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Thursday, August 19, 2010

Thomas L. Friedman of the NYT is Certainly Uncertain about Some Things. But, Not Others.


Abstract: Friedman of the New York Times mumbles about uncertainties in our economy. Then, he mumbles about what will fix this mess and then he theorizes that a quickie meeting with Obama at Camp David can be a convenient place to sort out 50 years of poor legislation, tax policies and other social disasters. Friedman then postulates that if this does not happen then we will spend a long time with high unemployment and slow growth. He is a wizard in his own mine.

We peruse the trendy little quips forged into authentic op-eds by the Walter Duranty Papers[1][2]—aka [the near-bankrupt] New York Times –that are created by the sheer force of dogma with skepticism and sometimes with amusement. We read the strangest things in that ragzine. Usually, some pompous stooge ramps up a fiery political edifice and props up the wreckage with culled facts and half-truths to make it fit into some predetermined mold dictated by some urgent crisis on the left or stale leftovers from the days of Marx. Frequently the writings of Marcuse[3] are pumpkinified to open new back doors to restroke the suckers in the hidden splendors of Marxism. Today, we encounter a circumspective view of real problems and the quest for real solutions.

Friedman begins:

Over the past few weeks I’ve had a chance to speak with senior economic policy makers in America and Germany and I think I’ve figured out where we are. It’s like this: things are getting better, except where they aren’t. The bailouts are working, except where they’re not. Things will slowly get better, unless they slowly get worse. We should know soon, unless we don’t.”[4]-- Really Unusually Uncertain By Thomas L. Friedman Op-Ed Columnist Published: August 17, 2010 [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

This is not double talk or mocking his resources. This is a full-fledged neuronal discharge that outlines some of what passes for thinking in the NYT.

More:

It is no wonder that businesses are reluctant to hire with such “unusual uncertainty,” as Fed chief Ben Bernanke put it. One reason it is so unusual is that we are not just trying to recover from a financial crisis triggered by crazy mortgage lending. We’re also having to deal with three huge structural problems that built up over several decades and have reached a point of criticality at the same time.”-- Really Unusually Uncertain

This comment is a de facto renunciation of his preamble above. Businesses are not uncertain about how they react to uncertainties thrown at them in anger by our government. They understand fully that the Obama administration is virulently anti-business and harbors deep-rooted hate for those who make profits out and away from the controls of the government. They know the score and the slimy trick is to convince their capitalist enemies to hire more people thus showing that Obama was the guiding light that saved our country and brought back our unemployed into the fold. The solution to this is obvious, but Friedman will grope and bluster and act as if he misses the main point that business is making: the business environment in the US is the now hostile in the world excepting only North Korea and Cuba and perhaps Venezuela.

The fix unfolds for us:

And as Mohamed El-Erian, the C.E.O. of Pimco, has been repeating, “Structural problems need structural solutions.” There are no quick fixes. In America and Europe, we are going to need some big structural fixes to get back on a sustained growth path — changes that will require a level of political consensus and sacrifice that has been sorely lacking in most countries up to now.”-- Really Unusually Uncertain

We now light off on a mumbling essay and dither and dodge the serpents around the snake pit:

The first big structural problem is America’s. We’ve just ended more than a decade of debt-fueled growth during which we borrowed money from China to give ourselves a tax cut and more entitlements but did nothing to curtail spending or make long-term investments in new growth engines. Now our government owes more than ever and has more future obligations than ever — like expanded Medicare prescription drug benefits, expanded health care, an expanded war in Afghanistan and expanded Social Security payments (because the baby boomers are about to retire) — and less real growth to pay for it all.”--Really Unusually Uncertain

The time span here is just long enough to indict George Bush and hold Obama apart and innocent as the Green Knight who, adorned with wreath and scepter, will rescue us from this debt with more spending. The connection between debt and the debt-fueled social programs Obama passed against the will of the majority of the people is not mentioned here. The salient fact that the deficit is now 10% of the GDP also seemed to slip away from this propaganda piece.

Friedman now blunders into reality with this leftist confounding comment:

America will probably need some added stimulus to kick start employment, but any stimulus right now must be in growth-enabling investments that will yield more than their costs, or they just increase debt”--Really Unusually Uncertain

Bingo! Some at the NYT have learned about growth by capitalism. But, we suspect that these growth elements will be focused in some sector where the unions can benefit and also the EcoNazis.[5][6] It must be clean and green.

The Only Way Speech:

There is only one way to deal with this challenge: more innovation to stimulate new industries and jobs that can pay workers $40 an hour, coupled with a huge initiative to train more Americans to win these jobs over their global competitors. There is no other way.”-- Really Unusually Uncertain

And, what if competitive jobs in foreign countries pay only half this amount for things produced to compete in the same world product sector??

“…the European Union, a huge market, is facing what the former U.S. ambassador to Germany, John Kornblum, calls its first “existential crisis.” For the first time, he noted, the E.U. “saw the possibility of collapse.” Germany has made clear that if the eurozone is to continue, it will be on the German work ethic not the Greek one. Will its euro-partners be able to raise their games? Uncertain.”-- Really Unusually Uncertain

The EU is busted and was a poor idea in the first place.[7][8] Spain and Greece will default.[9] Friedman blunders across the socialist line as he now endorses the hated work ethic and takes a political shot at the Greeks, famous for their lack of enthusiasm in the work place. Friedman now places blame:

By contrast, America’s two big parties still cling to their core religious beliefs as if nothing has changed. Republicans try to undermine the president at every turn and offer their nostrum of tax-cuts-will-solve-everything — without ever specifying what services they’ll give up to pay for them. Mr. Obama gave us expanded health care before expanding the economic pie to sustain it.”-- Really Unusually Uncertain

Oh, the Republicans will give up a lot of social programs like socialized medicine, Medicare, HUD, Dept of Education, some of the Justice Department, The Draft Board and subsidizing the states that have spent their futures into the latrines. What the Rs are toxic about is the debt that is crushing our economy. The debt is something we can ignore for awhile according to one of your colleagues.[10]

Into the huddle with Obama:

The president needs to take America’s labor, business and Congressional leadership up to Camp David and not come back without a grand bargain for taxes, trade promotion, energy, stimulus and budget cutting that offers the market some certainty that we are moving together — not just on a bailout but on an economic rebirth for the 21st century. “Fat chance,” you say. Well then, I say get ready for a long phase of stubborn unemployment and anemic growth.”-- Really Unusually Uncertain

That is on the d0cket now due to the deficit spending.

There is where the liberals want us to go. We can do a quickie sit down, like a musical lap dance, and promptly solve some of the problems that have torn down the efficiency of our society that took only 50-75 years of leftist plodding and bawling to implement. Obama now has the wisdom to cut and patch our taxes and spending and bring us back to prosperity. All this can happen at Camp David if the lap dogs from business only spend a weekend there in a receptive mood with their hats being continually crumpled as they bow in obsequience. The unions signal a raise coming.

I am certain that the academics who infest the White House have their slim-line Speedos in a moist and aromatic party mode at this moment. These losers have panicked after their phony stimulus and other phony programs have done nothing to kick start out economy despite the promises of Roemer and others who were apparently recently fired. Summers is quiet and Volker has been muzzled.

The only way out of this mess now is to set up the tax rates to allow small businesses to begin hiring and to throw out about 90% of the legislation passed in the last year. The White House losers knew full well that their drilling moratorium in the Gulf with shoo away drilling rigs who need 2-3 year contracts to make money off to Brazil. That means more unemployment and higher gas prices. There goes our balance of payments again in the negative direction.

This process is unfolding in California[11][12][13][14][15][16] now as they face endless yearly deficits of 20+ billion dollar or more with the extra excitement to find ways to fund their 500 billion dollar pension funds that were a payoff to government workers and teachers for their votes. This deficit will grow until either spending is cut drastically or when they default or perhaps it will happen simultaneously. There is no known scenario by which California can recover from this as they are increasingly more anti-business in their legislation and outlook and only invite the inevitable default. Their hopes then rest solely upon Washington for gifts as they cannot finance a loan. There is a strong parallel between the mentalities of the politicians in California and Greece as they both have the same affliction. Both are going broke and refuse to cut spending.[17] New York, New Jersey and Michigan are in similar positions in debt. These entities are almost entirely controlled by leftist elites.[18]

Today we got the bad news that another 500,000 workers lost their jobs in this cascading depression caused by an ‘affordable housing’ bubble of government making.[19]

So, it is time to spend more and raise tax levels. That will help out a lot.

rycK

Comments to: ryckki@gmail.com



[2] In honor of that celebrated Communist stooge and liar and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the NYT. The color RED is used in my essays in honor of Walter Duranty, a saint, if there could be one, in the Marxist Archives of Honor.

He said that these people had to be "liquidated or melted in the hot fire of exile and labor into the proletarian mass". Duranty claimed that the Siberian labor camps were a means of giving individuals a chance to rejoin Soviet society but also said that for those who could not accept the system, "the final fate of such enemies is death." Duranty, though describing the system as cruel, says he has "no brief for or against it, nor any purpose save to try to tell the truth". He ends the article with the claim that the brutal collectivization campaign which led to the famine was motivated by the "hope or promise of a subsequent raising up" of Asian-minded masses in the Soviet Union which only history could judge.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty

[3] “… he advocates a discriminatory form of tolerance that does not allow so-called "repressive" intolerance to be voiced.

"Surely, no government can be expected to foster its own subversion, but in a democracy such a right is vested in the people (i.e. in the majority of the people). This means that the ways should not be blocked on which a subversive majority could develop, and if they are blocked by organized repression and indoctrination, their reopening may require apparently undemocratic means. They would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements which promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or which oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc"

[3]

"Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#The_New_Left_and_radical_politics

[4] Really Unusually Uncertain By Thomas L. Friedman Op-Ed Columnist Published: August 17, 2010 .[Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/18/opinion/18friedman.html?hp

[6] Reprinted from a previous blog: The Dollar Sags in Full View of the World This Invites a Run on the Dollar. Inflation Threatens US.

http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2009/09/25/the_dollar_sags_in_full_view_of_the_world_this_invites_a_run_on_the_dollar_inflation_threatens_us.thtml

[7] California Becomes the National Leper like Greece is for the EU II. They Need All our Money and More.

http://ryckki.blogspot.com/2010/07/california-becomes-national-leper-like.html

[9]

[10] Krugman. Krugman Searches for His Own Truth in an Irish Mirror. He Reflects upon the Mirror and Finds Himself as Originator of the Eternal Solution. Tax and Spend.

http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2010/03/09/krugman_searches_for_his_own_truth_in_an_irish_mirror_he_reflects_upon_the_mirror_and_finds_himself_as_originator_of_the_eternal_solution_tax_and_spend.thtml

[15] The Proud March of the Financial Lepers: Greece Leads the Way Down for California and Other Beggars.

http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2010/02/14/the_proud_march_of_the_financial_lepers_greece_leads_the_way_down_for_california_and_other_beggars.thtml

[19] Unemployment insurance claims hit 500,000 last week, the worst in 2010

Unemployment insurance filings rose to 500,000 last week, reflecting continuing layoffs in the private sector and state governments. Economists say a healthy economy averages fewer than 400,000 claims per week. "The data do not point to a recession," said Conference Board economist Ken Goldstein, in releasing the numbers. But it's a "weak economy with little forward momentum." http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/20102/0819/Unemployment-insurance-claims-hit-500-000-last-week-the-worst-in-2010

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