It isn’t only Mr. Luce that is suddenly concerned with the welfare of ‘the less well off’. The Economist has just as suddenly come to a realization about ‘young minds’ : ‘If schools don’t open soon the effect on young minds could be devastating’.
Judging from the number of links featured on their twitter account. What can the reader think of this ‘evolution’ ? One of the most compelling chapters of ‘Liberalism At Large’ titled ‘Globalism and its Contents’ describes, in detail, the men, and the occasional women, who become writers and editors of newspapers like The Financial Times and The Economist.
Pages 334 and *335 of ‘Liberalism’ offers some revelatory insights as to the how and why of career paths, for the favored few, who manage to attend and matriculate/graduate from a small number of exclusive Oxford colleges. A reference to the ‘Magdalen Mafia’ in the context of employment at The Economist provides insights, even Gideon Rachman is mentioned as the beneficiary of an elite education.
What does my presentation have to do with Mr. Luce’s sudden revelation/evolution on the welfare of ‘the less well off’ ? As a regular reader of this newspaper, this is the first time I can recall Mr. Luce expressing anything like concern for ‘the less well off ‘. Is the reality of the word poor so alien? Mr. Luce, with his mentions of Amazon and Tyson, attempts an unconvincing reaffirmation of his Capitalist Faith.
The opening paragraph of this essay reads, in part, as if were written in an American newspaper, during the the height of the McCarthy Purges, in its first sentence, while subsequently critiquing it: call it maladroit framing, or pastiche journalism, born in the Age of Trump?
The conviction that pointy-headed intellectuals in the US national security establishment are covertly imposing their worldview on American foreign policy hardly originated with the Trump White House. Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist crusade in the 1950s was largely premised on the same paranoia about some establishment “deep state”. Similar views were voiced — with lesser degrees of conspiratorial conviction — by the Reagan and Nixon adminsistrations.
One of the major disadvantages that Peter Spiegel shares, with so many of the writers at The Financial Times, is that their historical memories lack sufficient , what to name it, depth? As they didn’t live through the political era’s they write about, with such confidence! Searching for the right descriptors, for much of what is written in the pages of this newspaper, is a challenge for anyone who actually came of age in 1950’s America. Its ‘as if’ the Coup against Mosaddegh never happened, The Bay of Pigs, The Assassination of John Kennedy, and its cover-up: ‘The Warren Report’ and its ‘magic bullet’ theory confected by the late Arlen Spector. Mark Lane, Jim Garrison, and myriad other ‘Conspiracy Theorists’ , a concept cobbled together by the CIA, exposed the Deep State operatives who were the true conspirators. Not to forget the revelations of the long forgotten Phillip Agee in his 1975 book ‘Inside the Company: CIA Diary’.
What is missing in Peter Spiegel’s essay is the propaganda opportunity for constructing an apologetic for a ‘Deep State’ that actually exists. David Rohde constructs a valuable National Analgesic, an apologetic for the existence of a National Security apparatus, that like the Pentagon’s budget, cannot be audited! Here is a paragraph from Spiegel’s paraphrase of Rohde’s book:
To Rohde, the importance of the Church committee is not so much what it uncovered — unauthorised wiretapping of high-ranking US politicians, infiltration of peaceful domestic political groups, “black bag jobs” that broke into private homes to plant incriminating evidence — as the reforms it spawned. Many of the norms Trump now flouts, Rohde argues, flowed from Church: justice department independence, congressional oversight, independent counsels, inspectors-general.
The FISA Court was the product of the Church Committee: ‘A Secret Court: Secret Evidence, Secret Witnesses, Secret Trails, National Security Letters’! Without Oversight! A monument, not to Constitutional governance, but the unchecked power of Security State Operatives.
The two essays below, do more than support Mr. Spiegel’s rhetorically evolving doubt!
December 18, 2019
Headline: FISA court’s rebuke of the FBI: It broke or ignored the rules and our rights
The presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has issued a stinging rebuke to the FBI in the wake of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the bureau’s serial abuses in the surveillance of Carter Page.
In the FISC’s assessment, the derelictions in the Page surveillance warrants are so serious, the court’s judges cannot be confident that any warrant applications the FBI has submitted are accurate and complete — i.e., that the bureau’s assertions have been true and, even if true, were not misleading because of the omission of relevant information.
Consequently, in an extraordinary public order on Tuesday, the secret court’s presiding judge, Rosemary Collyer, directed the Justice Department and the FBI to conduct a thorough review of all submissions the bureau has made to the FISC. They have about three weeks (until Jan. 10, 2020) to explain what steps have been taken to assure the candor of each submission.
Headline: Michael Flynn case should be dismissed to preserve justice
Previously undisclosed documents in the case of former national security adviser Michael Flynn offer us a chilling blueprint on how top FBI officials not only sought to entrap the former White House aide but sought to do so on such blatantly unconstitutional and manufactured grounds.
These new documents further undermine the view of both the legitimacy and motivations of those investigations under former FBI director James Comey. For all of those who have long seen a concerted effort within the Justice Department to target the Trump administration, the fragments will read like a Dead Sea Scrolls version of a “deep state” conspiracy.
One note reflects discussions within the FBI shortly after the 2016 election on how to entrap Flynn in an interview concerning his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. According to Fox News, the note was written by the former FBI head of counterintelligence, Bill Priestap, after a meeting with Comey and his deputy director, Andrew McCabe.
The note states, “What is our goal? Truth and admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?” This may have expressed an honest question over the motivation behind this targeting of Flynn, a decision for which Comey later publicly took credit when he had told an audience that he decided he could “get away” with sending “a couple guys over” to the White House to set up Flynn and make the case.
Headline: Argentina: how IMF’s biggest ever bailout crumbled under Macri
Sub-headline: With the Peronists waiting in the wings, the country is struggling to avoid a ninth sovereign default
‘The decision to seek what became the biggest bailout in the IMF’s history took only a few minutes.
A loss of faith in Argentina’s reform programme had been visibly demonstrated by a two-week run on the peso in spring last year. President Mauricio Macri had few options left. A long-mooted contingency plan went into action.
“When it came to it, we had discussed it so much, for Macri it was no problem,” says one senior government official recalling the events of last May. “The decision took five minutes . . . back then, Macri was fine and he was very happy with the agreement . . . after all, we had managed to get $50bn.”
Headline: Argentina wrestles with creditors over repayments as default looms
Sub-headline:Buenos Aires to delay coupons until 2023, which one bondholder calls a’non- starter’
Some of the world’s largest institutional investors are locked in a stand-off with Argentina over terms put forward by the government to restructure $65bn of foreign debt, as the cash-strapped country heads towards its ninth sovereign debt default.
On Wednesday, Buenos Aires skipped about $500m in scheduled payments on three foreign bonds, triggering a 30-day countdown to a formal default. The country’s proposal to reduce its huge debt burden landed with a thud last week, eliciting immediate objections from three groups that represent a large chunk of bondholders.
Asset managers BlackRock, Fidelity, Ashmore and T Rowe Price, which have joined forces with AllianceBernstein, Wellington Management and other institutional investors, criticised the government’s proposal to delay any debt payments until 2023, arguing that it places a “disproportionate share of Argentina’s longer-term adjustment efforts on the shoulders of international bondholders”.
Headline: Argentina bondholders snub ‘disproportionate’ debt offer
Sub-headline: Biggest creditors attack government’s proposal to restructure $65bn of foreign debt
Argentina’s biggest bondholders have doubled down on their opposition to the government’s plan to restructure its $65bn foreign debt mountain, all but confirming the failure of the deal, which expires on Friday.
On Monday, three groups representing some of the country’s largest private creditors issued a joint statement confirming they would not support the proposal from Buenos Aires, which calls for interest payments to be delayed until 2023 and principal payments until 2026.
Tensions have run high between Argentina and its creditors since the proposal was announced last month. The three groups, which represent some of the world’s largest institutional investors including BlackRock and Fidelity, have already rejected the offer independently, with some calling it “unacceptable” and not a product of “good faith” negotiations.
“Each of the three bondholder groups and the institutions they represent, together with various other investors, wish to reiterate and make clear that they cannot support Argentina’s recently launched exchange offer, and will not tender their bonds in such offer, because, among other reasons, they consider the terms to require Argentine bondholders to bear disproportionate losses that are neither justified nor necessary,” the creditors said in a statement on Monday.
This would have been a struggle before; now, the Covid-19 crisis makes it impossible. Developing countries are being battered by a tsunami of falling export and tourism revenues and dramatic outflows of capital, causing sharp currency depreciation. Without quick and substantial action, many governments will be forced into debt defaults.
So does the international community (assuming that there is still one) want a perfect storm of disorderly defaults that could wreck the global financial system? Or a more equitable distribution of costs among lenders and borrowers, with less damage to people? The UN has argued for a new “Global Debt Deal” for developing countries, involving a $1 trillion debt write-off, recognizing that this is one of those unusual moments in history when the fate of the international system hangs in the balance.
Fortunately, there is a concrete example of how this could be done. The new government in Argentina has proposed a set of principles and a framework for debt sustainability that make eminent sense. If adopted by creditors, it would set the stage for a manageable debt reduction in Argentina that would enable the country to grow its way out of the currently unsustainable debt. It would also provide a template for dealing with other unsustainable developing country debt.
Consider this from the Financial Times of October 21, 2019:
Headline: Will Argentina be safe in the Peronists’ hands?
Sub-headline: Leftwing populists are poised to retake power. The priority is a swift renegotiation of the country’s huge debt pile
The victor of this Sunday’s election in Argentina will inherit one of the world’s most unenviable economic messes.
Inflation is running at 55 per cent a year, the economy is in a deep recession, poverty is rising, billions of dollars have fled the country, the peso has plunged and Argentina is unable to pay its $100bn foreign debt. It sounds an all too familiar story in a country that aspired to European levels of prosperity in the early 20th century but has consistently disappointed ever since.
This time was supposed to be different: Mauricio Macri, scion of one of the country’s wealthiest families, came to power four years ago promising that his market-friendly policies and business savvy would finally put the Argentine economy right.
But after a series of blunders that led to another IMF bailout last year, Mr Macri has achieved what few thought possible, according to a senior executive at an international bank in Buenos Aires: he will hand over Argentina’s economy in a worse state than it was when he inherited it in 2015 from Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, a leftwinger criticised by international investors for her repeated bouts of state intervention.
Somewhat improbably against the dire economic backdrop, Mr Macri is running for a second term. But few even in his own team expect him to win. A national primary on August 11, widely regarded as a good barometer of sentiment, was won handsomely by the main opposition candidate, the centre-left Peronist Alberto Fernández, whose running mate is Ms Fernández de Kirchner.
Thinking about the questions raised by the Argentine ‘default’ – calling it vexing is understatement, yet in the Age of The Pandemic, the whole of the World System/Capitalism is facing imminent collapse.
The Technocratic tinkering to mitigate Financial Capital’s excesses, and the Southern Tier’s economic fecklessness: to borrow from the scalding, under the claims of the Virtuous Northern Tier’s defamation of the Greeks- the only real question is what is to be done? With the utter failure of the Technocrats where do ‘we’ turn?
Headline: Pro-people policies, dutiful citizens effective in China’s COVID-19 fight: Daniel A. Bell
The myth of a ‘benevolent paternalism’ makes its return via a radical nostalgia for ‘safety’ in the age of Covid-19? Mr. Bell and his co-author Wang Pei, write an apologetic for ‘Just Hierarchy’, framed via a debate with toxic imperial apologist Niall Ferguson. The Bell/Pei political intervention reads like a riff on Lippmann’s faith in Technocrats, as a hedge against too much democracy:
Any large-scale society needs social hierarchy, led by experts who can efficiently deal with problems in different domains. It’s impossible to connect large numbers of people in an efficient way without hierarchically structured and specialized social organizations.’
The reader can also look to another expression of faith in this trinity of Technocracy/Hierarchy/Elites in Garett Jones’ ‘10% Less Democracy: Why You Should Trust Elites A Little More and the Masses A Little Less.’ reviewed in the Economist of February 13, 2020, probably a Friday!
Headline: Why an excess of democracy can lead to poor decisions
Sub-headline: Cutting back on people power can be beneficial, thinks Garett Jones
Garett Jones an economics professor at George Mason University in Virginia, knew he was on to a good thing when he got a call from the campus police. A student journalist had written a report on a lecture that he had given suggesting that rich countries would be better off if they were less, rather than more, democratic. The hostile reaction, which spread beyond the university, included a call threatening enough to trouble the university’s private security force. Mr Jones concluded that he had an idea powerful and contentious enough to make into a book. The result is “10% Less Democracy”.
Prof. Jones, the victim of a Student Mob, echoes the recent ‘The Coddling of the American Mind’ by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, here is a condensation of their polemic in The Atlantic:
A tribute to the political hysteria of Allen Bloom, updated by a New Democratic propagandist Jonathan Haidt, with assistance from Lukianoff. The New Democrats mark a de-evolution, from the New Deal to a political pastiche of McCarthyism, and an utterly collapsed Neo-Liberalism. The above a frame in an American political context, yet transcending borders that the Bell/Pei intervention represents. The reader need only look to the neologism of Niall Ferguson and Moritz Schularick of ‘Chimerica’ about the symbiotic relation of these two states. Also consider this revelatory paragraph from Mr. Bell’s interview :
Bell: One of the weaknesses of electoral democracies is that it’s often easier to get more voter support by demonizing opponents and inventing enemies rather than reflecting on one’s own responsibility for problems and trying to solve problems in an efficient way. Unfortunately, these flaws are especially apparent around election time. In the US, it’s almost inevitable that there will be much “China bashing” to get votes. All we can do is hoping that political leaders become more rational after they are elected. Meanwhile, we – China – should not play their games. We should keep our heads down and aim to cooperate with reasonable and talented people to deal with global problems such as global pandemics and climate change. We can also try to inspire others by our model at home. We need to improve the ability and virtue of public officials, as well as to give more freedom of speech for conscientious professionals to report problems before they explode. We inspire by humility, good deeds, and learning from our mistakes, not by bragging about what we do.
Its ‘as if’ *Kant’s imperative of ‘self-emancipation from tutelage’ had never been enunciated, by the most important philosopher since The Greeks! The postulation of a ‘Benevolent Paternalism’, now in the guise of Just Hierarchy, makes its return via a radical nostalgia for the mirage of ‘safety’, in the world mired in The Pandemic? With the help of Anti-Student hysteria and the return of ‘The Yellow Peril’.
Imagine the Blackstone Headquarters, 345 Park Avenue, New York. Just call this building, and its tenets, part of the Manhattan Corporate elite’s architectural hyperbole. Lets focus on Mr. Gray’s private office, not that cavernous, even intimidating conference room, where each seat has its own microphone. Just a bit of Corporate overkill to impress prospective client. Mr. Gray is holding court, and the topic for discussion with his most trusted aids, the head of Marketing being the most important, when crafting an essay bound for the pages of The Financial Times . Mr. Gray has proposed a number of topics, that he jotted on a legal pad, and had an assistant type. Do Wall Street Titan’s still have Sectaries? Is it now Administrative Assistants?
Item 1 : Don’t handcuff private capital in this crisis
Item 2: Blackstone and other PE firms can give companies a fighting chance of survival
Item 3: It’s easy to get discouraged by the headlines.
Item 4: A record 26m Americans have filed for unemployment in the last month alone.
Item 5: This mix of rapid dislocation and extreme uncertainty causes markets to seize up and stems the flow of capital to businesses.
Item 6: Even the most deserving companies may not have access to capital when they need it most for survival, job preservation and growth.
Item 7: Into the vacuum, well before the “all-clear” sign has been called on this downturn, must flow private capital.
…
Capitalist apologetics wedded to cliche. No longer does the Capitalist Hero produce anything other that profit! Financial Capital is now the engine of growth. The final paragraph of Mr. Gray’s rhetorical/political intervention- the economic collapse of 2008 taught a stunningly valuable lesson about Capital in the 21st Century: civic virtue and anything resembling benevolence are absent qualities of Capitalism and its practitioners!
Some critics are already using the current crisis to renew their calls to ban or severely restrict private equity investment, and overseas investment more broadly. This would be deeply damaging to the economy in normal times. It is especially so during a crisis. We need all hands on deck — including a big push from private capital — to restart job growth and make our economy better able to withstand future shocks.
Andy Divine never shuts up! But when he does come up for air, to pronounce on ‘The Pandemic’ he is adept at playing the victim! Even America’s favorite discrete Neo-Liberal, Obama, tweeted about this!
‘I have direct, personal experience of living through a plague once before in my life.’
His readers shouldn’t forget his publication of a long excerpt of ‘The Bell Curve’, In The New Republic of Oct 31, 1994 , Halloween, how appropriate! His aggressive advocacy for The Iraq War, his continuing war against Students , of a certain political stripe etc.
He continues the benighted tradition pioneered by the late Allen Bloom, of the 1987 Best- Seller ‘The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students‘. A singular example of Neo-Conservative Political Theology’s desperation.
Mr. Luce’s essay doesn’t surprise, or even offer anything like a solution to the present conundrum. Perhaps the very nature/concept of that ‘conundrum’ makes it more amenable to extemporaneous political free association? Yet The Pandemic threatens the very Capitalist Enterprise in toto! What must ‘our’ response be? The bleak tone of Mr. Luce about, what is essentially a collapse of Capital, offers what?
Ms. Tett finds ‘hope‘ in the model offered by Bryce Wilkinson:
In “Quantifying the Wellbeing Costs of Covid-19”, a research note written for the pro-free-market New Zealand Initiative and published earlier this month, Bryce Wilkinson sets out to examine some of the fiscal trade-offs around coronavirus when it comes to health, wellbeing and cost. Whether you agree with his approach or not, the results are worth reading.
The ‘as if’ here is that the fate of ‘our fellow citizens’ is not a compelling reason for political action, a reason that the State, and its vital civic dimension, should act as the glue that holds ‘us’ together? ‘A research note written for the pro-free-market New Zealand Initiative’ offers the reason for Mr. Wilkinson’s ‘research note’, whatever that is? Or should it be called by its name propaganda? A very particular kind of political advocacy/apologetic: red in tooth and claw Social Darwinism, that the Hayek/Mises/Friedman Trinity draped with the tattered cloak of Economics.
Ms. Tett is almost convincing by putting ‘the costs’ of The Pandemic at arms length from herself, via Wilkerson ‘speculative models’, but then she gives the game away:
So I salute Wilkinson for publishing his speculative models — however contentious — and I wish others would do the same, including national treasuries, which must make their own private calculations of such trade-offs. Taboo or not, these numbers could at least spark proper democratic debate. In these troubled times, that’s something we badly need.
Checking my old copy of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, page 675 provides not an exact description of Tett’s thought process, self-apologetic strategy? via her self-presentation as an advocate of ‘proper democratic debate’…
‘What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything , and the value of nothing’
Note the use of antitheses in Mr. Paulson’s political intervention: ‘Isolationism vs. Globalism’ , Populism vs Integrationism, forces of openness rooted in market principles vs. those of closure across four dimensions: trade, capital flows, innovation and global institutions: The Potemkin Village of Schumpeter’s Creative Destruction with its permanent residents of Hayek, Mises, and Friedman, has now been deserted .The Brotherhood of Capitalists, have moved to the tonier address, of the overcrowded yet luxurious Keynesian villa.
The Paulson Economic Melodrama unfolds in the hyperbolic mood. In sum, ‘we’ must remain in that Keynesian abode, and dedicate ‘ourselves’ to Capitalism’s full recovery until? The Multilateral Organizations, that is the touchstone, the instrument of that full recovery of ‘our’ economic health are NGO’s, without allegiance to any Nation State, nor to any political constituency except itself. Are they worthy of our faith and trust?
The forces that advocate for closure will resist strengthening multilateral organisations. But that only increases the risks to our citizens. While the near-term prospects of reform seem dim, I am more optimistic that this crisis will ultimately spur co-operation among major nations to begin the hard work of building a more peaceful, sustainable future.
The above is the penultimate paragraph of Mr. Paulson’s essay, that amounts to a collection of not very convincing cliches.
From the hysterical opposition to the Free Speech movement, that rebellion led by the heroic Mario Savio, washed up Movie Star and FBI snitch Ronald Reagan, parleyed this into the Governorship of California…the rest is ‘History’. To S.I. Hayakawa, and later by the redoubtable Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind : its Star, a generation of incurious Students addled by Rock-Music, and other False Prophets, perhaps with a liberal sprinkle of weed?
Or the latest iteration of anti-student hysteria The Coddling of the American Mind by Haidt and Lukianoff, a link to the Atlantic Magazine’s shortened version (Behind a Pay Wall), is helpful to those who don’t want to waste their time on a book, of hysterical political propaganda, featuring an utterly unfit, indeed spoiled, younger generation. The ‘as if ‘ here is that New Democrat propagandist Haidt and Lukianoff , whose FIRE is funded by a collection of notorious Conservatives, can offer a balanced critique of a generation of ‘the coddled’.
From one of the New York Times’ resident coterie of apologists for the political present, David Brooks, once the protege of the self-invented Brahman, and political poser Wm. F. Buckley Jr. (Imagine Buckley senior as a rough-hewn Texas wildcatter ? ) Brooks takes up the coddling metaphor, with the assistance of Haidt and Lukianoff as part of the tried and true public shaming of the Younger Generation, who must adapt to The Pandemic. The imperative that Brooks offers is as unimaginative as it is hackneyed: toughen up!
How many times, in my Middle School and High School years, did I and my class mates, hear this shit from our teachers? But mostly from the coaches, that ‘taught’ the mandatory Physical Education classes, in the Dark Age of the mid-fifties and early sixties!
The last two paragraphs of the Brooks exercise in public shaming of the ‘overprotected’ offers insights into the ineradicable nature of the Puritan Ethic, and its hero like Jonathan Edwards and one of its many villains, Cotton Mather!
I’m hoping this moment launches a change in the way we raise and train all our young, at all ages. I’m hoping it exorcises the tide of “safetyism,” which has gone overboard.
The virus is another reminder that hardship is woven into the warp and woof of existence. Training a young person is training her or him to master hardship, to endure suffering and, by building something new from the wreckage, redeem it.
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