A huge, complicated machine, connected to the operating table, with many tubes and wires, began at this moment to go pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. “The new anesthetizer is giving away!”shouted an interne. “There is no one in the East who knows how to fix it!” “Quiet, man!” said Mitty, in a low, cool voice. He sprang to the machine, which was now going pocketa-pocketa-queep-pocketa-queep. He began fingering delicately a row of glistening dials: “Give me a fountain pen!” he snapped. Someone handed him a fountain pen. He pulled a faulty piston out of the machine and inserted the pen in its place. “That will hold for ten minutes,” he said. “Get on with the operation.”
Sunday, November 8, 2015
Ben Carson and "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"
An excerpt from The New Yorker:
What Makes Ben Lie?
What kind of "civil dialogue" is making up a nasty thing that somebody never said and attributing it to them? What kind of pathological liar feels compelled -- and authorized -- to make up things that can be easily refuted with a text search?
Never has Saul Alinsky said in any book -- or other publication -- "Never have a conversation with your adversary, because that humanizes them and your job is to demonize them." A total fabrication.
"Gas All Boomers" Or At Least Tax And Cut Their Benefits More Says WaPo
No, nobody in today's Washington Post Outlook section devoted to the boomers said that first line, although it has become a commonplace on such sites as Economics Job Market Rumors where anonymous and frustrated millennials very frequently and fervently spout that opening line to the point that it lost whatever ironic humor it had some time ago. But then irony is a Gen-X thing, not a millennial or boomer thing.
However, taxing them more and cutting their benefits is certainly called for by new economics reporter (and Gen Xer) James Tankersley, in an astoundingly bad article full of so much nonsense one does not know where to start. He claims that because of their huge numbers, none of this will happen, even though the latest budget deal has in fact cut benefits for them (really for everybody not already receiving them, but with front end boomers the most likely to have been counting on those now cut benefits in the near term, see my post on this here).
While I shall deal with Tankersley's numerous misrepresentations, let me note more of the anti-boomer venom filling this special issue (Is this WaPo trying to market to millennials?). So, Heather Havrilesky has the following:
"For the remainder of the decade, we can expect a brand-new wave of melodramatic retrospectives, each designed to remind us of a magical time when boomer heads were packed full of idealistic notions and covered in lustrous free-flowing hair. But just as what goes up must come down, what frolics in the mud of Woodstock must eventually sulk in the flourescent chill of the cardiology office. Somehow as boomers age, their commitment to dragging that dusty 60s archival reel out of the basement yet again seems to grow exponentially"
[I shall accept that some of this complaining is not without merit. Her eventual take is that people now should take things as seriously now without looking back to the 60s either for inspiration or comparison, especially invidious comparison, and that starting in the 70s and on the more conservative majority of the boomers took over the show. But mostly she is whining and snarking.]
Not quite as hostile is the much older Landon Y. Jones, one of the early coiners of the term "baby boomers." who declares:
"The designation has to do with coming of age at the right time. They enjoyed sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll, took all the good jobs and are now retiring and becoming a burden on society," which is the gist of Tankersley's whine, although Jones is mostly interested in the origin of the term and how it has been used indifferent countries rather than blasting on and on in this vein, which is in fact him reporting on the views of the late Dutch critic of the boomers, Pim Fortuyn.
Before going to Tankersley, I will note one other writer a bit more sympathetic to the boomers, Shirley Abrahms, who dispels five myths about them. Supposedly, in spite of Tankersley et al, they are not as wealthy as widely thought (although some are), they are not clearly much healthier than their parents (and the recent Case-Deaton report on middle aged white males dying sooner since 2000 fits in with this, although she did not mention that), that boomers are reasonably charitable rather than just being "selfish," that they are not as technologically incompetent as many think, although certainly Xers and millennials are more competent than they are (not to mention the rising post-millennials now beginning to make their first appearances), and finally that their sex lives are not total disasters, although aside from all the viagra and cialis ads, I was under the impression that they were mostly being criticized for having been too much into sex, etc., although perhaps that wicked past had supposedly led to a pathetic present. For all her wisdome, Abrahms undercuts her own credibility by somehow thinking that 18 year olds were voting for LBJ in 1964, which was most definitely not the case (why is it that WaPo has gotten so bad that even its supposed fact checkers goof up?).
So, on to Tankersley, regarding whom I really wonder if either he or his anti-entitlement bosses are aware just how totally off this debut article is. I am not going to quote and will not answer everything, but will try to focus on some of the biggest bloopers. I shall also note that near the end of his article that a lot of the problems he identifies are really a matter of the large numbers of boomers and not any clearly intentional actions. But this does not absolve them from deserving to "pay more" somehow for all the damage they have supposedly caused. A main thrust of my response will be, if indeed they were causing all these problems, were not the earlier Silents and Greatest at least as guilty, if not in some cases worse?
OK, I shall quote one paragraph, which summarizes most of his complaints:
"Boomers soaked up a lot of economic opportunities without bothering to preserve much for the generations to come. They burned a lot of cheap fossil fuels, filled the atmosphere with beat-trapping gases and will probably never pay the costs of averting catastrophic climate change or helping their grandchildren adapt to a warmer world. The took control of Washington at the turn of the millennium, and they used it to rack up a lot of federal debt, even before the Great Recession hit."
YIkes!
For starters let us note that the stagnation of real wages began in the 1970s, about the time when most boomers entered the labor market. So both the Greatest and the Silents did much better than the boomers on that one, with the period of rapidly rising real wages being 1945-73. Yes, the early Greatest suffered in the Great Depression and fighting in WW II, but those amazingly quiet Silents really raked it in. Look at somebody born in 1930. only barely experiencing the GD as a child and not having to fight in WW II, if experiencing the privations of rationing, again as a young person, but then entering the job market in the late 40s and having the full experience of that postwar boom, well into middle age when the wage growth slowed, and in their 50s when fica taxes rose sharply as part of the Greenspan Commission's 1983 deal designed to "make sure the baby boomers pay for their own retirement," which mostly they have despite the misrepresentations of Tankersley. There were no payments for COLA recipients prior to 1971, but any Greatest or Silent retiring not too long after it was put in then paid zippo into Social Security but got many times what they paid in benefits, far more than the boomers will get (who so far have not whined about this latest benefit cut, which Tankersley ignores, needless to say).
Tankersley's spin is that even though wages have not risen, a point he ignores, boomers got promoted to higher salaries as they aged. While indeed growth has reverted to its 1975-95 average, there is no reason that Xers and millennials will not be able to have such promotions either. After all, the boomers are now indeed beginning to retire in serious numbers, opening up all those upper tier jobs for their juniors to earn more. The idea that SS and Medicare will not be there is of course the biggest phone screed that WaPo hands out, when in fact the projections have the millennials receiving more in benefits than current recipients, even if the system "goes bankrupt," not that Tankersley is anywhere near even being conscious of this I think. And, of course most of those projected increases in costs are tied to medical care cost increases, which hopefully will be kept more in line in the future.
Then we have all this stuff about burning fossil fuels and ruining the environment. Last time I checked, the golden era of gas hog polluting cars was the 50s and 60s, with environmental laws arriving in the early 70s and with higher oil prices leading to much greater gas efficiency of cars. This backslid in the later 80s and 90s when oil prices fell and we got the SUV boom. But offhand the Greatest and the Silents look at least as guilty, and frankly more so, on this matter of polluting the atmosphere than do the boomers, whose main sin would indeed to be their large numbers, not their excessively polluting ways compared to other generations.
Then we get this weird claim that the millennials "took control of Washington at the turn of the millennium," thus making "the boomers" responsible somehow for the clearly irresponsible policies of George W. Bush, even though he lost the popular vote in 2000. But Bill Clinton is a boomer, and he was in charge in the 90s, when the national debt actually fell. Do not the boomers get some credit for him? Or do we only get the blame for his sexual improprieties? The more striking increase in non-war debt came with Reagan, he of the Greatest Generation, with a full quarter of boomers not even old enough to vote when he came in. Surely he was more a creature of the Greatests and the Silents, with their failure to obey rational expectations and Ricardian Equivalence by lowering their savings rates when they got his tax cuts (with income tax cuts indeed offsetting those fica increases aimed at the boomers).
He goes on and non about a lot more, but I think I am going to stop here other than to note that he opens by complaining about people talking about raising the retirement age for future retirees not somehow noting that indeed the 1983 agreement put in place such increases for the boomers, increases which are already happening and will continue to do so. Really, this article is a disgrace.
Barkley Rosser
However, taxing them more and cutting their benefits is certainly called for by new economics reporter (and Gen Xer) James Tankersley, in an astoundingly bad article full of so much nonsense one does not know where to start. He claims that because of their huge numbers, none of this will happen, even though the latest budget deal has in fact cut benefits for them (really for everybody not already receiving them, but with front end boomers the most likely to have been counting on those now cut benefits in the near term, see my post on this here).
While I shall deal with Tankersley's numerous misrepresentations, let me note more of the anti-boomer venom filling this special issue (Is this WaPo trying to market to millennials?). So, Heather Havrilesky has the following:
"For the remainder of the decade, we can expect a brand-new wave of melodramatic retrospectives, each designed to remind us of a magical time when boomer heads were packed full of idealistic notions and covered in lustrous free-flowing hair. But just as what goes up must come down, what frolics in the mud of Woodstock must eventually sulk in the flourescent chill of the cardiology office. Somehow as boomers age, their commitment to dragging that dusty 60s archival reel out of the basement yet again seems to grow exponentially"
[I shall accept that some of this complaining is not without merit. Her eventual take is that people now should take things as seriously now without looking back to the 60s either for inspiration or comparison, especially invidious comparison, and that starting in the 70s and on the more conservative majority of the boomers took over the show. But mostly she is whining and snarking.]
Not quite as hostile is the much older Landon Y. Jones, one of the early coiners of the term "baby boomers." who declares:
"The designation has to do with coming of age at the right time. They enjoyed sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll, took all the good jobs and are now retiring and becoming a burden on society," which is the gist of Tankersley's whine, although Jones is mostly interested in the origin of the term and how it has been used indifferent countries rather than blasting on and on in this vein, which is in fact him reporting on the views of the late Dutch critic of the boomers, Pim Fortuyn.
Before going to Tankersley, I will note one other writer a bit more sympathetic to the boomers, Shirley Abrahms, who dispels five myths about them. Supposedly, in spite of Tankersley et al, they are not as wealthy as widely thought (although some are), they are not clearly much healthier than their parents (and the recent Case-Deaton report on middle aged white males dying sooner since 2000 fits in with this, although she did not mention that), that boomers are reasonably charitable rather than just being "selfish," that they are not as technologically incompetent as many think, although certainly Xers and millennials are more competent than they are (not to mention the rising post-millennials now beginning to make their first appearances), and finally that their sex lives are not total disasters, although aside from all the viagra and cialis ads, I was under the impression that they were mostly being criticized for having been too much into sex, etc., although perhaps that wicked past had supposedly led to a pathetic present. For all her wisdome, Abrahms undercuts her own credibility by somehow thinking that 18 year olds were voting for LBJ in 1964, which was most definitely not the case (why is it that WaPo has gotten so bad that even its supposed fact checkers goof up?).
So, on to Tankersley, regarding whom I really wonder if either he or his anti-entitlement bosses are aware just how totally off this debut article is. I am not going to quote and will not answer everything, but will try to focus on some of the biggest bloopers. I shall also note that near the end of his article that a lot of the problems he identifies are really a matter of the large numbers of boomers and not any clearly intentional actions. But this does not absolve them from deserving to "pay more" somehow for all the damage they have supposedly caused. A main thrust of my response will be, if indeed they were causing all these problems, were not the earlier Silents and Greatest at least as guilty, if not in some cases worse?
OK, I shall quote one paragraph, which summarizes most of his complaints:
"Boomers soaked up a lot of economic opportunities without bothering to preserve much for the generations to come. They burned a lot of cheap fossil fuels, filled the atmosphere with beat-trapping gases and will probably never pay the costs of averting catastrophic climate change or helping their grandchildren adapt to a warmer world. The took control of Washington at the turn of the millennium, and they used it to rack up a lot of federal debt, even before the Great Recession hit."
YIkes!
For starters let us note that the stagnation of real wages began in the 1970s, about the time when most boomers entered the labor market. So both the Greatest and the Silents did much better than the boomers on that one, with the period of rapidly rising real wages being 1945-73. Yes, the early Greatest suffered in the Great Depression and fighting in WW II, but those amazingly quiet Silents really raked it in. Look at somebody born in 1930. only barely experiencing the GD as a child and not having to fight in WW II, if experiencing the privations of rationing, again as a young person, but then entering the job market in the late 40s and having the full experience of that postwar boom, well into middle age when the wage growth slowed, and in their 50s when fica taxes rose sharply as part of the Greenspan Commission's 1983 deal designed to "make sure the baby boomers pay for their own retirement," which mostly they have despite the misrepresentations of Tankersley. There were no payments for COLA recipients prior to 1971, but any Greatest or Silent retiring not too long after it was put in then paid zippo into Social Security but got many times what they paid in benefits, far more than the boomers will get (who so far have not whined about this latest benefit cut, which Tankersley ignores, needless to say).
Tankersley's spin is that even though wages have not risen, a point he ignores, boomers got promoted to higher salaries as they aged. While indeed growth has reverted to its 1975-95 average, there is no reason that Xers and millennials will not be able to have such promotions either. After all, the boomers are now indeed beginning to retire in serious numbers, opening up all those upper tier jobs for their juniors to earn more. The idea that SS and Medicare will not be there is of course the biggest phone screed that WaPo hands out, when in fact the projections have the millennials receiving more in benefits than current recipients, even if the system "goes bankrupt," not that Tankersley is anywhere near even being conscious of this I think. And, of course most of those projected increases in costs are tied to medical care cost increases, which hopefully will be kept more in line in the future.
Then we have all this stuff about burning fossil fuels and ruining the environment. Last time I checked, the golden era of gas hog polluting cars was the 50s and 60s, with environmental laws arriving in the early 70s and with higher oil prices leading to much greater gas efficiency of cars. This backslid in the later 80s and 90s when oil prices fell and we got the SUV boom. But offhand the Greatest and the Silents look at least as guilty, and frankly more so, on this matter of polluting the atmosphere than do the boomers, whose main sin would indeed to be their large numbers, not their excessively polluting ways compared to other generations.
Then we get this weird claim that the millennials "took control of Washington at the turn of the millennium," thus making "the boomers" responsible somehow for the clearly irresponsible policies of George W. Bush, even though he lost the popular vote in 2000. But Bill Clinton is a boomer, and he was in charge in the 90s, when the national debt actually fell. Do not the boomers get some credit for him? Or do we only get the blame for his sexual improprieties? The more striking increase in non-war debt came with Reagan, he of the Greatest Generation, with a full quarter of boomers not even old enough to vote when he came in. Surely he was more a creature of the Greatests and the Silents, with their failure to obey rational expectations and Ricardian Equivalence by lowering their savings rates when they got his tax cuts (with income tax cuts indeed offsetting those fica increases aimed at the boomers).
He goes on and non about a lot more, but I think I am going to stop here other than to note that he opens by complaining about people talking about raising the retirement age for future retirees not somehow noting that indeed the 1983 agreement put in place such increases for the boomers, increases which are already happening and will continue to do so. Really, this article is a disgrace.
Barkley Rosser
Parsing Portugal
Horrors! Another European country threatens to slip the grasp of austerity. Be prepared for the worst.
That seems to be the message of this morning’s New York Times article about Portugal’s political crisis. The problem, if you want to call it that, is that the governing conservatives came up short in the last election. Three parties of the left—the Socialists, the Communists and the Left Bloc—between them got a majority of the seats in parliament. The president, Cavaco Silva, also a conservative, has turned to Passos Coelho, the head of the conservative alliance, to form a government, but the left deputies have vowed to deliver a vote of no confidence this coming week.
Now, in a normal democratic country people would say, “It looks like the voters have shifted to the left and rejected austerity. The new government will reflect that.” But we are talking about the Eurozone, where such sentiments are viewed as subversive—not only by the eurocrats but also the media, including the Times.
So we are treated in this article to the notion that austerity policies “are credited with arresting Portugal’s economic slide” and that the country is now in the “early stages of a recovery” which is threatened by the “uncertainty” caused by the latest election. The country’s “structural reforms” are at risk, and Portugal now “hangs by a thread”.
The article goes so far as to say
And here is the unemployment rate:
What's that about a "prolonged crisis"? Portugal’s economy is still well below where it was seven years ago, and unemployment continues to be an immense problem. And all of this is unnecessary. Portugal did not suffer some mysterious disappearance of productive assets or skills or natural resources; this is a predictable result of policies that deliberately seek to suppress output and employment. That’s what austerity means.
If there is a criticism of the political rebellion in Portugal, it is that it has been so long in coming. We are now at a moment, however, when democracy and economic sanity have converged. If there’s a crisis, its source is not Portugal but the dictates of the eurocrats. If they are looking for stories about how hard it is to extricate yourself from poor choices, the Times could send its reporters to Brussels and Frankfurt, not Lisbon.
That seems to be the message of this morning’s New York Times article about Portugal’s political crisis. The problem, if you want to call it that, is that the governing conservatives came up short in the last election. Three parties of the left—the Socialists, the Communists and the Left Bloc—between them got a majority of the seats in parliament. The president, Cavaco Silva, also a conservative, has turned to Passos Coelho, the head of the conservative alliance, to form a government, but the left deputies have vowed to deliver a vote of no confidence this coming week.
Now, in a normal democratic country people would say, “It looks like the voters have shifted to the left and rejected austerity. The new government will reflect that.” But we are talking about the Eurozone, where such sentiments are viewed as subversive—not only by the eurocrats but also the media, including the Times.
So we are treated in this article to the notion that austerity policies “are credited with arresting Portugal’s economic slide” and that the country is now in the “early stages of a recovery” which is threatened by the “uncertainty” caused by the latest election. The country’s “structural reforms” are at risk, and Portugal now “hangs by a thread”.
The article goes so far as to say
If the Parliament rejects the government’s economic program on Tuesday, it will leave Mr. Cavaco Silva with a hard choice.
He could either allow the left to form a government that promises to unwind part of Portugal’s austerity program, or he could leave Mr. Passos Coelho in place as what promises to be an ineffective, caretaker prime minister until new elections can be held.
Either outcome seems destined to leave the country in a prolonged crisis....It’s time for a little reality check. Here is Portugal’s real GDP from the onset of the crisis in 2008 to the most recent statistics.
And here is the unemployment rate:
What's that about a "prolonged crisis"? Portugal’s economy is still well below where it was seven years ago, and unemployment continues to be an immense problem. And all of this is unnecessary. Portugal did not suffer some mysterious disappearance of productive assets or skills or natural resources; this is a predictable result of policies that deliberately seek to suppress output and employment. That’s what austerity means.
If there is a criticism of the political rebellion in Portugal, it is that it has been so long in coming. We are now at a moment, however, when democracy and economic sanity have converged. If there’s a crisis, its source is not Portugal but the dictates of the eurocrats. If they are looking for stories about how hard it is to extricate yourself from poor choices, the Times could send its reporters to Brussels and Frankfurt, not Lisbon.
Saturday, November 7, 2015
Isn't "Third Way" a Euphemism for Fifth Column?
The "Washington Wire" blog at the resolutely non-partisan Wall Street Journal features an article about "a new 52-page report from centrist Democratic think tank the Third Way" that warns against populist, redistributionist messages.
Who is this Third Way? According to Wikipedia: "The board of the Third Way is made up almost entirely of investment bankers and other Wall Street executives." Wikipedia cites as their source a Nation article from 2013, "GOP Donors and K Street Fuel Third Way’s Advice for the Democratic Party."
Who is this Third Way? According to Wikipedia: "The board of the Third Way is made up almost entirely of investment bankers and other Wall Street executives." Wikipedia cites as their source a Nation article from 2013, "GOP Donors and K Street Fuel Third Way’s Advice for the Democratic Party."
Buried inside the annual report for Third Way is a revelation that the group relies on a peculiar DC consulting firm to raise half a million a year: Peck, Madigan, Jones & Stewart. Peck Madigan is no ordinary nonprofit buckraiser. The group is, in fact, a corporate lobbying firm that represents Deutsche Bank, Intel, the Business Roundtable, Amgen, AT&T, the International Swaps & Derivatives Association, MasterCard, New York Life Insurance, PhRMA and the US Chamber of Commerce, among others.
So What Really Happened When Bob Solow, Tyler Cowen, and Noah Smith Went Into A Chinese Bar?
This is a meme out there that I shall not link to because it is all over the place. All I am going to do is provide my own version of what really happened, which I have posted various versions of which both Mark Thoma and Marginal Revolution have on their lists, but way down low on their threads. And in fact I think most of the serious discussion of this on various venues has been ignorant garbage, including by many of the principals.
So, Bob Solow, Tyler Cowen, and Noah Smith enter a Chinese bar to debate the curious vicissitudes of the current path of the Chinese economy.
Bob orders a Tsingtao beer. He is brought one, but it only fills 13% of his glass. He asks where the residual is. Both Tyler and Noah assure him that they will resolve this mystery, despite the well-known problems with Chinese macro data. He promises to think less about sex, having some decades ago having accused Milton Friedman of spending too much time thinking about M.
Tyler orders hot tea, and proceeds to praise the bar for having a menu that shows the influence of such advanced foreign technological innovations chow mein, chop suey, and egg foo young. Clearly this bar in on to the global trends, even as Tyler notes that they seem to be ignoring traditional provincial cuisines such as Sichuanese and Yunnanese. I mean, yuk. But in any case he did the best he could to praise technogical innovation before he was thrown out and ended up being run over by a driverless tank in Tiananmen Square.
As for Noah, well, this notoriously Japanophiliac was clearly in a difficult location. Of course he ordered sake and sushi. The bartender served him multiply spiked mao tais along with large plates of chop suey. Before he passed out he declared that what the Chinese should do is to build many more breweries mildly adjusted from the original German-modeled plant so that Bob could have as much good "Chinese" beer as he might choose to consume.
Barkley Rosser
PS: The original post by Dietz Vollrath is here. For what it is worth Vollrath sides with Noah against Tyler mostly.
So, Bob Solow, Tyler Cowen, and Noah Smith enter a Chinese bar to debate the curious vicissitudes of the current path of the Chinese economy.
Bob orders a Tsingtao beer. He is brought one, but it only fills 13% of his glass. He asks where the residual is. Both Tyler and Noah assure him that they will resolve this mystery, despite the well-known problems with Chinese macro data. He promises to think less about sex, having some decades ago having accused Milton Friedman of spending too much time thinking about M.
Tyler orders hot tea, and proceeds to praise the bar for having a menu that shows the influence of such advanced foreign technological innovations chow mein, chop suey, and egg foo young. Clearly this bar in on to the global trends, even as Tyler notes that they seem to be ignoring traditional provincial cuisines such as Sichuanese and Yunnanese. I mean, yuk. But in any case he did the best he could to praise technogical innovation before he was thrown out and ended up being run over by a driverless tank in Tiananmen Square.
As for Noah, well, this notoriously Japanophiliac was clearly in a difficult location. Of course he ordered sake and sushi. The bartender served him multiply spiked mao tais along with large plates of chop suey. Before he passed out he declared that what the Chinese should do is to build many more breweries mildly adjusted from the original German-modeled plant so that Bob could have as much good "Chinese" beer as he might choose to consume.
Barkley Rosser
PS: The original post by Dietz Vollrath is here. For what it is worth Vollrath sides with Noah against Tyler mostly.
Thursday, November 5, 2015
Did Bernanke (And Crew) Save The World?
I have not yet read Bernanke's new book, The Courage to Act, but plenty of people on both the left and the right are mocking claims made by many that Bernanke and crew "saved the world" by their actions in September, 2008. Most of the focus of these discussions has been on the TARP bank bailouts along with the creation of a bunch of special lending entities, most of which were shut down later. Those on the left tend to argue that we would have been better off letting some more big banks fail, along with throwing at least their CEOs and CFOs in jail. Those on the right worry about all the moral hazard hyped up by TARP as well as the more than doubling of the Fed bank balance sheet that happened in the next few months, going from roughly $900 million to about $2.2 trillion by thge beginning of 2009, with this supposedly setting us up for that hyperinflation that is still supposedly going to come some day.
"Save the world" is awfully dramatic, but indeed the buzz by those defending Bernanke has been that this moment was like September, 1931, when the rolling international financial collapse that had started in May of that year in Vienna with the failure of the Creditanstalt finally hit the US shores hard, and the Fed did nothing, with this being reported and criticized by Friedman and Schwartz in their Monetary History of the United States, the work much on Bernanke's mind and to which he has referred, even famously promising Friedman at one point that he would never let that happen again, the failure to prop up the banking system in September, 1931, which indeed was followed by a massive wave of bank failures, and a severe plunge of the US economy into the Great Depression. If he saved the world, it was that he prevented that. But many are skeptical, particularly with regard to TARP and the assoicated bailout of AIG. The bums should have been shut down and jailed.
I have reported on this previously, but I think have again become aware of how few people understand what really went down in September, 2008. We just had a well-known economist in yesterday, who will remain unnamed, who when I told him what really went down dismissed the whole thing as "a conspiracy theory." It can sound like it if one does not know about it. But in fact this was a successful conspiracy that has been since made public, but about which many seem not to know, including professional economists who really should know better, even if they would still disapprove of it.
So, the most crucial action was not TARP or the AIG bailout. It was the decision on September 18, 2008 to open swap lines to foreign central banks, especially the ECB, which were under heavy pressure and facing a complete freeze of their financial markets due to a plunging euro and lack of dollars. This is recounted in Chapter 11 of Neil Irwin's The Alchemists from 2013. They immediately approved $180 billion of lending, but by December this had amounted to $580 billion, leading to eurojunk sitting on the Fed balance sheet. This was nearly half the increase in the Fed balance sheet. This increase would be gradually worked off over the next six months or so as the agreement in December to purchase $500 in mortgage-backed securities was approved, and these were accumulated as the eurojunk got rolled off.
If Bernanke and crew saved the world, this was the moment, and the parallel with 1931 is precisely that it involved the world economy and financial system. In 1931, the world financial system was already going down the tubes, but the Fed let the US system join it. In 2008, the crisis was emanating from the US and its subrime lending crisis. The Fed effectively kept this from leading to a 1931 outcome in Europe and other nations as well. Why it was kept secret what they were doing (although it was publicly knowable to those following the details of the Fed balance sheet at the time) was that the Europeans, particularly Trichet and those leading the ECB, did not want people to know how fragile their situation was for fear of generating a full-blown panic, which was indeed avoided. People should keep this in mind, even if they think CEOs should have gone to jail or we are about to experience hyperinflation or whatever other dislike they might have about Fed policies of that time.
Barkley Rosser
"Save the world" is awfully dramatic, but indeed the buzz by those defending Bernanke has been that this moment was like September, 1931, when the rolling international financial collapse that had started in May of that year in Vienna with the failure of the Creditanstalt finally hit the US shores hard, and the Fed did nothing, with this being reported and criticized by Friedman and Schwartz in their Monetary History of the United States, the work much on Bernanke's mind and to which he has referred, even famously promising Friedman at one point that he would never let that happen again, the failure to prop up the banking system in September, 1931, which indeed was followed by a massive wave of bank failures, and a severe plunge of the US economy into the Great Depression. If he saved the world, it was that he prevented that. But many are skeptical, particularly with regard to TARP and the assoicated bailout of AIG. The bums should have been shut down and jailed.
I have reported on this previously, but I think have again become aware of how few people understand what really went down in September, 2008. We just had a well-known economist in yesterday, who will remain unnamed, who when I told him what really went down dismissed the whole thing as "a conspiracy theory." It can sound like it if one does not know about it. But in fact this was a successful conspiracy that has been since made public, but about which many seem not to know, including professional economists who really should know better, even if they would still disapprove of it.
So, the most crucial action was not TARP or the AIG bailout. It was the decision on September 18, 2008 to open swap lines to foreign central banks, especially the ECB, which were under heavy pressure and facing a complete freeze of their financial markets due to a plunging euro and lack of dollars. This is recounted in Chapter 11 of Neil Irwin's The Alchemists from 2013. They immediately approved $180 billion of lending, but by December this had amounted to $580 billion, leading to eurojunk sitting on the Fed balance sheet. This was nearly half the increase in the Fed balance sheet. This increase would be gradually worked off over the next six months or so as the agreement in December to purchase $500 in mortgage-backed securities was approved, and these were accumulated as the eurojunk got rolled off.
If Bernanke and crew saved the world, this was the moment, and the parallel with 1931 is precisely that it involved the world economy and financial system. In 1931, the world financial system was already going down the tubes, but the Fed let the US system join it. In 2008, the crisis was emanating from the US and its subrime lending crisis. The Fed effectively kept this from leading to a 1931 outcome in Europe and other nations as well. Why it was kept secret what they were doing (although it was publicly knowable to those following the details of the Fed balance sheet at the time) was that the Europeans, particularly Trichet and those leading the ECB, did not want people to know how fragile their situation was for fear of generating a full-blown panic, which was indeed avoided. People should keep this in mind, even if they think CEOs should have gone to jail or we are about to experience hyperinflation or whatever other dislike they might have about Fed policies of that time.
Barkley Rosser
Monday, November 2, 2015
From The Personal Is Political to The Political Is Personal
Once upon a time the personal was political. Do you have a problem in your personal life? Men treat you badly? Your classes are authoritarian and stultifying and make you hate school? Your boss is a jerk? Take it public. You may find out that thousands, even millions of others have the same “personal” problems and that political action—joining together with other women or students or workers—can do for you what sulking or private griping can’t.
Now the political is personal. We still have racism, but the solution is for white people, one by one, to look inside themselves and confront their personal bias. There is mass poverty and oppression across the globe, and the solution is for each of us in the wealthier countries to be more careful shoppers, avoiding goods produced with the most exploited labor. Climate change threatens to overwhelm us, and to act against it we should examine our individual carbon footprints, drive less, eat less meat, change our light bulbs.
Of course, the political and personal overlap from both directions. Surely we need both. But an intensified quest for personal virtue can hardly substitute for a retreat from collective action.
Now the political is personal. We still have racism, but the solution is for white people, one by one, to look inside themselves and confront their personal bias. There is mass poverty and oppression across the globe, and the solution is for each of us in the wealthier countries to be more careful shoppers, avoiding goods produced with the most exploited labor. Climate change threatens to overwhelm us, and to act against it we should examine our individual carbon footprints, drive less, eat less meat, change our light bulbs.
Of course, the political and personal overlap from both directions. Surely we need both. But an intensified quest for personal virtue can hardly substitute for a retreat from collective action.
Sunday, November 1, 2015
Does Christianity admit of private property?
The following catechism on selfishness appeared in an article titled "Serious Questions of the Hour" in the November 1874 Shaker and Shakeress Monthly. A large portion of it was quoted in Richard T. Ely's The Labor Movement in America (1886). I have reformatted the text, breaking questions and answers into separate paragraphs.
SELFISHNESS
Does Christianity admit of private property?
It does not; never did.
Do Christian churches permit distinctions of dress, diet, or other comforts, among the members?
Never.
Are there any rich or poor Christians?
None whatever.
Why are there so many rich, and particularly why are there so many poor, in the so-called Christian churches of to-day?
Because such churches are not Christian.
Can these be brethren and sisters of Christ while faring so unequally?
Never.
Why are there no rich nor poor in Christ's church?
The formerly rich "lay down" their plenty; the formerly poor do likewise with their poverty, and hence share equally.
Who, then, are the rich and poor?
The children of unresurrection, who will give up neither their riches nor poverty for the Gospel's sake.
Who amass fortunes and live in palatial residences?
Unfeeling men and women, erroneously termed Christians, who are careless of how many are made correspondingly poor.
Who are the mountains and valleys of scripture?
The rich and poor.
What is the mission of Christianity to such?
To bring down the mountains; raise up the valleys — Inaugurate an equality — none possessed aught he could call his own.
What wonderful phenomena accompany conversions to Christianity?
Mine becomes Ours! Riches and Poverty, with their miseries, disappear.
George Will Starting Out Smart And Going Dumb On Anti-Semitism
In today's Washington Post George Will follows up on a new book by Timothy Snyder about Germany and anti-Semitism, also drawing on earlier work by Daniel Goldhagen. He finds in their work that Binyamin Netanyahu's claim that Hitler was convinced to do the Holocaust by Jerusalem muft Haj Amin al-Husseini is nonsense, a claim that Netanyahu has now apparently withdrawn and even apologized for making. Will notes that Snyder and Goldhagen argue that Hitler drew both on longstanding German views, but also was especially convinced even at the time he wrote Mein Kampf in the 1920s that racial conflict was the driving force of history, a winner take all violent conflict, and that the Aryan-Semite conflict was the most important. He was definitely already geared up to try to kill all Jews long before the mufti showed up in Berlin in 1941 and had already done in about 700,000 by then.
Apparently Snyder talks about this also, but I do not know what he says, but Will interprets as saying that the same holds for Iran today. They are also convinced of a deeply rooted need to commit genocide against Jews and to destroy not only the state of Israel but Jews living there and apparently elsewhere as well, although Will is less clear about this latter point. There are serious problems with this argument, which is widely repeated and believed in much of US media, with a lot of this coming out of the debates over now completed Iran nuclear deal, with many still claiming it will lead to them getting a bomb and using it to nuke Israel and engage in genocide.
So, one problem has long been that while there have been leaders in Iran who have questioned the Holocaust, or at least details of it, none of them has ever called for such a thing. Lots of them, including current Supreme Leader Khameini, have called for the ending of the state of Israel and its replacement by a state elected by all longtime residents of the former British mandate of Palestine, none of these have called for the killing of Jews except in self-defense, with the most drastic call being for the expulsion of more recently arrived Jews from what is now Israel. Most of the reports of plans for genocide have been based on mistranslations from the Farsi, and Khameini has gone out of his way to explicitly deny any such intentions. He does not like the state of Israel, but he strongly opposes the killing of Jews.
This has a lot of credibility because in fact Iran has the largest Jewish population of any predominantly Muslim MENA nation at around 15-25,000, with these even having a representative in the Majlis. Does this mean that they suffer no discrimination? Hardly. They do. But their treatment has been far better than in their Arab neighbors, many of which had much larger Jewish populations prior to 1948, but which have seen the vast majority of their Jewish populations leave for one place or another since then, if they have not been killed outright. Probably Morocco has the second largest Jewish population in MENA, but less than half of what Iran has, with them lacking some of the protections their Iranian co-religionists have.
So, Will has played into an anti-Iranian meme pushed by hardline Israelis, even as he has joined in on the deserved bashing of Netanyahu's nonsense about the muft of Jerusalem.
Barkley Rosser
Apparently Snyder talks about this also, but I do not know what he says, but Will interprets as saying that the same holds for Iran today. They are also convinced of a deeply rooted need to commit genocide against Jews and to destroy not only the state of Israel but Jews living there and apparently elsewhere as well, although Will is less clear about this latter point. There are serious problems with this argument, which is widely repeated and believed in much of US media, with a lot of this coming out of the debates over now completed Iran nuclear deal, with many still claiming it will lead to them getting a bomb and using it to nuke Israel and engage in genocide.
So, one problem has long been that while there have been leaders in Iran who have questioned the Holocaust, or at least details of it, none of them has ever called for such a thing. Lots of them, including current Supreme Leader Khameini, have called for the ending of the state of Israel and its replacement by a state elected by all longtime residents of the former British mandate of Palestine, none of these have called for the killing of Jews except in self-defense, with the most drastic call being for the expulsion of more recently arrived Jews from what is now Israel. Most of the reports of plans for genocide have been based on mistranslations from the Farsi, and Khameini has gone out of his way to explicitly deny any such intentions. He does not like the state of Israel, but he strongly opposes the killing of Jews.
This has a lot of credibility because in fact Iran has the largest Jewish population of any predominantly Muslim MENA nation at around 15-25,000, with these even having a representative in the Majlis. Does this mean that they suffer no discrimination? Hardly. They do. But their treatment has been far better than in their Arab neighbors, many of which had much larger Jewish populations prior to 1948, but which have seen the vast majority of their Jewish populations leave for one place or another since then, if they have not been killed outright. Probably Morocco has the second largest Jewish population in MENA, but less than half of what Iran has, with them lacking some of the protections their Iranian co-religionists have.
So, Will has played into an anti-Iranian meme pushed by hardline Israelis, even as he has joined in on the deserved bashing of Netanyahu's nonsense about the muft of Jerusalem.
Barkley Rosser
Saturday, October 31, 2015
A Nadir for Left Wing Monetary Advice
I have enormous respect for Ralph Nader. I think he has accomplished as much for social progress in the US as any white guy in the last 50 years. My one personal interaction with him left me with a feeling of awe at his level of dedication. (And, no, he is not responsible for that Florida business in 2000, but that’s another argument.)
Alas, he has gone off the deep end in his criticism of the Fed’s zero-bounded interest rate policy. He thinks it represents a scam to prop up the evil banks at the expense of virtuous savers, who deserve to earn more on their money. Even worse is the comment thread, which exposes the lunacy of much of the US left, or at least the portion of it driven by the urge to post comments.
For the record, if your perspective on economics comes from the left, you should be a big fan of low interest rates under most circumstances. (1) Given whatever fiscal policy is doing, lower interest rates mean more macroeconomic stimulus, with less unemployment and more potential for worker bargaining power. As long as there’s labor market slack, this argument should be compelling. (2) Low interest rates increases the shadow of the future. That means more incentive for conserving natural resources while lowering the bar for investment in new products and processes. (3) Interest is a return on holding money, and it’s hard for me to see how anyone on the left could argue that a greater share of society’s resources should go toward remunerating existing wealth. (4) It’s true that more of the burden for financing retirement falls on individuals who are now expected to bulk up their savings. This is the consequence of the demise of defined-benefit pensions and the failure to expand Social Security to keep up with economic growth. The reality is that most people can’t save enough to make for the lack of social insurance, especially with wages stagnant over multiple decades. A few percentage points in interest rates will not solve this problem: we need publicly funded pensions adequate for a decent retirement.
Meanwhile, the left should support the Fed in its low interest policy and put whatever pressure it can muster on it to resist the demand for tight money—which comes mostly from the right and the rich, except for Ralph Nader.
Alas, he has gone off the deep end in his criticism of the Fed’s zero-bounded interest rate policy. He thinks it represents a scam to prop up the evil banks at the expense of virtuous savers, who deserve to earn more on their money. Even worse is the comment thread, which exposes the lunacy of much of the US left, or at least the portion of it driven by the urge to post comments.
For the record, if your perspective on economics comes from the left, you should be a big fan of low interest rates under most circumstances. (1) Given whatever fiscal policy is doing, lower interest rates mean more macroeconomic stimulus, with less unemployment and more potential for worker bargaining power. As long as there’s labor market slack, this argument should be compelling. (2) Low interest rates increases the shadow of the future. That means more incentive for conserving natural resources while lowering the bar for investment in new products and processes. (3) Interest is a return on holding money, and it’s hard for me to see how anyone on the left could argue that a greater share of society’s resources should go toward remunerating existing wealth. (4) It’s true that more of the burden for financing retirement falls on individuals who are now expected to bulk up their savings. This is the consequence of the demise of defined-benefit pensions and the failure to expand Social Security to keep up with economic growth. The reality is that most people can’t save enough to make for the lack of social insurance, especially with wages stagnant over multiple decades. A few percentage points in interest rates will not solve this problem: we need publicly funded pensions adequate for a decent retirement.
Meanwhile, the left should support the Fed in its low interest policy and put whatever pressure it can muster on it to resist the demand for tight money—which comes mostly from the right and the rich, except for Ralph Nader.
Friday, October 30, 2015
Tailgunner Ted
Reflecting upon Cruz's rip-snorting, crowd-pleasing, media-bashing outburst during the GOP debate on Wednesday, I was reminded of the old lawyer joke about what to do when both the evidence and the law are against you. A version of the anecdote was told by Carl Sandburg in a 1936 book-length poem, The People, Yes! Sam Ervin (yes, that Sam Ervin) also told a version in his November 1954 speech on the Senate resolution of censure against McCarthy for disorderly behavior:
The following story is told in North Carolina: A young lawyer went to an old lawyer for advice as to how to try a lawsuit. The old lawyer said, "If the evidence is against you, talk about the law. If the law is against you, talk about the evidence." The young lawyer said. "But what do you do when both the evidence and the law are against you?" "In that event," said the old lawyer, "give somebody hell. That will distract the attention of the judge and the jury from the weakness of your case."
That is precisely what Senator McCarthy is doing in his response to the report of the select committee. He does not attempt to meet that report on the merits. He insists that the Senate shall try everybody and everything except the junior Senator from Wisconsin and the issues which the Senate was called into special session to try.
He asserts primarily that the Senate must try Senator Watkins, Senator Johnson of Colorado, and myself, on the ground that we were disqualified to serve on the select committee because we entertained a bias against him.
He declares secondarily that the Senate must then try the select committee as a whole upon his charge that all of its members are unwitting handmaidens, involuntary agents, and attorneys in fact for the Communist Party.Sound familiar? If you can't back up your political posturing with facts and coherent arguments, pound the table and give the liberal-biased media hell for asking the damned, impertinent questions. Finish off by accusing your adversaries of being Commies -- or, at best, unwitting dupes of the evil Communist conspiracy. Cruz has the drill down to a "tea."
Sam Ervin's speech contained a treasury of these homespun gems, each of them -- not surprisingly -- as applicable to the junior Senator from Texas and his foxy-truthy acolytes as they were to that old hack, Joe.
On lifting words out of context
I now know that the lifting of statements out of context is a typical McCarthy technique. The writer of Ecclesiastes assures us that "there is no new thing under the sun." The McCarthy technique of lifting statements out, of context was practiced by a preacher in North Carolina about 75 years ago. At that lime the women had a habit of wearing their hair in top-knots This preacher deplored the habit. As a consequence, he preached a rip-snorting sermon one Sunday on the text, "Top Knot Come Down." At the conclusion of his sermon an irate woman, wearing a very prominent top-knot, told the preacher that no such text could be found In the Bible. The preacher thereupon opened the Scriptures to the 17th verse of the 24th chapter of Matthew and pointed to the words:Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take anything out of this house.[Laughter]
Any practitioner of the McCarthy technique of lifting things out of context can readily find the text, "top not come down" in this verse.
On the inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality:
I wish to say that one thing I noticed about Senator McCarthy is very puzzling to me. It is reflected in all has examinations. He seems to have an incapacity to distinguish between what he thinks in his head and external facts. I do not say this in unkindness. But this characteristic makes it very difficult for one to meet him on the same mental plane.On McCarthy's technique for examining witnesses:
Senators can claim that was legitimate cross-examination if they wish to do so; but I call it baiting and badgering and brow-beating a witness.On the making of "fantastic and foul accusations":
I do not propose to urge Senator McCarthy's expulsion from the Senate, but I shall make three observations upon the fantastic and foul accusations made by him against the six Senators who served on the select committee:
First, if Senator McCarthy made these fantastic and foul accusations against the members of the select committee without believing them to be true, he attempted to assassinate the character of these Senators and ought to be expelled from membership in the Senate for moral incapacity to perform the duties of a Senator.
Second, it Senator McCarthy made these fantastic and foul accusations against the six Senators who served on the select committee in the honest belief that they were true, then Senator McCarthy was suffering from mental delusions of gigantic proportions, and ought to be expelled from the Senate for mental incapacity to perform the duties of a Senator.
I do not propose to permit Senator McCarthy to try Senator Watkins, Senator Johnson of Colorado, or me on the charge of partiality. I do not propose to permit Senator McCarthy to try the entire membership of the select committee upon his charge that they are the unwitting hand maidens or involuntary agents or attorneys in fact of the Communist Party.
Senator Ervin concluded his speech with yet another homespun tale from North Carolina:
Mr. President, many years ago there was a custom in a section of my country, known as the South Mountains, to hold religious meetings at which the oldest members of the congregation were called upon to stand up and publicly testify to their religious experiences. On one occasion they were holding such a meeting in one of the churches; and old Uncle Ephriam Swink, a South Mountaineer whose body was all bent and distorted with arthritis, was present. All the older members of the congregation except Uncle Ephriam arose and gave testimony to their religious experiences. Uncle Ephriam kept his seat. Thereupon, the moderator said. "Brother Ephriam, suppose you tell us what God has done for you."
Uncle Ephriam arose, with his bent and distorted body, and said, "Brother, he has mighty nigh ruint me."
Mr. President, that is about what Senator McCarthy has done to this Senate. As a result of Senator McCarthy's activities and the failure of the Senate to do anything positive about them, the monstrous Idea has found lodgment in the minds of millions of loyal and thoughtful Americans, that Senators are intimidated by Senator McCarthy's threats of libel and slander, and for that reason the will of the Senate to visit upon Senator McCarthy the senatorial discipline he so justly merits is paralyzed.
Where, oh where is Senator Sam Ervin now when we need him?
How to Tell Good Guys from Bad Guys
Regarding Joe McCarthy, I am reposting this from Ecological Headstand, December 2012:
"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is good guy with a gun." -- Wayne LaPierre.
Mr. LaPierre's pronouncement confronts the American public with the crucial task of distinguishing between who is the bad guy and who is the good guy. Fortunately, John Steinbeck addressed this question some 58 years ago, originally published in Punch in September 1954 and republished in The Reporter in March 1955.
How to Tell Good Guys from Bad Guys
JOHN STEINBECK
Television has crept upon us so gradually in America that we have not yet become aware of the extent of its impact for good or bad. I myself do not look at it very often except for its coverage of sporting events, news, and politics. Indeed, I get most of my impressions of the medium from my young sons.Whether for good or bad, television has taken the place of the sugartit, soothing syrups, and the mild narcotics parents in other days used to reduce their children to semi-consciousness and consequently to semi-noisiness. In the past, a harassed parent would say, "Go sit in a chair!" or "Go outside and play!" or "If you don't stop that noise, I'm going to beat your dear little brains out!" The present-day parent suggests, "Why don't you go look at television?" From that moment the screams, shouts, revolver shots, and crashes of motor accidents come from the loudspeaker, not from the child. For some reason, this is presumed to be more relaxing to the parent. The effect on the child has yet to be determined.I have observed the physical symptoms of television-looking on children as well as on adults. The mouth grows slack and the lips hang open; the eyes take on a hypnotized or doped look; the nose runs rather more than usual; the backbone turns to water and the fingers slowly and methodically pick the designs out of brocade furniture. Such is the appearance of semi-consciousness that one wonders how much of the "message" of television is getting through to the brain. This wonder is further strengthened by the fact that a television- looker will look at anything at all and for hours. Recently I came into a room to find my eight-year-old son Catbird sprawled in a chair, idiot slackness on his face, with the doped eyes of an opium smoker. On the television screen stood a young woman of mammary distinction with ice-cream hair listening to a man in thick glasses and a doctor's smock."What's happening?" I asked.Catbird answered in the monotone of the sleeptalker which is known as television voice, "She is asking if she should dye her hair.""What is the doctor's reaction?""If she uses Trutone it's all right," said Catbird. "But if she uses ordinary or adulterated products, her hair will split and lose its golden natural sheen. The big economy size is two dollars and ninety-eight cents if you act now," said Catbird.You see something was getting through to him. He looked punch-drunk, but he was absorbing. I did not feel it fair to interject a fact I have observed —- that natural golden sheen does not exist in nature. But I did think of my friend Elia Kazan's cry of despair, and although it is a digression I shall put it down.We were having dinner in a lovely little restaurant in California. At the table next to us were six beautiful, young, well-dressed American girls of the age and appearance of magazine advertisements. There was only one difficulty with their perfection. You couldn't tell them apart. Kazan, who is a primitive of a species once known as men, regarded the little beauties with distaste, and finally in more sorrow than anger cried, "It's years since I've seen or smelled a dame! It's all products, Golden Glint, l'Eau d'Eau, Butisan, Elyn's puff-adder cream—I remember I used to like how women smelled. Nowadays it's all products."End of digression.Just when the parent becomes convinced that his child's brain is rotting away from television, he is jerked up in another direction. Catbird has corrected me in the Museum of Natural History when I directed his attention to the mounted skeleton of a tyrannosaur. He said it was a brontosaurus but observed kindly that many people made the same error. He argued with his ten-year-old brother about the relative cleanness of the line in Praxiteles and Phidias. He knows the weight a llama will bear before lying down in protest, and his knowledge of entomology is embarrassing to a parent who likes to impart information to his children. And these things he also got from television. I knew that he was picking up masses of unrelated and probably worthless information from television, incidentally the kind of information I also like best, but I did not know that television was preparing him in criticism and politics, and that is what this piece is really about.Indigenous Art FormI will have to go back a bit in preparation. When television in America first began to be a threat to the motion-picture industry, that industry fought back by refusing to allow its films to be shown on the home screens. One never saw new pictures, but there were whole blocks of the films called Westerns which were owned by independents, and these were released to the television stations. The result is that at nearly any time of the day or night you can find a Western being shown on some television station. It is not only the children who see them. All of America sees them. They are a typically American conception, the cowboy picture. The story never varies and the conventions are savagely adhered to. The hero never kisses a girl. He loves his horse and he stands for right and justice. Any change in the story or the conventions would be taken as an outrage. Out of these films folk heroes have grown up Hop-a-long Cassidy, the Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, and Gene Autry. These are more than great men. They are symbols of courage, purity, simplicity, honesty, and right. You must understand that nearly every American is drenched in the tradition of the Western, which is, of course, the celebration of a whole pattern of American life that never existed. It is also as set in its form as the commedia dell' arte.End of preparation.One afternoon, hearing gunfire from the room where our television set is installed, I went in with that losing intention of fraternizing with my son for a little while. There sat Catbird with the cretinous expression I have learned to recognize. A Western was in progress."What's going on?" I asked.He looked at me in wonder. "What do you mean, what's going on? Don't you know?""Well, no. Tell me!"He was kind to me. Explained as though I were the child."Well, the Bad Guy is trying to steal Her father's ranch. But the Good Guy won't let him. Bullet figured out the plot.""Who is Bullet?""Why, the Good Guy's horse." He didn't add "You dope," but his tone implied it."Now wait," I said, "which one is the Good Guy?""The one with the white hat.""Then the one with the black hat is the Bad Guy?""Anybody knows that," said Catbird.For a time I watched the picture, and I realized that I had been ignoring a part of our life that everybody knows. I was interested in the characterizations. The girl, known as Her or She, was a blonde, very pretty but completely unvoluptuous because these are Family Pictures. Sometimes she wore a simple gingham dress and sometimes a leather skirt and boots, but always she had a bit of a bow in her hair and her face was untroubled with emotion or, one might almost say, intelligence. This also is part of the convention. She is a symbol, and any acting would get her thrown out of the picture by popular acclaim.The Good Guy not only wore a white hat but light-colored clothes, shining boots, tight riding pants, and a shirt embroidered with scrolls and flowers. In my young days I used to work with cattle, and our costume was blue jeans, a leather jacket, and boots with run-over heels. The cleaning bill alone of this gorgeous screen cowboy would have been four times what our pay was in a year.The Good Guy had very little change of facial expression. He went through his fantastic set of adventures with no show of emotion. This is another convention and proves that he is very brave and very pure. He is also scrubbed and has an immaculate shave.I turned my attention to the Bad Guy. He wore a black hat and dark clothing, but his clothing was definitely not only unclean but unpressed. He had a stubble of beard but the greatest contrast was in his face. His was not an immobile face. He leered, he sneered, he had a nasty laugh. He bullied and shouted. He looked evil. While he did not swear, because this is a Family Picture, he said things like "Wall dog it" and "You rat" and "I'll cut off your ears and eat 'em," which would indicate that his language was not only coarse but might, off screen, be vulgar. He was, in a word, a Bad Guy. I found a certain interest in the Bad Guy which was lacking in the Good Guy."Which one do you like best?" I asked.Catbird removed his anaesthetized eyes from the screen. "What do you mean?""Do you like the Good Guy or the Bad Guy?"He sighed at my ignorance and looked back at the screen. "Are you kidding?" he asked. "The Good Guy, of course."Now a new character began to emerge. He puzzled me because he wore a gray hat. I felt a little embarrassed about asking my son, the expert, but I gathered my courage. "Catbird," I asked shyly, "what kind of a guy is that, the one in the gray hat?"He was sweet to me then. I think until that moment he had not understood the abysmal extent of my ignorance. "He's the In-Between Guy," Catbird explained kindly. "If he starts bad he ends good and if he starts good he ends bad.""What's this one going to do?""See how he's sneering and needs a shave?" my son asked."Yes.""Well, the picture's just started, so that guy is going to end good and help the Good Guy get Her father's ranch back.""How can you be sure?" I asked.Catbird gave me a cold look. "He's got a gray hat, hasn't he? Now don't talk. It's about time for the chase."Got Him Pegged.
There it was, not only a tight, true criticism of a whole art form but to a certain extent of life itself. I was deeply impressed because this simple explanation seemed to mean something to me more profound than television or Westerns.Several nights later I told the Catbird criticism to a friend who is a producer. He has produced many successful musical comedies. My friend has an uncanny perception for the public mind and also for its likes and dislikes. You have to have if you produce musical shows. He listened and nodded and didn't think it was a cute child story. He said, "It's not kid stuff at all. There's a whole generation in this country that makes its judgments pretty much on that basis.""Give me an example," I asked."I'll have to think about it," he said.Well, that was in March. Soon afterward my wife and I went to Spain and then to Paris and rented a little house. As soon as school was out in New York, my boys flew over to join us in Paris. In July, my producer friend dropped in to see us. He was going to take an English show to New York, and he had been in London making arrangements.He told us all of the happenings at home, the gossip and the new jokes and the new songs. Finally I asked him about the McCarthy hearings. "Was it as great a show as we heard?" I asked."I couldn't let it alone," he said. "I never saw anything like it. I wonder whether those people knew how they were putting themselves on the screen.""Well, what do you think will happen?""In my opinion, McCarthy is finished," he said, and then he grinned. "I base my opinion on your story about Catbird and the Westerns.""I don't follow you.""Have you ever seen McCarthy on television?""Sure.""Just remember," said my friend. "He sneers. He bullies, he has a nasty laugh and he always looks as though he needs a shave. The only thing he lacks is a black hat. McCarthy is the Bad Guy. Everybody who saw him has got it pegged. He's the Bad Guy and people don't like the Bad Guy. I may be wrong but that's what I think. He's finished."The next morning at breakfast I watched Catbird put butter and two kinds of jam and a little honey on a croissant, then eat the treacherous thing, then lick the jam from the inside of his elbow to his fingers. He took a peach from the basket in the center of the table."Catbird," I asked, "did you see any of the McCarthy stuff on television?""Sure," he said."Was he a Good Guy or a Bad Guy?" I asked.
"Bad Guy," said Catbird, and he bit into the peach.And, do you know, I suspect it is just that simple.
VSPs Get Their Way With Budget Deal: Social Security Benefits Are Cut
All the Very Serious People are jumping up and down and cheering. We have a budget deal in the House and the debt ceiling is being raised and there will be no more artificial budget crises until after the new president is in office, hurray hurray hurray! Not only that, all the Dems in the House voted for it, with everybody gushing gratitude to John Boehner for making it possible by resigning as Speaker to turn it over to reasonable Paul Ryan once Boehner could get this deal through the House, thwarting the evil Tea Party/Freedom Caucus bomb throwers who want to have a big crisis with the government shut down and indeed bankrupt outright. We are saved!
Well, indeed there certainly are these benefits. But without much publicity, Paul Ryan is reported to be behind slipping into the deal something that he has long supported, entitlement benefit cuts, which have been heavily featured in past budgets he has proposed. The particular cut is the ending in Social Security of the ability of couples to "file and suspend" with this being replaced by "deemed filing." File and suspend allowed someone to get Social Security benefits prior to retiring, while not having to accept the lower benefits one gets if one retires at 62 or 66. One can get the higher benefits later. This will now not be allowed, so one must accept the lower benefits if one starts getting benefits early. This has only been possible for married couples with this involving one getting spousal benefits and then their own through some semi-complicated maneuvers that have been allowed since 2001.
So, while most commentators have simply ignored this item, or focused on some other changes that have involved propping up the disability part of Social Security (which has needed some propping), this is indeed a benefit cut and one that will affect people who are on the verge of retiring (those already doing it I think are grandparented in), not non-voting Gen-Xers or millennials down the road, as would be the case for most of the proposals being made by the GOP presidential candidates (e.g. gradually raising the retirement age as has been going on for several decades thanks to the 1983 Greenspan commission). Most of those who have noted this, particularly the VSP types, have applauded it, saying this has been sort of a scam and has been available mostly to higher income people. There is something to this, but there is no doubt it is a benefit cut, and we did not see any cuts to any other programs, with in fact defense spending being allowed to rise. Even though Cruz claimed this deal would raise the deficit during the latest GOP debate, it will not. The bottom line is that Social Security benefits are being cut while DOD spending is increasing, and this was unanimously supported by Dems in the House, and probably will be also be in the Senate. What a farce.
Regarding Ryan, Paul Krugman and Dean Baker have done a good job of pointing out how off the wall the budgets he has proposed in the past have been, filled with asterisks, while he has somehow been praised over and over as this responsible Republican in the House. Of course he has national recognition due to being Romney's VP candidate, and he has some favorable qualities, including even his desire to spend time with his family. He looks like a reasonable person until one looks too closely. However, it is a bit ironic that the VSP crowd is so enamored of him. Their fave commission was the failed Bowles-Simpson one, with the long favored VSP deal being cutting entitlement benefits in exchange for a tax increase. It should be remembered that the reason it failed (and its "report" was simply a document issued by Bowles and Simpson themselves, not the whole commission) was that some of the Republicans on the commission voted against its recommendations. One of those who did so was Paul Ryan. Why did they do so? Because it proposed tax increases. So, Paul Ryan is just great on cutting Social Security (and Medicare and Medicaid) benefits, but he is not in favor of that crucial other piece of the VSP deal, tax increases. But that has not restrained their enthusiasm for him.
Oh, and WaPo in particular has continued to look like itself earlier today in a column by Charles Lane. He mostly wastes time blaming Obama for all the failures of the VSP dreams to come true, "kicking the can" down the road, although he mostly focuses in particular on Obama's "failure" to implement cuts to Social Security and healthcare, shame on him. Lane mentions in passing these cuts in Social Security in the budget deal, but basically dismisses them, "too little, too late." Only near the end does he mention in passing the unwillingness of GOPsters to raise taxes, with his focus overwhelmingly on the "need" to cut those darned entitlement benefits, gosh darn it!
Barkley Rosser
Well, indeed there certainly are these benefits. But without much publicity, Paul Ryan is reported to be behind slipping into the deal something that he has long supported, entitlement benefit cuts, which have been heavily featured in past budgets he has proposed. The particular cut is the ending in Social Security of the ability of couples to "file and suspend" with this being replaced by "deemed filing." File and suspend allowed someone to get Social Security benefits prior to retiring, while not having to accept the lower benefits one gets if one retires at 62 or 66. One can get the higher benefits later. This will now not be allowed, so one must accept the lower benefits if one starts getting benefits early. This has only been possible for married couples with this involving one getting spousal benefits and then their own through some semi-complicated maneuvers that have been allowed since 2001.
So, while most commentators have simply ignored this item, or focused on some other changes that have involved propping up the disability part of Social Security (which has needed some propping), this is indeed a benefit cut and one that will affect people who are on the verge of retiring (those already doing it I think are grandparented in), not non-voting Gen-Xers or millennials down the road, as would be the case for most of the proposals being made by the GOP presidential candidates (e.g. gradually raising the retirement age as has been going on for several decades thanks to the 1983 Greenspan commission). Most of those who have noted this, particularly the VSP types, have applauded it, saying this has been sort of a scam and has been available mostly to higher income people. There is something to this, but there is no doubt it is a benefit cut, and we did not see any cuts to any other programs, with in fact defense spending being allowed to rise. Even though Cruz claimed this deal would raise the deficit during the latest GOP debate, it will not. The bottom line is that Social Security benefits are being cut while DOD spending is increasing, and this was unanimously supported by Dems in the House, and probably will be also be in the Senate. What a farce.
Regarding Ryan, Paul Krugman and Dean Baker have done a good job of pointing out how off the wall the budgets he has proposed in the past have been, filled with asterisks, while he has somehow been praised over and over as this responsible Republican in the House. Of course he has national recognition due to being Romney's VP candidate, and he has some favorable qualities, including even his desire to spend time with his family. He looks like a reasonable person until one looks too closely. However, it is a bit ironic that the VSP crowd is so enamored of him. Their fave commission was the failed Bowles-Simpson one, with the long favored VSP deal being cutting entitlement benefits in exchange for a tax increase. It should be remembered that the reason it failed (and its "report" was simply a document issued by Bowles and Simpson themselves, not the whole commission) was that some of the Republicans on the commission voted against its recommendations. One of those who did so was Paul Ryan. Why did they do so? Because it proposed tax increases. So, Paul Ryan is just great on cutting Social Security (and Medicare and Medicaid) benefits, but he is not in favor of that crucial other piece of the VSP deal, tax increases. But that has not restrained their enthusiasm for him.
Oh, and WaPo in particular has continued to look like itself earlier today in a column by Charles Lane. He mostly wastes time blaming Obama for all the failures of the VSP dreams to come true, "kicking the can" down the road, although he mostly focuses in particular on Obama's "failure" to implement cuts to Social Security and healthcare, shame on him. Lane mentions in passing these cuts in Social Security in the budget deal, but basically dismisses them, "too little, too late." Only near the end does he mention in passing the unwillingness of GOPsters to raise taxes, with his focus overwhelmingly on the "need" to cut those darned entitlement benefits, gosh darn it!
Barkley Rosser
Monday, October 26, 2015
Finding Myself Partly Agreeing With Robert A. Samuelson (On The Debt Ceiling)
In today's Washington Post the usually egregious Robert A. Samuelson has written a column, "Dump the debt ceiling," whose main message I agree with. It is about time the VSPs in Washington figure out that the US debt ceiling is utter nonsense, with the US the only nation ever to have such a nonsensical mechanism, even though we have had it in some form or other since 1917, only four years after we got our income tax (of course, many nations have limits on budget deficits, a very different thing). He goes over this history and repeats arguments I have made on numerous occasions in the past such as here.
So, where do I have a problem with him? Of course he went from his reasonable discussion of the silliness of the debt ceiling to talking about how we could achieve a balanced budget, something that we do not need to do. He dumps on Republicans because they are unrealistic about various plans they have put forward that the spending cuts they propose would leave anything meaningful left of the government, without admitting that this implies getting rid of such things as air traffic control and the weather service. This is also not unreasonable.
But then for going after the Dems he revives his usual VSP rant against Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, arguing that benefits for these should be cut. Otherwise we are facing 20 to 25 percent tax increases, not doable only on the rich. No discussion that lowering the rate of increase in health care costs might help out on all this.
To quote Dean Baker, who I am surprised did not comment on this, "It is Monday, and the columnists at WaPo are calling for cuts in Social Security and healthcare."
Barkley Rosser
So, where do I have a problem with him? Of course he went from his reasonable discussion of the silliness of the debt ceiling to talking about how we could achieve a balanced budget, something that we do not need to do. He dumps on Republicans because they are unrealistic about various plans they have put forward that the spending cuts they propose would leave anything meaningful left of the government, without admitting that this implies getting rid of such things as air traffic control and the weather service. This is also not unreasonable.
But then for going after the Dems he revives his usual VSP rant against Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, arguing that benefits for these should be cut. Otherwise we are facing 20 to 25 percent tax increases, not doable only on the rich. No discussion that lowering the rate of increase in health care costs might help out on all this.
To quote Dean Baker, who I am surprised did not comment on this, "It is Monday, and the columnists at WaPo are calling for cuts in Social Security and healthcare."
Barkley Rosser
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