Boom Time Era McCarthyism 18 comments
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This is the Expressway to Serfdom. Next exit: Havana.
Apparently, working class whites, southerners, yankee business elite, foreigners, and even blacks themselves have discovered yet another charged epithet to hurl at a leading Black Man and his sympathizers:
'Socialist.'
The Republican Party has resorted to elementary school yard name-calling - distorting an economic stance into a pejorative synonymous with anti-Americanism and the collapse of Western Society. The spectacle of rumor mongering is breeding a charged atmosphere of ignorance. Certainly, the agitated masses applying the socialist label to all members of the Democratic Party would be unable to identify Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels from any lineup:
From each, according to his ability; to each, according to his need.
According to right-wing rhetoric, we must reason that any regulated, Government action to tax, spend, promote industry, and intervene commercially is indeed, socialism. Comrade, we must have arrived at Pyongyang years ago. Let us expose this foolishness, and argue that the paranoia of being fingered as a militant communist serves as the very backbone of today's debacle.
Welcome to Havana, America.
First, Wall-Street, bastion of free-market, unfettered capitalism has beaten a path from Lower Manhattan to Pennsylvania Ave, hat-in-hand for bailout money. Also, Congressional Republicans have vehemently backed various versions of a $300 billion Farm Bill to subsidize farmers - a critical G.O.P. bloc, amidst a boom time era of agricultural profits. Lastly, Bush's U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T act which compromises individual liberties in response to an international crack down upon terrorism is a page taken directly from Senator Joseph McCarthy's Playbook.
Interestingly, the rise of Soviet Power and conservative U.S. intimidation tactics predated the rise of Senator McCarthy. Republicans began attacking the Depression era New Deal policies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as socialist ploys that were legislated to destroy America. Although the U.S. - Soviet World War II alliance eased the angst, the witch hunt begun anew immediately following the last shot was fired. The Soviets were on the march, installing puppet regimes across Eastern Europe, confiscating top-secret U.S. atomic bomb information, and launching Sputnik.
Enter Senator Joseph McCarthy.
I have here in my hand a list of 205 - a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.
The 1952 proclamation incited yet another dark period in U.S. History of meritless accusations, slander, intrigue, and the outright condemnation of personal character. Federal Bureau of Investigation director, J. Edgar Hoover served as the linchpin of the movement. Thousands of government employees were blacklisted and fired - labeled as communist sympathizers without trial. The F.B.I. illegally opened mail, burglarized the innocent, forged letters, and wiretapped telephones - engaging upon a mission of paranoia to eliminate the communist threat.
The list of persecuted subjects includes Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, Orson Wells, Charlie Chaplin, and W.E.B. DuBois. Countless politicians, authority figures, and celebrities were subpoenaed - ordered to dismiss Soviet espionage and pledge allegiance to America:
Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party in the United States?
The Scarlet Letter fiasco has become manifest in a 1980-2008 embrace of right-wing, Reaganomic orthodoxy at the expense of basic, common sense economics. Leaders smug, happy-talk refusal to acknowledge the obvious is a consequence of the fear of being tarred and feathered as a 'socialist.'
Says Paul Farrell of Marketwatch,
Alan Greenspan's admission of his failures in congressional testimony, prove that if he and other Reagan ideologues weren't so myopic and intransigent about proving free-market deregulation theories, they could have acted earlier and prevented today's colossal mess.
Wall Street insider Treasury Secretary Paulson and Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke, student of the Great Depression have been unable to observe the writing on the wall - glad handling Wall Street and Main Street with a nursery rhyme matrix of inaction until the very end. The stubborn embrace of free-market models amidst the backdrop of an American predisposition to fear communist, Soviet Power has very well led to Cuba's surreal annexation of The United States of America.
Witness Detroit. Our Big Three automakers are fundamentally worthless - shackled by obsolete models that are indeed fit for the streets of Havana. Karl Marx' decree that 'working men of all countries, unite,' has metastasized as a United Auto Workers group intent upon negotiating themselves out of work.
Both parties are responsible for this debacle. Before blindly labeling any innocent proponent of government intervention as a 'socialist,' Republicans must accept their own responsibility behind importing the Kremlin to Pennsylvania Avenue. Let us review today's Moscow, Stalin-like happenings:
- No Congressional oversight over $700 billion in taxpayer money.
- Contradictory messages from the Capitol.
- The masses struggle; the elite lobby government for favors.
- Rampant manipulation of public and private data.
- Political platforms based upon nonsensical, economically impossible promises.
In closing, as our 'something for nothing' asset bubble boom-time era of right-wing, free markets and managed expectations of incoherence has come to an abrupt end, all parties must accept the status quo and operate in a matter that is best for the Nation, rather than clinging to dogma. Failure to do so will crystallize itself in a United States of America that rivals any Soviet satellite.
Welcome to Havana, Comrade.
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This article has 18 comments:
If you cannot name one example where Joseph McCarthy made a false accusation, then it is you who are guilty of "McCarthyism."
One hallmark of the ideological left is to commit an unscrupulous act, and then accuse your opponent of committing the very same act. For example, if your opponent wants to try and convict one of your comrades for committing murder (e.g. Mumia, Sacco, Vanzetti, etc.) then call your opponent a "murderer." Call him "vengeful." Accuse him of racism. Accuse him of wanting to kill simply because he is ideologically opposed. Accuse him of doing the exact same things that your comrade Joe Stalin is doing back in the motherland, and wants to eventually have done here in the US.
Or accuse him of making false accusations in the press, even though it is you who is the worst when it comes to making false accusations. In fact, you are so bad, your main periodical, PRAVDA, which means "truth," is now synonymous with the material that comes out of the wrong end of a cow. At least amongst the people who know.
Do yourself and your readers a favor. Please do a little reading on both sides of the political spectrum on Joseph McCarthy, before regurgitating tiresome canards from the leftists who spoon-fed you their poison from kindergarten on up. Free yourself from them. "Open up your mind," as they say.
What equities to buy?
I won't use this article to suggest what to buy.
Everything is cheap right now. That is, any corporation that is not going to dissolve into bankruptcy.
The government has almost no power over corporate America. In fact, business leaders from the major multinational corporations decide government policy. That's why Ralph Nader has no chance of getting elected: His basic policy is that government should control corporate America. (Cough, cough, ... what did he say? Control my corporation?)
Even the most superficial look at US history proves it, whether it is the history of the railroads, slavery (private property) or the pharmaceutical industry.
(Some economic historians even go so far as to look on the American Civil War as a war of economic aggression against, and annexation of, the South which had little to do with slavery. It was, instead, a war of the capitalist North against the feudalistic South and the annexation of the South by the North.)
Barack Obama will discover that he can't do anything without the approval of the corporate elite such as Henry Paulsen. It wouldn't matter if the Congress were 80% Democrat, he would still be hamstrung every time he tried to do something that corporate America does not want.
Even during the complete meltdown of the 1930's Franklin Roosevelt was hamstrung by the reactionary Supreme Court which ruled that his minimum wage proposal, social security plan, his NRA, etc. etc., were unconstitutional and corporate America has tried to undo the New Deal at least since the time of Ronald Reagan.
There is absolutely no danger that socialism or communism will come to America unless it arrives in the form of a revolution. If it did, the entire American corporate plutocracy would move somewhere else and leave the continental United States to be run by Russia or China.
As for the Hand: Buy General Motors and hedge that with a purchase of Pimsleur Russian and Pimsleur Chinese, all three levels.
Jim Carey: I agree with your points. The U.S. is the lone Western Power with no organized socialist party. That movement will not take place here. My argument was to expose the preposterous claims of those labeling Obama a socialist.
I am glad that you said 'such as Paulson.'
Paulson will be shown the door shortly.
I hope he actually is just too dense to realize his contradictions but he may truly be an extremely desceptive and dishonest guy. A true free market capitalist would never be the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank or even on its board due to the very non-free market reason for its existence, to hold complete monopoly power over the nation's money supply. The Fed's reason for being is to manage us to "price stability" which is not possible in a truly free market - this is central planning which is not "free" market so let's get that straight and call central planning - central planning - not a free market.
America is a nation of Crony Capitalism and has been for the past 100 or more years. This was Alexander Hamilton's vision so please don't describe the 1980 - 2008 period as right wing, free markets because these are mutually exclusive options. You describe boom - bust cycles as natural parts of the free market but how do you know this when we do not have a "free" market and have not had a free market in anyone's lifetime who is alive today? In fact, we have had many boom-bust cycles from 1913 through today during a time in which (1) price stability was managed by the Fed, (2) banks were regulated and told what their capital requirements are, by governments, and told how to lend money and (3) rules were put in place, by congress, to make sure lending was "fair."
The economy can be right-wing or it can be free but is cannot be both. As noted above - these are mutually exclusive. We have a history of massive government intervention in what you claim is a free market. Again, the market cannot be free when government is intervening so let's be honest and call it what it is - a government run economy.
You suffer from a misconception that was force fed to you by the government schools you went to, or did you go to private schools, that teaches we live in a free market economy. This is not true. I liked your point about data manipulation but were you charging the "free" market with data manipulation or the government? If the government manipulates data then how is this the "free" markets fault? You think maybe the economics text books you read in your government schools were factually true? I understand your frustration with the current economy, politics, et.al. but until you blame the correct culprits or causes you will never discover the cure.
Paulson, Bernanke, Bush, Cheney, etc. are not "Wall Street" free marketeers. You were correct in identifying Wall Street as going to Washington for their hand outs in the bailout. They are "crony capitalists." No one on Wall Street is for free markets. Again you confuse crony capitalists who are statists with free market capitalists who are NOT statists. You need to get this factually correct. Facts do matter.
Your closing is incomplete. Our something for nothing asset bubble - boom - which has now gone bust, was propogated by Washington not the free market. When Greenspan lowered the rate to 1.0% in 2002 he transferred the dot com bubble to real estate. Again, who paid Greenspan's salary? If memory serves me right he was a government employee as is Bernanke. Government intervention causes boom-bust cycles because only government can misallocate resources since it has the wherewithal to allocate resources based on "non-economic" factors. Interventionists never allocate resources to their "highest and best" use.
Show me an example of a "free market" and I will send you a gift card for a steak dinner.
austria63:
You've forgotten about the illegal cocaine and other drug markets in the inner cities of the United States. There is virtually no government regulation and they follow free market principles.
Don't say the free market doesn't exist in America.
Nobody is concerned about making nice.
The shortcomings of all posts will be ripped mercilessly.
Presumably, we are all trying to get closer to the truth and we need civilized and informed give and take to get there.
I add humor as often as I can, just to keep from going crazy, and I'm often speaking tongue in cheek and sometimes use sarcasm but I always try to remain civilized and informed ;)
I appreciate the humor and agree that a alrge dose is needed in these times. Didn't mean to be so "ripping." I just get frustrated with the fact that most examples presented of the "free" market are really examples of a "highly regulated" and "interventionist" market.
carey_jim:
There is massive government regulation in the inner city drug markets as their products are illegal under federal law and most state and local laws. As such, this is an example of a highly regulated market and not a free market. In fact, it's a great example of the unintended consequences of intervention.
Try again.
The cocaine drug war is about the hypocrisy of well-to-do people using drugs along with corruption in police forces. You know as well as I do that if America really wanted to stop illegal drugs we could, just as we have, for the most part, stopped polygamy and other things we truly refuse to tolerate. But most of us don't want to.
I think you are smart enough to read between the "head" lines to see that, for instance, America is already in a war with our neighbor to the south, Mexico, a war that we call the "war against drugs." But we might just as well call the Iraq war the war for oil as call the war with Mexico the war on drugs.
The Mexican drug cartel is so corrupt and the Mexican police and army are so corrupt that the war against the Mexican drug cartel is virtually a war with Mexico and the Mexican armed forces.
If the American economy gets bad enough and the American plutocracy thinks we need to begin rounding up illegals and sending them home to Mexico and points further south, our plutocrat leaders might think it time to change the name of the war to one that sounds more conventional.
One thing we can say for certain is that perfectly "free" enterprise has never existed and never will. But then again, we can say the same thing about perfectly cooperative human beings and that is why pure socialism will never exist either. Which I think is a good thing because I would hate to live in utopia or any other heaven. Here below is good enough for me.
No offense taken. I actually spit my drink out onto the monitor when I read your comments - I laughed so hard!
I hope your monitor recovered!
But I don't know what Austria is looking for. What industrialized nation has a 'freer market' than the U.S. right now?
Germany? No - almost impossible to fire workers.
France? No - Strong socialist representation.
Great Britain? No - the blueprint for The Bailout.
Japan? No - business is executed by cooperation, not aggression; reluctance to allow banks to fail led to two decades of zero growth.
Canada? No - Government backed, universal health care, etc.
Italy? Um er ah...No.
Maybe Austria is looking for a return to the Post Civil War - Great Depression era. Obviously, financial panic and bust was the order of the day during this ramshackle period.
Maybe he is suggesting that we all tend cattle as Saharan nomads.
If you are a socialist his election is a good thing. The only reason socialist has a bad connotation is if you want to fool the uninformed and undecided to vote Obama socialist has a bad connotation or did until now. So he is now in so you don't need to tell us he really isn't anymore.
The great one will fix that.
I have to say that I enjoy this format of discussing economic ideas with others who have different opinions and viewpoints.
You are correct there are no "free markets" today and the "markets" are not functioning well but the "monied interests" i.e. the crony capitalists are being well taken care of. Citibank just received $20bn + $306bn more of your money.
Your comment re: the Post-Civil War to Great Depression era actually co-mingles a fairly unregulated laissez faire period (1876 - 1900) with a period in which regulation grew rapidly (1900 - 1930). It is interesting to note the decade of the 1920's was the first "boom" cycle caused by the federal reserve bank, which was chartered in 1913 I believe, in which interest rates were forced down to artificially low levels to provide "incentive" to individuals and businesses to borrow, spend, grow businesses, etc. This borrowing was supported by ever increasing asset/collateral values. Sound familiar?
The tradgedy of the boom-bust cycles is that booms fueled by artificial means are never sustainable. In fact, the stock market crash of October 1929, in and of itself, did not greatly harm the "average Joe" but instead it did harm the "monied interests" who were responsible for the chartering of the Federal Reserve Bank, the consolidation of the large money center banks, etc. In fact, real estate prices had actually peaked a few years before the crash due to the fact that Americans had reached their debt limits by 1925 of 1926 and so prices stopped being bid up further since there was less fake money being spent.
Government had been increasingly "regulating" commercial banking, investment banking, capital ratios, etc. because this benefited the crony capitalists of the time. Keep in mind, these regulations did not exist for the benefit of the working class or the middle class. As a result of the crash, government "had to do something" to protect those whose "Oxes had been gored." Hence, regulate more, protect American business from unfair foreign competition, etc. Smoot-Hawley, which was sponsored by two Republicans and supported by and signed by Herbert Hoover, contributed in transferring the down turn from Wall Street to Main Street but at least the government did something.
I think Shakespeare said "the more things change, the more they stay the same." Very similar to my favorite definition of insanity - "doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results."
We can all use the current crisis to make wise investment and life decisions because the outcome(s) will be fairly predictable. The Ivy League, Wall Street, Hyde Park crowd managed to create a boom economy in the 1920's and to turn a recession into a depression in the 1930's, but of course they are much smarter than we are. The same crowd got us to where we are today and only the names of the players are changing to "guide" us out.
Be ready for a 0.0% Fed funds rate and massive spending to "stimulate" the economy. You can see the prima facie goal of continuing/propping up the "boom."
You are quite the student of history.
I notice your reference to the Chicago school of economics, also.
Fed funds at 0%. It seems like you think that we are going to enter Japan territory with zero growth. There won't be much ammunition, if any, left at that level.
And I don't know about your 'crony capitalism' term.
Yes, favors are extended.
But I would have to argue that there are particular institutions of the U.S. that would foreshadow absolute catastrophe if allowed to fail.
I think that we all may agree that the 'little guy' was also destroyed by the Crash of '29 which precipitated the Great Depression.
Good points but remember, all of the institutions that were created to "save" us from ourselves (the Fed, all of the Executive Departments Treasury, et. al.) actually create the crises they profess to save us from. Yes the crash of '29 hurt some average guys but the government's policies implemented first by Hoover (Smoot-Hawley) and then by Roosevelt (huge fiscal stimulas packages over and over again) actually prolonged the recession and pushed the country into depression where the "little guy" got decimated.
Always beware of government leaders with long ivy league pedigrees who say "I'm here to help you." Greenspan was here to help us with easy and cheap credit (below the natural rate of interest based on the time-preference of individuals and businesses). I don't think I want any more of that kind of help.
I am looking for job where I can create a catastrophe (Greenspan, Bernanke, ...) and then come to the rescue and be noted as masterfully brilliant. What a great gig!