On 'Freefall' (in the U.S. economy) a book by Joseph Stiglitz

Before moving on to something else I thought I should make a few comments on Stiglitz’s book about the 2008 Wall Street, Banking and Finance crash of the U.S. economy. It is an interesting book that reinforces many of the suspicions that one might have about the present U.S. corporate business environment.

The United States should man up to its substantial economic challenges if it is to hope to keep a comparative better standard of living than the rest of the world. And it must do so in a way that reduces consumption, increases efficiency, innovation and decreases the misery index for the poor and middle class. There are four primary challenges; 1) Reform the financial sector, Wall Street and banking breaking up ‘too big to fail’ banks on the way 2) Eliminate Bush II era tax cuts 3) Reduce federal spending, eliminate the public debt and better spend federal revenues 4) Create a sustainable self-reliant green energy policy.

Stiglitz’s Nobel Prize in economics might have been for his work on upgrading the Walrasian models ideas about market equilibrium-I don’t know, yet market equilibrium is not self-correcting as assumed in the neo-classical model. The market binges into the gutter without government regulation, perhaps from overdoses of irrational exuberance and the leverage of wealth and power detaching from neo-realism. The point of the free market is to serve the interests of the people. The emergent Chinese market may become a better model for real economic capitalism than that of the United States in the years ahead, as the latter is encumbered with extremist rhetoric about a perfect, unregulated utopian free market even as it piles up public debt and requires corporate welfare from public bail outs to function.

I am not at all optimistic that the United States will move toward more government regulation of Wall Street, banking and finance. President Obama in December 2010 was a cheerleader for extending Bush II era tax cuts. The financial class with high pay and bonuses don’t want higher taxes-they just want government bailouts and insider sweetheart deals from the Fed.

Stiglitz pointed out the financial sector took more than 40% of Wall Street profits before the crash, and that the manufacturing sector of the U.S. economy today is just 11.5%. Financial perfidy, too big to fail (or exist) banks and a complex web of risky financial products has made the health of the U.S economy problematic.

One amidst several remedies suggested by Stiglitz was creation of a world reserve currency. That did set me to wonder if an electronic currency signed on to by the world’s major players might not be instantly available and transparent.

Another idea was that of perfect information and perfect competition. Plainly it does not exist in the present business world. In the home mortgage crisis, in the securitization of mortgages where even the Chinese Government owned substantial numbers of Fanny Mae bonds, the average buyer may have had little understanding of the complex web of corporate and banking business existing below the surface affect everything from variable rate mortgages to employment.

If perfect information is not a fact modern corporatism, if obscure mathematically complex financial products are sold off exchanges, might not Internet search engines in some way move to bring perfect information absent from neoclassical models?

Improved Internet search engines can develop lists of ranked product prices. The lowest possible price of any given product available in a nation such as the U.S.A. could be assured by an Internet search theoretically. If a widget, or my science fiction book ‘St. Novilistricka Dimensions’, is available on the global market, an Internet search protocol might quickly discover the location of the lowest possible cost for a buyer; that at least seems something of an improvement over the neo-classical model.

Solid State Economics-A few websites

Steady state economics takes an entirely different approach than classical economics toward natural resource use. Since there are real limits to use of finite natural resources intelligent design of governing economic philosophy is requisite for rational Earth habitation of mankind.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady_state_(macroeconomics)

http://dieoff.org/page88.htm An article by the economist Herman Daly

http://steadystate.org/discover/definition/

http://www.eoearth.org/article/Steady_state_economy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady_state

http://www.necsp.org/about-us/public-policy/steady-state-economy.html

http://www.amazon.com/Steady-State-Economics-Second-New-Essays/dp/155963071X author Herman Daly

Jesus Christ & the Phenomenon of Mind

In reading the gospel book of Luke there is an account of the Lord on the cross. Obviously Jesus Christ was personally experiencing pain abundantly. The account of how the Lord experienced that temporal phenomena is a valuable insight into His attitude toward the phenomenality of mind and it's relation to the body.

Cartesian philosophical duality aside the mind does seem like a stranger to the body sometimes during extreme insult to the body. As the body fails in health as it inevitably will ,one becomes aware that the mind has an unstable, finite temporal vehicle for support. The mind too shuts down as the body dies. Some find that thought troubling, while others anticipate that it is like going to sleep. The Lord, according to the account provided by the Apostle Luke, commended his Spirit unto God before his mind too, died.

Today, in the era of quantum mechanics and the advent of quantum computing, even today when news of the first full mapping of the brain has been completed by science

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/04/worlds-first-human-brain-map-u.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news

it might be easier for people to form even a technical idea of how it might be possible to reassemble or resurrect the mind of a human from stored information. It is easy to comprehend that an omnipotent God would have no trouble at all resurrecting the human spirit (whatever that is-even the data mapping of a mind).

As the Lord experienced the agony of the crucifixion and its aftermath it might have been something of a relief to actual feel the impending relief from the pain of life. It is in life that the pain was so intense, and in death-that the Lord evidently experienced completely as he needed to rely upon God the Father to manage His Spirit after death-that the victory of the Lord appeared. The Lord Jesus was resurrected on the third day after his death. That was a victory for all of the elect.

quote from the King James version...

Luke 23: " 40But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation?

41And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss.

42And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.

43And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.

44And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour.

45And the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst.

46And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost."

A Vote of No Confidence in 2012 Congressional Budget Debate

President Obama generally has continued the Bush policies regarding U.S. economic management acting as a conservative since taking office. He has bailed out banks and forced two manufacturing corporations into bankruptcy. He has signed off on a Bush II era tax cut extension. Some of the Wall Street regulation reforms were eliminated in the 2011 budget. The President left much of the Bush II era economic managers in office such as Tim Geitner, Ben Bernanke and Larry Summers (Treasury Secretary of the Deregulating Clinton administration). The President's policies may lead to further Wall Street, Banking, and Finance Sector perfidy ahead.

Reading Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz's 2010 book ('Free Fall') on the 2007-2008 U.S. economic meltdown confirms several observations I have had about the conduct of the Obama Presidency on the economy; the President is a sycophant of policy enabling the Wall Street/Banking/Financial sector swindlers to renew their assault on American employment and earnings security as the produce nothing sector manufacturers new ways to trim U/S/ rubes of their life opportunities.

Fundamentally, there is no choice between Democrat and Republican parties that would make any difference in the Presidential election of 2012. Each party will work against U.S. interests and support those management class M.B.A.s with little equity in the corporations they work for taking multi-million dollar bonuses, outsourcing industry, killing the national ecosphere, flooding the nation with cheap labor from Mexico and discovering new financial instruments to swill the innocent working class. The poor do not exist except as highway lint in the high end bottled water with a sprig lunch set.

Monetary policy is not at the heart of the 2007-2008 meltdown I think. In reading Joseph Stiglitz's 2010 book 'Free Fall' (he won the 2001 Nobel Prize for economics) I got a few more ideas about the issue.

Monetary policy on what interest rate to lend to banks at, and how much money to print is set buy the Federal Reserve. Even with low interest rate the banks can get the money and do whatever they want with it. Banks do not need to lend the money responsibly to small businesses or innovative tech start ups-they in fact can create financial instruments, housing bubbles and a number of financial products to increase their profit in a way that is harmful to the U.S. economy.

I believe now that financial deregulation of banks and a failure of regulation of Wall Street and the financial service sector was the reason for the recession of 2007-2008. Bush II also deregulated war making with Congress going along with the idiot President starting a protracted kinetic military action without oversight.

Wall Street is not self-correcting, and in the raving national broadcast industry communications swamp extolling immorality, corruption of being stupid in the immediate temporal exstasis (now) the moral thermostat is set at jungle for derivatives, credit swaps, predatory lending to home buyers with the mortgages then sold to pension funds etc. President Obama and the Democrats have continued the policy of Bush II in that regard. Obviously neither party has an interest in solid state economics.

Money supply (M1) is important, yet in a rotten moral investment class climate liquidity is no assurance that cash will be spent where it should.

Hitler, Lenin and Stalin Were Not Men of Ideas

Hitler, Lenin and Stalin were not men of ideas; they were action figures; political actors timing their ascent to political power. These men were community organizers rather than independent thinkers. Rather than philosophers they were social manipulators.

Posterity has not brought humanity to regard the ideas of Hitler, Lenin and Stalin much. It is fair to say that Karl Marx was a man of ideas-yet he actually failed to be a man of political revolution in fact; Karl Marx spent much of his life working in the British Library and trying to feed his large family instead of organizing a Crystalnacht, planning a Beer Hall putsch, inventing a way to purge a society of many of its people through death or purging the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of its leaders. These acts were the works of men of act; Hitler, Lenin and Stalin.

Ideas are the currency of human liberty, of human invention, of the power to imagine possibilities before actualizing them. Oppressive governments and totalitarian regimes have forever sought to kill free thought. Today the world is rich with oppressive governments denying the freedom of expression and reading requisite for the growth of human social reason. Even corporatism inheriting the world following the collapse of Soviet Communism has tendencies to limit free speech through numerous means. Very few executives venture to express any sort of political opinion that is not sycophantic of their employer’s interest. As the networking of corporate control spreads around the globe real independent political expression may decline for replacement with tidal waves of sycophants even if bifurcated as in the U.S.A. presently.

If Christianity today in the first world needed a reorganized form of ecclesiastical structure of transition from a hierarchical to a priesthood of believers form, the hierarchical priesthood would, as in prior errors, be tempted if not obligated to supported the hierarchical concentrated economic powers of the day-especially now since the hierarchical priesthood would largely demote themselves from their pedestals and become peer Christians if they did. A Christianity dedicated to reinforcement of global corporatism is obviously one in danger of becoming the worldly church putting actual Christians out.

A global corporatism oppressing free thought by their employees and through the communications media they control as well as via sympathetic government actions such as giving radio wavelengths to the wealthy rather than for citizen podcast use is not unlike the historical economic agencies that existed within authoritarian contexts that sought to repress free thought and speech as it was rightly regarded as a danger to the concentrated wealth and power of the day.

Some might argue in error that Hitler, Lenin and Stalin were intellectually productive. Stalin for example as a youth was placed by his parents in an orthodox Christian school-the choice for the poor. He received a scholarship to an Orthodox Theological Seminary at Tblisi.

Some say that the seminaries of that era were something like Madrassa of today in poorer regions of the world; not an excellent place for education, yet Tblisi Georgia was a restive place able to provide free, unofficial readings in revolution against teh Tsar.

Stalin seemed to do well at the Theology school however he reportedly was rebellious and read forbidden materials. Also uncertain to me is the amount of time he spent there. Possibly attending from age 12, he was cast out from the school in 1899. A wikipedia article notes that he missed his final exam possibly being unable to a afford the back-loaded tuition. Alternatively, according to some sources such as Isaac Deutcher I seemed to recollect, Stalin was already involved in revolutionary meetings and was soon imprisoned. Stalin's is not the life of a sincere intellectual, but that of an opportunist, worldly promoter of his own political interests.

Adolph Hitler was not an intellectual either. As atwenty-something drafted into the first world war he was the son of an Austrian wife-beating drunk. The young Adolph walked his father home from the tavern routinely as he was too inebriated to walk the walk of the sober. Eventually Hitler did compose a book-the infamous Mein Kamp while in prison. Yet as an aspiring political party rtevolutionary he needed to write something in order to stay socially relevent while cooling his heels. The book-terrible raving that it is, was dictated to a near-genius (the guy that ended his life in Spandau Prison) who was his Alex Halley. Actually, Malcom X's telling of his story to Halley turned out much better than Adolph's.

Hitler was a man of action surging ahead with the help of the homosexual militant Ernst Rohm and his gayed up S.A. terminating social, poltiical opposition until he in turn purged Rohm and the S.A. of the gay elite in the 'night of the long knives' after cutting a deal with the elite Werhmacht to get support as the Chancellor of Germany.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_R%C3%B6hm

Lenin would be the most close of the three to being fairly regarded as an intellectual. Actually most of his writing occurred after becoming the first among equals in the prot-Soviet state. Lenin was a solid political organizer who out-maneuvered even the brilliant poltical writer Leon Trotsky for leadership of the pre-revolutionary Bolshevik Party. lenin did not lead the Kronstaadt naval fortress mutiny however, and when the revolution occurred was far away in western Europe somplace.

Lenin was a correspondence school lawyer who's brother was executed for taking part in a plot top assassinate the Tsar. Lenin had little chance of being trusted by the Russian imperial elite and joined the revolutionary ranks against the Tsar. It is not at all certain that the Bolshevik Party would have been successful in revolting against the Tsar if the Tsar had not first completely bungled the war of Russia versus Germany. Tsar Nicholas II was a nice guy and a terrible political and military leader.

Lenin was brought through Germany on a sealed train to take over leadership of the new post-imperial communist government. The Germany elite had probably arranged for their support in exchange for Lenin's agreement to withdraw Russia from the war and give up the Ukraine to Germany in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk later.

Lenin was a clever community organizer, an intellectual of many words and few lasting ideas who did design the transformation of the imperial government into a communist government, and a synthetic man of action-political designer of middling success. Lenin was leader of the Soviet Union only until 1924, and Stalin liquidated his political structure of the New Economic Policy as well as virtually all of the Bolshevik Party veteran revolutionary leaders. Thus Lenin was a politician rather than a thinker, and not sufficiently aware of the nature of the people in the communist party. Stalin may have poisoned Lenin some have speculated, in such a way that he suffered a series of strokes, the last of which was fatal, and occurred while Trotsky was far away from Moscow and unable to attend the all-important funery proceedings and political selection of the new fearless leader-Joseph Stalin (Djugashvilli).

Free Speech May Decline in Dissent as Corporatism Flows

Corporate networking globally may bring about a reduction in free speech as a function of the number of employees as a percent of a nation's population and GDP increases. Advocates of free speech may urge the liberation from authoritarian governments most in locales without substantial or complete global corporate economic control.

In restive Moslem nations such as Iran without free speech pervasively as well as extremely limited U.S. corporate investment a transition in Government friendly to a global corporate takeover is supported by U.S. administrations since the Shah left Iran. One must be aware that the replacement of one sort of oppression of free speech with another is not an absolute political improvement.

The corporate world as a global network of capitalized and concentrated wealth and political power is very reluctant to allow free speech those conflicts with corporate allocations of political and economic power. The repression of free speech via purchase of outlets of free speech or deletion of contents, or a number of other methods such as termination of employment for expressing contentious political opinions is a fact of life that evolves in sophistication as the control of wealth is increased into concentrated elite control. The challenge for democracy and real free enterprise to survive in that environment is challenging, and perhaps unlikely if one believes that even the hiwerarchical Christian priesthood supports the concentration of corporate wealth along the road to Armageddon.

It is possible to change capitalism and make it fit for the modern era by limiting the number of employees that any corporation might have at a level that reinforces quality rather than quantity and networking oligarchic economic control. With a totalized geographic control of human liberty in the concentrated wealth of the few not only is free speech repressed, a free market with fair competition by individual inventive entrepreneurs is repressed too through a vast web of corporate power.
The United States should not operate with a 1920s era political philosophy of a bifurcated capitalist-communist dialectical competition. It ought to modernize, defend real U.S. national ecological, economic and political interests and rectify capitalism that a million business starts might bloom instead of thousands of Wall Street networked relationships take over all of the American economy leading to the poverty of tens of millions for life.

president Obama Urges Tax Increases & Trillions of Dollars of Future Non-Spending

The President’s new budget plans a near four trillion dollar reduction in future federal spending over a hypothetical twelve year period. He anticipates that the federal deficit could be reduced to just 2.5% of U.S. GDP in four years (still a very large number).

Having been a cheerleader for extending Bush tax cuts in December 2011, the President now urges Bush II era tax cuts be rescinded for those receiving more than a quarter million per year in compensation for their valuable time. The unrealistic expectation that House Republicans might allow tax cuts has less chance for passage in Congress than the proverbial snowball in Cuba.

One deduces that the President plans a summer closure of government to stimulate vacation travel and spending.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6163095n

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-13/obama-is-said-to-target-4-trillion-deficit-reduction-in-12-years-or-less.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_exclusive/20110413/pl_yblog_exclusive/obamas-budget-plan-leaves-him-boxed-in

http://usgovernmentspending.com/downchart_gs.php?title=Military_Industrial_Complex&year=1960_2013&units=p&chart=30-total

President Obama & Democrat Senate Sign Off on Repeal of Dodd-Frank Wall Street Financial Reform Law

Since President Obama has consistently done the bidding of the Republicans during his time in office signing off on repeal of the Wall Street Financial Reform law in this last 38 billion dollar budget cut bill for the last fiscal year, signing off on Bush II era tax cuts, continuing the Bush Afghanistan policy and gaying up the military (a global corporate marketing strategy) it might be better to elect a Republican President (hopefully with hidden green nationalist leanings) to accomplish the job in a fashion that might work. If one is launching an aircraft one must go full speed rather than half-hearted speed to get off the ground safely.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodd%E2%80%93Frank_Wall_Street_Reform_and_Consumer_Protection_Act

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/04/962460/-Senate-Republicans-push-for-full-Wall-Street-reform-repeal

Allowing Wall Street to have a round two of trimming the United States and investing abroad is the wrong way to go. Neither has President Obama closed the Guantanamo Bay detention facility or directed the U.S. economy toward and ecological economic direction.

No corporation with more than 5000 employees should be allowed to do business in the United States, and no citizen or foreigner should be allowed to own stock in more than three U.S. corporations. Competition should be increased so a real free market can exist. As it is there is only an oligharchy of free market heirs owning vast financial and business networks concentrating wealth globally. If the founders of the U.S.A. were as unable and unwilling to reform the way things were as the present congresspersons Americans still would be part or the British Empire (or are we still as a sub-unit of a new world order?).

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/04/05/paul-ryan-wall-street-budget/

Arab Spring of Fomenting Revolution & Future Gas Prices

Physicians as a first contact with a patient bear in mind the premise of ‘first do no harm’. In making American foreign policy regarding the 2011 spring of populist uprising our policy planners might heed that advice. For those of us out of the loop, those politicians in the noose of broadcast media and populist twittering may occupy uncertain ground-perhaps shaky, regarding their ability to safeguard oil supplies for sale to Europe and the U.S.A.

Of course some of us don’t drive and have more concern for the well being of out fellow human beings abroad than their ability to produce and sell oil for a low price. Even so, the uncertainty in the Middle East and across North Africa and further that was anticipated for some years and planned since at least last year evidently may lead to revolutions, counter-revolutions and experimental states of affairs of government form, sectarian hegemony and economic efficiency. It is easy to imagine a future in which cutting off oil production as a civil economic weapon may become a primary political device for those vying for national and regional sectarian power.

If Saudi Arabia, Iraq and other oil producing members of OPEC with vast oil reserves become destabilized and their oil fields temporarily put out of service one can anticipate world oil shortages with per gallon prices reaching twelve dollars in the United States. The U.S.A. for some time (since the end of the cold war) has enjoyed incompetent political leaderships that has failed to transition to a low entropy-high tech transportation infrastructure and hence is vulnerable to foreign economic control. George Washington’s farewell address anticipated this sort of thing where the nation is reliant upon foreign agreements.

The U.S. foreign policy should be to transition to a new form of national transportation infrastructure that does not require foreign oil. To fail to adapt and to instead travel further down the fossil fuel transportation on highway paradigm is a consequence of the rich investing overseas to the detriment of the U.S.A. The Congress seems like a bought and paid for group of flunkies for globalists. They may be developing a future of perennial crisis, high unemployment and costly gasoline as the Moslem world realizes itself in history as a rising power through populist contests disrupting sale of oil to the U.S. East coast and Europe.

That Quantum Elixir ©2011GaryCGibson (poem)

Seventeen colors that arise with the wind
flowing into morning light within
the gem forest gathering
in this place of being
where echoes of waveforms expand
normal dreams of moving toward water withstand without indices of structure

As ideas become hardened
broadcast manure spreaders
comparing ostensive ideas as discrete packeted a priori
clumps of common immorality plastered
ecospheric arguments for integrity
the world is poisoned in pseudoaffluence
nature is forced through factories of maladroit quantum elixr
named necessary consumption.