The professional Economic Buccaneer needs to be very careful about his public advocacy for friends and allies that he might hold in high esteem: J. Ezra Merkin? For the checkered career of Mr. Ackman Wikipedia provides valuable information to evaluate his credentials:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ackman
Mr. Ackman manages to produce not a pastiche of a campaign press release, but to simply produce one that enunciates the cliches of the genre, with a telling fidelity to the imperatives that Bernays laid out in 1928.
The opening paragraphs rely on the oft used metaphor of a country as a business. Is a country like a business, subject to the laws of supply and demand, not to speak of the ever present profit motive? What is the definition of success that is common to a country and a business? Or is this labored metaphor a device to give us the assurance that a hard headed business man is what is needed, to bring America out of the eighth year of economic stagnation, following the catastrophic collapse of the Free Market Delusion? In rides Mr. Bloomberg on a white stallion awash in the shimmer of false hope. Perfect as an antidote to the rebellion against the elites, the current Part Line of the bourgeois respectable pundits at The Financial Times.
See my comment on the Bloomberg record here:
‘Today America is burning. Our government is wasteful and dysfunctional. Our national debt exceeds our gross domestic product. Our bridges, roads, airports and tunnels are crumbling. Our school system fails to educate our children. Our middle class is shrinking. Our tax code drives our most profitable businesses to relocate to foreign jurisdictions. Our immigration laws force talented young scientists and entrepreneurs to competitor nations. Our incomprehensible regulations fail to protect us from fraud, crime, pollution and abuse of power, while stunting growth and impairing our global competitiveness. Our international standing has deteriorated. Our enemies no longer take our pronouncements seriously and our military supremacy is threatened. The American dream is fading.’
This coda is in keeping with Bloomberg as the only, inevitable choice of the thinking oligarch:
‘It is time to put the fires out and restore the United States to greatness. Mr Bloomberg is the right choice.’
One needs to exercise patience, not to speak forbearance with Mr. Ackman’s political advocacy.
Almost Marx
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/1c440342-d0a2-11e5-831d-09f7778e7377.html#axzz3zxd7nlf6
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