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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Debt, Taxes and Politics
by ilene - August 2nd, 2010 3:33 pm
Debt, Taxes and Politics
Courtesy of Doug Short
I continue to receive many email requests for links to my charts on federal debt, taxes, and politics. Here is the latest update, and I’ve added a permanent link to it the Favorites menu above.
My previous commentary on US Federal debt and personal tax rates highlighted the significant difference between nominal and real (inflation-adjusted) gross federal debt. I showed that the tax cuts in the early 1980s coincided with the beginning of an acceleration in real federal debt from a relatively consistent level over the previous three decades, evident in the first chart.
The second chart replaces real debt with the debt-to-GDP (Gross Domestic Product) ratio. Against the backdrop of US history, the contours of the first two-thirds of the chart are easy to understand. Debt-to-GDP soared with the US entry into World War I, as did the personal tax rates. After the war the ratio gradually dropped, this time against the backdrop of the "Roaring Twenties." The Crash of 1929 and Great Depression triggered a rise in the ratio to levels exceeding the peak in World War I. Logically enough, World War II brought about another rapid rise in Debt-to-GDP. War costs drove the ratio to a peak above 120% in 1946.
The ratio rapidly declined after WW II and bottomed out 28 years later in 1974, where it remained within a 3% range until 1982. Then, over a 14-year period the ratio more than doubled from 31.9% in 1981 to 67.1% in 1995. For the next six years the ratio improved, dropping to 56.5% in 2001. The ratio reversed again, this time in sync with several factors — the Tech Crash, 911, and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And then, of course, came a dramatic acceleration in the ratio triggered by the Financial Crisis and deepest market decline since the Great Depression.
Here’s another view of the federal debt-to-GDP ratio, this time with major wars and the Great Depression highlighted:
Debt and Taxes
Does the Gross Federal Debt-to-GDP ratio chart change my view of the disconnect between tax brackets and gross federal debt? Not at all. There is a logic to the ratio increases within the historical context of two World Wars and the Great Depression. Likewise,…
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Liar, liar: Why deception is our way of life
by ilene - June 21st, 2010 10:26 pm
Liar, liar: Why deception is our way of life
By Dorothy Rowe, New Scientist
How did we get ourselves into this mess? Continual wars and conflicts, climate change and economic crisis loom at the international level, while as individuals we continue, generation after generation, to inflict pain and suffering not only on other people but on ourselves. Why do we have such difficulty in learning what we most need to know to mitigate our most destructive behaviours?
Throughout history there have been a few individuals whose insight into what goes on inside us is as clear as their understanding of what goes on around them, yet with what looks like self-induced stupidity most of us have been wholly unable to learn what they have been telling us.
Take the Stoic Greek philosopher Epictetus. He commented on human behaviour this way: "It is not things in themselves that trouble us, but our opinions of things." In other words, it is not what happens to us that determines our behaviour but how we interpret what happens to us. Thus, when facing a disaster, one person might interpret it as a challenge to be mastered, another as a certain defeat, while a third might see it as the punishment he or she deserves. Crucially, the decisions about what to do follow from the interpretation each person has made.
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Black Swans And The Collapse Of Empires Swimming In Debt
by ilene - March 5th, 2010 4:08 pm
Elaine Supkis passionately takes on Dr. Niall Ferguson. Her words in Niall’s LA Times excerpt are red. – Ilene
Black Swans And The Collapse Of Empires Swimming In Debt
Courtesy of Elaine Supkis at Culture of Life News
It is rather curious how people refuse to see obvious things. This is why so many things are ‘unexpected’ or a ’surprise’. People who do see obvious things are called ‘cynics’. Cynics are the exact opposite of banking gnomes and their ilk. Cynics disparage wealth and power in order to see reality and truth. Often, cynics go around telling people, ‘You are doomed’ which makes them party poopers. But then, often, they are right.
Cynic – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Cynics (Greek: Κυνικο?, Latin: Cynici) were an influential group of philosophers from the ancient school of Cynicism. Their philosophy was that the purpose of life was to live a life of Virtue in agreement with Nature. This meant rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, health, and fame, and by living a life free from all possessions. As reasoning creatures, people could gain happiness by rigorous training and by living in a way which was natural for humans. They believed that the world belonged equally to everyone, and that suffering was caused by false judgments of what was valuable and by the worthless customs and conventions which surrounded society. Many of these thoughts were later absorbed into Stoicism.
The first philosopher to outline these themes was Antisthenes, who had been a pupil of Socrates in the late 5th century BCE. He was followed by Diogenes of Sinope, who lived in a tub on the streets of Athens. He took Cynicism to its logical extremes, and came to be seen as the archetypal Cynic philosopher. He was followed by Crates of Thebes who gave away a large fortune so he could live a life of Cynic poverty in Athens. Cynicism spread with the rise of Imperial Rome in the 1st century, and Cynics could be found begging and preaching throughout the cities of the Empire. It finally disappeared in the late 5th century, although many
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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.
