Monday, September 30, 2013

Reshoring, Globalization, Plutocratization

I agree with the notion that global trade's growth has abated, as many one time improvements are behind us. But there is more to say. What was the main enabler of globalization? Plutocratization. Globalization allowed plutocrats to augment their production, hence power, all the more as they could buy the local potentates, hence the local law, while avoiding the laws of their countries of origin. A developing problem for plutocrats is the rise of transnational laws, regulations, and even examinations (!) to foil their plutocratic plots. For example, if Apple is condemned to pay more than 2% tax, it may reconsider some of its global gymnastics. If capital cannot take refuge overseas, it will have to invest locally. As observed with reshoring. The pirates are coming home to roost. https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/all-we-need-is-tech/

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Deficit Reduction Scam? Barack Rand Obama Paul?

Much of the deficit reduction may be a scam. Banks have been repaying the government, using money from QE. Moreover; From the Wall Street Journal today: "The sequester is squeezing the very programs liberals care most about—including the National Endowment for the Arts, green-energy subsidies, the Environmental Protection Agency and National Public Radio. Outside Washington, the sequester is forcing a fiscal retrenchment for such liberal special-interest groups as Planned Parenthood and the National Council of La Raza, which have grown dependent on government largess..... Liberals had hoped that re-electing Mr. Obama, the most pro-spending president since LBJ, would unleash another four years of Great Society government expansion. Instead, spending caps and the sequester are squashing these progressive dreams. Welcome to the new fiscal reality in Washington. All Republicans need to do is enforce the budget laws Mr. Obama has already agreed to. Entitlement reforms will come when liberals realize that the unhappy alternative is to allow every program they cherish to keep shrinking." What is there to celebrate? That we don't need to elect Rand Paul to the White House, because he is already there, and has already enated his program? PA

Monday, August 12, 2013

Transient Stimulus, Permanent Improvement: Much Feared.

Paul Krugman argues that stimuli are not permanent. I observe, though, that their results can be permanent, for the best. Even president Hoover had advanced the start of the construction of the colossal Hoover dam, to provide jobs. Although a stimulus is not permanent, the tasks it accomplishes can be. To wit the Hoover dam, and many other public works of the 1930s, let alone the Interstate FREEway system of general-president Eisenhower in the 1950s. And so it is around the world. Germany uses Hitler's autobahns... And Volkswagen (another Hitler creation) is still around... The same holds for the most major Japanese companies, created by Japanese government programs, starting in the 19C... all the way to American directed stimulus in Japan in the 1950s. All the Very High Speed train projects, in France, Japan, Germany or present day UK, all started as government programs. And also Boeing and Airbus. The Marshall (another general, used to be Eisenhower's superior) Plan was another example of transient stimulus, with PERMANENT consequences. In democracy and related regimes, the ultimate boss of the economy is not the economy, but the government. Trying otherwise is trying to run the chicken without a head: it works, but not very long. It is precisely the fact that a transient stimulus can permanently improve the condition of common folks that frightens the plutocrats. The lower We the People, the higher our lords, relatively speaking. That's what real greed is all about. Not just having more, but having things no common person has. PA

Thursday, August 1, 2013

Wealthcare State Endless Summers

Wealth Care State’s Endless Summers

Starting with Nixon, the Kennedy-Johnson welfare state became the wealthcare state. The rise of systematic failures such as Lawrence Summers, was instrumental that way.



Democrats point at Republicans all the time. In truth, they set-up the Wealth Care State just as enthusiastically. Ever since Nixon, all outwardly socially motivated programs grew that monstrosity.



Obama said, July 31, 2013, Summers saved the USA. However, under Summers the bad operators of the very bad bank holding corporations were lent indefinitely (through QE) more than 8 trillion dollars, and the American people, who paid for this rescue did not even acquire the properties they paid for.



Anyway, 2,500 words of details of what is wrong with Summers, TARP (Transferring Assets to Rich People) and the wealthcare state on:

http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2013/07/31/wealth-care-states-summers/

Monday, July 29, 2013

Wealth Care's Summers

Plutophiles are terrorized by the idea that their masters the plutocrats would enjoy in the future less money, and less control, than they do presently. Indeed, who would feed them? Would they have to work? Would they be exposed to truthful thinking? Would they have to recognize that money for the very few does not an economy make?

The WEALTH CARE state is the exact opposite of the welfare state. The Wealth Care state has a knight, and demonstrated enabler, Larry Summers, champion of Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, all hedge funds and their ilk. Summers, Grand Cross of all derivatives, especially those that allow banks to show profits that do not profit society, and are reserved to the very few, insured, as they are, and financed, as they are, by the bleating, unworthy, clueless taxpayers.

Summers, and the inflationphobes are the incarnation of all what's wrong, as the Wall Street journal itself admitted Saturday (Summers is on the take from the plutocracy, an article said substantially), and today (Federal Reserve 'Doves' Beat 'Hawks' in Economic Prognosticating

Slow Growth, Low Inflation Give Yellen, Dudley Upper Hand on Forecasts; http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324144304578624033540135700.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection)



Urban Sprawl: USA versus Europe

The recovery of the USA, the real one, not the fake one from financial engineering (zero interest rates, QE, Goldman Sacks and its ilk) rests mostly on fracking (and a low $/Euro ratio). Break the ground, get gas and oil.


Urban sprawl exposes the USA in case the fracking gets fracked (from a combination of ecological reasons and bad ROI). Or in case the CO2 crisis becomes so bad, even the deluded government of the USA submits to the evidence.


In Europe, it's different. Europeans have known for at least 1,000 years, that urban sprawl was bad: it encroached on arable land, and precious forests, increased the cost of transportation. Not so in North America. why? Because, modulo exterminating the natives, there was always a lot of land to misuse.


Want to do something about sprawl? First raise tax base of cities, punish sprawling (say by putting a significant carbon tax/gas tax). Otherwise? Danger, long term: one cannot de-sprawl overnight...

More complete version: http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2013/07/29/uniformly-sprawling-atrocity/

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Exponential All Over Economics & Biology

The mathematics of the exponential explains the plutocratic phenomenon. Basically, the richer one is, the easier it is to get much richer. That's why, just for society to stay in place, one has to implement increasingly confiscatory taxation in the higher reaches of wealth.




The Roman Republic had an absolute limit on wealth (that was circumvented by globalization, hence the collapse of the Republic).



The exponential is the most important function in mathematics. It may even explain the disappearance of large species after catastrophes, from Neanderthals to Dinosaurs.



Nearly any extinction will reveal itself to be an exponential phenomenon:

http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/why-did-neanderthals-disappear/

Friday, July 26, 2013

Plutocrats Care, Obamacare, Obamascare

The pseudo-left is besides itself with joy with Obamacare. My calling Obamacare, Obamascare, is obviously inappropriate.

I am so happy that insurance companies, with the generosity that long characterized them, and health care plutocrats, bless their philanthropy, are so keen to provide care for free. They, no doubt, will join the pantheon of all those banks who so generously provided houses to We the People for free, ten years ago!


We should thank Warren Buffet, that experienced health care investor, object of Obama's reverend affection, for guiding us to the land of the hyper wealthy who care.



Ayn Rand was right, and Hayek, and Friedman! It was enough to set (stock?) exchanges all over, and transform patients into shoppers, and, instantaneously, the free market would provide all what We the People needed!the triumph of Obamacare!



It's like in the Bible; please the Lords and the lords shall please you! The USA is such an exceptional country that only here could profit, exchanges and shopping replace boring care, single payer version, as the rest of the world make do with!



And so it was that Obamacare never became Obamascare. Alleluia!

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Railroads railroaded

Krugman is "surprised that the econoblogosphere hasn’t taken much notice yet of Keith Bradsher’s interesting piece on the revival of the Silk Road — now not consisting of camels carrying Chinese silk, but of huge freight trains carrying Chinese electronics.

But really, if you’re interested in globalization, this should be of great interest. Transportation technology matters, a lot; container shipping revolutionized the world."

Then the good Paul falls partly back into his old mistake:"It comes down, of course, to time and money... Shipping is cheap but slow."

Excuse me?

Shipping is cheap because it uses bunk oil, the most polluting refuse oil.


Introducing a carbon & pollution tax on shipping would force shipping to retool, say with (partial) sails (or kites). The tech exists, and was long deployed on the Club Med II, a very large ship that saves considerable fuel thanks to the help it gets from sails.

Railroads are enormously efficient, even the obsolete diesel electric engines used in the USA. Their contribution to CO2 is neglectable, relative to the alternatives. Thus all ecologists ought to come aboard.

Krugman opines that: "So there’s an important niche for rail — a niche that probably hasn’t been fully exploited, because people forgot for a while about a technology that seemed old-fashioned."

The truth, according to Krugman, would be that "people" just had amnesia?
Old fashioned, with TGVs going at 400 kilometers per hour?

The truth is different. Quite the opposite; plutocrats remembered very well they could pollute as much as they wanted with shipping and air travel, and get subsidies, to boot.

Air fuel is not taxed, worldwide. In Greece ship magnates don't pay tax either (and one of them had a child with Obama's ex-director of budget, now a pillar of Citigroup). Much of Western policy, in particular in the USA has been made to please fossil fuel plutocrats.

The problem with rail? It's too efficient, hence does not feed enough the clout of the fossil fuel lobby and the politicians associated to it.

http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Hitting The Information Wall

In "Hitting China's Wall." Paul Krugman opines that "All the signs coming from the economic data show that China is in big trouble."


He does not do a very deep job at explaining what he means. He claims that China is running out of peasants... Although there are 600 millions of them out there. Anyway, I wanted to deepen the debate, so, I sent him this:
Economy and politics are entangled. China's economic problems are nothing relative to its political problems.


The number one consumption in the developed world is information. That's what Chinese consumers will really want in the end. That sort of consumption, the Chinese dictatorship cannot afford to let the People of China enjoy.

So the leadership is reluctant to allow ever more base material consumption: once that has proven unsatisfying, it would lead to ever more questions, of a deep emotional, rational, and then philosophical, thus political, nature. This is basically the psychological mechanism that led the children of the elite to turn against their parents at the time of Tiananmen.

On the other side of the mountains, India has opted for democracy. democracy depends upon openness and information. As time enfolds, India will be able to become increasingly the master of both, and that's what people want. Worldwide.

Thus the present Chinese political system blocks the long term production of the most advanced service, information. That's what really hobbles the Chinese economy: getting ten dollars making a 600 dollar i-phone gets you only that far.

The Chinese surveillance apparatus, with its 50,000 Internet censoring goons, is only dwarfed by the American one, with its 1.2 million watchdogs. It's an economy killer, be it there, or here.

http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Neoconservatism: Neofascism in Disguise, Best Defined by its Origin

Hal Horvath ("mostly from Austin, TX") opines that "A more sophisticated view of A. Rosenbaum (Rand) is that she wrote about artistic freedom and later freedom to innovate in contrast to totalitarian states (where she originated)... That she gradually went wacko is just a lesson to us all about overextending and overgeneralizing ideas. As with religion, many things are said in her name, under color of her, that are near 180 degrees opposite of what she believed."

All these people coming from fascist regimes (Hayek, Rand, etc.) came with the fascist mindset of believing in the providential man (the personality cult). The one who works more, or better than the rest, and thus rises above (Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, and countless lesser imitators followed that justification).

Far from being freed from totalitarianism, those thinkers were born from it. The opposition was never between Stalin and Hitler, or Mussolini, but between them, and the French republic (France being where these trains of thought left the station, generations before.)

The opposition between Liberty and Equality is resolved by Fraternity. No subtlety Hayek, Rand, Neoconservatives, Neofascists, greedsters and plutophiles can get.
PA