The Cult Of Beck's Lies About Keynes & Deficits! (Reagan, Clinton, Obama)

[kovert]

Straight from the mouth of the father of free market economic theory.

"The other part of the new deal policy was relief and recovery... providing relief for the unemployed, providing jobs for the unemployed, and motivating the economy to expand... an expansive monetary policy. Those parts of the New Deal I did support.

Something had to be done; it was intolerable. And it was a case in which, unlike most cases, the short run deserved to dominate."

[kovert]

I guess we really all are Keynesians now.

"T]he prolific federal judge and University of Chicago economist argues that competitive forces inspire financiers to take irrational gambles--especially when they're betting other people's money. We cannot trust them to put the common good ahead of profits, says Posner. As a result, government must step in to limit the risks bankers take and, occasionally, repair the damage they inflict."

And more from Keynes 2.0.

[ovcatto]

Originally Posted by LibertyandJusticeforAll

1. Any nation willing to go into debt and not pay for it is doomed.

Can't argue with that.

2. Any nation not willing to balance a budget is also doomed to be in debt.

Now that would have been an interesting argument during WWII.

"Well General Eisenhower, the CBO says that this Normandy Invasion Surge would place a deficit on the budget. Do you think that we could either put it off until the next fiscal year or perhaps you might consider scaling down your plans."

Any nation who thinks they can provide economic and social justice at the hands of centralized government and expand this idealogy to the rest of the world expense of treasury and blood will always ignore 1 and 2.
You can call it anything you want economic debt comes from government spending and no matter what your reasons and or tax system the people are slaves to government intervention.

This whole concept of slavery to the government or theft by a government in a democracy, even a representative one leaves me scratching my head. As does the idea that economic or social justice would simply spring forth from the ground absent the balancing powers of government.

But hey, what do I know.

[kovert]

Another interview from Keynes 2.0.

Originally Posted by kovert

"None other than Milton Friedman, the founding father of the free-market era, told me in an interview before he died that Stiglitz also had been more correct than everyone else about how to transform Russia into a market economy when he argued that institution-building and creating regulatory authorities were an important preliminary step. "In the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, I kept being asked what the Russians should do," Friedman told me in 2002. "I said, 'Privatize, privatize, privatize. I was wrong. Joe was right. What we want is privatization, and the rule of law.
As his longtime collaborator Bruce Greenwald—another Columbia professor who, by the way, is a conservative Republican—puts it: "You need radical global reform" to correct chronic imbalances in capital flows, all of which Stiglitz has laid out in his book, "Making Globalization Work." "There's no chance these guys are going to do what's necessary," with the possible exception of Summers, says Greenwald."

[jetgraphics]

Originally Posted by kovert

Roosevelt & Keynes helped set up a system to REDUCE DEFICITS, NOT EXACERBATE THEM!!!

According to the law on the books, that is an erroneous conclusion.

A unit dollar is defined as a silver coin. (See: Coinage Act of 1792, et seq)
A dollar bill is defined as an obligation to pay face value in lawful money. (See: Title 12 USC Sec. 411)
In 1933, Congress repudiated that promise. (See: House Joint Resolution 192, 1933)

Since 1933, no dollars have circulated. (Which explains the perpetual State of Emergency)
Since 1935, all enumerated Americans are "contributors", equally liable on the impossible public debt (Now over 12 trillions).
Pursuant to law, that debt cannot be paid with more debt (dollar bills are debt, borrowed, at usury, into existence).
And the current sum can never be paid - since it is several orders of magnitude greater than the world supply of gold bullion (Silver was demonetized in the Coinage Act of 1873).
This impossible situation cannot be questioned, pursuant to paragraph 4 of the 14th amendment.

D'oh!

[kovert]

True capitalists giving a shout to the great Keynes.

"John Maynard Keynes had it right when he likened short-term investing in the stock market to betting on the result of a "beauty contest."

[subsound]

Originally Posted by Sandpointian

Pardon my French, but why on earth would anyone in their right mind expect a high school graduate to deliver a formal discourse on the political economy and monetary policy?

Jesus, are we so desperate in our ignorance that scholarship will now be promoted by someone who learns via Cliff's Notes?

I think you are dead on there, but just to expand on this a bit more.

We kind of get what we ask for when people look for sound bytes for their opinions rather then learning in order to make intelligent and rational decisions. Though learning, intelligence and education are frowned upon by those like Beck because it lessens the population of easily manipulated idiots...not really because of the "evil" of knowledge.

Just look at the Tea Idiots...that wonderful Youtube video posted yesterday.

"What part of the bill do you not like (or contains X you find is bad)?"

"I don't know, I haven't read it."

[kovert]

We really need to take a good look at the brilliance of the minds of the New Deal era like Keynes, Roosevelt and Marshall.

"China's surplus can also be traced back to the 'Nixon Shock' of 1971 when the President unilaterally dismantled the Bretton Woods system - an international financial architecture designed to discipline both deficit and surplus countries, and maintain the balance of trade. By abandoning the system, President Nixon laid the foundations of the US deficit and the Chinese surplus.

In addition, Nixon's actions in 1971 unilaterally removed gold as the world's reserve asset. Later, US Treasury Bills - IOUs issued by the US Treasury - replaced gold. Today any country with a surplus has no choice but to hold Treasury IOUs, as evidence of the health of their economy.

So, largely thanks to Nixon, the US now acts as the world's banker, and can issue Treasury Bills freely to finance its deficit.

To do that the United States will have to lead the world in re-introducing a Bretton Woods-type system: Bretton Woods ll.

In other words, a system that restrains capital flows between nations, and obliges countries to structurally adjust their economies periodically, to reduce deficits/surpluses, and return their economy to balance."

[kovert]

Keynesian 2.0. Finally, people are beginning to stir from the Ayn Rand/Milton Friedman wet dream and recognize the brilliance of Keynes.

"Such restrictions were in force in most major capitalist economies during the Bretton Woods era of fixed exchange rates (1945-71)--otherwise known as the Golden Age of the American economy, or what the French to this day call les trente glorieuses, the Thirty Glorious Years. The American and world economies performed better in this period than ever before or since. And therein lies the tale.

What's the place of capital controls in this? Without free movement of capital, there's no manipulating currencies. That's one big reason why, pre-1971, America was a net creditor nation and ran either small trade surpluses or deficits tiny by present standards. So if you bring back capital controls, you necessarily force the world back towards much more balanced trade.

This doesn't mean the end of international capitalism any more than it did in 1970, when multinational corporations were doing just fine, thank you, albeit under somewhat different rules. They'll adapt just fine this time, too. And the U.S. may even stop hemorrhaging jobs, running down its industrial base, and piling up foreign debt due to trade deficits."

[OhioIstheBest]

Originally Posted by kovert

Roosevelt & Keynes helped set up a system to REDUCE DEFICITS, NOT EXACERBATE THEM!!!

And since FDR was prez we have gotten nothing but deficits.

According to the government:

On June 30, 1945 the national debt was $258,682,187,409.93

On June 30, 1971 the national debt was $398,129,744,455.54

Guess Keynes and FDR weren't so bright after all.