Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Just two short weeks ago, Opie skunked CounterPunch with the following spray of malice:

"I've never cottoned to Alex's bloc of rights, frights, lites, mites, and botchky-ites over there at Counterpunch. . . ."

Then Opie lobbed another gob of spittle at CP further on in the same thread, in the comments section:

"not to mention the odious
inch deep but as wide as all fatuity
prog pleasing econ con gibbermeisters
and clue less blow hards"

Now, today, this same Opie (I think!) has the temerity to write:

" realize the impression has gotten around that I, Owen Thaddeus Stevens Paine, take a dim view of Counterpunch. Nothing could be further from the truth."

I guess Opie must have reached that age where short-term memory problems have set in.

Notice also Opie's facile dismissal of "guys like Hudson and Pollin"--I wonder just how many guys there are like Hudson and Pollin, and what that is supposed to mean. As usual, Opie exempts himself from any detailed attempt at refutation of specific points he objects to--the usual sophomoric derogation will do the trick ("Trust me, I'm a genius!")--if you happen to believe that sleight-of-word tricks are an adequate substitute for facts and logic.

"Guys like Pollin and Hudson" differ from guys like Opie chiefly in three respects:
(a) They have a amassed a serious record of publication and accomplishment in their field, and
(b) their typical modus operandi is careful analysis and exposition, not chronic comic-opera posturing, and
(c) they have enough intellectual integrity not to blatantly contradict themselves in the space of two weeks and still expect people to take them seriously.

read this ragged piece
by one
s martin

http://www.counterpunch.org/martin04172009.html

seems alex -st clair
are reaching
for
new regions of the galaxy

I make no brief for hudson, but i really respect pollin. he's published some good stuff over at Amherst. i rarely see him writing anything for counterpunch though. the last thing i saw by him there was a encomium to the late harry magdoff and that was years ago.

by the way, cockburn claimed in a recent talk with laura flanders and david harvey that he and st. clair try and try to find radical economists to write for the site, but none are to be found. not sure how true that is (then again, he also says global warming is a myth), but just thought i'd put it out there...

dermocrat--
Just for the record--Pollin is not at Amherst College but at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

There are a lot of good things about Cockburn as well as some appalling things such as his apparent beliefs about global warming (I suspect caused by a conflict with a Marx-inspired belief in increasing employment by perpetually increasing industrial production, a possibility Climate Change closes as a responsible alternative). Life other humans, he has good bits along with bad ones.

But I think the lack of worthwhile economic contributors may be do to the fact economics is a pseudoscience almost fatally restricted by dubious ideological conventions in addition to a pretense that there exists any knowledge on the topic that isn't trivial. Or at any rate claiming we are on the verge of discovering such knowledge and that current theories are a close approximation of reality (much like theoretical physics).* Whereas, what we really need is clear exposition of facts (not hard to discover but usually intentionally obscured in various ways) about the current design of the economy, taking into account all that is relevant such as political factors, and where defects are not readily obvious the pointing of these out. In other words, we want to know, who's fucking us economically and how they're doing it.

So far, "windbag" David Harvey has provided the best expositions on the topic I've come across.

*Generally this is implied (though mystical phrases such as "market forces" do crop up a fair amount) but in the case of Marx it was claimed explicitly.

Pete, what in the name of Jeebus are you smoking when it comes to Karl Marx? You seem utterly unread on the topic. E.g., where would say Marx endorsed the CAPITALIST assumption of endless growth? Do tell.

Mr. Dawson--
Perhaps I'm misinterpreting Peter Ward's point as well as your critique of it, but I don't think Mr. Ward was suggesting that Marx believed that there could be endless growth under capitalism--the point is that Marx believed that there could be limitless growth under a rationally planned socialist economy that would not be subject to periodic crises. Although it's been many years since I read it, I think that Baudrillard (back in the early 1970s, when I think he still considered himself a leftist) critiques this "productivist" bias of Marxist theory. Part of his point, as I vaguely recall it, was that this outlook would leave humans no less chained to economic growth as an end in itself and would perpetuate, rather than transcend, the alienation engendered by the capitalist order--hence traditional Marxism was viewed as the mirror image of the productivist ethos of capitalism.

Given the threat of catastrophic climate change, it is certainly legitimate to question the conventional socialist notion that a planned economy should seek to unleash productive forces that are limited by the irrationality of the market. Human survival now demands a taming, even a reversing, of industrial production, especially insofar as it remains tied to carbon-based energy sources. No one doubts, for example, that with currently available energy technologies--if India or China were to attain the levels of per capital consumption that prevail in the West, the world would face environmental catastrophe (solar and wind, as I understand it, are not yet able to furnish the degree of power needed for heavy industry--nuclear can, but also with obvious perils).

So it seems that a socialist economy would, ironically, be one that would seek to contain--or at least radically tame and/or redirect--the forces of production rather than "unleashing" them in the traditional Marxist sense. All of this has philosophical implications as well--perhaps a reconceptualizing of the human relationship to nature.

(renewable electricity and process efficiency can do pretty much any job affordably except cook up virgin raw materials, which we can't really justify doing as much anyhow. well, pretty much any job except labor arbitrage by means of socializing near-irreparable externalities.)

(the physical is in overheat by many measures -- needs us to give it space -- by exploring the boundless room in metaphysics and process design for greater creativity -- the revolution of the mind, to save the body)

" Whereas, what we really need is clear exposition of facts (not hard to discover but usually intentionally obscured in various ways) about the current design of the economy, taking into account all that is relevant such as political factors, and where defects are not readily obvious the pointing of these out. In other words, we want to know, who's fucking us economically and how they're doing it." (Peter)

This is especially true about economic matters, where murky things like CDS, with the power to destroy all life, loom overhead. Whitney and Hudson (and PC Roberts) keep the light on these murky things, just as Chalmers Johnson does on the subject of the military.

If he's looking for radical economists, Alex might contact Johathan Nitzan and Shimson Bichler at the University of York.

" i really respect pollin"
fair enough

in fact that is a view widely shared
on the left

so long as he's being considered as an essayist i 'm sure he brings light to many subjects

as an economist he is a rebottler

i'm sure a place has been reserved
for him on the leftos' ark

maybe i should provide
a specific critique of his body of work
who knows even a seriously closed and locked mind like mine can re open on the subject
of the whole amhersty type
post-urpe crowd
the popular general lefty will
after all playing coriolanus
as tempting as it is to me some times
at least up to the point of aiding the enemy

such one man against the multitude
has its hazards eh ??

"exposition of facts ... about the current design of the economy"

the comparative modeling
of the present systems stylized motions
i submit requires
more then even honest deep diving empirics
can delivery.... right ?

m Whitney
is a hard driving jounalist
i love his flare and his turn of phrase
we have exchanged notes on occasion
he hardly claims to be an economist

ps
hapa hits a few homers

tech advance is about new recipes

Opie wrote about Pollin,

"maybe i should provide
a specific critique of his body of work"

This brings to mind the one about pigs flying. Opie has never done such a thing because he cannot. He is all windup and no delivery--pure bluff and bluster. He tosses around a broad range of references with a knowing wink--e.g., "the whole amhersty type post-urpe crowd"--to convey the impression of a vast erudition, but it's all a confidence trick. What you have is a dilettante's "knowledge" that is a mile wide and a millimeter deep.

His prose-poem gimmick is the ideal format for the pompous fraud--all oracular jottings in broken lines into which

one cannot
stuff a detailed
coherent argument
much less any footnoted
facts--
would not
fit the
format
tee hee

You get the idea. For all his snickering about this one's or that one's lack of mathematical rigor, I bet that Opie would stumble over elementary algebra at this point.

Summers is a major-league fraud. Opie is a little-league fraud--just a chronic nuisance, but a clear impediment to any meaningful or serious discussion on this list as long as people take him seriously.

Economists over journalists? Journalists over opinionaters? Opinionaters over educated pajama-clad gossipers. Gossipers over ignorant cave-dwellers? Good heavens, the Internet would have to shut down!

Van, I would very strongly suggest that you are blaming Marx for Lenin and Stalin. There is simply nowhere in Karl Marx's writings where he argues nature is infinite, or that even the most ideal society could ignore it. Quite the contrary.

I understand that "productivism" was one of the ways Lenin and Co. elaborated Marx, but it wasn't based on Marx himself, who actually was rather forward thinking about nature and the problem of ecology. And the pomo mofos were always looking for a way to confirm their own talentless silliness, not to mention their own oh-so-modern and consumerist two strikes and you're out impatience. 1917 + 1968 = 0, in their pathetic, wrongheaded book.

I make no brief for hudson, but i really respect pollin

Lefties attacking lefties. Hmm. It's always interesting to dig beneath the surface why.

Hudson has said that he was driven out of the New School by "Hal Draper and a gang of Stalinists" back in the 1970s.

http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/48892

I'm guessing this is about obscure faculty politics and the enforcement of some kind of othodoxy.

It must suck to be a lefty and not be able to think for yourself.....

Summers is a major-league fraud. Opie is a little-league fraud--just a chronic nuisance, but a clear impediment to any meaningful or serious discussion on this list as long as people take him seriously.

I like his poetry.

"the whole amhersty type post-urpe crowd"--to convey the impression of a vast erudition, but it's all a confidence trick

Communists debate.
Traitor sellout. One's at Yale.
The other Harvard.

Once they shot the Czar.
Now they babble in faculty lounges
concerning tenure.

Mr. Dawson--
I know there are endless debates on whose Marx is the real Marx. I don't think it's entirely far-fetched to read a productivist tilt into Marx's own writings--but you are right that that tilt goes over the cliff in the Plekhanovian-Leninist interpretation.

The work I was referring to by Baudrillard--The Mirror of Production is--as I recall from thirty years ago!--an interesting analysis and still worth a read; I wonder if you've read it and, if so, what your take is on it. If you haven't, and you can snag a copy somehow, I think you would find it worth your time--it's not very long. I now plan to re-read it myself, now that I've brought it up!

Scott S.--er, TKT--writes:

"Lefties attacking lefties. Hmm. It's always interesting to dig beneath the surface why."

So, Scott--you were once a lefty, of the most odious and pathetic sort: a Healyite robot; that means you were among the dumbest of the rabid young ideologues of that era. So despite your snickering at "lefties," your posts are still an example of a lefty attacking a lefty--in your case, your current sold-out right-wing self still wrestling with the residual conscience of your old lefty self--played out in your compulsive flaming/trolling on left lists (trying to wrestle your feeble old lefty self to the mat).

Judging by the frantic, hostile tone of most of your posts, I'd say the old lefty is winning.

So, Scott--you were once a lefty, of the most odious and pathetic sort: a Healyite robot;

I don't even know what a Healyite is.

But in my case, I'm just a rather typical suburban American who was brought up in the backwash of Vietnam Syndrome cynicism about his country. I was brought up to think that socialism is good. Religion is bad. And America is an imperialistic monster with fangs dripping the world's blood.

I've come to the painful realization that the last is true. America is an imperialist monster. We do have the world's blood all over us. We are good Germans.

But I don't think socialism's the way anymore, in America anyway.

Sometimes I think maybe the best thing that we Americans can do is simply to weaken our own monster leviathan state as much as possible and give the world some room to breath.

Social Democracy might make sense in Mexico. Spread some of that oil money around. But here in America, our economy is so dependent on military spending, "socialism" just means spreading the profits from Lockheed around a bit more evenly.

Kind of like Nazis sharing cigarettes in between shifts at the ovens.

TKT--
The dependence of the U.S. economy is not divinely ordained. It is an alterable historical contingency, the result of the manifold corruptions of crony CAPITALISM.

It has been repeatedly pointed out to you that capitalism entails a state leviathan--the worst kind: a state that enforces gross and irrational disparities of wealth and income through its vast apparatus of civil contract law, courts, legislatures and executives that creates these reified dartificial entities known as corporations. In fact, has it occurred to you that there could be no such thing as a corporation without a state to create it and sustain it and to enforce its tyranny over real human beings? That there is no more antidemocratic and autocratic institution than a corporation?

The antistatism of right-wingers like you is entirely specious. You like a state that creates and enforces the prerogatives of wealth and property. You despise a state that fosters justice and equality.

As Nietzsche one said, a man's philosophy is a reflection of the kind of man he is. We clearly know what kind of man you are.

TKT--
Overhasty typing--see the addition in all caps: "The dependence of the U.S. economy ON THE MILITARY is not divinely ordained."

You like a state that creates and enforces the prerogatives of wealth and property. You despise a state that fosters justice and equality.

And yet even the working class in military industrial cities like San Diego and Seattle have it pretty good compared to the working class in the rest of the world.

Are you saying that bitchy little college professors like you are going to convince people at Boeing or Lockheed that they should give up those nice paychecks and throw their lot in with the poor in the Third World?

In fact, has it occurred to you that there could be no such thing as a corporation without a state to create it

So then it really doesn't matter what the motivations are for getting rid of the state, does it?

Just get rid of it and you get rid of capitalism, right?

And everybody's happy. Our interests coincide.

TKT - i don't actually make it my business to attack other leftists, especially since there are plenty of people like you who have already made this their vocation (I realize you're not a leftist, but all the same).

i don't ever read hudson to be honest, so that's why i write that i make no brief for him.

as someone else already commented in a previous thread, you should probably stop wasting your time in here and take your evangelizing to the conservative and liberal blogs. those are the people with whom you should be remonstrating against empire, not this grab bag blog of anarchists/left libertarians and marxist symps...

"The dependence of the U.S. economy ON THE MILITARY is not divinely ordained."

It's not divinely ordained by it seems to be just about the only industrial base America has left.

It's historically ordained. Cheap labor in China and Mexico drives most industry out of America.

But the ruling class/state/whatever wants to make sure that America still has an arms industry since that arms industry is the only thing keeping the rest of the world from going off the dollar and keeping their own resources for themselves.

It's not divinely ordained but it's ordained by the opinion of 300 million Americans, all of whom benefit to some extent from the military industrial complex.

If you had one of those Star Trek vanishing machines that could make 300 million Americans disappear you'd have your solution.

Picture Spock in a beard and pray.

as someone else already commented in a previous thread, you should probably stop wasting your time in here and take your evangelizing to the conservative and liberal blogs.

But the fact that you're putting your fingers in your ear and going "la la la la la I can't hear you" makes it oh so interesting.

Come on dude. We both hate Obama. So we've got that in common.

I just hate a few things more.

I don't really think the problem is Obama in and of himself or a few "pwogs" who don't have the guts to vote third party.

I think the problems go deeper and are more structural.

Take the idea that Obama cast some sort of magic spell over liberals to make them forget about protesting the war.

I think it has more to do with the depoliticized cultural liberalism left over from the 1960s and the ethnic and cultural fragmentation of the American people as a whole.

And I know you sort of agree with me and maybe I can force you to think a bit harder, eh?

Or do you find it just too painful to hear from people with whom you don't share an ideologically left political agenda?

Because if that's true, I'd get the same response at Free Republic. I disagree with them on as many things as I disagree with you about. They're just different things?

"grab bag blog of anarchists/left libertarians and marxist symps"

my aren't we motley
any simple populists
or plain vanilla soc-dems??
green anti corporatists ???

-------

"So then it really doesn't matter what the motivations are for getting rid of the state...Just get rid of it and you get rid of capitalism..."
i think the notion is
corporate capitalism that "requires"
a nurturing "state "

ma and pa can run a cap op too eh ??

commodity production
using
wage labor and ...

i've found a nice little pollin lecture
from last year that might serve
he even flirts with the legacy of my teacher wild bill vickrey

fun ...but no algebra ...may be had by all

i'll try to post my "review"
right here on father S's sheeew
as a comment to this post ...
prolly tomorrow nite

be here sharp
or be here flat
just be here

"arms industry is the only thing keeping the rest of the world from..."

1)"... going off the dollar "

2)"... keeping their own resources for themselves"

on 1)
okay

but on 2)
what about a replacement hegemon ???

is uncle the last possible hegemon ???

or are u saying something less remarkable
like
to be THE imperial hyper nation
u gotta be militarily
double down tops ??
not just cross border
but all across the planet
errr...armed power projection wise
that is

who here might disagree with that

TKT-
You think WTO/NAFTA are divinely ordained? The financial class intentionally gutted the industrial base of America. That's a human folly that can be reversed. The industrial base and infrastructure can be rebuilt by human, just as it was gutted by humans.

Moreover, if capitalist corporations are artifices of the state, and you are procapitalist, then you are not antistatist, by definition. If you are against both capitalism and socialism, it would be interested to hear what kind of social order you do advocate.

You sometimes just blather--talk and write real fast, summon up a steam of hipsterlike verbal pizazz, and seem to hope that no one will notice that your comments are devoid of logic.

If you are against both capitalism and socialism, it would be interested to hear what kind of social order you do advocate.

I'll throw the question back at you.

If socialism doesn't look like Russia from 1917 to 1989 or China from 1948 to say (I dunno let's use the Bob Avakianite date) the death of Mao in 1976, what does it look like?

Come on. Give me a blueprint of your socialist utopia.

Oh right, you won't do that. No Marxist will do that. So why do you expect me to do what you won't do yourself?

what about a replacement hegemon ???

Like the EU?

As in maybe the EU's socialist cross border economic superpower replaces the USA through international law, treaty, and moral persuasion?

Well, I don't think that's going to happen as long as Americans and Russians are controlling the supply of oil and natural gas.

But let's see those Euro Weinies put their money where they're mouths are. If wind, solar, and "alternative" sources of energy are really feasible, then maybe they can develop a workable post fossil fuel economy within the borders of Europe that would set them free from the Americans and Russians and provide an example for the rest of the world.

I wouldn't bet my hybrid on it.

pollin's lecture is here

http://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/working_papers/working_papers_101-150/WP141.pdf

two quick points on the areas of
no show

he never mentions exchange rate fiddles
which cause industrial policy to become
de industrial policy

and the mid pacific super profit capture system the trans nats are working with east and south east asia not to mention subcon asia is based on a fiddle that automatic exchange rate mechanisms could cut off
at the kness

just require trade balance in material production
and enforce it with a forex policy
qed

but ignorinmg forex
for what ever reason
leaves him with swede soc dem social market safety net strategies

which his own narrative discovers to be
on the fritz right now
given the on going class struggle in scandoville

where as
the swede de val
of the early 90's worked quite well

obviously the de val till trade is balanced
strategy is availible to all industrial
geopolitical trading zones
with an independent hard currency eh ??

and he doesn't seem to grasp the concept of the mark up market
of collander vickrey lerner
clv

clv is a policy to take price level effects off the class struggle table

the inflation bug a boo
has been used for decades (since 46)
to blunt wage share in ndp

caps on mark up
not prices
as p miss states the task
force the class struggle on shares
into the open
heres mr p 's account of cvl

"According to his(vick's) proposal, all business firms would have the right to raise prices at a given rate established by government policymakers. Firms could also raise prices beyond the fixed rate. But to do so, they would have to purchase from other firms these other firms’ rights, or warrants, to themselves raise prices. For example, assume all firms were free to raise prices by three percent in a given year. Each firm therefore holds a warrant to raise prices by three percent. But these are tradable warrants. If one firm wished to raise its prices by six percent, they could purchase the warrants of another firm. This way, the first firm could raise their prices by six percent, while the second firm, which had sold its warrant, would be required to not raise their prices at all."
note the confusion of pricing with the more precise notion of mark up
if he merely slipped up
here its evidence of inadequate concentraion on the cvl proposal
which leads to

pollin simply not seeing the necessity for this restructuring of the social market

he instead accepts the notion of a minimumm necessary rate of unemployment
after all marx outlined it eh ??

ie job rationing in the private sector
and the implied wpa sub standard wage option
if the slack in employment is to be harry hopkins-ed out of the picture
without over tight pri sec markets and thhe on set of the wage price spiral

chowder headed mess up

"Moreover, contrary to Marx, Kalecki held that full employment can be beneficial to profits, because the economy will be operating with buoyant markets at a high level of overall demand for products."

even as he gets this right

"Full employment could threaten the capitalists control over the workplace, the pace and direction of economic activity, and even a society’s political institutions."

marx saw a cycle
and its quite consistent with
kalecki's insight about the wage price spiral
and the slacker problem
given readily availible full time employment for all
produced solely thru macro effective demand policy

which by the way stand alone bbecomes
compatible with low wage share
given a price control credit policy
and a "socially necessary" reserve army of jobless
so this conclusion is plain wrong

"This and related ideas by Vickrey(mark up markets)
are certainly worth exploring further.
But more promising, in my view, comes out of the work of Meidner in Sweden, in particular because this model has demonstrated its effectiveness in practice"

why
because in the long run
it doesn't work
as pollin points out
sweden now has high unemployment

to close in on this here

"Meidner and Rehn(the swede soc-dem paradigm
opposed macroeconomic demand expansion measures that, on their own, aimed to bring the economy all the way to zero unemployment, since they held that unacceptably high inflation could indeed result if full employment was achieved through such stimulus measures alone. In other words, Meidner and Rehn supported maintaining some slack in the economy to keep upward wage pressure from producing headlong inflation"

but here comes today in swede ville

"between 1993-2006, unemployment rose to an average of 7.6 percent, while inflation fell sharply, to an average of 1.5 percent.has averaged 7.6 percent. Ginsburg and Rosenthal explain this as resulting from “the growing power of Swedish business, pressures from globalization and the race to join the European Union, with its requirements for low budget deficits and inflation but none for low unemployment,” (2006, p. 1). 8 This most recent Swedish experience thus raises the question as to whether the model has become unworkable in our contemporary globalized economy"

now where back to Globalization and the missing forex policy option

his green machine "solution"

is intrinsically fine
but it really doesn't address the slack requirement that enforces price stability

btw

if we were to adjust the forex to rebuild our production platform
we'd need to swallow a price tsunami
as our imports sky rocket in price

given a cvl we could do this and
pre empt the income effects on
job holder households
with index income tax abatements obviously ssi payments are already indexed if not properly
and pensioneers would need adjustments too
thru the fed pension trust no doubt

sum up ??

pollin has nothing to add to the policy mix
in fact he seems behind the cutting edge

he shares our class stand point
but lacks our best technical models

why ??
trained at the new school under heilbroner

he's an essayist and a nice guy goo goo
harm in this ??...none
that is
so long as we have vickreys and lerners
---and meidners---et al
to actually discover the science
and for the rest of us
with a job class pov
to use their discoveries
and constructs as the basis for policy solutions

algebra comprehension helpful but not necessary
unless your designing a model
or fail to take stuff on authority
or if long chains of verbal reasoning
make you impatient for concise
compact clarifications of the linkages
or if graphs leave you unsatisfied
with your grasp of the full montee of it

-----------

long like pollin
just forget about him as a policy oracle

hell community workers
and union organizers
don't know recent economics either

and sa far as counter punch goes

they need at least to add a few
real trained technical economists
to the writer rossssssster

"productivist" bias of Marxist theory

what a cow flap that notion is

marx vs the greens
do dah words
dis info campaign mean anything to ya
i try never to invoke
the dear doctor from trier
its taking unfair advantage

but md is right

a mayflower wreath
fits quite easily
on his moorish brute of a head

Opie wrote,
""productivist" bias of Marxist theory

what a cow flap that notion is"

That's Opie's idea of an argument. That's also my five-year-old niece's idea of an argument.

Hundred-to-one Opie has never read The Mirror of Production. Sure, he'll toss off that name and a dozen others to convey the impression that he has . . . but that's all "cow flap." The guy can't sustain a serious discussion or argument--the point is always that Opie Knows Best and the rest of your pikers just STFU.

Hasn't MJS caught on yet that Opie is a preening, pompous fraud, a massive nut job, and a huge dead weight of diseased ego on this blog? Nearly every thread goes smash from this guy's mad blather.

MSJ? HELLO!

TKT wrote:
"I'll throw the question back at you."

Don't do a cowardly dodge/change of subject. That's what the Senators on Meet the Press do. Tim Russert let them get away with it, but I won't be so accommodating.

Here's the point you keep dodging: you claim to be an antistatist. But capitalism is based on corporations, and corporations are not natural organisms--they are ARTIFICES OF THE STATE--pure "state" from charter to civil court to the cops needed to protect their STATE-ordained "property." State through and through and through.

So--do you support corporate capitalism or not? If you do, you are obliged to drop your pose of anti-statism. If you don't favor corporate capitalism or socialism, you ought to be able to tell us what you DO favor. Whether MY idea of "utopia" is sound or not is irrelevant. Let's say mine is flawed for the sake of argument. Fine--so what's YOUR proposal? Do you favor corporate capitalism or not?

Out with it, you coward!

Opie writes,
"they need at least to add a few
real trained technical economists
to the writer rossssssster"

Ya mean like Opie? What "technical" issue would he be addressing--where to abritrarily break a line in a fake prose poem? Or how to maximize the use of syllables in the saying of nothing? How to reconcile the claim of being a "socialist" while spin-doctoring for the HMOs?

I'm sure Alex would politely--maybe not so politely--decline. There crackpots aplenty with their own blogs--no need to import one into CP. And there are more than enough apologists for the HMOs in the mass media. None needed at CP.

MJS may not care how Opie's daily shredding of the credibility of this blog, but I'm sure Alex is a bit more vigilant about the standards over at CounterPunch.

Opie writes,
"they need at least to add a few
real trained technical economists
to the writer rossssssster"

Ya mean like Opie? What "technical" issue would he be addressing--where to abritrarily break a line in a fake prose poem? Or how to maximize the use of syllables in the saying of nothing? How to reconcile the claim of being a "socialist" while spin-doctoring for the HMOs?

I'm sure Alex would politely--maybe not so politely--decline. There crackpots aplenty with their own blogs--no need to import one into CP. And there are more than enough apologists for the HMOs in the mass media. None needed at CP.

MJS may not care about Opie's daily shredding of the credibility of this blog, but I'm sure Alex is a bit more vigilant about the standards over at CounterPunch.

obviously the will full blind
can not be made to see

but for those willing to
try here's a class assignment

greenwald stiglitz 1986
american economic review 101:229-264

why ??

cause its implications over throw
the neoclassical gen equ paradigm
yes the market bible's first gospel
that according to adam
the invisible hand

and the fuckers 22 years old
yet even now
not in main stream discourse
that's the lag time

not that its import is comparable
but this is as if keynes GT
was still largely
unknown in 1958

in fact i doubt most rad-kampf types
that are into the material base of society
and its present irrational
state sponsored organization
even know this paper exists

caution its gated
you'll need your jestor pass
i as a full time jestor
of course can pass thru
like caspar
entering your bedroom
thru a wall

sorry
its not the aer
its
the quarterly journal of economics 101:229-264

Wow--Opie can cite a quarter-century-old article by Stiglitz, but he evidently cannot write coherent prose sentence, and so huffs and bluffs behind the willful obscurities of his preposterous free verse.

D'ya think anyone's impressed, Opie? Think again.

Giving Opie a taste of his own--

Opie sneers at Pollin:
"he's an essayist and a nice guy goo goo
harm in this ??...none"

I wonder what ad hom sally of this sort Pollin might venture about Opie if he happened on to this blog? Maybe something like this:
"Who is this crank, this delusional hot-air machine?"

http://bostonreview.net/BR34.1/pollin.php

here's another pollin bit
this time an essay on reregulating the banksters
will review here too
though it appears all sane readers have moved on to higher ground
and only a swamp rat or two remain

yes i'm one of those swamp rats
no doubt about that

pollin on the security markets for repackaged house/house lot mortgages

"The idea behind bundling mortgages into marketable securities is that the local bank or S&L that lends you money to buy a home does not hold onto your loan once you get your money. Rather, it sells your loan to a big financial institution,... (which) then sells these mortgage-backed securities to banks, hedge funds, and other market players."

so far so good

but ...

" With thousands of mortgages packaged into one security, the dangers of lending to higher-risk borrowers are supposed to decline; within a large portfolio of mortgages, the losses lenders incur from the small share of delinquent borrowers are offset by the much larger proportion of borrowers in good standing."

this is simple risk pooling which requires no synthetic security production

seems pollin is wobbly at best on this point
later he gets back into it

"What makes securitized assets more valuable in the market than the underlying bundle of loans is that the risks associated with those loans have been reconfigured, repackaged, and presumably clarified for market participants."

that demonstrates some comprehension of whats going on

but like a lot of pollin its the seemingly imprecise grasp leads to blurry exposition

the point of the derivative production is to slice this pooled risk synthetically into various pools based on out comes
ie creating a series of cash flow pools
of greater risk
think a series of cisterns on a hill side and a flow of water down into them
the top cistern must be filed before thenext starts to get water and so on down the slope

where the reg comes in is evaluating the risk to these various cisterns

the problem with the mortgage risk assesment

the assumption that the rise in residential property values might slow even stall maybe even mildly contract
but never at a rate like ...well like we ended up seeing happen

again pollin's fairly wobbly grasp leads to equally wobbly policy
in this case the depository system
which could be "nationalized" is lumped in with
the rest of the hi fi institutional mish mash

and he concludes nationalization will fail because of sub pri sec par performance

he oughta read and digest

http://books.google.com/books?id=farQuE67J0wC&pg=PA120&lpg=PA120&dq=sappington+stiglitz+privatization+theorem&source=bl&ots=C1SOGUvxQr&sig=HP3e5dF0l9tBNhyz7hkFKjVGGTk&hl=en&ei=Zd_tSbqVMMTgtgf6nbDADw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1

the sappington stiglitz privatisation theorem
stuff like this works both ways
in and out of pub sec
like the stark plan
nationalizing the depository system
i think it leads on to deeper things not back to square one thru reprivatization

the success of social security hasn't prevented attempts to privatize it

nothing will so long as there's potential gold in the4m thar hills

again his narrative of events is fine
and he's on "our" side
but he's into half measures
either by self constraint
or lack of deeper insight i'm not sure

his tobin tax on security trades is right on

only it should be a congestion type algorithm
ie the tax rises as trade flows in units increase
but that's complex mechanism stuff and i'm not sure bob wants to take his mind there

at any rate its a great first apporximation

his idea of an uncle security rating unit is very fine indeed
and his talk about a multiple reseve system with trades ala pollution warrents is right on too

indeed there is much here of value

but its rebottled stuff
its source flows from other fountains

Rebottled stuff? And exactly what original published contributions to economic analysis have you ever made anywhere, aside from your laughable oracular dribbling all over this blog?

good stuff
I'm still reading along

Can you upload "Externalities in economies with imperfect information and incomplete markets - G & S 1986" to rapidshare for me?

or a zip file of relevant papers, if you can

"Can you upload "Externalities in economies with imperfect information and incomplete markets - G & S 1986" to rapidshare for me?"

bob

hell i don't even know what your talking about

i'm an old stupid/ignorant man here

MY DAIGHTER slipped me a secret
pass code that lest me in to
all the econ con
ivy journals
years ago
but i know no way to free what i gop to there
if there's a way spell it out ...please
i can't even do electronic copying
for christ's sake

hell
i can't even post a picture ..here
or write in coherent sentences and paragraphs
and you figure i can free text from the walled world of elitest electronic journals

as i've said its father smiff
like a self propelled tireless replacement for little ole ixion me
that turns my fiery posting wheel

the real me
is this archy like pink cockroach
from pol pot's chamber of horrors
scratching his way around these comment cages
to the distraction of all things that trot

of course super al shoooman
the four square human
can prolly do these things u ask ...
fuck
super al can do ANYTHING

i wonder if dermo is reading this
he after all wanted me to
bob pollinate some

i must say
its better i don't read these rad cuffs like pollin
i grow too fond of them

after all ..
they are my brothers and sisters ...eh

far far better i just stab
blindly and wildly at them
with my rubber stick
like the shameless
peanut gallery oaf i am

booo pollin booo
grab some pine you stiff

op,
it's pretty easy just click download .pdf on jstor or ssrn. then click "upload" here:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/12103054/Stiglitz-Invisible-Hand

Opie wrote,
"to the distraction of all things that trot"

Paranoid Opie thinks I'm a "trot." He also thinks the head of the California Nurses Association is a trot. In fact, anyone who wants single payer and does not share Opie's DLC-perfct view that the Stark HMO-sellout-hybrid plan is just as good as single payer is . . . a TROT! That means the following people are trots: Ralph Nader, Russell Mokhiber, Joseph Stiglitz, all the massed doctors of the PNHP, John Conyers, Barney Frank, Bernie Sanders . . . TROTS ALL! Who knew that the Fourth International was the second most powerful political influence in the United States after AIPAC!

Hey, Opie, now that you've sidled up to the DLC on health care, what's next? You gonna start explaining why derivatives shouldn't be regulated? Why card check will wreck the economy? Can't wait for your next in policy verse. It really THRILLS me when you flash your skin-deep patches of erudition! (I especially love the ancient Greek allusions) Do that wacky brilliant prose poem pompous thing you do, Opie!

bad copy
http://socsci2.ucsd.edu/~aronatas/project/academic/Stiglitz%20Greenwald.pdf

thanks hapa

thanx guys

hows the paper ???

oddly these ground brakers look just like the pangloss regulars at first glance

dixit stiglitz wrote perhaps the most important paper in formal firm theory
in the late 77's

dixit suggested they really were not aware
of all it would entail

stiglitz appears as co author of an amazing number of these key papers

often however others arrived at the same results independently
i don't want to give the impression
he is
peerless
its just convenient to follow his journey thru the 70's and 80's

It seems like Dixit doesn't actually like the conclusions that much, and has switched to academic-solidarity concern trolling:

"If it is to have value beyond its use for critics of markets of all stripes to hijack and invoke in support of their own agendas, it should lead to explicit construction of good policies in specific practical contexts of asymmetric information." Dixit
http://www.princeton.edu/~dixitak/home/StiglitzFest_Dixit.pdf

He is of course being sensible and responsible here.. but those of us who have no regard for the fate of the profession probably should be "hijacking" the theory right about now. Just from a few days of reading, it seems to me that the first practical policy that Stiglitz & co.'s work entails is a re-writing of every single economics text, and a de-frocking of a large number of dismalians. I guess the menu costs involved make economic paradigms sticky.

It seems like Dixit doesn't actually like the conclusions that much, and has switched to academic-solidarity concern trolling:

"If it is to have value beyond its use for critics of markets of all stripes to hijack and invoke in support of their own agendas, it should lead to explicit construction of good policies in specific practical contexts of asymmetric information." Dixit
http://www.princeton.edu/~dixitak/home/StiglitzFest_Dixit.pdf

He is of course being sensible and responsible here.. but those of us who have no regard for the fate of the profession probably should be "hijacking" the theory right about now. Just from a few days of reading, it seems to me that the first practical policy that Stiglitz & co.'s work entails is a re-writing of every single economics text, and a de-frocking of a large number of dismalians. I guess the menu costs involved make economic paradigms sticky.