Doubling down on foolishness

Whenever I get depressed about the future of the USA, three reasons predominate.

1. Our failure to maintain what we have built 
2. Our absurd energy "policy" of pretending oil will exist forever 
3. We are ruled by morons 

Actually, #3 is a bit imprecise and an insult to regular morons.  It requires time, money, and cultural commitment to produce a Sarah Palin, or a Mitch McConnell, or etc.  Yes, the tipping point has been reached and nobody wants to admit the system is broken and we are acting just like every imperialist when the cracks are too big to fix or hide.

My good friend has offered friendly amendments to my core complaints:

1. The complete indifference to workers, the sick and children. 
2. The total corruption of the institutions from Congress to health care. 
3. The glorification of policeman and the constant fear factor of enemies around every corner. 
4. The private prison industry and the gathering of information by ill-trained monkeys believing they are doing their patriotic duty. 
5. The use of the Ivy League as the source of stockbrokers and company CEO's and presidents. 

"And the list goes on...primarily the hoarding of the wealth by the predators and the money wasted on keeping the empire intact. The worst for me will be the final tyrannization of the worker and the student once they are economically impotent."

Whose Side is the White House On? 

Monday, 12/6/2010 - 10:33 am by James K. Galbraith 

In a speech given on November 20, 2010 at the ADA Education Fund’s Post-election Conference at the Harvard Kennedy School, Galbraith asks who Obama is really working for, and demands that progressives seek leaders who will fight the good fight.

I want to raise a hard question — a question on which Americans are divided. It seems to me, though, we will get nowhere unless we realize where we are, what has actually happened, and what the future most likely holds.

Recovery begins with realism and there is nothing to be gained by kidding ourselves. On the topics that I know most about, the administration is beyond being a disappointment. It’s beyond inept, unprepared, weak, and ineffective. (my emphasis) Four and again two years ago, the people demanded change. As a candidate, the President promised change. In foreign policy and the core economic policies, he delivered continuity instead. That was true on Afghanistan and it was and is true in economic policy, especially in respect to the banks. What we got was George W. Bush’s policies without Bush’s toughness, without his in-your-face refusal to compromise prematurely. Without what he himself calls his understanding that you do not negotiate with yourself.

It’s a measure of where we are, I think, that at a meeting of Americans for Democratic Action, you find me comparing President Obama unfavorably to President George W. Bush.

In economic policy it was said earlier we have a lack of narrative. This afternoon, Gregory King asked why the people didn’t know that the Republican Party is uniformly and massively opposed to job programs, to state and local assistance, and to every legislative measure that might aid and promote economic recovery from the worst crisis and recession in modern times. Why is that that they didn’t know? Could it have anything to do with the fact that the White House didn’t tell them?

And why was that?

The president deprived himself of any chance to develop a narrative from the beginning by surrounding himself with holdover appointments from the Bush and even the Clinton administrations: Secretary Geithner, Chairman Bernanke, and, since we’re here at Harvard, I’ll call him by his highest title, President Summers. These men have no commitment to the base, no commitment to the Democratic Party as a whole, no particular commitment to Barack Obama, and none to the broad objective of national economic recovery that can be detected from their actions.

With this team the President also chose to cover up economic crime. Not only has the greatest wave of financial fraud in our history gone largely uninvestigated and unpunished, the government and this administration with its stress tests (which were fakes), its relaxation of accounting standards which permitted banks to hold toxic assets on their books at far higher prices than any investor would pay, with its failure to make criminal referrals where these were clearly warranted, with its continuation in office — sometimes in acting capacities — of some of the leading non-regulators of the earlier era, has continued an ongoing active complicity in financial fraud. And the perpetrators, of course, prospered as never before: reporting profits that they would not have been able to report under honest accounting standards and converting tax payer support into bonuses; while at the same time cutting back savagely on loans to businesses and individuals, and ramping up foreclosures, much of that accomplished with forged documents and perjured affidavits. more

And to further demonstrate Keynes' contention that self-described practical men are slaves to the ideas of dead economists, we have someone who actually provides a list of some of the worst economic ideas propagated by the neoliberals.  What is so amazing about this list is that it was published in Foreign Policy Magazine--possibly the MOST establishment rag in USA.  FP has been solidly neoliberal over the years so this MIGHT signal a turn in policy positions at the top.  (or not)

Five Zombie Economic Ideas That Refuse to Die

Two years after the financial crisis, the U.S. economy has steered clear of total disaster, with the Dow Jones industrial average currently near its pre-crash level. But the theories that caused it all are still out there, lurking in the shadows.

BY JOHN QUIGGIN | OCTOBER 15, 2010

The global financial crisis that began with the collapse of the U.S. subprime mortgage market in 2007 ended by revealing that most of the financial enterprises that had dominated the global economy for decades were speculative ventures that were, if not insolvent, at least not creditworthy.

Much the same can be said of many of the economic ideas that guided policymakers in the decades leading up to the crisis. Economists who based their analysis on these ideas contributed to the mistakes that caused the crisis, failed to predict it or even recognize it when it was happening, and had nothing useful to offer as a policy response. If one thing seemed certain, it was that the dominance of the financial sector, as well as of the ideas that gave it such a central role in the economy, was dead for good.

Three years later, however, the banks and insurance companies bailed out on such a massive scale by governments (and ultimately the citizens who must pay higher taxes for reduced services) have returned, in zombie form. The same reanimation process has taken place in the realm of ideas. Theories, factual claims, and policy proposals that seemed dead and buried in the wake of the crisis are now clawing their way through the soft earth, ready to wreak havoc once again.

Five of these zombie ideas seem worthy of particular attention and, if possible, final burial. Together they form a package that may be called "market liberalism," or, more pejoratively "neoliberalism." Market liberalism dominated public policy for more than three decades, from the 1970s to the global financial crisis. Even now, it dominates the thinking of the policymakers called on to respond to its failures. The five ideas are:

The Great Moderation: the idea that the period beginning in 1985 was one of unparalleled macroeconomic stability that could be expected to endure indefinitely.

The Efficient Markets Hypothesis: the idea that the prices generated by financial markets represent the best possible estimate of the value of any investment. (In the version most relevant to public policy, the efficient markets hypothesis states that it is impossible to outperform market valuations on the basis of any public information.)

Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE): the idea that macroeconomic analysis should not be concerned with observable realities like booms and slumps, but with the theoretical consequences of optimizing behavior by perfectly rational (or almost perfectly rational) consumers, firms, and workers.

The Trickle-Down Hypothesis: the idea that policies that benefit the wealthy will ultimately help everybody.

Privatization: the idea that nearly any function now undertaken by government could be done better by private firms. more