And Now for Something Completely Predictable: A Retro-Post for a Retro-Celebrity Part Two

By Michael Giometti-

(In the first part of this post we started to take John Cleese to task for his characterization of America, or at least that part of it that doesn’t swoon over Barack Obama, as “backwoods, racist, and redneck.” We set out to prove that there was very little in the way of “hope and change” that we could expect from an Obama administration (and so far we have not been disappointed). We numbered the ways that George Bush, far from being a” heartless, small-government conservative” when it came to social welfare policies, was actually a suitable heir in that respect to FDR and LBJ. Here we’ll continue the tirade by listing the ways that Barack Obama resembles George Bush and his ilk on national security issues.)

Left or Right?

On national security issues, the Bush administration was rightly characterized as fond of unconstitutional foreign military operations and domestic security measures. This behavior is considered typically right-wing, but a cursory look at modern Democrat administrations, from Wilson to Clinton, and their friendly Congresses puts the lie to this. Detailing the ways these “peace-loving” Democrats slashed and burned their way through the geopolitical landscape of the twentieth century will take another overly long post, so we’ll stick with Barack Obama for now.

Despite the constant shouts of “Hope and Change” that rained down like hammer blows from the Obama campaign, Democrats, and those in the media friendly to him (known as The Media), Barack Obama is no great agent of change. Consider his stands on various national security issues as Senator and candidate—and later as President:

· Senator Obama was always an outspoken critic of our involvement in Iraq and has moved to end that involvement as president. His commitment, like most Democrats in Congress, can be called into question, however, in light of his nearly complete reluctance to vote to defund the effort, as well as the leisurely nature of his exit plan as president, which will keep us there until at least 2012.

· Iraq aside, from listening to some of his campaign speeches one could be forgiven for seeing Senator and candidate Obama as an interventionist on the order of Bill Clinton or George Bush. While condemning our operation in Iraq, he nonetheless justified hypothetical large-scale operations in Sudan, Zimbabwe, Iran, and Pakistan.

Just days after the inauguration, President Obama launched missile strikes against Taliban and Al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan, continuing a recent Bush Administration policy of small-scale missile strikes there. In the ensuing months, Obama has softened his public comments on any intensification of American military activity in Pakistan in hopes of prodding Pakistan itself to take more active measures against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Toward this end he has secured a dramatic increase in aid to the country. Nevertheless, he has left open the possibility of more active military measures there.

· Like most Democrats, Obama has been an enthusiastic supporter of our involvement in Afghanistan. Indeed a common refrain among Democrats, including Obama, has been that the Republicans’ “obsession” over Iraq had caused the important struggle in Afghanistan to be “under-resourced.” As president, Obama sent 17.5 thousand additional troops shortly after taking office and has just announced a plan to send about twice as many more.

· Obama has a mixed record on civil liberties for American citizens. As a senator, though he did call for a liberalizing reform of the PATRIOT Act in 2005, he nevertheless voted for amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 2008 that extended government wiretapping authority. Furthermore, as president, he is now calling for a renewal of those provisions of PATRIOT Act set to expire.

What hasn’t been brought up so far are the similar efforts under Bush and Obama to prop up/stimulate our ailing economy. This mare’s nest deserves its own post, but it suffices to say that Bush played Herbert Hoover to Obama’s FDR in laying the foundation (and the first few stories) of a vast government edifice of disastrous economic planning.

So again, Mr. Cleese, why all the breathless talk about some great choice to be made in this country?

(In the next, and last, part of this post interminable, let’s take a look at John Cleese’s political views—or at least what we can best determine them to be. For, you see, it’s hard to find anything explicit on that subject for about a decade. Watching him spew condescension from his seaside porch to an obsequious, nondescript interviewer or slap thighs with an equally unchallenging Keith Olbermann takes us pretty far, but we’ll nevertheless take a closer look. We’ll also show what these views have meant for Great Britain. More generally, we’ll consider why it is that the ideologies of Right and Left seem to converge, and why their respective members remain stubbornly oblivious to this fact and unjustifiably vituperative to their philosophical cousins. Finally, I’ll qualify my criticism of Europeans, but not Monty Python.)

What Recovery? America's Problems "Getting Worse, Not Better," Says Jim Rogers

(Yahoo Finance)

"It's getting worse, not better."

That's how Jim Rogers responds to the recent talk of improvement from President Obama, Treasury Secretary Geithner and Fed Chairman Bernanke, among others.

"Papering over the problem is not going to solve America's problem," Rogers says. "The idea you can solve a problem of too much debt and too much consumption with more consumption and more debt defies belief. I cannot believe that grownups would stand there and say that."

History shows the only way to solve a financial crisis is "when people go bankrupt, you let them go bankrupt," Rogers say. "Then, competent people come in, take over the assets, reorganize and you start over."

But rather than "take the pain and reorganize and start over," as Sweden, South Korea and others have done, Rogers says America is "doing the Japanese model."

Keeping zombie banks alive and bailing out their creditors will only prolong the pain, the famed financier predicts. "What has been happening is the government has been printing and spending a lot of money," he says. "The problem is not solved - they're making the problem worse."

Adding insult to injury, Rogers fears the "unintended consequences" of new regulations that inevitably come from politicians seeking someone to blame for the crisis.

"The problems in last two years came from industries that are heavily regulated: banking, insurance, mortgage," he notes. "Now what? You're going to make the regulations tougher? It's not the regulations, it's the regulators."

Sovereign Debt Is the Next Big Worry

By MICHAEL CASEY (WSJ)

NEW YORK -- If you're looking for one global risk to really worry about, look no further than the mountain of debt accumulated by governments in their efforts to support domestic economies.

Moody's Investors Service says there's $49.5 trillion of sovereign debt outstanding -- and this week, ratings firms, and some jumpy bond traders, have shone a glaring light on it.

The raters are worried that governments' massive deficit-spending campaigns to pull their economies out of last year's crisis won't produce enough economic growth to pay for itself.
But none of this is new. A month ago, the International Monetary Fund projected that the average debt-to-gross domestic product ratio of the 10 advanced country members of the Group of 20 developing and developed nations would mushroom to 118% by 2014. Such numbers have led some pundits to warn of a debt crisis, especially regarding the U.S.'s dependence on foreign creditors.

What's key now is that the recent market jitters could be self-fulfilling. Falling bond prices mean higher yields, which makes it harder for governments to refinance future obligations. That will hurt the currencies of those nations and will challenge fixed exchange rate regimes -- especially in the euro zone and for currencies pegged to the dollar.

Spain became the latest flashpoint Wednesday when Standard Poor's changed the outlook on its AA+ rating to negative. As it did when it downgraded Portugal's outlook Monday, S&P emphasized a weak growth outlook.

And with their bonds hammered for different reasons, Greece and Dubai's and Abu Dhabi's government-controlled entities have similarly seen ratings or outlook downgrades this week.

Also on Tuesday, Moody's acknowledged two elephants in the room. Although it referred to worst-case scenarios, the agency said the U.S. and the U.K.-- whose public debt runs to $12.1 trillion and $1.3 trillion, respectively--could potentially lose their triple-A ratings.

Meanwhile, analysts are worried about Japan, where deflation makes it ever-more expensive for the government to repay a debt that's projected to hit 220% of GDP in 2014.

Sovereign borrowers aren't supposed to default, at least not on local-currency debt, because their central banks can always print money. But Russia's ruble default in 1998 blew that theory away. And in any case, printing money to pay down the debt means robbing Peter to pay Paul: too often, we pay for it with inflation.

In theory, if a global capacity glut were to continue generating deflationary pressures, it might not be a problem to repay the debt with yet more "quantitative easing." But with so much liquidity already making inflation hawks nervous and fueling potential asset bubbles, pressures are rising for monetary tightening, not loosening.

And that's why sovereign strugglers are most at risk. When the European Central Bank hikes rates it's going to make Greece's interest obligations only more burdensome.

That raises questions about the entire euro zone. The ECB must pursue a policy that fits the price stability outlook for the 16-member euro zone as a whole.

But can debt-laden Greece handle that? Or Spain? Or Italy? What if a U.S. recovery pushes the Federal Reserve closer to an exit from its extraordinarily accommodative policy stance? That would hurt big sovereign debtors whose currencies are pegged to the dollar -- ike Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

Alternatively, what if the biggest shoe were to drop? Although it's near impossible to imagine the U.S. Treasury formally defaulting, many worry that its mammoth debt burden could lead to a dollar collapse. Then all bets are off.

None of these scenarios must play out. Nonetheless, they show why sovereign debt is the problem to watch.

White House Calls for Summit on Summits New “Summit Czar” Named*

By Michael Giometti –

On Thursday, the White House called for a major overhaul of the way it conducts summits. Part of the initiative is a proposed meeting of stakeholders who will be entrusted with the task of constructing a plan to improve the operation of these meetings—a “summit” on summits, as it were.

“For far too long in this town,” the President said, “both Republicans and Democrats have conducted these meetings in an environment of partisanship and pleading of special interests. Those days are over. From now on it’s no longer “summits as usual.”

The director of the newly created White House Office of Consensus Development, or” Summit Czar”, Frances Tugwell, when asked about the new initiative, affirmed the President’s commitment to openness and inclusivity. “We are eschewing the politics of exclusion and special interest. The participants of this summit represent the breathtaking diversity of this wonderful country, from the AFL-CIO to the Sierra Club to Public Citizen.”

When asked about the improvement in the environmental impact of future summits, if any, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said, “Well, uh, I don’t know exactly what the carbon footprints of these meetings will be, or, uh, what exactly a carbon footprint is, but I’ll, uh, get back to you on that, uh.”

*keen political satire

And Now for Something Completely Predictable: A Retro-Post for a Retro-Celebrity, Part One

By Michael Giometti –

You might remember British comedian John Cleese. He was the one who played, very competently, a haughty, condescending psychotherapist in one episode of the 80s sitcom Cheers. He is also one of that breed of Europeans (called “Europeans”) that feels the need to characterize America as uncivilized, uncouth, and unenlightened. This breed habitually attempts to soothe, through slander, its wounded collective (per EU) ego over the success of its upstart bastard child, the United States. The fact that the U.S. had surpassed its parent continent long ago by just about any measure you care to use: economic, cultural, altruistic, etc. is of no end of annoyance to the Mother Race.

It’s not just that we’ve achieved more and are resented for it; what’s truly galling is that, on net, we’ve benefitted the rest of this benighted planet (including Europe) more than any other society in history—and, on a lot of that planet are resented, in direct proportion, for it. We do deserve to be criticized, but not for our racism, or laissez-faire thinking (which are more at odds with each other than some think) but, ironically, for our increasing tendency to ape our critics, from Europe and elsewhere, in their statism.

In an interview just before the election of President Obama, Cleese gleefully smeared any American who didn’t look forward to that outcome. Without defending unduly George Bush (a truly bad president), John McCain, Sarah Palin, or Republicans in general, I bristle at his judgment that only the election of statist (and black) Barack Obama could prove to the rest of the world that we’re not a “backwoods, redneck, and racist country.”

I have two big problems with Mr. Cleese—well, three, if you count Monty Python. Ignoring for the time being that silly, over-rated waste of time (Monty Python, that is), my first problem is with the idea that in this day and age a genuine, discrete difference in philosophy exists between evil, plutocratic, racist Republicans and compassionate, deep-thinking, heroic Democrats. There certainly is not more than a marginal difference between the philosophies of your run-of-the-mill Republican and your run-of-the-mill Democrat—which, make no mistake, Barack Obama very much is. My second problem is that this shared philosophy is not at odds with, but rather is largely in accord with, contemporary European thinking, and is thus disastrously illiberal and statist. It is also, ironically, a repudiation of those civilizing classical liberal ideals which we took from our European parents (they weren’t really using them much anyway), applied assiduously here, and built the best society ever.

Right or Left?

As for the supposed distinctions between Republican/Democrat, Right/Left these days in America, Cleese should do some homework. Consider the record of the previous “evil” Republican administration regarding domestic, non-security-related matters:

· George Bush enthusiastically supported and signed into law the biggest entitlement program enacted since the genesis of the Great Society, namely, Medicare Part D.

· George Bush increased education spending 58% faster than inflation during his time in office. As usual, leftist objections to Bush’s education policy are laughably hypocritical.

· Bush’s tax cuts were modest and temporary, and, press coverage notwithstanding, increased the relative tax burden on the rich, while decreasing it on the less well-off.

· De-regulation, again notwithstanding misleading press coverage, did not occur under Bush.

· George Bush was actually quite green, and didn’t deserve the hysterical scorn heaped upon him by “environmentalists”.

· Bush’s Ownership Society idea, supposedly a way to reduce people’s dependence on government, actually fostered more, as in the case of home ownership. Long a fetish of politicians of both parties since the New Deal, government sponsorship of home ownership through tax policy, mortgage guarantees, secondary mortgage purchases, and onerous arm-twisting of lenders accelerated during the Clinton and Bush administrations. These chickens have recently come home to roost.

· George Bush increased federal spending by about as much as Lyndon Johnson--remember him, the author of the Great Society, the biggest package of misguided welfare spending in world history. Far from dismantling egalitarian Democrat panaceas like the Great Society and the New Deal, Bush extended them more than any other administration. What helped Bush here was his refusal to veto a single appropriations bill until the second half of his second term. In answer to those inclined to defend Bush’s profligate spending by pointing to the demands of pressing national security issues, consider that Johnson had a little thing called the Vietnam War.

In short, Mr Cleese, on domestic, non-security-related matters, Bush and the Republican Congress acted not like the aloof, laissez-faire caricature living in leftists’ heads, but rather like fairly typical twentieth-century statist politicians—in other words—like Democrats . . . or Europeans . . . or Barack Obama. By the way, John McCain wouldn’t have disappointed on this score.

(The second part of this post will explore the “surprising” ways Democrats act like Republicans.)

Something to consider during the destruction of your wealth.

Democrats, in their own words, denying any crisis concerning Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at a 2004 congressional hearing.

Note: this is not an endorsement of Republican policies.
Disclosure: The Socialist Nightmare Escape Plan does not support the creation or continuance of any GSE (government-sponsored enterprises).

We are all Extreme Empiricists Now

By Michael Giometti –

Since President Obama took office, we have been treated by his supporters to the rhetorical ju-jitsu move of the “give the guy a chance; he’s only been in office X days/weeks/months” variety. Such appeals to extreme empiricism, where philosophical opponents are admonished to put off judgment until some indefinite point in the future when, supposedly, sufficient information is available, is a manipulative dodge meant to forestall legitimate debate. It belongs in the same dustbin as a similar dodge employed by others in time of war: “don’t express opposition to the war; we need to display unity and support our troops.”

The unreasonable nature of this tactic can be brought to light quickly by asking those using it if they would abjure from reasoned opposition if a new and different president in the present circumstances advocated the invasion of Canada or the expulsion of the Jews as remedy for our ills, be it the general economic malaise or our “broken health care system.” The historical record is replete with actions like these being touted as national tonics in times of crisis. The answer is obvious.

No, to judge the president’s policies we need not wait for some utilitarian standard of success or failure to be met sometime in the future, perhaps after the maximum amount of damage is done. We are well able to discern deductively, for example, that inherent moral wrongs have already been committed by the president, his administration, and his allies in Congress (not to mention, his predecessor) in their misguided attempts to “stimulate the economy.” The canon of classical liberalism is filled with unassailable a priori arguments for the moral requirement of freedom from a natural law perspective.

Moreover, such expressions of natural law have been codified in our positive law at a fundamental level in our federal (and state) constitutions and should ensure that positive law adheres to these classical liberal tenets. Of course for about a century now, however, any appeal to such underpinnings is almost always laughable window dressing. Such alarmingly statist measures as handouts to, and even equity purchases of, private financial institutions and other entities (with all the attendant government influence that brings) are fraudulently dressed up as necessary expedients well within the purview of the federal government in time of crisis. It shouldn’t take much imagination to understand the horrible immorality and illegality of this ham-fisted expropriation of the property of supposedly free citizens—of not only this generation, but probably the next few as well. Also somehow considered within the pale is the rewriting or voiding of valid contracts freely arrived at by willing and legally competent parties, as well as the theft of the average American citizen’s wealth through inflation of our money supply by means of government-sponsored counterfeiting—er, sorry--monetary stimulus.

Just as we can immediately infer, deductively, the moral impropriety of current policies, we can infer the self-defeating nature of the utilitarian consequences thereof. Those writers mentioned above, as well others-- most notably the economists of the Austrian school such as Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard have provided concrete proof as to the efficacy of freedom. For example, it is the Austrian School which has provided the only coherent explanation of the occurrence of boom and bust in the economy. The sine qua non of this theory is none other than the above-mentioned coerced, government-sponsored inflation of the money supply, which, perversely, is all too often (as now) touted as a cure for the business cycle!

Likewise, in regard to the supposed need to fix a health care system that is already at least half-socialized, we are led to believe that the road to utopia is—wait for it--more government involvement. Again, the moral and legal problems of the theft of citizens’ money (and choices) to build this rickety edifice are brushed aside, as is the powerful inductive argument against such a course as presented by the spectacles of such medical “utopias” as Britain and Canada. Thomas DiLorenzo provides a comprehensive argument here for returning more freedom to this realm.

Far from being a prudent prescription for our recovery, these policies, ironically, represent more of the same poison (namely, overweening government) that has laid us low to begin with. The medical technique of homeopathy, where pathogens are countered with medicines that in the absence of illness have similar effects upon the body, may be effective in treating the human body, but as legal and economic theory it’s a death sentence to the body politic. Policies such as these, which are at odds with the ideals of a free, civilized society, not to mention the binding legal embodiment of these ideals in our constitutions, cannot work to restore those ideals. Nor will they, not coincidentally, yield practical benefits—quite the contrary; to be sure, any future evaluations of the utilitarian consequences are bound to confirm this—but maybe only after it is too late.

You Print The Money, You Get The Perspective.

Today the Federal Reserve expressed jovial confidence that the budding economic recovery was indeed a reality. “Last month we stabilized and now we are building a base. This is the best unknown trillions we have ever spent,” said Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. Additionally, to prove its commitment to ending the “Great Recession” the Fed left borrowing costs near zero for “as long as the people need it.” The central bank also said it would buy about $175 billion of debt issued by government-backed mortgage finance agencies because “we’ve got the money, so why not?”

When asked about the Fed’s decision to keep its benchmark federal funds rate in a range of zero to 0.25 percent Chairman Bernanke said “Sure we’re hedging our bets here, but the crisis is over people! You got to get out there and spend that Money!” The Chairman was also cited as being enthusiastic about the Ghost Mall & Mob Rule Index moving down .68 percent over the last 30 days (the Ghost Mall & Mob Rule Index replaced the formerly tracked M3 shortly after Bernanke took over the post of Chairman).

Read my lips, More New Taxes.

Here are just some of the great ideas coming down the regime’s pipeline.

· Allowing the expiration of the previous Bush administration tax cuts at the end of 2010. The cuts go away if Congress does nothing, raising tax rates on the top earners to 39.6% from 35%, and on the next-highest bracket to 36% from 33%. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that 55% of these tax increases will come from small-business income.

· Additional tax increases as part of the House health-care bill. The House Ways and Means chairman calls for a 1% surtax on couples with more than $350,000 in income, 1.5% on incomes more than $500,000, and 5.4% on incomes more than $1 million. The extra tax would kick in at lower levels for unmarried taxpayers. And if promised health-care cost savings don’t materialize, the surtaxes would automatically double.

· $8.2 billion of tax increases for people using health savings accounts or other tax-free savings to purchase over-the-counter drugs.

· A “Comparative Effectiveness Research Tax” of $2 billion on all private and “public option” insurance, plus up to 8% paid by employers–mostly small businesses–that don’t offer health insurance.

· A proposed tax on individuals who do not have health insurance.

· An increased tax on American companies doing business in other countries.

· Raising or abolishing the wage cap on Social Security taxes, which would effectively convert Social Security into a welfare program.

· Reducing the tax benefit for itemized deductions like charitable contributions, which would reduce philanthropy.

John Stossel, ibertarian (not a typo)

By Michael Giometti –

Say it ain’t so, John. In case you haven’t heard, John Stossel , a fixture at ABC for about thirty years, and for some of that time the network’s libertarian gadfly, has finally jumped ship to FOX . No doubt he’ll feel more at home there, maybe more that I thought he would. During one of his pieces on Bill O’Reilly’s show the other night, Stossel was discussing health care with O’Reily, wherein Stossel agreed with O’Reilly that government must play some role in providing healthcare to the poor. Now no one should be surprised that populist republican O’Reilly thinks this is a good idea, but how can someone who calls himself a libertarian endorse this. I’m familiar with the concept of a “small l” libertarian, but this “l” is too small to see-very disappointing. FOX is the best game in town, but is it too much to hope for that a “big L” outlet will appear someday?

The Very Dangerous S.773

The Cybersecurity Act of 2009: The Summary In Their Words

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER AND SENATOR SNOWE INTRODUCE COMPREHENSIVE CYBERSECURITY LEGISLATION This comprehensive legislation addresses our country’s unacceptable vulnerability to massive cyber crime, global cyber espionage, and cyber attacks that could cripple our critical infrastructure. We presently have systems to protect our nation’s secrets and our government networks against cyber espionage, and it is imperative that those cyber defenses keep up with our enemies’ cyber capabilities. However, another great vulnerability our country faces is the threat to our private sector critical infrastructure–banking, utilities, air/rail/auto traffic control, telecommunications–from disruptive cyber attacks that could literally shut down our way of life. This proposed legislation will bring new high-level governmental attention to develop a fully integrated, thoroughly coordinated, public-private partnership to our cyber security efforts in the 21st century by:

1) Significantly raising the profile of cybersecurity within the Federal government and streamlining cyber-related government functions and authorities.


2) Promoting public awareness and protecting civil liberties.


3) Remaking the relationship between government and the private sector on cybersecurity.


4) Fostering innovation and creativity in cybersecurity to develop long-term solutions.

1) Significantly raise the profile of cybersecurity within the Federal government and streamline cyber-related government functions and authorities.


· Establish the Office of the National Cybersecurity Advisor within the Executive Office of the President. The National Cybersecurity Advisor will lead this office and report directly to the President. The Advisor will serve as the lead official on all cyber matters, coordinating with the intelligence community, as well as the civilian agencies. This section also outlines a number of important functions and authority of the National Cybersecurity Advisor, including the authority to disconnect a Federal or critical infrastructure network from the Internet if they are found to be at risk of cyber attack.


· Develop a comprehensive national strategy for cybersecurity. The Advisor is responsible for developing a comprehensive national strategy for cybersecurity to coordinate Federal and private sector cybersecurity efforts.


· Require a Quadrennial Cybersecurity Review. The legislation will direct the National Cybersecurity Advisor to conduct a quadrennial review of the U.S. cybersecurity program, modeled after the Defense Department’s Quadrennial Defense Review, to examine cyber strategy, budget, plans, and policies.


· Require a threat and vulnerability assessment to gain a thorough, comprehensive and coordinated understanding of the threats and vulnerabilities of public systems and private-sector owned critical infrastructure.


2) Promote public awareness and protect civil liberties.


· Promote cybersecurity awareness by initiating a cybersecurity awareness campaign to educate the general public about cybersecurity risks and countermeasures they can implement to better protect themselves.


· Require a comprehensive legal review of the federal statutory and regulatory legal framework applicable to cybersecurity, including recommendations on changes that need to be made to modernize this legal framework.

· Require a report on identity management and civil liberties. The legislation would require the Advisor to review the feasibility of an identity management and authentication program, to include recommendations regarding civil liberties protections.


3) Remake the relationship between government and the private sector on cybersecurity.


· Create a public-private clearinghouse for cyber threat and vulnerability information-sharing. The clearinghouse would responsible for the management and sharing of data between the federal government and private sector critical infrastructure operators.


· Create a Cybersecurity Advisory Panel consisting of outside experts in cybersecurity from industry, academia, and non-profit advocacy organizations to review and advise the President the on cybersecurity related matters.


· Establish enforceable cybersecurity standards. The legislation would require the National Institute of Standards and Technology to establish measureable and auditable cybersecurity standards that would be applicable both to government and the private sector.


· Provide for licensing and certification of cybersecurity professionals. The legislation would require the development and implementation of a professional licensing and certification program for cybersecurity professionals similar to those required for other major professions.


· Create state and regional cybersecurity centers for small and medium sized companies. These centers, modeled off of the Commerce Department’s Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) programs, would assist small and medium sized businesses in adopting cybersecurity measures.


· Establish international norms and cybersecurity deterrence measures. The legislation would require the Advisor to work with the Secretary of State to develop international standards and techniques for improving cybersecurity.

· Establish a Secure Products and Services Acquisitions Board responsible for certifying that products the federal government purchases will have met standards for security as established by the Board. Many federal contracts do not incorporate cybersecurity provisions, and this Board would eliminate that problem by requiring that all information and communication technologies are reviewed and approved.


4) Foster innovation and creativity in cybersecurity to develop long-term solutions.


· Expand the Scholarship-For-Cyber-Service program focused on recruiting students into a cybersecurity curriculum program. Upon graduation, these students would enter public service, joining an agency or department and leveraging the skills they’ve learned.


· Create cybersecurity competitions and challenges to attract, identify, and recruit individuals to cybersecurity.


· Increase federal cybersecurity research and development at the National Science Foundation.


· Attempt to place a dollar value on cybersecurity risk. The legislation would require the Advisor to provide a report on the feasibility of creating a market for cybersecurity risk management, to include civil liability and government insurance.