What we have been seeing worldwide, from India to the UK to the US, is the rebellion against the inner circle of no-skin-in-the-game policymaking "clerks" and journalists-insiders, that class of paternalistic semi-intellectual experts with some Ivy league, Oxford-Cambridge, or similar label-driven education who are telling the rest of us 1) what to do, 2) what to eat, 3) how to speak, 4) how to think… and 5) who to vote for.

-        The Intellectual Yet Idiot, Nassim Nicholas Taleb

President Obama gave a speech at the United Nations yesterday.  I could probably stop here….

Posturing

But let's press on.  It is a speech overflowing with intelligent sounding words that reflect a total – and even corrupt – lack of wisdom; it is a speech that fools no one in the room (it isn't really meant to, as they are more or less in on the game), and is fooling fewer and fewer people who will never be invited into the room – people like you and me:

From the depths of the greatest financial crisis of our time, we coordinated our response to avoid further catastrophe and return the global economy to growth.

A financial crisis created by the same "we" who coordinated the response that resulted in "growth" in every corner of the globe except for the corners occupied by, well, most of us.

We've taken away terrorist safe havens….

Except for where "we've" created them, like Syria, Iraq, Libya, France, Germany, Belgium, the United States….

…strengthened the nonproliferation regime…

Except for the trillion-dollar nuclear "modernization" program announced by you-know-who.

…resolved the Iranian nuclear issue through diplomacy….

The single, reasonably positive, foreign policy action of the United States in the last several decades.

We opened relations with Cuba…

Is it appropriate to take credit for stopping your abuse of your wife?  Does this deserve an atta-boy?  Can you give yourself a pat on the back for this?

With these supposed positives come a few negatives:

Around the world, refugees flow across borders in flight from brutal conflict.

The conflict brought on by the "global force for good."

Financial disruptions continue to weigh upon our workers and entire communities.