The Democrats have to face up to the fact they only control one branch of the government: the Senate. The House and the White House are under the control of the Republicans. Consequently a Senate filibuster is often the only option left to stop any of this.
There may be one other chance to block this compromise. Boehner's office is saying it does not have enough Republican votes for approval, and therefore needs at least 50 Democratic votes to put this through. I don't know how true this statement is, because just a few days ago it was being said Boehner would be forced to resign if he couldn't get his own plan through without Democratic help. But this of course is a compromise, without his name on it, and everybody is supposed to feel all warm and fuzzy over the chance to do something bipartisan. If the Democrats in the House choose not to feel all warm and fuzzy, and stick it to their president, it would certainly be a dramatic statement of disgust with the White House.
We would then be right back to the default scenario. The Republicans would blame the House Democrats for not supporting the grand compromise. The Democrats would blame the House Republicans for not even having enough votes to carry the House. they would also blame the White House for not consulting with them. But at least some Democrats could say they stood up for traditional party values.
Once again, the discussion is riddled with political acts and political consequences without regard to the reality of failed monetary policy in evidence for decades...Its plain and simple--actually its in-your-face--the same old Washington culture, that whines and whines about failed political agendas and failed Party leadership...Where is the intelligent application of sound scientific analysis, sound economic principles and the resultant recognition that the culture and its posturing and maneuvering by Congressional leaders and the incumbent administration is once again light years away from the best interest of the nation...Get smart, America...In the meantime, God save us all.
I was going to make a mention of this in the article but wanted to keep things short. The immediate next stage for the Republicans will be to demand a tax amnesty. There are so many noble corporations out there who have kept their revenue offshore due to our "unfair" tax system, and they are just dying to bring this money home in order to create jobs! Sen. Mike Crapo (R.,Idaho) make this very argument this morning on television. I didn't think they'd be on this so quickly, but they are on a roll so why not go for everything in their playbook.
This will allow General Electric to keep their effective tax rate at 0%, while they and so many other multinationals play games with the tax system to avoid contributing anything to the US. I guess since they figure their factories are all overseas and 50%+ of their earnings are overseas, they owe nothing to this country anymore. That and the fact that they own the Congress.
By the way, don't expect any jobs to be created after they get their tax amnesty. The money will go into stock buybacks and mergers and acquisitions, just like it did last time. Meanwhile, the US is out about $100 billion a year in tax revenue.
Many of us have been highly skeptical of Obama all along. He made the sandwich with Geithner and Summers and stuffed it with Democrats in Name Only (DINOs) with Tea Party dressing. Now it's served up to a struggling nation and we're expected to eat it.
Is there an heroic effort that might emerge to stop this. Even if Sanders tries (and I don't know the rules on this bill), you are right. The GOP Senators would be quickly reinforced by those Democrats remaining who voted for the Bankruptcy Reform bill way back. They must love this.
The set up completed, The Money Party moves in for the kill.
They think no one will notice. They're wrong.
Excellent statement and timely, right on the moment of betrayal.
Anyone handicapping negotiations knows that it matters not a whit where they begin or what the score is in the 6th inning; it's where it's going to end up, and about that there's been, or should have been, no doubt at any point:
Cheshire cat smiling ubercynic Mitch McConnell (who is one right-winger who I have 0% doubt knows all about the electoral rigging done and to come) was going to write the plan with Grover Norquist, it was going to have Zero on the revenue end and crippling cuts to the hated New Deal programs (finally), it was going to be all about "drowning government in the bathtub," and Obama wasn't even going to be given enough 'cover' to survive in 2012 (when the 'disaffection of his base' will be the cover story explaining his defeat as well as the demise of the Democratic senators riding his negative coattails).
The Democrats in the Senate will be insane to pass the McConnell "compromise" but, being insane, they will, leaving Obama a choice whether to sign and seal his own electoral doom or veto and plunge the world into a financial tailspin. Now all this was politically preordained when the GOP netted a spectacular 125 House seats (mostly for Tea Party wingnuts) on a modest Generic Congressional Ballot lead of 9% last November (By way of comparison, the Democrats' 26% Generic Congressional Ballot advantage netted them only 58 House seats in 2006, the last off-year election. That's 125/9 vs. 58/26 and that's statistically impossible in the absence of wholesale rigging.) and essentially everything in between was Kabuki and not worth paying the slightest attention to.
Yes it is a war on you, as Michael puts it, and they're slipping blanks in your guns and dum-dum bullets in theirs each November. We won't even begin to be able to fight back until we take over the vote counting process, make it public and observable with Hand-Counted Paper Ballots. Period.
Folks, I have looked high and low on "deal" specifics and cannot find a thing. It's ridiculous. $1 trillion of cuts that one cannot find out what they are.
Yet another headline buzz I will assume, and probably specifics won't be revealed until after the deed is done.
Yet to be seen because use of chained CPI for COLA adjustments is a major, major cut to social security benefits.
Seems politicians are keeping this close to the chest, but if it turns out to be a glorified "save face" in order to raise the debt ceiling, well, then, maybe we should write a series of articles about real reforms to reduce the debt and deficit that won't hurt anybody.
If someone else knows differently, that social security chained CPI is part of this deal, please write a comment with a link reference. Thanks.
Once we can find out the details, if ever, I'll write up an instapopulist.
You cannot find out the cuts and there is a narrative. Supposedly it's $1 trillion now with $1.4 trillion by committee with a trigger to cut Medicare and Defense if what the committee recommends isn't passed.
Now, is social security part of these $1 trillion? Probably, but not confirmed.
No tax increases for sure, but odds on no closing of tax loopholes either.
That's the issue. The media, especially FOX, completely ignores what the polls actually say when it comes to the voice of the people.
I watched some Obama representative on Meet the Press and shuddered. They are saying up is down and down is up by pushing trade deals well known to cause more jobs to be lost.
It appears, fundamentally the ones left out of the political discourse are the American people and it's by far disgusting that politicians claim they represent the American people. They clearly do not.
If they represented the American people this wouldn't even be happening, they would have reformed trade, put together a manufacturing initiative, not given the banks even more power and the list goes on and on.
Osellout started out negotiating a raise in revenue and a cut spending position which he assured us would be “fair and balanced”. Using his interpretation, he clearly has a big future with Fox News.
There is an argument, in WTO terms, for a 15% ABT (on all imports whatever the source) as long as Congress enacts carefully worded legislation like calling it "port-use fees" or whatever ... but you're right, oil is the controlling reality at this time and for the foreseeable future.
So, it's a very bad idea to mess with GATT, regardless of declining popularity of the WTO nationally and globally.
I'm not worried about the WTO paper tiger -- just another inefficient systemically-corrupt bureaucracy. We are all of us accustomed to dealing with inefficient unnecessary bureaucracies and grateful for any exceptions to that rule. Part of life. SNAFU.
The WTO might allow tariffs on China and that is because China currency manipulates. If they didn't, no.
But the point of any trade remedies is to improve the U.S. economy, create jobs and reduce the trade deficit...
so you cannot start, out of the gate, pushing for a policy that would actually cause the U.S. to enter another recession.
It's tricky and timing but first up is to worry about the cause and effects, not the WTO.
the WTO has a delay in hearing cases anyway. For example, by the time the WTO hears a China case...it doesn't matter. China already wiped out that U.S. sector and captured the market for themselves anyway.
By the time the case makes it to the WTO, those U.S. businesses are already out of business due to China's unfair dumping or tariffs or incentives or whatever they did which forms the WTO case against them.
Look, you don't need to "research" an ABT for obviously I am already aware of the argument and I'm saying it's just plain a bad idea for the obvious reasons.
You don't realize how dependent the U.S. economy is, U.S. manufacturing is, U.S. production is on oil.
What do you think turns on the factories and drives the shipping? Oil.
Generally black and white solutions for colored and dynamic problems is a real bad idea.
See, you're still a broken record, thinking "I just don't understand". Obviously I do and I'm saying it's plain a bad idea and wrong for the reasons I've already stated.
"This site's motto is no economic fiction and that means you have to check your philosophy at the door and whip out your calculator and adjust."
Dude! Whiz!
I already conceded your point! I do nave a critical point of view as valid as anyone's, but I am no longer pushing agenda of imposing tariff on oil imports, as you see when reading my words. You have convinced me, although I suggest that there may be some other way of handling the problem within a framework that includes the dirty little word 'tariff'.
EP has already done the stats for me, showing that China's rake on imports at the border is about 20% and other countries similar. Mexico has a tariff on our goods (unless we allow destruction of U.S. independent truckers), Canada has a VAT. Meanwhile, our rake on imports is between 1% and 2%.
I'm just saying rather than what amounts to a trade war here and a trade war there, prosecuted by our feckless political leaders -- where we concede cases in WTO quasi-judicial fora -- why not erect a seawall, a dyke, against the entire incoming destructive tide?
In my final paragraph, I honor and credit your pragmatism and note that I am NOT pushing my economic philosophy as something to be mechanically applied to economic policy. No ideology should be so applied.
I understand that you do not want anything further reminding EP readers of the ABT option, at least nothing short of a well-researched and documented article, that's fine and I'll get to work on that, but please ... I'm not bat-shit crazy, not yet anyway.
Robert Oak and Bernie Sanders tell the truth, but not the whole truth. I'm not blaming them for that, since the whole truth will not be brought out into the open for at least a couple of years, if ever.
We have been looking at the political BS and contemplating the likely collateral damage, but we have scarcely done more than hint at likely profiteering motivations of at least some of the players.
It isn't as though scams of financial profiteers, connected with political opportunists sharing in the financial profiteering, are unknown to our history or to world history!
It isn't as though ambitious politicians are all men of high principle who would never conflate their notions of the welfare of the nation with plans for amassing their own private fortunes!
I suggest that we look back at Black Friday, 1869, when a small group of financial profiteers, led by the notorious Jim Fisk and Jay Gould, conducted a secret operation involving moles within the White House and the Department of Treasury. This conspiracy undoubtedly threw the nation into the Depression of 1869-1870, even though severity of that depression was mitigated by the last-minute sobering up of President Ulysses S. Grant to order the sale of $4,000,000 worth of gold. (Grant was a notorious alcoholic.) The amount, $4,000,000 was a lot of money and a lot of gold back in 1869.
Could we have a parallel today?
Instead of the White House, we have John Does (#1, #2, #3, etc.), to-be-identified, including one or more John Does who are members and leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Instead of the political cover story (1869) that pushing up the price of gold would benefit U.S. farmers in selling a bumper wheat crop to Europe, we have the mantra (2011) of "no tax increases only spending cuts" (masquerading as 'fiscal conservatism').
Instead of the moderate depression of 1869-1870 (comparatively moderate, although many individuals and families were ruined in that event), we have the prospect of extending the Great Recession (2008) into the Second Great Depression (2008 - 20??).
We have often noted the religious tone of TP rhetoric. As with many quasi-religious movements, self-anointed leaders of the TP may well be profiteering opportunists. In particular, is it unthinkable that TP opportunists have been limited-partnered up with profiteering financiers/conspirators to exploit insider information to play the precious metals and currency markets like an over-amped electric guitar? Or, considering the domination of computerized trading, it may be more like playing a synthesizer on steroids, complete with real-time sampling and systems of differential equations predicting systemic feedback effects.
Insider information on the timing of announcements or the timing of a negotiation or the cutting off of a negotiation can be worth $Billions to speculators playing the precious metals and international currency markets. Some will suggest that the White House and Secretary of the Treasury are also involved, as well as the obvious involvement of congressional leaders. I can only say that if I knew the whole story, I'd have to be dead ... but nothing would surprise me in this day and age.
During the reconstruction era after the American Civil War, the United States government issued a large amount of money that was backed by nothing but credit. After the war ended, people commonly believed that the U.S. Government would buy back the “greenbacks” with gold. In 1869, a group of speculators, headed by James Fisk and Jay Gould, sought to profit off this by cornering the gold market. Gould and Fisk first recruited Grant’s brother-in-law, a financier named Abel Corbin. They used Corbin to get close to Grant in social situations, where they would argue against government sale of gold, and Corbin would support their arguments. Corbin convinced Grant to appoint General Daniel Butterfield as assistant Treasurer of the United States. Butterfield agreed to tip the men off when the government intended to sell gold.
In the late summer of 1869, Gould began buying large amounts of gold. This caused prices to rise and stocks to plummet. After Grant realized what had happened, the federal government sold $4 million in gold. On September 20, 1869, Gould and Fisk started hoarding gold, driving the price higher. On September 24 the premium on a gold Double Eagle ... was 30 percent higher than when Grant took office. But when the government gold hit the market, the premium plummeted within minutes. Investors scrambled to sell their holdings, and many of them, including Corbin, were ruined. Fisk and Gould escaped significant financial harm.
Subsequent Congressional investigation was chaired by James A. Garfield. ... Butterfield resigned from the U.S. Treasury. Henry Adams, who believed that President Ulysses S. Grant had tolerated, encouraged, and perhaps even participated in corruption and swindles, attacked Grant in an 1870 article entitled The New York Gold Conspiracy.
Although Grant was not directly involved in the scandal, his personal association with Gould and Fisk gave clout to their attempt to manipulate the gold market. ... Grant had personally declined to listen to Gould's ambitious plan to corner the gold market, since the scheme was not announced publicly ... Gould had promoted the plan to Grant as a means to help farmers sell a bountiful 1869 wheat crop to Europe.
I know, I know. Robert Oak will call this CT, but I maintain there is enough to it to constitute an appropriate topic for an EP comment at this time. It's often said that for an idictment of homicide in the first degree, all you need is to prove means, motive and opportunity. Did the perps have the means, are there grounds for alleging a motive, and, did they create the opportunity? Federal conspiracy law is extraordinarily broad. Clarence Darrow wrote that a conviction of conspiracy doesn't even require proving any other criminal act.
I also hope everyone that voted for these TEA party members in 2010, now realise
they all ran with hidden agendas and will vote them all out in 2012 !!
Watch all of the recall elections in WI, starting in Aug. 2011 and the governor recall
in Jan. 2012, hopefully this will be the start of the end to the TEA party across the country!!
Any reduction in spending during a recession/depression is unwise since it furthers the contraction in the economy. The reason here is clear. There's no point in paying down debt during recovery that never takes place. That is true and has been universally.
What's absent from you rhetoric:
- stopping offshoaring;
- stopping the import of necessary professional and lower level workers;
- ending costly and illegal wars; - and dumping the tax cuts from Bush;
- the theft of the Social Security surplus every year to fund deficits that fund purchases of goods and services from the Tea Party billionaire patrons.
You also forget to mention that we would never have heard about the Tea Party were it not for Freedomworks and Americans for Prosperity. They made the organiation, they fund it, and they call the shots. Where do these right win lobbying organizations get their money? From the richest families in the United States.
This is legal and part of the process but lets get real here in the midst of your preaching and propaganda how about mentioning that fact? Actualy, I know why you woudn't. It would show that this whole debate is a sham and promoted by those who will profit from crisis, the Te Party Patrons.
Here is the precise reason that we need a crisis, whether Tea Party or not. Rational analysis of the budget situation would call for much different acdtion that is going to emerge.
If you back out the Bush tax cut give-aways and the two wars, the budget deficit goes down nearly 50%. If you restore the economy to non recessionary status, you get another huge benefit and the current deficit is round $100 billion.
Medicare is an emerging problem but there is no crisis now unless you dig war and recessions.
But that's not the Tea Party billionair agenda is it.
Look, I've written many overviews as well as analysis on oil price increases being highly correlated to recessions.
It would be very nice if you paid attention to the economic statistics and adjust accordingly.
Pushing some agenda that doesn't fix the cause/effects/statistics, facts of economics is just as bad as these bat shit crazies going on air trying to claim that the current economic malaise is a result of budget deficits.
This site's motto is no economic fiction and that means you have to check your philosophy at the door and whip out your calculator and adjust.
The last thing you want to do right now is increase oil costs, PERIOD.
Promoting a 15% ABT is still a good rallying shout-out, because the people surely are capable of great support around the so-long-now forbidden word 'tariff'. Our corporate-govenment media, along with most of academia, have been suppressing even the thought of 'tariffs' for about 15 years now. Therefore, being as reactionary as the next guy, I use the word wherever and as often as I can.
The reason for an across-the-board tariff is to reconstruct a sane protectionist policy while avoiding preference systems, which are all essentially examples of political corruption. In other words, the reason for ABT is to reverse the situation where U.S. producers are effectively forced to subsidize foreign competition.
I am unconvinced that there are not ways to moderate the consequences of oil supply shock within an ABT system. Conversely, I am not sure that oil supply shock can be evaded by avoiding an ABT, nor am I convinced that the ABT approach can be ruled out as the best structural reform even considering, or perhaps especially considering, the problem of oil supply shock.
I don't think that targeting China will accomplish anything. Yes, China is tops on a list, but we should not confuse any one entry in the list with the list as a whole. Suppose, by way of analogy, that we stopped all the outsourcing to India. Would that stop outsourcing? The same corrupt influences that nurtured outsourcing to India would soon be nurturing outsourcing to Africa! So, if we drive Chinese money to move some jobs and the last stop before going on to the U.S. market into, say, Indonesia, would that constitute progress?
At some point, we (U.S.) need to announce that we are protecting ourselves against all comers, and, in the long run, that cannot be done as long as we perpetuate the politically motivated preference system that is the fundamental cause of our problems.
We need to recognize that our problems originated here in the U.S. with our delusional policies and habits of mind. Treating symptoms is often a necessary expediency, but recovery requires systemic treatment of underlying causes of the illness.
However, I do agree with your pragmatism. Everyone has some kind of economic ideology, but I am not so gone that I think that my ideology can be applied mechanically in real life, anymore than any other ideology. My ideology is just my adknowledgement of the springboard and guidelines for my 2¢ worth from time to time.
Thank you for the only valid argument I have ever seen for your more targeted VAT approach rather than ABT at this time! In principle, I continue to advocate for ABT, but expediency sometimes overrides principle.
To give an example of how expediency may override principle, in principle I am opposed to government employee unions, but I must support them today on grounds of expediency.
So, okay, I am convinced that we need to send our Dutch Boy to stop this spouting hole labeled 'China', plugging it heroically with something larger than just his thumb ... but in the long run, we need a new dyke.
Are the conspirators enemies of the state? They do not see themselves as such, because they see the state as a means, not an end. In truth, they are not exactly enemies of the state but, more precisely, false friends of the state. The state is how almost all of them have amassed and continue to amass great personal wealth and power.
The Democrats have to face up to the fact they only control one branch of the government: the Senate. The House and the White House are under the control of the Republicans. Consequently a Senate filibuster is often the only option left to stop any of this.
There may be one other chance to block this compromise. Boehner's office is saying it does not have enough Republican votes for approval, and therefore needs at least 50 Democratic votes to put this through. I don't know how true this statement is, because just a few days ago it was being said Boehner would be forced to resign if he couldn't get his own plan through without Democratic help. But this of course is a compromise, without his name on it, and everybody is supposed to feel all warm and fuzzy over the chance to do something bipartisan. If the Democrats in the House choose not to feel all warm and fuzzy, and stick it to their president, it would certainly be a dramatic statement of disgust with the White House.
We would then be right back to the default scenario. The Republicans would blame the House Democrats for not supporting the grand compromise. The Democrats would blame the House Republicans for not even having enough votes to carry the House. they would also blame the White House for not consulting with them. But at least some Democrats could say they stood up for traditional party values.
Once again, the discussion is riddled with political acts and political consequences without regard to the reality of failed monetary policy in evidence for decades...Its plain and simple--actually its in-your-face--the same old Washington culture, that whines and whines about failed political agendas and failed Party leadership...Where is the intelligent application of sound scientific analysis, sound economic principles and the resultant recognition that the culture and its posturing and maneuvering by Congressional leaders and the incumbent administration is once again light years away from the best interest of the nation...Get smart, America...In the meantime, God save us all.
I was going to make a mention of this in the article but wanted to keep things short. The immediate next stage for the Republicans will be to demand a tax amnesty. There are so many noble corporations out there who have kept their revenue offshore due to our "unfair" tax system, and they are just dying to bring this money home in order to create jobs! Sen. Mike Crapo (R.,Idaho) make this very argument this morning on television. I didn't think they'd be on this so quickly, but they are on a roll so why not go for everything in their playbook.
This will allow General Electric to keep their effective tax rate at 0%, while they and so many other multinationals play games with the tax system to avoid contributing anything to the US. I guess since they figure their factories are all overseas and 50%+ of their earnings are overseas, they owe nothing to this country anymore. That and the fact that they own the Congress.
By the way, don't expect any jobs to be created after they get their tax amnesty. The money will go into stock buybacks and mergers and acquisitions, just like it did last time. Meanwhile, the US is out about $100 billion a year in tax revenue.
Many of us have been highly skeptical of Obama all along. He made the sandwich with Geithner and Summers and stuffed it with Democrats in Name Only (DINOs) with Tea Party dressing. Now it's served up to a struggling nation and we're expected to eat it.
Is there an heroic effort that might emerge to stop this. Even if Sanders tries (and I don't know the rules on this bill), you are right. The GOP Senators would be quickly reinforced by those Democrats remaining who voted for the Bankruptcy Reform bill way back. They must love this.
The set up completed, The Money Party moves in for the kill.
They think no one will notice. They're wrong.
Excellent statement and timely, right on the moment of betrayal.
Anyone handicapping negotiations knows that it matters not a whit where they begin or what the score is in the 6th inning; it's where it's going to end up, and about that there's been, or should have been, no doubt at any point:
Cheshire cat smiling ubercynic Mitch McConnell (who is one right-winger who I have 0% doubt knows all about the electoral rigging done and to come) was going to write the plan with Grover Norquist, it was going to have Zero on the revenue end and crippling cuts to the hated New Deal programs (finally), it was going to be all about "drowning government in the bathtub," and Obama wasn't even going to be given enough 'cover' to survive in 2012 (when the 'disaffection of his base' will be the cover story explaining his defeat as well as the demise of the Democratic senators riding his negative coattails).
The Democrats in the Senate will be insane to pass the McConnell "compromise" but, being insane, they will, leaving Obama a choice whether to sign and seal his own electoral doom or veto and plunge the world into a financial tailspin. Now all this was politically preordained when the GOP netted a spectacular 125 House seats (mostly for Tea Party wingnuts) on a modest Generic Congressional Ballot lead of 9% last November (By way of comparison, the Democrats' 26% Generic Congressional Ballot advantage netted them only 58 House seats in 2006, the last off-year election. That's 125/9 vs. 58/26 and that's statistically impossible in the absence of wholesale rigging.) and essentially everything in between was Kabuki and not worth paying the slightest attention to.
Yes it is a war on you, as Michael puts it, and they're slipping blanks in your guns and dum-dum bullets in theirs each November. We won't even begin to be able to fight back until we take over the vote counting process, make it public and observable with Hand-Counted Paper Ballots. Period.
Folks, I have looked high and low on "deal" specifics and cannot find a thing. It's ridiculous. $1 trillion of cuts that one cannot find out what they are.
Yet another headline buzz I will assume, and probably specifics won't be revealed until after the deed is done.
I've been looking for information on the "deal" details but supposedly Obama said Social Security cuts and Medicare cuts are not part of the deal.
Yet to be seen because use of chained CPI for COLA adjustments is a major, major cut to social security benefits.
Seems politicians are keeping this close to the chest, but if it turns out to be a glorified "save face" in order to raise the debt ceiling, well, then, maybe we should write a series of articles about real reforms to reduce the debt and deficit that won't hurt anybody.
If someone else knows differently, that social security chained CPI is part of this deal, please write a comment with a link reference. Thanks.
Once we can find out the details, if ever, I'll write up an instapopulist.
You cannot find out the cuts and there is a narrative. Supposedly it's $1 trillion now with $1.4 trillion by committee with a trigger to cut Medicare and Defense if what the committee recommends isn't passed.
Now, is social security part of these $1 trillion? Probably, but not confirmed.
No tax increases for sure, but odds on no closing of tax loopholes either.
That's the issue. The media, especially FOX, completely ignores what the polls actually say when it comes to the voice of the people.
I watched some Obama representative on Meet the Press and shuddered. They are saying up is down and down is up by pushing trade deals well known to cause more jobs to be lost.
It appears, fundamentally the ones left out of the political discourse are the American people and it's by far disgusting that politicians claim they represent the American people. They clearly do not.
If they represented the American people this wouldn't even be happening, they would have reformed trade, put together a manufacturing initiative, not given the banks even more power and the list goes on and on.
What a tragedy this is.
Osellout started out negotiating a raise in revenue and a cut spending position which he assured us would be “fair and balanced”. Using his interpretation, he clearly has a big future with Fox News.
Your arguments are persuasive.
There is an argument, in WTO terms, for a 15% ABT (on all imports whatever the source) as long as Congress enacts carefully worded legislation like calling it "port-use fees" or whatever ... but you're right, oil is the controlling reality at this time and for the foreseeable future.
So, it's a very bad idea to mess with GATT, regardless of declining popularity of the WTO nationally and globally.
I'm not worried about the WTO paper tiger -- just another inefficient systemically-corrupt bureaucracy. We are all of us accustomed to dealing with inefficient unnecessary bureaucracies and grateful for any exceptions to that rule. Part of life. SNAFU.
The WTO might allow tariffs on China and that is because China currency manipulates. If they didn't, no.
But the point of any trade remedies is to improve the U.S. economy, create jobs and reduce the trade deficit...
so you cannot start, out of the gate, pushing for a policy that would actually cause the U.S. to enter another recession.
It's tricky and timing but first up is to worry about the cause and effects, not the WTO.
the WTO has a delay in hearing cases anyway. For example, by the time the WTO hears a China case...it doesn't matter. China already wiped out that U.S. sector and captured the market for themselves anyway.
By the time the case makes it to the WTO, those U.S. businesses are already out of business due to China's unfair dumping or tariffs or incentives or whatever they did which forms the WTO case against them.
Look, you don't need to "research" an ABT for obviously I am already aware of the argument and I'm saying it's just plain a bad idea for the obvious reasons.
You don't realize how dependent the U.S. economy is, U.S. manufacturing is, U.S. production is on oil.
What do you think turns on the factories and drives the shipping? Oil.
Generally black and white solutions for colored and dynamic problems is a real bad idea.
See, you're still a broken record, thinking "I just don't understand". Obviously I do and I'm saying it's plain a bad idea and wrong for the reasons I've already stated.
"This site's motto is no economic fiction and that means you have to check your philosophy at the door and whip out your calculator and adjust."
Dude! Whiz!
I already conceded your point! I do nave a critical point of view as valid as anyone's, but I am no longer pushing agenda of imposing tariff on oil imports, as you see when reading my words. You have convinced me, although I suggest that there may be some other way of handling the problem within a framework that includes the dirty little word 'tariff'.
EP has already done the stats for me, showing that China's rake on imports at the border is about 20% and other countries similar. Mexico has a tariff on our goods (unless we allow destruction of U.S. independent truckers), Canada has a VAT. Meanwhile, our rake on imports is between 1% and 2%.
I'm just saying rather than what amounts to a trade war here and a trade war there, prosecuted by our feckless political leaders -- where we concede cases in WTO quasi-judicial fora -- why not erect a seawall, a dyke, against the entire incoming destructive tide?
In my final paragraph, I honor and credit your pragmatism and note that I am NOT pushing my economic philosophy as something to be mechanically applied to economic policy. No ideology should be so applied.
I understand that you do not want anything further reminding EP readers of the ABT option, at least nothing short of a well-researched and documented article, that's fine and I'll get to work on that, but please ... I'm not bat-shit crazy, not yet anyway.
Robert Oak and Bernie Sanders tell the truth, but not the whole truth. I'm not blaming them for that, since the whole truth will not be brought out into the open for at least a couple of years, if ever.
We have been looking at the political BS and contemplating the likely collateral damage, but we have scarcely done more than hint at likely profiteering motivations of at least some of the players.
It isn't as though scams of financial profiteers, connected with political opportunists sharing in the financial profiteering, are unknown to our history or to world history!
It isn't as though ambitious politicians are all men of high principle who would never conflate their notions of the welfare of the nation with plans for amassing their own private fortunes!
I suggest that we look back at Black Friday, 1869, when a small group of financial profiteers, led by the notorious Jim Fisk and Jay Gould, conducted a secret operation involving moles within the White House and the Department of Treasury. This conspiracy undoubtedly threw the nation into the Depression of 1869-1870, even though severity of that depression was mitigated by the last-minute sobering up of President Ulysses S. Grant to order the sale of $4,000,000 worth of gold. (Grant was a notorious alcoholic.) The amount, $4,000,000 was a lot of money and a lot of gold back in 1869.
Could we have a parallel today?
Instead of the White House, we have John Does (#1, #2, #3, etc.), to-be-identified, including one or more John Does who are members and leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Instead of the political cover story (1869) that pushing up the price of gold would benefit U.S. farmers in selling a bumper wheat crop to Europe, we have the mantra (2011) of "no tax increases only spending cuts" (masquerading as 'fiscal conservatism').
Instead of the moderate depression of 1869-1870 (comparatively moderate, although many individuals and families were ruined in that event), we have the prospect of extending the Great Recession (2008) into the Second Great Depression (2008 - 20??).
We have often noted the religious tone of TP rhetoric. As with many quasi-religious movements, self-anointed leaders of the TP may well be profiteering opportunists. In particular, is it unthinkable that TP opportunists have been limited-partnered up with profiteering financiers/conspirators to exploit insider information to play the precious metals and currency markets like an over-amped electric guitar? Or, considering the domination of computerized trading, it may be more like playing a synthesizer on steroids, complete with real-time sampling and systems of differential equations predicting systemic feedback effects.
Insider information on the timing of announcements or the timing of a negotiation or the cutting off of a negotiation can be worth $Billions to speculators playing the precious metals and international currency markets. Some will suggest that the White House and Secretary of the Treasury are also involved, as well as the obvious involvement of congressional leaders. I can only say that if I knew the whole story, I'd have to be dead ... but nothing would surprise me in this day and age.
I know, I know. Robert Oak will call this CT, but I maintain there is enough to it to constitute an appropriate topic for an EP comment at this time. It's often said that for an idictment of homicide in the first degree, all you need is to prove means, motive and opportunity. Did the perps have the means, are there grounds for alleging a motive, and, did they create the opportunity? Federal conspiracy law is extraordinarily broad. Clarence Darrow wrote that a conviction of conspiracy doesn't even require proving any other criminal act.
Thank god these people are not paid by the hour.
I also hope everyone that voted for these TEA party members in 2010, now realise
they all ran with hidden agendas and will vote them all out in 2012 !!
Watch all of the recall elections in WI, starting in Aug. 2011 and the governor recall
in Jan. 2012, hopefully this will be the start of the end to the TEA party across the country!!
Any reduction in spending during a recession/depression is unwise since it furthers the contraction in the economy. The reason here is clear. There's no point in paying down debt during recovery that never takes place. That is true and has been universally.
What's absent from you rhetoric:
- stopping offshoaring;
- stopping the import of necessary professional and lower level workers;
- ending costly and illegal wars; - and dumping the tax cuts from Bush;
- the theft of the Social Security surplus every year to fund deficits that fund purchases of goods and services from the Tea Party billionaire patrons.
You also forget to mention that we would never have heard about the Tea Party were it not for Freedomworks and Americans for Prosperity. They made the organiation, they fund it, and they call the shots. Where do these right win lobbying organizations get their money? From the richest families in the United States.
This is legal and part of the process but lets get real here in the midst of your preaching and propaganda how about mentioning that fact? Actualy, I know why you woudn't. It would show that this whole debate is a sham and promoted by those who will profit from crisis, the Te Party Patrons.
Here is the precise reason that we need a crisis, whether Tea Party or not. Rational analysis of the budget situation would call for much different acdtion that is going to emerge.
If you back out the Bush tax cut give-aways and the two wars, the budget deficit goes down nearly 50%. If you restore the economy to non recessionary status, you get another huge benefit and the current deficit is round $100 billion.
Medicare is an emerging problem but there is no crisis now unless you dig war and recessions.
But that's not the Tea Party billionair agenda is it.
Here's the graph, it's easy enough to understand:
Look, I've written many overviews as well as analysis on oil price increases being highly correlated to recessions.
It would be very nice if you paid attention to the economic statistics and adjust accordingly.
Pushing some agenda that doesn't fix the cause/effects/statistics, facts of economics is just as bad as these bat shit crazies going on air trying to claim that the current economic malaise is a result of budget deficits.
This site's motto is no economic fiction and that means you have to check your philosophy at the door and whip out your calculator and adjust.
The last thing you want to do right now is increase oil costs, PERIOD.
Promoting a 15% ABT is still a good rallying shout-out, because the people surely are capable of great support around the so-long-now forbidden word 'tariff'. Our corporate-govenment media, along with most of academia, have been suppressing even the thought of 'tariffs' for about 15 years now. Therefore, being as reactionary as the next guy, I use the word wherever and as often as I can.
The reason for an across-the-board tariff is to reconstruct a sane protectionist policy while avoiding preference systems, which are all essentially examples of political corruption. In other words, the reason for ABT is to reverse the situation where U.S. producers are effectively forced to subsidize foreign competition.
I am unconvinced that there are not ways to moderate the consequences of oil supply shock within an ABT system. Conversely, I am not sure that oil supply shock can be evaded by avoiding an ABT, nor am I convinced that the ABT approach can be ruled out as the best structural reform even considering, or perhaps especially considering, the problem of oil supply shock.
I don't think that targeting China will accomplish anything. Yes, China is tops on a list, but we should not confuse any one entry in the list with the list as a whole. Suppose, by way of analogy, that we stopped all the outsourcing to India. Would that stop outsourcing? The same corrupt influences that nurtured outsourcing to India would soon be nurturing outsourcing to Africa! So, if we drive Chinese money to move some jobs and the last stop before going on to the U.S. market into, say, Indonesia, would that constitute progress?
At some point, we (U.S.) need to announce that we are protecting ourselves against all comers, and, in the long run, that cannot be done as long as we perpetuate the politically motivated preference system that is the fundamental cause of our problems.
We need to recognize that our problems originated here in the U.S. with our delusional policies and habits of mind. Treating symptoms is often a necessary expediency, but recovery requires systemic treatment of underlying causes of the illness.
However, I do agree with your pragmatism. Everyone has some kind of economic ideology, but I am not so gone that I think that my ideology can be applied mechanically in real life, anymore than any other ideology. My ideology is just my adknowledgement of the springboard and guidelines for my 2¢ worth from time to time.
Thank you for the only valid argument I have ever seen for your more targeted VAT approach rather than ABT at this time! In principle, I continue to advocate for ABT, but expediency sometimes overrides principle.
To give an example of how expediency may override principle, in principle I am opposed to government employee unions, but I must support them today on grounds of expediency.
So, okay, I am convinced that we need to send our Dutch Boy to stop this spouting hole labeled 'China', plugging it heroically with something larger than just his thumb ... but in the long run, we need a new dyke.
Are the conspirators enemies of the state? They do not see themselves as such, because they see the state as a means, not an end. In truth, they are not exactly enemies of the state but, more precisely, false friends of the state. The state is how almost all of them have amassed and continue to amass great personal wealth and power.
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