, the Jews were “concentrated.”  Deportations began in April, but most took place between May and July 1944.  By 9 July 1944 437,000 Jews had been deported to Auschwitz where ninety percent of them were killed upon arrival.  On 6 July 1944, Horthy ordered deportations stopped; on 25 August 1944, Horthy got rid of the pro-German cabinet.  In mid-October 1944, the Germans overthrew the Hungarian government and installed a puppet regime.  Over the next month, the Germans deported another 65,000 Jews.  Then the Hungarian fascists ran wild for a couple of months, leaving 10,000 to 20,000 more Jews dead.  The Red Army captured Budapest on 13 February 1945. 

What could have been done to prevent this last great slaughter?  First, the Hungarian Jews could have been allowed to emigrate to Britain, Palestine, and the United States before the war ever began.  This didn’t happen because the United States had sharply restricted immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe in 1924; and Jewish immigration to Palestine had brought a violent Arab opposition in the 1930s. 

Second, the Hungarian Jews could have been moved to a place of greater safety before the Germans got control of Hungary in March 1944.  Essentially, that meant through Rumania to the Black Sea to … where?  Palestine?  Would Hungarian Jews willingly have placed themselves within reach of the Rumanians[1] or the Germans? 

Third, the deportations could have been prevented in some fashion by military action.  Essentially, this comes down to bombing the railroad lines to Auschwitz.  This might have slowed up the process.  At the same time, the Germans had a lot of experience repairing bombed railroad lines and bridges.  At the end of the war, they also used “death marches.” 

Fourth, the gas chambers at Auschwitz could have been destroyed before all or most or some of the Hungarian Jews arrived.  The British and American air forces didn’t want to divert assets from purely military operations.  The national leaderships didn’t want to force them.[2] 

[1] See: Struma disaster – Wikipedia  Not reaching for excuses here; just trying to imagine real discussions. 

[2] See: Auschwitz bombing debate – Wikipedia  Nor did Jewish organizations. 

The United States and the Holocaust III.

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            The war made any effort to rescue Jews more complicated.  The war quickly became a struggle for national survival in many countries.  This became true most of all for Britain and then for the Soviet Union.  American entry into the war at the end of 1941 held out the prospect of eventual Allied victory.  It did not bring about actual victory immediately.  National interest came before any other interest in the allocation of resources and the planning of operations. 

Sometime during the Winter of 1940-1941, Adolf Hitler made two decisions.  First, he would attack the Soviet Union in Summer 1941.  Second, he would have all the Jews of Continental Europe killed as quickly as possible beginning in Summer 1941.  The armed forces got busy preparing the attack on the Soviet Union.  The SS got busy preparing the annihilation of the Jews.  Both decisions were highly-guarded state secrets. 

The British and the American leaders learned of the attempt to annihilate—rather than persecute—the Jews in the second half of 1942.[1]  They had some difficulty comprehending what they were told.  Felix Frankfurter said later of one messenger from the abyss that “I did not say that he was lying, I said that I could not believe him. There is a difference.”

Then there was the problem posed by the speed of the killing.  “In mid-March 1942, some 75 to 80 percent of all victims of the Holocaust were still alive, while 20 to 25 percent had perished.  A mere eleven months later, in mid-February 1943, the percentages were exactly the reverse.  At the core of the Holocaust was a short intensive wave of mass murder.”[2]  Thus, 50 to 60 percent of the killing took place in less than a year.  Before Stalingrad, before El Alamein, before “Torch,” and before Americans began bombing Germany. 

At a rough estimate, by the end of 1941, the Germans had under their direct control 5.7 million Jews.  There was nothing that could be done for these people by outsiders.  The Germans were determined to catch and kill as many as possible. 

In late 1942, how many Jews were outside the direct control of the Nazis?  Something on the order of 1.3 million.  There were 48,000 in Italy, 48,500 in Bulgaria, 445,000 in Hungary, and 756,000 in Rumania.[3] 

The Italian government resisted deportations until the Germans invaded Italy.  When the Germans occupied northern Italy in 1943, there were 43,000 Jews in their area.  An estimated 35,000 survived (81%).[4]  Most Italians refused to cooperate with the Germans. 

There were 48,500 Jews inside Bulgaria’s borders of 1939.  An additional 11,000 were added in territory seized from Greece in 1941.  The Bulgarians turned over the Greek Jews to the Germans.  Virtually none survived.  The Bulgarian refused to turn over Bulgarian Jews. 

There were 756,000 Jews inside the Rumanian borders of 1930.  An estimated 490,000 (65%) survived.  There were an additional 185,000 Jews in Bessarabia and Bukovina, taken from the Soviet Union.  An estimated 55,000 (30%) of these survived.  The Rumanian government obstructed deportations from its core territory. 

There were 825,000 Jews inside the Hungarian borders of 1941.  An estimated 261,000 survived (31%).  The Germans had to overthrow the Hungarian government to get at these Jews. 

[1] Walter Laqueur and Richard Breitman, Breaking the Silence (1986). 

[2] Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (1992), p. xv.

[3] The numbers get a little murky because of wartime changes in boundaries.  Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria all added territory with Jewish populations. 

[4] For all figures see: Jewish Losses during the Holocaust: By Country | Holocaust Encyclopedia (ushmm.org) 

The United States and the Holocaust II.

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            Trying to assess what might have been done to prevent the Holocaust and why it was not done requires facing hard facts. 

            From January 1933 to August 1939, Nazi Germany engaged in an appalling persecution of the Jews under their control.  The Jews lost their German citizenship and civil rights; they were excluded from the economy and society, and robbed of their possessions; and every effort was made to foster hostility toward Jews.  The aim was to drive German Jews to emigrate.  In 1938, Germany added Austria to the Reich.  All this was widely reported in foreign countries. 

Nevertheless, there were two great barriers to the flight of the Jews.  On the one hand, there was a real reluctance on the part of many Jews to be driven out of their country by a bunch of louts who seemed unlikely to remain long in power.  On the other hand, most countries were unwilling to take in many “ordinary” German refugees.[1]  First, Poland, Hungary, and Rumania were ferociously anti-Semitic societies.  They didn’t want more Jews (or anyone else) added to their population; no Jew would think that pre-1939 Nazi Germany was a worse place than these countries.  Then there was the Soviet Union.  It not only oppressed and persecuted its inhabitants, but also was in the process of murdering hundreds of thousands of them.[2] 

That left countries to the West of Germany as a possible refuge.  This meant France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Britain and its Commonwealth, and the United States.  All were struggling with the economic catastrophe of the Depression.  This meant that they were fighting against high unemployment without immense success.  Taking in tens of thousands of refugees, let alone hundreds of thousands, would make the unemployment problems worse over the short-term.  It would have financial costs that would have to be born by a country’s taxpayers for the benefit of non-citizens.  Then, anti-Semitism existed as a real force in all of these countries, no matter how much politicians denied it or the press decried it.  It wasn’t Nazi anti-Semitism.  It was more “would you let your sister marry one?” and “there are too many in the universities” anti-Semitism.  No less real and powerful for that.  These factors made the refugee question politically explosive.  The easiest course was to say “It is unfortunate and disgusting that the Jews under Nazi rule are being persecuted; it is to be hoped that “normal” Germans will reassert themselves; but in the meantime, there are limits to how many refugees we can take.”  

A second phase began with the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939.  From this point onward, the Nazis tried to prevent Jews from leaving the lands that they controlled.  Furthermore, the number of Jews under Nazi control expanded massively and rapidly.  From August 1939 to August 1940, the number rose from about 800,000 to 3.2 million.  By late Fall 1941, there probably were an additional 2.2 million.  There were an additional 1.3 million under the control of German-allied states (Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary, Italy).  What Germany meant to do with its captives wasn’t known at first. 

Along the way, the Germans defeated Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries, France, Yugoslavia, and Greece, and rocked the Soviet Union to its foundations.  German victories brought into the war both Italy (1940) and Japan (1941).  That is, German aggression overthrew the established system of powers and created an unprecedented global crisis.[3] 

[1] It was easier for the “prominenten”: scientists, writers and artists, political leaders. 

[2] Just because the editors of the New York Times believed the erroneous reports from their Moscow correspondent doesn’t mean that people in Europe believed them. 

[3] See, most recently, Richard Overy, Blood and Ruins: The Great Imperial War, 1931-1945 (2021). 

The United States and the Holocaust I.

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            When did Jews fall under Nazi Germany’s control? 

            1933. 

Germany:                    525,000  237,000 by 1939, so better than half had emigrated. 

            1938.

Austria:                       250,000   

            1939.  The seizure of Czechoslovakia came as a surprise, but not the attack on Poland. 

Czechoslovakia:          357,000  March.

Poland:                     3,000,000  September.  Roughly two-thirds; the others fell to the Soviets. 

            1940.  All of these came as an astonishing surprise in a few months of war. 

Denmark:                        5,700   April.  Most later escaped to Sweden.

Norway:                          1,400   April.  Most later escaped to Sweden. 

France:                        250,000   June in Occupied Zone; November 1942 in the rest of France.

Netherlands:                156,000   June. 

Belgium:                       60,000   June.   

            1941.  All of these came as an astonishing surprise. 

Greece:                          73,000   April.

Yugoslavia:                   68,000   April

Bulgaria:                       48,500   Blocked the Germans from taking most Bulgarian Jews. 

Albania:                             200   April

European Russia:      2,525,000[1] June-December

Estonia:                           4,560   June-December.  Part of the Soviet Union from September 1939.

Latvia:                           95,600   June-December.  Part of the Soviet Union from September 1939.

Lithuania:                    155,000   June-December.  Part of the Soviet Union from September 1939.

Romania:                      756,000  Murderously antisemitic in some places; not so much elsewhere.

            1943.

Italy:                              48,000   September.[2] 

            1944.

Hungary:                     445,000  

            Never.

Spain:                              4,000  Portugal:                      1,200  Sweden:                       6,700  

Switzerland:                18,000    Britain and the Palestine Mandate:                          475,000 

[1] On the one hand, possibly 1 million Polish Jews were added to the Soviet population in Fall 1939.  On the other hand, many Jews fled or were evacuated eastward when Germany attacked. 

[2] Italy tried to jump ship on Germany; the Germans fell on the northern two-thirds of the country like an avalanche.

Down the Malay Barrier 8.

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            Dismantling the British Empire after the Second World War unleashed all sorts of hostilities that the British had long sought to damp down.  The division of Britain’s Indian Empire offers a good example.  Broadly, many Muslims refused to live under Hindu majority rule.  Pakistan was born.  Population exchanges amidst communal strife wreaked bloody havoc.[1] 

            The new Pakistan had two components: West Pakistan (now Pakistan) and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).[2]  The two regions shared little but religious faith.  The Punjabis of West Pakistan were lighter-skinned racists[3] who saw themselves as a warrior people and the true Muslims in the country.  The Bengalis of East Pakistan were darker-skinned, and regarded by the Punjabis as “fake Muslims” and a naturally submissive people.  Bengali tolerance of a large minority of Hindus added fuel to the fire of Punjabi discontent.  One stumbling block to Punjabi domination lay in Pakistan’s pretense to democracy: the Bengalis outnumbered the Punjabis.  Pakistani democracy failed to launch; from 1958 to 1970, a military dictatorship ruled the country under a series of leaders.  Along the way, a Bengali nationalist movement, the Awami League, sprang up.  Foolishly from the point of view of the Punjabis, in July 1969, President General Yahya Khan announced that elections would be held in December 1970.  He said that these would move Pakistan toward democratic government. 

            Punjabi hostility actually looked to be a lesser problem for Bengal.  Far more pressing danger arrived annually from the physical environment.  Bengal lies at the intersection point of the shallow, northern end of the Bay of Bengal and the mouths of the Ganges-Brahmaputra rivers.  The low-lying delta country is caught between the great rivers and the monsoon storms that blow northward across the bay.  In November 1970 one such storm slammed into East Pakistan.  It killed half a million people.  The survivors suffered immense misery.  The government appeared largely indifferent to that suffering.[4] 

            Events spiraled downward in a hurry.  The Awami League won the elections (December 1970); Yahya Khan and the Punjabis refused to transfer power; the leader of the Awami League declared independence (March 1971); the Army launched “Operation Searchlight” during which it killed perhaps as many as 3 million Bengalis; 7 million more Bengalis fled to neighboring India, while other stayed to wage war against the Army; Yahya Khan ordered air attacks on India in retaliation for its support of the Bengalis; and India invaded East Pakistan, where it crushed the army of Pakistan.  East Bengal gained its independence as the new nation of Bangladesh. 

            Bangladesh is about the same size as the state of New York.  Its population is eight-times as large (170 million v. 21 million).  Its big industries are farming and “fast fashion” manufacturing.  The monsoon storms keep coming, while climate change caused sea-level rise looms.  Bangladesh has all kinds of problems.  Being ruled by Punjabi soldiers isn’t one of them.    

[1] The photographer Margaret Bourke-White documented parts of the partition.  See: Margaret Bourke-White Partition India – Search (bing.com) 

[2] Scott Carney and Jason Miklian, The Vortex: A True Story of History’s Deadliest Storm, An Unspeakable War, and Liberation (2022).  Reviewed by Tunku Varadarajan, WSJ, 19-20 March 2022. 

[3] Turns out, Islam isn’t any better about this than is Christianity. 

[4] If not something worse.  One Punjabi army general was quoted saying that “this cyclone solved about half a million of our problems.” 

Office Glut.

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            Carl Becker coined the phrase “every man his own historian.”  What he meant is that humans naturally think in historical terms.  They look for the distant and complex origins of contemporary events.  Here is an example.[1] 

            Once upon a time, an inane on-line discussion took place among history professors over the question “who created more jobs, Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama?”  They were delighted to show that Obama had a much better record on job-creation that did Reagan.[2]  Curiously, none of them referred to the historical context of the two presidencies.  In Reagan’s first term, Fed Chairman Paul Volker jacked up interest rates to break the 1970s inflation.  The economy slowed to a painful degree.[3] 

            Seeking to goose the economy, the Reagan administration changed aspects of the tax laws.  One element of the changes came in accelerated depreciation rates for commercial real-estate, like office buildings.  Financed in many instances by savings-and-loan associations, office buildings popped up all over the place like dandelions.  Actual total demand for a product is hard to estimate when there is a lot of money to be made from making more of the product.[4] Over-building occurred.  Vacancy rate rose.  New office construction plunged. 

Then the growing economy during the 1990s slowly grew into the surplus office supply.  Vacancy rates fell some.  A bunch of the new tenants were “start-up” tech firms of the “dot-com” bubble.  The bursting of this bubble pushed up vacancy rates again.  They stayed high.  However, a lot of foreign capital poured into the American economy in the first part of the 21st Century.  Much of it went toward construction.  As building continued, newer construction pulled tenants away from less-new construction. 

This building ignored one of the changes that flowed from the sub-prime mortgage collapse.  Companies started cutting costs by shifting workers from individual offices to cube-farms.  Although a miserable experience for employees, it did reduce the amount of floor space a company had to lease.  It was a hard-headed sort of adaptation. 

In the view of some people, visions of sugar-plums, in the form of anticipated changes in the economy, danced in the heads of investors in co-working spaces.  Venture capitalist took a chance by supporting such companies in their efforts to lease a lot of vacant office space.  The space didn’t really stop being vacant.  It just was leased. 

The now-obvious solution would have been to build less, or tear down a lot of older construction, or to adapt some of the construction to some other function.[5]  Tearing down something doesn’t make money for anyone but the wrecking crew.  Structures built for one purpose can be difficult to adapt to another purpose. 

Then came Covid and remote work.  As the Russian guy says in “The Russians Are Coming,” now “everyone is blaming you, Whitaker Walt.”  Not entirely correctly. 

[1] Konrad Putzier, “Office Glut Started Decades Ago,” WSJ, 24 August 2022. 

[2] The academic profession leans left in the same way as the military leans right. 

[3] In Obama’s first term, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke cut interest rates to below zero to respond to the sub-prime mortgage disaster.  The economy recovered. 

[4] As Sinclair Lewis once said, “It’s hard to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.” 

[5] Warehouses, say, or apartments. 

“Maline! You die!”

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Leon Uris (1924-2003) maybe needed a father-figure and a community he could respect in order to grow up.[1]  The son of Russian Jews who had immigrated to the United States, Uris was no great shakes in school.  He dropped out to enlist in the Marines soon after Pearl Harbor.  Maybe he found some of what he had been missing in the Marines.  He went to Camp Pendleton for basic training, and then to the Second Battalion, 6th Marines.  After that came New Zealand, late-stage Guadalcanal, and Tarawa.  The South Pacific of the 1940s wasn’t the Hawaii of modern vacationers: he caught dengue (“break-bone”) fever and malaria.  In hospital, he missed out on Saipan.[2]  After the war the guy who had flunked high school English three times decided to try writing.  He had a story he wanted to tell.  It was the story not of himself, but of the 2/6. 

He didn’t have an easy time getting it published.  By the early 1950s, many novels about the war had been published.  Some of them remain powerful stories.[3]  Interests were turning toward new conflicts[4] or back to the familiar.  A dozen publishers rejected the book before Putnam’s took it.  It came out as Battle Cry (1953).  It became a best-seller (and a so-so movie). 

            The story and the writing is pretty simplistic, even rough-and-ready.  It’s not the worse for that.  A disparate (even diverse and inclusive by the standards of the time) group of young men fired by patriotism enlist after Pearl Harbor.  They endure the extended rigors of boot camp at Camp Pendleton.  Shared harsh experience forges a shared identity.  They are Marines and always will be.  There are also their experiences with women and drink.  For some of them it is there first time away from parental supervision and conventional morality.  Nobody seems the worse for what follows.  Plenty of time for hypocrisy later in life—if you survive. 

            Then they ship out.  First to New Zealand for more training and acclimatization.  Then to Guadalcanal, although they arrive after the heroic period in the second half of 1942.  Here they get their first taste of combat with the Japanese.  Then back to New Zealand for rest and refit in preparation for Tarawa.  The unit is in a support role in the battle of Tarawa (November 1943).  Then to Hawaii for another round of rest and refit.  This time they are preparing for Saipan (June-July 1944).  Sam Huxley, the battalion commander, and his men all “want a beach.”  They didn’t do all this just to mop-up after others.  They want to be in the first wave at Saipan. 

            They get their wish.  Huxley and many others are killed; Max Shapiro, a peace time reprobate, but a ferocious warrior, leads the 2/6 in defeating a huge banzai attack.  The book ends with the survivors sorting out who they have become in the furnace of war.  Men, better men. 

            Many American men owe their colonic good health to Leon Uris.  He wrote a string of books that were good for reading on the head.  This was the first. 

[1] “He was basically a failure”, Uris later said of his father. “I think his personality was formed by the harsh realities of being a Jew in Czarist Russia.  I think failure formed his character, made him bitter.”  On the other hand, maybe he didn’t entirely grow up. 

[2] Which is where Lee Marvin got shot “in the wallet” (as he decorously phrased it during a television interview).    

[3] Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead (1948); Irwin Shaw, The Young Lions (1948); James Jones, From Here to Eternity (1951); Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny (1951); Nicholas Monsarrat, The Cruel Sea (1951).   

[4] For example, Robert Ruark, Something of Value (1955) on Mau Mau in Kenya; Nicholas Monsarrat, The Tribe That Lost Its Head (1956) on decolonization in Africa; Nevil Shute, On the Beach (1957) about nuclear war; Leon Uris, Exodus (1959) about the foundation of Israel; and Eugene Burdick and William Lederer, The Ugly American (1959) about American engagement in Southeast Asia.  Curiously, no best-selling novels on the Korean War. 

Then and Now.

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            Seen through the optic of income and net worth in 2019, there are two Americas.[1] It isn’t a racial or gender or regional division, although those factors undoubtedly play a role under the surface.  Instead, it is an age or generational division.  One is older, comparatively successful, and rich.  One is much younger, less successful, and comparatively poor.  For those born before 1965, their American lives have been a success story.  For those born from 1965 on, their American lives have been, and continue to be, a story of struggle and frustration. 

            Those 75 or older (i.e. born before 1944) earned 62 percent more than did the equivalent age group in 1989 (i.e. born 1914 or before).[2]  Their median individual net worth was 76.7 percent greater than for the equivalent group in 1989.  Working careers ran from before 1964 to say 2009. 

Those 65 to 74 (i.e. born 1945-1954) earned 50.2 percent more than did the equivalent age-group in 1989 (i.e. born 1915-1924).  Their median individual net worth was 72.4 percent greater than for the equivalent group in 1989.  Working careers ran from 1965 to 2019. 

            Those 55 to 64 (i.e. born 1955-1964) earned 21.6 percent more than did the equivalent age group in 1989 (i.e. born 1925-1934).  Their median individual net worth was 9.2 percent greater than for the equivalent group in 1989.  Working careers ran from 1975 to, say, 2030. 

            In contrast, those 45-54 (i.e. born 1965-1974) earned only 2.1 percent more than did equivalent age group in 1989 (i.e. born 1935-1944).  Their median individual net worth was 13.5 percent less than for the equivalent group in 1989.  Working careers ran from 1985 to 2040. 

            Those 35-44 (i.e. born 1975-1984) earned only 0.9 percent more than did the equivalent group in 1989 (i.e. born 1945-1954).  Their median individual net worth was 19 percent less than for the equivalent group in 1989.  Working careers ran from 1995 to 2050. 

In 2019 those 34 and under (i.e. born in 1985 or later) earned17.7 percent more than did the equivalent age group in 1989 (i.e. those born 1955-1981).  Their median individual net worth was 13.5 percent less than for the equivalent group in 1989.  Working careers ran from 2005 to after 2070. 

            How can we explain this divided America?  “Successful” America went to work from before 1944 to 1984.  “Less successful” America went to work from 1985 onward.  

To overstate matters to some degree, from 1940 to the 1980, Americans lived in an “Age of Free Prosperity.”[3]  The Second World War revived an economy with immense latent power.  It took decades for a war-ravaged world to catch up.  From the 1970s on, global economic conditions became much more competitive, but Americans had a hard time adjusting.  Income growth stalled, even as 401ks boomed for those who could save. 

            The college debt “crisis” is a symptom of this issue, more than it is a cause.  Before 1980, people with (or without) degrees came out of school into a better employment environment than has been the case since 1980.  Still, the old will croak pretty soon and their kids will inherit.  This may be generational justice.  It isn’t a solution to the underlying problem. 

[1] David Leonhardt, “Why Cancel Student Debt Now?  Things Really Are Tougher,” NYT, 31 August 2022. 

[2] Sums adjusted for inflation.  Income and net worth are median for the group. 

[3] I’m borrowing from the term “Age of Free Security,” which is how historians of foreign relations describe the period before the First World War.  Nobody could reach us or threaten us, except may Britain, which didn’t want to. 

Follow-on to the Student Debt Cancellation.

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            The Constitution says that money bills (taxing and spending) originate in the House of Representatives.  They go to the Senate for approval, then on to the President for signature into law.  Arguably, President Joe Biden’s use of emergency powers[1] to cancel $300-$500 billion worth of student debt short-circuits this process.  The Executive branch will borrow the money to cover the cost without any input by the Legislative branch. 

            The Fifth Amendment says that “No person shall be… deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”  Arguably, debt cancellation “takes” from banks and loan processing companies the fees that they would otherwise have collected. 

            So, there may be law-suits that delay implementation of the cancellation.[2]  Or perhaps not.  Apparently, the financial services industry is still trying to figure out what to do.  JMO, but bad press isn’t likely to deter them.  However, they might decide that the legal fees outweigh what would they would get from suing.  They might just accept repayment of the principal from the government and move on down the road to the next money harvest.[3] 

            For the moment, the House of Representatives isn’t likely to defend its constitutional rights against what could be called a usurpation by the Executive branch.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is famously proud of her skill at counting votes and there is a tight election approaching.  If that election does tip toward a Republican majority, then the House could sue.  “If.”[4]   

            Republican state attorneys general could sue the Biden administration, just to gum up the works on another of his signature initiatives.  This sort of thing is becoming more common, despite the dubious legal grounds for some of the suits.[5] 

Awkwardly for Democrats, among the precedents offered to justify President Biden’s action include President Donald Trump’s transfer of Department of Defense funds to pay for his border wall.  Less awkwardly, nobody squawked when the Biden administration suspended student debt repayment in 2020.  Still, the cancellation is a much bigger step.[6] 

The cancellation targets specific borrowers, rather than being an across-the-board write down.  Borrowers seeking relief will have to apply.  President Biden announced the debt cancellation before the Department of Education had worked out the details of the plan.[7]  The application form will become available in October; the deadline for submitting it will be 31 December 2022, after which student loans payments must begin.  Lots of bureaucratic snags could occur (but may not).  Law suits could put the whole effort on pause.  Someone is going to bear the blame in the public eye if things go wrong.  If.    

[1] For an emergency that is, in many minds, now over.  See: the charts in David Leonhardt, “On the Left, Feeling Less Anxiety About Covid,” NYT, 1 September 2022. 

[2] Alan Rappeport, “Court Challenges to Biden’s Student Loan Plan Are Likely,” NYT, 2 September, 2022. 

[3] Harry McClintock – The Big Rock Candy Mountains – (1928). – YouTube 

[4] Philip of Macedon to the Spartans: “You are advised to submit without delay, for if I bring my army on your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people and raze your city.”  Spartans to Philip of Macedon: “If.” 

[5] See: Erik Ortiz, State attorneys general have sued Trump’s administration 138 times — nearly double those of Obama and Bush (nbcnews.com)

[6] In particular, it establishes a “moral hazard” that future borrowers will expect their own jail delivery. 

[7] See a good overview at What You Need to Know About Student Debt Cancellation – The Education Trust (edtrust.org) 

Climate of Fear XXIV.

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            At the Little Big Horn in June 1876, one of the Sioux war-leaders was named “Rain-in-the-Face.”  Bjorn Lomborg might be called “Rain-on-the-Parade.”  He’s a “climate skeptic” of a particular type.  He doesn’t doubt the reality of climate change and global warming.  He’s just pretty sure that governments in a panic will do all the wrong things.[1]  This conforms to the general attitude of the Wall Street Journal, so they have published a bunch of his op-eds.[2] 

Broadly, Lomborg believes in the immense value of long-term research on effective and cost-effective responses to real problems.[3]  He believes that the current solutions, exemplified by the climate provisions of the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), are a waste of good money.  Most of the $369 billion are devoted to subsidizing the price of “green” solutions that can’t compete on a level playing field with the established forms of energy.  He also doubts that the spending will be sustained over the long term. 

For Lomborg, all types of “green” energy generation must be seriously explored and considered: “from solar, wind and batteries to fourth-generation nuclear and carbon capture.”  He isn’t soft-headed about the result.  He predicts that many leads will not work out.  However, only a few have to work out for the world to solve its energy problems. 

Moreover, the West isn’t at the heart of our current crisis.  From 2011 to 2030, China is projected to emit twice as much greenhouse gases as does the United States, and three times as much as the European Union.  Throw in India and a host of developing nations and you arrive at the real danger.  The key factor is that the countries are trying to raise their people from poverty to prosperity in a hurry and with thin resources.  They can’t throw hundreds of billions of dollars into subsidies.  There has to be a cheap and reliable alternative to carbon to check the massive emitting of these countries as well as the emitting by other already-developed economies.  Only research can provide that solution. 

In the meantime, the IRA isn’t going to make much of a difference.  Carbon dioxide emitted in the United States has already fallen by about 21 percent from the 2005 level.  That, right there, is just over half of the 40 percent decrease that the climate component of the IRA claims to target.  The decline is attributed largely to the “fracking revolution’s” substitution of burning natural gas for burning coal.[4]  There is no reason to think that this trend will not continue regardless of the IRA.  One left-leaning think-tank has forecast that U.S. emissions will fall by almost 30 percent from the 2005 by 2030 in any event.  The climate component of the IRA will reduce them by a further 8 percent for a total reduction of a scosh over 37 percent. 

In short, we would get more bang for the buck from tens of billions spent on research. 

[1] On Lomborg, see: Bjørn Lomborg – Wikipedia 

[2] Bjorn Lomborg, “The Inflation Reduction Act Does Little to Reduce Climate Change,” WSJ, 24 August 2022.  Getting published in the WSJ doesn’t make someone right.  Doesn’t make them wrong either. 

[3] Think of it this way: How long did it take to produce the atomic bomb?  The standard answer would begin with the letter sent by Albert Einstein to President Roosevelt in 1939 and end with Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  A more correct answer would begin with birth of modern physics in the last years of the 19th Century.  Forty years of scientific research on many fronts were necessary.  Why would the same thing not be true of global warming, especially given the need to divert so much time and energy to persuading democratic electorates of the reality of the problem? 

[4] See the charts in Greenhouse gas emissions by the United States – Wikipedia Natural gas burns slightly cleaner than does coal, but it produces much more energy for the equivalent quantity burned.  So you can get the same energy from burning much less fuel.  It’s a useful stop-gap.