The Ecstasy of Empire
by ilene - August 17th, 2010 4:42 pm
The Ecstasy of Empire
Courtesy of PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS writing at CounterPunch
The United States is running out of time to get its budget and trade deficits under control. Despite the urgency of the situation, 2010 has been wasted in hype about a non-existent recovery. As recently as August 2 Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner penned a New York Times column, “Welcome to the Recovery.”
As John Williams (shadowstats.com) has made clear on many occasions, an appearance of recovery was created by over-counting employment and undercounting inflation. Warnings by Williams, Gerald Celente, and myself have gone unheeded, but our warnings recently had echoes from Boston University professor Laurence Kotlikoff and from David Stockman, who excoriated the Republican Party for becoming big-spending Democrats.
It is encouraging to see some realization that, this time, Washington cannot spend the economy out of recession. The deficits are already too large for the dollar to survive as reserve currency, and deficit spending cannot put Americans back to work in jobs that have been moved offshore.
However, the solutions offered by those who are beginning to recognize that there is a problem are discouraging. Kotlikoff thinks the solution is savage Social Security and Medicare cuts or equally savage tax increases or hyperinflation to destroy the vast debts.
Perhaps economists lack imagination, or perhaps they don’t want to be cut off from Wall Street and corporate subsidies, but Social Security and Medicare are insufficient at their present levels, especially considering the erosion of private pensions by the dot com, derivative and real estate bubbles. Cuts in Social Security and Medicare, for which people have paid 15 per cent of their earnings all their lives, would result in starvation and deaths from curable diseases.
Tax increases make even less sense. It is widely acknowledged that the majority of households cannot survive on one job. Both husband and wife work and often one of the partners has two jobs in order to make ends meet. Raising taxes makes it harder to make ends meet--thus more foreclosures, more food stamps, more homelessness. What kind of economist or humane person thinks this is a solution?
Ah, but we will tax the rich. The rich have enough money. They will simply stop earning.
Let’s get real. Here is what the government is likely to do. Once Washington realizes that the dollar is…
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Kotlikoff: The IMF Says That the US Is Bankrupt, and They’re Right
by ilene - August 11th, 2010 11:21 pm
Kotlikoff: The IMF Says That the US Is Bankrupt, and They’re Right
Courtesy of JESSE’S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN
I have not read it yet, but Kotlikoff has a book out called "Jimmy Stewart Is Dead" which was reviewed in April by Craig Heimark at Naked Capitalism.
I have not followed Kotlikoff closely and will attempt to read some of his more serious material in the near future. I did listen to a long discussion on Bloomberg television this afternoon, and he made some real sense to me, although he did not penetrate the miasma of corporate sloganeering that represents the minds of the anchors. They seem to lean to the ‘cut everything that is not a subsidy to or a cashflow owned by the oligarchy’ school of economic reform. And he takes that sort of supply side hoaxing to task, and harshly.
I have to take a closer look at his analysis of Social Security, which is highlighted in this Bloomberg piece (quelle surprise). But his comments on the need for reform in the financial system was point on.
He disagrees with both the supply siders and the demand siders, favoring a systemic overhaul and reform, and so my interest in what he says is obvious.
Bloomberg
U.S. Is Bankrupt and We Don’t Even Know
By Laurence Kotlikoff
Aug 10, 2010Let’s get real. The U.S. is bankrupt. Neither spending more nor taxing less will help the country pay its bills.
What it can and must do is radically simplify its tax, health-care, retirement and financial systems, each of which is a complete mess. But this is the good news. It means they can each be redesigned to achieve their legitimate purposes at much lower cost and, in the process, revitalize the economy.
Last month, the International Monetary Fund released its annual review of U.S. economic policy. Its summary contained these bland words about U.S. fiscal policy: “Directors welcomed the authorities’ commitment to fiscal stabilization, but noted that a larger than budgeted adjustment would be required to stabilize debt-to-GDP.”
But delve deeper, and you will find that the IMF has effectively pronounced the U.S. bankrupt. Section 6 of the July 2010 Selected Issues Paper says: “The U.S. fiscal gap associated with today’s federal fiscal policy is huge for plausible discount rates.” It adds
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the site