The Stock Market, The Rule of Law and Vince Foster
'The Secret Life of Bill Clinton'
8/4/98 Ambrose Evans Pritchard excerpt
"James Dale Davidson...........best known as President of the National Taxpayer's Union, he is also an accomplished author. He co-edits the Strategic Investments newsletter with William Rees-Mogg - or the Baron of Hintonblewitt to use his correct title - member of the House of Lords and a former editor of The Times of London. Strategic Investments is tailored to those who want hard intelligence for investment purposes, long before it appears in the general press.
Davidson had the same tutor as Bill Clinton at Oxford, enjoyed Clinton's "charm and geniality," and contributed to his 1992 presidential campaign. "I knew he was a bounder, of course, but my hope was that he'd turn out to be the Carlos Menem of North America and slash entitlement spending," said Davidson.
But questions of economic management were soon overtaken by the much greater issue of the rule of law. For Davidson the Foster cover-up is a marker of the declining integrity of the American democratic system. If the U.S. judicial system cannot summon the courage to deal with this case, if it behaves like the Mexican or the Indonesian or Nigerian judiciaries, then there is no reason to pay a "rule of law" premium on U.S.. stocks, bonds, and real assets.
He recommends investing in countries at a positive stage of the moral and cultural cycle, like Chile, where judges, prosecutors, and police cannot be bought so easily. A Chilean policeman in the 1990s, he asserts with contrarian mischief, is much more honest than a U.S. cabinet officer.
But at a deeper level Davidson is afraid that Foster's death, which he calls an "extra-judicial execution," is a sign of incipient fascism. He notes that the Clintons have mastered the art - described by Hannah Arendt in `The Origins of Totalitarianism' -"of turning all questions of fact into questions of motive." The Clintons do not try to rebut allegations. They use surrogates to muddy the waters and smear opponents, just as the National Socialists used to do. That they should be able to employ this practice to obscure the violent death of a top White House aide throws into doubt the durability of the republic.
"A government that winks at murder will wink at anything," he says, "what's left after that? Cannibalism?"
freerepublic.com
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