Neoclassical Pseudo Theories and Crooked and Bought Economists as Fifth Column of Financial Oligarchy

There is no economics, only political economy, stupid

• Introduction
• Rules of disclosure of sources of financing for economic research are non-existent
• "Markets uber alles" or more correctly "Financial oligarchy uber alles"

Introduction

When you see this "neoclassical" gallery of expensive intellectual prostitutes (sorry, respectable priests of a dominant religion) that pretend to be professors of economics in various prominent universities, it is difficult not to say "It's political economy stupid". Those lackeys of ruling elite are just handing microphone bought by financial oligarchy.  Here is am Amazon.com review of  ECONned How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism eBook Yves Smith that  states this position well:

kievite:

Neoclassical economics as a universal door opener for financial oligarchy

There are many good reviews of the book published already and I don't want to repeat them. But I think there is one aspect of the book that was not well covered in the published reviews and which I think is tremendously important and makes the book a class of its own: the use of neoclassical economics as a universal door opener for financial oligarchy. I hope that the term "econned" will became a new word in English language.

Neoclassical economics has become the modern religion with its own priests, sacred texts and a scheme of salvation. It was a successful attempt to legitimize the unlimited rule of financial oligarchy by using quasi-mathematical, oversimplified and detached for reality models. The net result is a new brand of theology, which proved to be pretty powerful in influencing people and capturing governments("cognitive regulatory capture"). Like Marxism, neoclassical economics is a triumph of ideology over science. It was much more profitable though: those who were the most successful in driving this Trojan horse into the gates were remunerated on the level of Wall Street traders.

Economics is essentially a political science. And politics is about perception. Neo-classical economics is all about manipulating the perception in such a way as to untie hands of banking elite to plunder the country (and get some cramps from the table for themselves). Yves contributed to our understanding how "These F#@king Guys" as Jon Steward defined them, economics professors from Chicago, Harvard, Columbia, Princeton and some other places warmed by flow of money from banks for specific services provided managed to serve as a fifth column helping Wall Street to plunder the country. The rhetorical question that a special counsel to the U.S. Army, Joseph Welch, asked Senator McCarthy: "Have you no sense of decency?" applies.

The main effect of neoclassical economics is elevating unregulated ( "free" in neoclassic economics speak) markets into the key mechanism for distribution of the results of economic activity with banks as all-powerful middlemen and sedating any opposition with pseudo-mathematical mumbo-jumbo. Complexity was used as a powerful smoke screen to conceal greed and incompetence. As a result financial giants were able to loot almost all sectors of economics with impunity and without any remorse, not unlike the brutal conquerors in Middle Ages.

The key to the success of this nationwide looting is that people should be brainwashed/indoctrinated to believe that by some alchemical process, maximum level of greed results in maximum prosperity for all. Collapse of the USSR helped in this respect driving the message home: look how the alternative ended, when in reality the USSR was a neo-feudal society. But the exquisite irony here is that Bolsheviks-style ideological brainwashing was applied very successfully to the large part of the US population (especially student population) using neo-classical economics instead of Marxism (which by-and-large was also a pseudo-religious economic theory with slightly different priests and the plan of salvation ;-). The application of badly constructed mathematical models proved to be a powerful tool for distorting reality in a certain, desirable for financial elite direction. One of the many definitions of Ponzi Scheme is "transfer liabilities to unwilling others." The use of detached from reality mathematical models fits this definition pretty well.

The key idea here is that neoclassical economists are not and never have been scientists: much like Marxist economists they always were just high priests of a dangerous cult -- neoliberalism -- and they are more then eager to stretch the truth for the benefit of the sect (and indirectly to their own benefit). All-in-all this is not unlike Lysenkoism: state support was and still is here, it is just working more subtly via ostracism, without open repressions. Look at Shiller story on p.9.

I think that one of lasting insights provided by Econned is the demonstration how the US society was taken hostage by the ideological views of the neoclassical economic school that has dominated the field at least for 30 or may be even 50 years. And that this ideological coup d'état was initiated and financed by banking establishment who was a puppeteer behind the curtain. This is not unlike the capture of Russia by Bolsheviks supported by German intelligence services (and Bolshevics rule lasted slightly longer -- 65 years). Bolsheviks were just adherents of similar wrapped in the mantle of economic theory religious cult, abeit more dangerous and destructive for the people of Russia then neoclassical economics is for the people of the USA. Quoting Marx we can say "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce".

That also means that there is no easy way out of the current situation. Ideologies are sticky and can lead to the collapse of society rather then peaceful evolution.

So it's no surprise that there is a strong evidence that neo-classical economics is not a science, it's a political ideology of financial oligarchy masquerading as science. Or a religious cult, if you wish.

The cult which served as a Trojan horse for bankers to grab power and wealth by robbing fellow Americans. In a way this is a classic story of a parasite killing the host. The powers that be in academia put their imprimatur on economic ‘theory,’ select and indoctrinate its high priests to teach it, and with a host of media players grinding out arguments pro and con this and that, provide legitimacy sufficient for cover of bankers objectives. Which control the disposition and annuity streams of pension fund assets and related financial services. In his new documentary Inside Job, filmmaker Charles Ferguson provides strong evidence of a systematic mass corruption of economic profession (Yahoo! Finance):

Ferguson points to 20 years of deregulation, rampant greed (a la Gordon Gekko) and cronyism. This cronyism is in large part due to a revolving door between not only Wall Street and Washington, but also the incestuous relationship between Wall Street, Washington and academia.

The conflicts of interest that arise when academics take on roles outside of education are largely unspoken, but a very big problem. “The academic economics discipline has been very heavily penetrated by the financial services industry,” Ferguson tells Aaron in the accompanying clip. “Many prominent academics now actually make the majority of their money from the financial services industry, not from teaching or research. [This fact] has definitely compromised the research work and the policy advice that we get from academia.”

... ... ...

Feguson is astonished by the lack of regulation demanding financial disclosure of all academics and is now pushing for it. “At a minimum, federal law should require public disclosure of all outside income that is in any way related to professors’ publishing and policy advocacy,” he writes. “It may be desirable to go even further, and to limit the total size of outside income that potentially generates conflicts of interest.”

The dismantling of economic schools that favor financial oligarchy interests over real research (and prosecuting academic criminals -- many prominent professors in Chicago, Harvard, Columbia and other prominent members of neo-classical economic church) require a new funding model. As neoliberalism itself, the neoclassical economy is very sticky. Chances for success of any reform in the current environment are slim to non existent.

Here is one apt quote from Zero Hedge discussion of Gonzalo Lira article On The Identity Of The False Religion Behind The Mask Of Economic Science zero hedge

"They analyze data for Christ sakes"

Just like Mishkin analyzed Iceland for $120k? a huge proportion in US [are] on Fed payroll, or beneficiaries of corporate thinktank cash; they are coverup lipstick and makeup; hacks for hire.

Like truth-trashing mortgage pushers, credit raters, CDO CDS market manipulators and bribe-fueled fraud enablers of all stripes -- they do it for the dough -- and because everybody else is doing it.

It's now a common understanding that "These F#@king Guys" as Jon Steward defined them, professors  of neoclassical economics from Chicago, Harvard and some other places are warmed by flow of money from financial services industries for specific services provided managed to serve as a fifth column helping financial oligarchy to destroy the country. This role of neo-classical economists as the fifth column of financial oligarchy is an interesting research topic. Just don't expect any grants for it ;-).

Since inequalities of privilege are greater than could possibly be defended rationally, the intelligence of privileged groups is usually applied to the task of inventing specious proofs for the theory that universal values spring from, and that general interests are served by, the special privileges which they hold.

I would like to stress it again: they are not and never have been scientists: they are just high priests of dangerous cult -- neoliberalism -- and they are more then eager to stretch the truth for the sect (and that means their own) benefits. Fifth column of financial oligarchy. All-in-all this is not unlike Lysenkoism: at some point state support became obvious as financial oligarchy gained significant share of government power (as Glass-Steagall repeal signified). It is just more subtle working via ostracism and flow of funding, without open repressions. See also Politicization of science and The Republican War on Science

Like Russia with Bolsheviks, the US society was taken hostage by the ideological views of the Chicago economic school that has dominated the field for approximately 50 years ( as minimum over 30 years). Actually the situation not unlike the situation with Lysenkoism is the USSR. It's pretty notable that the USA suffered 30 years of this farce, actually approximately the same amount of time the USSR scientific community suffered from Lysenkoism (1934-1965)

Rules of disclosure of sources of financing for economic research are non-existent

Peter Dormat noticed amazing similarity between medical researchers taking money from drug companies and economists. In case of medical researchers widespread corruption can at least be partially kept in check by rules of disclosure. Universities are being called out for their failure to disclose to public agencies the other, private grants researchers are pulling in. This is not perfect policing as the universities themselves get a cut of the proceeds, so that the conflict of interest exists but at least this is theirs too.

But there is no corresponding policy for economics. So for them there are not even rules to be broken. And this is not a bug, this is  feature.  In a sense corruption is officially institualized and expected in economics. Being a paid shill is the typical career of many professional economists. Some foundations require an acknowledgment in the published research they support, but that's all about “thank you”, not disclaimer about the level of influence of those who pay for the music exert on the selection of the tune. Any disclosure of other, privately-interested funding sources by economists is strictly voluntary, and in practice seldom occurs. Trade researchers can be funded by foreign governments or business associations and so on and so forth.

In this atmosphere pseudo-theories have currency and are attractive to economists who want to enrich themselves. That situation is rarely reflected in mainstream press. For example, there some superficial critiques of neo-classical economics as a new form of Lysenkoism (it enjoyed the support of the state) but MSM usually frame the meltdown of neo-classical economic theory something like "To all you corrupt jerks out there: shake off the old camouflage as it became too visible and find a new way misleading the masses...". At the same time it's a real shocker, what a bunch of toxic theories and ideologies starting from Reagan have done to the US economy.

That suggests that neo-economics such as Milton Friedman (and lower level patsies like Eugene Fama ) were just paid propagandists of a superficial, uninformed, and simplistic view of the world that was convenient to the ruling elite. While this is somewhat simplistic explanation, it's by-and-large true and that was one of the factors led the USA very close to the cliff... Most of their theories is not only just nonsense for any trained Ph.D level mathematician or computer scientist, they look like nonsense to any person with a college degree, who looks at them with a fresh, unprejudiced mind. There are several economic myths, popularized by well paid propagandists over the last thirty years, that are falling hard in the recent series of financial crises: the efficient market hypothesis, the inherent benefits of globalization from the natural equilibrium of national competitive advantages, and the infallibility of unfettered greed as a ideal method of managing and organizing human social behavior and maximizing national production.

I would suggest that and economic theory has a strong political-economic dimension. The cult of markets, ideological subservience and manipulation, etc. certainly are part of neo-classical economics that was influenced by underling political agenda this pseudo-theory promotes. As pdavidsonutk wrote: July 16, 2009 16:14

Keynes noted that "classical theorists resemble Euclidean geometers in a non Euclidean world who, discovering that in experience straight lines apparently parallel often meet, rebuke the lines for not keeping straight --as the only remedy for the unfortunate collisions. Yet in truth there is no remedy except to throw over the axiom of parallels to work out a non-Euclidean geometry. SOMETHING SIMILAR IS REQUIRED IN ECONOMICS TODAY. " [Emphasis added]

As I pointed out in my 2007 book JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES (Mentioned in this ECONOMIST article as a biography "of the master") Keynes threw over three classical axioms: (1) the neutral money axiom (2) the gross substitution axiom, and (3) the ergodic axiom.

The latter is most important for understanding why modern macroeconomics is dwelling in an Euclidean economics world rather than the non-Euclidean economics Keynes set forth.

The Ergodic axiom asserts that the future is merely the statistical shadow of the past so that if one develops a probability distribution using historical data, the same probability distribution will govern all future events till the end of time!! Thus in this Euclidean economics there is no uncertainty about the future only probabilistic risk that can reduce the future to actuarial certainty! In such a world rational people and firms know (with actuarial certainty) their intertemporal budget constrains and optimize -- so that there can never be an loan defaults, insolvencies, or bankruptcies.

Keynes argued that important economic decisions involved nonergodic processes, so that the future could NOT be forecasted on the basis of past statistical probability results -- and therefore certain human institutions had to be develop0ed as part of the law of contracts to permit people to make crucial decisions regarding a future that they "knew" they could not know and still sleep at night. When the future seems very uncertain, then rational people in a nonergodic world would decide not to make any decisions to commit their real resources -- but instead save via liquid assets so they could make decisions another day when the future seemed to them less uncertain.

All this is developed and the policy implications derived in my JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES (2007) book. Furthermore this nonergodic model is applied to the current financial and economic crisis and its solution in my 2009 book THE KEYNES SOLUTION: THE PATH TO GLOBAL PROSPERITY (Palgrave/Macmillan) where I tell the reader what Keynes would have written regarding today's domestic crisis in each nation and its international aspects.

Paul Davidson ghaliban wrote:

July 16, 2009 15:34

I think you could have written a shorter article to make your point about the dismal state of economics theory and practice, and saved space to think more imaginatively about ways to reform.

A bit like biology, economics must become econology - a study of real economic systems. It must give up its physics-envy. This on its own will lead its practitioners closer to the truth.

Like biological systems, economic systems are complex, and often exhibit emergent properties that cannot be predicted from the analysis of component parts. The best way to deal with this is (as in biology) to start with the basic organizational unit of analysis - the individual, and then study how the individual makes economic decisions in larger and larger groups (family/community), and how groups take economic decisions within larger and larger forms of economic organization. From this, econologists should determine whether there are any enduring patterns in how aggregate economic decisions are taken. If there are no easily discernable patterns, and aggregate decisions cannot be predicted from a knowledge of individual decision-making preferences, then the theory must rely (as it does in biology) on computer simulations with the economy replicated in as much detail as possible to limit the scope for modeling error. This path will illuminate the "physiology" of different economies.

A second area of development must look into "anatomy" - the connections between actors within the financial system, the connections between economic actors within the real economy, and the connections between the real and financial economies. What are the precise links demand and supply links between these groups, and how does money really flow through the economic system? A finer knowledge of economic anatomy will make it easier to produce better computer simulations of the economy, which will make it a bit easier to study economic physiology.

"Markets uber alles" or more correctly "Financial oligarchy uber alles"

In her interview What Exactly Is Neoliberalism  Wendy Brown advanced some Professor Wolin ideas to a new level and provide explanation why "neoclassical crooks" like Professor  Frederic Mishkin (of Financial Stability in Iceland fame) still rule the economics departments of the USA. They are instrumental in giving legitimacy to the neoliberal rule favoured by the financial oligarchy:

"... I treat neoliberalism as a governing rationality through which everything is "economized" and in a very specific way: human beings become market actors and nothing but, every field of activity is seen as a market, and every entity (whether public or private, whether person, business, or state) is governed as a firm. Importantly, this is not simply a matter of extending commodification and monetization everywhere-that's the old Marxist depiction of capital's transformation of everyday life. Neoliberalism construes even non-wealth generating spheres-such as learning, dating, or exercising-in market terms, submits them to market metrics, and governs them with market techniques and practices. Above all, it casts people as human capital who must constantly tend to their own present and future value. ..."

"... The most common criticisms of neoliberalism, regarded solely as economic policy rather than as the broader phenomenon of a governing rationality, are that it generates and legitimates extreme inequalities of wealth and life conditions; that it leads to increasingly precarious and disposable populations; that it produces an unprecedented intimacy between capital (especially finance capital) and states, and thus permits domination of political life by capital; that it generates crass and even unethical commercialization of things rightly protected from markets, for example, babies, human organs, or endangered species or wilderness; that it privatizes public goods and thus eliminates shared and egalitarian access to them; and that it subjects states, societies, and individuals to the volatility and havoc of unregulated financial markets. ..."

"... with the neoliberal revolution that homo politicus is finally vanquished as a fundamental feature of being human and of democracy. Democracy requires that citizens be modestly oriented toward self-rule, not simply value enhancement, and that we understand our freedom as resting in such self-rule, not simply in market conduct. When this dimension of being human is extinguished, it takes with it the necessary energies, practices, and culture of democracy, as well as its very intelligibility. ..."

"... For most Marxists, neoliberalism emerges in the 1970s in response to capitalism's falling rate of profit; the shift of global economic gravity to OPEC, Asia, and other sites outside the West; and the dilution of class power generated by unions, redistributive welfare states, large and lazy corporations, and the expectations generated by educated democracies. From this perspective, neoliberalism is simply capitalism on steroids: a state and IMF-backed consolidation of class power aimed at releasing capital from regulatory and national constraints, and defanging all forms of popular solidarities, especially labor. ..."

"... The grains of truth in this analysis don't get at the fundamental transformation of social, cultural, and individual life brought about by neoliberal reason. They don't get at the ways that public institutions and services have not merely been outsourced but thoroughly recast as private goods for individual investment or consumption. And they don't get at the wholesale remaking of workplaces, schools, social life, and individuals. For that story, one has to track the dissemination of neoliberal economization through neoliberalism as a governing form of reason, not just a power grab by capital. There are many vehicles of this dissemination -- law, culture, and above all, the novel political-administrative form we have come to call governance. It is through governance practices that business models and metrics come to irrigate every crevice of society, circulating from investment banks to schools, from corporations to universities, from public agencies to the individual. It is through the replacement of democratic terms of law, participation, and justice with idioms of benchmarks, objectives, and buy-ins that governance dismantles democratic life while appearing only to instill it with "best practices." ..."

"... Progressives generally disparage Citizens United for having flooded the American electoral process with corporate money on the basis of tortured First Amendment reasoning that treats corporations as persons. However, a careful reading of the majority decision also reveals precisely the thoroughgoing economization of the terms and practices of democracy we have been talking about. In the majority opinion, electoral campaigns are cast as "political marketplaces," just as ideas are cast as freely circulating in a market where the only potential interference arises from restrictions on producers and consumers of ideas-who may speak and who may listen or judge. Thus, Justice Kennedy's insistence on the fundamental neoliberal principle that these marketplaces should be unregulated paves the way for overturning a century of campaign finance law aimed at modestly restricting the power of money in politics. Moreover, in the decision, political speech itself is rendered as a kind of capital right, functioning largely to advance the position of its bearer, whether that bearer is human capital, corporate capital, or finance capital. This understanding of political speech replaces the idea of democratic political speech as a vital (if potentially monopolizable and corruptible) medium for public deliberation and persuasion. ..."

"... My point was that democracy is really reduced to a whisper in the Euro-Atlantic nations today. Even Alan Greenspan says that elections don't much matter much because, "thanks to globalization . . . the world is governed by market forces," not elected representatives. ..."

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• 20210331 : If pride comes before the fall, the US is peaking in its arrogance and there's few likely outcomes that don't lead to worse conditions ( Mar 31, 2021 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20210328 : As a fervent anti-imperialist, I think we should celebrate the incipient loss of Washington's power. ( Mar 28, 2021 , www.nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20210328 : It would follow, probably at the behest of Wall Street and Silicon Valley, that the aims stated in Xi's and Putin's Davos speeches would produce aggressive rhetoric from Biden and Blinken toward Russia and China ( Mar 28, 2021 , www.nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20210328 : " how to bring the now-former hegemon down off its high perch " is a bit ambitious. It may be instead be to minimize the inevitable global damage caused by an empire in decline ( Mar 28, 2021 , www.nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20210328 : No empire, or system, lasts forever: neoliberalism as a system requires infinite growth, quite impossible on a finite planet ( Mar 28, 2021 , systemicdisorder.wordpress.com )
• 20210328 : Real unemployment is double the 'official' unemployment rate ( Mar 28, 2021 , systemicdisorder.wordpress.com )
• 20210326 : Those Fortune 500 companies most of which incorporated in Delaware did not do so for patriotic reasons, but to avoid tax and government regulation. ( Mar 26, 2021 , www.unz.com )
• 20210324 : On Jerome Powell pronouncements ( Mar 24, 2021 , www.wsj.com )
• 20210319 : U.S. Aggressiveness Will Accelerate Its Demise ( Mar 19, 2021 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20210314 : Something about modern day academics ( Mar 14, 2021 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20210314 : How Partisan Politics Rots Your Brain ( Mar 14, 2021 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20210314 : Disposable People by Sandwichman ( Mar 04, 2021 , angrybearblog.com )
• 20210308 : Change we can believe in ( Mar 08, 2021 , www.marketwatch.com )
• 20210308 : Tesla down 31%? Not a problem I will use the dividends to offset my losses. Oh wait! ( Mar 08, 2021 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20210306 : The USA will first wither, then maybe collapse. Either way, it will be chaotic ( Mar 06, 2021 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20210306 : I argue the biggest challenge to US power in coming few years will not come from outside powers but rather will come from inside. US has become wildly divided between two ideologic poles that has a created a lasting effect on her interior security. As has become more and more visible, this newly felt internal insecurity is due to inequality, poverty, and government's incompetence to provide security and social services at a minimum level. ( Mar 06, 2021 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20210306 : Who says that there will be a collapse? There will be slow decline, because the US is the most resourceful country in the world with the best geopolitical position in the world, best strategic depth, and the largest alliance network. The US dollar still remains 62 % of world currency reserves ( Mar 06, 2021 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20210306 : While both China and the USA are neoliberal there is some notable difference in policies ( Mar 06, 2021 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20210306 : Nothing can depose neoliberalism short of obliterating the financial centers of America and the City in London, in simultaneous strikes ( Mar 06, 2021 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20210306 : There seems to be an ongoing trend for countries around the globe to take greater control of their own natural resources. ( Mar 06, 2021 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20210306 : The age of decadence can be described as "bread and circuses," or for these times "drugs and internet porn/reality TV". It is characterised by exploding wealth disparity, excessive materialism and status signalling, overextended militaries ( Mar 06, 2021 , peakoilbarrel.com )
• 20210306 : Value investor John Rogers sees an end to Big Tech's stock market dominance ( Mar 06, 2021 , finance.yahoo.com )
• 20210305 : America ranks among most "problem-ridden" countries in the World: The USA has far and away the highest rates of poverty in the developed world. ( Mar 05, 2021 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20210301 : Neoliberalism- A Critical Reader by Saad-Filho, Alfredo, Johnston, Deborah, Saad-Filho ( Mar 01, 2021 , www.amazon.com )
• 20210225 : Regarding terms "liberal" and "neoliberal" ( Feb 25, 2021 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20210224 : The tendency of liberalism to deny the consequences of society stems from its myth of the 'individual ' ( Feb 24, 2021 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20210221 : 'Freedom' under neo-liberal capitalism is all of the negative type. ( Feb 21, 2021 , www.unz.com )
• 20210205 : The Great Reset, Part IV- -Stakeholder Capitalism- Vs. -Neoliberalism- - ZeroHedge ( Feb 05, 2021 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20210203 : Those who have the most to say about the burdens of government regulation tend to be silent about the enormous infrastructure supporting a very specific conception of corporate personhood, limited liability, and intellectual property. ( Feb 03, 2021 , crookedtimber.org )
• 20210203 : Amid -Shortage-, Ecuador Police Bust Clinic Giving 1000s Of Fake COVID Vaccines - ZeroHedge ( Feb 03, 2021 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20210203 : Freedom from the Market ( Feb 03, 2021 , crookedtimber.org )
• 20210203 : US insulin prices as market failure ( Feb 03, 2021 , crookedtimber.org )
• 20210202 : Watching stock market moves is like watching Pulp Fiction: halfway through, the violence doesn t even bother you anymore ( Jan 27, 2019 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20210129 : The Coming Revolt Of The Middle Class - ZeroHedge ( Jan 29, 2021 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20210128 : 'Where is the line between global business attempts to control society-' Putin asks Davos as he calls out power of Big Tech ( Jan 28, 2021 , www.rt.com )
• 20210127 : Why financial oligarchy loves neoclassical economics ( Jan 27, 2021 , www.nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20210125 : Neoliberal world order is morping into neo-feudalism ( Jan 25, 2021 , www.unz.com )
• 20210125 : An American neoliberal ideological project ( Jan 25, 2021 , www.rt.com )
• 20210122 : I wouldn't say that not accepting things at face value is a quot;bad habit quot; though this has caused me problems in the past and still does. Being sceptical and open-minded should be healthy attitudes. does. Being sceptical and open-minded should be healthy attitudes. ( Jan 22, 2021 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20210120 : :ole Trotskyites and Bolsheviks neoliberals care only about one thing: disempowering and crushing anyone who dissents from and threatens their hegemony ( Jan 20, 2021 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20210120 : As Joe Biden takes over, the Democrats are still running scared as resurgent Russophobia reaches peak insanity by Robert Bridge ( Jan 20, 2021 , www.rt.com )
• 20210119 : The US seems to have gone completely crazy these day. ( Jan 19, 2021 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20210117* "79% of Americans think the US is falling apart" those not accounted for are possibly homeless or illiterate and don't have the opportunity of putting their view forward ( Jan 17, 2021 , www.rt.com ) [Recommended]
• 20210115 : Trump supporters are pushed into underground ( Jan 15, 2021 , www.rt.com )
• 20210115 : Replacement of the Bill of Rights, with the Bill of Don'ts ( Jan 15, 2021 , www.rt.com )
• 20210115 : Blaming all its problems on foreign actors is the scapegoating and smoke screen over endemic US problems. Especially the vast social and economic inequality caused by neoliberalism and the destruction of the New Deal capitalism. Both parties seem unwilling or incapable of understanding what needs to be fixed in a fundamentally broken system. ( Jan 15, 2021 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20210114* After the illegitimate elections, the task is to consolidate power and suppress all those who reject what happened. This is what happened in Ukraine after the Maidan 2014 ( Jan 14, 2021 , www.moonofalabama.org ) [Recommended]
• 20210111 : Is America's Future a Civil War, by Paul Craig Roberts - ( Jan 11, 2021 , www.unz.com )
• 20210110* Trump's Last Stand, by Israel Shamir ( Jan 10, 2021 , www.unz.com ) [Recommended]
• 20210109 : What we are seeing in the US is an ongoing coup. This is a coup against the US people by the US corporate and financial oligarchs. ( Jan 09, 2021 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20210109 : The line of investigation initiated by Upton Sinclair into the shared Board memberships at key elite universities within the USA that erased the traditional teaching of political-economy and replaced it with the mathematical economics which lie at the root of Neoliberalism's Junk Economics ( Jan 09, 2021 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20210103 : George Monbiot got it half-right- There is a capitalist civil war, but not exactly the kind of war he describes ( Jan 03, 2021 , failedevolution.blogspot.com )
• 20210103 : The USA is on the path to techno-feudalism ( Jan 03, 2021 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20201230 : Fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt by Brian Gallagher ( Dec 30, 2020 , getpocket.com )
• 20201228 : The biggest shakeup to my world view came with Russiagate. ( Dec 28, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20201227 : The comical and impotent figures of Comey, Mueller, Clapper, Rosenstein, Barr, Schiff, Nader, and such filled the stage during a production of the Russiagate farce. ( Dec 27, 2020 , www.unz.com )
• 20201220 : Escobar- When Deplorables Become Ungovernables - ZeroHedge ( Dec 20, 2020 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20201220 : America outsourced because of the decline in profitability of domestic manufacturing. Capitalism did exactly what it was supposed to do and investors sought out better returns on their investments, which meant moving production elsewhere. ( Dec 20, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20201220 : The American ruling class has failed on pretty much every issue of significance for the past several decades ( Dec 20, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20201210 : The Transnational Financiers as aliens hell-bent of conquering the Earth population ( Dec 10, 2020 , zerohedge.com )
• 20201205 : WATCH- Trump's Censored Speech OffGuardian ( Dec 05, 2020 , off-guardian.org )
• 20201205 : Lockdown lead to atomization of labour ( Dec 05, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20201202 : Under neoliberalism the US is hollowing itself out politically, economically, spiritually, and morally; the power structures have mutated to a corporate owned dictatorship. ( Dec 02, 2020 , www.unz.com )
• 20201128 : Fratelli tutti (3 October 2020) - Francis ( Nov 28, 2020 , www.vatican.va )
• 20201126 : The historic Trump presidency emasculated globalism by Patrick J. Buchanan ( Nov 26, 2020 , www.wnd.com )
• 20201125 : "Social" media as a cancer: it creates tightly insulated echo chambers which masturbate our confirmation bias and hide any information which might cause us cognitive dissonance ( Nov 25, 2020 , caitlinjohnstone.com )
• 20201125 : Biden is to the extreme right of Trump on the issue of the US's endless neocolonial wars. And Biden is already laying the groundwork for the deconstruction of Social Security, work he began as VP to Obama. That makes Biden to the extreme right of Trump on foreign domestic issues...all thanks to the "blue no matter who" crowd. ( Nov 25, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20201123 : The Coronavirus Pandemic Has Killed America's Reputation for Competence ( Mar 23, 2020 , foreignpolicy.com )
• 20201122 : 'The Real Looting in America Is the Walton Family'- GAO Report Details How Taxpayers Subsidize Cruel Low Wages of Corporate G ( Nov 22, 2020 , www.nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20201116* Four More Years Of by Andrew Joyce ( Nov 16, 2020 , www.unz.com ) [Recommended]
• 20201109 : Gridlock Biden May or May Not Win, but Trump Remains 'President' of Red America -- Strategic Culture ( Nov 09, 2020 , www.strategic-culture.org )
• 20201109 : First gaslight, then calls for unity: Why should Biden get any more unity than Trump four years ago? by Wayne Dupree ( Nov 09, 2020 , www.rt.com )
• 20201108 : Michael Hudson on Financialization and Deindustrialization - ( Nov 08, 2020 , www.nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20201107* The result of this election can be summarized with one phase "Strange non-death of neoliberalism." ( Nov 07, 2020 , crookedtimber.org ) [Recommended]
• 20201107 : Knowing what's wrong with the social system is different from being able to fix it: just because you are correctly diagnosed with stage 4 cancer it doesn't mean your doctor will be able to cure you. Sometimes, the problems are insoluble and terminal; ( Nov 07, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20201107 : Moral is is them, money is for us ( Nov 07, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20201107 : Both Democrat and Republican voters want much the same things and that is more collectivism. They want more collectivism on social matters and they want more collectivism on economic matters. They want society back from neoliberal capture ( Nov 07, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20201106 : the Professional, Managerial class. ( Nov 06, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20201106 : If neoliberal state collapses what will come next? ( Nov 06, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20201106 : USA Hegemony and Decline ( Mar 01, 2010 , www.eurasia-rivista.org )
• 20201103 : Elections as a continuation of color revolution run by intelligence agencies against Trump ( Nov 03, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20201102 : Archbishop Says Trump Is Only One To Save Humanity From 'The Great Reset' ( Nov 02, 2020 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20201102* Today, neoliberal is used to refer to someone who bills themselves as a liberal but promotes ideas that actually inhibit individuals' well-being. In the 1930s, the neo- in neoliberal meant "new." But with this new meaning, the neo- prefix takes on a more specific connotation: "fake." ( May 30, 2017 , www.theatlantic.com ) [Recommended]
• 20201101 : The global neoliberal elites see politics as such, and any mode of economy other than that which is strictly regimented and controlled by the US government, the oligopoly MNCs and a handful of globalization entities, as antiquated obstructions to its power and profit. ( Nov 01, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20201030 : Chile's referendum rejecting the Pinochet-era constitution shows that the world is entering a new, anti-neoliberal age by Bradley Blankenship ( Oct 07, 2020 , www.rt.com )
• 20201030 : Chile's referendum rejecting the Pinochet-era constitution shows that the world is entering a new, anti-neoliberal age -- RT Op-ed ( Oct 30, 2020 , www.rt.com )
• 20201026 : The Pope wanted to convey some very precise words about the risks involved in an excess of political and ideological polarization ( Oct 26, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20201025 : Whose Great Reset- The Fight For Our Future Technocracy Vs. The Republic - ( Oct 25, 2020 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20201021 : Like rise of the Praetorian Guard in Rome, the rise of political role of US intelligence agencies and an ominous sign by cynthia chung ( Oct 20, 2020 , ronpaulinstitute.org )
• 20201020 : America At The Point Of No Return: in their disdain of ordinary people neoliberal elite starts to resemble Busheviks elite ( Oct 20, 2020 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20201020 : What if neither Democrats nor Republicans want to win in 2020- No one wants the task of changing the full diaper of US Empire -- RT Op-ed ( Oct 20, 2020 , www.rt.com )
• 20201019 : Hunter Biden's Laptop -Is Not Some Russian Disinformation Campaign-; DNI Ratcliffe Slams Schiff ( Oct 19, 2020 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20201019* The neocon/NATO aggressive expansionism and anti-Russian hysteria has many purposes, but one is surely domestic repression: to gaslight and cause fear-the-foreign-bogeyman trauma among the American and British people ( Oct 19, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org ) [Recommended]
• 20201016 : The Backlash Against the [neo]Liberal World Order ( Oct 16, 2020 , www.theamericanconservative.com )
• 20201014 : The Vatican's calculated snub of Mike Pompeo exposes the limits of his evangelical, ideological, China-hating foreign policy -- RT Op-ed ( Oct 14, 2020 , www.rt.com )
• 20201011 : Cover Your Ass-- The Guiding Principle Of Our Time - ( Oct 11, 2020 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20201006 : -Joe Biden's 'war economy' policies are a radical break with the status quo.- Telegraph - Sic Semper Tyrannis ( Oct 06, 2020 , turcopolier.typepad.com )
• 20201006 : In backing Biden, the leftist 'resistance' to Trump is perpetuating illegal US invasions wars, handing victory to the neocons -- RT Op-ed ( Oct 06, 2020 , www.rt.com )
• 20201006 : "FRATELLI TUTTI" (OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS ON THE FRATERNITY AND SOCIAL FRIENDSHIP), ( Oct 06, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20201006 : Who is the dumbest economic Nobel Prize winner? ( Oct 06, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20201001 : Is Hannah Arendt idea of totalitarism bunk and its in certain proportions is immanent in all modern societies, especially neoliberal like the USA ( Oct 01, 2020 , www.theamericanconservative.com )
• 20201001 : Civil War 2.0- -The Country Is Now Out Of Its Mind- - ( Oct 01, 2020 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20200928 : The apparent problems with the the US "management elite": the hired managerial class is both very stupid and very self-serving ( Sep 28, 2020 , www.unz.com )
• 20200924 : Critical race theory as the theory of black racism ( Sep 24, 2020 , en.wikipedia.org )
• 20200924 : Antifa Conspiracy Theories and America's Unraveling by Nickolas Kristof ( Sep 24, 2020 , www.nytimes.com )
• 20200923 : How Globalization Destroyed the Western Middle Class ( Sep 23, 2020 , www.blacklistednews.com )
• 20200921* How the west lost by Anatol Lieven ( Sep 21, 2020 , prospectmagazine.co.uk ) [Recommended]
• 20200921 : Is America heading for a race war- Unless Democrats stop protecting criminals, it is inevitable by Robert Bridge ( Sep 21, 2020 , www.rt.com )
• 20200921* Tucker: Democrats, fires and the climate misinformation campaign ( Sep 11, 2020 , www.youtube.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200920 : The Criminal Prosecution Of Boeing Executives Should Begin ( Sep 20, 2020 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20200919 : How Silicon Valley Broke the Economy by Adrian Chen ( Oct 14, 2019 , www.thenation.com )
• 20200919 : Technocracy support of BLM and riots ( Sep 19, 2020 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20200918 : The New Year Gift, by Israel Shamir ( Sep 18, 2020 , www.unz.com )
• 20200914 : While We're at It by R. R. Reno ( Sep 14, 2020 , www.firstthings.com )
• 20200912 : Nineteen years since 9/11 Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman attempt to Infects Readers With 9/11 Dementia ( Sep 12, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200902 : Amazon spies on staff, fires them by text for not hitting secretive targets, workers 'feel forced to work through pain, injuries' report ( Sep 01, 2020 , www.theregister.com )
• 20200901* Are We Deliberately Trying to Provoke a Military Crisis With Russia by Ted Galen Carpenter ( Aug 28, 2020 , www.theamericanconservative.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200831 : Economics Quotes ( Aug 31, 2020 , quotes.cat-v.org )
• 20200829 : Decline of American Empire is now noced by many observers ( Aug 29, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200829 : Another triumph of neoliberalism in the USA: Gun Sales Up 72% ( Aug 29, 2020 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20200827 : Slavery and immigration ( Aug 27, 2020 , www.unz.com )
• 20200824* Why neoclassical economics is a yet another secular religious doctrine, and not a science ( Aug 24, 2020 , peakoilbarrel.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200824 : Tesla market cap $300B v. Exxon at $190B. ( Aug 24, 2020 , peakoilbarrel.com )
• 20200824 : Why neoclassical economics is a yet another secular religious doctrine, and not a science ( Aug 24, 2020 , peakoilbarrel.com )
• 20200823 : A Love Letter To The Fed From The Adoring Stock Market - ( Aug 23, 2020 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20200822 : Looks like Milton Freedman is now a dirty word in the USA ( Aug 22, 2020 , www.unz.com )
• 20200821 : Signs of decay of the USA ( Aug 21, 2020 , angrybearblog.com )
• 20200819 : Smash the Oligarchy by JOSIAH LIPPINCOTT ( Aug 19, 2020 , www.theamericanconservative.com )
• 20200819 : The Devastation Of The Middle Class- It Now Takes 53 Weeks Of Median Wages Every Year To Pay For Basic Needs - ( Aug 19, 2020 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20200819 : The US is contending with the two most competent and accomplished world leaders of the 21st century: Xi and Putin ( Aug 19, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200819* Democrats are in bed with the deep state, take billions from the largest corporations, and conduct the most undemocratic nominating process ever seen in the US, but thank God they are not fascists! ( Aug 19, 2020 , www.zerohedge.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200816* CIA Behind Guccifer Russiagate A Plausible Scenario ( Aug 16, 2020 , www.zerohedge.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200809 : Previously the USA was considered to be the land of milk and honey where the streets are paved with gold: for billions in the world America was a fairy tale come true, and this was true of the Chinese people as well. In every category it seemed the USA was #1. That gradually changing ( Aug 09, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200802 : I can't see much distinction between Neoliberalism in its purest form and authoritarian Communism ( Aug 02, 2020 , www.unz.com )
• 20200729 : A Significant Decline Is Coming For The U.S- ( Jul 29, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200728 : Near and Present Anarchy by Susan Zakin ( Jul 28, 2020 , thebaffler.com )
• 20200727 : A Significant Decline Is Coming For The U.S- ( Jul 27, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200726 : Stress Test of a Straining Superpower ( Jul 26, 2020 , www.theamericanconservative.com )
• 20200726 : Alan Sabrosky thinks that America Headed for Civil War, by Kevin Barrett ( Jul 26, 2020 , www.unz.com )
• 20200725 : the Minsky moment, which can kill the empire ( Jul 25, 2020 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20200721* Why We Shouldn't Believe Polling About Trump by Lord Pettigrew ( Jul 21, 2020 , www.zerohedge.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200719 : Neoliberal globalization (globohomo) and its three defining features ( Jun 27, 2020 , neznaika-nalune.livejournal.com )
• 20200719 : Welcome To The Crazed, Frantic Demise Of Finance Capitalism by Charles Hugh Smith ( Jul 19, 2020 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20200719 : The Global Reset Unplugged -The Deep State by Peter Koenig ( Jul 18, 2020 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20200711 : The Groupthink Pandemic - ( Jul 11, 2020 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20200709 : Austerity is part and parcel of the neoliberal business model. In other words "austerity is what a good economic policy looks like to a creditor [or rentier] by likbez ( Jul 09, 2020 , crookedtimber.org )
• 20200708 : A note on the "professional-managerial class, ( Jul 08, 2020 , crookedtimber.org )
• 20200708 : US is destroying itself and world through erratic moves- Global Times editorial - Global Times ( Jul 08, 2020 , www.globaltimes.cn )
• 20200706* The inevitable end of neoliberal Dems political dominance ( Jul 06, 2020 , crookedtimber.org ) [Recommended]
• 20200703 : Neoliberalism and Christianity ( Jul 03, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200703 : The God That Failed -- Why The US Cannot Now Re-Impose Its Civilisational Worldview by Alastair Crooke ( Jul 03, 2020 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20200701* Putin s economic and social policies have a neoliberal bent but Putin is far from a classic neoliberal ( Jul 01, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org ) [Recommended]
• 20200701 : End of empire by Andrew Bacevich ( Jul 01, 2020 , spectator.us )
• 20200630 : The coronavirus crisis has caused a dramatic deterioration in the European public perception of the US, extensive new polling from across Europe reveals ( Jun 30, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200625 : Neoliberalism as internal colonialism ( Jun 25, 2020 , angrybearblog.com )
• 20200623* Identity politics is, first and foremost, a dirty and shrewd political strategy developed by the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party ( soft neoliberals ) to counter the defection of trade union members from the party ( Dec 28, 2019 , crookedtimber.org ) [Recommended]
• 20200623* It is shocking to see such a disgusting piece of human garbage like Joe Biden get so many working class voters to vote for him. Biden has never missed a chance to stab the working class in the back in service to his wealthy patrons. ( Mar 03, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org ) [Recommended]
• 20200623 : On Choosing a Belief System by Ken Melvin ( Jun 22, 2020 , angrybearblog.com )
• 20200623* Scary Signs - Cafe Hayek by Don Boudreaux ( Jun 12, 2020 , cafehayek.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200621 : How Workers Can Win the Class War Being Waged Against Them by Richard D. Wolff ( Jun 19, 2020 , www.counterpunch.org )
• 20200619* The Police Weren t Created to Protect and Serve. They Were Created to Maintain Order. A Brief Look at the History of Police ( Jun 18, 2020 , www.nakedcapitalism.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200619* A discriminatory informal caste system that racism create was used by neoliberals for supression of white working poor protest against deteriorating standard of living and cooping them to support economic policies of redistribution of wealth up, directly against them ( Jun 19, 2020 , www.nakedcapitalism.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200618 : In the Ruins of Neoliberalism The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West by Wendy Brown ( Jun 18, 2020 , www.amazon.com )
• 20200618* This is clearly Catch-22 situation as the global crisis of neoliberalism and neoliberal globalization is overlaid on the current racial riots and COVID-19 level of unemployment ( Jun 18, 2020 , angrybearblog.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200616* How Woke Politics Keeps Class Solidarity Down by GREGOR BASZAK ( Jun 16, 2020 , www.theamericanconservative.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200616* "That's why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it." by George Carlin ( Jun 16, 2020 , www.youtube.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200616* Krystal Ball: The American dream is dead, good riddance ( Jun 12, 2020 , www.youtube.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200616 : Neoliberalism and the USA: Americans are no longer a moral and religious people even though they present the trappings of such ( Jun 16, 2020 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20200614 : Former MI6 Spy Alastair Crooke- For This To Slip Would Be The 'End Of Empire' - ( Jun 14, 2020 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20200614* Anonymous Berkeley Professor Shreds BLM Injustice Narrative With Damning Facts And Logic ( Jun 12, 2020 , www.zerohedge.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200611 : There's a Crisis in US Capitalism but how it will unfold is completely unclear by Richard D. Wolff ( Jun 10, 2020 , www.nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20200610 : The Left and Wall Street are not going to go after each because at the moment they are allies pursuing a common goal; the dismantling of the traditional nation-state and its replacement by a new transnational system ( Jun 10, 2020 , www.unz.com )
• 20200610 : while this is happening, the entire world is undergoing what appears to be a severe Kondratiev Winter, in which malinvestment shows up as failure to repay loans and undesirable trade relations are ended. Attempts to avoid this K Winter appear to be under severe stress ( Jun 10, 2020 , www.unz.com )
• 20200608 : The news about the USA collapse staring is probably 12 years old ( Jun 08, 2020 , www.unz.com )
• 20200608 : Total and final collapses are very rare, mostly they just initiate a lengthy and potentially very dangerous transformation process, the outcome of which is almost impossible to predict. ( Jun 08, 2020 , www.unz.com )
• 20200608 : I agree the US is long overdue a collapse not out of glee, but just out of the fact that you can't shit on your own house that much and not expect to find yourself in a cesspit sooner than later ( Jun 08, 2020 , www.unz.com )
• 20200608 : Much of the rest of the world is in the same situation as the US ( Jun 08, 2020 , www.unz.com )
• 20200608 : The Systemic Collapse Of The US Society Has Begun by the Saker ( Jun 08, 2020 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20200605 : We re South Africa now ( Jun 05, 2020 , www.unz.com )
• 20200604* Neoliberalism WTF: Neoliberal Capitalism from Ronald Reagan to the Gig Economy by Tom Nicholas ( Sep 12, 2019 , www.youtube.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200604 : Neoliberalism carries within its DNS the gene for destruction -- excessive greed ( Jun 04, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200604 : When recruiters or job ads say "flexible working hours" all I hear is "you must be flexible to work whatever hours we give you" ( Jun 04, 2020 , www.youtube.com )
• 20200602* What Was Liberalism #3 Neoliberalism Philosophy Tube ( Jun 02, 2020 , www.youtube.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200602 : It didn t happen overnight by Ken Melvin ( Jun 02, 2020 , angrybearblog.com )
• 20200602 : Ross Ashcroft on his program Renegade Inc continues to follow up on the Four Horsemen documentary by interviewing Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson and showing additional footage from the interview done with him for the film which sadly wasn't included or aired until now ( Jun 02, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200531 : The Phillips Curve is a farce, neoclassical theory is a fraud ( May 31, 2020 , japantimes.co.jp )
• 20200529* Trump's Tax Cuts Get an "F" for enriching the Globalist Elite by Michael Cuenco ( May 26, 2020 , www.theamericanconservative.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200526* There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning ( May 26, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org ) [Recommended]
• 20200525 : Gangster politics at the age of Trump: Lack of principle itself becomes a principle. ( May 25, 2020 , logosjournal.com )
• 20200525 : Neoliberalism will probably survive the crush of the American empire. ( May 25, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200524 : As its own infrastructure has been laid waste by the COLLASSAL MONEY PIT that is the Pentagon, its flagrant use of the most valuable energy commodity, oil, to maintain some 4000 bases worldwide, this rickety over-extended upside down version of old Anglo-Dutch trading empires, will finally collapse ( May 24, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200524* Unable to communicate in Arabic and with no relevant experience or appropriate educational training ( May 24, 2020 , www.unz.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200523* Coronavirus had shown Brezhnev socialism and the US neoliberalism are never as far apart as people imagined ( May 23, 2020 , discussion.theguardian.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200523 : Neoliberal ideology is often presented as a natural state. This deception is a central feature of neoliberalism, acting as a way of abdicating responsibility for harmful and selfish actions of financial oligarchy, and to prevent challenges to the financial oligarchy rule and debt slavery ( May 23, 2020 , discussion.theguardian.com )
• 20200523 : Who are serfs ( May 23, 2020 , discussion.theguardian.com )
• 20200523* Neoliberalism promised freedom instead it delivers stifling control by George Monbiot ( Apr 10, 2019 , www.theguardian.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200522 : It is easy for chickenhawks to scream war war war but when their lives or their kid's lives on the line of fire most will ran away to Canada or Mexico ( May 22, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200521 : The neoliberal globalization myth fostered the delusion of labour in which Western societies could prosper from the ideas and computer startups, while the dirty work of actually making things is left to low-wage countries. One result: a drastic shortage of face masks ( May 21, 2020 , consortiumnews.com )
• 20200521 : Covid-19 Straw Breaks Free Trade Camel's Back ( May 20, 2020 , www.nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20200521 : How free trade actually works ( May 21, 2020 , www.nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20200521 : It is worth reminding of criticism of the untrustworthiness of modern medical science from the editors of some of the top medical journals ( May 21, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200519* Russophobia in the Age of Donald Trump ( May 19, 2020 , www.oxfordscholarship.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200515 : The Illusion of 'Free Markets' and 'Free Trade' by George D. O'Neill ( May 15, 2020 , www.theamericanconservative.com )
• 20200515 : "Lifting all boats" was always a lie. It was simply a way to sell trickle down by claiming that the objectively observable inequality it produced would somehow help everyone, eventually, sort of ( May 15, 2020 , www.nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20200514 : Libertarians who are extraordinarily sensitive to the least legal limitation on negative freedom are usually completely immune to the idea that structural features of capitalist society are coercive and freedom-limiting ( May 14, 2020 , crookedtimber.org )
• 20200511 : What is the neoliberal freedom exactly? Freedom to be replaced by a machine, without any forward thinking plan by society? Freedom to be hungry? Freedom to rampage and kill others? ( May 11, 2020 , www.unz.com )
• 20200507 : Neoliberal society does not fare well in any large scale epidemic: The neoliberal dogma of "Freedom for the nihilistic narcissistic ego individual over everything else" lead to anto-social behaviour -- many people today willingly prefer to rake risk and to go to concerts and beer gardens than to deny themselves those small joys in favor of their compatriots ( May 07, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200506 : Whom Bitcoin brings together ( May 06, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200505 : Governments are developed to establish justice, ensure tranquility, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare. Without these no market is possible. There is no "free market" without government. ( May 05, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200503 : It is already possible, at this stage, to draw some lessons from the shock inflicted by the Covid-19 pandemic on world order. The first is that the international order built under the aegis of the United States in the aftermath of the Second World War is no longer adapted to the reality of the balance of power of the 21st century. ( May 03, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200503 : What would it take to restore USA's standing? ( May 03, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200503 : "Pleonexia, sometimes called pleonexy, originating from the Greek , is a philosophical concept which roughly corresponds to greed, covetousness, or avarice, and is strictly defined as 'the insatiable desire to have what rightfully belongs to others', suggesting what Ritenbaugh describes as 'ruthless self-seeking and an arrogant assumption that others and things exist for one's own benefit'" ( May 03, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200501 : Trump is a salesman first and foremost. As a former pharmaceutical rep I am well aware that most salesmen are suckers for most sales pitches as an intrinsic part of their personalities. ( May 01, 2020 , www.unz.com )
• 20200501 : Burn, Neoliberalism, Burn by Pepe Escobar ( Oct 24, 2019 , www.strategic-culture.org )
• 20200430 : In the Ruins of Neoliberalism The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West (The Wellek Library Lectures) by Wendy Brown ( Apr 30, 2020 , www.amazon.com )
• 20200429 : China's Rise, America's Fall by Ron Unz ( Apr 29, 2020 , www.unz.com )
• 20200427 : Pandemic Exposes Liberalism's Free Trade, Open Borders Road To National Suicide by Martin Sieff ( Apr 27, 2020 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20200426 : Will the collapse of US neoliberal empire accelerate after coronavirus epidemic ? ( Apr 26, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200424* Please Tell the Establishment That U.S. Hegemony is Over by Daniel Larison ( Apr 23, 2020 , www.theamericanconservative.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200422 : The Neoliberal Collapse by Miatta Fahnbulleh ( Feb 28, 2020 , www.foreignaffairs.com )
• 20200421 : All the msm talking heads have been revealed for what they are: state propagandists. not one krugmanian friedmanite will ever say, "I didn't see this coming and I pimped myself out for the last 40 years selling snake oil and getting nobel prizes for it ( Apr 21, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200419 : Neoliberalism as fraud ( Apr 19, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200419* The neoliberal elite is desperate, and when they get desperate they play dirty ( Apr 19, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org ) [Recommended]
• 20200417* The word socialism became just a neoliberal smear. We should talk about public sector vs private sector, not about socialism ( Apr 17, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org ) [Recommended]
• 20200415 : While personal freedom is largely illusory, it seems to me that one has a contractual right to expect good parents, good teachers, good bosses and so forth. That's a legalistic constitutional right to exchange the individual's right to violence in exchange for protection ( Apr 15, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200415 : Personal freedom is not an unlimited right. Diana Johnstone has given a convincing argument for its limits. One's freedom and rights end where they infringe on the freedom and rights of others ( Apr 15, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200413 : Predatory Publishing 2020 ( Jan 09, 2020 , copy-shake-paste.blogspot.com )
• 20200411* The country that glorifies profit at any cost and ruthless unethical competition will fare bad in case of any virus epidemic. That includes "Typhoid Mary" cases of selfish anti-social behaviour ( Apr 11, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org ) [Recommended]
• 20200410 : The Cargo Cult segment of the 1963 documentary "Mondo Cane" can be viewed here (it is the last segment of the film) ( Apr 10, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200410 : The New Normal: Cascading and Multilayered Crises by Vincent Emanuele ( Apr 09, 2020 , www.counterpunch.org )
• 20200406* A sound banker, alas! is not one who foresees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional and orthodox way along with his fellows, so that no one can really blame him. ~Keynes ( Apr 06, 2020 , www.nakedcapitalism.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200405 : Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class. Al Capone ( Apr 05, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200405 : Hegemonic ideologies tend to naturalize socioculturally-generated pathologies, often dismissing them as "human nature." ( Apr 05, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200328* Neoliberal priorities: plenty of USG resources for Pentagon and to run pandemic war games but no money to create the most basic stockpiles (thermometers, face masks, gloves) ( Mar 21, 2020 , caucus99percent.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200328 : Free market and wage arbitrage ( Mar 28, 2020 , www.theamericanconservative.com )
• 20200328 : Contrary to free-market catechism, the pursuit of profit frequently runs contrary to the public's well-being ( Mar 28, 2020 , www.unz.com )
• 20200328* On disappearance of certain drugs ( Mar 28, 2020 , www.unz.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200328 : Just imagine the French hoity toity now not having to put up with the yellow vests in the streets. Must be such a comforting relief. ( Mar 28, 2020 , www.unz.com )
• 20200328* One common flavour of modern idiotism: I've heard doctors and pharmacists complain that patients will get offended when prescribed a cheaper, older drug. They want the best and newest, they need and deserve it! ( Mar 28, 2020 , www.unz.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200327 : We have to beg for hand sanitizer? It's almost like we are one of the nations under strct USA sanction ( Mar 27, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200327 : Exactly when did behaviour of neoliberals become a bunch of out-takes from Catch-22?" ( Mar 27, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200327 : Looks like the USA and the Soviet Union traded jerseys after the wall fell. ( Mar 27, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200327 : Larry Summers should have a drink named after him ( Mar 27, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200327 : Trump's about as innocent in the coronavirus fiasco as jack the ripper ( Mar 27, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200326* Reflections on a Century of Junk Science ( Mar 26, 2020 , www.unz.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200325 : Goldman Gives CEO 20% Raise - While Forecasting Major Coronavirus-caused Financial Crash for Americans ( Mar 25, 2020 , www.unz.com )
• 20200324 : Welcome to Sweatshop Amerika! by Mike Whitney ( Mar 24, 2020 , www.unz.com )
• 20200323 : Looks like the virus further damage neoliberalism ( Mar 23, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200323 : If you'd ever tried to set up a business here in the UK, you'd realise pretty quickly that you are under complete and utter control of the government in every aspect ( Mar 23, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200322* Mask piracy among neoliberal nations: Wonderful show of world-wide solidarity ( Mar 21, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org ) [Recommended]
• 20200322 : Opinion - A Tale of Two Foreign Policies The Train-Wreck Abroad Is Bipartisan by Philip Giraldi ( Mar 22, 2020 , www.informationclearinghouse.info )
• 20200322 : Opinion - Neoliberalism's Death Knell ( Mar 22, 2020 , www.informationclearinghouse.info )
• 20200321* Tulsi Gabbard says insider traders should be 'investigated prosecuted,' as Left and Right team up on profiteering senator ( Mar 21, 2020 , www.rt.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200321* Tucker Senator Burr sold shares after virus briefing ( Mar 21, 2020 , www.youtube.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200321* Don't forget our congress critter Senator Kelly Loeffler ( Mar 21, 2020 , caucus99percent.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200319 : Neoliberalism has an expiration date. And this day arrived. It's that simple. ( Mar 19, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200319 : The Decline of Neoliberalism Implications for CSR- - The BUSINESS of SOCIETY ( Mar 19, 2020 , www.bos-cbscsr.dk )
• 20200319 : We are still barely starting to understand the consequences of Covid-19 for the future of neoliberal turbo-capitalism ( Mar 19, 2020 , www.unz.com )
• 20200317 : Will neliberalsm surive the second hard blow? ( Mar 17, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200316 : How is the Consumer Society Doing by Stormy ( Mar 16, 2020 , angrybearblog.com )
• 20200316 : The Man Who Sold the World Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America Kleinknecht, William 9781568584423 Amazon. ( Mar 16, 2020 , www.amazon.com )
• 20200316 : OK, neoliberalism is bad. But what is the alternative? ( Mar 16, 2020 , angrybearblog.com )
• 20200315 : The Companies Putting Profits Ahead of Public Health ( Mar 14, 2020 , www.nytimes.com )
• 20200315 : COVID-19 epidemic promote cooperation and as such should be viewed as the second stage of the collapse of neoliberalism ( Mar 15, 2020 , www.counterpunch.org )
• 20200314 : This is a transformational moment in history that will allow American politics to socialize and turn away resolutely from the anti-government stupidity represented by Trump and all the anti-New Deal elements among the elite predators that have dominated politically since Reagan ( Mar 14, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200314 : Congress discard neoliberalism and jump into direct the New Deal Style action ( Mar 14, 2020 , turcopolier.typepad.com )
• 20200314 : Erik Olin Wright and the Anti-capitalist Economy by Edward J. Martin ( Mar 14, 2020 , dissidentvoice.org )
• 20200313 : This virus is revealing just how ineffective the neoliberal social Darwinist "every man for himself" ethos is and how deeply in denial and out of touch with reality these societies are ( Mar 13, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200313 : Free trade suddenly seems like a dangerous fantasy, as nations start putting their own people first ( Mar 13, 2020 , www.theamericanconservative.com )
• 20200311 : Neoliberal v Neoclassical economics - what's the difference - Renegade Inc ( Mar 11, 2020 , renegadeinc.com )
• 20200310* Neoliberalism has brought out the worst in us by Paul Verhaeghe ( Sep 29, 2014 , www.theguardian.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200310* Neoliberalism the ideology at the root of all our problems by George Monbiot ( Apr 16, 2016 , www.theguardian.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200310* The Bankruptcy of the American Left by Chris Hedges ( Feb 05, 2018 , www.truthdig.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200309 : One day, Americans will fully understand , with horrible consequences, that not every single human transaction must revolve around making a few people obscenely rich ( Mar 09, 2020 , www.unz.com )
• 20200309* The Politics of Privatization How Neoliberalism Took Over US Politics by Brett Heinz ( Sep 08, 2017 , www.faireconomy.org ) [Recommended]
• 20200307 : In the Land of the Gerontocrats by Jacob Bacharach ( Mar 07, 2020 , www.truthdig.com )
• 20200303* "Predatory capitalism", which clearly describes what neoliberalism is. ( Mar 03, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org ) [Recommended]
• 20200302 : Under the rule of a repressive [neoliberal] oligarchy, freedom can be made into a powerful instrument of domination ( Mar 02, 2020 , www.truthdig.com )
• 20200226 : The neoliberal globalists and bankers are engaging in a massive ripoff of the "99%" (although I think the ratio is more like 80-20% rather than 99-1%). But I don't think Bernie has the solution. ( Feb 26, 2020 , www.unz.com )
• 20200225* The Democrats' Quandary In a Struggle Between Oligarchy and Democracy, Something Must Give by Michael Hudson ( Feb 25, 2020 , www.nakedcapitalism.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200225* The Economic Anxiety Hypothesis has Become Absurd(er) ( Feb 25, 2020 , angrybearblog.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200224 : Creating the Corporate Coup ( Dec 09, 2019 , caucus99percent.com )
• 20200224 : Globalisation: the rise and fall of an idea that swept the world by Nikil Saval ( Feb 03, 2017 , www.theguardian.com )
• 20200224 : The fatal flaw of neoliberalism: it's bad economics by Dani Rodrik ( Nov 14, 2017 , www.theguardian.com )
• 20200224* Seven signs of the neoliberal apocalypse by Van Badham ( Apr 26, 2018 , www.theguardian.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200222* The Red Thread A Search for Ideological Drivers Inside the Anti-Trump Conspiracy by Diana West ( Feb 22, 2020 , www.amazon.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200219* During the stagflation crisis of the 1970s, a "neoliberal revolution from above" was staged in the USA by "managerial elite" which like Soviet nomenklatura (which also staged a neoliberal coup d' tat) changed sides and betrayed the working class ( Feb 19, 2020 , angrybearblog.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200219* On Michael Lind's "The New Class War" by Gregor Baszak ( Jan 08, 2020 , lareviewofbooks.org ) [Recommended]
• 20200207 : The favored candidate of the DNC is clearly Trump ( Feb 07, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20200126* The Collapse of Neoliberalism by Ganesh Sitaraman ( Dec 23, 2019 , newrepublic.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200125* Rabobank What If... The Protectionists Are Right And The Free Traders Are Wrong by Michael Every ( Jan 25, 2020 , www.zerohedge.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200123* An incredible level of naivety of people who still think that a single individual, or even two, can change the direction of murderous US policies that are widely supported throughout the bureaucracy? ( Jan 23, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org ) [Recommended]
• 20200119 : Internal Boeing Emails Claim 777X Shares MAX Problem ( Jan 19, 2020 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20200118* The joke is on us: Without the USSR the USA oligarchy resorted to cannibalism and devour the American people ( Jan 18, 2020 , www.theguardian.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200112* Luongo Fears "An Abyss Of Losses" As Iraq Becomes MidEast Battleground ( Jan 12, 2020 , www.zerohedge.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200111* Atomization of workforce as a part of atomization of society under neoliberalism ( Apr 18, 2017 , www.nakedcapitalism.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200102* The Purpose Of Life Is Not Happiness: It s Usefulness Happiness as an achievable goal is an illusion, but that doesn t mean happiness itself is not attainable by Darius Foroux ( Aug 22, 2019 , getpocket.com ) [Recommended]
• 20200101 : Radical "essentialist identity" left is just tools of financial oligarchy and/or stooges of intelligence agencies and always has been ( Jan 01, 2020 , crookedtimber.org )
• 20191221* Trump administration sanction companies involved in laying the remaining pipe, and also companies involved in the infrastructure around the arrival point. ( Dec 21, 2019 , peakoilbarrel.com ) [Recommended]
• 20191202 : A bunch of neocons in key positions in Trump administration really represents a huge threat to world peace ( Oct 28, 2016 , crookedtimber.org )
• 20191202 : The Vichy left – essentially people who are ready to sacrifice all principles to ensure their own prosperity ( Oct 24, 2016 , economistsview.typepad.com )
• 20191202* The Fake Myth of American Meritocracy by Barbara Boland ( Mar 15, 2019 , www.theamericanconservative.com ) [Recommended]
• 20191201* Neoliberalism Tells Us We're Selfish Souls How Can We Promote Other Identities by Christine Berry, ( Nov 01, 2019 , www.nakedcapitalism.com ) [Recommended]
• 20191124* Chris Hedges on Death of the Liberal Class - YouTube ( Jan 04, 2011 , www.youtube.com ) [Recommended]
• 20191121* How Neoliberal Thinkers Spawned Monsters They Never Imagined ( Nov 21, 2019 , www.nakedcapitalism.com ) [Recommended]
• 20191114* Neoliberalism Paved the Way for Authoritarian Right-Wing Populism by Henry A. Giroux ( Sep 26, 2019 , truthout.org ) [Recommended]
• 20191113* The End of Neoliberalism and the Rebirth of History by Joseph E. Stiglitz ( Nov 04, 2019 , www.project-syndicate.org ) [Recommended]
• 20191106* Neoliberalism was not conceived as a self-serving racket [of the financial oligarchy], but it rapidly became one ( Nov 06, 2019 , crookedtimber.org ) [Recommended]
• 20191104* Postmodernism The Ideological Embellishment of Neoliberalism by Vaska ( OffGuardian ) [Recommended]
• 20191010* Trump, Impeachment Forgetting What Brought Him to the White House by Andrew J. Bacevich ( Oct 10, 2019 , consortiumnews.com ) [Recommended]
• 20191005* Everything is fake in the current neoliberal discourse, be it political or economic, and it is not that easy to understand how they are deceiving us. Lies that are so sophisticated that often it is impossible to tell they are actually lies, not facts ( Oct 05, 2019 , economistsview.typepad.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190922* Neoliberalism Political Success, Economic Failure Portside by Robert Kuttner ( Aug 25, 2019 , portside.org ) [Recommended]
• 20190922* It was neoliberalism that won the cold war ( Sep 08, 2019 , economistsview.typepad.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190913 : Clowns, AI and layoffs ( Sep 13, 2019 , www.nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20190910 : What s wrong with you people ? ( Mar 11, 2014 , independentaustralia.net )
• 20190910* Neoliberal Capitalism at a Dead End by Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik ( Aug 25, 2019 , portside.org ) [Recommended]
• 20190910* How Deep Is the Rot in America s Institutions by Charles Hugh Smith ( Sep 09, 2019 , www.oftwominds.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190910* It s all about Gene Sharp and seeping neoliberal regime change using Western logistical support, money, NGO and intelligence agencies and MSM as the leverage ( Aug 31, 2019 , What's the True Unemployment Rate in the US? by Jack Rasmus ( Sep 09, 2019 , www.counterpunch.org ) [Recommended]
• 20190904 : Economists had 'a far greater sense of confidence in their analyses than I have found to be warranted. They were best kept down with the surplus furniture and the rats ( Sep 04, 2019 , www.economist.com )
• 20190902* Where is Margaret Thatcher now? ( Sep 02, 2019 , www.nakedcapitalism.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190902* Questions Nobody Is Asking About Jeffrey Epstein by Eric Rasmusen ( Sep 02, 2019 , www.unz.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190825 : Trump and the value of the 90 days probation period for any newly elected President ( Aug 25, 2019 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20190823 : I believe being oblivious is the main qualification for being a successful mainstream economist. ( Aug 23, 2019 , www.nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20190823 : Poorly targeted is in reality "richly targeted" under neoliberalism ( Aug 23, 2019 , www.nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20190823 : Is nonsense economic throes promoted by NYT a deliberate policy or are they really ignorant ? ( Aug 23, 2019 , www.nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20190823 : Austerity is Prosperity ( Aug 23, 2019 , www.nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20190823 : Checkmate, liberals ( Aug 23, 2019 , www.nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20190823 : I remember when Qaddafi was murdered and Libya fell. Within the first day or two a central bank was set up in Libya. And look how well that is working out for them. ( Aug 23, 2019 , www.nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20190823 : Investment advice from Wall Street for workers and their 401k just before the Great Recession: "Don't worry about the price. Invest now as much as you can. You can't predict the market " ( Aug 23, 2019 , www.nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20190823 : One can hope that Larry Summers will eventually convert to MMT, especially if he get a stipend for that ( Aug 23, 2019 , www.nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20190820* Trump is about the agony. The agony of the US centered global neoliberal empire. ( Aug 20, 2019 , economistsview.typepad.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190804* We see that the neoliberal utopia tends imposes itself even upon the rulers. ( Aug 04, 2019 , jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190804* to the liberal economists, free markets were markets free from rent seeking, while to the neoliberals free markets are free from government regulation. ( Aug 04, 2019 , www.nakedcapitalism.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190804* Neoliberalism Political Success, Economic Failure ( Aug 04, 2019 , www.nakedcapitalism.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190803 : Perhaps when the PLA finish in hongkong they can come over here and deal with antifa since our government at any level does not appear to have the sense or spine to do it themselves ( Aug 03, 2019 , turcopolier.typepad.com )
• 20190803 : Hell's Top Banker Explains How To Destroy The Global Economy ( Aug 03, 2019 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20190725* The destiny of the USA is now tied to the destiny of neoliberalism (much like the USSR and Bolshevism) ( Dec 25, 2018 , www.unz.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190722 : When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated ( Jul 22, 2019 , jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com )
• 20190722 : A baited banker ( Jul 22, 2019 , jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com )
• 20190717 : A major problem with US neoliberalism: unbelievably shallow people run for the highest office in the US ( Jul 17, 2019 , www.theamericanconservative.com )
• 20190705* The UK public finally realized that the Globalist/Open Frontiers/ Neoliberal crowd are not their friends ( Jul 05, 2019 , www.unz.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190702* Yep! The neolibs hate poor people and have superiority complex ( Apr 10, 2018 , www.theguardian.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190627* The Ongoing Restructuring of the Greater Middle East by C.J. Hopkins ( Jun 27, 2019 , www.unz.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190623 : Theory and practice of neoliberalism ( Mar 06, 2012 , discussion.theguardian.com )
• 20190623* It never stops to amaze me how the US neoliberals especially of Republican variety claims to be Christian ( Mar 06, 2012 , discussion.theguardian.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190623* These submerged policies obscure the role of government and exaggerate that of the market. As a result, citizens are unaware not only of the benefits they receive, but of the massive advantages given to powerful interests, such as insurance companies and the financial industry. ( Jun 23, 2019 , discussion.theguardian.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190623* The return of fundamentalist nationalism is arguably a radicalized form of neoliberalism ( Jun 23, 2019 , discussion.theguardian.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190622* Use of science by the US politicians: they uses science the way the drunk uses a lamppost, for support rather than illumination. ( Jun 16, 2019 , www.theamericanconservative.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190619* America s Suicide Epidemic ( Jun 19, 2019 , www.nakedcapitalism.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190619* Bias bias the inclination to accuse people of bias by James Thompson ( Jun 19, 2019 , www.unz.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190610 : Are Bonds Peaking-Interest Rates Bottoming ( Jun 10, 2019 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20190610 : If ever there were a candidate who might be inclined to rethink our relationship with the Saudis, it's Buttigieg. ( Jun 10, 2019 , turcopolier.typepad.com )
• 20190609* The looming 100-year US-China conflict by Martin Wolf ( Jun 04, 2019 , archive.fo ) [Recommended]
• 20190525* The Belligerence Of Empire by Kenn Orphan ( May 23, 2019 , www.counterpunch.org ) [Recommended]
• 20190517* Shareholder Capitalism, the Military, and the Beginning of the End for Boeing ( May 17, 2019 , www.nakedcapitalism.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190513* Angry Bear Senate Democratic Jackasses and Elmer Fudd ( May 04, 2019 , angrybearblog.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190428* Prisoners of Overwork A Dilemma by Peter Dorman ( Apr 28, 2019 , angrybearblog.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190427* Why despite widespread criticism, neoliberalism remains the dominant politico-economic theory amongst policy-makers both in the USA and internationally ( Apr 27, 2019 , angrybearblog.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190403 : The software's reengagement is what doomed everybody aboard Boeing Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 ( Apr 03, 2019 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20190403* What We Can Learn From 1920s Germany by Brian E. Fogarty ( Apr 03, 2019 , www.commondreams.org ) [Recommended]
• 20190325* Russiagate was never about substance, it was about who gets to image-manage the decline of a turbo-charged, self-harming neoliberal capitalism by Jonathan Cook ( Mar 25, 2019 , www.counterpunch.org ) [Recommended]
• 20190319 : "Monopoly" is such an ugly term. ( Mar 19, 2019 , crookedtimber.org )
• 20190306 : The only real growth in the US - ( Mar 06, 2019 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20190226* Neoliberalism by Julie Wilson ( Oct 09, 2017 , www.amazon.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190226* THE CRISIS OF NEOLIBERALISM by Julie A. Wilson ( Oct 08, 2017 , www.amazon.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190216* MSM Begs For Trust After Buzzfeed Debacle by Caitlin Johnstone ( Jan 20, 2019 , www.zerohedge.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190213* MoA - Russiagate Is Finished ( Feb 12, 2019 , www.moonofalabama.org ) [Recommended]
• 20190211 : The so-called shale revolution, the fracking miracle, may have resulted in record oil and gas production in North America, but the real miracle -- in which shale companies make money fracking that oil and gas -- has yet to occur. ( Feb 11, 2019 , www.nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20190210* Neoliberalism is dead. Now let's repair our democratic institutions by Richard Denniss ( Oct 31, 2018 , www.theguardian.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190205 : Fed's Dudley Explains How I Learned To Stop Worrying Love The Fed's Balance Sheet ( Feb 05, 2019 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20190205 : Dad Heartbreakingly Thinks His Connections Can Help Son Find Job ( Feb 05, 2019 , local.theonion.com )
• 20190205* The bottom line is that this preoccupation with the 'headline number' for the current month as a single datapoint that is promoted by Wall Street and the Government for official economic data is a nasty neoliberal propaganda trick. You need to analise the whole time serioes to get an objective picture ( Feb 05, 2019 , jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190202* The Immorality and Brutal Violence of Extreme Greed ( Jul 22, 2016 , Naked Capitalism ) [Recommended]
• 20190129* A State of Neoliberalism by Kevin "Rashid" Johnson (New African Black Panther Party) ( Nov 16, 2016 , rashidmod.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190126* Can the current US neoliberal/neoconservative elite be considered suicidal? ( Jan 20, 2019 , www.theamericanconservative.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190124 : Stockman about Vichy left ( Jan 24, 2019 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20190124* No One Said Rich People Were Very Sharp Davos Tries to Combat Populism by Dean Baker ( Jan 22, 2019 , cepr.net ) [Recommended]
• 20190123* When neoliberalism became the object of jokes, it is clear that its time has passed ( Jan 23, 2019 , crookedtimber.org ) [Recommended]
• 20190122* The French Anti-Neoliberal Revolution. On the conditions for its success by Dimitris Konstantakopoulos ( Jan 14, 2019 , www.defenddemocracy.press ) [Recommended]
• 20190121 : Sound financial advice ( Jan 21, 2019 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20190119* According to Wolin, domestic and foreign affairs goals are each important and on parallel tracks ( Jan 19, 2019 , www.moonofalabama.org ) [Recommended]
• 20190113* There is no free market! It's all crooked by financial oligarchy! ( Jan 13, 2019 , www.unz.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190112* Tucker Carlson Mitt Romney supports the status quo. But for everyone else, it's infuriating Fox News ( Jan 02, 2019 , www.foxnews.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190108* Rewriting Economic Thought - Michael Hudson ( Oct 05, 2015 , michael-hudson.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190108* The Financial Sector Is the Greatest Parasite in Human History by Ben Strubel ( March 13, 2014 ) [Recommended]
• 20190108* No, wealth isn t created at the top. It is merely devoured there by Rutger Bregman ( Mar 30, 2017 , www.theguardian.com ) [Recommended]
• 20190103 : The parable of casino capitalism, or neoliberal finance innovative method of weighting the ox via wisdom of the crowd ( Jan 03, 2019 , www.amazon.com )
• 20190102 : Jeff Bezos Tables Latest Breakthrough Cost-Cutting Idea After Realizing It's Just Slaves ( Jan 02, 2019 , www.theonion.com )
• 20190102 : American People Admit Having Facebook Data Stolen Kind Of Worth It To Watch That Little Fucker Squirm ( Jan 02, 2019 , www.theonion.com )
• 20181230* The essence of neoliberalism by Pierre Bourdieu ( Dec 30, 1998 , mondediplo.com ) [Recommended]
• 20181227 : 'Trickle down effect' and pub test ( Dec 27, 2018 , discussion.theguardian.com )
• 20181226 : You might say that neoliberalism borrows from economics only in the sense that astrology borrows from astronomy. ( Dec 26, 2018 , mainlymacro.blogspot.com )
• 20181216* Neoliberalism has had its day. So what happens next (The death of neoliberalism and the crisis in western politics) by Martin Jacques ( Aug 21, 2016 , www.theguardian.com ) [Recommended]
• 20181209 : BREAKING: UK exhausted from endless stream of Brexit bollocks so here's a picture of some puppies. ( Dec 09, 2018 , www.nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20181209* Neoliberalism is more like modern feudalism - an authoritarian system where the lords (bankers, energy companies and their large and inefficient attendant bureaucracies), keep us peasants in thrall through life long debt-slavery simply to buy a house or exploit us as a captured market in the case of the energy sector. ( Dec 09, 2018 , discussion.theguardian.com ) [Recommended]
• 20181127* American capitalism could afford to make concessions assiciated with The New Deal because of its economic dominance. The past forty years have been characterized by the continued decline of American capitalism on a world stage relative to its major rivals. The ruling class has responded to this crisis with a neoliberal counterrevolution to claw back all gains won by workers. This policy has been carried out under both Democratic and Republican administrations and with the assistance of the trade unions. ( Nov 27, 2018 , thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com ) [Recommended]
• 20181122 : Here's one for all those who say, indignantly, "US debt is not 100% of GDP". No, that's right; it's not. ( Nov 22, 2018 , thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com )
• 20181117 : Goldman Sachs CEO is "personally outraged" at criminal behavior in his bank ( Nov 17, 2018 , caucus99percent.com )
• 20181103* Neoliberal Measurement Mania ( Nov 03, 2018 , www.rako.com ) [Recommended]
• 20181012 : The Fundamentals are Strong! ( Oct 10, 2018 , angrybearblog.com )
• 20180929* Steve Keen How Economics Became a Cult ( Sep 29, 2018 , www.nakedcapitalism.com ) [Recommended]
• 20180927* Hiding in Plain Sight Why We Cannot See the System Destroying Us ( Sep 27, 2018 , www.counterpunch.org ) [Recommended]
• 20180907* Neomodernism - Wikipedia ( Sep 07, 2018 , en.wikipedia.org ) [Recommended]
• 20180828* A Colony in a Nation by Chris Hayes ( Mar 23, 2017 , economistsview.typepad.com ) [Recommended]
• 20180819* End of "classic neoliberalism": to an extent hardly imaginable in 2008, all the world's leading economies are locked in a perpetually escalating cycle of economic warfare. ( Aug 19, 2018 , thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com ) [Recommended]
• 20180810* On Contact: Casino Capitalism with Natasha Dow Schull ( Mar 25, 2017 , www.youtube.com ) [Recommended]
• 20180728* American Society Would Collapse If It Were not For These 8 Myths by Lee Camp ( Jul 27, 2018 , www.zerohedge.com ) [Recommended]
• 20180628 : Oil will never be above $44 WTI in my lifetime. ( Jun 28, 2018 , peakoilbarrel.com )
• 20180615 : Creationists and George W Bush: Bush junior is the best argument against intelligent design ( Jun 15, 2018 , www.unz.com )
• 20180606* Neoliberal language allows to cut wages by packaging neoliberal oligarchy preferences as national interests ( Jun 06, 2018 , discussion.theguardian.com ) [Recommended]
• 20180531* Meet the Economist Behind the One Percent's Stealth Takeover of America by Lynn Parramore ( May 31, 2018 , www.nakedcapitalism.com ) [Recommended]
• 20180530* How Media Amnesia Has Trapped Us in a Neoliberal Groundhog Day ( May 30, 2018 , www.nakedcapitalism.com ) [Recommended]
• 20180520* "Free markets" as a smoke screen for parasitizing riches to implement their agenda via, paradoxically, state intervention ( May 20, 2018 , www.nakedcapitalism.com ) [Recommended]
• 20180509* Trotskyist Delusions, by Diana Johnstone ( May 05, 2018 , www.unz.com ) [Recommended]
• 20180427 : Chomsky joined Vichy left on Syria ( Apr 27, 2018 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20180423* Neoliberals are statists, much like Trotskyites are ( Apr 23, 2018 , americanaffairsjournal.org ) [Recommended]
• 20180423* How Neoliberalism Worms Its Way Into Your Brain by Nathan J. Robinson ( Apr 23, 2018 , www.currentaffairs.org ) [Recommended]
• 20180312* There is no democracy without economic democracy by Jason Hirthler ( turcopolier.typepad.com ) [Recommended]
• 20180312* Colonizing the Western Mind using think tanks ( Mar 12, 2018 , www.counterpunch.org ) [Recommended]
• 20180302* Fatal Delusions of Western Man by Pat Buchanan ( Mar 02, 2018 , www.unz.com ) [Recommended]
• 20180210* More on neoliberal newspeak of US propaganda machine ( Feb 10, 2018 , consortiumnews.com ) [Recommended]
• 20171231* Brainwashing as a key component of the US social system by Paul Craig Roberts ( Jul 25, 2015 , Zero Hedge ) [Recommended]
• 20171231* Is [neo]Liberalism a Dying Faith by Pat Buchanan ( Oct 01, 2002 , www.unz.com ) [Recommended]
• 20171224* Laudato si by Pope Francis ( May 24, 2015 , 5w2.vatican.va ) [Recommended]
• 20171215* Rise and Decline of the Welfare State, by James Petras ( Dec 13, 2017 , www.unz.com ) [Recommended]
• 20171205* Controlling speculation in world financial markets Progressive Christians Uniting by Gordon K Douglass ( Nov 09, 2002 , www.prospect-magazine.co.uk ) [Recommended]
• 20171203* Another Democratic party betrayal of their former voters. but what you can expect from the party of Bill Clinton? ( Dec 03, 2017 , www.nakedcapitalism.com ) [Recommended]
• 20171129* Secular Stagnation: The Time for One-Armed Policy is Over ( Jun 05, 2015 , economistsview.typepad.com ) [Recommended]
• 20171129* Economics is a Belief System - and We are Ruled by Fundamentalists ( Nov 09, 2015 , resilience.org ) [Recommended]
• 20171129* Michael Hudson: The Wall Street Economy is Draining the Real Economy ( www.nakedcapitalism.com ) [Recommended]
• 20171129* Positive Feedback Loops, Financial Instability, The Blind Spot Of Policymakers ( Nov 22, 2017 , www.zerohedge.com ) [Recommended]
• 20171129* Attack on Sanders Economic Plan By Former Chairs of the Council of Economic Advisors Irresponsible ( Mar 06, 2016 , naked capitalism ) [Recommended]
• 20171105* China and the US Rational Planning and Lumpen Capitalism by James Petras ( Nov 05, 2017 , www.unz.com ) [Recommended]
• 20171104* Who's Afraid of Corporate COINTELPRO by C. J. Hopkins ( Nov 04, 2017 , www.unz.com ) [Recommended]
• 20171025* Tomorrow Belongs to the Corporatocracy by C.J. Hopkins ( Oct 20, 2017 , www.unz.com ) [Recommended]
• 20171013* Sympathy for the Corporatocracy by C. J. Hopkins ( Oct 13, 2017 , www.unz.com ) [Recommended]
• 20171010* The US Economy: Explaining Stagnation and Why It Will Persist by Thomas I. Palley ( Apr 10, 2015 , www.thomaspalley.com ) [Recommended]
• 20171008* On the history and grand duplicity of neoliberalism ( Oct 08, 2017 , www.amazon.com ) [Recommended]
• 20171007* Finances hold on our everyday life must be broken by Costas Lapavitsas ( Jan 01, 2014 , www.theguardian.com ) [Recommended]
• 20171006* Prof. Philip Mirowski keynote for Life and Debt conference ( Aug 18, 2013 , www.youtube.com ) [Recommended]
• 20171006* How Economists Turned Corporations into Predators ( Oct 06, 2017 , www.nakedcapitalism.com ) [Recommended]
• 20171001* Bulletproof Neoliberalism by Paul Heideman ( Oct 01, 2017 , www.jacobinmag.com ) [Recommended]
• 20170925* Free market as a neoliberal myth, the cornerstone of neoliberalism as a secular religion ( Jan 06, 2017 , economistsview.typepad.com ) [Recommended]
• 20170923* The Exit Strategy of Empire by Wendy McElro ( Sep 23, 2017 , ronpaulinstitute.org ) [Recommended]
• 20170919* Neoliberalism: the deep story that lies beneath Donald Trumps triumph: How a ruthless network of super-rich ideologues killed choice and destroyed people s faith in politics by George Monbiot ( Nov 16, 2017 , www.theguardian.com ) [Recommended]
• 20170919* Neoliberalism: the idea that swallowed the world by Stephen Metcalf ( Aug 18, 2017 , www.theguardian.com ) [Recommended]
• 20170918* Critical Realism: Mathematics versus Mythematics in Economics ( Oct 02, 2015 , www.debtdeflation.com ) [Recommended]
• 20170918* Looks like Trump initially has a four point platform that was anti-neoliberal in its essence: non-interventionism, no to neoliberal globalization, no to outsourcing of jobs, and no to multiculturism. All were betrayed very soon ( Jun 02, 2017 , economistsview.typepad.com ) [Recommended]
• 20170918* Its always bizarre who easily neoliberals turn into hawkish and warmongering jerks ( Apr 09, 2017 , economistsview.typepad.com ) [Recommended]
• 20170916* The Transformation of the American Dream ( Sep 16, 2017 , economistsview.typepad.com ) [Recommended]
• 20170913* A despot in disguise: one mans mission to rip up democracy by George Monbiot ( Sep 13, 2017 , www.theguardian.com ) [Recommended]
• 20170911* Neo-classical economics as a new flat earth cult ( Apr 11, 2017 , economistsview.typepad.com ) [Recommended]
• 20170911* Neoliberalism is creating loneliness. That's what is wrenching society apart by George Monbiot ( Oct 12, 2016 , www.theguardian.com ) [Recommended]
• 20170911* The only countervailing force, unions, were deliberately destroyed. Neoliberalism needs to atomize work force to function properly and destroys any solidarity among workers. Unions are anathema for neoliberalism, because they prevent isolation and suppression of workers. ( Apr 15, 2017 , economistsview.typepad.com ) [Recommended]
• 20170911* Around 1970 corporate managers and professionals realized that they shared the same education, background and interests with capital owners and realigned themselves, abandoning working class and a large part of lower middle class (small business owners) ( Nov 14, 2016 , crookedtimber.org ) [Recommended]
• 20170905* Is the World Slouching Toward a Grave Systemic Crisis by Philip Zelikow ( Sep 05, 2017 , www.theatlantic.com ) [Recommended]
• 20170905* A State of Neoliberalism ( Nov 16, 2016 , rashidmod.com ) [Recommended]
• 20170830* The President of Belgian Magistrates - Neoliberalism is a form of Fascism by Manuela Cadelli ( Aug 30, 2017 , www.defenddemocracy.press ) [Recommended]
• 20170704* Summers as a defender of Flat Earth theory ( Apr 12, 2017 , economistsview.typepad.com ) [Recommended]
• 20170508* Karl Polanyi for President by Patrick Iber and Mike Konczal ( May 04, 2017 , www.dissentmagazine.org ) [Recommended]
• 20170501* Trump: A Resisters Guide by Wesley Yang ( Jan 21, 2017 , harpers.org ) [Recommended]
• 20170123* One way to sum up neoliberalism is to say that everything-everything-is to be made over in the image of the market, including the state, civil society, and of course human beings ( Jan 23, 2017 , economistsview.typepad.com ) [Recommended]
• 20161028 : Americas Vichy Regime ( Apr 21, 2011 , www.americanthinker.com )

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I find an attempt to elevate academic finance and economics to sciences by using the word "scientism" to be bizarre. Finance models like CAPM, Black-Scholes and VAR all rest on assumptions that are demonstrably false, such as rational investors and continuous markets. May 11, 2012 at 1-40 pm

[Jul 29, 2021] Neoclassical economics and the current collapse of neoliberalism

Jul 29, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Sound of the Suburbs 2 hours ago remove link

Neoclassical economics brought the US economy to its knees in the 1930s.

"Why don't we give it another whirl?" US policymakers

It was asking for trouble.

The economics of globalization has always had an Achilles' heel.

The 1920s roared with debt based consumption and speculation until it all tipped over into the debt deflation of the Great Depression. No one realized the problems that were building up in the economy as they used an economics that doesn't look at debt, neoclassical economics.

Not considering private debt is the Achilles' heel of neoclassical economics.

1929 and 2008 stick out like sore thumbs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAStZJCKmbU&list=PLmtuEaMvhDZZQLxg24CAiFgZYldtoCR-R&index=6

At 18 mins.

In the 1930s, the Americans found margin lending and share buybacks had artificially inflated the markets and this had lead to the Wall Street Crash of 1929.

What lifted US stocks to 1929 levels in 1929?

Margin lending and share buybacks.

What lifted US stocks to 1929 levels in 2019?

Margin lending and share buybacks.

A former US congressman has been looking at the data.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zu3SgXx3q4

US policymakers asked for trouble and they got it.

Did they really have to roll this nonsense out globally?

Can you please keep half-baked ideas like this to yourselves in future?

They have no idea what they are doing.

[Jul 29, 2021] Accept Our Diverse World As It Is - JFK

Neoliberals organically can not accept diversity on state level. Like Trotskyites in the past they want permanent revolution directed on conversion of all nations into neoliberalism and creation of the global neoliberal empire ruled from Washington. Much like communist empire was rules from Moscow.

Jul 29, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

fosfor 37 14 hours ago remove link

It is not clear why the West is so stubbornly climbing with its perverted liberal values ​​to the East? This applies not only to Russia but also to other Orthodox countries, as well as Hungary and Poland. These are historically established patriarchal countries with a traditional way of life.
Why, with the stubbornness of a ram, do they shake these LGBT flags and impose all sorts of animal perversions?

They already in their home made life impossible for healthy and normal people of traditional views. And now they are climbing into other countries. As a result, normal and healthy people are already thinking about moving to those countries where they will feel good and their children will be morally healthy. After all, there is nothing more expensive than our children.

adr 14 hours ago

Because what you see as perversion is the fantasy of those who wield power.

fosfor 37 14 hours ago

I am very sorry for their subjects and I am worried about the moral health of their children.

AdenJamesSwift 14 hours ago

Because the sons of Zion need to break your notions of 'nationhood' and 'shared culture' down until all you believe yourself to be is an individual, in an ocean full of 'people just like you'.

Individuals, just like wounded, old or juvenile animals in a herd, are easiest caught in isolation from the rest of their kind.

Monos 13 hours ago (Edited)

Kennedy was willing to put our political model on offer to the world, but not to impose it on anyone

Things that JFK did during his political career that contradict and disprove Pat's narrative:

1) Supported US military intervention in Vietnam while still a US Senator.

2) Ordered the Pay of Pigs invasion with the express purpose of overthrowing the Cuban government for the sake of democracy.

3) Instigated the Cuban Missile Crisis by antagonizing Khrushchev at their first international summit.

4) Incited the overthrow and assassination of South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem, because the latter's policies were at odds with 'US national security interests' (i.e. Diem was open to diplomacy and reconciliation with the North, while JFK was not).

radio man 14 hours ago remove link

Buchanan subscribes to the Warren Commission's conclusion. Now Pat sets out to educate us? Pass the air sickness bag.

mike6972 2 hours ago

A good speech. If Kennedy were President today, the US and Russia would be partners, not enemies.

Posa 1 hour ago

The MIC-Deep State could see where this was going so they gunned down the President on the street in broad daylight--- then brazenly covered it up. Everyone knew what happened but were powerless. The JFK, RFK and MLK assassinations was a lesson every politician of rank in the US learned. Example: Obama, when challenged for suck-up policies told a progressive audience "Look what they did to Martin" (Luther King).

That's the only system the Us ever wanted to export.

Sound of the Suburbs 2 hours ago

Any US president who wants to bring in Government created money ends up with a bullet in the head, i.e. Lincoln and Kennedy.

What a coincidence!

The prophecy of the neoliberalism to come.

" The death of Lincoln was a disaster for Christendom. There was no man in the United States great enough to wear his boots and the bankers went anew to grab the riches. I fear that foreign bankers with their craftiness and tortuous tricks will entirely control the exuberant riches of America and use it to systematically corrupt civilization." Otto von Bismark (1815-1898), German Chancellor, after the Lincoln assassination

Why was Lincoln so important?

"The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and the buying power of consumers. By the adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity." - Abraham Lincoln

Money is the master of mankind and it really shouldn't be as it is just numbers typed in at keyboards, it comes out of nothing.

When we find out how the monetary system works we can all do a lot better, the only limitations should be the resources available.

The monetary system is a man made system, and it's quite a good system when we know how it works.

That is why they don't want you to know how it works.

Sound of the Suburbs 2 hours ago (Edited) remove link

Can we let central bankers know?

Afraid not.

How did Ben Bernanke convince himself debt doesn't matter?

He thinks banks are financial intermediaries.

Ben Bernanke is famous for his study of the Great Depression and here it is discussed in the Wall Street Journal.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB113392265577715881

"Theoretically, neither deflation nor inflation ought to affect long-run growth or employment. After a while, people and businesses get used to changing prices. If prices fall, eventually so will wages, and the impact on profits, employment and purchasing power will be neutral. Borrowers suffer during deflation because their debts are fixed in value, but creditors benefit because the dollars they get back will buy more. For the economy as a whole, deflation ought to be a wash."

What has Ben Bernanke got wrong?

He thinks banks are financial intermediaries and there was no way he could understand the debt deflation of the Great Depression.

Debt deflation can't happen if banks are financial intermediaries.

Policymakers can convince themselves "debt doesn't matter", as it doesn't appear to if banks are financial intermediaries, but they aren't.

Ben, this is how banks really work.

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-bulletin/2014/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy.pdf

Now you can understand the debt deflation of the Great Depression and see why debt does matter.

Forty years of financial blunders, repeated time and time again globally, has allowed heterodox economists to make enormous progress in this area.

Some central bankers do seem to know a bit (not Ben Bernanke) ......

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-bulletin/2014/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy.pdf

It's the wider implications of this, they haven't grasped.

Financial stability isn't as hard as they make it look.

[Jul 24, 2021] Woke Nasdaq's Boardroom Diversity Push

Neoliberal oligarchy fight against income redistribution by pushing perverted social justice smoke screen and in effect can turn the USA in South Africa. Money quote from comments: "If I read NASDAQ's proposal for Board representation in the Onion, I would have thought that even these jokesters have exceeded the creativity threshold of ridiculousness I thought was possible." and "What about the Mentally Ill? Do they get a seat? How about the Homeless?"

Three words about famele CEO and board room members: Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos. BTW what is unclear in NASDAQ bold critical race theory support is: Can we exchange one black member for two female members? Or not.

Also why stop at the boardrooms. Why not require the same in professional sport teams?

Jul 24, 2021 | www.wsj.com

Nasdaq has, in its own words, embraced "the social justice movement." The actual job of a stock exchange, however, is to ensure that trading is orderly and its listed companies follow standard governance rules. But doing that doesn't earn the applause of the political left. Progressive approval apparently means a lot to Nasdaq, which has officially proposed to its regulator -- the Securities and Exchange Commission, newly chaired by Gary Gensler -- to increase boardroom diversity through a "regulatory approach."

This proposal would require that Nasdaq-listed companies not only disclose the diversity characteristics of their existing boards, but also retain "at least one director who self-identifies as female," and "at least one director who self-identifies as Black or African American, Hispanic or Latinx, Asian, Native American or Alaska Native, two or more races or ethnicities, or as LGBTQ+."

Noncompliant firms must publicly "explain" -- in writing -- why they don't meet Nasdaq's quotas. Nasdaq has, in its own words, embraced "the social justice movement."

The actual job of a stock exchange, however, is to ensure that trading is orderly and its listed companies follow standard governance rules. But doing that doesn't earn the applause of the political left. Progressive approval apparently means a lot to Nasdaq, which has officially proposed to its regulator -- the Securities and Exchange Commission, newly chaired by Gary Gensler -- to increase boardroom diversity through a "regulatory approach."

[Jul 24, 2021] New variation of the old saying

Apr 07, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

OldNewB

Give a man a gun and he can rob a bank.

Give a man a bank and he can rob the world.

[Jul 24, 2021] The Fed, BLS and al Capone: the Fed, in sync with the fiction writers at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), reports consumer inflation as honestly as Al Capone reported taxable income

Jul 24, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

The Fed, in sync with the fiction writers at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), reports consumer inflation as honestly as Al Capone reported taxable income.

Vardaman 3 hours ago

"A basket of things no one actually buys, with prices we just pull out of our asses..."

Glock 1 hour ago

Yep, the BLS uses the CPI-W to literally avoid raising SS payments. The real rate of inflation for seniors is close to 10% as the things they spend most of their money on like medical care, medicine, food and utilities have gone through the roof

While the government claims they are entitled to 1.5% or less COLA's out of which comes a bigger deduction every year for Medicare. Scam artists.

[Jul 21, 2021] Why Mastercard is banned in India and how it'll help RuPay by Mimansa Verma

Jul 16, 2021 | qz.com

India's decision to ban Mastercard from issuing new debit and credit cards in the country could be a win for the government's own payment systems -- and that's not all good news.

On July 14, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said US-based Mastercard had not complied with data storage rules from 2018 (pdf) that require foreign card networks to store Indian payments data within the country so the regulator can have "unfettered supervisory access." The ban on Mastercard will come into effect on July 22. RBI's move will not impact existing customers of Mastercard.

about:blank

Most banks in India provide four types of debit and credit cards : Visa, Mastercard, Maestro (a part of the Mastercard enterprise), and RuPay. Of these, only RuPay is Indian, and until its launch in 2012, the sector was dominated by foreign players.

With one of these four out of the picture, for now, experts believe, RuPay could be the one player to see exceptional gains. This is particularly because of the Narendra Modi government's tough stance against foreign card companies in recent years.

" The dependence on foreign brands will be consciously reduced as the government seems focussed on making homegrown one successful. This probably a nudge for the banks to seriously consider the homegrown names," said Mumbai-based independent market analyst Ambareesh Baliga.

Mastercard, RuPay, and UPI

The ban on Mastercard, the world's second-largest payments processor, comes after India's central bank, in May, barred American Express and Diners Club International from issuing new cards due to similar violations .

[Jul 20, 2021] Why Mastercard is banned in India and how it'll help RuPay by Mimansa Verma

Jul 16, 2021 | qz.com

India's decision to ban Mastercard from issuing new debit and credit cards in the country could be a win for the government's own payment systems -- and that's not all good news.

On July 14, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said US-based Mastercard had not complied with data storage rules from 2018 (pdf) that require foreign card networks to store Indian payments data within the country so the regulator can have "unfettered supervisory access." The ban on Mastercard will come into effect on July 22. RBI's move will not impact existing customers of Mastercard.

about:blank

Most banks in India provide four types of debit and credit cards : Visa, Mastercard, Maestro (a part of the Mastercard enterprise), and RuPay. Of these, only RuPay is Indian, and until its launch in 2012, the sector was dominated by foreign players.

With one of these four out of the picture, for now, experts believe, RuPay could be the one player to see exceptional gains. This is particularly because of the Narendra Modi government's tough stance against foreign card companies in recent years.

" The dependence on foreign brands will be consciously reduced as the government seems focussed on making homegrown one successful. This probably a nudge for the banks to seriously consider the homegrown names," said Mumbai-based independent market analyst Ambareesh Baliga.

Mastercard, RuPay, and UPI

The ban on Mastercard, the world's second-largest payments processor, comes after India's central bank, in May, barred American Express and Diners Club International from issuing new cards due to similar violations .

[Jul 19, 2021] What was not mentioned

Jul 19, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

---

Filosofur 7 hours ago

I find it very odd that ZH not even mentioning the 1000 point drop in dow today...wtf??

sbin 7 hours ago

1000 points is a good start.

Pareto 7 hours ago

its only 2%

[Jul 09, 2021] Could Pfizer and Moderna Be in Trouble After the Latest COVID Vaccine Findings

So Motley Fool analysts advocate profiteering... Nice. there is some dark neoliberal humor in stating that the elimation of booster shots is bad..

Jul 09, 2021 | www.msn.com

Keith Speights: Some findings were recently published in Nature magazine that indicate that the Pfizer-BioNTech and the Moderna vaccines may provide protection for years.

Many investors are and were hoping for annual recurring revenue from these companies' vaccines. Brian, how troublesome is this latest data for the prospects for Pfizer, BioNTech, and Moderna?

Brian Orelli: There's a bit of an extrapolation going on here. The researchers looked at memory B cells, which tend to provide more long-term protection than, let's say, antibodies. They looked at those in the lymph nodes and found the cells were there as long as 15 weeks.

Typically, they'd mostly be gone by four to six weeks. So that's the basis of this claim that it could offer protection for years. If true, that will be a big blow obviously to vaccine makers, at least for Moderna and BioNTech.

Pfizer would be fine because it's so diversified. It's really hard to make an argument for the valuations of Moderna and BioNTech right now if these vaccines are one and done over a couple of years. They really need to have ongoing sales until they can get growth from other drugs in their pipelines.

Speights: Brian, when I first saw the story, I went to check out to see how the stocks were performing, and Moderna is up, BioNTech was barely changed, Pfizer barely changed. It seems to me that investors really aren't making much of this news. Do you think that's the right take at this point?

Orelli: I think it's still too early to be able to conclude that it's definitely going to work for years. The other issue is that we're looking at, will those B cells actually protect against the variants?

If they don't protect against the variants, then it doesn't really matter if you have B cells in your lymph nodes. If they're not going to protect against the variants then we're going to have to get a booster shot anyway.

Speights: Right. Obviously, if these vaccines provide immunity for multiple years, these companies aren't going to make nearly as much money as they expect and a lot of investors expect. So this is a big story to watch, but like you said, really, really early right now and too soon to maybe go drawing any conclusions at this point.

[Jul 08, 2021] Who Goldman think it actually is?

Jul 08, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

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duck_fur 9 hours ago

Note to Goldman: you're a bank. Stick to banky-stuff. Leave the fear **** and lies to the professionals in the .gov and MSM.

p3scobar 7 hours ago

Goldman is the government... sooo.....

espirit 9 hours ago

If Goldman can give medical advice, so can I.

A Lunatic 9 hours ago remove link

Turning off the TV will neutralize the Delta Variant.

rag_house 9 hours ago

Just like 'Climate Change' you know it's contrived when the bankers start doing 'science.'

liberty2day 9 hours ago

when did they not?

rag_house 8 hours ago

Bankers aren't scientists. They simply dream up fake things they want to convince people of and bribe people to try to make it seem real.

Enraged 9 hours ago remove link

Goldman Sachs Charged in Foreign Bribery Case and Agrees to Pay Over $2.9 Billion

The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Goldman Sachs (Malaysia) have admitted to conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in connection with a scheme to pay over $1 billion in bribes to Malaysian and Abu Dhabi officials to obtain lucrative business for Goldman Sachs, including its role in underwriting approximately $6.5 billion in three bond deals for 1Malaysia Development Bhd. (1MDB), for which the bank earned hundreds of millions in fees.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/goldman-sachs-charged-foreign-bribery-case-and-agrees-pay-over-29-billion

[Jul 08, 2021] Nothing to do...

Jul 08, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

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HillaryOdor 5 hours ago remove link

bond prices have nothing to do with recovery [sic]

stock prices have nothing to do with growth, except growth of the money supply

Kreditanstalt 3 hours ago

"...the price of a beer or a McDonalds in 10-years time will be exactly the same as it is today. (Which it won't.)"

But the type who buy US government bonds don't care about the price of burgers. They only plan to flip the thing back to the next Greater Fool...or THE FED

[Jul 08, 2021] What's wrong with neoclassical economics?

Jul 08, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

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Sound of the Suburbs 2 hours ago remove link

You don't want to do what they did in the 1920s, and allow the banking system and the markets to become closely coupled.

Too late.

Most of today's problems could be seen in the 1920s.

What's wrong with neoclassical economics?

1. It makes you think you are creating wealth by inflating asset prices
2. Bank credit flows into inflating asset prices, debt rises faster than GDP and you eventually get a financial crisis.
3. No one notices the private debt building up in the economy as neoclassical economics doesn't consider debt.

What is the fundamental flaw in the free market theory of neoclassical economics?

The University of Chicago worked that out in the 1930s after last time.

Banks can inflate asset prices with the money they create from bank loans.

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-bulletin/2014/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy.pdf

Henry Simons and Irving Fisher supported the Chicago Plan to take away the bankers ability to create money.

"Simons envisioned banks that would have a choice of two types of holdings: long-term bonds and cash. Simultaneously, they would hold increased reserves, up to 100%. Simons saw this as beneficial in that its ultimate consequences would be the prevention of "bank-financed inflation of securities and real estate" through the leveraged creation of secondary forms of money."

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Henry_Calvert_Simons

Margin lending had inflated the US stock market to ridiculous levels.

Richard Vague had noticed real estate lending balloon from 5 trillion to 10 trillion from 2001 – 2007 and went back to look at the data before 1929.

Real estate lending was actually the biggest problem lending category leading to 1929.

The IMF re-visited the Chicago plan after 2008.

https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2012/wp12202.pdf

Existing financial assets, e.g. real estate, stocks and other financial assets, are traded and bank credit is used to fund the transfers.

The money creation of bank credit inflates the price.

You end up with a ponzi scheme of inflated asset prices that will collapse and feed back into the financial system.

The money creation of unproductive bank lending made the economy "roar", but there was little real wealth creation going on.

They didn't have the GDP measure then, but we can still look at the data.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAStZJCKmbU&list=PLmtuEaMvhDZZQLxg24CAiFgZYldtoCR-R&index=6

At 18 mins.

1929 and 2008 stick out like sore thumbs.

When you have productive bank lending, debt and GDP rise together like the UK before 1980.

https://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/uploads/monthly_2018_02/Screen-Shot-2017-04-21-at-13_53_09.png.e32e8fee4ffd68b566ed5235dc1266c2.png

We used to be the financial superpower and it looks like we knew what we were doing in the past.

At the end of the 1920s, the US was a ponzi scheme of inflated asset prices.

The use of neoclassical economics and the belief in free markets, made them think that inflated asset prices represented real wealth accumulation.

1929 – Wakey, wakey time

Why did it cause the US financial system to collapse in 1929?

Bankers get to create money out of nothing, through bank loans, and get to charge interest on it.

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-bulletin/2014/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy.pdf

What could possibly go wrong?

Bankers do need to ensure the money they lend out gets paid back to balance their books.

Banking requires prudent lending.

If someone can't repay a loan, they need to repossess that asset and sell it to recoup that money.

If they use bank loans to inflate asset prices they get into a world of trouble when those asset prices collapse.

As the real estate and stock market collapsed the banks became insolvent as their assets didn't cover their liabilities.

They could no longer repossess and sell those assets to cover the outstanding loans and they do need to get the money they lend out back again to balance their books.

The banks become insolvent and collapsed, along with the US economy.

When banks have been lending to inflate asset prices the financial system is in a precarious state and can easily collapse.

Cont ......

Sound of the Suburbs 2 hours ago

That was the 1920s.

What was the ponzi scheme of inflated asset prices that collapsed in Japan in 1991?

Japanese real estate.

They avoided a Great Depression by saving the banks.

They killed growth for the next 30 years by leaving the debt in place.

Japan could study the Great Depression to avoid this fate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YTyJzmiHGk

What was the ponzi scheme of inflated asset prices that collapsed in 2008?

"It's nearly $14 trillion pyramid of super leveraged toxic assets was built on the back of $1.4 trillion of US sub-prime loans, and dispersed throughout the world" All the Presidents Bankers, Nomi Prins.

We avoided a Great Depression by saving the banks.

We left Western economies struggling by leaving the debt in place, just like Japan.

It's not as bad as Japan as we didn't let asset prices crash in the West, but it is this problem has made our economies so sluggish since 2008.

We, in turn, seem to have learnt something from Japan, as they did let asset prices crash.

The banking system and the markets are still closely coupled.

Any significant fall in asset prices will feed back into the banking system.

We are trapped, and the only way to keep things from collapsing is to keep pumping in more and more liquidity.

It's a choice

1. Let the assets bubbles collapse, and watch this feed back into the financial system.
2. Keep the whole thing afloat, but make things worse in the long run as the bubbles just get bigger and bigger.

We've gone for option two.

That's why the FED get so jittery when the markets start to fall.

During the coronavirus lockdowns there was no way the markets could be allowed to reflect what was going on in the real economy.

The banking system would go down.

Sound of the Suburbs 1 hour ago remove link

They learnt from the mistakes of the 1920s and put regulations in place to ensure this didn't happen again.

Financial stability arrived in the Keynesian era and was locked into the regulations of the time.

https://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/banking-crises.png

"This Time is Different" by Reinhart and Rogoff has a graph showing the same thing (Figure 13.1 - The proportion of countries with banking crises, 1900-2008).

Neoclassical economics came back and so did the financial crises.

The neoliberals removed the regulations that created financial stability in the Keynesian era and put independent central banks in charge of financial stability.

Why does it go so wrong?

Richard Vague had noticed real estate lending balloon from 5 trillion to 10 trillion from 2001 – 2007 and knew there was going to be a financial crisis.

Richard Vague has looked at the data for financial crises going back 200 years and found the cause was nearly always runaway bank lending.

We put central bankers in charge of financial stability, but they use an economics that ignores the main cause of financial crises, private debt.

Most of the problems are coming from private debt.

The technocrats use an economics that ignores private debt.

The poor old technocrats never really stood a chance.

[Jul 03, 2021] Another important aspect of the collapse of neoliberalism -- reaching the natural resources limits, especially fossil energy extraction limits by George Kaplan

Notable quotes:

"... The US seems to be especially vulnerable to issues caused by lack of precarity as it has such a poor welfare system, previously relying on infinite growth to smooth things over or a, now failing, religious faith to keep things in order; prolonged economic and political success that has led to a sense of entitlement and self-belief in the American way, a history of putting personal liberty above all else, which embraces competition rather than co-operation; and a world beating phobia of death well beyond when reproductive age has passed. ..."

"... The gig economy, middle class collapse, MAGA, BLM (and the police actions that prompted its rise), cancel culture, (un)reality TV's attraction, FOMO, the increase in low level strife, self-harming, on-line pornography addiction, the Oxycodone/Fentanyl epidemic etc. are all manifestations and/or causes of that precarity. Civil wars and major revolts (and almost any that succeed in their aims) tend to happen only when there is intra elite infighting rather than uprisings from below. The most likely catalyst for that at the moment is Trump, which may be a good sign given his ineffectualness, ineptitude and general repulsive lack of charisma; anyone even a bit more like a real human being could cause serious ructions. ..."

Jun 26, 2021 | peakoilbarrel.com

Off Topic Finish: Waiting for the Great Leap Forward

I have been reading "˜A More Contested World: Global Trends 2040' by The National Intelligence Council; slowly as there's a lot in it but also a lot missing. No mention of specific resource limits, no discussion of GM just general "˜technology' concerns concentrating on AI and of course, god forbid any mention of overpopulation. It is very US-centric "" in the good scenarios the world gets to a better place only through US leadership "" and humanist focused with no consideration of the rights of the earth in general, only the perpetuation of our civilisation and to that end all future scenarios are some variant of technology led, growth obsessed, centralised BAU (maybe not with full globalism but still based around hegemonic power structures at some level). It's a view from mainstream economists and politicians carrying all the normal drawbacks that those words imply: i.e. bad things happen when the world doesn't do as it's told to do by us, and if you don't agree with us about what constitutes "˜bad' then you're wrong about that too.

I think similar studies from more global or European NGOs and governmental departments (both from individual countries or the EU) tend to be more objective and those from the militaries (from anywhere in the west) tend to be more honestly subjective. See for example: The Adaptation Committee's Independent Assessment of UK Climate Risk , Decoupling debunked "" Evidence and arguments against green growth as a sole strategy for sustainability ; Reinforcing Environmental Dimensions of European Foreign and Security Policy ; Arctic Climate Change Update 2021: Key Trends And Impacts ; Our Future on Earth ; and The State of the Global Climate 2020 or, for military sources: Implications of Climate Change for the U.S. Army ; NATO is responding to new challenges posed by climate change ; Ministry of Defence Climate Change and Sustainability Strategic Approach ; and Armed Forces, Capabilities and Technologies in the 21st Century Environmental Dimensions of Security .

The rising wealth gap and other inequality issues are a common theme in these global risk studies. However, theories in some recent studies have proposed that it is not inequality itself that is the problem so much as a prolonged sense of precarity (a new word to me and, apparently, to MS spellchecker, but it is essentially identical to precariousness) of the non-elites that accompanies it.

This makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint, as parents desire a stable and resource abundant household in which their children can be expected to reach a reproductive age. This might be expected to come more from the female side, as they are tied to their offspring more than males, who are free to spread their sperm and move on. I have read reorts, possibly anecdotal only, that it will invariably be the woman that will be the party insisting on buying the largest house that can be attained, whether affordable or not. I'm all for gender equality and women's rights but some things are innate and equal-rights do not mean equal hormones, ambitions, impulses and behaviors.

From this viewpoint therefore, solving the wealth inequality issue is actually anathema to population reduction. For example the already low birth rate in Italy had a further step down caused by the increased precarity due to the economic impact of Covid-19, the government has responded by offering direct incentives for having children. The apparent short term aims are in direct opposition to the what is best long term, this is called a dilemma rather than a problem.

The US seems to be especially vulnerable to issues caused by lack of precarity as it has such a poor welfare system, previously relying on infinite growth to smooth things over or a, now failing, religious faith to keep things in order; prolonged economic and political success that has led to a sense of entitlement and self-belief in the American way, a history of putting personal liberty above all else, which embraces competition rather than co-operation; and a world beating phobia of death well beyond when reproductive age has passed.

The neologism for the growing proportion of people affected by precarity is the precariat. The always readable Tim Watkins has a new post that touches on some of theses issues, with a particular eye on the possibility (or not) of significant inflationary issues ( The Everything Death Spiral ).

The gig economy, middle class collapse, MAGA, BLM (and the police actions that prompted its rise), cancel culture, (un)reality TV's attraction, FOMO, the increase in low level strife, self-harming, on-line pornography addiction, the Oxycodone/Fentanyl epidemic etc. are all manifestations and/or causes of that precarity. Civil wars and major revolts (and almost any that succeed in their aims) tend to happen only when there is intra elite infighting rather than uprisings from below. The most likely catalyst for that at the moment is Trump, which may be a good sign given his ineffectualness, ineptitude and general repulsive lack of charisma; anyone even a bit more like a real human being could cause serious ructions.

IRON MIKE IGNORED 06/26/2021 at 4:54 pm

Great post George thank you. It is quite evident for the astute observer that western democracy has over the years turned more and more into an amalgam of kleptocracy, oligarchy and plutocracy.

How many countries have colonial Europe and U.S foreign policy destroyed in the name of "democracy" and "freedom" ?
I've lost count.

Plato famously is said to have said:
"If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools."

In Platos book the republic, Socrates despises democracy as one of the worst forms of government. His criticism those many years ago still resonates till this day (in my opinion).

WIthout invoking logic, I feel the world is in uncharted waters and heading towards a precipice which no one will see coming.

You have a typo, I believe you mean oxycontin (oxycodone) epidemic. HICKORY IGNORED HOLE IN HEAD IGNORED 06/27/2021 at 1:12 pm

Hicks , not being based in USA ,my view maybe incorrect . The US is undergoing an identity crisis . Where in the world did we have this gender crisis , male "" female heck can't people see between their thighs ? Red-Blue . White Supremacy vs BLM . North vs South . Growing up in the 70's US entrepreneurship was my inspiration . My hero's were Ford, Sloan , Edison etc and what do we have today, Musk ? What changed that a society where work was an ethic has transformed into a system where everyone is looking for an opportunity to suck at the teat of the government . Amazing transformation for someone who has a reference point . Now I am going into the stupid zone . What changed was the net surplus energy available per capita to the US citizen . Once that flipped it was downhill all the way . I reserve the right to be incorrect in my assessment .

06/27/2021 at 10:45 am

Regarding the off-topic finish, I don't think most people realize how fragile is the glue holding the US together.
Fragmentation along tribal lines is the biggest theme in American culture.
If a minority collection of tribes succeeds in the attempts to reverse election results, even more than the Electoral College already does, the country will undergo a major restructuring (polite description) with no guarantees on a recognizable outcome.

[Jul 02, 2021] Number Of US Truck Drivers Sidelined Due To Substance Abuse Violations Has Surpassed 60,000

Jul 02, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

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Lone_Star 7 hours ago

I don't see what's wrong with truck drivers being all hopped up on amphetamines, they were doing it to bomber pilots during WWII and beyond.

rockstone 7 hours ago

The whole idea is to keep a shipping network from resembling a bombing run.

fxrxexexdxoxmx3 PREMIUM 7 hours ago

Comment of the day

ParkAveSlasher 7 hours ago (Edited)

I would think a bombing run would be the most efficient thing a delivery and offload could resemble

[Jun 26, 2021] Groupthink inherently discounts primary evidence in favor of social affirmation

Jun 26, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

gcjohns1971 2 hours ago

Personalities of the Left are group-thinkers, not critical-thinkers.

Group-thinkers have two giant vulnerabilities: They're easily misled by ANYONE with harisma, and psychopaths actively exploit that weakness. And inasmuch as group-think inherently discounts primary evidence in favor of social affirmation, group-think is ALWAYS wrong.

[Jun 26, 2021] Johnson Johnson Settles New York Opioid Case for $230 Million by Sara Randazzo

Jun 26, 2021 | www.wsj.com

Johnson & Johnson has agreed to pay $230 million to the state of New York to resolve an opioid lawsuit slated to go to trial Tuesday, as negotiations intensify with the company and three drug distributors to clinch a $26 billion settlement of thousands of other lawsuits blaming the pharmaceutical industry for the opioid crisis.

Johnson & Johnson's New York deal removes it from a coming trial on Long Island but not from the rest of the cases it faces nationwide, including a continuing trial in California. The New York settlement includes an additional $33 million in attorney fees and costs and calls for the drugmaker to no longer sell opioids nationwide, something Johnson & Johnson said it already stopped doing.

States have been trying to re-create with the opioid litigation what they accomplished with tobacco companies in the 1990s, when $206 billion in settlements flowed into state coffers. More than 3,000 counties, cities and other local governments have also pursued lawsuits over the opioid crisis, complicating talks that have dragged on since late 2019 and that have been slowed down by the Covid-19 pandemic.

... ... ...

[Jun 26, 2021] Collapse of neoliberalism and the decline of the USA

Jun 23, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

CheapBastard 15 hours ago (Edited)

USA is declining fast imo.

The USA health care system is failing for many due to a number of reasons including outrageous premiums and piss-poor care with HMOs and basically a corporatized system. People are numbers, not patients anymore.

The roads are crumbling.

Crime in every major city is literally out of control, from LA to NYC, from ****cago to Houston. Homicides and violent assaults (by joggers) out of control.

USPS notified me today that 4 packages I mailed out will be delayed because of both equipment and labor problems.

What next? More blackouts or failed internet? Droughts?

Jim in MN 15 hours ago remove link

Under Obama US life expectancy actually decreased for consecutive years, something that's never supposed to happen in a 'developed economy'. Of course Trump fixed it, and now the globalist scum are fixing us....permanently.

Unless we do something about it.

[Jun 24, 2021] States now have quotas to meet for how many Americans go to jail. Increasing numbers of states have contracted to keep their prisons at 90% to 100% capacity

Jun 24, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."

- Frédéric Bastiat, French economist

If there is an absolute maxim by which the American government seems to operate, it is that the taxpayer always gets ripped off.

... ... ...

In the prisons : States now have quotas to meet for how many Americans go to jail. Increasing numbers of states have contracted to keep their prisons at 90% to 100% capacity . This profit-driven form of mass punishment has, in turn, given rise to a $70 billion private prison industry that relies on the complicity of state governments to keep the money flowing and their privately run prisons full , " regardless of whether crime was rising or falling ." As Mother Jones reports, "private prison companies have supported and helped write laws that drive up prison populations .

Their livelihoods depend on towns, cities, and states sending more people to prison and keeping them there." Private prisons are also doling out harsher punishments for infractions by inmates in order to keep them locked up longer in order to "boost profits" at taxpayer expense .

All the while, prisoners are being forced to provide cheap labor for private corporations . No wonder the United States has the largest prison population in the world .

... ... ...

[Jun 22, 2021] The US was overtaken by ex-Trotskyites in the form of Neocons, eg. Irving Kristol. They redefined the US from a nation-state into an ideological state, as the Soviet Union had been.

Jun 22, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

Weaver , Jun 22 2021 19:35 utc | 15

VK,

The US is not capitalist. There are no "capitalist powers." There are only managerial states. Read Orwell who, yes, was a socialist.

The US was overtaken by ex-Trotskyites in the form of Neocons, eg. Irving Kristol. They redefined the US from a nation-state into an ideological state, as the Soviet Union had been. But we do not have any particular ideology here; the ideology is always changing.

The US empire does not serve the interests of the American people, you'll agree. But it's not as simple as "capitalism." These ideological battles are theatre. They are not the real battles. They are pretend religions, like sports teams, which motivate and justify war for two different elites.

Read James Burnham, another ex-Trotskyite, on Machiavellians and, separately, on the managerial state. However, Burnham became something akin to a Neocon; so, certainly, don't come to the same conclusions as he did.

Piotr Berman , Jun 22 2021 20:19 utc | 22

The US is not capitalist. There are no "capitalist powers." There are only managerial states. Read Orwell who, yes, was a socialist.

Posted by: Weaver | Jun 22 2021 19:35 utc | 15

This is a rather strange interpretation. The power of the managers stems fro the power of large active shareholders, while the majority of shares may be passively owned by middle class in the form of retirement savings. As it was explained: "Contrary to popular beliefs, there are no bulls and bears on Wall Street, but sheep and wolves. And the money is not made by the bah bah crowd", followed by the distinction between "smart money" and the rest of investors. The financial games that we discussed in the case of Boeing may seem stupid in terms of "maximizing long term stock value", but excellent for providing gains for active investors who got artificial run-up in stock prices followed by selling to the "bah bah crowd".

[Jun 21, 2021] Do you remember when a trillion was a big number? Well, it still is especially if we are talking about possible stock market losses even with "accommodative" FED

Jun 21, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Traders are addicted to trading, much like murderers fixate on murdering. The traders noticed a slight change in the Fed's tone and sold anything tied to inflation. They whacked gold good. Then they went after the other commodities. When they were done there, they went after value stocks, before finishing the week by blasting a bunch of cyclical names.

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ted41776 5 hours ago

the only kind of ism that has exist is sociopathism

they always end up at the top of any power pyramid and make the rules that apply to all others but not them

same as it always was and same as it always will be

NoDebt 4 hours ago

Traders are addicted to trading, much like murderers fixate on murdering

A line I wish I had come up with.

lambda PREMIUM 4 hours ago

This was already modeled and formalized: The Gambler Fallacy.

[Jun 14, 2021] World War II Was Transitory- - Putting Inflation In Context

Jun 14, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Via Global Macro Monitor,

Let us preface our inflation note with one of our favorite quotes:

"World War II was transitory"

– GMM

Inflation has eroded my purchasing power in my transitory life. Bring back the $.35 Big Mac, which was only about 20% of the minimum wage. Now? About 40-50%... Enough to spark a revolution?

[Jun 13, 2021] Dennis Gartman is still considered a commodities expert. He infamously said in 2016 that WTI would never be above $44 again in his lifetime. He is still alive last I knew

There are also Bagdad Bobs from IEA " "World oil supply is expected to grow at a faster rate in 2022, with the US driving gains of 1.6 million bpd from producers outside the OPEC alliance. "

Jun 13, 2021 | peakoilbarrel.com

SHALLOW SAND IGNORED 06/11/2021 at 3:58 pm

Dennis Gartman is still considered a commodities expert.

He infamously said in 2016 that WTI would never be above $44 again in his lifetime. He is still alive last I knew.

[Jun 12, 2021] There s a new LGBTQ-focused ETF

Notable quotes:

"... Just in time for Pride Month, a new exchange traded fund aims to connect with LGBTQ investors. ..."

"... LGBTQ Loyalty Holdings partners with Harris Poll to annually survey 150,000 self-identifying LGBTQ constituents across the U.S. for their views about a company's brand awareness, brand image, brand loyalty and how the firm supports the community. As noted in its prospectus , 25% of the index's weighting is derived from that survey data. ..."

Jun 06, 2021 | www.marketwatch.com

Just in time for Pride Month, a new exchange traded fund aims to connect with LGBTQ investors. Two previous efforts failed to attract enough assets.

The fund, LGBTQ + ESG100 ETF LGBT, , launched in late May, is a passively managed, large-cap index fund that holds the top 100 U.S. companies that most align with the LGBTQ community.

In 2019, two LGBTQ-focused ETFs were delisted: ALPS Workplace Equality Portfolio ETF and InsightShares LGBT Employment Equality ETFs. Like this new fund, both were mostly U.S. large-cap, passive index ETFs comprising companies that received high or perfect marks for workplace equality in the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index , a benchmark for corporate LGBTQ policies.

The first ETF stuck around for five years, but the second barely made it two years, even though it was launched with much fanfare by UBS. Neither gained many assets.

Bobby Blair, CEO and founder of LGBTQ Loyalty Holdings, which launched the fund with issuer ProcureAM, says community input on holdings makes this fund different.

LGBTQ Loyalty Holdings partners with Harris Poll to annually survey 150,000 self-identifying LGBTQ constituents across the U.S. for their views about a company's brand awareness, brand image, brand loyalty and how the firm supports the community. As noted in its prospectus , 25% of the index's weighting is derived from that survey data.

... the LGBTQ + ESG100 has an annual expense ratio of 0.75%.

[Jun 12, 2021] Watchdog criticised over plans to combat dominance of big banks

Jun 07, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

Nicholas Megaw in London Sun, June 6, 2021, 8:00 PM

The UK's competition regulator has been accused of "putting foxes in charge of the henhouse" after asking the banking industry's own lobby group to design a supervisory body to combat the dominance of big banks. Dozens of organisations including fintech start-ups, established tech groups like Experian and Equifax, consumer representatives and a cross-party group of MPs have raised concerns over the Competition and Markets Authority's plan to use proposals drawn up by UK Finance as the basis for a consultation on the future of so-called open banking rules. Open banking forces banks to share valuable customer data with other financial services providers, allowing smaller firms to make faster lending decisions or offer new services such as budgeting tools.

[Jun 12, 2021] Putin warns US may regret using dollar as sanctions weapon - Nation - postguam.com

Jun 10, 2021 | www.postguam.com

President Vladimir Putin said Russia doesn't want to stop using the dollar as he accused the U.S. of exploiting the currency's dominance for sanctions and warned the policy may rebound on Washington.

Russia has to adopt other payment methods because the U.S. "uses its national currency for various kinds of sanctions," Putin said late Friday in St. Petersburg at a videoconference with representatives of international media organizations. "We don't do this deliberately, we are forced to do it."

Settlements in national currencies with other countries in areas such as defense sales and reductions in foreign-exchange reserves held in dollars eventually will damage the U.S. as the greenback's dominance declines, Putin said. "Why do U.S. political authorities do this? They're sawing the branch on which they sit," he said.

me title=

Putin spoke a day after Russia announced it will eliminate the dollar from its oil fund to reduce vulnerability to sanctions, a largely symbolic move as the switch in holdings will take place within the central bank's reserves. Russia has tried with limited success to shift away from the dollar for years amid international sanctions over Putin's 2014 annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in eastern Ukraine, as well as for alleged cyber attacks, election meddling and espionage operations.

The Russian leader's comments came ahead of his first summit meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden in Geneva on June 16. While he praised Biden as one of the world's most experienced leaders, Putin said he expects no breakthrough in relations with the U.S. at the talks.

And he offered a warning at Friday's meeting for the U.S., based on what he said was his own experiences "as a former citizen of the former Soviet Union."

"The problem with empires is that they think they can afford small errors and mistakes," which gradually accumulate, Putin said. "There comes a time when they can no longer be dealt with. And the U.S., with a confident step, a confident gait, a firm step, is walking straight along the path of the Soviet Union."

[Jun 12, 2021] America's Covid Groupthink Functioned Like China's Repression by Gerard Baker

Jun 07, 2021 | www.wsj.com

Marching in ideological lockstep is less forgivable in a society where one has a choice in the matter.

...In this country, scientists, bureaucrats, journalists and executives of Big Tech companies suppressed the story not out of fear of imprisonment or death, but of their own volition, out of ideological or even venal motives. You may well ask: Whose culpability is greater?

It's not simply that the lab-leak theory was "debunked," as news organizations repeatedly told us when anyone tried to raise it a year ago. It wasn't even permitted to be considered. Discussion of the topic was deliberately extinguished on tech platforms, in the respectable scientific journals and in newsrooms.

...Thanks to a recent release of emails under the Freedom of Information Act, we now know that some of the scientists dismissing the idea had themselves expressed concerns that the zoonotic explanation they were publicly championing might not be right. We also know that in the case of the Lancet letter , some of the correspondents were involved in similar research and had a strong professional interest in denying the possibility of an engineered virus.

...Last year, many scientists beclowned themselves by bowing to the prevailing political pieties with their absurd assertion that taking part in protests on behalf of Black Lives Matter was literally salubrious, whereas taking part in protests against lockdowns was lethally reckless.

If too many American scientists failed to help us get a proper understanding of the origins of Covid, they seem to have been abetted by like-minded people in the permanent bureaucracy. Emails to and from Anthony Fauci uncovered last week show that while there were some genuinely diligent officials determined to get to the truth, too many in positions of power seemed keen to stamp out a proper investigation.

As Katherine Eban reported in Vanity Fair last week, officials from two separate bureaus in the State Department warned against a proper investigation for fear of opening a "can of worms."

Again we have good grounds to suspect that officials in a bureaucracy that had already undermined Donald Trump's presidency with baseless allegations about Russian collusion seemed intent on suppressing any suggestion, however well-supported it might be, that Trump officials might be right about a critical issue of state.

Yet the largest responsibility for the failure to consider in a timely fashion the lab-leak theory lies with the media.

Journalists were once marked by their curiosity. Now the only thing that's curious about many of them is their lack of curiosity when a story doesn't fit their priors.

...It seems increasingly likely that Chinese officials mishandled research and misrepresented and misinformed the public. But they did so under pain of punishment, even death, in a system designed to suppress that kind of information.

In this country, constitutionally protected, free and independent scientists, bureaucrats, journalists and others did the same. What's their excuse?

[Jun 08, 2021] List of Misleading and Fake Metrics

Notable quotes:

"... Google Scholar does not screen for quality and indexes predatory journals ..."

May 26, 2021 | predatoryjournals.com

Stop Predatory Journals About Contribute Hijacked Journals Metrics Publishers List of Misleading and Fake Metrics

This is a list of possibly misleading metrics.

Metrics are judged to be misleading if they meet the following criteria:

1. The website for the metric is nontransparent and provides little information about itself such as location, management team and its experience, other company information, and the like
2. The company charges journals for inclusion in the list.
3. The values (scores) for most or all of the journals on the list increase each year.
4. The company uses Google Scholar as its database for calculating metrics (Google Scholar does not screen for quality and indexes predatory journals)
5. The metric uses the term " impact factor " in its name.
6. The methodology for calculating the value is contrived, unscientific, or unoriginal.
7. The company exists solely for the purpose of earning money from questionable journals that use the gold open-access model. The company charges the journals and assigns them a value, and then the journals use the number to help increase article submissions and therefore revenue. Alternatively, the company exists as a front for an existing publisher and assigns values to that publisher's journals.

[Jun 07, 2021] There s a new LGBTQ-focused ETF

Jun 06, 2021 | www.marketwatch.com

Just in time for Pride Month, a new exchange traded fund aims to connect with LGBTQ investors. Two previous efforts failed to attract enough assets.

The fund, LGBTQ + ESG100 ETF LGBT, +0.91% , launched in late May, is a passively managed, large-cap index fund that holds the top 100 U.S. companies that most align with the LGBTQ community.

In 2019, two LGBTQ-focused ETFs were delisted: ALPS Workplace Equality Portfolio ETF and InsightShares LGBT Employment Equality ETFs. Like this new fund, both were mostly U.S. large-cap, passive index ETFs comprising companies that received high or perfect marks for workplace equality in the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index , a benchmark for corporate LGBTQ policies.

The first ETF stuck around for five years, but the second barely made it two years, even though it was launched with much fanfare by UBS. Neither gained many assets.

Bobby Blair, CEO and founder of LGBTQ Loyalty Holdings, which launched the fund with issuer ProcureAM, says community input on holdings makes this fund different.

LGBTQ Loyalty Holdings partners with Harris Poll to annually survey 150,000 self-identifying LGBTQ constituents across the U.S. for their views about a company's brand awareness, brand image, brand loyalty and how the firm supports the community. As noted in its prospectus , 25% of the index's weighting is derived from that survey data.

... the LGBTQ + ESG100 has an annual expense ratio of 0.75%.

[Jun 07, 2021] Tech giants and tax havens targeted by historic G7 deal by David Milliken and Kate Holton

Jun 05, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

LONDON (Reuters) -The United States, Britain and other large, rich nations reached a landmark deal on Saturday to squeeze more money out of multinational companies such as Amazon and Google and reduce their incentive to shift profits to low-tax offshore havens.

Hundreds of billions of dollars could flow into the coffers of governments left cash-strapped by the COVID-19 pandemic after the Group of Seven (G7) advanced economies agreed to back a minimum global corporate tax rate of at least 15%.

Facebook said it expected it would have to pay more tax, in more countries, as a result of the deal, which comes after eight years of talks that gained fresh impetus in recent months after proposals from U.S. President Joe Biden's new administration.

"G7 finance ministers have reached a historic agreement to reform the global tax system to make it fit for the global digital age," British finance minister Rishi Sunak said after chairing a two-day meeting in London.

The meeting, hosted at an ornate 19th-century mansion near Buckingham Palace in central London, was the first time finance ministers have met face-to-face since the start of the pandemic.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the "significant, unprecedented commitment" would end what she called a race to the bottom on global taxation.

German finance minister Olaf Scholz said the deal was "bad news for tax havens around the world".

Yellen also saw the G7 meeting as marking a return to multilateralism under Biden and a contrast to the approach of U.S. President Donald Trump, who alienated many U.S. allies.

"What I've seen during my time at this G7 is deep collaboration and a desire to coordinate and address a much broader range of global problems," she said.

Ministers also agreed to move towards making companies declare their environmental impact in a more standard way so investors can decided more easily whether to fund them, a key goal for Britain.

... ... ...

Key details remain to be negotiated over the coming months. Saturday's agreement says only "the largest and most profitable multinational enterprises" would be affected.

European countries had been concerned that this could exclude Amazon - which has lower profit margins than most tech companies - but Yellen said she expected it would be included.

How tax revenues will be split is not finalised either, and any deal will also need to pass the U.S. Congress.

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said he would push for a higher minimum tax, calling 15% "a starting point".

Some campaign groups also condemned what they saw as a lack of ambition. "They are setting the bar so low that companies can just step over it," Oxfam's head of inequality policy, Max Lawson, said.

But Irish finance minister Paschal Donohoe, whose country is potentially affected because of its 12.5% tax rate, said any global deal also needed to take account of smaller nations.

The G7 includes the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada.

[Jun 06, 2021] Biden and the waning of the 'neoliberal' era

It is interesting that this was publish in WaPo -- the citadel of neoliberal thinking owned by Bezos.

From comments: "It's about damn time. Neoliberalism has played itself out, dragging the planet and the impoverished with it."

Jun 06, 2021 | www.washingtonpost.com

For much of his political career, President Biden was a custodian of the "neoliberal" order . He was a fixture in a Washington establishment that promoted years of economic globalization and, like political elites in many other countries, embraced the apparent virtues of free trade and fiscal responsibility. Although he often appealed to blue-collar American values, Biden was a standard-bearer for a brand of "third way" centrist politics that scoffed at class wars and allied itself to Wall Street. As vice president, he stood behind a post-financial crisis recovery that critics argue was inadequate and boosted wealthy and corporate interests over those of the majority of Americans.

But in the first few months of his presidency, Biden is cutting a dramatically different figure . After Congress passed his administration's mammoth $1.9 trillion pandemic stimulus, Biden introduced an even more ambitious legislative plan to overhaul the nation's infrastructure, create million of new jobs and better align the economy to reckon with the imperatives of climate change -- all to the tune of perhaps $4 trillion in spending over the next decade .

"It's going to create the strongest, most resilient, innovative economy in the world. It's not a plan that tinkers around the edges," Biden said of his proposed legislation on Wednesday. "It's a once-in-a-generation investment in America unlike anything we've seen or done since we built the interstate highway system."

To be sure, Biden faces an uphill battle in Congress, with Republicans and even moderate Democrats wary of the ballooning U.S. deficit and the possibility of growing inflationary pressures. But the sweep of his ambition is striking and could, argued left-leaning commentator Robert Kuttner , mark a transformation of the Democrats from decades of being "a Wall Street neoliberal party."

"Historians and politicians are already comparing the ambition with [Franklin D.] Roosevelt's New Deal or Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program," Guardian columnist Will Hutton wrote enviously from across the pond. "In British terms, it's as though an incoming Labour government pledged to spend £500bn over the next decade with a focus on left-behind Britain in all its manifestations -- real commitments to leveling up, racial equity, net zero and becoming a scientific superpower."

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A flurry of recent reporting suggests Biden is interested in cloaking himself in the legacy of great Democratic reformers, including that of FDR , no matter the limitations of the analogy . But whatever his own personal views, his moves reflect a new political zeitgeist in the West that was emerging during the chaotic years of the Trump presidency and took concrete shape amid the havoc and ruin of the pandemic.

"Radical reforms -- reversing the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades -- will need to be put on the table," noted a Financial Times editorial last year , which in and of itself was quite a statement given how much the well-heeled readership base of the publication likely benefited from that previous policy direction. "Governments will have to accept a more active role in the economy. They must see public services as investments rather than liabilities, and look for ways to make labour markets less insecure."

To help offset the deep cost of his infrastructure and jobs plans, Biden has proposed significant tax hikes on corporations and the wealthy . Though this will face political resistance from corporate lobbyists, it's an easier pitch now than it would have been when Biden became vice president. The pandemic has illustrated the need for even the most laissez-faire of governments to bolster the social safety net and abandon older fears over deficits and ingrained biases toward austerity.

"Simply put, America's economy over the past four decades has been far crueler and more unequal than either superrich capitalists or affluent suburbanites need it to be," wrote New York magazine's Eric Levitz . "In truth, even a Western European-style welfare state (and the associated tax rates) is not contrary to the enlightened material interests of the upper middle class; only the ultra-wealthy can be confident that they will never have need for social insurance."

This is rhetoric echoed by the International Monetary Fund, an institution long seen as the embodiment of neoliberalism. Ahead of its annual meetings this week, it issued a report calling for advanced economies to use more aggressive taxation to help redress the costs of the pandemic. That includes greater taxes on corporate profits, inheritance, property and other measures that Republicans in Washington have routinely insisted would be damaging for the national interest. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is expected to set the tone for the meetings with a speech calling for a global minimum corporate tax rate , which could disincentivize companies relocating offshore.

"Many countries could rely more on property and inheritance taxes," wrote a trio of IMF economists , arguing that narrowing inequality within societies was important for social cohesion. "Countries could also raise tax progressivity as some governments have room to increase top marginal personal income tax rates, whereas others could focus on eliminating loopholes in capital income taxation."

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-1&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2hvcml6b25fdHdlZXRfZW1iZWRfOTU1NSI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJodGUiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3R3ZWV0X2VtYmVkX2NsaWNrYWJpbGl0eV8xMjEwMiI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJjb250cm9sIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH19&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1376934569824428036&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fworld%2F2021%2F04%2F05%2Fbiden-infrastructure-plan-neoliberalism%2F&sessionId=451322ed080f441d249162be2e5c0b3a54f14be7&siteScreenName=WashingtonPost&theme=light&widgetsVersion=82e1070%3A1619632193066&width=550px

Biden's seeming abandonment of the legacy of neoliberalism may also extend to trade policy. It's unclear to what extent the new administration may actually depart from the more protectionist course set by its nationalist predecessor. When asked during a congressional hearing whether the goal of a trade agreement between two countries should be the elimination of tariffs and trade barriers, Katherine Tai, the Biden-appointed U.S. trade representative, demurred.

"Maybe if you'd asked me this question five or 10 years ago, I would have been inclined to say yes," Tai said . But she said the experience of the last few years, including the emergency of the pandemic and the animus of the Trump administration's trade wars, led her to believe "that our trade policies need to be nuanced, and need to take into account all the lessons that we have learned, many of them very painful, from our most recent history."

"Everybody who was involved in business or government in the 1980s or 1990s has seen some of the promise of globalization come through, but a lot of the harm has been unexpectedly broader, sharper, deeper," Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) told the New York Times earlier this year. "[Biden] believes we need to change direction on trade."

For now, Biden stands at the helm of a U.S. economy that is leading the Western world out of the pandemic. "Amid steady progress with coronavirus vaccinations, the U.S. economy is gathering so much steam that its gains will not stay at home," wrote my colleague David Lynch . "Demand for goods and services this year is expected to spill well beyond U.S. borders, making the United States the largest single contributor to global growth for the first time since 2005, according to Oxford Economics."

Thanks in large part to the stimulus bill, the United States will help add almost 1.5 percent to the global economy's growth rate this year, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. By the end of next year, global output is projected to be around $3 trillion larger than it would have been absent new U.S. spending.

"The fact that there is a significant stimulus in the U.S. will boost global GDP, will boost exports from the euro area," European Central Bank chief economist Philip Lane told CNBC last week , adding that Biden's new spending "will be a significant engine for the world economy."

Read more:

The pandemic may set women back by a whole generation

Biden's border 'crisis' has little to do with the border

Vaccination rates are rising, but so are covid cases Newest Oldest Most replies Most liked expand_more remove TheTrue2 A popover with more user information 2 months ago I wish we quit blowing our own horn regarding our contribution to Global GDP. The truth is that Japan is also making a big contribution. The European are not far behind. This is a Global effort. To put things into perspective, Global GDP is around 84,000 Billion dollars in 2020. One Trillion dollar is 1000 Billion dollars, so our contribution of 3000 billion dollars to the World Economy is only 3% most of it is not our products and services is money that we are providing for loans through IMF, World Bank and other financial institutions. The reality is that the long-term consequences of the crisis will be severe. The pace of digitalization, automation and robotization is set to accelerate, further depressing labor demand in the medium term. While productivity will experience some growth in economic sectors embracing automation, average productivity growth will likely falter. Declining investments in fixed capital, low average productivity growth and lower labor-force participation rates are expected to weigh on potential output going forward. Global public debt has increased or will increase by 15%. The money numbers are large, but the economic multipliers ratios and benefits to Labor will be less than to Capital. Inequality still needs to be resolve. Is not only about the Benjamins.
A dialog showing a permalink to the comment flag remove BillSamuel A popover with more user information 2 months ago Well he's somewhere between neoliberal and progressive. His proposed corporate tax rate is exactly halfway between the pre-Trump rate and the Trump rate. That's hardly progressive.

In international affairs, he remains a classic neo-liberal deeply committed to imperialism and the war system, and backing foreign tyrants. thumb_up reply Reply share
A dialog showing a permalink to the comment flag remove A Real New Deal A popover with more user information 2 months ago From his earliest days in politics as the Attorney General of Delaware, the former Senator For DuPont for almost 40 years, and Vice President for 8 years, Joe Biden has always and forever been a lickspittle, lackey, knave and varlet for what Mr. Tharoor calls the "neo-liberal world order" which actually calls itself the One World/New World Order and which is crumbling rapidly everywhere after decades of pillaging, plundering and polluting the planet by and for the super rich and their trans-national corporations for their own evil profit. pleasure and amusement.

Now the little people are in open revolt worldwide from America to the Middle East to Britain to Italy to Hong Kong to Brazil. The 0.01% and their plutocrats' puppets like Biden are becoming uneasy and some are even running scared.

Joe Biden is trying to cover up all his previous crimes against humanity such as his Senate votes for the Reagan and Bush tax cuts for the rich and big business, NAFTA, the WTO, most favored trade status for China, repeal of Glass-Stegall, the ensuing trillions of dollars in taxpayer bail out money for Wall St., his support for the illegal wars of aggression under false pretenses in Afghanistan and Iraq, etc., etc. and trying to tout himself as some kind of "secular savior" and a suddenly "transformed" Republican Lite into a progressive. Only fools are falling for this mongrel dog trying to change his DNA.

Biden thinks that by throwing trillions of dollars in borrowed, fiat money on corporate welfare and crumbs for the "little people" and proposing to raise taxes on big business and the rich he can "buy' enough American votes to keep Congress in Democratic hands. lol. No Joe the people know what you are and despite this they took you over Chump because of the pandemic and the bad economy. But already after a few weeks in office your "popularity' is waning and your proposals are failing.

Biden will be a one term wonder POTUS and a total failure----if he lives that long. A dialog showing a permalink to the comment flag remove natecar A popover with more user information 2 months ago "By the end of next year, global output is projected to be around $3 trillion larger than it would have been absent new U.S. spending."
So we spend 4 Trillion on two stimulus bills and get 3 Trillion in economics benefits. That is exactly in line with economics theory that government spending doesn't really have a multiplier effect. But it sure does have a strong cost for future generations.
thumb_up 2 reply Reply share A dialog showing a permalink to the comment flag remove A Real New Deal A popover with more user information 2 months ago Joe Biden was always considered a straw man and a nattering nitwit as a U.S. Senator and Obama's V.P. valet. His destructive actions since becoming POTUS simply further confirm his "peers" low opinion and dismissal of him.

thumb_up 1 reply Reply share A dialog showing a permalink to the comment flag remove ChuChuBelo A popover with more user information 2 months ago I'm not convinced that the U.S. itself actually practiced neoliberalism. Huge deficits, government subsidies of business, interest rate manipulation, trade protectionism, regulations that impede the free market... I don't see how we ever really sought these policies. A dialog showing a permalink to the comment flag remove skyfall95 A popover with more user information 2 months ago Biden is no FDR. Not even close. FDR's top corporate profit rate was 40%. GOP+Dems later cut it to 35%; Trump cut it to 21% in 2017. FDR's top personal income tax rate began at 63% (1933), rose to 94% (1944). GOP+Dems cut it to 37%. Biden's proposals are nothing like FDR's.

Thank You. Both parties are equally responsible for these odious pro-corporate tax cutting policies, the worst and most harmful occurring in my working lifetime between 1985 to current.
When you elect a bunch of corporate elitists who are more interested in their own wallets and cushy government paid power jobs rather than doing what's best for the social, cultural and economic health of their own taxpayers and voting citizens and allow their multinational corporate business donors to dominate our policy making decisions that favor them, this is what we are left with. Explains the massive hollowing out of our Education systems, health 'care' systems, safety net systems that keeps the same sleazy people hoodwinking the serfs and the fiefs. They enjoy the drama of watching the little people clawing at each others throats while they sit high above the fray. Dystopian isn't a far-off description. Hope they're happy. A popover with more user information 2 months ago Neoliberalism -- a.k.a "Reagan Democrats" have been a bane on America since their inception. I'm glad to see the movement wane. thumb_up 9 reply Reply share A dialog showing a permalink to the comment flag remove Bandos WB A popover with more user information 2 months ago (Edited) Only took 40 years of failed policy (laffer curve/trickle down), dangerous levels of inequality and economic anxiety (see Trumpists), to realize that massive spending targeted at the already wealthy does not trickle down, that massive spending that benefits the wealthy does create economic bubbles and 40 years of flat wages.

We DO need to control inflation. However, we have been doing so by maintaining "the right" amount of unemployment. In other words, we have been controlling inflation by ensuring human misery, lost wages, livelihoods, increased mental health issue and crime. Oops.

It is time to control inflation by sucking money out of the economy from those who do not spend it; ie the wealthy.

In short, spend to create broad based prosperity, get the unemployment rate to zero, and if there are signs of inflation, raise taxes on incomes over 400k, estates, 2nd homes and the like.

Its that path or more demagogues and misery. A dialog showing a permalink to the comment flag remove Arthur J Montana A popover with more user information 2 months ago (Edited) When I was in college, my economic professors taught us the benefits of "free trade". It looks great on paper.

I remember professors also teaching about the economic dislocation that occurs as other nation's with better "efficiencies" start to replace industry in the U.S. The theory was that, while uncomfortable, the economic dislocation associated with free trade would be transitory as displaced workers provide a pool of labor for industry to re-direct to more modern industrial pursuits.

What the professors never taught (nor did they ever advocate) was that U.S. based companies would intentionally flee the U.S. with technology transfers to other nations in exchange with low-paid, non-union, labor pools; at the expense of the U.S. Labor Force. That was never taught or advocated by my professors. That was the great Fleecing of America.

The professors also taught against double-standards in international trade with some nations subsidizing their companies to achieve market dominance artificially; while the U.S. played it straight. In many cases, that's exactly what happened to our steel industry; another Fleecing of America. Arguably, Clinton's NAFTA (which I think was initiated during the H.W. Bush Administration) was the codification of this Fleecing of America. A popover with more user information 2 months ago (Edited) And American workers have not forgotten NAFTA, which wrecked our entire domestic garment and textile industry.

[Jun 01, 2021] ARK Invest Stocks To Buy And Watch- 6 Stocks That Cathie Wood's ARK ETFs Own; Zoom Slides Before Earnings

Reminds me of Trading Places.

Jun 01, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

Theo the Cat 19 April, 2021 Ark is gonna turn into Titanic.

[May 31, 2021] Yes inflation is transitionary. Thos only question is transitionary to what level?

Highly recommended!

As for whether this is "transitory," we may paraphrase J.M. Keynes: In the long run, everything is transitory.

May 31, 2021 | www.wsj.com

D

David Weisz

I accept the reality except that FED said this inflation is "transitory."

The Fed description is accurate... it's just whether the transition is to lower inflation or to runaway inflation.

Jim McCreary

The biggest single factor that will drive long-term inflation is the absence of downward price pressure from new Chinese market entrants. Cutthroat pricing from China is the ONLY reason the West has been able to get away with Money-Printing Gone Wild for the past 20 years without triggering runaway inflation.

There are no new Chinese entrants because the Chinese are now all in in the world economy. The existing Chinese competitors are seeing their costs go UP, not down, because they have fully employed the Chinese population, and have to pay up in order to get and keep workers.

So, without any more downward price pressure from China, this latest round of Money-Printing Gone Wild is showing up as price inflation, and will continue to do so.

Batten down the hatches! Stagflation and then runaway inflation are coming!

[May 30, 2021] Ford Retools Headquarters for Hybrid Work

Executives at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP have voiced worries that workers who stay remote could wind up as second-class corporate citizens, falling behind in promotions and pay , so the company plans to track rates of advancement for office-based and remote staff in an effort to make sure nobody lags behind.

May 30, 2021 | www.wsj.com

Ford Motor Co. is pushing ahead with digital efforts to help bring office workers back to its Dearborn, Mich., corporate headquarters, while eyeing a future where many of them continue to work from home, company officials say.

For now, the auto maker is aiming for a gradual return of some employees to the sprawling campus beginning in July, with "significantly reduced capacity" to retain social distancing, a spokeswoman said.

[May 30, 2021] Everything Bubble: issuance of new CLOs is on pace to easily exceed 2018's record.

May 30, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Lordflin 2 hours ago (Edited) remove link

This has worked out so well in the past I cannot see what could possibly go wrong...

At least the people involved in these transactions are honest, trustworthy folks...

We have built a world upon such a foundation folks... I guess we should all be grateful for the coming war...

And I must be off my meds again...

ebworthen 2 hours ago

Oh yeah, those little beasties.

Mortgage Backed Securities, Credit Default Swaps, Collateralized Loan Obligations.

4X levered ETF's, mortgage/rent +50% of monthly income, HELOC's, 10% inflation.

What could go wrong?

[May 30, 2021] Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism by Quinn Slobodian

The author is a very fuzzy way comes to the idea that neoliberalism is in essence a Trotskyism for the rich and that neoliberals want to use strong state to enforce the type of markets they want from above. That included free movement of capital goods and people across national borders. All this talk about "small government" is just a smoke screen for naive fools.

Similar to 1930th contemporary right-wing populism in Germany and Austria emerged from within neoliberalism, not in opposition to it. They essentially convert neoliberalism in "national liberalism": Yes to free trade by only on bilateral basis with a strict control of trade deficits. No to free migration, multilateralism

Notable quotes:

"... The second explanation was that neoliberal globalization made a small number of people very rich, and it was in the interest of those people to promote a self-serving ideology using their substantial means by funding think tanks and academic departments, lobbying congress, fighting what the Heritage Foundation calls "the war of ideas." Neoliberalism, then, was a restoration of class power after the odd, anomalous interval of the mid-century welfare state. ..."

"... Here one is free to choose but only within a limited range of options left after responding to the global forces of the market. ..."

"... Neoliberal globalism can be thought of in its own terms as a negative theology, contending that the world economy is sublime and ineffable with a small number of people having special insight and ability to craft institutions that will, as I put it, encase the sublime world economy. ..."

"... One of the big goals of my book is to show neoliberalism is one form of regulation among many rather than the big Other of regulation as such. ..."

"... I build here on the work of other historians and show how the demands in the United Nations by African, Asian, and Latin American nations for things like the Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources, i.e. the right to nationalize foreign-owned companies, often dismissed as merely rhetorical, were actually existentially frightening to global businesspeople. ..."

"... They drafted neoliberal intellectuals to do things like craft agreements that gave foreign corporations more rights than domestic actors and tried to figure out how to lock in what I call the "human right of capital flight" into binding international codes. I show how we can see the development of the WTO as largely a response to the fear of a planned -- and equal -- planet that many saw in the aspirations of the decolonizing world. ..."

"... The neoliberal insight of the 1930s was that the market would not take care of itself: what Wilhelm Röpke called a market police was an ongoing need in a world where people, whether out of atavistic drives or admirable humanitarian motives, kept trying to make the earth a more equal and just place. ..."

"... The culmination of these processes by the 1990s is a world economy that is less like a laissez-faire marketplace and more like a fortress, as ever more of the world's resources and ideas are regulated through transnational legal instruments. ..."

Mar 16, 2018 | www.amazon.com

Hardcover: 400 pages
Publisher: Harvard University Press (March 16, 2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0674979524
ISBN-13: 978-0674979529

From introduction

...The second explanation was that neoliberal globalization made a small number of people very rich, and it was in the interest of those people to promote a self-serving ideology using their substantial means by funding think tanks and academic departments, lobbying congress, fighting what the Heritage Foundation calls "the war of ideas." Neoliberalism, then, was a restoration of class power after the odd, anomalous interval of the mid-century welfare state.

There is truth to both of these explanations. Both presuppose a kind of materialist explanation of history with which I have no problem. In my book, though, I take another approach. What I found is that we could not understand the inner logic of something like the WTO without considering the whole history of the twentieth century. What I also discovered is that some of the members of the neoliberal movement from the 1930s onward, including Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, did not use either of the explanations I just mentioned. They actually didn't say that economic growth excuses everything. One of the peculiar things about Hayek, in particular, is that he didn't believe in using aggregates like GDP -- the very measurements that we need to even say what growth is.

What I found is that neoliberalism as a philosophy is less a doctrine of economics than a doctrine of ordering -- of creating the institutions that provide for the reproduction of the totality [of financial elite control of the state]. At the core of the strain I describe is not the idea that we can quantify, count, price, buy and sell every last aspect of human existence. Actually, here it gets quite mystical. The Austrian and German School of neoliberals in particular believe in a kind of invisible world economy that cannot be captured in numbers and figures but always escapes human comprehension.

After all, if you can see something, you can plan it. Because of the very limits to our knowledge, we have to default to ironclad rules and not try to pursue something as radical as social justice, redistribution, or collective transformation. In a globalized world, we must give ourselves over to the forces of the market, or the whole thing will stop working.

So this is quite a different version of neoliberal thought than the one we usually have, premised on the abstract of individual liberty or the freedom to choose. Here one is free to choose but only within a limited range of options left after responding to the global forces of the market.

One of the core arguments of my book is that we can only understand the internal coherence of neoliberalism if we see it as a doctrine as concerned with the whole as the individual. Neoliberal globalism can be thought of in its own terms as a negative theology, contending that the world economy is sublime and ineffable with a small number of people having special insight and ability to craft institutions that will, as I put it, encase the sublime world economy.

To me, the metaphor of encasement makes much more sense than the usual idea of markets set free, liberated or unfettered. How can it be that in an era of proliferating third party arbitration courts, international investment law, trade treaties and regulation that we talk about "unfettered markets"? One of the big goals of my book is to show neoliberalism is one form of regulation among many rather than the big Other of regulation as such.

What I explore in Globalists is how we can think of the WTO as the latest in a long series of institutional fixes proposed for the problem of emergent nationalism and what neoliberals see as the confusion between sovereignty -- ruling a country -- and ownership -- owning the property within it.

I build here on the work of other historians and show how the demands in the United Nations by African, Asian, and Latin American nations for things like the Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources, i.e. the right to nationalize foreign-owned companies, often dismissed as merely rhetorical, were actually existentially frightening to global businesspeople.

They drafted neoliberal intellectuals to do things like craft agreements that gave foreign corporations more rights than domestic actors and tried to figure out how to lock in what I call the "human right of capital flight" into binding international codes. I show how we can see the development of the WTO as largely a response to the fear of a planned -- and equal -- planet that many saw in the aspirations of the decolonizing world.

Perhaps the lasting image of globalization that the book leaves is that world capitalism has produced a doubled world -- a world of imperium (the world of states) and a world of dominium (the world of property). The best way to understand neoliberal globalism as a project is that it sees its task as the never-ending maintenance of this division. The neoliberal insight of the 1930s was that the market would not take care of itself: what Wilhelm Röpke called a market police was an ongoing need in a world where people, whether out of atavistic drives or admirable humanitarian motives, kept trying to make the earth a more equal and just place.

The culmination of these processes by the 1990s is a world economy that is less like a laissez-faire marketplace and more like a fortress, as ever more of the world's resources and ideas are regulated through transnational legal instruments. The book acts as a kind of field guide to these institutions and, in the process, hopefully recasts the 20th century that produced them.

---

Mark bennett 3.0 out of 5 stars One half of a decent book May 14, 2018 Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase

This is a rather interesting look at the political and economic ideas of a circle of important economists, including Hayek and von Mises, over the course of the last century. He shows rather convincingly that conventional narratives concerning their idea are wrong. That they didn't believe in a weak state, didn't believe in the laissez-faire capitalism or believe in the power of the market. That they saw mass democracy as a threat to vested economic interests.

The core beliefs of these people was in a world where money, labor and products could flow across borders without any limit. Their vision was to remove these subjects (tariffs, immigration and controls on the movement of money) from the control of the democracy-based nation-state and instead vesting them in international organizations. International organizations which were by their nature undemocratic and beyond the influence of democracy. That rather than rejecting government power, what they rejected was national government power. They wanted weak national governments but at the same time strong undemocratic international organizations which would gain the powers taken from the state.

The other thing that characterized many of these people was a rather general rejection of economics. While some of them are (at least in theory) economists, they rejected the basic ideas of economic analysis and economic policy. The economy, to them, was a mystical thing beyond any human understanding or ability to influence in a positive way. Their only real belief was in "bigness". The larger the market for labor and goods, the more economically prosperous everyone would become. A unregulated "global" market with specialization across borders and free migration of labor being the ultimate system.

The author shows how, over a period extending from the 1920s to the 1990s, these ideas evolved from marginal academic ideas to being dominant ideas internationally. Ideas that are reflected today in the structure of the European Union, the WTO (World Trade Organization) and the policies of most national governments. These ideas, which the author calls "neoliberalism", have today become almost assumptions beyond challenge. And even more strangely, the dominating ideas of the political left in most of the west.

The author makes the point, though in a weak way, that the "fathers" of neoliberalism saw themselves as "restoring" a lost golden age. That golden age being (roughly) the age of the original industrial revolution (the second half of the 1800s). And to the extent that they have been successful they have done that. But at the same time, they have brought back all the political and economic questions of that era as well.

In reading it, I started to wonder about the differences between modern neoliberalism and the liberal political movement during the industrial revolution. I really began to wonder about the actual motives of "reform" liberals in that era. Were they genuinely interested in reforms during that era or were all the reforms just cynical politics designed to enhance business power at the expense of other vested interests. Was, in particular, the liberal interest in political reform and franchise expansion a genuine move toward political democracy or simply a temporary ploy to increase their political power. If one assumes that the true principles of classic liberalism were always free trade, free migration of labor and removing the power to governments to impact business, perhaps its collapse around the time of the first world war is easier to understand.

He also makes a good point about the EEC and the organizations that came before the EU. Those organizations were as much about protecting trade between Europe and former European colonial possessions as they were anything to do with trade within Europe.

To me at least, the analysis of the author was rather original. In particular, he did an excellent job of showing how the ideas of Hayek and von Mises have been distorted and misunderstood in the mainstream. He was able to show what their ideas were and how they relate to contemporary problems of government and democracy.

But there are some strong negatives in the book. The author offers up a complete virtue signaling chapter to prove how the neoliberals are racists. He brings up things, like the John Birch Society, that have nothing to do with the book. He unleashes a whole lot of venom directed at American conservatives and republicans mostly set against a 1960s backdrop. He does all this in a bad purpose: to claim that the Kennedy Administration was somehow a continuation of the new deal rather than a step toward neoliberalism. His blindness and modern political partisanship extended backward into history does substantial damage to his argument in the book. He also spends an inordinate amount of time on the political issues of South Africa which also adds nothing to the argument of the book. His whole chapter on racism is an elaborate strawman all held together by Ropke. He also spends a large amount of time grinding some sort of Ax with regard to the National Review and William F. Buckley.

He keeps resorting to the simple formula of finding something racist said or written by Ropke....and then inferring that anyone who quoted or had anything to do with Ropke shared his ideas and was also a racist. The whole point of the exercise seems to be to avoid any analysis of how the democratic party (and the political left) drifted over the decades from the politics of the New Deal to neoliberal Clintonism.

Then after that, he diverts further off the path by spending many pages on the greatness of the "global south", the G77 and the New International Economic Order (NIEO) promoted by the UN in the 1970s. And whatever many faults of neoliberalism, Quinn Slobodian ends up standing for a worse set of ideas: International Price controls, economic "reparations", nationalization, international trade subsidies and a five-year plan for the world (socialist style economic planning at a global level). In attaching himself to these particular ideas, he kills his own book. The premise of the book and his argument was very strong at first. But by around p. 220, its become a throwback political tract in favor of the garbage economic and political ideas of the so-called third world circa 1974 complete with 70's style extensive quotations from "Senegalese jurists"

Once the political agenda comes out, he just can't help himself. He opens the conclusion to the book taking another cheap shot for no clear reason at William F. Buckley. He spends alot of time on the Seattle anti-WTO protests from the 1990s. But he has NOTHING to say about BIll Clinton or Tony Blair or EU expansion or Obama or even the 2008 economic crisis for that matter. Inexplicably for a book written in 2018, the content of the book seems to end in the year 2000.

I'm giving it three stars for the first 150 pages which was decent work. The second half rates zero stars. Though it could have been far better if he had written his history of neoliberalism in the context of the counter-narrative of Keynesian economics and its decline. It would have been better yet if the author had the courage to talk about the transformation of the parties of the left and their complicity in the rise of neoliberalism. The author also tends to waste lots of pages repeating himself or worse telling you what he is going to say next. One would have expected a better standard of editing by the Harvard Press. Read less 69 people found this helpful Helpful Comment Report abuse

Jesper Doepping 5.0 out of 5 stars A concise definition of neoliberalism and its historical influence November 14, 2018

Anybody interested in global trade, business, human rights or democracy today should read this book.

The book follow the Austrians from the beginning in the Habsburgischer empire to the beginning rebellion against the WTO. However, most importantly it follows the thinking and the thoughts behind the building of a global empire of capitalism with free trade, capital and rights. All the way to the new "human right" to trade. It narrows down what neoliberal thought really consist of and indirectly make a differentiation to the neoclassical economic tradition.

What I found most interesting is the turn from economics to law - and the conceptual distinctions between the genes, tradition, reason, which are translated into a quest for a rational and reason based protection of dominium (the rule of property) against the overreach of imperium (the rule of states/people). This distinction speaks directly to the issues that EU is currently facing.

[May 30, 2021] Mean Girl Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed by Lisa Duggan

Highly recommended!

See also her book: The Twilight of Equality: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy by Lisa Duggan

Notable quotes:

"... From the 1980s to 2008, neoliberal politics and policies succeeded in expanding inequality around the world. The political climate Ayn Rand celebrated-the reign of brutal capitalism-intensified. Though Ayn Rand's popularity took off in the 1940s, her reputation took a dive during the 1960s and '70s. Then after her death in 1982, during the neoliberal administrations of Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom, her star rose once more. (See chapter 4 for a full discussion of the rise of neoliberalism.) ..."

"... During the global economic crisis of 2008 it seemed that the neoliberal order might collapse. It lived on, however, in zombie form as discredited political policies and financial practices were restored. ..."

"... We are in the midst of a major global, political, economic, social, and cultural transition - but we don't yet know which way we're headed. The incoherence of the Trump administration is symptomatic of the confusion as politicians and business elites jockey with the Breitbart alt-right forces while conservative evangelical Christians pull strings. The unifying threads are meanness and greed, and the spirit of the whole hodgepodge is Ayn Rand. ..."

"... The current Trump administration is stuffed to the gills with Rand acolytes. Trump himself identifies with Fountainhead character Howard Roark; former secretary of state Rex Tillerson listed Adas Shrugged as his favorite book in a Scouting magazine feature; his replacement Mike Pompeo has been inspired by Rand since his youth. Ayn Rand's influence is ascendant across broad swaths of our dominant political culture - including among public figures who see her as a key to the Zeitgeist, without having read a worth of her writing.'' ..."

"... Rand biographer Jennifer Burns asserts simply that Ayn Rand's fiction is "the gateway drug" to right-wing politics in the United States - although her influence extends well beyond the right wing ..."

"... The resulting Randian sense of life might be called "optimistic cruelty." Optimistic cruelty is the sense of life for the age of greed. ..."

"... The Fountainhead and especially Atlas Shrugged fabricate history and romanticize violence and domination in ways that reflect, reshape, and reproduce narratives of European superiority' and American virtue. ..."

"... It is not an accident that the novels' fans, though gender mixed, are overwhelmingly white Americans of the professional, managerial, creative, and business classes." ..."

"... Does the pervasive cruelty of today's ruling classes shock you? Or, at least give you pause from time to time? Are you surprised by the fact that our elected leaders seem to despise people who struggle, people whose lives are not cushioned and shaped by inherited wealth, people who must work hard at many jobs in order to scrape by? If these or any of a number of other questions about the social proclivities of our contemporary ruling class detain you for just two seconds, this is the book for you. ..."

"... As Duggan makes clear, Rand's influence is not just that she offered a programmatic for unregulated capitalism, but that she offered an emotional template for "optimistic cruelty" that has extended far beyond its libertarian confines. Mean Girl is a fun, worthwhile read! ..."

"... Her work circulated endlessly in those circles of the Goldwater-ite right. I have changed over many years, and my own life experiences have led me to reject the casual cruelty and vicious supremacist bent of Rand's beliefs. ..."

"... In fact, though her views are deeply-seated, Rand is, at heart, a confidence artist, appealing only to narrow self-interest at the expense of the well-being of whole societies. ..."

Jun 14, 2019 | www.amazon.com

From the Introduction

... ... ...

Mean Girls, which was based on interviews with high school girls conducted by Rosalind Wiseman for her 2002 book Queen Bees and War/tubes, reflects the emotional atmosphere of the age of the Plastics (as the most popular girls at Actional North Shore High are called), as well as the era of Wall Street's Gordon Gekko, whose motto is "Greed is Good."1 The culture of greed is the hallmark of the neoliberal era, the period beginning in the 1970s when the protections of the U.S. and European welfare states, and the autonomy of postcolonial states around the world, came under attack. Advocates of neoliberalism worked to reshape global capitalism by freeing transnational corporations from restrictive forms of state regulation, stripping away government efforts to redistribute wealth and provide public services, and emphasizing individual responsibility over social concern.

From the 1980s to 2008, neoliberal politics and policies succeeded in expanding inequality around the world. The political climate Ayn Rand celebrated-the reign of brutal capitalism-intensified. Though Ayn Rand's popularity took off in the 1940s, her reputation took a dive during the 1960s and '70s. Then after her death in 1982, during the neoliberal administrations of Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom, her star rose once more. (See chapter 4 for a full discussion of the rise of neoliberalism.)

During the global economic crisis of 2008 it seemed that the neoliberal order might collapse. It lived on, however, in zombie form as discredited political policies and financial practices were restored. But neoliberal capitalism has always been contested, and competing and conflicting political ideas and organizations proliferated and intensified after 2008 as well.

Protest politics blossomed on the left with Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and opposition to the Dakota Access oil pipeline at the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in the United States, and with the Arab Spring, and other mobilizations around the world. Anti-neoliberal electoral efforts, like the Bernie Sanders campaign for the U.S. presidency, generated excitement as well.

But protest and organizing also expanded on the political right, with reactionary populist, racial nationalist, and protofascist gains in such countries as India, the Philippines, Russia, Hungary, and the United States rapidly proliferating. Between these far-right formations on the one side and persistent zombie neoliberalism on the other, operating sometimes at odds and sometimes in cahoots, the Season of Mean is truly upon us.

We are in the midst of a major global, political, economic, social, and cultural transition - but we don't yet know which way we're headed. The incoherence of the Trump administration is symptomatic of the confusion as politicians and business elites jockey with the Breitbart alt-right forces while conservative evangelical Christians pull strings. The unifying threads are meanness and greed, and the spirit of the whole hodgepodge is Ayn Rand.

Rand's ideas are not the key to her influence. Her writing does support the corrosive capitalism at the heart of neoliberalism, though few movers and shakers actually read any of her nonfiction. Her two blockbuster novels, 'The Fountainpen and Atlas Shrugged, are at the heart of her incalculable impact. Many politicians and government officials going back decades have cited Rand as a formative influence-particularly finance guru and former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who was a member of Rand's inner circle, and Ronald Reagan, the U.S. president most identified with the national embrace of neoliberal policies.

Major figures in business and finance are or have been Rand fans: Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Peter Thiel (Paypal), Steve Jobs (Apple), John Mackey (Whole Foods), Mark Cuban (NBA), John Allison (BB&T Banking Corporation), Travis Kalanik (Uber), Jelf Bezos (Amazon), ad infinitum.

There are also large clusters of enthusiasts for Rand's novels in the entertainment industry, from the 1940s to the present-from Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, and Raquel Welch to Jerry Lewis, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Rob Lowe, Jim Carrey, Sandra Bullock, Sharon Stone, Ashley Judd, Eva Mendes, and many more.

The current Trump administration is stuffed to the gills with Rand acolytes. Trump himself identifies with Fountainhead character Howard Roark; former secretary of state Rex Tillerson listed Adas Shrugged as his favorite book in a Scouting magazine feature; his replacement Mike Pompeo has been inspired by Rand since his youth. Ayn Rand's influence is ascendant across broad swaths of our dominant political culture - including among public figures who see her as a key to the Zeitgeist, without having read a worth of her writing.''

But beyond the famous or powerful fans, the novels have had a wide popular impact as bestsellers since publication. Along with Rand's nonfiction, they form the core texts for a political/ philosophical movement: Objectivism. There are several U.S.- based Objectivist organizations and innumerable clubs, reading groups, and social circles. A 1991 survey by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club found that only the Bible had influenced readers more than Atlas Shrugged, while a 1998 Modern Library poll listed The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged as the two most revered novels in English.

Atlas Shrugged in particular skyrocketed in popularity in the wake of the 2008 financial crash. The U.S. Tea Party movement, founded in 2009, featured numerous Ayn Rand-based signs and slogans, especially the opening line of Atlas Shrugged: "Who is John Galt?" Republican pundit David Frum claimed that the Tea Party was reinventing the GOP as "the party of Ayn Rand." During 2009 as well, sales of Atlas Shrugged tripled, and GQ_magazine called Rand the year's most influential author. A 2010 Zogby poll found that 29 percent of respondents had read Atlas Shrugged, and half of those readers said it had affected their political and ethical thinking.

In 2018, a business school teacher writing in Forbes magazine recommended repeat readings: "Recent events - the bizarro circus that is the 2016 election, the disintegration of Venezuela, and so on make me wonder if a lot of this could have been avoided bad we taken Atlas Shrugged's message to heart. It is a book that is worth re-reading every few years."3

Rand biographer Jennifer Burns asserts simply that Ayn Rand's fiction is "the gateway drug" to right-wing politics in the United States - although her influence extends well beyond the right wing.4

But how can the work of this one novelist (also an essayist, playwright, and philosopher), however influential, be a significant source of insight into the rise of a culture of greed? In a word: sex. Ayn Rand made acquisitive capitalists sexy. She launched thousands of teenage libidos into the world of reactionary politics on a wave of quivering excitement. This sexiness extends beyond romance to infuse the creative aspirations, inventiveness, and determination of her heroes with erotic energy, embedded in what Rand called her "sense of life." Analogous to what Raymond Williams has called a "structure of feeling," Rand's sense of life combines the libido-infused desire for heroic individual achievement with contempt for social inferiors and indifference to their plight.5

Lauren Berlant has called the structure of feeling, or emotional situation, of those who struggle for a good life under neoliberal conditions "cruel optimism"-the complex of feelings necessary to keep plugging away hopefully despite setbacks and losses.'' Rand's contrasting sense of life applies to those whose fantasies of success and domination include no doubt or guilt. The feelings of aspiration and glee that enliven Rand's novels combine with contempt for and indifference to others. The resulting Randian sense of life might be called "optimistic cruelty." Optimistic cruelty is the sense of life for the age of greed.

Ayn Rand's optimistic cruelty appeals broadly and deeply through its circulation of familiar narratives: the story of "civilizational" progress, die belief in American exceptionalism, and a commitment to capitalist freedom.

Her novels engage fantasies of European imperial domination conceived as technological and cultural advancement, rather than as violent conquest. America is imagined as a clean slate for pure capitalist freedom, with no indigenous people, no slaves, no exploited immigrants or workers in sight. The Fountainhead and especially Atlas Shrugged fabricate history and romanticize violence and domination in ways that reflect, reshape, and reproduce narratives of European superiority' and American virtue.

Their logic also depends on a hierarchy of value based on radicalized beauty and physical capacity - perceived ugliness or disability' are equated with pronounced worthlessness and incompetence.

Through the forms of romance and melodrama, Rand novels extrapolate the story of racial capitalism as a story of righteous passion and noble virtue. They retell The Birth of a Ntation through the lens of industrial capitalism (see chapter 2). They solicit positive identification with winners, with dominant historical forces. It is not an accident that the novels' fans, though gender mixed, are overwhelmingly white Americans of the professional, managerial, creative, and business classes."

---

aslan , June 1, 2019

devastating account of the ethos that shapes contemporary America

Ayn Rand is a singular influence on American political thought, and this book brilliantly unfolds how Rand gave voice to the ethos that shapes contemporary conservatism. Duggan -- whose equally insightful earlier book Twilight of Equality offered an analysis of neoliberalism and showed how it is both a distortion and continuation of classical liberalism -- here extends the analysis of American market mania by showing how an anti-welfare state ethos took root as a "structure of feeling" in American culture, elevating the individual over the collective and promoting a culture of inequality as itself a moral virtue.

Although reviled by the right-wing press (she should wear this as a badge of honor), Duggan is the most astute guide one could hope for through this devastating history of our recent past, and the book helps explain how we ended up where we are, where far-right, racist nationalism colludes (paradoxically) with libertarianism, an ideology of extreme individualism and (unlikely bed fellows, one might have thought) Silicon Valley entrepreneurship.

This short, accessible book is essential reading for everyone who wants to understand the contemporary United States.

Wreck2 , June 1, 2019

contemporary cruelty

Does the pervasive cruelty of today's ruling classes shock you? Or, at least give you pause from time to time? Are you surprised by the fact that our elected leaders seem to despise people who struggle, people whose lives are not cushioned and shaped by inherited wealth, people who must work hard at many jobs in order to scrape by? If these or any of a number of other questions about the social proclivities of our contemporary ruling class detain you for just two seconds, this is the book for you.

Writing with wit, rigor, and vigor, Lisa Duggan explains how Ayn Rand, the "mean girl," has captured the minds and snatched the bodies of so very many, and has rendered them immune to feelings of shared humanity with those whose fortunes are not as rosy as their own. An indispensable work, a short read that leaves a long memory.

kerwynk , June 2, 2019

Valuable and insightful commentary on Rand and Rand's influence on today's world

Mean Girl offers not only a biographical account of Rand (including the fact that she modeled one of her key heroes on a serial killer), but describes Rand's influence on neoliberal thinking more generally.

As Duggan makes clear, Rand's influence is not just that she offered a programmatic for unregulated capitalism, but that she offered an emotional template for "optimistic cruelty" that has extended far beyond its libertarian confines. Mean Girl is a fun, worthwhile read!

Sister, June 3, 2019

Superb poitical and cultural exploration of Rand's influence

Lisa Duggan's concise but substantive look at the political and cultural influence of Ayn Rand is stunning. I feel like I've been waiting most of a lifetime for a book that is as wonderfully readable as it is insightful. Many who write about Rand reduce her to a caricature hero or demon without taking her, and the history and choices that produced her seriously as a subject of cultural inquiry. I am one of those people who first encountered Rand's books - novels, but also some nonfiction and her play, "The Night of January 16th," in which audience members were selected as jurors – as a teenager.

Under the thrall of some right-wing locals, I was so drawn to Rand's larger-than-life themes, the crude polarization of "individualism" and "conformity," the admonition to selfishness as a moral virtue, her reductive dismissal of the public good as "collectivism."

Her work circulated endlessly in those circles of the Goldwater-ite right. I have changed over many years, and my own life experiences have led me to reject the casual cruelty and vicious supremacist bent of Rand's beliefs.

But over those many years, the coterie of Rand true believers has kept the faith and expanded. One of the things I value about Duggan's compelling account is her willingness to take seriously the far reach of Rand's indifference to human suffering even as she strips away the veneer that suggests Rand's beliefs were deep.

In fact, though her views are deeply-seated, Rand is, at heart, a confidence artist, appealing only to narrow self-interest at the expense of the well-being of whole societies.

I learned that the hard way, but I learned it. Now I am recommending Duggan's wise book to others who seek to understand today's cultural and political moment in the United States and the rise of an ethic of indifference to anybody but the already affluent. Duggan is comfortable with complexity; most Randian champions or detractors are not.

[May 28, 2021] Obama's follow-up to "Dreams from My Father" will be "Sins of My Mother"

May 19, 2021 | www.unz.com

Wokeness is just a detail, not the biggest one by any means, of a vast socio-economic collapse of neoliberalism.

chris , says: May 14, 2021 at 7:13 am GMT • 5.8 days ago

What wokeness does mandate for my son (who is studying biology) to be told in his class that he is the carrier of "white guilt" even though his ancestors never interacted with blacks, let alone blacks in the USA.

Obama's follow-up to "Dreams from My Father" will be "Sins of My Mother"

Stephen Paul Foster , says: Website May 14, 2021 at 10:58 am GMT • 5.7 days ago

" [C]orporate "America" which is now flooding all its advertisements with the "correct" races in total disregard to that race's real percentage of the population "

Yes, for corporate America, the U.S. demographic is composed mainly of young, beautiful, smart looking "black folks" with a few flabby, pasty white dullards to heighten the contrast.

[May 28, 2021] Dedollarization is a serious threat to the US neoliberal empire

May 23, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

Max , May 23 2021 15:45 utc | 7

How can one ignore all the noise in the media to focus on the crux of the situation, implications, and the future outcomes?

One can only understand the impact of events better and envision the future by exploring plausible scenarios and identifying signals which over time will enable one to size up the probabilities of outcomes.

INTERNATIONAL -- MONETARY IMPERIALISM

Geopolitical relationships are frosty & flammable. All the narratives can be summed up into a few SCENARIOS:

• COMPETITION. Aggressive competition between China/Russia (Sovereignties) & U$A/UK (Five Eyes - suzerainties). EU?
• DECOUPLING. Two spheres of influence & supply chains. China & Russia led and the Five Eyes led. Germany/EU?
• WAR. The dollar empire launching a war against China &/or Russia. Iran?

The probabilities of these scenarios will be defined by the following SIGNALS:

• NS2. Is Nord Stream 2 completed by September? If yes, a major geopolitical victory for Russia. If the U$A can thwart this project then it still has the power and will to shape Europe. If, on the other hand, Germany & Russia resists U$A's pressure and complete the pipeline to operate, that would be an act of defiance unprecedented in postwar history. This is the biggest clash between Russia and the United States since the end of World War II. Let's see if European countries are less subservient to Washington.
• De-DOLLARIZATION. China, Russia and other nations moving away from the US$ and trading in their respective national currencies.
• SANCTIONS. More sanctions from the dollar empire against China, Russia, Iran, Germany... Counter sanctions, retaliations... impact on the global economy...
• JCPOA deal and ME developments.
• FROZEN CONFLICT developments: Ukraine, Syria, Belarus, Venezuela
• Afghanistan withdrawal by September?
• U$A economic & dollar developments.

Any new scenarios & signals? What probabilities would one assign to various scenarios? What will be the construct of scenarios and signals at the national level?

The Dollar Empire likes to initiate a conflict during Olympics when they are held in its adversaries:

1. 2008, Georgia conflict
2. 2014, Ukraine conflict
3. 2022, ?

[May 26, 2021] U.S. stocks are demonstrating most of the characteristics of a bubble, but don't sell yet, says strategist

Of course, you need to wait until all banks and hedge managers sell ;-)

May 26, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

Steve Goldstein

U.S. stocks are looking bubbly but it isn't time to sell, argues this fund manager's strategist.

[May 24, 2021] Taibbi- Con Of The Week - Greensill Capital

May 24, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

pndr4495 2 days ago (Edited)

Doyle Lonnegan to Johnny "Hooker" Kelly in the movie The Sting: "Your boss is quite the card player Mr. Kelly. How does he do it?"

Kelly to Lonnegan: "He cheats."

philipat 2 days ago

It's appropriate that the entirely useless ex-PM Cameron got taken by this guy and tried to use his influence to access free money for him from The Treasury as an "advisor"..He didn't get any.

Cameron couldn't even do corruption properly!!

[May 24, 2021] -The Fed Has Lost Control- - John Williams Warns Of Hyperinflation In 2022

May 24, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

---

messystateofaffairs 48 minutes ago

The Fed never had control, just s bunch of shysters running a long term hybrid ponzi scheme.

Lordflin 54 minutes ago (Edited)

The Fed is losing control...

I suppose that is true... as the function has been to drain the people's wealth into the coffers of the few...

The Real Satoshi 29 minutes ago remove link

Sad that Greg Hunter got kicked off youtube.

gregga777 12 minutes ago (Edited)

He is in great company, though. Anyone who offends the Marxist narratives (Politically Correct, Multicultural, Affirmative Action, Diversity, Feminist, LGBTQQ, etc.) gets kicked off YouTube.

pmc 36 minutes ago (Edited) remove link

...As Kissinger said "The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer."

https://thenewamerican.com/kissinger-the-illegal-we-do-immediately-the-unconstitutional-takes-a-little-longer/

[May 12, 2021] Crumbling infrastracture

This is what happing in empires in decay...

May 12, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

vk , May 12 2021 22:23 utc | 66

Bridge in the USA was literally falling:

Bridge over Mississippi river closed for repairs after inspectors discover MAJOR CRACK, river transport grinds to a halt

I thought the "crumbling infrastructure" was just an internet joke or a lobby thing (American Society of Civil Engineers sounds like a the name of a DC lobby firm). Never thought it was de facto happening in USA.

[May 11, 2021] 11 Plunging Stocks Are Badly Burning Cathie Wood's ARK Invest

May 11, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

Cathie Wood's ARK Invest is still red-hot, but now in the opposite way: It's getting burned by many collapsing stocks including some in the S&P 500.

[May 11, 2021] Neoliberalism taken to the limit

May 11, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

ay_arrow

Make_Mine_A_Double 6 hours ago (Edited)

But China can do our bio-chemical warfare research cheaper than we can - it only makes sense to use the theory of 'comparative advantage'.

I think outsourcing our bio-chemical weapons program to our existential enemy is really brilliant and saves the taxpayers money...

replaceme 6 hours ago

Did the NIH give that work special oversight, eg no oversight? Yes, yes they did...

[May 10, 2021] How many times can a declared "expert" be wrong before they are not an expert anymore!

Notable quotes:

"... Ask an economist. Wrong more than 50% of the time and still fully employed. When was the last time an economist got fired for being wrong? ..."

Apr 15, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

lwilland1012 1 hour ago

How many times can a declared "expert" be wrong before they are not an expert anymore!

INTJ Economist 1 hour ago

Ask an economist. Wrong more than 50% of the time and still fully employed. When was the last time an economist got fired for being wrong?

[May 09, 2021] I think neoliberalism is on its last legs, admin of it is currently under going a near psychotic episode of various degrees depending on how factions roll and the desire to come out on top when the dust settles

May 09, 2021 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

skippy , May 8, 2021 at 3:00 am

Actually I think neoliberalism is on its last legs, admin of it is currently under going a near psychotic episode of various degrees depending on how factions roll and the desire to come out on top when the dust settles.

Covid really presented a situation which has removed so much ideological PR fog, for so many people, that the GFC was just a bad patch or some nefarious plot by outside forces which would snatch their dreams away.

[May 09, 2021] CPI Is A Lie! We can't trust CPI to tell us the truth about inflation by Peter Schiff

Highly recommended!

Notable quotes:

"... The CPI is calculated by analyzing the price of a "basket of goods." The makeup of that basket has a big impact on the final CPI number. According to WolfStreet , 10.9% of the CPI is based on durable goods (computers, automobiles, appliances, etc.). Nondurable goods (primarily food and energy) make up 26.6% of CPI. Services account for the remaining 62.5% of the basket. This includes rent, healthcare, cellphone service etc.) ..."

"... The things the government includes and excludes from the basket can make a profound difference in that final CPI number. Back in 1998, the government significantly revised the CPI metrics. Even the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) admitted the changes were "sweeping." ..."

"... In 1998, the BLS followed the recommendations of the Boskin Commission. It was appointed by the Senate in 1995. Initially called the "Advisory Commission to Study the Consumer Price Index," its job was to study possible bias in the computation of the CPI. Unsurprisingly, it determined that the index overstated inflation " by about 1.1% per year in 1996 and about 1.3% prior to 1996. The 1998 changes to CPI were meant to address this "issue." ..."

"... As Peter pointed out, there is a lot of geometric weighting, substitution and hedonics built into the calculation. The government can basically create an index that outputs whatever it wants. ..."

"... Peter said there is a bit of irony in government officials and central bankers constantly complaining about "not enough inflation." ..."

"... They're the ones that are cooking the books to pretend that inflation is lower than it really is. Because what they're really trying to do is get the go-ahead to produce more inflation, which is printing money." ..."

"... And there are other things that hide inflation. For instance, shrinking packaging so there is less product sold at the same price, or substituting lower quality ingredients, or requiring consumers to assemble items themselves. ..."

"... They find different ways to lower the quality and not increase the price, and I'm sure that the government is not picking up on any of that. If the quality improves, yeah, yeah, they calculate that. But they probably ignore all the circumstances where the quality is diminished." ..."

"... The bottom line is we can't trust CPI to tell us the truth about inflation. ..."

May 04, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Via SchiffGold.com,

We've been talking a lot about the specter of inflation. Despite the Fed's assurances not to worry because any price increases we're seeing are transitory, some people are indeed worried. A former JP Morgan managing director warned about inflation and echoed Peter Schiff's view that the central bank is powerless to fight it.

And we're seeing rising prices all over the place, from the grocery store to the gas station. Even the government numbers flash warning signs . But as Peter Schiff explains in this clip from an interview with Jay Martin, it's probably even worse than we realize because the government cooks the numbers when it calculates CPI.

The monthly rises in CPI through the first quarter show an upward trend. The CPI in January was up 0.3%. It was up 0.4% in February. And now it's up 0.6% in March. That totals a 1.013% increase in Q1 alone. The question is does this really reflect the truth about inflation? Peter doesn't think it does.

The government always makes changes to their methods of measuring things, whether it's GDP, or inflation, or unemployment. And they always tweak the numbers to produce a better result as a report card. "

https://www.youtube.com/embed/lnPrsBzIZsw

Imagine if students in a school had the ability to change the metrics by which they were graded or the methodology the teacher used to calculate their grades.

Would it surprise anybody that all of a sudden they started getting more As and Bs and fewer Cs and Ds? The government always wants to make the good stuff better, like economic growth, and the bad stuff better, like unemployment or inflation. So, they want to find ways to make those numbers little and the good numbers big."

The CPI is calculated by analyzing the price of a "basket of goods." The makeup of that basket has a big impact on the final CPI number. According to WolfStreet , 10.9% of the CPI is based on durable goods (computers, automobiles, appliances, etc.). Nondurable goods (primarily food and energy) make up 26.6% of CPI. Services account for the remaining 62.5% of the basket. This includes rent, healthcare, cellphone service etc.)

The things the government includes and excludes from the basket can make a profound difference in that final CPI number. Back in 1998, the government significantly revised the CPI metrics. Even the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) admitted the changes were "sweeping."

According to the BLS, periodic changes to the CPI calculation are necessary because "consumers change their preferences or new products and services emerge. During these occasions, the Bureau reexamines the CPI item structure, which is the classification scheme of the CPI market basket. The item structure is a central feature of the CPI program and many CPI processes depend on it."

In 1998, the BLS followed the recommendations of the Boskin Commission. It was appointed by the Senate in 1995. Initially called the "Advisory Commission to Study the Consumer Price Index," its job was to study possible bias in the computation of the CPI. Unsurprisingly, it determined that the index overstated inflation " by about 1.1% per year in 1996 and about 1.3% prior to 1996. The 1998 changes to CPI were meant to address this "issue."

As Peter pointed out, there is a lot of geometric weighting, substitution and hedonics built into the calculation. The government can basically create an index that outputs whatever it wants.

I think this period of "˜Oh wow! We have low inflation!' It's not a coincidence that it followed this major revision into how we calculate it."

Peter said there is a bit of irony in government officials and central bankers constantly complaining about "not enough inflation."

They're the ones that are cooking the books to pretend that inflation is lower than it really is. Because what they're really trying to do is get the go-ahead to produce more inflation, which is printing money."

Peter said the CPI will never reveal the true extent of rising prices.

And there are other things that hide inflation. For instance, shrinking packaging so there is less product sold at the same price, or substituting lower quality ingredients, or requiring consumers to assemble items themselves.

They find different ways to lower the quality and not increase the price, and I'm sure that the government is not picking up on any of that. If the quality improves, yeah, yeah, they calculate that. But they probably ignore all the circumstances where the quality is diminished."

The bottom line is we can't trust CPI to tell us the truth about inflation.

[May 08, 2021] In 1999, the Wall Street Journal had 286 articles on bubbles. Here are a few of the titles

May 08, 2021 | www.wsj.com

J John Smith

Not only is this not true, the evidence shows that bubbles are called in advance. In 1999, the Wall Street Journal had 286 articles on bubbles. Here are a few of the titles,

• "When the Bubble Bursts..."
• "The Bubble Won't Burst"
• "Bursting Mr. Geenspan's Bubble"
• "Fed `Bubble' Policy: Watch, Don't Pop'"
• "Fed Governor Meyer Counters Suggestions Of a Market Bubble"

And on, and on, etc., etc.

[May 08, 2021] Dogecoin is now valued at more than Ford

May 08, 2021 | www.wsj.com

R Robert A

Dogecoin is now valued at more than Ford.
Economics?
Lunacy is more like it.
This is just more proof that the dollars are becoming more worthless.
Whistling past the graveyard.

[May 07, 2021] Neoliberal empire and FRD four freedoms

May 07, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

karlof1 , May 7 2021 19:00 utc | 26

Global Times seems to have declared an Open Season today on the Outlaw US Empire and its vassals/lackeys with a Broadside of articles that build on yestaerday's outstanding editorial . First is this Infographic that asks six pertinent questions based on FDR's Four Freedoms that are now at the core of Western Values despite their being completely disregarded. Next we have Blinken making a fool of himself again at the China-hosted virtual session of the UNSC for claiming to uphold the UN Charter that the Outlaw US Empire's violated daily since 1945 and by attempting to smear others for violating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights when the Empire isn't even a party to that treaty, never having ratified it. But the stunner comes from an odd source, The Guardian , which cited a new poll:

"Reported by the Guardian on Wednesday, another poll in Western countries shows that the US is seen as more of a threat to democracy than Russia and China , with 44 percent of respondents in the 53 countries concerned that the US threatens democracy in their country.

"'They show neither the US, nor the G7, can simply assume the mantle of defenders of democracy,' the Guardian said." [My Emphasis]

It can't be said the Chinese don't have a sense of humor since this article and the graphic it's based on certainly prove otherwise--it's a big dig at how far the mighty have fallen comparing the current G-7 and additional lackeys with those nations that invaded China 120 years ago.

Meanwhile, Outlaw US Empire dependence on China increased :

"China's exports to the US rose 49.3 percent while imports gained 53.3 percent, and the trade surplus with the US was 653.89 billion yuan, an increase of 47 percent . [My Emphasis]

It seems all the Anti-China rhetoric and Congressional hearings only serve to increase that dependence. The reason why is simple: the Neoliberal System is designed to do just that, and Biden along with Congress is doing nothing to reverse that basic problem.

[May 07, 2021] Crooks are selling to fools

finance.yahoo.com

...retail investors have been net buyers of stocks for 10 straight weeks, hedge funds have been sellers, client data from BofA Global Research showed, with the four-week average of net sales of equities by hedge funds hitting their highest levels since the firm began tracking the data in 2008.

[May 05, 2021] FED Powell on tough question: Not sure what the exact nature of that question is

May 05, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

ReadyForHillary 1 hour ago

When will the economy be able to stand on its own feet?

He immediately followed with:

I'm not sure what the exact nature of that question is.

HA HA HA HA! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

[May 05, 2021] a "cult" is characterised by slavish reverence and obedience to the personal doctrines of an individual or collective of human beings having no particular, and certainly no substantive, claim to deity. That's especially so when the gurus have an identifiable ulterior motive (Scientology comes to mind an independently intelligent thinker might be compelled to ask how can people be so dumb?).

May 05, 2021 | www.unz.com

Ultrafart the Brave , says: Website May 5, 2021 at 7:07 am GMT • 11.4 hours ago

@Rev. Spooner

Please define the difference between a religion and cult in plain English if you feel offended.

Actually, I'm not offended, just intrigued by the question.

At a first cut, I'd suppose

Ultrafart the Brave , says: Website May 5, 2021 at 7:07 am GMT • 11.4 hours ago

@Rev. Spooner ion and just start making shit up, then that probably qualifies as a "cult".

Bottom line, it's probably all in the eye of the beholder. If you're a true believer, then it's a "religion". If you have neither belief in a religious species nor respect for its adherents, then it's a "cult".

An alternative view might be that "religions" are based around life philosophies that recognise a larger reality than we can perceive here in the material realm, whereas "cults" probably not so much. The more enduring religions seem to have quite a legacy of spooky stuff that so-called "modern science" might have difficulty in resolving (perhaps not so much nowadays, seeing how "science" has become such an arbitrary discipline subject to social and political whim).

All in the eye of the beholder.

[May 03, 2021] Free markets are only free for parasites and usurers to run their schemes.

May 03, 2021 | www.unz.com

Mefobills , says: May 2, 2021 at 8:14 pm GMT • 5.9 hours ago

@HallParvey st absolutely destroy them.

I said: Okay, I get it, if you lend them the money, then they can pay. This is like a Ponzi scheme: you lend the investors enough to pay the interest and keep current. That was my introduction to how the balance of payments worked between the United States and the third world and how political the whole credit problem was.

Free markets are only free for parasites and usurers to run their schemes. Lolbertarianism is an ideology of our (((friends))), and I think its adherents are dupes. I no longer think they are well meaning dupes either, they have a personality defect, where they lack empathy.

[May 03, 2021] For several centuries, Europe served as the Ancient Greece to the American Rome

May 03, 2021 | www.unz.com

Sollipsist , says: April 30, 2021 at 6:33 pm GMT • 2.3 days ago

For several centuries, Europe served as the Ancient Greece to the American Rome -- the source of most of the most important cultural inspirations, despite a certain underlying criticism of 'effeminacy' and 'dissolution.'

The 20th Century's Modernism and Postmodernism was similar to Rome's sometimes successful but more usually inferior attempts to incorporate and ultimately replace the influence of Greek culture. Despite proclaiming a concrete Roman character, Rome was often just a hodgepodge of various assimilated Mediterranean influences (a bland but somehow also nationalistic multiculturalism) until Christianity gave its thinkers and artists a more or less focused and unified point of departure.

Which would indicate some of what the future holds for the European triumphs of the Renaissance to the 20th Century -- a weak acknowledgment of its importance, with a handful of individuals remembered and very little in the way of context or continuity. At best, there could be another Renaissance after the Dark Age that looms. But it doesn't look likely from here, as the Empire is taking so much down with it as it falls.

[May 03, 2021] Republicans and the end of hard neoliberalism by JOHN QUIGGIN

Apr 26, 2021 | crookedtimber.org

As I argued recently , the decline of soft neoliberalism in the US Democratic Party can be explained largely in terms of generational replacement. What about hard neoliberalism and the Republican Party?

After four years of the Trump Administration, and a few months of post-election madness, the Republican Party has completed a transition that has been going on for decades. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Republicans were a hard neoliberal party, spending most of their policy effort on tax cuts and deregulation, and using white grievance politics to attract votes. Now the situation is reversed. The Republicans are a white grievance party, whose targets include 'woke corporations', However, they still attempt to attract support from corporations by advocating tax cuts. While any pretence of principled aversion to regulation has been abandoned, crony capitalist exemptions from regulation are still on offer if the price is right

The core claim of hard neoliberalism was that a free market economy with a modest 'safety net' could do a better job of delivering broad prosperity than the welfare state built on the New Deal and Keynesian economics. The optimism of this message, reflected in Reagan's 'Morning in America' turned into triumphalism with the end of the Cold War.

Hard neoliberals supported globalisation, and cheered on the idea that borderless capital would bring governments under control, and put an end to budget deficits. In particular, Republicans supported trade deals like NAFTA https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/05/09/history-lesson-more-republicans-than-democrats-supported-nafta/

The high point of hard neoliberalism was the 1994 Contract with America, the slogan under which the Republicans gained control of Congress for the first time since 1952. The Contract called for balanced budgets and reduced welfare spending for single-parent families, but also proposed positive measures including an expanded child tax credit.

The commitment to balanced budgets was the first element of hard neoliberalism to be ditched. Responding to the collapse of the dotcom boom, the Bush Administration introduced large, and effectively permanent (fn: the most regressive elements were allowed to expire under Obama) tax cuts. These cuts, along with massive expenditure on the 'forever wars' that began after the 2001 terror attacks, pushed the government budget from the surplus that had been achieved under the Clinton Administration into permanent deficit.

For a brief period, the 'Tea Party' revolt against the Obama Administration appeared as a reversion to hard neoliberalism, with a non-partisan focus on sound finance. In reality, the Tea Party was a mixture of Republican activists and grifters who used its appeal to solicit donations, largely used to fund well-paid jobs for themselves. Both groups have been prominent among the support base for Donald Trump .

By the time the Republicans turned to Trump, grievance politics were already dominant. Trump discarded long held beliefs about free trade and the need for government to stay out of business. But even during Trump's Presidency, Congressional Republicans held on to a few elements of the old mixture, such as corporate tax cuts and pro-corporate changes to regulation. It is only in the aftermath of Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election that the alliance between Republicans and big business has been broken.

On the one hand, corporations regularly run afoul of grievance politics, by taking initiatives seen as 'woke'. On the other hand, the threat posed to constitutional government by the Republican party is now so obvious as to arouse corporate resistance. Corporations with a long-term view of their prospects correctly prefer to risk higher tax rates than to operate in a Trumpist banana republic.

A puzzle remains. On the one hand, as we have seen, Trumpism is the culmination of trends going back many decades. On the other hand, today's far right Republican party is clearly different in kind from the party that nominated moderate globalist Mitt Romney for the presidency in 2012

One useful metaphor for this process is that of a phase transition, such as from liquid to gas, or dissolved solid to crystal) in physics and chemistry.

To develop the metaphor, think of the Eisenhower-era Republican party as a complicated mixture of many dissolved ingredients, in which the dominant element was the business establishment, and the Trump era party as a crystallised mass of plutocratic economics, racism and all-round craziness. The development over the 60 years between the two has consisted of keeping the mixture simmering, while adding more and more appeals to racial animus and magical thinking (supply-side economics, climate denial, the Iraq war and so on). In this process various elements of the original mix have boiled off or precipitated out and discarded as dregs.

Boiling off is the process by which various groups (Blacks and Northeastern liberal Republicans in C20, liberaltarians more recently) have left the Republican coalition in response to its racism and know-nothingism. The dregs that have precipitated out are ideas that were supposed to be important to Republicans (free trade, scientific truth, classical liberalism, moral character and so on) that turned out not to matter at all.

Trump's arrival is the catalyst seed crystal that produces the phase change. The final product of the reaction emerges in its crystallised form.

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Sashas 04.26.21 at 4:14 am ( 1 )

Eisenhower was president from 1953-1961. The Great Realignment Republican'">Democrat happened in the 1930s under Roosevelt, and the Southern Strategy that eventually switched the South from Democrat'">Republican and laid out the current US political alignment happened either in 1964 with Goldwater or 1968 with Nixon, in either case after Eisenhower. I'm not sure how reliable the date I have for the first half of this political realignment is (I admit I got it from Wikipedia), but I'm pretty confident of the second half being post-Eisenhower. As a result, I raise my eyebrows quite a bit when I hear about a transition directly from an Eisenhower-era Republican Party to a Trump-era Republican Party. What about the intervening Republican presidents?

In short, I actually agree with this being a direct transition, but I'd argue that the 'œTrump-era' Republican Party starts with Nixon and hasn't stopped since. They made a conscious decision, whose evidence we can see in macro voting patterns and in their correspondence, to incorporate White Grievance into their coalition. I'm unable to find a position on which the Republican Party has changed on a coalition-building level since.

The OP is making the case for Free Markets being such a thing, and I think it's the topic for which the strongest case can be made, but I don't buy it. Republican administrations since Nixon have supported cronyism, military adventures in support of their favored companies, suppression of specific industries (e.g. solar), subsidizing others (e.g. fossil fuels and pharmaceuticals). I'm not an economist, but I suspect that if we zoom in we'd find more cases of Republican administrations intervening against Free Markets than to protect them on the level of individual companies too.

When Republicans say Free Markets, they mean Deregulation and Low Taxes on the Rich, both of which notably continued under Trump.

Romney, for comparison, would probably also have supported Deregulation and Low Taxes on the Rich, but Eisenhower didn't.

Brian 04.26.21 at 6:47 am ( 4 )

Working in the Midwest and Idaho I think there is a large group of jumping voters. I called the 2016 election for Trump after staying in multiple AirBnBs with people who voted Obama twice and were voting for Trump. Same reason '" hope for change.

The past few years I was surrounded by Trump voters, some still good friends. They aren't conspiracy dingbats. They also liked Yang. They radically dislike the democrats corruption and warmongering. It's the religious who sign up to fight those wars and their children coming home in body bags.

The real issue is no choice, nobody except liars, and politicians on the take.

Don't kid yourself, John. The current white house occupants are a senile old warmonger whose drug addict son has him wrapped around his finger, and the one primary candidate who resoundingly lost.

Those two, foisted on the nation by DNC oligarchs, nearly lost! They came within a hair of losing to an uncouth, marginally literate clown. Ignore the electoral college. Look at the margins in states that won.. this is no victory, no mandate, nor is it stable. This pack of Same old drivelers in both parties is busy shoving the same garbage that created Trump's victory.

If you think that the Republicans media machine is unhinged, read Matt Taibbi on Russiagate's lies. How much more unhinged is it for the Democrats media (Rachel Maddow and co) to attack and provoke a nuclear super power into creating new weapons and reinstating MAD.

ArtSrc 04.26.21 at 7:09 am ( 5 )

Here is my evidence that Right Wing science denial is older than Trump:

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-01-10-me-911-story.html

Phil 04.26.21 at 8:29 am ( 6 )

I think I'd want to go back further than Sashas. Researching an article on Helen Keller a while back, I discovered to my surprise not only that Ms Keller was a Wob (in the Debs/Wobbly intersect to be precise) but that she was funded by Andrew Carnegie '" and that the GOP of her day was, as well as a party of bankers and strikebreakers, a party of East Coast pencil-necked liberals with fingers in every progressive cause going (excepting the cause of labour, for obvious reasons).

All this was in the period prior to the US joining the Great War '" which is what we historians refer to as a hell of a long time ago '" and the Dems have also gone through a change or two in the same period. (Well, one big one.) Still, I wonder if the story of the GOP could be told as a series of these transitions '" from plutocrat/business/liberal to plutocrat/business/conservative to plutocrat/business/conservative/racist to today's hard core plutocrat/racist '" with the only constant being the presence of people with the kind of money that can endow libraries around the world, or do less useful things .

MFB 04.26.21 at 10:06 am ( 7 )

Wouldn't it be nice to wait and see if there has actually been an end to hard neoliberalism (or, indeed, a leftward shift in the Democratic Party) before making confident and information-free declarations about such matters? As far as I can make out there is essentially no current plan to make any substantive changes in the U.S. economic system arising out of the Democratic Party, and no sign of any substantive shift in the Republican Party's positions.

It is always comforting to believe that such things are true. Liberals, however, have been fooled before, over and over, by the Democratic Party. Naturally politicians attempt to say some nice things, which are then fed back to the appropriate demographics by compliant media houses which have their own agendas and which know that their audience know no alternatives.

As Mr. Fenton put it:

Listen to what they did.
Don't listen to what they said.
What was written in blood
Has been set up in lead.

Lead tears the heart.
Lead tears the brain.
What was written in blood
Has been set up again.

The heart is a drum.
The drum has a snare.
The snare is in the blood.
The blood is in the air.

Listen to what they did.
Listen to what's to come.
Listen to the blood.
Listen to the drum.

MisterMr 04.26.21 at 1:04 pm ( 8 )

I think that the real backbone of conservative parties is small business, more than big corporations. It certainly is so here in Italy (where however we have a much larger share of small business to big business relative to the USA), but I wonder if this is a common phenomenon.

I think that the clash between big business and small business is a big part of the apparent change in right wing parties.

Gorgonzola Petrovna 04.26.21 at 3:43 pm ( 10 )

@1 'œ'¦and Low Taxes on the Rich, both of which notably continued under Trump.'

Ever heard about the infamous SALT cap? Check out the above-mentioned Matt Taibbi @substack.com.

Tm 04.26.21 at 4:44 pm ( 11 )

JQ: 'œAfter four years of the Trump Administration, and a few months of post-election madness, the Republican Party has completed a transition that has been going on for decades. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Republicans were a hard neoliberal party, spending most of their policy effort on tax cuts and deregulation. Now the situation is reversed.'

I suggest you read that snippet again (in isolation), and try to make sense of it. I can't. What has been reversed? Is there a missing step in your argument? 'œTax cuts and deregulation' is a concise description of Trump administration policies, and there is no indication whatsoever that the post-Trump GOP will be any different. And the Culture War has been a staple of right wing politics in the US for decades. So what do you mean by reversal?

rogergathmann 04.26.21 at 4:45 pm ( 12 )

#4, This is beautiful. 'œThe current white house occupants are a senile old warmonger whose drug addict son has him wrapped around his finger'¦' ...

Tom 04.26.21 at 7:13 pm ( 13 )

John, have you read Before the Storm (2001) by Rick Perlstein? You may find it useful for the Goldwater years.

I have also similar issues with the claim of Republicans being free marketeers. Yes, obviously, they (used to) say that they are pro-market but they rarely walk the talk. E.g.: Reagan increased the budget deficit; Trump-like concerns for the trade deficit (with Japan at the time) and currency manipulation spurred the 1985 Plaza Accord; even when they are in favor of lower taxes, they rarely care about how this may distort incentives (e.g. no sales tax on goods purchased on Internet are a subsidy to Bezos), they just (claim that they) want to starve the beast; Casey Mulligan advised Trump and according to him Trump is the greatest deregulator ever; and 'œfreedom' is always a loaded term, e.g. they are against immigration which is just the freedom of one factor of production (labor) to freely move across countries. So, yeah, the libertarians who have (mainly in the past but some also now) supported Republicans are hard neoliberals free marketeers but most Republican rarely fit that description.

More general question (no need to answer, obviously, just for your thoughts): what is the role of this intellectual history section in your book? It seems you are forced to make some generalizations that some may object to, even though it is not clear to me how essential they are to your main thesis.

Barry 04.26.21 at 7:47 pm ( 15 )

Brian: 'œThe past few years I was surrounded by Trump voters, some still good friends. They aren't conspiracy dingbats. They also liked Yang. They radically dislike the democrats corruption and warmongering. It's the religious who sign up to fight those wars and their children coming home in body bags.'

It's the religious right who loved them some o' dat war. It's the religious right who loves corruption, especially in their leaders.

LFC 04.27.21 at 1:16 am ( 20 )

Perhaps relevant to a couple of the above comments is an excerpt from a blog post I wrote in 2016, when I was reading Perlstein's Before the Storm (which I didn't finish):

One thing (among others) that comes through clearly in the first 50 pp. or so of the book is the extent to which the emergent or reconstituting U.S. Right in the '50s and early '60s found a key constituency in family-owned and/or privately-held manufacturing and other businesses'¦ Indeed Perlstein opens the first chapter with a sketch of the political views and trajectory of one such (hypothetical) businessman.

Here's one actual example of many: In '59, on the eve of Khrushchev's visit to the U.S., we're told that 'œMilwaukee's Allen-Bradley Company bought a full page in the Wall Street Journal: 'To Khrushchev, 'œPeace and Friendship' means the total enslavement of all nations, of all peoples, of all things, under the God-denying Communist conspiracy of which he is the current Czar'¦. Don't let it happen here!'' (p.52)

Pretty clearly only a family-run or closely-held business would have felt able to spring for this kind of full-page ad in the WSJ '" a big publicly-traded company presumably would not have done this sort of thing, even if some of its executives might have shared the same views. (I use the word 'œpresumably' because I'm not sure that this speculation is correct, but it seems fairly logical.)

Barry 04.27.21 at 11:56 am ( 26 )

John: 'œFor a brief period, the 'Tea Party' revolt against the Obama Administration appeared as a reversion to hard neoliberalism, with a non-partisan focus on sound finance. '

No, they never did, except for people willing to believe. They didn't have a single problem with abuses under Dubya.

Tm 04.27.21 at 1:51 pm ( 27 )

JQ 25, I think I get your point but I wouldn't call this much of a reversal. An interesting question is at what point Culture War became a (not yet 'the') defining feature of the GOP, and how that point is related to the hard neoliberal turn.

Phil 6 describes the transition 'œfrom plutocrat/business/liberal to plutocrat/business/conservative to plutocrat/business/conservative/racist to today's hard core plutocrat/racist' (i. e. fascist I would say).

Fwiw there also is an account that paints the pre-Reaganite GOP as more complex than that, e. g. they weren't always strictly anti-labor ( https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/06/opinion/labor-unions-republicans.html ). It seems to me that one characteristic of the GOP of our time is the strict and in the US context extremely unusual ideological homogeneity, which imho strengthens the case for classifying that party as fascist.

nastywoman 04.29.21 at 8:16 am ( 46 )

AND if I may add:

perhaps the decline of soft neoliberalism in the US Democratic Party can be explained largely in terms of 'comical' replacement.

... ... ...

Tm 04.29.21 at 8:48 am ( 47 )

35: 'œThe right wing of earlier times did worship at the altar of engineering and technology for its ability to deliver shiny toys and things that go boom but that did not require either an understanding or respect for science as a methodology.'

You have to look no further than the Nazis. Their general outlook was anti-modernity, anti-enlightenment, they condemned relativity as 'œJewish science' and had quite some affinity with certain esoteric movements (and vice versa), but they also had the engineering/technologiy-worshipping side. See also Italian Futurism.

[May 03, 2021] Global capital, crony capital and the centre-left

Notable quotes:

"... '˜An important limitation of Bruenig's analysis is that she treats 'capital' as a unitary force. There is a sharp division between global corporations, with a long-run interest in the preservation of the rule of law under a democratic government, and the crony capitalists, epitomized by Trump himself, for whom the object is to extract as much as possible from the US economy, as quickly as they can'. ..."

May 03, 2021 | crookedtimber.org

by JOHN QUIGGIN on APRIL 29, 2021

Writing in the New York Times, Elizabeth Bruenig makes the case against an alliance of convenience between liberals and 'woke' corporations against the threat posed to democracy by Trumpism . After acknowledging how desperate the situation has become, she presents the argument, to which I'll respond bit by bit

Capital is unfaithful. It can, and does, play all sides. Many of the courageous businesses that protested North Carolina's 2016 'bathroom bill,' for instance, also donated to political groups that helped fund the candidacies of the very politicians who passed the bill.

This is the nature of alliances of convenience. When the Western Allies joined Stalin to fight against Hitler they had no (or at least few) illusions about him, and didn't rely on him to keep his word any longer than necessary, or to refrain from undermining them in other quarters

It isn't possible to cooperate with capital on social matters while fighting them in other theaters; capital can fight you in all theaters at once, all while enjoying public adulation for helping you, as well.

This simply isn't correct as the Biden Administration is showing. Despite co-operating with capital on social matters,. Biden has proposed substantial increases in corporate tax rates and global action against corporate tax avoidance. In this context, it is the position of capital that has been weakened by the toxicity of its usual allies, the Republicans.

Setting aside the fact that capital can in a single moment be both heroic and diabolical '" Amazon wants you to be able to vote , but it would prefer if you didn't unionize '" it is, incredibly, even less democratic, accountable and responsive than our ramshackle democracy. Capital rallies to the defense of democracy while aggressively quashing that very thing in the workplaces where its workers labor.

Again, this is what happens in an alliance of this kind. Fights over unionization go on, in parallel with an alliance over the right to vote. Once again, it's the corporations who face the bigger problem here, with opportunistic Republicans pretending to back the rights of the workers.

I have no idea what to do about this other than know it for what it is. If it were ever the case that knowledge was power, it certainly isn't so anymore: Knowledge is more widely dispersed than ever; power remains notably concentrated. But knowledge confers a certain dignity. It's worse to be powerless and unaware than to be powerless and perfectly clear on where you stand.

This is a counsel of despair, without any real basis. Bruenig gives no reason to suppose that the fight for democracy can't be won, even if it requires alliances between groups with interests that are otherwise opposed. But if the Republicans can be held at bay long enough to allow the passage of strong voting rights law, they will have to reform themselves or face permanent minority status. Getting to that point (for example, by winning bigger majorities in both Houses of Congress in 2022, then scrapping the filibuster) will be difficult, but not impossible

An important limitation of Bruenig's analysis is that she treats 'capital' as a unitary force. There is a sharp division between global corporations, with a long-run interest in the preservation of the rule of law under a democratic government, and the crony capitalists, epitomized by Trump himself, for whom the object is to extract as much as possible from the US economy, as quickly as they can.

Someone with more expertise than me could interpret all this in terms of the 'fractions of capital' idea put forward by Poulantzas and others in C20. A search on those terms produced this piece in The Guardian , which covers some of those points.

---

nastywoman 04.29.21 at 7:34 am ( 1 )

'˜An important limitation of Bruenig's analysis is that she treats 'capital' as a unitary force. There is a sharp division between global corporations, with a long-run interest in the preservation of the rule of law under a democratic government, and the crony capitalists, epitomized by Trump himself, for whom the object is to extract as much as possible from the US economy, as quickly as they can'.

I couldn't agree more as:

'˜An important limitation of any current analysis about the US Chaos is that outdated political labels are treated as a unitary forces. There is a sharp division between so called '˜Elites' who are considered to be '˜Elites' because they have a lot of dough, and '˜Elites' who are able to understand jokes about rich Idiots '"
(just joking!)
with a long-run interest in NOT preservation of the rule of law under a democratic government.

Mike Huben 04.29.21 at 11:14 am ( 2 )

I think that Bruenig's basic problem is not so much despair, as the expectations of friendship and loyalty that we want to give and receive. That may work fine in small groups, but fails utterly in larger political and economic situations. Corporations exploit that as much as they can for the benefits of employee and customer loyalty, and hardly ever reciprocate, leading to a lot of disappointment, resentment, and cynicism. I agree with John that there is a different strategy of alliances that's needed for the latter, and it's a shame we don't educate students directly about it.

steven t johnson 04.29.21 at 12:55 pm ( 3 )

Major point: Crony capitalism and crony capitalists are hissable villains. Any clique can nominate whomever they wish as Snidely Whiplash, but as an identifiable group, I believe the crony capitalists are even harder to identify than the aristocracy of labor. They are in economic terms, unproductive capitalists. It's not clear how anyone who rejects the usefulness, or claims the impossibility, of distinguishing unproductive labor from productive labor could accept this as a real category.

Minor point: The supposed alliance of convenience of the 'Allies' with 'Stalin' is not quite the point believed. The supposed allies of Stalin delayed meaningful entry into the war, the second front. And the supposed allies of Stalin turned against the war-ravaged USSR as quickly as possible, launching decades of hostility, including military actions, attempted subversion and economic warfare. This example of 'alliance of convenience' means the corporations will rely on the small-d democrats to fight the bulk of the war, then attack their convenient allies as soon as possible.

Gorgonzola Petrovna 04.29.21 at 2:51 pm ( 4 )

'There is a sharp division between global corporations, with a long-run interest in the preservation of the rule of law under a democratic government, and the crony capitalists, epitomized by Trump himself, for whom the object is to extract as much as possible from the US economy, as quickly as they can. '

Whoa. I happen to feel (and it seems fairly obvious to me) that it's exactly the opposite: domestic capital is interested in long-term prosperity and stability, while global capital operates by invading, squeezing all juice, and moving on.

Could you elaborate on this, please.

BruceJ 04.29.21 at 4:12 pm ( 5 )

Bruenig would have liberals fight a war on all fronts, apparently, without any allies.

[Amazon] is, incredibly, even less democratic, accountable and responsive than our ramshackle democracy.

Well, that may be because it is not in any sense a '˜democracy' . It is a corporation operating within the state framework of a representative democracy.

Corporations are quite responsive to societal concerns the moment their bottom line is threatened . This is the power that consumers have in a consumer-driven economy.

Certainly 'Capital' has deep and abiding shared interests with the Republican party; the GOP has long been their reliable partner delivering the things they want, less taxes, regulation and free reign in international markets; trumpism threatens that, because the essence of Trumpism is it's chaotic arbitrariness.

Witness the whole arc of the '˜banning' of TikTok because people using that platform humiliated Dear Leader. In the end it amounted to'¦well, we still don't know what, exactly it has amounted to.

This kind of chaos isn't even beneficial to crony capitalists, because as we've seen time and time again in Russia'¦your status as a '˜crony' is always precarious, subject to the whims and paranoia of the autocrat.

marcel proust 04.29.21 at 6:23 pm ( 6 )

The linked Guardian piece has the added appeal for you (I imagine) of using chemistry metaphors similar to the phase transition ones you used here .

On the broader topic of instrumental alliances, you are of course correct, at least if the desired end is achieved goals rather than individual purity. Tom Lehrer's Folksong Army may be a useful counter to Breunig's argument.

Stephen 04.29.21 at 6:58 pm ( 7 )

OP; 'When the Western Allies joined Stalin to fight against Hitler they had no (or at least few) illusions about him.`'

Umm. It seems fairly clear that Roosevelt said, at Yalta 'Stalin doesn't want anything but security for his country, and I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he wouldn't try to annex anything and will work with for a world of democracy and peace.'

Now with Roosevelt, perhaps even more than with other politicians, there may be a gap between what he really thought and what he wanted his listeners to believe he thought. All the same '¦

As for steven t Johnson @3:
'The supposed allies of Stalin delayed meaningful entry into the war, the second front.'
I would be interested to get an explanation as to why stj thinks that

a) the allied actions before the invasion of France (which is what all good Communists in Britain meant when they painted 'SECOND FRONT NOW' on walls in 1942 or 1943) were not meaningful; and

b) how an invasion of France in 1942 or 1943 would have in fact have shortened the war, other than to Germany's advantage.

Over to you, comrade.

nastywoman 04.29.21 at 7:09 pm ( 8 )

@4
'˜Could you elaborate on this, please'.

Oh? '"
I just would love to '" as aren't you the '˜Petrovna' who once wrote that Greedy Outsourcers are NOT '˜Greedy Outsourcers'? '"
so how does square with your idea of:
'˜domestic capital is interested in long-term prosperity and stability, while outsourcers operate by invading, squeezing all juice, and moving on'.

Trader Joe 04.29.21 at 7:39 pm ( 9 )

I'd say Ms. Bruenig is primarily just someone who needs to grow up and understand that the entire world isn't arrayed around whatever she imagines democracy might be about. She appears as someone who thinks democracy is about waiting your turn in the Starbucks line and tipping the minority barista because they've had to face struggles in life.

Score this as the latest in a line of '˜woke' media who sit and vilify Amazon by posting their views on Facebook, ignoring that every few days a fresh box shows up with a swoosh on their doorstep.

This one uses the NEW YORK F-ing Times as her soapbox '" ironic, no? Last I looked they weren't exactly a not for profit, indeed manufacturing fake concern, real concern, any concern for money is why they exist '" not exclusively, but if not for the $$$ their impact would be equal to the same article in the East Overshoe Nebraska, Gazette.

Many might rail against Exxon and pals but when the tank is on E and its the only station on the highway I know of none that pull over and walk instead of fill up.

Companies exist to fill particular needs '" their political, environmental and social impacts (all of which are important) are by products of their primary mission and are managed as needed in proportion to the degree it impacts their objectives (which heavily involve profit making but only rarely are exclusively focused on profit making).

As JQ notes, they will be an ally when it suits them or (or when it suits you) but they are tools to their own end, not a tool to be wielded by others.

Lobsterman 04.29.21 at 7:41 pm ( 10 )

Bruenig has the right of it, of course '" Biden will help drive our civilization into the climate apocalypse as eagerly as Trump did, and the end result will be the exact same levels of brutality and misery. Biden and Trump are two sides of the same coin; salvation does not come from the 'Senator from MBNA.'

Sooner or later, Biden will get tired of pretending to be benevolent papa. He's already there on weed, police brutality, and imperialism. It's just a matter of time.

Starry Gordon 04.29.21 at 11:53 pm ( 11 )

I find it difficult to believe in the naiveté exhibited in Bruening's article, as if she had never read or heard any serious analysis of power and class. It's as if presenting thumb-sucking as a stance. In the alleged real world, those liberals (whatever that now means) tempted to pick a side in the current ruling-class struggles should remember what Mr. Carlin said: '˜They got a club, and you ain't in it.'

steven t johnson 04.30.21 at 12:53 am ( 12 )

Stephen@7 is preaching to the choir, thus briefly as possible: The USSR joining the UN; restraining the Italian and French CPs; surrendering the Greek CP (well, to be fair, Tito was even more important to this, but still); withdrawal from Austria and Iran; neutralization of Finland; the recognition of Israel; the offer of neutralization of Germany; limited aid (to put it mildly) to the Chinese CP, etc. There are an estimated 20 million reasons why 'Stalin' played it that way. Nonetheless, Stephen's Cold War triumphalism is still wrong.

And as to the alleged mysteries Stephen doesn't understand? The number of German divisions tied down in Italy was about, if I remember correctly, was eight. Churchill may have coined a vivid phrase in 'the soft underbelly of Europe' but it was BS meant to divert troops away from fighting Germans save to protect Egypt etc. The Soviet Union defeated the Nazis, not the Allies. It's true that if the Allies had managed to join the Nazis in alliance with the Finns that the Soviet Union would almost certainly have been defeated. No doubt Stephen regrets the lost opportunity. Or, along with David Brin, wishes the atomic bomb could have been used in Europe to stop'¦Stalin?

The other question, as phrased suggests that a second front in France in 1942 or 1943 would have been advantageous to Germany. I suggest this is simply nuts. Unless there's some assumption that a second front would have promoted the chances of a negotiated peace between the Allies and the Nazis? But this I think is just wishful thinking.

J-D 04.30.21 at 2:15 am ( 13 )

I think that Bruenig's basic problem is not so much despair, as the expectations of friendship and loyalty that we want to give and receive.

As Obsle said to Estraven in The Left Hand Of Darkness (by Ursula Le Guin), '˜We can pull a sledge together without being kemmerings.'

J-D 04.30.21 at 2:16 am ( 14 )

Bruenig has the right of it, of course '" Biden will help drive our civilization into the climate apocalypse as eagerly as Trump did, and the end result will be the exact same levels of brutality and misery. Biden and Trump are two sides of the same coin; salvation does not come from the 'Senator from MBNA.'

Sooner or later, Biden will get tired of pretending to be benevolent papa. He's already there on weed, police brutality, and imperialism. It's just a matter of time.

Elizabeth Bruenig says nothing whatever about Joe Biden (good or bad), so why are you trying to change the subject in this way?

J-D 04.30.21 at 4:51 am ( 15 )

I find it difficult to believe in the naiveté exhibited in Bruening's article '¦

Naïveté (like the misspelling of people's names) is extremely common. Being unable to credit other people's naïveté is itself often a sign of naïveté.

In the alleged real world, those liberals (whatever that now means) tempted to pick a side in the current ruling-class struggles should remember what Mr. Carlin said: '˜They got a club, and you ain't in it.'

You don't think that refusing to take your opportunities where you find them is a kind of naïveté?

Tm 04.30.21 at 7:38 am ( 16 )

It seems to me that certain fractions of the left are just awful when it comes to tactical politics. Tactical alliances are part of almost all successful politics. One doesn't have to always be friends to have common political goals under selective circumstances.

MisterMr 04.30.21 at 8:48 am ( 17 )

@Stephen 7
Umm. It seems fairly clear that Roosevelt said, at Yalta 'Stalin doesn't want anything but security for his country, and I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he wouldn't try to annex anything and will work with for a world of democracy and peace.'

Stalin did, for example, call the communist italian partigiani and told them NOT to attempt a communist takeover in Italy, but instead to collaborate with other democratic forces.
This is because Stalin agreed at Yalta that Italy was to be under the western sphere of influence, and he didn't want stir too much the situation.
What are the acions that Stalin did outside of the USSR that prove Roosvelt wrong?

That Stalin was a terrible tyrant inside the eastern block is obviously true but this is not what Rooselt was speaking about, I think.

It seems to me that you (Stephen) are underplayng the poular support Stalin (and on the other side, various fascist movements) had in many parts of Europe at the time, and therefore you don't see how Stalin's actions were, in fact, not all that aggressive on the international scene.

Saurs 04.30.21 at 9:28 am ( 18 )

I don't see any meaningful and substantive distinction between the phenomenon Bruenig purports to describe and as a consequence what she is counseling (despite saying she isn't) and the We Should Improve Society Somewhat toon. It's a more or less perfect distillation of nominally pro-labor anti-Democratic thinkythoughters who for the sake of purity preach no collective action or cooperation beyond the right kind of trade unionism. Yet another entry in the prevailing Atomized Style.

Ebenezer Scrooge 04.30.21 at 11:45 am ( 19 )

Breunig is religious left. Religious types tend to be very deontological'"they care much more about right v. wrong than good v. bad. Many readers of this blog might agree that capital is 'wrong.' (Not, you, Tim W.!) But since we are good consequentialists here, we would also agree that this particular alliance with capital is 'good.'

Bruce Baugh 04.30.21 at 1:55 pm ( 20 )

Bruenig has a problem most of us don't: she wants abortion banned, and she wants to continue thinking this position is both liberal and popular out in the public at large. It's pretty clear that corporate America at large isn't going to help get her any closer to that.

J, not that one 04.30.21 at 2:32 pm ( 21 )

'This is the nature of alliances of convenience.'

Bruenig is typical of a school of thought that would like everyone to act on principal 100% of the time. Is it possible to persuade someone to do the right thing even if they didn't already want to? Apparently that's even worse than if they can't be persuaded by any means. Is it possible to persuade imperfect people to improve the world? That's not good enough. We should live with the world's problems while continuing our search for perfect people.

When this goes along with treating 'capitalism' as both a totalizing force and something that can never be worked with, it doesn't leave a lot of room for anything short of a kind of leftist Benedict Option, unless it's total war against even quite mild manifestations.

Stephen 04.30.21 at 6:46 pm ( 22 )

MisterMr @17: thank you for a rational, though I think in several ways mistaken, reply.
I quoted Roosevelt's belief at Yalta that Stalin would 'not try to annex anything' and 'work for a world of democracy and peace.' Even before Yalta, Stalin's behaviour in foreign policy (Nazi-Soviet pact, annexation of the Baltic states and eastern Poland, Katyn) and domestic policy (Holodmor, the Great Terror) should have been enough to show that he had no interest refraining from annexation, nor in democracy or peace.

You ask ' What are the actions that Stalin did outside of the USSR that prove Roosevelt wrong?' Well, apart from those above, there were his postwar annexations of as much of Europe as he could manage, and his behaving there as (in your own words) ' a terrible tyrant'.

You say I am 'underplaying the popular support Stalin '¦ had in many parts of Europe at the time'. I can't quite see how that is relevant: I don't think he had much support in the parts of Europe he annexed. Among the French and Italian Communist parties, yes, but I think those countries were much better off for not being annexed.

Stephen 04.30.21 at 6:51 pm ( 23 )

As for steven t johnson @12: I am entirely unable to understand how your intemperant rant relates to anything I wrote, or have previously written. In other circumstances I would have concluded 'the man's clearly delusionary, ignore him' but you accuse me of regretting an opportunity for the UK to ally with the Nazis and defeat the Soviet Union. or even of wishing for atomic warfare in Europe. These are completely unjustifiable and seriously defamatory conclusions, such as I had not expected to find on CT. What train of thought '" I can hardly say, of logic '" led you to them, I cannot say.

As far as I can follow your argument, it is that
1) Regarding the Allied contribution to defeating Germany before the Normandy invasion, 'The number of German divisions tied down in Italy was about, if I remember correctly, was eight.' I don't have a history of the Italian campaign to hand, but the Wikipedia article states that in May 1944 the German forces in italy numbered 439,224. Eight bloody big divisions, surely.
It also gives Axis losses in Italy, before the final surrender, as being about 530,000. And I don't know why, apart from sheer ignorance, you regard the Allied contribution, pre-Normandy, as being restricted to the Italian campaign. Which, incidentally, made the rather important Allied invasion of southern France possible.

2) Arguing that there were cases where Stalin did not invade and tyrannise his neighbours does not refute the obvious case that there were many times when he did.

3) ' The Soviet Union defeated the Nazis.' In terms of the land battle in eastern Europe, of course that's true, apart from the rather embarrassing period when they were trying to help the Nazis to defeat the Western democracies. Whether they could have succeeded without help from the West is not at all obvious.

4) I await, without much hope, svj's explanation of why a cross-Channel invasion in 1942 or 1943 would have been other than an extensive and complete catastrophe: Dieppe writ very large, Kasserine-sur-mer? If that had happened, I suspect that a negotiated peace might have resulted. but I would regard that as fearful, not wishful thinking.

5) I wrote that Roosevelt was naive in believing that the concept of 'noblesse oblige' applied to Stalin, and that therefore I am guilty of 'Cold War triumphalism'. Well, I lived through most of the Cold War, and could foresee four possible developments:
a) War in Europe becomes hot. I hope stj would agree that would have been a global catastrophe, even if the Soviet Union had in some sense 'won'.
b) Cold war continues indefinitely, so that in 2021 we would still have the armed forces of the Warsaw Pact and NATO confronting each other, with (a) on the cards, and eastern Europe under unwelcome Soviet domination.
c) Cold War in Europe ends with collapse of Western alliance under the influence of Communist-Neutralist-Defeatist elements, followed by the installation of Soviet-type domination in Europe.
d) Cold War ends with the collapse of the Soviet Union and its domination under the weight of its own internal contradictions.
Personally, I am very glad that (d) happened. I suspect '" though I would be happy to have stj's own opinion '" that he would much have preferred (c) or failing that (b).
Pre-emptive comment: no, of course I don't think that the effects of the collapse of Actually Existing Socialism have been always desirable. A basic lesson from history is that solving one problem always leaves many other problems unsolved, and often gives rise to new ones.

Gorgonzola Petrovna 04.30.21 at 7:22 pm ( 24 )

@nastywoman, 8
'aren't you the '˜Petrovna' who once wrote that Greedy Outsourcers are NOT '˜Greedy Outsourcers'?'

I wouldn't anthropomorphize economic phenomena. It tends to obscure rather than illuminate, imo.

Tm 04.30.21 at 8:22 pm ( 25 )

MisterMr: 'žWhat are the acions that Stalin did outside of the USSR that prove Roosvelt wrong?'

Umm, what definition of USSR are you applying here? This thread is a distraction and we should better not feed it but I can't help being curious'¦

Starry Gordon 04.30.21 at 8:38 pm ( 26 )

J-D 04.30.21 at 4:51 am @ 15 '"
I misspelled '˜naïveté' too, didn't I? Actually I thought putting in the diaeresis might be a bit much.

You ask: '˜You don't think that refusing to take your opportunities where you find them is a kind of naïveté?' I think that would depend on the context and the nature of the opportunities. He that sups with the Devil should take a long spoon and all that, no? Maybe if Bruenig had read more commie literature she could have located her disquiet more precisely. But then, could she work for the Times ?

Tm 04.30.21 at 9:19 pm ( 27 )

The posturing of Republican corporate stooges complaining about corporations is quite amusing:
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/04/ted-cruz-has-been-a-corporate-stooge-his-as-long-as-hes-been-a-senator-says-ted-cruz

John Quiggin 05.01.21 at 12:32 am ( 28 )

Unless someone wants to make the case that the US and UK governments should not have allied themselves with Stalin, I request that we draw a halt to the discussion on that point.

J-D 05.01.21 at 1:49 am ( 29 )

It seems to me that certain fractions of the left are just awful when it comes to tactical politics.

In my experience, many people have trouble with thinking tactically much of the time.

I misspelled '˜naïveté' too, didn't I? Actually I thought putting in the diaeresis might be a bit much.

The dictionary offers more than one spelling. You chose the one you preferred, I chose the one I preferred. I am more sensitive on the subject of misspelling of names. For all I know, Bruening is in fact a correct spelling, it's just not the correct spelling of Elizabeth Bruenig's surname.

You ask: '˜You don't think that refusing to take your opportunities where you find them is a kind of naïveté?' I think that would depend on the context and the nature of the opportunities. He that sups with the Devil should take a long spoon and all that, no?

There is an important difference between the advice '˜If you sup with the devil, you should have a long spoon' and the advice '˜Never sup with the devil, no matter how long your spoon, even if the alternative is starvation'.

Robespierre 05.01.21 at 4:33 am ( 30 )

Since Bruenig is 'naive', don't be naive in turn.

1) To the extent that corporations do this to ally themselves with the Democratic party's power, as opposed to conforming to consumers' woke orthodox culture, what do they want in return?

2) Corporations in America are uniquely (in the rich world) able enforce correct speech and thought because of the unusually big power they have over their employees. The answers I usually hear from democratic party supporters is a mix between rejoicing in woke mccarthyism and 'lol, the first amendment doesn't apply to corporations, you dummy!'.
The point is: is this healthy and what are we going to do about it?

3) Related to (2), woke monopolies have crippled the right-wing social media infrastructure (after cultivating the fash-curious information bubble for years) and are big enough to bully states into changing their election laws -for the better, this time.
Again, the point is 'is this healthy and what are we going to do about it'.
If the 'left''˜s reaction is 'be happy that Daddy beat up my enemy today', cool, but maybe it's not the best way to go about it.

[May 03, 2021] New kind of leadership

Apr 26, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

Archegos is a Greek word denoting leadership. The place where the eponymous family office led UBS, and a growing roll call of investment banks, was into a morass.

[May 02, 2021] Cutting neoliberal oligarchy foothold on political power is essential for reversing neoliberalism in Western countries

May 02, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

karlof1 , May 2 2021 20:49 utc | 19

I see Michael Hudson has posted three new items at his website since I last appeared here. I'd like to think some barfly posted the links to them, in particular this one, "America's Neoliberal Financialization Policy vs. China's Industrial Socialism" . Mike opens by citing Machiavelli:

"Nearly half a millennium ago Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince described three options for how a conquering power might treat states that it defeated in war but that 'have been accustomed to live under their own laws and in freedom: the first is to ruin them, the next is to reside there in person, the third is to permit them to live under their own laws, drawing a tribute, and establishing within it an oligarchy which will keep it friendly to you....'

"U.S. strategists have preferred Machiavelli's third option: To leave the defeated adversary nominally independent but to rule via client oligarchies."

Michael then succinctly spells out the current crisis and its roots:

"The U.S.-China confrontation is not simply a national rivalry, but a conflict of economic and social systems. The reason why today's world is being plunged into an economic and near-military Cold War 2.0 is to be found in the prospect of socialist control of what Western economies since classical antiquity have treated as privately owned rent-yielding assets: money and banking (along with the rules governing debt and foreclosure), land and natural resources, and infrastructure monopolies .

"This contrast in whether money and credit, land and natural monopolies will be privatized and duly concentrated in the hands of a rentier oligarchy or used to promote general prosperity and growth has basically become one of finance capitalism and socialism. Yet in its broadest terms this conflict existed already 2500 years ago in the contrast between Near Eastern kingship and the Greek and Roman oligarchies. These oligarchies, ostensibly democratic in superficial political form and sanctimonious ideology, fought against the concept of kingship. The source of that opposition was that royal power – or that of domestic 'tyrants' – might sponsor what Greek and Roman democratic reformers were advocating: cancellation of debts to save populations from being reduced to debt bondage and dependency (and ultimately to serfdom), and redistribution of lands to prevent its ownership from becoming polarized and concentrated in the hands of creditors and-landlords .

"From today's U.S. vantage point, that polarization is the basic dynamic of today's U.S.-sponsored neoliberalism. China and Russia are existential threats to the global expansion of financialized rentier wealth. Today's Cold War 2.0 aims to deter China and potentially other counties from socializing their financial systems, land and natural resources, and keeping infrastructure utilities public to prevent their being monopolized in private hands to siphon off economic rents at the expense of productive investment in economic growth ." [My Emphasis]

This is Hudson's best, tersest, explanation of the current crisis, that in reality has existed for a great many centuries. He then narrows to a few crucial specifics:

"Financialized industrial capital wants a strong state to serve itself, but not to serve labor, consumers, the environment or long-term social progress at the cost of eroding profits and rents.

"U.S. attempts to globalize this neoliberal policy are driving China to resist Western financialization. Its success provides other countries with an object lesson of why to avoid financialization and rent-seeking that adds to the economy's overhead and hence its cost of living and doing business.

"China also is providing an object lesson in how to protect its economy and that of its allies from foreign sanctions and related destabilization. Its most basic response has been to prevent an independent domestic or foreign-backed oligarchy from emerging . That has been one first and foremost by maintaining government control of finance and credit, property and land tenure policy in government hands with a long-term plan in mind." [My Emphasis]

That is precisely why China's governing political method is so heavily distorted and demonized, and why all attempts to emulate it are viciously attacked--Iran, Cuba and Venezuela being prominent examples. The ongoing situation's very fluid, but the upper hand is clearly held by China and the emerging Eurasian Bloc. An example of China's lead is its successful initiation of its space station project to be completed and fully operational next year while Biden has given the reigns of the Outlaw US Empire's space project to Kamala Harris who is completely unqualified to lead such an endeavor.

I'd be remiss not to provide this link to Hudson's recent Macau lectures on Super Imperialism , which are in the form of you tube type videos. I've yet to fully explore them, but the course synopsis is here .

[May 02, 2021] If I'm going to lose the house gambling, it's more respectable to do so in the stock market.

May 02, 2021 | www.wsj.com

SUBSCRIBER 2 hours ago Borrowing money to gamble on the stock market is not a very smart thing to do in my opinion. Like thumb_up 7 Reply reply Share link Report flag R

If I'm going to lose the house gambling, it's more respectable to do so in the stock market. SUBSCRIBER 2 hours ago

Borrowing money to gamble on the stock market is not a very smart thing to do in my opinion.

[Apr 27, 2021] The atomisation of US society by Identity Politics, Selective Censorship and Political Correctness (aka self-censorship).

Apr 27, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

Hoarsewhisperer , Apr 25 2021 14:58 utc | 17

Interesting essay over at Turcopolier.com about the atomisation of US society by Identity Politics, Selective Censorship and Political Correctness (aka self-censorship).

The United States of 2 Americas
Posted on April 25, 2021 by Steven J. Willett

The following article by Ret. Col. John Mills from The Epoch Times should be of interest to readers of this site.

Commentary

If you haven't noticed, the United States is reorganizing itself into two Americas -- blue and red. Although there is a president of the United States, state governors are in many ways now driving the national narrative in this new America.
etc, etc.

div>

/div

[Apr 24, 2021] When The Market Unravels There Will Be -No Place To Hide- - David Stockman - YouTube

Apr 24, 2021 | www.youtube.com

peter plouf , 4 hours ago

The current financial world has been reduced to a one-legged bar-stool in a bar where drinks are on the house. There is no scenario where this does not end well no matter how euphoric we are in the moment.

[Apr 22, 2021] Rabobank -- Does This Portend The End Of Neoliberal Idiocy

Apr 22, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

... ... ...

Anyway, somewhere that powerful leaders are not being seen and powerful --dare I say revolutionary?-- forces are sweeping in, is football. The European Super League, so derided in this Daily for the past two days, has crumbled . All six English clubs have pulled out, with one or two even apologizing to "legacy" fans, and the vice-chair of Manchester United resigning. Victory for the people's game! Victory for localism over globalism! Well, yes, except it's far from certain the British government will now act as promised to deliver real power back into fans' hands via partial ownership of the clubs they worship to stop this happening again. Moreover, the pre-existing football structure we revert to includes an expanded gilt-edged Champions League format, and a game that is still more about money than it is about anything else.

So does this portend the end of Build Back Better globalism? Or the end of neoliberal idiocy? Or the entrenchment of nasty neoliberalism as the savior from an even stupider version of neoliberalism? Well, in markets, every time our system fails we swear we are changing it in response – and then the same old faces do the same old things, but worse, under a new badge.

The primary way this now happens of course is that central banks pretend that not only do they not see the asset inflation they are deliberately stoking, they also don't see the supply-side cost-push inflation . Instead, they talk about the wage inflation they can never stoke alone – and which even fiscal policy in tandem can't either without people power 'football' policy. As we have just seen, this will also have to involve decoupling and (peaceful) redrawing of economic borders around a local, national, or limited international perimeter. On which note, the US push for a new liberal world fiscal order is reportedly already in trouble ( no! ) because Amazon doesn't want to join the party: ' Taxation Dies in Darkness ', it seems.

So to conclude my own epic here, which way are the powerful forces of history leading us? And what are powerful leaders going to do to either resist or accelerate this momentum? It seems odd for a global financial market with the attention span of a bowl of borscht to have to consider, but that kind of Tolstoyan question is still one for the ages . Today particularly so.

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Lordflin 3 hours ago remove link

This is not idiocy...

It is desperation on the part of a group of ruthless, heartless psychopaths who are currently gazing over the balconies in watchful fear... on the lookout for that far off glow of midnight torches...

dead hobo 1 hour ago (Edited) remove link

I was going to say the same thing, only less tactfully.

The mass media depends on terrorist stories and the acts that make people want to read or watch them. That's what they want to Build Back Better. Inciting riots and worse is good for business.

Globalists only want control and power so they can make profit. They want low costs for goods, labor, and open borders to facilitate both. Globalists only care about BLM and the like if they affect customer traffic. Their logical end result of Globalism is feudalism for the 99%.

Democrats crave endless power. Racial politics is their stock in trade. Playing groups against each other while doling out benefits is what being a Democrat means. Establishment Republicans are parasites, for the most part.

People of good conscience are terrified of ending on the wrong side of the mob or as a means to sell newspapers or attract eyeballs by the media. This creates useless law enforcement at the local and federal levels, a milquetoast Supreme Court, and general apathy all around. Simply saying 'No' could be a career ending or even a life threatening act.

To make my point, there's no reason for any of this to end. Over 1/2 of the 99% are proven dimwits. Life is undoubtedly too complicated for them so the above groups appear to be leaders and / or saviors. Perhaps 30% of the population is smart enough to cope with everyday life. They are the minority.

Hence, I suspect we are only at the start of the decline and it will not end. There simply aren't enough people to want it to end. The vast majority are either controlled by self interest or too stupid to cope otherwise.

To Hell In A Handbasket 3 hours ago (Edited) remove link

So does this portend the end of Build Back Better globalism? Or the end of neoliberal idiocy? Or the entrenchment of nasty neoliberalism as the savior from an even stupider version of neoliberalism? Well, in markets, every time our system fails we swear we are changing it in response – and then the same old faces do the same old things, but worse, under a new badge.

Only 2 nations are the driving forces behind this ideology (UK & USSA) the rest merely follow, and toe the line. The European Super League, was a stark reminder to most of these American owners, that not only are they outted as greedy b@st@rds, but their version of franchise sports, where no relegation, or promotion can be achieved, is not a model we'd ever swallow.

As for the future? It's all about deluding the average IQ western dunce, that we are blessed with resources, and wealth, when in reality we don't have any resources of note, nor a pot to pl$$ in, and somehow manipulate an outcome where we control finance, and the value of money for another 270+ years, like we have in the last epoch.

The dunces have no f##king idea of the predicament we'll be in, when we lose the scam of deciding the fake value of each respective countries currency. If they did, as we say in England "They'd top themselves" Alas, 75% of ZH, are economic retards, so the reality hit will be even greater when they realise our entire economic model, and illusion of wealth is one of the greatest lies ever perpetrated. Just as bad a lie as the Holocaust death numbers.

Sound of the Suburbs 1 hour ago (Edited)

Neoclassical economics.

It's a crock of ****, but we've rigged it in our favour so we like it.

The rentiers at the top of society had been identified by classical economists.

This wouldn't do at all; they needed a new economics to hide this, neoclassical economics.

The early neoclassical economists hid the problems of rentier activity in the economy by removing the difference between "earned" and "unearned" income and they conflated "land" with "capital".

They took the focus off the cost of living that had been so important to the Classical Economists as this is where rentier activity in the economy shows up.

It confuses making money and creating wealth so all rich people look good.

If you know what real wealth creation is, you will realise many at the top don't create any wealth.

It was a complete disaster last time we used it, but it is rigged in our favour.

How do we get this crock of **** back into the mainstream again?

If you wrap it in a fluffy new ideology, no one will notice.

OK, we'll call it neoliberalism.

What about the economists?

Surely they will notice.

You'll be fine, they won't notice.

Stuck on Zero 3 hours ago

Well, in markets, every time our system fails we swear we are changing it in response – and then the same old faces do the same old things, but worse, under a new badge.

Could be stated more generally:

Well, in markets, every time our system fails we swear we are changing it in response – and then the same old faces do the same old things, but worse, under a new badge.

eatthebanksters 38 minutes ago

Right now the most dangerous thing in our country is the Cancel Culture, being driven by Big Media. Big Media needs to be brought to its knees, faced with two choices: 1. Provide fair and unbiased true journalism, or 2. Elimination. The number of people driving cancel culture are actually few in number. The real number of activist Antifa/BLM is relatively small, however their violent actions reverberate far and wide. They too must be shut down. Until this happens, our country will continue to divide. I am of the opinion that Democrats WANT Maga people to revolt so Dems can call in the military and crush the rebellion once and for all. As a country we are not in a good place right now.

Sound of the Suburbs 2 hours ago

Neoliberalism – Little more than ideological nonsense held together by pseudo economics.

It wouldn't fool anyone with an IQ over 70.

[Apr 22, 2021] Pastors as black Bolsheviks: some black churches try to hold Home Depot hostage

"History Does Not Repeat Itself, But It Rhymes" -- Mark Twain (attributed). This is a naked fight for political power using very questionable means.

Apr 22, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Corporations, especially those headquartered in Georgia, have come out against the legislation signed by Governor Kemp. Republicans describe the bill as one that addresses election integrity while Democrats call it a voter suppression law – "Jim Crow 2.0". Coca-Cola and Delta were among the first to make a point to virtue-signal after the governor signed the bill, only to be exposed as taking part in the process and giving input into the legislation. Both were fine with the law until the governor signed it and grievance activists did their thing. Coke soon discovered that not all of its consumers think that companies should be making policy – that 's the job of lawmakers- and now it is trying to clean up the mess it made for itself.

Churches have increasingly played a part in American politics and this is an escalation of that trend. Evangelical churches have shown support for conservative and Republican candidates while black churches get out the vote for Democrats. This threat of bringing a large-scale boycott over state legislation is a hostile action against the corporation. It's political theatre. Groups like Black Voters Matter, the New Georgia Project Action Fund (Stacey Abrams), and the Georgia NAACP are pressuring companies to publicly voice their opposition and the religious leaders are doing the bidding of these politically active groups.

When SB 241 and HB 531 were working through the legislative process, the groups put pressure on Republican lawmakers and the governor to abandon the voting reform legislation. They also demanded that donations to any lawmakers supporting the legislation be stopped. The Georgia Chamber of Commerce tried to remain bipartisan while still voicing support for voting rights but then caved and expressed "concern and opposition" to some provisions . At the time, several large Georgia companies were targeted by activists, including Aflac, Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, Home Depot, Southern Company and UPS.

The Georgia Chamber of Commerce previously reiterated the importance of voting rights without voicing opposition against any specific legislation. In a new statement to CNBC, the Georgia Chamber said it has "expressed concern and opposition to provisions found in both HB 531 and SB 241 that restrict or diminish voter access" and "continues to engage in a bipartisan manner with leaders of the General Assembly on bills that would impact voting rights in our state."

Office Depot came out at the time and supported the Chamber's statement. The Election Integrity Act of 2021, originally known as Georgia Senate Bill 202, is a Georgia law overhauling elections in the state that was signed into effect by the governor and we know what happened. Office Depot has not delivered for the activists as they demand so now the company faces boycott drama. The religious leaders are taking up where the activist groups left off.

African Methodist Episcopal Bishop Reginald Jackson said the company has remained "silent and indifferent" to his efforts to rally opposition to the new state law pushed by Republicans, as well as to similar efforts elsewhere.

" We just don't think we ought to let their indifference stand ," Jackson said.

The leader of all his denomination's churches in Georgia, Jackson had a meeting last week with other Georgia-based executives to urge them to oppose the voting law, but said he's had no contact with Home Depot, despite repeated efforts to reach the company.

Faith leaders at first were hesitant to jump into the boycott game. Now the political atmosphere has changed and they are being vocal. Jackson focused on pressuring Coca-Cola first. After that company went along to get along, before it realized its error, Jackson moved his focus onto other companies.

"We believe that corporations have a corporate responsibility to their customers, who are Black, white and brown, on the issue of voting ," Jackson said. "It doesn't make any sense at all to keep giving dollars and buying products from people that do not support you."

He said faith leaders may call for boycotts of other companies in the future.

So, here we are with Home Depot in the spotlight. There are four specific demands leveled at Home Depot in order to avoid further action from the activists.

Rev. Lee May, the lead pastor of Transforming Faith Church, said the coalition is "fluid in this boycott" but has four specifics requests of Home Depot: To speak out publicly and specifically against SB 202; to speak out against any other restrictive voting provisions under consideration in other states; to support federal legislation that expands voter access and "also restricts the ability to suppress the vote;" and to support any efforts, including investing in litigation, to stop SB 202 and other bills like it.

" Home Depot, we're calling on you. I'm speaking to you right now. We're ready to have a conversation with you. You haven't been ready up to now, but our arms are wide open. We are people of faith. People of grace, and we're ready to have this conversation, but we're very clear those four things that we want to see accomplished ," May said.

The Rev. Timothy McDonald III, senior pastor of the First Iconium Baptist Church, warned this was just the beginning.

"It's up to you whether or not, Home Depot, this boycott escalates to phase two, phase three, phase four," McDonald said. "We're not on your property -- today. We're not blocking your driveways -- today. We're not inside your store protesting -- today. This is just phase one."

That sounds a lot like incitement, doesn't it? Governor Kemp is speaking out, he has had enough. He held a press conference to deliver his comments.

"First, the left came for baseball, and now they are coming for Georgia jobs," Kemp said, referring to MLB's decision to move this year's All-Star Game from Atlanta over the new laws. "This boycott of Home Depot – one of Georgia's largest employers – puts partisan politics ahead of people's paychecks."

"The Georgians hardest hit by this destructive decision are the hourly workers just trying to make ends meet during a global pandemic. I stand with Home Depot, and I stand with nearly 30,000 Georgians who work at the 90 Home Depot stores and 15 distribution centers across the Peach State. I will not apologize for supporting both Georgia jobs and election integrity," he added.

"This insanity needs to stop. The people that are pushing this, that are profiting off of it, like Stacey Abrams and others, are now trying to have it both ways," Kemp said. "There is a political agenda here, and it all leads back to Washington, D.C."

The governor is right. The activists are in it to federalize elections, not to look out for Georgians, who will lose jobs over these partisan actions. The law signed by Kemp increases voting rights, it doesn't limit them .

[Apr 22, 2021] Market Cap Of Money-Losing Companies Surpasses Dot Com Bubble Record

Apr 22, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

---

DHS Fusion Center 6 hours ago

Is Paul Krugman available to talk about how great everything is now or is he still being investigated for distribution of child ****?

archipusz 5 hours ago

I needed a cross dressing analyst to explain this mkt to me. Thanks.

YesWeKahn 6 hours ago

This is Powell speaking:

There is no bubble, this is just a optimism of "not happening" reopening and "not working" vaccine.

[Apr 19, 2021] The USA neoliberalism certainly seems to be in some sort of self-destructive spiral. The MSM has been the key to holding things together through all the deceptions and false flags trying to preserve the public illusion that the neoliberal establishment are somehow the good guys

Apr 19, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

Ike , Apr 18 2021 0:30 utc | 59

The USA certainly seems to be in some sort of self-destructive spiral. The MSM has been the key to holding things together through all the deceptions and false flags maintaining the public belief that the establishment are somehow the good guys. This must be approaching an end point soon as thousands of conservative Americans know they were cheated on in the elections and with each new false flag another portion of the population become more skeptical of the official line and less gullible regarding the lies disseminated by CNN BBC etc.

As the Covid19 situation unfolds into an endless train-wreak, with the Vaccines not providing a solution and non promotion of the real solutions by TPTB more and more people will become skeptical that their governments are acting in their interests. (The real solution to Covid19 is the use of Ivermectin, protectively and at all stages of infection and a focus on increasing Vitamin D levels throughout the population)
The attempts by the West to destabilise Russia and China in Ukraine and Xinjiang will hopefully eventually add to the public disbelief of the official narrative.

The world should be extremely grateful for Vladimir Putin and his team for their unflappable restraint. I know I am.

The confronting of Biden by Putin, with the US attempt to assassinate the President of Belarus, a few days after Biden called Putin a killer, must go down in history as one of the greatest ironies of all time. Will the greater public ever get to hear about it from our overhyped news services. No!

This could be described as the "Banality of Evil". The MSM reporters just reporting the official line with no real debate, while the world teeters at a few minutes in midnight on the Nuclear Clock.
Russia and China need to up their game regarding the news media. Provide western audiences with genuinely truth seeking interviewers of politicians and public figures and hold them to account. Public debates between the opposing viewpoints so we are not just subject to the official propaganda that is all the MSM gives us now. Maybe they would say, why should we bother we have more important things to spend money on, and I would understand that.

Finally, MOA has my undying gratitude for providing what should be provided by the News Media. Intelligent commentary and debate about world events as the old empire disintegrates and other powers arise with a more truly humanitarian outlook...

[Apr 09, 2021] A modest suggestion for semi-vacant malls

Apr 09, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

---

Cock Strong 38 minutes ago

Bezos notches another $100 billion.

Mando Ramos 7 minutes ago (Edited)

My simple solution is to turn the vacant malls into giant marijuana growing operations,and huge meth labs,and use the revenue from the meth and weed sales to balance the Federal budget..As an additional plus,you put the Mexican drug cartels out of business,which can't be a bad thing,either

FurnitureFireSale 26 minutes ago

The smile on the side of the Prime trucks looks like a big wang (Bezos's?) saying "F-U, take THIS!" to all the small businesses. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it.

Puppyteethofdeath 14 minutes ago

Turn them into homeless shelters.

744,000 Americans filed for 1st time unemployment last week.

Every week the numbers are the same.

no cents at all 5 minutes ago

Yet mall property owners and their ilk have equity prices in the stratosphere. Same with cruise lines. A mystery. (Although doesn't take scooby doo to understand why)

is scooby canceled yet?

aarockstar 7 minutes ago

A 60 year retail experiment goes bust...

[Apr 08, 2021] There is no inflation, it is just that everything costs more.

Apr 08, 2021 | www.wsj.com

B BA Byron SUBSCRIBER 1 day ago @ Anthony

Economists: " There is no inflation, it is just that everything costs more. "

[Apr 07, 2021] Jamie Dimon in the eyes of ZH crowd

Such comments were definitely impossible before 2007. The level of vitriol is simply incredible. That spells trouble...

Apr 07, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

10 hours ago

Jamie has Jerome's phone number.

That makes Jamie brilliant. play_arrow 5 play_arrow 1

---

zorrosgato 10 hours ago

"flush with savings"

HA!

Yen Cross 10 hours ago

Jack, ****, Dimon? Which one was it Z/H Google moderator?

I donate at Christmas.

Basil 20 minutes ago

whats gone wrong is the cancer of progressiveism. wokeism, social justice nonsense.

Gadbous 29 minutes ago

Don't you want to just slap these people?

MuleRider 18 minutes ago

You misspelled decapitate.

GrandTheftOtto 2 hours ago

"It was a year in which each of usfaced difficult personal challenges"

boundless hypocrisy...

Mr. Rude Dog 2 hours ago remove link

" Americans know that something has gone terribly wrong, and they blame this country's leadership: the elite, the powerful, the decision makers - in government, in business and in civic society," he wrote.

"This is completely appropriate, for who else should take the blame?"

Lets see if he projects the problem back on the citizens...Let's see what happens.

"But populism is not policy, and we cannot let it drive another round of poor planning and bad leadership that will simply make our country's situation worse."

I knew the so called elites could not take the blame... You know populism always makes bad decisions with the economy, our monetary system, our infrastructure and just managing our tax money in general...Yes I knew Jamie could not take the blame..LOL.!!!!

QE4MeASAP 2 hours ago

So Dimon is giving the state of the union instead of Biden?

Budnacho 2 hours ago

Jamie Dimon....Friend of the Little Guy....

Tomsawyer2112 PREMIUM 11 hours ago

He doesn't believe a word of what he just said. But he knows that if he wants his bank to continue to be an extension of the government and curry favor then he needs to tow the line. I am sure he also has his eye on a future role as Fed Lead or US Treasurer but might be tough since he's not a diversity candidate.

oknow 2 hours ago

Someone turn off his mike, dont need your sorry *** confession

Just confiscate his wealth and make him do 9 to 5 jobs for the rest of his life.

ChromeRobot 9 hours ago remove link

This guy is a rarity in the banking industry. He's a billionaire. Running a bank I was often told in my early years in finance was foolproof. Everybody needs money and they have it. Hard to fk up. Somehow this "titan" has gamed it to do really well doing something incredibly easy. Positioning yourself to be a SIFI helps too! Too big to fail has it's perks.

a drink before the war 10 hours ago

What Jamie is really saying without saying it is " I get paid in stock options however since the pandemic JPM and other banks haven't been allowed to do stock buy back but come June we get back to the NORMAL and with the FED printing money and giving it to us we going to talk this stock WAY up no matter what because I got almost two years of stock options I gotta get paid for!"

lay_arrow 2

archipusz 10 hours ago

If you want to get to the top, you must speak the party line narrative.

The truth is something different altogether.

Eddie Haskell 10 hours ago

If you want to be a state-approved oligarch you've gotta suck the right dickie. Good job.

Detective Miller 38 minutes ago

"Jaimie Tells Bagholders To 'Buy Buy Buy!!!'"

Onthebeach6 38 minutes ago

The US is addicted to helicoptor money.

The world looks fine to an addict until the supply is cut off.

sbin 41 minutes ago

• Off shore industry

• Steal pension funds

• Laundering drug money

• Regulatory capture.

Jimmy going to lock himself in jail and forfeit his assets?

34k of jerkoff.

Nuk Soo Kow 2 hours ago

How magnanimous of Jamie to blame elitists and civic "leaders" for the structural problems in America. It was the banksters that pushed NAFTA and helped China engineer it's currency against the dollar, which led to massive outflows of productive capital. It was the banksters via the use of financial legerdemain who engineered the collapse in 2008 (not to mention every other banking panic and collapse prior to). It's high time to throw out this den of vipers once and for all.

Nature_Boy_Wooooo 2 hours ago

He lost me at.....

We need more cheap immigrant labor...... housing is unaffordable for many.

No **** moron!......you suppressed our wages and increased demand for housing.

PT 10 hours ago remove link

I always consult the fox when I want to know about the state of the hen house.

QuiteShocking 10 hours ago

Economic boom?? Is really just trying to get back to where we were previously before the pandemic hit with things opening back up etc... More people have been working from home so different spending patterns are developing.. but could change... Supply chain chaos makes it seem like shortages and inflation etc... It may only last through 2023?? but with Dems in charge this is not a given with their anti business slant??

same2u 11 hours ago

UBI for the rich= stock market...

Hope Copy 3 hours ago (Edited)

Jamie knows that the core of Crypto is at the CIA and that the pseudo Republic has far to much Fascist politics at the core .. There has been a competitive failure at most all levels of the government in recent times with a 'winner take all' at the cost of keeping competitive practices alive (not to mention kickbacks).. Of course China is laughing even though they have a history of cutting corners (and outright fraud) in every economic sector.

Mario Landavoz 20 minutes ago

Banker. That's all ya need to know.

Just a Little Froth in the Market 40 minutes ago

But the CEO was very candid about China...

"China's leaders believe America is in decline... The Chinese see an America that is losing ground in technology, infrastructure and education – a nation torn and crippled . . . and a country unable to coordinate government policies (fiscal, monetary, industrial, regulatory) in any coherent way to accomplish national goals

This is correct.

Joe A 55 minutes ago

He is just mocking and taking a piss at everybody. That America is such a mess is because of people like him with his scorched earth robber baron rogue capitalism. But there is a way to redeem yourselves. Just make all your assets available to the American people. And oh, blow your own brain out.

Abi Normal 3 hours ago remove link

What else is he supposed to say? As long as things don't go bad for Jamie it's cool.

OrazioGentile 3 hours ago

The Banksters, after years of mismanagement, borderline fraud, and endless bailouts now see that investments in unicorn startups, selling mindless BS to each other, and the quick buck lead to a burned out husk called America?!? Now?!? Let all of them live in the great paradise called the Cayman Islands that they helped build and see how far they get selling "capital instruments" to each other. The last 20 years have taught most Americans that hard work is meaningless to get ahead IMHO.

[Apr 07, 2021] Jamie Dimon: "This boom could easily run into 2023 because all the spending could extend well into 2023."

When did market cheerleading became the key responsibility of all key executives in major banks?

Apr 07, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

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Bay of Pigs 9 hours ago

Legs Dimon has always been a serial liar.

He's incapable of being honest.

One Moment Please 9 hours ago

My neighbors and I are not experiencing any of this 'economic boom' he speaks of.

Maybe we abide in some mysterious economic dead zone?

Mr..Lucky 10 hours ago

"Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau," Yale economist Irving Fisher.

[Apr 06, 2021] Et tu, Brute: IMF 'very much in support' of global minimum corporate tax by Brian Cheung

It has been argued that the phrase Et tu, Brute can be interpreted as a curse or warning. It is possible that Caesar adapted the words of a Greek sentence "You too, my son, will have a taste of power", which to the Romans had long since become proverbial. It foreshadows Brutus ' own violent death, after Antony and Octavian decisively defeated the outnumbered armies of Brutus and Cassius at the Battle of Philippi in October 42. After the battle, Brutus committed suicide.

This is not only about IMF being a puppet of the USA. this is also clear reputation of neoliberal ideology.

After this move any defender of neoliberal deregulation looks like joke.

Apr 06, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says it backs a U.S. proposal for a global minimum corporate tax.

IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath said that the fund has been calling for international cooperation on tax policy "for a long time," adding that different corporate tax rates around the world have fueled tax shifting and avoidance.

"That reduces the revenues that governments collect to do the needed social and economic spending," Gopinath told Yahoo Finance Tuesday. "We're very much in support of having this kind of global minimum corporate tax."

Gopinath's remarks are likely to add momentum to U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen's efforts to start an international dialogue on a new framework. The European Commission on Tuesday also said it supported discussions , but said the ultimate rate should be deliberated through the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Yellen recently called on the 20 largest economies to work together to "stop the race to the bottom" by setting a new minimum that would allow governments more stability in collecting tax revenue. The Biden administration is targeting a 21% global minimum tax for U.S. multinational corporations.

"It is important to work with other countries to end the pressures of tax competition and corporate tax base erosion," Yellen said in a speech Monday.

[Apr 06, 2021] Yellen pledges U.S. international cooperation, calls for global minimum tax

This is anathema to neoliberal ideology with it sfree movement of capital mantra, but the USA is hard pressed, so ideology does not matter anymore.

Apr 06, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Monday that she is working with G20 countries to agree on a global corporate minimum tax rate and pledged that restoring U.S. multilateral leadership would strengthen the global economy and advance U.S. interests.

In a speech ahead of her first International Monetary Fund and World Bank Spring Meetings as Treasury chief, Yellen signaled stronger U.S. engagement on issues from climate change to human rights to tax base erosion.

A global minimum tax proposed by the Biden administration could help to end a "thirty-year race to the bottom on corporate tax rates," Yellen told an online event hosted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

The proposal is a key pillar of President Joe Biden's $2 trillion infrastructure spending plan, which calls for an increase in the U.S. corporate tax rate to 28% while eliminating some deductions associated with overseas profits.

Without a global minimum, the United States would again have higher rates than a number of other major economies, tax experts say, while the U.S. proposal could help jump-start negotiations for a tax deal among major economies.

World Bank President David Malpass said finance leaders from the Group of 20 major economies on Wednesday would discuss global tax issues, including for digital services, adding that international attitudes were shifting away from continual tax reductions.

"Taxes matter to development, and it's important that the world get it right," Malpass told CNBC television.

Separately, a group of Democratic senators unveiled a legislative proposal to roll back parts of former President Donald Trump's 2017 U.S. tax cuts.

[Apr 06, 2021] Mexico Seeks to Ban Outsourcing After Agreement With Business

Prohibiting outsourcing is anathema to neoliberal ideology.

Apr 06, 2021 | www.bloomberg.com

Mexico's government said it reached a deal with union and business leaders on a controversial bill to ban outsourcing in a move that seeks to close tax loopholes.

The group agreed during a meeting at the National Palace in Mexico City on Monday to forbid the outsourcing of personnel to third-party firms, except for specialized work outside a company's main economic activity, and to implement a new profit sharing model, the labor ministry said in a statement .

[Apr 06, 2021] UBS Predicts 80,000 More Retail Stores Will Close In Five Years

Apr 06, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

archipusz 1 hour ago

Market surges on 80,000 retail outlet closings optimism.

[Apr 02, 2021] But let's be reasonable - how is it possible to have 700K - 800K initial jobless claims every week and create nearly a million new jobs?

Highly recommended!

If we are to believe authorities the USA. added 916K jobs in March, and the official unemployment rate is at 6% (note the word official; the current official U6 unemployment rate as of March 2021 is 10.70%; so the real number is probably much higher than 10%)

Fudging data became as prominent as it was in the USSR. The neoliberal empire can't afford objective stats.

Notable quotes:

"... monthly data is collected over a brief timeframe - just a few days - and that the calculations are seasonally adjusted. ..."

"... Yes, at least half the sheep population think they are real. It's insane how dumb people are today. ..."

Apr 02, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

variousmarkets

I spent the last 2 weeks digging into the numbers - especially timing of the surveys and data collection. I get the fact that weekly claims don't reflect new hires. I also realize that monthly data is collected over a brief timeframe - just a few days - and that the calculations are seasonally adjusted.

But let's be reasonable - how is it possible to have 700K - 800K initial jobless claims every week and create nearly a million new jobs? Does anyone really believe any of these numbers?

Globalistsaretrash

Yes, at least half the sheep population think they are real. It's insane how dumb people are today.

[Mar 31, 2021] If pride comes before the fall, the US is peaking in its arrogance and there's few likely outcomes that don't lead to worse conditions

Mar 31, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

brainiac3397 , Mar 31 2021 17:28 utc | 4

There will be probably a long period of gradual decline of the USA empire and dismateling of various aspects of neoliberalim in countires all over the globe.

It's evident that the "new world order" China wants is nothing more than respect for a multipolar world and the international institutions in place meant to service this world.

The US has become accustomed to the notion that it is the "world" and that American interests are everybody's interests even when America's interests harm their interests, whether economic(Germany's Nordstream 2 or Japan's trade with China) or security(the DPRK-ROK situation can never be resolved as long as the US interferes as a biased 3rd party) or even humanitarian(see: Palestine, Libya, Syria, Yemen etc).

The pawns of the US empire will go on diatribes to basically outline a framework where America is the end-all, be-all. Human rights, according to racist America. International peace, according to militarist America. Fighting poverty, according to capitalist America.

The only question for me has always been whether the blob of experts, advisors, and government officials are maliciously pursuing this kind of global trolling or whether they're actual believers of the delusion of American Exceptionalism. And the reason would be because the latter are far more likely to cause exceptional suffering and destruction on their moral crusade due to their arrogance in their fundamental "superiority".

If pride comes before the fall, the US is peaking in its arrogance and there's few likely outcomes that don't lead to worse conditions.

[Mar 28, 2021] As a fervent anti-imperialist, I think we should celebrate the incipient loss of Washington's power.

Mar 28, 2021 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

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LowellHighlander , March 27, 2021 at 8:42 am

So many USians (as in "people who use far too many resources") really believe, as President Obama intimated on so many occasions, that this country is exceptional. My readings of ancient Greece remind me of Athens: as Edith Hamilton pointed out in The Greek Way, that city-state's decline began when its rulers treated "client states" as conquered territories to be plundered. Athens' decline in power thus began when its rulers, having become so arrogant, became unconcerned with the rights of others. In our own time, we see that our "leaders" not only couldn't care less about the rights of others in terms of foreign countries, but also with regard to Americans not of their class, race, and social/academic pedigrees.

Nevertheless, as a fervent anti-imperialist, I think we should celebrate the incipient loss of Washington's power.

km , March 27, 2021 at 9:56 am

Funny that the neocons claim to be admirers of ancient Athens but seem blissfully unaware of the Thucydides Trap.

Eustachedesaintpierre , March 27, 2021 at 10:46 am

According to Mary Beard & others Thucydides is incredibly difficult to translate resulting in variations depended on the translator.

Perhaps not surprisingly Donald Kagan, Victoria's husband Robert's Father produced his own hawkish assessment of what Thucydides should teach us today.

https://www.bookforum.com/print/1604/thucydides-the-reinvention-of-history-by-donald-kagan-4693

km , March 27, 2021 at 4:51 pm

I suspect that is not the result of a translation problem, but because in this case, Thucidides doesn't say what Kagan and Nuland want them to say.

Even if Thucidides never mentioned it, the problem is real and accurately describes observable reality.

ObjectiveFunction , March 28, 2021 at 12:08 am

"Every generation gets the ancient Greeks and Romans it deserves." – Anon.

Socal Rhino , March 27, 2021 at 10:48 am

Just going by the number of articles in mainstream channels about avoiding the Thucydides Trap, I doubt that.

Roger , March 27, 2021 at 2:56 pm

The Thucydides Trap is a clownish misreading of history by simplistic International Relations scholars who should spend more time talking to real historians of the relevant period. Graham Allison is on record as having done no research on China, he just assumed the parallel with the Peloponnesian war. From my PhD dissertation, which included addressing such simplistic and historically-ignorant theories in International Relations:

The ahistorical, Eurocentric and universalist shortcomings of neorealism with respect to a rising power such as China are evident in analyses such as Allison's (2017), that rely upon the assumption that the small-scale Peloponnesian wars of more than two millennia ago are applicable to the modern world of superpowers and weapons of mass destruction, with the internal dynamics of each nation deemed to relative irrelevance. Furthermore, both classical realist and neorealist scholars may utilize simplistic readings of Thucydides, an author that may in fact be a highly unreliable narrator (Podoksik 2005). There is a great deal of disagreement among historians about who actually started the Peloponnesian wars; it could have been Athens, Sparta, Corinth or even a combination (Dickins 1911; Tannenbaum 1975; Kagan 2013), and therefore the main lesson to be learnt is the complexity of the real world, even the ancient one. In addition, as Bagby notes (1994, p. 133), "Thucydides thinks that an understanding of the political and cultural differences among city-states before and during the Peloponnesian War is crucial for understanding their behavior"; Sparta and Athens could easily be seen as greater ideological competitors than the Cold War US and Soviet Union.

occasional anonymous , March 27, 2021 at 6:55 pm

Actually it's pretty common knowledge among classisists that there was no Thucydides Trap. Whatever his many merits one thing Thucydides didn't even begin to do was to prove his central claim about jealously between a rising and an established power making conflict inevitable.

Yves Smith , March 27, 2021 at 10:14 pm

The book The Thucydides Trap is a 100% misreading of Thucydides. But that never stopped ideologues.

[Mar 28, 2021] It would follow, probably at the behest of Wall Street and Silicon Valley, that the aims stated in Xi's and Putin's Davos speeches would produce aggressive rhetoric from Biden and Blinken toward Russia and China

Mar 28, 2021 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

---

Nels Nelson , March 27, 2021 at 2:59 pm

Take an article back in February NC linked to in the Asia Times wherein Pepe Escobar reported that "the two really crucial events at Davos" were speeches given by Putin and Xi at the WEF that "received minimal or non-existent coverage across the wobbly West."
Here is a link to an analysis of Putin's speech by Rostislav Ishchenko provided in Escobar's article
https://www.stalkerzone.org/munich-esque-davos/?fbclid=IwAR39jqR8vWHHAAUP0KXazwBAqTqsg7PXkIrlB2Yvmuu0sXZP0WqB3fJgUjw

Add the above to the discussion between Pepe Escobar and Michael Hudson provided in the links today.

It would follow, probably at the behest of Wall Street and Silicon Valley, that the aims stated in Xi's and Putin's speeches and the material discussed by Escobar and Hudson would produce aggressive rhetoric from Biden and Blinken toward Russia and China.

Chauncey Gardiner , March 27, 2021 at 3:16 pm

Interesting that Putin mentioned "financial hegemony" as one of the two tools used "to carry out long-arm jurisdiction and suppress other countries." I assume he means the eurodollar system of offshore US dollars which remains the dominant currency of global finance and capital markets, and control of the global payments system. If so, what are the workarounds, and who controls them? or, are we talking Texas hold'em here?

Susan the other , March 27, 2021 at 3:40 pm

Just an observation here. China is making China a better place; Russia is making Russia a better place; India is India. And the United States looks to be headed in that direction. It is a big job and it will keep our "leaders" busy for a long time. One thing I'd like to see is a cooperating, cohesive and sustainable North America. Canada, the US, Mexico and Central America. That would be a good project for our foreign policy wizards. World War 2 is over. Way long gone. We should let the EU, and especially our long and loyal ally Germany, make their own peace with Russia and China.

Sound of the Suburbs , March 27, 2021 at 3:44 pm

China was all onboard for Western neoliberal ideas.
They started to have their doubts when the US, UK and Euro-zone wrecked their economies in a ridiculous financial fiasco in 2008.
When they realised they had made exactly the same mistakes, and nearly driven the Chinese economy into a financial crisis, they realised neoclassical economics was the problem.
They really needed some decent economics and fast.

We never did work out what happened in 2008, the Chinese did.
The Chinese now know the US, UK and Euro-zone went on a joint economic suicide mission before 2008.
After 2008, they went on an economic suicide mission.
Policymakers are rendered completely clueless with neoclassical economics and try and crash their economies.
If the West is sticking with this load of old rubbish, that's their problem, the Chinese have learned from their mistakes.

Davos 2018 – The Chinese know financial crises come from the private debt-to-GDP ratio and inflated asset prices
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WOs6S0VrlA
The black swan flies in under our policymakers' radar.
They are looking at public debt and consumer price inflation, while the problems are developing in private debt and asset price inflation.
The PBoC knew how to spot a Minsky Moment coming, unlike the FED, BoE, ECB and BoJ.

A year later, and they had made further progress.
Davos 2019 – The Chinese know bank lending needs to be directed into areas that grow the economy and that their earlier stimulus went into the wrong places.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNBcIFu-_V0
They had pumped bank credit into areas that don't grow GDP, and the private debt-to-GDP had risen to a level they were on the verge of a financial crisis.
Everyone does that with neoclassical economics, but they don't usually see the financial crisis coming, like the US in 1929, Japan 1991 and US, UK and Euro-zone in 2008.

Sound of the Suburbs , March 27, 2021 at 3:45 pm

The one good thing about bringing back neoclassical economics.
We know what led to Wall Street Crash in 1929. The same mistakes have been repeated globally.

At 25.30 mins you can see the super imposed private debt-to-GDP ratios.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAStZJCKmbU&list=PLmtuEaMvhDZZQLxg24CAiFgZYldtoCR-R&index=6

No one realises the problems that are building up in the economy as they use an economics that doesn't look at debt, neoclassical economics.
As you head towards the financial crisis, the economy booms due to the money creation of unproductive bank lending, as it did in the 1920s in the US.
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-bulletin/2014/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy.pdf
The financial crisis appears to come out of a clear blue sky when you use an economics that doesn't consider debt, like neoclassical economics, as it did in 1929.
1929 – US
1991 – Japan
2008 – US, UK and Euro-zone
The PBoC saw the Chinese Minsky Moment coming and you can too by looking at the chart above.
The Chinese were lucky; it was very late in the day.

Everyone has made the same mistake; only the Chinese worked out what the problem was.

Phil in KC , March 27, 2021 at 6:23 pm

Our current status is in some respects comparable to Britain in the decades preceding WW I: balancing rival powers off of each other. In Britain's case, the rivals were Russia, first and foremost, and Germany. But as Germany was perceived to be threatening to both Britain and Russia, Britain made an alliance with Russia (and France) against Germany.

We tried to make a similar alliance with Russia against the growing power of the PRC, but Yeltsin was too weak, and Putin was not eager to become the junior partner of the US in the game of containing Chinese power. Then came the pivot to China (after the failure of Clinton's "reset" with Russia). That failed too. Trump tried to re-engage Putin and levied tariffs on China. Both moves were ineffective.

We still have something to learn from Britain, though: mainly, how to have a long and gentle glide path into decline and yet still manage to punch above our weight. This is something Lawrence Wilkerson has talked about for the last 15 years or so. We either do this or go bankrupt trying to hold onto . . . what?

c_heale , March 27, 2021 at 9:57 pm

Not sure the UK's decline was long and gentle. The USA will be one of the three major powers in the world for a long time yet. What has gone wrong for the USA imo is that it tried to be a hyperpower, to rule the world, when that possiblity really disappeared when first Russia and then other countries obtained nuclear weapons. The neoconseratives need to stop drinking the koolaid.

drumlin woodchuckles , March 27, 2021 at 10:45 pm

Why should we care about punching above our weight?

RMO , March 28, 2021 at 1:34 am

"We tried to make a similar alliance with Russia against the growing power of the PRC, but Yeltsin was too weak, and Putin was not eager to become the junior partner of the US in the game of containing Chinese power."

I don't see any historical evidence supporting that assertion. The US tried to do a complete sack and burn of the remains of the USSR and walk off with everything worth anything. They didn't quite succeed at that but did a lot of harm along the way. Russia tried (with Putin no less) to become part of the EU or at least associate with it and tried to become part of NATO (or at least associate with the rest of Europe in military and security matters) and was told to get lost. Then, violating promises, the expansion of NATO began. I think the record shows that the US wants Russia to be an enemy – regardless of what the Russians want. With the history of the past twenty years to go by I would think that both Russia and China (and likely several other nations) now believe that the US simply can't be negotiated with due to it's penchant for throwing away treaties and ignoring the rule of law whenever it feels like it. If that wasn't bad enough, there's also the holier-than-thou moralizing that goes along with it.

The Rev Kev , March 28, 2021 at 1:59 am

About a decade or so ago there was serious talk in Washington of a US-China pact as an extension of Chimerica. China would supply the money and the manpower while Washington would supply the brains. The rest of the world could go fly a kite as these two would then run the world but the Chinese for some mysterious reason had zero interest in being the junior partner in this proposal.

drumlin woodchuckles , March 28, 2021 at 3:02 pm

That's because China had already decided to turn America into one of its many Overseas Tibets. ( I have read that the Chinese word for Tibet translates to Western Treasure House. And they also refer to Tibet as Water Tower Number One).

[Mar 28, 2021] " how to bring the now-former hegemon down off its high perch " is a bit ambitious. It may be instead be to minimize the inevitable global damage caused by an empire in decline

Mar 28, 2021 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

---

Thuto , March 27, 2021 at 8:18 am

Putin has perhaps realised that unflappability and civility, long his calling cards in diplomatic relations with the West, even when coming under the most vicious attacks, will never win him or Russia any favour with the western mainstream press and their political class overlords. You can't reason with a bully so might as well do a more polished version of Duterte telling Obama to "go to hell" as Putin and China are doing here. The pillars of American foreign policy are increasingly being shown up to be relics of a bygone era, anachronistic and maladaptive in the extreme.

The world has moved on and people are no longer buying the "America is a force for good" story. They see the worst of American cultural values e.g. excessive consumption, being exported by Hollywood to their societies and American companies swooping in to harvest the demand for useless stuff that comes as a result of this. Dismounting the high horse will be difficult for America to do but I don't see that she has any choice here, the world is starting to signal strongly that we've all had enough of the exceptionalism and belligerence borne of entitlement with which the US engages with other nations.

Weimer , March 27, 2021 at 8:53 am

Yes, and perhaps the most important task before R/C is how to bring the now-former hegemon down off its high perch, quietly and gracefully, or at least without triggering an all out war. I do hope they can pull it off, otherwise it's curtains for us all.
But it is not the first time p. Putin told the West Russia will go its own way. The 2007 Munich security conference put all on notice; some just refused to listen.
But if we take those 5 min 25 sec, and the Chinese statement in Anchorage that USA has no qualifications (!) to speak to China from the position of strength, we should see that the world's distribution of power has changed. In spite of more tricks and subterfuge that the West will no doubt deploy, what matters more now is the self-confidence these two nations have finally owned. For us, the little folk, however, it will get worse before it gets better.

pebird , March 27, 2021 at 10:44 am

" how to bring the now-former hegemon down off its high perch " is a bit ambitious.

It may be instead be to minimize the inevitable global damage caused by an empire in decline.

[Mar 28, 2021] No empire, or system, lasts forever: neoliberalism as a system requires infinite growth, quite impossible on a finite planet

Everything of human creation has a lifespan and everything of human creation can be changed or removed by human hand. Slavery, feudalism and other systems of the past

March 18, 2021

Mar 28, 2021 | systemicdisorder.wordpress.com

The bottom line question from all of the above is this: Will this U.S. dominance come to an end? Stepping back and looking at this question in a historical way tells us that the answer can only be yes, given that there has been a sequence of cities that have been the financial center.

Centuries ago, the seat of a small republic such as Venice could be the leading financial center on the strength of its trading networks. Once capitalism took hold, however, the financial center was successively located within a larger federation that possessed both a strong navy and a significant fleet of merchant ships (Amsterdam); then within a sizeable and unified country with a large enough population to maintain a powerful navy and a physical presence throughout an empire (London); and finally within a continent-spanning country that can project its economic and multi-dimensional military power around the world (New York).

No empire, whatever its form, lasts forever. But knowledge of the sequence of capitalist centers tells us nothing of timing. Each successive new financial locus was embedded in successively larger powers able to operate militarily over larger areas and with more force. What then could replace the U.S.? The European Union has its effectiveness diluted by the many nationalisms within its sphere (and thus nationalism acts as a weakening agent for the EU whereas it is a strengthening agent for the U.S. and China). China's economy is yet too small and retains capital controls, and its currency, the renminbi, isn't fully convertible.

U.S. Treasury bills remain the ultimate safe haven, as shown when investors poured into U.S. debt during crises such as the 2008 collapse, even when events in the U.S. are the trigger.

There are no other possible other contenders, and both the EU and China, as already discussed, are in no position to seriously challenge U.S. hegemony.

Here we have a collision of possibilities: The transcending of capitalism and transition to a new economic system or the decreasing functionality of the world capitalist system should it persist for several more decades. Given the resiliency of capitalism, and the many tools available to it (not least military power), the latter scenario can't be ruled out although it might be unlikely. Making any prediction on the lifespan of capitalism is fraught with difficulty, not least because of the many predictions of its collapse for well over a century. But capitalism as a system requires infinite growth , quite impossible on a finite planet and all the more dire given there is almost no place on Earth remaining into which it can expand .

Although we can't know what the expiration date of capitalism will be, it will almost certainly be sometime in the current century . But it won't be followed by something better without a global movement of movements working across borders with a conscious aim of bringing a better world into being. In the absence of such movements, capitalism is likely to hang on for decades to come. In that scenario, what country or bloc could replace the U.S. as the center?

And would we want a new center to dictate to the rest of the world? In a world of economic democracy (what we can call socialism) where all nations and societies can develop in their own way, in harmony with the environment and without the need to expand, and with production done for human need rather than corporate profit, there would no global center or hegemon and no need for one.

Capitalism, however, can't function without a center that uses financial, military and all other means to keep itself in the saddle and the rest of the world in line.

Yes, the day of U.S. dethronement will come, as will the end of capitalism . But the former is not going to happen any time soon, however much millions around the world wish that to be so, and the latter is what we should be working toward. A better world is possible; a gentler and kinder capitalism with a different center is not.

Jef Jelten says: March 18, 2021 at 12:31 pm

Excellent analysis! I would just point out that those who decide how the world operates, and I am not talking about the US Gov, hold the vast majority of their wealth in dollar$. Most of their power and influence would disappear if the dollar as world reserve currency system were to end. Their power to manipulate from behind the scenes is nearly unlimited and this is not conspiracy theory.

Their ace in the hole is of course World WAR.

It seems to me that all wars and all Empire collapses are about resources and we are at or near peak everything so that is IMO what will determine how things play out sooner than we all think too.

Cheers and keep up the good work!
jef

Systemic Disorder says: at 6:03 pm

Greetings, Jef.

" Most of their power and influence would disappear if the dollar as world reserve currency system were to end. " That is very much true, and is true not only for the U.S. bourgeoisie but also for the bourgeoisie and compradors of countries around the world. When the U.S. unraveling comes, it will be on a steeping curve, but that day is a long way off yet. Nonetheless, resource depletion may well intervene sooner than we believe . Better to organize now rather than later.

[Mar 28, 2021] Real unemployment is double the 'official' unemployment rate

Notable quotes:

"... The Globe and Mail ..."

"... The Globe and Mail ..."

"... The Endless Crisis: How Monopoly-Finance Capital Produces Stagnation and Upheaval from the USA to China ..."

Mar 28, 2021 | systemicdisorder.wordpress.com

How many people are really out of work? The answer is surprisingly difficult to ascertain. For reasons that are likely ideological at least in part, official unemployment figures greatly under-report the true number of people lacking necessary full-time work.

That the "reserve army of labor" is quite large goes a long way toward explaining the persistence of stagnant wages in an era of increasing productivity.

How large? Across North America, Europe and Australia, the real unemployment rate is approximately double the "official" unemployment rate.

The "official" unemployment rate in the United States, for example, was 5.5 percent for February 2015. That is the figure that is widely reported. But the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics keeps track of various other unemployment rates, the most pertinent being its "U-6" figure. The U-6 unemployment rate includes all who are counted as unemployed in the "official" rate, plus discouraged workers, the total of those employed part time but not able to secure full-time work and all persons marginally attached to the labor force (those who wish to work but have given up). The actual U.S. unemployment rate for February 2015, therefore, is 11 percent .

Canada makes it much more difficult to know its real unemployment rate. The official Canadian unemployment rate for February was 6.8 percent, a slight increase from January that Statistics Canada attributes to "more people search[ing] for work." The official measurement in Canada, as in the U.S., European Union and Australia, mirrors the official standard for measuring employment defined by the International Labour Organization -- those not working at all and who are "actively looking for work." (The ILO is an agency of the United Nations.)

Statistics Canada's closest measure toward counting full unemployment is its R8 statistic, but the R8 counts people in part-time work, including those wanting full-time work, as "full-time equivalents," thus underestimating the number of under-employed by hundreds of thousands, according to an analysis by The Globe and Mail . There are further hundreds of thousands not counted because they do not meet the criteria for "looking for work." Thus The Globe and Mail analysis estimates Canada's real unemployment rate for 2012 was 14.2 percent rather than the official 7.2 percent. Thus Canada's true current unemployment rate today is likely about 14 percent.

Everywhere you look, more are out of work

The gap is nearly as large in Europe as in North America. The official European Union unemployment rate was 9.8 percent in January 2015 . The European Union's Eurostat service requires some digging to find out the actual unemployment rate, requiring adding up different parameters. Under-employed workers and discouraged workers comprise four percent of the E.U. workforce each, and if we add the one percent of those seeking work but not immediately available, that pushes the actual unemployment rate to about 19 percent.

The same pattern holds for Australia. The Australia Bureau of Statistics revealed that its measure of "extended labour force under-utilisation" -- this includes "discouraged" jobseekers, the "underemployed" and those who want to start work within a month, but cannot begin immediately -- was 13.1 percent in August 2012 (the latest for which I can find), in contrast to the "official," and far more widely reported, unemployment rate of five percent at the time.

Concomitant with these sobering statistics is the length of time people are out of work. In the European Union, for example, the long-term unemployment rate -- defined as the number of people out of work for at least 12 months -- doubled from 2008 to 2013 . The number of U.S. workers unemployed for six months or longer more than tripled from 2007 to 2013.

Thanks to the specter of chronic high unemployment, and capitalists' ability to transfer jobs overseas as "free trade" rules become more draconian, it comes as little surprise that the share of gross domestic income going to wages has declined steadily. In the U.S., the share has declined from 51.5 percent in 1970 to about 42 percent. But even that decline likely understates the amount of compensation going to working people because almost all gains in recent decades has gone to the top one percent.

Around the world, worker productivity has risen over the past four decades while wages have been nearly flat. Simply put, we'd all be making much more money if wages had merely kept pace with increased productivity.

Insecure work is the global norm

The increased ability of capital to move at will around the world has done much to exacerbate these trends. The desire of capitalists to depress wages to buoy profitability is a driving force behind their push for governments to adopt "free trade" deals that accelerate the movement of production to low-wage, regulation-free countries. On a global basis, those with steady employment are actually a minority of the world's workers.

Using International Labour Organization figures as a starting point, professors John Bellamy Foster and Robert McChesney calculate that the "global reserve army of labor" -- workers who are underemployed, unemployed or "vulnerably employed" (including informal workers) -- totals 2.4 billion. In contrast, the world's wage workers total 1.4 billion -- far less! Writing in their book The Endless Crisis: How Monopoly-Finance Capital Produces Stagnation and Upheaval from the USA to China , they write:

"It is the existence of a reserve army that in its maximum extent is more than 70 percent larger than the active labor army that serves to restrain wages globally, and particularly in poorer countries. Indeed, most of this reserve army is located in the underdeveloped countries of the world, though its growth can be seen today in the rich countries as well." [page 145]

The earliest countries that adopted capitalism could "export" their "excess" population though mass emigration. From 1820 to 1915, Professors Foster and McChesney write, more than 50 million people left Europe for the "new world." But there are no longer such places for developing countries to send the people for whom capitalism at home can not supply employment. Not even a seven percent growth rate for 50 years across the entire global South could absorb more than a third of the peasantry leaving the countryside for cities, they write. Such a sustained growth rate is extremely unlikely.

As with the growing environmental crisis, these mounting economic problems are functions of the need for ceaseless growth. Once again, infinite growth is not possible on a finite planet, especially one that is approaching its limits. Worse, to keep the system functioning at all, the planned obsolescence of consumer products necessary to continually stimulate household spending accelerates the exploitation of natural resources at unsustainable rates and all this unnecessary consumption produces pollution increasingly stressing the environment.

Humanity is currently consuming the equivalent of one and a half earths , according to the non-profit group Global Footprint Network. A separate report by WWF–World Wide Fund For Nature in collaboration with the Zoological Society of London and Global Footprint Network, calculates that the Middle East/Central Asia, Asia-Pacific, North America and European Union regions are each consuming about double their regional biocapacity.

We have only one Earth. And that one Earth is in the grips of a system that takes at a pace that, unless reversed, will leave it a wrecked hulk while throwing ever more people into poverty and immiseration. That this can go on indefinitely is the biggest fantasy.

[Mar 26, 2021] Those Fortune 500 companies most of which incorporated in Delaware did not do so for patriotic reasons, but to avoid tax and government regulation.

Mar 26, 2021 | www.unz.com

Sean , says: March 26, 2021 at 12:55 am GMT • 19.8 hours ago

@Commentator Mike eo-play">

Reagan made jokes about burning the midday oil, but he was faced with stagnant collapsing Russia, not dynamic China. Biden has actually said that China is doomed to collapse and already in decline because–get this– the Chinese are not young enough. Those Fortune 500 companies most of which incorporated in Delaware did not do so for patriotic reasons, but to avoid tax and government regulation. The elites (38 to 58 year olds) running America or at least largely determining who wins the elections are more interested in making money on their Chinese investments than US primacy; Trump was a merely a blip and the future of America is pretty much set on relative decline now.

[Mar 24, 2021] On Jerome Powell pronouncements

Mar 24, 2021 | www.wsj.com

P Paul Avila SUBSCRIBER 8 hours ago U.S. stocks edged higher Wednesday as investors awaited more testimony from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.

Good grief. Is there any way his subordinates could prevent that? Perhaps lock him in a supply closet until the market closes? Every time he opens his pie hole, I lose money. W Will Bee SUBSCRIBER 8 hours ago Actually I suspect we are waiting for all the FED and Treasury "people" to stop jawboning us so Markets can assimilate their irrelevance

[Mar 19, 2021] U.S. Aggressiveness Will Accelerate Its Demise

Notable quotes:

"... Western headlines are for western internal consumption. And what's happening behind the scene, what incentives are offered and what threats are made in exchange for what specific actions, we simply don't know. ..."

"... The Biden admin's behavior is purposeful and, frankly, entirely logical if you view it from the American perspective of global production: the US, its ruling class, and its population greatly benefits from the neocolonial expropriation of value from exploited nations, granted largely through unequal exchange. ..."

Mar 19, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

Jackrabbit , Mar 18 2021 19:03 utc | 3

Then, after days of badmouthing China, it finally daunted to Blinken that he needs China's help.

• Blinken urges China to convince North Korea to denuclearize - March 18, AP
• China must persuade North Korea to give up nuclear weapons, says Blinken - March 18, Guardian

Why, after so many bad words towards it, would China help the U.S. with solving the North Korea problem? It has zero incentive to do so.

The same aggressive behavior can be seen with regards to Russia. Baseless accusations of Russian election interferences are followed with more sanctions and threats topped off with Biden calling Russia's President Putin a 'killer' . As the Canadian Russia expert Paul Robinson writes :

As for Biden's comments, well what can one say? Didn't he just order the bombing of Syria. Doesn't that make him a 'killer' too? Politicians should avoid this sort of language. I suspect, though, that what this and the intelligence report mentioned above indicate is that Russiagate , with its allegations of Trump-Putin collusion to undermine American democracy, has done irreparable damage to US-Russia relations. One gets the impression that there is now a deep, deep hatred of Russia within the US government, a hatred that prevents any sane analysis of Russian intentions and actions, as well as of US national interests . I fear that this will last for quite a long time.

Andrei Martyanov adds :

[The] degradation of the American political institutions, top-bottom, and its speed are mind-boggling. As for the class and culture--US political elite and US media machine don't have any. Biden merely confirmed it today.
...
One Russian saying posits that one can still negotiate with scoundrels, one cannot negotiate with idiots. When the opposite side is both, boy, talk about the United States turning into the third world country.

The hostility the U.S., by its behavior and words, creates against itself is not restricted to Russia and China.

Last week the French "Armed Forces Joint Reflection Circle" CRI, an independent think tank of former generals and high officers of the French forces, issued an open letter to NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg in which it accused him of having acting solely in the interest of the U.S. during the development of his NATO 2030 plan .

The letter details how Stoltenberg, NATO and the U.S. have caused the bad relations with Russia. It says that the U.S. is trying use a fictional 'Russian threat' to pressure NATO countries into morphing into a global force, under U.S. command and independent of the United Nations, to then use it against China. This while the real threat to Europe is Islamic terrorism caused by the U.S. interferences in the Middle East and north Africa. The U.S. led NATO is thereby becoming a danger for Europe.

The accusations the French generals are launching against the U.S. go beyond anything one might hear from Moscow or Beijing.

The next 'allied' nation that will have sound reason to turn hostile towards the U.S. might well be Germany :

The Biden administration Thursday stepped up its rhetoric against a gas pipeline between Russia and Germany, calling on all those involved in the project to "immediately abandon" their work.

"The Department reiterates its warning that any entity involved in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline risks US sanctions and should immediately abandon work on the pipeline," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

Nord Stream 2 is of vital importance to Germany's energy security. The German public was rather hostile to President Trump and Biden's victory was seen with relief. But when it sees how Biden pursues the same policies, and with a similar tone, it will turn on him. A more general 'anti-Americanism' would then arise.

The uncompromising and ever aggressive behavior the U.S. shows towards competitors as well as friends will not lead to a stronger U.S. position in the world. People and nations will learn to work around it.

These rushed attempts to prevent the ending of its unipolar moment will only accelerate the move towards a new multilateral global system.

Posted by b on March 18, 2021 at 18:48 UTC | Permalink

AFP Breaking News (from Twitter)

US warns entities involved in Nord Stream 2 to "immediately abandon work"

White House says does not regret Biden calling Putin "killer"

!!

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Seej , Mar 18 2021 19:05 utc | 4

Pepe Escobar also has noted in his Telegram channel the craziness of Dem Dementia admin's work till now aptly:

"DIPLOMACY'S DEAD, BABY. DIPLOMACY'S DEAD.

The Empire of Chaos is in utter desperation, and on a Kill Bill rampage. Without a samurai sword.

Some of us, including Alastair Crooke, Paul Craig Roberts, The Saker, and if we he was still alive, Prof. Stephen Cohen, have been warning everyone for a long time.

It doesn't matter that Russiagate was completely debunked. The Dem Dementia administration is now on Russiagate 2.0 on steroids.

This "intel" report on Russian interference in the - rigged - US elections does not even qualify as a bad joke.

What Crash Test Dummy's handlers told him to say in that interview about Putin being "a killer", "without a soul" who will "pay a price", goes way beyond ANYTHING that happened during the Cold War.

At least there was a measure of diplomatic decency in the superpowers relationship.

What's happening now is totally reckless, totally irrational - not to mention terminally stupid: there is NO American foreign policy left.

The Kremlin - as well as the Ministy of Foreign Affairs - already got the picture: they are dealing with a bunch of lowly gangsters which also happens to be criminally insane.

For the record: Stupidistan is now at war ON THREE FRONTS. Against Russia, against China and against Iran.

Declining empires are ALWAYS strategically stupid."

Piotr Berman , Mar 18 2021 19:06 utc | 5

Nord Stream 2 is of vital importance to Germany's energy security. The German public was rather hostile to President Trump and Biden's victory was seen with relief. But when it sees how Biden pursues the same policies, and with a similar tone, it will turn on him. <-- b

However "hostile", Germany contributed to uni-lateral Trumpian sanctions, and so far, North Stream 2 is the only beacon of independence. Take Ukraine: Germany and France form half of Normandy Four, and provided name for Steinmeier formula. Ukraine resolutely resists proceeding with any obligations under that formula. Germany is silent on that and support annual extensions of sanctions, not to mention sanctions on Syria, Venezuela and whatever EU sanctions. Syria is an interesting example. It could be actually popular among German voters to facilitate reconstruction in that country and return of the refugees to their homeland. Iran and Russia are potentially good customers for German industry. Independence of German banks and other companies from whimsical sanctions from USA would help too.

Seemingly, ingrained masochism is hard to overcome.

Piotr Berman , Mar 18 2021 19:12 utc | 6

Ukrainian government quite recently decided to insult China. Not only Chinese investors who got the majority stake in a major Ukrainian company (major in Ukraine, that is) were prevented from getting their hard paid ownership, but the buyers became targets of sanctions, practically, confiscation of property.

The reaction, other than verbal, was a bit slow.

But last week a large business/tourism delegation from China visited Crimea, officially sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Trade and concluded a number of deals, with promise of more. What happened to Ukrainian purchase of Chinese vaccine is hard to tell.

Piotr Berman , Mar 18 2021 19:20 utc | 7

For the record: Stupidistan is now at war ON THREE FRONTS. Against Russia, against China and against Iran.

Declining empires are ALWAYS strategically stupid."

Posted by: Seej | Mar 18 2021 19:05 utc | 4

Alas, more than 30 years ago it was observed in USA that it benefits a politician to seem stupid, and being genuinely stupid is even better. Why do you think power to be within Democratic Party decided to maneuver the least intellectually able contender to win in the primaries? That in itself is not necessarily bad, but on the lower levels of government, you must prove stupidity (or at least utter lack of original thinking) to advance. Now we have new generations of opportunists hiding any sign of thinking, apart from passing all the required exams in elite schools etc. Let me think of the greatness and extinction of Irish elk.

karlof1 , Mar 18 2021 19:22 utc | 8

Seej @4--

Thanks for posting Pepe's comments, some of which are in his current article I linked to on the open thread. In my comment related to Pepe's article I noted his excerpt of Chinese academic Jisi and this specific part:

"the Americans are eager to deal with problems before they are ready to improve the relationship."

That observation is consistent with that of an entity that only wants its orders obeyed and seeks no relationship or friendship with any other entity since it sees itself as Top Dog, and #1 in every way. As with the Nord Stream project, we see the Gangster mentality--Do as I say or else!

Not only does the Emperor have no clothes or much of a working memory, he's got erectile disfunction too that's well beyond the ability of Viagra to fix.

psychohistorian , Mar 18 2021 19:38 utc | 9

So here we have Blinken, Winken and Nod providing direction for failing empire

Blinken is obvious
Winken is that behind the scenes, wink, wink, nod, nod (there ain't no class structure here) type VP and
Nod is the new normal as US President.

I am sure they will try to take America to new places, yet to be dreamt of....will the brainwashed of the West follow?

About Germany and Nord Stream II.....To a degree that I am not sure of, Germany is like Japan, a fully owned colony of empire....this may be the time that the Germany nut gets cracked wide open....interesting times indeed.

Where are the details of Blinken telling China how to behave? I can hardly wait for the next act of Blinken, Winken and Nod

Mao Cheng Ji , Mar 18 2021 19:50 utc | 11

"Why, after so many bad words towards it, would China help the U.S. with solving the North Korea problem? It has zero incentive to do so."

This (as well as the Germany/NS2 thing) sounds like a rather naive view. Western headlines are for western internal consumption. And what's happening behind the scene, what incentives are offered and what threats are made in exchange for what specific actions, we simply don't know.

Norwegian , Mar 18 2021 20:00 utc | 13

Last week the French "Armed Forces Joint Reflection Circle" CRI, an independent think tank of former generals and high officers of the French forces, issued an open letter to NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg in which it accused him of having acting solely in the interest of the U.S. during the development of his NATO 2030 plan.

Well, I'd like to thank the French generals, because Stoltenberg is nothing but a Quisling, who betrays his country and is "acting solely in the interest of the U.S.". Indeed.

Kapusta , Mar 18 2021 20:19 utc | 16

The Biden admin's behavior is purposeful and, frankly, entirely logical if you view it from the American perspective of global production: the US, its ruling class, and its population greatly benefits from the neocolonial expropriation of value from exploited nations, granted largely through unequal exchange.

Trump's ascendancy in the run-up to and aftermath of 2016 can be viewed as a reaction to the collapse of neoliberalism in 08-09, culminating in a policy that looked to partially revert to old-school colonialism of forcing raw material trade to the US rather than exporting the purchase of labor power beginning in the 80s. Of course, that is folly, as it was never possible for Trump to truly return productive jobs back to the US, at least not at the rates expected for global north standards of living or profit expectations. Even the 25% of productive labor in the US averages wages above global wages (i.e. even productive workers in the US are net exploiters of global south labor power). Nevertheless, in the wake of neoliberalism's collapse, standards of living now ebb and flow in the US, which means that Trump and future continuous descent into fascist policy is all but inevitable.

Biden is a reaction to Trump in that his admin represents a desperate attempt to salvage the neoliberal policies of the past 50 years since the 80s. Unfortunately for Biden, and the rest of America, there's only so many populations you can exploit before exploited productive forces become so advanced that they begin to demand higher wages, and thus profits dry up. Global wage differences even out, then import prices go up, and our American standard of living continues to drop until the sweatshops come home to roost. That won't stand and ideology shifts again and again (Biden's response to these shifts is, ironically, censorship and control).

So what does the Biden admin do? They know it will eventually come down to opening up new labor power markets (those sweet, sweet populations and natural resources of Russia are so tempting to Biden's vampiric brood) and taking down competing countries (China's rise as a consumer market is a big problem for the US). This is why Biden's behavior makes sense. If they don't put maximum pressure now, not just on Russia and China, but all potential neocolonial interests, then they won't get the chance in the future. We'll see the internal contradictions in the US give rise to even more blatant fascism (doesn't matter from whom, Trump or Biden).

[Mar 14, 2021] Something about modern day academics

Mar 14, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

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Ohiolad 1 day ago

In the present political climate, the words "government" and "ethics" could NEVER go together in the same sentence. It's an oxymoron. Leftist politicians lie all the time as easily as they breathe.

CRM114 1 day ago (Edited)

... I was once asked to review a book on Engineering Ethics for a University course. I did some background research and discovered that the first four examples of ethical behavior resulted in all those engineers being secretly blacklisted and never being able to work in the profession again. They didn't use the book. However, the fact still remains that it still happens, in case you were wondering how all those bridges and dams that fall down passed inspection the year before.

CaMuPaSh 17 hours ago remove link

The first thing to remember is that most "professors" are frauds.

The second thing to remember is that most places that "professors" work at are frauds.

The third thing to remember is the first thing and the second thing.

We're talking here about a gender of parasite that usually Retires In Place as soon as s/he gets tenure.

Just keep taking out those student loans to support these, predominantly, left wing loonies.

Learn plumbing move to TX.

New_Meat 1 day ago remove link

"Military Intelligence"

"Jumbo Shrimp"

and now

"Government Ethics"

Back when, Jack Welch required all GE people to take "GE Ethics". Naturally, one would think that this is a good thing. But after constant interactions with GE people, we concluded that the purpose of the training was:

• Make sure that everyone in GE knew where "the line" is, then
• Make sure that everyone in GE knew where the "gray areas" lie, then
• Make sure that everyone in GE knew how far beyond the "gray area" they could operate without getting into trouble.
• Then give the more aggressive people an "out"

Faeriedust 1 day ago

That's the usual purpose of "ethics training" in both medicine and the legal profession. Been there, arranged the coursework, mailed the certificates.

AI Agent 9 hours ago remove link

Corporate ethics works the same way. President of the Company gets caught bribing the government. Office of ethics is created. Everyone down to the janitor is trained in ethics: don't steal stationary and don't stop working, even for a minute.

Meanwhile, new president is designing killer airplanes and hiding stuff from the FAA. However, saying that's wrong is an ethics violation.

It's just atheist ethics.

[Mar 14, 2021] How Partisan Politics Rots Your Brain

Mar 14, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by David D'Amato via Libertarian Institute & Libertarianism.org,

Recent research using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques is allowing us to peer into the connections, yet shrouded in mystery, between local brain activity, cognitive processes, and partisan attachment. This developing body of knowledge has revealed the profound importance of evolution in shaping the ways in which our brains process all kinds of information, in particular political information. At the center of this evolutionary journey is the importance of groups -- of being initiated and accepted into them, of aligning ourselves with them, of being loyal to them regardless of philosophical considerations. The social dynamics of group membership and participation are programmed more deeply into our brains than is abstract philosophizing. "In other words, people will go along with the group, even if the ideas oppose their own ideologies -- belonging may have more value than facts. " Because we once moved from place to place as nomads, such groups are our homes even more than any physical locations are.

We now have decades of research suggesting -- if not proving -- " the ubiquity of emotion‐​biased motivated reasoning ," reasoning that is qualitatively different from the kind operating when subjects are engaged in "cold reasoning," where the subjects lack a "strong emotional stake" in the subjects at issue. Coupled with a growing literature on the startling character and extent of political ignorance , the current state has dire implications for human freedom. The stakes are high: in their 2018 study of why and how partisanship impairs the brain's ability to process information objectively, NYU researchers Jay J. Van Bavel and Andrea Pereira note that "partisanship can alter memory, implicit evaluation, and even perceptual judgments."

One recent study, published last fall by a team from Berkeley, Stanford, and Johns Hopkins, set out to better understand how partisan biases develop in the brain. The researchers had subjects watch a series of videos, using fMRI to explore the "neural mechanisms that underlie the biased processing of real‐​world political content." The results showed that partisan team members process identical information in highly biased and motivated ways. The researchers locate this neural polarization in the part of the brain known as the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, a region associated with understanding and formulating narratives. The study also found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that to the extent a given participant's brain activity during the videos aligned with that of the "average liberal" or "average conservative," the participant was more likely to take up that group's position .

The study accords with years of previous research showing that partisans' opinions on important social, political, and economic issues are affected by subconscious brain processes -- processes of which they're neither aware nor in control . This ought to be deeply concerning to everyone who belongs to a political team: processes are taking place in your brain, underneath or beyond the level of direct awareness, that are informing your conclusions about important social and political issues. To reflect on this for even a moment should fill anyone who aspires to critical thinking or rationality with a kind of dread, for loyalty to the team seems to be overriding the higher faculties of the mind .

But, the authors are careful to note, it's important not to interpret these results as pointing to some kind of determinism, whereby we can't choose how to think or what we believe. As one of of the study's authors, Stanford psychologist Jamil Zaki, says, "Critically, these differences do not imply that people are hardwired to disagree." Rather, these neural pathways seem to be carved largely by the kinds and sources of the media we consume . From the data yielded by such research, among many other similar studies, a picture begins to emerge of partisanship as a kind of mind poisoning , an infection that leads to serious and, importantly, measurable cognitive impairment . Evidence suggests that, under the influence of partisanship, we can't even understand our own thoughts and opinions.

In another important, recent experiment, researchers wanted to understand the relative accuracy of participants' introspective constructs. The researchers set out to gauge people's ability to understand their own choices, to see clearly "the elements of internal argumentation that lead to [their] choices." In particular, the researchers wanted to know how subjects would deal with choices that had been manipulated -- that is, whether subjects would "notice mismatches between their intended choice and the outcome they are presented with." Would subjects recognize that something was off? If they failed to notice the manipulation, would they offer justifications for choices they had not even made? The assumption is that subjects who fail to notice the mismatches must not really understand the reasons for their choices or "the internal processes leading to a moral or political judgment."

The results revealed a conspicuous "introspective blindness to the internal processes leading to a moral or political judgment." People didn't seem to understand why they had made the decisions they'd made (or had not made), though some exhibited what the researchers call " unconscious detection of self‐​deception " -- these subjects were unable to detect the manipulations of their answers, but they did register lower confidence in the manipulated choices, which the authors suggest points to "the existence of a neural mechanism unconsciously monitoring our own thoughts."

Once one has chosen and joined a team, she has very little control over her own thoughts. When they are introduced, new data are distorted, misinterpreted, or discarded based on their consistency with what we may describe as a program running in the background: partisanship leads the team member into a cognitive position of unconscious self‐​deception . Few of us, if fully understanding this phenomenon, would choose it for themselves -- at least that's the hope of many who study this area. As the authors observe, "reflecting on our beliefs may help to develop free societies." They suggest that if citizens better understood the brain mechanics of the cognitive impairment and self‐​deception brought on by partisanship, they'd be positioned to make better decisions. Research has shown that " reflecting on how we make decisions leads to better decisions ."

Similar research on self‐​deception in politics has also confirmed the presence of the Dunning‐​Kruger effect (to summarize, people think they know a lot more than they actually do). Further, the effect is exaggerated within the context of politics, with low‐​knowledge participants describing themselves as even more knowledgeable than usual once partisanship is made a conspicuous factor . Vitor Geraldi Haase and Isabella Starling‐​Alves posit that the kind of self‐​deception that is such "a major characteristic of political partisanship probably evolved as an evolutionary adaptive strategy to deal with the intragroup‐​extragroup dynamics of human evolution." Objective truth, meaning roughly an accurate model of reality, is not important, at least not anywhere near as important, as conformity and indeed submission, which we may associate with social reality .

Whatever its flaws , evolutionary psychology offers us several promising leads on the question of just why the brain isn't able to perform on partisanship. This notion of social reality is an important clue. At this juncture, it is important to underline the fact that when we speak of partisanship, we are not speaking of ideology; the relationship between partisan identification and political ideology is complicated, the connection between the two not particularly strong. Ideologues tend to think systematically, and the philosophical contents of their beliefs are deeply important to them. What is important to the partisan is not what she believes, but that she aligns her beliefs with those of her team or in-group -- or else, as may be the case, that she is loyal to and supportive of the party group despite any real or perceived ideological nonconcurrences.

Americans tend to vastly overestimate the differences in political ideology and policy preferences between Democrats and Republicans. In fact, most Americans are not at all ideological , can't describe ideologies accurately ( as their proponents would describe them ), and have almost no information on either the history of ideas or the empirical evidence that bears on particular political or policy questions. Interestingly, partisanship doesn't necessarily seem to be about politics in the normative or philosophical sense, as "people place party loyalty over policy, and even over truth ." There are actually relatively weak correlations between partisan identity and concrete policy preferences. "[P]artisan affect is inconsistently (and perhaps artifactually) founded in policy attitudes."

Indeed, strong partisanship is necessarily an impediment to ideological thinking insofar as ideology is predicated on an integrated and consistent approach to policy questions, as against the blind, team‐​rooting approach associated in the literature with partisanship. Ideological people, whatever their flaws, hold political actors and government bodies to account. Partisans change positions readily and shamelessly, depending on anything from who is living in the White House, to the vagaries of party leaders, to what is perceived as popular at the moment. Further, individual Americans' political opinions are remarkably unstable over time, vacillating between glaring contradictions, relying on a confused amalgam of elite opinions. Partisanship as we know it rather seems to be a holdover from humankind's history of tribal loyalty , with " selective pressures hav[ing] sculpted human minds to be tribal ." That is, evolution selected for just the kinds of cognitive biases we find in partisans on both sides today (importantly, neither "team" is immune).

A recent paper published by the American Psychological Association suggests that from a cognitive and psychoneurological standpoint, partisans of the left and right are much more like each other than they are like nonpartisans. As study co‐​author Leor Zmigrod writes , "Regardless of the direction and content of their political beliefs, extreme partisans had a similar cognitive profile." Specifically, partisans of all stripes show lower levels of cognitive flexibility; importantly, even when processing information that has no political character, they are more dogmatic, less adaptable , and less able to complete tasks that require an " ability to adapt to novel or changing environments and a capacity to switch between modes of thinking ."

Partisanship quite literally makes one dumb -- or is it that dumb people are just more likely to be committed partisans? Zmigrod is careful to point out that the study can't give us the answer to that question, that we would need longitudinal studies in order to better understand the causal direction and causal phenomena at play. As soon as partisanship is introduced, as soon as a question mentions a politician or political party, subjects are unable to accurately assess basic facts . Indeed, remarkably, tinging a question with a political shade renders many subjects unable to answer a simple question even when they are given the answer . Relatedly, studies have shown that one's political affiliations even affect her ability to perform basic math : given an operation that yields a statistic contradicting a subject's partisan view, the subject will tend to question the result rather than updating based on the evidence or attempting to reconcile the new information with her politics.

In a groundbreaking study published last summer , a team of researchers led by the University of Exeter's Darren Schreiber attempted to address the lack of brain imaging research specifically aimed at better understanding nonpartisans , a group that has been neglected as almost all such research has focused on the differences between the brains of partisans of the left and right. The study found that nonpartisans' brains are different from those of their brainwashed brethren, particularly in " regions that are typically involved in social cognition. "

It may be that the next stage in human evolution will involve rewiring our brains to accept the fact that current groups are artificially and arbitrarily defined -- that all human beings are one people. For just as there is harmful, toxic tribalism, there is also socially beneficial, cooperative, cosmopolitanism. As social policy expert Elizabeth A. Segal writes , "Ultimately our goal should be to build the tribe we all belong to: that of humanity." Libertarians take this lesson quite seriously, for we tend to see ourselves as part of a common global community of connected individuals who are perfectly capable of dealing with one another through peaceful and mutually‐​beneficial interactions. We celebrate social, cultural, religious, and linguistic differences as the spice of life rather than see them as dividing lines or impediments to willing collaboration. If we can understand and think clearly through partisanship, we can begin to build a freer world based not on arbitrary divisions and compromised reasoning, but on mutual respect and renewed emphasis on rigorous critical thinking.

[Mar 14, 2021] Disposable People by Sandwichman

Mar 04, 2021 | angrybearblog.com

Disposable people are indispensable. Who else would fight the wars? Who would preach? Who would short derivatives? Who would go to court and argue both sides? Who would legislate? Who would sell red hots at the old ball game?

For too long disposable people have been misrepresented as destitute, homeless, unemployed, or at best precariously employed. True, the destitute, the homeless, the unemployed and the precarious are indeed treated as disposable but most disposable people pursue respectable professions, wear fashionable clothes, reside in nice houses, and keep up with the Jones.

Disposable people are defined by what they do not produce. They do not grow food. They do not build shelters. They do not make clothes. They also do not make the tractors used to grow food, the tools to build shelters or the equipment to make clothes.

Although disposable people do not produce necessities what they do is not unnecessary. It is simply that the services they provide are not spontaneously demanded as soon as one acquires a bit of additional income. One is unlikely, however, to engage the services or purchase the goods produced by disposable people unless one is in possession of disposable income. Disposable income is the basis of disposable people. Conversely, disposable people are the foundation of disposable income.

[Mar 08, 2021] Change we can believe in

Mar 08, 2021 | www.marketwatch.com

Shoe shop chain Shoe Zone replaces Peter Foot with Terry Boot as finance director. It's not a joke.

[Mar 08, 2021] Tesla down 31%? Not a problem I will use the dividends to offset my losses. Oh wait!

Mar 08, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

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bentaxle 54 minutes ago

Tesla down 31%? Not a problem I will use the dividends to offset my losses. Oh wait!

BigJJ 13 minutes ago

I've never understood how Tesla could possibly make money given all the infrastructure they had to install just to sell shoddily thrown together rusty cars that are useless when the grid crashes.

Sound of the Suburbs 41 minutes ago (Edited)

...What was the ponzi scheme of inflated asset prices that collapsed in 2008?

El Hosel 1 hour ago (Edited)

Clearly "It's different this time", now that everybody knows "stocks only go up"...

[Mar 06, 2021] The USA will first wither, then maybe collapse. Either way, it will be chaotic

Mar 06, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

vk , Mar 5 2021 1:05 utc | 58

I've already expressed my opinion on the eventual fall of the American Empire, so I'll be more succinct here:

I'm certain the USA won't collapse like the USSR. In fact, the USSR's fall is kinda unique in History, considering its relative importance and size. Very unlikely such a gracious and peaceful collapse of such a military superpower ever repeats in Human History.

But there's a reason the USSR fell as easily and graciously as it did: its centralized system. The USSR was the CPSU; once Gorbachev humiliated the Party and destroyed it, he automatically destroyed the USSR. What followed was a neoliberal genocide by Boris Yeltsin, but that's not on the Soviet socialist system (it could have reformed successfully and become a China with more natural resources and a better military).

The USA's system is capitalism. Capitalism is not a centralized system; instead, it is governed by a confederation of capitalists, who partition between themselves the different sectors of the economy. This system has a necessarily diffused administrative and command architecture. It's also highly cannibalistic: those capitalist hate each other and try to devour each other constantly, and they constantly do so successfully - hence the rarity of capitalist very long dynasties. The technological evolution/revolutions of capitalism also expand this confederation of capitalists because they create new sectors of the economy while destroying others, which makes the system even more decentralized and chaotic.

That's why I think the USA will first wither, then maybe collapse. Either way, it will be chaotic, possibly with high levels of destruction and civil wars - what we call the "Mad Max Scenario"/Roman Empire scenario. The chances of the USA going down with a world war are also great, as capitalism is a very virulent system: the British Empire went out with a bang (the two WWs it caused).

A few factors are given in my opinion:

1) the USA cannot be seriously considered a true world empire without a solid Eurasian foothold. That means if it loses NATO (i.e. the European Peninsula), it loses its status as a world empire (it would technically have Israel and the Arabian Peninsula, but they don't have the military architecture on NATO's degree) as Japan is an island too near China, Australia is a distant continent, India is in an existential crisis (neutrality or become an American puppet?) and SE Asia is a true zone in dispute;

2) the USA cannot be considered a world empire without the Dollar Standard. Without the Dollar Standard, you can still retain the status by being the industrial superpower, but that post seems to be in China's hands now. Of all the factors that one could mention as being single-handedly capable of bringing the American Empire down in a collapse-style process, the end of the Dollar Standard is the only one I can think of in the social sphere (i.e. not taking into account natural catastrophes such as a giant meteor);

3) the USA cannot be considered a world empire if it doesn't dominate the Seven Seas. Luckily, it still does (and that's an important base for the Dollar Standard), but it's important to highlight the fact that at least China is building up its naval capabilities, to a point of being able at least to be the sovereign over the South China Sea (which opens up a bridge to the junction between the Pacific and the Indian). Russia also seems to be decided to fight to the death for its Tartus base in Syria (its only warm waters port) and has turned back the Black Sea into its particular lake, and is on a comfortable pace to do the same with the Arctic (while it was frozen, it belonged to whoever dominated the North Atlantic; unfrozen, it belongs to whoever has the largest and best fleet of icebreakers);

4) The USA cannot be considered an empire if it doesn't dominate the entire American Continent. That means that, at the moment the USA loses Brazil (which commands Latin America sans Mexico and the Caribbean), it will no longer be an empire. Yes, it would still have Japan and Australia (and the rest of Oceania), but that would be like the Byzantine Empire without Syria and Egypt: just a glorified Greek kingdom that still calls itself an empire.

Note that none of these must be the cause: they may be the consequence of internal strife and civil war, followed by an economic collapse from within. Remember: 2008 happened in the US territory, at the heart of the Empire (Wall Street), not in some random Arab banana republic or some corrupt artificial Latin America narco-state.

And 2008 definitely wasn't the last big crisis of the capitalist world. Any long term prediction of any capitalist country that doesn't take into account crises is an invalid one.

Dr. George W Oprisko , Mar 5 2021 1:57 utc | 60

Who says there will be a collapse...????

I DO !!

If you take those blinders off... it's all around you!

It's gone to the point the country cannot properly feed the National Guard Troops guarding the Capitol!

Any time... I expect to hear Trump offering to use the kitchen(s) at his hotel(s) to feed them... at his expense...

Look again at those Iranian missiles hitting that US base in Iraq.... Where were the interceptors???

There weren't any!!

Then there is the Littoral Combat Ship, Zumwalt Destroyer, F-35, Abrams Tank, Humvee, AR-15 (notable for it's jams).

Exactly how old are US frontline aircraft??? B-52, B-1, B-2, F-16, F-15, F-18... all designed in 50s or 60s....

Arleigh Burke Destroyer... 70s...

Ditto with the subs...

Wake up!

INDY

[Mar 06, 2021] I argue the biggest challenge to US power in coming few years will not come from outside powers but rather will come from inside. US has become wildly divided between two ideologic poles that has a created a lasting effect on her interior security. As has become more and more visible, this newly felt internal insecurity is due to inequality, poverty, and government's incompetence to provide security and social services at a minimum level.

Mar 06, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

kooshy , Mar 5 2021 0:23 utc | 54

I argue the biggest challenge to US power in coming few years will not come from outside powers but rather will come from inside. US has become wildly divided between two ideologic poles that has a created a lasting effect on her interior security. As has become more and more visible, this newly felt internal insecurity is due to inequality, poverty, and government's incompetence to provide security and social services at a minimum level. This internal insecurity is a collective mass insecurity by the American citizenry knowing that their government is incompetent to handle the next crises, this feeling now resides deep in every American's bone, including the ruling elites.

This internal insecurity, incompetence crises, has made US regime more concerned and insecure from her own internal affairs and less capable to address her major external policy challenges. Obviously failing governments that can not provide security, economic, justice and health services to their citizenry they blame their opposition and foreign powers. This is exactly what is happening in US now and that is exactly what one would constantly hear from government propaganda echo chambers of US media. US is in deep slippery slope internal crises that she cannot avoid even if Jesus Christ get elected and becomes president. This is a major reason that she has become incompetent to implement her external policies in likes of Belarus, Iran, Venezuela, etc.

[Mar 06, 2021] Who says that there will be a collapse? There will be slow decline, because the US is the most resourceful country in the world with the best geopolitical position in the world, best strategic depth, and the largest alliance network. The US dollar still remains 62 % of world currency reserves

Mar 06, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

Passer by , Mar 4 2021 20:49 utc | 21

>>We can not yet know what, at what point will cause the collapse of U.S. hegemony. But we are coming more near to it.

Who says that there will be a collapse? There will be slow decline imo, because the US is the most resourceful country in the world with the best geopolitical position in the world, best strategic depth, and the largest alliance network. The US dollar still remains 62 % of world currency reserves, although it declined in payments.

The US was able to print trillions of dollars, and thus register better economic growth rates than many others. This year, it expects growth of 6 - 7 %, one percent less than China. It registered far better economic performance during the Covid Pandemic than many other countries.

The US is the most influential Empire the world has seen since 19th century Britain.

It has lots of power - see where the UN and the IMF are located.

This thing can not "collapse", unless there is internal separatist conflict, which i see as unlikely, much more likely is a One Party Democratic Party State consolidating power. Just as it happened in California.

And collapse can not happen via the dollar either, rather a slow decline too. There is too much inertion behind the dollar. This money does not have somewhere else to go. No capital markets exist to replace US treasuries either.

It may take 20 years before the US becomes more like "one big power among many". But it will still be influential power.

But i can certainly say that: US influecne will be declining. And the US dollar will be declining in the long run too. Countries that rapidly gain in per capita GDP see their currencies rise. So i would invest in CNY, Indian rupee and ASEAN currencies. Stay away from the US dollar, as all of that debt and stimulus means that there will be long term inflation and a long term drop in the dollar value.

Another point that should be mentioned is the military decline of the US. The long wars during the last 20 years had very negative effect on its equipment. And the rest of the world is catching up, and even becoming better (in missiles especially), making carrier groups more and more obsolete, and making overseas US bases big fat targets. Modern weapons guarantee a blood bath for the aggressor in peer to peer conflict.

Both Trump and Blinken acknowledged the military weakness of the US, claiming no more wars.

So there is some weakening but the US will remain a factor just like Britain was a factor, using divide and rule tactics and offshore balancing. The US role will be like the one of Britain in Europe. In this sense, only a United Eurasia (like the EU of Europe, but for the whole of Eurasia) can bring down the US for good.

---

psychohistorian , Mar 4 2021 21:05 utc | 23

@ Passer by | Mar 4 2021 20:49 utc | 21 who wrote
"
And collapse can not happen via the dollar either, rather a slow decline too. There is too much inertion behind the dollar. This money does not have somewhere else to go. No capital markets exist to replace US treasuries either.
"
I disagree with your arguments.

I think the decline will be slow then fast and we are approaching the fast portion
The capital market you write of has a large fictitious part that represents the inflation in dollars into private pockets since 2008. The capital market will shrink significantly with financial collapse but unfortunately the elite have their "capital" in secure positions.

In support of my arguments is the link below that describes the ongoing build up of public banking world wide.

Public Banks and Covid 19 - Combatting the Pandemic with Public Finance

It is not a matter of if but when. The when is defined as foreign countries stopping buying US Treasuries (which is occurring) along with a world wide financial crash which exists in all but the reporting of such.

Passer by , Mar 4 2021 21:25 utc | 26

Posted by: psychohistorian | Mar 4 2021 21:05 utc | 23

>>It is not a matter of if but when. The when is defined as foreign countries stopping buying US Treasuries (which is occurring) along with a world wide financial crash which exists in all but the reporting of such.

Yes, it occuring for treasuries, but slowly, see chinese reserves, still staying above 1 billion. Now foreign investors are a minority. The US dollar though still remains nearly two thirds of world currency reserves.

After seeing the Covid crisis, i became more sceptical of collapse theories. They can print all the money they want to fix problems in the system. The only potential problem is inflation. And the bigger the currency, the less the inflation.

When the US prints, it gains from it, as it steals billions from the rest of the world via low inflation. So via this method it can get itself out from a deep whole, as you saw during the pandemic.

Trillions of dollars were printed, but US long term debt by 2030 increased only by 9 %. How is this possible? Because interest rates are low.

You need to replace the dollar in order to stop the US from saving itself on the back of the rest of the planet.

After 2030, you may have a world with basket of currencies augmented by crypto and gold. And US debts will become too high. Then it will get hard for the US to print without big inflation.

William Gruff , Mar 4 2021 21:31 utc | 28

I am in agreement with psychohistorian @23 here. When the US dollar starts losing its golden glow as a secure investment and reserve currency then trillions of dollars will flood home. It will become a race to unload dollars so as to not be left holding the hot potato.

Well, the US$ is already losing its attraction, but there will be a tipping point beyond which the race starts. That tipping point is probably closer than many people expect.

The US will still be a somewhat powerful country, but only a regional power. The days of global hegemony will end rather quickly. There will be no more super carriers or nuke subs and the F-35 will be the last super plane that the US ever fields. Allies like South Korea and Japan will flip to neutrality without hesitation.

[Mar 06, 2021] While both China and the USA are neoliberal there is some notable difference in policies

Mar 06, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

Mao Cheng Ji , Mar 4 2021 20:08 utc | 16

"But that China did and does much better than the U.S. to meet its people's needs and hope is not a lie."

The difference is, it seems to me, that the Chinese establishment pursue national interests (as they perceive them), while the US liberals pursue interests of global financial capital (a-la Soros Fund Management and suchlike). Obviously people's needs and hopes are better aligned with the former M.O.

karlof1 , Mar 4 2021 20:22 utc | 19

Mao Cheng Ji @16--

Aside from the differences I've written about; when it comes to China's "establishment," the key difference is they arose from the great mass of Chinese and weren't born into what in the West is clearly seen as the Ruling Class--The Monetary Nobility if you will. China's government when compared to the USA's is absolutely Of the People, By the People, and For the People--a reality the Outlaw US Empire cannot change unless it morphs into what it proclaims itself to be.

[Mar 06, 2021] Nothing can depose neoliberalism short of obliterating the financial centers of America and the City in London, in simultaneous strikes

Mar 06, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

CarlD , Mar 6 2021 0:57 utc | 64

Short of obliterating the financial centers of America and the City in London, in simultaneous strikes,
I cannot foresee any change in the direction our financiers are taking the world.

Short of taking out the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers and the Soroses of this world, nothing will change.

The German financiers can be taken out in a less dramatic fashion. Individually, collectively but they must be annihilated also.

The financial prison of Humanity must be blown up.

If not my sons and yours will revert to the serfdom of yore.

[Mar 06, 2021] There seems to be an ongoing trend for countries around the globe to take greater control of their own natural resources.

Mar 06, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

farm ecologist , Mar 5 2021 16:33 utc | 9

Some good news. There seems to be an ongoing trend for countries around the globe to take greater control of their own natural resources.

A report published Thursday by risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft indicated that over the course of 2020, 34 countries had seen a "significant increase" in resource nationalism, with the pandemic exacerbating an existing trend toward government intervention. . Analysts indicated that "Issues around income distribution, poverty, access to education and healthcare -- to name but a few -- can trigger socio-political processes that demand more from the state" . Imagine that, countries like Bolivia using their natural resources to improve the lot of the average citizen.

This trend towards nationalizing resources, however, could spell danger for commodities and decrease profits of the resource extraction industry.

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of folks, if you ask me.

[Mar 06, 2021] The age of decadence can be described as "bread and circuses," or for these times "drugs and internet porn/reality TV". It is characterised by exploding wealth disparity, excessive materialism and status signalling, overextended militaries

Mar 06, 2021 | peakoilbarrel.com

Off Topic Finish: Rise and Fall

There is a much-cited essay from 1976 by General Sir John Glubb, a British diplomat called The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival in which he describes repeated cycles that empires throughout history appear to share. He described how most last about 250 years, or ten generations, and follow six stages: the age of the pioneers (also called the outburst), the age of commerce, the age of conquests, the age of affluence, the age of intellect, and the age of decadence.

From my perspective, admittedly with a statistically meaningless sample size of one, we are in the latter stages of some kind of near global empire. I'm not sure what to call it, possibly the western empire or the industrial empire but the corporation empire might be most fitting (and not because we're collectively getting paunchier). It is rather nebulous because presently there isn't direct control by one country over many other states but there is no denying that the business world, and I'd include crime and corruption enterprises as a significant part of that, has an inordinate influence over global politics. If so then I have lived through the last part of the age of affluence, most of the age of intellect and am currently experiencing a transition to the age of decadence. From Glubb's descriptions the age I'd choose to live would be that of intellect, so I should consider myself lucky. It is characterised by: excess wealth that allows concentration on knowledge acquisition and acquiring degrees and certificates for there own sake, rapid expansion of universities often with endowments from the elites, increased travel and spreading multiculturism.

He has a quote concerning the age of intellect that particularly encapsulates the delusions of the BAU, growth-at-all-costs, techno-copian crowd:

Perhaps the most dangerous by-product of the Age of Intellect is the unconscious growth of the idea that the human brain can solve the problems of the world. Even on the low level of practical affairs this is patently untrue. Any small human activity, the local bowls club or the ladies' luncheon club, requires for its survival a measure of self-sacrifice and service on the part of the members.

This is not as disparaging as some opinions of John Gray, who is often thought of as the philosopher for a fading civilisation, such as:

Like Christianity in the past, the modern cult of science lives on the hope of miracles. But to think that science can transform the human lot is to believe in magic

When a more balanced world emerges, it will be after many crises, and after our present utopian faith in technology has been consigned to the rubbish heap of history .

Actually using "when" rather than "if" makes this one of his more upbeat statements'.

The age of decadence holds much less appeal, it can be described as "bread and circuses," or for these times "drugs and internet porn/reality TV" might be more apt. It is characterised by exploding wealth disparity, excessive materialism and status signalling, overextended militaries (and these days I'd include militarised police forces in that), decline of religion (does American neo-evangelism a religion or a political movement), increased reliance on state intervention at all levels, currency debasement and overt sexual prurience.

There are other approaches to studying how societies, civilisations and empires rise, evolve and fall. Aspects of these studies have names: cliodynamics, environmental determinism, ecological overshoot analysis, etc. with proponents including Diamond, Costanza, Bardi, Lewis, Middleton, Turchin, Tainter, Homer-Dixon, Acemoglu / Robinson, etc. The various theories of collapse all seem biased, to some extent, by the political and moral standpoints or specialist fields of the proponents, not least Glubb. Recently analysis has been converging on a non-linear, dynamic system approach that, in theory, would encapsulate all the features proposed by those authors, e.g. marginal energy gains, marginal complexity costs, property rights and trustworthiness of institutions, population limits, resource depletion, environmental degradation, natural disasters, invasion, novel parasites etc.

As I understand it the system dynamics explanation goes something like as follows. The similar cyclic nature of societies might imply some common fundamental features in their systems. That they have been able to endure despite unpredictable and erratic exogenous, until suddenly they can't, implies that it is those features that determine the life time of the society and once the resilience is lost any sufficiently large knock will cause the collapse. A key indicator that the end is nigh is excessive wealth disparity and a rising centralised hegemony, though I think these are consequences rather than causes, so artificially reversing them would not necessarily prevent a decline to collapse. I haven't seen much on how population growth versus key resource depletion affects cycles (I'd say energy supply has been central for all civilisations and capacity for waste disposal as important for all societies, and waste disposal capacity needs to be included as a possible limiting resource). The best that I can suggest is that these limit the maximum size of a civilisation and, a little like peak oil but more asymmetric, the growth and decay rates then adjust to give a typical life span.

All empires are civilisations but the reverse need not be true (and not all societies are civilisations). Large societies rarely completely collapse – they tend to devolve and simplify, whereas empires can disappear completely. In either case, however, the contraction phases might be rather unpleasant for those experiencing them. A recent study by Centre for the Study of Existential (CSER) at the University of Cambridge concluded that average duration for civilisations has been just over 300 years, but with a wide distribution and fat tail. As a subset empires will have more common features than civilisations in general, and therefore more similar life cycles, which may explain the differences from Glubb's work, but equally his study was rather sparse on quantifiable data.

Most proposed solutions to our ills strike me as treating the symptoms and not the disease; if the ultimate cause is an intrinsic property of large societies then I'm at a loss as to what can be done. The best that may be hoped for is to embrace a collapse as an opportunity for rebirth and regeneration. I've seen reports that this is Bardi's approach, though I have not yet read much from him directly. That is easy to say in my newly vaccinated state, in a centrally heated home and looking forward to a pleasant meal; probably less easy to say and still less to put into practice whilst shivering with cold and in fear, and wondering where your families' next meal is coming from.

It's always dodgy to say, "this time it's different", but there are some notable features now. Firstly the earth is full, there's nowhere with sparse population and under-exploited resources left to move to in order to leave the wreckage behind after a crash. Only in the last ten generations has there been significant, net overall growth in population, consumption, energy and waste production, GDP etc.; at the same time we are now actively reducing the land and resource available to us. Previous collapses and any subsequent recovery happened in the Holocene, a period of unusually stable climate that we may now have disrupted irreversibly in the anthropocene. Some previous collapses have been associated with over exploitation of one or two key resources; at the moment it is difficult to find one without some supply threat from depletion, geopolitical disruption, or excess costs. We do not live in harmony with nature and rely on industrial society functioning at fairly high levels to maintain the balance, for example: vaccines, insulin and antibiotics; fertilizer production; infrastructure maintenance; intensive farming and food distribution; civil and national conflict control; cross border humanitarian agencies etc.

As a footnote the CSER website has many interesting open source papers and videos that I haven't found elsewhere, although it is heavy on AI "Terminator" or GE "Planet of the Apes" type threats, highly academic (lots of attempted points scoring in the Q&As) and often oriented towards the establishment with clear faith in progress, assumed continuation of capitalism, government structures, institutions etc., so just the types Gray and Glubb were commenting about.

[Mar 06, 2021] Value investor John Rogers sees an end to Big Tech's stock market dominance

Mar 06, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

Michael Mackenzie and James Fontanella-Khan in New York Fri, March 5, 2021, 7:00 PM

The veteran value investor John Rogers predicted the US is headed for a repeat of the "roaring twenties" a century ago that will finally encourage investors to dump tech stocks in favour of companies more sensitive to the economy. The founder of Ariel Investments told the Financial Times in an interview that value investing "dinosaurs" like him stood to win as higher economic growth and rising interest rates took the air out of some of the hottest stocks of recent years. The US central bank is "overly optimistic that they can keep inflation under control", he said, and higher bond market interest rates would reduce the value of future earnings for highly popular growth stocks such as tech companies and for the kinds of speculative companies coming to market in initial public offerings or via deals with Spacs.

[Mar 05, 2021] America ranks among most "problem-ridden" countries in the World: The USA has far and away the highest rates of poverty in the developed world.

"The average American family has a net worth of $102,700, according to the most recent data from Federal Reserve's 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances."

Mar 05, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

---

Chief Joesph 10 hours ago

There are 18.4 million millionaires in the U.S. and 48.6 million people in poverty. The U.S. has far and away the highest rates of poverty in the developed world. In addition, the extent of U.S. income and wealth inequality also tends to be extreme when compared to other industrialized countries. It's glaring proof that Capitalism doesn't work, and never has. And there is no such thing as equality in Capitalism, because, in capitalistic philosophy, there is only predators and prey. If Capitalism actually worked, we wouldn't be fighting over the same old problems today, as we were in the 1870's to 1890's,during the age of "Robber Barons", (that Mark Twain once coined "the Gilded Age Elites"), when we had lots of riots, strikes, and mini civil wars then, about being compensated properly from the wealthy elites, The countries that are proactive in terms of social policies that ensure few people will fall below a minimum floor level, generally have much lower rates of poverty than those countries that take a more laissez-faire approach, (i.e. like the U.S.).

Chief Joesph 7 hours ago remove link

There are plenty of links and books on this subject, but try this one for starters: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11205-019-02244-3 .

What it basically says: America ranks among most "problem-ridden" countries in the World. The study compared countries based on social problems ranked the U.S. 38th of 40 countries, between Latvia and Uruguay, just above Trinidad and Tobago.

Researchers also took into consideration the social problems of short life expectancy, infant mortality, obesity health issues, homicides, teen pregnancy, and prison rates, and found that big income gaps between rich and poor correlates with those problems too.

A book worth reading would be this too: https://confrontingpoverty.org/research/confronting-poverty-economic-hardship-in-the-united-states/

curiousweb 11 hours ago

So rich and 'untouchable' they don't even seem to care to pretend to follow any of their own rules any more.

[Mar 01, 2021] Neoliberalism- A Critical Reader by Saad-Filho, Alfredo, Johnston, Deborah, Saad-Filho

Mar 01, 2021 | www.amazon.com

It is impossible to define neoliberalism purely theoretically, for several reasons. First, methodologically, although neoliberal experiences share important commonalities (explained in what follows), neoliberalism is not a mode of production. Consequently, these experiences do not necessarily include a clearly defined set of invariant features, as may be expected in studies of 'feudalism" or 'capitalism", for example. Neoliberalism straddles a wide range of social, political and economic phenomena at different levels of complexity. Some of these are highly abstract, for example the growing power of finance or the debasement of democracy, while others are relatively concrete, such as privatisation or the relationship between foreign states and local non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Nevertheless, it is not difficult to recognise the beast when it trespasses into new territories, tramples upon the poor, undermines rights and entitlements, and defeats resistance, through a combination of domestic political, economic, legal, ideological and media pressures, backed up by international blackmail and military force if necessary.

Second, as is argued in Chapters 7 and 9., neoliberalism is inseparable from imperialism and globalisation. In the conventional (or mainstream) discourse, imperialism is either absent or, more recently, proudly presented as the 'American Burden': to civilise the world and bring to all the benediction of the Holy Trinity, the green-faced Lord Dollar and its deputies and occasional rivals, Holy Euro and Saint Yen. New' converts win a refurbished international airport, one brand-new branch of McDonald's, two luxury hotels, 3,000 NGOs and one US military base. This offer cannot be refused - or else.- In turn, globalisation is generally presented as an inescapable, inexorable and benevolent process leading to greater competition, welfare improvements and the spread of democracy around the world. In reality, however, the so-called process of globalisation - to the extent that it actually exists (see Saad-Filho 2003) - is merely the international face of neoliberalism: a worldwide strategy of accumulation and social discipline that doubles up as an imperialist project, spearheaded by the alliance between the US ruling class and locally dominant capitalist coalitions. This ambitious power project centred on neoliberalism at home and imperial globalism abroad is implemented by diverse social and economic political alliances in each country, but the interests of local finance and the US ruling class, itself dominated by finance, are normally hegemonic.

Third, historical analysis of neoliberalism requires a multi-level approach. The roots of neoliberalism are long and varied, and its emergence cannot be dated precisely. As Chapters я to 6 show, neoliberalism amalgamates insights from a range of sources, including Adam Smith, neoclassical economics, the Austrian critique of Keynesianism and Soviet-style socialism, monetarism and its new classical and 'supply-side' offspring. Their influence increased by leaps and bounds with the breakdown of the postwar order: the end of the 'golden age' of rapid worldwide growth in the late 1960s, the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in the early 1970s, the erosion of the so-called 'Keynesian compromise' in the rich countries in the mid 1970s, the meltdown of the Soviet bloc in the 1980s and the implosion of developmental alternatives in the poor countries, especially after balance of payments crises in the 1980s and 1990s. Chapters 1 and 2 show that the collapse of the alternatives provided space for the synthesis between conservative view's and the interests of the US elite and their minions. The cauldron was provided by the aggressive populist conservatism of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and the broth was tendered by finance - that had become hegemonic worldwide after the 'coup- led by the chairman of the US Federal Reserve System, Paul Volcker, in 1979.3 By persuasion and by force, neoliberalism spread everywhere.

It is, however, important to avoid excessively linear accounts of the rise of neoliberalism. For example, in the United Kingdom, key elements of Thatcher's monetarist economic platform had been imposed by the previous Labour government; she only expanded them and gave them a compelling rationale. There was also an irresolvable tension between the puritanical claims made by milk-snatching Thatcher, Reagan's ventriloquists, and the intellectual harlots peddling their wares around the US Imperial Court, and the political practice of these neoliberal administrations. For example, Reagan's 'voodoo economics' (in the words of his deputy, George Bush pere) would have been unacceptable to the guardians of the scriptures. History shows that it is easier to impose pristine economic and political models in the dominions, because at home the strength of conflicting interests and the messy realities of limited power do not allow history to start anew on demand. This is best illustrated in Chapter 14's discussion of the asymmetric application of agrarian liberalism. It is relatively easy to parachute well-paid advisers into distant and unimportant countries, where Lord Dollar can easily bend the natives' will. This purifying ritual will make them almost civilised. However, should the ignorant masses and their brutal leaders reject dollar diplomacy and be reluctant to play by the (new) rules, weapons of mass destruction are available and they can be deployed increasingly effectively from great distances.

Although every country is different, and historical analysis can reveal remarkably rich details, the overall picture is clear. Tire most basic feature of neoliberalism is the systematic use of state power to impose (financial) market imperatives, in a domestic process that is replicated internationally by 'globalisation'. As Chapters 22. 23 and 30 argue in the cases of the United States, the United Kingdom and east and south-east Asia respectively, neoliberalism is a particular organisation of capitalism, which has evolved to protect capital(ism) and to reduce the power of labour. This is achieved by means of social, economic and political transformations imposed by internal forces as well as external pressure. The internal forces include the coalition between financial interests, leading industrialists, traders and exporters, media barons, big landowners, local political chieftains, the top echelons of the civil service and the military, and their intellectual and political proxies. These groups are closely connected with 'global' ideologies emanating from the centre, and they tend to adapt swiftly to the demands beamed from the metropolis.

Their efforts have led to a significant worldwide shift in power relations away from the majority. Corporate power has increased, wiiile finance has acquired unrivalled influence, and the political spectrum has shifted towards the right. Left parties and mass organisations have imploded, while trade unions have been muzzled or disabled by unemployment. Forms of external pressure have included the diffusion of Western culture and ideology, foreign support for state and civil society institutions peddling neoliberal values, the shameless use of foreign aid, debt relief and balance of payments support to promote the neoliberal programme, and diplomatic pressure, political unrest and military intervention when necessary. For example, Chapter 24 shows how' the ruling economic and political forces in the European Union have instrumentalised the process of integration to ensure the hegemony of neoliberalism. This account is complemented by Chapter 2n's analysis of the segmentation of Eastern Europe into countries that are being drawn into a Western European-stvle neoliberalism and others that are following Russia's business oligarchy model. In sum, neoliberalism is everywhere both the outcome and the arena of social conflicts. It sets the political and economic agenda, limits the possible outcomes, biases expectations, and imposes urgent tasks on those challenging its assumptions, methods and consequences.

In the meantime, neoliberal theory has not remained static. In order to deal with the most powerful criticisms levelled against neoliberalism, that it has increased poverty and social dislocation around the world, neoliberal theory has attempted to present the ogre in a more favourable light. I11 spite of the substantial resources invested in this ideologically inspired make-over, these amendments have remained unconvincing, not least because the heart of the neoliberal project has remained unchanged. This is discussed in Chapter 15 for poverty and distribution, while Chapter 21 unpicks the agenda of the 'Third Way', viewed by many as 'neoliberalism with a human face'.

A MULTI-PRONGED POWER PROJECT

Neoliberalism offered a finance-friendly solution to the problems of capital accumulation at the end of a relatively long cycle of prosperity. Chapters 1. 22 and 30 show that neoliberalism imposed discipline upon a restless working class through contractionary fiscal and monetary policies and wide-ranging initiatives to curtail social rights, under the guise of anti-inflation and productivity-enhancing measures. Neoliberalism also rationalised the transfer of state capacity to allocate resources inter-temporally (the balance between investment and consumption) and inter-sectorally (the distribution of investment, employment and output) towards an increasingly internationally integrated (and US-led) financial sector. In doing so, neoliberalism facilitated a gigantic transfer of resources to the local rich and the United States, as is shown by Chanters 11 and 15. Neoliberal globalism is not at all a model of 'economic deregulation', and it does not promote 'private initiative' in general. Under the ideological veil of non-intervention, neoliberalism involves extensive and invasive interventions in every area of social life. It imposes a specific form of social and economic regulation based on the prominence of finance, international elite integration, subordination of the poor in every country and universal compliance with US interests. Finally, neoliberalism does not foster rapid accumulation. Although it enhances the power and the living standards of the global elite and its appendages, it is destructive for the vast majority. Domestically, the expansion of 'market relations' tramples upon rights of access to food, water, education, work, land, housing, medical care, transportation and public amenities as well as 011 gender relations, as is shown by Chanters 16 to 18. Lawrs are changed to discipline the majority, restrict their rights of association and make it difficult to protest against the consequences of neoliberalism and to develop alternatives. The police, the courts and the armed forces are available to quash protests in the 'new democracies' such as Bolivia, Ecuador, Nigeria, South Africa, South Korea and Zambia, as well as in 'old democracies' such as France, India, Italy, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. Chanter 20 shows that democracy is everywhere limited by the rights of global capital to seize the land and exploit its people, while Chanter 8 reviews the systematic seizure of assets which has gone hand in hand with neoliberalism in many countries. Finally, an increasing share of global profits is being pumped into the rich countries, especially the United States. These transfers increase the pressure 011 the periphery, where rates of exploitation must increase sharply in order to support extraordinary levels of elite consumption domestically as well as in the United States. In other words, neoliberalism is a hegemonic system of enhanced exploitation of the majority. Chanter 12 shows that the neoliberal promise of rising living standards for poor countries has not been fulfilled, and Chanter ip, discusses the manner in which foreign aid has served this process of exploitation. These and other chapters in this volume argue that neoliberalism prevents the implementation of those very policies that would most likely contribute to economic growth and poverty reduction: as Chapter 28 argues for South Asia, neoliberalism has fatally narrowed the policy discourse. This exploitative agenda is primarily but not exclusively the outcome of a shift in the power relations within (and between) countries. It is also the outcome of technological changes, especially cheaper international transportation, communications and computing power, the internet, the emergence of 'flexible' production, greater international integration between production chains and in the financial markets, and so 011. These material changes responded to existing social changes at least as much as they induced them.

TRANSCENDING NEOLIBERALISM

In spite of its power, the transformations that it has wrought 011 the world economy, and the achievement of ever rising living standards for the minority, neoliberalism does not offer an efficient platform for capital accumulation. Under neoliberalism, economic growth rates have declined, unemployment and underemployment have become widespread, inequalities within and between countries have become sharper, the living and working conditions of the majority have deteriorated almost everywhere, and the periphery has suffered greatly from economic instability. In other words, neoliberalism is a global system of minority power, plunder of nations and despoilment of the environment. This system breeds economic, political and social changes, creating the material basis for its own perpetuation and crushing the resistances against its reproduction. Chanters 26 to 30 discuss the continuing crisis in Latin America, sub- Saharan Africa, South Asia, Japan and East and South-East Asia. They argue that neoliberal policies have enhanced instability everywhere, while Chanter 10 shows that the theoretical and empirical evidence cannot support neoliberalism's central hypothesis that trade openness is good for growth.

However, neoliberalism also destroys its own conditions of existence. Its persistent failure to deliver sustained economic growth and rising living standards exhausts the tolerance of the majority and lays bare the web of spin in which neoliberalism clouds the debate and legitimates its destructive outcomes. Tire endless mantra of 'reforms' which systematically fail to deliver their promised 'efficiency gains' delegitimises the neoliberal states, their discourse and their mouthpieces. The explosion of consumer credit that has supported the improvement of living standards in the centre, given the growing fiscal constrains upon the state, limits the scope for interest-rate manipulation - the most important neoliberal economic policy tool. Most importantly, popular movements have emerged and successfully challenged the neoliberal hegemony. Whatever their limitations, as Chapter ?? argues, the recent social explosions in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, as well as more limited social movements elsewhere, show that neoliberalism is not invulnerable. This book details and substantiates these claims, and points toward an agenda of reflection, critique and struggle.

[Feb 25, 2021] Regarding terms "liberal" and "neoliberal"

Feb 25, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

MFB , Feb 25 2021 7:26 utc | 74

Regarding "liberal" and "neoliberal"...

"Liberal" appeared in Europe in a socio-economic context in the late 1600s to describe an system where business would be free, unhindered by royal/government control. For the most part, to start up a business, one needed a royal license or patent. The liberals wanted unregulated business, and their motto was "laissez faire" (let it be done/happen). Laissez-faire capitalism is generally considered the first (entrepreneurial) phase of capitalism, starting in the early 1700s.

Outside the English-speaking world, the word still relates to free trade and unregulated business practices.

"Neoliberal" is more recent, coming into common usage since the arrival of the Thatcher/Reagan regime of globalization. Neoliberals go one further than the original liberals. While the latter just wanted governments to let businesses do their thing, the neoliberals believe that it is government's duty to promote and support business, in other words to play a major role in making it possible for corporations to make money. Hence, Boeing and the other corporations and the big banks must NEVER be allowed to fail, for that would represent a failure of government as it is understood in neoliberal ideology.

Posted by: RJPJR | Feb 25 2021 1:02 utc | 5 4

Apropos neoliberalism.

The liberalism which is referred to here is the economic liberalism which was adopted in the United Kingdom in the 1840s after the "reform" of the Corn Laws, which permitted free trade in grain and therefore brought down both the price of wheat and the small farming community in the UK, as it was intended to do. Later these liberal policies (largely modelled on the "comparative advantage" economic theory, which had already been refuted by the time it was developed by David Ricardo) were used to justify the Irish genocide of 1847-9.

This policy was eventually abandoned later in the nineteenth century, except for places like India, of course. It was restored in the West in the 1970s, under the name of "free trade", and therefore is called neoliberalism, or new liberalism in the economic sense.

The term is not a compliment.

I suspect that the term "liberal-fascist" derives partly from the term Islamofascist, meaning a Muslim who does not bow to Washington six times a day, and partly from the term "social-fascist", a Stalinist term for a socialist who did not bow to Moscow six times a day.

---

vk , Feb 25 2021 12:04 utc | 84

@ Posted by: MFB | Feb 25 2021 7:26 utc | 74

Liberalism is the ideology of capitalism. According to Losurdo, the term "liberal" (as an adjective) is first found in 16th Century Spain, and essentially was a defense of slave labor to serf labor.

The first theoretician of Liberalism that I can think of is John Locke. If he wasn't the first, he certainly was the most influential, as he was the philosopher of the Founding Fathers of the USA.

Liberalism was never an organized "school" or ideology. The term itself as we know today (an ism) was only consolidated sometime around the French Revolution (1789), hence why many people today (mainly Western First Worlders) still associate the term is progressivism and even leftism. In reality, they are confounding the term with radicalism, which was the faction of the abolitionist liberals who extrapolated liberalism to all human beings.

Neoliberalism is literally the New Liberalism. The neoliberals believe that everything that happened between the Russian Revolution (1917) and the post-war welfare state social-democracy was an abortion of History that should've never have happened. They then propose the return to the classical liberal era (until 1914) with updates to the new technological realities of their time, as if the period of 1917-1975 never existed. They then seek to "link up" 1980-present to 1500-1914.

... ... ...

Mao Cheng Ji , Feb 25 2021 12:28 utc | 87

@vk "The neoliberals believe that everything that happened between the Russian Revolution (1917) and the post-war welfare state social-democracy was an abortion of History that should've never have happened."

Personally, I tend to define 'neoliberalism' as global financial capitalism. 'Global' being the key. Something similar to what's described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-imperialism . Technological advances in global communications and transportation (containerization) being its most important precursors.

But I agree that the collapse of the Soviet Union, a competing alternative model, has to be an important component also.

vk , Feb 25 2021 12:34 utc | 88

@ Posted by: Mao Cheng Ji | Feb 25 2021 12:28 utc | 87

You're thinking about Monetarism - the economics school founded by Milton Friedman that served as the economic theory of neoliberalism after the 1980s.

Neoliberalism was founded in 1947 (Mont Pelerin Society). One interesting thing about the original neoliberals was that they didn't distinguish between European social-democracy and communism: in their view, the welfare state was the realization of the Communist Manifesto's program (it really does propose for what we nowadays call the welfare state in some of its pages as some kind of transition program).

The Mont Pelerin Society still exists.

Dogon Priest , Feb 25 2021 13:15 utc | 91

Some animals are more equal than others

vk , Feb 25 2021 13:36 utc | 93

@ Posted by: Mao Cheng Ji | Feb 25 2021 12:49 utc | 89

Monetarism is the economic theory. Neoliberalism is the political-ideological doctrine. Neoliberalism found in Monetarism the missing piece for them to govern the Western world, sometime in the mid-1970s.

It is common for a political-ideological doctrine to absorb theories outside of its "field" in order to strengthen itself and gain power. Change of clothes (i.e. change of the theories it adopts) is also common.

The impression Westerners have nowadays that one political-ideological doctrine must always have exactly one economic theory or even that they are the same thing comes from the fact that we live in the Era of Marxism, i.e. a historical period where Marxism is dominant. But Marxism is the exception to the rule, based on the scientific theory of the greatest philosopher of all time.

In practice, the bourgeois ideologues will have to make do with much inferior theoreticians (John Locke, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Paul Samuelson, Mises, Hayek, Böhm-Bawerk, Walras, Keynes, Friedman etc. etc. etc.) and so it is expected for them to change their thinkers from time to time.

Mao Cheng Ji , Feb 25 2021 14:18 utc | 97

@vk "Neoliberalism found in Monetarism the missing piece..."

The way I see it, economics is the base. Like I said, technological advances in global communications and transportation shifted the paradigm. What we have now is international division of labor, controlled by west-owned global finance. Global financial capital is rising above national boundaries; the role of national governments is to provide resources, infrastructure, and disciplined low-cost labor, thus attracting a portion of global capital, competing for it.

That's what I call 'neoliberalism', but I don't insist on it. What's in the name? 'Hyperimperialism', 'super-imperialism', 'inter-imperialism' or even 'state cartel' would do.

It's just that 'neoliberalism' is a popular word these days, that seems to be used to describe the current form of "relations of production". And why not.

Now, about ideologies. My feeling is, there are always hundreds of various ideologies flying around. The establishment will pick a suitable one, shine it up in think-tanks, and go with it. It'll become the dominant ideology. Until it doesn't suffice anymore, and then they'll replace it with another. But that's all bullshit. Pwogwessivism, liberalism, social democracy, the third way, whatever. No need to pay attention.

vk , Feb 25 2021 14:53 utc | 99

@ Posted by: Mao Cheng Ji | Feb 25 2021 14:18 utc | 97

Now, about ideologies. My feeling is, there are always hundreds of various ideologies flying around. The establishment will pick a suitable one, shine it up in think-tanks, and go with it. It'll become the dominant ideology. Until it doesn't suffice anymore, and then they'll replace it with another. But that's all bullshit. Pwogwessivism, liberalism, social democracy, the third way, whatever. No need to pay attention.

That's the definition of democracy in the post-war, as defined by the likes of Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. and Hannah Arendt.

Schlesinger defined democracy or Western democracy as the system with a "vital center". A vital center is a political system dominated by a political spectrum (left-right). The ideologies within this political spectrum freely compete against each other in the public arena for political power (getting into the White House; forming a majority within a Parliament). Schlesinger is the father of what we nowadays call "pluralism". In opposition, a totalitarian system is one of a single party, in which he put Nazi Germany and the USSR - they don't have a "vital center".

Hannah Arendt defined totalitarianism as any system that vertebrates itself on one single meta-narrative (History). She put as the totalitarian holotypes both Nazi Germany and the USSR - the first built itself over the narrative of the master race; the second over class struggle. By exclusion, she defines a democratic system as those without a single narrative or any meta-narrative. By a different route, she comes to a similar endgame as Schlesinger, with the exception that, in her model, democracies don't necessarily need to be multi-party or even plural. You could be a single-party system and not plural - as long as the party doesn't adopt any "meta-narrative", it suffices as free and democratic. Needless to say, Arendt is one of the precursors to Postmodernism (absolute relativity).

That's why the West, until the present days, still consider itself as fully democratic and China and Russia fully totalitarian: as long as the West doesn't adopt a meta-narrative and keeps more than one party, they are democratic by post-war standards. It's not and never was about eradicating poverty, turning the world a better place, fomenting progress for the people etc. etc.

karlof1 , Feb 25 2021 18:41 utc | 121

Lots of stabs being made at a definition for Neoliberalism. The following is from Hudson's J is for Junk Economics , pgs 167-8:

" Neoliberalism: An ideology to absolve banks, landlords and monopolists from accusations of predatory behavior. Just as European fascism in teh 1930s reflected the failure of socialist parties to put forth a viable alternative, today's U.S.-centered neoliberalism reflects the failure of industrial capitalism or socialism to free society from rentier interests that are a legacy of feudalism.

"Turning the tables on classical political economy, rentier interests act as plaintiffs against public regulation and taxation of their economic rents in contrast to Adam Smith and other classical liberals, today's neoliberals want to deregulate monopoly income and free markets for rent seeking, as well as replacing progressive income taxation and taxes on land and banking with a value-added tax (VAT) on consumers.

"Endorsing an oligarchic role of government to protect property and financial fortunes (see Chicago School and Moral Hazard ), neoliberalism loads the economy with an exponential growth of debt while depicting it in a way that avoids recognizing the rising rentier overhead (rent, interest and insurance) paid to the FIRE sector. (See Junk Economics and Social Market .) Neoliberals want to privatize public infrastructure. They defend this grabitization by depicting public ownership and regulation as less efficient than congtrol by financial managers, despite their notorious short-termism. The pretense is that private operators will provide goods and services at lower cost even while extracting monopoly rent, building interest, dividends and high management salaries into prices. (See Pentagon Capitalism .)"

A related definition follows:

" Neoliberal Disease: A term coined by Jan Hellevig to describe the free hand that leaders of the demoralized post-Soviet bureaucracies gave neoliberals to redesign and de-industrialize their economies by creating client kleptocracies . 'They freed the markets, but only for the criminals. They totally neglected investments to modernize the industry, and let the assets and cash streams be openly or covertly stolen by insiders and the mob. The result was total chaos and the breakup of the Soviet Union.'" (Jon Hellevig, "Russian Economy--The disease is not Dutch but Liberal," Awara March 2 2016, reprinted in Johnson's Russia List , March 3, 2016, #12.)" [All Emphasis Original]

It should be noted the strategy Hellevig describes is the same as that used by those termed "Corporate Raiders" that first prominently surfaced during Reagan/Bush and were responsible for the so-called Savings & Loan Crisis.

If you don't have Hudson's book, I highly suggest getting it as it's filled with excellent information and beats taking both micro- and macroeconomics. It's the companion book to Killing the Host , which is essential for understanding Neoliberalism. The only part of the Saga missing is a definitive history telling how the Neoliberal doctrine arose in the UK and was exported to the USA @1880. Hudson has provided key portions but the overall story still remains to be told.

v> Notsofast says: February 22, 2021 at 7:15 pm GMT • 3.1 days ago • 100 Words ↑

Notsofast says: February 22, 2021 at 7:15 pm GMT • 3.1 days ago • 100 Words ↑

the worst mistake jimmy carter ever made was to hire brzezinski, father of the mujahideen and grandfather of al-qaeda. we used to brag about arming terrorists with weapons to shoot down russian helicopters, hell they even made a "comedy" about it called charlie wilsons war. now we accuse the russians of placing bounties on americans in afganistan and demand more sanctions be placed on russia.

utter hypocrisy.

as for the maidan cookie monster and her neocon half wit husband, further proof of failing upward, nothing succeeds like failure in washington. /div

[Feb 24, 2021] The tendency of liberalism to deny the consequences of society stems from its myth of the 'individual '

Feb 24, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

Patroklos , Feb 21 2021 22:13 utc | 63

b@8 (and vk passim)

The tendency of liberalism to deny the consequences of society stems from its myth of the 'individual'. Liberalism imagines a world of rational subjects each making decisions in a sovereign way (Thatcher's 'there is no such thing as society'). This allows capitalism to erect a moral framework that represents the consequences of an economy as the consequences of personal decisions. In this way, success (wealth) is 'reward' and failure (poverty) is punishment. It's what Max Weber called 'secular Protestantism'. The working classes participate in this evaluative ideology (Gramsci); it is the source of their self-loathing and the reason they always vote against their own best interests. They all believe their lack of means is a consequence of their lack of intelligence, work ethic, failure of entrepreneurial spirit, etc etc. Here is Marx's own critique of the way liberalism washes its hands of the effects of capitalism:

"The... theory... which is also expressed as a law of nature, that population grows faster than the means of subsistence, is the more welcome to the bourgeois as it silences his conscience, makes hard-heartedness into a moral duty and the consequences of society into the consequences of nature, and finally gives him the opportunity to watch the destruction of the proletariat by starvation as calmly as any other natural event without bestirring himself, and, on the other hand, to regard the misery of the proletariat as its own fault and to punish it. To be sure, the proletarian can restrain his natural instinct by reason, and so, by moral supervision, halt the law of nature in its injurious course of development." - Karl Marx, Wages, December 1847

While it may be superficially true that our poor Texan could have cunningly evaded copping the wholesale price the fact remains that he is -- as all Texans are -- a victim of a system structurally designed to extract exorbitant rents from his need for power. A socialist system would not see him as a battery hen to be skimmed or as an atomized individual who should 'sink or swim' (in the words of that local mayor) but would seek to prevent power, food, water, air, housing, education, health, etc etc from being hijacked and sequestered by vested interests accessible only by outrageous fees. Socialism would outlaw rent-seeking, which is the theft of meaningful life by carpetbaggers and their corrupt partners in government.

[Feb 21, 2021] 'Freedom' under neo-liberal capitalism is all of the negative type.

Feb 21, 2021 | www.unz.com

Mulga Mumblebrain , says: February 16, 2021 at 1:13 am GMT • 4.2 days ago

@Flying Dutchman

'Freedom' under neo-liberal capitalism is all of the negative type. You are free to be as greedy and arrogant as you like, as rich, ie as big a thief, as you like, and as poor as you like. You are to ignore the liberal injunction that your freedom must not interfere with that of others, and screw as many patsies as you desire. You are 'free' to vote for two or so near identical parties, then have no 'freedom' but that which your money buys you. 'Freedom' is the biggest lie of all Big Lies.

[Feb 05, 2021] The Great Reset, Part IV- -Stakeholder Capitalism- Vs. -Neoliberalism- - ZeroHedge

Feb 05, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Stakeholders consist of "customers, suppliers, employees, and local communities" in addition to shareholders. But for Klaus Schwab and the WEF, the framework of stakeholder capitalism must be globalized. A stakeholder is anyone or any group that stands to benefit or lose from any corporate behavior -- other than competitors, we may presume. Since the primary pretext for the Great Reset is global climate change, anyone in the world can be considered a stakeholder in the corporate governance of any major corporation. And federal partnerships with corporations that do not "serve" their stakeholders, like the Keystone Pipeline project, for example, must be abandoned.

...T ake one David Campbell, a British socialist (although non-Marxist) and author of The Failure of Marxism (1996). After declaring that Marxism had failed, Campbell began advocating stakeholder capitalism as a means to the same ends. His argument with the British orthodox Marxist Paddy Ireland represents an internecine squabble over the best means of achieving socialism, while also providing a looking glass into the minds of socialists determined to try other, presumably nonviolent tacks.

Campbell castigated Ireland for his rejection of stakeholder capitalism. ... Ireland's more-radical-than-thou Marxism left Campbell flummoxed. Didn't Ireland realize that his market determinism was exactly what the defenders of "neoliberalism" asserted as the inevitable and only sure means for the distribution of social welfare? "Marxism," Campbell rightly noted, "can be identified with the deriding of 'social reform' as not representing, or even as obstructing, 'the revolution.'" Like so many antireformist Marxists, Ireland failed to recognize that "the social reforms that [he] derided are the revolution."

Ireland and Campbell agreed that the very idea of stakeholder capitalism derived from companies having become relatively autonomous from their shareholders. The idea of managerial independence and thus company or corporate autonomy was first treated by Adolf A. Berle and Gardiner C. Means in The Modern Corporation and Private Property (1932) and after them in James Burnham's The Managerial Revolution (1962). In "Corporate Governance, Stakeholding, and the Company: Towards a Less Degenerate Capitalism?," Ireland writes of this putative autonomy: "[T]he idea of the stakeholding company is rooted in the autonomy of 'the company' from its shareholders; its claim being that this autonomy can be exploited to ensure that companies do not operate exclusively with the interests of their shareholders in mind."

This apparent autonomy of the company, Ireland argues, came about not with incorporation or legal changes to the structure of the corporation, but with the growth of large-scale industrial capitalism. The growth in the sheer number of shares and with it the advent of the stock market made for the ready salability of the of the share. Shares became "money capital," readily exchangeable titles to a percentage of profit, and not claims on the company's assets. It was at this point that shares gained apparent autonomy from the company and the company from its shareholders.

Moreover, with the emergence of this market, shares developed an autonomous value of their own quite independent of, and often different from, the value of the company's assets. Emerging as what Marx called fictitious capital, they were redefined in law as an autonomous form of property independent of the assets of the company. They were no longer conceptualized as equitable interests in the property of the company but as rights to profit with a value of their own, rights which could be freely and easily bought and sold in the marketplace .

On gaining their independence from the assets of companies, shares emerged as legal objects in their own right, seemingly doubling the capital of joint stock companies. The assets were now owned by the company and by the company alone, either through a corporation or, in the case of unincorporated companies, through trustees. The intangible share capital of the company, on the other hand, had become the sole property of the shareholder. They were now two quite separate forms of property. Moreover, with the legal constitution of the share as an entirely autonomous form of property, the externalization of the shareholder from the company had been completed in a way not previously possible.

Thus, according to Ireland, a difference in interests emerged between the holders of the industrial capital and the holders of the money capital, or between the company and the shareholder.

Nevertheless, Ireland maintains, the autonomy of the company is limited by the necessity for industrial capital to produce profit. The value of shares is ultimately determined by the profitability of the company's assets in use. "The company is, and will always be, the personification of industrial capital and, as such, subject to the imperatives of profitability and accumulation. These are not imposed from the outside on an otherwise neutral and directionless entity, but are, rather, intrinsic to it, lying at the very heart of its existence." This necessity, Paddy argues, defines the limits of stakeholder capitalism and its inability to sustain itself. "The nature of the company is such, therefore, as to suggest that [there] are strict limits to the extent to which its autonomy from shareholders can be exploited for the benefit of workers or, indeed, other stakeholders."

Here is a point on which the "neoliberal" Milton Friedman and the Marxist Paddy Ireland would have agreed, despite Ireland's insistence that the extraction of "surplus value" at the point of production is the cause. And this agreement between Friedman and Ireland is exactly why Campbell rejected Ireland's argument. Such market determinism is only necessary under capitalism, Campbell asserted. Predictions about how companies will behave in the context of markets are only valid under current market conditions...

Despite this insurmountable "neoliberal"/Marxist impasse, the notion of stakeholder capitalism is at least fifty years old. Debates about the efficacy of stakeholder capitalism date to the 1980s. They were stirred up by Friedman's rejection of the "soulful corporation," which reached its peak with Carl Kaysen's "The Social Significance of the Modern Corporation" in 1957. Kaysen viewed the corporation as a social institution that must weigh profitability against a broad and growing array of social responsibilities: "there is no display of greed or graspingness; there is no attempt to push off onto the workers or the community at large part of the social costs of the enterprise. The modern corporation is a soulful corporation." Thus, in Kaysen, we see hints of the later notion of stakeholder capitalism.

Likely, stakeholder capitalism can be traced, although not in an unbroken line of succession, to the "commercial idealism" of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when Edward Bellamy and King Camp Gillette, among others, envisioned corporate socialist utopias via incorporation. For such corporate socialists, the main means for establishing socialism was through the continuous incorporation of all the factors of production. With incorporation, a series of mergers and acquisitions would occur until the formation of a singular global monopoly, in which all "the People" had equal shares, was complete. In his "World Corporation , " Gillette declared that "the trained mind of business and finance sees no stopping-place to corporate absorption and growth, except final absorption of all the World's material assets into one corporate body, under the directing control of one corporate mind." Such a singular world monopoly would become socialist upon the equal distribution of shares among the population. Stakeholder capitalism falls short of this equal distribution of shares but gets around it by distributing value on the basis of social and political pressure.

Interestingly, Campbell ends his argument, rather undogmatically, by stating unequivocally that if Friedman was right and "if these comparisons [between shareholder and stakeholder capitalism] tend to show exclusive maximization of shareholder value to be the optimal way of maximizing welfare," then "one should give up being a socialist." If, after all, the maximization of human welfare is really the object, and "shareholder capitalism" (or "neoliberalism") proves to be the best way to achieve it, then socialism itself, including stakeholder capitalism, must necessarily be abandoned.

[Feb 03, 2021] Those who have the most to say about the burdens of government regulation tend to be silent about the enormous infrastructure supporting a very specific conception of corporate personhood, limited liability, and intellectual property.

Feb 03, 2021 | crookedtimber.org

kinnikinick 01.29.21 at 4:47 pm

Those who have the most to say about the burdens of government regulation tend to be silent about the enormous infrastructure supporting a very specific conception of corporate personhood, limited liability, and intellectual property.
It's like an industrialist looking out upon a vast landscape of canals, dams, and levees, and complaining at the "unnatural" construction of a bridge putting a ferryman out of a job.

[Feb 03, 2021] Amid -Shortage-, Ecuador Police Bust Clinic Giving 1000s Of Fake COVID Vaccines - ZeroHedge

Feb 03, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

rock-ribbed 17 hours ago remove link

It's still not clear exactly what the clinic's customers were being injected with...

My guess is that it's something less hazardous to your health than the real vaccine, but still not what the greatest scientist of all time, Dr. Fauci, and our greatest president of all time, His Excellency Joe Biden, have mandated that you take.

[Feb 03, 2021] Freedom from the Market

Feb 03, 2021 | crookedtimber.org

Freedom from the Market

by HENRY on JANUARY 26, 2021

Mike Konczal has a new book, Freedom from the Market ( Bookshop.org locator , Amazon ). I've been wanting to write about this book for a while, but first had to wait for it to come out, and then had my working life banjaxed by the madness of the last few weeks. But it is a great book that looks to remake the American debate about freedom and largely succeeds. Full disclosure: Mike is a friend of the 'see very occasionally but like very strongly' variety; I also read an early version of the mss and commented on it.

When I say that this book is about the American debate, I mean it. Non-Americans will learn from the book, but they aren't the target audience. The examples that Konczal draws on to inform modern Americans are drawn from their own, largely forgotten history. This could be seen as a reflection of the American parochialism that Konczal mentions in passing, but it is, I think, a deliberate political move. It also is in some ways refreshing – rather than weaving fairytales about the wonders of Fantasy Sweden or Fantasy Germany, it tells stories where the ambiguities are necessarily more visible to its readers.

Still, it provides measured hope. By drawing on what has happened in American history, Konczal makes it easier for Americans to understand that things they might not believe are possible in America must be, because they have been. He rescues moments such as the WWII government run daycare centers that allowed women to work, or the use of the power of the federal state to force through the integration of Southern hospitals, from the enormous condescension of posterity. Notably, although he doesn't dwell on this point, many of these changes began at moments that seem shittier and more despairing than our own.

Konczal neither provides a standard linear history, nor a policy textbook. Instead, he is claiming an alternative American tradition, which has not looked to the market as its apotheosis, but instead has sought to free Americans from its random vagaries. His history explains how America has responded collectively to the real and expressed needs of publics, who have organized to fight for them. And it does so in the plain language that he mentions in passing was necessary to allow ordinary people to organize and understand who was trying to stop them.

Konczal's fundamental claim is that people who attribute freedom to markets miss out on much of the story. Equally important is a notion of freedom from markets, "rooted in public programs that genuinely serve people and checking market dependency." This notion goes back much further in time than the New Deal. The nineteenth century is sometimes depicted as a reign of laissez-faire, both by those who admired it and deplored it. Konczal argues instead that there was an emerging sense of public needs – and imperfect ways in which the government provided for them. This helps us understand, for example, the provision of public land through the Homestead Act and the land grant universities.

The nineteenth century notion of the public was clearly horribly flawed and contradictory – it did not include slaves or Native Americans. Some, like Horace Greeley ended up fleeing these contradictions into the welcoming arms of free market absolutism. But within these contradictions lay possibilities that opened up in the twentieth century. Konczal builds, for example on Eric Schickler's work to argue that as the New Deal began to provide concrete benefits to African Americans, it created a new relationship between them and the Democratic Party, breaking up the old coalition that had held Jim Crow together.

The organizing ideas in this book are Polanyian – the stresses of the market lead to social rupture, which may in turn create the conditions for political mobilization. But Konczal doesn't depict this as necessary or inevitable – people's choices have consequences. He is also more precise than Polanyi in his understanding of how change happens – through social movements and the state:

While the Supreme Court can be effective at holding back change and enforcing already existing power structures, it is actually very weak at creating new reform itself. It controls no funding and is dependent on elite power structures to carry out its decisions. What really creates change is popular mobilization and legislative changes.

Finally, Konczal not only employs Polanyi's ideas, but the ideas of Polanyi's friendly critics like Quinn Slobodian, to describe how modern Hayekians have sought to "encase" the market order in institutions and practices that are hard to overturn. Property rights aren't the foundation of liberty, as both nineteenth century jurists and twentieth century economists would have it. They are a product of the choices of the state, and as such intensely political.

This allows Konczal to turn pragmatism against the Hayekians. Hayek's notion of spontaneous order is supposed to be evolutionary, to provide a more supple response to what people (thought of as individuals want). But if there is a need to provide collective goods for people that cannot be fulfilled through voluntarism, the Hayekian logic becomes a brutal constraint on adaptation.

The efforts of Hayekians to enforce binding legal constraints, to cripple the gathering of the collective knowledge that can guide collective action, to wink at legal doctrines intended to subvert social protections against the market; all these prevent the kinds of evolutionary change that are necessary to respond to changing circumstances. Konczal makes it clear that Oliver Wendell Holmes was no left-winger – but his pragmatist criticisms of the rigid and doctrinaire laissez-faire precepts of his colleagues rings true. Their "willingness to use a very specific understanding of economics to override law writes a preferential understanding of economics into the constitution itself." Although Konczal wrote this book before the current crisis, he describes Holmes as mentioning compulsory vaccination laws as one of the ways in which government interference in private decisions can have general social benefits. The wretched contortions of libertarians and market conservatives over anti-pandemic measures during the last several months, and the consequences of their intellectual rigidity for human welfare in states such as North Dakota illustrate the point, quite brutally.

What Konczal presses for is a very different notion of freedom. This doesn't deny the benefits of markets, but it qualifies them. In Konczal's words, "markets are great at distributing things based on people's willingness to pay. But there are some goods that should be distributed by need." Accepting this point entails the necessity of keeping some important areas of life outside the determining scope of markets. Furthermore, people's needs change over time, as societies and markets change. Konczal's framework suggests the need for collective choice to figure out the best responses to these changes, and a vibrant democratic politics, in which the state responds to the expressed needs of mobilized publics as the best way to carry out these choices.

All this makes the book sound more like an exercise in political theory than it is. That's because of my own professional deformities, and because I want you to read the book itself, if you really to get the good stuff – the stories, the examples, and the overall narrative that Konczal weaves together. Freedom from the Market has the potential to be a very important book, focusing attention on the contested, messy but crucially important intersection between social movements and the state. It provides a set of ideas that people on both sides of that divide can learn from, and a lively alternative foundation to the deracinated technocratic notions of politics, in which good policy would somehow, magically, be politically self supporting, that has prevailed up until quite recently. Strongly recommended.

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Brett 01.26.21 at 3:47 pm ( 1 )

I'll second this recommendation – it was a great read. I would especially recommend reading it for the section on Medicare integration, since that's a story that rarely gets told but is genuinely quite fascinating. It gives me greater respect for LBJ, given that he was giving them full-support despite a difficult, treacherous political battle to integrate hospitals in the South despite immense resistance.

He also made a very interesting point after the Homestead section when he got to the section on work-hour labor movements, about how they needed to specifically make it so that certain rights couldn't be contracted away, because otherwise even laws establishing such-and-such rules would get end-runned by businesses requiring their employees to give them up in contracts.

Kurt Schuler 01.27.21 at 4:10 am (
3 )

Henry, you write, "if there is a need to provide collective goods for people that cannot be fulfilled through voluntarism, the Hayekian logic becomes a brutal constraint on adaptation." That seems like a big "if." Other than the classic examples of national defense and perhaps police and courts, what goods cannot be provided through voluntarism?

Chris Bertram 01.27.21 at 8:29 am (no link)

There's a nice line in Slobodian's book about Americans not knowing much about the rest of the world but imagining that the US is a scale-model of it. Isn't the worry about the general claim here that it is more plausible to see property rights as merely the creature of the state when you have a vast internal market with many needs catered for by domestic production than it is when you have small states with relatively specialized domestic production that need to trade across borders to satisfy their needs. In such a case, where the real economy transcends borders and where trade barriers at those borders just make everyone poorer, you need transnational guarantees (or at least a very strong degree of confidence) for property rights and investment against the potential interference of local governments. So even if Konczal is right for the US, the question of how to do social democracy transnationally remains for the rest of us. The EU is one possible answer to that, but the continuation of national political narratives, blaming other nations within the structure for their own problems (Germany > Greece, Italy) etc remains a big obstacle to anti-market pushback at that level.

reason 01.27.21 at 11:20 am (no link)

Just a short aside, this sentence struck me:

" Property rights aren't the foundation of liberty, as both nineteenth century jurists and twentieth century economists would have it."

Property rights are inherently a restriction of liberty. They restrict the rights of everybody but the designated owner. It may be that in some circumstances they are net a positive, that this is clearly not something one can expect from the nature of the thing. That this point isn't made more often and more strongly puzzles me.

Jake Gibson 01.27.21 at 1:22 pm (no link)

I think it can be illuminating to think of "property rights" in the context that at some point all property was taken (stolen) from The Commons.
And that property laws are enshrinement of common law on possession (nine tenths).

MPAVictoria 01.27.21 at 1:22 pm ( 8 )

"what goods cannot be provided through voluntarism?"

Apparently insulin .
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/07/another-person-has-died-from-rationing-insulin.html

Henry 01.27.21 at 2:16 pm (no link)

The "twentieth century economists" like the "nineteenth century jurists" refer just to those discussed in the book (basically Friedman, Chicago School, market for corporate control people etc etc). So they're not claims about the general class of economists in the twentieth century, where there is tons of disagreement on lots of stuff obviously, but a particular strain of economic thought that Konczal writes about.

Rapier 01.27.21 at 3:27 pm ( 10 )

There is no "the" market. All markets are not the same.
The Hayekians first insistence is that in fact all markets are the same. They then have designed the 'markets' they want, and if you design a market you win.

Mike Huben 01.27.21 at 4:11 pm (no link)

Kurt Schuler @ 3 asks: "what goods cannot be provided through voluntarism?"

The glib answer is "none" because you can always find an exceptional case of private production.

But the problem is "provided" is underspecified: it could mean provision to only one person, or (better) provision of ENOUGH. And even enough is underspecified.

Look at something like water. Public provision of vast volumes of clean, safe, cheap drinking water is an alternative to voluntarism's answer: expensive bottled water which must be used frugally by the poor, consumes much energy in transportation and waste in plastic: which is enough? Which is proper provision? Should there be only one type of provision?

And of course that question implies another; what goods should not be provided through voluntarism? Maybe pollution, addiction, crime, and a host of others.

"Voluntarism" is an example of framing, trying to focus the world through an ideological lens. If you accidentally accept this narrow peephole on the world, your thinking is greatly constrained because of the things is has misdirected you from. The same kind of framing as "markets are freedom", which Konczal is apparently decrying. (I have not yet read the book.)

steven t johnson 01.27.21 at 4:59 pm ( 12 )

Given the tenor of most responses, it doesn't seem likely Konczal's book is going to change the narrative in any significant way.

Bob@2 seems a good example of the pro-market reasoning. For one thing, "economics" says that if a person with a scarce talent can earn more money than is necessary to induce them to exercise that talent, the income can be taxed away without affecting the market outcome. Considering the real life examples of professional athletes, movie stars and artists, the sage advice to tax the athletes, stars and artists, precisely because it won't endanger the market outcomes of professional athletics, Hollywood and the art world presupposes the market outcomes of pro sports, Hollywood and the museum/art gallery circuit are just and wise.

Bob@2 wrote "Economics is wisely silent on people's preferences and needs. The point surely is not that there is something inherent in certain goods that means they should be distributed by need–who decides what those "good" goods are that everyone (ought to?) need?; the point is that income should be redistributed so that everyone can buy whatever they see fit to buy based on their own understanding of their needs."

Yes, I recall reading a short article by von Hayek explaining there was no scientific way to distinguish between wants and needs, thus there was no way ever, even in principle, to deny there was such a thing as scarcity. Like von Hayek, the assumption that, given the impossibility of pronouncing a difference between needs and wants (nor apparently even a way of merely satisficing any such distinction,) the only valid way of deciding what must be produced is by consumer sovereignty. The "votes" by rational consumers are the only possible means of justice. Like distinguishing between productive and unproductive labor, anything less than the market is tyranny.

I have no idea why Bob says Konczal's book as presented doesn't pose a problem, given two market refutations of it are endorsed in the comment. It may be something like compatibilism, the philosophical position that people have free will in the religious sense despite the myriad of facts and millennia of experience showing that the religious notion of moral responsibility is, to say the least, flawed. In words, compatibilists will say they accept things like mental illness leave old notions of moral responsibility -- which is to say, old notions about retribution and punishment -- then in practice, they will do things like try adolescents as adult or arbitrarily limit the definition of mental illness or simply ignore such fiddling objections to honor time-honored customs. Similarly, market proponents will give lip service to the notion of market failure, then inexplicably (?) fail to see it.

Chris Bertram@5 writes " the continuation of national political narratives, blaming other nations within the structure for their own problems (Germany > Greece, Italy) etc remains a big obstacle " to social democracy. Is the illustrative example meant to condemn Germany blaming Greece and Italy for creating their own problems and leeching (or trying to) off of Germany? Or, is it Greece and Italy blaming of Germany for not curing their own failures for them? Is it somehow both? Also, the definition of the EU as a consortium of states premised on fiscal integrity may be more of an obstacle to social democracy than political narratives, however construed?

Francis Spufford 01.27.21 at 7:50 pm ( 13 )

Kurt Schuler @ 3 --

Well, insulin clearly (see above). But also: schools that make everybody literate and promote basic social solidarity. Colleges that are cheap enough to educate all of the talents. Hospitals that treat illnesses irrespective of ability to pay. Universal vaccinations. Flood defences. Disaster relief. Food inspectors. Drug safety testers. Buildings inspectors. Fire inspectors. Transport safety inspectors. Highways. Mending potholes in highways. Keeping bridges safe. Last-mile rural electrification. Universal mail coverage at a single price. Legal advice to even access to justice by rich and poor. Excellent daycare at prices poor people can afford. Basic research in particle physics and astronomy. R & D in far-from-market areas society needs. Drug discovery for diseases poor people get. Training of specialists in non-profitable yet essential professions. Landscape conservation. Pollution control. Tech regulation. Setting a carbon price/tax. Railways that move people fast enough and cheaply enough to take custom away from ecocidal airlines. Mass transit in cities. Space programmes. A welfare safety net permitting risky careers in the arts. A welfare safety net to equalise the chances of children. A welfare safety net allowing every member of a society to go to sleep every night in a state of delicious moral luxury, knowing that no-one is hungry. Lighthouses. Earthquake detection. Censuses. Diplomacy. Peacemaking. Peacekeeping. Public broadcasters with editorial independence. Et cetera et cetera et cetera, in every flavour from civilisational basic to utopian flight of fancy. Collective action! Getting the job done everywhere on the planet where libertarians aren't.

John Quiggin 01.28.21 at 6:52 am ( 14 )

" In such a case, where the real economy transcends borders and where trade barriers at those borders just make everyone poorer, you need transnational guarantees (or at least a very strong degree of confidence) for property rights and investment against the potential interference of local governments."

Much of the world did social democracy pretty well last century, without transnational guarantees. Conversely, the creation of investor guarantees like ISDS has been a gift to predatory corporations like Philip Morris.

[Feb 03, 2021] US insulin prices as market failure

Feb 03, 2021 | crookedtimber.org

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mw 01.28.21 at 6:04 pm (
19 )

"Apparently insulin ."

Insulin (and Epi pens) become unaffordable in the U.S. because the government massively screwed up the regulations. These are off-patent drugs, so in theory anybody can make them. BUT, getting production facilities FDA-approved is a long, expensive process. So when there's an effective monopoly on a drug, no other company will enter the market to compete -- even after huge price hikes. Why not? Because after the new company had invested the time and money to get its production line built and approved, the original monopolist would drop its prices back down, and the new entrant would make no money. And everybody knows this, so potential new entrants don't bother. An obvious solution is reciprocity to allow importation of drugs already approved in the EU. But there's no way the FDA is going to allow that to happen and lose its regulatory monopoly.

The bottom line is that these are not failures of unregulated markets, they are cases of government failure in the most heavily regulated market in the U.S. (and where, in fact, the strict regulation is the key enabler of the bad outcome and where the obvious fix is blocked by the regulatory agency defending its turf).

MPAVictoria 01.29.21 at 1:39 am (no link)

"Insulin (and Epi pens) become unaffordable in the U.S. because the government massively screwed up the regulations."

Just need to point out that this is completely false. Insulin prices are high in the US because of a lack of price controls. Canada has very similar patent rules and our insulin is made by the same companies but guess what? We set a maximum price for pharmaceuticals. The US should do the same.

mw 01.29.21 at 1:23 pm (no link)

MPAVictoria @ 23 Just need to point out that this is completely false. Insulin prices are high in the US because of a lack of price controls. Canada has very similar patent rules and our insulin is made by the same companies but guess what? We set a maximum price for pharmaceuticals. The US should do the same.

Yes, you could layer on additional price-control regulations to fix the problems caused by the existing regulations. Of course it's one thing for Canada to adopt such rules where the U.S. has not (and remains a source of profits and R&D incentives) and another when the U.S. is also controlling prices. Incidentally, if price controls were to be adopted in the U.S., my suggested approach is that the U.S. should require all pharma companies within, say, two years to sell drugs here for the lowest price they have negotiated in any industrialized country with a comparable per-Capita GDP. Then we can all be in it together.

But that's all a discussion for another thread -- the point remains that insulin and epi pens are not examples of a free, unregulated market failing, they're an example of a very heavily (but badly) regulated market failing. Yes bad U.S. regulations are responsible -- they create barriers to entry (specifically high costs of setting up a production facility combined with an FDA regulatory monopoly and a ban on imports) that enable monopoly pricing.

notGoodenough 01.29.21 at 8:01 am (no link)

mw @ 19, MPAVictoria @ 23

Not to side-track the thread, but I think there was an attempt to explore this on a previous thread (particularly with respect to Daraprim, though I believe many of the points are applicable in a general sense) [1]. While I´ll freely admit I am not an economist, I didn´t find the responses to my queries and concerns from those advocating "regulations are the issue" sufficiently satisfactory [2, 3] to warrant changing my position – in short, I see little evidence to support the notion that it is US regulations responsible for the high price of pharmaceuticals (particularly as it appears that R&D spending is frequently less than that of marketing and administration). I hope the discussion at the links provided is of interest.

Apologies to everyone for the interjection, but Pharma is a topic of keen interest and concern to me.

[1] https://crookedtimber.org/2019/10/09/the-third-lesson/
[2] https://crookedtimber.org/2019/10/09/the-third-lesson/#comment-766046
[3] https://crookedtimber.org/2019/10/09/the-third-lesson/#comment-766434

CHETAN R MURTHY 01.29.21 at 8:32 pm (no link)

mw @ 30: I forgot to respond to your by-the-by argument that the pharmas' US profits fund their R&D. This is, as with the rest of your arguments, untrue.

(1) the US taxpayer funds most pharma research
(2) Last I checked, pharmas spend more on advertising and lobbying than they do on R&D.

'nuff said.

MPAVictoria 01.30.21 at 1:29 am (no link)

@ NotGoodenough – Interesting links thank you! And I completely agree that I am unconvinced that over regulation in it the reason the US has uniquely high drug prices.

@ me – Drug approval and manufacturing requirements in the US are not that different from any other developed country. Neither is it's Drug IP regime. So the argument that these features are what cause these outrageous pharmaceutical prices doesn't make much sense. In fact the US had a bit of a reputation of being too ready to approve drugs with limited effectiveness. The reason that Americans pay more than anyone else in the world is simple – no price controls.

[Feb 02, 2021] Watching stock market moves is like watching Pulp Fiction: halfway through, the violence doesn t even bother you anymore

Notable quotes:

"... "It's like watching 'Pulp Fiction.' Halfway through, the violence doesn't even bother you anymore." ..."

Jan 27, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

"Investors are becoming desensitized,"

Bryce Doty, SVP at Sit Investment Associates, told Bloomberg, then continued the verbal poetry:

"It's like watching 'Pulp Fiction.' Halfway through, the violence doesn't even bother you anymore."

[Jan 29, 2021] The Coming Revolt Of The Middle Class - ZeroHedge

Jan 29, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

he Great American Middle Class has stood meekly by while the New Nobility stripmined $50 trillion from the middle and working classes. As this RAND report documents, $50 trillion has been siphoned from labor and the lower 90% of the workforce to the New Nobility and their technocrat lackeys who own the vast majority of the capital: Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018 .

Why has the Great American Middle Class meekly accepted their new role as debt-serfs and powerless peasants in a Neofeudal Economy ruled by the New Nobility of Big Tech / monopolies / cartels / financiers? The basic answer is the New Nobility's PR has been so persuasive and ubiquitous: soaring inequality and Neofeudalism has nothing to do with us, it's just the natural result of technology and globalization--forces nobody can resist. Sorry about your debt-serfdom, but hey, your student loan payment is overdue, so it's the rack for you.

The recent Foreign Affairs article referenced here last week Monopoly Versus Democracy (paywalled) describes the net result of the economic propaganda that the stripmining of the working and middle classes was ordained and irresistible: Today, Americans tend to see grotesque accumulations of wealth and power as normal. That's how far we've fallen:

"As the journalist Barry Lynn points out in his book Liberty from All Masters: The New American Autocracy vs. the Will of the People , the robber barons shared with today's high-tech monopolists a strategy of encouraging people to see immense inequality as a tragic but unavoidable consequence of capitalism and technological change. But as Lynn shows, one of the main differences between then and now is that, compared to today, fewer Americans accepted such rationalizations during the Gilded Age. Today, Americans tend to see grotesque accumulations of wealth and power as normal. Back then, a critical mass of Americans refused to do so, and they waged a decades-long fight for a fair and democratic society." (emphasis added)

The bottom 90% of the U.S. economy has been decapitalized : debt has been substituted for capital . Capital only flows into the increasingly centralized top tier, which owns and profits from the rising tide of debt that's been keeping the bottom 90% afloat for the past 20 years.

As I've often observed here, globalization and financialization have richly rewarded the top 0.1% and the top 5% technocrat class that serves the New Nobility's interests. Everyone else has been been reduced to debt-serfs and peasants who now rely on lotteries and luck to get ahead: playing the stock market casino or hoping their mortgaged house in an urban sprawl on the Left or Right coasts doubles in value, even as the entire value proposition for living in a congested urban sprawl vanishes.

America has no plan to reverse this destructive tide of Neofeudal Pillage. Our leadership's "plan" is benign neglect : just send a monthly stipend of bread and circuses (the technocrat term is Universal Basic Income UBI) to all the disempowered, decapitalized households, urban and rural, so they can stay out of trouble and not bother the New Nobility's pillaging of America and the planet.

There's a lot of bright and shiny PR about rebuilding infrastructure and the Green New Deal, but our first question must always be: cui bono , to whose benefit? How much of the spending will actually be devoted to changing the rising imbalances between the haves and the have-nots, the ever-richer who profit from rising debt and the ever more decapitalized debt-serfs who are further impoverished by rising debt?

As I explain in my book A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet , people don't want to just get by on UBI , they want an opportunity to acquire capital in all its forms, an opportunity to contribute to their communities, to make a difference, to earn respect and pride.

That our "leadership" reckons bread and circuses is what the stripmined bottom 90% want is beyond pathetic. The middle class has meekly accepted the self-serving claim of the New Nobility that the $50 trillion transfer of wealth was inevitable and beyond human intervention. But once the stock market and housing casinos collapse, the last bridge to getting ahead--high-risk gambling-- will fall into the abyss, and the middle class will have to face their servitude and powerlessness.

That's how Neofeudal systems collapse: the tax donkeys and debt-serfs finally revolt and start demanding the $50 trillion river of capital take a new course.

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[Jan 28, 2021] 'Where is the line between global business attempts to control society-' Putin asks Davos as he calls out power of Big Tech

Jan 28, 2021 | www.rt.com

'Where is the line between global business & attempts to control society?' Putin asks Davos as he calls out power of Big Tech 27 Jan, 2021 12:10 / Updated 3 hours ago Get short URL © Pixabay / Gerd Altmann 354 18 Follow RT on Technology giants have become powerful rivals to governments, but there are doubts over the benefits for society of their monopoly positions, Russia's President Vladimir Putin told the annual World Economic Forum, on Wednesday .

"Where is the line between a successful global business, in-demand services and consolidation of big data – and attempts to harshly and unilaterally govern society, replace legitimate democratic institutions, restrict one's natural right to decide for themselves how to live, what to choose, what stance to express freely?" Putin wondered.

"We've all seen this just now in the US. And everybody understands what I'm talking about," he added.

The Russian leader was apparently referring to the crackdown by Big Tech corporations like Twitter, Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon, mostly on Donald Trump and his supporters, during the recent presidential election in the US. The companies, which, according to some critics, sided with Democratic candidate Joe Biden, blocked President Trump's social media accounts over accusations of inciting violence, with the same being done to many pages of groups and individuals who'd backed him.

ALSO ON RT.COM YouTube prolongs Trump suspension citing 'ongoing potential for violence' as Big Tech doubles down on deplatforming policies

However, one-sided bias claim voiced by some might be an overestimation – the accounts of Democrats supporters were also subject to restrictions, but on a much smaller scale.

Conservative Twitter-like platform Parler was also forced offline, and now there are calls to block the Telegram app as well.

These events have shown that Big Tech companies "in some areas have de facto become rivals to the government," Putin said.

Billions of users spend large parts of their lives on the platforms and, from the point of view of those companies, their monopolistic position is favorable for organizing economic and technological processes, the Russian president explained. "But there's a question of how such monopolism fits the interest of society," he stressed.

ALSO ON RT.COM Putin tells Davos that divided modern world facing 'real breakdown', with demographic struggles & echoes of 1930s pre-WW2 tensions

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shadow1369 8 hours ago 27 Jan, 2021 07:51 AM

This is a great opportunity for Russia to create some Big Tech operators which actually allow free speech. Russia certainly has the expertise and the means, and cannot be bullied by western regimes.

Proton1963 shadow1369 1 hour ago 27 Jan, 2021 02:54 PM

Sure.. But only after the Russians can build a drivable car or a decent smart phone or a laptop.

Election_Fraud Biden shadow1369 1 hour ago 27 Jan, 2021 02:12 PM

The West is surely giving Russia a lot of opportunities, through its own arrogance and stupidity, does not it ? It keeps going backwards in its effort to diminish Russia. And the same goes for China too.

JOHNCHUCKMAN 7 hours ago 27 Jan, 2021 08:45 AM

Putin is a remarkable statesman, and he sets a very high standard for political discourse. I can't think of any of our Western leaders who speak in these truthful and philosophic terms. What we hear in the West are slogans or whining or complaining.

Tenakakhan JOHNCHUCKMAN 3 hours ago 27 Jan, 2021 01:03 PM

The patriarch of the west has become extremely weak. It seems like our leaders lack any moral authority to speak truth and common sense for fear of being cancelled. What we see now is the virtue signaling dregs sponsored by extreme groups leading our nations down the toilet. If a real war was to break out now we would be cannon fodder.

Hilarous 7 hours ago 27 Jan, 2021 09:04 AM

I think there's a simple explanation. Big tech is afraid to lose section 230 of the communications act, which stipulates that online platforms are not legally responsible for user content. Trump and some Republicans have accused social media sites of muzzling conservative voices. They said undoing Section 230 would let people who claim they have been slighted sue the companies. So Big Tech has a strong interest to remove Trump and run down a few bad examples to convince people and politics that Section 230 must remain.

Count_Cash 8 hours ago 27 Jan, 2021 07:40 AM

In many cases they aren't rivals, but owners of government. Money controls everything in the west and big tech have it. They have taken control of, or are blackmailing governments. The Western Liberal Regime straddles both Big Tech and government!

RTaccount Count_Cash 7 hours ago 27 Jan, 2021 08:57 AM

Correct. Let us never forget that in America we are ruled by oligarchs just like the rest of the world, and that our oligarchs are largely hidden. They are our true government, and so it is meaningless to make this type of distinction.

[Jan 27, 2021] Why financial oligarchy loves neoclassical economics

Jan 27, 2021 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Sound of the Suburbs , January 27, 2021 at 4:00 am

The globalists found just the economics they were looking for.
The USP of neoclassical economics – It concentrates wealth.
Let's use it for globalisation.

Mariner Eccles, FED chair 1934 – 48, observed what the capital accumulation of neoclassical economics did to the US economy in the 1920s.
"a giant suction pump had by 1929 to 1930 drawn into a few hands an increasing proportion of currently produced wealth. This served then as capital accumulations. But by taking purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denied themselves the kind of effective demand for their products which would justify reinvestment of the capital accumulation in new plants. In consequence as in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When the credit ran out, the game stopped"

This is what it's supposed to be like.
A few people have all the money and everyone else gets by on debt.