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.

A VIDEO ASSOCIATION FOR THE WEEK BRUCE LEE

WHY NOT

THE CHINESE CONNECTION

That makes some sense, given the larger circumstances.

RE DAVID KAISER'S CURRENT POST

"The entire intellectual elite, I am convinced, must also share much of the blame."

I believe that he is right about this, but what might be some incidental implications of his remark?

I am not going to suggest that he thinks any of the things I think, but 'weaknesses' of the US intellectual elite are there for all to see, I believe.

Some of my comments re the compartmentalization of disciplines plays some part in the failure of the intellectual elite, I believe.

Further, it is hard to really coherently refer to an 'intellectual elite' as a distinct and identifiable 'body', in the American public and private academic, and private sector, 'system'.

There are, just one example, political pundits, often with certain academic credentials, politics or economics or medicine or law or management or investment, other than the 'nonacademic' one of 'journalist'.

These credentials, and the scope of their expertises, are seldom seriously questioned, except among the academic disciplines themselves from which these pundits emerge politically.

A larger political voice for them is strictly gratuitous under our system, where no higher authority governs technical punditry itself.

Also the tendency for politicians, and powerful segments of society, to 'coopt' both exact and social sciences, both within and outside academia, is another powerful factor in the processes that got us here.

Good examples are medicine and architecture. Back at the time Ayn Rand, a pseudo-intellectual elite, wrote The Fountainhead, architecture ruled construction projects. Not any more.

Similarly for medicine and the control drug companies have increasingly exerted over the field of medicine.

This presents the spectre of scientific intellectuals, perhaps part of the so-called intellectual elite, serving as handmaidens of this or that political or commercial cause, which they may support, or which supports them, or their research.

RE THE TALENT CODE BOOK AND DEEP PRACTICE VERSUS GENIUS PARADIGM

The author makes some revealing observations about both individual achievement, and social (also familial, national, or civilizational) motivation, based both on recent research and on his investigations.

Meadowmount, Tiger Woods, Clint Eastwood's 'look', Russian tennis stars, Toyota mfg techniques, and many other things.

His comments on comparative educational, and socio/civilizational, paradigms are particularly arresting.

Well worth 'close scrutiny' (those fateful words).

Re Democratic Party Krugman Keynsian FDR 'jobs' solutions to US problems REALLY ONCE AGAIN THE WRONG OLD DEBATE THAT GOT US HERE

The Republicans have long been in the pocket of the really big MNC freer trade cartels, and really want to ignore so-called domestic employment, and economic matters altogether, as no longer directly relevant.

Their agenda is global rather than American in focus, but the average Republican still does not know this because of all the redirected moralistic propaganda.

To fight this pestilence, the Democrats have been limited to largely the same systemically limited economic tools of both parties, for generations now, because they have been limited to the political system within which there are no other, real, more aggressive, economic or social options for the federal government, and the federal government itself would rein in any highly unlikely big socio-economic initiatives of individual states.

You either blindly, and unilluminatingly, 'reduce taxes' and government with Republicans, or 'tax and spend' ('jobs', any old jobs, simpliciter) with Democrats, although technically these 'alternatives' have not even held true, over time, with Republicans often outspending Democrats.

The actual differences between their constituencies, agendas, policies, and basic tools, has not been that great, really, in spite of the shrill rhetoric.

Neither party has had much incentive to change markedly the sliding status quo, and neither has the political will (read powerful political patronage) to move toward drastic reform.

No thought can be given to any larger or deeper types of roles between government and private sector activities.

Little thought could be given, in the present political framework, to agendas in which industrial and commercial sectors were promoted, strengthened, or encouraged, in ways seen so successful in some other countries.

In this context, the notion of creating just 'jobs' simpliciter, or conversely of just reducing taxes simpliciter, rather than inspiring and promoting larger competitive, or even merely productive, domestic initiatives, will not engender a movement out of the economic and political malaise into which the US has long been sinking as against its so-called 'strategic partners'.

Re Philip Davis

See Philip Davis' Seeking Alpha article:

Trade War Tuesday: China, Japan and U.S. at Odds

Almost all you need to know, at the moment.

Re Krugman editorial NYT today

He makes some obvious points for the millionth time.

One problem, alluded to by others, is that federal stimulus money would find many foreign firms vying for it now, very different from the 30s, albeit using some American workers especially in construction etc.

Re another 'structural' view, See post re World Is Flat, etc, on this site.

Also discussions of the blinkers of one narrow 'field', sprinkled throughout the site.

RE JAPAN RETREATS EDITORIAL AND PRIOR POSTS THE END OF COBDENISM NOT THE END OF HISTORY AND THE LAST MAN

It seems that there are now so many politico-economically 'fattened up' Asian regimes, China now being apparently the fatter, that they each can't get enough 'food' for their large economic girths, over there. A quite understandable situation for all concerned.

This editorial, with its frankly militarist implication of 'retreat', also gives the lie to all the Cobdenist free trade pacifism which Americans have been fed, and still are being fed by their Executive Branch, about the peaceful consequences of economic development for all comers. This is so even though China is Japan's largest export market now.

What does that imply re power, and trade as a peace loving pastime?

New or recently developed economies are as unlikely to be peace loving, going forward, toward their erstwhile economic benefactors, or their neighbors, as wasteland countries and regions, shunned by any development, were and are.

See prior post re Margaret MacMillan's Paris 1919, quote from a British diplomat there, 'vicious from the moment of their birth'.

The big bad difference, the terrible, seldom voiced, implication for longstanding American foreign and economic policies, is that developed and developing economies are much more formidable economic and military adversaries, in the global struggle for resources and power, than undeveloped wastelands.

It is not a good direction to have blithely gone, all these decades, really, since the 19th Century, Republicans since 1930 or so. The Democrats were free traders since before the Civil War, for reasons hardly identified with Cobdenism.

See prior posts re Nixon Shock, 1972, Fattening Things Up, Trading Poker, Trading Places, Trading American Interests, Prestowitz, Eckes, cartoons, Maverick Executive, etc., etc., etc., on this site.

RE DAVID KAISER'S CURRENT POST

Great summary.

He quotes, at the end, a snipet of Afghanistan politics comparing it with ours.

Is it just a coincidence that Krugman, I think, in a NYT editorial today, had called the current trend here a move toward a Banana Republic?

David and Paul seem to be thinking somewhat alike, at least at the moment.

RE CHINA JAPAN ETC ETC

Been expecting it to emerge for some time now. Amazing that such longstanding animosities could be glossed over for so long.

For the US, it is not really a question of 'advantage', but belated additional confirmation of 'game over', really.

'Heavyweight American' executives having questions for the Chinese.........another symptom of much else yet to come.

Casanova hand low wage gravy train coming to a kind of halt perhaps, yet another instance, of something really big, and developing for a long time, in broad daylight, 'catching US policymakers by surprise'.

Kind of pathetic really.

GOLD

Be there
or be square.

Re The Lowry 10th Anniversary Spencer Tunick Everyday People Manchester UK

Re current art, such as it now is:
See Spencer Tunick's Everyday People, at the Lowry, and on the web.
Rather unusual. A modern rendition of not-so-matchstick people.
I noted, in passing, that there seem not to be any everyday people of color inTunick's current Lowry piece (although Lowry had often included some in his crowd scenes). Perhaps it is just an oversight, or I missed
them, or they did not apply.
I still rather prefer my drawing, below. There are some images of a white
man on the reverse of my drawing, but he is also idiosyncratic in a Lowryesque way.

RE JAPAN CHINA ETC SQUARE DANCE

Allamande left,
corners all.

RE FRIEDMAN AREN'T WE CLEVER? EDITORIAL NYT

NO.

Fools.

That is what the article is all about.

This has been the pattern since the War (WW II).

Unfortunately, Friedman joins the cavalcade of American pundits, over five decades, starting with Japan, SE Asia, etc., arguing that the US should now partner with China on technical innovations, and set up joint projects over there, rather than trying to accomplish anything like that over here by political reforms.

Some US thinkers have long known where those initiatives have lead.

Re entrepreneur Maverick Executive rail to rail nyt editorial language games forms of life Pre Batch market states create market persons cartoon

Many different possible cartoons spring to mind reading this article.

Seth 'Pre Batch' presents an ideal steed for the Maverick Executive to ride jauntily into the sunset of Western Civilization upon.

Think Frederick Remington, Bronco Buster, something like that, for a start.

'Maverick Entrepreneurs': Really erratic: they change overnight, black, then, mauve. Thurston Robert Macaire Howell, will turn on you, overnight, one slip up.

Marx had pointed out, 'mode of production determines form of life'.

Wittgenstein had elaborated, looking at different aspects of similar phenomena, in a very different, very loose, but loosely related set of contexts, 'A language game determines, so one could say, a form of life.'

Oligopolistic Market Capitalism has combined these and other 'insights', with still others, technical and otherwise, to generate such nonsensical human 'mercantile' forms of behavior, unmoored from all that had gone before, really.

Market states create, among many other innovations, so called 'market language games persons' (there is not one kind of game, but a whelter of them, just as there is not one kind of 'market game person', but many kinds).

A helpful fool to the truly Hitlerian entrepreneur, say Gilligan, 'one mistake, little buddy, out of the 'life boat', stultifera navis!'

That's the model for global start up success here in America.

Hypomania is also, oddly enough, arguably, a description of a really good hunting dog; some might equivocate on this.

You don't stay with these good quick ventures. Venture capitalists are short term pimps of the Casanova hand.

Hit and run investing, make it big, sell before the idea is stolen in the global underworld, converted suddenly to an offshore mega industry.

We once, long ago, had one, a bird dog puppy, a Scvngr-like animal, named 'Flirt', really super erratic, totally;

sadly, she was actually run over by a train, broad daylight, 'rail to rail' as the venture capitalists also so picturesquely point out, while we were hunting with her.

Re Keynes in the Clouds post and China Japan America Krugman cartoon

One could also show in the above cartoon, above the de la Tour game, Keynes, sleeping rather fitfully, on a cloud, in an elegant smoker.

The caption below might contain an addendum re, say,

'The Open Society, its friends, and its Muse' , or some such thing,
referring, of course, to Keynes. Keynes of course would have objected.

Re filibuster

See David Kaiser's current post, and if he decides to post it, my and others' comments.

RE REAL ECON TV GOLD CHINA'S END GAME?

Great argument.

Rather simple really.

RE SORELL CITING HONDERICH ON NOT RETURNING TO NORMAL nyt

'Equalizing global inequality.'

Professor of Global Ethics.........

What nonsense.

See elsewhere here for various reasons why.

'Keynes In The Clouds' might be a starting point, point of entry.

'Greatest good for the greatest numbers'. Comments re Adam Smith follow.

DAVID BROOKS DAY AFTER TOMORROW EDITORIAL NYT PRINCIPLES OF FREEDOM AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

He is ostensibly attacking anti statist, actually nonstatist, trends in his own party, which hold up the banner of principles of freedom of the individual and imaginative and creative entrepreneurship against ostensible socialism, and against any noticeable government whatever (Ryan and Brooks);

(I guess they would still want a strong military (maybe entrepreneurial, nimble team players), even though no other big agency left standing? Maybe Big VA for wounded, etc.),

even while David Brooks nevertheless somehow claims unbounded respect for these same authors; it is a not even clever and ill concealed species of plain hypocrisy;

in fact his, and their, views are so close, it really doesn't matter much, and also those of none other than The Maverick Executive, a time honored icon regaled repeatedly on these pages, along with Robert Macaire, the Maverick's ancestor in French satire.

Ideologically, Brooks, like almost everyone else over here, is lost at sea in a stultifera navis looking for the mainland, a three hour tour, but turns out, entre chien et loup, to be Gilligan's Island.

RE BARRY BLITT

I would like for Mr Blitt to do some cartoons.

I am perhaps not as good a political 'librettist' as Philipon.

We live in dumbed down times.

He only needs to clone himself, re his other obvious responsibilities.

A good cartoon might be Blitt cloning himself, in case he hasn't already done this.

(Pygmalion etc. Daumier did a nice one, I recall.)

MISE EN SCENE RE CHINA JAPAN AMERICA KRUGMAN NYT TODAY DE LA TOUR CARD PLAYERS THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS FRIENDS

He talks about sharp, simple realities, re currencies, bonds, trade, jobs etc.

American policymakers, 'being taken', goes way back. See some of the prior posts, 'Playing Three Sides In the Cold War', Team Play, Maverick, etc.

There are sharper, simpler, realities, however.

One could do an interesting cartoon, using de la Tour's The Ace of Diamonds, or The Ace of Clubs, as a model.

 Uncle Sam would be the 'taken' old lady, but would have to be in drag for this one; it's not that far fetched. Could also be the Maverick Executive in drag.

Cards could also double for currency, and for bonds.

MISE EN SCENE:
To one side, a fireplace; at the hearth a large long metal log poker, labelled 'Wittgenstein's Poker' (or 'Wittgenstein's Wien'). On the playing table, an elaborate decanter, glasses all around, the decanter labelled 'Gin'.
One player, call her Europa, is nodding off. Another, an Asian male, whispering to a third, Asian male, next to the nodder, 'Poke Her'. The Maverick, on the other side of nodder, gesticulating "Pop Her" (Popper).
The Caption above might Read

"Trading Poker (Popper):
The Open Society and Its Friends"

The one below, being announced apparently by the old Lady Uncle Sam Maverick, laying down her cards on the table, the one word

"Gin".

RE PHILOSOPHERS' PRIVATE LANGUAGE SARTREAN BONOBO DOG OR CAT PET POSSIBLE WORLDS SEMANTICS INTELLIGENCE

Only in the US could such a concatenation of outlandish notions be given serious attention, if not also research funding.

Simian moral philosophy.

Not that animals, pets or not, should not be treated with greater respect, care, and kindness, even those destined for slaughter as food; the horrors of factory farming should be abhorred;

but there is a reasonable limit on these abstruse intellectual endeavors.

RE WHY NOT ALSO COMPARE CONTRAST THE ROBOT CARTOONS WITH THE MONKEY ONES

RE TROUBLE IN THE MONKEY HOUSE

September 8 NYT article.

This has a lot of possibilities for my cartoon predilections.

Did she happen to see some of my prior posts, on bonobo pyramids, pillars, of experts,

Andy Martin, ugly philosophers, phenomenologists,

Marilyn, Sartre?

Is this a monkey shine?

RE THE MAVERICK EXECUTIVE BITING BACK FRANK RICH BIG DOG BITING BACK CARTOON BARRY BLITT STYLE

Why not do a cartoon take-off of Rich's article today, and Blitt's cartoon, with the Maverick Executive (America's special interest MNC Big Mustang), biting back Barry Blitt's Big Dog, on the behind, through the ring ropes, even as he is still sitting in the corner of the ring?

Big Dog could be spilling his coffee everywhere as he is jumping up, shocked by the bite, Maverick's teeth still in him, visible from the side.

The Maverick, HALF MAN HALF HORSE, looking a lot like Robert Macaire, should be looking a little drunk, dressed in a luxurious smoker, cigar in the other hand, and even while biting Big Dog, will be holding, casually, even wantonly, a dry martini, with olive, in the other.

The Caption above:
It's What's for Dinner.

The Caption below:
How The Maverick Executive Likes His Hors d'oeuvre


See Blitt cartoon adjacent to Rich's column NYT today.

I like Blitt's somewhat 'Daumieresque' style of depiction. He can do a wonderful action scene, and physionomy caricature, both very well. Very rare.

RE WORLD IS FLAT CARDBOARD MADE IN CHINA BOX CRUSHED CARTOON HOLLOWING OUT MISE EN SCENE

The caption above:

"The World Is Flat"

Picture a 'tag team' wrestling match.

The teams are, say, the West, US and EU,

on one team, two Asian wrestlers forming a team, they could look like sumos, you pick them, on the other.

The teams are at the end of the match.

The US wrestler is LITERALLY 'flat' on the ring floor. He can't tag anyone.

This player is in the shape of an empty cardboard box, he has been wrestling as an empty box with legs and arms and, and is now being crushed flat by his Asian opponent in this scene.

He has a dollar sign on his visible top side being stomped flat, preferably by a very large sumo type wrestler sitting on him.

Elsewhere, his box torso is stamped 'Made In China'.

He has a flattened Uncle Sam hat. It too has a China stamp.

The Eu wrestler, euro symbol somewhere, is being held back (from the tag of his 'partner') in its corner of the ring by various other handlers, say by a Greek in an ancient loin cloth, and others.

The caption below reads:

"Team Play Aftermath of Hollowing Out."

RE NYT TONELSON KEARNS ARTICLE TRADING AWAY THE STIMULUS

Something like this approach should have been under way, for the past 40 years now.

Americans don't really even understand what is at stake at this point.

They think a free society needs free trade.

It's a dumbed down situation.

Politicians and their big backers decided that they wanted a dumbed down electorate situation, good for business; they concluded that was in their interests.

Unfortunately, now, for them, and for all of us, at some point soon,
GAME OVER.

Refer to previous posts here, eg "Trading American Interests" article by Eckes, Trading Places, etc.

As I pointed out in a prior post, a 'Smoot Hawley' solution is kind of weak, long after the production horse has 'left the barn';

not that reindustrialization cannot and should not be tried and eventually accomplished, but one needs a resolute, far sighted, powerful central government to do such a thing, and an electorate somehow brought on board, and the US has never had that, except as a concession in time of war.

RE JAPAN CHINA ASIA SQUABBLE OVER MARITIME JURISDICTION SQUARE DANCE DO SI DO

Grab your partner.

RE AMERICAN LEAD MARKET GLOBALIZATION TAKING DOWN THE EU WITH IT

The title really says it all.

We really lead them into this cul de sac.

Few European nations have been very enthusiastic about expansive globalization of production. They have sort of had to get into it, as a race to the bottom of production costs.

Globalization has been, once the Marshall Plan recovery was successful, if not a uniquely American predilection, at least mainly our foreign policy agenda.

Time to pay the piper, so to speak.

Some people think this will have a peaceful and happy denoument of gradual devolution.

I am not one of those.

THURSTON MACAIRE HOWELL P 15

I remember, no one even back in 1980 could really say they were wrong. The Four Tigers which later followed Japan’s lead, and now China, and others, would agree.

Yet, without subs to ours, and our ‘quote’ allies’ markets, no Japanese ‘robber barons’ would have been able to buy the time of day, much less land, in Hawaii in 1985, (Midkiff) barely 40 years after Pearl Harbor.

An export trade economy, absent military responsibilities, can be a way of gathering strength over a long period.

Bin Laden had been subsidized to fight the Soviets.

Policy makers’ horizons on whom, where, how, and why to subsidize, have been short and blinkered.

American cities, and industries without overt military implications, have largely been left out.

re AMERICAN NATIONALISM

Unfortunately, many of the principles of what I would call American nationalism, are the very principles which have gotten Americans into the economic and ideological messes they are now deeply in.

So, a call to a new American solution, a 'New Deal', or an 'America first' nationalist statist solution, is about the last thing most Americans are well placed to ideologically understand, adopt, or benefit from, going forward.

They are too sold on other, old, individualist, anti-communist, exceptionalist, fundamentalist, hegemonic, ideas.

For Americans, 'team concepts', still ubiquitous, long after their socio-economic efficacy, the lifetime employment they once generally implied, and MBA OB allure, have vanished, are a bankrupt, outdated, and bewildering aggregation of half-baked and now-burnt notions, having little explanatory relevance anymore, but are still relied on everywhere to assert flagging vestigial corporate inclusion, as there is nothing else, no other purely pretextual paradigm, left.

The closest thing Americans have to a nationalistic tradition is perhaps best described by Huntington, Who Are We. It is not very promising as a blueprint for nationalistic ideological coalescence, going forward.

RE EU EURO

When the Euro crashes, eventually, how much of what will they each give their citizens, for their Euros, in exchange?

Will they each go back to their old currencies?

Will they peg them to anything, besides fiat?

By then, who will still hold them? How many?

What will they have been hoarding instead, by then?

Take a wild guess.

A PROPOS A VISION OF THE FUTURE AN IDEOLOGICAL CUL DE SAC

A propos David Kaiser's current topic, a few remarks re what I would call an idelogical cul de sac into which American politics has now pulled.

We have finally come to a point, I believe, where even some of the most devout market capitalist and/or conservative ideologues, thinkers not pundits, although they would still give different explanations depending on party (eg socialist sabotage, Republican sabotage, etc.),

may be beginning to see the 'end of history', to which their free market and weak government programs, both parties, have now lead (the Democrats have long been on the free market train, by the way, longer than the Republicans):

How much smaller can government get, under the status quo system? (Certainly can't get that much weaker, in spite of their views.)

Krugman talks in an editorial today about a political trap, and he has compared this I believe, with an economic analysis of an 'economic' trap. Sort of gives one a sense of a cul de sac, too.

I sympathize with his side of the issue, the need for greater job stimulus, as far as that paltry topic goes.

As Reich described the economic slide, the other day in a NYT editorial, I am afraid that such a mere WPA type job stimulus (eg mickey mouse census worker 'jobs'!) won't really help Americans recover what has been lost in that slide, Reich says lasting 30 years, I say 50 or so.

As I said in a prior post, don't we need a New Deal? Who's kidding who?

The political cul de sac reminds me of the old remedy of bleeding the sick patient. Here are the tools which have always been at the electorate's disposal:

Turn the incumbents out; tax, or spend, or tax, or spend, or tax, or spend, or tax, or spend, and so on,.................................. to infinity.

More free trade, more open markets, less regulation, more free trade, less regulation, more free trade.............................................to infinity.

If he doesn't get better, better bleed him some more with both, tax or spend, more free trade, less regulation.

Market capitalism as a more or less one trick Maverick pony.

If we aren't prospering, markets must not yet be open enough, or we haven't taxed or spent enough.

On another topic:
Note that China recently expanded its public sector in response to flagging world demand. Maybe that is a big mistake, but I believe others long needed to smell the coffee.

Another natural resource topic, besides the end of cheap oil, has been the tremendous large long term contracts some developing governments have made for essential resources.

Weak laissez faire lazy fare, mere tax or spend, regimes haven't been able to follow suit.

If the resource source nations, for these huge deals renig, guess what?

RE KRUGMAN'S NYT 1938 AND 2010 ARTICLE

Great short essay.



Especially the part about getting out of the Depression being accidental.

Keynes' General Theory was not published until 36. The New Deal, an ad hoc series of good, but half measures, and still not major political reform.

The big purely lucky break was a war, but the really important thing was it was a war, most importantly, fought and won elsewhere.



Too bad, then, before then, and now, we have always been short intellectual power and political will. As I have pointed out, it has been a political systemic thing.

Nobody really touches it. Hardest thing in the world.

Real major redevelopment type political reform has been off the table for Americans since the Civil War, itself a fiasco.

They will go down, so to speak, with the ship.

RE FRANK RICH FREEDOM'S JUST ANOTHER WORD ARTICLE

At least Rich is able to mention various different areas, rather than just one myopic topic, of the American political enterprise, that somehow (mysteriously for him?) seem connected (at least in the essay), in their failure, and in their need for some new insight, program, or framework. He even refers to another writer on military affairs, whose ideas he agrees with.

But he does not get to the point of saying anything it seems, unless I missed it, about what might really be needed, either in terms of political reform, or in terms of some new way ahead.

A mere critique, even a correct one, of how both parties have failed the American people, without more, is not that new, really, now, and not that much in doubt, by those who have more than a media understanding of things.

But mere public wringing of hands, and gnashing of teeth, however truthful, does not get anyone anywhere further, now, really.

RE NYT ARTICLE RE FLORIDA FORECLOSURES

This is the kind of finance and investment situation, which had cried out for greater and better regulation, oversight, and perhaps political consolidation as well, long before the mortgage backed securities debacle.

Now, the situation is played out, state by state, and courthouse by courthouse, with the usual tales of overbearing influence, corruption, and abuse.

Had it not been the free play of market forces that fomented the scenarios we see unfold?

Securitization, even, of the unconscious; id overcoming superego.

The foibles of the purely legal side, as these cases are litigated, are the least interesting; but those legal issues, legal concerns, frauds and legal fictions now on a colossal scale, futile objections, were the ones previously overriden by the investment machines; and overriden now by judges on the ground as well, it seems, in the headlong grind of local foreclosure case overloads, if the assertions of article are to be believed, in a legal system not at all geared for massive securitization breakdown.

Could it have been any other way?

RE REICH HOW TO END THE GREAT RECESSION

Good summary of portions of why we got here.

Interestingly, Reich does not talk about any major political reforms or consolidation.

The existing political structure is good enough for his initiatives as is, it seems.

But, has it not been that status quo political structure itself that got us the 'structural' economic problems he bemoans?

Theories that, say, it was just :

unhelpful individual politicians,

or unwise or corrupt political parties,

or just decades of bad economic advice,

or smarter or luckier or more industrious foreigners,

don't wash.

The existing political system made these outcomes, and this situation, feasible,

and in some ways, I would surmise, inevitable.

RE REVKIN GATES DOT EARTH ENERGY INITIATIVES

What kind of free market, carbon credit, dream world, are they really in?

To say they are not 'strong on politics', understatement.

FOLLOWING UP THE COMPARTMENTALIZATION POSTS

A somewhat different difficulty emerges as the process of specialization occurs, and as new strengths or perceived strengths in one area or technique become more generalized or enlarged; resulting in shrinking, sometimes, or elimination, of previously dominant or related areas of knowledge.

There can be what I would call 'good', and 'bad', examples of such generalizations and shifts within and across fields and subfields.

There are also examples of borrowings , sharings, thefts, from one field by others or another, analogies, models, paradigms, gimmicks even, what have you.

These can present, once again, opportunities that I would call 'good'; and some pitfalls, both for practitioners and others affected directly or indirectly, which I would call 'bad'.

RE SPECIALIZED COMPARTMENTALIZED KNOWLEDGE ITS OWN CRITERION

One of the implications of differentiation and specialization of knowledge, is that, whatever it is, it tends often but not always, to need or want to get narrower still, within a given larger field, in order to get deeper still into a refined subject matter area. There are countervailing tendencies, which seem not to have been as strong.

We have seen a relentless march of specialization in many fields along these lines.

With this specialization, has come a self-authenticating system of validation for particular areas or subfields.

So the argument might go: Who knows more about the special validity or special qualifications or constraints of this particular subfield than its practitioners?

Medicine, many specialties and subspecialties, of anatomy, of systems, carving out niches for themselves against their neighbors, forensic areas in litigation fraught with difficulties, very common; often with not very good or helpful consequences for patients, clients, or the public.

Law, similar issues pervade the field.

Economics, self-authenticating pundits, traditionally narrow absolute presuppositions, dogmatism, and similar issues.

Other social sciences, sociology, psychology, anthropology, similarly.

Accounting, imploded recently, many subfields, consulting, etc., showing their colors.

Many areas of technical exact science research, particularly at universities endowed by private or various nations' money, handmaidens of particular industrial or national masters.

Many 'exact' sciences, especially their forensic areas, engineering of many specific types, handmaidens of other fields: politics, private industry, or law, and all three, quite often, in a given specialty.

Sometimes, where the stakes are high enough, industry, government, or law, commandeer various subspecialties in technical ensembles, often career forensic experts usually seen in disparate fields, harnessed toward a particular desired scientific, industry, or litigation outcome.

Another implication is that technical knowledge seems to need, to some extent at least, to get specific criteria of its own in order to validate its technical advances.

ASIA DO SI DO MISE EN SCENE

Why think tango, when there are so many good dancers on the floor?

This is really 'square dance' territory.

The Maverick Executive is easily pulled into convivial situations like this.

I will let you flesh out the details.

RE HARD TIMES IN BIG SKY COUNTRY UNCOMMON WISDOM

This is the kind of story one gets from savvy advisors. Things are really bad in my home town in Montana re real estate and jobs, but booming real estate market in China, so savvy investors should invest in real estate there, never mind about other issues here, at home, that's irrelevant; or troublesome issues, long term, re investing there, but......

That's a really great bit of advice, long term perspective for all Americans.

In the long run, all comparable things will be the same price everywhere, macro economics efficiency speak.