What Greece and Oregon have in common and why money launderers should care about the US defense bill
Hello, and welcome to Oligarchy. We are tracking how Covid-19 and the world’s response to it is affecting the super-rich — and what that means for power and politics.
CAN WE CELEBRATE THE NDAA YET?
I read a history book recently, which described how baffled European powers were when, towards the end of World War One, they came up against the US political system. Accustomed to a world where, if a government said it would do something, that thing tended to get done, they suddenly had to tussle with the concept of the separation of powers. The president might want to join the League of Nations, but if Congress says ‘nah’, then it wasn’t going to happen.
Here in the UK, ordinary citizens (well, me, at any rate) have faced that same steep learning curve over the last four years, as Donald Trump has tussled with ever more obscure aspects of the U.S. Constitution. We only have a few more weeks of his stress-testing approach to government left, but now – as a last Christmas present – we have to try to understand the veto-proof majority.
Both houses of Congress have now passed the National Defense Authorization Act by the kind of large majorities that stop the president being able to veto it. But what if he vetoes it anyway, as he has – once more – promised to do: because, apparently, “THE BIGGEST WINNER OF OUR NEW DEFENSE BILL IS CHINA”?