Syria s Chemical Genie

The idea of this air genie is, it's something that can just transform and become anything.

Unfortunately, putting the nuclear genie back in the bottle is next to impossible. The effectiveness of available options is limited, and all of them are pregnant with unpredictable political and military consequences.

I can't help but with this wish to think about when you're a little kid and you all your friends ask you if a genie could give you one wish in the world, what would it be?

True, once the inflation genie is let out of the bottle, it could take several years to put it back in. No one wants to relive the anti inflation fights of the 1980 s and 1990 s.

The regime may assume that it will be able to use the process to its own advantage, but events may not be that easy to control once people begin to feel empowered. The democratic genie is out of the bottle.

But it s easy for politicians to be irresponsible about monetary policy. They are not the ones who will be blamed for soaring prices, nor are they the ones who will have to force the inflation genie back into the bottle.

The genie is out of the bottle, and people know that they have the power to topple governments, and, more generally, that their political activism has consequences. That is why people have continued to fill Tahrir Square whenever the military has tried to consolidate its power and suppress dissent.

At best, they are seeking ways to keep health care spending from rising, as though the genie of medical progress can be forced back into the bottle. Instead, governments should embrace the promise of wonderful innovations in health care, and ask how fast spending should rise, and how that rise should be financed.