RE CHINA'S FAST RISE LEADS NEIGHBORS TO JOIN FORCES cartoon mise en scene

What a ridiculous gloss over a ludicrous economic and diplomatic past this article is.

See prior posts re fattening things up, square dance cartoon, etc.

It might be worthwhile to pose Mahbubani waltzing around a ballroom floor with say a large Chinese sumo wrestler, singing the praises of the Asian Century.

Mrs. Clinton might be also out there, cavorting with a japanese partner.

The caption above might read

"Civilized behavior"

She might be requesting of her partner

'A Singapore Sling Please'

Re Macro

My professor of macro at BU GSM, Phil Friedman, a good teacher of a bad course, still actually teaches, at GGU, Ageno School of Business.

Who knew?

RE MAHBUBANI: THE IRRESISTIBLE SHIFT

An example,

what has been happening in broad daylight, going on for decades now,

while Americans expanded Asian trade,

went to their sports fan sporting events,

fought debilitating and diverting little wars, Korea to Viet Nam to Afghanistan,

and agonized over arcane domestic ethical issues.

Americans frittered away their advantages.

THEME VIDEO FOR THE WEEK

CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON

This is dated a few years, but hey.

Interestingly, Ang Lee also directed Emma Thompson's

version of Sense And Sensibility, what.

Thurston Robert Macaire Howell p 16

This was from around 06:

"Yet, it turns out that even the magnitude of the threat driving cold war military spending and trade concessions may have been exaggerated.[1]

American policy makers have compartmentalized decisions on foreign and military policy from trade, industry, urban economics, and the general welfare, and have subordinated the latter to the former, because of weaknesses in our system which require or allow such compartmentalization, on which foreigners and multinationals have been able to game.[2]

Is it now too late, for our cities, industries, and safety, for Americans to see that social, economic, and military strength hang together?[3] Is it too late to adopt producerism rather than consumerism? To promote a middle class, the general welfare, to adopt a 21^ST Century version of the American System?"[4]

---

[1] T. Gervasi, The Myth of Soviet Military Supremacy, Harper & Row, 1986.

[2] See: Johnson, Japan: Who Governs?, p. 106:”’If Japan told Washington it would no longer sell computer chips to the United States, the Pentagon would be totally helpless….Japan now has a decisive technological advantage.’” Bobbitt, Shield, p. 702. When Congress has had to make trade-related sausage, it has usually been foreign sausage.

[3] Peter Paret, Understanding War, Essays On Clausewitz and the History of Military Power, “The New Military History”, Princeton, 1992, p. 209.

[4] Or perhaps it is time for Francis Fukuyama’s, The End Of History And The Last Man(?) Free Press, 1992. (If the last man had had nationality, religion, economics, and politics, what would they have been: German, Protestant, British System, Whig?)

See also: Our Posthuman Future, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002. “… capitalist liberal democratic institutions have been successful because they are grounded in assumptions about human nature that are far more realistic than those of their competitors.” Our Posthuman Future, p. 106. See however Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation Of History, and Johnson, Japan: Who Governs; Miti, for an antidote to Fukuyama.

RE DAVID SHAMBAUGH CHINA EXPERT

It's uncanny how he physically resembles, somewhat, the fictional British diplomat, who tried to defect to China, via Greece, in the "It's Up To The Lady' episode of Secret Agent, the early 60s television series.

Just a coincidence......I wonder if Shambaugh ever even heard of the program?

RE DIVIDED WE FALL KRUGMAN NYT EDITORIAL

Re be afraid, he is right.

"Fragmented from the beginning, we long since have fallen"

might be a better way to put it.

Re, "When Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, the U.S. economy had strong fundamentals", unfortunately he has date and terminology wrong.

The last time the US had a 'strong,' but declining, 'domestic economy' (the only one that counts when it hits the fan) was in the early 70s.

Civilizational Advantage was already shifting at that point, say around the time of the Nixon Shock.

The USA intentionally did not have a strong government, then or before or now.

RE KRUGMAN ON FRIEDMAN ON JAPAN JAMES GRANT CHINA AND THINGS BEYOND COMPETITION

Printing more money, a monetarist device ends up as a species of government corruption. Banks are not necessarily under control of this device.

Fiat money itself enables misconduct.

Economists tend to see their postulates as applicable across the board of all countries. All countries behave according to these immutable globalizing laws.

It is useful to find examples of behavior inconsistent with these postulates, 'globalizers' who nevertheless do not share rare earths, or (perhaps even now or in the near future) gold or silver, if they can help it.

Maybe that is the greatest good for the greatest number of Chinese, a new economic mercantilist theme.

Perhaps this is another economics counterexample:

James Grant, an astute economic thinker, publisher, and pundit, who used to show up on Louis Rukeyser's Wall Street Week, was apparently surprised, according to his comments in a recent video, when his group tried to 'value invest' in Japan, some years ago.

The Japanese have supposedly been working on products or materials for which there can be no 'competition'. That is an impossibility almost for the economists; the closest analogy may be the 'natural monopoly' I guess.

Theme music for this new item, 'Can't Touch This'.

RE EXCHANGE RATE WARS INTEREST RATE WARS TRADE WARS AND JUST PLAIN WARS TO COME

Economists everywhere are advising their patrons to devalue their currencies, in order to better wage the trade wars at hand.

They never talk much really about better, more, substantial ways to improve their countries absolute positions, by import substitutions, by subsidies and other measures, which might benefit their working classes rather than their monopolists rather than 'export substituting' their working classes to Asia.

Mere currency wars play into the hands of developing countries, which want to see closer currency values anyway rather than rich nation currencies versus poor nation currencies. Maybe some bright economist out there can correct this skewed notion.

There was a time when strong currencies tied to a determinable hard asset, could not be touched by weak currencies, and trading was a tertiary activity in that regard.

Another implication, not drawn by pundits in NYT, although both articles are there today, is that these developing nations are sucking investors' money out of the developed world, and its domestic businesses, and into their higher growth economies, by raising their interest rates while those elsewhere are at or below zero.

The other day, foreign regulators were warned about financial shenanigans in China, and perhaps India, blithely glossing over the other implications of this ongoing trend in huge investments by but away from the developed world.

Filling the Gap Between Farm and Fair Trade

Re Filling the Gap Between Farm and Fair Trade Editorial:

Americans need, or soon will need, a domestic version of this kind of reagriculturalization.

RE THE GLOBALIZATION PANDER AGAIN NYT FRIEDMAN

Friedman in NYT today has some good criticisms.

Unfortunately, this accusation, of a Republican plank, while truly a plank, is not a good criticism of them, any more than it would be a good criticism of Democrats with similar views:

"Let’s oppose the free-trade system that made us rich."

The reason is that this system did not make 'us' rich.

He also does not appreciate his call for greater regulations of subjects he favors, and the repudiation of government regulation implicit in his globalism. it is a species of hypocricy.

re rattling the saber of war before an election

Unfortunately, this is one of the old tricks of weak regimes like ours.

There is no stronger method for bringing the electorate behind some ill advised adventure than this,

while the day to day lazy fare politics have lead in the obvious direction, actually building toward such a confrontation, for decades, through multiple administrations, in any event.

It is sad to see such a system grind on (only seemingly) interminably.

RE TAKING HARDER STANCE TOWARD CHINA EDITORIAL NYT G20 AMERICA SHOULD HAVE SMELLED THE COFFEE 50 YEARS AGO NO EMBARGO NO CURRENCY OPTIONS OPEN

"This administration came in with one dominant idea: make China a global partner in facing global challenges,” said David Shambaugh, director of the China policy program at George Washington University. “China failed to step up and play that role. Now, they realize they’re dealing with an increasingly narrow-minded, self-interested, truculent, hyper-nationalist and powerful country.”

In 2010, 2010, they realize the're dealing with.........

Ridiculous, really. Anyone with just a smidgen of history can see what a truly pathetic situation this is, and will be.

The US off shored most if its bric a brac and much other manufacturing over there, to its 'strategic' partner.

What could make anyone think that other Asian spaghetti republics would be closer to the US? Only a delusional diplomatic mind set.

And when one reads such as:

'this administration came in with one dominant idea............................'

it says something about the simplicity, paucity, and narrowness, of ideas at the diplomatic and political top.

Hello: guess what America also is:

'a narrow-minded, self-interested, truculent, hyper-nationalist and powerful country'.

All that Cobdenist peace loving free trade development, throughout Asia, is now coming home to roost.

Who do you think their new economic and military rival will be; might it be their favorite erstwhile peaceful trading partner?

Wonder how that happened, not enough open markets for them? Not enough technology transfer, or joint projects? Not enuf lazy fare?

What is a 'harder stance', imposing 'sanctions', e.g. say reducing the ENORMOUS trade deficit with China by, say .5%?

Embargo? How do you embargo your major source of goods?

Another good question:

How do you slap the hand that is feeding you?

What military options are open to a country which has blithely placed its manufacturing sources in the home of its new enemy?

See some prior posts re fattening things up, Trading Places, Trading American Interests, Japan Who Governs, Thurston Robert Macaire Howell, lazy fare, laissez faire, CIVILIZATIONAL ADVANTAGE, and various cartoon mises en scene, etc.

Things may be heating up, as I had poetically taken a wild guess, along with Rumpole, ..........no birds,

No vember.

In geopolitical, civilizational, terms, which I have used before, which even many Americans can kindof understand,

'Game Over'.

RE 48TH IS NOT A GOOD PLACE

What has long been striking is the extent to which American higher educational institutions have been allowed to cater to, and to have been subsidized by, foreign powers and interests, even in relatively technical areas and subjects: research projects, institutes, etc. Much of this research has been made available wholesale, or to its specific sponsors, whoever they have been.

The authors mention and discuss patents; another editorial recently exhorted greater American R&D and patent activity (though ideas are now quickly pirated in many places because of weak regimes everywhere to prevent this).

There will be a lot of excuses made for this longstanding educational state of affairs; not enough qualified Americans, demand outstripped domestic talents, etc, etc.

The authors note that while these foreign students used to stay here (an ostensibly good thing); now they are increasingly going back home, wherever that is.

This heavy advanced education of foreign nationals, who end up in competition with directly, or employed by MNCs which have no nation's interests at heart, has only exacerbated the excess capacity of multiple developed competitor regimes around the globe, each always clawing for limited resources and opportunities in a world rapidly shrinking in both.

JAPAN PROTESTS OVER CHINESE BOATS NEAR DISPUTED ISLANDS

Re previous posts eg Fattening Things Up, some cartoons, and so forth:

Now, having been sufficiently fattened up over several decades, these behemoths need to square off hard over some things.

Frankly, however, on the other hand, with Friedman, I believe they need a few more globalizational joint projects, say projects to maximize usefulness of Australia and New Zealand ores and coal, on top of the mega deals they already now have; give them something useful to think about.

RE MY DEAR LATE UNCLE GAC AND THE REAL ESTATE GAME

I can't help but think, here in the midst of the shenanigans of the mortgage debacle, the banks now taking a hard line on their depressed and frankly title tarnished assets,

BORROWERS ALSO SNAKE OIL OPERATORS, FLIPPERS, THEMSELVES, IN MANY CASES,

of my uncle, my favorite Maverick Executive, near the top of GAC, back in the heady days of the Florida Arizona and elsewhere fraudulent RE BOOM, swamp and desert land boom of the 60s and early 70s, until it exploded on him and all of them.

I believe it is all going to get a lot uglier and less certain going forward than most pundits assert.

Real estate titles and values in US will never be the same.

Kind of a wake up call for greater government regulation, but that's not happening until a little bit later; and then, not in a great kind of way.

Here was some late 'winding down' of the fiasco. It had been going on since the early 70s:

Article: GAC Liquidating Trust, the bankruptcy trustee for GAC Corp.,settles lawsuit by selling undeveloped land in Collier Country, Fla. for $5.25 million. (1986)

RE LAZY FARE VERSUS PROTECTIONISM

A propos a comment by TOF on David Kaiser's blog re Anti Intellectualism Again, on the topic of economists' contradictions and the clear advantages of free trade over protectionism, one needs to review the history of industrialization in America in the 19th Century, and the crucial role protectionism played in that industrialization.

Protectionism was copied, largely through Friedrick List's program, in Germany, at roughly the same time, for very similar reasons, and to counteract mainly the same laissez faire industrial monopolist, the first such one, Britain.

Thomas L Friedman Globalization Pander

The well advised reader is well advised not to bother to read his nonsense.

He is like the doctor, for a patient of megaglobalization, a disease his previous treatment promoting globalization, has caused.

His inevitable solution for globalization is more globalization. And so on.

Here are some thoughts along these lines:

Why not some good joint globalization projects, say some between Arab groups and Israel.

We could also have some useful globalization projects, promoting greater trade, aggressive commerce, and good relations between say Iran and Iraq.

Let's throw in some Balkan projects into the mix, to get the full benefits of globalization.

Why stop there, Japan and China and Taiwan are crying out for globalization joint projects.

Re David Kaiser's Coming To A Theater Near You post Michael Lewis' Liar's Poker and education

Just an example here, of my remarks, connecting e.g. finance and education crises, on David Kaiser's blog, re his post above, although he was talking about primary and secondary education;

and Lewis' comments, also in his recent book, re how he had thought back in the 80s, that college students of management or finance would take his book, Liar's Poker;

and how surprised, and disappointed, he had been at the actual response (not that it should have been all that surprising).

RE THE CONFIDENCE FAIRY HERE AND IN BRITAIN

Krugman is right, in his article.

I want to focus on a point he makes, in passing, re regimes which come to rely too heavily on the finance 'industry'.

There was a time when 'finance' was hardly even really considered an 'industry', much less one which when played fast and loose, wheeling and dealing therein, kept a domestic or national economy afloat.

FINANCE WAS SOMETHING YOU NEEDED SOMETIMES, TO DO A REAL INDUSTRY OF SOME OTHER SORT.

When your main 'industry' is financial wheeling and dealing, you are in really big trouble.

RE CHAMBER OF UNCOMMERCE MISE EN SCENE

Show only the heads of these two cowpoke mavericks, in profile facing right: Josten and Donohue, close up, as in the photo.

They both need to be wearing dusters and ten gallon hats, each holding a cigar, and perhaps a martini.

The caption above, We'll show those city slickers.

We'll show that Washington crowd , too.

The caption below: Maverick Executives' Corporate Commerce

RE POLITICAL REFORM NOT

There are three major dimensions, now missing from the current US situation, which will prevent a reasoned reform toward a commonwealth, economic nationalism, or economic autarky, which almost all Americans, except perhaps the very rich ones, have needed for decades now.

The very rich ones do not realize it, but they need this now unavailable major reform as much or more than the average ones, because of the backlash to come, against the very rich, and others, from the average, from poor Americans, and from young Americans, against very rich ones and against old ones. It will not be a reasoned reform movement.

These three things are:

1. The fact that Americans have been talked, propagandized, dumbed out of, and developed out of, economic nationalism as a goal for the last 60 years.

2. Americans have largely off shored most of their production capacity which would have made renewed economic nationalism feasible.

3. Americans are tied, propagandistically and spiritually, and dumbed down toward their existing political structures, federal, state, and local, in such ways as to make reasoned reforms of these very complex political structures, guided by an informed middle class, not possible.

Mise en scene of the previous post

Another possibility:

The visage kneeling at Palin's feet might be 'The Beast' from Beauty and The Beast.

Then, the image in the mirror might be, say, Rush, Rove, Beck, you name it.

 

Another possibility:

 

Marilyn is the unreflected image, Palin the mirror image. That makes more sense.

These are perhaps, theatrically, better alternatives.

Re Making Ignorance Chic: Cinderella Three Penny Opera Crucible Marilyn Palin Beauty and the Beast Mise En Scene

Mise en scene:

We show a 'fancy' dressing room, backstage in a run down theater.

Die Dreigroschenoper.

Bouquets of flowers here and there.

Sarah Palin is seated facing 75 degrees left. Kneeling at her feet and holding her hand reverently is a bedraggled right wing admirer, say Rove, or some equally prominent (i.e. identifiable) admirer, resembling also the Maverick Executive, Macheath, and also even Robert Macaire if possible.

He could also be wearing some kind of Macaire esque dressing gown, implying he is one of the players as well.

One might even depict him trying on her foot a slipper...........but this might be 'pushing' it.

She is looking into a long dressing mirror (not at him), seated at a long dressing table at her left.

Her image, reflected to the viewer from that mirror, is that of Marilyn Monroe, not Sarah Palin.

Behind her, is a full length wardrobe mirror, showing Rove, Rush, or whoever, also coincidentally mirrored toward the viewer as, say, Casanova, Hitler, Attila The Hun, it does not so much matter exactly who, etc.

Another mise en scene might depict his reflection not overtly politically, e.g. as that of 'The Beast', from Beauty and The Beast, the television program from a couple of decades ago. That might work better.

At the back of the dressing room, are three busts, one of Socrates, one of Alcibiades, the third of say Ronald Reagan, wide but side by side facing front. The busts are each atop a pyramid of two bonobos, each 'hear no evil' and 'see no evil' respectively.

A poster, from The Crucible, is somewhere on the wall shared by the wardrobe mirror, at right.

Some phenomenological reference is noted somewhere, a poster of Sartre would be good.

Caption above,

Pirate Jenny: Some Like It Yacht.

Caption below, he is asking: "Are you the sweet illusion of a lover's dream,

or are you really as wonderful as you seem?"

A musical reference would be perhaps 'Mac The Knife', or even 'Pirate Jenny', rather than the referenced melody from Cinderella, 'Do I Love You Because You're Beautiful?'

RE HOOT SMALLEY CASANOVA PHILOSOPHERS' BONOBO MARILYN REFUDIATED NYT DOWD EDITORIAL CARTOON POTENTIAL

Maybe Ms Dowd took a glance at my site...................................doubtful. I have included her misspellings for appropriate effect.

The Casanova hand of the market in American politicians is writ large in people like Reagan, Palin, etc.

Why not pursue a cartoon theme of political leadership, intellect, beauty and ugly, a character for example not necessarily nonintellectual, but dissembling about their savvy (not necessarily absent any intellectual acumen), to appeal to a dumbed down electorate?

Anyway, this is good food for a cartoon or two or three.

Previous posts re Andy Martin Ugly Philosophers editorial addressed some different issues, bonobos, etc, etc.

One theme he hit, ugly philosophers, rings bells re the disgust some Greeks felt for ugly Socrates, as against for example his one-time star politician pupil beautiful, licentious, Alcibiades.

We need another image, similar to the one staged in Andy Martin's bathroom, with the mirror seen by the viewer, say Marilyn or Miller's bathroom? The mirror for reflections of certain sorts, an image on the back wall perhaps.

Andy Martin does not need to be in this one, but Arthur Miller perhaps has to be implied, somewhere.

More on this anon.

cartoon MAVERICK EXECUTIVE RAWHIDE BOSSING AMISH SUBORDINATES AROUND THE PASTURE

You get the point. He can resemble Gil Favor.

He can be dressed in his cowboy get-up, punching cows on horseback, etc, with the Amish Rowdy Yates' in his entourage.

This could be rather comical, as a cartoon, for the cognoscenti, of whom in the US there are, perhaps, three.

RE THE NEW AMERICAN AMISH STATE ON THE HORIZON

Without realizing it, the US has been moving toward a sort of pre-industrial 'Amish loose confederacy of states', by political default.

Most Americans have been unaware of the progress, of the trends in this terrible direction; until now, it is virtually a fait accompli.

The problem, for Americans, is that they are not that pre-industrial 'Amish' anymore, and even many non-Amish colonials, especially colonial town dwellers, weren't either.

They no longer know how to farm, do handicrafts, have old folkways, own farm land, make homespun, or tools, like the real Amish do.

Even armed with modern technology tools (an authentic Amish no no) they are more or less lost at sea.

They are techno-consumers, wondering where their next techno-byte is coming from.

This will be a shock, if and when 'producing' states pull the plug on the consumer products gravy train (ridiculous fake plastic objects, utensils, clothing, and toys, etc., made e.g. in China, Mexico, etc.), and they are back in the figural 1600s, but without the knowhow, skills, desire, background, or tools (even modern ones; we more or less offshored the machine tool industry) to go back to the land, just to live.

Re Sherrod Brown For Our China Trade Emergency, Dial Section 301 Editorial NYT

Been there. Seen all this before. Section 301 didn't work then, won't work now.

Brown makes the ridiculous statement that only 10 years ago, the Senate sold out American manufacturing. The US government has catered to and manipulated an industrial economy eager to outsource, offshore, and otherwise eliminate domestic manufacturing for 5 decades now, not just 10 years; initially as part of an explicit Cold War Strategy, but latterly just to make short term profit without regard for the common welfare. See other posts on this site: Trading American Interests, Trading Places, Japan Who Governs, etc.

Like using a pop gun on a herd of elephants.

What we long needed, before 1930 really, was a more centralized, and plan rational autarkic industrial and developmental policy for Americans.

We never got that, mainly because our moribund political structures and centrifugal social system will not support them, except perhaps in times of large scale military conflict,

and these upstarts will now take over the world, shortly.

RE KRUGMAN'S RARE AND FOOLISH EDITORIAL TODAY NYT

For some of us, he points out the long obvious. I could not disagree more with what I take to be an underlying assumption of Krugman's essay, assuming as it inevitably does, a liberal lazy fare international economic order, divorced from politics as such.

You see, lazy fare does assume a separation of economics from politics.

The 'rare and foolish', is not China, but those lazy fare nations and their economics profession, most notably the United States, which have long catered to, and been the lazy fare engine for, developmental nations like, now especially, China;

which, once they get to sufficient size, inevitably flex their new overbearing advantage (hardly just the 'comparative' or 'competitive' variety). As a matter of fact, whatever could be economically wrong about charging a premium, or not even agreeing to sell, any of some rare and valuable minerals held within a nation state's borders under its ownership?

And if foreigners are gullible enough to buy some of that domestic supply, don't they risk non lazy fare techniques, where those supplies 'compete' with the supply of that nation state?

E H CARR has some rewarding passages on the subject, mirroring also my views, in The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939, Ch. 8 INTERNATIONAL POLITICS, SECTION (b) ECONOMIC POWER, SUB SUBS "The Separation of Economics from Politics", "Some Fallacies of the Separation of Economics from Politics", "Autarky".

His quotation from Hamilton is especially nice, given that he was British.

RE ANOTHER VIEW WHY 'STIMULUS PACKAGE' IS A DIRTY WORD

THE MAVERICK EXECUTIVE OUTLAW

RE KRUGMAN TODAY MORTGAGE MORASS: SOME LIKE IT YACHT

He's quite right. His solutions, at bottom of his article, will not be appropriate.

Recall that 'Thurston', back in '06, in Boca, or later, in Bonita Springs, had asked rhetorically,

"Who do you think they will bail out, you or me?"

The Obama Administration, according to Krugman, is apparently confirming Thurston's judgment.

'Some like it Yacht.' Incidentally, sad to note Tony Curtis' passing, this past week.

RE E H CARR AND DAVID KAISER'S POST RE ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM AGAIN

Just a few words, as I have discovered that this early 20th Century Historian, of history, politics, and 'International Relations', shared some of my views and conclusions, before 1950, and put them into print.

He also diverged from my views in crucial respects, but at least he was fighting the good fight.

Some of his observations, eg about 19th Century underpinnings, the Benthamism so to speak, and related trends, of people like Wilson, are especially refreshing, in this arid wasteland of the intellect.

Also, some of his thoughts on what one might call the 'wish fulfillment' aspect of 'specialists', and of 'experts', in various fields, (he deals especially with politics and economics), prefigures some of my observations on this subject, and on many other affected fields, specialization in general, really. (See also my remarks on David Kaiser's blog, History Unfolding.)

Others of his, Carr's, views, e.g. his view of Smoot-Hawley, diverge drastically from mine.

RE The End Of The Tunnel and NYT article re Wall Street Investment Bubble developing nations

"Foreign regulators beware..." Here comes the next bubble. As they note, this is nothing really new, except perhaps in its magnitude.

Question: why shouldn't the average American beware?

Re my previous post, below: "Although rates are at historic lows now, surprisingly few 'property rights Americans' have been 'stepping up to the plate' lately, or are likely ever again to do so, as their sources of income are increasingly drained away abroad."

The Maverick Executive would perhaps say, in a Texas drawl so characteristic,

All this good investor money has to go somewhere,

why not abroad, where it'll do some good?

RE MORTGAGE BACKED SECURITIES

Here is an article I found on Krugman's blog. It is a useful summary. It contains other references for those who want to see some implications.

http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2010/10/08/foreclosure-fraud-for-dummies-1-the-chains-and-the-stakes/

Cartoon RE NYT EDITORIAL TODAY IRAN PAPER TIGER Maverick Executive as Don Quixote

Mise en scene:

Why not show the Maverick, at the Rodeo, say dismounting from the Don's horse, having lassoed 'Tony the Iranian paper tiger'.

Tony, of course, will be resisting, but he is flat, after all, noose around his neck, or back paws.

The caption above:

Put a tiger in your tank.

The one below:

How the Maverick likes his gas.

RE DIAMOND NOBEL PRIZE AND THE ECONOMIST CUL DE SAC

A classic economists' Morton's fork:

"...whether today’s unemployment is a cyclical result of recession, or a structural mismatch between workers’ skills and employers’ needs."

The truth, of course, is that it is neither, nor both, nor some third or fourth economist's ostensible cause.

But the economist must play his game with a very limited deck, and the really important questions to ask are why that has been the case?

Some of the actual causes of US unemployment are contained in references to works by others, and my remarks connecting them, contained in various posts on this site. It helps to have watched it unfold, out of the corner of one's eye, for decades.

RE CURRENT 'CHINA BASHING'

To see how this term came about previously, re Japan, and how it was used very effectively back then, to defuse perfectly legitimate criticism, mainly of the US system of economic and political patronage to foreign client states and major corporations, and was not so much really about 'bashing' foreign regimes as such, see prior posts re Trading Places, Trading American Interests, Japan Who Governs, etc.

It was easy then to manipulate American academic and public opinion away from taking a serious look at how the US government tried to administer business and foreign policy, globally. It has been a pathetic story, going back to the Marshall Plan really.

RE NYT editorial today China Emerges as a Scapegoat in Campaign Advertisements

Seen this coming for decades.

Unfortunately, most Americans will not be able to see that both parties' big players, especially the Republicans, but also heavily the Democrats, have long been sold on this low wage gravy train.

One 'scapegoat' I referred to earlier appears to have been found, but I suspect it will be temporary.

RE TERMS SEARCH THIS SITE RE EG THURSTON ROBERT MACAIRE HOWELL

For those individuals who want to review Thurston Howell's talk for those pages published so far, given in 2006, the Bing terms search device at upper left is available on this website.

There had been a prior version, or two, done e.g. for the Local Government Lawyers' Certification Review Course, but that was not published in the language in which it was delivered. There are, however, audio tapes of that presentation.

TOXIC PROPERTIES AND NONTOXIC ONES

Let's put it like that.

We already read, as I had predicted, there are becoming two sorts of real estate, for title insurance purposes.

All those properties for which creditors' claims were securitized, are now toxic.

One often would not know who claims them or owns them; multiple possible claimants are common.

All those against which there were no securitized mortgages issued, are sort of nontoxic.

Question: In some cases, can one be in reasonable doubt even about nontoxicity?

In our litigious society, why not, if some claimant thinks they stand to gain some advantage by so claiming?

Say, a 'dirty bomb', dropped on the US real estate market and on the rest of the world by lazy fare Entrepreneurs, just doing the imaginative creative investment device Wall Street thing.

RE NYT After Foreclosure, a Focus on Title Insurance

SEE MY PRIOR POST ON THIS TOPIC JUST THE OTHER DAY.

THE MAVERICK EXECUTIVE OUTLAW

Let's sketch briefly one image here that must resonate across God's country.

The story still being told is that if only more clever entrepreneurs would come forward, and create, that things would improve drastically overnight.

One problem with this frankly utopian propaganda chimera, has to do with the stubborn refusal of banks, now fat from federal money from the bailout, to get back to lending in the marketplace, ostensibly because of all the super high risk kinds of businesses out there, like restaurants, bars, discos, retail of all kinds, etc, etc., whereas doctors' offices, lawyers, less so ostensibly.

Thus, our Maverick is starved of good old fashioned grub.

Mis En scene for a cartoon:

We show the Maverick Executive Thurston Macaire, inside a bank lobby, at a teller window. He is dressed in a bedraggled wide striped seersucker suit and tie, but with cowboy boots, a ten gallon hat, and a gun belt visible.

The sign above the window says 'Entrepreneurs' Window'. He is at it.

He's got his big six shooter pulled from its holster, and trained on a bitter looking middle aged looking well dressed woman with horn rimmed glasses and a boufant behind the window. She is disgusted, but appears unphased by this confrontation, as if it happens every day.

The caption above:
The Maverick Executive's Stimulus Package

The one below, which he is saying:

"Never Mind What I want It For.
It's Going To A Good Cause."

RE THE END OF THE TUNNEL

It should not be a big surprise, but many Americans feel more strongly about so called 'property rights', and blindly oppose all government projects, even those like this, which deprive few if any of their house or office,

even as they are generally being divested of their central one, their homes in many cases, en masse, by even bigger 'property rights' (oligopolistic creditors' rights) right now, than one would otherwise suppose.

It's a constitutional thing.

Also, an indoctrination thing. Americans are rabid about abstract things like property rights because of propaganda designed to limit the effectiveness of government to govern.

They have been wilder about the property rights issue, in context, that really took off after Kelo, crippling all public projects,

than they are now about the much bigger badder fact that crooked and negligent private banks and Fannie and Freddie pumped up the mortgage market then caused it to pop on millions of home owners (but also a lot of 'property rights' speculators, now with creditor property rights egg on their dirty faces), losing their properties to the big property rights, the creditor banks, the same entities which were bailed out by All Americans just at the same time.

A lot of other aspects of the national commonwealth turn out to be more critical than just isolated 'property rights' home ownership:

having a job to pay a large, long, traditionally expensive, mortgage, over decades has generally been necessary.

Although rates are at historic lows now, surprisingly few 'property rights Americans' have been 'stepping up to the plate' lately, or are likely ever again to do so, as their sources of income are increasingly drained away abroad.

See David Kaiser's current post

His site is 'History Unfolding'

'Knowledge Gaps', the current post.

RE KRUGMAN THE END OF THE TUNNEL

He does a great essay sometimes.

How should American politics be reformed to accomplish what he infers is needed, instead of what the NJ governor has done?

Do you think it has anything to do with the system of 50 states, and their picayune politics?

A dumbed down electorate is also in play.

Also, I guess the construction lobby in NJ, (lobbies are where it is at, after all), is weaker there than other lobbies.

Maybe NJ wants a private road system, say little toll booths every few hundred yards, armed brigands at toll booths?

Lazy fare at work writ large.

RE MORTGAGE DEBACLE AND SOME QUESTIONS OF TITLE

Some of the issues, which few Americans had thought about until the other day, have to do with real property title implications of mortgage backed securities.

Even if they had done it right, some good, but technical, arguments might be made that securitization itself clouds title, even without lender due diligence negligence seen on a monumental scale.

Securitization itself, arguably, even before the bubble burst, constituted a permanent cloud on titles of all properties so encumbered.

Legal issues, of course, differ, state by state; and there are, of course, 50 of them.

A good argument might be made that all US properties encumbered by securitized mortgages should be entitled to a federally, or affected banks, funded quiet title action against multiple lenders, as there is no way to determine ab initio which lender is the legitimate one, after negligence and banking consolidations, and may never be known with certainty.

It is an impractical, but logical, legal feeding frenzy, brought on by failures of regulation and private self restraints.

My suggestion is that banks should generally be forced by the federal government to write off all these properties as bad corporate decisions, leave the property owners with tainted titles, and go from there.

Some other alternatives, none good either, spring to mind.

Caveat emptor.

NEW CASANOVA HAND VERTICAL INTEGRATION BUT WORLD IS FLAT CARTOON

Let's go ahead and do a WORLD IS FLAT/US IS FLAT image, and combine that with a 'vertical totalitarian integration', POST BELOW, image, for our viewers, and see what that, combined, looks like:

It is an image toward which the Tea Party, conservative religious right Republicans, many many Democrats, and even market-state, Casanova Hand, lazy fare afficionados, have been, inexorably, inclining.

It will have the economically hollowed out, and now squashed-flat, American economy, as a flat lateral pancake;

and the totalitarian, vertical, oligopolistic, media-global-industrial integration, discussed most recently by Krugman, although these are certainly not his terms or interpretation, but mine, as the vertically integrated market capitalist post.

When these two pieces are combined, pancake suspended on the vertical post, we will thus see a large Christian-looking 'cross'.

The sign of the cross, so to speak. Simple, really.

The caption above might read:
POLITICAL PARTIES' CRUSADE RAPPROCHEMENT

The one below:
'A Global Moral Pillar for a Flat Nation in a Flat World:
The End of History, and The Last Man,
Again and Again'

OR

'Entre Chien Et Loup:
At Night, All Cats are Gray
At Night, All States are Flat'

Bob Herbert and Krugman NYT October 5 and before MICROECONOMICS VERTICAL TOTALITARIAN INTEGRATION

Combine that with Krugman's latest remarks, and you have quite a summary of current fast moving trends toward some kind of oligopolistic totalitarianism.

Great investigative editorializing by Krugman. Krugman is at his best, as far as I am concerned, when he stays away from economics as such, and discusses, how shall we say (keep his comments grounded in something), the 'microeconomics' of the takeover of society by politico-media, and industrial global, 'megafirms'.

Let's call it VERTICAL INTEGRATION.

Totalitarianism would be the ultimate in 'vertical integration', wouldn't it? The Germans tried it, after all.

They, the big big backers, thought they could control the forces they 'amassed' politically. cf. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism.

After all, they only really want an even freer lazy fare environment.

Things are such that Americans will not dig themselves out of the politico/economic pit into which they have long been digging themselves by reasoned effort, but rather will be driven to some new, even less enlightened, measures, probably by major adverse developments, initially commercial or financial ones perhaps, from abroad.

RE KRUGMAN'S MOST RECENT ARTICLE SUNDAY

He makes the usual comments, but here refers to certain processes as 'natural', processes which bear no resemblance to normal uses of the term.

If it is 'natural' for trade to overcome national political agendas, everywhere, over time, then political efforts to control domestic industries and economies are inherently 'unnatural'.

A Chinese, Indian, or other , worker is as politically important, and as natural for US policymakers, and all other countries' policymakers, to represent politically, as an American one.

That's economics, as a narrow discipline, for you.