My apologies for not posting…

After putting up the Joseph Stiglitz piece yesterday, the trackpad on my MacBook started playing games on me… going where it wanted to go, not where I did, and opening windows and folders I didn’t want to.

I spent most of the day cleaning the pad, trying all the downloads recommended on the help boards, loading and unloading applications, changing administrative sign-ons, etc., but it was only late in the evening that it started working more-or-less correctly again.  So far this morning there is no problem.

The non-working computer also kept me from finishing the article on the arts in Shepherdstown, WV, that I am writing for the new Fluent magazine… so that will take up a lot of my day today (assuming this baby keeps on course.)

So come on back later this afternoon and I hope something will be here for you.

-Bill

Cheers for Joseph Stiglitz…

In a section of his book, “The Price of Inequality,” printed in Salon, Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz gives a thorough analysis of why the top 1% is able to manipulate the rest of us by “brainwashing” us about inequality:

Joseph Stiglitz

The fact that the 1 percent has so successfully shaped public perception testifies to the malleability of beliefs. When others engage in it, we call it “brainwashing” and “propaganda.” We look askance at these attempts to shape public views, because they are often seen as unbalanced and manipulative, without realizing that there is something akin going on in democracies, too. What is different today is that we have far greater understanding of how to shape perceptions and beliefs — thanks to the advances in research in the social sciences.

It is clear that many, if not most, Americans possess a limited understanding of the nature of the inequality in our society: They believe that there is less inequality than there is, they underestimate its adverse economic effects, they underestimate the ability of government to do anything about it, and they overestimate the costs of taking action. They even fail to understand what the government is doing — many who value highly government programs like Medicare don’t realize that they are in the public sector.

Stiglitz compares the perceptions of Americans to citizens in other countries and discovers polar opposites in experience of  inequality and fairness. It is worth reading the whole article (HERE) to get his opinions on how beliefs effect reality,

Related articles

• Joseph Stiglitz Explains the Price of Inequality (wnyc.org)
• How the 1% Brainwashed the 99% (bigthink.com)
• Joseph Stiglitz: Why The Rich Need To Pay More Taxes – Business Insider (tribuneofthepeople.com)
• American dream is a ‘myth’ says Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz: National business news roundup (oregonlive.com)
• Joseph Stiglitz on Occupy Wall Street & Why US-Europe Austerity Will Only Weaken Economic Recovery (democracynow.org)
• Joseph Stiglitz on “The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers our Future” (democracynow.org)
• Joseph Stiglitz: The Middle Class Has Been Screwed Over The Last Decade (businessinsider.com)
• The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future by Joseph E. Stiglitz (planetizen1network.wordpress.com)

An Essay by my good friend John Case…

Debt-ceiling Showdown: A test of Sanity

by John Case

John Case on WSHC's "Winners and Losers"

The so-called “debt ceiling” crisis is upon us. Unless the amount the US can  borrow is raised, a second financial crisis looms,  partial default on our  debts,  the furlough of 800,000 federal workers and contractors, cancelled
checks to millions of social security and medicare and medicaid clients, and a host of other evils. Th president has said his young children are performing better on their homework, than leaders in the Republican dominated House are on theirs. He’s called for all to leave ideology at the door as he convenes them again at the White House tomorrow. But the only ‘ideologists’ are the so-called Tea Party fanatics, who act as witting or unwitting flunkies for reactionary Ag-biz, Energy, Defense and some of Wall street interests — those planning to make a killing by ‘shorting’ the whole
economy as it tanks again — while striving to distract everyone with racist and nativist ‘dialogs’, keeping women barefoot and pregnant and calling it ‘religion’, and tagging unions not banks for the deepening crisis.

Its becoming a test of sanity how long it takes all reasonable people to conclude that the Republican party has painted its teeth orange, turned right, and jumped off a cliff, to mangle an old Dylan lyric. Conservative NY Times columnist David Brooks calls a) threatening to bring on another financial crisis and “stain the honor of our country” over  debt,  and b) refusing to raise any tax whatsoever — acts that voters will and should repudiate.

“If the debt ceiling talks fail, independents voters will see that Democrats were willing to compromise but Republicans were not. If responsible Republicans don’t take control, independents will conclude that Republican fanaticism caused this default. They will conclude that Republicans are not fit to govern. And they will be right”

Joseph Stiglitz

Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says the problem runs deeper than psychological challenges of leading Republicans. He calls the showdown over debt ceiling and the obsession of right wing leaders with even more austerity,  alongside the stubborn refusal of the rich to pay even a penny tax —  “the ideological crisis of western capitalism”.

What has happened is that the entire trickle-down, free market fundamentalist premises that began with the Reagan Administration and drove financialization for the past 30 years have been proven utterly false. Some call it neo-liberalism. In any event — its failing. Those clinging to the hollowed out ideology appear less and less lucid and more narcissistic. On a personal level, If not treated, this can become a personality disease we call “sociopathic behavior” — a life without conscience or sensitivity to any other beings.

The path ahead is toward more socialism to protect a fair distribution of wealth, and to restrain super high risk private corporate behavior and concentration, of power. “Too Big to Fail” means “Too Big to Remain in Private Control.”

More socialism does not mean the end of capitalism or markets. Competitive markets — that regulation insures remain competitive! — are democratizing. They are one known key to efficient — meaning productivity-enhancing — commodity production. They are an important, although hardly the only, factor in encouraging innovation.

Every generation re-invents and reproduces almost every facet of both public and private institutions and all relations of production and exchange, including social classes and the interactions of public and private
property. The “more socialism” of the next generation will not be the same public institutions that arose in the big 20th century expansion of public sector activities across the world. It will be smarter, more scientific, more resilient and less bureaucratic or centralized. We will find the ways to make public institutions and services more accountable to,, and closer partners with, the people they serve. And it will be global in scope.

I predict sanity will prevail. We will make it through this storm, as a people, though I cannot say what the toll may be, except that all will be changed. There are crazed Captain Ahabs on the decks of our ships, and they are obsessed with a whale of their imagination, when a tsunami of monumental dimensions is approaching starboard.

Related articles

• Let’s Put Our Thinking Caps On, and Really Try to Figure Out the Best Way to Respond to This Argument (coordinationproblem.org)
• Stiglitz: The Ideological Crisis of Western Capitalism (economistsview.typepad.com)
• White House Debt Ceiling Summit Aims for Grand Deficit Bargain (usnews.com)
• Editorial: Make a deal on raising debt ceiling (knoxnews.com)
• Inequality Dampening Economic Recover (ritholtz.com)
• Politics hamper efforts to solve world’s debt crisis (theglobeandmail.com)

Quote of the Day – While the Republicans scream to cut back, intelligent voices are saying something else:

“We will see in the next two years the real cost of there not being a second round of stimulus. We will see the economy slow down at a very high economic cost.”

– Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz

Are we at the end of American-style Capitalism?

There’s a thought provoking article in the new Vanity Fair by Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize winning economist, which evaluates what the current financial situation throughout the world means to America’s position in it.

It is worth reading and thinking about, since it lays most of the responsibility on a “free-market economy” as foisted on the world by a greedy and thoughtless Wall Street, which set very different standards for other countries than it adopted for the U.S. This from the article:

Among critics of American-style capitalism in the Third World, the way that America has responded to the current economic crisis has been the last straw. During the East Asia crisis, just a decade ago, America and the I.M.F. demanded that the affected countries cut their deficits by cutting back expenditures—even if, as in Thailand, this contributed to a resurgence of the aids epidemic, or even if, as in Indonesia, this meant curtailing food subsidies for the starving. America and the I.M.F. forced countries to raise interest rates, in some cases to more than 50 percent. They lectured Indonesia about being tough on its banks—and demanded that the government not bail them out. What a terrible precedent this would set, they said, and what a terrible intervention in the Swiss-clock mechanisms of the free market.

The contrast between the handling of the East Asia crisis and the American crisis is stark and has not gone unnoticed. To pull America out of the hole, we are now witnessing massive increases in spending and massive deficits, even as interest rates have been brought down to zero. Banks are being bailed out right and left. Some of the same officials in Washington who dealt with the East Asia crisis are now managing the response to the American crisis. Why, people in the Third World ask, is the United States administering different medicine to itself?

So, as our influence in the world diminishes and that of countries like China increases, we are watching a situation where Wall Street has actually been brought in to handle what’s wrong with Wall Street. Stiglitz thinks that Americans “will realize that what is required for success is a regime where the roles of market and government are in balance, and where a strong state administers effective regulations. They will realize that the power of special interests must be curbed.”

If we do realize this, will we do so too ate in the game to make the kind of recovery which protects our lifestyle and influence? If you realize that of the top 5 banks in the world, the first 4 are Chinese and America has number 5 where it used to be number 1, then you now our position in the “free-market” economy is shaky at best.

And he goes further:

There used to be a sense of shared values between America and the American-educated elites around the world. The economic crisis has now undermined the credibility of those elites. We have given critics who opposed America’s licentious form of capitalism ample ammunition to preach a broader anti-market philosophy. And we keep giving them more and more ammunition. While we committed ourselves at a recent G-20 meeting not to engage in protectionism, we put a “buy American” provision into our own stimulus package. And then, to soften the opposition from our European allies, we modified that provision, in effect discriminating against only poor countries.

Are we weakening the sense of “global trust” necessary for “global recovery?” Stiglitz thinks so, and I have to agree with him.

Read the article and see what you think.