Preventing Collapse
Last night I watched an interesting but highly disturbing interview on Bill Moyers Journal about the economy that featured James K. Galbraith, son of famous economist John Kenneth Galbraith. He’s the Lloyd M. Bentsen Chair in government and business relations and professor of economics at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.
Galbraith states that Obama and his administration, thus far, have really only had two primary goals. One, to keep the entire economy from collapsing, and two, “to return things to a condition of normalcy, to use a 1920s word, that prevailed five and ten years ago. That is to say, we’re back to a world in which Wall Street and the major banks are leading and setting the path…”
He goes on to ask “Do you want to have a financial sector dominated by a small number of very large institutions, very difficult to manage, practically impossible to regulate and ruled by, essentially, the same people and the same culture that caused the crisis in the first place.”
No, we don’t. Such a policy means more uncontrolled growth, the disease Edward Abbey correctly diagnosed years ago, back when we had a chance to do something about man-made climate change. Why don’t we ever hear Obama address this? Surely he knows it’s a problem, as we’re talking about a very well educated man with capable advisors. Is he clueless or just apathetic?
And maybe collapse isn’t such a bad thing. Maybe it’s what is needed to finally free the country and the world of the burden of Wall Street, since it’s Wall Street that’s at the core of our problems, from wars to ecotage.
Within the current economic orthodoxy, growth is necessary because it makes stocks and investments increase in value. No or slow growth translates into poor valuations and plunging stock prices. Simply put, people that gamble in the stock market want their stocks to increase in value so they can sell and make a profit, and this is the very reason why a serious discussion of steady state economics never emerges beyond the confines of academe and a paltry number of progressive intellectual circles. A steady state economy is the only type of sustainable economy, but people that profit within the casino complex don’t want a steady state stock market. They want a booming market, literally a booming market….
For markets to grow, you need to open new markets. You need governments friendly to U.S. business interests and historically, the U.S. has achieved this through warfare, either directly or via proxy forces. Basically, war is good for business. It opens markets, keeps real wages at a high level and U.S. control obviously makes it easier for all the fat cats to get fatter. In our modern, military fueled Keynesian economy, military spending is an alarming percentage of the all-so-important GDP, our true Gross Domestic Product. It’s why Kit Carson and the U.S. military rounded up the Navajo and sent them to Bosque Redondo. It’s why the United States controls Iraq and why U.S. forces are in Afghanistan. It’s all about money.
As long as Wall Street exists, the United States will exist in a constant state of war, trapped on a treadmill without a stop button. To kill the beast, you have to aim for the heart, and in the United States, the heart, the muscle that pumps life into the system and makes everything possible, is Wall Street.
Categories: Miscellany
Tags: economics, Galbraith, Moyer, Wall Street
Comments: 1 Comment.
Sad and True.
The Growth Maniacs are in control, so much that every bit of our societies are modeled on the eternal growth nightmare.
To question the idea of economic growth and dare to whisper the dreaded words “Steady State” is to invite public obloquy, social ostracism, physical retribution. Those of us who understand the absurdity of the unlimited growth constantly struggle uphill in every public discourse.
Struggle we must, the price of intelligence, awareness, rationality and advocacy.
“Fantastic doctrines (like Christianity or Islam or Marxism) require unanimity of belief. One dissenter casts doubt on the creed of millions. Thus the fear and the hate; thus the torture chamber, the iron stake, the gallows, the labor camp, the psychiatric ward.” Ed Abbey