More Notes on the Debt Ceiling “Negotiation”

Gang of Six? Looks to me more like the Gang of Seven (with Obama part of the team).

I agree that this is a horrible situation that the president has steered us into. Also that Obama’s re-election is seriously in doubt if it passes.

Real nastiness (or paranoia) imagines Obama (and friends) deliberately created the crisis situation (Shock Capitalism) by for instance, ensuring the Spring 2009 stimulus package was ineffective and borrowing so much money to bail out the banks. This would include TARP in 2008, the choice to let Lehmann fall, the decision to blow off Pelosi and not end the Bush tax cuts in Jan 2009, the reappointment of Bernanke, and the structure and timing of the health care bill. IOW, the Lesser Depression is a deliberate tactic or strategy. I even think Greenspan could have engineered the housing bubble.

I am unable and unwilling to predict anything 2 weeks or 2 years ahead. It appears the France and Germany have reached an agreement on Greece, so that may be punted another 6 months. Congress and Obama probably will raise the debt ceiling, with say a trillion dollar spending cut (few taxes) as a down payment to the House, and immediately start looking toward a Grand Bargain in the fall. I think this will happen maybe the middle of August to mid September after much damage has been done to the economy and the US credit rating.

Then Europe, horrible fiscal policy, and Bernanke will send us into the 2nd leg of what history will eventually call the Greater Depression in early 2012. Romney or any Republican would have good odds in November, but I’m not sure it matters, because the real serious neo-liberalism will come down on us in 2013, no matter who is President.

It’s gonna be a screaming nightmare.

Isn’t a debt ceiling a stupid idea in the first place?

……or, Nick, maybe it will allow for a new, prodigious opposition to arise from the ashes of the current “Left.” An opposition that is flexible, improvisational, not easily cowed or cornered…..an opposition that will ultimately get the job done and end this Class War once and for all.

Of course, another perspective for this is that there is no “Left” and hasn’t been for quite some time in the U.S. Some would argue that there was never a “Left” recognized within the political establishment in the U.S. Considering this, what has been jokingly referred to as the “Left” is a mere illusion propped up to give the disaffected and I want to feel good without giving up my Volvo Liberals the idea that they matter, when in fact they don’t. What’s referred to as the “Left” in the U.S. is a hollowed out husk, and hidden within its innards are the Enemy.

I think that’s why the stock market hasn’t “reacted”.

The Stock Market is no longer a reliable indicator of anything, if it ever was. It’s the last leg that will get kicked out….it’s the leg that keeps the Middle Class from taking to the streets. Once their retirement goes….for the majority, then all hell is going to break loose, but not constructively, unfortunately. Scapegoats will be found. Pogroms will be launched and senseless, misdirected violence will rule the day.

Addendum to my last post:

He’ll probably trade cuts in medicare and ss just for an extension of unemployment insurance and an extension of the payroll tax cut for another year as well as some nebulous promise to close tax loopholes in the future.

Z

Cuts of that magnitude will be to the economy what a nuclear bomb is to a city.

I’m imagining it would be more like the effect a nuclear bomb in a major city like NYC or LA would have on the economy – to throw it into a far worse condition than it’s in now. Am I being overly optimistic.

Interesting idea, Mr. Welsh, that President Obama could have and should have raised the debt ceiling while his party still held the House. Instead, he gave up on the taxes increases, both the income tax increases which were due to happen automatically and the return of the estate tax–whose repeal he called “the Paris Hilton tax break” when he gave the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Convention. Then, why did he do as he did, instead of raising the debt ceiling, as you suggest he should have?

Most likely, because the previous month his party had taken what President Obama called a “shellacking” at the polls in an election where the biggest issue was the fiscal one. He doesn’t want the shellacking of 2010 to turn into the rout of 2012, when his own name will be on the ballot.

“He doesn’t want the shellacking of 2010 to turn into the rout of 2012”

So he gave the rich a tax cut and is about to cut Medicare to pay for it. Great way to avoid electoral disaster!

He was defeated the moment he was elected.

Marat has it right.

Jane Hamsher has an interesting take on this over at FDL:

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2011/07/21/why-arent-the-banks-lobbying-over-the-debt-ceiling/

The banks aren’t lobbying for an increase, even though they could lose a LOT of money in a default. Why this odd behavior? Here are some reasons she lists:

They think it will just happen anyway and aren’t worried — O-kay. I can’t find anyone else who isn’t worried, so I’m assuming that the quality of their intel isn’t that poor.

They have received private assurances from Obama that before it gets to that point, he will invoke the 14th Amendment, and they do not want to be blamed for raising the debt ceiling by publicly advocating for it.

Jon Walker adds two possible more:

The banks want to force the President to use the 14th amendment and take the debt ceiling increase votes off the table once and for all, because who knows what kind of nut might be in office 8 years from now

The banks want to force Bernanke into some kind of mini-QE3 to send out Social Security checks, because that will be very very good for Goldman Sachs. In which case Judd Gregg should definitely go to jail.

Comments? I’m voting either a private assurance of the 14th amendment strategy or the mini-QE3 play.

StewartM

Cujo359,

Well put. It could be added that a complex society without debt is simply not possible – one person’s debt is another person’s asset, and without debt larger economic undertakings would always be limited to the few who have accumulated large sums of money, and nobody could ever found a start-up company.

But more importantly, all debt is not equal. There are at least three possible debtor categories: consumers, companies and the state. Companies, as mentioned above, simply need to have debt to function, there is no way around it. For them, it is the normal modus operandi, and no problem as long as they can expect to make more profit than they have to pay in interest.

Consumers, on the other hand, should really think very hard indeed before ever going into debt. I think the only reasonable way of doing that is a mortage or student loan after a careful cost-benefit analysis has shown that it is affordable and a good investment for the future. Apart from that, debt is always eating the future for a consumer, and anybody who goes into debt to pay for consumption should get their head checked. What they should really do is save, and the money they deposit can then be lent out by the banks to the companies mentioned above.

Finally, the state is yet another issue. Ideally from a Keynesian perspective, it should balance the other two “sectors”; when companies and consumers are doing well, lower state debt, when they suffer, go into debt to help them lower theirs and get the economy out of a slump. Once again, one person’s debt is another person’s asset, and this is the blatantly obvious point that debt-is-always-bad shouters fail to grasp. Such Keynesianism could probably work if everybody weren’t idiots and wouldn’t always fail to lower the debts during the good years.

But even in the worst case, a state can simply go bankrupt or inflate the debt away. Companies and consumers obviously do not have the latter option, and companies may be physically destroyed by the former, but that cannot happen to a state. I have never quite understood why all this debt is taken so seriously. If worst really comes to worst (and it looks as if it will), simply do a currency reform and start completely anew, with all debts and assets destroyed. The important thing is that you still have the farms, mines, factories and the educated workforce. That is the machinery – the money is just the grease that keeps the cogs turning smoothly. Of course, such a move would require the state not to be completely beholden to the creditors…

Wall Street owns Obama. It was Wall Street money that got him elected, and even before the election, he delivered with the massive bailout. It’s been downhill since.

Morocco Bama PERMALINK
July 21, 2011
Alex and Cujo, you crack me up…really, you do. From your statements, it is implied that debt will always be with the human race, and I believe that is patently false and downright absurd. If we don’t extinct ourselves first, the notion of debt will be relegated to the history texts in two-hundred years. In fact, our survival as a species will depend on all debt being vanquished. In a world of finite resources, debt has only served to accelerate and hasten the theft of the future.
==================================
Now that is an interesting statement! No debt. But does that not presuppose no credit?
I understand finite resources; but not in this context. Can you explain a bit further…or not…I’ll figure it out eventually, cheers…

That’s kinda like saying that there will be a future without communication. Without debt, everything more complicated than a lone hunter-gatherer on an island grinds to a halt.

This is nuts. You have exalted the concept and practice of Debt and Lending to the status afforded the Monolith in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Your statements imply a certain arrogance. The implication is that complex society, Civilization if you will, is superior to what came before, and for lack of a better term, what came before is the lowly, furrow-browed, slouched Hunter-Gatherer. Merely because our current social/economic/political arrangement is more complex does not in any way make it more superior, nor does it denote progress, unless, of course, we want to redefine “progress” for these purposes.

Whether you like it, or not, Humanity is on a trajectory….one largely determined by forces well beyond your control, and my control. Current industrial growth, considering diminishing resources, is no longer possible. A growth model, of which Debt has been an integral part, although I would argue didn’t have to be but once the genie was out of the bottle it was here to stay until the economic model that is Civilization is no more which is now upon us, presumes an infinite abundance of resources. That assumption, obviously, is false, and so the model itself was always false and now Humanity’s at the Crossroad of Reckoning. From here on out, to exist as we have been for the past 10,000 to 12,000 years, Humanity has no choice but to deleverage and contract, and Debt has no place in such a scenario. There is no tomorrow in the context of this current system…only the illusion of one….and that illusion has been sold and resold, packaged and repackaged for at least thirty years now, and an argument can be made ever since WWII. Of course, some of the most brilliant minds on the face of the planet know this and have taken it well into consideration. It is the belief of many within the scientific community that we can overcome the restraint of finite resources and continue our quest to dominate not just Earth, but the entire Universe…..not as Biological Man….but as Digital Man….but can they erect Digital Man quick enough, and board that Digital Ark, before the miasmic deluge of Trading Down breaks loose? The world, if it still exists, will be a very different place in 200 years, and Humanity, if it still exists, will look upon this current debt-based system the same way you look upon the system(s) under which Hunter-Gathers operated….antiquated and inferior.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7141762977713668208

But hey, if it makes you feel better to believe Star Wars and Star Trek were documentaries and not ridiculous fiction, then far be it from me to stand in your way.

No, Alex – Morocco is making perfect sense.

No, Petro – Morocco is raving and beating his usual drums.

Anon525 wrote:

“Still no word on what the congressional democrats want. ”

That’s not accurate. See this:

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2011/7/14/1462/43320

“The plan, which is being hatched by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), would ensure that over $1.5 trillion in cuts over ten years be passed into law. It would also grant President Obama the authority to extend the debt ceiling through the 2012 election season while requiring him to propose — but allowing him to ultimately veto — cuts beyond those initial $1.5 trillion.”

Congress has offered Obama a squeaky-clean debt limit increase, and he turned it down to push for cuts to Medicare and Social Security, which another person here mentioned before (hat tip).

ks:

“The plan, which is being hatched by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), would ensure that over $1.5 trillion in cuts over ten years be passed into law. It would also grant President Obama the authority to extend the debt ceiling through the 2012 election season while requiring him to propose — but allowing him to ultimately veto — cuts beyond those initial $1.5 trillion.”

Word is, though, that Reid was doing this on orders of the White House. Which is another reason Senate Dems are angry, because the White House has meanwhile been undercutting them all along.

http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/07/22/the-day-senate-democrats-got-angry/

Senate Democrats are mad, not only because most of them had to hear about the all-cuts deal in the press, not only because they’re being cut out of the negotiations, but because they feel Obama walked past the endgame and forced a point-of-no-return big solution that cannot be delivered without an unbalanced deal.

-StewartM

Yo, Jack! Lookie what Republicans are getting ready to campaign on:

http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/07/22/republicans-already-attacking-proposed-social-security-cuts-from-the-left/

Conservatives are already attacking President Barack Obama for cutting Social Security, before the ink is even dry on any deal that would accomplish this. While this tactic should in theory collapse under the weight of its own hypocrisy, it’s essentially the same script that won the Republicans the House of Representatives in 2010, and would definitely be a feature of their efforts in 2012.

Of course, they’re hypocrites, just like Paul Ryan’s gutting Medicare attempt after campaigning to save it, but that’s never stopped them before.

But note the public wants a “liberal” solution. The problem is, neither party will give it to them, they’re both bought by moneyed interests determined to treat the US like a cash cow industry and milk every dime out of it they can before closing shop.

-StewartM

StewartM,

Which is another reason Senate Dems are angry, because the White House has meanwhile been undercutting them all along.

Obama undercutting Democratic constituencies? Truly shocking. Who could have ever seen that one coming.

It’s almost as if obama is doing damn near everything he can to piss off the democratic party.

Z

“In theory, it works like this…”

Okay, I see what you mean now.

anon2525:

Let us hear some “honest” and “frank” talk about the wrong decisions that
you made and how you are going to reverse them, Decider.

The easiest one to pick out, when he held all the cards, was in not letting the Bush tax cuts expire. All he had to do is NOTHING. How hard is NOTHING?

What he get for that exactly? One of the promises I believe was that the Repugs wouldn’t hold the debt ceiling hostage. How’d that play out?

Except the federal gov’t. budget isn’t “just like a family.

Not to step in cowpile about whether or not debt is good or not going in this thread, the fact is that families DO engage in deficit spending and debt. All the time.

…..

That being said—Hurrah!! The “grand bargain” talks breaking down today is the best news out of DC in some time. It was the best of all likely outcomes for this mess. Now the focus will be on a “clean” debt ceiling increase.

We’re not out of the woods by any means, indeed the future continues to look bleak in many ways, but at least we were spared this self-inflicted wound on the US and possibly global economy by idiotic $4 trillion dollar (mostly) spending cuts, cuts with the highest GDP multipliers (i.e., those that directly aid low- and middle-income people). We have a bunch of intransigent right-wingers to thank for this mostly more so than our “Democrat” president.

Don’t you wish that progressives would fight as stubbornly for what they say they believe in?

-StewartM

The easiest one to pick out, when he held all the cards, was in not letting the Bush tax cuts expire. All he had to do is NOTHING. How hard is NOTHING?

Why did Obama and the Democrats continue the bush/cheney tax policy in 2009? There is no obligation on any congress to continue the spending policy of the previous congress. Likewise, why did they continue the terrible bankruptcy law that the republs pushed through? Or the medicare part D that funnels hundreds of billions of dollars per year to the drug industry? Or the deregulation that was passed in the 90s and which lead to the housing bubble, the collapse, and the recession, and which continues to threaten the economy?

These lead up to the question of the larger view: Why is it that the Democrats have not reversed everything that the republs have done the past thirty years, and yet are helping to reverse every good program that Democrats have put in place over the past seventy years?

I hate the term used to describe the travesty going on in DC; Kabuki Theater; bullshit! It’s not theater; it’s out and out fraud!
I am just plain underwhelmed (disgusted) by the criminal class flaunting their disdain for their electorate.
Let the whole lot rot in a fucking prison; they’re the most over-rated, worthless pile of toxic shit that won’t even make decent fertilizer.

@ 233ºC

“Let the whole lot rot in a fucking prison; …”

Better still, that lot is already in prison, the most escape proof prison there is, prisoners of their own minds, locked behind bars of ignorance, belief and hubris, shackled to ideology, chained to the weights of propaganda and delusion, there is no escape for them. That these creatures rule the dungeon as if lords does nothing to release themselves from their mean existence, they are incapable of using the keys to free themselves, they are the enslaved, the incurious, the brain-dead and will be for the duration of their days. Keep not their company.

A loan is permission to do something, right now we give permission for people to do unproductive and/or stupid and/or actively harmful things.

Reminds me of the mid-19th century morphing of corporations, from being chartered by government for specific large-investment endeavors to the “personhood” behemoths that are permitted to exist in perpetuity.

“I can tell you how to fix what’s wrong, and I can tell you why, but it doesn’t matter”

I’d be glad to read what you have to say about this. I have plenty of time on my hands.

I’d be glad to read what you have to say about this. I have plenty of time on my hands.

I’m afraid for him to answer it. I have a feeling he just my say “find a local gun store, secure a pistol, load it with a couple of bullets from Wal-Mart just to be redundant or in case you’re a bad shot, put said gun to your head, and pull the trigger….voila, problem solved. If you fail this ever important mission, bend over and resume taking it up the ass.”

“lift the burden of health care expense from US companies and significantly improve their bottom line (and if Obama had been a *real* progressive, the first step in that direction when saving the auto industry instead of that loan and gutting UAW benefits would have been to offer to put the employees of all the Big 3 on Medicare; from what I’ve read that would have made them instantly profitable even with their other problems).”
—————————-
Indeed, if I were a 11 dimensional chess playing superProg Dem President who had the House, Senate – and the Big Three by the bailout balls, I might have attached a few strings – like health insurance, no raiding of pension funds AND green hybrids with stellar gas mileage.

Re prison – maybe their minds are already there, but I’d like to see their bodies in Rikers too 😉

…because things are much more dire than they were when I wrote…

“That’s what the climate scientist said.”

He picks on the weak and the helpless. He’s a bully and a thug.

Holy S#&t, a “Super Congress.”

We are all children in a vast kindergarden trying to spell God’s name
with the wrong alphabet blocks.
— Tennessee Williams, “Suddenly Last Summer”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kinda sums it up for me…
But what makes it irrevocable is; we’re not learning the important lessons; never have been…

^ 🙂

Since it’s being done:

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stampt on these lifeless things,
The hand that mockt them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1817)

If anyone knows why this empire is different, speak now, or forever hold your piece.

Egypt’s economy did not destroy the natural world, or even effect it much. The economy of the industrialized world is doing that. In magnitude, the current “civilization” is worse than all of the others combined.

Probably the greatest “civilization” that we know of, in terms of longevity, was the population that occupied the Americas mostly in harmony with nature for ten thousand years before the Europeans arrived.

I forgot to include the following link in my previous post. It is a chart of fed. gov’t. debt provided by the St. Louis Federal Reserve bank from 1966 to the present: Total Public (Federal) Debt.

It can be easily seen that the rate of increase of debt has accelerated since 2008. This is because of the financial crisis/housing bubble collapsing, and the resulting recession. But the fact that it accumulating at such a high (and now accelerating) rate is due to the decisions that the Decider obama made to continue the bush/cheney policies. obama does not benefit from the housing bubble as bush&cheney did, despite bernanke’s attempts to inflate a new bubble.

And now the Decider obama wants Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, among other gov’t. programs to be cut in order to pay for the consequences of his decisions.

Has any government in the last few centuries had a balanced budget in wartime?

anon2525,

i have been staring at those debt-curves for some time.

it is always THREE debts.
1) governmental/public
2) private
3) corporate

The astonishing finding is, that total debt in different ‘western’ countries is quite similar.

At least more similar, if You compare e.g. the public debts of maybe the US and Japan, where the US looks quite good.
Total debt is much more similar.
(in my phanatastic-logical-inference-days I see this as country-specific method to extract the most of the debtor-creditor- relationship, which are MORE private debt for the more individualistic countries, and more public debt for the more individualistically inclined countries. You can even include military spending in the US case and philosophize on its public-versus-private components, which continually seem to shift to the ‘private’ side –think Blackwater and the like.)

On the other hand, there seems to be some shifting between the three, due to policy-changes or different strategies of different countries in the first place.

Where corporate debt is the most obscure. Because of tax havens and the like.
This is thankfully monitored by http://taxjustice.blogspot.com/ and now its US partner-site.

So, what is obscured by that, is the basic mechanism of the relationship between individual/collective debtor and ist logical conterpart: The creditors.

There has been some sloppy ‘statistics’ lately (Bloomberg), to indentify the relationship between in-country-debt versus foreign debt.

With the finding, that 70% of US-debt is actually in-country-debt.

Which means, that the dominant redistribution-‘pump’ actually is in-country, which, as surely all know here, constantly raises the GINI- index.

So China and the other foreign debtors can conveniently serve als bogeyman, distracting from the in-country redistribution. which seems to be a valuable asset for the PTB, to have such a bogeyman.

The BIG stick as an asset of last resort, so to say: War! the American way.
Which frightens me, as a Foreigner, and gladly leave the 70% of the problem to You Americans to resolve.
But won’t happen.
Because nobody seems to be willing to make this important distinction.

That this is not a sustainable situation, everybody able to do a little arithmetic knows, and finally it is in their bones, if they cannot resolve the ‘riddle’ by thinking/calculating.

It is about making the obvious a ‘riddle’, where the Repubs increasingly have to resort to the Crazies (teabaggers), because for everyone else (in the whole world) it is in plain sight.

Or am I too ‘optimistic’?

With any retreat of reason the probability of war(s) rises accordingly.
Communicating tubes, so to say.

“There is nothing a citizen can do to remedy the state of the nation, it is beyond public capability to accomplish remedy”

T-B, always appreciate the sunshine but I disagree. Plenty can be done, up to/including dumping the fuckers in the gutter.

Will anything (worth doing) be done? That’s another matter entirely, given the mass of men lead lives of quiet [brainwashed, anesthetized] desperation. The first step is awaking them from their Matrix-pod slumber. When dissidents move from the blogosphere to the street, it’ll begin.

correction:
…It is a NOT a question of degree, but in tendency: …

What we need…is more of this….in droves.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/26-13

@ Ian Welsh

I used to discuss economic and social theory. A lot (back on BOP, sometimes at the Agonist and FDL.) Don’t anymore, there’s no point. I can tell you how to fix what’s wrong, and I can tell you why, but it doesn’t matter, because no one with any power wants to do it, and most Westerners don’t really want it. …

Registering au contraire that there is not only a point but a need to your work on economic and social history that cannot be derived from the prevailing economic orthodoxy/ideology which is hard put to sustain rational thought let alone provide comprehensive overviews of current affairs. To begin, for economics to be understood it must be viewed as where economic considerations co-exist and are in conjunction with sociology, politics, history, law, anthropology, and even geography. Failure to adequately account for any of these disciplines will weaken if not destroy the possibility of finding a comprehensive economic opinion. As a highly complex subject matter where proofs are difficult if not impossible, opinion becomes a shortcut devise to enable conversation.

All to often, as seen in the comments in these very journals posted by Ian, opinion becomes divisive to the point that distracts from necessary issues to be considered. Opinion can take on two forms, one being simple opinion, constructed from one’s past direct experiences, the other, also derived from experience but modified by external resources (e.g. reading, travel, studies, anecdotal stories and the like) that leave a patina of some consideration added to the opinion. Opinions have the same characteristics as beliefs, they are like flags unfurled to the prevailing winds, displayed to the happenstance direction of that wind. A change in condition of the wind’s direction also puts the flag (and the opinion) into unintended quarters.

Returning to why it is important to pursue Ian’s essays is that it is necessary to establish a common definition of terms between participants in a conversation. The current state of political response to economic conditions is best put as economic babble, no coherency, (no tower), no economic solutions, cliff ahead – with real consequences. Once establishing common definitions suitable, a theory can be established (this is exactly the process used by the Chicago School of Economic Phrenology that currently overwhelms all economic thought) and alternatives be devised and considered under conditions that reflect the actual world, not a world of ideologically constrained or distorted perceptions. Without the ability to understand economic terms, it will also be impossible to understand associated political terms. Ultimately, it will take ideology to contend with ideology. An ideology based upon actuality should ultimately best those ideologies based upon belief.

Adam Smith wrote the first economic essay(s) as a critique of the failures of mercantilism prevalent at the time to provide economic sustenance to the economic participants. Mercantilism did provide the wealth necessary to displace the feudalistic economic system and absconded with most of the political power feudalism wielded but was beset with its own internal disabilities. Today’s “capitalism” is not much more than rewarmed mercantilists with a modish coat, same disabilities apply. Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” gives an economic geography and history of his day. That economic geography and history can be put into current terms and become a basis to construct a more accurate mirror of economic functions being considered. In many ways Adam Smith pointed to a ‘greatest sum’ form of economics as opposed to mercantilist ‘zero sum’ before those terms came into use, but then reading the original can provide concepts and conclusions that no longer exist in todays anemic academia.

Count this commenter as one who commends Ian’s continued economic essays without reservation. Of the great classical economic writers, five were English (Adam Smith, Malthus, J.S. Mill, Ricardo, J.M. Keynes) and one German (Karl Marx) whose writings have been eclipsed by the academic frauds at the University of Chicago and the Harvard School of Business. The health of a republic is dependent on the full understanding of economics, an understanding that has been occulted by a fraudulent ideology and the academic charlatans posing as authorities at those institutions. That disingenuous and deceptive guild must be broken. A new narrative is needed to displace and disgrace their malfeasant offerings.

Morocco Bama,
Formerly T-Bear,

maybe I appear being a clown here, and all you wise lefties knowe the truth.

I would hope so.
And would hope that You actually make a differnce.

Referring to the old authorities like Smith and Marx is somewhat helpful,
but I must say, that ANYONE referring to hast to keep an ey on the present.
And this is,
a) Steve Keen,
b) Michael Hudson
c) William (Bill) Black

in this order.
a)Keen assumes that there is some mathematical essence, mediated by economic modelling.
b) Hudson as the preeminent economist knowing history (HET) is someone i deeply admire
c) Bill Black, who knows ‘reality’, or current practice.

I dont know.
Is this blog an assortment of ignorant idealists, or what?

as T-bear writes:
…
Of the great classical economic writers, five were English (Adam Smith, Malthus, J.S. Mill, Ricardo, J.M. Keynes) and one German (Karl Marx) whose writings have been eclipsed by the academic frauds at the University of Chicago and the Harvard School of Business.
…
Do You want to bring owls to Athens,(i.e. readers of this blog)?

The state of affairs is like this:
…
The High Price of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors’ Failure to Read Akerlof & Romer
…
by Bill Black
http://www.benzinga.com/economics/11/07/1796051/the-high-price-of-the-presidents-council-of-economic-advisors-failure-to-rea

I am somehow embarrassed by the intellectual Cheney-like shooting of lame ducks -or whatever- here.
Not dumbness, ofcourse, but quite some endemic delusion of old hippie-belief or what have you.

The elephant in the room ist clearly in sight.
Or are You ‘lefty’ Americans not even able to see an elephant, or a violet cow, when there is one, right before Your eyes!

Yes, You do. But You at least seem to attribute the wrong colours to it.
Just to understand: Blowing up the planet because of colour-blindness .
How silly is that?

Swiss-violet-Milka-chocolate-cow.

By which I mean: (btw, I am a hobby-Philosopher, trying to save the world in late afternoon)
YOU OBVIOUSLY DO NOT SEEM TO BE ABLE TO SEE THE NONEXISTENT VIOLET COW, as what it is.
A Fata Morgana.

The deficit is not a deficit, but a convenient fiction and a virtual battle-ground.
Between virtual debtors and creditors, connected by virtual contracts.

You just have to believe.

Hope You enjoy the calories.

Morocco Bama,
Formerly T-Bear,

maybe I appear being a clown here, and all you wise lefties know the truth.

I would hope so.
And would hope that You actually make a differnce.

Referring to the old authorities like Smith and Marx is somewhat helpful,
but I must say, that ANYONE referring to has to keep an eye on the present.
And this is,
a) Steve Keen,
b) Michael Hudson
c) William (Bill) Black

in this order.
a)Keen assumes that there is some mathematical essence, mediated by economic modelling.
b) Hudson as the preeminent economist knowing history (HET) is someone i deeply admire
c) Bill Black, who knows ‘reality’, or current practice.

I dont know.
Is this blog an assortment of ignorant idealists, or what?

as T-bear writes:
…
Of the great classical economic writers, five were English (Adam Smith, Malthus, J.S. Mill, Ricardo, J.M. Keynes) and one German (Karl Marx) whose writings have been eclipsed by the academic frauds at the University of Chicago and the Harvard School of Business.
…
Do You want to bring owls to Athens,(i.e. readers of this blog)?

The state of affairs is like this:
…
The High Price of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors’ Failure to Read Akerlof & Romer
…
by Bill Black
http://www.benzinga.com/economics/11/07/1796051/the-high-price-of-the-presidents-council-of-economic-advisors-failure-to-rea

I am somehow embarrassed by the intellectual Cheney-like shooting of lame ducks -or whatever- here.
Not dumbness, ofcourse, but quite some endemic delusion of old hippie-belief or what have you.

The elephant in the room ist clearly in sight.
Or are You ‘lefty’ Americans not even able to see an elephant, or a violet cow, when there is one, right before Your eyes!

Yes, You do. But You at least seem to attribute the wrong colours to it.
Just to understand: Blowing up the planet because of colour-blindness .
How silly is that?

Swiss-violet-Milka-chocolate-cow.

By which I mean: (btw, I am a hobby-Philosopher, trying to save the world in late afternoon)
YOU OBVIOUSLY DO NOT SEEM TO BE ABLE TO SEE THE NONEXISTENT VIOLET COW, as what it is.
A Fata Morgana.

The deficit is not a deficit, but a convenient fiction and a virtual battle-ground.
Between virtual debtors and creditors, connected by virtual contracts.

You just have to believe.

Hope You enjoy the calories.

Being a human with principles , versus being a mere politican/opportunist/bean-counter/Manchurian candidate.

Norways Stoltenberg versus Obama.

There COULD be change, even as low as firmness n position: Holding a position. against the tendency du jour.

@ Ian Welsh

“…to discuss economic and social theory. A lot (back on BOP, sometimes at the Agonist and FDL.) Don’t anymore, there’s no point. I can tell you how to fix what’s wrong, and I can tell you why, but it doesn’t matter, because …”

Appreciate that. Doubt the message would be heard above the noise. Each has their opinion, custom tailored to the poverty of their own experience and education, proclaiming possession of all the answers (none left over for everybody else), insisting to be heard at the top of their lungs and under a landslide of written opinion, that buries any voice not their own.

But it would be a magnificent gift to give the grandchildren, none-the-less.

Mo-Ba:

Whenever I see hostility on the left (i.e. whenever I observe the left), I think along these lines:

“In a real revolution – not a simple dynastic change or a mere reform of institutions – in a real revolution the best characters do not come to the front. A violent revolution falls into the hands of narrow-minded fanatics and of tyrannical hypocrites at first. Afterwards comes the turn of all the pretentious intellectual failures of the time. Such are the chiefs and the leaders. You will notice I have left out the mere rogues. The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane and devoted natures, the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement – but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims – the victims of disgust, disenchantment – often of remorse. Hopes grotesquely betrayed, ideals caricatured – that is the definition of revolutionary success. There have been in every revolution hearts broken by such successes. But enough of that. My meaning is that I don’t want you to be a victim.”

–Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes

Remove all the would-be sadists and egomaniacal misanthropes and who’d be left? IOW, if Zinn had lived to see his vision for America enacted, he’d have been imprisoned or executed.