“industrial policy”
by any other label

(apollo project

green milling )

is just encryption of

the inevitable sectoral planning

our domestic manufacturing sector

is headed into

prolly could work well
like the one “we”

put

“the farms and ranches “of america

on

at least as far back

as fdr's first new deal

“the US has already got a de facto industrial policy, but it exists in the shadowlands of earmarks, subsidies, tax breaks and of course a huge military expenditure. It would be nice if US economists could haul its various and sometimes obscure components out into the daylight and maybe estimate its overall effects”

industrial policy ????

de facto ???

what we have here in north america today
is a long range crypto

de-industrial policy

imagine if bob rubin and larry summers
had stated out in the open in the late 90's

we are pursuing a high dollar policy

and this will export our industrial sector

or if the various treasury clowns of the chaney dispensation
had said

despite our weal dollar policy
vis a vis the euros

we are still

de industrializing

now its just targeted

towards the various asian peggers

optimal market size
leads to optimal location and unit scale of production

these barter like ratios
derived from techical and demand drivers

beyond the distortions and interuptions

of crude border effects

like quotas and other “real”barriers

and even putting aside

he distortions of relative price found under tariff regimes

location optimizers

have further deflectors

manipulated final prices
or cost prices can be used to locate production

just about anywhere

policy likes best

profit max
has its agenda

and it often clashes with real productivity max

example
whole price levels are raised and lowered

by forex policy targets

to locate production where it otherwise would not be located

the point pk is making

is the location of a production

process that is spreading its web wider and wider

as transport and communication gets cheaper and faster

the import from conutry x

may have made intermediate stops in conurty y or and z

the final import may have various factor intensity stages

the location of the last stage is not a reflection of all prior stages factor endowment ratios

onlty that stages factor intensity requirements and endowment

“By contrast, the rise in the trade deficit under Clinton was a consequence of declining saving in the private (household and corporate) sector”

no that is not sufficient
income effects on the trade balance

might have been off set by substitution effects

thru a lower dollar

and its effect

an export increase import decrease

the block on the policy
.. as part of a lower dollar

the needed lower policy rates

would not curb asset inflation

let alone real wage gains thru a smaller output gap

however both
the dot bubble

and the uneven growth of income

between

the US and the rest of the trading world

could

HAVE BEEN CONTROLED

in one case
by sectoral trade controls

or the other

by sectoral credit controls

rubin summers however were “happy”
to “support” the rising dollar

with its domestic manu-cidal effects

we've gotten
three serious job recesssions

since the beginning

of the glorious reagan/volcker dispension

whither number 4 ????

the word dooozzzy comes to mind

Posted by js paine at 12:51 AM

mr 'Tech versus Imports'

you miss another key point

are we importing more industrial products
despite automation

because of over priced dollar exchange rates

its not just

a matter

of are we exporting industrial jobs

but whole industries

we ought to retain here in norte america

keep em bring em back

and make em clean and green

even if totally automated

if in fact
the entire manufacturing sector contained not one

job for skill free operatives

formerly paid a high union wage

i'd say so what

so long as the products were still produced here

given the size of the NA market

there are few products with a technical reason

for importation (size economies )

to hell with ricardo
the products we consume here

oughta be overwhelmingly

produced here

unless there are serious natural economies

now its cheap wages no regs etc

purely forex frigged scams

as to raising skill free wage rates

as the high pay skill less

industrial jobs evaporate

that's up to the jobblers themselves

a pro high wage macro policy

and the political process that would produce that

oughta be possible given

the interests of the jobbled

are interests

of the majority

ps
obviously the service and commercial sectors

are the new low wage target sites for unionization

but lets recall

b4 the cio org victory parade

in the late 30's and war 40's

industrial operatives

despite a half century of productivity gains

were still paid more or less

guilded age shit wages

in our factories and mines

km

we need to turn inward as a nation
keep our borders open

but turn inward

let the world alone for a spell

won't happen of course

given our de facto since '46
ancient regime…

the dictatorship of
the limited liability trans nats

…
“When I read Mother Jones magazine, I wonder about what kind of warped childhoods could unite the readership in wanting to imbibe such paranoid tripe on a regular basis”

an odd choice of a readership
for drug therapy bruce

my choice would be
the sunday new york times

…
paranoids should be read figuratively

Posted by js paine at 09:48 PM

my man fred gos to town
on todays knarled up kapshow

“What we are about to see is the final discrediting of monetary policy and the other modern neo-classical synthesis shibboleths. Household balance sheets are about to sink by something like $10 trillion. This must be compensated for by something like $6 trillion in additional Federal debt. That means deficits on the order of $2 trillion a year for the next few years. This $150 billion stimulus just isn't going to do the trick.

Those aggregate demand implied by those $2 trillion deficits will leak away because of the trade deficit unless we impose an across the board tariff. Alternatively, impose a selective tariff on those countries with which we have excessive trade deficits. That will sock it to the oil exporters and is VERY politically feasible.

Huge budget deficits will allow the Fed to RAISE interest rates, thereby crushing all this hedge-fund drive commodity speculation and pushing the dollar back up, thereby bringing cost-driven price inflation completely under control and opening the door to still higher budget deficits. Higher interest rates will also crush Wall Street and the banks, which need crushing bad. Assuming budget deficts are truly massive, there will plenty of cash rich private investors like Warren Buffet to step in and create new banks. We don't need to protect the existing boobs and incompetents.

We are facing a classic Keynesian crisis of collapsing aggregate-demand as everyone shifts from spending to saving. Massive budget deficits are the only answer.”

my comment
to his uncle sam

policy thrill ride

fred

reading your stuff reminds me

of one of those early 70's

street percussion bands

man do u bang away

if we did everything
you suggest here policy wise

why the whole earth's market economy

would start to look like

a human face accelerating at 6 g's

Posted by js paine at 07:33 PM

beware the ides of vanity
john v

like the guy who thinks

folks

steer clear of him

out of fear

for their life and limb

when in fact

he just stinks

like a july garbage can

Posted by js paine at 07:18 PM

since no one seems to disagree
why the endless yammer

about better safety nets

and more generous job loss

programs ???

i'll mark “agreed”
to the list in the post

and move on to this bit:

“The solution ..”
which

“..should involve

more government investment

in infrastructure,

the medical sciences,

alternative energy …”

okay job net increase from same …please ???
oh ya

“and other areas …”

goal:

”.. produce good new jobs.”

nice to know uncle oughta
“produce ” more “good new jobs”

not bad new jobs

net new meme content = zero

mark however makes a point
worth more reps

lets not argue about sources of job loss

after all in a actual fully interconnected

set of markets

with inter connected “moving parts “

that display wildly diverse

“rates and sizes of adjustment “

whether anything causes anything
is arbitrary

often its just about where

your assumptions by implication

“order you to stop “

so lets focus on new job creation
numbers location type and wage rate

and value added potential

no only should uncle foster
“A more strategic approach to investment “

he needs to close by macro policy
two gaps

the chronic
if variable domestic output gap

and

the acute but persistent

product trade gap

ie
we need a balanced trade policy

and a way to stamp out

profit wage price spirals

notice neither of these issues

involves border issues

or technical miracles

and are well within

our immediate range

of possible steps

btw the policy based on these consensus findings
is either

apple pie

or horse apples

neither of which gets to the systems

structural failures

or for that matter

inter class share

of value added politics

intra class transfers

or even inter class transfers

is no threat to the system

been there done that

okay so we gotta do it again

but that sounds like cycles to me

not basic transfomation

is it just more help

and a fair opportunity

to up their hu cap's va

wage folks need ???if borders are to remain open

something about

the cost of producing hu caps

here vs over there

needs addressing too

the anabolic catabolic

metabolic job balance

—————-

km

“US labor can never compete with Chinese.”

if changes in relative currency values were
allowed to rapidly change and rebalance

trade between and among nations this point now so true would disappear

as the planets actual product markets

morphed into something similar

to a

ricardian rel-comp-advantage

dreamscape full of single value factor exchange systems

———-
“NAFTA coincides with a large increase in productivity that is responsible for much of the mfg job loss.”

hey no one needs to work in these production plants
they just need to be located …here

thus necessarily built here
and jack pot extra

run safe and clean and green here ..

and as we build more and more
greened robotized plants here

over time

trade gaps will reduce here

more open isn't a pure good
if we import high pollution over seas products

the globe is that much worse off

—————-

don cherry

symbol of no helmet nationalism

———-

“The model, premised on forensics, will surely tell us how/why the patient died”

scientific
rear view mirror driving is for us rubes

bw:

are we in agreement ???

a balanced trade
what be proof agin

the first level of horrors

and that
to fully nullify

the righteous class threat behind

the present

domestic decent wage/job protection racket

will require

corporate wage agreement deciders

to either

” be forced ”

or ” allow”

real middle 60% wage rates

to resume

their tandem climb

along side

middle 60 % VA

a climb abandoned
30 odd years ago

—-without overly noticeable class struggle ——

as part of the nation's

new white guy visionary dawn

ie
the reagan-wicked witch of the sunbelt

contract on cast iron amerika

bw

fine roll out to the far horizon

but
i meant only

do we agree

on the policy agenda for today

as in trade gaps and production gaps and forex fiddles
are all ready and ripe for “fixin' “

they only await

the proper popular mandate

and consequent

policy actions

as to economists able to concert these policy runs

i suspect leagues of em
are silently mobilizing in academia

they need only to here

the progressive call to arms

“When workers bitch about NAFTA
I think what they are really expressing

is the belief (true in my view)

that 'Somewhere, somehow,

I am getting screwed over by the Man'.

to cop from keats…

and
that is all we

goobers know

and all

we need to know

errr besides
where the f do dah man live by nite

Posted by js paine at 07:06 PM

you know when corporate amerika has the policy wonks by the balls
when their very own tower titan spirits and guess work

are the key policy ingredient

whether its confidence to invest (37-38)
or

expectations of further inflation (now)

macro policy needs to empower uncle sam
not turn him into

some ivy league hierophant

calls on us to

just keep

racing around

the wall street kaba stone

————-

“Dual mandate, but one policy tool. A choice has to be made in the short run”

but
who sez we gotta play by one tool only rules here ??

have we forgotten the alternatives that began to emerge
just before the volcker dammerung

only the boys on the corporate
wage control board

really like this

slave to the niaru gimmick

————

“The monetary base has been shrinking……….stay tuned”

if so
now that's worth a whistle… eh ???

but if
its just

” another natural rate drop”

do to

” cyclical emerging market

'risk reflux '”

then

to keep up the shrink

while fighting the shrink

just have policy make

paltry feckless

“well intentioned ” counter moves

to

the massive spontaneous

run into uncle's

brand of

“safe liquids”

effy

“the standard of living of borrowers has increased, while the standard of living of the other groups has declined.”
circular causation can not be put

on a finite time line

i think aristotle said something like that

on his way to infinite regress

at any rate
get thee to a vickrey site !!!!

dialects obtain

where the yang of lending

becomes itself the ying of borrowing

good and bad l imply good and bad b

want a hard currency simulation contract
get your deal indexed

…

Allan Metzler ???

talk about a blast from the shucked off past

this soulful proprietor
of a galloping 70's

midas price muffler shop

ahh for a return
to worship ing

our sacred monetary base

…

effy

“Price stability (sticky prices)”

would these were
one and the same meme

…
the problem of a run away price level

can be solved by setting an optimal

price level change path

using a mark up cap and trade system

problem
it would corralllll

our wild stallions

of limited liability

at least in a closed system
or an open one with exchange rate

full balance targets

we can end the corporations'

great escape clause

from

wage share raising contract forces

and even as we pump up job demand

to chock full choak fnear levels

who sez
there's an absolute margin of profit floor

i say
widows cruse the profit ink

and i bet

we'll get more tech change

faster and better and more economically

…
mark

the posts list of inflation terrors
is for the nursery

only a generation not forced thru the 70's gauntlet
could actually believe

in an open economy like ours now is

this weimar nitemare scenario

lies …. necessarily

on the other side

of any really full employment macro policy

the forced enemia of corporate macro policy

the dismal dodrums
of

the hocus pocus niaru

with its cyclical but still chronically

sub possible output/job gap

my image
a cycle that uses true full employment as a ceiling it touches at best for a few peak quarters

and then gets strangled by macro induced

jobicidal credit policy

…
its like pretending

turning on or off

a sprinkler system

is an act of naturte

just like a rain storm

…

“What Mishkin is glossing over, and Thoma is carrying water for Mishkin, is that while inflation may be transitory, its effects are accretive”

ahh
like the chinese drip torture

short rate induced price level up ticks
that don't trigger serious long ternm expectational changes at the product producing firm price decider level

but nick away at existing bond values

you poor puppy

buy stocks pal
…

don

uses the build up

of nasty

very conflagration friendly

underbrush

in a managed fire suppression system

what a metaphor for macro mangement
very paleo-austrian

…
Absolute Price Stability - that's what central banks should aim for over the course of the business cycle.

And governments should aim to have zero net debt and zero net savings over the course of the business cycle too.

salient

are you suggesting inflation phases

fully countered by deflation phases

and deficit phases fully countered by surplus phases

if so here's some possibly relevent history

the isle of laputa
tried that policy back in 1723 -1728

and found it … 'largely unworkable '

so they turned

back to trying

to find

a perpetual motion machine

to power their flour mills etc

 ”Economic nationalism deserves a good deal more respect, among economists”
as usual

coming from

that hide bound institutionalist

bw

right on the money

policy econ con wise that is …

( ie the ivy platonics aside )

but here's the problem
a narrow nationalist econ con policy

in washington ???

just zero borders away
from

the north american trans national corporate headquarters

on manhattan island …??

such a miracle of independence
hasn't existed since ….the great depression

conjecture
we live under a trans nat dictatorship

and have since 1945

anyone here
care to contradict that ??

Posted by js paine at 06:54 PM

we know history passes along cultural memes
from generation to generation

within any

“reproducing social formation”

'course there's
a fair bit of morphin

recombinin and just plain mutatin

along the way

as with the construction of the minds

of each new cohort

the legacy gets

far from perfectly

replicated

over time
much changes with

the passing done process

but regularities emerge
patterns persist

even with
—and despite—-

massive and sudden upheavals

yup even after a rev

even after

the sudden total “death of the old “

gives “birth  to the new “

“the old “leaves more then
just ” birth marks “

on the fresh (or refreshed )

souls of

the rev's raw (or rectified ) babes

these issues got a work out

at mark's a couple days back

over a krug 90's piece
on the robustness to

broad based

cynicism of

our contemporary system

of corporate

let many hierarchies contend

version of capitalism

speaking
systemic viability wise

here's a real star turn:

“What we need is a BALANCE
between selfishness and greed,

not either one to the exclusion of the other.”

that in its spoony way

gets at a real sense of the briar

of inner contradictions

most production monads manifest serially

we got lots of insider internalized treason
to contend with

not just

“you're your own worse agent bub “

bruce wilder's

beware your inner slacker

is a nice jump off

but deep depths await us

Posted by js paine at 06:43 PM

this line captures
the knot hole at the center

of amerika's

chicken little

lib-prog 

5 times daily

call to prayer

“our sagging physical and intellectual infrastructure

is eroding our national competitiveness.”

sagging intellectual infrastructure

what a jim dandy phrase that be

  a kinder gentler jihad

 yikes
uncle's latest

tower is indeed a babel

and its toppling mates

we ahhhh

better all go back to….

school

Posted by pinky at 06:33 PM

and worse yet must mostly operate well below capacity
in fact capacity becomes the upper limit

and not like christ

availible for some

assymtotic limitless approach

but only a tantulus fruit tree

xions wheel

syssy's bolder

some proces with abrupt fall backs

in need of a righteous justification

ie

a secular science necessity

unavoidability and inevitability

in other words we need
a creditable

blame the victim con

Posted by pinky at 01:06 PM

 if taking a job cut
were reward

as if the victim was not a victim

but a kind of

scared Adamic martyr

a maker of the production system's progress

 well
slackers would emerge by the millions

at the job site …eh

itchin to be a martyr
no not necessarily

but surely not afraid of the lay off

now firing becomes personal
direct brutal sacking

requires an apologia

all jobless
must be seen

as anti social parasites

con men thieves and

soul buggars

could 
our present generation

of nurse ratchet HR professionals

really ramp up to that ????

whither remediation then ??

 what manifestation
must the necessary lash take ???

that way i'd claim
lies

nasty “work houses”

satanic mills

salt mines

and other disguised 

arbeit-gulags

correctional institutions arise
when idleness must be punished directly

lesson 513
in why capitalism creates

its own mystified barriers

to perpetual whole of the people prosperity

Posted by pinky at 12:53 PM

uncle milty feldstein
on the policy cycle

or

capitalism's intentionally

self inflicted barriers

to perpetual whole of the people prosperity

“The recessions that began in 1991 and 2001 lasted only eight months from the start of the downturn until the beginning of the recovery. Even the deeper recession of 1981 lasted only 16 months.

But these past recessions were caused by deliberate Federal Reserve policy aimed at reversing a rise in inflation”

its nice to have something really evil worth fighting

like the possibility
of run away inflation

that way

the jobicide involved becomes incidental

the misery collateral

unintentional

regret able

but unavoidable 

and

the real wage control

real profit protection

a means necessary

to avoid a great society wide catastrophe

but what about MAP

end wage price spiral inflation
kill the rational expectation of more inflation

and….

now you gotta find maybe a direct way
to repress wage rate climb

macro policy must be impotent
or at least mischievious

if it heightened

the obvious ness

of the burger states

class tilt

————

a comment
after some one found marty

in the usual

fork tongued apologist's

double back double cross talk

dd

nice uncle marty pranging

you hung him
by his own prior strung

rope a dope

piano wire

btw
what a sterile cuckoo he's become

since bush fils

bypassed

him

—his fathers merlin no less —

for the fed chair job

now he has to resort
to chasing and cheering on

the grim fads and gray fashions

of a wall street in mourning

imagine the slummery of it all…
no longer

called apon by

the great boards in the towers

to sprinkle ivy league NBER holy water

on their latest romp-capades

nothin like them high 80's eh ??

…

nite mare

for dollar ghouls

“paychecks rising across the country”

notice how easily marty describes
the contrived recessions of 91 and 01

as deliberate gubmint acts of jobicide

“let em feel the scarcity boys “

reagan was right
at least as far as

the wage doldrums

these last near 30 years

gubmint IS the problem

Posted by pinky at 12:42 PM