Dems Furious, See Deal as GOP Win...

[Ben]

Dems Furious, See Deal as GOP Win


by Mike Illis
House Democrats on Monday expressed outrage at the White House for how it handled the debt-ceiling negotiations, claiming the administration caved to the GOP and left them in the dark.
http://www.commondreams.org/sites/commondreams.org/files/imagecache/headline_image/article_images/holmesnorton_ap_328.jpg “I don’t think,” said Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) of the debt-ceiling deal. “I cry.” (AP Photo)

The irate lawmakers took exception to the lack of balance between cuts and revenues; they railed against the White House for excluding them from the process; and they accused President Obama of bowing to the demands of Republicans without putting up much of a fight.
“Our negotiators weren’t tough enough,” Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said Monday. “They didn’t do the work.”
House Democrats have been steaming for months after they were largely left out of high-stakes talks to extend the George W. Bush-era tax rates and fund the government this year. Many protest that the administration takes their support for granted, ignoring their policy concerns.
“People have seen this movie before,” Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) told CNN.
In the debt-ceiling debate, for instance, House Democrats insisted on tax-revenue hikes that didn’t materialize and demanded domestic investments that were excluded. The combination, the Democrats charged Monday, saddles the middle class with the burden of reducing the deficit while letting corporations and wealthy Americans off the hook.
Even House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — who was directly engaged in the talks until the last few days — described the final product as a “Satan sandwich with Satan fries on the side.” The remarks were a reference to Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s (D-Mo.) much-reported critique of the package.
Still, Pelosi said she’d hold her nose and support the measure for the sake of preventing a government default.
Pelosi will have to try to heal some of the wounds the deal has inflicted on her caucus. Just last week, House Democrats were flying high. They united against a GOP plan to raise the debt ceiling, forcing Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to delay a high-profile vote.
House Democrats noted they had leverage in the talks, pointing out that Republicans would need their votes to pass any type of deal. Their math was accurate, but their analysis proved faulty.
Vice President Biden addressed the concerns of House Democrats for more than 90 minutes Monday afternoon, but many lawmakers left the meeting angrier than when they entered.
“They didn’t want anything ‘extraneous’ in this package,” Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said, lambasting Biden’s salesmanship. “Jobs are extraneous, safety and security are extraneous — what’s the package about? It’s all about cutting, cutting, cutting.
“Tax cuts and reductions in spending are not going to create jobs in this country,” DeFazio added. “We need some investment, [and] there isn’t a penny of investment.”
Not only did the agreement slash domestic spending while excluding new tax revenues, many Democrats ranted, but the White House left rank-and-file members in the dark through most of the talks.
“We’re the minority in the House, and they take us for granted. And that’s what they’re going to do,” Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) said Monday. “I don’t think that my concerns and the concerns of the majority of this caucus were taken into account enough with this agreement.”
Engel said most Democrats in the New York delegation had requested a meeting with the White House to discuss potential cuts in graduate medical education.
“We couldn’t get a meeting,” he said.
When the deal was reached Sunday, Engel continued, the White House “didn’t bother” to contact House Democrats.
“We all heard that there was this deal through the media,” he said.
Asked what Democrats got from the deal, Engel responded, “We avoided default.
“But if you had told me that this would be [the] package a month ago,” he added, “I would have asked you what you had been smoking.”
Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) described the package as “a Trojan horse with Scylla and Charybdis inside,” and blasted Obama for agreeing to the deal.
“It’s our conscience versus our president,” Cohen said.
Crafted largely by Obama and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the proposal locks in roughly $1 trillion in cuts over the next 10 years. Congressional leaders would then appoint a bipartisan panel to identify roughly $2 trillion in additional deficit reduction over the same span. If it fails, then automatic cuts of the same level would kick in — including steep reductions in military and Medicare spending.
Asked what she thinks of the bill, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) was terse.
“I don’t think,” she said. “I cry.”

[beandip]

They're too goddamned stupid to realize "they won" this round.

The Dums put off the big reset by about 2 years.

God Bless "kick the can"

Hold on...'cause the bernanke is gonna do a back door QEIII.

[Ben]

‪Thom Hartmann: Infotainment instead of news on the debt story‬‏ - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHKy5lUJg04)

[Ben]

‪Thom Hartmann: What Standard & Poors isn't telling us about the Debt‬‏ - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrL-kbPwZpc)

[onmyknees]

Curious Lot these liberals are. What the fuck are they so furious about? So we're making some minor cuts to the actual growth rate, not the base line budget, and they act like every federal department and agency was ordered to cut thier budget 10% over last year. Only in DC would there ever be such hand wringing about such inconsequential cuts. What's gonna happen when we're forced to make some real cuts. These pinheads will be jumping off the ledge......

[Stavros]

Not all liberals, onymyknees. And, as I said in another post, it is the Republicans who have been damaged most. Some astute commentators will note that if it is 'the left' who are dismayed then Obama is doing the right thing...but someone still has to deliver on jobs before any confidence returns.

[arnie666]

Yes we can tell, ranting about the tea party being terrorists.The media are doing the same,but then the media is Obama TV and also the tea party dares to go against the political establishment in america. The word terrorism is banded about willy nilly far too much by both sides. It belittles the victims of terrorism over the years. And personally this just yet another example of how unsuitable Biden is for the VP role.

Funnily enough the tea party and conservatives regard this deal as a sell out by the GOP,and think Obama is guaranteed another term now as the democrat president who is basically a republican. His name should be Obush. I can see why the libs are mad though,all this talk of 'hope' and 'change' and it meant jack shit.

[trish]

I agree, the Tea Party did not engage in terrorism ( well not unless you count bringing guns to town hall meetings for the purpose of intimidating lawmakers and the citizens who support them, or unless perhaps you count their "targeting" of political opponents and note that one of their opponents did in fact get shot). But no, I agree their recent foray the into region between crime and politics wasn't terrorism__it was extortion.

[hippifried]

I can't believe these assholes bailed out for a month without funding the FAA. 4000 furloughed already. Since the baggers are so hot to be off on vacation without getting anything done, maybe the agency should finish furloughing everybody else & watch the airports close down from coast to coast. We'll see how long it takes to get back in session once their donors are stuck at home with their wives. For those in the west, it might take a few more days by rail or Greyhound.

These guys don't know what they're doing.

[yodajazz]

I can't believe these assholes bailed out for a month without funding the FAA. 4000 furloughed already. Since the baggers are so hot to be off on vacation without getting anything done, maybe the agency should finish furloughing everybody else & watch the airports close down from coast to coast. We'll see how long it takes to get back in session once their donors are stuck at home with their wives. For those in the west, it might take a few more days by rail or Greyhound.

These guys don't know what they're doing.

"Stuck at home with their wives". Why would you wish such a terrible punishment for our legislators? Deep down, I think they mean well. I'm going to the drugstore, and expect to be back in 3-4 hours, so you can answer by then.

[Ben]

Interesting article by Matt Taibbi.... Pointing to the fact that both parties are backed by the same big business interests.
He makes a very good point about how the president should serve the vast majority of the American people. And what do the American people want. Simple. Look at the polls -- :)

Wednesday, August 3, 2011 by Rolling Stone (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/debt-ceiling-deal-the-democrats-take-a-dive-20110801) Debt Ceiling Deal: The Democrats Take a Dive


by Matt Taibbi (http://www.commondreams.org/matt-taibbi)


So the debt deal has finally been reached. As expected, the agreement arrives in a form that right-thinking people everywhere can feel terrible about with great confidence.
The general consensus is that for the second time in three years, a gang of financial terrorists has successfully extorted the congress and the White House, threatening to blow up the planet if they didn't get what they wanted.
Back in 2008, the congress and George Bush rewarded Hank Paulson and Wall Street for pulling the Cleavon-Little-"the-next-man-makes-a-move-the-n---er-gets-it" routine by tossing trillions of bailout dollars at the same people who had wrecked the economy.
Now, Barack Obama has surrendered control of the budget to the Tea Party, whose operatives in congress used the same suicide-bomber tactic, threatening a catastrophic default unless the Democrats committed to a regime of steep spending cuts without any tax increases on the wealthy.
Commentators everywhere are killing the president for his seemingly astonishing level of ball-less-ness. Both the New York Times house editorial (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/opinion/to-escape-chaos-a-terrible-debt-deal.html?ref=opinion) and the Nobel prizewinning liberal columnist Paul Krugman (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/opinion/the-president-surrenders-on-debt-ceiling.html?_r=1&ref=opinion) are insisting the president should have invoked extreme measures to counter the radicals on the other side, using emergency legal tactics to unilaterally raise the debt limit. Or, at least, he should have threatened to do this, according to Krugman:
And even now, the Obama administration could have resorted to legal maneuvering to sidestep the debt ceiling, using any of several options...
At the very least, Mr. Obama could have used the possibility of a legal end run to strengthen his bargaining position. Instead, however, he ruled all such options out from the beginning.
Is Krugman right? Probably. In a perfect world, where the president was what he is supposed to be, i.e. a representative of that majority of American voters who elected him, that is what a good president would probably have done. No matter what the situation was with the deficit, or what cuts were or were not justified, a real leader would have invoked such powers at the very least to set a precedent that the government is not to be held hostage by irresponsible lunatics bent on invoking a catastrophe for purely political reasons.
But that isn't what happened. What did happen? The popular take is that Obama is a weak leader of a weak party who was pushed around by canny right-wing extremists. Observers like pollster Sydney Greenberg portray Obama and the Democrats as a group of politically tone-deaf bureaucrats who fail because the public associates them with a corrupt government that benefits the rich and connected.
The Democrats, Greenberg argues, could change their situation by showing the public that they genuinely represent the interests of ordinary working people. In his piece, "Why Voters Tune Out Democrats," (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/31/opinion/sunday/tuning-out-the-democrats.html) he offers a list of things Democrats could do to turn things around:
What should Democrats do?
The Democrats have to start detoxifying politics by proposing to severely limit or bar individual and corporate campaign contributions, which would mean a fight with the Supreme Court. They must make the case for public financing of campaigns and force the broadcast and cable networks to provide free time for candidate ads. And they must become the strongest advocates for transparency in campaign donations and in the lobbying of elected officials.
IF they want to win the trust of the public, Democrats should propose taxing lobbyist expenses and excessive chief executive bonuses and put a small fee on the sale of stocks, bonds and other financial instruments. By radically simplifying the tax code to allow only a few deductions, the Democrats would generate new revenue and remove the loopholes that allow special interests to win favorable treatment ...
I think everything Greenberg says is true -- except for the part about it being possible. His list of solutions would make sense as advice to a real political party.
But to a bunch of hired stooges put in office to lend an air of democratic legitimacy to what has essentially become a bureaucratic-oligarchic state, what good does such advice do? Would it have made sense to send the Supreme Soviet under Andropov or Brezhnyev a list of policy ideas for enhancing the civil liberties of Soviet citizens?
The Democrats aren't failing to stand up to Republicans and failing to enact sensible reforms that benefit the middle class because they genuinely believe there's political hay to be made moving to the right. They're doing it because they do not represent any actual voters. I know I've said this before, but they are not a progressive political party, not even secretly, deep inside. They just play one on television.
For evidence, all you have to do is look at this latest fiasco.
The Republicans in this debt debate fought like wolves or alley thugs, biting and scratching and using blades and rocks and shards of glass and every weapon they could reach.
The Democrats, despite sitting in the White House, the most awesome repository of political power on the planet, didn't fight at all. They made a show of a tussle for a good long time -- as fixed fights go, you don't see many that last into the 11th and 12th rounds, like this one did -- but at the final hour, they let out a whimper and took a dive.
We probably need to start wondering why this keeps happening. Also, this: if the Democrats suck so bad at political combat, then how come they continue to be rewarded with such massive quantities of campaign contributions? When the final tally comes in for the 2012 presidential race, who among us wouldn't bet that Barack Obama is going to beat his Republican opponent in the fundraising column very handily? At the very least, he won't be out-funded, I can almost guarantee that.
And what does that mean? Who spends hundreds of millions of dollars for what looks, on the outside, like rank incompetence?
It strains the imagination to think that the country's smartest businessmen keep paying top dollar for such lousy performance. Is it possible that by "surrendering" at the 11th hour and signing off on a deal that presages deep cuts in spending for the middle class, but avoids tax increases for the rich, Obama is doing exactly what was expected of him?

© 2011 Rolling Stone

[onmyknees]

Not all liberals, onymyknees. And, as I said in another post, it is the Republicans who have been damaged most. Some astute commentators will note that if it is 'the left' who are dismayed then Obama is doing the right thing...but someone still has to deliver on jobs before any confidence returns.

I don't agree Stavros...I think besides what happened with the actual agreement, a narrative has begun about the impotency of Obama as a leader. I read today where Reid and Boehner actually asked him and his staff to leave the meeting room so the could negotiate. Wow....that's an astounding revelation !

[Ben]

Corporate Interests Back the Debt Deal. Do They Regret Funding the Tea Party’s Rise?

By Steven Gray Monday, August 1, 2011

Of the few clear truths in Washington’s nearly resolved debt debate, there is this: House Republican freshmen made good on their promise to vigorously push President Obama, and Democrats, toward fiscal austerity. They were elected to Congress last November with the help of some $34 million in campaign advertising from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the big business lobby that wields more wealth and influence than just about any other group in Washington. But no one could have predicted how much the freshmen – “hobbits,” as the Wall Street Journal called them last week – would challenge the Republican Establishment, notably House Speaker John Boehner, a longtime business ally whose proposal to raise the debt ceiling spectacularly failed last Thursday at the Tea Party’s hand.
Let’s call it a case of buyer’s remorse. For months, the business community has consistently argued that the nation’s $14 trillion debt limit must be raised to protect the federal government’s credit rating and avoid rattling the global financial system, which some analysts feared would upend a fragile economic recovery. House Republican freshmen, particularly members of the Tea Party caucus, unapologetically rebuffed such ideas. At an Atlanta Rotary Club event in June, Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue ominously said of the freshman resistance, “We’ve got a lot of new people pounding their chest.” And, he added, “We’ll get rid of you.”
Last week, the Chamber praised Boehner’s proposal as “responsible.” On Sunday, of course, the President and Senate leaders from both political parties crafted a proposal that would raise the debt ceiling by $2.1 trillion, and over the next decade make at least $2.4 trillion in spending cuts. The Chamber joined other business groups, such as the Business Roundtable, which represents CEOs, in supporting the agreement. “This agreement,” Donohue said in a Monday statement, will “provide a workable, enforceable mechanism to ensure that the cuts actually take place.” The Chamber has sent sent an electronic alert to its extensive grassroots network urging them to contact some of the same Republican freshmen it helped elect in order to tell them to support the “key vote,” a designation used to assess an elected official’s commitment to business interests.
Speaker Boehner must now sell this new agreement to his fractured caucus. If he falters and the Tea Party freshmen endanger the deal, the Chamber of Commerce will be faced with something every business hates: bearing the cost of a bad investment.

Steven Gray is a Washington Correspondent at TIME.


(http://swampland.time.com/2011/08/01/corporate-interests-back-the-debt-deal-do-they-regret-funding-the-tea-partys-rise/#ixzz1U1f8R8YL)

[Stavros]

I don't agree Stavros...I think besides what happened with the actual agreement, a narrative has begun about the impotency of Obama as a leader. I read today where Reid and Boehner actually asked him and his staff to leave the meeting room so the could negotiate. Wow....that's an astounding revelation !

Also, Mitch McConnel preferred dealing with Joe Biden, but this is a man who said after the mid-term elections that the President should be defeated on every motion, regardless of whatever it was. There is a clash between the rational, life-affirming belief in the powers of persuasion, negotiation and consensus from Obama, and the confrontational, do-or-die, 'up'an at'em' aggression of the opposition. There is a theory that because he was educated in Hawaii Obama's approach to face-to-face talks is polite and consensual to the point that some people can't work out what it is he wants. This is the 'No drama Obama' angle. And the claim also is that if he is being reasonable, he can't understand why the people he is negotiating with are also not reasonable.

But there is also a nasty clique of people who never thought Obama should be in the White House anyway, their hostility is as relentless as the fringe who pursued Clinton over Whitewater, I remember a Democrat telling me 'These people actually hate Clinton to death', and so on.

I think the public will lose interest in the more extreme aspects of the Tea Party group, if Obama has been damaged to the point that the electorate don't think he is up to the job, the consequence would be a one-term President, followed by another one-term President as the appetite for instant solutions to America's problems cannot be dealt with in 4 years -and I dont see any credible candidates with practical policies emerging from the Republican arena.

If anyone has really lost it, it is the political system that failed to stop it -if Obama is 'damaged goods', so is the Republican Party and its fringe -and the consequence of this is apathy among the main voting block, and a hardening of attitudes on the fringe, and that is not good for anyone.

[hippifried]

"Stuck at home with their wives". Why would you wish such a terrible punishment for our legislators? Deep down, I think they mean well. I'm going to the drugstore, and expect to be back in 3-4 hours, so you can answer by then.
Oops, missed the deadline.

Anyway, I didn't say legislators. I said donors. No traffic control means the private jets are grounded too. But either way, it serves them right for getting married in the first place. I've been blissfully divorced for almost 40 years. I ran out of sympathy way back then.

[beandip]

or unless perhaps you count their "targeting" of political opponents and note that one of their opponents did in fact get shot).
Trish, you fucking MORON, the shooter was a LEFT WING ASSHOLE!!!!!!!!!!1 Read up on what he was reading, who he followed etc....

[beandip]

It's MATH you stupid motherfucking liberal shit for brains assholes!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHA

Here's your goddamned "increase in the debt limit" that you thought was a good idea!

Choke on it assholes.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/aug/3/us-eats-most-debt-limit-one-day/


U.S. eats up most of debt limit in one day

[trish]

Oh, for being ignorant and wrong, you're such a sweet talker.

[russtafa]

how long will it take America to pull it's self out of the shit?

[Faldur]

how long will it take America to pull it's self out of the shit?

Your looking at a complete correction of a 50 year old tradition of corruption. It's going to be 10 - 15 years until we rise again free of all the bullshit in our government.

[trish]

Oh, can we see the calculations that allowed you pull those numbers out your ass? I know, you're not a real economist but you play one on the internet.

[Faldur]

Oh, can we see the calculations that allowed you pull those numbers out your ass? I know, you're not a real economist but you play one on the internet.

Lets keep this shit straight.. I'm a Nobel Economist!

And come on Trish, my last statement was nothing more than a speculated guess. I'm pretty sure that would have been evident. No factual basis implied.

[hippifried]

Youi're only off by a decade, Faldur.

Ten days from today (on 08/15) is the 40th annicersary of the "Nixon shock".

[Faldur]

Youi're only off by a decade, Faldur.

Ten days from today (on 08/15) is the 40th annicersary of the "Nixon shock".

Ok if happy hour has started and you didn't invite any of us, were going to be so pissed!

[trish]

Thank you Tea Party, your recent antics just got our S&P credit rating downgraded. I told you so.

[Ben]

More good news -- ha ha ha!

‪Thom Hartmann: Why the Stock market plunged‬‏ - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uzXXs5HNUA)

[Faldur]

Thank you Tea Party, your recent antics just got our S&P credit rating downgraded. I told you so.

Sorry Trish, but it was the lack of any substantial and "real" budget cuts that earned the downgrade. You can thank the limp dicked republicans and the democrats for that.

The US debt shot up $239 billion on Tuesday, thats what the kid with the golden credit card gave us. 60% of the debt ceiling increase spent in one day. That amount will probably exceed any real cuts to our budget over the next 10 years. And you wonder why we were downgraded? And anyone that thinks any real cuts are going to come from a government running without a budget for over 840 days is insane. How can you have a baseline cut when you don't have a fucking baseline?

The people know what the Tea Party was fighting for, just wait for November 2012. I think you will hear their opinion.

[trish]

Wrong. Read their report.

[hippifried]

Ok if happy hour has started and you didn't invite any of us, were going to be so pissed!
Oh! Our resident expert has never heard of the Nixon shock?

That's the day the dollar was debased by executive fiat, & ceased to be the world's official reserve currency. That's the day the dollar was floated on the currency market to find its natural value, & we're still waiting. That's the day we started on the inflationary spiral we're still in & have grown to accept as just fine if it stays within a few percentage points. That was the day that we started falling into the grip of the inflationary recession (stagflation) a year later. That was the day the 25 year stable post war worldwide boom came to a screeching halt, with the demise of the Bretton Woods agreement. For any gold bugs out there, that was the day the peg to gold, commonly referred to as the gold standard, ended.

Always glad to help.

[Stavros]

Nevertheless, the argument has been that the formal arrangement which Bretton Woods symbolised, was replaced by an informal arrangement which placed the Dollar as the world's benchmark currency; a position it continues to hold today. Economists who welcomed the end of Bretton Woods saw it as a liberalisation that would 'free up' currency and commodity markets, and encourage more investment, more jobs, more prosperity. It may be seen in retrospect as one step towards the more extensive process of globalisation that we have experienced since the 1970s, compared to what existed then. It fed into the continuing growth of the Asian tigers -Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwam, South Korea, where the growth of markets and production offered more flexibility in the world economy and more investment opportunities. The Nixon Shock may have happened two years before the OPEC revolution, but 1971 was the year that revolution began, in Libya when Qadhafi nationalised the petroleum industry in one stroke.

Would Bretton Woods have survived the radical changes of 1973-79? I don't know, I think that the nature of those changes would have put it under pressure, for what the oil price shocks exposed, in the UK in particular, were fundamental weaknesses in industry where lack of investment in plant and machinery and labour relations that were hostile to growth fed into the disillusion with Keynesian ecnomies and replaced it with a fatal belief in Monetarism and liberal economic theory -under Thatcher the UK lost 25% of its manufacturing base. Fixed exchange rates were replaced by a free-fall which saw them rise at one point in the UK to 15% -I was horrified at the time, and personally damaged, but I don't know what difference would have been made when the fundamentals in the UK were so poor. And when 'we' recovered, what was left was, in effect, a service economy -great if you really like cappucino and latte.

The world economy was restructuring regardless of Bretton Woods, in spite of it -whatever. More people have been lifted out of poverty worldwide, but on balance the advanced economies of the time -with, as usual, the exception of Germany -have conceded much industrial, job-intensive production overseas.

Consider also the eerie parallel in Nixon's Shock with the dying days of the Bush Administration -the unsustainable cost of war in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos; the unsustainable costs of the arms race; and you can see the difference: all that plus the invention of a new department of government (Homeland Security); the invention of credit arrangements and the willingness of banks and governments to indulge in borrowing and you see how Obama's most realistic options -immediate pull-out of military engagements, tax rises, budget cuts, getting rid of Homeland Security; and so on -would never have got through Congress.

Ultimately, whatever economic policies might be advanced to help the US out of this mess, which I think will take 5-10 years, the politics of certain factions in Congress would have sidelined it all for obsessions with taxes and pledges and all sorts of mystical nonsense that has no place in politics -this is, as a foreign observer feels, the most fractious and damaging Congress I can remember, and until the electorate has the courage to elect responsible people from all parties, this farce will continue and the US -and the rest of the world economy, will continue to suffer.

[hippifried]

Okay Stavros. I have to go do some real work, but I'll be back to adress that post. There's a lot to digest, but I don't see anything I can't answer. I've thought a lot about this, & I maintain that the inflation we're caught up in, & have been since the shock, is artificial & a result of the shock. We've slowed the rate of decline in purchasing power, but we haven't stopped it, & it's compounded.

[hippifried]

the argument has been that the formal arrangement which Bretton Woods symbolised, was replaced by an informal arrangement which placed the Dollar as the world's benchmark currency; a position it continues to hold today.
Bretton Woods wasn't symbolic. It created the IMF, set the dollar as the world reserve currency, pegged the dollar to gold, & pegged every currency on the planet to the dollar. The Brits wanted the pound to be the reserve, but that wasn't going to happen. We were the new badasses, & pretty much untouched by the war. It wasn't replaced by anything. The dollar's the "benchmark" currency because it's still the strongest. There's no reserve at all. But most of that's a bunch of so what.


Economists who welcomed the end of Bretton Woods saw it as a liberalisation that would 'free up' currency and commodity markets, and encourage more investment, more jobs, more prosperity. It may be seen in retrospect as one step towards the more extensive process of globalisation that we have experienced since the 1970s, compared to what existed then. It fed into the continuing growth of the Asian tigers -Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwam, South Korea, where the growth of markets and production offered more flexibility in the world economy and more investment opportunities. The Nixon Shock may have happened two years before the OPEC revolution, but 1971 was the year that revolution began, in Libya when Qadhafi nationalised the petroleum industry in one stroke.
Yeah, I've heard that crap. I know better. There wasn't anything holding back the commodity markets. Everybody just wanted a piece of Ft Knox. The "Asian tigers" were already growing rapidly. The currency exchange rates were fixed & stable, & the currency markets didn't jave enough clout to affect the rates or purchasing power. We've been in an inflationary spiral ever since the shock. I keep hearin g about how muich more money there is today, but the dollar only buys 7 or 8 cents worth of what it did in the first half of '71.

Oh, & so what about Qadafi? How much you wanna bet that the oil will still be nationalized after he's gone? We've been through this shit. OPEC's been around since 1960. Chief archetect & one of the original founding members was Venezuela. They'd been working on it since '49. All the founding members had nationalized oil. OPEC isn't the culprit. By the time of the embargo in late '73, inflation was already out of control, wages were frozen by the government, prices were supposedly capped (except they weren't), the economy had slowed down, & stagflation was setting in.


Would Bretton Woods have survived the radical changes of 1973-79? I don't know, I think that the nature of those changes would have put it under pressure,
Huh? What radical changes? You mean the inflation, stagflation, bogus oil shortages, & everybody getting totally fed up with it? Wouldn't have happened. Bretton Woods is what kept it all stable. Worked just fine for 25 years. No major crashes. No bank panics. No artificial inflation. There was some minor inflation of course (I remember my dad hitting the roof when the price of a postage stamp went to 3 cents.). That comes along with growth, & it was the biggest economic boom in the history of the world. Without everything falling apart after the shock, Thatcher & Reagan probably wouldn't have come to power in '79 & '81 respectively. The world's currencies wouldn't be in this slide, & traded in the big casino like they're some kind of commodity. Money's not a commodity, yet here we are. All currencies are in decline. You make money on the currency exchange by betting on the rate of decline. We need to ask ourselves if that's really how we want to set the purchasing power of the money we use.


Just for the record, I'm not against globalization per se'. I don't believe Bretton Woods was an impediment. I think the chief flaw of the agreement was the peg to gold. But in '46, how do you explain that to people who think gold is money. I'm not sure Keynes even tried. We're never going to get away from this crap of packing up the factory & moving it because somebody wants to cut labor costs until we start getting more wage parity. We have it in the fully developed world, but to hear the pack it up boys tell it, one would think that that was the worst tragety that could befall the places they've moved to.

I'm sick & tired of the economic theologians on all sides. We spent the better part of 30 years threatening global anihilation because economic ideologues in power couldn't talk to each other. I can't emphasize that enough. As a baby boomer, I'm a member of the first generation born into a world with the ability to wipe out our species just by acting rash. Enough already. It's all just hypothesis. There has never been a theory that's been fully implemented, let alone one that actually worked. We really need a rethink.

[Stavros]

I tend to see these issues as part of the structural history of capitalism since the onset of the industrial revolution -there are some, like Andre Gunder Frank, who have argued that the whole history of humankind since the neolithic period has been characterised as 'the cumulation of accumulation' and that it is this tendency to hoard that has generated modern economics.

Economic theology, as you nicely put it, tends to operate much in the way that generals do: planning the next war on the basis of what they did in the last one: Bretton Woods was an attempt to do for the post-war world what had failed in the pre-war one. It appeared to work because the US was so rich, relatively speaking, that it could afford to invest in reconstruction in Britain, France, Germany and Italy, and also Japan (although the Seagraves have argued much of it came from Yamashita's Gold, rescued from its hiding place by someone called Marcos...). The US also invested in the frontline states in the Cold War, especially in Asia, yet military spending relative to overall output in the USA actually declined in the Cold War period.

The problem was that while the 1950s is remembered for full employment, an abundance of cheap raw materials, expanding markets, and new products and commodities which in turn created jobs and markets, the dollar became in effect the world's leading benchmark currency even though it was still convertible with gold -and some, like the French, converted their dollars into gold between 1965 and 1968, part of de Gaulle's lasting, and declining obsession with French Grandeur. Add in the devaluation of the pound in 1967 and suddenly the Johnson administration, already unable to control the cost of the war in Vietnam was faced with a 'clusterfuck' to which Johnson wanted draconian measures. Maybe Bretton Woods died in the 1960s but it took a few more years for someone to bury the corpse.

When referring to the 'radical changes' in the 1970s, I am referring to the rupture between private enterprise and economic nationalism. It was typified by the Libyan nationalisation in 1971 which was then copied by Iraq, until OPEC's seizure of the pricing and distribution networks of global oil. By 1979 not only had prices quadrupled, the great majority of the world's oil was in state ownership, where it has remained. I feel that if you understimate the importance of these events, it is because the federal goverment does not tax gasoline like the govt here does; plenty people here think you are mad to be driving gas-guzzling vehicles at unrealistic prices. Had you been forced to experience what we have here, there might well have been riots all over the USA.

But just as important was the disillusion with the failure of 1970s statism to generate growth and jobs, which fed into the free enterprise ideology of Thatcher and Reagan. It has become an illusion in the Middle East where building infrastructures from scratch and with imported labour has completely transformed Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, but led to poltical atrophy in the absence of democracy -people have been bought off, but outside Kuwait, the UAE and Qatar, the paychecks no longer work. The emergence of a more democratic South Korea, the liberalisation of Singapore, are trends that suggest most people prefer relatively free market capitalism, perhaps with some state intervention in areas like education, health and welfare; a sort of balanced mixed-economy approach. In the UK, when Blair first entered office, he was a convert to something called 'The Third Way' which was supposed to be neither full-throttle free enterprise, nor state intervention: if it was incoherent and unsatisfactory it was because a mix of both, but with an emphasis on the individual as a 'stakeholder' in the broader economy.
Blair was talked out of the Third Way by someone called Murdoch, whose emphasis was on freedom to the point where major corporations -like his- should be free to grow and by so doing create jobs and prosperity: and either de-regulation or 'regulation lite' was signal to this.

I therefore tend to see the structural aspect of the global economy reflecting the growth of China more than the decline of its competitors -China is growing at 9% a year, and while it is investing in its own expanding markets this will continue to outstrip the rest of the world, but is not sustainable in the long term -China needs the dollar in the same way that the Arabs needed it in the 1980s; and the US needs the Chinese as it still does the Arabs -thats the nature of the beast called the global economy.

The growth of credit in the 1990s paved the way for the mess we are now in: as China was growing and production in the US declining, borrowing made no sense: but borrowing on a reckless scale was encouraged because the regulatory regime did not intervene to stop it; whereas in Canada it was tightly controlled and Canada, suffering from a jobs problem as it is, doesn't have the deficit problem the US does. And it wasn't just a few states borrowing -nearly everyone was at it, and in the cases of Iceland, Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Italy, borrowing vaslt in excess of what they could afford -but who was going to stop them?
Throw in the staggering cost of Iraq and Afghanistan and you have a repeat of the 'clusterfuck' of the mid-1960s.

That is why when people observe Congress incapable of making a decision, of opposing just about everything the President puts on the table, confidence ebbs away. As I said a few days ago, I don't think we have ever seen such a fractious and in practical terms, useless bunch of represenatives. Until there is a revival of responsibility, I don't see an end to this situation. It will change, and probably not as we want, but I still feel the dollar is on top, and if you hang on in there, much as the shipwrecked sailor clings to a lump of wood, you will make dry land and survive. Not drowning, but waving, as it were.

[hippifried]

Had you been forced to experience what we have here, there might well have been riots all over the USA.
I don't know how this idea got started that Americans tend to riot over prices. If that was true, the country would have burned down in 1972, & the fires would still be getting stoked. I can't think of a single incident of riots over price hikes here. I seem to recollect some similar riots over in y'all's neck of the woods. Didn't the brits just get done erupting over tuition or something?


My contention is:

That the biggest economic drag is inflation (loss of purchasing power through currency devaluation).

That Bretton Woods stifled inflation by pegging the world's currencies.

That the inflation we have today & for the last 40 years is artificial & driven by speculation in the exchange of currency, in order to manipulate international trade.

That money's not a commodity & can't be traded like one.

That money is numbers in a ledger & there's no limit to the supply.

That monopolies are anathema to a free market.

That capitalism & free enterprize aren't necessarily synonymous, & that left to its own devices, a capitalist system will always strive to corner markets & create monopolies.

That cultural animosity has no basis in reality.

That the developing world will develop sooner or later regardless of any attempts to stifle it, & that it may not end up eurocentric.

That the Arab spring had nothing to do with oil, & that it's just people sick & tired of being lorded over by aristocracy.

That private enterprize never creates common use infrastructure unless forced by circumstance.

That supply side economics doesn't work.

That no current or past economic theory takes dishonesty into account.

That Adam Smith was NOT a demigod.

That ideologues should not run governments.

That war is passe, & has been since the invention of television.

That as soon as it thinks it can get away with it, Iraq will negate the oil contracts it was forced to sign a couple of years ago, & renationalize its oil. Also that it will have no effect on anything when it happens.

That doomsayers usually end up belied.


I know that got a little long winded & disjointed, but it sort of took on a life of its own as more shit popped into my head. Now I've lost track of why I started the list, & I don't feel up to an attempt to put it in any semblance of order. Gotta go grille.

[Stavros]

Nevertheless, inflation set in by the 1960s so clearly Bretton Woods did not control or stifle it. What if? is an occasionally interesting but pointless exercise: what would have happened in the US if it had stayed out of Vietnam? Harold Wilson declined to get involved, mainly because of the cost, not being involved made no difference to us, inflation ran out of control, it was the underlying problems of the British economy that caused it.

The point about riots was prosaic -an attempt to guess how average Americans would react to paying what some in this country would call 'realistic prices' for gasoline. The cars you people drive and the cost of it could be rationalised -I once saw an American on tv who boasted about having two or three giant SUV's saying it was his right as an American to burn as much gasoline as he wants driving to the supermarket or wherever. There are alternatives, and in 20 years time I guess most people in cities will be driving electric cars; and yes, I don't see why Iraq should not re-nationalise its oil, it is theirs after all.
I hope you enjoyed your grilled meats...

[beandip]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA Obama OWNS this stock market plunge..... what happened to his "big plan"?

The one he never revealed.

Anyway..... both Dums and Pubs got fucked sideways with a rusty chain saw today.

Blaming the S&P downgrade on the TP'ers.......REALLY?

Get
A
Fucking
Grip.

and stop arguing 5 th grade math.

Now I'm gonna love it when FEDGOV gets HAMMERED with a 40% hair cut.

You see the effect today of the downgrade.....Muni's in the tank....Fannie and Freddie throttled.

I love this shit.

No more "free shit" you socialist assholes.

Let the market decide......and it certainly did today!

:)

[beandip]

Oh, for being ignorant and wrong, you're such a sweet talker.

Au Contraire'

Simple MATH is on my side, I'm not blinded by ridiculous ideology.

[trish]

BAAAAAH, BAAAAAH, BAAAAAHDon't you mean "sheepdip"?

[beandip]

HAHAHAHAHA Obama OWNS this shit.

Let's "raise the debt limit" to fix the economy.

Let's "get more credit"....yup

WTF is credit asshole?

Credit is DEBT.

So lets fix a debt problem by incurring more debt.

Do the math you simpleton.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/epic-plunge-63378-6th-largest-drop-dow-jones-history

[trish]

Did someone just bleat?

[onmyknees]

I don't know how this idea got started that Americans tend to riot over prices. If that was true, the country would have burned down in 1972, & the fires would still be getting stoked. I can't think of a single incident of riots over price hikes here. I seem to recollect some similar riots over in y'all's neck of the woods. Didn't the brits just get done erupting over tuition or something?


My contention is:

That the biggest economic drag is inflation (loss of purchasing power through currency devaluation).

That Bretton Woods stifled inflation by pegging the world's currencies.

That the inflation we have today & for the last 40 years is artificial & driven by speculation in the exchange of currency, in order to manipulate international trade.

That money's not a commodity & can't be traded like one.

That money is numbers in a ledger & there's no limit to the supply.

That monopolies are anathema to a free market.

That capitalism & free enterprize aren't necessarily synonymous, & that left to its own devices, a capitalist system will always strive to corner markets & create monopolies.

That cultural animosity has no basis in reality.

That the developing world will develop sooner or later regardless of any attempts to stifle it, & that it may not end up eurocentric.

That the Arab spring had nothing to do with oil, & that it's just people sick & tired of being lorded over by aristocracy.

That private enterprize never creates common use infrastructure unless forced by circumstance.

That supply side economics doesn't work.

That no current or past economic theory takes dishonesty into account.

That Adam Smith was NOT a demigod.

That ideologues should not run governments.

That war is passe, & has been since the invention of television.

That as soon as it thinks it can get away with it, Iraq will negate the oil contracts it was forced to sign a couple of years ago, & renationalize its oil. Also that it will have no effect on anything when it happens.

That doomsayers usually end up belied.


I know that got a little long winded & disjointed, but it sort of took on a life of its own as more shit popped into my head. Now I've lost track of why I started the list, & I don't feel up to an attempt to put it in any semblance of order. Gotta go grille.


well...I see you've been working on your issues with brevity, well done. Next up some substance please. That's the biggest bunch of liberal think tank blather I've ever read. It sounds like it was ripped from the pages of a study hall group at UC Berkeley circa 1968. Rambling, incoherent, and undefined. I'm happy you've reached all those conclusions, but mind providing some context and some back up? I mean after you finish your barbecue, of course. :dancing:

[hippifried]

Let the market decide......and it certainly did today!
It certainly did. The marketeers bought up every T-bill they could get their mitts on, & dumped everything else to do it. Despite S&P's doom & gloom crap, & their effort to appease the Europeans who have stopped subscribing to S&P, the market told the world today that US bonds are the safest investment on the planet.

Somebody might find this interesting:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/44032967

[hippifried]

well...I see you've been working on your issues with brevity, well done. Next up some substance please. That's the biggest bunch of liberal think tank blather I've ever read. It sounds like it was ripped from the pages of a study hall group at UC Berkeley circa 1968. Rambling, incoherent, and undefined. I'm happy you've reached all those conclusions, but mind providing some context and some back up? I mean after you finish your barbecue, of course. :dancing:
2 days on the grill. Yesterday, my niece brought over a bunch of her nosering crowd to splash in the pool, so it was all burgers & dogs. Tonight I did the ribs.

I don't mind being called liberal because I am liberal. But the list of my contentions are my own conclusions from observation. I don't follow pundits, & I haven't found a philosopher yet who I didn't think was just a blowhard trying to get attention. I'm not an ideologue. The only think tank is my head. I can expand the list, & I'm willing to explain whatever you have a problem with. As long winded as you like.

So where's the disagreement? Do you think:
Inflation is no big deal?
Monopolies are synonymous with free enterprize?
Cultural animosity is all about real insurmountable differences instead of bogus stereotypes?
Adam Smith was devine?
Doomsayers are right most of the time?

[Stavros]

I think one of the problems that arises when 'the left' criticises 'the right' is that the latter takes a defensive attitude: its a problem because if free enterprise and competition are the foundation of a capitalist economy, a monopoly is surely a contradiction in terms -? Some might argue thats how the market responded, but if one business has so much capital it can buy out, or out-perform its competitors, the element of competition has been lost. The Sherman Act and the enforced dissolution of Rockefeller's empire in 1911 is surely the 'great moment' in this debate...in contemporary terms, does it mean Wal-Mart should be forced to shed x% of its outlets to let new and smaller retailers get a slice of the action?

When the 'right' is at it the same process takes places: defending entitlement programmes some of which are hideously expensive, employ more office staff at greater cost and in doing so divert the hard cash from the 'needy' to staff, from the street to the 'process'. It doesn't invalidate the aim of the programme, but raises the question, is social welfare doomed to be expensive and inefficient?

[Faldur]

2 days on the grill. Yesterday, my niece brought over a bunch of her nosering crowd to splash in the pool, so it was all burgers & dogs. Tonight I did the ribs.

Fun times! Glad to hear you have that in your life Hippi, without a doubt the greatest times to be had.

[hippifried]

Stavros,

Walmart has competition. The reason they're as big as they are is that their competitors ignored the rural markets. Maybe they thought that Walmart would stay out of the cities forever. Oops!

The Standard Oil breakup is a large chapter in our history. Despite the doom & gloom predictions at the time, the country thrived & John D was still the richest man in the world.

There's been 2 other major anti-trust suits in the last few decades. The ATT breakup was huge, & saved the consumer all kinds of money since it happened. Opened up options too.Couldn't own your own phone before, & got charged extra for having more than one in your house. Since the breakup, the land line fees haven't gone up all that muchcompared to everything else. I think the reason the Microsoft suit failed was mostly bcause nobody really understood what was happening. Besides, Bill Gates bailed out Apple (saved their ass from collapse) so he could point to a competitor. Nowadays, it's hard to buy anything that isn't Berkshire Hatheway. There won't be a successful suit against Warren Buffet et al though, because they can divest too fast.

I don't worry too much about the left/right nonsense. I think it's a false dichotomy, & serves no purpose other than creating bogus stereotypes. I've never even seen a realistic definition of the terms that applies to anything but the extreme fringes. It's all a bunch of lies more often than not. It's a bogus claim that someone's position on any given issue can be predicted by their position on an unrelated issue. Politics isn't 2 dimentional. Personally, I see it as spherical.

[Ben]

‪Thom Hartmann: 666 is the name of the S&P Beast‬‏ - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lJzCUhOcQQ)

[yodajazz]

HAHAHAHAHA Obama OWNS this shit.

Let's "raise the debt limit" to fix the economy.

Let's "get more credit"....yup

WTF is credit asshole?

Credit is DEBT.

So lets fix a debt problem by incurring more debt.

Do the math you simpleton.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/epic-plunge-63378-6th-largest-drop-dow-jones-history

The Federal debt limit was raised 6 times during the Bush II adminstration. It has been raised 74 times since 1962. That averages more than once a year over the last 50 years.
(http://money.cnn.com/2011/01/03/news/economy/debt_ceiling_faqs/index.htm)

The debt ceiling has nothing to do with "fixing the economy", by anyone's definition. Raising the debt limit, is just a tool.

"So in reality arguing over the debt ceiling is essentially arguing over whether to pay the bills the country has already incurred."

The crisis was a hostage crisis. They threatened, to not let the government pay its debts in order to gain concessions, including Social Security, which raises it's own money, through payroll deductions. There is no lower limit on who pays these taxes, but there is an upper limit. Three quarter of taxpayers pay more for these than they do income taxes. And they are not imposed on investment income. With the exception of children, any low income person who works has paid into this system. And in fact the government has borrowed this money, to use for other purposes.

[Stavros]

I don't worry too much about the left/right nonsense. I think it's a false dichotomy, & serves no purpose other than creating bogus stereotypes. I've never even seen a realistic definition of the terms that applies to anything but the extreme fringes.

Up until the end of the Cold War I don't think this applied here in Old Europe. Our political parties for the most part were part of the 19th century changes that shaped political representation through 'class struggle' but primarily war and revolution. The left became associated with statism or collectivism, the right with individualism; the onset of the Cold War polarised positions so that even though there were 'Christian Socialists' opposed to one-party dictatorships and full public ownership, the right tarred all of the left with a Leninist brush -just as the left tended to read the Right as a wedge that began with English Tories and soon ended up in bed with Spanish falangists and German Nazis: but there were real differences on the core issues: how much should the state intervene in the economy: are social problems actually social problems or just the result of dysfunctional individuals who don't want to work or fit into 'normal' society, and so on. The end of the Cold War has not removed those two positions, but it has taken the tone of debate away, as parties gravitate toward the centre to get elected and the language of politics blurs, as it were. Whereas in the USA both parties take the same founding documents as the foundation of their creed: the Constitution. The legacy of that process -the original Constitution and its subsequent amendments, has given the USA a perpetual reference-point that so far nobody has challenged, although I suppose extremist Christians say the Bible must take precedence over the Constitution and extremist Muslims the Qu'ran and so on.

[Faldur]

I suppose extremist Christians say the Bible must take precedence over the Constitution

I cannot speak for Muslims, but I can speak for "extremist Christians". I suppose by that comment you mean anyone who follows the teachings of the Bible.

Christ taught explicitly that Government and Law are completely separate from following Christ or better defined being a Christian. Christians are commanded to obey all of the laws that are created by "Caesar" or modern day government. That includes all taxes, regulations, laws, or anything else current government deems appropriate. A Christian individual may choose to use his/her faith to make day to day decisions in voting, as a moral base for running for political office, even for governing if elected. Everyone in our great country gets a political voice, what you use as your moral compass is completely up to you.

[hippifried]

Sorry Stavros, but I'm not buying the "statist vs individualist" argument for 1 second. Left vs right is all about who's in charge of everybody else. The only real individualists are anarchists, & both sides try to claim them & revile them at the same time. From what little factual information I've seen, it started out as 'equality vs aristocracy' in France. If you really look at it hard, that's still the argument if you can get past the bogus rhetoric. From your post, it would seem that the whole concept was just as twisted & confused in the '30s as it is now. The cold war just intensified the hysteria brought on by the rancorous lies. The lies themselves haven't changed at all. Seems like it got pretty hysterical back then too, & before.

Now I don't know about y'all easterners over there on the wrong side of the Atlantic, but here in the good ol' US of A, McCarthyism is alive & well. I sometimes wonder if the Birchers have him stuffed & stashed away in a warehouse somewhere, waiting for the day whem they'll rise up & depose the trilateralists. There's a historical revisionist movement that would make him an American hero. The same revisionists also claim that Hitler was a leftist. I've noticed that the red baiting has intensified a lot, as the same folds scream that the left is bankrolled by billionaires. The extremist ideologues on both sides seem to have the same set of enemies, & they just swap the names of the "bad guys". It's all a crock of horseshit. The linear (left/right) perception is inaccurate. Politics is spherical.

[Stavros]

You are looking at it thematically, I am looking at it historically. If you want to go back in history far enough, there is an argument that the socialist 'tradition' in the UK is rooted in the anti-establishment Christian sects -the Welsh chapels, the 'wee frees' in Scotland (home to many austere sects), Methodists, and so on, people for whom the language and meaning of the Bible was their social contract, people for whom 'equality in the eyes of God' could not justify either a monarchy or the established church -which meant either the Roman Catholic church of the Church of England. William Blake was one such radical Christian with an egalitarian perspective but also a mystical one, and he regularly fell out with other sects and wrote some savage poetry condemning the established church [I saw a chapel all of gold...] . He appears to have welcomed the American revolution, and may also have been associated with the Muggletonians. In our own time, Denis Healey and Tony Benn, who occupied two extremes in the Labour Party and were both in Cabinet at the same time, are also rooted in Christian socialism. This radical strain in Christianity has sceptical views about property, tends to be tough on morals, and feeds into those aspects of class which have not been absent in America but possibly less stratified than they have been here.

The seminal moment was the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917 and the development of Leninism. It polarised both politics in general and the left specifically. It was crystallied in the labels: The Parliamentary Road to Socialism, and The Revolutionary Road to Socialism.

The so-called right of the spectrum was increasingly divided from the late 19th century as pseudo-scientific theories of race were developed and the concept of fascism as a pure form of 'nationalism' posed as a direct opposite of 'internationalist' socialism -that Stalin created something called 'Socialism in One Country', a complete contradiction in terms was something many on the left often refused to acknowledge right up to the present day when there are still one-dimensional idiots who think Cuba is a socialist country to take one notorious example. In the end, both left and right have 'saved themselves' from oblivion by opting for electoral politics, and by attempting to occupy the 'centre ground' -the issues then becomes, where is that centre? Is it ratcheted in favour of markets, or the state? Low taxes or high taxes, big spending, or spending cuts, and so on.

So if you take the thematic perspective, yes, the lines are blurred; it is actually a sophisticated argument, but I rely on history as the guiding narrative, and for the UK recommend WH Greenleaf's The British Political Tradition, with the health warning: it comes in four volumes. Greenleaf is dead now but I read his work as an undergraduate and was deeply impressed, even if the concept of a 'British' tradition is overdone.

[hippifried]

Sorry. Still doesn't work. You can't just look at it "historically" in 20th or even 19th century Britain. You have to go back to the French revolution. "Thematically", the dichotomy keeps changing throughout history from that point. It changes regionally too. The dichotomy's just rhetorical because it gets defined by whichever pundit is loudest & has the most publishing clout at any given point in time. Then, just like now, pundits are liars. The difference is in the reach & speed of communication. So really, the most prominent use of the terms is derogatory, with no substance at all. It's a tool for division & diversion. It only speaks to extremes.

The linear dichotomy can't work because there's no definitive point of differentiation. The center overlaps are obvious, but every issue has its own set of overlaps from different places up & down the line in either direction. You can't reconcile that on a 2 dimentional linear plane. The thought process needs to radiate from the center on an issue by issue basis. That brings rational logic back to the discourse & marginalizes the fringes, allowing us to talk to each other, without all the irrelevant rancor & stereotypical lies. Calms down the whole process. A spoked circle can work too, but I prefer spherical thinking.

[Stavros]

I dont think we are going to agree on this. I dont see the French Revolution as a benchmark, in this country it goes back much further, but to a time when the concept of being 'left' or 'right' is even more inapropriate. The rise of the modern state appears to be the thread that binds it all together, whether that state is a monarchy or a republic. There are points of differentiation: the reduction of the crown's powers in Magna Carta; the Wars of the Roses (Civil War I); the growth of Empire; the Civil War II and the short-lived Republic; the 'Glorious Revolution' and the restoration of a limited monarchy, and so on and so on. At these 'defining moments' what the State was or should be was defined, and re-defined. As I have said, the Constitution of the USA in this context gives a foundation of ideological stability to the country which in our case is a vague commitment to something undefined but which people claim is a sense of being either 'British' or even 'English', whatever that is. Subsequent to which everyone argues about the size and reach of government. And that's it. One-Party states, the dictatorship of the Proletariat, the public ownership of industry -most of these defining differences have been discredited. Right now, however, there is always a shower of opinion in comments after articles in the Daily Telegraph which blames all our problems on immigration and 'multiculturalism' and which in some cases basically say 'we' need to send 'them' back to where they came from. This is however, still an argument about the State: but its complexion rather than government. And here, surely, the 'left' supports multiculturalism, and the 'right' opposes it.

[hippifried]

The terminology goes back to the Frogs. I swear, look it up. The concept, & it's a simple concept, probably goes back to the first time Glak picked up his club, stepped to the front of the cave & claimed to be in charge. That's when Gorp said "no in charge" & whacked him with a rock. The fight was on. It certainly goes back to the time of early settlement for farming purposes. As settlements grew, it didn't take the lazy long to figure out a way to get others to take care of their needs. Just claim to speak for God, or kick everybody else's ass & take what you want. When the human sacrifice figured out that he could get away with a bloodletting now & then & still have his every whim catered to, monarchy was born.

The best (& simplest) explanation I've come across is:
Left vs Right = Egalitarianism vs Oligarchy

This really isn't about being liberal or conservative. The tendency to interchange those terms creates the biggest confusion IMO. Despite the lies by the punditry, it's impossible to predict someone's position on an issue by their position on an unrelated issue. The "multiculturalism" argument isn't actually left/right. It's liberal/conservative. Since both liberals & conservatives span the entire left/right dichotomy, the arguments, both pro & con, come from both left & right. It's just about a departure from current social comfort levels. The wingers are working very hard to co-opt the issue, & it would appear they're succeeding with some. Politically, it's just a diversion from real problems that can actually be addressed by political means. As far as I'm concerned, culture is something you grow in a petri dish. The rancor about "multiculturism" is just a bunch of bogus stereotypical nonsense. "Culture" changes with each generation. Who gives a shit if somebody's worried. Worriers worry. If not this, it'd be something else. If a "culture" is so damn delicate that it has to be protected by prejudicial draconian laws, or terrorist acts, it's probably not worth the effort.

To use linear discriptions for politics, or social ideologies, you really need more than one line. I'm not really sure how many. But you need to be able to stack them, swap ends, bend them, angle 'em, stretch 'em, shrink 'em, & whatever in order to get them to line up on any given issue. In a sphere, all issues radiate outward. Regardless of their position in the sphere, anyone can easily reach their own personal position on any given issue by simply moving to the middle first. How do you slap some bogus label on people under that situation? You can't, because everything gets back to reality without all the stupid. The pundit lies no longer have effect because the pigeon holes are gone. I know it's hard to unlearn what we've been told since birth, but we're never going to get out of this political malaise without a change in the thought process.

Change the mindset, change the world.

[robertlouis]

I have just spent a very entertaining and informative twenty minutes or so reading and reflecting on the content of the dialogue in this thread between Stavros and Hippifried. Wonderful to enjoy exchanges based on ideas rather than ideology, and a total absence of strident, hysterical sloganeering and shallow pointscoring for partisan political ends.

I almost forgot I was on HA for a while!

Thank you both.

[Stavros]

Hippifried -in terms of its labels, yes, the difference between left and right was shaped by which part of the National Assembly people sat in: for Order and the King to the right, for Movement and the People, to the left. Hence the tendency of left and right to devolve into your 'egalitarian and oligarchy' poles. I can't agree entirely with the caveman analogy, I tend to think that, thematically, Frank's concept of all human history as the 'cumulation of accumulation' lays the foundations for social divisions based on property of some kind, where possession provokes jealousy, rage and potential or actual violence. It is only part of the fabric, for what possessions seem to indicate is power: why does shepherd A have 50 sheep when shepherd B has 60? Both are slugging it out -and rustling each other's sheep- until over the horizon comes Shepherd C who has 2000 sheep and a small army of minders...politics should be the practical method whereby people live in the space they occupy and discuss the arrangements that make life bearable; as well as the ideas. I see that as being the greatest legacy of narrative poetry, from the Iliad and the Odyssey in Europe, to the Mahabharata in India, and so on. So, in a way you are right to place left and right onto a template of politics which was formed long before 1789; but in the intervening years it did become a divisive way of identifying blocs of voters, parties and thinkers. Note also that in this country a liberal is centre-right or right wing in the 'old' parlance, socialists these days tend to demur and call themselves 'social democrats' if they bother. There was a division between Liberals and Conservatives before the labour movement organised itself into a party (in 1900), so its a more confusing picture than it is in the USA.

Thank you for the praise, RobertLouis...but you haven't told us if you are right or left, or stuck in the middle...or spinning around...

[hippifried]

Almost everybody hates the labels when they get one pasted on them, & for good reason. They're almost always inaccurate. Yet we're all so quick to use them when describing others. It's rude. In religious thought, it's a sin. A direct violation of the Mosaic law: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor". When you go out of your way to piss someone off by pinning a derogatary label on them, the probability is that you won't be able to hold a rational discussion with that person. Even if they accept the label & it doesn't piss them off, you've still marginalized the issue itself from the outset, & narrowed the scope of the discussion. When the label is used, the discussion almost always reverts back to the label, the lame assumptions of how those under the brand think, & the merits of the designer. Personaly, I don't care about some guy long dead who had no idea what my world would look like. The one thing all these left/right labels have in common is that they brand you as a follower. Well I'm not impressed by half of the people I've been accused of following, & I'd never heard of the other half. Spherical politics loses the labels because you can't pin anybody down in one spot.

As for RobertLouis, I say: Thank you very much for the compliment. Like Stavros, I'm also curious as to which way a one legged pirate leans. :D

[Ben]

The only reason to watch this is, well, both chicks are hot -- ha ha... ;)

Super Committee: Already Bought? - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4XgAwtchf8)

[robertlouis]

Stavros and Hippi, if you haven't sussed my political credentials from my oft-confessed liberalism and long-term Guardian-reading habit by now, you never will.

I guess that puts me well to the left of Fidel in the eyes of the paranoid US right (Hmm - is that a tautology???) and here in the UK just another woolly-minded idealist.

[hippifried]

Aha! One of those/them. Would you like a generic or designer label?

[Stavros]

RobertLouis I am aware of your political beliefs, I was just being light-hearted and realised I could bring in some irreverent pop songs into the discussion.