RE WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD

See David Kaiser's latest post.

Were I a betting man, I would think that the Donald had some chance, given his gross media exposure all these years;

but what do I know?

The Donald, a flesh and blood 'Thurston Robert Macaire Howell', now, late in the game,

just wanting to 'give back' to the great system that made it all possible(eye water).....something like that.

Re the Venus of Willendorf Beauty Versus Ugly Philosophers and Gods The Mediterranean Diet And Other Things

We are going to commence, in dribs and drabs, a discussion of various topics, which I will connect in abstruse ways as we go along.

The title gives a hint of what is to come.

Here is an image to start. this is The Venus of Willendorf:

RE A STALE FOOD FIGHT EDITORIAL NYT MICHAEL POLLAN the menu

Re food safety, and a lot of other things:

Why an Iowa?

For that matter:

Why an Oklahoma?

After all:

Why a fragmented confederacy?

See also, Bing terms search, 'weak governments', etc.

Most Americans don't discover how ill governed they are, 

and long have been.

When examples such as this (regardless really of where, or if, you stand, on this food issue) are pointed out, even if it registers, they quickly forget it again.

RE THE SPANISH PRISONER THE EU AND US THE REAL ROAD TO SERFDOM

It's not just Spain.

We are all, rather, 'The West', on a locked train, heading toward global 'Wage Poverty Siberia'.

The EU has tied the hands of its European captives on this train, precisely as Krugman describes, has happened to Spain.

Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, today,

who else tomorrow?

The US has similar constraints, imposed on it by globalization, not just by a currency union;

lack of control over its separate currency, especially amid fiat currency wars;

no expansionist levers amid globalized environment except ever more globalization..... down 'the slippery slope';

government stimulus ineffectual for the same reasons;

tariff or embargoes, now useless for similar reasons.

I would call this the real

THE ROAD TO SERFDOM

RE LEAVING THE EURO HOW WOULD IT WORK?

Good question. The article gives a few examples.

Perhaps they should start buying gold, and go on a gold standard over a few months?

Say, a Greek or Irish transitioned gold reserve currency.

Sounds quite farfetched for these regimes. They want to leave the euro precisely presumably to print extra money, which the EU won't allow.

Certainly if they go back to their former fiat currencies, they will be crushed, capital flight beats down the value of the fiat currency, and banks fail, etc.

RE IS SQUIRREL THE PERFECT AUSTERITY DISH? EDITORIAL BBC ENTRE CHIEN ET LOUP the menu

BETTER THAN, SAY, SOMETHING ENTRE CHIEN ET LOUP!

Most Americans should read this little gem. Of course, the British are sending up their country brethren in this article, but that is nothing new, and well deserved I might add.

Of course, I have a special fondness for the little devils (both squirrels, and British).

My grandfather used to take me hunting for them in the woods of Mississippi.

Contrary to Mr. Smith, my grandfather also loved squirrel brain, too.

(Smith: "It's a quite pleasant tasting dish and I would not be afraid to offer it to the Queen," he says, before quipping, "Y'all are overrun with squirrels in England. You need to eat some of them!")

So here is a passing comment on cooking, since I got a stray request recently for some cooking commentary from an admiring reader:

we didn't stew these little gems, where I came from; we rolled them in flour and meal and some kind of binder my grandmother used, and Southern Fried them to perfection. They tasted rather like Colonel Sanders' chicken, heavily salted and peppered and crusty.

One could also grill these little rascals, or even saute them. Either would work very well.

If grilled, or on a kebab, I recommend a little smoked bacon be placed in proximity as well.

Some of the cuts of squirrel we had were suspiciously similar to certain dishes of ostensible chicken I have since eaten, especially in some Indian restaurants in London.

It seems that eating squirrel is not necessarily limited to rural America, at least among some city dwellers, even in the heart of some European capitols.

My grandfather loved fried squirrel brain! Just like Mr. Smith's mother.

He actually used to use a nutcracker, my memory is rather vague on this detail, to crack open the fried skull; he had also remarked about nuttiness, that it tasted like walnuts.

I recommend a garlic mash, green beans, turnip greens with fat back, and squirrel drippings, flour, onion, garlic, provencal herbs, and fino sherry gravy, sourdough soft dinner rolls,

and a 'dry riesling' to accompany this little delicacy!

Pecan pie a la mode, sanka (just kidding), and of course, cognac and cigars to follow.

One might also substitute rabbit, but i have never tried it like this.

One might try possum too, but again, I have not had the pleasure.

Better hurry, WWIII perhaps about to begin.

SEE ALSO PRIOR POSTS

RE FRANCO PRUSSIAN WAR

AND PARIS Paris BOULANGERIES
terms search the menu

Re NO VEMBER

Well, it's beginning to appear that I might have actually guessed right on this.

Would be a great time to incidentally sink the dagger into the EU, and further destabilize already 'fragile' (Yes 'Fragile', all economists agree) globalistic economies, everywhere;

with an eye to wringing as many economic and territorial waters appeasements as possible;

assuming that lazy fare and nearby developmental regimes choose, as they almost must, to start to play along, giving it up, until the bitter end, slippery slope, becomes clearer to them.

The Middle East has been the convenient, and draining, side show camouflage, for these long accumulating events to begin to unfold.

Re THEY HAVE ANGERED CHINA TOO NO VEMBER

The forthcoming four-day US-South Korea naval manoeuvres were organised well ahead of this week's attack, but they have angered both North Korea and China.

Way too late for Americans, especially those like Geithner, to smell the coffee.

RE CARTOON MISE EN SCENE UNCLE SAM DOG WITH A PEST

Picture an old mangy Uncle Sam dog seen from the side half sitting. He should be a hound dog, rather than say a Pekinese, Foo, Chow, or Shar Pei.

He is bedevilled near his rear, half scratching at it, by a very large tick, half the size of the dog, and by other smaller fleas here and there.

The caption above: Trade and Security Partnering In Asia

Diplomatic Dialogue:

Sam (Somewhat dizzily): Are you a close friend?

Tick: No, just a flea.

Sam: Can you guard my behind against other fleas?

Tick: Sure.

Sam: Fair enough.

The one below: Free Riders Beggar Their Neighbors

RE KRUGMAN BLOG THE INSTABILITY OF MODERATION

Great blog post.

I see it, of course, also as part of a much larger trend toward compartmentalization, the kind of thing E H Carr bemoaned re a disconnect between politics and economics, even in the late 30s, The 20 Years Crisis.

It had begun in earnest, as Carr had pointed out, early in the 19th Century.

Call it, in part, a failure caused, in part, by compartmentalization.

RE KRUGMAN'S EATING THE IRISH

Here,

Krugman needs Blitt too!

Could do a kindofa Gahan Wilson

thing, color green, etc.

RE LEONHARDT ON GEITHNER THE LAISSEZ FAIRE CASANOVA CHINA HAND

Geithner: Old China hand.

I especially liked the image of the nation going PRC flag color.

That says it all.

That's economics for ya. All our Walmart stuff are made behind China's borders, and further behind their territorial waters, now so very in dispute.

See prior posts re Casanova Hand, laissez faire, lazy fare, etc.

THE ASIAN REFORMATION

Great that China can take over the Catholic Church within its borders.

Great news.

Kind of gives all Westerners, not just the Catholic Church, a 'heads up'.

RE 50 STATE LABORATORIES TAILS WAGGING BIG MNC OTHER STATES OFFSHORE OR FOREIGN DOGS

Many corporations were originally incorporated in New Jersey, a small state, which I had suggested recently (re NYT editorial) should perhaps be rolled into New York, along with a few others, for good measure. Thinking about Newt's view, why have '50 labs', when say 20, or 10, or even say 5, would do even better, economies of scale, consolidations, outsourcing, and all of that?

New Jersey was a big one for incorporation costs 'breaks'; so many big big MNC dogs have their tails wagging in, guess where, New Jersey.

Most of those corporations do no one in New Jersey very much good anymore anyway, to say the least; they might help New York a little here or there; in fact, a lot of damage and neglect there in NJ, probably.

Therefore, why not, when we roll New Jersey into a 'bigger state dog', simply unincorporate all these unpatriotic MNC behemoths in the 'New Jersey Pound', in the rolling process?

Why really bother with trying to resuscitate 'antitrust' laws, from the New Deal period and before, a dead letter now anyway:

just unincorporate them as part of consolidation, and commence the 'winding down' process.

If you want smaller weaker government, you need even smaller even weaker still private entities, otherwise, WHO GOVERNS? Many MNCs have 'economies' and 'capitalizations', and therefore political power, larger than that of some states, and most foreign countries.

I know this will sound odd, but Newt's position is equally at an extreme location.

RE NORTH KOREA A THREAT BUT PRC ALLY PRC OUR FACTORY AND OUR STRATEGIC ADVERSARY

You figure it out.

Japan, another 'ally', they hate the Koreans, and the Chinese.......

That is so called market capitalism, writ large.

When it unravels, soon, watch out.

Re Newt Gingrich 12 Ideas

"50 state laboratories"... great stuff for people who have no idea what they are talking about.

Not that the present federal structure is anything to write home about, but get a load of the states, each one, of 50, and each their manifold subordinate local governments. Rather like Germany before Bismarck. Napoleon had a field day with it.

See my prior posts on this topic.

Rumpole's quote from Hood re Korea situation

Re my previous post re: Poetic Relief

"No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member.
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves,
no birds, --
No vember."

Say, for the sake of mere speculation, November.

RE TRUTH BEAUTY THE SOUL THE FACE GRACE PREDESTINATION UGLY PHILOSOPHERS AND FEARFUL SYMMETRY

"The face is the soul of the body."

WITTGENSTEIN ALSO SAID, SOMEWHERE, THAT THE HUMAN BODY (NOT THE FACE) IS THE BEST PICTURE WE HAVE OF THE HUMAN SOUL.

"Truth is beauty, beauty truth."

Can this too be true?

Then, what of ugly philosophers (Socrates), and of doctrines like predestination, then?

My grandmother had said 'beauty is as beauty does'. Very different paradigm: good works, etc.Is that like 'good works' , as against, say, predestination, or 'grace'?

That is, I think, quite a 'counterexample', were this ("Truth is beauty, beauty truth.") an argument, rather than 'poetry'.

And if a lion can't talk, it can't be truthful, and if not truthful, then also not beautiful.

But if that, then what of Blake,

"Tiger Tiger, burning bright,

in the shadows of the night,

what mortal hand or eye........"

RE THE STONE EDITORIAL BEYOND UNDERSTANDING ANDY MARTIN AUTISM WITTGENSTEIN AND US

It is of interest that Martin has moved to another fringe issue for the subject of philosophy.

He previously delved into the question of beauty versus ugliness as perhaps having to do with the philosophical turn of mind.

Now it is autism. This may be a more fruitful avenue of inquiry, for Martin's decadent approach to the subject.

It may also provide some fodder for a few cartoons at some point.

My professor at King's, Peter Winch, had translated Culture And Value into English, and it was published, back in the late 70s.

A propos Martin's previous editorial on Ugly Philosophers, he had some remarks on 'beauty' there. How's this:

"The face is the soul of the body."

That really plays to Martin's strong suit.

Does he resemble, a little, the late Andy Warhol,

or is it my autistic imagination?

 

RE FRANK RICH NYT EDITORIAL COULD SHE REACH THE TOP ANTI INTELLECTUALISM BARRY BLITT

I especially liked Barry Blitt's cartoon.......................

And, re Rich's very good point, near the bottom of this long, but short, article, next to Blitt's cartoon, the point about her followers base being anti-intellectualism versus anti-wealth, let's face it, most people aren't reading that much anymore, anyway, and just look to their left.

Re Cartoon mise en scene Daumier economist schools joust cf Barry Blitt

Re

Cartoon mise en scene Daumier economist schools joust cf Barry Blitt:

One might also show two pyramids of monkeys (economists, experts), each half submerged in a swimming pool, the bottom bonobo and half the middle one in each pyramid being seem from underwater, the top member of each 'team' trying to dunk the other top member, and 'win'.

One might also show a plucked chicken, standing nonchalantely at the side of the pool, watching and judging the competition, with a flag ready to wave, labeled 'Plato's Man'.

The caption above:

The Worldly Philosophers

The one below:

"Keynesians Versus Monetarists"

Re Lester Thurow The Future of Capitalism Cold War Blunders Last Clear Chance Rawls' Justice As Fairness Flexible Exchange Rates Again

The 'last clear chance' the US political system had to rationalize and develop the US domestic political/economy was squandered on an ideological mission, utopian in origin, with fleeting strategic underpinnings, to develop the undeveloped non-communist world: hardly an example of, say, Rawls' 'justice as fairness' to average Americans.

Thurow had a nice explanation of this in paper back edition, pages 117-119.

He also talked about flexible exchange rates, (see also re my recent post on Weinman for floating currencies against a gold standard) at page 223:

'Kindleberger was the only economist (in 1971), according to Thurow, who could honestly say, even back then, including Thurow, "I told you so".'

Well, surprise again.

Cartoon mise en scene Daumier economist schools joust cf Barry Blitt

One might show a joust between left and right wing economists, similarly to Daumier's famous tryst between Ingres and Delacroix over the issue of line versus color. We might depict Krugman on a Keynsian Palomino, and show, say, Bernanke or some other one, atop a Milton Friedman Monetarist Maverick.

Where is Barry Blitt, when one needs him?

RE KRUGMAN RE CHEESE-EATING VAT-PAYING SURRENDER MONKEYS

My cartoon bonobos could do with some of that too.

My bonobo pyramid of experts would not appreciate, or understand, his new article.

In a sense, then, ignorance, while it has lasted, has been bliss.

RE LAWRENCE WEINMAN SEEKING ALPHA ARTICLE

Weinman ostensibly makes various points he thinks Ron Paul is not aware of re a return to a gold standard.

That, I am sure, is quite true.

However, Weinman's supposed reasoning has very many flaws (can't shake a stick at all of them here), Paul's 'reasoning' (if any) aside.

THE DONALD FOR PRESIDENT BBC EDITORIAL

"I have many people from China that I do business with, they laugh at us. They feel we're fools. And almost being led by fools. And they can't believe what they're getting away with."

About this detail,

the Donald is quite right.

RE NYT EDITORIAL BAILING OUT NEW JERSEY AND THINKING BIG AND THE EDUCATIONAL ROLE OF THE MEDIA

Interesting editorial.

Re 'thinking big':

WHY A 'NEW JERSEY', AT ALL,

NOWADAYS, AT THIS LATE POLITICAL DATE?

Why not, for example, just roll New Jersey into New York City, or into New York State, along with a few other small states thereabouts, as well, for consistency?

See also: State and Local Politics, The Great Entanglement, by the late Robert S. Lorch, 1st Ed. gray panels, and especially Ch. 3 Federalism, gray panel entitled "Why An Iowa?"

Indeed, Why Iowa?

To paraphrase, and update, Lorch's only partly rhetorical question,

"Why 50 different struggling, antiquated, behemoths?"

Unfortunately, many of the same people who rightly question 'why so many lawyers', on the other hand are vehement for their own state's rights, including its unique set of laws.

50 different states, plus DC, and each their innumerable local governments, all separately regulate the professions, the trades, and many other matters, in their own voluminously peculiar ways. The federal government piles in on top.

Thus, "Why ________?"

You fill in your favorite entity.

See also: State and Local Politics, The Great Entanglement, 1st Ed. gray panels, and especially Ch. 1 INTRODUCTION, gray panel entitled

"How Interesting Is A State?"

RE US Web Traffic Rerouted via China Telecom editorial BBC

Kind of a wake up call for globalized information networks.

RE DAVID BROOKS THE TWO CULTURES EDITORIAL SWAN SONG NYT

What an essay.

While any reader of this site can see that, to say the least, I have not been sympathetic to economics as a discipline,

Brooks' essay is not at all my kind of criticism of economics, except perhaps that it implies a criticism of economic compartmentalization;

but disciplinary compartmentalization, in all fields, is after all one of our biggest problems, and invites journalistic sophistries, like Brooks', a journalistic pot shot across disciplines, eg here 'history' (Brooks' apparent college major) attacking 'economics', in every area of scientific or quasi-scientific endeavor, not just in economics.

It's hard to select, from among obvious angles, which one to use first to criticize this cynical and misleading diatribe of his; even from the point of view of conservative (non-economist) perspectives, were one so inclined.

The only reasonable explanation, for someone who, frankly, knows better, is that he is now having to show some patron(s), somewhere, who are both ignorant, suggestible, anti-intellectual, and angry, that Brooks is still 'on board'.

With so many well known economists, conservative or liberal, being coincidentally Jewish, and Brooks also, one wonders why he would have been chosen, or volunteered, to pen so implicitly divisive an essay, calling it The Two Cultures, on such a topic? It too readily plays into, or could be turned into, the themes that early 20th Century European antisemitism fomented: a Jewish economic conservative (Republican,capitalist, globalist) conspiracy, and a Jewish economic socialist (Democrat, liberal, globalist) conspiracy. Neither Hume nor Smith were Jews, however, and there are many non Jewish economists of either stripe, who may soon be forgotten.

One of the good questions, substantively, might be to ask how the US got into a position, to which Brooks himself refers, where several current economists (their intellectual backgrounds aside for the moment) have produced a study perhaps rightly showing that for a country like the US now, economics (stimulus spending) itself no longer works.

It is, after all, Brooks' and others', kind of globalism, which has resulted in this 'economics conundrum'. See e.g. prior posts, eg

RE GLOBALIZATION TRAP: DEFICIT SPENDING TARIFFS DEBT

Thus, Brooks, frustrated by the technical, exact, yet twilight, quasi-scientific, world of economics, (their models and entities like shadows, silhouettes, thrown up on the wall of Plato's cave from indirect light)

enters the world of common sense, and of art, in politics. (Seldom, however, have there been two more uncomfortable bedfellows than common sense and art, a fact which he also knows all too well.)

The harder fact remains, morality and art aside, that the globalization that now renders domestic economic 'Keynesian' efforts fruitless has been a profoundly bipartisan enterprise for decades now. Additionally, conservative economists have been even less taken with art and morality than the so-called liberal ones he criticizes.

We have also had a lot of conservative economists, Friedman school, in control of things now for decades, who largely hail from Chicago, the town where Mr. Brooks was also educated, with some of them I believe.

Perhaps this is a kind of 'swan's song' for 'intelligent' mainstream conservative journalism?

See also my comment on David Kaiser's blog post re Anti Intellectualism Again, referred to in my post entitled

RE LAZY FARE VERSUS PROTECTIONISM

Here is that comment:

"Professor

Great summation. Thanks for publishing this essay.

I also had read passages of Hofstadter myself, back in the 70s.

I was not so sympathetic to e.g. Allan Bloom's book, The Closing..., on more recent intellectual history.

I will refer to some things I have been noting re causes: there has long been an intellectual compartmentalization, with not just one or two causes, which has caused the discrediting of intellectuals of all kinds.

When the compartmentalized intellectual's pronouncements prove false, for various reasons, the field, or subfield, loses intellectual face.

It is also connected, just one cause, with a visceral turning away from all specialists, even though so many of us, not even intellectuals, are inevitably 'specialists' of one stripe or other.

Take, just one example, many medical doctors, their discipline itself based on exact science, dating of archaeological matter, etc., yet they sometimes embrace a creationist cosmogony beginning 12.5 thousand years ago, despite the exact science contradiction. They also embrace an anti intellectualism inconsistent with their very discipline's underlying tenets.

This is just one of the most glaring examples; there are many others, from all specialist fields, of specialists repudiating intellectual other specialists assertions or constructions.

Another aspect, to which I have alluded, has been the large extent to which liberal democratic politics, and its free market, have been allowed, and have thus been enabled, to overtake and control disciplinary criteria, and meritocratic principles, by money, influence, and progressive transformations in various industries and professions.

The big market players have tended to overpower the professions, the trades, farmers, and other specialists who might have exercised some meritocratic or professional or guild sense to the marketplace; this type of overbearing influence shows itself no more plainly than in such events as the mortgage-backed security debacle.

This is not at all a new thing. For example, I especially enjoyed Jonathan Steinberg's Teaching Company talk on Frederick The Great, his treatment of experts at his court.

There are various other causes to which one might advert, but can't monopolize another site with more of them. This even was perhaps too much of a 'comment'.

So many remarks here invite comment, but space is at a premium.

all the best,

YOU SOMETIMES DON'T APPRECIATE YOUR TEACHERS ENOUGH UNTIL THEY ARE GONE

Perhaps we could get Brooks, say Krugman, and say, James Grant and Bob Herbert, all in a room, and they could, so to speak, fight it out? Tag team?

June 2020 addendum:

I criticize David Reich and Nicholas Wade, too, as well as Brooks and his adversaries. 

I really agree with none of them. 

But backed against bright scalding graffiti amid a flat hot intellectual wasteland, parched desert or rotting jungle, you turn and fight with what comes to hand.

Brooks: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/16/opinion/16brooks.html?hp

 New Republic:  https://newrepublic.com/article/79211/david-brooks-and-cultures

RE PLATO AND POSSIBLE WORLDS REPUBLIC

Those who can, should get a copy of the early Teaching Company tape of Dalton's lectures on Power, view the Plato one especially.

The audience's reactions to Plato's, and to Aristotle's contrary, view, on the role of women, alone, is worth it.

Still, one needs to see all this in contradistinction to the rise, and dominance, of Sparta,

a topic seldom considered in the same breath with quite abstract political/philosophical discussions of Plato's views.

RE BACEVICH'S THE END OF (MILITARY) HISTORY?

I am afraid he has the Whig (Butterfield's sense) 'disease',

inherited in part from Fukuyama.

To believe in an 'end' of military history is as chimerical, I am afraid, as to believe in an end to the notion of victory between adversaries.

Sorry.

RE NYT THE STONE EDITORIAL THIS IS YOUR BRAIN AND SAY SYMBOLIC NEANDERTHAL ANALYSTS METAPHOR AND POSSIBILITY

There may be more types of beings than are usually connoted by the term 'symbolic analyst'.

One might, for example, call politics a 'Conversation of Symbolic Analysts', or a 'Clash of Symbolic Analysts';

or one might think of The Clash of Civilizations, as a 'Clash' of Symbolic Analysts.

The 'symbolic analyst in everyone' should be of special concern, more so than the more narrowly defined globalized IT 'group'.

They don't necessarily have to be savvy IT techies, in the desert, or the mountains, or in an office. They don't even have to know how to read, really.

Perhaps they don't have to be human, say 'BONOBO SYMBOLIC ANALYSTS'.

One might depict the nyt author, who has a great deal of hair, in a 'symbolic analyst' interchange with a neanderthal, or with either a very clean cut or punk kid geek, IT techie or two; I can't think of the captions yet.

The bonobo pyramid of experts, say for this purpose a 'Pyramid of Metaphoricians', with something in the captions about 'monkey shines', and 'Possible Worlds', would also work. There might need to be an element of slapstick, banana peels, or banana republic reference.

POSSIBLE WORLDS START WITH PLATO AND MODALITIES

Let's start small, with just one little example, to kick off the discussion of these topics.

A good, early, example of an 'impossible world' is, say, the one sketched in The Republic.

In contradistinction, the Spartan State, as it actually was, an actual city-state 'world', as we might conceive it, (not a literary fiction,) would seem to us to have been almost equally 'impossible', or perhaps better, 'unimaginable', had it not actually existed.

Theme music: The Impossible Dream

RE NOW, WILL CHINA GET IT?

See my prior post cartoon mise en scene:

MISE EN SCENE BUS STOP MAVERICK EXECUTIVE MARILYN FREE TRADE HUMAN RIGHTS HOLD UP AND UGLY PHILOSOPHERS

the Maverick, his gun pulled,

might also be saying: "Get It?'

MORE MODALITIES ON THE HORIZON RE POSSIBLE WORLDS

We are going to be talking shortly, having broached the subject of 'modalities', of some other kinds of reality.

We are going into the twilight reality of some:

'IMPOSSIBLE WORLDS'.

RE HOW TO MAKE THE DOLLAR SOUND AGAIN James Grant and Now, Will China Get It? NYT Editorials

GOLD STANDARD AGAIN, FINALLY. Get It?

Great stuff. Didn't know he had it in him.

This would be one step on the way to redevelopmental America.

China is grossly devaluing its fiat currency,

but mining and hoarding gold and silver voraciously.

What do you think might be going on there?

Re NYT editorial today: "...Get It?",

You wonder if editors talk to each other?

See post above.

Maverick will make sure 'someone' gets it.

RE BEING IN A MARKET STATE OF MIND

Maybe you have heard of 'being in a New York State Of Mind'? It was a lyric.

I am in kind of a 'market state' tonight, so will drop a few new terms, experimentally, draft version, for some kinds of things I think might actually be going on.......

Let's start with a seeming 'oxymoron', or 'occimoron', actually 'asi-moron' is closer, and you can imagine a cartoon for this type of state, individual, or market participant:

'Global Market Communist' Dale Terrain Territory

'Global Goods Nationalist' Hill State Island Territory

'Confucian Capitalist' Gully No Man's Land

or say,

Muslim Town Casino (Not) Coastline

Hindu Country Badlands Steppe Territory

Or how about:

'Plan Rational Global Market Participant Desert Civilization'

Another idea, would be perhaps:

'lazy fare globalist socialist Imperial Peak'

These are just some variations, for a market state of mind.

Various other alternative imaginative scenarios, 'modal worlds', have been discussed, 'park', 'garden', or 'meadow', etc., fleshed out, in a way, elsewhere, by others. E.g. The Shield Of Achilles

For Catholics, Interest in Exorcism Is Revived

While there are a lot of other comments I probably should make, my favorite one is that there are a few individuals who seem to me might benefit from a mild exorcism, even though they happen not to be Catholics.

Perhaps the Holy See can do some dispensation for outreach, in these kinds of cases.

RE THROWING FREE TRADE OVERBOARD EDITORIAL NYT

I suppose it is better late than never.

It seems to take a non-Democrat-non-Republican

to see something long obvious like that.

CYRIL FALLS' INAUGURAL LECTURE EXCERPT

"INDEED, ONE OF THE TRAGEDIES OF OUR COUNTRY HAS BEEN THE FACT THAT IT IS AS RESISTANT TO UNPALATABLE ADVICE AS A BIRD'S FEATHERS ARE TO RAIN."

This was a rather nice lecture, back in 1946.

Re Back to a Gold Standard?

See comment re Mark Thoma's Editorial, Economist's View blog:

"Gold During The Depression"

He, they, claims that without floating rate currencies,

economists lose the chance to control domestic economies.

Hello, in a globalized world, a bubble world largely enabled by floating fiat currencies, economists have created a situation where economists can no longer control 'domestic economies'

anyway.

Re Throwing The Bums Out Editorial NYT Nov 6

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/opinion/07kennedy.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

He draws a great thumbnail sketch of the Gilded Age, and shows a lot of material from which a thinking person might conclude that some fundamental reforms in the American system have long been desperately needed, but not a breath of such a thing passes his lips.

re NYT EDITORIAL TODAY

Countries See Hazards in Free Flow of Capital.

The next step will be nationalization, a process that has been surreptitiously going on, in international intellectual property, for decades now, anyway.

A Real, Property Rights hold up........

Now that's what I call big big 'property rights'.

American property rights advocates identify 'strong property rights' with free (the Casanova hand) trade.

This article: Just another tell tale sign of

GAME OVER.........

RE NYT TODAY EDITORIAL KOREA TRADE 'DEAL' TRADING AMERICAN INTEREST TRADING PLACES AGAIN AND AGAIN

"This is an opportunity that we can’t let lapse, for economic growth in our country and also for a long-term presence in the region, particularly as it relates to China,.."

You figure out what this might really mean.

Re David Kaiser's current post

He refers to previous losers in national crises, business interests and white southerners, in a previous post from 6 years ago:

"How did We Come so Far? The Meaning of Tuesday's Election"

Interesting reading.

RE Where Do We Go From Here?

See David Kaiser's current post.

This is perhaps my favorite phrase "...they have become more and more detached from reality--...."

I have been reading Hanna Arendt, Origins, on and off, and she has some very interesting passages, mid book, Ch. 11 especially sec. II, on themes I see as somewhat similar, what I would call the 'plasticity', as it were, and mediatedness, of political reality.

RE NICHOLAS KRISTOF SUNDAY EDITORIAL BANANA BONOBO REPUBLIC PYRAMID OF EXPERTS PHILOSOPHERS AND YES SLAPSTICK LAISSEZ FAIRE

'Perhaps the most astounding statistic is this: From 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.'

This QUOTE could be the caption below

for a lone bonobo totem pole, pictured with the familiar three bonobos in a zigzag pyramid. These might each have a different expertise written in block capitals across their chests, Economist, Think Tank, Philosopher, Asia Expert, etc

There need to be actual banana peels all around the pyramid, and them each eating one with one hand.

A fourth bonobo is slipping down on a peel while running by. He might be labelled Europe.

THE CAPTION ABOVE

SLAP STICK LAISSEZ FAIRE

RE THE DEFINING PARTNERSHIP FOR THE 21ST CENTURY MISE EN SCENE WEST SIDE STORY G20

We show an elegant ballroom.

The President and Premier Singh are dancing the tango together, both in suits.

However, the President is the male partner for this particularly dramatic moment in the dance.

There are one or two other identifiable pairs on the dance floor, looking on, with various expressions of emotion.

There are about G20 individuals on the side lines.These should be arrayed in groups or cliques based on ethnic, national, or racial characteristics. Think West Side Story.

Certain groups can be snapping their fingers, facing one direction, etc., in unison........

They eye each other with suspicion, etc., etc.

The caption above

EAST SIDE STORY

The caption below

The Defining Partnership For The 21st Century.

Zoellick Pushes Gold Standard Debate

Thestreet.com article today.

Zoellick Pushes Gold Standard.....

Me too. If you can't carry out needed policies without debasing a currency as part of that process, give it up. Fiat money sanctions cutthroat devaluations.The currencies themselves are backed by nothing verifiable.

There are other ways to accomplish policy while keeping an objective standard for a currency. Claims that fiat money are needed to stimulate, or retard, or something else, are specious because other mechanisms can be used. You can have runs on banks because the deposits do not stand for specie, but rather stand for claims to fiat currency. 'Finance', and speculative investments, divorced from specie discipline, are a big part of what got us here.

We weren't following a strict gold standard, even until 71.

RE KRUGMAN'S DOING IT AGAIN

He has the best advice, from an economist, but our status now does not seem open to mere Keynsian efforts like those begun shortly before WW II.

Additionally, I would point out that Bernanke's speech 8 years ago re Friedman's claim perpetuates a false account both of the causes and 'cure' for the Depression, and of the role and capacity of the 1920s Fed, or the 2010s Fed.

Many other causes played into the Depression, causes not directly susceptible to mere Fed manipulation, even back then. It's a long list.

Similarly, but perhaps more so, today.

Realecontv the situation from an Asian perspective

http://www.realecontv.com/page/667.html

MISE EN SCENE BUS STOP MAVERICK EXECUTIVE MARILYN FREE TRADE HUMAN RIGHTS HOLD UP AND UGLY PHILOSOPHERS

We show the Maverick in his cowboy get up, dressed for the rodeo, with six shooters strapped on, ten gallon hat; Uncle Sam goatee. He has dismounted an older mare. He is wearing a prominent Sheriff's Badge with pointy ends.

He has stopped a stage coach (the large old kind, seen in Westerns; 'Wells Fargo' painted somewhere) in a desert landscape; small circular sign, atop a waist-high pole stand, nearby says BUS STOP; tall cactus etc. We could also show a 'bonobo' Indian Totem Pole 'Pyramid of Experts' somewhere, three bonobos tall, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, just to add the recent philosophers' and experts' dimensions to the scene.

We see the coach relatively close up, from the side, so that we see inside windows on each side of the open stage coach door in the middle.

The coach is full of disparately dressed individuals.

He has already got one of them out of the coach and is standing next to the coach brandishing a six shooter at this unarmed individual, and has him by the scruff of the neck with the other hand. The Maverick has a Clint Eastwood type cigar stub in his mouth as he is talking.

This passenger might be a plump Arab, Mexican, Asian, or Indian-looking 'business man', 19th Century garb. He might also be Gandhi; Nehru jacket etc. He looks real scared. He is weighed down by two large, heavily stuffed, 'carpet bags', one in each hand.

A Marilyn Monroe figure, dressed in tight jeans and a tight white open blouse, as in The Misfits, is standing at the stop, holding a furled umbrella at arm's length pointed down smartly at an angle to her booted foot. Her blouse reads across the bosomy front, in block capitals 'I LOVE PHILOSOPHY'.

The caption above

Enforcing Human Rights and Free Trade 'In the Territories'

The caption below, he is saying

(

Think of 'Dusty''s voice from Tales of The Cowboys, Garrison Keillor.)

:

Mister, Stick 'Em Up! (Or: Stick Em Up Shorty!)

Don't give me that

'no direct investment' mambo jambo.

That jabber's for city slickers.

Gimme All Yur Free Trade, Now,

and Nobody'll Get Hurt: That's Yur Human Rites.

RE OBAMA INVOKES GANDHI FOR AGGRESSIVELY DEVELOPING INDIA

Nice thot.

But, unfortunately, Hitler, Stalin, and others we shall not name,

would have made very short work of Gandhi.

RE THE REAL GLOBALIST 'FREE RIDERS'

These are the regimes which have to globalize, and stay ever greater globalized, imperialize in the words of some analysts, in order to ostensibly try to maintain basic internal political stability.

This strategy, oddly utopian in its economic aspect and origin, yet starkly realist in political history, has been doomed, in the long run, as an inherently self-defeating politico-economic-military program.

RE EXPORTING OUR WAY TO STABILITY THE LAZY FARE WAY FREE RIDERS BEGGAR THY NEIGHBOR THE REAL ROAD TO SERFDOM

The President's essay. A noble exposition. A continuing exhortation, in its way, of the 'real' lazy fare "Road To Serfdom" which we have been following for a long time now.

Unfortunately, exporting and importing, and foreign direct investment,have been the engines of slowly gathering impoverishment, not prosperity, for developed nations, for the past 50 years. Terms like 'excess capacity', including labor capacity, spring to mind.

Because our 'system' turned on it major corporations only moments after having abandoned its average citizens, those corporations, now MNCS with largely foreign constituencies, have long since abandoned the domestic economy they were originally incorporated, state by state, to serve.

It used to be common among economists, and politicians aped them, to trumpet notions like 'free rider', to decry so called 'beggar thy neighbor' policies of protectionist developmental states like Japan and China; when they were perceived to be merely small lazy fare parasites on the 'free' world economy.

Only a few years later, they are recognized to be not only not merely parasites, but the second or third largest economies, by these techniques. Of what, of what is left, can they meaningfully be said to be 'free riding'?

US Presidents' foreign policies, including the current one, are largely responsible for what has gotten advanced nations into the power morass they have now been in for a while.

Producing is great, rather than consuming, but stability has to be based primarily on domestic industrial and commercial policies, not on 'economics', and not primarily on trade; nor will long term prosperity come from that direction, particularly for developed and declining advanced economies which embrace lazy fare.

Further, and this really shows where the ball has been dropped, military power, and security, still have to be based largely on a strong and socially coherent domestic social and political base, not primarily on diplomatic/strategic/trade negotiations, on deals bargaining access to markets, or on a compartmentalized, and mercenarized, military paradigm.

Trading commercial for OSTENSIBLE, AND FRANKLY, ILLUSORY, military or diplomatic advantage has been a fool's paradise for 5 decades now. One's partners turn into, at best, one's commercial adversaries, in short order.

Re Barry Blitt image re security umbrella Middle East Shield of Achilles

He has, under his Hoo Haw section, an image of Marilyn Monroe, covered over, but above the subway vent, with skirt spread umbrella-like.

Why not show this as an image of a security umbrella for the Middle East, with this type of image descending, similarly to Mary Poppins in others I have described, from say 10 feet above the ground, over a desert landscape, with date palm trees at an oasis, plus a spring, at near right or left.

The caption above:

Middle East Security Blanket deploying.

The Caption below:

The Shield Of Achilles

RE CARTOON MIS EN SCENE SECURITY UMBRELLA STATUS NOW

This is a take off on previous posts, re Lear as Uncle Sam.

It might be good to continue with President Obama in drag as Cordelia.

At least he is shown in that role as faithful to Old Glory.

Other parties' notables could be suitably, and threateningly, arrayed.

We could show a scene in the play where Lear is mad,

it is raining, pouring, he is wailing,

think of one of Daumier's better dynamic 'rain scenes',

he needs a shield, a large, picnic table size, umbrella,

call it 'The Shield Of Achilles',

or something,

and is offered a small, delicate, and true, parasol,

by Cordelia.