The response I advocate is to bolster the forces, institutions, and practices that can shift this complex nation onto a benign trajectory. Many acts of assertion and resistance can coalesce into a truly transformative movement. Here are two suggestions for international donors seeking unique ways to increase the slender prospects for democratic progress in Nigeria in 2011. The first would be to fund the purchase of thousands of copies of Steve Crawshaw and John Jackson’s recent book, Small Acts of Resistance: How Courage, Tenacity, and Ingenuity Can Change the World, for distribution throughout Nigeria. The second would be to give robust support for the creation of a pan-Nigerian movement of civic and other organizations to work for free, fair, and credible elections, a recommendation I made in a jubilee lecture in Abuja and Lagos in early October.

It should not be underestimated how many Nigerians, at home and abroad, are willing to take unusual action to challenge the brinkmanship that passes for statesmanship in their beleaguered nation. We should begin by arming them with the requisite tools, such as small video cameras, to capture nefarious electoral practices in their communities for screening on websites and televisions. And the technology should be made available for tabulating and displaying votes cast in each polling station that are transmitted by cell phones to collating sites. The 2011 election can have a dual character: an officially administered one by INEC, and a citizens’ movement to get out the vote that includes a comprehensive parallel vote count. The 2011 elections provide an opportunity for Nigerians to reclaim their democracy through neutralizing the efforts of politicians to distort and disrupt the voting process. From manipulated subjects, they can become active and alert citizens. They can be empowered to give birth to a new electoral democracy and demand greater performance and accountability of office-holders by a vigilant citizenry. This dream at independence has turned into a nightmare, especially during recent elections. The time has come to make good on a fifty-year promise, and the elections of 2011 is the moment to start.

I leave it at that and save the cynicism for another day.

Thanks to Kiran for the link.

Without undermining the intellectual capabilities and the personal achievements of Ms Hirsi Ali, she often comes accross as self-overestimating and excessively self-benefitting. Since she stepped out of the islamic faith, she seems extremely obsessed with projecting islam in a negative light. For a self-proclaimed islam expert, I would appreciate a discuss that projects a more rational, objective and more balanced projection. She is celebrated in the West because of her anti-islam crusade. I reside in the Netherlands and I know that she avoids public debates and discussions with people of authority and experts on Islam who do not share her views of islam. My attention was drawn to Ms Hirshi Ali in the early nineties when she was a young member of the PVDA (The Workers Party in the Netherlands). As a young politician, she was out-spoken, well articulated and determined. She later cross-carpet to the VVD (Liberal party). Following political scandals surrounding her acquisition of the Dutch citizenship, she had to quit her seat in the parliament. Since a few years she has been working for the extremely consevative American institution: The American Enterprise Institute. For a self-proclaimed liberal individual, her taking up a job position with this institution, suggests a great degree of contradiction to me, knowing the goals and objectives of this institute.

For the good order, I am not religious and could care less on religious issues, it’s just that I sort of had higher expectations of Ms Hirshi Ali towards the minority communities in the Netherlands. With her intelligence, personality and achievements, she could go a long way as a role model to young immigrants who are not interested in religon. This I miss in her list of achievements, hence the term: “excessively self-benefitting”

Zuckerberg and gang may think that they know what’s best for society, for individuals, but I violently disagree. I think that they know what’s best for the privileged class. And I’m terrified of the consequences that these moves are having for those who don’t live in a lap of luxury. I say this as someone who is privileged, someone who has profited at every turn by being visible. But also as someone who has seen the costs and pushed through the consequences with a lot of help and support. Being publicly visible isn’t always easy, it’s not always fun. And I don’t think that anyone should go through what I’ve gone through without making a choice to do it. So I’m angry. Very angry. Angry that some people aren’t being given that choice, angry that they don’t know what’s going on, angry that it’s become OK in my industry to expose people. I think that it’s high time that we take into consideration those whose lives aren’t nearly as privileged as ours, those who aren’t choosing to take the risks that we take, those who can’t afford to. This isn’t about liberals vs. libertarians; it’s about monkeys vs. robots.

Being scared of the privacy issues was what made me leave Facebook two years ago.

We can intellectualize these things all we want, but there are no more startling discoveries to be made as far as the causes of violence in northern Nigeria are concerned. Olakunle Abimbola’s getting a lot of verbal bashing (sentimental fool, people like you will rot in hell, among other verbal stabbing), because he dared to damn political correctness and nail the issue home to its proven veracity. If the self-indulgent Katsina legislator that was throwing empty verbal darts at Gadaffi on TV the other day had expressed such outrage at the Jos carnage similarly on air, may be we would have been on the way to true consideration of a federalist identity. Struggles for economic and political empowerment might still be less unwieldy within the federation of this crazy quilt if we de-emphasise the factor of religion as basis for ethnic and territorial identity and for violent mobilization in the northern Nigeria.

The whole article is worth reading.

In an interview with the Huffington Post, Neill Blomkamp states that the small population of Nigerians in South Africa is indeed responsible for the majority of crime in his country. In keeping with his bias against Nigerians, District 9 features prominently, a Nigerian criminal gang that engages in dubious business deals and pimps out its women to this largely male alien species. Nigerians are also the center of the films occultic elements, unrelated to Nigerian traditional religion and medicine (despite ill-informed documentaries citing otherwise). In purporting District 9 to be a social commentary against xenophobic hatred and then opening the movie with lurid Nigerian characters, ??contradict[s] himself as soon as he started writing the script,? according to blogger MellowYel of Stuff Nigerians Love/Hate. Nigerian American science fiction author, Nnedi, also vents her frustration with the film on her blog and makes the point that beyond this, black South Africans served as a ?mere setting,? for the film. Sugabelly, known for her biting frankness, goes on to suggest that ??if you squinted your eyes just a little bit you might not even notice the movie was set in Africa.? District 9 was hardly a triumph for African film industry and definitely was not worth disparaging Nigerians in South Africa.

A comment on the same movie by a reader of New York Press (HT Sean):

?As a young Afrikaans South African with a fondness for interspecies-conflict-based fiction, I enjoyed D9, and still I agree with [Armond] White [New York Press film critic] on a few levels. As a purely fictional sci-fi movie, D9 is excellent. During the first 15 minutes of the movie, the entire audience around me was laughing at how the South-African public?s nuances were portrayed? But White is right about the whole analogy thing. The similarities between Apartheid and Human- Prawn segregation is non-existent, except for the fact that in both cases the segregated party resided in crappy shacks.There is a lot more to South Africa?s history than what the general international public realizes, and Peter Jackson?s cash-in on it seems like pure publicity hunting to me.What?s worse to me is the hundreds of critics appraising the analogy in D9, while they themselves don?t know shit about what apartheid is really about. The Nigerian thing is also way overdone, and I feel it is insensitive seeing that there is already a general xenophobia in SA toward Nigerians.?

From my column of this Tuesday:

I have not yet seen the movie but from what I have read from reviews, the movie seems to have borrowed the worst from Nollywood movies. I consider tapping into an existing body of work fair game, but I think that taking snatches and omitting the context is an extreme form of laziness. But then, when one thinks about it, was this kind of misrepresentation not something waiting to happen?

I would like to see a level of outcry similar to the one that has followed the movie directed towards Nollywood movies that portray Nigerians as people who make money from human body parts. Or is that belief so entrenched in the minds of Nigerians that it cannot be questioned? On the part of Nollywood producers, I hope that this makes them realise that they are making movies for the whole of Africa. Indeed, many Africans think that ritual killing, along with some form of cannibalism, is prevalent in Nigeria.

I find the references to Nigeria and the depiction of Nigerians in the movie highly distasteful, in case you are curious.

And from CNN:

Some Nigerians said the movie feeds off stereotypes associated with the country.

“Everyone has this image of Nigeria,” Umeano said. “A lot of people have given Nigeria a bad name, but that does not mean the whole country is bad.”

While Clement Nyirenda believes the director should have used a fictional country, he said the outcry is much ado about nothing.

After all, he said, the Nigerian movie industry, Nollywood, is filled with the same characterizations.

“The (Nollywood) movies show Nigerians as witch doctors, corrupt, a lot worse,” Nyirenda said. “Nigeria is mostly known for 419 scams … the government officials should focus on cleaning the image.”

The term “419 scams” refers to spam e-mails that ask for money and bank information.

Akunyili said the country is trying to “rebrand itself away from such images.” The Nollywood industry is undergoing a makeover, too, she added.

The World Customs Organization (WCO) recently expressed concern over the indiscriminate and incessant dumping of used electronic gadgets in Nigeria. The organization said that the gadgets emanated mostly from Europe and such products had been intercepted on several occasions at the Lagos seaport terminal.

The Secretary – General of the body, Mr. Kunio Mukuriya at a meeting of member-countries explained that a container load of the used gadgets was also intercepted in June, 2009 after a month – long vigil. The container, however, remained unclaimed. The organization had in collaboration with the Nigerian Customs Service seized about 30,000 tonnes and 1,500 pieces of hazardous waste in 57 interceptions. Nigeria is considered to be a major destination for used or second-hand appliances such as refrigerators, televisions screens; scrap metal and vehicle parts.

Nigeria, for a long time now, has been a dumping ground for all manner of used electronic gadgets. Unfortunately, even some Nigerians in Diaspora engage in this hazardous business. They see the trade as a business opportunity back home, which they exploit to the detriment of their fellow countrymen. This is an unhealthy practice, and the sooner the authorities put a stop to it, the better for the health of the country’s economy and the citizens. Nigerians, whether in or outside the country who trade in this illegal business should not in any way be considered patriotic citizens. Patriotism demands that we should be concerned with the possible ill effects our actions to our fellow citizens and desist from doing such acts. The negative effect of used electronic gadgets in Nigeria sometimes takes long to manifest especially where radioactive materials are involved.

The country has to look for ways to effectively manage electronic waste generally. The thing is that much of the used electronics can actually be imported legally into Nigeria. There should also be a way of making sure that some of the more dangerous ones do not end up in the country. And developing countries cannot do this alone.

Governments of developed countries that make regulations concerning the reduction of waste that go to landfills in their countries should consider that the waste, when exported as used items to developing countries, will end up in landfills and/or will be burnt anyway, releasing all kinds of toxin into the atmosphere. By reducing what go to their landfills they are increasing what go to the landfills of the countries that consume their waste. Also, regulations that stipulate that certain kinds of waste are not to be exported from the country have to be enforced…..

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“Wives of influential people travel to Dubai to import suit cases and on arrival, their husbands call the customs officers informing them of the arrival of their wives who had traveled. We are all guilty.”

And

“Customs has the mandate to curb smuggling but the required tools are not available. And there is no political will to combat the smuggling. Smuggling is capital intensive and is undertaken by only those with the ways and means.

“Customs officers at the borders are tenants of big time smugglers. The borders are porous and cannot be effectively covered. But we can’t give up the fight. Government should empower Customs with tools and give us the needed support.”

I think it is high time the government reviewed the list of prohibited items and looked at other ways of protecting the local industry. That is the reason for the prohibition, right? Wait, it couldn’t be because of patronage, could it? Or the creation of ‘overnight’ millionaires by prohibiting the importation of certain products and then granting  exclusive import license to certain individuals?

The saddest song to have come out of Africa in recent times was actually composed as a song of celebration, written to mark the ascendancy of an African-American to the presidency of the United States of America. It was a musical tribute by a Kenyan, and the lyrics say simply: it is easier for a Luo to be President of the United States than to become the President of Uganda.

The Luo are, of course, one of Kenya’s minority nationalities. Obama’s triumph took place, it will be recalled, after one of the most devastating riots ever witnessed in Kenya. It lasted weeks, left entire townships wiped off the face of Nairobi and environs, claimed hundreds of lives, many of them through singularly bestial forms of butchery. The panga reigned supreme. Those days were reminiscent – minus the scale – of the Rwandan massacres. Among the walking survivors are men who are traumatized for life, having been subjected to forced sexual mutilation. The cause? Denial of a people’s right to choose their own leader through the ballot box – that endemic curse of the modern African state. Kenya nonetheless made a claim on Obama as the logical spot for his first presidential touch-down on Black African soil. It should have been an occasion to be celebrated in festive accents as the return of the native son. If sentiment indeed weighed more on the scale of entitlements than humanity itself, the Kenyan claim would be universally unassailable.

The other, and indeed more presumptuous claimant to Barrack Obama’s recognition on his first presidential visit to the continent is of course, mine, Nigeria. The Nigerian nation has not witnessed an uprising on allied scale to Kenya’s in the last few decades, not since in the mid-1960s when a similar, but far less wholesale, indiscriminate campaign of arson and killings took place in a region that an incoming Head of State came to designate ‘the Wild, Wild West’. There was also the more recent spate of butchery in a northern state or two, but neither came close to matching the sheer brutality of the Kenyan scenario.

Nigeria cannot be ranked, needless to say, any higher on the democratic scale than Kenya, even though electoral robbery did not result in such mayhem, any more than it has led to a protracted Civil War that devastated the Ivory Coast in recent times. Nonetheless it is important to remind ourselves that the Biafran war of Secession that began in 1966 did not lack for flammable tributaries from accumulated electoral injustices. Memories of that war, and the fear of an even more nation destabilizing repeat have contributed to the seeming accomodativeness of the Nigerian people towards a now deeply entrenched project of national disenfranchisement. Only the complacent however dare eliminate possibilities of an eventual explosion from the suppressed rage that stems from civic dispossession, and the air of impunity that surrounds the incorrigible perpetrators. Indeed, this inevitability is seen by many – both insiders and outside observers – as only a matter of time. Since the debilitation of civil society through decades of military rule, Nigerians freely use the expression ‘internal colonialism’ as the readiest expression of the continuing suppression of popular will, an orchestrated democratic denial that operates in relay, and is sustained by a select hegemony resolved to remain in perpetual control of the nation. Offering nothing in return, this unproductive cabal has become increasingly arrogant and contemptuous in its dismissal of even a pragmatic semblance of a gesture towards fair dealing that sometimes salves the pride and dignity of a people.

This, then, is the background from which one listens to, or reads of, plaints of resentment and indignation from government cheer-leaders at Obama’s symbolic boycott of the ‘Giant of Africa’. They are lost to the irony of laying claim to recognition by a product of electoral equity, an African-American who came to power in a once openly racist nation through the ballot box. Such complainants are not stupid however, they are merely actors in a script of diabolical cynicism. How else it is possible for such politicians to conceive that a leader like Barack Obama, who has ascended to power through a respect for the manifested will of a people, would actually lend his presence to dignify any state that demonstrably rejects, indeed actively ridicules, the very means that brought him, Barrack Obama, to power? Blood, they say, is thicker than water. Obama’s gesture is intended to inform nations like Kenya and Nigeria that neither blood nor oil courses thicker than equity.

How sad it makes one – no, not the studied excision by Obama of those two nations from his itinerary – but the lack of objective self-assessment within the rulership circles of such ‘aggrieved’ nations! It evokes pity for the continent as a whole, that such political leadership exists today which, sooner than retire into their gilded holes to reflect, have actually gone to battle on behalf over some mystic entitlement, since such is not sustained by any credentials in democratic and responsible governance. Of the two, the case of our own nation, Nigeria, is obviously the more pathetic.

Primary among the qualities that earned Barrack Obama the prized crown of the American presidency was the public recognition of his intelligent even-handedness, the recognition of a thinking, knowledgeable being, analytic by training and temperament. Anyone who has read his memoirs – Dreams from my Father – or has somehow come into knowledge of his trajectory through childhood, his intellectual and political formation, all brought in evidence throughout a grueling political campaign, would understand immediately that Obama would sooner spend Thanksgiving Day with the genocidal government of Omar Bashir, or the throwback mullahs of Iran, than choose either Uganda or Nigeria for a first visit that not only pursues political and economic goals, but is profoundly symbolic.

The very astuteness of Barrack Obama, one that dictated the strategy of a political campaign that catapulted him to victory from the underdog position of a rank outsider, should have informed the ‘patriotic’ cheerleaders of African misgovernance that they can expect no preferential consideration from the 44th president of the American nation. This, just to refresh memories, was a candidate who ensured from the beginning that he would break with corporate patronage and thus, indebtedness, and rely largely on the mass contribution of cents and pennies to ensure a mandate of maximum independence. By contrast, behold the permanent indentureship of the Nigerian power base, not merely to the moneyed oligarchy, but to the most corrupt, indeed criminal elements within that disreputable oligarchy. Nigeria is a nation that repeatedly blows its chances to stand tall, to present to the world a massively endowed colossus, bestriding the continent with the over-abundant productive genius of its people and the generosity of nature resources.

What, instead, has been the actuality? A plague of incontinent rulers in relay, some in military uniform, others in civilian clothing, but all clones of one another, united in a commitment to unabashed profligacy, mutually assisted corruption and, to add insult to injury, an obsessive hankering for self-perpetuation, necessitating the cultivation of outright disdain for the elementary right of their citizens to a voice in leadership choice. Is this truly a nation that deserves the recognition, much less a gesture of respect, from any democratically elected leadership of the world, and one especially of such unprecedented political significance for the African continent itself?

A decade ago, needless to say, Ghana would also have been a non-contender. But the continent has witnessed, and remains envious of, the transformation that has taken place in Ghana, an internal process of self-recovery that nearly matches that of the United States in her transition from George Bush to Barrack Obama. Among the attributes of intelligence is the ability to create, or recognize the opportunity for self-renewal. Nigerians, at home or residing in the United States during the past decade, have not been slow to observe that the eight previous years in United States governance were uncannily paralleled within Nigeria – eight years of waste, deception, divisiveness and corruption, of advancing bankruptcy, eight years of arrogant subversion of democratic norms….all spearheaded by a man from whom the nation, the continent and the world expected so much, eight years that sent the nation spiraling into a reverse momentum that has earned it the humiliating designation of a ‘failed state’. Should an incoming product of the repudiation of such a shared past compromise his mandate by a significant visit to the other half, while that half remains fixated and unrepentant in its perpetuation of that disreputable past?

Of course if it were possible for Barrack Obama to visit Nigerians – the people that is – to express his condolences for such an unmerited state of affairs, parley with non-governmental organizations, exchange views with political alternatives, interact with the labour unions, hold talks with the insurgents of the oil-producing Delta region and offer direct succour to the neglected people of a benighted nation, I have no doubt whatsoever that Nigeria would indeed be his first choice. However, such a precedent being impossible – at least in these times – the only programme that remained would have been, at best, a tokenist interaction with the other Nigeria, duly vetted. The rest would be to wine and dine, sign some effete agreements and exchange presents with the current symbol of national decay and leadership alienation, a nation whose claim to the status of a giant is upheld only by the gigantesque dimensions of its retrogression since independence, its governance ineptness and the colossal scale of its corruption. Obama knows that every other hand he would shake at a state reception is steeped in sheer putrefaction from the sump of robbery, perhaps every third elbow deep in the blood of perceived political threats – across all levels of contestation.

Obama’s pronouncements indicate quite clearly that he would be the first to to admit that his own nation is past master of corruption both in its conduct at home and abroad, but he can boast that the Enrons, the Andersons, and the Madoffs are mere hostages of time, that sooner or later, they end up behind bars. Obama knows that the contrary is the case with Nigeria, that the Madoff-Enron breed will be presented as the leading citizens of the Nigerian nation, feted countrywide, that after their openly inglorious careers in and out of office, thanksgiving services are held for them in church and mosque, that it is such should-be social pariahs that will be lined up for formal handshakes and photo-ops with him, photos that they will proudly bequeath to their children and grandchildren, hang on their gilded walls and pillars of criminal impunity to the eternal glorification of decadence. He has chosen wisely to go the modest, unassuming flagbearer of the redemptive theology of Change.

The homecoming son knows that the Delta, Nigeria’s sole economic provider, for which all prior and potential modes of productivity have been jettisoned, is up in flames. I have wondered sometimes, by the way, whether it is a coincidence that one of the handful of officers of which the Nigerian army can be truly proud, now a retired Colonel, has taken to ostrich farming not far from Abuja, the seat of government. It cannot be by accident. Sooner or later, I think he reasons, the occupants of Aso Rock, and the profligate ‘representatives’ of the Nigerian people in the legislative houses will recognize the message of the ostrich, its fabled habit of burying its head in the sand of unconcern while the wind ruffles and exposes its behind. These days, it is no longer the wind, it is the fire, and only the ostrich does not yet recognize that its rear feathers are aflame. That is the lesson of the Delta uprising. Sometimes it is necessary to spell things out for the megaphones of, and pretenders to the mantle of leadership: what the Deltan insurgents are saying to the uncaring state is that the present conflict goes beyond the decades-old contemptuous neglect of the goose that lays the golden egg.

They are annunciating, in clear terms, that a system that siphons off an obscene percentage of the national revenue to sustain the rites, rituals and member life-styles of legislative houses, is ultimately unsustainable. They are serving notice – and their publicised manifestoes add up to no less – that the Nigerian state is itself untenable as presently constituted and governed, and must be taken apart, then re-assembled, this time in a manner that reflects the true aspirations and entitlements of the components and providers of that artificial entity. They are pointing out a noticeable constant: that time and time again, even when an incoming national leader has earlier promised no less than a drastic overhaul, no sooner does he settle into that power base than he proceeds to shore up and consolidate a cracked and collapsing edifice. This he does – the pattern has become predictable and boring – by a modest re-distribution among a restricted, conniving elite, but most often by an unscrupulous conversion of state power, brutal repression, political assassinations and divisive strategies. This was what the nation suffered – yet again – during the eight years of misrule of the last incumbent, a supposedly Born-Again democrat and assiduous bible-thumper. This, in sum, is the extraction, implicit or overt in pronouncements, by the Deltan insurgents.

I shall waste no more time on the deviants of the movement, the opportunists and mercenaries, the kidnappers for ransom, rapists, extortionists and psychopaths whose operations have contributed to obscuring the ideological core of the Movement for the Emancipation of the the Niger Delta (MEND), a confusion assiduously nurtured by the corrupt leadership of the nation. The outside world knows its own history, and should be the last to point fingers at the presence of extortionists and psychopaths in any movement, no matter how lofty its ideals. It is for us, within the Nigerian nation, to sort out those criminals and bring them to justice, a task that is however complicated by the presence of far more seasoned, far more deeply entrenched criminals, more impudent extortionists, assassins, the barefaced, wholesale expropriators of a nation’s resources in positions of power, reveling in the now untamable rampage of impunity. Now, this is the mafiadom whose triumphalist existence a democratically elected outsider, torch-bearer of a phenomenal precedent, is expected to legitimize by an inaugural visitation!

The super-patriots and national chauvinists must however be encouraged to continue to wallow, infuriated, in the sludge of national amour-propre, bawds to the careerists of open prostitution. We can only remind them that, outside their constricted purlieu, there are other national leaders who are not quite as promiscuous as they are, or are accustomed to encountering. They should content themselves with the representative emotion of the present selected national leader who, unbelieving that he actually sat in the presence of a former United States president, could not contain himself as he gushed: This is the happiest moment of my life. That presidential host was George Bush II. By contrast, this is indeed one of those instances when absence makes the heart grow fonder. For the average Nigerian, this month of July 2009, when another president did NOT step foot on Nigerian soil, is a month to treasure. The sentiment, after all, is only borrowed from that of the enraptured home president, for what such a Nigerian is saying, equally enraptured is also: this is the happiest moment of my life.

Wole Soyinka

President Obama

Responses
Responses to the interview have varied widely, from ‘I am so proud to be American’ to ‘Bush protected Israel, Obama is going to destroy her’. (You can check the Al Arabiya website for some of the comments.) My impression is that this is a really smart man, who understands that so much is tied to a peaceful relationship with the Muslim world. I think this interview is a great blow to Al Qaeda, and that it makes a case for extremist Islam a lot harder to sell. But, in case anybody thinks this is a sign of weakness, just remember that this same man who is saying that America is not the enemy of the Muslim world commands the best-equipped Army in the world.

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A strong Europe is essential to America’s recovery. The United States is too stretched — militarily and economically — to do without the cohesion of its closest allies.

There are three major European powers: Britain, France and Germany. Britain is going through a meltdown so severe that the joke there is that the country’s the next Iceland. That aside, its European credentials are always a little suspect.

And:

The recession is severe in Germany, but the country still has a savings ratio of 11 percent (it’s negative in the United States), a strong manufacturing sector and, after spending a staggering $1.8 trillion to integrate the Communist East, it has managed to get its budget close to balance.

And that is where I think America and the UK should learn from Germany. I have found it increasingly baffling that almost every economist has pointed to the need to increase consumption, the need to make people start buying again. I find it a little problematic that people do not seem to want to discuss how part of the current economic crisis was created by people buying what they cannot afford and spending money they do not have. I hear stories of people having more than three credit cards, and I simply do not get it. That is where Germans can teach Americans and the Brits a bit. An average German, for instance, spends what they have saved; and I don’t think there are many who hold multiple credit cards.

If only one lesson is taken away from the current global economic crisis, it should be that people cannot just keep spending money they do not have without eventually running into trouble. But, sadly, it seems that is not a lesson people are prepared to learn. At least that is what is shown by rhetorics of economists and policy makers who aim to get banks to start lending again, and people to start borrowing and spending again.

You can read Mr Cohen’s column here.