June 2010 archive

Paul Krugman outlines a serious warning in his NYT Op-Ed Sunday :

Neither the Long Depression of the 19th century nor the Great Depression of the 20th was an era of nonstop decline – on the contrary, both included periods when the economy grew. But these episodes of improvement were never enough to undo the damage from the initial slump, and were followed by relapses.

We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. It will probably look more like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost – to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs – will nonetheless be immense.

And this third depression will be primarily a failure of policy. Around the world – most recently at last weekend’s deeply discouraging G-20 meeting – governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending.

In the face of this grim picture, you might have expected policy makers to realize that they haven’t yet done enough to promote recovery. But no: over the last few months there has been a stunning resurgence of hard-money and balanced-budget orthodoxy.

It is [the] the victory of an orthodoxy that has little to do with rational analysis, whose main tenet is that imposing suffering on other people is how you show leadership in tough times. And who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again.

  The Republican’s filibuster of the “tax extenders” bill will have severe economic consequences.

  Moody’s is predicting the loss of 200,000 jobs. Nomura Securities says it will knock 0.4% off of the GDP.

  A good 2 million unemployed families will have their last financial lifeline cut by the second week of July. The suffering of these families is about to increase many fold.

 In midst of the outcry from the struggling working class, came this statement from Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.):

 “It is very clear that the Republicans in the Senate want this economy to fail. They see that things are beginning to turn around…. In cynical political terms, it doesn’t serve them in terms of their election interests if things are beginning to turn around.”

 Now I like conspiracy theories more than most, maybe even too much, but I also recognize that describing a political opponent in 2-dimensional terms with evil intent is usually an indication of something missing from your theory.

  What is missing here is the concept of class interests.

Crossposted at Daily Kos

The Conspiracy of the Elite has always been able to throw the kill switch. It’s what they do. They kill whatever stands in their way. Whether it is the resistance to their domination by the common man. Or a “Leader” who doesn’t want to go along with their agenda of world domination. Or the Earth herself who does not yield to their rape and pillage without a fight. This Elite of banksters, financiers, industrialists, military professionals and philosophers of elite exceptionalism gather under names like Bilderberg, Trilateral, CFR, G8 and others in secret and public places always protected by a phalanx of kill switch security armed to euthanize the prying eyes of the public and those brave enough to resist.  

To deny this conspiracy of the elite is to deny the earth orbits the sun or the tides are effected by the moon. To deny an elite gathers in secret to decide the fate of nations or the value of money or to plan war and recession is to deny we need water and air to survive. It is a truth which is self-evident.

In the wake of the BP disaster, we’ve heard powerful stories from fishermen whose livelihoods may have been destroyed for decades or longer. However long it takes for the Gulf’s fish, oyster and shrimp harvests to recover, those who’ve made their livelihoods harvesting them will need to create a powerful common voice if they’re not going to continue to be made expendable. A powerful model comes from Seattle and Alaska salmon fisherman Pete Knutson, who has spent thirty-five years engaging his community to take environmental responsibility, creating unexpected alliances to broaden the impact of their voice, and in the process defeating massive corporate interests.

“You’d have a hard time spawning, too, if you had a bulldozer in your bedroom,” Pete reminds us, explaining the destruction of once-rich salmon spawning grounds by commercial development and timber industry clearcutting. Pete could have simply accepted this degradation as inevitable, focusing on getting a maximum share of dwindling fish populations. Instead, he’s gradually built an alliance between fishermen, environmentalists, and Native American tribes, persuading them to work collectively to demand that habitat be preserved and restored and to use the example of the salmon runs to highlight larger issues like global climate change.

The cooperation Pete created didn’t come easily: Washington’s fishermen were historically individualistic and politically mistrustful, more inclined, in Pete’s judgment, “to grumble or blame the Indians than to act.” But together, with their new allies, they gradually began to push for cleaner spawning streams, rigorous enforcement of the Endangered Species Act, and an increased flow of water over major regional dams to help boost salmon runs. They framed their arguments as a question of jobs, ones that could be sustained for the indefinite future. But large industrial interests, such as the aluminum companies, feared that these measures would raise their electricity costs or restrict their opportunities for development. So they bankrolled a statewide initiative to regulate fishing nets in a way that would eliminate small family fishing operations.