Debt Rattle Mar 28 2014: The China Clock Goes Tick Tock
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Esther Bubley Daily Greyhound commute to Memphis September 1943 How do we know what’s really going on in China’s economy? Given that it’s – at least o
[See the full post at: Debt Rattle Mar 28 2014: The China Clock Goes Tick Tock]Very broadly speaking, there are chiefly two ways human beings procure resources, and by extension, power over resources. One is through honest effort: education, production, honest exchange and just reward. The other is through theft: extortion (taxes and fines), bribery, fraud, blackmail and robbery. Both strategies are perfectly viable, and empires are built around both models, but only so long as the former strategy (honesty) dominates. Unfortunately, our debt-laden world is defined by dominance of the latter strategy. What that portends for the future is, also very broadly speaking, not subject to debate, though the timing and details could proceed any which way.
My dad often summed up conversations about current events, politics, history, and just stories about ordinary people with the statement, “People are no damn good.” As I’ve aged, and as I’ve watched the world degenerate on so many levels, I’ve increasingly come to agree with him. We should have elected a Black to the Presidency back in 2008 and again in 2012, but it should have been Bill Black. So long as theft goes unpunished, and thieves of all stripes get away scot-free, there will be no promise, broadly speaking, for the future.
On a separate topic, but not completely unrelated, the following video and article (in that order) potentially shed light on so many topics at once that all I can say is they provided me with the kind of mind-blowing experience that keeps me glued to the Internet. Killer shocking stuff if it’s all true. Enjoy or possibly despair, whichever suits you.
I seem to have been defeated twice. Here is the proper link for cut-and-paste. I hope it works this time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWYANJzVJvY&index =2&list=UUFGmA4owCCCb-rn0DrkDypA
Not to spend too much time in the Wonderland of neoclassical economics, nor much more defending Krugman as among its less delusional and most civic-minded theorists, but I don’t see these massive expansions of public liability to sustain financial sector bubbles as Keynesian. Not all deficits are Keynesian. The more plausibly Keynesian response that Krugman is probably correct in maintaining has never really been tried, is putting money in ordinary people’s hands, in the productive economy, not in banks, hedge funds and share speculation.
56, not being terribly familiar with either Keynes nor Krugman, where would the money come from that would be put “in ordinary people’s hands?” I’m thinking about the adage, “Next time you hear something described as ‘government-funded,’ remember that the government is 100% taxpayer-funded.” TIA.
A first response is to ask in turn where the trillions come from that we used to place junk bank assets and now QE on the public balance sheet. The broader point being that if the aim–which would not be my idea of a sensible aim–is to promote a return to growth, then even by the low lights of (neo)classical economic thinking we would get far more stimulative benefit, a greater multiplier effect, from putting money into the hands of those who *need* to spend it, and into infrastructure projects that have an immediate and evident future benefit (the civil engineers tell us that something in the neighbourhood of 4 trillion could and arguably must be reinvested in our electrical grids, sewage, water, pipelines, rail lines), than from parking it in banks and corporate cash reserves and share buybacks, fuelling stock market and real estate speculation, and maintaining artificially low tax rates on these.
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