Gary Wills on B16 and Newman in the NYRB blog

Pope Benedict XVI is the best-dressed liar in the world. And in England he presided over the best set-designed lie imaginable. He beatified the nineteenth-century Oxford theologian John Henry Newman, presenting him (in the penultimate step toward canonization) as a docile believer in papal authority, an enemy of dissent, and a rebuke to anyone who questions church authority.

Newman was a restive Catholic under constant scrutiny and criticism from Rome until a new pope (Leo XIII) bought him off with a cardinal’s robes when he was eighty and tamable.

He was a fierce critic of Pope Pius IX (beatified in 2000 by Benedict’s predecessor). Pius was pope for over thirty years, and Newman said that any man holding that office even for twenty years was bound to become a tyrant. He was allied with Lord Acton in opposing the “tyrant majority” at the Vatican Council that in the year 1870 declared the pope infallible. He wrote of the Council: “We have come to a climax of tyranny. It is not good for a pope to live twenty years. It is anomaly, and bears no good fruit; he becomes a god, has no one to contradict him, does not know facts, and does cruel things without meaning it.”

Before the Council made the fatal declaration, Newman wrote to his closest friend Ambrose St. John hoping that the Italian forces threatening to take away his secular power would succeed, or that Pius would die: “We must hope, for one is obliged to hope it, that the pope will be driven from Rome and will not continue the council or that there will be another pope. It is sad he should force us to such wishes.” That is far from the figure the current pope will offer the world as a model for submissive belief. Benedict was once a scholar and now claims to be infallible in matters of faith or morals. But on the clearest facts of history he is a dissembler and disguiser. Were Newman alive to hope for preventing this distortion of his history, would he hope for the pope’s demise, as he hoped for Pius IX’s death before he did such damage to the church by claiming “tyrannical” powers?

September 16, 2010 12:20 p.m.

Vanity Fair on Murdoch vs Sulzberger

Like watching the Corleones picking on the Royal Tenenbaums.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

A US colleague of mine thoughtfully sent through a memo on the Greek crisis and European economic outlook from a chap at Oaktree Capital. It was the usual pillory of the Greeks for being lazy tax-dodgers and praise for the fiscally prudent Germans. It prompted the following response.

"The Euro was basically a political compromise: West Germany was allowed to reunify with East Germany (the French hated this because it made Germany without doubt the premiere power in Europe) if the French were allowed to have the Deutsche Mark (i.e. a lower cost of borrowing). It was explicitly framed in these terms by Mitterand and Kohl. From the same source of French insecurity comes the decision to allow the fiscally weak countries such as Belgium, Italy and Greece to join despite the fact that they did not, and were not likely to, meet the Maastricht Convergence Criteria. The idea was to create a voting block of nations that France could commander as a counter-veiling force to Germany on the ECB and the Council of Economic Ministers.

"I also get a bit cheesed off when commentators describe the current crisis as being caused by the profligate South in the teeth of opposition from the fiscally prudent North. The South is profligate – not to mention inefficient, unproductive and crippled by an unjustified sense of entitlement (if Portugal didn’t exist, would you invent it (unless you were a golf-fanatic)?). But the North – while possessing a decent manufacturing export sector – is also crippled with over-generous and inefficient social security programmes. The key fact is that Germany – the apparent paragon of fiscal virtue – broke the Maastricht Stability and Growth Pact rules on budget deficits in 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005. Not to mention to 2009 and 2010(f). By contrast, Spain passed the test with flying colours – posting SURPLUSES in 2004, 2005 and 2006. So, enough of the anti-South propaganda. Germany, France, Belgium etc all over-spent and that’s why they didn’t come down hard on Greece – because they would’ve had to come down on themselves too.

"The amazing thing is not that bond market vigilantes have finally caught onto this – but that between 2000 and 2008 they gave the Eurozone the benefit of the doubt. We are now in a situation where bond markets and rating agencies are enforcing the fiscal discipline that Eurozone politicians should’ve enforced themselves. All of which goes to show that there is nothing new in European politics. Juvenal had it exact in 180 AD – you can’t trust the people who are subject to the law to enforce it.

Information from the North Concerning Ice

Each seal uses many blowholes, and every blowhole is used by many seals.

"JakeN" commenting on The Economist's analysis of Goldman versus the SEC

In summary,

a) Goldman escaped having to admit wrongdoing.

b) Goldman fined a fraction of the amount in the original complaint.

c) Goldman ordered not to break the law.

d) Goldman staff ordered to find out what the law is.

(a) and (b) are par for the course in terms of financial regulation. But (c) and (d) sound like an extract from the satirical script of “Jon Stewart’s Daily Show”.

From The Economist

"The barrier to (EU structural) reform has always been political, not economic. Jean-Claude Juncker, prime minister of Luxembourg, put it best in 2007: “We all know what to do, but we don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it.”"

It's the little things

From the Letters page of the Trinity Issue of Oxford Today:

"In your interview with Monty Python actor Terry Jones ("A Python's Progress", OT, 22.2), you referred repeatedly to his involvement with the "Oxford Review". When I was at Oxford, my involvement was with the Oxford Revue. Call me picky, but I think that I was involved with the one better spelt.

Rowan Atkinson.
Queen's 1975.