You mentioned this possibility earlier, and now you draw it detail.
I suppose that the Court will say that the class is too big for the courts to fashion adequate and just remedies. It's like too big to fail, only it's become too big to take responsibiilty.
Apologists for the Court will say that the remedy could be like Brown v. Board, all kinds of things being tried by different district courts all over the country, and maybe ultimately there would even by 'bussing' involved as plaintiffs were bussed from courthouse to courthouse.
But let's wait and see. Smaller scale, more targeted cases should still be possible.
Your analysis is sound, as to what should be done .... but also, unfortunately, sound as to what the probable outcome is.
Once again we may well find that, according tot the Court,
"All dollars are equal but some dollars are more equal than others."
We (U.S.) are losing the neo-mercantilist game, which is a game where the rules are constantly changed. We should forget about playing the neo-mercantilist game and do things a different way: establish a stable monetary policy and a stable fiscal-financial policy, add to that a stable across-the-board tariff, and then practice free enterprise, including aggressive prosecution of War Profiteering Prevention Act and anti-trust law.
Instead of pretending to run the world, we concentrate on running our own bailey wick, within which we promote a system that allows small businesses and start-ups to flourish, even if they are not "minority-owned."
Everything together, the point is to level the competitive playing field for producers.
Our five-year plan should be to establish tax-reform (eliminating loopholes), and reform of our monetary and fiscal/financial systems. eliminate ALL preference systems and let free enterprise operate -- and then keep the government out of business for five years. Of course, we would still have to do battle among ourselves on environmental issues, extraction issues, nuclear issues and environmental impacts of renewable resources. That's where the focus of our political debate should be.
We don't have to become like China. They do their thing. We do our thing. We maintain our borders: across-the-board tariff or VAT.
We take responsibility for a full-employment policy: immigration policy is secondary to full-employment policy. Full employment drives immigration, not the other way around.
To greatest possible extent, we accommodate our closest neighbors, Mexico and Canada. That's a kind of preference, but it's a natural and inevitable preference, based in history.
What we want to avoid is preferences that derive from our delusion that we are responsible for all the borders everywhere -- equally responsible for everything everywhere in the world, as though we had anything like sufficient power or resolve or wisdom to fix everything everywhere in the world. That was the United States in 1946. That was then. This is now.
We don't reject "gloablism" -- we simply announce that the "flat earth" approach to globalism is dead.
China is not the only country to have national plans - the French run national plans and the plans are generally supported by all political parties. They take a national view of things like transport infrastructure (the TGV construction), health, education, etc. It is a recognition that society is made up of mutually reinforcing interests rather than narrow vested interests as in the US.
The problem in the US is these discussing things immediately falls into juvilne name calling about 'socialism', etc.
It is easy to knock the US but what could the US achieve if it took the same approach and focused solely on achieving planned national objectives as opposed to being divided by narrow interests that pits Americans against each other. I don't live in the US but the only thing the US approach benefits is competitors to the US.
The last time the US was fully mobilized as a nation was WW2 and the fight back in Europe and the fight across the Pacific - why should war be the only driver of national interest and cohesion?
BACKGROUND: the death of ideology and all the isms
Does anybody remember the World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre, Brazil, way back n early 2001? The WSF was deliberately timed to coincide with the World Economic Forum of that year, promoted as an alternative to whatever the banksters were cooking up in Davos.
Luminaries such as Mikhail Gorbachev, Immanuel Wallerstein (sociologist-historian who originated "world-systems analysis), Samir Amin, (Franco-Egyptian economist), and, Takis Fotopoulos, (Anglo-Greek political scientist-philospher and economist) gathered and, among other ideas, examined the collapse of all modern 'systemic social movements' and 'anti-systemic social movements' as well. (Of course, it is understood that we are now in a 'post-modern' era.)
Nationalism as it had appeared at the end of World War I -- a kind of anti-imperialism -- had collapsed by the end of the 20th Century. Traditional imperialism had collapsed shortly after World War II, although Soviet and U.S. empires continued until the end of the century and what amounts to a new Chinese empire continues strong up to the present day.
Subsequent to World War II, all the new nationalisms such as Yugoslavism, Stalinist pan-Slavism, Peronism, pan-Arabism, pan-Africanism and Black Nationalism eventually collapsed, not to mention fascism and Nazism. By the end of the century, Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, socialism, anarchism, feminism, nativism, environmentalism, constructivism, de-constructivism, modernism, post-modernism and even the Gaia movement and shamanism had all come and gone -- at least in the minds of the primarily academic group of social theorists (prone to using words such as 'utopics') gathered at Porto Alegre. Even progressivism and perhaps statism could be proclaimed, objectively speaking, as dead.
Finally, 'globalism' alone remained as the last 'ism' standing.
GLOBALISM
'Globalism' appears to be a problematic term, because there is a planet and it is approximately global in shape. So what are we saying if we claim to be globalists? That we are in favor of the Earth being roughly global in shape? The question isn't whether we are globalists or not, it's what kind of globalists are we? The WSF intellectuals were opposed to the 'globalism' being patented at Davos, and some kind of 'ism' appeared to many at the WSF to be needed. But there was little agreement about the particulars of what was needed.
In many ways, the 'ism' of the WSF was like the old 'ism' of the Washington consensus, which was 'anti-Communism'. In other words, the WSF could find no consensus other than an 'anti-ism', namely, 'anti' the global project being planned in the WEF at Davos. The WSFers called the Davos project 'neo-liberalism' or 'corporate globalism'. It's awkward to put an 'anti' in front of something like 'neo-liberalism'.
(Probably some of the people involved in the WSF have written articles and books on the concept of the 'anti-ism'. Those of us old enough to remember know how compelling an anti-ism such as anit-Communism can be. Today, of course, we have anti-terrorism where formerly we had anti-Communism. If we cannot agree on being pro anything, then we can at least come together on some anti-agenda or anti-ism. Thus today we don't really have any pro-fiscal-responsibility agenda -- including such basic items as Rep. Abernathy's War Profiteering Prevention Act -- but many can manage enthusiasm for an anti-tax agenda.)
IF NOT GLOBALISM, THEN WHAT?
Takis Fotopoulos -- one of the big dogs in this anti-neo-liberalism thing -- has promoted something called 'Inclusive Democracy' as the "new" antisystemic movement that is needed. Fotopoulos has written a revealing sentence in his work The End of Traditional Antisytemic Movements and the Need for A New Type of Antisystemic Movement Today (November, 2001). Here's the sentence:
"In fact, the only significant anti-systemic forces today, which directly challenge the ‘system’ (i.e. the market economy and representative democracy) are some currents within the anti-globalisation movement." (Takis Fotopoulos, 2001)
Personally, I am part of that anti-globalization movement. Except that i object to it being called 'anti-globalization'. I am not opposed to globalization, whatever that means, anymore than I am opposed to trade just because I am pro-tariff (across-the-board tariff or VAT). I just don't agree with Fotopoulos' premise that the system today can be described as "the market economy and representative democracy"! I would say that the world-system of today is marked by a lack of any real market economy and also of representative democracy. I think I am part of a "current within the anti-globalization movement" and i think I am challenging the corporate ("neo-liberal") system, but I am not challenging either the concepts or the reality of market economies or of representative democracy.
To be fair to the man, Fotopoulos' paper is dated November 2001. But that is my point. I think that Obama is still a true believer in the anti-anti-globalization movement. I think many of our economic-political elite are. That anti-anti-globalization movement has been styled 'inclusive democracy' by its advocates, but, more commonly, it is known as 'multiculturalism'.
MULTICULTURALISM
I am not saying that the phenomena of multiple cultures in the U.S.A. or in the world are evil. I am not ranting against a mosque in Manhattan. I am not opposed to schools teaching about multiple cultures with the objective of reducing conflict and inter-group tension and violence. I am in favor of a multicultural world at peace. Why not?
I am just making one point here:
MULTICULTURALISM IS WHAT PRESIDENT OBAMA, with the best of intentions, BELIEVES IN ... AND MULTICULTURALISM TODAY IS JUST ONE MORE DEAD ISM. MULTICULTURALISM IS THE LAST OF ALL THE DEAD OR DYING ANTI-SYSTEMIC SOCIAL MOVEMENTS STILL HOLDING OVER FROM THE 20TH CENTURY.
President Obama simply has bought into an ism. It seems to work well for him, but that doesn't mean that it works well for his natural popular politcal base.
I think every president in my lifetime bought into some ism or another or into some anti-ism or another. Myself, I am not without my isms. If pressed, I will own to being a kind of humanist, even though that may be a dirty word to some good people. I also like to call myself a monetarist. And a protectionist. And a constitutionalist. (Whatever else I may believe lies outside the scope of EP.)
I am all for every positive aspect of every culture. I am all for culture. I admire the Sons of Italy, the Sons of Norway, Sokol, the NAACP, the Peace Corps and the DAR. I am all for global peace and friendship among all peoples.
It's just that, as I look realistically around the world, it looks like the "anti-social movement" of multiculturalism, that is, the politico-economic dogma of multiculturalism ... is a dead letter.
And that is how I understand President Obama. He is a multiculturalist -- which would be okay, except for the macro-economics part. The President should stop and think twice before trying to apply his social ideology to the decisions he makes that ultimately affect the U.S. economy respecting such matters as unemployment. Something less idealistic and more pragmatic is needed. After all, unemployment, homelessness and malnutrition span all of America's multiple cultures, no?
MACRO-ECONOMICS AND VOODOO ECONOMICS
I suspect that President Obama is ignorant of the underlying concepts of macro-economics, simple though these are. Macro-economics is based on one principle which can take two forms:
1. A rising tide lifts all boats; and,
2. A falling tide ultimately strands all boats.
After you grasp this fundamental principle, there's nothing left but statistics and pragmatics.
What works? If it doesn't work, discard it. Try something else. If it doesn't make sense from the gitgo, then you identify it as "voodoo economics" and you discard without even trying it.
Economies always go sour when political leaders attach themselves to an ideology and try to apply it to economic affairs. It doesn't matter if the ideology is Marxism or marketism, socialism or libertarianism ... the end result is always a disaster for the economy. That's because the economy is a living thing, and the major components are human. You can't fit people into any ism. That won't work. You have to fit the ism to the people.
PRAGMATISM
How about pragmatism? ... okay, pragmatism and common sense in political economics ... that might work!
Unfortunately, pragmatism in democratic politics and pragmatism in economics do not often coincide.
Given the rapid increase in population and demographic changes we're experiencing, it would be naive to think our current parties won't undergo considerable change.
... I believe our passivity in the face of this invasion of foreign job stealers ... and the success of a small minority in imposing their will over a majority -- much to the majority's detriment -- will remain a mystery.
There's really no mystery to it, anymore there is a mystery to any aristocracy/plutocracy.
Just as there is an economic elite (the super-rich), so there is a political elite. They are both members of the same club. Obama crashed the party, and he has managed to get a few of his friends in with him ... but he can't get us all in! So we are outside looking in. Obama too is something of an outsider, but he is inside. The political elite is less well defined than was the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, but it's a closed group all the same. Our 'party', like the old CPUSSR, requires that you are born into it and/or you start early in our less well-defined version of the old Soviet Komsomol. The People's Republic of China works the same way.
You can hope for a Gorbachev, but you always knew that no one from outside the Party could ever make it into the Kremlin -- not since the fall of the Old Regime. Even Yeltsin was a Party apparatchik. In "post-Communist" Russia, Putin rose to power from a background as an officer in the NKVD (People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs), the equivalent of our 'secret government' including our DHS.
Why do people accept this state of affairs? It's just the usual state of affairs, that's all. Anything else would be an exception.
Every enduring aristocracy/plutocracy has a degree of openness. That's the key to understanding Obama and what is happening today. When a social order gets shaky, the elite often look to admit outsiders as a means of stabilizing the social order. They think of it as "meritocracy".
The question raised by Robert Oak is whether this expansion of the political elite of the U.S. will function as a meritocracy or is simply decadent profiteering, disastrously tied to a severe contraction of the economic middle class and related working classes of the U.S.A.? If so, is that situation sustainable for the U.S.A.? Commentators who claim to be 'inside the beltway' say that the buzzword these days in Washington is "sustainability" ... and that's the big question. Is demise of the U.S. middle classes compatible with stability and sustainability of the global world-system? Obviously, Bill Gates assumes such stability and sustainability, but his vision of the world is limited and distorted. (Gates is taken here as an example of his class.)
The small-scale phenomenon is Obama, while the large-scale version is called 'realignment' along demographic lines. That's the theory alright, based on the ideas of Walter Lippman (1889-1974) back in the 1950s commenting that the defeat of Al Smith (a Roman Catholic) in 1928 was of greater consequence politically than the election of FDR in 1932. We can also think of all this as the practical-politics side of an ideology, the ideology known as 'multiculturalism'. What is promoted in academia and elsewhere in the corporate world as 'multiculturalism' is mirrored in the world of ordinary working people by 'realignment along demographic lines'.
Realignment along demographic lines is neither more nor less than an inevitable result of demographic change. It's the result of immigration policy over a long period of time, and the immigration policy is a result of 'globalism', which in turn arose out of 'anti-Communism', which arose out of the two great world wars, and that's as far as I take it.
I don't so much object to multiculturalism, as such. I question whether the elites have not 'lost it' in their attempt to apply multiculturalism to economic policy, as that has been exposed by Robert Oak. That's the question: are the elites losing it? In particular, is the political elite of the U.S. losing it? Do they really know what they are doing? Or are they just sitting around on the decks of the Titanic as did many another deluded elite in, for example, Russia under the Tsar?
Look at Europe. The elites there are in retreat as the people reject the EU agenda in nation after nation. Russia and Turkey no longer want to join the EU. No political leader anywhere in Europe (or Asia) today espouses multiculturalism.
That's my message, but it's a long story too. So, if anyone is interested, I will explain it all in excruciating detail in a remark below this post.
If you are video-oriented, you can get the picture by watching this video that is available courtesy of BarackObamaVideos.net --
If you were invited, try to laugh at the right places! Actually, Obama is pretty funny in places, which is the whole idea of the celebrity gathering. If he had never made it in politics, Obama might have made a living as a comedian. (Chris Rock maybe wrote the first ten minutes of his script!)
I never cease to marvel at Obama's talents as a speaker. And, I think it is a great strategic error for Republicans to underestimate him, if that's what they are doing. (Maybe the Republicans are actually planning on losing.)
Anon says "rich people aren't allowed to lose money." And I agree with that. It's what I call the principle that ...
"All dollars are equal but some dollars are more equal than others!"
That's the problem alright. And it's dishonest to talk about any kind of global free market when the 'principle' of unequal dollars reigns.
Anon also says: "it must start with the American people physically getting in the way - literally blocking the door, barring, at least symbolically, entry to their oppressors."
I agree again. I call it "Across-the-Board tariff" (or VAT). I will not vote, contribute to, or express approval of, any candidate or party that fails to advocate for a tariff protectionist policy.
BTW: There's nothing wrong with railing against the Federal Reserve, except that isn't enough. Ron Paul opposes and exposes the Fed and the WTO, but then he promotes abolition of all trade barriers (zero tariffs!) and the gold standard. No negative policy agenda is really ever adequate to a negative situation. Two negatives make a positive, but life is more than one-dimensional. Which consequent positive direction are we taking?
Maybe it will come to a revolution, but generally revolutions are merely reactionary and therefore counter-productive. Creative destruction involves somebody having a creative idea and actively pushing it forward.
To me, EP doesn't advocate anything but telling it like it is. If you like information and believe information can exist independent of propaganda, then EP is for you. I think of EP as the best source for non-professionals on macro-economics. If you believe that there are macro-economies, then there must be macro-economics.
I don't think of macro-economics as a science, more like social criticism informed by econometrics. Macro-economics could also be considered a discipline or as an approach for decision-making, based on one principle which can take two forms:
1. A rising tide lifts all boats; and,
2. A falling tide ultimately strands all boats.
After you grasp this fundamental principle, there's nothing left but statistics and pragmatics. What works? If it doesn't work, discard it. Try something else. If it doesn't make sense from the gitgo, then you identify it as "voodoo economics" and you discard it without even trying it.
To extend the metaphor into hypothetical examples, with a falling tide or sea level, maybe you decide to move your boat or sell your boat. If you can't do that, maybe you decide to prepare for living in a stranded boat. For sure, you mark down the book value of any mooring rights you may have.
If you're the Harbor Master, and you see generally rising tides, maybe you advise the Harbor Commission to put aside funds to improve the jetty. If you are the President of the Republic of Maldives, you may look into moving your entire nation! Generally, you don't delude yourself that you are in charge of "tide control," unless you are strong-willed Dutch.
Our economy is headed toward a brick wall at 100mph. We have 180,000+ contractors looting our treasury under our noses, with billions being sent there in cash, which means there's plenty of kickbacks that we'll never be able to keep track of.
Corporations are running the biggest share of our Reps with their money...
The World Bank has warned us YEARS ago about our spending, China warned us a couple years ago about our spending, and they have now divested themselves of 97% of their US holdings.
I expect the "killer blow" to our economy will be when OPEC starts accepting other money than US dollars for oil.
When that happens our money will be toilet paper...
In spite of Bill Clinton's obvious corruption, bringing us NAFTA, China and the deregulation which laid the seeds for the financial crisis, he often has good ideas. One of them is we can save 10-20% and 20% on a hot day in energy costs, usage by simply painting roof's white. Pretty simple and very obviously a good direct jobs program in the mix as well.
I wish on some they would clean up their audio, but it's awesome they have in depth talks and put them online. Sometimes they get fictional people but often, I notice gets some real economists speaking serious truth. I think of any source I've put more lectures up that they recorded than any other.
Of course they get 500 views while some cute cat gets 2 million.
Goes well with your theme, yet another piece of fiction huh? Globalization and glorified multinational monopolies give us low prices. Yeah, right.
A little more action, perhaps, but highly informative.
This approach makes a lot of sense. It shows how the "Law and Economics" movement by the neocons ruined new business opportunities in this country. That always made sense but their data is quite impressive.
Here's the outcome, a chart showing just how real the "not new jobs" data is and how hard it hits people.
Clever, aren't they, our rulers by their own machinations. The corporate media won't address this specific phenomena nor will it address the points of our movie subjects. It's a rigged game for the owners and survival of the fittest for the rest of us.
And here's EP's take on it, less elegant than these fine scholars but makes the point
I had to take off over the weekend, but I found such incredible stories and material, I'm doing the weekly series a little late.
Regardless, this has some absolutely astounding articles in it this time. All could be expanded with more data and details into an original article for this site. Read them, way more than just casual links this week.
Well, I'm the anon drive-by guy who writes railing against the Federal Reserve, and I read what you write and it makes a great deal of sense to me.
But I think in a lot of ways what you suggest circumvents the process of revolution. It would be like skipping the whole throwing out the British thing and perhaps the turmoil thereafter, and jumping right to the Constitutional Convention. Couldn't happen - something was standing in the way. Namely the British army.
Likewise giant forces are standing in the way of what you suggest, namely the global elites.
You see, one major thing would have to happen for your ideas to come to fruition: Rich people would have to use money.
And rich people aren't allowed to lose money. That simply truth is the whole reason we have a crisis to begin with. If rich people were allowed to lose money, then failed institutions and policies would fail, the rich who invested in those ponzi schemes would take a bath, we'd probably have a short and deep depression, but then we could clear the books and move on.
But because the rich aren't allowed to lose money, debt gets piled upon debt, chokes the system, and we slog along in deep malaise but the rich are preserved.
Do you expect them to go quietly? No, something physical will be needed.
I suggest a "Don't let them in" campaign. No violence, just symbolic human chains. Start first with just the Federal Reserve Bank in NYC, and the headquarters of Goldman Sachs. The premise will be, "Every time they walk in those doors you lose."
Now I am not suggesting physically preventing someone from going in. But they will have to duck under the chain. The American people are going to have to rise up - the government won't do anything to help because they are owned by those very institutions. So the people are going to have to step and say "Enough! Whatever it is they're doing in those buildings, no more! Every time they go in there, we lose. Every time they go in there, we got robbed some more."
Now at some point it will likely get much worse. But there will be no other way. The American people are going to have to rise up and tear down Goldman Sachs, tear down the Federal Reserve, tear down the IMF, tear down the WTO, tear down JP Morgan, tear them all down with their bare hands.
That is the only way it will ever be accomplished. The government is only capable of shoving Dodd-Frank like pieces of garbage down our throats that only make the too big to fail banks even bigger and more dangerous. Every single thing they do only makes it worse, only makes the people that much poorer.
Then we can sit down and replace it all in the reasoned way you suggest. But the elites are standing in the way and will not voluntarily give up their control. It is a fact of history that the elites absolutely will not stop until they are hanged. There is no limit to the enslavement and poverty they can inflict upon the people. They are a group that throughout history doesn't seem to be happy until they are hanged.
Now I'm not suggesting any of that and I hope it doesn't come to that. But I think it must start with the American people physically getting in the way - literally blocking the door, barring, at least symbolically, entry to their oppressors. Because every time they walk in those doors, the people lose more.
I honestly don't think it matters at all. Huntsman is exactly the same as Obama, exactly the same as Bush, all doing whatever lobbyists want them to do.
More we're watching the complete destruction of the United States and it's an inside job.
The only thing that I'm comfortable predicting about 2012 is that in Dec of that year, I believe, the Mayan long count calendar runs out. The Mayan's attached no significance to it at the time but I'll try here. It's not the end of the world, that would be too easy. It represents the end of presidential politics as we know it.
Obama barely tops 50% in job approval polling but he in the mid to high 50% range on favorability. If he works really hard to close the upper gap with targeted lies to please those who favor him but don't approve of his policies, that's one pillar of his strategy. The other will be the Republican candidate. If it's one of those in the race now, Obama has it made. Romney is the most "presentable" and he's a clown. The ringer is Huntsman. He's got a Jimmy Carter feel to him. Guy from nowhere. Looks "right" and can speak in full sentences. His record as Utah governor is as of yet unexamined. There are, no doubt, ideological skeletons and maybe others in his closed. He'd have an outside chance but would not likely survive the Obama attack crew, which is now experienced enough to take apart most challengers.
So lets say it's Obama. People will vote holding their noses and expect little. There will be an entire campaign that is seen from end to end as a misrepresentation of the people's interest. It will result in an inauguration of a president with a 22-23% plurality (presuming low turnout) of qualified voters, hence represent a small minority of those capable of voting. The Democrats will take back Congress with the public punishing the Republican members this time.
And the conclusion of it all will be more sleepwalking by the Democrats, no action, and worsening economic conditions. I'm happy to be wrong on this but I suspect that the real action will be in 2013 when the people will start something to throw the bums out.
Corporate media and smoke and mirrors can only work so long in the face of undeniable, ongoing hardship.
You're right. There is monetarism and then there is monetarism. It depends on what is meant by the term, and, like any word, it can be abused for propaganda purposes.
"Monetarism" has been horribly abused since it was brought forward as an alternative to "Keynesianism" by the founder of the true libertarian (classic liberal) school of economics, Henry C. Simons.
Misunderstandings arise out of different definitions of money.
From a monetarist point of view, money is a medium of exchange. It's really just another commodity, a necessary commodity, maybe more necessary than gold. Why try to tie one commodity to another? What's the point? Just as with a monetarist-managed currency, metallic or bimetallic standards never work without fiscal responsibility and fiscal prudence.
Metallic components are needed for a currency only because people doubt the "full faith and credit of the United States," which reduces to that they lack full faith and credit in themselves collectively, and if that's the way it is, there's no hope for it anyway. The Founders could have saved themselves the trouble and stuck with the Crown.
Is there gold in Fort Knox? How much? How would it help the United States to base a currency on something that may or may not be there in sufficient quantity? Or is it? You tell me. For all I know, you and Ron Paul are personally sitting on a horde of gold, but why should I trust you to manage the currency any more than I can trust the Federal Reserve?
Yes, the word "monetarism" has been and is abused by schemers and scammers, who have equally abused the glamorous flag of the "gold standard." Sure, it could be nice if the United States Treasury had a big pot of gold, but the crooks who run things now would see to it that it was gone in the wink of an eye! Guns don't kill: people do. Monetarism isn't the problem: the crooks are!
Bottom line: although the Constitution -- in the section that prohibits any state from entering into a confederation -- declares that no state shall "coin money, emit Bills of Credit; [or] make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts," nonetheless Art. I, Sect. 8, effectively declares a policy of monetarism with no mention of metallic or bimetallic standards. If you don't like it, you should advocate an amendment to the Constitution.
The problem isn't monetarism or a monetarist policy, as such. The problem is that monetarism and monetary policy are misunderstood. People think that it's okay to electronically create any amount of money, just because that is theoretically possible. People think that somehow the theory of monetarism releases the government from responsible behavior. People think that because there is no gold standard, therefore no one (especially those who put their money offshore) should pay any taxes and/or no one should be denied any monetary benefits. Beyond the problems of economic and monetary education, the problem is corporate globalism and the international system of fractional reserve banking.
Without fiscal responsibility and fiscal prudence, what does it matter if you proclaim a ratio of your currency to some commodity? Is there gold in Fort Knox? Which begs the question:
Does it really matter if there is gold in Fort Knox? -- aside from the criminal issue of who stole it?
Of course, to some extent, money must also be a store of value and a measure of worth. Money supply must be managed with that in mind. However, we should keep foremost in mind that what we are after is a supply of something that is absolutely necessary for any economy to flourish or even exist, namely, a medium of exchange! Like tariffs on imports, a monetarist policy is part of the Constitution of the United States.
Anyway, I have said that if we must have some kind of commodity-based monetary standard, then let it be a basket of commodities. The economic-fiscal-monetary models for this have been worked out. The idea has been presented by Hayek, and it makes some sense. But it still comes down to some version of monetarism. (Otherwise we've left economics and gone over to theology!)
I am really just arguing for education, enlightened self-interest, Americanism, global peace, protectionism and social sanity. (About protectionism, relating to ideas of Henry C. Simons, the national/global situation today is very far from what it was in 1946., and, IMHO, Simons today would advocate an across-the-board tariff or VAT.)
I don't know, but we may be in 99% agreement. My view is that things can be looking up, but democratic institutions and governance are in a terrible mess. The big long-term dangers to the American economy (and to the global economy) are the WTO world-system with its inherent destabilizing tendencies including neo-mercantilism and drawn-out institutionalized warfare (unless those are reformed on the initiative of the United States). The mid-term danger is runaway inflation (unless the Federal Reserve and U.S. monetary and trade policy are reformed soon). The short-term danger is that the "Bush tax cuts" will not be repealed and all the issues related to that, including the necessity for an across-the-board tariff as part of a reform to eliminate corporate tax loopholes.
We need structural political reform, especially of campaign financing, We need protectionism. We need a new Reform Party contending not only for the White House but for every seat in the Congress.
But very few listen to me. Most don't even read EP.
You mentioned this possibility earlier, and now you draw it detail.
I suppose that the Court will say that the class is too big for the courts to fashion adequate and just remedies. It's like too big to fail, only it's become too big to take responsibiilty.
Apologists for the Court will say that the remedy could be like Brown v. Board, all kinds of things being tried by different district courts all over the country, and maybe ultimately there would even by 'bussing' involved as plaintiffs were bussed from courthouse to courthouse.
But let's wait and see. Smaller scale, more targeted cases should still be possible.
Your analysis is sound, as to what should be done .... but also, unfortunately, sound as to what the probable outcome is.
Once again we may well find that, according tot the Court,
"All dollars are equal but some dollars are more equal than others."
It's a helluva way to run a country.
We (U.S.) are losing the neo-mercantilist game, which is a game where the rules are constantly changed. We should forget about playing the neo-mercantilist game and do things a different way: establish a stable monetary policy and a stable fiscal-financial policy, add to that a stable across-the-board tariff, and then practice free enterprise, including aggressive prosecution of War Profiteering Prevention Act and anti-trust law.
Instead of pretending to run the world, we concentrate on running our own bailey wick, within which we promote a system that allows small businesses and start-ups to flourish, even if they are not "minority-owned."
Everything together, the point is to level the competitive playing field for producers.
Our five-year plan should be to establish tax-reform (eliminating loopholes), and reform of our monetary and fiscal/financial systems. eliminate ALL preference systems and let free enterprise operate -- and then keep the government out of business for five years. Of course, we would still have to do battle among ourselves on environmental issues, extraction issues, nuclear issues and environmental impacts of renewable resources. That's where the focus of our political debate should be.
We don't have to become like China. They do their thing. We do our thing. We maintain our borders: across-the-board tariff or VAT.
We take responsibility for a full-employment policy: immigration policy is secondary to full-employment policy. Full employment drives immigration, not the other way around.
To greatest possible extent, we accommodate our closest neighbors, Mexico and Canada. That's a kind of preference, but it's a natural and inevitable preference, based in history.
What we want to avoid is preferences that derive from our delusion that we are responsible for all the borders everywhere -- equally responsible for everything everywhere in the world, as though we had anything like sufficient power or resolve or wisdom to fix everything everywhere in the world. That was the United States in 1946. That was then. This is now.
We don't reject "gloablism" -- we simply announce that the "flat earth" approach to globalism is dead.
Why not?
China is not the only country to have national plans - the French run national plans and the plans are generally supported by all political parties. They take a national view of things like transport infrastructure (the TGV construction), health, education, etc. It is a recognition that society is made up of mutually reinforcing interests rather than narrow vested interests as in the US.
The problem in the US is these discussing things immediately falls into juvilne name calling about 'socialism', etc.
It is easy to knock the US but what could the US achieve if it took the same approach and focused solely on achieving planned national objectives as opposed to being divided by narrow interests that pits Americans against each other. I don't live in the US but the only thing the US approach benefits is competitors to the US.
The last time the US was fully mobilized as a nation was WW2 and the fight back in Europe and the fight across the Pacific - why should war be the only driver of national interest and cohesion?
BACKGROUND: the death of ideology and all the isms
Does anybody remember the World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre, Brazil, way back n early 2001? The WSF was deliberately timed to coincide with the World Economic Forum of that year, promoted as an alternative to whatever the banksters were cooking up in Davos.
Luminaries such as Mikhail Gorbachev, Immanuel Wallerstein (sociologist-historian who originated "world-systems analysis), Samir Amin, (Franco-Egyptian economist), and, Takis Fotopoulos, (Anglo-Greek political scientist-philospher and economist) gathered and, among other ideas, examined the collapse of all modern 'systemic social movements' and 'anti-systemic social movements' as well. (Of course, it is understood that we are now in a 'post-modern' era.)
Nationalism as it had appeared at the end of World War I -- a kind of anti-imperialism -- had collapsed by the end of the 20th Century. Traditional imperialism had collapsed shortly after World War II, although Soviet and U.S. empires continued until the end of the century and what amounts to a new Chinese empire continues strong up to the present day.
Subsequent to World War II, all the new nationalisms such as Yugoslavism, Stalinist pan-Slavism, Peronism, pan-Arabism, pan-Africanism and Black Nationalism eventually collapsed, not to mention fascism and Nazism. By the end of the century, Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, socialism, anarchism, feminism, nativism, environmentalism, constructivism, de-constructivism, modernism, post-modernism and even the Gaia movement and shamanism had all come and gone -- at least in the minds of the primarily academic group of social theorists (prone to using words such as 'utopics') gathered at Porto Alegre. Even progressivism and perhaps statism could be proclaimed, objectively speaking, as dead.
Finally, 'globalism' alone remained as the last 'ism' standing.
GLOBALISM
'Globalism' appears to be a problematic term, because there is a planet and it is approximately global in shape. So what are we saying if we claim to be globalists? That we are in favor of the Earth being roughly global in shape? The question isn't whether we are globalists or not, it's what kind of globalists are we? The WSF intellectuals were opposed to the 'globalism' being patented at Davos, and some kind of 'ism' appeared to many at the WSF to be needed. But there was little agreement about the particulars of what was needed.
In many ways, the 'ism' of the WSF was like the old 'ism' of the Washington consensus, which was 'anti-Communism'. In other words, the WSF could find no consensus other than an 'anti-ism', namely, 'anti' the global project being planned in the WEF at Davos. The WSFers called the Davos project 'neo-liberalism' or 'corporate globalism'. It's awkward to put an 'anti' in front of something like 'neo-liberalism'.
(Probably some of the people involved in the WSF have written articles and books on the concept of the 'anti-ism'. Those of us old enough to remember know how compelling an anti-ism such as anit-Communism can be. Today, of course, we have anti-terrorism where formerly we had anti-Communism. If we cannot agree on being pro anything, then we can at least come together on some anti-agenda or anti-ism. Thus today we don't really have any pro-fiscal-responsibility agenda -- including such basic items as Rep. Abernathy's War Profiteering Prevention Act -- but many can manage enthusiasm for an anti-tax agenda.)
IF NOT GLOBALISM, THEN WHAT?
Takis Fotopoulos -- one of the big dogs in this anti-neo-liberalism thing -- has promoted something called 'Inclusive Democracy' as the "new" antisystemic movement that is needed. Fotopoulos has written a revealing sentence in his work The End of Traditional Antisytemic Movements and the Need for A New Type of Antisystemic Movement Today (November, 2001). Here's the sentence:
"In fact, the only significant anti-systemic forces today, which directly challenge the ‘system’ (i.e. the market economy and representative democracy) are some currents within the anti-globalisation movement." (Takis Fotopoulos, 2001)
Personally, I am part of that anti-globalization movement. Except that i object to it being called 'anti-globalization'. I am not opposed to globalization, whatever that means, anymore than I am opposed to trade just because I am pro-tariff (across-the-board tariff or VAT). I just don't agree with Fotopoulos' premise that the system today can be described as "the market economy and representative democracy"! I would say that the world-system of today is marked by a lack of any real market economy and also of representative democracy. I think I am part of a "current within the anti-globalization movement" and i think I am challenging the corporate ("neo-liberal") system, but I am not challenging either the concepts or the reality of market economies or of representative democracy.
To be fair to the man, Fotopoulos' paper is dated November 2001. But that is my point. I think that Obama is still a true believer in the anti-anti-globalization movement. I think many of our economic-political elite are. That anti-anti-globalization movement has been styled 'inclusive democracy' by its advocates, but, more commonly, it is known as 'multiculturalism'.
MULTICULTURALISM
I am not saying that the phenomena of multiple cultures in the U.S.A. or in the world are evil. I am not ranting against a mosque in Manhattan. I am not opposed to schools teaching about multiple cultures with the objective of reducing conflict and inter-group tension and violence. I am in favor of a multicultural world at peace. Why not?
I am just making one point here:
MULTICULTURALISM IS WHAT PRESIDENT OBAMA, with the best of intentions, BELIEVES IN ... AND MULTICULTURALISM TODAY IS JUST ONE MORE DEAD ISM. MULTICULTURALISM IS THE LAST OF ALL THE DEAD OR DYING ANTI-SYSTEMIC SOCIAL MOVEMENTS STILL HOLDING OVER FROM THE 20TH CENTURY.
President Obama simply has bought into an ism. It seems to work well for him, but that doesn't mean that it works well for his natural popular politcal base.
I think every president in my lifetime bought into some ism or another or into some anti-ism or another. Myself, I am not without my isms. If pressed, I will own to being a kind of humanist, even though that may be a dirty word to some good people. I also like to call myself a monetarist. And a protectionist. And a constitutionalist. (Whatever else I may believe lies outside the scope of EP.)
I am all for every positive aspect of every culture. I am all for culture. I admire the Sons of Italy, the Sons of Norway, Sokol, the NAACP, the Peace Corps and the DAR. I am all for global peace and friendship among all peoples.
It's just that, as I look realistically around the world, it looks like the "anti-social movement" of multiculturalism, that is, the politico-economic dogma of multiculturalism ... is a dead letter.
And that is how I understand President Obama. He is a multiculturalist -- which would be okay, except for the macro-economics part. The President should stop and think twice before trying to apply his social ideology to the decisions he makes that ultimately affect the U.S. economy respecting such matters as unemployment. Something less idealistic and more pragmatic is needed. After all, unemployment, homelessness and malnutrition span all of America's multiple cultures, no?
MACRO-ECONOMICS AND VOODOO ECONOMICS
I suspect that President Obama is ignorant of the underlying concepts of macro-economics, simple though these are. Macro-economics is based on one principle which can take two forms:
1. A rising tide lifts all boats; and,
2. A falling tide ultimately strands all boats.
After you grasp this fundamental principle, there's nothing left but statistics and pragmatics.
What works? If it doesn't work, discard it. Try something else. If it doesn't make sense from the gitgo, then you identify it as "voodoo economics" and you discard without even trying it.
Economies always go sour when political leaders attach themselves to an ideology and try to apply it to economic affairs. It doesn't matter if the ideology is Marxism or marketism, socialism or libertarianism ... the end result is always a disaster for the economy. That's because the economy is a living thing, and the major components are human. You can't fit people into any ism. That won't work. You have to fit the ism to the people.
PRAGMATISM
How about pragmatism? ... okay, pragmatism and common sense in political economics ... that might work!
Unfortunately, pragmatism in democratic politics and pragmatism in economics do not often coincide.
Jersey, citing to a blog at DailyKos, writes:
There's really no mystery to it, anymore there is a mystery to any aristocracy/plutocracy.
Just as there is an economic elite (the super-rich), so there is a political elite. They are both members of the same club. Obama crashed the party, and he has managed to get a few of his friends in with him ... but he can't get us all in! So we are outside looking in. Obama too is something of an outsider, but he is inside. The political elite is less well defined than was the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, but it's a closed group all the same. Our 'party', like the old CPUSSR, requires that you are born into it and/or you start early in our less well-defined version of the old Soviet Komsomol. The People's Republic of China works the same way.
You can hope for a Gorbachev, but you always knew that no one from outside the Party could ever make it into the Kremlin -- not since the fall of the Old Regime. Even Yeltsin was a Party apparatchik. In "post-Communist" Russia, Putin rose to power from a background as an officer in the NKVD (People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs), the equivalent of our 'secret government' including our DHS.
Why do people accept this state of affairs? It's just the usual state of affairs, that's all. Anything else would be an exception.
Every enduring aristocracy/plutocracy has a degree of openness. That's the key to understanding Obama and what is happening today. When a social order gets shaky, the elite often look to admit outsiders as a means of stabilizing the social order. They think of it as "meritocracy".
The question raised by Robert Oak is whether this expansion of the political elite of the U.S. will function as a meritocracy or is simply decadent profiteering, disastrously tied to a severe contraction of the economic middle class and related working classes of the U.S.A.? If so, is that situation sustainable for the U.S.A.? Commentators who claim to be 'inside the beltway' say that the buzzword these days in Washington is "sustainability" ... and that's the big question. Is demise of the U.S. middle classes compatible with stability and sustainability of the global world-system? Obviously, Bill Gates assumes such stability and sustainability, but his vision of the world is limited and distorted. (Gates is taken here as an example of his class.)
The small-scale phenomenon is Obama, while the large-scale version is called 'realignment' along demographic lines. That's the theory alright, based on the ideas of Walter Lippman (1889-1974) back in the 1950s commenting that the defeat of Al Smith (a Roman Catholic) in 1928 was of greater consequence politically than the election of FDR in 1932. We can also think of all this as the practical-politics side of an ideology, the ideology known as 'multiculturalism'. What is promoted in academia and elsewhere in the corporate world as 'multiculturalism' is mirrored in the world of ordinary working people by 'realignment along demographic lines'.
Realignment along demographic lines is neither more nor less than an inevitable result of demographic change. It's the result of immigration policy over a long period of time, and the immigration policy is a result of 'globalism', which in turn arose out of 'anti-Communism', which arose out of the two great world wars, and that's as far as I take it.
I don't so much object to multiculturalism, as such. I question whether the elites have not 'lost it' in their attempt to apply multiculturalism to economic policy, as that has been exposed by Robert Oak. That's the question: are the elites losing it? In particular, is the political elite of the U.S. losing it? Do they really know what they are doing? Or are they just sitting around on the decks of the Titanic as did many another deluded elite in, for example, Russia under the Tsar?
Look at Europe. The elites there are in retreat as the people reject the EU agenda in nation after nation. Russia and Turkey no longer want to join the EU. No political leader anywhere in Europe (or Asia) today espouses multiculturalism.
That's my message, but it's a long story too. So, if anyone is interested, I will explain it all in excruciating detail in a remark below this post.
If you are video-oriented, you can get the picture by watching this video that is available courtesy of BarackObamaVideos.net --
Al Smith dinner October 2008
You weren't invited?
If you were invited, try to laugh at the right places! Actually, Obama is pretty funny in places, which is the whole idea of the celebrity gathering. If he had never made it in politics, Obama might have made a living as a comedian. (Chris Rock maybe wrote the first ten minutes of his script!)
I never cease to marvel at Obama's talents as a speaker. And, I think it is a great strategic error for Republicans to underestimate him, if that's what they are doing. (Maybe the Republicans are actually planning on losing.)
BTW: Is celebrity culture a part of the problem?
Anon says "rich people aren't allowed to lose money." And I agree with that. It's what I call the principle that ...
"All dollars are equal but some dollars are more equal than others!"
That's the problem alright. And it's dishonest to talk about any kind of global free market when the 'principle' of unequal dollars reigns.
Anon also says: "it must start with the American people physically getting in the way - literally blocking the door, barring, at least symbolically, entry to their oppressors."
I agree again. I call it "Across-the-Board tariff" (or VAT). I will not vote, contribute to, or express approval of, any candidate or party that fails to advocate for a tariff protectionist policy.
BTW: There's nothing wrong with railing against the Federal Reserve, except that isn't enough. Ron Paul opposes and exposes the Fed and the WTO, but then he promotes abolition of all trade barriers (zero tariffs!) and the gold standard. No negative policy agenda is really ever adequate to a negative situation. Two negatives make a positive, but life is more than one-dimensional. Which consequent positive direction are we taking?
Maybe it will come to a revolution, but generally revolutions are merely reactionary and therefore counter-productive. Creative destruction involves somebody having a creative idea and actively pushing it forward.
To me, EP doesn't advocate anything but telling it like it is. If you like information and believe information can exist independent of propaganda, then EP is for you. I think of EP as the best source for non-professionals on macro-economics. If you believe that there are macro-economies, then there must be macro-economics.
I don't think of macro-economics as a science, more like social criticism informed by econometrics. Macro-economics could also be considered a discipline or as an approach for decision-making, based on one principle which can take two forms:
1. A rising tide lifts all boats; and,
2. A falling tide ultimately strands all boats.
After you grasp this fundamental principle, there's nothing left but statistics and pragmatics. What works? If it doesn't work, discard it. Try something else. If it doesn't make sense from the gitgo, then you identify it as "voodoo economics" and you discard it without even trying it.
To extend the metaphor into hypothetical examples, with a falling tide or sea level, maybe you decide to move your boat or sell your boat. If you can't do that, maybe you decide to prepare for living in a stranded boat. For sure, you mark down the book value of any mooring rights you may have.
If you're the Harbor Master, and you see generally rising tides, maybe you advise the Harbor Commission to put aside funds to improve the jetty. If you are the President of the Republic of Maldives, you may look into moving your entire nation! Generally, you don't delude yourself that you are in charge of "tide control," unless you are strong-willed Dutch.
Suggest you read a major article in the British Journal Nature, Vol 472, April 2011.
It's called "The PhD Factory" and it outlines in great detail the overabundance of US and global PhDs.
The only people unaware of the glut in US scientists reside in Washington DC!
Excellent article Robert!! Thanks for your excellent points!
Why wait till 2013 to throw the bums out.
Washington isn't on your side.
Our economy is headed toward a brick wall at 100mph. We have 180,000+ contractors looting our treasury under our noses, with billions being sent there in cash, which means there's plenty of kickbacks that we'll never be able to keep track of.
Corporations are running the biggest share of our Reps with their money...
The World Bank has warned us YEARS ago about our spending, China warned us a couple years ago about our spending, and they have now divested themselves of 97% of their US holdings.
I expect the "killer blow" to our economy will be when OPEC starts accepting other money than US dollars for oil.
When that happens our money will be toilet paper...
In spite of Bill Clinton's obvious corruption, bringing us NAFTA, China and the deregulation which laid the seeds for the financial crisis, he often has good ideas. One of them is we can save 10-20% and 20% on a hot day in energy costs, usage by simply painting roof's white. Pretty simple and very obviously a good direct jobs program in the mix as well.
Too late to go to the links but I'll follow up tomorrow.
I have been meaning to check out those work bidding sites.
Why do Americans get just 25 cents? Let's hope this exposure -- or should I say expose? -- in Newsweek gets the Labor Dept. on the case.
I wish on some they would clean up their audio, but it's awesome they have in depth talks and put them online. Sometimes they get fictional people but often, I notice gets some real economists speaking serious truth. I think of any source I've put more lectures up that they recorded than any other.
Of course they get 500 views while some cute cat gets 2 million.
Goes well with your theme, yet another piece of fiction huh? Globalization and glorified multinational monopolies give us low prices. Yeah, right.
A little more action, perhaps, but highly informative.
This approach makes a lot of sense. It shows how the "Law and Economics" movement by the neocons ruined new business opportunities in this country. That always made sense but their data is quite impressive.
Here's the outcome, a chart showing just how real the "not new jobs" data is and how hard it hits people.
Clever, aren't they, our rulers by their own machinations. The corporate media won't address this specific phenomena nor will it address the points of our movie subjects. It's a rigged game for the owners and survival of the fittest for the rest of us.
And here's EP's take on it, less elegant than these fine scholars but makes the point
Questions for The Money Party: Why Negative Job Growth Since 2000?
Hi Folks,
I had to take off over the weekend, but I found such incredible stories and material, I'm doing the weekly series a little late.
Regardless, this has some absolutely astounding articles in it this time. All could be expanded with more data and details into an original article for this site. Read them, way more than just casual links this week.
Well, I'm the anon drive-by guy who writes railing against the Federal Reserve, and I read what you write and it makes a great deal of sense to me.
But I think in a lot of ways what you suggest circumvents the process of revolution. It would be like skipping the whole throwing out the British thing and perhaps the turmoil thereafter, and jumping right to the Constitutional Convention. Couldn't happen - something was standing in the way. Namely the British army.
Likewise giant forces are standing in the way of what you suggest, namely the global elites.
You see, one major thing would have to happen for your ideas to come to fruition: Rich people would have to use money.
And rich people aren't allowed to lose money. That simply truth is the whole reason we have a crisis to begin with. If rich people were allowed to lose money, then failed institutions and policies would fail, the rich who invested in those ponzi schemes would take a bath, we'd probably have a short and deep depression, but then we could clear the books and move on.
But because the rich aren't allowed to lose money, debt gets piled upon debt, chokes the system, and we slog along in deep malaise but the rich are preserved.
Do you expect them to go quietly? No, something physical will be needed.
I suggest a "Don't let them in" campaign. No violence, just symbolic human chains. Start first with just the Federal Reserve Bank in NYC, and the headquarters of Goldman Sachs. The premise will be, "Every time they walk in those doors you lose."
Now I am not suggesting physically preventing someone from going in. But they will have to duck under the chain. The American people are going to have to rise up - the government won't do anything to help because they are owned by those very institutions. So the people are going to have to step and say "Enough! Whatever it is they're doing in those buildings, no more! Every time they go in there, we lose. Every time they go in there, we got robbed some more."
Now at some point it will likely get much worse. But there will be no other way. The American people are going to have to rise up and tear down Goldman Sachs, tear down the Federal Reserve, tear down the IMF, tear down the WTO, tear down JP Morgan, tear them all down with their bare hands.
That is the only way it will ever be accomplished. The government is only capable of shoving Dodd-Frank like pieces of garbage down our throats that only make the too big to fail banks even bigger and more dangerous. Every single thing they do only makes it worse, only makes the people that much poorer.
Then we can sit down and replace it all in the reasoned way you suggest. But the elites are standing in the way and will not voluntarily give up their control. It is a fact of history that the elites absolutely will not stop until they are hanged. There is no limit to the enslavement and poverty they can inflict upon the people. They are a group that throughout history doesn't seem to be happy until they are hanged.
Now I'm not suggesting any of that and I hope it doesn't come to that. But I think it must start with the American people physically getting in the way - literally blocking the door, barring, at least symbolically, entry to their oppressors. Because every time they walk in those doors, the people lose more.
I honestly don't think it matters at all. Huntsman is exactly the same as Obama, exactly the same as Bush, all doing whatever lobbyists want them to do.
More we're watching the complete destruction of the United States and it's an inside job.
The only thing that I'm comfortable predicting about 2012 is that in Dec of that year, I believe, the Mayan long count calendar runs out. The Mayan's attached no significance to it at the time but I'll try here. It's not the end of the world, that would be too easy. It represents the end of presidential politics as we know it.
Obama barely tops 50% in job approval polling but he in the mid to high 50% range on favorability. If he works really hard to close the upper gap with targeted lies to please those who favor him but don't approve of his policies, that's one pillar of his strategy. The other will be the Republican candidate. If it's one of those in the race now, Obama has it made. Romney is the most "presentable" and he's a clown. The ringer is Huntsman. He's got a Jimmy Carter feel to him. Guy from nowhere. Looks "right" and can speak in full sentences. His record as Utah governor is as of yet unexamined. There are, no doubt, ideological skeletons and maybe others in his closed. He'd have an outside chance but would not likely survive the Obama attack crew, which is now experienced enough to take apart most challengers.
So lets say it's Obama. People will vote holding their noses and expect little. There will be an entire campaign that is seen from end to end as a misrepresentation of the people's interest. It will result in an inauguration of a president with a 22-23% plurality (presuming low turnout) of qualified voters, hence represent a small minority of those capable of voting. The Democrats will take back Congress with the public punishing the Republican members this time.
And the conclusion of it all will be more sleepwalking by the Democrats, no action, and worsening economic conditions. I'm happy to be wrong on this but I suspect that the real action will be in 2013 when the people will start something to throw the bums out.
Corporate media and smoke and mirrors can only work so long in the face of undeniable, ongoing hardship.
You're right. There is monetarism and then there is monetarism. It depends on what is meant by the term, and, like any word, it can be abused for propaganda purposes.
"Monetarism" has been horribly abused since it was brought forward as an alternative to "Keynesianism" by the founder of the true libertarian (classic liberal) school of economics, Henry C. Simons.
Misunderstandings arise out of different definitions of money.
From a monetarist point of view, money is a medium of exchange. It's really just another commodity, a necessary commodity, maybe more necessary than gold. Why try to tie one commodity to another? What's the point? Just as with a monetarist-managed currency, metallic or bimetallic standards never work without fiscal responsibility and fiscal prudence.
Metallic components are needed for a currency only because people doubt the "full faith and credit of the United States," which reduces to that they lack full faith and credit in themselves collectively, and if that's the way it is, there's no hope for it anyway. The Founders could have saved themselves the trouble and stuck with the Crown.
Is there gold in Fort Knox? How much? How would it help the United States to base a currency on something that may or may not be there in sufficient quantity? Or is it? You tell me. For all I know, you and Ron Paul are personally sitting on a horde of gold, but why should I trust you to manage the currency any more than I can trust the Federal Reserve?
Yes, the word "monetarism" has been and is abused by schemers and scammers, who have equally abused the glamorous flag of the "gold standard." Sure, it could be nice if the United States Treasury had a big pot of gold, but the crooks who run things now would see to it that it was gone in the wink of an eye! Guns don't kill: people do. Monetarism isn't the problem: the crooks are!
Bottom line: although the Constitution -- in the section that prohibits any state from entering into a confederation -- declares that no state shall "coin money, emit Bills of Credit; [or] make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts," nonetheless Art. I, Sect. 8, effectively declares a policy of monetarism with no mention of metallic or bimetallic standards. If you don't like it, you should advocate an amendment to the Constitution.
The problem isn't monetarism or a monetarist policy, as such. The problem is that monetarism and monetary policy are misunderstood. People think that it's okay to electronically create any amount of money, just because that is theoretically possible. People think that somehow the theory of monetarism releases the government from responsible behavior. People think that because there is no gold standard, therefore no one (especially those who put their money offshore) should pay any taxes and/or no one should be denied any monetary benefits. Beyond the problems of economic and monetary education, the problem is corporate globalism and the international system of fractional reserve banking.
Without fiscal responsibility and fiscal prudence, what does it matter if you proclaim a ratio of your currency to some commodity? Is there gold in Fort Knox? Which begs the question:
Does it really matter if there is gold in Fort Knox? -- aside from the criminal issue of who stole it?
Of course, to some extent, money must also be a store of value and a measure of worth. Money supply must be managed with that in mind. However, we should keep foremost in mind that what we are after is a supply of something that is absolutely necessary for any economy to flourish or even exist, namely, a medium of exchange! Like tariffs on imports, a monetarist policy is part of the Constitution of the United States.
Anyway, I have said that if we must have some kind of commodity-based monetary standard, then let it be a basket of commodities. The economic-fiscal-monetary models for this have been worked out. The idea has been presented by Hayek, and it makes some sense. But it still comes down to some version of monetarism. (Otherwise we've left economics and gone over to theology!)
I am really just arguing for education, enlightened self-interest, Americanism, global peace, protectionism and social sanity. (About protectionism, relating to ideas of Henry C. Simons, the national/global situation today is very far from what it was in 1946., and, IMHO, Simons today would advocate an across-the-board tariff or VAT.)
I don't know, but we may be in 99% agreement. My view is that things can be looking up, but democratic institutions and governance are in a terrible mess. The big long-term dangers to the American economy (and to the global economy) are the WTO world-system with its inherent destabilizing tendencies including neo-mercantilism and drawn-out institutionalized warfare (unless those are reformed on the initiative of the United States). The mid-term danger is runaway inflation (unless the Federal Reserve and U.S. monetary and trade policy are reformed soon). The short-term danger is that the "Bush tax cuts" will not be repealed and all the issues related to that, including the necessity for an across-the-board tariff as part of a reform to eliminate corporate tax loopholes.
We need structural political reform, especially of campaign financing, We need protectionism. We need a new Reform Party contending not only for the White House but for every seat in the Congress.
But very few listen to me. Most don't even read EP.
If you haven't already, please check out the American Monetary Institute
P.S. I have no idea if my ideas match those of Robert Oak or anyone else posting here at EP.
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