Stop Me Before I Vote Again

To put and end to this we need to find a solution that doesn't involve effectively paying a tax to the finical services industry. Just as in the case of health care, where we need a solution that doesn't amount to a tax paid to superfluous and quite harmful private insurers --

As the economist Michael Hudson puts it in his trenchant piece on this site this weekend, “The government’s solution, placed in its hands by the financial lobbyists, is to bail out the bankers and Wall Street while leaving the ‘real’ economy even more highly indebted. Families, businesses and government are having to spend more wage income, profits and tax revenues on debt service instead of buying goods and services. So why is the solution to this debt overhead held to be yet MORE debt? Is there not something crazy here?”

OP-san, you've delayed your reply to the last inquiry asking for comment on the argument that Fisher is a mere distraction (albeit a telling one), and you seem a small hair genuinely surprised that the recipe continues to favor the ruling ideology that more atop is the answer to all problems. Why? Or am I mis-reading you?

iron mike:

fisher has a message
for the job class (kulack division)

the old bribed worker stratum
their bribe now credit not wage based
a compact not so keen

since reagan
the debtorship society
has walked among us ..or over us
now comes the finale
concrete double knits for all

respectable pleb headed jobblers
need to walk away from their credit scores

we need to spend it all

--------
as to me "surprise" ....no
just juvenile and sarcastic

mr ward

hudson is a fraud
a fraud in candy stripes
counterpunch is a graceful peacock of the left

but alex doesn't know
a working class economist
from
a face painted witch doctor

completely to the contrary of your quotes final squib
more debt is precisely
the fastest way out of our debt trap

a swap of debt in fact

a hostage exchange
triggered by massive walk aways

debt ob in a panic
gets shifted
from jobbled up households
to their limitless uncle

uncle like noah's god
needs to flood the earth
in a the sea of dollars
themselves the ultimo form of debt eh ??

i'll write on this soon

Owen, that's the sound bite. Hudson is opposed to accumulating more debt in the context of further shifting the burden of it onto labor, rather than using it to correct the anti-labor arbitrages, while increasing the power that the additional debt gives to finance. I think a better sound bite would be, "they're stealing the best parts of our debt!"

al i'll read this latest from hudson

as much as being fair to him runs against my grain

i shouldn't jump on a sound bite

but notice who else sports this catch phrase
i'd advise staying away from the whole thrift
mem its a devil's magnet
for proto greens par example ...

btw hudson on the good side
he's just a tower of self promotion
with am analytic foundation made of jello

i'll combine a review of him
with one of magdoff foster
if time allows

"they're stealing the best parts of our debt!"
now that's a catch phrase i'll buy into deeply

That advice about the thrift hairshirt is excellent advice. Personal virtue, such as thrift, that's contingently virtuous to begin with, gets nasty and cruel once it's scaled up.

OP: I take it you're saying pump up the debt (yours and mine) until it's worthless?

That's fanciful.

Hudson's point, as I read him, is it would be better to direct the money to unemployment, welfare, health care, job creation, etc., instead of giving it to the banks to lend again. What's wrong with that?

I'll go out on a limb and say Owen's objections to any leftie econ types is that they rarely help people train for landing a punch, but give them plenty of grounding in learning how to take one, and how to recover from being hit.

"I take it you're saying pump up the debt (yours and mine) until it's worthless"

no transfer to an uncle bank
a very huge hunk
of our existing mortgage debt
equal to lot values circa 05
ie transfer a big piece
of our major non asset backed household obligation
now held by for profit financial corporations
to our big uncle
say 6 trillion's worth
and pro tem charge zero interest and no principal payments

--- more on that in a much delayed post --

this is fisher with a petty guy pigou hard on

------

"it would be better to direct the money to unemployment, welfare, health care, job creation, etc., instead of giving it to the banks to lend again. "

ie

no fisher all keynes

well the two are very different activities
indeed

neither
precludes the other
if uncle has no constraint on his credit budget like we'd have
why not both ...

here's the keynes camp point
okay sure owen
uncle with his limitless
credit card
can dutch around
with the social balance sheet
end the asset deflation prevent product price deflation
and still we can have
one hell of a depression
in our production system to deal with

this is the limits of fisher
the pigou wealth effect
on household expenditures
is too slow
too weak in the short run
to spur recovery
simply reversing it by debt forgiveness
won't put humpty dumpty back togather
i agree
we gotta seperate
necessary debt relief measures
from necessary recovery measures

now if hudson's point is
fuck debt relief for banks
cause
we need direct human relief
al shurman's pocket owen
slurman
about radical
bigger collision mats for the job class
fits

ie a nice package
of
borowed gifts from uncle

treasury funds borrowed from private sources by the treasury
turned into transfer payments
like say upping food stamps
or social security payments
or spreading the coverage of the unemployment system or increasing its payments
or adding all citizen souls over 55
and under 15 to medicare
nice public love stuff
put on our collective credit card
for the jobless bottom rungs

okay fine
its gotta be there
but its bad class politics
to lead with a dole out
to non job class plebs and proles

if he's saying
we oughta leave the private hi fi system as its own road kill
and revive the production system
by uncle taking control perminently
of the commanding hi fi heights
is that minimum plan stuff ???

its all about about job market recovery
and i agree that's not
coming thru reviving the private for profit credit sysyem

from a class point of view
great no relief for the rentiers
plus all power to the state as single lender
proudhon viva

------------------
now next year in jerusalem stuff aside

what now
what course for class agit prop

first
its within recovery
the battle must be fought

now my post
since the question remains
within the types of possible
recovery not relief
uncle expenditure activities
which ones
best fit job class interests ???

---putting aside the magnitudes of course --

here's where
keynes and fisher camps clash

additional tax cuts sez fisher
ie payroll cuts from job class pov
and
additional direct or indirect federal expenditures sez keynes
ie schools for fools
stools with wheels for the leg-less
and green tools for hard hats

obviously
all these uncle acts can have
different time profiles
and distribution of its class benefits

more distinctions arise
two pathhs need following independently
and in sequence not simultaneously
recovery first
reconstruction next

fisher is faster to recovery

mr k is the way for reconstruction

OP -- don't give in so quickly. Combining Fischer and K is only middle class politics. Working class politics means stopping every way the government funnels money from the people to the top -- the SS tax, the regressive income and corporate taxes, the preferencial treatment for corporations generally, the electoral process generally, the deregulation culture, the priviledged position of banks, the reverse priority of private profit over people's needs, etc.

It's simple: just restore a couple of basic human rights -- right to a job; right to education and medical care; right to a secure retirement.

tom paine and seneca => jacobin terror

"right to a job; right to education and medical care; right to a secure retirement."
basic rights asserted
leads to ...

viva the head slicer
that's the best outocome
the actual assertion of these rights
can produce ...

when reproduction
of a nation's material base
crumbles away into entitlements

armed outside states plot to intervene ...

then what ????

lets not replay
the last century in the key of red

using just a magic bag of 18th century memes
that's for hanna barbera cartoons

not even jonathan swift would find
his funny bone tickled
by a rev state proclaiming
these economic entitlements
in say ...haiti

"Combining Fischer and K is only middle class politics"

indeed

if we might practice
other ...
pro prole sorts'round here....
grand !!!! i'm on the first bus

now just where's this norte americano liberated zone of yours again ???

my posts attempt to show what's possible within the present frame work
that yes
might lead by provoking
us all by way
of inherent stedfast social contradictions
right on out of today's top down orders
bottom up rip off system

example of prole heads filled with pleb memes
like this hideous
mind shackle

household savings are good
so gubmint savings are good

let's forge minimal steps here
plausible steps
steps that lead
out of kansas and up to oz

let's not go bounding around
counting on
a leap and a prayer

who's yer crew-congregation
for that capin ahab ???

the choir of rouge castrati ???

Right to health-care a jacobin plank, for you? Come on!

OK, we'll drop "rights" and talk about "goals" -- goals of universal health care; goal of full employment, etc. Or maybe we should start with 3.5% unemployment. That's not too radical!

Minimal demands lead to meaningless slogans, like "road map" and "peace process."

And OP, your heart's in the right place, you live in the real world, and your mind has obviously been exposed to the higher disciplines. So I'm with you, and ready to be enlightened.

Sometimes it's hard to follow your wild and whirling words.