The World Is Nobody's Oyster or Backyard

Whether it is a family, a private enterprise, a government institution or a country, you will always find a few hotheads in it who believe they are privileged, and will argue for taking on the world to avenge a loss – if they lost something recently, or to add to their gain if they scored a gain of some sort recently. You will also find the cool heads who will argue for being cautious because – privileged or not – they cannot behave as if the world was their oyster; as if it were their backyard.

It is evident that Judy Shelton is a hothead calling on the Obama administration to behave as if the world was America's oyster; as if it were its backyard. She makes the call in an article she wrote under the title: “Turning the Ukrainian Crisis Into the IMF's Gain” and the subtitle: “Along came a nice crisis for the Obama administration to exploit on behalf of the International Monetary Fund.” The article was published in the Wall Street Journal on March 14, 2014.

Shelton establishes her state of paranoia at the very beginning where she starts the article with a direct quote from Rahm Emanuel who used to be President Obama's Chief of Staff but is no more. His credo was: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” and so she accuses Mr. Obama of trying to follow that credo by linking emergency financial aid to Ukraine with changes to the IMF governance and financing. She does that in the first paragraph, and then admits in the next that the changes were proposed in 2010, four years before the Ukrainian situation. So much for this woman's ability to grasp the chronological and logical sequencing of events.

What is worrying her, and worrying other hotheads like her is that the proposed reforms will increase the voting power of countries like China, India, Brazil and Russia, something that will happen because they will be paying more into the IMF's fund due to the fact that their economies have grown substantially. But when it happens, America will also see its influence diminish in the corridors and conference rooms of that international institution; a development that those who believe the world is America’s oyster and its backyard, find objectionable.

The problem as far as the hotheads are concerned is not that America will be asked to pay more into the IMF fund; it is that for once someone else will do that. The result will be that the money in the fund will almost double with the side effect that $63 billion from the crisis fund will be transferred to the general lending account where America has less control over how the money is used. This is what galls the hotheads; and what it says is that to see the IMF almost double the ability to lend money, and rescue the nations that get into trouble is to them a bad thing to happen because America's influence will diminish. It also means that their own influence as American pundits and opinion makers will diminish in the world.

To get in the way of this happening, they argue that the amount of money now in the fund is adequate. Shelton even quotes Dominique Strauss-Kahn who once said as head of the IMF: “We are ready to answer any demand by a country facing problems.” What she does not mention is that he made that remark long ago, before the troubles of the European peripherals had manifested themselves, and before the Ukrainian crisis had erupted.

Another thing these people do to get in the way of the proposed reforms is that they throw the usual accusation which is that the IMF is mismanaged. Helping them in this regard is the Congress about which the world has a high regard, of course, seeing that American institution as a model of effective management … at least when it comes to gridlocking the business of the nation and turning a superpower into the laughing stock of the world.

Shelton ads her own bit of logic by approving two things she heard with regard to the Congress. One pertains to the idea that “whether or not changes serve the interests of the US taxpayers should be debated before Congress votes … For those already skeptical about the IMF's effectiveness; it is not a decision to be rushed.” And the other pertains to the idea that was put by Ed Royce, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee when he said: “The time to act is now.”

It seems that hot headed Judy Shelton also has trouble understanding the concept of time. And this is probably why she suffers from another disease called political dyslexia. It shows on her as she warns that President Obama will be at fault if the Congress committed another idiocy like the one it commits everyday.

Here is her statement in abbreviated form: “Obama risks undermining Ukraine if he insists on inserting IMF funding into the legislation. What message would that send to the World if Congress failed to pass a measure to help Ukraine because of a peripheral issue? This is no time for Obama to exploit a crisis by adding a measure to a matter of world importance.”

With pundits and opinion makers like these, and with a Congress like that, now you know why America has become the laughing stock of the World.