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Have at it

By Michael J. Smith on Friday July 1, 2011 10:57 AM

I'm going to leave an open thread up, while traveling, until I'm able to post again. But Al and Owen, feel free to pre-empt it if the spirit moves you.

Comments (42)

Ahhh!!! Isn't that the cutest damn thing!

op:

"Government has to start living within its means, just like families do. We have to cut the spending we can’t afford so we can put the economy on sounder footing, and give our businesses the confidence they need to grow and create jobs."
o'barry does billy

op:

http://www.clms.neu.edu/publication/documents/Revised_Corporate_Report_May_27th.pdf

headline
amerika sets new mark
with a nearly pure profit recovery

above paper
out of a shakey flakey econ con department
never the less
not a bad look at this stag party
we jobsters are stuck at

jobholders ??

7 quarters after gdp official troughing in summer 09
wages and salaries in constant dollars
have gone slide ways

corporates ??

in three words
profits profits profits


this seems to be based on uncle's own numbers with near zero manipulation beyond tallying up

so its only as good as those numbers are good
but no more suspect that that


More very strong evidence that it has been a supply-side bailout from op-san. Both the Zero quote and this report. Reagan and the Bushes would have had trouble completing this deal, and certainly would have raised some ruckus in doing so.

Meanwhile, MJS's burnout comment makes sense. There are right walls, in Gouldian terms. Horses do die, and beating them gets old.

Hence, we remain locked in Crow's claim that teachers don't matter under any possible conditions, and the SMBIVA quasi promotion of the same amazing conclusion. The baby is taking the blame for the bathwater at this point.

anonymous:

The 9/11 truth is out on the internet.
This is the truth: The WTC was destroyed by 3 underground thermo-nuclear explosions. They were detonated by the US government who used this as an excuse to lead the US and its allies into invading Afghanistan and Iraq. All these wars and deaths were based on a lie.

Goebbels: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

Will you help to tell the truth to the world?

www.mathaba.net/news/?x=625926

www.911-truth.net/
Be sure to watch the 26 part video there.
#4 is on the built-in nuclear demolition scheme of the WTC
www.911-truth.net/911_WTC_nuclear_demolition_Dimitri_Khalezov_part04.mp4
#14 in on Building 7, which collapsed even though no plane hit it.
www.911-truth.net/911_WTC_nuclear_demolition_Dimitri_Khalezov_part14.mp4
#24/25 is on the chronic radiation sickness of the WTC responders)
www.911-truth.net/911_WTC_nuclear_demolition_Dimitri_Khalezov_part24.mp4
www.911-truth.net/911_WTC_nuclear_demolition_Dimitri_Khalezov_part25.mp4

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNh1Isb20tw&feature=player_embedded

careandwashingofthebrain.blogspot.com/2011/05/911-comparing-building-implosions.html

Can you imagine what would have happened if Bush had tried to start a military invasion in Iraq without 9/11? THE ENTIRE COUNTRY WOULD HAVE STOOD UP AND SAID "NO"! There would have been national shutdowns and sit ins and protests in the streets! The Bush administration would never have been able to get away with it! It's the only way it makes any sense!

LeonTrollski:

but paul, there wer....


ooooohhhhhh.

Op:

Good news and bad news

I have no ability to post up at this site

Bad news
Where's electric AL he can post here on his own
While sailor mike is breezing the coast fantastic to Maine

Chomskyzinn:

Is Anonymous quoting Goebbels for the defense or the prosecution?

juan:

don't you think the financial and nonfinancial should be seperated when lookig at mass of profit -- or if not, go ahead look at Rate [but include all fictitious capital within that to be valorized].

no question exploitation is much higher but def questions re source of much of the 'profit' increase [think misrepresented asset inflation].

op:

juan

this is just jargon shifting in most instances
right ??
we notice the fire sector gaining profit share faster then value added share
and cry
rentier parasitism is rampant

true enough
so far as it goes

i prefer to reserve marx nomenclature for inner sanctum ceremonies

however even after translation into
our "church" latin

i any changes in this two tier
structure of surplus distribution
to the class struggle from the wage class pov

surplus is extracted in
the day to day production of use values
by wage labor
vol one

and that suffices to guide us into battle
it gives us the basic where and how
so long as we keep our eye on the "shop floor"
so to speak
we can't stray off course

where and how the fuckers
move the value extractions around
ie
the circuits of capital may well impact
the results

and the results are the key to the well being of the wage class next period and beyond
but
forecasting is for capitalist staffers not
wage class staffers eh ??
so why try to figure out precisely what is the outcome of an expanded fire share in
private social profits

we have a general understanding
of what can happen

a history of what has happened

and we have ..today
and a tomorrow that will be
better or worse then today

and looking toward a longer view
we see struggle

ups and downs

the last thirty years here in norte amigo have been downers

so far as i'm concerned 'nough said
we organize to hit back as well as possible

as to the further refinements of corporate capitalism in its inevitable self development into its opposite
--toward the socialization of capital itself--
some general trends are clear

for over a 100 years we marxists have noted
the ever deeper financialization of capital

a parallel to an earlier and now co existent
process
market extension in production itself
the commodification of products
and the financialization of capital

both are obviously "progressive" morphings

both processes in the socialization of societies progressive reproduction of itself

in the case of financialization
the progress is in the centralization of capital itself

within this process of financialization
we have the specific form
of marketization of capital
called securitization

the recent stage of deeper securitization
since the early 70's of money capital
is a step
a qualitative step in the direction of fuller socialization of fund flows
the comparative dynamic advantage of this exceeds present models
we can not analytically demonstrate
the superiority of this form
over earlier forms
but we have intuitions and scraps of evidence

( note
securitization is the correct label
for the alphabet soup of new hi fi markets
and vehicles like the mbs or the now
utterly basic repos

even the short term bank loan per se
to large corporations
is a nearly ublated form of credit vehicle
--we saw it back in action in this crisis of course
as the repo market faultered --

loans are being fully replaced
by the trade able repo

just as the booming spread
of the corporate bond market
in an earlier interval
took the banks acting directly
from holders to originators
not out of the funding process o
but out of the serious holding function
for the debt of large ongoing concerns

both repos and the early bonds
were securitizations
similar to the late 19th century deepening
of socialization
with the sudden securitization of equity
ie
the near universal adoption of
the joint stock form for production outfits

the securitization process spreads
the sharing of risk and opportunity
ie socializes it


now to answer your question

thesis

it is progressive to suck off the maximum of the surplus value from the basic operating units

that is a controversial statement no doubt
in particular
among those enamored of indy worker owned
co op set ups

obviously the co op scheme
is driven
by the mistaken conception
small produces higher freedom on all dimensions
ie
a system of co oops
as the universal basis of social production
would be liberating and progressive

my response
these are fantasyland mis-apprehensions

i have a sense of the enlightenment notion
of a general will
that goes like this

over the long haul
Clio runs a rational pilgrimage

given what She has to work with and thru
us humans
saShe is our creation
and as such treats us as badly as we deserve

however
if something institutional persists
it is "self rationalizing "

the error comes in
when one of us agents
assumes
rationality
doesn't have a shelf life
or come deeply intricated
with various irrationalities

the emergence of rationality
out of irrationality is deceptive

since human agency and the history it makes
is a collective self searching
self developing self discovering
self transforming process
of picking apart and reforming institutions

institutions that remain in part sub rational at best thru out their existence
ie
the rationalizing process alas
is co extensive
with any institutionalizations entire historical existence

op:

"teachers don't matter under any possible conditions"

"the SMBIVA quasi promotion of the same amazing conclusion"


now md is this strictly speaking fair
in fact i 'd suggest the opposite

teachers matter under any possible conditions

the attack by mjs as i understand him
is on the institution of universal
public compulsory school
now in some states to age 18 !!!
of course he sees voucherizing and even charterizing as well as on line schooling as nasty corporate invasions
so he's closer to you i suspect then i am
since i'd like to see both our hospital and our schooling systems demolished in a frenzy of profiteering
but i'm nasty to the bone

the second large mug of morning java
that only makes me feel i have
invincible insights

but her highness almighty Clio
on the other hand though she
might act sociopathic on occasion
she's never manic depressive
the story of Job
is not a story Cliuo might "produce "

first off she'd trim
the downs and the ups
of the drama added n scenes
with n verging on the limitless

generally soap up her multi part
redaction of the swift and closed
drama of the hebrew template

not a three act completion

but an immortal
filling spilling and refilling
and again spilling ...of the soup can

juan:

Owen, very nice - excellent - response though doesn't seem to grasp that I've been through most of Marx's 'economic' books multiple times. [I did, admittedly, not spend as much time with the credit section in vol 3 as I should have, but did during the later 80s when making myself crazy with Hilferding and a long piece on Global Finance Capitals [GFCs] development.
Conversations with one of my brothers [a senior exec w/a global -supposedly European- auto company] and with Frank Ostroff [then still at McKinsey] raised questions of worldwide concentration and centralization to extent capitalism seems to have undergone qualitative change beyond the old 'monopoly capital' phase. This, I felt, required a deeper look, which led me towards many 20th c Marxists such as Grosmann, Mattick, Mandel, Harvey, Davis, Shaikh, Goldner... long waves, hegemony, class development in the perphery... [all in all, a multi-decade spiral towards where I had acquired 'social[ist]' consciousness worth fighting for].

I def do not think that increased effective demand is sufficient. It may mitigate but only by perpetuating an overaccumulation while countercyclic policies are hitting limits.

Rather than go on and on and on...here's a short mainstream type which partially covers:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2008/07/hoisted-from-comments-has-neo.html

juan:

Boink - Great rabbit! Here's a slow loris
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3530/3744914786_689cc871fc_o.jpg

Owen - on questions re structured finance, Janet Tavakoli is very good [so is a former CBOT guy I knew but probably shouldn't post his nname other than 'surf'...big on algotrade systems]. http://www.tavakolistructuredfinance.com/

And for credit bubble data, Doug Noland [I believe he's now with Federated but has written his Credit Bubble Bulletin since at least mid-2000. Lots of data/very little theory, and to extent there is, some combo of Austrian and Minsky/Keynes.
http://www.safehaven.com/author/2/doug-noland

op:

juan can i assume this condenses your points ??:


"1. the ending of national economies v. what can only be national states, a contradiction between economic mode of organization and national states.

2. progressive expansion of fictitious capital v. the possibility of satisfying such claims, a ‘satisfying’ which depends upon a) global creation of surplus value and b) substitution of credit for a relative insufficiency of realized surplus value (profit). This has provided much of the ‘advanced’ world with what is no more than a superficial prosperity even as it has also helped undermined its real basis. The spectacle of finance hides too much.

3. In combination, the above two have generated greater class, ethnic, international and subnational tensions. The social relations of the world capital system have become quite strained, which is not to say that capitalism is ‘doomed’ but that its present form has become increasingly untenable and a ‘change in state’ is almost certainly unavoidable, in fact seems to be underway. "

i'll respond when i get a chance

btw

"do not think that increased effective demand is sufficient"
i assume means sufficient to stabloze global capitalism today

i agree but why requires some exposition


the comment was aimed past you to folks with less exposure to the issues
hence my
"this is just jargon shifting in most instances"
is followed by a "right ?? "
addressed to you specificxally
right ??

juan:

RIGHT.

Seems we are on the same wave.

op:

still no chance to get really into this\effective demand has its limits thesis


but we may not agree on this either

i consider break down theories mechanical or otherwise
toy boat marxism
from lady lux to grossman and on to mandel

the long wave or whatever version
of the declining rate of profit
does not induce a structural crisis of profitability
even if it exists

capital always seeks the path
of maximum self expansion
the long term inherent declining rate of profit seems to be nothing more then
the declining real value of
the neoclassical's natural or
balanced growth rate of interest

only an ever expanding labor pool
in the 50's solow model
misses this asymtote
at zero instead of that ramsey end result
solow gets a final capital value per labor hour ratio
ie where the capital stock is just growing fast enough to maintain the per hour capital ratio where the change in k
equals the change in l
this simple re;lationship
is of course formally
just like the domar debt burden model where
g> i
and the total deficit is a fixed percentage of gdp

frank ramsey
considered the rate of interest a very long
period dynamic rationing device
all without any necessary moment
of Zusammenbruchsgesetz

to me the episodic crises have short run origins and medium run solutions
i need hardly suggest to you
that saying each crisis puts capital " on trail"
hardly means conviction and sentencing to death

-------------------
in effect i suspect if the global economy were all at advanced levels
the "natural real rate would be vanishingly close to zero
but this hardly ends the quasi rents earned by innovation and well contrived rent sumps
that can squeeze up the producer retention of
surplus value
ie avoid the full conversion of the exchange value of that net new use value
into final product
consummers surplus

op:

"a contradiction between economic mode of organization and national states"

the basic unit of modern capital is a multi national corporation

the basic unit of class struggle is the national economy
this is indeed full of contradictions in practice

but the nation state still remains
the unit of class struggle and job class oriented policy aims at the nation state's ability to combat MNC's with their border crossing hops

the model we need but don't have
oughta combine stylized stripped down
market planets

combining located MNC "production and marketing units "

a partitioned global system
in two tiers
product markets and credit markets
aka the hi fi cloud

each partitioned area
with local laws taxes
prices currencies resources

this allows opportunity for
cross border profit arbitrage

just how complex this model might need to be b4 it yields a stick figure "realism"
is open to discovery obviously

my intuition suggests we have the models or sub models already and only
need to inter connect them
-- example optimal tariff models are excellent optimal MNC local market differential pricing
mechanisms

resource pricing oughta be lots of fun

the system oughta get run from certain initial conditions fairly similar to the existing north /south big /small
set of national profiles


and run forward only a few periods
to a nice crisis

that is the best to expect
from such a model

a comic strip toonish market earth
fable maker

op:

"fictitious capital "
i prefer the expression scheinvert
or
"illusory value" a very ghostly being indeed

schein is nicely hegelian eh ??

see book II section II of the science of logic

great stuff ethereal spectral spirits
able to hold
the hi fi cloud layer in its limitlessly
multipling hands

op:

the 1970's in one sense described the limits of effective demand
but it also produced the easy sublation of the core complaint
ie wage push inflation
with
the lerner weintraub fixes
neither necessary as "private capital"
found solutions else where
that i until the fall of 2008

the attempts to keep keynes buried
by say taylor are not proving successful at the level of the academy
even if they have for now smouthered him in the press tjhanx to the stimu less induced stag

op:

the opening up of the various north marketplaces
to southern industrial products
mediated by the MNCs
became possible and profitable
once the bretton woods structure was blown apart allowing vast deficits and surpluses on both sides of the great north south divide

compare these two passages
apropos
the new phase of globalization

yours:

"...generated greater class, ethnic, international and subnational tensions."

the moors:


" exploitation of the world market gives a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country.... it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood.

All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all advanced and advancing nations... whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe.

In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of the entire planet .

In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations.

..... the rapid improvements of technology... draw all, even the most unemerged of nations into the maelstrom .

The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery battering down all ... national walls ... forcing the obstinate haters of all things foreign to capitulate... compelling all peoples, on pain of extinction, to adopt ....the modern mode of production....

globalization calls into our benighted midst,... a world after its own image."

------------
indeed

"The social relations of the world capital system have become quite strained "
indeed they popped in fall 08 !!!

" its present form has become increasingly untenable and a ‘change in state’ is almost certainly unavoidable, in fact seems to be underway. "

much like the interval 73 to 83

bigger ??

who the fuck knows

op:

"substitution of credit for a relative insufficiency of realized surplus value "

is this bubble blowing as policy ???

Michael Dawson completely fabulates:

"Hence, we remain locked in Crow's claim that teachers don't matter under any possible conditions, and the SMBIVA quasi promotion of the same amazing conclusion. The baby is taking the blame for the bathwater at this point."

You, asshole, are a lying sack of shit.

I'm must fine with teachers. My brother is a history teacher. My mother was a teacher of the deaf.

Teachers obviously matter. Education matters.

I have no use for academics. Like you, Dawson. Academia, with its profit colleges and state institutions, is a proof positive adversary of human liberation.

And I have no use for the loyalty oaths, training in obedience and distraction and historical substitutionism which are the main produce of late capitalist public schools.

I'm not surprised that a managerial centralist such as yourself would find objections to pedagogical indoctrination suspect. But, at least have some self-respect, and stop lying, fuckwit.

I like the term fuckwit. It's succinct yet very descriptive. I also appreciate you pointing out the difference between indoctrination, which is what schools currently do, and actual education. It's like equating a dislike for cops as a desire to see people raped, mugged and murdered.

Karl:

Dawson, still lying out his ass:

we remain locked in Crow's claim that teachers don't matter under any possible conditions,

That would be MY claim you're almost getting correctly there, ShiteaterCocksucker.

MY claim is that teachers unions must fail in order to fix public education.

Feel free to lie about that one too, you piece of shit.

Amazing that you have a faculty job and that you're a mulatto. You talk like a trustafarian white boy pseudo-hippie.

Apparently you're a pathetic corporate oreo.

Karl:

Apart from Owen's "Michael Dawson" pseudonymous posting, we get treated to more EEEEE-Confidencetrick theory wars!

Remember, children: the only way to fix a social problem is with Economic Theory.

Ask any economist. They'll tell you it's so.

op:

"late capitalist public schools."

as opposed to tardy capitalist private schools

the use of the word liar is a bit shrill

for a nihilist mr crow
you certainly want your image
to remain un-mussed

just who is supposed to give a shit anyway ???

op:

karl
ever the wing man

i guess ole crow needs one
given his flock of lost little boys and all

mentors must be respected

btw
i'd love to have a site
one tenth as good
or as useful
as md's

crow's ...????

op:

heres my address btw

crow and karl
come pay me a visit
i have a reward waiting


188 side hill road
hingham mass

Liars are liar, op. And who cares where you live or what websites have greater value? I'm not blogging to stroke off your faithless Clio. I write because I enjoy it. No less, and no more.

As for the investment in images - who cares? I don't. I no more like being misrepresented by smug, sanctimonious shitwits than you like using complete sentences with ordinary language.

Besides, it was fun to have an opportunity to properly classify Dawson Raider as a fuckwit. I thought SMBIVAns were supposed to relish this mortal joint of a human moment?

You know, cultivate drug habits, take mistresses, sail boats along the pollution channels of the East River, and punch Dawson in his smug little eye...

op:

gee crow i thought you'd man up
and give me your address

as for karl

well karl i have no use for anyway
if he thinks his last comment was anything better then a disgrace to himself

--------------

"I write because I enjoy it. No less, and no more."

i think that sez about all anyone need know about you crow

for some reason it reminded me of reckless solo driving

i guess that has its personal pleasures as well

suit yourself drive in the wrong lane at 110

if there's no on coming traffic just around the bend .....

Chill out dudes!

An address exchange for what? Anonymous tests of manly virtue, OP? Muscle flexing? A dick contest?

Christ on a stick - that chest thumping is ridiculous. And over perpetually rabid Dawson? Mincia...

op:

yes over the nasty clown crap about dawson
though where karl lives i'm sure i'll never know

your both i suspect safe
even if md acts like i do
he lives in oregon

i don't

i grew up in new hampshire
and live next door

but its karl i'm ripped at not you crow

kindly use your comradely influence
on your pal there in the future
to avoid word choices
like those he uses in his recent comment

about a public figure fine
despite the race baiting
but
about a fellow private citizen ???
really revolting

-----------
pa
this has a history
history that i doubt chills well

but
never mind
it's an unserious distraction
for this site
though i agree it oughta go off line

op:

for the sport of it :

dino baker

"we know why we have doctors.

But if the economists really want to tell us that there is nothing that they can do about the worst downturn since the Great Depression, then it is not obvious why we would need them."


"If economists could show great things that they had done for the world economy then perhaps ... generous pay and benefits could be justified, but if they really want to tell us that they can't do anything, why not just save the money? "


Karl:

Not Jack's "wing man" at all. As anyone who bothers following either my or Jack's writing at our respective places, we disagree on things and yet, unlike Dawson the Dickhead, are able to support each other regardless.

Then there's Dickcheese Dawson... the crusted foreskin smegma of e-blog existence... who has to fabricate outright lies about another's position in order to denigrate it.

Straw-man "criticism" is "useful" to Ow! In Pain! apparently, and thus the lying, obfuscation, and juvenile provocation are negligible.

And if Crusty Smegma Dawson isn't an OP pseudonym, then even more embarrassingly, Dawson is just the little punk rent-boy who slobs on Owen's knob.

Hoo-wee! SOOOO-WEEEEE! Squeal like a pig, BOAH!

Thankfully, Owie has no use for me! I suppose that's supposed to make me question the value of continued existence?

Karl:

"race baiting" is somehow worse than lying about another's position?

explain that one, you crusty old fuck... if you can.

Karl:

also, don't forget to chide Lenny Bruce on his use of "offensive" words, "Owen".

the puritans of pwoggiedom will thank you.

op:

thank u karl
u solidified your position nicely

Owen,

Karl's opinions aren't my own, and I'm not going to police his statements. As he's mentioned already, we don't coordinate discussions and there are any number of topics upon which we do not agree.

The issue - and yes, it is a silly distraction - is that Dawson routinely comes in slinging untruths, ad homs and accusatory grenades and your response is to hold the folks he's slinging 'em at accountable, while asking them to behave.

If you're really looking for fewer distractions and a profound reduction in animosity and bad feeling, the fix is to take up your complaint with Dawson.

What was the point of his using a false attribution to me? Why the totemism - as if my rather narrow anti-academic stance is somehow a substitute for all that's wrong with leftist critique of education?

Because he's a mean-spirited petty little man?

Seriously, Owen, is it that everyone ought to be Francis of Assisi when dealing with Dawson? Or is he a big enough boy to get back what he dishes out first?

juan:

'scheinvert' does better cover but how many know what it means - in a sense like 'krach' rather than crash.

Ad\nd I've completely forgotten what I intended to add after that.

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