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Weekend Economists Repent! The End Is Here! July 20-22, 2012
Another week has flown by, with marvel upon madness upon misery upon murder....it's been a week to forget, if possible.
Utopia has been suggested as our focus this weekend. I don't know much about Utopia.
I do know, that when the American people shut down the Vietnam war and ousted crooked President Nixon, I personally thought Utopia was at hand for this great nation. We were living up to the best hopes of our Founders. Little did anyone suspect that the few weeks, between Nixon's resignation on August 8th, 1974, and the fall of Saigon on 30 April, 1975, would be the closest America ever came to Utopia for many a generation, and that's assuming that someday in the future our long declining "democracy" reverses from becoming merely a Mockracy of its stated dream....
It's been all downhill since then. The Elites and the Reactionaries and the Forces of Evil Fascism redoubled their efforts, and with the help of a couple of demented old men, a slick Willie, Little Boots, and the Oreo Man, the Predator Drone Himself, we are as far from Utopia as one can get, outside of Dante's Nine Circles of Hell.
Malt does more than Milton can, in these circumstances. So pour yourself something alcoholic and relax while we post the 4 M's of the day, week, year, and contemplate the "Best of All Possible Worlds".
Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was coined in Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt to create an ideal society, and fictional societies portrayed in literature. It has spawned other concepts, most prominently dystopia.
The word comes from the Greek: ?ὐ ("not"
and ?ό??? ("place" and means "no place". The English homophone eutopia, derived from the Greek ?ὖ ("good" or "well" and ?ό??? ("place" , means "good place". This, due to the identical pronunciation of "utopia" and "eutopia", gives rise to a double meaning....-wikipedia
The word comes from the Greek: ?ὐ ("not"
and ?ό??? ("place" and means "no place". The English homophone eutopia, derived from the Greek ?ὖ ("good" or "well" and ?ό??? ("place" , means "good place". This, due to the identical pronunciation of "utopia" and "eutopia", gives rise to a double meaning....-wikipedia&feature=related
I'm not sure, but I think this band is called Utopia.
81 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
http://truth-out.org/news/item/10432-why-iceland-is-a-success-story
BECAUSE THEY PROSECUTE AND JAIL THEIR FRAUDSTERS?
I was recently alerted to a remarkably stupid attack (and I use that term advisedly) directed at me from the Council on Foreign Relations on the subject of Iceland. The C.F.R. people take me to task in a blog post titled “ ‘Iceland’s Post-Crisis Miracle’ Revisited” for measuring economic performance in Iceland and the Baltics relative to the pre-crisis peak, which they suggest is some kind of scam. Why not measure relative to the post-crisis trough, under which the Baltics look better? Oh, boy. Economists have been studying business cycles for something like 90 years, and done comparisons to previous peaks all that time; apparently these guys don’t know about any of that. So let’s try this slowly.
First of all, we think of a recession as a period in which the economy falls below its potential; the natural way to gauge a recovery is to see how much of the lost ground has been regained...Better yet, compare two hypothetical countries — call them country I and country L. Both suffer from a severe economic setback, but country I does a better job of responding to the shock, so that output falls only 10 percent in I but 20 percent in L. Then both economies recover. In that recovery, output in L grows more from the trough than output in I — but only because the country did so badly in the first place. Yet the C.F.R. people would have us believe that L, not I, is the success story....Or do a bit of history. The economy in the United States grew 10.9 percent — yes, 10.9 percent — in 1934. The New Deal triumphant! Or maybe not. Real gross domestic product was still about 20 percent below its 1929 level. So by comparing output to the previous peak I’m doing the obvious, natural thing; the C.F.R. alternative makes no sense.
Oh, and Ryan Avent, the economics correspondent at The Economist, took on in his own blog post another, earlier C.F.R. argument that the Baltics have grown more since 2000. This is a different kind of confusion: mixing up long-run growth in potential with shortfalls below potential. Iceland was and is a rich country; the Baltics were poor countries playing catch-up, which isn't relevant either way to the crisis story...One place where I do disagree with Mr. Avent is in his desire to stop talking about Iceland. Yes, it's a small island exporting mainly fish and aluminum. But you take your natural experiments where you find them. (The economist Milton Friedman made his original case for floating exchange rates in part by invoking the example of, believe it or not, Tangier). Iceland was the only European-periphery country that received huge capital inflows, then responded to the crisis not with a grim determination to stay on or pegged to the euro, but by devaluing. In the process it demonstrated that devaluation is a lot easier than "internal devaluation," the attempt to regain competitiveness with a fixed exchange rate, which is actually the main point.
Defining Success Down in the Baltics
I still get comments and mail from people claiming that the experience of Latvia and/or Estonia proves that I'm all wrong, or something. Most of the people saying this don't know anything beyond one or two good numbers they've heard. So, here's what you need to know. Look at the charts on this page on gross domestic product and unemployment. We're talking about two economies that suffered severe, Depression-level slumps, and have since made up some but not all of the lost ground. You could, by the way, have said exactly the same thing about the United States in 1935. I mean, obviously it's good that some ground has been regained. But this is the best people can do to demonstrate the wonders of austerity?
BECAUSE THEY PROSECUTE AND JAIL THEIR FRAUDSTERS?
I was recently alerted to a remarkably stupid attack (and I use that term advisedly) directed at me from the Council on Foreign Relations on the subject of Iceland. The C.F.R. people take me to task in a blog post titled “ ‘Iceland’s Post-Crisis Miracle’ Revisited” for measuring economic performance in Iceland and the Baltics relative to the pre-crisis peak, which they suggest is some kind of scam. Why not measure relative to the post-crisis trough, under which the Baltics look better? Oh, boy. Economists have been studying business cycles for something like 90 years, and done comparisons to previous peaks all that time; apparently these guys don’t know about any of that. So let’s try this slowly.
First of all, we think of a recession as a period in which the economy falls below its potential; the natural way to gauge a recovery is to see how much of the lost ground has been regained...Better yet, compare two hypothetical countries — call them country I and country L. Both suffer from a severe economic setback, but country I does a better job of responding to the shock, so that output falls only 10 percent in I but 20 percent in L. Then both economies recover. In that recovery, output in L grows more from the trough than output in I — but only because the country did so badly in the first place. Yet the C.F.R. people would have us believe that L, not I, is the success story....Or do a bit of history. The economy in the United States grew 10.9 percent — yes, 10.9 percent — in 1934. The New Deal triumphant! Or maybe not. Real gross domestic product was still about 20 percent below its 1929 level. So by comparing output to the previous peak I’m doing the obvious, natural thing; the C.F.R. alternative makes no sense.
Oh, and Ryan Avent, the economics correspondent at The Economist, took on in his own blog post another, earlier C.F.R. argument that the Baltics have grown more since 2000. This is a different kind of confusion: mixing up long-run growth in potential with shortfalls below potential. Iceland was and is a rich country; the Baltics were poor countries playing catch-up, which isn't relevant either way to the crisis story...One place where I do disagree with Mr. Avent is in his desire to stop talking about Iceland. Yes, it's a small island exporting mainly fish and aluminum. But you take your natural experiments where you find them. (The economist Milton Friedman made his original case for floating exchange rates in part by invoking the example of, believe it or not, Tangier). Iceland was the only European-periphery country that received huge capital inflows, then responded to the crisis not with a grim determination to stay on or pegged to the euro, but by devaluing. In the process it demonstrated that devaluation is a lot easier than "internal devaluation," the attempt to regain competitiveness with a fixed exchange rate, which is actually the main point.
Defining Success Down in the Baltics
I still get comments and mail from people claiming that the experience of Latvia and/or Estonia proves that I'm all wrong, or something. Most of the people saying this don't know anything beyond one or two good numbers they've heard. So, here's what you need to know. Look at the charts on this page on gross domestic product and unemployment. We're talking about two economies that suffered severe, Depression-level slumps, and have since made up some but not all of the lost ground. You could, by the way, have said exactly the same thing about the United States in 1935. I mean, obviously it's good that some ground has been regained. But this is the best people can do to demonstrate the wonders of austerity?
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-07-19/krugmenistan-vs-dot-estonia
In May 2009, months after the passage of a $787 billion stimulus package in the U.S., Estonia’s government took the opposite tack: the hard line. It did not dip into the country’s reserves or borrow money. Ministers say they never even considered devaluing what was then Estonia’s currency, the kroon, which would have derailed a 10-year plan to adopt the euro. To maintain the country’s balanced budget, a tradition it had honored since the end of the Soviet occupation, Estonia’s government froze pensions, lowered state salaries by about 10 percent, and raised the value-added tax by 2 percent. The gross domestic product dropped more than 14 percent that year.
At Estanc, which makes high-pressure steel containers at a plant outside of Tallinn, profits stagnated. The company postponed plans to double floor space at the factory. Unemployment in Estonia got as high as 16 percent, and many of the country’s welders took the ferry ride across the Gulf of Finland to Helsinki to look for work. Vaido Palmik, the plant’s managing director, had friends lose their jobs during the crash. “It was a very hard time,” he says.
The welders are back now. In 2010, Estonia’s GDP grew by 2.3 percent. At the end of that year, the country ran into a burning building and adopted the euro. Last year, GDP grew by 7.5 percent. Estanc has increased its head count by more than a third in 2012. Palmik sells to Finland and Sweden; he wants to break into the German market and has moved forward with plans for expansion. Estonia’s unemployment is down to 10.8 percent—not ideal, but less than half that of Spain, and enough to get both the country’s president and its ruling coalition reelected in 2011. Last November, the International Monetary Fund praised the country’s export-led recovery and “enviable fiscal position.” Economists don’t get controlled experiments, so they have to take countries as they are. Right now, Estonia seems to show that monetary and fiscal restraint can, after pain, create growth. “If you look back, the crash is very good,” says Palmik. Not surprisingly, Estonia, a country with 1.2 million people, has been offered as a model by advocates of austerity in Europe and elsewhere. On the far side of the Atlantic, however, Nobel prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has been arguing for years against this kind of restraint, saying it leads to pointless misery. The argument is central to the future of the U.S.—and most other countries, too. On June 6, in a blog post titled “Estonian Rhapsody,” Krugman took on what he called “the poster child for austerity defenders.” In his post, he graphed real GDP from the height of the boom to the first quarter of this year to show that, even after a recovery, Estonia’s economy is still almost 10 percent below its peak in 2007. “This,” he wrote, “is what passes for economic triumph?”
AND IT GOES ON...HOW THE OTHER SIDE SEES IT
In May 2009, months after the passage of a $787 billion stimulus package in the U.S., Estonia’s government took the opposite tack: the hard line. It did not dip into the country’s reserves or borrow money. Ministers say they never even considered devaluing what was then Estonia’s currency, the kroon, which would have derailed a 10-year plan to adopt the euro. To maintain the country’s balanced budget, a tradition it had honored since the end of the Soviet occupation, Estonia’s government froze pensions, lowered state salaries by about 10 percent, and raised the value-added tax by 2 percent. The gross domestic product dropped more than 14 percent that year.
At Estanc, which makes high-pressure steel containers at a plant outside of Tallinn, profits stagnated. The company postponed plans to double floor space at the factory. Unemployment in Estonia got as high as 16 percent, and many of the country’s welders took the ferry ride across the Gulf of Finland to Helsinki to look for work. Vaido Palmik, the plant’s managing director, had friends lose their jobs during the crash. “It was a very hard time,” he says.
The welders are back now. In 2010, Estonia’s GDP grew by 2.3 percent. At the end of that year, the country ran into a burning building and adopted the euro. Last year, GDP grew by 7.5 percent. Estanc has increased its head count by more than a third in 2012. Palmik sells to Finland and Sweden; he wants to break into the German market and has moved forward with plans for expansion. Estonia’s unemployment is down to 10.8 percent—not ideal, but less than half that of Spain, and enough to get both the country’s president and its ruling coalition reelected in 2011. Last November, the International Monetary Fund praised the country’s export-led recovery and “enviable fiscal position.” Economists don’t get controlled experiments, so they have to take countries as they are. Right now, Estonia seems to show that monetary and fiscal restraint can, after pain, create growth. “If you look back, the crash is very good,” says Palmik. Not surprisingly, Estonia, a country with 1.2 million people, has been offered as a model by advocates of austerity in Europe and elsewhere. On the far side of the Atlantic, however, Nobel prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has been arguing for years against this kind of restraint, saying it leads to pointless misery. The argument is central to the future of the U.S.—and most other countries, too. On June 6, in a blog post titled “Estonian Rhapsody,” Krugman took on what he called “the poster child for austerity defenders.” In his post, he graphed real GDP from the height of the boom to the first quarter of this year to show that, even after a recovery, Estonia’s economy is still almost 10 percent below its peak in 2007. “This,” he wrote, “is what passes for economic triumph?”
“It was like an attack on Estonian people,” says Palmik, in an office above his plant, surrounded by blueprints for his new production line. “These times have been very difficult. People have kept together. And this Krugman took all these facts that he wanted.”
AND IT GOES ON...HOW THE OTHER SIDE SEES IT
In many cultures, societies, and religions, there is some myth or memory of a distant past when humankind lived in a primitive and simple state, but at the same time one of perfect happiness and fulfillment. In those days, the various myths tell us, there was an instinctive harmony between man and nature. Men's needs were few and their desires limited. Both were easily satisfied by the abundance provided by nature. Accordingly, there were no motives whatsoever for war or oppression. Nor was there any need for hard and painful work. Humans were simple and pious, and felt themselves close to the gods. According to one anthropological theory, hunter-gatherers were the original affluent society.
These mythical or religious archetypes are inscribed in all the cultures and resurge with special vitality when people are in difficult and critical times. However, the projection of the myth does not take place towards the remote past, but either towards the future or towards distant and fictional places, imagining that at some time of the future, at some point of the space or beyond the death must exist the possibility of living happily.
These myths of the earliest stage of humankind have been referred to by various cultures, societies, and religions:
Golden Age The Greek poet Hesiod, around the 8th century BCE, in his compilation of the mythological tradition (the poem Works and Days), explained that, prior to the present era, there were other four progressively more perfect ones, the oldest of which was the Golden Age.
Plutarch, the Greek historian and biographer of the 1st century, dealt with the blissful and mythic past of the humanity.
Arcadia, e.g. in Sir Philip Sidney's prose romance The Old Arcadia (1580). Originally a region in the Peloponnesus, Arcadia became a synonym for any rural area that serves as a pastoral setting, as a locus amoenus ("delightful place" :
The Biblical Garden of Eden The Biblical Garden of Eden as depicted in Genesis 2 (Authorized Version of 1611):
"And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. [...]
And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. [...]
And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; [...] And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man."
And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. [...]
And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; [...] And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man."
The Land of Cockaigne
The Land of Cockaigne (also Cockaygne, Cokaygne), was
an imaginary land of idleness and luxury, famous in medieval story, and the subject of more than one poem, one of which, an early translation of a 13th-century French work, is given in Ellis's Specimens of Early English Poets. In this, "the houses were made of barley sugar and cakes, the streets were paved with pastry, and the shops supplied goods for nothing." London has been so called (see Cockney), but Boileau applies the same to Paris.
The Peach Blossom Spring, a prose written by Tao Yuanming, describes a utopian place. The narrative goes that a fisherman from Wuling sailed upstream a river and came across a beautiful blossoming peach grove and lush green fields covered with blossom petals. Entranced by the beauty, he continued upstream. When he reached the end of the river, he stumbled onto a small grotto. Though narrow at first, he was able to squeeze through the passage and discovered an ethereal utopia, where the people led an ideal existence in harmony with nature. He saw a vast expanse of fertile lands, clear ponds, mulberry trees, bamboo groves, and the like with a community of people of all ages and houses in neat rows. The people wore a style of clothing unlike anything he saw before. They explained that their ancestors escaped to this place during the civil unrest of the Qin Dynasty and they themselves had not left since or had contact with anyone from the outside. They had not even heard of the later dynasties of bygone times or the then-current Jin Dynasty. In the story, the community was secluded and unaffected by the troubles of the outside world. The sense of timelessness was also predominant in the story as a perfect utopian community remains unchanged, that is, it had no decline nor the need to improve. Eventually, the Chinese term Peach Blossom Spring (桃花源
came to be synonymous for the concept of utopia.
Schlaraffenland is an analogous German tradition. (See in German Wikipedia.)
These myths also express some hope that the idyllic state of affairs they describe is not irretrievably and irrevocably lost to mankind, that it can be regained in some way or other.
One way might be a quest for an "earthly paradise"—a place like Shangri-La, hidden in the Tibetan mountains and described by James Hilton in his utopian novel Lost Horizon (1933). Christopher Columbus followed directly in this tradition in his belief that he had found the Garden of Eden when, towards the end of the 15th century, he first encountered the New World and its indigenous inhabitants.
http://www.alternet.org/economy/156410/bill_moyers_and_chris_hedges%3A_how_whole_regions_of_america_have_been_destroyed_in_the_name_of_quarterly_profits/
Bill Moyers and Chris Hedges: How Whole Regions of America Have Been Destroyed in the Name of Quarterly Profits
_640x450_310x220
BILL MOYERS: Here we are, barely halfway through the summer, and Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have stepped up their cage match, each attacking the other, throwing insults and accusations back and forth like folding chairs hurled across the wrestling ring.
Governor Romney pummels away at the economy; President Obama pummels away at Mr. Romney—when he was or wasn’t at his company Bain Capital, his tax returns and his offshore accounts. All the while, as they bob and weave their way through this quadrennial competition, punching wildly, the real story of what’s happening to ordinary people as capitalism runs amok is largely ignored by each of them. But not in this book “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt”—an unusual account of poverty and desolation across contemporary America. It’s a collaboration between graphic artist and journalist Joe Sacco, and my guest on this week’s broadcast, Chris Hedges.
CHRIS HEDGES: All of the true correctives to American democracy came through movements that never achieved formal political power.
BILL MOYERS: This is just the latest battle cry from Hedges, who, angry at what he sees in the world, expresses his outrage in thoughtful prose that never fails to inform and provoke. As a correspondent and bureau chief for “The New York Times,” he covered wars in North Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East—leaving the paper after a reprimand for publicly denouncing the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Bill Moyers and Chris Hedges: How Whole Regions of America Have Been Destroyed in the Name of Quarterly Profits
_640x450_310x220
BILL MOYERS: Here we are, barely halfway through the summer, and Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have stepped up their cage match, each attacking the other, throwing insults and accusations back and forth like folding chairs hurled across the wrestling ring.
Governor Romney pummels away at the economy; President Obama pummels away at Mr. Romney—when he was or wasn’t at his company Bain Capital, his tax returns and his offshore accounts. All the while, as they bob and weave their way through this quadrennial competition, punching wildly, the real story of what’s happening to ordinary people as capitalism runs amok is largely ignored by each of them. But not in this book “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt”—an unusual account of poverty and desolation across contemporary America. It’s a collaboration between graphic artist and journalist Joe Sacco, and my guest on this week’s broadcast, Chris Hedges.
CHRIS HEDGES: All of the true correctives to American democracy came through movements that never achieved formal political power.
BILL MOYERS: This is just the latest battle cry from Hedges, who, angry at what he sees in the world, expresses his outrage in thoughtful prose that never fails to inform and provoke. As a correspondent and bureau chief for “The New York Times,” he covered wars in North Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East—leaving the paper after a reprimand for publicly denouncing the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jul/21/global-elite-tax-offshore-economy
The Cayman Islands: a favourite haven from the taxman for the global elite. Photograph: David Doubilet/National Geographic/Getty Images
A global super-rich elite has exploited gaps in cross-border tax rules to hide an extraordinary £13 trillion ($21tn) of wealth offshore – as much as the American and Japanese GDPs put together – according to research commissioned by the campaign group Tax Justice Network.
James Henry, former chief economist at consultancy McKinsey and an expert on tax havens, has compiled the most detailed estimates yet of the size of the offshore economy in a new report, The Price of Offshore Revisited, released exclusively to the Observer.
He shows that at least £13tn – perhaps up to £20tn – has leaked out of scores of countries into secretive jurisdictions such as Switzerland and the Cayman Islands with the help of private banks, which vie to attract the assets of so-called high net-worth individuals. Their wealth is, as Henry puts it, "protected by a highly paid, industrious bevy of professional enablers in the private banking, legal, accounting and investment industries taking advantage of the increasingly borderless, frictionless global economy". According to Henry's research, the top 10 private banks, which include UBS and Credit Suisse in Switzerland, as well as the US investment bank Goldman Sachs, managed more than £4tn in 2010, a sharp rise from £1.5tn five years earlier.
The detailed analysis in the report, compiled using data from a range of sources, including the Bank of International Settlements and the International Monetary Fund, suggests that for many developing countries the cumulative value of the capital that has flowed out of their economies since the 1970s would be more than enough to pay off their debts to the rest of the world.
The Cayman Islands: a favourite haven from the taxman for the global elite. Photograph: David Doubilet/National Geographic/Getty Images
A global super-rich elite has exploited gaps in cross-border tax rules to hide an extraordinary £13 trillion ($21tn) of wealth offshore – as much as the American and Japanese GDPs put together – according to research commissioned by the campaign group Tax Justice Network.
James Henry, former chief economist at consultancy McKinsey and an expert on tax havens, has compiled the most detailed estimates yet of the size of the offshore economy in a new report, The Price of Offshore Revisited, released exclusively to the Observer.
He shows that at least £13tn – perhaps up to £20tn – has leaked out of scores of countries into secretive jurisdictions such as Switzerland and the Cayman Islands with the help of private banks, which vie to attract the assets of so-called high net-worth individuals. Their wealth is, as Henry puts it, "protected by a highly paid, industrious bevy of professional enablers in the private banking, legal, accounting and investment industries taking advantage of the increasingly borderless, frictionless global economy". According to Henry's research, the top 10 private banks, which include UBS and Credit Suisse in Switzerland, as well as the US investment bank Goldman Sachs, managed more than £4tn in 2010, a sharp rise from £1.5tn five years earlier.
The detailed analysis in the report, compiled using data from a range of sources, including the Bank of International Settlements and the International Monetary Fund, suggests that for many developing countries the cumulative value of the capital that has flowed out of their economies since the 1970s would be more than enough to pay off their debts to the rest of the world.
