Stop Me Before I Vote Again

i love sandy like i love the flash

but if you parse thru this proprietary meme thicket....

--yes in todays market place of ideas
our sandy as much as owns this one
that is ' the lump of labor ' and its
army of vicious fallacies--

....expect to take a few slashes
on the minds arms and legs along the way
from all the home grown
and enervating cognitive thorns
Sandy has positioned shrewdly in there
over the years

at this point after many trips
into and out of this
Sandy's
personal wild man in charge
rustic verseilles
garden of briars

well i must report
i 'm no longer sure
i know
even one damn thing clearly
about
either the lump en soi
or its many headed set
of attendant fallacies

Thankyou for this. Refusal to even consider actual human agency is one of the most nauseating and infuriating unspoken principles of the 'intellectual' tribe.

Owen, all writers worth reading have their idiosyncrasies. One might reasonably make the same claim about you as you've made about Sandwichman. Yet, here I am making the effort.

You're welcome, Paul. It's one of the things that drives me to spitting fury.

al

re lebel :

the fallacy of the lump of labor fallacy
or how to turn
the upside down wage fund fallacy
into a tar ceiling
this is not by any means Sandy's doing
he has remained a beacon of clarity

but the topic itself has refracted itself into ten thousand counter posed fallacies

why the pigou link in Sandy's post in particular the passage reproduced
is as full of cheesey slip knots and slightings

imagine pigous audacity to list
a shorter work week
marketing prison labor
and importing from across the seas
as formally equivalent

and even the hallowed Ignoratio Elenchi
gets twisted around so much

it gets to mean

for pigou
the denial of a valid proposition
because it is supported by an unsound argument

where dobb seems to believe
ignoratio elenchi is about
accepting an invalid propostion
because its supported by a sound
but irrelevent argument

as if validity and soundness
got to trumping each other
when in the end to win
they need to play as a team

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

btw

i'm flattered to be elevated
into the company of mr walker
even if it requires me
to admit to a rather extensive stable
of enchanted hoby horses of my own

the rock bottom wortse thomatos product ever

http://moneywatch.bnet.com/economic-news/blog/maximum-utility/why-is-the-fed-hesitant-to-do-more-for-the-economy/1685/

the musical question

what are the " factors" that will
lead gentle ben of the fed
to sit on his hands despite the continued job market stag

" First, some members of the board do not believe that monetary policy can do much to stimulate the economy low interest rates or not"
and these same members
"... see the potential for large negative effects from inflation."

".. little benefit from stimulative monetary policy and a large potential cost."

" These are the doctrinaire inflation hawks."

"Second"

" there are also some who believe monetary policy is effective in normal times,
but much less so near the lower bound for interest rates (which we are at presently)."

"Third, there is a fairly large group who believe it could work. "

But

"they aren’t sure what to expect in terms of inflation, etc."

" they don’t think inflation will be a problem, but a large outbreak of inflation cannot be ruled out and must be factored into the decision."

But you can forget all that
"the clincher is the fear that if they do end up creating inflation, the Fed could lose its independence,"

" particularly if there is little to show for it in terms of stimulating the economy."

" If they lose their independence, the response to every future recession would be less effective."

" This makes recessions more costly, and when the higher costs are tallied across all future recessions, the total cost of losing its independence is very high."

"So the unwillingness to do more for the economy comes from"

" ideological hawkishness"

" skepticism about the power of monetary policy"

" and uncertainty about the ability to control inflation that arises from being on unfamiliar ground."

however
"a majority on the FOMC would still push forward if it weren’t for the change in the political environment."

" The Ron Pauls in Congress looking for a reason to attack and take away the Fed’s powers,"

" the criticism from many on the left for all sorts of things, etc.,etc., puts the Fed in a more precarious political position than they ever expected to be in, and the fear of making a mistake and losing independence is tying its hands. "

"The Fed values independence first and foremost, and it is unwilling to put that in danger."

" Thus, the Fed is trading more unemployment now for less in the future,"

" and it’s mainly the political environment rather than economics that is driving this decision."

amazing !!!!!!!

the best line

"the Fed is trading more unemployment now
for less in the future"

can he possibly believe this ???

its like some cult member
that believes the word of the prophet zonko
formerlyknown as ted stump
an ex used car salesman from encino

ted got a tip direct from God

"the world is ending .....next year
on october 7th "

Paine is right. It's a horribly twisted bramble patch. At base, it's a secret handshake among economists. Its opaqueness and convolution serves the purpose of excluding the non-elect.

It also serves as a kind of Rosetta stone facilitating the translation between the blandly technocratic and the viciously ideological dialects of the field.

To me, one of the more intriguing features of this whole business is the key role played by plagiarism and forgery in academic economics. Under forgery, I include the practice of making shit up and attributing it to people who said no such thing.

I've started treating the use of the Lump, by The Economist and its ilk, as a means of saying that, "the means to subsist is surely plentiful, but the conditions under which you can gain access to them are very much fixed. And it's all your fault."

It's more squeamish than the shape up, but that's what it is.

"I've started treating the use of the Lump, by The Economist and its ilk, as a means of saying that, "the means to subsist is surely plentiful, but the conditions under which you can gain access to them are very much fixed. And it's all your fault." "

And now go eat your peas!

Al baby

you have hit the ice berg

it's called
the lump of JOBS

and it isn't a damn fallacy brother rat

its S.O.P capitalism

main street to wall street

a contrived scarcity of opportunity

and indeed nothing much beyond
an opportunity to sweat
for another man's breakfast
err and subsist on the rest
with a certain blend of quiet desperations

I wonder if "contrived scarcity" is a better term, in general. Seems so to me.

Every time I've made a good faith effort to understand the received wisdom of orthodox economics, I've trudged through half-truths, non sequitor truisms, euphemisms, capricious algebraic euphemisms and transparently inapplicable postulates only to find someone who has come to terms with the status quo. The scholarly good guys want to tinker with it a bit and make it less vicious. The very good guys want to tinker a lot, and I love them for it. But only the people with no privileged access to the brambles make any sense.

apropos jackson hole

the great bernanke white wash

he's scared of the rick perry project

" political intimidation ....is killing our last remaining hope for economic recovery"
paul krugman

you got to be shittin me here pk

gentle ben
wall streets credit lever boy
intimidated by the tea baggers ???

what a white wash

stark fact:

the wally one worlders

DON'T WANT A FUCKING FAST AND FULL RECOVERY HERE !!!!!

details of the white wash

"Bernanke’s Perry Problem, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: As I write this, investors around the world are anxiously awaiting Ben Bernanke’s speech at the annual Fed gathering at Jackson Hole, Wyo. They want to know whether Mr. Bernanke ... will unveil new policies that might lift the U.S. economy out of what is looking more and more like a quasi-permanent state of depressed demand and high unemployment.
But I’ll be shocked if Mr. Bernanke proposes anything significant... Why...? In two words: Rick Perry. ... I’m using Mr. Perry — who has famously threatened Mr. Bernanke with dire personal consequences if he pursues expansionary monetary policy before the 2012 election — as a symbol of the political intimidation that is killing our last remaining hope for economic recovery.
To see what I’m talking about, let’s ask what policies the Fed actually should be pursuing right now. ... Well, in 2000 ... Ben Bernanke offered a number of proposals for policy at the “zero lower bound.” True, the paper was focused on policy in Japan... But America is now very much in a Japan-type economic trap, only more acute. ...
Back then, Mr. Bernanke suggested that the Bank of Japan could get Japan’s economy moving with a variety of unconventional policies...: purchases of long-term government debt (to push interest rates, and hence private borrowing costs, down); an announcement that short-term interest rates would stay near zero for an extended period, to further reduce long-term rates; an announcement that the bank was seeking moderate inflation, “setting a target in the 3-4% range for inflation, to be maintained for a number of years,” which would encourage borrowing and discourage people from hoarding cash; and “an attempt to achieve substantial depreciation of the yen”...
So why isn’t the Fed pursuing the agenda its own chairman once recommended for Japan?
Part of the answer is internal dissension..., with three inflation hawks on the committee... The larger answer, however, is outside political pressure. Last year, the Fed actually did institute a policy of buying long-term debt, generally known as “quantitative easing”... But it faced a political backlash out of all proportion...
Now just imagine the reaction if the Fed were to act on the other and arguably more important parts of that Bernanke 2000 agenda, targeting a higher rate of inflation and welcoming a weaker dollar. With prominent Republicans like Representative Paul Ryan already denouncing policies that allegedly “debase the dollar,” a political firestorm would be guaranteed.
So now you see why I don’t expect any substantive policy announcements at Jackson Hole. ... In effect, it has been politically intimidated into standing by while the economy stagnates. And that’s a very, very bad thing.
Political opposition has already crippled fiscal policy; instead of helping to create jobs, the federal government is pulling back, acting as a drag on output and employment.
With the Fed also intimidated into inaction, it’s hard to see any end to the ongoing economic disaster."
----------------

this should be a separate comment
because it dilutes the first comment

but for the record these efforts untaken
by the bernanke fed

these paths to a fast recovery unexplored

are a sick joke
coming from the self proclaimed
liquidity trap reviver himself
mr pk

it proves one thing that already long since didn't need proving:

the new keynesian liquidity trap
isn't a liquidity trap at all

its an expectational trap

at any rate
let us review the bold recovery assured measures rick perry has scared
out of gentle ben's " to do " book :

"purchases of long-term government debt (to push interest rates, and hence private borrowing costs, down)"

implied thesis:

solvent good credit firms despite swimming in cash
WILL borrow more
so long as the real borrowing rate
is negative enough

you know borrow now lock in funds

but for what ???

buying each other up ??
or buying themselves in ??
or sending various commodity and asset markets charging off in either or in both directions ???

what counts
building new capacity
either with new machines or new hires
ie effective priming of the production system and the job market ???

why ???

are the prices of machines rising
are wages rising ???

why botherwhen thee's no real cost
to a wait and see
in a time of stagnation and uncertainty
you wait till demand justfies expansion

---------------------
" an announcement that short-term interest rates would stay near zero for an extended period, to further reduce long-term rates; "

more of the same is just more of the same
so why would it mean something different eh ??

well because maybe it reinforces this

"an announcement that the bank was seeking moderate inflation, “setting a target in the 3-4% range for inflation, to be maintained for a number of years,” "

okay i'll not laff at the pathetic numbers
3 to 4
---come on we need more like 6 to 10 ----

no matter
how do you get this mighty inflation surge started
meee boyo ???

"what else"
sez the cat spinning after its tail

" by a low enough negative enough private real rate of borrowing "
yup
we're back to square one again

but now we add

this announced higher inflation target
will right now
" discourage people from hoarding cash"

you get that ??

yes madame
the target announcement
will make banks and corporations
put their cash back into real product and employee markets

put that cash back into fast real economy circulation

why ??

well ...

ahhh
the pre existing high risk of premature capacity
is now over whelmed by
the off setting potential loss
of purchasing power

but professor krugman
don't you got to create the inflation
and can the fed do that ex nihilo

are you suggesting a wage push here
driving up prices ??

that suggests the job market
is already tightening
but isn't that before it
has the demand increase you expect to tighten it with ???

---side bar ---

one of the problems with these
marshall/ walras mind sets

in arriving at their grand all factor eguilibirum paths forward

nothing remotely like
real time and sequence exist
in these models

its meta statics

the NKs model here are timeless phantom realms
yes meta static models
as bill vickrey keenly called them
not without their uses but ...

its not real macro dynamics

its just a mind fuck

all aboutinducing mind changing
ie expectations
changing
thru an incantaion

the fed to the real economy

"price level inflation ..accelerate NOW "

what's required is fact changing fiirst that is what does the expectation changing

and only a fed as helping hand
in a massive accomdation
of a multi trillion dollar federal deficit
can get these facts rolling out
job markets tightening
wages rising ...
and consumately and ultimately
core product sales and prices
moving up fast enough
to restart investment

no announcements alone
are going to accomplish that

outside the new keynesian meta static universe

---------------
to be fair one point is right on target

" an attempt to achieve substantial depreciation of the (currency ) "

yup reduce imports increase exports
that would work

but is it rick perry and ryan and that pack of primeval nit wits
that are the deciders on currency policy ??
are they the ones that can effectively stop
a dollar plunge policy ??

or is it the usual suspects
the bobby rubinites
the bright side of the wally one worlders collective brain

the smart set of guardians of the global MNC system

you know
the mnc's ??

who are today as for the last 65 years
the present benficiaries
of theworld market connecting
set of currency ratios
that effortlessly
produce price and profit arbitrage games ????

"Might not the very slow pace of economic expansion of the past few years, not only in the United States but also in a number of other advanced economies, morph into something far more long-lasting?
I can certainly appreciate these concerns…, however, my own view is more optimistic.

....although important problems certainly exist, the growth fundamentals of the United States do not appear to have been permanently altered by the shocks of the past four years.

It may take some time, but we can reasonably expect to see a return to growth rates and employment levels consistent with those underlying fundamentals."

gentle ben

contented old ursine
honey pot ben

'only the people with no privileged access to the brambles make any sense.'

yup

they feel their feet burning
even as the scholars up on stilts
predict re assure and promise

"tomorrow will be a day of cooling
here on earth "

more pk quotes and comments
With all eyes on Jackson Hole, it may be worth talking a bit about the intellectual history that lies behind some of the policy debate.

So, let’s start with the state of monetary policy orthodoxy circa 1997 or so. By that time, most macroeconomists had come to believe that central banks could and should bear the whole burden of stabilizing the economy. No need for active fiscal policy (although maybe let the automatic stabilizers stay in place), just let Uncle Alan do his thing, and we’ll have acceptable stability. I shared this view.

But then some of us started to notice Japan, which had cut rates to near zero and was still sliding into deflation. Could this really be the hoary old liquidity trap come back to haunt us again?

Many economists just dismissed the Japanese example, asserting either that it reflected very special circumstances — zombie banks! — or that the Bank of Japan just wasn’t trying hard enough. I guess I was the first to suggest that Japan actually showed that the liquidity trap was not a myth, after all. The way I got to that conclusion, by the way, was as follows: I set out to prove, using a model with all the eyes dotted and teas crossed, that monetary expansion would always work even at a zero interest rate. But the model said just the opposite. And so I was forced to acknowledge that the liquidity trap was real, and to think through the implications, which I did in this 1998 paper. *

What that paper suggested was that the only way for monetary policy to be effective in a liquidity trap was via expectations: the central bank had to convince the public that it would sustain monetary expansion even after the trap was over. This idea was then expanded on by others, notably by Eggertsson and Woodford, and also in work by Lars Svensson. By the way, the leading Japan worriers were all at Princeton in 2000-2001.

However, one of the Japan worriers, a guy by the name of Ben Bernanke, had a somewhat different take. He believed that the Fed could gain considerable traction not so much by changing expectations as through the direct effect of nonstandard open-market operations. I was skeptical, as was Mike Woodford. But would the different views ever get tested?

Well, here we are: Ben Bernanke is now (Master of the Universe) Fed chairman, and he has just conducted an experiment — Quantitative Easing 2 — in asset purchases. That experiment is now widely viewed as a disappointment; to the extent it worked, it did so mainly by changing expectations, and once markets realized that the Fed wasn’t actually going to sustain expansion, the expectational effects wore off.

So now we have Woodford (not a household name, but one of our leading, perhaps the leading, macro theorist working now) arguing in the FT that Bernanke needs to stop fiddling with balance sheets and start making explicit announcements about future policy. The key thing to understand, reading Woodford, is that this isn’t some shoot-from-the-hip piece, it’s the culmination of a debate that goes back more than a decade.

Meanwhile, Cullen Roche makes much the same argument, although he insists that you need Modern Monetary Theory to make it, which would be news to Woodford (and me).

I’ve labeled this post wonkish, because it is. But this is really important. And as FT Alphaville says, all the fears about QE have been misplaced. The danger isn’t that it’s wildly inflationary; it is that it’s symbolic rather than real, at a time when we desperately need substance.

* http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/bpea_jp.pdf

compaction

by the late 90's

"most macroeconomists had come to believe that central banks could and should bear the whole burden of stabilizing the economy."

call it cyclops macronautics

enter japan quag stag :
any pk revives
the keynes liquidity trap

he uses his suped up new keynes model
and it tells him

"the only way for monetary policy to be effective in a liquidity trap was via expectations: the central bank had to convince the public that it would sustain monetary expansion even after the trap was over"

still cyclopic macro no ??

and the question remains

how like QE
is higher inflation rate announced targets
not ALSO just
"symbolic rather than real,
at a time when we desperately need substance."??

fed chief

like moses

"price level rise faster "

and
once the price level doesn't really rise faster

then what meistro ???

TALKING UP THE RATE OF INFLATION

rain dancing

literally folks literally

such are the fruits of 35 years of hocus pocus macro

"such are the fruits of 35 years of hocus pocus macro"

More like 180 years -- but whos' counting?

my pen pal mike whitney at c-punch

"The debt crisis is a PR scam designed to foreclose on Progressive Era reforms that lifted working people from squalor and provided them with a decent living. Now those policies are under-fire from financial elites who want to turn back the clock, crush the middle class, and return us all to the Dark Ages."

call it peak pruning time
for the federal tax and transfer system

brothers and sisters
hear me

even if the debt crisis
was not invented
even if it was as spontaneous
as a water fall
cutting away at its edge rock
it would still be necessary
for certain of us on the left
to say it was invented

i'm not one of those lefty types

i'm aware of tasks
the system places on its capitalist agents
far grander graver and more central to its profit path
then chiseling away
at the advanced nations'
various
public transfer systems

the job class has all sorts of guardian class members
out to extract all they can
ready to pick the gold teeth
right out of our heads
sell our livers ....buy our livers

but then there are
the academic humanists
the altruistic foundationists
the crusading journalists
and that's just the secularites

if you look at the value added by sector
there's health education
national and international " security "
criminal corrections
civil proceedings
various rituals and cults

doing that shit pays money too eh ??

and yet its not often commercial

revenues and incomes
are merited not earned

not all you do with cattle
is slaughter em

you fatten em up too

probably the attraction of reforms
for pwog-folk
rests as much as anything
on seeing public mediated
fattening
as pauline charity

call it feed lot socialism

perhaps an end to the welfare state
is just what we oughta aim for

the washington haters are still
up beat about the people foiling
uncle's latest sand box caper :

"LIBYA - Resistance to US/NATO Conquest Continues
Under the most incredibly difficult conditions – including NATO bombing, mercenary landings, Special Forces operations and the destruction of civilian infrastructure – the heroic resistance to imperialist conquest in Libya has continued.

All the corporate media lies claiming mass surrender, the fleeing of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, the arrest of his sons and more have turned out to be nothing but lies and psychological warfare. After 159 days of bombing, incredibly, the residence continues.

The continued resistance also exposes the lie of the so-called democratic “rebel” forces – forces that have been set up by Britain, France and the U.S. to facilitate the imperialist invasion of the oil-rich country. Meanwhile, arms have been distributed by the Libyan government to the whole population – something a hated dictator would never do.

As in Iraq and Afghanistan, an arrogant declaration of U.S. victory and “mission accomplished” does not mean an end to local people's resistance, which takes many forms. The Libyan people have heroically withstood not only half a year of bombing, but also a hail of racist corporate media propaganda seeking to portray the U.S.-NATO military machine, both preposterously and once again, as great white liberators.

While resistance continues in Libya, we in the center of U.S. imperialism must continue our resistance to the criminal war there – even as the prolonged economic war against poor and oppressed people continues within the U.S.

An IAC-organized truth tour featuring former Congressperson Cynthia McKinney – who traveled to Libya to be an eyewitness to the U.S.-NATO attack – has built major opposition meetings in 21 cities across the country. At each meeting, which was undertaken by a local coalition of forces, hundreds of anti-war and anti-imperialist and community activists attended.

These meetings against U.S. war in Libya have been the largest series of anti-war meetings held in years. At the same time, the IAC has been in the streets, organizing protests across the country.

The U.S. war in Libya is a first aggressive step in the expansion of wars of colonial conquest in Africa. It means new U.S. threats against Sudan and Somalia. It means more belligerent targeting of other countries in Middle East, especially Syria and Iran. "

read this piece on today's crisis
http://www.solidarity-us.org/current/node/3314

and cut it into paper doles for easy digestion

paine compaction:

thesis:
" the finance capital strategy itself has now imploded .."

thesis:


"the capitalist class has no further strategy other than a return to classical capitalism, with mass unemployment and a minimal welfare state"


--------------------------------------
there follows a briefest history
of neo liberalism
or the rebirth of unfettered finance capital
---------------------------------------

"The crucial turning point came in the seventies when it became clear that the welfare state/full employment made capitalism unstable. Workers who are given lifetime tenure of employment with rising wages
demand control over their work and over the society....By the 1960s and the ’70s..., the working class was demanding both concessions and greater control over corporations and the economy."

translation the wage price spiral
and its ugly jailer the stagflation crone

where worker's control fits in here escapes me
but soft ..we continue

" In country after country there were strikes and demonstrations which led the capitalist class to reassess its postwar strategy."


" Capitalim adopted a series of measures, which have become well-known as neoliberalism but are better understood as the consequences of the turn to finance capital."
now here you'd expect an itemization

but in essence we get one spell binding word
finance capital


however to continue
sub thesis :

"Since workers are the majority of society... they cannot be held back under conditions where the fundamentals of capitalism are contained."
contained here means the normal robust cycles
the episodic release of a big hunk of the industrial job force on their own recognicents

sub thesis:

"...capital, as self-expanding value, uses the form of commodity fetishism (“consumerism”),
both ideologically and practically, as its preferred direct means of control."

i prefer we call a banal spade a spade
consumerism
ie in this case
higher material purchasing power shorter hours
more fun time etc
precisely not worker control of their place and means of production

---btw im glad capital does this as a result of its self expanding value drive
and not for reasons like orwells inner party
thrive on--

sub thesis:
"The increasing role in organization of the economy by governments and corporations has eroded the myth that firms cannot be consciously planned rather than being run by the omnipotent capitalist"
what ??
from where then the wild libertarian uprisings

to be scrupulously fair
our man does notice the intensification
of the MSM puppet shows
staged in virtual space
staring our mythic start ups
and mighty founder class
Al and i call it in its hay day during reagan's reign

the george gilder hour

sub thesis:

" the public sector and the welfare state cannot be run on the simple basis of value (i.e. profit-making) itself."

i'll not touch that goo goo holy of hollows

" The attempt to run education, health, prisons, etc. on the basis of value alone does not work. "

yet to be proved conclusively comrade
at least as far as big capital is concerned

"The fact that the bureaucratic alternatives are often poorly run does not alter this point"
maybe not
but it does provide the clear and open
"moral " space to privatize and profitize

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

then comes this nice moment on
north american exceptionalism

the euro level of public transfer system never crossed the north

" The role of a huge military sector, which is in essence a nationalized division of the economy
outsourcing much of its production,
together with
a bureaucratic health machine controlled by insurance companies,
performs much of the same functions(as the robust euro welfare state )
in adding to (?) the consciously regulated capitalist economy."

yes the state can produce its
brass hat wpa
the weapons project administration
and drilllots of young males in nazi envy uniforms
make work to us macronauts is make work

and a defense sector and a wickedly abundent health sector do indeed in part add back
to national effective demand what a trade deficit takes away ...

and this is crucial
the five sided shambos spend their money they don't "stash it " in bonds or stocks


" the bourgeoisie has tried to turn the clock back with increased marketization"

this is trot awrap-a-ho-h0-ho
for
privatization securitization and of course
profitization and gamblization

sub thesis:

" The second form used to control workers... the reserve army of labor, which had been effectively abolished in Western Europe in the postwar years. "

here he sez something of substance

yes neo liberalism'reactivated
the big bad sack

sub thesis:
"The restoration of mass unemployment ... essential to the restoration of capitalist stability"

yup if you don't want inflation spirals
we know how to maintain any degree of full employment we want
simply by using various combinations and relative quantities
of
our now in place
tax borrow monetize and transfer system

but oh the price level ride we get on

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


thesis:

"the capitalist forms are undergoing rapid and uncontrollable change, which the capitalist class is doing its best to roll back...... "

this is an attempt to swing for the fences

paraphrase

we have a productyion system that by its own inner working drives itself toward greater interconnected ness greater socialization inter dependence etc

the stiglitz greenwald theorem can be relabeled to show how capitalists drive this socialization as they seek
in an un macro co ordinated fashion
to capture as yet "ungotten gains "
thru further socialization
but in this very process they must violate each others wealth and property prospects
and when the conflicts become severe enough they tend to replicate all on there own

i e in these witching hours
suddenly red ink starts oozing out of
places thought properly to be the home
of black ink processes

you get it right ??

he then gives us the present institutional forms this takes:

"the combined growth of governmental organization of the economy/society, large corporations, monopoly, and the increasing role of bureaucracies of insurance companies, large corporations, and the public sector reflect the increasing socialization of the economy/society "
and then nicely slips in

" in a fracturing capitalist framework..."
yup
fractureed by the arbitray incidental partitions into the sundry groupings of private holdings entitlements obligations etc

now he sums up:

"The effect :
dominance of value (a profit-driven “free market”) is limited in its scope, and decision-making often more important.."

so the spontaneous trend of the system is away from "marketization"
but the capitalist remedy is to try to force
more marketization
ie
"but the capitalist class has been trying to roll back history."

hence master thesis :

with the coming of this great big crisis of finance capital in 08

"the capitalist class has no further strategy other than a return to classical capitalism,
with mass unemployment and a minimal welfare state."

back to mike whitney's dark age
of "naked i came " type
job smurfs

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

some end notes

what if the crisis is over??

and the protracted stag we're in here
is just part of a long range shift
in the global industrial platform's
center of gravity
from the westeuro north amigo nexus
to moderneast and south Asia ???

the two track development model
we have de facto today may be
an acceptable approximation to a best of all possibly corporation-dom planet
fast for the emerger national industrial systems EM's of asia
and slow for the mature industrial states
of we/na

(there is of course the great game of resource extraction so beloved of tangible types like jack crow
the games that takes capital
any where mother nature decided
the resources should sit and
which tends to be far more
"security state involvement intensive
then welfare state involvement intensive"

---you know activity like
armed negotiatings
and
messages sent in a missile )


great sport is made here by
our late trot
dialectical machine here
great sport indeed
of the low rate of industrial investment
in the mature
euphemistically called
post industrial nations
like england and beverly hills

so what i say so what !!!

this hardly a crisis for capitalism makes

MNCs look globally not nationally
or regionally or even hemispherically

they're MULTI NATIONAL
and looked at collectively
the sun never sets on the corporate sphere

part of the neo liberal paradigm shift
was indeed the release of far greater flows of funds across national borders
after nixon wrecked that brit fag and jew stalinists
bretton woods capital controls

effectively allowing the US to run signifigant and chronic tradeand BOP deficits

--- as a side show
this deep all hollow
the shorter flight
to the southern rim
" new dixie "
in fact as we all know if not lamment
this allowed the final decisive
busting up of the CIO remnant
inside the aflack

"nice plant you have here it would be a pity to close it tomorrow
instead after you retire sean ...eh ??"
----

the 40 year great wage moderation commences
right there no ??

with the flexible dollar
today post kold war
what with open doors everywhere more or less
capital flies where it may

yes portfolio moves dwarf real direct foreign investment
but portfolio moves in an integrated hi fi system always dwarf real direct investment

---and all you laputa haters
never forget
the portfolio herd maintains the forex tilt
and the profit arbitrage the real corporations
feed off of ---

in the new global context
surely the chindian's twin industrial explosions with their attendant bright marginal competitive areas like vietnam
thailand and indonesia etc
provide ample opportunity
for real MNC industrial investment
or to be careful
for ample MNC "participation"...eh ??

recall the point of major profit extraction can come anywhere
in the transaction chain
in chindia or here or ireland or a space station i suppose
--branson --

so long as THE MNCs control access
to the big mature national markets
and
keep control of the existing "stock"
of technical know how and know what
they can negotiate for themselves
the lions share of the total global profit take

---------------------
stop reading the rest is deeply ideocentric

the term "finance capital "gets quite the work out in this piece


--though thanfully as an orthodox late trot
he avoids the neologistic buzz varient
" financialization"
which turns out to be left speak for securitization---

however instead of barking
this magic word and it is one word in german
at every stop in his pass
over the last 40 years
it might be better to suggest specifically
some of the innovations of the neo liberal era
that supported
the consumerism method of control
---he and father smite doubtless
both despise more on the higher grounds
of taste alone ...attendez sean --

if post wage price spiral 70's
na/we both moved away from more transfers
between the state and the toiling idiot masses
ie welfare state and security state macro economics
to the heavy intensification of collateralized --by house lot value --
consumer credit
and
non collatrealized
--on value of human capital only --
consumer credit .." house as atm and plastic money a go go "
these operated as partial
ED effective demand substitutes
for ugh .... think of it you humanists
higher take home wages
not to mention
the non ED
devils play pen
dare i mention it ???
shorter job hours

and indeed not to put too blunt an edge
to this
since 07 that has indeed run aground

for the near to mid range future at least

btw
there's a nice case of formal convergence here
as our hi fi 's used much the same model for the familly farm economy pre 1929
which equally found itself run aground ...several times in fact between the end of the civil war and the new deal fundemental "final morphing" of the agristructure
the great ease out of familly farming itself

no doubt
trying to ease out the still cottage run even if socially built
commodity form of labor
that sells its hours
ie time farming
may prove more protracted
then easing out familly corn farming and pig raising

the bureaucrat/ commercial health-higher ed - incarceration complex not withstanding

no from smerf to serf i suspect
though attaching one self to a corporation
becoming its ward at an early age
might become a lucrative vent for surplus
at the wagery house and hut level

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

in general i see no evidence the neoliberal form
of the last 40 years has yet morphed

nor can i see anything here
in mr H's piece to suggest it has

but like all else this must end
and suggesting the answer will be
dismantling the remains of the public transfer system
strikes me as patently wrong

yes the private household credit rush
is for now "over"

and the stag of the job market
stretches ahead to the event horizon

but i submit real honest nasty
deep pruning of the entitlements system
has peaked

the miraculous esape from
" the debt ceiling of death"
demonstrates
the transfer system butchers
are all hat and no knife




sum up

hillel notices a double down on the systemic value of a good sized army of unemployeds

great !!!!
and ???

well there he has only the word crisis

and i suspect subconciously the crisis he feels is not the crisis he points at

the crisis he feels
is right there inside
his inner world poli-econ model

a creaking marxicocal trotinational
jelopy
that can't come up the latest hill
to see over it

he needs a really new formulation
to match this grave new world stage
he "sees so darkly" ahead of us

we all do

-----------------------------
there's a clear sense
something changed here around nixon time
and also that the latest crisis marks something
relatively big in the self realization department for global capilal if not global wagery

much like happened in that same 70's period

what's next ???

well to me lots of folks
see here and now as a sort of qualitatiely speaking
1930's rerun

i see more that makes me think
of the 1890's

ya several curtains have risen and fallen
now since 70

but
this ugly gig
is still in its mid acts

they're MULTI NATIONAL"

Some are multi national, some are TRANS national ['trans' taken as beyond] but capital's social relations are not determined by the mode of corp organization which is more reaction or effect.

Maybe interesting - 'Transnational Class Formation? ...'
Journal of World-Systems Theory, No.2, 2011]

http://jwsr.ucr.edu/archive/vol17/Klassen_Carroll-vol17n2.pdf

"capital's social relations are not determined by the mode of corp organization which is more reaction or effect"
indeed
and that set of social relations went global post 71
with a qualitatively new
intensity and "freedom"

trans nat was the pinko name for these outfits to stress the border crossing trans gressive quality of their expansion
it wasn't trade in products it was movement of capital but here is the beauty of it
products trade became the conveyer
the slurry of goods and services
became the means
to capital gains
as these goddies passed thru
various exchange value transformations
as they crossed and recrossed
all these borders and oceans
building themselves into final products

corporate capital
constructed cross border
surplus acceleraors
use any figure
pipes and retorts or any other such brewery/refiner metaphors
capital was carrying filtering
concentrating
surplus value
surplus value from where ??
from wage tax regulation trans border arbitrage

how was this new compared
to hobson and proust's time ??

well to start
a new reserve currency to found the global credit system a more liberating reserve currency
then that stuborn commodity gold

it just tool 70 years to figure out how to make it work effectively consistently globally

that is "work "
in these dimensions
errr more or less
...more as we saw say 85-2005
(with a few hiccups)
or less as we've seen lately
------------------------------
thransnational class has a nice ring to it
lie larry's stateless elites

but like the notion of a supernational capitalism a post national fully integrated brave new world capitalism
dreamed of in the minds of romantic pessimists in the teens and twenties
---with thoughts of a devilish dark way
to sublate great war worlds---

this trans national class is only a momentary illusion

the contradictions among them will lead to nation state allignments
only the war or at least threat of war between contending great states can resolve these contradictions once they become acute

now back when
it was literally about carving up territory
like old fashion cartels
now its about access ie the target territory
gets to play a semi autonomous role
like the electorate in a bourgeois democracy
these target petty or emerging states get to
choose more or less their set of compradors

yes topday its less because the various great powers are so inferior to THE hyper power
but that is changing eh

this is not well laid out but you smart asses can fill in the gaps and i hope locate the the flaws ie
seperate the false contradictions
from the true

i think in the piig crisis we see these contradictions only in latent form

the stresses on the euro zone --using the euro zone as a microcosmic partial model
for a future world level
integration of nations economy

----- one could compare this to our national integration out of colonies/states/territories
which had one great war along the way eh ???
but since then has contained this uneven development ...so far ---

the various obviously located national job classes
"develop" with intensified uneven ness
as integration proceeds
the fact these bvarious job class sections are divided into nations suggests just how likely fault lines can lead to opportunistic manipulations and clashings

oh well
now the perception of this process grows even to scetchy for its original perceiver
i can't imagine what it looks like
to the perceivers interlocutors
even the friendly ones

the kold war rivalry will seem quaint
as these competitor great power based MNCs clash with each other

the potential positive sum game that is the paradigm of capitalist competition
has an internally driven tendency
to turn
zero sum episodically

its a fairly long way of given our personal time scales
but i estimate Clios basic unti is not a year like ours but 50 or 60 years

china rises and even as it has
an explicit state policy
to avoid confrontations
one sees the sparks
why ?

well for one thing
cowboy here
is spoiled
both by his easy way
to earth wide victory
in the kold war
and his ill considered ignorance
of the enemies he's making
as ten gallon hegemon ever since

when i say uncle cowboy id spoiled i should say his corporate sponsors and guardians are spoiled eh ??

watch how in a pinch
they play with the other foreign limited liability corporations
gentlemenly rule following competitive sport can become ateam on team brawl on the ice

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/30/science/earth/30germany.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

what a bunch of sud-svenskas ...

explain to me why a few deposits of nasty radioactive shit around the countryside is worth rattling your tea cup over ???

as threats worth taking abrupt and immediate action go
climate change i grasp ..if reluctantly

but fission waste and a few hot reactos running here and there ??

close down reactors because of the fear of it
is like obeying the gold standard

what can this small volume of deadly gunk
accomplish even if ukrainians are running the plant

i mean really

what's the real final box score
on churnibble anyway ??

its like the GWOT revenge weapon

the radioavtive material dispersing
sand people bomb treat

christ if obly

why that would be the best ipo
to hit wall street
since the first slave ship
arrived from guinea in what ??....1631

and i'm sayin that
even as
my only child unit
lives right near by

i regret i have but one such life to give
for my struggle

"a transnational state apparatus (TSA)"

you know the various post WWII yankee concoctions

un imf etc

thesis
(or is it counter thesis )

this TSA depends on a hegemonic nation state
called amerika
to remain relevent let alone potent

the paradigm that posits

“transformed and externally integrated national states" mistakes
the melange of
pro tem
coercion /co operation/subordination
a cartel of nation states
a league of deputized junior partner states
headed up by a sheriff state
best exemplified in semi perminent institutionalized form by nato
and not the headless EC
posses are ad hoc and vary from intervention to intervention

key factual points:
uncle retains de facto free hand

and several great powers remain outside nato

the cited paper

http://jwsr.ucr.edu/archive/vol17/Klassen_Carroll-vol17n2.pdf

discovers only what one would expect to discover

growing inter connected ness between leading canadian trans national outfits
and growing predominance of these outfits amnong all candian firms

to be expected as capital export allows faster "growth"
and we see lots of foreign outfits with canadian units interlocking their boards with canadian outfits

fine

but come conflict
some of these interconnections
with some of these foreign outfits
will be
untimely ripped

they will no more prevent inter great power
dueling wars
then mere cross trade did
in the lead up to the big finale with
the whole cast brought on stage
ie
1914-1917

but here is the key

the growing contradiction between purely national firms and their native trans national cousins

today we should see evidence
of this conflict of interetys

over prefered fiscal policy
vis a vis recovery speed

we don't because purely national firms
seem to prefer attacking their own job force
their tax burden and
their gubmint "tormentors "

a poor choice
but one the TNC'd adore

http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2011/07/27/chinas-smes-hurting/#ixzz1Wort5ri6

China’s SMEs: hurting

July 27, 2011 1:45 pm .