Your statements are superficially correct. For instance, we have a 10 trillion dollar infrastructure deficit. Putting money into curing that generates a lot of low skill jobs and provides the basis for the rest of the economy to function. So FDR had it right.
But the cyclic nature of the economy as driven by what party is in power does not explain the really big swings in the economy. But if you have a big swing, the party in power and its ideology will determine the response, which may make things worse, as in Hoover/Bush, vs FDR, better.
Truman I have no use for, and neither did FDR. Truman explicitly sabatoged FDR's program. For that we are now suffering. For instance, the speculative component of the economy is up around 400 trillion a year and the Gross Planetary Product is less than a tenth of that. So it is no wonder that useful production is being strangled. It is a big ponzi scheme out there and we suffer.
Bush to the extent he has an intent it to protect the beneficiaries of the speculation. Kerry *might* do something more useful. When Kerry made implicit comparisons of Bush to Hoover, you know that the issue is under debate inside his organization.
I have a little story, without URLs, from my local area, Tacoma, WA. Tacoma city government has the usual draconian rules on misuse of government equipment. There is an elected city council which holds public meetings. The council critters have government issued laptops which they take to public meetings. One was observed to be checking his stock positions during city council. This was publicized by the press as misuse of government computer facilies, and it is generally agreed that it was against policy.
The politican made excuses and the civil servant who was responsible for enforcing the computer policy said something like "I am not going to touch it". It all blew over.
I conclude, as in the military, you cannot hold people above you accountable. It is the way of the world.
In this cases, Dobbs could have been held accountable by his superiors, who instead chose to shot the messenger. Dobbs did not do much harm by his inactivity, but his superiors seem to me to have done a lot of harm by causing outrage about their actions to response to the situation.
But the real problem is that the citizen's of the state in question have an at-will employment policy, instead of civil service protections. So the imperative is probably to protect the political connected job holders, and thus this result occurs.
Note that we now have civil service reform regarding security agencies at the Federal level. This reform has been compared to the equivalent civil service reforms pushed through by Hitler. Perhaps the results at the Federal level will be even more outrageous than in Dobb's state.
Actually, I can think of a case where non-military americans stopped the federal government from abusing citizens. Most would think though that the non-military citizens were on the wrong side, but they created a history we still live with. Cannot provide any doc to speak of.
It was some southern state during reconstruction. The state was garrisioned by Federal Troops. Most of the troops were black. Some were having fun raping the white women, particularly of the old aristocracy. A small group of prominent men armed themselves and took over the state house. I do not believe a shot was ever fired. But what were the feds to do? Either they cut a deal or they were going to have to do serious military occupation. The deal that was cut was that the South would be open to the Northern industrialists and be anti-union. The military garrisoning would end. And the Southern good old boys could deal with the blacks as they saw fit. Thus we have the Jim Crow laws and perhaps the rise of the KKK as a popular national movement that went all the way into the White House under Wilson.
Probably hard to find in your high school history text.
I based my remark on a Belgium parlimentarian who said something similiar to what I did. Perhaps the resolution is that the behavior here that is legal is criminal in Belgium, and the Belgium's have the grace to try to hide it.
However, I still think my crooks trump your crooks.:-)
I am aware of your point, which why I said *most* of my tax money. Even beyond your point, you might occasionally get some decent vision things out of the congress critters and they would need some money to play with their idea.
But look beyond the inconvenience of your point and consider how the money is allocated now, and with what unseemly all the way to criminal influences. If our congress critters were in Europe and pulled these stunts, most of them would be in jail. In that light, my idea does not look quite so bad.
The Libertarians would probably advocate funding on a voluntary basis! Sort of a anarchist subscription program. Maybe instead of an income tax form selection process, we should just give tax credits for voluntary donations to government.
Oh well, its July 4th, might as well get weird ideas about how to run the government. It is after all the traditional day for it.
Let's not forget the money the government wastes in other ways. Bremer's people spent all the Iraqi oil money in the last few days of the occupation. They are hidding the meeting minutes too. Want to bet some Republicans did not get richer?
I think it would be a good idea if we could individually allocate most of our tax money to specific programs we support. Since my ballot does not much count, maybe I could influence "my" government with my tax return. I might be a little happier come tax time.
I will stand by my statement. Although it was a pretty innocent statement as given, it is intended to reflect that McArthur was part of the American System networks, and Carey, Lincoln's economist, was widely read during and after McArthur. I think you have an overly simple view of how economies work and do not work if you think McArthur's influence on Japan ended when he went to Korea. Then again, you may be sufficiently young that you have not seen a properly working economy up close.
I specifically used the words "general welfare", which I consider working for to be the basis of legitimacy of a government. (as so considered did our Founding Fathers) Your government, assuming it is the United States, is of questionable legitimacy and not simply on the grounds of election results. I think democratic republics are really a good approach, but I do not assume they automatically are worth anything but potential.
On your Japan example, I note that they had McArthur.
On your aggressive foreign policy position, I thought of U.S. foreign and trade policy and just shook my head. The Chinese are trying to preserve their soverignty by resisting U.S. pressure and doing a good job. Three cheers for them.
On your Three Georges Dam complaint, I like the dam, particularly given that the major limiter on Chinese economic development is a shortage of electricity. I also like big development projects in general. I think these infrastructure projects drive the economy. And that is the centerpiece of what the Chinese are doing right.
Big demonstrations recently in Hong Kong and they have the right of it AFAIK. Note this does look a little bit like freedom of speech and assembly, if you have the muscle for it, which is the usual rule. As far as self-governance, I live in the state of Washington, and we have limited self-goverance out here and get along pretty well.
I suspect by political system, you are referring to the "Washington Consensus" which is term referring to a set of policy prescriptions such as transparency, free-trade, and democratic institutions. Google it. Together, they are supposed to bring utopia world-wide. Myself, I am *mostly* happy with the Chinese government, primarily because they have a workable system for economic development and sovernignity. Actually, this relates to the original article in that avoiding dependence on foreign intellectual property is in this context just good sense.
Whatever country you from, I would challenge you to assert your political system is currently serving the general welfare as well as the Chinese political system.
I recently received a chatty email from a fellow who just spent some time in China. His wife was working on a Rotary project there and then they played tourist.
Several things stood out to me. This is a dynamic society, with construction everywhere. Yet they also spend money making their freeways signs look good, with a little extra neon. At night, the big cities are a neon wonderland. The freeways themselves have lighted lane markers and such. Lots of use of light.
And to the point on this topic, everyone he talked to seem to consider Taiwan a province of China, even the Taiwanise tourists, of which there are many. Now what I actually think is that neither government tolerate anything but the party line, and so people do not speak candidly on this issue. The real deal is that China considers Chinese populated territory to be properly under common rule. And most of the Taiwanese share that view. The Taiwanese government of course thinks it should be ruling China.
My idea is that everyone should agree that Taiwan is part of China and set a date, say in the next century, to realize it.
Historically, free weather reporting has been a slam dunk under the general welfare clause of the Constitution. Libertarian's often have a problem conceptualizing that there is a general welfare in which government has a role, beyond oh, maybe, military, IMO. So I want to know: How do you conceptualize the general welfare clause, and lets not forget the preamble.
People who do believe in the general welfare clause might want to click the comment link in the story and tell NOAA what they should do.
In defending the student, I am attacking the dominate culture, not just at this particular college, or even at all U.S. colleges, but in general.
This approach justifies commenting on high schools, which has been a big part of the student's life.
This approach, although referring not to your parents in particulars, justifies commenting on the cultural defects of babyboomers. Since you responded to your parents in particular, and I do not want to be insulting, let me generalize the problem. Baby boomers were taught to go along to get along. Getting along quite well, thank you, has usually meant severe ethical lapses in staying in conformity to the group think around the hypothetical parents.
In you personally, it seems that you concentrate on the good experiences, and try to put the bad ones out of your mind. Some people, however, see as primary the lapses of institutions from their ideals. In a college, intellectual dishonesty used to be something taken seriously. Now, at this college, and iirc statistically, at many colleges this is not true. Yet intellectual dishonesty violates the primary missions of colleges.
So moving on to another college is a good answer, but I also suspect it is more difficult for most people than for you pyschologically. And I have argued that moving on might not work anyway.
I sort of liked the kid, the one who talked about being the only one in a class that did not blantantly cheat.
I have good stories about intellectual dishonesty at colleges, and the stories go way back. But what I want you to think about is this kid who has the intellectual steadfastness not to cheat, in an environment where it was standard to cheat. I think you should put yourself in that position and view his environment from that perspective. Might you not be simply viscerally repulsed by your college. And being the kid, how did you respond to highschool. Or your baby boomer parents, who go along to get along. Disclaimer: I am a baby boomer parent.
Brutally despotic rulers are not much favored by most people. So I think your set up was a bit artificial. But let us suppose we have some brutal and despotic rulers and also that public stock corporations were discrimated against by the brutal despotic rulers, let us say by high taxes and heavy regulation. Compare that to brutal despotic rulers who let the corporations run wild, break unions, monopolize, cook the books, rig prices, etc. etc.
Now it seems to me given your free trade ideology you would prefer the second. I would then suppose you are pretty happy with Bush's economic policies.
On the 1973 oil embargo, my assumption has always been supply manipulation at the refineries, in order to provide an excuse to implement a dollar recycling international program to prop up the big banks while beating up on the population for psy-war reasons. Can't prove it. But I do not think the Alaska oil fields were developed at that time.
You have faith in the axioms was the argument I was making. Apparently, you actually claim to base your belief in the axioms to have evaluated econometric results, so it is a pragmatic position. Or alternatively, perhaps you claim a science based result. I am not sure which to respond to. But are you aware that a finite axiom set of a minimal complexity cannot yield the truth? So I am attacking your reliance on axioms instead of attacking pragmatism or economics as science. I am happy to attack any of the three.
Sometimes I like to run slugs entitled Wall Street Blotter on who is being indicted today. Of course, Enron was the moral equivalent of a serial killer. We agree! But let us suppose I buy up all the future contracts on a commodity and then squeeze. Where do you classify that in terms of a True Price?
Actually, the Israeli threat was yesterday. Or actually, April 30, 2004. Here is what I have on it. Unfortunately, your cite and my cite should be seen as complementary.
Your tariff argument I think I now understand. Its difficulty is that it embeds the free trade axioms by arguing the result under pertrubution would be symmetrical. You do not really believe that, do you? I guess some people do. I used to go to beer with a guy who would make arguments like that. It was a real struggle to get him to buy off on simple exceptions for the general welfare, and then he would backslide a month later.
The IMF was constituted as part of the Bretton Woods package. It had a charter I can approve of. So does the World Bank. In practice, since I have been paying attention, their policy has been to collect debt at any cost to the population. I am not happy with Kerry, almost all indications are that he is planning to be a towel boy for the financial capitalists. But he did say, when pressed on the Argentina situation, that people come before debt. I think the IMF has it the other way. Actually, probably it is speculation before production. I am thinking about the fuss made about Malaysia successful imposition of capital controls.
So what you going to be doing with yourself when all the speculative bubbles burst at once. Might be happening right now. Maybe the Dutch had a better deal because maybe tulips are eatable. (troll)
Let me tell you a personal story from the 1973 oil embargo. Supposedly the Arabs cut the oil supply, generating block long gas lines at the filling stations. Anacortes has a refinery. An old employer reported to me that the oil tankers were backed up ten deep in the Staits of Juan de Fuca because all the holding tanks at the refinery were full. And consistently, the numbers reported for production, which come out rather after the fact, showed no reduction. There is a little paradox here. And it illustrates the difference between an axionomic rational argument and a reality where the axioms are changing, as they are wont to do.
The Arabs have a goal price for oil in the $20's. They would agree, if they had the right partner to negotiate with.
The terror price-premium needs to be looked at in a different way. At the extreme, you have the Israli publicly talking about strategic nuking of twenty Arab population centers. Contemplate that if you want to think about oil prices rising! You cannot have an economy if you have chaos. The speculators do not solve these sort of problems no matters how much they loot. You have a touching faith, and it is a faith, that a speculative process results in the True Price and that is a social good. Lots of people have some distaste for Enron, and there were some really good audio tapes released a few days ago. If you are familiar with those tapes, I suggest that your axioms would force you to defend Enron. Probably you would draw line at that, but that is a paradox also.
The cutting tariffs in half argument did not make sense to me. The reason to have tariffs is in support of an industrial policy and the results of the industrial policy will be sensitive to the tariff levels.
Again, on Hawley-Smoot, it seems to me a scientific approach to protectionism would first of all attempt to determine in what circumstances it works and does not work and learn something. Hawley-Smoot was an accidental result in an administration that did not have one good economic policy. All of Hoover's planned economic policies were at the behest of the interests of the oligarchs of the time and the policies moral equivalency is current IMF policies. Of course(emphasis) Hawley-Smoot was a disaster.
Your reference to communism impells me to trolling: I do not like large public stock corporations.
Nah, not Hawley-Smoot. I cannot think of a single thing from the Hoover administration that I like. I commented on Hoover elsewhere in this story's comments a little more extensively. But to make tariffs work you need fixed exchange rates and bilateral agreements based on the common good of the participating nations.
With respect to U.S. tariffs historically, you may be taking a narrow view of "always". Hamilton's Report on Manufacturing was implemented very successfully and it includes high tariffs on manufactured goods. You are simply wildly wrong, but I am not sure of how you get to be so wrong.
You are not only wrong in particular, but you are wrong from a general perspective. The colonial revolution in North America had high motivations in the Imperial efforts to prevent manufacturing from getting a foothold in the Colonies. The newly independent United State would therefore wish to encourage manufacturing and did so successfully with high tariffs. Tariffs were the main source of revenue for the United States government in the 18th and 19th century.
Now with respect to the apology for speculation. I think oil is nicely immeadiate. Suppose the say Saudi's ship a barrel of oil. Before it lands in the U.S., say, it has changed hands 150 times. Each exchange demands some profit. Notice that only your smoothness of price is supposedly added. There is no other value-added. The cost, attributed to hedge funds, is $10 a barrel. Oil was $38/barrel when I looked today. So about a fourth of the cost is siphoned out by the hedge funds as a premium and then I claim used to support more speculation in oil and other areas. On the other hand, it would be quite feasible to set the price of oil in the neighborhood of $25/barrel by intergovernment agreements and cut out the speculators and make the price more stable than it is now, which is not very stable. Of course, the speculative gamblers control both Bush and Kerry, so this is not happening soon, assuming normalacy.
Your defense of speculation is pretty standard, but the reality is casino economics and a herd instinct. In oil, the herd went long and made money so they are going long again and their aggregate behavior pushes up prices just in itself. Here is the German Chancellor on the subject yesterday. I have this handy because it is on my website.
On size of speculative flows, again looking at oil, and again doing a google on my website, this is just filled with numbers. Unfortunately, these sort of figures are not confined to oil. Somewhere I have the memory that world speculative flows are in the neighborhood of $200 trillion and world gnp is in the neighborhood of $10 trillion.
On Hawley-Smoot, this is just another one of Hoover's disasters. Give him a few more years and he and his controllers would have been dining with Hitler. Hoover hated FDR's policies, which policies did get us out of the depression, so much that Hoover stripped the White House and refused to cooperate in making a transition, so that when FDR took office, the office did not have a pencil in it. I said protectionism was part of the answer. With regard to protectionism itself, it needs a certain context of bilateral agreements for the general good.
The other major thing we need is $10 trillion in infrastructure development, which topic is saved for another day.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder what the pros and cons are of using a version control system for backup, such as subversion.
I like the idea of shooting a lot of lasers at it when it gets far away. This would keep it going. And even accelerating.
Your statements are superficially correct. For instance, we have a 10 trillion dollar infrastructure deficit. Putting money into curing that generates a lot of low skill jobs and provides the basis for the rest of the economy to function. So FDR had it right.
But the cyclic nature of the economy as driven by what party is in power does not explain the really big swings in the economy. But if you have a big swing, the party in power and its ideology will determine the response, which may make things worse, as in Hoover/Bush, vs FDR, better.
Truman I have no use for, and neither did FDR. Truman explicitly sabatoged FDR's program. For that we are now suffering. For instance, the speculative component of the economy is up around 400 trillion a year and the Gross Planetary Product is less than a tenth of that. So it is no wonder that useful production is being strangled. It is a big ponzi scheme out there and we suffer.
Bush to the extent he has an intent it to protect the beneficiaries of the speculation. Kerry *might* do something more useful. When Kerry made implicit comparisons of Bush to Hoover, you know that the issue is under debate inside his organization.
I have a little story, without URLs, from my local area, Tacoma, WA. Tacoma city government has the usual draconian rules on misuse of government equipment. There is an elected city council which holds public meetings. The council critters have government issued laptops which they take to public meetings. One was observed to be checking his stock positions during city council. This was publicized by the press as misuse of government computer facilies, and it is generally agreed that it was against policy.
The politican made excuses and the civil servant who was responsible for enforcing the computer policy said something like "I am not going to touch it". It all blew over.
I conclude, as in the military, you cannot hold people above you accountable. It is the way of the world.
In this cases, Dobbs could have been held accountable by his superiors, who instead chose to shot the messenger. Dobbs did not do much harm by his inactivity, but his superiors seem to me to have done a lot of harm by causing outrage about their actions to response to the situation.
But the real problem is that the citizen's of the state in question have an at-will employment policy, instead of civil service protections. So the imperative is probably to protect the political connected job holders, and thus this result occurs.
Note that we now have civil service reform regarding security agencies at the Federal level. This reform has been compared to the equivalent civil service reforms pushed through by Hitler. Perhaps the results at the Federal level will be even more outrageous than in Dobb's state.
Is that really true? Writein votes are not tallied in my state unless there is an actual writein campaign. My state is Washington.
I figure they are afraid Mickey Mouse would win.
why not try
Actually, I can think of a case where non-military americans stopped the federal government from abusing citizens. Most would think though that the non-military citizens were on the wrong side, but they created a history we still live with. Cannot provide any doc to speak of.
It was some southern state during reconstruction. The state was garrisioned by Federal Troops. Most of the troops were black. Some were having fun raping the white women, particularly of the old aristocracy. A small group of prominent men armed themselves and took over the state house. I do not believe a shot was ever fired. But what were the feds to do? Either they cut a deal or they were going to have to do serious military occupation. The deal that was cut was that the South would be open to the Northern industrialists and be anti-union. The military garrisoning would end. And the Southern good old boys could deal with the blacks as they saw fit. Thus we have the Jim Crow laws and perhaps the rise of the KKK as a popular national movement that went all the way into the White House under Wilson.
Probably hard to find in your high school history text.
Yah, Cheney is my favorite too.
I am thinking about a bumber sticker
I based my remark on a Belgium parlimentarian who said something similiar to what I did. Perhaps the resolution is that the behavior here that is legal is criminal in Belgium, and the Belgium's have the grace to try to hide it.
However, I still think my crooks trump your crooks.:-)
I am aware of your point, which why I said *most* of my tax money. Even beyond your point, you might occasionally get some decent vision things out of the congress critters and they would need some money to play with their idea.
But look beyond the inconvenience of your point and consider how the money is allocated now, and with what unseemly all the way to criminal influences. If our congress critters were in Europe and pulled these stunts, most of them would be in jail. In that light, my idea does not look quite so bad.
The Libertarians would probably advocate funding on a voluntary basis! Sort of a anarchist subscription program. Maybe instead of an income tax form selection process, we should just give tax credits for voluntary donations to government.
Oh well, its July 4th, might as well get weird ideas about how to run the government. It is after all the traditional day for it.
Let's not forget the money the government wastes in other ways. Bremer's people spent all the Iraqi oil money in the last few days of the occupation. They are hidding the meeting minutes too. Want to bet some Republicans did not get richer?
I think it would be a good idea if we could individually allocate most of our tax money to specific programs we support. Since my ballot does not much count, maybe I could influence "my" government with my tax return. I might be a little happier come tax time.
I will stand by my statement. Although it was a pretty innocent statement as given, it is intended to reflect that McArthur was part of the American System networks, and Carey, Lincoln's economist, was widely read during and after McArthur. I think you have an overly simple view of how economies work and do not work if you think McArthur's influence on Japan ended when he went to Korea. Then again, you may be sufficiently young that you have not seen a properly working economy up close.
I specifically used the words "general welfare", which I consider working for to be the basis of legitimacy of a government. (as so considered did our Founding Fathers) Your government, assuming it is the United States, is of questionable legitimacy and not simply on the grounds of election results. I think democratic republics are really a good approach, but I do not assume they automatically are worth anything but potential.
On your Japan example, I note that they had McArthur.
On your aggressive foreign policy position, I thought of U.S. foreign and trade policy and just shook my head. The Chinese are trying to preserve their soverignty by resisting U.S. pressure and doing a good job. Three cheers for them.
On your Three Georges Dam complaint, I like the dam, particularly given that the major limiter on Chinese economic development is a shortage of electricity. I also like big development projects in general. I think these infrastructure projects drive the economy. And that is the centerpiece of what the Chinese are doing right.
Big demonstrations recently in Hong Kong and they have the right of it AFAIK. Note this does look a little bit like freedom of speech and assembly, if you have the muscle for it, which is the usual rule. As far as self-governance, I live in the state of Washington, and we have limited self-goverance out here and get along pretty well.
I suspect by political system, you are referring to the "Washington Consensus" which is term referring to a set of policy prescriptions such as transparency, free-trade, and democratic institutions. Google it. Together, they are supposed to bring utopia world-wide. Myself, I am *mostly* happy with the Chinese government, primarily because they have a workable system for economic development and sovernignity. Actually, this relates to the original article in that avoiding dependence on foreign intellectual property is in this context just good sense.
Whatever country you from, I would challenge you to assert your political system is currently serving the general welfare as well as the Chinese political system.
I recently received a chatty email from a fellow who just spent some time in China. His wife was working on a Rotary project there and then they played tourist.
Several things stood out to me. This is a dynamic society, with construction everywhere. Yet they also spend money making their freeways signs look good, with a little extra neon. At night, the big cities are a neon wonderland. The freeways themselves have lighted lane markers and such. Lots of use of light.
And to the point on this topic, everyone he talked to seem to consider Taiwan a province of China, even the Taiwanise tourists, of which there are many. Now what I actually think is that neither government tolerate anything but the party line, and so people do not speak candidly on this issue. The real deal is that China considers Chinese populated territory to be properly under common rule. And most of the Taiwanese share that view. The Taiwanese government of course thinks it should be ruling China.
My idea is that everyone should agree that Taiwan is part of China and set a date, say in the next century, to realize it.
Historically, free weather reporting has been a slam dunk under the general welfare clause of the Constitution. Libertarian's often have a problem conceptualizing that there is a general welfare in which government has a role, beyond oh, maybe, military, IMO. So I want to know: How do you conceptualize the general welfare clause, and lets not forget the preamble.
People who do believe in the general welfare clause might want to click the comment link in the story and tell NOAA what they should do.
In defending the student, I am attacking the dominate culture, not just at this particular college, or even at all U.S. colleges, but in general.
This approach justifies commenting on high schools, which has been a big part of the student's life.
This approach, although referring not to your parents in particulars, justifies commenting on the cultural defects of babyboomers. Since you responded to your parents in particular, and I do not want to be insulting, let me generalize the problem. Baby boomers were taught to go along to get along. Getting along quite well, thank you, has usually meant severe ethical lapses in staying in conformity to the group think around the hypothetical parents.
In you personally, it seems that you concentrate on the good experiences, and try to put the bad ones out of your mind. Some people, however, see as primary the lapses of institutions from their ideals. In a college, intellectual dishonesty used to be something taken seriously. Now, at this college, and iirc statistically, at many colleges this is not true. Yet intellectual dishonesty violates the primary missions of colleges.
So moving on to another college is a good answer, but I also suspect it is more difficult for most people than for you pyschologically. And I have argued that moving on might not work anyway.
I sort of liked the kid, the one who talked about being the only one in a class that did not blantantly cheat.
I have good stories about intellectual dishonesty at colleges, and the stories go way back. But what I want you to think about is this kid who has the intellectual steadfastness not to cheat, in an environment where it was standard to cheat. I think you should put yourself in that position and view his environment from that perspective. Might you not be simply viscerally repulsed by your college. And being the kid, how did you respond to highschool. Or your baby boomer parents, who go along to get along. Disclaimer: I am a baby boomer parent.
Brutally despotic rulers are not much favored by most people. So I think your set up was a bit artificial. But let us suppose we have some brutal and despotic rulers and also that public stock corporations were discrimated against by the brutal despotic rulers, let us say by high taxes and heavy regulation. Compare that to brutal despotic rulers who let the corporations run wild, break unions, monopolize, cook the books, rig prices, etc. etc.
Now it seems to me given your free trade ideology you would prefer the second. I would then suppose you are pretty happy with Bush's economic policies.
This is a good reply on tariffs. I will reconsider.
You have faith in the axioms was the argument I was making. Apparently, you actually claim to base your belief in the axioms to have evaluated econometric results, so it is a pragmatic position. Or alternatively, perhaps you claim a science based result. I am not sure which to respond to. But are you aware that a finite axiom set of a minimal complexity cannot yield the truth? So I am attacking your reliance on axioms instead of attacking pragmatism or economics as science. I am happy to attack any of the three.
Sometimes I like to run slugs entitled Wall Street Blotter on who is being indicted today. Of course, Enron was the moral equivalent of a serial killer. We agree! But let us suppose I buy up all the future contracts on a commodity and then squeeze. Where do you classify that in terms of a True Price?
Actually, the Israeli threat was yesterday. Or actually, April 30, 2004. Here is what I have on it. Unfortunately, your cite and my cite should be seen as complementary.
Your tariff argument I think I now understand. Its difficulty is that it embeds the free trade axioms by arguing the result under pertrubution would be symmetrical. You do not really believe that, do you? I guess some people do. I used to go to beer with a guy who would make arguments like that. It was a real struggle to get him to buy off on simple exceptions for the general welfare, and then he would backslide a month later.
The IMF was constituted as part of the Bretton Woods package. It had a charter I can approve of. So does the World Bank. In practice, since I have been paying attention, their policy has been to collect debt at any cost to the population. I am not happy with Kerry, almost all indications are that he is planning to be a towel boy for the financial capitalists. But he did say, when pressed on the Argentina situation, that people come before debt. I think the IMF has it the other way. Actually, probably it is speculation before production. I am thinking about the fuss made about Malaysia successful imposition of capital controls.
So what you going to be doing with yourself when all the speculative bubbles burst at once. Might be happening right now. Maybe the Dutch had a better deal because maybe tulips are eatable. (troll)
Let me tell you a personal story from the 1973 oil embargo. Supposedly the Arabs cut the oil supply, generating block long gas lines at the filling stations. Anacortes has a refinery. An old employer reported to me that the oil tankers were backed up ten deep in the Staits of Juan de Fuca because all the holding tanks at the refinery were full. And consistently, the numbers reported for production, which come out rather after the fact, showed no reduction. There is a little paradox here. And it illustrates the difference between an axionomic rational argument and a reality where the axioms are changing, as they are wont to do.
The Arabs have a goal price for oil in the $20's. They would agree, if they had the right partner to negotiate with.
The terror price-premium needs to be looked at in a different way. At the extreme, you have the Israli publicly talking about strategic nuking of twenty Arab population centers. Contemplate that if you want to think about oil prices rising! You cannot have an economy if you have chaos. The speculators do not solve these sort of problems no matters how much they loot. You have a touching faith, and it is a faith, that a speculative process results in the True Price and that is a social good. Lots of people have some distaste for Enron, and there were some really good audio tapes released a few days ago. If you are familiar with those tapes, I suggest that your axioms would force you to defend Enron. Probably you would draw line at that, but that is a paradox also.
The cutting tariffs in half argument did not make sense to me. The reason to have tariffs is in support of an industrial policy and the results of the industrial policy will be sensitive to the tariff levels.
Again, on Hawley-Smoot, it seems to me a scientific approach to protectionism would first of all attempt to determine in what circumstances it works and does not work and learn something. Hawley-Smoot was an accidental result in an administration that did not have one good economic policy. All of Hoover's planned economic policies were at the behest of the interests of the oligarchs of the time and the policies moral equivalency is current IMF policies. Of course(emphasis) Hawley-Smoot was a disaster.
Your reference to communism impells me to trolling: I do not like large public stock corporations.
Nah, not Hawley-Smoot. I cannot think of a single thing from the Hoover administration that I like. I commented on Hoover elsewhere in this story's comments a little more extensively. But to make tariffs work you need fixed exchange rates and bilateral agreements based on the common good of the participating nations.
With respect to U.S. tariffs historically, you may be taking a narrow view of "always". Hamilton's Report on Manufacturing was implemented very successfully and it includes high tariffs on manufactured goods. You are simply wildly wrong, but I am not sure of how you get to be so wrong.
You are not only wrong in particular, but you are wrong from a general perspective. The colonial revolution in North America had high motivations in the Imperial efforts to prevent manufacturing from getting a foothold in the Colonies. The newly independent United State would therefore wish to encourage manufacturing and did so successfully with high tariffs. Tariffs were the main source of revenue for the United States government in the 18th and 19th century.
I like your reply since it was to the point.
Now with respect to the apology for speculation. I think oil is nicely immeadiate. Suppose the say Saudi's ship a barrel of oil. Before it lands in the U.S., say, it has changed hands 150 times. Each exchange demands some profit. Notice that only your smoothness of price is supposedly added. There is no other value-added. The cost, attributed to hedge funds, is $10 a barrel. Oil was $38/barrel when I looked today. So about a fourth of the cost is siphoned out by the hedge funds as a premium and then I claim used to support more speculation in oil and other areas. On the other hand, it would be quite feasible to set the price of oil in the neighborhood of $25/barrel by intergovernment agreements and cut out the speculators and make the price more stable than it is now, which is not very stable. Of course, the speculative gamblers control both Bush and Kerry, so this is not happening soon, assuming normalacy.
Your defense of speculation is pretty standard, but the reality is casino economics and a herd instinct. In oil, the herd went long and made money so they are going long again and their aggregate behavior pushes up prices just in itself. Here is the German Chancellor on the subject yesterday. I have this handy because it is on my website.
On size of speculative flows, again looking at oil, and again doing a google on my website, this is just filled with numbers. Unfortunately, these sort of figures are not confined to oil. Somewhere I have the memory that world speculative flows are in the neighborhood of $200 trillion and world gnp is in the neighborhood of $10 trillion.
On Hawley-Smoot, this is just another one of Hoover's disasters. Give him a few more years and he and his controllers would have been dining with Hitler. Hoover hated FDR's policies, which policies did get us out of the depression, so much that Hoover stripped the White House and refused to cooperate in making a transition, so that when FDR took office, the office did not have a pencil in it. I said protectionism was part of the answer. With regard to protectionism itself, it needs a certain context of bilateral agreements for the general good.
The other major thing we need is $10 trillion in infrastructure development, which topic is saved for another day.