World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

We’ve talked briefly in class about the effects of the Federal Reserve’s policy of “Quantitative Easing” (QE3).  In class, I indicated that the fear of QE3 is that it will generate inflation in the future (when consumer demand returns) because the policy is, in effect, printing money that has no substantive backing.   The Federal Reserve (and the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan) are creating a situation where there will be too much money chasing too few goods, leading to price increases.  Many financial analysts are convinced that this will happen and are raising cries of alarm.  Perhaps the most disturbing alarm comes from an analyst at Societe Generale, one of the world’s largest banks.

Over the last three weeks it has been clear that President Obama has determined that he will not pay a serious political price by moving a little further away from Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.  The most dramatic evidence of this calculation was the decision by Obama not to meet with Netanyahu during the recent UN meeting–usually an American President would relish the favorable press from such a meeting so close to an election.  Obviously, Obama believes that those who most fervently support Netanyahu will vote for Romney no matter what he, Obama, does.  Now the speculation begins:  will Obama punish Netanyahu for being so outspoken about Iran during the election, particularly in a way that so obviously benefited Romney.