I wrote about the current economic crisis: > > > Most experts disagree, and the ones who predicted this crisis (and there > > were many, across the political spectrum) disagree the most vehemently. > > The evidence is fairly overwhelming (as I myself stated/predicted here > > almost one year ago >
And Alan responded: > Yes, I understand that you and perhaps the other "experts" you cite are > enthusiastically cheering and hoping that this is the last "death wriggle" > for capitalism. Maybe you are hoping that this will finally give Communism a > chance to come back from the grave. > > As William mentioned, if you are so convinced of the accuracy of your > economic predictions, why not retire as a translator and be a professional > investor? > > I unfortunately do not have such a crystal ball and think that it is the > height of hubris for you to tell us that you know the future. > Bravo, Alan, more McCarthyism. About what I expect from you. Not "death wriggle". "Death wiggle". If you are going to cite my jokes, at least get the phrasing correct. And that was obviously a tongue-in-cheek joke about Gramsci, which you have once again twisted into something it did not say, as fodder for your tedious McCarthyite attacks. Alan, you really shouldn't. And given your general debating style and some of your loopy factual claims here (I won't list them again), you are hardly the one to complain about hubris. I was merely pointing out that I got this one right. And I did, as anyone can easily discover by consulting the archives. You don't like that, tough. And for my part, I would very much urge you to KEEP your day job if you had any notion of trying to market your analytical abilities for fun and profit. Anyway, those critics.... Well, you would have to actually read some literature in the field of economics to know this, but there have indeed been numerous critics of US economic policy who predicted this collapse for many years now, and they cover the political spectrum. One of them, whose name I have mentioned here more than once, is Kevin Phillips, who started life as a Republican strategist but is now (like me) thoroughly disgusted by both parties. His position is not Marxist, but neo-mercantilist (a word that is probably not in your vocabulary, Alan), and while I would not agree with all of that position there is a lot of it that is very sound, particularly what he says about US trade policy and finance capitalism run amok. Other non-Marxist critics who saw this mess coming, to some degree at least, include people like Peter Schiff, George Soros (now wrongly labeled a raving socialist by idle ignoramuses, who have not bothered to learn anything about his ideas, which is easy to do since he has written a half dozen books), Nouriel Roubini, William Fleckstein, Robert Kuttner, Paul Krugman, R. Taggart Murphy, James Galbraith..... A long list, Alan, and nary a Marxist among them (though there are also some very good Marxist accounts, for example Robert Brenner's "The Boom and the Bubble", from which one can learn a good deal). And one of the things many of these critics point out, and that they are quite correct about, is that the idea that the contemporary US is a shining example of a properly functioning free market economy is simply laughable. The US political economy rather resembles what Galbraith has called (in a recent book of the same name) a "predator state". Now, if you want a detailed summary o f Galbraith's book, Alan, send $50 to my PayPal account; otherwise you'll have to forgive me, but I am not in the business of spoon-feeding knowledge to the indolent. But the idea that the arguments of Galbraith, or Phillips, or Soros are Marxist analyses by Gaulois smoking, espresso sipping cafe revolutionaries rubbing their hands with glee at what has happened to this country is just an idiotic, feverish fantasy. Jesus, Alan, maintain, maintain! Don't worry! No one is coming to seize your Jacuzzi for the local workers' collective! Your Audi will not be collectivized! You will not be sent to Bakersfield to grow onions in a people's commune! There is no need to join the Rush Limbaugh Anti-Communist League!!! And I further wrote: > > > This is not just an ordinary downturn; it is a financial collapse unlike > > anything seen since the 1930s. Even Alan Greenspan, the acolyte of Ayn > > Rand and Pontifex Maximus of laissez-faire, has concurred with this > > judgment. > And Alan asked: > Would you mind pointing me to the specific statements of Alan Greenspan to > which you refer? > How about his recent line in Congressional testimony that the last few months have shaken every belief he ever held about how markets function? Go on line and look at some of his statements over the last few months for yourself, Alan. He actually should have just kept his mouth shut, because almost every time he opened it over the last few months he helped drive the markets down further. I mean, are you living in a cave, Alan? This has been fodder in every newspaper, and on every cable news station, for months now! And I concluded: > > And there is no going back to what existed up to 2006. There is > > going to have to be a new set of international institutions and rules to > > cope with this mess, and the US economy is going to have be overhauled > > across the board as well (and that means every sector, from industry to > > services to finance, and the ridiculous trade deals that have exported > > millions of decent jobs overseas). > And Alan responded: > I don't think that trade deals are ridiculous at all. [snip]] > I think we need more global trade and not less. Do we want to bring back to > the US those low-wage manual labor jobs that have been exported? > Hmmmmm...... Let's see. When Jimmy Carter was president, our trade was unbalanced to the tune of a few billion dollars. Then we had Reagan, who taught us deficits do not matter, and the hemorrhaging of US manufacturing jobs began (and contrary to what you claim, not all of these were "low-wage" jobs). And the trade deficit ballooned. And the US became a net debtor nation by 1986 or so. And then instead of learning our lesson, NAFTA was negotiated, and it was followed by one trade deal after another. And then China emerged as the Great Export Platform. And the trade deficits just kept getting larger and larger. And more and more jobs were shipped overseas, including white collar jobs now. Millions upon millions of them. And last year the US ran a $825 billion trade deficit. And foreigners now hold about $6 trillion of US national debt. And manufacturing (which generally led the US economy out of past recessions) has shrunk by half to only about 10% of the US economy, while finance has more than doubled to over 20% in the last 25 years (the figures are from Phillips' "Bad Money"). And now we have a massive financial collapse on our hands, not long after our former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulsen reportedly commented that "finance is the only American export"! And now you want more free trade as the solution? Is this a joke? Let me ask you, Alan, just how large would the trade deficit have to be before you would consider it a problem? How large would it have to be before you would consider it evidence of a failed trade strategy? How many manufacturing and service jobs would have to be exported before you would consider it a problem? Clearly 10 million does not bother you; maybe 20 million would? BTW, this gets into a separate area, but it is also well known that the current sub-prime mess was simultaneously also the product of our failed trade strategy, which put trillions of dollars into the hands of foreigners, who were then looking for safe, high yield investments into which to plough their dollar holdings. This is ultimately what drove the spread of asset backed securities on the demand side, and pushed banks to give home loans to anyone with a pulse, so that there would be more mortgages out their to bundle, slice and dice, and sell all over the globe to dollar holders. There was a great segment of "This American Life" that explained with tremendous clarity and depth just how this all happened. But then you would have to read a paper or listen to NPR to learn something like this. Sorry, Alan, that's enough for now. Other fish to fry. Go easy on the McCarthyite slanders, though, such debating tactics are not only passe, they are also considered bad form in serious debate. John Marchioro --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Persons posting messages to not_honyaku assume all responsibility for their messages. The list owner does not review messages prior to posting, and accepts no responsibility for the content of messages posted. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
