Career Training

Paul Krugman says "these aren't normal times." Picking apart hoary clichés is like answering rhetorical questions, but still. We wonder: just when were those normal times?

David Brooks says, "In normal times, Americans would have been skeptical of proposals to double or triple the size of federal programs, but amid the economic fear, that skepticism fell away." Which, I suppose, is an answer of sorts.

Krugman is arguing for more money-to-the-moon, and Brooks isn't arguing anything so much as he is strolling the grounds of the Sanitarium in his bathrobe, but in either case one finds at base that charming American affection for a fanciful status quo, a deep-seated sense of sentimental nostalgia for an ineffable era of good feelings, decent profit margins, peace on earth, goodwill toward men, &c.

Such magical stability, to which we're supposed to aspire to return, is paired with an equally magical condition called "sustainable growth." The idea being that there are no real upper bounds to production, consumption, and the accumulation of wealth in a properly run society, so long as the pace of the increase is judiciously monitored. While I hesitate (or, I guess: I don't hesitate) to raise the specter of a crackpot Malthusianism, it seems to me that there may in fact be a point at which growth, as popularly defined, does indeed become unsustainable, and surely the enemy of anything we might mean by stability.

Our present troubles stem more from an imbalance between our declining productive capacity (as opposed to "productivity") and our increasing consumptive activity, and insofar as folks like the Krugster recognize this, they advocate investing our money in tangible economic activity--roads and bridges and hospitals and schools and so forth--while reorganizing our financial institutions so that they can again become agents for saving, reasonable lending, and modest investment rather than the main players in a vast speculative free-for-all. That's all fine and well, but seems to ignore the larger question of what happens next, in the medium and longer terms. With a few discrete exceptions, our principle economic activity neither makes much nor does much. What will all the out-of-work middle managers be doing in 2012, assuming Jerry Bruckheimner's MayanAztec Sungod doesn't consume the world first?

A Rare Defense of Government Standards

Some dude has written a half-humor, half-scare column about the bugs n' shit in your packaged food. Just a little more protein! as Dad used to say.

Symbolism

Radley Balko and I are of largely the same mind on indefinite detentions, but I'm struck by one line that reflects a popular sentiment:

Closing Guantanamo had some symbolic value, but it doesn’t mean a thing if we’re just going to do the same thing in another facility.

Is there such a thing as symbolic value? I agree with what comes after the comma, but want to suggest that it obviates the opening clause. Closing Guantanamo has no value.

Don't Follow the Money

The real measure of just how tiny a shit our rulers give about the disposition of our money in the hands of our bankers is the fact that they keep hauling the CEOs of these vast amalgamated Frankenstein corporations up to pester them about where the money is going, which they, of course, don't really know. What the hell does Vikram Whatsisfuck know about anything? Why not ask Richard Druskin, President and CEO Corporate and Investment Banking where the money went, or Bill Beckman, President and COO CitiMortgage Global Consumer Group, or better yet Stepahnie Mudick, General Counsel of the Global Consumer Group, or Stephanie Mudick's inferior Kathryn Reimann, the Chief Complaince Office for the GCG? Jeez, it sure would be helpful to have some kind of organizational chart.

The World Is Too Much With Us

High Despoiler of Donkdom Michael J. Smith puts me in mind again of the good old Wystan Hugh. I recall arguing with someone once, à propos Monsieur le président Buisson, that any proposition holding electoral success as a mark of or evidence for superior intelligence was inherently false, the the skill sets, as we call 'em around the office, necessary to actuate officeholderdom were unrelated to keen intellect and were linked instead to a fulsome sense of ethical abandon. Whither the conviction that all politicians are crooks and morons? Folk wisdom, but wisdom nonetheless, that.

Anyway, mutatis mutandis, Obama and the gang. The Lib conviction that once his own comrades effaced bias from the halls of Washington and imposed scientific governance, every problem could be solved like textbook physics, i.e., acted on by simple forces, untroubled in their smooth parabolic paths by air resistance, wind, surface mechanics. Amateurs. Half-assed Keynesianism will find its defenders in those who pledge faith and fealty to the Soul-Consuming Elder God of The Something that Must Be Done, who apply a know-nothing acceptance of the doctrine that spending can stimulate growth to arguing that any spending must stimulate growth, a radically different notion when you consider it for just a moment. Other than random appeals to multiplier effects and other such Magiks, no one can quite name a mechanism through which any of the supposed stimuli will stimulate anything. How will any of this money move out into the "broader economy." Motherfuckers don't need more credit; motherfuckers need jobs. I would have less trouble with some new WPA, but the laid-off (and soon-to-be) workforce isn't a manufacturing workforce easily reassigned to construction and infrastructure projects. Take a gander around the office, ye Blogreaders. If yours is anything like mine, the closest thing to shovel-ready is the bag of Tostitos in the kitchenette.

Masala!

Here is a picture of the TGV setting the world's rail speed record:



Here is a picture of, um, Amtrak:



Thomas Friedman:

In an age when attracting the first-round intellectual draft choices from around the world is the most important competitive advantage a knowledge economy can have, why would we add barriers against such brainpower — anywhere? That’s called “Old Europe.” That’s spelled: S-T-U-P-I-D.

There are plenty of criticisms to be leveled at the core nations of the EU, but technological inferiority isn't one of them. The Germans build better cars, the French better trains, and everyone's cell phones work better than ours. American dominance of the hard sciences is no longer a fact. From genetics to physics, Europe is at the forefront of current research. The ESA makes NASA look even more decrepit than it is. French and British universities are ever-more-popular for international students, especially from China and points on the Asian East.

For all his bullshit rah-rah Indiaphilia, there's a seed of an idea there: that it would behoove the US to open our borders. But the sprout is quickly killed by the descent of frosty Friedmanism: it was not a national culture of shame that insulated the Indian economy from the current global mess. It was protectionism, especially of their financial sector, which remained thoroughly national compared to American, European, and East-Asian banks. Meanwhile, even supposing a few million Indians immediately had the wherewithal and means to snatch up all the homes in foreclosure, this would have only a minor (at best) ameliorative effect on the broader economy, since the homes would be bought on vastly favorable terms at drastically reduced prices, leaving piles of mostly unaffected outstanding debt obligations unpaid, and doing nothing to prop up all the junk derivatives in the system, since they depend(ed) not on one-off home sales, but on home turnover, and immigrant home-buyers from societies with high savings rates aren't typically flippers.

In which for the umpteenth time we explain the figuration of: The Carrot and The Stick

The Obama Administration's mind control experiment continues apace:

Our challenge is much greater today because the American people have lost faith in the leaders of our financial institutions, and are skeptical that their government has--to this point--used taxpayers’ money in ways that will benefit them.

Naturally, then, the government will persevere in its efforts to craft an opaque, inscrutable giveaway of huge sums of money without the slightest quid pro quo, although they will happily tack on an immaterial pay cap for a tiny tranche of high-level employees (so blatantly limited in scope to direct salary compensation that the undergraduate interns in the HR department could find ways around it without so much as taking a few Away moments on Gchat).

"Our challenge," needless to say, is not a crisis of faith, although those who argue that our current economic arrangements bear uncanny resemblance to religious institutions can't help but grin at the hocus-pocus declining-culture hokum of an agèd Pope dissing atheistic Europe. It is, rather, the failure of financial institutions, and the notion that they must be "saved," that shareholder value must somehow be rescued, that risk must be not only ameliorated but essentially eliminated, at least over the short term, that the whole thieving, incoherent system must be insured against loss by a society-wide socializing of unrealizable debts and obligations is no less lunatic than the notion that the all men must pray to an ineffable multiform deity in a manner proscribed two millennia ago lest they be consigned for all eternity to unspeakable, unrelenting torture.

Revealingly:

“They want to make sure the plan is a balance of carrots and sticks, which are needed substantively and politically,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, vice chairman of the Joint Economic Committee. “They are using every tool in the book because the problem is so vast, but they are also tailoring their response to the individual needs of each institution.”

We'll return to the vegetable and branch momentarily. First, note: they are "using ever tool in the book" (sic, yo, the box?) but "tailoring their response to the individual needs of each institution." This recalls Obama-Biden's infelicitous, repetitive insistence during the campaign debates that we needed the scalpel and the table saw, or whatever, the, hammer and the scythe, the butterfly and the bee.

As for this "balance of carrots and sticks"--well, it's that rarest of truly, catastrophically, hilariously ridiculous misunderstandings of a basic figure of speech. Our politicians, I believe, have thoroughly confused the expression with Teddy Roosevelt's speak softly, carry a big stick admonition, and have thus conceived a new metaphor of punishment and reward, in which we are both fed delicious carrots and beaten with sticks. But the carrot and stick has another etymology entirely. The idea is that you affix the carrot to a long stick with a string and dangle it in front of a pack or harness animal, who will walk toward it as it appears to recede at a fixed distance. It is, in other words, a trick.

Rules for Rabblerousers

People can stand to be told that they're wrong, but explode at any suggestion that they're irrelevant.

Manufactured Dissent

While Frank Rich shows himself hopelessly out of his depth--economic arguments that include as their central tenets the necessity of Presidents inspiring confidence, as the saying goes, may be dismissed out of hand--he does manage to prove himself something better than the partisan sycophant he often appeared to be during the campaign, noting that the Obama administration's self-proclaimed commitment to ethical renovation in government is all sound, not much fury, and nothing signified.

Now Wilkinson has some thoughts on whether or not we are now socialists, or (tee-hee) participatory fascists, or, more particularly, why we are neither one nor the other. I still like the term State Capital, although it seems to me to be redundant. The idea that "capitalism" is a catch-all for any relatively "free" economy or mode of exchange is as deficient as the idea that any centralized or planned economy is communism. Capitalism as practiced, always and everywhere, seems to me to mean inherently a cooperative (collusive?) system of private enterprise subsidized and regulated by a state whose main actors are in turn subsidized by private enterprise. Here is a more flexible system than a direct command economy, less susceptible to shocks, more robust in general, but ultimately no less integrated across the realms of business, production, service, and government.

I both agree and disagree with Will on his assessment of the decreasing reach and effectiveness of manufactured consent. While I agree that disparate and dissenting voices now more effectively find audiences beyond their fellow-traveling compeers, I also suspect that such dissident nattering around the margins of popular opinion and consensus is, and will continue to be, easily coopted into a social narrative of divergent voices and free expression even as any thoughts we may have about alternative modes of being remain just as marginal and popularly discredited as before. The self-named blogosphere seems to me to be the country's latest free speech zone, with the unusual feature being the large portion of internees willing to hand money through the chain links to the guards beyond (cf. Progressives).

This is what indignant bloggers endlessly complaining about the funded media's scoffing dismissals of their manners and accuracy fails to understand, that they (we) aren't outsiders seeking entrance to the informational economy, but are fully part of the staged drama, a motley and strident gang whose motliness and stridency are characteristics that are adopted and amplified in description in order to bolster the reasonableness of so-called mainstream debate. We flatter national pretensions to diversity of opinion and the rhetorical commitment of a society to free speech, even as we effectively declare that the fenced- and barriered-in zone miles from the actual parade grounds is in fact the new locus of political activism.