sez stig tax cuts are bad
“They encouraged America to live beyond its means, increasing our liabilities without commensurate increases in assets. Further tax cuts would do the same”

“living beyond their means “

crap

tax cuts aimed at the job holder class
thru full payroll rebates for all employees

for their side of the SS tax till further notice

only gives back what has been earned

and to a “cash strapped” wage class

that has not participated equitably

in the increase in social productivity

for most of the last 30 years

stig is into generous poor relief
like most modern liberal econ cons

politics has taught us a lesson here
tax cuts for the wage earning majority

is an unassailable policy

the party that provides this cut

wins this voting block

with this voting block
a new new deal is feasible

without its allegiance going in

its not

can for now the goo goo pub sec chitter

the urge to do good to uplift …to green… to whatever

that shit plays right into GOP hands
until Dems deliver

something big and obvious and in cash

to job holders the Dems haven't

fought seriously for

in two generations

prez to jobblers:

“its your you earned it
so keep it till this crisis is over “

.

……

oh ya

instead of this cheap ass

5 franklin tip

raise the cash back

on the earned income tax credit

and broaden it too

its a subsidy for an obviously positive externality
a social benefit prolly worth

three times what's now paid out by uncle

Zephyr says…

“The economy will recover without the stimulus plan”

really ??

wow ….great…. thank god ..

i was getting a little scared there

Z man :

“I just bet on the rational outcomes
and make money from the fear and mania”

go fer it hoss !!!!

Posted by js paine at 02:04 AM

someone defends sweat shops
in cambodia

better then the trash heap childrens' job

—————————————-

this piece is an absolute horror

and yet
one needs to carve up the trans nat corporate system itself

to gather in the full horror

cambodia has been part of the global economy
since the 19th century

pol pot tried to get cambodia out of it
and ….

t'was of course uncle sam
that ” induced ” pol pot

but there the story only

begins…..

question
why can't cambodia develop

an industrial economy

without going thru the sweat shop stage

why must cambodia's “dynamic sector “

be “run”

from new york or frankfurt ???

national liberation ….talk about a gauzy dream

imagine..it makes one caring occidental soul
named ezra …”uncomfortable”

ezra
prophet and liberator of the hebrews

refounder of a nation his avatar is uncomfortable

now comes paul krugman…

“But matters are not that simple”
sez paul …ya paul

there complex and indirect enough

that even a clever terrier type like you

can feel clean

“me ..i'm not an exploiter “

paul counter pops anti sweat shop talk :

” moral outrage is common among the opponents of globalization”

okay…wait for it …here's paul's first up

property of globalization

”.. the transfer of technology ..”

transfer ??? really
you mean we send over folks to show em how to do it cutting edge style ????

really ????

the trans nats don't require anything just here's the specs here's the human capital ….?

come one come all

next

“… capital ..”

as in what pauli boy ???

machines ???
or credit

credit ???

that poison apple

so what else

really
ain't it mostly

“access ” to first class markets

trans nats provide

when they move production

“…from high-wage to low-wage countries..”

and as a result
ttrans nats nicely

control the profit process

created by

” the resulting growth of labor-intensive Third World exports “

no other way to develop a modern national economy ??
no way

beyond building an export platform

and a supine financial sector maybe too ????

both of which remove the vitals
of national economic self determination

from the grasp of the domestic political process

okay for every two or three haiti's
waiting in limbo

there's a south korea

u just gotta wait your turn
and mean while

ask for “relief aid “

anne

china is self determining
as is brazil (all most) and india

but

deny them technology transfers and

north hemi market access

and then what ???

no ..as long as trans nat corporations ..statless elites as larry summers calls em
can dictate the pace of development to most of the planet

we'll get …

well ….stuff like the present global train wreck

sure a few huge emerging states have a chance

too big to let fail ??

but the 100 little guys …

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | January 15, 2009 at 06:14 PM

paine says…
Richard Hoogesteger

what a labor standard

up from slavery

“governments ” are the problem ???

specifics??

“There has been an enormous growth of slavery particularily in the lao gai sweatshops in China. These prison camp workers are worse off than the garbage dump dwellers. They are paid nothing and worked until they die with no hope of escape. The existence of these sweatshops holds down wages for factory workers everywhere”

what sorry piffle
the chow mein gulag

kold war radio-activity has a long half life i guess

worthy of the late bill buckley

try an example from areas
now obviously

trans nat inc

free fire zones

like … uganda or indonesia or bengla-desh

i hope we don't need
a “borderless earth type corporate stooge ” alert here !!!!

oh and …
free tibet eh ???

Posted by js paine at 09:58 PM

there are
clever magic tricks

and

unclever magic tricks

fama's wouldn't fool a goat

model the modeler first

good example

“…he (fama)was looking for a tool
to use to justify his own bias..”

precisely

too bad he lacks mankiw's
trick design skills

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | January 15, 2009 at 12:03 PM

paine says…
“We are confusing the real economy and the financial economy.”

“we “
here includes not just fama but norman bates too

aka pugsley delong

shit its not just about relative price adjustments here

saved income invested in existing securities
merely adds to the spin rate

of hi fi laputa's paper propellers

not to mention
production dynamics (diffy q's enter here )

make a hash of any inventory comp stats

including this parable by

the serial clown norman tubby montebank

there are a zillion emaculate withdrawals
that can rob effective demand

from the full reproduction

of the real product markets

once “we” cut the gordian knot of
first degree keynesianism

and split y into its p's and q's

do the nomination identities

matter any way ???

smug mugger acts are repellent brad

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | January 15, 2009 at 12:20 PM

paine says…
“Friedman, to his credit, admitted that the onset of volatility in “V”

onset ????

christ it was always there
for those we eyes to see

the 80's
i guess made “the facts”

so big right wing magoo's like uncle milty

had to fess up …inside the ivy cloister

” meant that his views on optimal monetary policy were wrong. “

and that of course

changed nothing in his snake oil patter

about “natural “hics

and

“natural” hocs

or in the overbaring catfaced confidence
of his merlinesque public mien

“That sort of mind is rare”

no its not its a fairly common pattern
among

my shit don't stink types

on the other side of the aisle
bill clinton is equally uncornerable

and undauntedly shameless

why the thought of reading uncle milty
makes me

long for … delong

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | January 15, 2009 at 12:31 PM

paine says…
“If Mankiw's output of lies and slime varies in negative proportion to the tax rate, that makes raising the tax rate a moral imperative, prima facie”

what a fine feathered comment

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | January 15, 2009 at 12:33 PM

paine says…
“He lobs three insults: bisexual, dilettante, and academic”

poor brad was after a double layered effect here
very “with it ” irony

unfortunately
pipe stove irony like this

wielded by rubber arms

often crashes to the floor

good slap stick though

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | January 15, 2009 at 12:42 PM

paine says…
“The whole point of private investment is to reduce the number of workers needed to produce the current mix of products, and allow the market to rapidly switch now redundant workers over to production of innovative new products.”

again a confusion
of ” wrong set of relative prices and quantities”

with inadequate aggregate effective demand

a conflation devoutly to be avoided

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | January 15, 2009 at 12:46 PM

paine says…
“Not enough attention is being paid to reducing the frictional costs.”

lets get the number of vacancies

up closer to equality with those looking for jobs first

we're losing jobs these days not creating them

meanwhile on net 2 million folks try to enter

the “formal” job market each year

Posted by js paine at 09:57 PM

the highly educated econ cons are dancing in the dark these days
and if they got a heart …it scares em plenty





http://www.george.irvin.com/MASD1/session7_files/image005.gif



http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/10/risks-of-deflation-wonkish-but-important/



here's my recent favorite hair standing on end conjecture by everlasting friend of the little people ..paul k of times square and nassau hall



“There’s been some talk about risks of deflation,

but there’s one alarming comparison I haven’t seen made.

… the CBO is currently projecting an output shortfall

from the current slump comparable to the slump of the early 1980s.

Actually, it’s very close:….(wonkery deleted)…

Now here’s the thing: the slump of the early 1980s produced the Great Disinflation,

which brought the core inflation rate down from about 10 to about 4.

This time, however, we entered the slump with a core inflation rate of about 2.5 percent.

If we experienced a disinflation comparable to that of the 1980s,

that would mean ending up with deflation at a rate of -3.5 percent.”



now i agree with st paul here one really ought to conjure seriously

with this deflation warning …



“deflation” as ole alan greenspan was wont to remark “now that's real trouble “





why ???



well first there's the obvious ..one starts postponing purchases and

that tends to build its own added downward price mojo

if an economy is already short on sufficient effective demand



but  more centrally in a deflationary regime where the real value of dollar denominated obligations

increases right along with the real value of the dollar itself

the debt jacket harnessing us all gets to weigh heavier and heavier



analysis :



paul here is taking quite sharply literally and without off sets

a model of aggregate price level movement

that the late evil dwarf milton friedman inspired with some vague verbal gestures

back in the late 60's (yes right in the heart of the topsey turvey)

the model as evolved by a bevy of other more math hungry dwarfs after that and…



at any rate the model postulates a so called natural rate of unemployment

(now btw placed in our “real world” at 5 % or in the shadow range there of )

and here's whats relevent about this ” reasonable assumption ”

if an economy such as ours were to run a rate of unemployment higher then our natural rate

then core inflation rate ( the rate of increase of our aggregate price level do to wage costs )

begins to slow itself down and if (like today )

we start this higher then natural jobless period from very near the low end of the inflation range

and we proceed to run above our natural rate long enough …well  we might travel down past the zero inflation point

and right on into bizzaroland … right into deflation ney accelerating deflation

much as we experienced off and on for three years under quaker appostate and bulwark of ordered liberty

herbert zebullon hoover



now that's taking the model very literally of course

as one is wont to do when one's in the scary story business



but even within the model paul k's conjecture  from analogy to the 80's reagan volcker gotterdammerung

hardly accounts for structural variations that might well exist in any market system's dynamic behaviour

far above zero inflation (mid 80's) vs  very near zero (nowsville)



in fact my hero abba lerner felt there was no such sweet spot “natural ” rate of unemployment

with inflation accelerating immediately to one side and disinflation just as immediately to the other side

no matter the initial rate of inflation



dear abba suggested we might actually exist in this age of modern macro management

on  a kind of plateau between say 10- 12% unemployment and 3-4% unemployment

where uncle's macro policy could stabilize the jobless rate more or less

while simultaneously maintaining the rate of price change(again more or less)  …

we could drift forward without much action either way anywhere along that spectrum

ie with anywhere between 15 million and 4 million jobless supplicants …  an 11 million margin of error



i agree and further more i tend to believe the system's corporate demigods

will discover within the next three quaters or so that they're quite  comfortable

with an 8-10% jobless rate …for a few years here anyway …. you know just till things settle down

the horrors of proximate job loss without the actual losing of ones job  is a tonic to citizenship

in particular it gives  the right kind of environment for amerika's jobbler zillions

to get use to their freshly poured still drying cement debt suits

and maybe comrades its true

maybe most of us wage freaks really do need a decent interval of falling down to  hell's door step type pecuniary nite sweats 



maybe most of us need to learn to be ”grateful ”

grateful to our scrooges and our mr burnses

grateful for our grossly liened on home and shit ass of a job



next time :

scarcity works

the cases of jobs and credit scores



why “walking away” from a debt suit

might require a far stronger job market and consumer credit market

then obigma's posse prolly has in store for us



——————————-

http://www.frankenidiot.com/images/al_franken_umd1_800pxh.jpg


http://mortystv.com/showcards/jack_benny.jpg

http://z.hubpages.com/u/209959_f496.jpg

i guess i oughta come clean on something now it seems he's headed for the senate ..

i never got hired by my pal al to write gag lines



yes back in the day Al suggested i ” throw together a few funny ones” as he mobilized for the big run

but truth is i wanted the mother fucking oak faced fucker to fall flat on his kisser

so i sent him nothin but lame shit ….some of which can be found scattered about here at smbiva among various posts and comments



self admiring birthday party rideable ass that he is

AL once told me he'd ”love to be jack benny to somebodies rochester ”

so i did a whole bunch that started ” oh voter ….” quite naturally he didn't take a shine to em





ps inside straight :

at his core Al lacks the great and soft goodness of a Benny who always thought everyone else was funnier then him

Posted by pinky at 08:22 PM

classical economists loved ground rent
the marginal revolution swamped it with a zillion formal similarities

and today house lot values get conflated with the houses built on em

which brings me to the great american walk away



see the “housing “bubble was really a residential lot bubble which was in essence

a series of interretaled local lot markets capitalizing infinite horizon  expected ground rents

sounds good sounds unbubblicious even maybe

but the key to validating such guffomics
is very simple:

use an accomodating credit market to inject the hellium

a market produced by a credit-usirial complex operating

on the implict benign asumption

that present house lot values 

can sustainably liberate themselves from the course of future household incomes and go on rising faster then inflation for ..well not ever but at least long enough to …



then without waiting for a cue suddenly came

a boom :

the lot value pop heard round the world

and ever since right up until now
households face a choice 

either trudge on under a bankers saddle

made of lead

or throw the fucker off and earn a credit score striaght from hell



recall the 4 r's that come in pairs



recovery relief followed by reconstruction reform

this blank mt rushmore waiting for four good fathers

is full of candidates for father of relief



my gadanken relief father might choose this plan

or better this insteration :

a federal land bank
ready to re fi the full lot value

of every house and apartment building in america

as a second mortgage 

with no principal payments..ever

and at the on going fed funds rate 



the implications of this are marvelous

and classical too

can you see them comrades ????


uncle can convert the scrooges mortgage interest

right back into the ground rent from whence it came

Posted by pinky at 08:03 PM