StephenKMackSD's Blog

Read the first two paragraphs of Andy’s regular political gossip column : in this episode, Andy takes the rhetorical guise of a Thatcherite Miss Lonelyhearts: 

History can be funny sometimes, can’t it? And if a slight smile didn’t cross your face at times as you watched or heard the president’s speech to both Houses of Congress on Wednesday night, I’d be worried about you. I mean: who ever would have thought that a) Joe Biden, of all people, would one day be president; b) that he would be elected with slim Democratic majorities in both Houses after a close election; and c) that he would then unveil the most brazenly leftist, spend-and-borrow agenda of any president since, er, Nixon? I mean seriously. Until a couple of years ago, I sure didn’t. 

You might have fantasized about an Obama presidency, perhaps, sailing on a generational wave of optimism, radically transforming American society by bending the arc of history toward moral justice, or whatever. That’s a much more intuitively appealing narrative — and quite a few people tried to squint their eyes to make it happen. But history fucks with you. It decided to land the first black president with a quintessentially conservative disposition, the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression, and two never-win wars, neither of which he was able to end. Revolution was never on the agenda, however fetid the fainting spells of the far right because of a black man as the symbol of America.

…

https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/the-strange-fate-of-joe-biden?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo1MzQ5NjEsInBvc3RfaWQiOjM1NjA5NjI1LCJfIjoiTFlyeU8iLCJpYXQiOjE2MTk4MDk0NzcsImV4cCI6MTYxOTgxMzA3NywiaXNzIjoicHViLTYxMzcxIiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.ystQeOoIxZNrNRLzkVIfEVy5TMcFWI4VWc3obFXVeLA

 

I just might be engaging in a bit of self-serving hyperbole, on the above characterization! But read this paragraph a bit further on in his ‘political story’ :

…

Today’s huge swing leftward is therefore in part a consequence of the GOP’s abandonment of fiscal conservatism. I mean: if the GOP can gleefully borrow trillions to give the plutocrats a handout during a boom, why can’t the Dems do the same to pay for childcare and education for those struggling in the wake of an American pandemic?

…

The first sentence, in this paragraph, might leave an inexperienced reader/interpreter of Andy’s political vignettes a bit confused. The toxic political mirage that ensorcelled both the Republicans and the New Democrats was Neo-Liberalism, that precipitated the Crash of 2008. The Pandemic simply magnified the utter failure of Capital, and its cadre of political operatives, to a reform of that Capital, in any cogent way. Dodd-Frank was the Corporatized ghost Glass-Steagall! Andy’s political ‘evolution/de-evolution’ can be described by this ungainly triptych: Thatcherite/Neo-Conservative/Neo-Liberal. The bit between his teeth, Andy proceeds at full gallop, noting that ‘I’ is the noun that dominates this essay. No Surprise!

Old Socialist

 ‘Finance minister emphasises that US administration is ‘very collaborative’ on vaccines’ Does this describe the ‘very collaborativeness’ :

Headline: Vaccine makers say IP waiver could hand technology to China and Russia

Sub-headline: Proposal to suspend patent rights comes as poorer countries struggle to obtain Covid doses

Vaccine makers have warned US officials that temporarily scrapping patents for Covid-19 shots would risk handing novel technology to China and Russia, according to people familiar with the talks. 

As industry lobbying has escalated in Washington, companies have warned in private meetings with US trade and White House officials that giving up the intellectual property rights could allow China and Russia to exploit platforms such as mRNA, which could be used for other vaccines or even therapeutics for conditions such as cancer and heart problems in the future.

J&J, Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax did not respond to requests for comment. 

…

https://www.ft.com/content/fa1e0d22-71f2-401f-9971-fa27313570ab

On Freedland, should the reader look here:

Or here?

‘A Liberal Hand in Hand with Nazis: Chrystia Freeland in Ukraine’

https://www.thecanadafiles.com/articles/ncfuk

Again:

Here?

Freeland warns Canadians to beware of Russian disinformation

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/freeland-warns-canadians-to-beware-of-russian-disinformation/article34227707/

Political Cynic

The reader just has to look at a map to see that The Solid South, except for the four smallest states, is controlled by Republicans, and that the leadership of the Senate Republicans has been Mitch McConnell since 2007, a Southerner. Liz Cheney is from Wyoming.

So the fact that Republicans are in power in a majority of states is established. The Party is now controlled by Trump loyalists and Neo-Confederate/Originalists. Trump’s future is predicated upon his ability to get his version of Twitter up and running, a very necessary political instrument. Otherwise he is disappeared!

The Recall of Newsom, in California, will be on the ballot, not this time sponsored by Hollywood Republicans, who found Grey Davis so objectionable. Will it be a Pete Wilson clone, demonstrating that the party is now hysterically xenophobic. What replaced Davis was a washed up Action Hero ‘Arnold’. Succeeded by Jerry Brown in New Democratic drag. And then Newsom. Should the reader factor in the ‘fickle electorate’ as demonstrative of political rise and fall? Or just engaging in a necessary recycling?

Not to forget that Cuomo’s political capital has plummeted, and offers opportunity for the Republicans? Mr. Ganesh refers to the ‘Moderate Republicans’ like Romney or the ten Republicans House members that voted to impeach Trump?

Mr. Ganesh doesn’t offer much, not even his talent for the production of beguiling aphorisms, all chaff and no grain!

Political Reporter

https://www.ft.com/content/f1c438ea-f8fa-4142-b2e8-ffd8f3a49a24

Should a Larry Summers Neo-Liberal cast aspersions on the champion of ‘aggrieved white conservatism’ and an almost argued ‘ideal pluto-populist’, who also is a possible presidential candidate? This has the stale aroma of Allen Drury’s Advise and Consent series of novels, with a columnists named Frankly Unctuous.

Drury’s growing extremism — his taste for apocalyptic scenarios and belief that American liberalism was actively abetting international Communism — would especially affect his treatment of former colleagues in the media. The newsmen in “Advise and Consent” are already a disproportionately fatuous, left-leaning and scornful lot. In later books, these unnamed, self-important commentators will goofily harden into Walter Dobius and Frankly Unctuous.

Mr. Luce’s comments on the verdict on the Derek Chauvin trial demonstrates that Black Lives Matter is now in the ascendent? Carlson’s dissent …

His reaction to Wednesday’s verdict on Derek Chauvin for killing George Floyd crossed even his own thinly drawn lines. The jury’s triple guilty verdict, reached after 10 hours of deliberation, amounted to “an attack on civilisation”, said Carlson. It came as a result of Black Lives Matters threats against a jury that had unanimously reached the verdict: “Please don’t hurt us.”

The true cause of Floyd’s death, Carlson has repeatedly said, was a drug overdose — not the nine-minute asphyxiation that jurors saw over and over.

https://www.ft.com/content/cc2a46cf-4392-44db-b911-f883e2f46539

In the Post-Trump era the possibility of a Carlson candidacy , given Josh Hawley’s raised fist, in response to the January 6, 2021 demonstrators, before the Insurrection commenced, doesn’t seem far fetched. If a huckster and con man can capture the Republican Party from outside the party apparatus.

This reader and critic must give Mr. Luce his due! Well written, well argued, that demonstrates that politics, morality and civic virtue bind ‘us’ together, if not ‘we’ will not survive.

Political Observer

Instead of covering the weekly instalment of The Rebellion Against The Elites, that takes place in France every Saturday across the country, is unreported in The Financial Times -in another time and place this was called ‘managed news’!

What appeals to M. Mallet and his editors is palace gossip. Saint-Simon’s particular ‘brand’ has the advantage of being of Historical importance. But an ‘insider’s view’, captivates the committed observer, in the political present, without thought of centuries future. Although in America, of late, this genre has been handled by the respetable bourgeois journalist Bob Woodward, or by the tabloid sensibility of Michael Wolff in his ‘Fire and Fury’. As for actual Trump ‘insiders’: Omarosa Manigault Newman, James Comey, Anonymous,  John Bolton, Mary Trump: this list lacks the ‘heft’ that M. Mallet might find laudatory?

Edouard Philippe, President Emmanuel Macron’s first prime minister and one of the country’s most popular politicians, is the latest to join the fray with a quintessentially French account of his three years in office — discursive, elliptical and short of revelations about Macron but full of hints about how the country should be run by a centre-right leader such as himself.

Michel Barnier, the EU’s former Brexit negotiator and another possible presidential contender, will see The Great Illusion, on the four years that shook Europe, published next month. Finance minister Bruno Le Maire’s 10th book, The Angel and the Beast, came out in January. 

https://www.ft.com/content/69264eed-6a06-426c-9007-94885eab2d70

Note that M. Mallet mentions the potent opposition of the gilet jaunes, in his next paragraph, that led to Phillippe’s beard turning grey. A manifestation of honesty, as to the effect of that rebellion that continues unabated. Should the reader dub it ‘Insurrection on the Installment Plan’, a riff on Mort a credit  by Louis-Ferdinand Céline? How is the reader to check on Phillippe’s popularity? Everywhere Macron, and his political operatives go, a cadre of armored police follow, shields at the ready to repel the mob! That does have an historical ring?

But it is Philippe — half of whose beard went white with the stress of managing the gilets jaunes anti-government protests and the start of the Covid-19 pandemic — who is the focus of political gossip in Paris. He is thought to be loyal to Macron but has not ruled himself out as a candidate in 2022; some suspect he could “do a Macron”, emulating his 2017 trick of wresting the Elysée Palace from the hands of the man who had appointed him.

Not to forget that Michel Barnier and Bruno Le Maire have or will publish more ‘insider accounts’ on Macron in power. Or even run against Macron! What follows this is a Literary/Political Guided Tour under the rubric of ‘In the past, French author-politicians’  a mediation on the use of metaphors. Chosen by French politicians, and their Technocrats to describe their political interventions, and even ‘the maritime musings of former footballer Eric Cantona’ . The last paragraphs of M. Mallet’s essay, Philippe demonstrates his utter banal attachment to shopworn Hollywood Kitsch. From ‘All my life I have had a certain idea of France.’ to ‘Star Wars’ !

On the whole, though, the tone of the book is unlike anything usually published in the UK or the US. There are no toe-curlingly frank anecdotes such as in Sasha Swire’s Diary of an MP’s Wife, or even the pen-portraits of Barack Obama in A Promised Land, including his scathing description of then French president Nicolas Sarkozy with “his chest thrust out like a bantam cock’s”. 

Instead, the reader of a French political book is expected to relish the author’s literary pretensions and to be familiar with the cast of characters before reading the first sentence: Philippe does not refer to Macron by name until page 46.

But maybe, just maybe, Philippe is the harbinger of a new, more populist style of French political writer. 

Along with the obligatory references to Churchill and de Gaulle and a series of French biographers and artists, he manages to pay tribute to Anglo-Saxon film and TV culture from Game of Thrones to Star Wars. Just visible in the cover photo of Philippe is a cufflink with the message: “May the force be with you.” 

Political Cynic

Au lieu de couvrir la tranche hebdomadaire de The Rebellion Against The Elites, qui a lieu en France tous les samedis à travers le pays, n’est pas rapportée dans le Financial Times – à une autre époque et en un autre lieu, cela a été appelé «information gérée»!

Ce qui plaît à M. Mallet et à ses éditeurs, ce sont les potins de palais. La «marque» particulière de Saint-Simon a l’avantage d’être d’importance historique. Mais un «point de vue d’initié», captive l’observateur engagé, dans le présent politique, sans penser aux siècles à venir. Bien qu’en Amérique, ces derniers temps, ce genre ait été traité par le journaliste bourgeois respectable Bob Woodward, ou par la sensibilité tabloïd de Michael Wolff dans son ‘Fire and Fury’. Quant aux véritables «initiés» de Trump: Omarosa Manigault Newman, James Comey, Anonymous, John Bolton, Mary Trump: cette liste n’a pas le «poids» que M. Mallet pourrait trouver élogieux?

Edouard Philippe, premier Premier ministre du président Emmanuel Macron et l’un des politiciens les plus populaires du pays, est le dernier à se joindre à la mêlée avec un récit typiquement français de ses trois années au pouvoir – discursif, elliptique et à court de révélations sur Macron mais plein d’indices sur la manière dont le pays devrait être dirigé par un leader de centre droit comme lui.

Michel Barnier, ancien négociateur de l’UE sur le Brexit et autre candidat éventuel à la présidentielle, verra La Grande Illusion, sur les quatre années qui ont secoué l’Europe, publié le mois prochain. Le 10e livre du ministre des Finances Bruno Le Maire, L’Ange et la Bête, est sorti en janvier.

https://www.ft.com/content/69264eed-6a06-426c-9007-94885eab2d70

Notez que M. Mallet mentionne la puissante opposition des gilets jaunes, dans son paragraphe suivant, qui a conduit la barbe de Phillippe à devenir grise. Une manifestation d’honnêteté, quant à l’effet de cette rébellion qui se poursuit sans relâche. Le lecteur devrait-il le surnommer «Insurrection on the Acompte», un riff sur Mort un crédit de Louis-Ferdinand Céline? Comment le lecteur peut-il vérifier la popularité de Phillippe? Partout où Macron et ses agents politiques vont, un cadre de policiers blindés suit, des boucliers prêts à repousser la foule! Cela a un anneau historique?

Mais c’est Philippe – dont la moitié de la barbe est devenue blanche avec le stress de la gestion des manifestations anti-gouvernementales des gilets jaunes et du début de la pandémie de Covid-19 – qui fait l’objet de ragots politiques à Paris. On pense qu’il est fidèle à Macron mais ne s’est pas exclu en tant que candidat en 2022; certains soupçonnent qu’il pourrait «faire un Macron», imitant son astuce de 2017 consistant à arracher le palais de l’Élysée des mains de l’homme qui l’avait nommé.

Sans oublier que Michel Barnier et Bruno Le Maire ont publié ou publieront plus de «récits d’initiés» sur Macron au pouvoir. Ou même courir contre Macron! Ce qui suit est une visite guidée littéraire / politique sous la rubrique «Dans le passé, écrivains-politiques français», une médiation sur l’utilisation des métaphores. Choisi par les hommes politiques français et leurs technocrates pour décrire leurs interventions politiques, voire «les réflexions maritimes de l’ancien footballeur Eric Cantona». Dans les derniers paragraphes de l’essai de M. Mallet, Philippe démontre son attachement totalement banal au kitsch hollywoodien usé. De «Toute ma vie, j’ai eu une certaine idée de la France» à «Star Wars»!

Dans l’ensemble, cependant, le ton du livre ne ressemble à rien de ce qui est habituellement publié au Royaume-Uni ou aux États-Unis. Il n’y a pas d’anecdotes franches et franches comme dans le Journal de l’épouse d’un député de Sasha Swire, ou même les portraits à la plume de Barack Obama dans Une terre promise, y compris sa description cinglante du président français de l’époque Nicolas Sarkozy avec un coq nain ».

Au lieu de cela, le lecteur d’un livre politique français devrait savourer les prétentions littéraires de l’auteur et se familiariser avec la distribution des personnages avant de lire la première phrase: Philippe ne fait référence à Macron par son nom qu’à la page 46.

Mais peut-être, juste peut-être, Philippe est-il le signe avant-coureur d’un nouveau style plus populiste d’écrivain politique français.

Parallèlement aux références obligatoires à Churchill et de Gaulle et à une série de biographes et d’artistes français, il parvient à rendre hommage à la culture cinématographique et télévisuelle anglo-saxonne de Game of Thrones à Star Wars. Juste visible sur la photo de couverture de Philippe se trouve un bouton de manchette avec le message: “Que la force soit avec vous.”

Cynique politique

In America two genres of popular culture are, and have been, in the ascendent , since the 1930’s and 1940’s , Pulp and the Comic Book. Why start here? James Ferguson provides the cartoon reductionism of the argued conflict between Russia, as the ferocious bear and China just present, but its intention unseen. And a majestic America eagle soars above, in this tableau. Art in the service of propaganda? The interpretation of symbols, in paintings of past ages, is an integral part of Art History.

Biden’s ‘retreat’ ,from the natural role of America as World Hegemon will lead to dire consequences. The second and third paragraphs of his essay Mr. Rachman that features the ignominy of America’s defeat in Vietnam, of course not framed so close to the truth, fealty to bourgeois political respectability must be observed.

…

The watching world will wonder if a gap is emerging between White House rhetoric about re-engagement with the world, and a reality of continuing retreat. Biden insists that this is not the case. He argues that America has achieved its counter-terrorism aims in Afghanistan and now intends to “fight the battles for the next 20 years, not the last 20”.

But perception matters. The danger is that the pullout from Afghanistan will be seen outside America as a Vietnam-like failure that could eventually lead to the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, a replay of the fall of Saigon to North Vietnam in 1975.

…

https://www.ft.com/content/0116d3ab-9c97-45d8-97ef-8ba86254c4dc

Biden’s ‘weakness’ will have dire consequences. The Enemies are poised to breach the Pax Americana. The reader accompanies Mr. Rachman as he describes , in the vocabulary of Stan Lee, in his Futurology Episodes of The New Cold War to come, while riffing on Dickens. The whole of literary/political inheritance is subject to the demands of fear mongering, about the dire possibilities.

What follows in Mr. Rachman’s polemic is a History Made To Measure, a speciality of Financial Times writers. What Mr. Rachman fails to even mention is that Biden has surrounded himself with Neo-Con ghoul Victoria Nuland, R2P zealot Samantha Power, and Antony Blinken : In sum the Neo-Cons and fellow travelers are in power. What is politics as practised but the exercise of ‘pragmatism’: in sum ‘reappraisal’ is its manifestation.

Political Skeptic

What might History teach about the failed interventions of the British and the Soviet Union and their wars in Afghanistan? Not to speak of America’s support for the Mujahideen and  Osama bin Laden?  

The two most conservative/reactionary Western newspapers, are taking the role of an utterly failed foreign policy technocracy, that helped to produce the failed ‘War On Terror’. The human costs of this war are not worthy of mention in these two newspaper. Though never at a loss for politically exploitable moralizing.   

Headline: At Least 37 Million People Have Been Displaced by America’s War on Terror

Sub-headline: A new report calculates the number of people who fled because of wars fought by the United States since Sept. 11, 2001.

The War in  Afghanistan began on 2001, how much longer for the occupier to win ‘hearts and minds’ ? The Neo-Cons, champions of The American Empire, are well represented in the Biden Coterie: Victoria Nuland and R2P Zealot Samantha Power. So a possible ‘reappraisal’ of the withdrawal is more than possible, based in Biden’s ‘pragmatism’.   

April 17 , 2021 :

Headline: Joe Biden is wrong to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan

Sub-headline: But America can still try to minimise the damage

…

If Mr Biden insists on pulling out American troops, he should at least take steps to reduce the likelihood of total disaster. The Soviet-backed state did not collapse immediately when Russian soldiers withdrew; it fell when the money ran out. So America should promise to subsidise Kabul for longer. The Taliban’s leaders now have plush offices in Qatar and travel freely internationally. They are, at least nominally, negotiating with Kabul. They must be made to realise that if they take over by force, they will be international pariahs once again, and the money will stop. Even in Taliban-held districts teachers and doctors are paid by foreign donors. Ashraf Ghani, Afghanistan’s president, must also now realise that more American troops are not coming to his rescue, and try seriously to negotiate—or cede his position to someone who will.

The omens are not good. The Taliban believe they have defeated America; they do not seem inclined towards concessions. Even if they negotiate rather than shoot their way back into government, the Afghan constitution of 2004, with its legal protections for women and other freedoms, is unlikely to last. The Taliban show little sign of giving up their links with al-Qaeda. Mr Biden may be pulling troops out of the country now. A future president may have to send them back in.

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/04/15/joe-biden-is-wrong-to-withdraw-american-troops-from-afghanistan

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April 18, 2021:

Headline: Biden’s risky Afghanistan withdrawal

Sub-headline: The Taliban gets something for nothing in its war on Kabul

…

The choice is understandable. As the cliché goes, there are no good options in any of these situations. But America should be aware of what could come undone. Millions of Afghan girls now going to school who would be sent back home under the Taliban. Women in the urban work force would also be in jeopardy. It is easy to dismiss America’s history in Afghanistan as a tragic waste. But these are powerful counterpoints.

Following Biden’s announcement, America’s Nato allies, which account for another 7,000 troops, said they would also pull out. This will leave Kabul even more starkly exposed. Given the Taliban’s territorial gains in the last two years, Biden’s advisers were concerned that the Pentagon would press for another surge.

When the choice boils down to all or nothing, the least bad is probably the latter. But there is a third option — to retain America’s modest presence on the ground and in the air. Last year ten US troops were killed in combat in Afghanistan. Each loss is tragic. But the result of America’s departure risks being far more tragic for Afghanistan and the world. 

https://www.ft.com/content/afdf0907-cf92-4327-b85a-e38a722db37a

The reader confronts the expertise of both the Economist and the Financial Times , but the reader need only look to Iraq,  to what ‘withdrawal’ actually means. Here is information on the size of America’s Embassy in Bagdad, Iraq, that is in reality the fortress of an occupier:

That was the process that has led, now, to this—the construction of an extravagant new fortress into which a thousand American officials and their many camp followers are fleeing. The compound, which will be completed by late fall, is the largest and most expensive embassy in the world, a walled expanse the size of Vatican City, containing 21 reinforced buildings on a 104-acre site along the Tigris River, enclosed within an extension of the Green Zone which stretches toward the airport road. The new embassy cost $600 million to build, and is expected to cost another $1.2 billion a year to run—a high price even by the profligate standards of the war in Iraq. The design is the work of an architectural firm in Kansas City named Berger Devine Yaeger, which angered the State Department last May by posting its plans and drawings on the Internet, and then responding to criticism with the suggestion that Google Earth offers better views. Google Earth offers precise distance measurements and geographic coordinates too.

…

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2007/11/langewiesche200711

Political Observer

From January 21, 2021 in The Economist:

Under the rubric of ‘Fire without fury’

Headline: Will Joe Biden’s fiscal stimulus overheat the American economy?

Sub-headline: If it does, higher inflation could be the consequence

On january 20th Joe Biden entered the White House during an economic crisis for the second time. On January 14th he unveiled his plan for dealing with the downturn wrought by the pandemic. Viewed from the bottom up, it combines vital spending on vaccines and health care, needed economic relief and other, more debatable handouts. Seen from the top down, it is a huge debt-funded stimulus. Mr Biden’s plan is worth about 9% of pre-crisis gdp, nearly twice the size of President Barack Obama’s spending package in 2009. And it is big, too, relative to the shortfall in demand that America might suffer once it puts the winter wave of covid-19 behind it, given the stimulus already in place.

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2021/01/19/will-joe-bidens-fiscal-stimulus-overheat-the-american-economy?itm_source=parsely-api

Vintage Economist’s Austerity grumbling about the undeserving lesser beings, that inhabit the once Republic: ‘and other, more debatable handouts.’ and this declaration, ‘nearly twice the size of President Barack Obama’s spending package in 2009’ which proved to be not enough. Adam Tooze offers this in the April 22, 2021 issue of the London Review of Books:

…

Once the crisis was properly recognised it was clear what had to be done – and Obama appeared to have the people in place to do it. His economic policy team were as thoroughbred a group of New Keynesians as you could wish for. What was needed was a huge fiscal stimulus to ensure that the US didn’t slide from a crippling financial crisis into a Japan-style, low-growth liquidity trap. It was the very obviousness of that diagnosis that made what happened next all the more upsetting to Krugman. In 2009 Obama and the Democratic Congress passed a stimulus, but it was hopelessly undersized – half what was required. And 2010 began with the president announcing not that more was necessary, but that it was time for belt-tightening.

In so far as Obama was involved, Krugman wasn’t surprised – he had never been a fan. Obama’s insistence on bipartisanship ran squarely against Krugman’s darker vision of the roots of America’s political divisions in racialised class inequality. The dogged opposition of the GOP, for its part, was only to be expected. What shocked Krugman was the failure of his own kind, the economists, to rally in a time of national emergency. Predictably, the Chicago School joined the GOP opposition, but what horrified Krugman was the undeniable evidence that Obama’s own economic experts were self-sabotaging, and that Larry Summers – once the teenage star of MIT and Harvard – was in the thick of it. It was he who led the push to cap the stimulus at well below a trillion dollars. ‘The overall narrative,’ Krugman wrote, was ‘tragic. A policy initiative that was good but not good enough ended up being seen as a failure, and set the stage for an immensely destructive wrong turn.’ ‘We used to pity our grandfathers, who lacked both the knowledge and the compassion to fight the Great Depression effectively; now we see ourselves repeating all the old mistakes.’

…

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n08/adam-tooze/the-gatekeeper

The Economist writer present the arguments, recognizing the role of Larry Summers as self-appointed watchdog on the possibility of this ‘overheating’. Let me refresh your memory : Gramm-Leach-Bliley and Simpson-Bowles !

…

There are three main reasons to suspect overheating might be on the cards: emerging evidence that the downturn may prove temporary; generous stimulus; and the Federal Reserve’s monetary-policy strategy. Take first the evidence that today’s downturn might be more temporary hiatus than prolonged slump. The number of non-farm jobs remains around 10m, or 6.3%, below its pre-pandemic peak—similar to the shortfall seen in 2010. Yet after the first wave of infections last year, unemployment fell much more rapidly than forecasters expected. If job creation were to return to the average pace achieved between June and November 2020, the pre-pandemic peak in employment would be reconquered in less than a year. It was not until midway through Mr Biden’s second vice-presidential term that such a milestone was reached last time.

…

Next for consideration is the ‘cash pile’ comprised of ‘excess savings’ that Americans have accumulated since the lockdown. Such is the myopia of this person, with the lives of we ordinary Americans!

According to Fannie Mae, a government-backed housing-finance firm, by mid-December Americans had accumulated about $1.6trn in excess savings. It is hard to know what might happen to this cash pile; economists typically assume that households are much less likely to spend wealth windfalls (such as the gains from a rise in the stockmarket) than income. But if people instead regard these excess savings as delayed income, then the cash hoard represents stimulus that has not yet gone to work, to be unleashed when the economy fully reopens.

The writer ends the essay here, with the fact that the Economy is not like a watch that can be repaired byTechnocrats.

Those who are zealously committed to breaking the world economy out of the low-rate, low-inflation trap of the 2010s might welcome the even larger burst of inflation that the current fiscal and monetary policy mix could enable. The Fed, however, is not in that camp. Were overheating to provoke it into earlier rate rises than markets expect, the assumption of cheap money that underpins today’s sky-high asset prices and the sustainability of rocketing public debt might begin to unravel.

Such a scenario remains a tail risk. The most likely outcome is that Congress agrees on a smaller stimulus than Mr Biden has proposed, and that overheating, if it occurs, proves temporary. Beyond that, nobody really knows how fast the economy can grow without setting off inflation. Should economic policy stay in uncharted territory, though, its speed limits may be tested more frequently. 

___________________________________________________

From The Financial Times of April 11, 2021. Larry Summers is interviewed by Martin Wolf

Headline: Larry Summers: ‘I’m concerned that what is being done is substantially excessive’

Sub-headline: Former treasury secretary criticises the scale of Biden’s fiscal policy and warns it could lead to overheating and wasted resources

…

Now, however, Summers — a Democrat with his party back in power — is criticising both the scale and direction of the administration’s fiscal policies. Instead of applauding its boldness, he fears they will lead to significant overheating and waste of resources.

In discussion with Martin Wolf, the FT’s chief economics commentator, Summers explains why the new approach might go disastrously wrong. He agrees there is a strong case for a more aggressive approach to fiscal policy. But policy still needs to be grounded in economic realities and priorities — and these ones, he insists, are not.

If Summers is wrong, it will matter little. If he is right, the hopes for a transformative presidency are likely to end in catastrophic economic and political disappointment. It is an immensely important argument.

…

https://www.ft.com/content/380ea811-e927-4fe1-aa5b-d213816e9073

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Martin Wolf: Let’s start with the current macroeconomic situation and, particularly, the legacy of Covid-19 and the arrival of Biden. His administration has already passed an enormous new fiscal stimulus of $1.9tn and is talking about a longer-term investment package of $3tn. Together, this is close to a quarter of gross domestic product.

You have been critical of these policies. Could you explain your criticisms? And how does this fit with your views on secular stagnation?

Larry Summers: I’m going to focus on the American policy path and not talk about where responsibility lies for that path. I think, in important respects, it lies with the Republicans and with those on the more extreme left of the Democratic party.

If you look at the economy at the beginning of this year, prevailing forecasts were that Covid would reduce wages and salaries to American households by $20bn-$30bn a month, with that figure declining over the year.

So, that would be a $250bn-$300bn hole in wages and salaries over the course of the year. So, I look at this hole and then I see $900bn of stimulus in the December package, $1.9tn of stimulus in the recently passed package and $2tn in the savings overhang, which is also likely to be spent. I see the Fed with its foot on the accelerator as hard as any Fed has ever done.

I see serious discussion of trillions of dollars more in fiscal stimulus, along with the explanation that this latest package is not temporary Covid relief, but a harbinger of a major transformation in social policy, which suggests that at least some of it will be continued indefinitely.

So, I look at that dwindling hole. Then I look at expenditures that aren’t hard to add into the multiple trillions, and I see substantial risk that the amount of water being poured in vastly exceeds the size of the bathtub.

The Technocrat, who was the an advocate for the ill fated Gramm-Leach-Bliley,that was the end of Glass-Steagall, that ended in a World Historical Crisis! Who can claim that kind of power? But note that Mr. Summers strategically hedges his bets with Biden:  I’m going to focus on the American policy path and not talk about where responsibility lies for that path. Just in case the Biden economic overreach goes wrong, Mr. Summers will be there to assist with an Austerity made to measure.

Here is Robert Kuttner’s revelatory essay on Summers of July 13 , 2020

Headline: Falling Upward: The Surprising Survival of Larry Summers

Sub-headline: The surprising survival of a rebranded Larry Summers, who once again is counseling a Democratic presidential candidate

Larry Summers’s public career has been marked by a carnival of policy debacles, punctuated by his brief, accident-prone tenure as president of Harvard. Yet, at 65, he is once again a senior economic adviser to another prospective Democratic president—one who has gingerly embraced transformative policies that Summers has long opposed.

Joe Biden and his handlers are aware that Summers is radioactive to much of the Democratic coalition. His campaign has downplayed Summers’s role. In fact, Summers is not only part of Biden’s senior economics policy team, but he is able to end-run other advisers and have one-on-one conversations directly with the former vice president.

Though much has been written about Summers, it’s worth reviewing the dynamics of his influence, serial repositioning, and uncanny survival. The more mistakes Summers makes, the more he is treated as a seer. This is a complex man, with a brilliant mind and nimble political skills. He has powerful patrons and protégés. Perhaps most importantly, his views are very congenial to powerful financial elites, who have a great deal to lose should Joe Biden turn out to be another Franklin Roosevelt.

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https://prospect.org/economy/falling-upward-larry-summers/

In American History there have been many harbingers (perhaps not a strong enough term?) of catastrophe: Johnson, McNamara Nixon, Kissenger, Bush The Younger, Cheney,Rumsfeld, Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Samantha Power, Victoria Nuland, and The Economic Sage Greenspan! The political/economic niche that Mr. Summers has created for himself, places him comfortably with the aforementioned.

Old Socialist

The first paragraph reads like a weak but modulated defense of the Royals, in a History Made To Measure of their victimhood, at the hands of democratising forces: malign political actors, catastrophic events, all cobbled together to impress the reader of the writer’s mastery of sources?  

The modern world was built on the graves of royal dynasties. The grave-diggers started their work with the American and French revolutions in the second half of the 18th century, paused for a while in the 19th, as Europe recoiled from the excesses of Madame Guillotine and the Emperor Napoleon, and then resumed with gusto in the 20th. The first world war and its aftermath saw the destruction of such great names as Russia’s Romanovs, Germany’s Hohenzollerns and Austria-Hungary’s Habsburgs. Today there are just 26 monarchies left. 

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The following paragraph builds on the first:

Yet the reaction to Prince Philip’s death on April 9th demonstrated that the dynastic principle continues to flourish in one of the world’s most advanced countries. The bbc suspended its programming to focus on the news. Newspapers produced special editions framed in black. A vast army of royal experts competed to tell the most heart-warming anecdotes about the crusty royal. Old newsreels of the queen’s coronation were rolled out to remind the world that, while most surviving monarchies seem almost embarrassed about their role—witness the bicycling kings and queens of the Nordic world—the Windsors believe that monarchy is worth doing only with pomp and circumstance.

More of Bagehot’s ‘history’ that evolves into a telling question:

Why do the British continue to cherish the dynastic principle at the very heart of the state? There has been no shortage of answers to this question over the past days. One is that the royals are tireless public servants: the prince carried out more than 22,000 solo engagements and countless more as an appendage to his wife, always walking two steps behind her. A second is that they are judicious modernisers: the prince melded clever innovations (such as the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme for youngsters) with ancient rituals. A third is that the monarchy is a source of unity in a country that is often at war with itself.

Bagehot expands on the question, in the next two paragraphs, yet does he stand apart from his fellow citizens?

The first two answers are weak. The theatre of monarchy is not primarily a theatre of works performed and duties fulfilled. It is a theatre of majesty. The only way to fully modernise the monarchy is to abolish it: the point of the institution is to act as a counterbalance to the everyday world of value for money and performance targets. Monarchy is romance or it is nothing.

The third answer is closer to the truth. Regular politics is inevitably about differences: rival parties bellow at each other from opposing benches and then vote in something called a division. These disagreements are unusually sharp at the moment: furious arguments about Brexit are now giving way to equally furious arguments about devolution. Questions of identity underlie these issues: what does it mean to be “British” in a multi-ethnic society? And what prevents us from spinning out of control in an age of such hectic change? The reaction to the duke’s death was a symptom of a desire to find unity at a time of discord and continuity at a time of flux.

After more conjecture ,the reader comes to this surprising comment on Prince Philip, and the royal apostate, Meghan Markle. The Melodrama of the Royals evokes political kitsch, from a writer, who adopts the guise of a revered 19th Century editor*, that at its end is cynical. Perhaps the Free Market ideologue fails to see the value of the Royals as exemplars of duty, service, and tradition?

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Prince Philip’s blunt style exacerbated some of the divisions at the heart of the country’s culture wars. And recent rows about Meghan Markle—a victim of royal racism to her defenders and an entitled woke princess to her critics—suggest that the monarchy fosters division as well as healing it.

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The most keenly watched royal events are marriages (and their breakdown) and births. The Duke of Edinburgh’s death provided a chance to observe on the public stage something that usually takes place only in private. It also allowed people to do at a national level what they usually do within their families: contemplate the way things have changed over the decades. These great royal events are unifying because they are “brilliant editions of universal facts”, to borrow a phrase from Walter Bagehot, the great Victorian editor of The Economist. They are also consoling, for they remind people that even those with great wealth and status share the troubles from which lesser mortals suffer—unsatisfactory partners, wayward children and, eventually, decay and death.

It is extraordinary that the dynastic principle has survived. That it has done so by taking the most atypical people on the planet—blue bloods living in gilded cages—and turning them into exemplars of our common humanity is quite bizarre.

https://www.economist.com/britain/2021/04/15/prince-philip-and-the-dynasty-factor?utm_campaign=editorial-social&utm_medium=social-organic&utm_source=twitter

Almost Marx

*From page 88, of ‘Liberalism at Large: The World According to the Economist’ by Alexander Zevin, that describes Bagehot’s opinion on extending the franchise:

Footnote to the above: