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Ils recueillent depuis presque 40 ans l’or noir de la Mer du Nord. (Imaginez ce pactole de royalties pétrolières en France.)
Ils décident souverainement de leur politique monétaire, budgétaire et nous assomment sans arrêt de leurs vertus libérales.
La City leur assure un empire financier dans un archipel de paradis fiscaux ceinturant l’europe.

Résultat : un déficit national historique, le “quantitative easing” (la planche à billet) et une livre coulante (plutôt que flottante… sans même accroitre leurs exportations), des secteurs immobiliers et bancaires en quasi déroute, des scandales de corruption politique de dimension grecque (normal entre marins louvoyants parmis leurs îles de trésors fiscaux ou maffieux) ... jusqu’à se mettre à la merci des agences de notation anglo-saxonne !

Et maintenant ... alors que le baril de pétrole est à la moitié de son record de juillet 2008 le prix à la pompe atteint des records ! Ils accusent la baisse de la Livre (le coeur de leur politique monétaire ?!) et un goulot au raffinage (ça alors ... une occasion ratée pour Dunkerque, à quelques km pourtant).

Bref un exploit de première grandeur dans le royaume du Souverainisme, mais tout ira mieux dans l’avenir grâce au génie National ... quoique la hausse du taux d’émigration ?

UK Petrol Prices to Hit Record High As Stealth Inflation Rages http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article17944.html

dirait que c’est une crise classique de surproduction liée à la libéralisation des échanges. On a pressuré le salarié ce qui a généré d’énormes bénéfices concentrés dans peu de mains. Mais surtout, on a tué l’acheteur puisque qu’en fin de compte, l’acheteur est le salarié.

Une autre vue d’un economiste…

La crise Americaine doit, a mon avis, imperativement etre analysee a travers ce que nous a montre l’histoire et la-dessus je suis en parfait accord avec vous.
Cependant, je ne pense pas que les USA puissent etre reduits a un simple etat “contractuel”, c’est “tout simplement” un Etat regalien (car clairement fonde sur une volontee populaire—si je vous ai bien compris) en mode Empire. Le probleme classique de l’Empire, extremement bien decrit dans “War, Peace, War” de P. Turcheon, est qu’ au fur et a mesure de son expansion il perd, lentement, ce qu’Ibn Khaldoun appella l’Asabiya, la cohesion sociale (ou plutot l’indice de cohesion sociale).
L’expansion continuelle et l’envie de tout maitriser eloignent l’Empire de plus en plus des ideaux qui l’ont forge et, avec le temps, ce goufre devient si grand que l’Empire croule.

Finalement, je tiens a remarquer que si la plupart des economistes modernes sont des abrutis, entiches de theories econometriques neo-Keynesiennes a la noix (oui, ils m’enervent…), nous ne sommes pas tous comme ca. Certains parmis nous pensent encore que l’etude des comportements humains n’est pas toujours reductible a une serie d’equations (et heureusement, sinon je serais chomeur!)

PS: desole je n’ai pas d’accents sur ce clavier.

après l’avertissement des 614m$ de bonus retiré, Gates passe à la manière forte avec Lockheed:

http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=58317

le contrat JSF devrait passer sous un mode de prix fixe et non plus de cost-plus. Si cela se fait (et on peut faire confiance à lockheed pour résister) ca nous promet des larmes de crocodiles dans quelques années pour avoir une rallonge, style airbus avec son A400M.

The great American debate recommences

Mar. 13, 2010 By LOUISE W. KNIGHT History News Service http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/03/13/2037075/history-government.html

This country began with a fierce debate, and it does not appear to be over. The folks rallying to the Tea Party campaign espouse a program that goes right back to the Articles of Confederation. Whatever we think of it, the movement is as American as apple pie. And its followers think so too, calling themselves “patriots” rather than Republicans or Democrats.
Mark Skoda, the president of a Tea Party PAC, recently summed up what he calls their first principles: “less government, fiscal responsibility, lower taxes, states’ rights and national security.”

There’s an irony here, though. The Tea Party-ers lustily cheer at every mention of the U.S. Constitution yet their principles were most fiercely embodied not in our current Constitution, but in the Articles of Confederation.

Remember those? The same month that Congress was debating a declaration of independence, a committee was drafting the articles. Its purpose was to form a new government, which it called the United States of America.
The states completed ratification of the articles in 1781. Eight years later the Constitution supplanted the articles and brought to an end the political institution that Tea Party members now seem intent on reviving.

The articles allowed the new central government—solely a legislative body—to make war but not to tax or regulate interstate commerce. States, nervous about losing their independence, had designed a weak government intentionally. That was why it was called a confederacy.

(The Southern states, equally determined to protect states’ rights, created another one 80 years later.)

The first confederacy failed. Unable to tax, it struggled to raise money from the states to finance the Continental Army; after the war ended, it could not help states floundering with war debts.
By 1786, it was clear to many that the confederation needed to be replaced by something stronger, a federation.

The second constitution, the one we live under now, became law in 1788. It gave the central government powers to tax and to regulate interstate commerce and created a national government that for the first time had executive and judicial branches. Many Americans, known as the Antifederalists, had their doubts about the new constitution.

Their spiritual descendants are the Tea Party-ers. Like the Antifederalists, the Tea Party folks are fiercely distrustful of the national government, especially its power to tax, even though they completely trust its power to defend the nation. They also dislike the two-party political system created in Washington’s first administration. Sarah Palin recently declared her disapproval of both the Republican and Democratic parties in her speech to the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville and sparked an explosion of approval from her audience.

Today’s defenders of the Constitution are the progressives. Led by President Barack Obama, they believe that the national government should not only protect the nation from attack, promote interstate commerce and protect individual rights but also solve national problems through federal legislation—from building infrastructure to promote economic growth to making the schools better to protecting workers from unjust employment practices. It is not surprising that the Tea Party-ers hate Obama. He embodies the Antifederalists’ worst fears.

What is perhaps most interesting about the Tea Party-ers is that they have no interest in the socially divisive cultural issues—abortion, gay marriage, euthanasia—that have so dominated our recent national political debate. That is refreshing.

Instead, these Americans have returned to the oldest argument arising from this nation’s founding—what should the role of the national government be? Should it help Americans who are struggling or should it not? Should we maintain (and even strengthen, as through health reform) the progressive apparatus of laws and programs that keep the unemployed, the poor and the elderly sick, and even all citizens, from suffering, and increase total federal tax revenues to pay for it, or should we deconstruct that apparatus and reduce those revenues?

This is the debate we should be having. May it recommence!

Le JSF vu par l’humour britannique

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0jgZKV4N_A

Grandiose !

merci pour votre analyse des mandats SARKOZY OBAMA .
une remarque: pouvait-il en être autrement au regard de l’état des sociétés qui les ont respectivement élus.
La société française en élisant SARKOZY n’a -t-elle pas exprimée son angoisse identitaire à travers un personnage qui en résume de façon insolente la problématique?
Quant à OBAMA le personnage est à lui seul la narrative de l’obsession néo-con, un métis portant dans son prénon toute la problématique de la guerre contre le terrorisme.
Comment de tels personnages peuvent-ils embrasser et résoudre les éléments essentiels de leur fonction . ils ne sont rein d’autre que des images. Quand donc une image a -t-elle eu le pouvoir de gouverner?

les bonnes nouvelles s’accumulent encore et toujours pour le JSF :
-le 11/03/2010, le GAO publie un nouveau rapport sur ce thème:
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d10520t.pdf

quelques passages valent le détour, l’audit a commencé en mai 2009, et le rapport dit ceci:
“Total estimated acquisition costs have increased $46 billion and development extended 2 ½ years, compared to the program baseline approved in 2007”

donc pour résumer le programme a été décalé de 2 années et demi sur une durée d’environ deux années et demi de déroulement, ca promet pour la suite.

- cette publication a attiré quelques sympathiques commentaires outre atlantique:
Outre Bill Sweetman, on notera surtout celle de Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee:

“This raises great concern, not only about the potential for a Nunn-McCurdy breach now, but for continuing problems with the JSF program….. We cannot sacrifice other important acquisitions in the DOD investment portfolio to pay for this capability.”

effectivement l’impensable devient pensable.

Donc Bird and Fortune avaient raison trois ans en avance voir ici http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6h8i8wrajA à 3mn30.
Même les comiques ont eu connaissance du problème.

Si la France et ses alliés européens au sein de l’Agence spatiale européenne avaient 2 sous de visées stratégiques, la coopération spatiale avec la Russie devrait devenir une priorité. La Chine entend être bientôt sur la Lune, l’Amérique (Nasa) semble sur le recul. Il serait donc temps de relancer un grand programme russo-européen,  lanceurs de Nlle génération, capsules habitables, orbiteurs, satellites divers.

Il me semble me souvenir que le précédent contrat, annulé donc par la suite et non renouvelé désormais, avait en son temps été présenté comme une des heureuses conséquence de la réintégration de la France dans l’Otan.
D’où une possible sensation pénible qui s’exprimerait en termes maladroits parce qu’un peu vive…

Les USA et Israel ont un point commun, l’image et sa fabrication, de faire disparaitre toutes traces de leurs crimes, c’est comme sur TF1, une histoire furtive et fascinante, les experts en arnaques c’est très divertissant, c’est ce que disait ce stratégiste Ralph Peters, fabriqué la réalité au faire et a mesure, le complexe financiaro/militaro/hollywoodien.
Comme disait Anders les sociétés sont parfaitement en accord avec leurs images.

Effectivement, l’impuissance de Washington incarnée par celle d’Obama commence à devenir une évidence pour le monde entier : même le Figaro la relève, entre la récente humiliation publique du vice-président Biden par le gouvernement israélien (cela semble devenir une coutume du gouvernement Netanyahou d’humilier publiquement ses alliés s’ils osent ne pas se soumettre à ses moindres desiderata), ou les déclarations attribués à certains gouvernants russes :

“Dans l’entourage de Poutine, certains responsables auraient récemment ironisé sur le peu d’importance de parvenir à un accord [START] avec les Américains, au motif que d’ici à trois ans, le président Obama pourrait bien «ne plus être là».”

http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2010/03/11/01003-20100311ARTFIG00016-le-doute-grandit-dans-le-camp-obama-.php

Il est possible que vous fassiez une lecture extralucide des propos de l’Amiral. Lequel insiste lourdement sur les contingences économiques qui justifient « confiance mutuelle et coopération bilatérale » (c’est-à-dire transferts de technologie…), à ce point lourdement que l’on peut douter d’intentions autres que celle du sauvetage des chantiers navals français, menacés de noyade (ce qui est avéré). Puisque Forissier s’adressait au public russe dans l’interview, il aurait pu mettre en avant des arguments plus politiques qu’épiciers (on sent le désespoir du marchand qui n’a plus de clients et qui excite la compassion pour arracher une affaire). L’importance de ce possible deal ne fait pas de doute : en témoignent les réactions anglo-américaines. Mais à ce stade, la naissance d’une hypothétique « coopération bilatérale » Paris-Moscou pourrait bien être une conséquence de ce marché qu’une cause délibérée. Du moins de la part de l’Elysée : rien dans les faits ne laisse accroire que la France soit équipée de puissants stratèges en matière de politique internationale…

Après l’avion de transport furtif (voir ci-dessous), aurons-nous droit aussi à un “tanker-refueler stealth” ?
Les avions de l’USAF seront-ils bientôt tous “invisibles”?
—————————————————————————————————————————
DoD: U.S. Needs Stealthy Airlifter



By JOHN T. BENNETT
Defense News 10 March 2010



By the 2020s, U.S. special-forces troops will need a stealthy new air­lifter to sneak past ever-improving radar and missile systems into “de­nied areas,” says the Pentagon’s top civilian special operations official. “At some point, serious consid­eration will need to be given to the development and fielding of a more survivable, long-range SOF [special operations forces] air mo­bility platform that exploits ad­vances in signature reduction and electronic attack,” Michael Vick­ers, assistant U.S. defense secre­tary for special operations, low-in­tensity conflict and interdependent capabilities, said during a March 4 interview at the Pentagon. “We don’t have to decide today” what to buy, but the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review probably “will have to look at this pretty hard.” Currently, U.S. special operators use a mix of helicopters and fixed­wing aircraft, like modified C-130 transports, to move by air.

While it’s too early to determine what a new stealth transporter might look like or how much it would cost, Vickers said “it will be expensive” and look less like a modified C-130 and more like a tra­ditional stealth aircraft. He also said the need for range would force it to operate from land bases, not ships. The Pentagon flies stealthy F-22 fighters and B-2 bombers, but the development of a radar-avoiding airlifter could require a radically different design.

“This is a tough one,” said Ronald Epstein, an analyst at Banc of America Securities-Merrill Lynch. “You have to carry a lot of weight.” The most likely choice, Epstein said, is a blended-wing aircraft. A NASA fact sheet shows a concept for a blended-wing airliner that re­sembles a flying wing with a thick airfoil-shaped fuselage section.

But Epstein said a flying wing de­sign “wouldn’t give you the volume you need, especially to get all the gear in with them.” Another option might be a swing wing that would look like a B-2 bomber in flight, and then could “swing to look more like a C-130 for the insertion part,” Epstein said. Several Pentagon veterans and defense analysts said they agree about the need for a stealthy insertion plane in an era of improving air defenses.

“The issue for the SOF community, however, has been, and remains, cost,” said Barry Watts, a former director of the Pentagon’s Program Evaluation and Analysis directorate who now is an analyst at Washington’s Center for Strate­gic and Budgetary Assessments. “I am skepti­cal that the SOF community will find the fund­ing to procure the kind of insertion platform they need.” But Pentagon leaders appear determined to stay ahead of potential adversaries who are im­proving their ability to keep U.S. forces at bay. Just weeks ago, the 2010 QDR declared weapons and vehicles that can break through or outmaneuver anti-access systems are “funda­mental to the nation’s ability to protect its in­terests and to provide security in key regions.” The drive to create this arsenal will reshape DoD spending discussions, said Peter Huessy, a defense and national security consultant.

“I think the major debate within the defense budget over the next five years will come in” the anti-access realm, Huessy said.

For the next few years, U.S. special opera­tions forces will use their modified C-130s and helicopters to go where their secret missions send them. But a decade hence, defenses will be much more able to lock onto the planes’ radar, infrared, and acoustic signatures.

“The air defense environments are becom­ing so threatening, particularly because of these advanced, double-digit [surface-to-air missiles], that it’s driving our air forces — 

Navy and Air Force — to signature reduction and electronic attack to penetrate those de­fenses,” Vickers said. “So, at some point, if I ... also want to insert SOF in, or if I can only put in a B-2 or its successor, then I’m kidding my­self if I think a clever C-130 is going to get in there with terrain-following radar.” Watts concurred. “Mike’s right: An upgrad­ed C-130 isn’t going to get the job done in the face of double-digit SAMs.” Vickers said the new aircraft will not likely resemble today’s MC-130s. “If you want the signature reduction, it would have to look more like stealth aircraft,” he said.

Not all things will be possible. For instance, he said, “you would make tradeoffs between payload and a number of things to maximize the survivability aspects of the aircraft. You may not get the short takeoff or landing on hard strips that we would like to see.” Vickers said the Pentagon might also decide to buy a variety of aircraft to meet SOF needs. A long-range, stealthy insertion airplane would not be needed “everywhere in the world, so you might have a high-low mix,” he said. “But if I say, ‘I want to put them into this area where only the leading edge of air power is going,’ I would need corresponding technology.” “Not every contingency by any stretch will require these capabilities; just [a] small set,” he said. “But when you need it, you need it.” 

Purpose-Built Airlifter? 

Today’s special-forces airlifters are gener­ally upgraded versions of military airlifters, but “the idea of taking a transport aircraft that moves GPFs [general-purpose forces] around and then modifying that may be coming to an end,” Vickers said.

Nevertheless, he said his special opera­tions/low-intensity shop would closely follow relevant technology work elsewhere in DoD. “A SOF program would probably follow on larger efforts in this realm, taking advantage of work the services have done elsewhere so it might not take us as long as [it] takes them,” Vickers said.

Still, such a development effort is “typical­ly, a decade or so of effort,” he said.

U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command has been studying possible stealthy airlifters for years as part of its M-X program. And sev­eral major U.S. defense firms from time to time have floated conceptual solutions.

Vickers added that the next-generation SOF airlifter will likely fly from ground bases, not ships, because of the ranges involved.

“These [enemy] capabilities and the variety of them can push you out further, and threat­en your close-in bases. And then when you try to penetrate, they’ve got all these defens­es that make life tough for you there,” he said. “Depending on their geographic depth and where the target is, you compound your problem in that you’ve got to go a long way. That range problem ... generally drives you to land-based.” Still, he said, for missions like taking out “coastal targets, then a sea-based capability might make sense.” Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute, said big-ticket acquisition programs could make SOF less attractive to Washington. “Political appointees have been enamored with SOF throughout this decade,” he said, but “once SOF starts demanding big money for items like stealthy insertion air­craft, its appeal will wane.” What’s more, Thompson said, as acquisition program costs grow, so does congressional poking around for details on how federal funds are being spent.

“As the budgetary footprint of SOF grows,” he said, “legislators will want to know more, and that could lead to controversy about the role of such capabilities in our overall de­fense posture.” ■