At The Financial Times: Simon Schama, ‘Let us spurn Brexit and remain a beacon of tolerance’, a comment by Political Observer

Never fear at The Financial Times the Brexit hysterics are becoming more and more strident as the date of the vote approaches: Mr. Schama produces a model of it’s kind, although more historically and intellectually sophisticated: complete with a shameless coda that features the murder of  Jo Cox whose British Values of tolerance, acceptance and inclusiveness are strangers to the pages of a publication, that celebrates with ethical abandon the threadbare apologetics for a failed Free Market, and it’s pernicious seepage into the now abandoned practice of the primacy of civic life, replaced by worship of the entrepreneur as economic, historical, political, ethical singularity. See Wendy Brown’s ‘Undoing the Demos’ from MIT Press:

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/undoing-demos

For an antidote to Mr. Schama’s polemic read Amartya Sen’s ‘The dark shadow: The Brexit proposal springs from panic and would certainly be terrible news for Britain’s economy – but it carries a threat even greater than that.’ Though I disagree with Sen and Schama there is much to admire, respect and even assent to in Sen’s approach in terms tone, argument, and style. Some selective quotes are revelatory:

The remedies that are needed (on which I have written elsewhere: see “What happened to Europe?”, the New Republic, 2 August 2012) would need policy changes and institutional reforms, but not any rejection of the idea behind a united Europe.

That political unification has fallen way behind the ill-thought-out financial moves is a sad fact. The EU’s policy priorities need to be scrutinised and reworked – a process to which Britain can contribute, and from which it can benefit along with other Europeans.

The message of Brexit would have huge implications, given where the world is at this time. The Polish philosopher Leszek Koakowski has rightly asked, “If we would like the EU to be more than just a place for money temples of banks and the stock exchange, but also a place where material welfare is surrounded by art and is used to help the poor, if we want freedom of speech, which can be so easily misused to propagate lies and evil, as well as be used for inspiring works – then what is to be done?”

There was no conflict between innovative British ideas and broader European thinking, nor between British and European identities (there is no reason for us to be incarcerated in one identity – one affiliation – per head).

The proposal of Brexit is born out of panic, and it is as important to see that the reasoning behind the panic is hasty and weak as it is to recognise that wisdom is rarely born of fright. In his Nexus Lecture, called “The Idea of Europe”, given a dozen years ago, George Steiner wondered about the prospects for Europe playing a leadership role in the pursuit of humanism in the world. He argued: “If it can purge itself of its own dark heritage, by confronting that heritage unflinchingly, the Europe of Montaigne and Erasmus, of Voltaire and Immanuel Kant may, once again, give guidance.” Brexit would certainly be a bad economic move, but the threat that it carries is very much larger than that.

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/economy/2016/06/dark-shadow

Sen is as usual an eloquent defender of the Enlightenment Tradition, and  he quite sensibly touches on the primary question of the lack of democracy in the EU in his essay.  Mr. Schama relies on the ‘faceless bureaucrats’ trope, but the issue of the democratic reform of the EU was not even considered by Mr. Cameron, as an advocate/defender of the Neo-Liberal status quo.

For cogent and enlightening comments on The Failure of the Elites , another rhetorical/political staple at this publication, read this interview titled: ‘Michael Sandel: “The energy of the Brexiteers and Trump is born of the failure of elites”The political philosopher on markets, morality and globalisation.’ The last question of the interview and it’s telling answer:

JC What are the limits to markets? And what is the alternative to market triumphalism, especially when moderate social democracy is in crisis?

MS The only way of reining in the uncritical embrace of markets is to revitalise public discourse by engaging in questions of values more directly. Social democracy has to become less managerial and technocratic and has to return to its roots in a kind of moral and civic critique of the excesses of capitalism. At the level of public philosophy or ideology it has to work out a conception of a just society, it has to work out a conception of the common good, it has to work out a conception of moral and civic education as it relates to democracy and ­empowerment. That’s a big project and it hasn’t yet been realised by any contemporary social-democratic party.

A revitalised social-democratic response to the power of markets would also try to come up with institutions for meaningful self-government – forms of participatory democracy in an age of globalisation, where power seems to flow to transnational institutions and forms of association. It’s important also to find ways to promote participatory democracy. This requires political imagination and political courage. It’s a long-term project that remains as a challenge, but until we make some progress in that bigger challenge, I think that democratic politics will still be vulnerable to the backlash that we’re witnessing, with Brexit in Britain, some of the populist political movements in Europe, and Trump in the United States.

There is an alternative – but the alternative is to go beyond the managerial, technocratic approach to politics that has characterised the established parties and the elites, to reconnect with big questions that people care about.

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/06/michael-sandel-energy-brexiteers-and-trump-born-failure-elites

Political Observer

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/7c7f2dbe-3474-11e6-bda0-04585c31b153.html

https://www.patreon.com/StephenKMackSD?ty=h

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Beschloss on Wilentz, a comment by Almost Marx

In his essay on Mr. Wilentz, framed by the career of Arthur Schlesinger Jr.,a for rent public intellectual, who reveled in socializing with movers and shakers, and apprenticed himself to JFK, and who became chronicler of The Camelot Crushed mythology, Michael Beschloss produces this puzzling comment:

For instance, Wilentz’s affinity for happy political combat on behalf of left-of-center goals is consonant with the former secretary of state’s presidential announcement speech a year ago this month

Without doubt Mr. Wilentz is a New Democrat i.e. he is a Neo-Liberal just as the Clintons are, so the notion that he pursues ‘left-of-center goals’ is an expression of comic miss-apprehension or myopia, calculated or not.

Then make way for the appearance, in this melodrama, of the ever bellicose Mrs.Clinton: I’m tougher that any man in the room!

In her remarks, delivered at a rally in New York’s Four Freedoms Park, honoring Franklin Roosevelt, she called her program the “Four Fights.”

We have a kind of proof that both Wilentz and Schlesinger are/were Party Loyalists: not to the New Deal Tradition, but to the Democratic Party remade in the image of Reagan i.e. the New Democrats. A demonstration of the political propinquity of Wilentz and Schlesinger, or proof that in Isaiah Berlin’s conformist term they were clubable. ( Note that it was a term in the masculine almost exclusively, except for Schlesinger’s close friend Marietta Peabody Tree)

Both Wilentz and Schlesinger testified before Congress in Clinton’s defense during the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment hearings in 1998.

There is more from Wilentz, as narrated by Beschloss, which demonstrates the wilful distortion of history by Wilentz. Disregard : Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act,Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and the end of Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Mr. Wilentz qualifies as a certifiable apologist for the Reaganite policies of the New Democrats. Mr. and Mrs. Clinton were the political enactors of what Reagan could not do: begin to dismantle the Welfare State and the political institutions constructed by the New Deal, rationalized by this self -exculpatory Neo-Liberal apologetic,  “reverse the trend toward inequality, overseeing dramatic decreases in unemployment and increases in real wages.” 

Then, with Ronald Reagan, came what Wilentz describes as the most powerful “demonization” of government since Reconstruction, accompanied by a large increase in the income accruing to the haves at the top of American society. He credits Bill Clinton with being “able to outfox” the “increasingly radical” Republicans in Congress during the mid-1990s by using those powers available to a president to “reverse the trend toward inequality, overseeing dramatic decreases in unemployment and increases in real wages.”

Almost Marx

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-sean-wilentzs-historical-view-a-good-hint-for-how-clinton-would-govern/2016/06/02/f8e84700-22ae-11e6-aa84-42391ba52c91_story.html

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Niall Ferguson on ‘The clash of generations’, a comment by Almost Marx

You have to wonder at ‘Modern Conservatism’ ! Disraeli used his novels to express his evolving ideas about the practice of politics, and it’s philosophical foundations. How arresting is the fact of this kind of genius? it inspires a kind of awe, even if of one disagrees with Disraeli’s evolving notions of the exercising of the benevolence of a landed aristocracy as foundational, one has to acknowledge his mastery in both politics and literature. He and Plato were both political thinkers and literary practitioners. There were others, of course.

Then look at Mr. Ferguson and his attack not just on Marxism but on Social Democracy, although not in the least surprising. What has escaped Mr. Ferguson’s ken is the utter failure of his favorite hobbyhorse, Neo-Liberalism , or is this part of his propaganda strategy? I’m being deliberately obtuse.

Since the collapse of the codified Neo-Liberal Dogmas in 2008 there has been no return in ‘Western’ economies of anything resembling prosperity, another  strategic absence in Mr. Ferguson’s polemic. The absences in his screed are more important to his retrograde defense of Neo-Liberalism, in his hectoring lecture to the young supporters of Sen. Sanders.

Like so many of  imported British ‘Conservative Thinkers’ like Mr. Sullivan, Mr. Ferguson suffers not just from self-serving ideological myopia, but a strategically necessary, even a cultivated  tone deafness. Take the question of the supporters of Sen. Sanders, they are young and Mr. Ferguson produces the statistical data to prove that. Sanders appeals to the posited insurgent mood of disaffected youth, yet he misses the voter like me, a retired, not by choice but by circumstance, voter. I’m the inconvenient exception to his Conservative  youth paranoia, and it’s chronicler Alan Bloom, in his Closing of the American Mind. I’m nearing seventy one and disaffected from the brutal necessities of Mr. Ferguson’s Neo-Liberalism. The failure of which: Bail Out followed by Austerity, and the dismal economic present stand in stark contrast to the Free Market Catechism Mr. Ferguson repeats as Revealed Truth. I’m surprised that Mr. Ferguson hasn’t become an advocate of TPP and TTIP or Free Trade as it’s propagandist call it, perhaps I have missed this, as the successor to the utterly failed Neo-Liberal Utopianism.

Almost Marx

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/06/06/the-clash-generations/K8v0DX4aioKbBAIRJtxckN/story.html

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On Anne-Marie Slaughter as Feminist and Hillary acolyte

AMSCommentFinancialTimesJune092016

My reply to @Critique

@Critique

The motion that is maladroitly touched upon in your comment is that Hillary is a Feminist instead of what she shares with Trump: they are both Corporatists, political and ethical opportunists, in short Trump is a fascist with your Feminist heroine just one step behind him. Her foreign policy stance is ‘I’m tougher than any man in the room’, her AIPAC speech demonstrated, and her promise to invite the loathsome Netanyahu to the White House her first month in office.

Why else would Ms. Slaughter, a rationalizer of necessary American Imperial violence, be brought on board to sing the praises of her sister in arms, well almost, Slaughter equivocations are her stock and trade. Not to speak of her ‘pivot’ to being a newly minted Feminist, after her misbegotten, not to speak of destructive reign, as Foreign Policy Expert.

But comfort yourself with the ‘caveman’ chatter as compensatory. As a caveman I’m seriously contemplating voting for Dr. Jill Stein in November, please fell free to do the same!

Best regards,

StephenKMackSD

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/f3cca012-2e26-11e6-bf8d-26294ad519fc.html?hubRefSrc=email&utm_source=lfemail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=lfnotification#lf_comment=523171494

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Jonathan R. Cole inveighs against the ‘coddling of students’or Bloom & D’Souza redux. A comment by Political Observer

What might a reader make of this?

‘This article is part of our Next America: Higher Education project, which is supported by grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Lumina Foundation.’

The Lumina Foundation has $1.4 billion in assets. One can only wonder at that kind of money, and the pressing question of its source, as inconvenient as that might be for The Atlantic and Bill & Melinda.
Or this:

‘The coddling of students’ minds has resulted in grave restrictions of free speech on campus—but academic leaders are also to blame.’

We are in the territory of Bloom and  D’Souza, of the paranoid demonization of students by Prof. Cole. ‘Coddling’ is the key word in the Reactionary Political Lexicon, or just call a reliable cliche!   The Rebellion Against the Elites, a Financial Times propaganda staple, to describe the rise of Right and Left Wing Populism, hasn’t reached the professor, as a possibly more salient argument than just the usual shopworn demonization: Oh! those ‘Kids’ from Bye Bye Birdie, with an impasto of political hysteria. Paul Lynde’s version had a decided comic edge.

Political Observer    

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/06/the-chilling-effect-of-fear/486338/#article-comments

https://www.patreon.com/StephenKMackSD?ty=h

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Tanenhaus on Bernie & Other Pressing Matters, a comment by Democratic Socialist

It is surprising how much Mr. Tanenhaus’ Neo-Liberal equivocations/self-apologetics reminds this reader of David Brooks sociologically garnished chatter. Mr. Brooks defends a sclerotic Conservatism/Neo-Conservatism, Tanenhaus defends an equally sclerotic Neo-Liberalism: and his means of attack against Sen. Sanders is to charge him with the crime of being as ‘… bracingly ascetic in the manner of the old revolutionaries.’ You get it, he’s throwback to the Bolsheviks.
Now the editors at The Economist, in their war against backbencher and or Left Wing arriviste Jeremy Corbyn, were much more effective propagandists. They illustrated one of their polemics against Corbyn, by re-purposing an old Socialist Realist Painting, from the early Soviet period, a portrait of Lenin addressing the New Men and Women of The Revolution, by superimposing the Union Jack and the head of Corbyn  into the image and produced a ‘new’ image, a ‘new’ piece of usable  anti-Corbyn political propaganda: redolent of Anti-communism’s attack on Soviet Socialist Realism as kitsch and the Cult of Personality, as a present political reality in British civic life.
Mr. Tanenhaus doesn’t have the imagination, the skill, the resources, to execute such a bold act of appropriation/reinvention. So instead we are served a potted history of failed dissidents as object lessons. Sen. Sanders has been corrupted by power, almost?

Democratic Socialist

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/world/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-democrats-nomination-presdiential-race-2016#comment-39415

https://www.patreon.com/StephenKMackSD?ty=h

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Some thoughts on the California Primary election 2016, a comment by Democratic Socialist

As I have aged I have been radicalized by the rise of Neo-Liberalism from Reagan, to the stolid iteration of that trans-generational swindle exercised by Obama. I am a Democratic Socialist and have reached my tolerance level for an utterly bankrupt utopianism, dubbed Neo-Liberalism and promoted by Hayek/Mises/Friedman and my personal favorite the notorious sociopath Ayn Rand. And the rise of the New Democrats: the Clintons and their epigones.
For a revelatory history of that misbegotten ‘idea/construct’ see Wendy Brown’s Undoing the Demos from MIT Press.
I am disappointed with Sander’s loss! But, as he has said on many occasions, this is not primarily about him but about building a movement within the Democratic Party. To put it simply it is about re-invigorating the New Deal tradition in the Party, and to, there is no other way to put this, my thought only, to purge the Neo-Liberals out of the party, or at the least to supplant their capture of the Party apparatus. Those Neo-Liberals can rebuild the Republican Party which is committing a protracted mass suicide. Hillary’s unsparing bellicosity and her kowtowing to Netanyahu belong elsewhere!
What to expect at the convention: there will be a knockdown drag out on BDS. Cuomo has fired the first salvo with his decree, and Zogby and West will wage a battle in the Rules Committee on the very question of Free Speech, and the ugly McCarthyite techniques of Hillary and her political surrogates: it will get ugly! And then the Myth of The Bernie Bros. will be exercised in a Convention surrounded by demonstrators and Network and Cable television to exploit the situation.Those Bernie supporters will be pissed about the high handedness of the Clinton operatives, who traded on bad faith and their ruthless control of the party apparatus, that will contribute to a tinderbox political environment! Will it be Chicago 1968? The media, like Viacom Hack Leslie Moonves, are looking for an exploitable political event, to sell more toilet paper and hemorrhoid cream, its all about television’s aging demographic.  One can only hope for the appearance of toxic Ayrian princess Megyn Kelly, along with ‘Fox News’ sidekick Megyn McCain, whose career was built on nepotism. It will be Hillary, Meg & Meg the very dregs of the by now sclerotic Feminist Revolution. And, as usual, AIPAC stooge Wolf Blitzer will chair the CNN coverage, a great deal to look forward to. As my favorite media critic and Murdoch biographer/hagiographer Michael Wolff would say, Great Television! Have I been too harsh? Probably not harsh enough.

Democratic Socialist

https://www.patreon.com/StephenKMackSD?ty=h

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At The Financial Times: Hillary Clinton Melodrama,episode DXLIII: The Real Battle Begins, a comment by Democratic Socialist

All that is missing from this wan political melodrama is The Donald tying poor Hillary to the train tracks, in all the grey herky jerky of a silent film, from the last century. Mrs. Clintons ‘problems’ are of her own making. Her obscene embrace of lupine Netanyahu as part of her ‘I’m tougher than any man in the room’ Foreign Policy – it is even rumored that Victoria Nuland is her pick for Secretary of State. Ms. Nuland showed her ability to rationalize and even lie with ease on the question of American involvement in the 2014 Ukrainian Coup,which makes her a perfect choice for Mrs. Clinton’s administration: Nuland is an expert at breaking things and finding less than plausible reasons for American political mischief. All of this edifying, to say the least.

On the utterly laughable notion that some how the Obama appointed Attorney General will indite Mrs. Clinton adds another dimension, if that is the right descriptor, to this attempt to diagnose the problems of Hillary’s campaign.

One more point of interest on the coming convention is that the question of BDS will make for more compelling political theater. After Gov. Cuomo’s BDS proclamation, one can see the New Democratic machine, the Clinton wing in full command of it’s operatives, running smoothly in terms of enforcing political conformity. Yet the floor fight at the convention on the BDS issue, with the presence of Zogby and West on the platform committee – poor Mrs.Clinton she is plagued not just with Sen. Sanders and his insurgents, but the volatile ‘firebrand’ Cornell West. One can only hope that CSPAN will cover this convention from gavel to gavel, as the Sanders supporters plan to have thousands outside the convention. Will it be another 1968 in Chicago? Will Hillary and her surrogates part the sea of dissidents? Oh! the dependability of political melodrama. Great Television!

Democratic Socialist

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/6cc74254-2cb2-11e6-a18d-a96ab29e3c95.html?ftcamp=engage/email/us_election/topics/9/crm&utm_source=topics&utm_medium=email&utm_term=us_election&utm_campaign=9#axzz4B5rT094r

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Trump & Fascism as viewed by the Oxbridgers at The Economist, a comment by Political Reporter

This essay reads as if it’s main ideas were hastily written on a napkin, over a hurried lunch, complete with the equivocating asterisk. Well, because the writer isn’t quite convinced that Trump is a fascist, in the sense that Mr. Paxton might agree with in terms of ‘impending genocide’. Yet for all the words written about the subject of fascism what is utterly absent is its American political context. That context being the American nation and the whole of the Western Hemisphere.

In the American state political context the names of Huey Long, Father Coughlin and Charles Lindbergh and America First are absent. Why? They are the political precursors of Trump! Not to speak of the post war history of The Republicans, who have been engaging in, and or, flirting with political necromancy since their ‘Generation of Treason’  sloganeering of post World War II. The  McCarthy/Nixon/McCarren/Mundt political alliance used this as a political war cry against The New Deal. Then came Goldwater of the infamous: radicalism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice. Quickly followed by the Dixiecrat migration of ’64 and ’65, after the passage of both the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.  The election of Nixon and his ‘Southern Strategy’, followed by States Rights advocate Ronald Reagan.Then Came Bush I and his Willy Horton race baiting , and then Neo-Reaganite Bill Clinton whose ‘Welfare Reform’ , ‘Financial Reform’ and ‘Crime Bill’ were monuments to Republican political/moral paranoia, and cemented the fact that the New Democrats were betrayers of the New Deal, in the name of scheming ambition.The New Democrats as the not so sub rosa allies of the Republicans. Not to forget, Bush II and his unalloyed economic incompetence, wedded to an irrepressible war mongering. The Republican political nihilism inaugurated by McConnell/Boehner and McConnell/Ryan as a ‘political strategy’ adapted in the face of the losses of 2008 and 2012. All of the foregoing set the political stage for Trump.Not to speak of the utter failure of the Neo-Liberal dispensation, and the inability of Western Capitalism to recover something like prosperity. Trump rides the tide of that ignominious failure!

In terms of the Western Hemisphere the most celebrated, nearly mythical of fascists was Juan Peron. See Peron: A Biography by Joseph A. Page:

http://www.amazon.com/Peron-Biography-Joseph-Page/dp/039452297

Peron was a Caudillo, the strong man, who enters the political frey and through his domination of that situation bring order out of chaos, the means deemed unimportant. In a sense he is the precursor of the 1976 Argentine Coup, a junta led by General Jorge Rafael Videla, Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera and Brigadier-General Orlando Ramón Agosti that led to the Dirty War and the loss of 30,000 lives. Certainly not a ‘genocide’ but can only be viewed as politically motivated mass murder. One can only marvel that one or more of the Oxbridgers at The Economist are being maladroitly Eurocentric, while attempting to educate their readership on an American problem.

Sullivan, whose self-reported political evolution from Thatcherite, to Neo-Conservative, to Neo-Liberal, has been the subject of his narcissistic, self-exculpatory chatter: don’t forget his championing of the Bell Curve! His is not just tone deafness, but an inability to see that racism is endemic in American life and institutions, nor to see it in himself. Kagan is an unapologetic Neo-Conservative, meaning he is bona fide war monger and an apologist for a Zionism in it’s seemingly endless destructive terminal stage. Each of these two thinkers/writers/propagandists has, in their own way, contributed to the Trump phenomenon, although they would vigorously deny any such responsibility.

Political Reporter

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2016/05/trump-and-1930s

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On a misplaced mea culpa, a comment by Political Reporter

Headline: A Misplaced Mea Culpa for Neoliberalism

Sub-headline :  The International Monetary Fund should stick to its knitting and tackle the decline in productivity

Opening paragraph:

As an all-purpose insult, “neoliberalism” has lost any meaning it might once have had. Whether it is a supposed sin of commission, such as privatisation; one of omission, such as allowing a bankrupt company to close; or just an outcome with some losers, neoliberalism has become the catch-all criticism of unthinking radicals who lack the skills of empirical argument.

As it progresses this paragraph builds up into a  kind of hysterical  lashing out of a true believer confronted with a heretic! But note that a critique of Neo-Liberalism is never a rational, a reasoned exercise.Read this from the IMF essay and see how carefully its writers frame their critique of Neo-Liberalism:

There is much to cheer in the neoliberal agenda. The expansion of global trade has rescued millions from abject poverty. Foreign direct investment has often been a way to transfer technology and know-how to developing economies. Privatization of state-owned enterprises has in many instances led to more efficient provision of services and lowered the fiscal burden on governments.­

However, there are aspects of the neoliberal agenda that have not delivered as expected. Our assessment of the agenda is confined to the effects of two policies: removing restrictions on the movement of capital across a country’s borders (so-called capital account liberalization); and fiscal consolidation, sometimes called “austerity,” which is shorthand for policies to reduce fiscal deficits and debt levels. An assessment of these specific policies (rather than the broad neoliberal agenda) reaches three disquieting conclusions:

•The benefits in terms of increased growth seem fairly difficult to establish when looking at a broad group of countries.­

•The costs in terms of increased inequality are prominent. Such costs epitomize the trade-off between the growth and equity effects of some aspects of the neoliberal agenda.­

•Increased inequality in turn hurts the level and sustainability of growth. Even if growth is the sole or main purpose of the neoliberal agenda, advocates of that agenda still need to pay attention to the distributional effects.­

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2016/06/pdf/ostry.pdf

As a Democratic Socialist/Unthinking Radical I was ready to engage, not without some shame, in a bit of schadenfreude, but I found the essay conventional, a bit too academically respectable. Or should I say too much the product of a Think Tank, whose main job is to cultivate both political and economic conformity, while challenging the current orthodoxy: a precarious balancing act. But what is of most interest is that even the most tepid criticisms of the Neo-Liberal dispensation is subjected to some rational argument, but not without resort to petty bickering chatter from one of the Vaticans of that very Neo-Liberalism. One can only wonder what the Oxbridgers at The Economist will make of this essay, perhaps Bagehot will reprise his politically strategic nostalgia for the year 1899:

Few places, in 1899, better encapsulated Britain’s industrial pomp than Oldham. Its skyline was the Manhattan of its day: a forest of smoke stacks emanating from the cotton mills, the Pennine hillsides freckled with mansions housing the country’s largest concentration of millionaires.

http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21678227-oldhams-election-campaign-microcosm-social-democracys-woes-trouble-labourland

The very pressing question in 2016, the eighth year of the present Economic Depression, is how shall we judge the fruits of Neo-Liberalism, by what empirical standard do we assess the economic present? The Financial Times has an answer: angry  defensive accusation against the economic heretics, no matter how well placed.

Political Reporter

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/ae448fcc-23fa-11e6-9d4d-c11776a5124d.html#axzz4BSqz1OPK

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