Some notes on what seems to be out there, and what some of us have sampled....

You need not be a conspiracy theorist...

The Iron Triangle: Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group
By Dan Briody  Wiley; 240 pages; $24.95 and £17.50

Although Dan Briody's book is useful reading for anybody interested in American politics today, it tells Carlyle's story in the style of a Tom Clancy or John Grisham novel.  This is rather a shame.  Instead of expanding in an unrelenting tone of shocked disapproval, the author could have offered a serious view on a number of difficult questions.

The Economist (UK) June 26, 2003

The Carlyle Group is a private equity firm that manages billions of dollars, including, at the time of the World Trade Center attack, some bin Laden family wealth.  Basically, the firm exists to pool contracts in defense and construction and make money arranging for the building of things governments want - from large buildings to weapons systems.  Such a firm depends upon connections to and within the governments who want such things.  So the firm has on its payroll folks like the former President Bush, the former UK Prime Minister John Major, former South Korean prime minister, Park Tae-joon, the former US Secretary of Defense and former Director of the CIA, Frank Carlucci, and other such folks.

Carlyle did well with Frank Carlucci who was able to open doors in Washington that had previously been closed to the firm.  They made lots of money.

I suppose, in spite of the warning above I'm going to have to read this book.  I was introduced to Frank Carlucci at the Pentagon back in the 1980's when he was Secretary of Defense, although I don't remember what we said to each other.  It was a social thing.  And my wife at the time warned me not to let all the Reagan folks in the room know what a flaming liberal I was then.  (I still am.)

I'm not sure what to make of such an organization.  As the anonymous Economist review points out:

The Carlyle Group is a godsend for conspiracy theorists who are convinced that the world is run by, and on behalf of, a shadowy network of wealthy men. Sure enough, it was not long before Cynthia McKinney, a Democrat member of Congress, pointed a finger at Carlyle, noting in an interview that "persons close to this administration are poised to make huge profits off America's new war" and that, despite "numerous warnings", they did not alert the "people of New York who were needlessly murdered". "What", she asked, "do they have to hide?"

You need not be a conspiracy theorist, though, to be concerned about what lies behind Carlyle's success. Can a firm that is so deeply embedded in the iron triangle where industry, government and the military converge be good for democracy? Carlyle arguably takes to a new level the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower feared might "endanger our liberties or democratic process". What red-blooded capitalist can truly admire a firm built, to a significant degree, on cronyism; surely, this sort of access capitalism is for ghastly places like Russia, China or Africa, not the land of the free market?

Is it?  Folks help each other out to get things done, and cronyism cannot be avoided.  Working with "like minded people" is natural, and good.  And firms like The Carlyle Group get things done.

I thought Carlucci was a strange little evil man.  He reminded me of a weasel.  But I am reminded of what John Maynard Keynes said about how things work: "Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all."  Is this so?  Perhaps.

I have a neighbor who wanted me to check out Lyndon LaRouche as an alternative to Bush in the next elections.  Lyndon LaRouche?  I'm not big on conspiracy theories.  I see most of what evil happens in this world as caused by careless and incompetence.  I don't know about The Carlyle Group and will have to read more.  But I'm not convinced concerning the LaRouche theory the world is controlled by an evil conspiracy of British aristocrats and international Jewish bankers. 

As convicted felons go, Lyndon LaRouche is rather colorful.  Who said America could not produce its own Jean-Marie Le Pen?  Le Pen was convicted of slugging a woman running for office who Le Pen thought had insulted his daughter.  Lyndon just rips off old people and doesn't pay his taxes, at least that's why he spent those years in jail.  Anyway, I do have Jewish friends and just got back from Bar Mitzvah in New Jersey.  As far as I can tell, Martin and his family were not plotting to take over the world from the true Christians.  But I could be wrong.

Oh well.

I received the new Harry Potter book this weekend.  A late birthday present.  I will plow through that.  My French neighbor just handed me a copy of Louis-Bernard Robitaille's And God Created the French.  A new biography of Benjamin Franklin was published this week that sounds good.  This Carlyle book comes after those.

Joe Pass