Once again, the discussion is riddled with political acts and political consequences without regard to the reality of failed monetary policy in evidence for decades...Its plain and simple--actually its in-your-face--the same old Washington culture, that whines and whines about failed political agendas and failed Party leadership...Where is the intelligent application of sound scientific analysis, sound economic principles and the resultant recognition that the culture and its posturing and maneuvering by Congressional leaders and the incumbent administration is once again light years away from the best interest of the nation...Get smart, America...In the meantime, God save us all.

Many of us have been highly skeptical of Obama all along. He made the sandwich with Geithner and Summers and stuffed it with Democrats in Name Only (DINOs) with Tea Party dressing. Now it's served up to a struggling nation and we're expected to eat it.

Is there an heroic effort that might emerge to stop this. Even if Sanders tries (and I don't know the rules on this bill), you are right. The GOP Senators would be quickly reinforced by those Democrats remaining who voted for the Bankruptcy Reform bill way back. They must love this.

The set up completed, The Money Party moves in for the kill.

They think no one will notice. They're wrong.

Excellent statement and timely, right on the moment of betrayal.

Folks, I have looked high and low on "deal" specifics and cannot find a thing. It's ridiculous. $1 trillion of cuts that one cannot find out what they are.

Yet another headline buzz I will assume, and probably specifics won't be revealed until after the deed is done.

Once we can find out the details, if ever, I'll write up an instapopulist.

You cannot find out the cuts and there is a narrative. Supposedly it's $1 trillion now with $1.4 trillion by committee with a trigger to cut Medicare and Defense if what the committee recommends isn't passed.

Now, is social security part of these $1 trillion? Probably, but not confirmed.

No tax increases for sure, but odds on no closing of tax loopholes either.

Osellout started out negotiating a raise in revenue and a cut spending position which he assured us would be “fair and balanced”. Using his interpretation, he clearly has a big future with Fox News.

The WTO might allow tariffs on China and that is because China currency manipulates. If they didn't, no.

But the point of any trade remedies is to improve the U.S. economy, create jobs and reduce the trade deficit...

so you cannot start, out of the gate, pushing for a policy that would actually cause the U.S. to enter another recession.

It's tricky and timing but first up is to worry about the cause and effects, not the WTO.

the WTO has a delay in hearing cases anyway. For example, by the time the WTO hears a China case...it doesn't matter. China already wiped out that U.S. sector and captured the market for themselves anyway.

By the time the case makes it to the WTO, those U.S. businesses are already out of business due to China's unfair dumping or tariffs or incentives or whatever they did which forms the WTO case against them.

Look, you don't need to "research" an ABT for obviously I am already aware of the argument and I'm saying it's just plain a bad idea for the obvious reasons.

You don't realize how dependent the U.S. economy is, U.S. manufacturing is, U.S. production is on oil.

What do you think turns on the factories and drives the shipping? Oil.

Generally black and white solutions for colored and dynamic problems is a real bad idea.

See, you're still a broken record, thinking "I just don't understand". Obviously I do and I'm saying it's plain a bad idea and wrong for the reasons I've already stated.

Robert Oak and Bernie Sanders tell the truth, but not the whole truth. I'm not blaming them for that, since the whole truth will not be brought out into the open for at least a couple of years, if ever.

We have been looking at the political BS and contemplating the likely collateral damage, but we have scarcely done more than hint at likely profiteering motivations of at least some of the players.

It isn't as though scams of financial profiteers, connected with political opportunists sharing in the financial profiteering, are unknown to our history or to world history!

It isn't as though ambitious politicians are all men of high principle who would never conflate their notions of the welfare of the nation with plans for amassing their own private fortunes!

I suggest that we look back at Black Friday, 1869, when a small group of financial profiteers, led by the notorious Jim Fisk and Jay Gould, conducted a secret operation involving moles within the White House and the Department of Treasury. This conspiracy undoubtedly threw the nation into the Depression of 1869-1870, even though severity of that depression was mitigated by the last-minute sobering up of President Ulysses S. Grant to order the sale of $4,000,000 worth of gold. (Grant was a notorious alcoholic.) The amount, $4,000,000 was a lot of money and a lot of gold back in 1869.

Could we have a parallel today?

Instead of the moderate depression of 1869-1870 (comparatively moderate, although many individuals and families were ruined in that event), we have the prospect of extending the Great Recession (2008) into the Second Great Depression (2008 - 20??).

We have often noted the religious tone of TP rhetoric. As with many quasi-religious movements, self-anointed leaders of the TP may well be profiteering opportunists. In particular, is it unthinkable that TP opportunists have been limited-partnered up with profiteering financiers/conspirators to exploit insider information to play the precious metals and currency markets like an over-amped electric guitar? Or, considering the domination of computerized trading, it may be more like playing a synthesizer on steroids, complete with real-time sampling and systems of differential equations predicting systemic feedback effects.

Insider information on the timing of announcements or the timing of a negotiation or the cutting off of a negotiation can be worth $Billions to speculators playing the precious metals and international currency markets. Some will suggest that the White House and Secretary of the Treasury are also involved, as well as the obvious involvement of congressional leaders. I can only say that if I knew the whole story, I'd have to be dead ... but nothing would surprise me in this day and age.
 

Excerpted from Wikipedia --

During the reconstruction era after the American Civil War, the United States government issued a large amount of money that was backed by nothing but credit. After the war ended, people commonly believed that the U.S. Government would buy back the “greenbacks” with gold. In 1869, a group of speculators, headed by James Fisk and Jay Gould, sought to profit off this by cornering the gold market. Gould and Fisk first recruited Grant’s brother-in-law, a financier named Abel Corbin. They used Corbin to get close to Grant in social situations, where they would argue against government sale of gold, and Corbin would support their arguments. Corbin convinced Grant to appoint General Daniel Butterfield as assistant Treasurer of the United States. Butterfield agreed to tip the men off when the government intended to sell gold.

In the late summer of 1869, Gould began buying large amounts of gold. This caused prices to rise and stocks to plummet. After Grant realized what had happened, the federal government sold $4 million in gold. On September 20, 1869, Gould and Fisk started hoarding gold, driving the price higher. On September 24 the premium on a gold Double Eagle ... was 30 percent higher than when Grant took office. But when the government gold hit the market, the premium plummeted within minutes. Investors scrambled to sell their holdings, and many of them, including Corbin, were ruined. Fisk and Gould escaped significant financial harm.

Subsequent Congressional investigation was chaired by James A. Garfield. ... Butterfield resigned from the U.S. Treasury. Henry Adams, who believed that President Ulysses S. Grant had tolerated, encouraged, and perhaps even participated in corruption and swindles, attacked Grant in an 1870 article entitled The New York Gold Conspiracy.

Although Grant was not directly involved in the scandal, his personal association with Gould and Fisk gave clout to their attempt to manipulate the gold market. ...  Grant had personally declined to listen to Gould's ambitious plan to corner the gold market, since the scheme was not announced publicly ... Gould had promoted the plan to Grant as a means to help farmers sell a bountiful 1869 wheat crop to Europe.

I know, I know. Robert Oak will call this CT, but I maintain there is enough to it to constitute an appropriate topic for an EP comment at this time. It's often said that for an idictment of homicide in the first degree, all you need is to prove means, motive and opportunity. Did the perps have the means, are there grounds for alleging a motive, and, did they create the opportunity? Federal conspiracy law is extraordinarily broad. Clarence Darrow wrote that a conviction of conspiracy doesn't even require proving any other criminal act.

Any reduction in spending during a recession/depression is unwise since it furthers the contraction in the economy. The reason here is clear. There's no point in paying down debt during recovery that never takes place. That is true and has been universally.

What's absent from you rhetoric:

- stopping offshoaring;

- stopping the import of necessary professional and lower level workers;

- ending costly and illegal wars; - and dumping the tax cuts from Bush;

- the theft of the Social Security surplus every year to fund deficits that fund purchases of goods and services from the Tea Party billionaire patrons.

You also forget to mention that we would never have heard about the Tea Party were it not for Freedomworks and Americans for Prosperity. They made the organiation, they fund it, and they call the shots. Where do these right win lobbying organizations get their money? From the richest families in the United States.

This is legal and part of the process but lets get real here in the midst of your preaching and propaganda how about mentioning that fact?  Actualy, I know why you woudn't.  It would show that this whole debate is a sham and promoted by those who will profit from crisis, the Te Party Patrons.

Here is the precise reason that we need a crisis, whether Tea Party or not.  Rational analysis of the budget situation would call for much different acdtion that is going to emerge.

If you back out the Bush tax cut give-aways and the two wars, the budget deficit goes down nearly 50%.  If you restore the economy to non recessionary status, you get another huge benefit and the current deficit is round $100 billion. 

Medicare is an emerging problem but there is no crisis now unless you dig war and recessions.

But that's not the Tea Party billionair agenda is it. 

Here's the graph, it's easy enough to understand:

Promoting a 15% ABT is still a good rallying shout-out, because the people surely are capable of great support around the so-long-now forbidden word 'tariff'. Our corporate-govenment media, along with most of academia, have been suppressing even the thought of 'tariffs' for about 15 years now. Therefore, being as reactionary as the next guy, I use the word wherever and as often as I can.

The reason for an across-the-board tariff is to reconstruct a sane protectionist policy while avoiding preference systems, which are all essentially examples of political corruption. In other words, the reason for ABT is to reverse the situation where U.S. producers are effectively forced to subsidize foreign competition.

I am unconvinced that there are not ways to moderate the consequences of oil supply shock within an ABT system. Conversely, I am not sure that oil supply shock can be evaded by avoiding an ABT, nor am I convinced that the ABT approach can be ruled out as the best structural reform even considering, or perhaps especially considering, the problem of oil supply shock.

I don't think that targeting China will accomplish anything. Yes, China is tops on a list, but we should not confuse any one entry in the list with the list as a whole. Suppose, by way of analogy, that we stopped all the outsourcing to India. Would that stop outsourcing? The same corrupt influences that nurtured outsourcing to India would soon be nurturing outsourcing to Africa! So, if we drive Chinese money to move some jobs and the last stop before going on to the U.S. market into, say, Indonesia, would that constitute progress?

At some point, we (U.S.) need to announce that we are protecting ourselves against all comers, and, in the long run, that cannot be done as long as we perpetuate the politically motivated preference system that is the fundamental cause of our problems.

We need to recognize that our problems originated here in the U.S. with our delusional policies and habits of mind. Treating symptoms is often a necessary expediency, but recovery requires systemic treatment of underlying causes of the illness.

However, I do agree with your pragmatism. Everyone has some kind of economic ideology, but I am not so gone that I think that my ideology can be applied mechanically in real life, anymore than any other ideology. My ideology is just my adknowledgement of the springboard and guidelines for my 2¢ worth from time to time.