POST OF THE WEEK

Saturday, January 25, 2020

KENNAN SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME PINNACLE OF ESCAPISM

Saturday, May 11, 2019

THE OPERA BOUFFE POLITICAL SYSTEM

Sunday, September 4, 2011

KENNAN REFERENCES RE FLEDERMAUS AND COVENT GARDEN PRODUCTION

"If we could afford to preserve an opera-bouffe political system, in which everything was taken in the spirit of Strauss' 'Fledermaus,' I should be the last person to oppose anything which could add so materially to the humor of it as our type of amateurism in government.......But if death, torture and misery are not laughing matters, then neither is political life in these times; for death, torture and misery have become the penalties of political failure."

AT LEAST I HAVE SOME RUSSIANS' ATTENTION AN ACCOMPLISHMENT IN ITSELF!

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AFRICA POPULATION 1.216 BILLION

US POPULATION 327 MILLION

THERE ARE FOUR TIMES AS MANY BLACK AFRICANS 

AS THERE ARE ALL US RESIDENTS OF ALL COLORS COMBINED

STOP THE FRICKING NIGERIANS DEPORT THOSE ALREADY HERE

QUESTION FOR VLADIMIR PUTIN NOW THAT YOU CLOSED THE BORDER FOR CORONAV

I have so many Russian guests today. 
Why not throw them a bone!:

Question for Premier Putin:
Why not go ahead and make it a hard border with China, virus or no virus.

The question is: From whom, ultimately, do you have more to fear?

US PAGEVIEWS FINALLY EXCEED ROOSKIE ONES TODAY

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THE PAGLIENEMA FOR POSTMODERNS

I don't really subscribe to her bizarro views, but what a blunt weapon to jam up postmodernists!

SAY CHINA NATIONALIZES ALL FOREIGNER ASSETS

Your whole physical plant is there.

Do you bomb your plants?

SEE MICHAEL PILLSBURY CHINA SUCKERED US INTO NIXON SHOCK

Friday, February 24, 2012

back in the 60s

The US had a chance to take a different course, re globalization, back then.

Multinationals were a relatively a new thing, back then, with notable exceptions.

With the advent of the lower corporate tax, 

the MNCs had an open season on everything, 

and are now totally out of control.

This was not something unknown to policymakers.  Kindleberger, Vernon, etc, at the pinnacle of policy making, were well aware of what forces were now afoot.  Marshall Plan, World Bank, IMF, Bretton Woods, etc.

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

AT NIXON SHOCK 1971 VERNON WROTE SOVEREIGNTY AT BAY

The salient point here is that nation state sovereignty was already, way back in 1971, very much 'at bay'.

"Monday, July 23, 2012

RE POLITICALLY FRAGMENTED MARKET CAPITALISM

'The world is our oyster', 'when in Rome do as the Romans' (Vernon, Sovereignty). These were the watch words of US executives in the 60s. Don't take my word for it. Vernon,Sovereignty At Bay, knew it well. See his passage, on the US' relative political fragmentation, leading to political weakness, as against its own and others' erstwhile national, but by then (1971) multi national, corporations, p 207, 208."

This was very old news, already in 1971, for the insiders of the LIEO, who had planned for this, anticipated it, and looked forward to the eventual end of the nation state and its nation state brand of capitalism. 

Kindleberger is the classic example of these theorists.

Sunday, August 28, 2011

RE EARLIER POST MENTIONING KINDLEBERGER AND VERNON HERE IS SNIPET FROM KOBRIN THE PARDONER'S TALE CHAUCER

Here is Kobrin:

'The dramatic expansion of the Multinational Enterprise (MNE) after 1960 produced a 
‘first wave’ of literature in the popular and academic press.  The opening lines of Raymond 
Vernon’s best known book capture its tenor well: ‘Suddenly, it seems, the sovereign states are 
feeling naked.  Concepts such as sovereignty and national economic strength appear curiously 
drained of meaning’ (Vernon 1971, p 3).
3'

'In a seminal series of lectures two years before the publication of  Sovereignty at Bay, 
Charles Kindleberger (1969, p 207) argued that the ‘nation-state is just about through as an 
economic unit.’ ' 

They had hoped, back then, for a 'united states of the world', (ANALOGOUS TO STEINGART'S UNITED STATES OF THE WEST, which however now excludes of course the pesky non West) 

based on expanding trade investment and political unification, 
and thereby the taming of the murderous nation state concept itself, that would make war obsolete. 

The nation state was the devil that needed to be exorcized. 

(Problem: the US itself is a nation state needing to be exorcised by virtuous Cobdenist multinational enterprise.)

Rather like the Pardoner's Tale, in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, really.

Saturday, July 28, 2012

RE RAYMOND VERNON A USEFUL UPDATE POLEMIC

Sovereignty@Bay

https://mgmt.wharton.upenn.edu/files/?whdmsaction=public:main.file&fileID=4002

Friday, November 19, 2010

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.

PAGLIA PROVOCATIONS

Planning to thumb into this and lose my dinner.

LEONHARDT KLEIN THE RATIONAL IS THE REAL THE REAL THE RATIONAL

The political party that controlled the American North for much of the 20th century was in many ways an authoritarian party.

The political party that controlled the American South for much of the 19th century was in many ways an authoritarian party.

Here is Philip Bobbitt:

Monday, July 20, 2015

RE NATION STATES TERRORISM CIVIL WAR BOBBITT

Reading Bobbitt's works, especially passages in Shield, it becomes clear that he viewed Lincoln's Union as what he terms the first nation state. It gets lumped in with all the belligerents of The Long War, and with the strategic implications of total war, with which he identifies the nation state itself as with a moniker.

In his view, it seems, nation states are inherently prone to total war and terror.  See especially the passage in Shield at p 217. This has been an ideological fallacy of the so called Milner Group since the early 20th Century.  I take it that Bobbitt is firmly in that tradition, quibble though he might with Sir Michael Howard, another member. 

He characterized Davis' Confederacy as a state nation (remnant), fighting a war, where feasible, only against official military units of the Union, and disdaining guerilla tactics as well as attacks on civilians or property as being undignified, immoral, and ungentlemanly.

Lincoln's Union was not only the first nation state, under Bobbitt's analysis, but also the first terrorist nation state, in that it attacked the state nation- like Confederacy (its own federal territory, by its own definition) in what has been characterized as a strategy, in the end, and ultimately long after, of depopulation and terror. 

The freeing of the slaves (only in the Confederacy) as a war measure was conceived, and was quite understandably treated in the Confederacy, as a terrorist measure against the Confederacy and its population, erstwhile citizens of the US for whom the Union claimed to stand. 

Although there were Confederate guerrillas whose activities could not be well controlled, the Confederate Army apparently did not attack either Northern civilians or destroy their property. Rather like Frederick The Great.

See also Moyar's book on insurgency, the Civil War and Reconstruction Chapters.

I should point out that I do not really agree with Bobbitt's analysis or emphasis on some of these issues, and he might of course claim that I have misinterpreted his material inShield. But if you disagree with this account, take a look at Shield, take it up with Bobbitt, not me. 

Bobbitt thought, differing also from Professor Kaiser, that Taney's views in Dred Scott were not so far wrong:

THE VITAL CENTER OF THE UNENLIGHTENMENT

Friday, June 14, 2013

THE VITAL CENTER OF THE UNENLIGHTENMENT

RE making ignorance chic:

There have been left or right leaning economists, as well as politicians.

There were, unfortunately, certain issues on which both politicians, and economists,

each leaning either way, really,

erroneously agreed,

call it the vital center, after one liberal apostle of the concept, E. J. Dionne:

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2012/04/cf-also-how-nations-fail-editorial-and.html

On the one hand, it is hard for me to call such a process, system, or result, the product or expression of Enlightenment ideas or institutions,

on the other hand, it is hard to call it anything else, really.

Call it ' The Unenlightenment ' or ' The Endarkenment '

AUDIENCE TODAY

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HAVING LOCKED UP ENOUGH WESTERN ASSETS THE WEST NO LONGER CAN OBJECT TO

WHATEVER CHINA NOW WANTS TO DO, WHEREVER IT WANTS TO DO IT.

IT IS WHAT CLINTON CALLED LOSS OF LEVERAGE.

YOU CAN PIVOT YOUR ASS OFF ALL YOU WANT NOW.

SIMON SAYS SIMON SAYS

SIMON JACK SQUAT SIMON SAYS JACK

Investors may have to accept a discount on the value of their investments if they want to take their money out at short notice, according to new proposals from banking regulators.

PAGEVIEWS RIGHT NOW

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WHY CHINA BOUGHT BRITISH STEEL BELT AND ROAD PART OF THE ANSWER

First, the official version. The businesses are genuinely complementary. Scunthorpe is a specialist in rail tracks and other "long products" like reinforcing bars used in construction. Jingye doesn't make these. British Steel gives it new products and new markets.

Second, Chinese steel is not welcome in all parts of the world.

Indeed, it was the flood of steel coming from Chinese overproduction that saw the UK steel industry have a near death moment in 2016 before strong EU anti-dumping measures that imposed big tariffs on Chinese steel imports offered the industry a degree of protection.

Some industry watchers are suggesting that Scunthorpe, and British Steel's plant in Hayange in France would allow Jingye to import raw steel from China, finish it into higher value products and stick a "Made in UK" or "Made in France" badge on it.

Peace of mind for big customers like Network Rail in the UK or French ones like SNCF. It would also make exports to the US quite a bit easier than they are now.

Third, and connected to the second, there is some valuable intellectual property and expertise that Jingye is acquiring along with the sites themselves.

Sources close to Jingye told the BBC that there was still some work to do to clinch the deal and so did not want to comment at this stage. That's fair enough and a useful reminder this deal is not yet in the bag.