Who stole my cheesy economy? - Eric Janszen

[Raz]

Re: Who stole my cheesy economy? - Eric Janszen

We didn't get into WWII to kick start the US economy, we went in kicking and screaming, and only once attacked. As the father of a 20 year old son, I can only hope that our current political leadership doesn't see war a tool to start the economy. Growing a domestic economy should not be a priority greater than the innocent lives of US and foreign children. And I'm no tree-hugger, peace monger. I believe in peace thru strength, believe that the US MUST maintain weapons superiority, and feel that our response to unprovoked attacks on Americans or American soil should be met with swift and severe retaliation. I simply do not believe that a few more dollars in our pocket is worth pre-emptive, false-emptive, or media-emptive aggression.

And, putting aside American ego for a minute, are we attacking in an effort to export our terrific political system and economic prowess to these backward, wayward foreigners? I am steadfastly pro-American, but we need to fix our own problems before we go force-exporting them.

we have all the natural resources and brain power we need, we don't need to go stealing anything. Let's look inside our Country and ourselves, and let's find some smart people to fix these problems properly.

Yes, yes and yes again! Spoken like a true conservative - not the Neocon mutation.
We were founded to be a republic - NOT an empire. The Cold War left us with an unnatural "empire" which certain moneyed interests don't want us to give up.

I wonder how many of the ignoramuses in Congress - and the White House - have read the Farewell Addresses of George Washington (warning against foreign entanglements) and Dwight Eisenhower (warning against the developing rapacity of a Military-Industrial Complex) ?

[ASH]

Re: Who stole my cheesy economy? - Eric Janszen

Don't underestimate the power of an emergency, of "survival".

Mass monetary inflation (which I think what has happened since 9/08 is unprecedented), indentured servitude, and national rationing can go a long way.

But, what if we convince large lenders (e.g. japan, taiwan) and other allies of the same emergency?

The thought of this all ending up with WWII-style rationing, price controls, and other aspects of a command economy, after we blow our national credit rating and our opportunity to borrow dries up, had previously occurred to me. But at the point where you are relying upon "mass monetary inflation" or a command economy, you are no longer really "borrowing". I trust jk's judgement quite a bit, so I was wondering if he thought America's credit was actually a good deal less vulnerable than EJ thinks it is.

The issue I have with borrowing, in general, is that everybody seems to be broke at the same time. The picture I have is that although lending by exporters such as Japan helped recycle the trade surplus we ran with them, the underlying engine of that consumption and production was an expanding credit bubble (which is now kaput). Therefore, it doesn't sound to me as if our creditors will be in any position to lend us large sums of money anytime soon -- particularly if our plan is to spend that money domestically on defense products. After all, the reason they were lending to us in the first place was so that they'd be able to export. They'd really need to fear for their security, and since everybody is broke, I don't see much potential for a threat of that scale to emerge rapidly.

[ASH]

Re: Who stole my cheesy economy? - Eric Janszen

I wonder how many of the ignoramuses in Congress - and the White House - have read the Farewell Addresses of George Washington (warning against foreign entanglements) and Dwight Eisenhower (warning against the developing rapacity of a Military-Industrial Complex) ?[/COLOR]

Just an argument about historical context:

Avoiding foreign entanglements when you are a third-rate power, constantly in danger of being caught up in a world war between the two world superpowers, is more of a pragmatic survival strategy than a timeless philosophy.

Fear of the military-industrial complex when military spending accounted for around 50% of government spending made a lot of sense; does it still make sense when defense spending is more like 15% of total government expenditures? (Based on table 15.4 of the Historical Tables from OMB, comparing the Korean War years to 2007.) I think it turns out that AARP has better lobbyists than Lockheed Martin.

P.S. To be clear, this is not an argument against avoiding foreign entanglements or decreasing defense spending. I just wanted to point out that Washington's advice had more to do with practical diplomacy than the big ideas of the Revolution, and that the defense-industrial complex of the 50's was quite more dominant than it is today.

[jandkmeyer]

Re: Who stole my cheesy economy? - Eric Janszen

I think the idea we, or anyone would start a war to lift themselves out of the economic crisis is silly. As a few people pointed out, we have two going on now and its not helping! The war that would actually help would be too big and scary. And why would bankers want to start a war when it would likely divert bailout money. No, the steady transfusion of money to banks from the citizenry will be enough to keep the powerful happy.

So do we need a war just to keep the sheeple distracted? Maybe, but it doesn't have to be destructive. Just put them to work in victory gardens and collecting scrap iron and have them buy "Bank" bonds. All this while TPTB figure out how to end the phrase "War on..." something. Poverty, Terrorism, Drugs, Prejudice - I really think EJ is correct with the CO2, climate change theme. Real war is just one (bad) option for spending large sums (we don't have).

[goadam1]

Re: Who stole my cheesy economy? - Eric Janszen

Yes, yes and yes again! Spoken like a true conservative - not the Neocon mutation.
We were founded to be a republic - NOT an empire. The Cold War left us with an unnatural "empire" which certain moneyed interests don't want us to give up.

I wonder how many of the ignoramuses in Congress - and the White House - have read the Farewell Addresses of George Washington (warning against foreign entanglements) and Dwight Eisenhower (warning against the developing rapacity of a Military-Industrial Complex) ?

You'll like this site:
http://www.antiwar.com/

A little on the Buchaninite side of things but some good coverage.

(Please delete if this isn't allowed)

[BiscayneSunrise]

Re: Who stole my cheesy economy? - Eric Janszen

Russia is unlikely to ever be a reliable supplier of energy to anyone. The west Europeans now know this [The Poles must be thinking "See, we told you so..."].

Spoke today with a friend of mine who is the Managing Director for the MENA region [Middle East & North Africa] of one of the largest continental European utilities. Told me his budgets were increased big time in January to fund a strategy to significantly increase MENA gas and NGL supply sources with the specific intent of first capping, and then reducing its dependence on Russian gas supplies. That his firm would view Middle East NOCs as more reliable suppliers than Gazprom would come as no surprise to anyone who has had dealings with both.

Projects of the scale that would interest his company typically take 7 to 10 years from inception to first delivery, partly because of scale and partly because...well...it's just the way things work [or not ] in the Middle East. Still, he's under a lot of pressure now to commit large sums over multiple years...said he wished he was a newly unemployed banker with a severance package; life would be much easier. :cool:

Excellent News. The Russians, realize they are at risk of being outsourced, so to be speak. They are busy trying to solidify as many political gains as possible before the West Europeans diversify away from the Russians and before the Russian demographic time bomb implodes. The sooner Europe disengages the better.

How will the NG to Europe be supplied, LNG tankers, I assume? Through the Suez or around the Cape?

[leegs]

Re: Who stole my cheesy economy? - Eric Janszen

a national security justification trumps whatever mechanisms might limit borrowing.

I think Ash has it right. A war, hot or cold, is 'digging holes and filling them in writ large' as he says.

I read the word 'mechanism' in your statement to refer to political mechanisms. But if I understand a fraction of what I read here, it is iTulip's premise that there are 'real' constraints on these mechanisms that are leading to the economic crisis we are facing. So how can these underlying physics be trumped?

Where does the money come from? It has to be borrowed from ROW, which seems unlikely, or it has to be borrowed from the future, which seems pretty well tapped out as well.

Having said all that, just because it doesn't make sense doesn't mean it won't happen, but I guess I'm optimistic enough to put it at a very low probability.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Who stole my cheesy economy? - Eric Janszen

All this talk of war and the like brings to mind The War Of The Worlds by H.G.Wells where the mechanical monsters, (not unlike the military/industrial complex) are eventually defeated by a germ.

While most imagine the next war to be all about guns and warships and space, I believe the greatest threat is from a nobody in a tent with just a few biological materials and an absolute intent to get their own back on someone that has just blown his family to bits with a missile from a drone.

Hello! anyone getting this?

Not very long ago I was attending a conference in Washington DC where a delegate responded to a question about Smallpox with the simple statement made in a totally silent room: "The Russian stocks of Smallpox are in unknown hands".

About two years before that some researchers in Australia, trying to find a way of ridding the local farmers of a plague of mice had been playing with Mouse pox and had reported that they had, somehow, lost every mouse in the laboratory, including the controls that were nowhere near the test animals. Apparently the "Mouse pox" was so virulent, it was uncontainable. I doubt there is much difference between Mouse pox and Chicken pox.......

More recently, in the last few months, we have had a report of a terrorist group who all went down with the Plague.

I have no fear of the Chinese, every one I have met has been civilised and responded towards me as anyone else I have ever met. But I do worry about the paranoid who bring someone in to look me over because I had a letter published in the largest Sunday newspaper here in the UK; criticising them.........

We are at desperate risk, not from any war that we might as individuals contemplate, but from the actions, exactly like the ones EJ highlighted at the start of this thread, that are causing desperate actions by people that are daily watching their families being blown to pieces by missiles from drones.

The greatest risk is from a mere bug, created by a desperate single individual who will never know what they have unleashed until it is too late for perhaps all of us. We could be back to a Stone Age Earth within three months with the planet littered by the remains of all those wonderful weapons rusting away while the next surviving species takes over the planet.

[goadam1]

Re: Who stole my cheesy economy? - Eric Janszen

All this talk of war and the like brings to mind The War Of The Worlds by H.G.Wells where the mechanical monsters, (not unlike the military/industrial complex) are eventually defeated by a germ.

While most imagine the next war to be all about guns and warships and space, I believe the greatest threat is from a nobody in a tent with just a few biological materials and an absolute intent to get their own back on someone that has just blown his family to bits with a missile from a drone.

Hello! anyone getting this?

Not very long ago I was attending a conference in Washington DC where a delegate responded to a question about Smallpox with the simple statement made in a totally silent room: "The Russian stocks of Smallpox are in unknown hands".

About two years before that some researchers in Australia, trying to find a way of ridding the local farmers of a plague of mice had been playing with Mouse pox and had reported that they had, somehow, lost every mouse in the laboratory, including the controls that were nowhere near the test animals. Apparently the "Mouse pox" was so virulent, it was uncontainable. I doubt there is much difference between Mouse pox and Chicken pox.......

More recently, in the last few months, we have had a report of a terrorist group who all went down with the Plague.

I have no fear of the Chinese, every one I have met has been civilised and responded towards me as anyone else I have ever met. But I do worry about the paranoid who bring someone in to look me over because I had a letter published in the largest Sunday newspaper here in the UK; criticising them.........

We are at desperate risk, not from any war that we might as individuals contemplate, but from the actions, exactly like the ones EJ highlighted at the start of this thread, that are causing desperate actions by people that are daily watching their families being blown to pieces by missiles from drones.

The greatest risk is from a mere bug, created by a desperate single individual who will never know what they have unleashed until it is too late for perhaps all of us. We could be back to a Stone Age Earth within three months with the planet littered by the remains of all those wonderful weapons rusting away while the next surviving species takes over the planet.

You can't eat the infected.

It's sad that we have more good ideas about War than how to make a new political party.

[ASH]

Re: Who stole my cheesy economy? - Eric Janszen

It's sad that we have more good ideas about War than how to make a new political party.

With a war?

What about the scenario roughly suggested by iTulip: current crop of politicians fail to stop the debt deflation, unemployment rises to a socially uncomfortable level, and presto -- new politicians with a different attitude toward FIRE economy interests starting with the 2010 mid-term elections?

[goadam1]

Re: Who stole my cheesy economy? - Eric Janszen

With a war?

What about the scenario roughly suggested by iTulip: current crop of politicians fail to stop the debt deflation, unemployment rises to a socially uncomfortable level, and presto -- new politicians with a different attitude toward FIRE economy interests starting with the 2010 mid-term elections?

Be careful what you wish for.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Who stole my cheesy economy? - Eric Janszen

You can't eat the infected.

It's sad that we have more good ideas about War than how to make a new political party.

One of the very big problems you have inside the US is that you do not have a reliable news service.

"Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy investigates how the war on terror is creating a generation of child terrorists who are prepared to kill both inside and outside Pakistan. Contains images of terrorist atrocities."

http://www.channel4.com/video/brandl...ban-generation

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches

[FRED]

Re: Who stole my cheesy economy? - Eric Janszen

You can't eat the infected.

It's sad that we have more good ideas about War than how to make a new political party.

Blame it on Hollywood.

[goadam1]

Re: Who stole my cheesy economy? - Eric Janszen

One of the very big problems you have inside the US is that you do not have a reliable news service.

"Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy investigates how the war on terror is creating a generation of child terrorists who are prepared to kill both inside and outside Pakistan. Contains images of terrorist atrocities."

http://www.channel4.com/video/brandl...ban-generation

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches

People are as informed in the States as they want to be. There are plenty of resources. People don't care. They like being fat, happy and stupid and will take it if it is offered.

[goadam1]

Re: Who stole my cheesy economy? - Eric Janszen

Blame it on Hollywood.

Ultra-orthodox religiods feel the same way. "Why doesn't anybody see this is all Satan's game!"