America is running on embalming fluid, and the great liquidation is happening.

[anarchist]

great article

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/03/guest-post-no-one%E2%80%99s-issuing-credit%E2%80%94why-are-auerback-and-parenteau.html

Why, in their article on Latvia’s austerity budget, are Marshall Auerback and Robert Parenteau giving Latvia credit for warm, fuzzy feelings? Especially in the context of Draconian cuts? It’s because Auerback and Parenteau don’t know what they want—their emotions are not grounded in any articulated policies. So they sound friendly. But are they friendly?

Let’s take a look. Maybe they just haven’t got their terms straight. For example, they say: “Mainstream economics insists that one path to full employment is via lower wages.” No, that’s not mainstream economics—that’s police state economics. That’s simply liquidation. They seem blithely unaware that since the power structure in America decided the suburbanization binge was over—that our suburban cow had ceased to be a profit center and had turned into a cash guzzler—America is no longer a paying proposition. So power is taking its flunkey, Uncle Sam, out of government.

That’s liquidation: power is withdrawing government from American society—and right on cue, the rest of the world is following suit, including Latvia.

Memories are short—and sometimes, even truncated. Just because World War II cut short Mellonesque liquidation, don’t for a minute buy the argument that somehow it wasn’t still policy right through the Roosevelt Administration—or that it isn’t always waiting in the wings, asserting itself all the time against countervailing forces (we shall return to those forces).

[picasso moon]

Good find, thanks!

[doctor zaius]

Embalming Fluid:  great metaphor!

[picasso moon]

Yet the author shows deep illusions in "the Constitution" and "the law".

[alan2102]

Major blast from the past, here.  I went to junior high school and high
school with this guy, John Ryskamp.  Quirky intellectual. I remember
him clacking away on a manual typewriter, writing a thesis on Civil
War humor.  The manuscript ran to 120 pages. This was in 8th grade!
Maybe I'll get in touch and ask him to expand on these ideas he has
about "facts" and "maintenance" and etc. (words that apparently have
some technical, non-obvious meaning, the way he uses them).
Knowing him, I would guess that he can document and defend his
view real well.

[alan2102]

Yet the author shows deep illusions in "the Constitution" and "the law".

Deep illusions, or a sophisticated and superior understanding?

I don't know. I don't have enough law background to say.

See his long post in reply to comments -- at the bottom of the page (posted
last night).

[atomicat]

You know it's funny if I ignore this site and the emails and stories, I feel more at peace.  I may be standing on the deck of the Titanic but it's a lot less stressful.

What I find interesting about this article is in some sense the Great American Empire has been gone for many years and we are just seeing the final possible collapse of that.  It happened and has always been happening with weakness in the souls of men.  Who trade pretend statesmanship for political spin.

There are always misfits or those who just have been having bad times hit them that talk about revolution, but the degree of massive pain and suffering is often placated by some little social program, some minor help from one of many government programs.  Overall the system has been under attack of being fair, basically always.  Because humans are in the loop and make decisions to help some friend and of course this will alienate others.   So everyone who loses or doesn't get selected for the winning bid, gets to piss and moan that they didn't get their fair share.  That they paid for a ponzi scheme and were not able to cash in.  The scheme has always favored some rich and that is why they are rich and will continue to be.   They cannot trade their riches easily for heaven, tho some try before they perish of old age.

The whining and complaining about minority suppression seems to be one of a Right wing rising and suppressing minority groups.  Minority groups like agnostics have been gaming and using the system for years to suppress the religious and fund evolutionary dogma.  Effectively silencing dissent.  A left wing leading political guy is in office, whose more likely to be a follower of the cultural revolution and left wing suppression of the right, than an agent for the corporations, still we find left leaning gripe pieces like this.

It seems that there will in the short term be a queueing of government complaints and pressures to destroy any business that is a threat to government chosen winners.  For example pressures against Toyota and keeping them in the public bad light will reduce their market share and help gain market share for companies that need to gain stock value to pay back the government's interest in the company.  Things like this will continue to happen, and then a wave of counter lawsuits and litigation from the corporations will cause another war (in the courts) that will drain tax budgets further.

For every program cut or readjustment to the new level of macro-economic trade (decision policy) poverty, and energy and resource poverty that we've headed toward, we'll find groups yelling and complaining about "what was lost".  But only a few individuals will go off and do something violent, the few nuts who are nuts enough under pressure of some sort to just snap.   These won't likely form some kind of new revolutionary group, although some try to imagine and dream there is one.  And look at the results of the revolutionaries.  People like Obama are in office, but nothing really changes.  It's just adjustments and a different spin.

There are to many perhaps vectored pressures from to many forces to keep the whole thing up and running.  Like a bed with a million needles all pressing up.  You can complain about some things, but overall there's a huge stake and group of stakeholders vested in keeping the ship going in the same direction.

The problem with many articles like this is they complain but don't have a real solution. There may not be a real solution, I'm not saying there is.  Power down by  Peak oil, green theorists is proposed as some kind of solution, but it seems unlikely to be something that will work at all.  I'd say that it could reach a point of die off, but history shows us that the more powerful countries will exploit and spin and kill others in poorer countries to keep the high BTU lifestyle going.

It's almost like a sharper pyramid rising.  More a sliding down the edges towards a lower level to make the pyramid higher at the top.  The solution to some is to crush that pyramid altogether or call for it's collapse.  But we all live with that (the machine stops), so any talk of revolution or what could happen, becomes to silly to act on by the common man.  I almost wonder if a study on minority groups who have been down and adjusted to being down and in the underclass and how they adapt is something that might be interesting to look at.  For example black males in Detroit have been in a group that really has something like 70% unemployment for many years.  They often are without jobs and adapt in perhaps strange subcultural ways and cope with it without rising up and rebelling.  We find they are in a more violent subculture perhaps (if that's a good term to even use).  It's one filled with grey and black markets of drugs, even relying on a view of the strong woman in the house as provider or someone to con to get a free lunch from.  I'm not trying to say they are all that way, but a large segment adapts with seemingly destructive patterns rather than constructive ones.  The few who try to get ahead are pulled down into the an attempt to game the system. 

This went from welfare, to no welfare, as benefits were cut.  And now it's perhaps living off whatever scrapes they can find and perhaps the good graces of a welfare mentality of being the boyfriend of a woman with many kids getting aid for those kids.  It becomes one of moving from entitlement to entitlement.  It can result in "working class" or perceived white middle class anger toward welfare and the drain that causes in taxing and tax reduction revolts.  Which become the calling card for right wing spinning candidates.  Both parties appeal to their "base of special interests".  It's a little game of buying off a potentially angry populace.  The solution to the poor is to have a free lunch given to all, that we cannot pay for.  To the rich it's a large seven course dinner for a few, that we all get to read about and cannot afford.  In both cases we cannot afford to pay the bill and it continues to be deferred, we'll just have to continue to do the dishes in the kitchen.

Anyway, I'm in a hurry and running out of gripes and complaints.  Time to go back to the real world for me, which is still at work but filled with more potential random violence. 

[Smoochy]

Major blast from the past, here.  I went to junior high school and high
school with this guy, John Ryskamp.  Quirky intellectual. I remember
him clacking away on a manual typewriter, writing a thesis on Civil
War humor.  The manuscript ran to 120 pages. This was in 8th grade!
Maybe I'll get in touch and ask him to expand on these ideas he has
about "facts" and "maintenance" and etc. (words that apparently have
some technical, non-obvious meaning, the way he uses them).
Knowing him, I would guess that he can document and defend his
view real well.

You knew him? Wild! Ryskamp has been all over the financial blogs for years. Roubini's blog is where I first encountered him. Unfortunately, he has generally been shunned and ignored due to his quirky intellectualism, perceived rudeness and entrenched legalese - consequently I lost track of him - but he's been right about all things financial. I find him fascinating, even if way over my head on many of the legalities (eminent domain and the maintenance regime) attached to this financial crisis.

Thanks for the link.

[MtLouie]

That is a great article.

With a quote for the ages:

Memories are short—and sometimes, even truncated.

Excellent! 

[Smoochy]

With a quote for the ages:

Memories are short—and sometimes, even truncated.

Excellent! 

Seriously, eh, Louie? Ryskamp has  got a dry confrontational wit, that I suspect, is intended to smack folks upside the head.

Gotta luv it.