HOW FRANCE HAS BEEN DOING IT.
Right now the replacement rate for cars in the USA is 23.9 years!How does one get that crucial industry restarted?
The trick used by France for the auto industry has been to make vehicles that emit less and less CO2. Meanwhile the European Union imposes lower and lower ceilings on CO2 emissions from cars (they are around 160 grams per kilometers right now before penalties on car makers, France is pushing for 125 grams and even lower soon; cars produced in France at or below 125 grams make more than 40% of the world production). Then the French government gives financial incentives for buying the clean cars (while punishing the dirty cars). The end result is a state of the art, non dead car industry. And, ultimately the planet profits (there is more than one billion cars).
The USA should copy that model. It is a good planetary solution, because it creates ever more efficient technologies. Two billion cars are expected soon, and if they don't become really clean, "the planet will explode" as Goshn, the CEO of Renault-Nissan puts it. It is good for the developed world because it then can trade with emerging countries something they do not have, and that they want.
Patrice Ayme
Patriceayme.wordpress.com
For reference: the average CO2 emission per car in the USA is 330 grams per kilometer (twice the present European limit).
PA
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Friday, February 13, 2009
RUBINOMICS AND PLUTOCRACY: CHANGE YOU CAN'T SEE SO FAR.
A RECAP OF THE NATURE OF THE CRISIS, & EXTENT OF THE INSUFFICIENT ANSWER SO FAR.
Obama's great desire seems to be that, by being kind and considerate to the mighty, the mighty will be kind and considerate in return. It has worked so far, at least for him, and the party of hope and change, but now the stakes are higher. Whereas the plutocracy long saw Obama as a nice dark horse, now it may be seeing him as a problem.
Because, in truth, it's all about power, and things have come to a head. The "republican" agenda, starting with Nixon (not Eisenhower), has been to give more power to the plutocracy. The word "republican" is ironical: it's all about the plutocracy. It is not about the public-thing, but about the power of Pluto. As a result of 40 years of efforts, a much more powerful plutocracy has risen over the land, even over the world. The Rubin group of the Clinton administration was one such plutocratic instrument enforcing plutocratic policy. Clinton did what Rubin told him to do ("make the bond traders happy"). The US heavy industry fell behind, evaporated, or left for China. The plutocracy profited from this by being the indispensable intermediary. Rubin amused the People with a bubble or two.
Now, just as it was getting richer and more powerful than ever, the plutocracy is suddenly at bay. Why? Because its little plan of turning the US population into relative serfs has encountered a serious road block. Suddenly, 10% of the present and future would be serfs have refused to pay the "gages of death" ("mort-gages"). Big disaster. The first reaction of the plutocracy has been to save its income, so it invented TARP (Transferring Assets to Rich People). TARP, as its name indicates, also covered up what had really happened, namely the extent to which the plutocracy stole and leveraged itself with People money, to make itself ever richer. Hey, if they got rich enough, maybe they could have private armies and seize power outright, as happened to Rome (circa 100 BCE).
The plutocracy is not without hope: it has a Rubin team in power, all around Obama, putting the right ideas in his head (such as his pathetic broadside at Sweden, that I will answer on my blog). Geithner came out all vague, because he is trying to gain time, and avoid what would really hit the plutocracy, namely nationalization. He hopes, against all hope, that, somehow, by using the anti democratic, Dark Side powers of hedge funds, foreign powers and the Federal reserve, plus a utopian rise of the housing market, he will be able to see the derivatives of real estate turn away from extinction. Meanwhile the American People gets all the disadvantages of nationalization, and none of the advantages.
The plutocracy underestimates its opposition. The taxpayers and serfs of the USA have had it, and the USA is not all alone (as Rome was). In other countries, the plutocracy is still under the power of the republic, and these countries will resist the pauperization that threatens the USA. That, in turn, will show the American People that a bit of assertiveness is the best way to resist the loud impudence of the unhinged plutocracy.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Obama's great desire seems to be that, by being kind and considerate to the mighty, the mighty will be kind and considerate in return. It has worked so far, at least for him, and the party of hope and change, but now the stakes are higher. Whereas the plutocracy long saw Obama as a nice dark horse, now it may be seeing him as a problem.
Because, in truth, it's all about power, and things have come to a head. The "republican" agenda, starting with Nixon (not Eisenhower), has been to give more power to the plutocracy. The word "republican" is ironical: it's all about the plutocracy. It is not about the public-thing, but about the power of Pluto. As a result of 40 years of efforts, a much more powerful plutocracy has risen over the land, even over the world. The Rubin group of the Clinton administration was one such plutocratic instrument enforcing plutocratic policy. Clinton did what Rubin told him to do ("make the bond traders happy"). The US heavy industry fell behind, evaporated, or left for China. The plutocracy profited from this by being the indispensable intermediary. Rubin amused the People with a bubble or two.
Now, just as it was getting richer and more powerful than ever, the plutocracy is suddenly at bay. Why? Because its little plan of turning the US population into relative serfs has encountered a serious road block. Suddenly, 10% of the present and future would be serfs have refused to pay the "gages of death" ("mort-gages"). Big disaster. The first reaction of the plutocracy has been to save its income, so it invented TARP (Transferring Assets to Rich People). TARP, as its name indicates, also covered up what had really happened, namely the extent to which the plutocracy stole and leveraged itself with People money, to make itself ever richer. Hey, if they got rich enough, maybe they could have private armies and seize power outright, as happened to Rome (circa 100 BCE).
The plutocracy is not without hope: it has a Rubin team in power, all around Obama, putting the right ideas in his head (such as his pathetic broadside at Sweden, that I will answer on my blog). Geithner came out all vague, because he is trying to gain time, and avoid what would really hit the plutocracy, namely nationalization. He hopes, against all hope, that, somehow, by using the anti democratic, Dark Side powers of hedge funds, foreign powers and the Federal reserve, plus a utopian rise of the housing market, he will be able to see the derivatives of real estate turn away from extinction. Meanwhile the American People gets all the disadvantages of nationalization, and none of the advantages.
The plutocracy underestimates its opposition. The taxpayers and serfs of the USA have had it, and the USA is not all alone (as Rome was). In other countries, the plutocracy is still under the power of the republic, and these countries will resist the pauperization that threatens the USA. That, in turn, will show the American People that a bit of assertiveness is the best way to resist the loud impudence of the unhinged plutocracy.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
FSP: FOOLISH STEADY PAUPERIZATION
GEITHNER KEEPING ON THROWING PUBLIC MONEY AT THE BIG BAD PLUTOCRACY.
Geithner talked, and said nothing. His main innovation was to move away from the tarnished acronym TARP (Transferring Assets to Rich People). Geithner replaced TARP with "FSP".
Geithner's main idea is to go on as before, using public money to allow the failed financial system to operate as before. No change of system. Geithner talks "transparency", but he wants to use the Federal Reserve bank, which operates in secrecy, escaping scrutiny. He attacks the preceding administration, he forgets that he was part of it (destroying the bank Lehman Brothers, nearly brought down the world financial system, because it was a major US bond market maker, besides being a major bank; two people were in the room, taking the decision of destruction: paulson and Geithner). Lehman should have been saved, and nationalized. But the general metaprinciple of the flawed preceding (and current) administration is that DESTRUCTION IS BETTER THAN NATIONALIZATION.
So Geithner wants to use public money to buy "toxic assets" (mostly an euphemism for financial and real estate derivatives). Problem? He still has no way to evaluate how much those are worth. His plan, as usual is to make a plan to value that "toxic waste". Imagine some guy in a toxic dump, desperately trying to value the toxic waste, instead of trying to get rid of it. That's Geithner for you.
On the positively fluffy side, we are apparently we are switching from TARP (Transferring Assets to rich People) to FSP. FSP is not for Financial Stability Plan as the administration wishes it, in its colossal naivety. Instead reality will reveal it to be, in the fullness of time, the Foolish Steady Pauperization.
The Foolish Steady Pauperization will keep on being caused by the inability to get rid of the derivatives of the real estate market that weigh on the banks’ books. (Instead of getting rid of them, Geithner wants to “get these markets (of derivatives) working again”.) So, as far as the eye can see, instead of getting credit flowing again, good public money will be thrown after bad.
To start afresh, the derivatives of the real estate should be declared null and void. Moreover, because incompetent managers have not be thrown out, they will keep on profiting from the flows of cash, managing them to allow further the expression of their powers. Instead the first thing that should have been done is getting these people out and away.
Let’s imagine the financial system is a plane. Well, the plane has crashed, it went down the Hudson. OK, it still floats. What Geithner proposes now, is to fly it again. That is his radical solution, and his simplicity, he believes, it’s just a matter of time. Well, sorry, but it won’t fly. That plane is all broken up inside.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Geithner talked, and said nothing. His main innovation was to move away from the tarnished acronym TARP (Transferring Assets to Rich People). Geithner replaced TARP with "FSP".
Geithner's main idea is to go on as before, using public money to allow the failed financial system to operate as before. No change of system. Geithner talks "transparency", but he wants to use the Federal Reserve bank, which operates in secrecy, escaping scrutiny. He attacks the preceding administration, he forgets that he was part of it (destroying the bank Lehman Brothers, nearly brought down the world financial system, because it was a major US bond market maker, besides being a major bank; two people were in the room, taking the decision of destruction: paulson and Geithner). Lehman should have been saved, and nationalized. But the general metaprinciple of the flawed preceding (and current) administration is that DESTRUCTION IS BETTER THAN NATIONALIZATION.
So Geithner wants to use public money to buy "toxic assets" (mostly an euphemism for financial and real estate derivatives). Problem? He still has no way to evaluate how much those are worth. His plan, as usual is to make a plan to value that "toxic waste". Imagine some guy in a toxic dump, desperately trying to value the toxic waste, instead of trying to get rid of it. That's Geithner for you.
On the positively fluffy side, we are apparently we are switching from TARP (Transferring Assets to rich People) to FSP. FSP is not for Financial Stability Plan as the administration wishes it, in its colossal naivety. Instead reality will reveal it to be, in the fullness of time, the Foolish Steady Pauperization.
The Foolish Steady Pauperization will keep on being caused by the inability to get rid of the derivatives of the real estate market that weigh on the banks’ books. (Instead of getting rid of them, Geithner wants to “get these markets (of derivatives) working again”.) So, as far as the eye can see, instead of getting credit flowing again, good public money will be thrown after bad.
To start afresh, the derivatives of the real estate should be declared null and void. Moreover, because incompetent managers have not be thrown out, they will keep on profiting from the flows of cash, managing them to allow further the expression of their powers. Instead the first thing that should have been done is getting these people out and away.
Let’s imagine the financial system is a plane. Well, the plane has crashed, it went down the Hudson. OK, it still floats. What Geithner proposes now, is to fly it again. That is his radical solution, and his simplicity, he believes, it’s just a matter of time. Well, sorry, but it won’t fly. That plane is all broken up inside.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Monday, February 9, 2009
THE GRACIOUS WAY OUT WITH IRAN
TO DISARM IRAN'S NUCLEAR EFFORT, REKINDLE WORLD NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT.
What does the USA want with Iran? Under G. W. Bush, the USA wanted to impose its system, and itself, all over the world. Bush repeated the fateful words that condemned Athens, and Greek civilization, to disaster, more than 24 centuries ago: "Either you are with us, or you are against us". The USA wanted war. And most, more than 80%, of the US population agreed. The joke was :"Everybody wants to go to Baghdad, real men want to go to Teheran". So now what?
There is a new president now. So, hopefully, things are changing. Hope we can believe in. But the fact remains that there was this vast hostility, of most of the American population against Iran, recently. Did the USA change completely in 5 years? Or is the truth hidden below a TARP?
Vice President Joseph Biden's - "Continue down your current course and there will be pressure and isolation" - was exactly wrong not just because it threatens Iran, but because it is forbidden for Teheran to get a nuclear bomb or two. Great, But, meanwhile, next door, Pakistan has dozens of thermonuclear bombs in an infinitely more dangerous situation. How logical is that? After all, what is the worse that can happen with an Iranian nuclear bomb? No more Israel? No more Iran? How realistic is that?
Iran has not invaded the region where Israel is found since Roman emperor Heraclius, 14 centuries ago (and Heraclius then destroyed the Iranians, allowing the success of the Arabs, but I am digressing...). It seems unlikely that Iran wants to commit suicide, so the probability of an Iranian attack is negligible.
The worst that can happen with the Pakistani thermonuclear bombs is nuclear world war. Pakistan is giving itself the means to make much more thermonuclear bombs, but nobody seems to have noticed. Maybe it's because Al Qaeda was running the country until recently? OK, I am getting confused with the ISI. Is there a difference? In any case, personnel affiliated to the ISI just attacked India in Mumbai, so the probability of a Pakistani nuclear attack on whoever is high.
So what does the USA want? World peace first, or something else first?
There is a serious potential world nuclear arm race problem. Iran has to be stopped, but it's understandable that Iran agree only if others held back their giant nuclear horses. Russia and the USA have too many weapons, and are not respecting the nuclear non proliferation deal more or less signed a long time ago.
Disarming Iran nuke potential, inspecting it for weapons enrichment is a great idea, and it will work. As long as it is extended worldwide.
Change Iranians can believe in.
Patrice Ayme
February 09, 2009 7:15 am
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
What does the USA want with Iran? Under G. W. Bush, the USA wanted to impose its system, and itself, all over the world. Bush repeated the fateful words that condemned Athens, and Greek civilization, to disaster, more than 24 centuries ago: "Either you are with us, or you are against us". The USA wanted war. And most, more than 80%, of the US population agreed. The joke was :"Everybody wants to go to Baghdad, real men want to go to Teheran". So now what?
There is a new president now. So, hopefully, things are changing. Hope we can believe in. But the fact remains that there was this vast hostility, of most of the American population against Iran, recently. Did the USA change completely in 5 years? Or is the truth hidden below a TARP?
Vice President Joseph Biden's - "Continue down your current course and there will be pressure and isolation" - was exactly wrong not just because it threatens Iran, but because it is forbidden for Teheran to get a nuclear bomb or two. Great, But, meanwhile, next door, Pakistan has dozens of thermonuclear bombs in an infinitely more dangerous situation. How logical is that? After all, what is the worse that can happen with an Iranian nuclear bomb? No more Israel? No more Iran? How realistic is that?
Iran has not invaded the region where Israel is found since Roman emperor Heraclius, 14 centuries ago (and Heraclius then destroyed the Iranians, allowing the success of the Arabs, but I am digressing...). It seems unlikely that Iran wants to commit suicide, so the probability of an Iranian attack is negligible.
The worst that can happen with the Pakistani thermonuclear bombs is nuclear world war. Pakistan is giving itself the means to make much more thermonuclear bombs, but nobody seems to have noticed. Maybe it's because Al Qaeda was running the country until recently? OK, I am getting confused with the ISI. Is there a difference? In any case, personnel affiliated to the ISI just attacked India in Mumbai, so the probability of a Pakistani nuclear attack on whoever is high.
So what does the USA want? World peace first, or something else first?
There is a serious potential world nuclear arm race problem. Iran has to be stopped, but it's understandable that Iran agree only if others held back their giant nuclear horses. Russia and the USA have too many weapons, and are not respecting the nuclear non proliferation deal more or less signed a long time ago.
Disarming Iran nuke potential, inspecting it for weapons enrichment is a great idea, and it will work. As long as it is extended worldwide.
Change Iranians can believe in.
Patrice Ayme
February 09, 2009 7:15 am
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
COOLER THAN A DEAD BARNACLE
PARTISAN IS WRONG, AND BIPARTISAN IS TWICE WRONG. WHEN METAPRINCIPLES GO CHILDISH.
President Obama’s pursuit of bipartisanship, has led to an inadequate, insufficiently effective stimulus bill.
As Paul Krugman puts it: "So has Mr. Obama learned from this experience? Early indications aren’t good... rather than acknowledge the failure of his political strategy and the damage to his economic strategy, the president tried to put a postpartisan happy face on the whole thing. “Democrats and Republicans came together in the Senate and responded appropriately to the urgency this moment demands,” he declared on Saturday, and “the scale and scope of this plan is right.”"
And our Nobel Laureate to conclude: "No, they didn’t, and no, it isn’t."
What is going on? What is going on with Obama's personality? Why, in a time when maximum force should be deployed, and Obama has it at his disposal, why did he try to absorb himself into the seduction of heathens instead? Why does Obama want so much to be "bipartisan", that he puts anything else on hold, even uttering ideas eerily disconnected with reality? (See below for one example.)
When studying psychology, it is natural to find out what are the main motivational drivers. For simpler animals, it's sex, food, and survival (in increasing order of importance). For humans, there are more. There are principles, What one could call metaprinciples, principles so deep that people can kill for them, while violating all the motivations that simpler animals go by. In different individuals, those metaprinciples vary. Metaprinciples can grow totally obsessive (as Nazis and Stalinists demonstrated).
Obama seems dominated by the metaprinciple that if only he could talk to republicans, if he could talk them out of their error, everything would be wonderful in the USA. Why his basic psychology leads him to this seems revealed in his autobiographies. The republican party is full of father figures. Finally the little boy will not feel abandoned anymore. Daddy will be talked to, finally, Daddy will listen, Daddy will turn out to be reasonable, and Daddy will come home at last.
Some will say that such an opinion exhibits contempt for Obama. But not at all. We all have our dark and painful closets, but by writing about them, and pondering them, Obama engaged in a public debate, and asked implicitly everyone to help solve the riddle that was his life. I think this was a useful and noble pursuit, that has made Obama much deeper, and much less of a child than most. I am just pointing out a further consequence of his life's suffering, as he exposed it, and I feel confident Obama will quickly lose his humility relative to the party of those that have understood nothing to the past.
Thinking that the little fathers of the republican party should be brought to reason and care, underestimates the failure of American politics and economics in the last four decades, and the debasing effects they had on society. The problem is much deeper than "partisan" (partisan of what, anyway?). The US problem has become a problem of appreciation of reality, and of the hierarchy of facts and values.
An example: the state of California is now closed for 10% (employees of the State do not show up for work, nor will get paid, two Fridays of the month). Although the governor is a republican, this crisis is not a republican crisis. It's a crisis of the inability to see what is important. An immediate gasoline tax would have solved it, but most people prefer to close essential functions of the State. Stupidity they can believe in.
When Obama says that he will solve the problem of energy dependence of the USA by teaching young people how to weatherize homes, we observe again that discernment crisis. Apparently he spent too much time talking to the people who prefer rebuilding Iraq rather than their own country.
Along this line, Obama will no doubt soon suggest to solve the housing crisis by teaching the youth how to build little grass shacks.
Spending all of one's time with people who have proven mentally unable to cope, is just as howling in the wind. There is no point to it. The republicans' main strategy for 40 years has been to weaken the state, instead of building a better state. That's their metaprinciple. They will not turn around, and say: "Oh, we were idiots". Polls have shown that Hitler was at his most popular in 1945, when Germany was bombed, in ruin, hopeless, attacked by the entire planet, and morally more evil than imaginable.
Why this popularity of Evil? Because humans are made (in part) to be diabolical, and it is a crucial function of a good state to prevent them to exert their (God given, or naturally born) Evil. By weakening the state, and thus education, the very fabric of morality has started to dissolve. People have appeared that do not have enough of a moral vocabulary to imagine right from wrong. People who believe "cool" is the ultimate good. People who, like children, believe that Daddy is the definition of big and bad, and if only Daddy were fixed, so would the world.
Instead, what we need now is confrontational therapy. Both in the economic and the social realms. When Roosevelt started his presidency in 1933, he asked for "broad executive power to wage war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe". Roosevelt did not beg the republicans for advice, and communion. He detested them. And he called the bankers, "banksters", and closed the banks. Roosevelt was not searching for a long lost authority figure, he was that figure, imposing his solutions for the world's problems.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
President Obama’s pursuit of bipartisanship, has led to an inadequate, insufficiently effective stimulus bill.
As Paul Krugman puts it: "So has Mr. Obama learned from this experience? Early indications aren’t good... rather than acknowledge the failure of his political strategy and the damage to his economic strategy, the president tried to put a postpartisan happy face on the whole thing. “Democrats and Republicans came together in the Senate and responded appropriately to the urgency this moment demands,” he declared on Saturday, and “the scale and scope of this plan is right.”"
And our Nobel Laureate to conclude: "No, they didn’t, and no, it isn’t."
What is going on? What is going on with Obama's personality? Why, in a time when maximum force should be deployed, and Obama has it at his disposal, why did he try to absorb himself into the seduction of heathens instead? Why does Obama want so much to be "bipartisan", that he puts anything else on hold, even uttering ideas eerily disconnected with reality? (See below for one example.)
When studying psychology, it is natural to find out what are the main motivational drivers. For simpler animals, it's sex, food, and survival (in increasing order of importance). For humans, there are more. There are principles, What one could call metaprinciples, principles so deep that people can kill for them, while violating all the motivations that simpler animals go by. In different individuals, those metaprinciples vary. Metaprinciples can grow totally obsessive (as Nazis and Stalinists demonstrated).
Obama seems dominated by the metaprinciple that if only he could talk to republicans, if he could talk them out of their error, everything would be wonderful in the USA. Why his basic psychology leads him to this seems revealed in his autobiographies. The republican party is full of father figures. Finally the little boy will not feel abandoned anymore. Daddy will be talked to, finally, Daddy will listen, Daddy will turn out to be reasonable, and Daddy will come home at last.
Some will say that such an opinion exhibits contempt for Obama. But not at all. We all have our dark and painful closets, but by writing about them, and pondering them, Obama engaged in a public debate, and asked implicitly everyone to help solve the riddle that was his life. I think this was a useful and noble pursuit, that has made Obama much deeper, and much less of a child than most. I am just pointing out a further consequence of his life's suffering, as he exposed it, and I feel confident Obama will quickly lose his humility relative to the party of those that have understood nothing to the past.
Thinking that the little fathers of the republican party should be brought to reason and care, underestimates the failure of American politics and economics in the last four decades, and the debasing effects they had on society. The problem is much deeper than "partisan" (partisan of what, anyway?). The US problem has become a problem of appreciation of reality, and of the hierarchy of facts and values.
An example: the state of California is now closed for 10% (employees of the State do not show up for work, nor will get paid, two Fridays of the month). Although the governor is a republican, this crisis is not a republican crisis. It's a crisis of the inability to see what is important. An immediate gasoline tax would have solved it, but most people prefer to close essential functions of the State. Stupidity they can believe in.
When Obama says that he will solve the problem of energy dependence of the USA by teaching young people how to weatherize homes, we observe again that discernment crisis. Apparently he spent too much time talking to the people who prefer rebuilding Iraq rather than their own country.
Along this line, Obama will no doubt soon suggest to solve the housing crisis by teaching the youth how to build little grass shacks.
Spending all of one's time with people who have proven mentally unable to cope, is just as howling in the wind. There is no point to it. The republicans' main strategy for 40 years has been to weaken the state, instead of building a better state. That's their metaprinciple. They will not turn around, and say: "Oh, we were idiots". Polls have shown that Hitler was at his most popular in 1945, when Germany was bombed, in ruin, hopeless, attacked by the entire planet, and morally more evil than imaginable.
Why this popularity of Evil? Because humans are made (in part) to be diabolical, and it is a crucial function of a good state to prevent them to exert their (God given, or naturally born) Evil. By weakening the state, and thus education, the very fabric of morality has started to dissolve. People have appeared that do not have enough of a moral vocabulary to imagine right from wrong. People who believe "cool" is the ultimate good. People who, like children, believe that Daddy is the definition of big and bad, and if only Daddy were fixed, so would the world.
Instead, what we need now is confrontational therapy. Both in the economic and the social realms. When Roosevelt started his presidency in 1933, he asked for "broad executive power to wage war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe". Roosevelt did not beg the republicans for advice, and communion. He detested them. And he called the bankers, "banksters", and closed the banks. Roosevelt was not searching for a long lost authority figure, he was that figure, imposing his solutions for the world's problems.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Friday, February 6, 2009
CAUSE OF THE SLUMP.
DEVOURING CIVILIZATION BY LACK OF INFRASTRUCTURE.
What caused the slump? The disorganization of the US economy. Basically the public sector did not set up correctly the arena of the free market with the correct public infra-structure (the structure below the free markets)necessary to support it. The US eco-nomy ("house-management") became impotent. Indeed it came to depend upon other countries for:
Energy procurement
Manufactured goods
Savings
Entertainment ("War on Terror", imperial overstretch, invading and bombing various countries).
Moreover, the plutocracy made it so that the average person became ever more impotent, robbing them of income, employment, political power.
To hypnotize the masses, the plutocracy persuaded them that they could be rich too, if only they borrowed enough. That was nice trap: the more credit, the better the masses felt, and the more the plutocrats made money. Ultimately an energy cost spike buried that self destructive dream. Borrowing oneself to wealth revealed itself to be borrowing oneself to death.
Some will say that description makes no sense: why would a society let that happen to itself? Why would a society let itself be eaten alive by its ravenous plutocracy?
Well, the historical examples abound of societies were an increasingly hubristic plutocracy drove the society it overlorded above to death.
It is exactly what happened in the Roman empire. And that happened for bad, but powerful reasons, and that is why they tend to happen over and over again. Those reasons have to do with the intrinsic nature of human beings and the nature of capital and the exponential function. Left undomesticated those laws of nature devour civilization.
So what should be done? Invert it all.
It can be done. It has been done. The history of Europe after the disintegration of the Greco-Roman empire is pretty much a struggle to invert what went wrong with the Greco-Roman socioeconomy. The first three important measures taken by the Franks in the West were to block the attack of the Christian superstition against education, the second was to throw out a lot of sexism, the third was to outlaw slavery. All these decisions led the economy of Western Europe to become the most energy intensive in the world, and, at least for a while, the society was reborn in the liberty, equality, fraternity arena (recent archeological studies show this).
The situation nowadays is similar. First the plutocracy ("money-power") should be put back in its cage. Superstition should be pushed back, reason and education re-expanded. One should aim to take social, technological, and industrial measures to make the economy much more energy efficient than it has been in the past.
Indeed, it's not enough to just use ever more energy. The Franks discovered this during the Middle Ages: they ran out of forests, that is carbon. The central governments in France and Germany and Italy had to take drastic measures against deforestation (all the way to "banning" people from some areas, under the penalty of death; the Dominican republic had to take somewhat similar measures in recent decades to avoid the fate of its neighbor, Haiti).
What counts is efficient work ("Work" in the sense of physics textbooks). That should be increased. Overall energy consumption should be decreased. In these crucial parameters, the USA has faltered (France is three time more efficient in carbon usage by unit of GDP).
By the way, all the decisions taken by the Franks were top down, and had to do with new legislation imposed by a powerful State, the Imperium Francorum. There was nothing "bipartisan" about any of this. It had every thing to do with a new imperial State thinking it knew what it was doing, and breaking the old conceptual order of the Greco-Romans (outlawing their slavery and sexism), and the conceptual order of the Christians (who had been assaulting reason and education to promote their superstitious rule). Taxation and legislation also broke the extravagant Greco-Roman plutocracy.
Finally when the undefeated Islamist armies invaded Francia, the Franks nationalized the Christian church. This counter intuitive move allowed them to have money to pay for the largest mobile army seen since early imperial Rome (it also made the point that this war was not about religion). That implied payments to support the families of the drafted soldiers. Another form of socialism, that was invented just for the occasion (the Roman army never used such a modern system to allow soldiers to have families, but two different systems that did not survive, because they were not as good).
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
What caused the slump? The disorganization of the US economy. Basically the public sector did not set up correctly the arena of the free market with the correct public infra-structure (the structure below the free markets)necessary to support it. The US eco-nomy ("house-management") became impotent. Indeed it came to depend upon other countries for:
Energy procurement
Manufactured goods
Savings
Entertainment ("War on Terror", imperial overstretch, invading and bombing various countries).
Moreover, the plutocracy made it so that the average person became ever more impotent, robbing them of income, employment, political power.
To hypnotize the masses, the plutocracy persuaded them that they could be rich too, if only they borrowed enough. That was nice trap: the more credit, the better the masses felt, and the more the plutocrats made money. Ultimately an energy cost spike buried that self destructive dream. Borrowing oneself to wealth revealed itself to be borrowing oneself to death.
Some will say that description makes no sense: why would a society let that happen to itself? Why would a society let itself be eaten alive by its ravenous plutocracy?
Well, the historical examples abound of societies were an increasingly hubristic plutocracy drove the society it overlorded above to death.
It is exactly what happened in the Roman empire. And that happened for bad, but powerful reasons, and that is why they tend to happen over and over again. Those reasons have to do with the intrinsic nature of human beings and the nature of capital and the exponential function. Left undomesticated those laws of nature devour civilization.
So what should be done? Invert it all.
It can be done. It has been done. The history of Europe after the disintegration of the Greco-Roman empire is pretty much a struggle to invert what went wrong with the Greco-Roman socioeconomy. The first three important measures taken by the Franks in the West were to block the attack of the Christian superstition against education, the second was to throw out a lot of sexism, the third was to outlaw slavery. All these decisions led the economy of Western Europe to become the most energy intensive in the world, and, at least for a while, the society was reborn in the liberty, equality, fraternity arena (recent archeological studies show this).
The situation nowadays is similar. First the plutocracy ("money-power") should be put back in its cage. Superstition should be pushed back, reason and education re-expanded. One should aim to take social, technological, and industrial measures to make the economy much more energy efficient than it has been in the past.
Indeed, it's not enough to just use ever more energy. The Franks discovered this during the Middle Ages: they ran out of forests, that is carbon. The central governments in France and Germany and Italy had to take drastic measures against deforestation (all the way to "banning" people from some areas, under the penalty of death; the Dominican republic had to take somewhat similar measures in recent decades to avoid the fate of its neighbor, Haiti).
What counts is efficient work ("Work" in the sense of physics textbooks). That should be increased. Overall energy consumption should be decreased. In these crucial parameters, the USA has faltered (France is three time more efficient in carbon usage by unit of GDP).
By the way, all the decisions taken by the Franks were top down, and had to do with new legislation imposed by a powerful State, the Imperium Francorum. There was nothing "bipartisan" about any of this. It had every thing to do with a new imperial State thinking it knew what it was doing, and breaking the old conceptual order of the Greco-Romans (outlawing their slavery and sexism), and the conceptual order of the Christians (who had been assaulting reason and education to promote their superstitious rule). Taxation and legislation also broke the extravagant Greco-Roman plutocracy.
Finally when the undefeated Islamist armies invaded Francia, the Franks nationalized the Christian church. This counter intuitive move allowed them to have money to pay for the largest mobile army seen since early imperial Rome (it also made the point that this war was not about religion). That implied payments to support the families of the drafted soldiers. Another form of socialism, that was invented just for the occasion (the Roman army never used such a modern system to allow soldiers to have families, but two different systems that did not survive, because they were not as good).
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
FRANCE CAN GET IT UP, BUT THE US CAN'T?
FRANCE: HOW TO NATIONALIZE, HOW TO SHOCK AND AWE. USA: HOW NOT TO.
France had, so far, only one insolvent bank, the Franco-Belgian Dexia (because it invested in US subprime). Dexia got ten billion dollars at 10 am, half from France, half from Belgium. By 11 am the top managers had been fired and physically removed from the company's grounds. That's the way to do it.
The Paulson-Geithner way has been to give the money to the bank managements that had made their banks insolvent, without getting anything in return. Then the failed managements did what they have always done in the USA in recent memory: they used the money for themselves: some for acquiring other companies and destroying them, some for outright theft.
France is doing its own "shock and awe", preventively. France is investing 42 billion dollars for 1,000 "shovel ready" projects (construction that was supposed to be financed after the year 2009, and now has been advanced to right now). Examples are reinforcing the jetty on Marseilles' port, repairing the metal works on cathedrals (Notre Dame got 3 million dollars right away for the works, out of a schedules 15 millions), or new buildings on university campuses, roads, trains, research (synchrotron light source) etc... 15 billion dollars is supposed to be given this week (first week of February).
Technically (differently from Germany or Britain), France is not yet in recession. Moreover, all big European economies have their economic stabilizers kicking in big time as the economies go down (they enforce mandatory economic activity to serve the less advantaged). They should limit, and ultimately block, the downslide. So there will no "catastrophe" (Obama's word) in Europe (except if the US Congress declares a protectionist war on the world, as in 1930!).
In the USA, economic stabilizers are not kicking in, because help to the poor is actually diminishing (I read in the news this week). That's because local states see their revenues going down, so they cut spending (according to balanced budget mandates).
California has instituted an anti civilizational mandatory reduction of days of government work of 10% (rather than instigating a modest rise of the gasoline tax, although gas went down quickly from five dollars a gallon down to two dollars per gallon!). Thus social services are 10% down in California (roughly speaking). The State of California has decided to shrink by 10% (and that is baffling because a reasonable gasoline tax would have allowed to avoid this). It is depression on command! Apparently, the beast feels surrounded, so has decided to commit suicide.
Tax cuts, or more exactly collapse of State revenue due to a non cooperative plutocracy and an obsolete, inappropriate taxation, and the resulting shrinkage of the State, is how Rome went down. Excruciating details can be found on my other sites ("Small State, Great Depression"). It took five centuries for Rome to collapse, but Rome had no rivals (until the end, when she got too weak to defend herself). It's going to go much faster for the USA, which has plenty of rivals. So drastic measures are not taken right away. .
The analogy with how the Roman empire went down are thrilling, were it not so scary. Hubris will do that to imperially overstretched plutocracies.
***
Patrice Ayme
***
Note: Maybe it's time to think about what to do to get out of deflation...
The USA got out of deflation with a command economy in 1942. Roosevelt and Galbraith decided what people would be working on, and work they did.
The Great depression in the late nineteenth century was much longer (although it also ended with a sort of world war, the Spanish-American war). Maybe because no huge command economy was put in place.
Notice that the European economic stabilizers of the social programs should act like a command economy... If things get worse.
***
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
PA
France had, so far, only one insolvent bank, the Franco-Belgian Dexia (because it invested in US subprime). Dexia got ten billion dollars at 10 am, half from France, half from Belgium. By 11 am the top managers had been fired and physically removed from the company's grounds. That's the way to do it.
The Paulson-Geithner way has been to give the money to the bank managements that had made their banks insolvent, without getting anything in return. Then the failed managements did what they have always done in the USA in recent memory: they used the money for themselves: some for acquiring other companies and destroying them, some for outright theft.
France is doing its own "shock and awe", preventively. France is investing 42 billion dollars for 1,000 "shovel ready" projects (construction that was supposed to be financed after the year 2009, and now has been advanced to right now). Examples are reinforcing the jetty on Marseilles' port, repairing the metal works on cathedrals (Notre Dame got 3 million dollars right away for the works, out of a schedules 15 millions), or new buildings on university campuses, roads, trains, research (synchrotron light source) etc... 15 billion dollars is supposed to be given this week (first week of February).
Technically (differently from Germany or Britain), France is not yet in recession. Moreover, all big European economies have their economic stabilizers kicking in big time as the economies go down (they enforce mandatory economic activity to serve the less advantaged). They should limit, and ultimately block, the downslide. So there will no "catastrophe" (Obama's word) in Europe (except if the US Congress declares a protectionist war on the world, as in 1930!).
In the USA, economic stabilizers are not kicking in, because help to the poor is actually diminishing (I read in the news this week). That's because local states see their revenues going down, so they cut spending (according to balanced budget mandates).
California has instituted an anti civilizational mandatory reduction of days of government work of 10% (rather than instigating a modest rise of the gasoline tax, although gas went down quickly from five dollars a gallon down to two dollars per gallon!). Thus social services are 10% down in California (roughly speaking). The State of California has decided to shrink by 10% (and that is baffling because a reasonable gasoline tax would have allowed to avoid this). It is depression on command! Apparently, the beast feels surrounded, so has decided to commit suicide.
Tax cuts, or more exactly collapse of State revenue due to a non cooperative plutocracy and an obsolete, inappropriate taxation, and the resulting shrinkage of the State, is how Rome went down. Excruciating details can be found on my other sites ("Small State, Great Depression"). It took five centuries for Rome to collapse, but Rome had no rivals (until the end, when she got too weak to defend herself). It's going to go much faster for the USA, which has plenty of rivals. So drastic measures are not taken right away. .
The analogy with how the Roman empire went down are thrilling, were it not so scary. Hubris will do that to imperially overstretched plutocracies.
***
Patrice Ayme
***
Note: Maybe it's time to think about what to do to get out of deflation...
The USA got out of deflation with a command economy in 1942. Roosevelt and Galbraith decided what people would be working on, and work they did.
The Great depression in the late nineteenth century was much longer (although it also ended with a sort of world war, the Spanish-American war). Maybe because no huge command economy was put in place.
Notice that the European economic stabilizers of the social programs should act like a command economy... If things get worse.
***
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
PA
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