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Wednesday, October 5, 2011

RE NO CHRISTIE NO BARGAIN THOMAS FRIEDMAN NYT

Americans want a, 

you guessed it,

Maverick Executive.

Unfortunately, it has always been an American dream.............


Friedman has nothing really new here, only seemingly so.  


He says we should follow what the great majority of economists tell us, supposedly, ie I guess, his last paragraph, that we need 'growth' (where?), most economists say from Asia, not domestic economic growth. (Friedman by the way is a historian by background, or journalism, not an economist, and he takes other 'experts'' word for this.)


Most economists are globalists re where 'growth' happens, and they have, virtually all, supported free trade all along, as Krugman also relentlessly has.

Term search: Maverick Executive, Krugman, Thomas Friedman, Keynes in the clouds.


At least Keynes had tried to argue primarily for a 'domestic economy solution', in the passage referred to:


Ch 24 IV The General Theory:

But if nations can learn to provide themselves with full employment by their domestic policy...there need be no important economic forces calculated to set the interest of one country against that of its neighbours. There would still be room for the international division of labour and for international lending in appropriate conditions. But there would no longer be a pressing motive why one country need force its wares on another or repulse the offerings of its neighbour...with the express object of upsetting the equilibrium of payments so as to develop a balance of trade in its own favour. International trade would cease to be what it is, namely, a desperate expedient to maintain employment at home by forcing sales on foreign markets and restricting purchases, which, if successful, will merely shift the problem of unemployment to the neighbor which is worsted in the struggle, but a willing and unimpeded exchange of goods and services in conditions of mutual advantage.

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