The insurance giant AIG has lately become the poster child for corporate risk-taking, mismanagement and greed.  Its unimaginably large losses, rooted in insurance it extended to financial companies engaged in subprime mortgage-backed transactions, have destroyed both AIG's corporate reputation and balance sheet.

Indeed, but for the fact that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson - who during his days running Goldman Sachs had extensive ties to AIG - deemed the insurance firm "too large to fail," the company would surely have gone under by now.

One result of Mr. Paulson's nationalization of AIG is that all of us taxpayers are now owners of a company that promotes Moslem Shariah law - the brutally repressive, totalitarian theo-political-legal program of authoritarian Islam.  It turns out that AIG has a subsidiary specializing in takaful¸ insurance products that are "Shariah-compliant."

Fortunately, an important legal initiative has just been launched aimed at blocking Secretary Paulson and the Federal Reserve Board from engaging in this sort of unconstitutional behavior via Shariah-Compliant Finance (SCF) and other commercial transactions.

The "international community" is eagerly anticipating the incoming Obama administration's policy toward Israel.

It is widely assumed that as soon as he comes into office, Mr. Obama will move quickly to place massive pressure on the next Israeli government to withdraw from Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in the interests of advancing a “peace process” with the Palestinians and the Syrians.

Obama's team, like its supporters in the international foreign policy establishment, is dismayed by the Israeli opinion polls that show that Likud, led by Binyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, is favored to win February 10's general elections by a wide margin.

In the coming contest between Bibi and Obama, it is important to recall that one of Netanyahu's most difficult challenges during his tenure as prime minister from 1996 to 1999 was handling his relations with the hostile Clinton administration.

From the moment Netanyahu was elected until the moment he left office, the Clinton administration's Israel policy was devoted entirely to bringing down his government.  It is likely that the Obama White House will duplicate these efforts against a Likud government. 

Warnings about the foreign challenges the Obama administration will face early on focus on the usual suspects - al Qaeda, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Russia and, not least, the global solvency crisis.

While each of these issues demands serious attention, the crises abroad that shocked, consumed or defined a succession of presidencies came "out of the blue."

Focused on ending our Indochina war, Richard Nixon was blindsided by an oil-price shock (thanks to our eternal buddies, the Saudis). Jimmy Carter literally woke up to find the Soviets in Afghanistan - and our embassy staff held hostage in Iran, a collapsed ally.

Ronald Reagan faced the Beirut Marine-barracks bombing. Somalia panicked Bill Clinton; Rwanda embarrassed him - and the rise of al Qaeda paralyzed him. W got 9/11.

For Mr. Obama, too, the first international crisis could be something that not one of us foresees (although, as always, events will seem obvious in hindsight). But there are also a number of potential crises hiding in broad daylight - and ignored.

One item of thankful good news as we're buffeted by the Dow Jones' death-spiral, reports of the domestic automakers' incipient demise, and ever-more-assertive testing by various adversaries of the not-yet-inaugurated "young president": Thomas Fingar is leaving the building on Beech Street NW in Washington DC.

Tom Fingar's is not, of course, exactly a household name. Nor is the building he will depart a publicly recognized fixture in Washington's official real estate.  Still, when the history of the Iranian nuclear threat - and all that flows from it - is written, his dismal tenure as Deputy Director for Analysis in the Office of National Intelligence will figure prominently.

After all, at a critical moment in the Bush administration, as evidence mounted in late 2007 of the true and ominous nuclear weapons ambitions of an Iranian regime that professed an interest only in peaceful nuclear energy, Fingar was instrumental in producing one of history's most politicized and misleading National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs).  

Under Fingar, NIE really should stand for No Intelligence Estimate.  Including the one he issued just before his departure, "Global Trends 2025."

[Note:  Please read this in the context of The Word That Can Save America --JW]

As President-elect Obama's apparent choice for health and human services secretary and as White House health care czar, it is a fair guess that Tom Daschle's view on health care legislation may be decisive.

So it is worth reading his book Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis, in which the gracious former Senate leader lays out without equivocation both the policy he recommends and the tactics for how to pass it.

It is pure, unadulterated fascism.

Somali pirates got a shock last week: The ship they seized carried dozens of Russian-built tanks, along with a wealth of heavy weapons and ammo. It was more than they'd bargained for.

As I write, the Ukrainian ship MV Faina sits at anchor off a notorious pirate port, its crew held captive by 30 or more Somalis. US Navy warships circle the vessel. Our helicopters buzz its deck.

We don't want that weaponry falling into terrorist hands. The Somalis lack the facilities to unload 40-ton tanks, but the smaller weapons aboard would delight the local al Qaeda franchise.

But we don't know what to do next. Which is ridiculous.

There is nothing new under the sun. The United States has endured major financial panics in 1837, 1873, 1893, 1907, 1929, 1933 and now in 2008. Most of these economic events had ideological and political consequences - as well as the inevitable economic play-outs.

And, if history is any guide, contrary to the hope of some and the fear of others, this is not the end of capitalism as we have known it.

But it is true that usually, major economic events have had political as well as economic consequences. For instance, the panic of 1893, which in some ways is similar to the current panic, was caused by overbuilding and sloppy financing of the railroads.

The 1880s had enjoyed dramatic economic expansion, which lead to dangerous speculation. Once the railroad bubble burst there was a run on the banks, a contraction of credit, and European investors demanded gold for payments which forced the reduction in the value of the dollar.

1.  The Community Re-Investment Act of 1977 threw out the idea of a sound financial system in favor of affordable housing for the less well off.  

Folks who could not afford to borrow to buy a home were now the legislated target market for lenders; banks were legally forced to lend money to bad credits. Out went traditional and rational lending criteria like 20% down. Now, folks who could not afford it could buy a home for 0% down.

So the banks fulfilled their, now lawful, obligation for making the initial loan but then, as soon as possible, sold the damn things off for a packaging fee.

2.  The fundamentally corrupt regulatory process whereby the quasi government controlled wholesale lenders of Fannie and Freddie, and the large private mortgage packagers such as Countrywide, could and did buy any kind of legislation they wanted.

The Chairman of the Senate banking committee, Chris Dodd (D-CT), is and has been the largest recipient of Fannie and Freddie political contributions. In addition, Senator Dodd got two sweetheart Mortgages from Countrywide. The recent heads of Fannie and Freddie were political appointees, mainly by Democrats:  Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelick, and Jim Johnson - all Obama advisors.