Glenn Greenwald - With Liberty and Justice for Some How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful

http://us.macmillan.com/withlibertyandjusticeforsome/GlennGreenwald

From "the most important voice to have entered the political discourse in years" (Bill Moyers), a scathing critique of the two-tiered system of justice that has emerged in America

From the nation's beginnings, the law was to be the great equalizer in American life, the guarantor of a common set of rules for all. But over the past four decades, the principle of equality before the law has been effectively abolished. Instead, a two-tiered system of justice ensures that the country's political and financial class is virtually immune from prosecution, licensed to act without restraint, while the politically powerless are imprisoned with greater ease and in greater numbers than in any other country in the world.

Starting with Watergate, continuing on through the Iran-Contra scandal, and culminating with Obama's shielding of Bush-era officials from prosecution, Glenn Greenwald lays bare the mechanisms that have come to shield the elite from accountability. He shows how the media, both political parties, and the courts have abetted a process that has produced torture, war crimes, domestic spying, and financial fraud.

Cogent, sharp, and urgent, this is a no-holds-barred indictment of a profoundly un-American system that sanctions immunity at the top and mercilessness for everyone else.

Transparency International Report - Money, Politics, Power : Corruption Risks in Europe

http://www.transparency.org/enis/report

The crisis is a wake-up call to Europe's leaders

Secrecy in dealings. Impunity in corridors of power. Public protests in the streets. Corruption is a reality in Europe and affects the daily lives of ordinary citizens.

Money, Politics, Power: Corruption Risks in Europe unveils the causes of many of the financial and political scandals that have dogged nearly every European country in recent years.

Drawing on substantial in-country research, the report identifies key cross-cutting gaps in anti-corruption systems of 25 European states.

The results are sobering. Europe is faced with significant corruption risks, particularly at the intersection of business and politics. The current system allows for undue influence and wrongful conduct, while avoiding public scrutiny.

The ongoing financial crisis has brought into stark relief the price of complacency about graft in Europe. What is required is concerted action backed by firm political commitment. In building on promising practices and providing citizens with oversight and voice, the mistakes of the past can be avoided and ultimately a cleaner Europe can emerge.

It’s All Connected: An Overview of the Euro Crisis

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/10/23/sunday-review/an-overview-of-the-euro-crisis.html

European leaders are meeting this week to deal with growing debt problems rattling investors worldwide. Here is a visual guide to the crisis.

Putting Brussels' lobbyists on the map

Our unique new guide to the hidden world of corporate lobbying in Brussels is now available, highlighting the players, the locations, and the tactics used by big business to influence decision making in the European Union. 

 

http://www.corporateeurope.org/publications/putting-brussels-lobbyists-map

The new edition of the Lobby Planet to Brussels’ EU quarter features a guide to some of the biggest lobby players operating in Brussels, as well as three thematic tours, highlighting the carbon lobby, the finance lobby and the agribusiness lobby. The guide also features a specially-commissioned cartoon of Brussels’ lobbyists at work, and full colour maps to guide you through the streets and squares of the EU quarter.

There are an estimated 15-30,000 lobbyists targeting EU decision makers in Brussels, mainly representing business interests, making the EU quarter home to one of the highest concentrations of lobbyists in the world. The Lobby Planet guides you through the maze of the EU institutions, the lobby groups, the agencies and the company offices which make up their lobbying world.

The first edition of Corporate Europe Observatory’s Lobby Planet guide was produced in 2004, and proved an eye-opener to many who were unaware of the scale of industry lobbying in Brussels. The number of lobbyists in the EU capital has grown significantly since then and there are growing calls for greater transparency and stricter rules on lobbying. Download a copy of the Lobby Planet to Brussels' EU quarter here: Lobbycracy 

CEOlobbylow.pdf

The Truth About the Drug Companies

How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It

Written by Marcia Angell
 
During her two decades at The New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Marcia Angell had a front-row seat on the appalling spectacle of the pharmaceutical industry. She watched drug companies stray from their original mission of discovering and manufacturing useful drugs and instead become vast marketing machines with unprecedented control over their own fortunes. She saw them gain nearly limitless influence over medical research, education, and how doctors do their jobs. She sympathized as the American public, particularly the elderly, struggled and increasingly failed to meet spiraling prescription drug prices. Now, in this bold, hard-hitting new book, Dr. Angell exposes the shocking truth of what the pharmaceutical industry has become–and argues for essential, long-overdue change.

Currently Americans spend a staggering $200 billion each year on prescription drugs. As Dr. Angell powerfully demonstrates, claims that high drug prices are necessary to fund research and development are unfounded: The truth is that drug companies funnel the bulk of their resources into the marketing of products of dubious benefit. Meanwhile, as profits soar, the companies brazenly use their wealth and power to push their agenda through Congress, the FDA, and academic medical centers.

Zeroing in on hugely successful drugs like AZT (the first drug to treat HIV/AIDS), Taxol (the best-selling cancer drug in history), and the blockbuster allergy drug Claritin, Dr. Angell demonstrates exactly how new products are brought to market. Drug companies, she shows, routinely rely on publicly funded institutions for their basic research; they rig clinical trials to make their products look better than they are; and they use their legions of lawyers to stretch out government-granted exclusive marketing rights for years. They also flood the market with copycat drugs that cost a lot more than the drugs they mimic but are no more effective.

The American pharmaceutical industry needs to be saved, mainly from itself, and Dr. Angell proposes a program of vital reforms, which includes restoring impartiality to clinical research and severing the ties between drug companies and medical education. Written with fierce passion and substantiated with in-depth research, The Truth About the Drug Companies is a searing indictment of an industry that has spun out of control.

La corrupción de la democracia

Ignacio Ramonet – Consejo Científico de ATTAC España

El “caso Bettencourt” que zarandea Francia con su vendaval de arrestos, odios familiares, cheques ocultos, grabaciones furtivas, fechorías fiscales y donaciones ilegales al partido del Presidente Nicolas Sarkozy, está hundiendo el país en una profunda crisis moral.

Liliane Bettencourt, una de las mujeres más ricas del planeta, poseedora de una fortuna de 17.000 millones de euros y propietaria del imperio de cosméticos y perfumes L’Oréal, se halla en el epicentro de un alucinante culebrón devenido asunto de Estado. Unas conversaciones robadas en su domicilio revelaron que el ministro de Trabajo, Eric Woerth, usó de su influencia (cuando era ministro del Presupuesto, y por consiguiente responsable de la administración fiscal) para obtener que su esposa, Florence, fuese contratada por la multimillonaria -con un salario anual de 200.000 euros- para administrar su fortuna… De paso, Eric Woerth, que también era tesorero del partido del Presidente, percibió presuntamente donaciones de decenas de miles de euros (1) para financiar la campaña electoral de Sarkozy… A cambio, se sospecha que el ministro hizo la vista gorda sobre una parte del patrimonio oculto de la dueña de L’Oréal: por ejemplo, varias cuentas millonarias en Suiza y una isla en las Seychelles valorada en unos 500 millones de euros…

Este asunto, de por sí bochornoso, adquiere mayor morbo en la medida en que Eric Woerth es el encargado de conducir la dura reforma de las jubilaciones que castigará a millones de asalariados modestos. En un ambiente de fuertes tensiones sociales y de motines de desclasados en los guetos urbanos, el “caso Bettencourt” está reactivando el viejo litigio entre las elites y el pueblo común. “El clima de la sociedad, advierte el filósofo Marcel Gauchet, se halla hoy impregnado de revuelta latente y de un sentimiento de distancia radical hacia los dirigentes” (2).

Francia no es la única democracia carcomida por la corrupción de algunos políticos y por la permanente confusión que muchos de ellos mantienen entre cargos públicos y beneficios privados. Está aún fresco en las memorias el escándalo de los abusos de los gastos parlamentarios a expensas de los contribuyentes, ocurrido en el Reino Unido y que, junto con otras causas, provocó el descalabro de los laboristas en las elecciones del 6 de mayo pasado. O el de la Italia de Silvio Berlusconi en donde, casi veinte años después de la operación mane pulite que decapitó a gran parte de la clase política, la corrupción, a modo de metástasis, vuelve a extenderse ante la impotencia de una izquierda paralizada y sin ideas. El Tribunal de Cuentas italiano, en su último informe, establece que los delitos de corrupción activa de los funcionarios públicos aumentaron el año pasado en más de 150% (3). Y qué decir de España, agobiada por los múltiples casos de corrupción de cargos públicos asociados a los “señores del ladrillo” enriquecidos por las delirantes políticas urbanísticas. Sin hablar del esperpéntico “caso Gürtel” que sigue coleando.

A escala internacional, la corrupción alcanza hoy, en la era de la globalización neoliberal, una dimensión estructural. Su práctica se ha banalizado igual que otras formas de criminalidad corruptora: malversación de fondos, manipulación de contratos públicos, abuso de bienes sociales, creación y financiación de empleos ficticios, fraude fiscal, disimulo de capitales procedentes de actividades ilícitas, etc. Se confirma así que la corrupción es un pilar fundamental del capitalismo. El ensayista Moisés Naím afirma que, en los próximos decenios, “las actividades de las redes ilícitas del tráfico global y sus socios del mundo ‘legítimo’, ya sea gubernamental o privado, tendrán muchísimo más impacto en las relaciones internacionales, las estrategias de desarrollo económico, la promoción de la democracia, los negocios, las finanzas, las migraciones, la seguridad global; en fin, en la guerra y la paz, que lo que hasta ahora ha sido comúnmente imaginado” (4).

Según el Banco Mundial, cada año, en el planeta, los flujos de dinero procedentes de la corrupción, de actividades delictivas y de la evasión de fondos hacia los paraísos fiscales alcanza la astronómica suma de 1,6 billones de euros… De ese montante, unos 250 000 millones corresponden al fraude fiscal realizado anualmente sólo en la Unión Europea. Reinyectados en la economía legal, esos millones permitirían evitar los actuales planes de austeridad y ajuste que tantos estragos sociales están causando.

Ningún dirigente debe olvidar que la democracia es esencialmente un proyecto ético, basado en la virtud y en un sistema de valores sociales y morales que dan sentido al ejercicio del poder. Afirma José Vidal-Beneyto, en su libro póstumo y de indispensable lectura, que cuando, en una democracia, “las principales fuerzas políticas, en plena armonía mafiosa, se ponen de acuerdo para timar a los ciudadanos” (5) se produce un descrédito de la democracia, una repulsa de la política, un aumento de la abstención y, más peligroso, una subida de la extrema derecha. Y concluye: “El gobierno se corrompe por la corrupción, y cuando hay corrupción en la democracia, la corrompida es la democracia”.

Artículo publicado en Le Monde diplomatique.

Notas:
(1) En Francia, la ley de financiamiento de los partidos políticos del 11 de abril de 2003, limita las donaciones de las personas físicas a 7.500 euros al año.
(2) Le Monde , París, 18 de julio de 2010.
(3) Clarín , Buenos Aires, 17 de febrero de 2010.
(4) Moisés Naím, Ilícito , Debate, Madrid, 2006.
(5) José Vidal-Beneyto, La corrupción de la democracia , Catarata, Madrid, 2010.

Fonte: http://www.attac.es/la-corrupcion-de-la-democracia/

SHADOW ELITE

How the World's New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market

(Basic Books; December 1, 2009)

Janine R. Wedel

Governments and administrations come and go, but not so a new breed of power brokers, who always seem to pop up just where the action is. Wearing different hats, they press their agendas in venue after venue. According to award-winning public policy scholar and anthropologist Janine Wedel, these are the "shadow elite," the prime movers in a vexing new system of power and influence.

Wedel charts how these players make public decisions without public input—in realms from domestic to foreign and financial policy. Maneuvering through their many spheres of influence, they challenge both governments' rules of accountability and businesses' codes of competition, ultimately answering only to each other. From the Harvard economists who helped privatize post-Soviet Russia and the neoconservatives who helped privatize American foreign policy for thirty years (culminating with the debacle that is Iraq) to many lesser-known global operators, these players flout once-sacrosanct boundaries between state and private, bureaucracy and market. This new breed, unseen by most, is steadily gaining power.

Original and eye-opening, Shadow Elite gives us the tools we need to recognize these players and understand the new system—which we ignore at our peril.
http://janinewedel.info/shadowelite.html

"Estamos perante a urgente necessidade de reavaliar a decisão sobre a construção de um novo aeroporto"

 
Este artigo encontra-se em http://resistir.info/ . 

por Luis Queiros [*] 

Ao afectar seriamente o sector do transporte aéreo, a actual situação de crise veio baralhar os planos de construção do novo aeroporto de Lisboa. Já tinha acontecido algo de semelhante em 1973, na sequência do primeiro choque petrolífero, quando Marcelo Caetano lançou os primeiros estudos sobre potenciais locais alternativos à Portela. Nessa altura não se passou das intenções.

Nas últimas décadas, e até ao advento da crise, o sector do transporte aéreo cresceu muito acima da economia global. De acordo com dados apresentados pelo comandante Cristopher Smith, da British Airways, nos dez anos anteriores a 2008 o sector cresceu 2,4 vezes mais depressa do que o PIB mundial.

Isso verificou-se também em Portugal. Entre 2003 e 2008, o crescimento do número de passageiros na Portela foi espectacular. Nesse período o tráfego anual passou de 9,8 para 13,6 milhões de passageiros, a que corresponde uma taxa média anual de crescimento de 6,9%. E foram precisamente estes números que apressaram a decisão de construir um novo aeroporto em Lisboa.

Mas a crise que agora atravessamos (cujo fim se não descortina) alterou radicalmente a situação. Em 2008 o crescimento anual de passageiros na Portela foi apenas de 1,6%. E em 2009, contrariando previsões anteriores que apontavam para um crescimento de 6%, houve mesmo um decréscimo de 2,6%. A crise no sector é mundial e generalizada. E nos próximos anos, a existir alguma recuperação, tudo indica que será muito lenta.

De acordo com notícias recentes, há quem se esforce por fazer crer o contrário. O presidente da ANA entende que a crise actual apenas reduzirá o crescimento anual médio do tráfego de 4,0% para 3,9% nos anos futuros; e que, em 2017, a Portela registará 18,0 milhões de passageiros, e não 18,7 como indicavam os anteriores estudos. Afirma mesmo que esta é uma previsão conservadora. E diz isto para concluir que o actual aeroporto estará a "rebentar pelas costuras em 2017", e que "não há dúvidas quanto à necessidade e urgência de construir um novo aeroporto".

ESCASSEZ DE PETRÓLEO

Porém, não é só a crise económica que vai condicionar depressivamente a procura do transporte aéreo. A previsível escassez de petróleo e o elevado preço da matéria-prima (afinal uma das razões principais da crise que o mundo atravessa) terá fortes implicações no futuro do transporte aéreo e nos sectores da economia que lhes estão associados. Com efeito, a dependência dos combustíveis líquidos derivados do petróleo é particularmente elevada – deve mesmo dizer-se total – no sector aeronáutico, pois não existem alternativas energéticas ao fuel usado nos aviões. Está fora de questão, num futuro próximo, a utilização de hidrogénio, de energia eléctrica ou nuclear, para propulsionar aeronaves comerciais.

Face à alteração de pressupostos, estamos perante a urgente necessidade de reavaliar a decisão sobre a construção de um novo aeroporto. E dois são os dados-chave para fundamentar essa decisão: saber qual o tráfego crítico de saturação da Portela, e estimar a taxa de crescimento desse tráfego nos próximos anos.

Admitamos, sem contestar, que a saturação da Portela se atinge nos 18 milhões de passageiros/ano. A uma taxa de crescimento médio anual de 4%, esse valor de saturação será atingido em 2017. Mas para taxas de crescimento de 3%, 2% ou 1%, os anos de saturação serão, respectivamente, 2020, 2025 e 2040.

Pessoalmente, acredito que taxas de crescimento entre 1% e 2% são realistas, e consentâneas com a previsível evolução do PIB português. Fixe-se pois o ano de 2030 como ano-meta para ter Alcochete pronto a receber aviões. E vá-se planeando e construindo, devagar e bem, como convém, sem megalomanias nem derrapagens de custos. À medida das nossas possibilidades. 

Crude Oil $83.28 ▲1.83   2.25% 12:04 PM EDT - 2010.04.20

[*] Presidente do Grupo Marktest, membro da Aspo Portugal

O original encontra-se em 
http://www.jornaldenegocios.pt/index.php?template=SHOWNEWS_OPINION&id=420371  

"Halliburton's Army:

How A Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized The Way America Makes War"

Pratap Chatterjee, Nation Books

“A sordid tale of politics and profiteering, courtesy of the Bush administration and a compliant military… A report that deserves many readers, about matters that deserve many indictments.”

–Kirkus

“Chatterjee keeps the pace of the narrative at a quick clip and nimbly marshals his extensive evidence to reveal—without sanctimony or stridency—Halliburton’s record of corruption, political manipulation and human rights abuses.”
–Publishers Weekly

On September 10, 2001, precisely one day before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told senior staff that the Pentagon was wasting $3 billion a year by not outsourcing many non-combat duties to the private sector. “At bases around the world, why do we pick up our own garbage and mop our own floors?” he asked. Soon after, this fortuitously-timed shift in the way the military wages war would bring immense profits to Texas-based military contractor Halliburton, an oil industry service company whose former CEO was Vice President Dick Cheney. Armed with lucrative no-bid contracts, Halliburton/KBR, its affiliates, and sub-contractors would soon provide most of the infrastructure that supports the war in Iraq. Ultimately, the company would face allegations of corruption, negligence, fraud, and corporate crime.

In HALLIBURTON’S ARMY: How a Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War (Nation Books; February 9, 2009; $26.95), muckraking journalist Pratap Chatterjee conducts a highly detailed investigation into Halliburton and its former subsidiary KBR’s activities in Kuwait and Iraq, uncovering much new information about its questionable practices and extraordinary profits. Becoming a Halliburton and a KBR shareholder in order to gain access to as much inside information as possible, Chatterjee also moved to Dubai, where the company recently relocated its headquarters. This Middle Eastern base also afforded him access to interviews with many Halliburton/KBR workers, subcontractors, suppliers, and military liaisons, including Texas engineers and Filipino day laborers, who each played a part in Halliburton’s enterprise.

Read more...

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Pratap Chatterjee is an award-winning investigative journalist and managing editor of Corpwatch. He is the author of Iraq Inc. He has hosted a weekly radio show on KPFA, was global environment editor for Inter Press Service and has written for the Financial Times, the Guardian and the Independent. Chatterjee has also appeared on the BBC World Service, CNN International, Democracy Now!, Fox and MSNBC. He is a shareholder of both Halliburton and KBR. He is the winner of a Lannan Cultural Freedom Award and lives in Washington, DC.

CorpWatch

The "Who Could Have Known?" Era

The Huffington Post

See if this sounds familiar:

An ambitious and risky undertaking carried out with hubris, and featuring the weeding out of anyone who raises alarm bells, little-to-no transparency, an oversight system in which no central authority is accountable, and the deliberate manufacturing of ambiguity and complexity so that if -- when -- it all falls to pieces, the excuse "who could have known?" can be used....

Is it Iraq? Fannie Mae? Citigroup? Bernie Madoff?

The correct answer is: all of the above.

When you look at the elements that were crucial to the creation of each of these debacles, it's amazing how much in common they all have. And not just in how they began but in how they ended: with those responsible being amazed at what happened, because...who could have known? Well, to paraphrase James Inhofe, I'm amazed at the amazement.

In fact, when historians look for a name that sums up the Bush II years, they could do worse than calling them The "Who Could Have Known?" Era.

Each of the disasters listed above was entirely predictable. And, indeed, was predicted. But those who rang the alarm bells were aggressively ignored, which is why it's important that we not let those responsible get away with the "Who Could Have Known?" excuse.

Let's start with Iraq -- specifically the reconstruction of Iraq. This weekend the New York Times got its hands on the unpublished 513-page federal history of the reconstruction. It's not pretty. As the Times puts it: it was "an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure." As a result, almost six years and $117 billion later, many essential services are only now reaching pre-war levels.

The report quotes Colin Powell on how the Pentagon, to cover up its failures, "kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces [that had reached readiness] -- the number would jump 20,000 a week! 'We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.' "

Hmm, making up numbers to realize a short-term gain, but which end up making the inevitable long-term reckoning much worse? Sounds a lot like what was happening at Citigroup at around the same time.

In late 2002, Charles Prince was put in charge of the company's corporate and investment bank. The banking giant was already knee deep in toxic paper and aggressively looking the other way.

He was so successful at averting his eyes that when, five years later, as Wall Street began to feel the initial shocks of the mortgage meltdown, he was told that the bank owned $43 billion in mortgage-related assets -- it was the first he'd heard of it. Isn't that something he should have known? Or did he prefer not knowing?

Prince had plenty of help ignoring the obvious, particularly from Robert Rubin. According to a former Citigroup executive quoted in the long New York Times analysis of Citi's downfall, despite ascending to the top of the Citi food chain, Prince "didn't know a C.D.O. from a grocery list, so he looked for someone for advice and support. That person was Rubin."

When it all came tumbling down, both Rubin and Prince portrayed themselves as helpless victims of circumstance, because...Who Could Have Known?

"I've thought a lot about that," Rubin said when asked if he made mistakes at Citigroup. "I honestly don't know. In hindsight, there are a lot of things we'd do differently. But in the context of the facts as I knew them and my role, I'm inclined to think probably not."

What he means, of course, is the facts as he chose to know them.

Prince's head is even higher in the clouds: "Anything," he said, "based on human endeavor and certainly any business that involves risk-taking, you're going to have problems from time to time."

Sounds like he's reading from the same damage control playbook as former Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines. According to Raines, he can't be blamed for what happened at Fannie Mae because mortgage stuff is so, well, complicated. In fact, he can't even understand his own mortgage: "I know I can't and I've tried," Raines told a House committee last week. "To this day, I don't know what it said... It's impossible for the average person to understand" mortgage terms such as negative amortization. In other words, Who Could Have Known?

Committee chair Henry Waxman wasn't buying it: "These documents make clear that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac knew what they were doing. Their own risk managers raised warning after warning about the dangers of investing heavily in the subprime and alternative mortgage markets."

Ignoring warning after warning is an essential element of the "Who Could Have Known?" excuse, as are rewriting history and shamelessly disregarding the foresight shown by those who sounded the alarm bells.

We're seeing the same ingredients in the Madoff affair. "We have worked with Madoff for nearly 20 years," said Jeffrey Tucker, a former federal regulator and the head of an investment firm facing losses of $7.5 billion. "We had no indication that we...were the victims of such a highly sophisticated, massive fraudulent scheme." It's a sentiment echoed by Arthur Levitt, the former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission: "I've known [Madoff] for nearly 35 years, and I'm absolutely astonished."

Who Could Have Known?

Well, Harry Markopoulos, for one. In 1999, after researching Madoff's methods, Markopolos wrote a letter to the SEC saying, "Madoff Securities is the world's largest Ponzi Scheme." He pursued his claims with the feds for the next nine years, with little result.

Jim Vos, another investment adviser who had examined Madoff's firm, says: "There's no smoking gun, but if you added it all up you wonder why people either did not get it or chose to ignore the red flags."

The answer comes from Vos's cohort Jake Walthour Jr., who told HuffPost blogger Vicky Ward: "In a bull market no one bothers to ask how the returns are met, they just like the returns."

Hasn't the "Who Could Have Known?" excuse been exposed as a sham enough times to render it obsolete?

Apparently not. Here come the Bush Legacy Project's revisionists expecting us to believe that everyone thought Saddam had WMD -- even though many were on record saying he didn't.

In the wake of 9/11, Condi Rice assured us nobody "could have predicted" that someone "would try to use an airplane as a missile." Except, of course, the government report that in 1999 said, "Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al Qaeda's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House."

After Katrina, the White House read from the "Who Could Have Known?" hymnal: No one could have predicted that the storm would be a Category 5, and that this could result in the levees being breached. We now know, of course, that plenty of people knew that the levees could be breached and said so before the storm hit.

Then there is Alan Greenspan, who, looking back in October of this year on the makings of the financial crisis he helped create (I mean, that just happened to come out of nowhere) delivered this "Who Could Have Known?" classic: "If all those extraordinarily capable people were unable to foresee the development of this critical problem...we have to ask ourselves: Why is that? And the answer is that we're not smart enough as people. We just cannot see events that far in advance."

The only problem is, many people did see events that far in advance.

Unlike Greenspan, I don't believe the problem is that we are "not smart enough as people." As we've seen time after time, smart enough people are all too willing to ignore facts they don't like. Or, even worse, they construct oversight systems designed to be ineffective -- and unable to provide to those in power information they don't really want to know.

Much has been made of the smartness of Obama's new team. But I'm hoping that their defining characteristic won't be their IQs but their willingness to confront reality and take responsibility for their decisions.

It's time to say goodbye to the "Who Could Have Known?" era. It's time to know things again. And to know that you know them.