tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post3755163815060445158..comments2024-03-29T02:03:49.151-04:00Comments on History Unfolding: Institutional Failure David Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05020082243968071584noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-91176288025626690652016-02-28T11:55:05.320-05:002016-02-28T11:55:05.320-05:00The architects of the domestic and international e...The architects of the domestic and international economic systems launched circa 1945, which systems have now passed their allotted three score and ten, had the experience of political and economic systems breaking down catastrophically as well as the grand examples of Progressive institution building. In some ways, they also had in hand some great advantages in that the U.S. was self-sufficient and more advanced technologically and economically than the rest of the world -- economically and ideologically, it was well-suited to be an anchor for a world system, well-equipped to provide the stabilizing counter-weights needed for leadership, if it could overcome its own isolationist impulses.<br />.<br />We don't have architects in our current elite. Through the entire second half of the cycle that began in 1945 and passed its major inflection point in 1981, the U.S. has been dismantling those systems, disinvesting from those structures. The two great political Parties cooperated in that task of taking apart the New Deal and the International Order: one became a wrecking crew, the other a salvage operation. Their experience is that no matter how stupid their choices, the consequences, at least for themselves, usually turn out OK if not terrific. <br /><br />Particularly, for the major-league capitalists, the period since 1980 has marked an easy life. Disinvestment is great: you own a house, you raise the rent, you cut back on the maintenance -- your income increases, and despite all you've done wrong, the property appreciates in value, because interest rates decline. The people renting from you aren't doing that well, but, hey, who cares about the losers?<br />.<br />Now, we have a billionaire running for President -- never held office. Having inherited wealth, he's passed thru this period, flush with cash, his wealth increasing almost despite his questionable business decision-making, and he thinks he understands how the world works and the he, himself, must be a genius because his leaky boat has risen on the tide he thinks he commanded to come in.<br />.<br />We don't have the experience of the catastrophe. Or at least our elites do not. The catastrophes caused by the Clintons, Bushes and Obamas have mostly happened to other people, people far away or far down, and those responsible have never been called to account.<br />.<br />Interesting times.Bruce Wilderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09631065564839959376noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-78215180714096174682016-02-28T01:27:31.120-05:002016-02-28T01:27:31.120-05:00You are spot on as regards the failure to see the ...You are spot on as regards the failure to see the big picture. Those in the US and commenting on the situation there are treating this as an American problem, but it isn't. It's much bigger than that. In the UK, the Labour Party has fractured, with the general membership electing Jeremy Corbyn leader, over the heads of the Blairite/Brownite Members of Parliament, who haven't yet grasped that they are nationally unelectable due to the catastrophic adventure in Iraq. The Conservatives are similarly fractured, having lost the bulk of their right-wing voters to the United Kingdom Independence Party over membership in the European Union. And in Scotland a populist uprising has seen the Scottish Nationalist Party virtually wipe out the vote for the Conservatives, the Labour Party, and the Liberal-Democrats, in spite of the fact that it is clear that the majority of Scots don't support the main plank of the SNP, namely, Scottish independence. Similarly, in Greece, we see the rise of Syriza on the left and Golden Dawn on the far right. I'm sure that there are other, similar, examples, with which I'm less familiar (perhaps the continued rise of the far right parties in Israel?). This is a world-wide problem, and if you are right about the generational cycles of history, then it is likely that we are at one of those generational turning points which is going to produce a restructuring, but not, this time, on a national, American, scale, rather, on a world scale. <br /><br />You are also spot on with the failure of people to see the past. As an archaeologist, I deal every day in long-term history, tens of thousands of years, not tens. The other evening there was little of merit on television, so I persuaded my thirty-year-old son to watch The Maltese Falcon with me. He had never seen a Bogart film before and was mesmerized. It has long been a trivial grump of mine that the lists of 'one hundred best films' which one sees rarely include any film more than ten years old, because most people live so much in the present, are so ignorant of the past, that they know nothing of even the popular culture of eras before their own, let alone of the major events. This short-termism dooms us to repeat past mistakes. Great leaders of the past were fully aware of the past, and used it so far as one can, to guide their actions away from the pitfalls.Rupert Chapmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07007234333289329849noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-44268081841446038532016-02-28T00:55:41.622-05:002016-02-28T00:55:41.622-05:00On the subject of the big picture, historically: T...On the subject of the big picture, historically: The Universal City Red Line station, part of the greater Los Angeles Metro system, is paved with tiles telling how Los Angeles and California came to be. One part mentions how the arriving Spaniards thought the local Gabrieleños spoiled their children: "The padres complained that the natives treated their children like idols, because they lacked discipline." <br /><br />Was that a cultural standard, or an accident of history? Were the locals recovering from a recent war, famine, or other Crisis that made children prized and coddled? Or had there recently been improved welfare that allowed them to indulge and protect them? Nobody seems to consider such possibilities, instead dragging the observation into an indictment of colonialism or evidence of racism or whatever is seen as the Real Problem With Those Europeans. <br /><br />Because that's what they study, or know, or believe.<br /><br />Perhaps provincialism is cyclical - people concentrate their focus until everyone knows everything possible about their personal infinitesimals. Then either society implodes, or someone comes along to integrate the parts into a useful whole. <br /><br />Implosion seems more likely, though.<br /><br /><br /><br />Patrick Bowmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01164089046231635152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-41263970467656316922016-02-28T00:26:19.360-05:002016-02-28T00:26:19.360-05:00Professor
Forgive me for making another comment he...Professor<br />Forgive me for making another comment here rather than on my site.<br /><br />One of the interesting things, to me, about the mortgage backed housing bubble, is that this developing bubble in housing prices was not really difficult to see: it went on for years starting I guess in the late 1990s, early 2000s, it was obviously somewhat suspect based on low rates and very loose lending practices, no money down, inflated appraisal valuations, it was filled with newbie real estate investors buying and flipping properties, and it was national in scope. I was puzzled that other people, people whom I considered savvy people, did not see it developing as such.<br /><br />Of course, i had not studied the financial underpinnings of the boom, securitization of mortgages, but it was clear that there was a large bubble developing for some reason or other.<br /><br />I even warned people that they weren't going to like it when it unravelled. It, depressed properties with big mortgages, was not going to be like a stock you could simply sell, or a liquid investment you could also readily hedge.<br /><br />all the best<br /><br />Bozonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18078858723231122013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-14813048420924677392016-02-27T16:19:54.038-05:002016-02-27T16:19:54.038-05:00David
A magisterial essay.
One thing: re: the ...David<br /><br />A magisterial essay.<br /><br />One thing: re: the Michael Lewis book, read this [he completely missed it]<br /><br />https://www.propublica.org/article/the-magnetar-trade-how-one-hedge-fund-helped-keep-the-housing-bubble-going<br /><br />http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yves-smith/rahm-emanuel-and-magnetar_b_535827.html<br /><br />[how a US$1.4T sub prime bubble became $14T in losses to the wider economy]: LEVERAGECrocodileChuckhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10762442097044797842noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-14881690359342650772016-02-27T06:37:10.754-05:002016-02-27T06:37:10.754-05:00"Government is not the solution to our proble..."Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem." -Ronald Reagan 1981<br /><br />"the era of big government is over" -Bill Clinton 1996<br /><br />Those marching orders, given to us by both corporate-owned parties, have yet to be countermanded. They crowned the untrammeled free market King and appointed our government as his servant. When he screwed up in 2008, of course the corporate parties agreed that nothing too fundamental was wrong, in fact, they continued to hail the King. The assumption that the untrammeled free market had the divine right of unquestioned rule over us had become so deeply embedded.<br /><br />So now the people no longer believe that our political system serves the needs of the public. But with two corporate owned parties, and a corporate owned press, no one is there to explain to them that the untrammeled free market serves the needs of powerful corporate interests and doesn’t care at all about the needs of the people. The two parties they voted for created a plutocracy, a government of, by, and for the wealthy--why are most citizens so surprised that it doesn’t serve their needs?Gloucon Xhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05218027862578514587noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-26905189790194589402016-02-26T23:06:58.454-05:002016-02-26T23:06:58.454-05:00Professor
It is great to see you, once again, go i...Professor<br />It is great to see you, once again, go into issues other than party politics from a predominantly Democratic perspective, and into issues nearer to my concerns regarding underlying problems (myself a greedy choir to preach to, if you will). <br /><br />You call these institutional failures. Great term. <br /><br />I have called them political structural problems, at times, which to me means much the same kind of thing, really, or similar. <br /><br />My view, though, is that such problems go back to before the founding, and on this question, I do not know if there is much common ground between us.<br /><br />Still, bravo. Bravo. <br /><br />Best post I have read as an eager choir.<br /><br />all the bestBozonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18078858723231122013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-57916857205659607832016-02-26T15:42:06.251-05:002016-02-26T15:42:06.251-05:00Well said, David. Wish Milton Friedman were alive ...Well said, David. Wish Milton Friedman were alive to try to make some sense of it all. You've done a remarkable job here (so sayeth this Republican). I believe the rot is endemic. People in this country, whether Republican, Democrat or Independent feel it. We know something is wrong.<br /><br />Hence Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders taking populism to new heights. Trump is seen as a decision-maker, a guy who has the guts and balls to make the changes needed. And Sanders speaks from the socialist end of things as an agent of change. I've been watching presidential campaigns since Nixon-Kennedy in 1960...and this year's is the craziest of them all.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14093586972931925258noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-88281511064998631192016-02-26T15:01:46.592-05:002016-02-26T15:01:46.592-05:00Reality is ignored by the generations used to abst...Reality is ignored by the generations used to abstractions. As a civilization progresses it goes from primitive beliefs to abstraction. Current theories of physics like string theory are unproveable, akin to religion. Economics is, like psychology, pure theoretical nonsense. Everything going on in the political, social, economic, cultural environment is opinion based pseudoreligious theories cooked up with higher mathematical models to make it look scientifically respectable. Look behind the theory and you find interest groups, not objective rational, disinterested research. At this point in time in a civilization comes collapse as reality neccessarily takes over. In this case we have the idea that permanent economic growth in a limited world can provide endless satisfaction to an enlightened democratic citizenry. Obviously the world was not created for bipedal primates by a benevolent bearded godhead. Our enlightenment forefathers turned atheists forgot however to take into account this inconvenient fact into their political, economic and social theories. Be fruitful and multiply and dominate the earth remained our creed. Now we are reaping the whirlwind in terms of resource depletion, mssive overpopulation, climate change. A theory is always just a limited subset of a greater, undiscovered reality. Newton's laws hits its limits at light speed. Einstein noticed the problem and filled a theoretical gap. Gaian total systems theory and corresponding economics theory based on physics, energy and resource availability fills the current gap. It will take however a complete global economic collapse with war, famine, climate collapse to help these theories to standard doctrine instead of edge theories. The spiral of progress uses previous technique, such as mathematical modeling, to develop new views of reality. We must learn to limit our view of ourselves in the universe or die in the attempt to remain a demigod on earth.Rational science is not an excuse to fake evidence for our dream of what we want reality to be but rather a technique of discovery of objective reality. Generational theory states that just before a crisis objective reality is in the back seat and ego in the front seat. Whoever can control reality more wins and makes the new rules which lead directly to the next crisis due to the tendency of homo homo sapiens towards linear ad absurdum thought processes. The generational theory is embedded within a larger civilzational process of hundreds of years. USA took over from Eurasia slowly starting 400 years ago championing materialistic growth consumerist democracy. Pursuit of happiness is humanism pure. 90% less fish and wildlife since 1900 asks whose happiness. Fat, lazy, middle class i dustrial, global human consumers. How long till we've eaten our last seed grain?Energyflowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14476915209268786507noreply@blogger.com