Everyone know which side of this debate Ron Paul is on. But which side is Ben Bernanke on? It is not clear: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Dj9v9s9buk
On Sat, Jul 16, 2011 at 12:36 PM, raghu <[email protected]> wrote: > This is obvious to most PEN-Lers, but surprisingly not so obvious even > to a progressive political theorist like Corey Robin: > > This blog post is well worth the read - including some of the comments > where there are some progressive dissenters. > > http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2011/07/15/a-response-to-corey-robin-on-the-political-idea-of-monetary-policy/ > ----------------------------snip > From a series of legal codes favoring creditors, a two-tier justice > system that ignore abuses in foreclosures and property law, a system > of surveillance dedicated to maximum observation on spending, behavior > and ultimate collection of those with debt and beyond, there’s been a > wide refocusing of the mechanisms of our society towards the crucial > obsession of oligarchs: wealth and income defense. Control over money > itself is the last component of oligarchical income defense, and it > needs to be as contested as much as we contest all the other > mechanisms. > > If one of your primary political objectives is income defense then > anything that increases, as Yglesias puts it, “the cost of hoarding > cash,” is a major problem. Even if that cash is worthless debt from a > credit and housing bubble that has collapsed long ago, defending it, > no matter what the costs to the real economy, is priority #1. In this > case, monetary policy redistributes from creditors to debtors and thus > puts balances between, as Bob Kuttner puts it, ”the claims of the past > and the potential of the future.” > > And rather than historically bounded, I think it needs to be placed in > a longer intellectual debate. It seems like a lot of historians and > political scientists are turning their focus to the 1970s as the time > when the liberal coalition fully collapsed and conservatism found its > legs (see this Rick Perlstein summary in The Nation). I’ll leave it > to others to figure that out, but it certainly seems like the 1970s > stagflation was the death of the Keynesian economic agenda. And in > the same way the strong language of justice disappeared from liberal > lexicon in the 1960s, the language of inflation, money and the demand > in the economy disappeared in the ashes of the 1970s. > > Which is a problem. Conservatives think money is something that > exists independently and naturally throughout time and that any > attempt to change it is, as Reagan said of inflation, “as violent as a > mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.” > And they are very comfortable working this language as just another > form of common sense. > > But going back to the Cross of Gold speech, through Franklin > Roosevelt’s abandonment of the gold standard and aggressive price > targeting, progressives and liberals have had a long-tradition with > monetary battles. These battles have disappeared from the agenda, but > it needs to come back as we have the right answer: money is a social > creation, one that the government has a responsibility to use to > stabilizing growth, prices and full employment with a view towards > building a future without overheating the system or letting it choke > to death from a lack of oxygen. > _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
