Hegemonic Stability
The Economy and "Global Warming"The Global warming movement, whether or not it is a cover for a power grab by the carbon trading elite, is blocking any chance of an economic recovery. Just putting money in the hands of consumers has been tried in the USA and QE 1 & 2 have failed to restart consumption and production.
Clearly a recovery has to be associated with production. Cheap money brought us the dot com and housing bubble recoveries but neither recovery lasted. Unlike houses and dot coms there is considerably less danger in producing too much energy. An energy production boom in the USA will take pressure off food prices inflated by the ethanol lobby around the world, reverse the US balance of payments crisis, create jobs, save the auto industry, bail out the banks, reverse the growing income inequality, save the middle class, generate the government revenues to save social security and Medicare and pay off the debt: in short it is a panacea.
We don't even need cheap money, just a policy change. Drill baby drill, in the Gulf, Anwar, off the Florida coast, everywhere. Corporations have the money to invest, the workers are there. All we need to do is to remove the roadblocks stopping the recovery.
FDR got out of the last depression with WWII. An energy boom will have a significantly lower environmental impact and loss of life. All that is missing is the Pearl Harbor Event that will turn public opinion.
Pollution of the environment is a legitimate concern. Global Warming is a giant lie that left unchallenged is spreading a tide of human misery, starvation, and civil unrest. Europe and the Middle East today, America next year.
Peak oil may well be a legitimate concern, but we need prosperity, time and a free market to sort out the alternative sources, not a government mandated imposition of winners and losers.
Labels: economy, energy, environment
TRAINS I like Trains of all kinds. I particularly enjoy the TGV in France. To create jobs the French built an extensive public transport infrastructure. The US Federal government is offering the states $50 billion for high speed rail projects. Beware, public mass transit is a Trojan Horse. While it would be great to have better trains there are two problems. Any body that has spent time in France is aware of the power of the unions wield outside of the ballot box by virtue of their ability to paralyze the transportation infrastructure. The other problem is that public transport loses money. Imagine how much more tax payer money Amtrak can lose with $50 Billion more stuff to operate.
Remember the StimulusThe point of the stimulus was to postpone the financial crisis currently faced by the states. The argument was made that if teachers and firemen and other public employees kept their jobs and kept spending the economy would recover. It did not happen. Instead we are a trillion or so more in debt and one by one the states are going to have to cut their payrolls anyway. The teachers union in NYC is buying TV ads demanding that Bloomberg get the rich on Wall Street to pay their fare share. It is going to take more than taxes on the very rich to keep all those jobs and benefits.
Labels: economy
It's nothing personal. It's just business.It's nothing personal. It's just business. Be careful what you wish for.
Chris Christie, NJ Gov., was on Today and Morning Joe this morning. Anne and Mika accused him of union busting. He denied it, contending that with less money to spend, he was trying to save public sector union jobs by lowering payroll benefit costs rather than through layoffs. A tad disingenuous perhaps, but few are noticing.
Well, the real problem for state budgets is not that public sector workers are paid better wages and dramatically better benefits than private sector workers. The real problem for the local economy is that there are too many non revenue generating public sector jobs. In the last period, according to Christie, NJ lost 20,000 public sector jobs and gained 15,000 private sector jobs. That is the trend around the country. I am sorry for those that lost their jobs, but now there are more productive taxpayers . With lower expenses states can lower taxes to attract new businesses and taxpayers. In the end there will be more jobs, just different ones, and the economy will recover. You can blame the rich, the Chinese, the greedy corporations exporting jobs, Wall Street, Congress, the Banks, the military industrial complex or whoever you want for the bad economy. It does not matter. When times are tough there is no choice but to tighten your belt, cut your expenses, and work a little harder until things get better.
The unions are mobilizing to stop Republican and Democrat gubernatorial efforts to roll back public sector wages and benefits by limiting unions power and fund raising abilities. The unions may well in the short run stop the union busting. This is a stroke of luck for the country. We do not want to lose our all our private sector unions. Remember Lech Walesa and the Solidarity union in Poland. On the other hand states and municipalities will be hard pressed to borrow or tax their way out of their deficits and will have no choice but to curtail government jobs and services.
The public sector is too big. Cutting public sector wages and benefits may eventually lessen the attraction of public sector jobs and reduce their numbers. On the other hand, massive layoffs of public sector workers is a much faster solution. The sad part is that one consequence will be lower quality in education as seniority rules will prevent any attempts to prune the deadwood via layoffs. For better or worse, privatization of the educational system may well accelerate as the value of public education declines.
Labels: Governors Vs Unions
Inflation or Deflation?Are we heading for inflation or deflation and how can we prepare ourselves? Deflation is when prices go down because economic activity grinds to a halt. People stop buying and hiring and just save their money. Inflation is when there is too much money chasing too few goods and the prices go up.
These two states are supposed to be mutually exclusive, but they are not. We are going into simultaneous inflation and deflation. Because of the debt deleveraging people are slowing down their spending. At the same time the Fed which is afraid of deflation is printing money which is inflationary.
EurabiaA common fallacy is the extrapolation of a current trend beyond reason ignoring the self regulating dynamics of nature, for example: the population bomb, global cooling, global warming. If current demographic trends continue, Judaeo Christian Europeans will be overwhelmed by immigrant Muslims and their descendants. Europeans will become Dhimmis, slaves of their fundamentalist Muslim masters who will destroy all their cultural artifacts, paintings, churches, monuments as the Taliban destroyed the statutes in Afghanistan.
Recently, I picked up a novel in LA "Atomik Aztek" by Sesshu Foster which fantasizes a world run by Aztecs and threatened by a consumerist takeover. Perhaps a good occupation what the Europeans need to shake themselves out of their atavistic worldweary socialist nightmare. Change is inevitable, but I find it hard to imagine a new Dark Age of any significant duration.
Pope John Paul;
I never really thought much about him one way or the other. Since 9/11 I have come to admire the Catholic Church for sticking to their traditions and their belief in the sactity of life. I am not sure The Federal government should criminalize abortion, but I have no problem with a religion making it a sin. The Old line Protestant Churches have surrendered to moral relativism. Situational ethics, I think they called it when I was in an Episcopalian school. The result is there are more people going to Mosques than to Protestant Churches in Europe. Nietzsche overstated things only somewhat when he said that the Catholic Church went into decline when it lost the self confidence to burn heretics.
The Trouble with CSPANCharles V. Pena of the CATO Institute was on CSPAN this morning discussing his critical commentary of the Defense Budget. His position sounded similar to what I believe was Rumsfeld's. Pull out of Europe, down size , modernize, skip a generation on new weapon systems like fighters , ships etc. Go fast and light etc. I love CSPAN because of the speakers and events they present. When the presentation is a speaker before a live audience the Q&A period brings out new facts and ideas. However, the shows with just the host and the guest and callers are agonizing. I cannot stand the callers. By and large they are partisan hacks . CSPAN puts on an interesting person and instead of probing to find out more the callers use the guest as a springboard to present their own frequently paranoid delusions. It is a clear instance of the "Tragedy of the Commons". People who believe the Neocons planned 9/11 so they could invade Iraq, for example, are entitled to that opinion and are free to speak it, but it only a question the way the answers in Jeopardy are questions. The CSPAN hosts would serve the people better if they cut off callers more aggressively and not allow them to waste everybody's time. The callers have an audience, not because their opinions are interesting, but because the guests are interesting. Partisan Hack Venters belong on talk radio shows like Limbaugh and Air America where point of the show is the interaction of host and caller or on blogs where they only waste their own time and that of those who enjoy that sort of thing.
From the Dictionary of Theories: "Nations achieve dominance in international systems, which they then must maintain by "rewards" to less powerful nations. Such a system is paradoxically unstable."
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