RE SILLINESS AND SLEIGHT OF HAND THE CASANOVA HAND NYT EDITORIAL BLOW BACK ON THE LAISSEZ FAIRY

Charles M. Blow. Blowback.
Great stuff. 


His article, blow back for the landing, below, of the Laissez Fairy, perhaps coming in for a landing 
from Brook's 'Upper Blowhardia' 
(CF BROOKS' ARTICLE, RE TRUMP, THE OTHER DAY, nyt.)


Let's just hope for no sightings of 
the Deep Do Do Fairy, (my term, cf The Big Short), 
the Laissez Fairy's nemesis, 
from Lower Blowhardia.

THE LAISSEZ FAIRY'S NICKNAME

MARKET BOY.


This is kindof like 'Jungle Boy', of old.

THE LAISSEZ FAIRY'S BEST FRIEND

THE TOOTH FAIRY


Here they are at play with their friends:

INTRODUCING LAISSEZ FAIRY'S FAIRY NEMESIS

To paraphrase Gutfreund's comment to Lewis, in The Big Short,


'It's Laissez Fairy Land until the arrival of 


The Deep Do Do  Fairy.'

RE THE LAISSEZ FAIRY AND QUANTITATIVE EASING FOR THE LIQUIDITY TRAP RESULTS IN BUBBLES

He will sprinkle some Fairy Liquid, in order to dispel quantitative tightness, and liquefy the liquidity trap. 


Cf Krugman's comments re the liquidity trap........... 


'Fairy Liquid' was a UK dish washing soap, may be still on the market.


This is not the same as fairy dust, which was thought of old to be gold dust; Fairy Liquid is a far cry from that. 


Unfortunately, Laissez Fairy Liquid always results in bubbles, perhaps because it treats the symptoms of income inequality economic and commercial sludge and grease. 


A liquidity trap is rather like a grease trap in a restaurant.........
all the wealth goes into the trap.

RE LAISSEZ FOU INTRODUCING THE LAISSEZ FAIRY

We are going to introduce a new, sublime, imaginary, perhaps immortal, personage.


He has a complex pedigree. He follows in a train of previous characters here, including Robert Macaire, Thurston Howell Macaire, The Maverick Executive, The Casanova hand, The Invisible Hand, The Enter Preener, and others. 


He is confused, about many things, about his background, nationality, loyalties, parentage, divine lineage, gender, ideology, offspring, religion, tastes, skills, inclinations.


A video reference might be "HELP".  


An audio one, for the weekend, "Let It Be", 
in honor of the royal wedding, and other things. 


Here is an image of what he might look like in a certain light, landing in a forest glade. He resembles Daumier's image of the Wind God, Zephyr, here.


Let's call him 


THE LAISSEZ FAIRY: 

RE EGYPT WARMS TO NYT EDITORIAL

Not a very big surprise.

RE PAIN AT THE PUMP? NYT EDITORIAL WE NEED MORE globalism A JAPANESE PLANT STRUGGLES TO PRODUCE A CRITICAL AUTO PART

These gurus, Porter etc,  want us to be better able 'to compete globally', with smart energy.


Porter gave us that classic of global market capitalism The Competitive Advantage of Nations, with a bunch of illuminating diamonds........ 


With some of Porter's schema, could a smart government policy pick winners? (If not, then what is the point anyway?) 


Nothing rational, based on his insights (but, re promoting domestic industrial and commercial export/import substitition; rather than globalistic initiatives), nothing rational, has ever been tried here, can be tried here now, if ever.


I will give the example of why such a rational policy is desperately needed in this ever so fragile global economy, also from the NYT today:


' A Japanese Plant Struggles To Produce A Critical Auto Part '


Apparently this one globalist bottleneck is holding up world auto production in many countries at once. 


Great entrepreneurial planning and thinking going on here.


Terms search many terms here.


Here is a reference to Porter in Thurston's rant:

As our tariffs dropped, American makers of this or that either went out of business or, like me, wisely high tailed it.[1]

 Foreign subs, more than FHA/VHA subsidies or the GI bill, caused deindustrialization and urban decline. 

Many have argued that American firms just weren’t creative or competitive enough.[2] Although maybe true, especially for my firm, trade deals reduced American firms’ chances for survival, even boosted foreign competition. As a result, American firms’ multinational sides had to speed up to compete with trade breaks to lower cost foreigners.[3]

  Absence of an industrial policy, or even a meaning for ‘competitiveness’ as a basis for one, have lessened chances for domestic firms.[4]          

Urban redev efforts were usually paltry local side shows, swimming upstream against global site-competition, even with fed dough.[5]

---

[1] Eckes; Prestowitz; Bluestone; Harrison; Jane Jacobs, Cities and the Wealth of Nations, Vintage, 1985, p. 167.

[2] Good arguments can also be made for incentivized domestic competition, and greater antitrust scrutiny, not just for economic reasons, but for security.

[3] N. Glickman, D. Woodward, The New Competitors, Basic Books, 1989. See especially Ch. 6, “The Domestic Effects of American Investment Abroad.”

[4] See especially Prestowitz; Michael Porter, The Competitive Advantage Of Nations, Free Press, 1990, xii. Unfortunately, Porter has the usual ‘economics’ discipline blinders, going in. He had been selected for the ‘President’s Commission on Industrial Competitiveness.’ His views, in the present context, are best summarized in Ch. 12, p. 617.

As one might imagine, he is not a fan of import substitution, or managed trade. Yet, he says things like: “As a starting point, a nation must identify those industries where its factor advantages today provide some competitive advantage but where other determinants of national advantage are also actually, or potentially, present.” p. 677. (One good antidote for Porter is Johnson, Japan: Who Governs, e.g., p. 99.)

[5] Eckes.

RE THE LONG WAR THEORISTS

Terms search: civilizational advantage, civilizational disadvantage.


GENERATIONAL ANALYSIS MIGHT, PARENTHETICALLY, BE TURNED TO EXPLAIN, OR BE USED TO EXPLAIN, HOW ONE GOES ABOUT WINNING, OR PERHAPS LOSING, A VERY, VERY LONG WAR.


THINK PUNIC, OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT.......


(CYCLICAL, GENERATIONAL, INTRA-CIVILIZATIONAL HISTORICAL TRANSFORMATION PARADIGMS MIGHT EVEN CONTRIBUTE, IN A TINY WAY, TO A MORE GENERAL INATTENTION TO MATTERS OF GREATER CONSEQUENCE FOR CIVILIZATIONAL RIVALRIES, RIVALRIES NOT NECESSARILY SO GENERATIONALLY DRIVEN.)

RE GAVIN HEWITT BBC EDITORIAL EUROPE AND IMMIGRATION FRANCE ITALY EU

Only the beginning.....


Not: 'The Age of Aquarius'.

RE COMPARATIVE HISTORY

David Kaiser has bemoaned loss of a larger comparative perspective, within the discipline of history, on his blog recently. 


Great concern.


I want to echo that thought here as well, with a little reference. 


Recently started reading Empires Of The Atlantic World, J H Elliott.


His Introduction, p. xv, and following, explores a similar point to that made by Kaiser, and explains Elliott's reasoning for the book he wrote, wonderful so far. 


(I seem pulled in the direction of Regius Professors of Modern History.)


One could make similar observations, and I have been trying here to do so, about parochialism, or over compartmentalism, of research, techniques, investigation, and or experiment, both within and across many different fields.

LAISSEZ FOU

Another iteration.


See also: laissez faire, lazy fare, lazy fool

RE THE BIG DISCONNECT BROOKS NYT EDITORIAL

The disconnect is bigger, older, and more complicated than the picture Brooks paints. 


He tends to talk about 'structural' weakness in an economic idiom, rather than the political one one probably should use in such circumstances.


Call it:
http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=2973239501462830480&postID=4981096057596554293


See also eg civilizational advantage, terms search, and other terms

LAISSEZ FAUX

Why not also another, while we are at it.


See laissez faire, lazy fare, etc.

LAISSEZ FOOL

A new term, for a country, from the laissez faire, lazy fare, lexicon.


Guess which country that is, and long has been? 


See reference below to the post and the quote from Friedman and LeBard, the problems with empire.....:

RE MOST OF SYRIA'S EXPERTS WRONG SECT

Just a little analogy from recent NYT articles, re experts, eg Bahrain, in various countries 'wrong' sect or religion.......

RE BBC THAI CAMBODIA CLASHES

There are clashes more or less all over Asia it seems. Maybe some good old hegemon or two will step in.

UN calls for an end.

RE MULTIDISCIPLINARY STUDIES METAPHYSICS ACADEMICS INDUSTRY AND THE WAY THINGS ARE GOING

I hate to put it so baldly, but metaphysics, in the sense of what I will call disciplinary foundations, including their intra disciplinary matters, interdisciplinary connections, discontinuities, and interrelations, 


has become more important, for cultural and political survival, not just for enlightenment, job training, employment, diversion, or entertainment, rather than less important, as the 20th Century wore on, and the 21st has now begun.  


Metaphysics, in this special sense,  has been where our 'intellectual', or call it ideological, system, not just our philosophical academic establishment, has been at its weakest, almost from the beginning.

RE FAST TRAIN TO NOWHERE NYT EDITORIAL SEE ALSO CIVIL WAR AND US GLOBALIZATION

This editorial points to some themes I have tried to elaborate here, re the need, for a long time, for a more unified political system, and a more rationally planned industrial policy that would depend on it.


A good reference here to 19th Century infrastructure fragmentation failures, the kind that also resulted in the Civil War. These fragmentation failures were hardly 'solved' by the Civil War, which in fact, as David Kaiser has noted on his blog, actually weakened the union. 


Nevins, Ordeal of The Union, Volume II,  covers some of this ridiculous legislative and entrepreneurial history in good detail in some places, as part of the larger infrastructural, sectional, and political picture he was painting of the run up to the Civil War, but there may be other good books on transportation itself as the main topic, including White's when it comes out.


Terms search many terms, PPP, industrial policy, steel, laissez faire, trading places, manufacturing matters, MITI, game over, etc.


See also Kaiser's current post, and his discussion there of the recognition back in the earlier 20th Century of the need for planning.


War usually makes the need for planning abundantly manifest, but not in the US, where we have been able, until now, because of small scale conflicts, and the Coldness of the Cold War, to politically, economically, and socially, tinker around the exigencies of all conflicts since WW II without resorting to a better, reformed, and rationalized, political structure. 


Meanwhile, there has been an enormous shift of economic, and inevitably military, power, elsewhere, a shift which our political system engineered by fighting the wrong foe with the wrong weapons.


Terms search: terms search, cartoon, mise en scene, Popper, Gin

RE MERCANTILIST MANAGERIAL OR ENTREPRENEURIAL MARKET STATES

Take your pick. This is not my schema.......


Bobbitt, in a spirited discussion in Shield, p. 336, suggested, back then, that the US should tend toward the entrepreneurial type of so called market state, versus the other two, as better for security reasons. 


I would say that the US had long been pursuing that alternative by default, without the need for encouragement, or even for a credible rationale. 


The fact that others have long been pursuing other alternatives to our disadvantage is one of the biggest problems with the whole strategic initiative after WW II.


I am not one of those who agrees with this selection. Terms search this site for examples of why it might have been misguided, not just for commercial, but also for strategic reasons.


I would like to talk about his comments in that chapter re interdisciplinary matters, at some point, as well....