Lots of mainstream finance commentators finally went ballistic over the state of financial policy. The most interesting group are the professional investors who have turned on their masters. I get to them at the end of the list of dissidents.
The Angry Keynesians. Paul Krugman is Exhibit A, a 1990s liberal free-trader where strong state intervention was the exception more than the rule, but who opposed the Bush tax cuts and for the ten years since has railed tirelessly about every replay of deregulatory trickle-down business-led plutonomics. He summarized the Bush Years as "The Big Zero," denounces "The Austerity Delusion," "The Urge to Purge," "Cockroach Ideas," among many others. The "Economic Bleeding Cure" is a classic of this genre.
Fortunately, physicians no longer believe that bleeding the sick will make them healthy. Unfortunately, many of the makers of economic policy still do. And economic bloodletting isn’t just inflicting vast pain; it’s starting to undermine our long-run growth prospects.Keynesians care about the development of society, and are confused and enraged by the casual blowing off of these concerns by policymakers in the US and the EU alike. "Well, this is a miserable step in the wrong direction" says Jeffrey Sachs, starting a denunciation of both parties in the US. "From a self-preservation angle, this is lunacy," notes David Dayen.
Nicholas Kristof alienated some Occupier supporters with a somewhat patronizing attempt to suggest demands, but he is also the author of the excellent summation "Our Banana Republic," voicing anger at policy suports for social devolution. But you know these people.
Prophetic Re-regulators. This group consists of high-end experts in technical domains -- mortgage industry regulation, complex credit instruments, international banking relationshiops -- who have become relentless and sometimes furious bloggers. They focus on the non-improvement of the financial system itself -- not so much on its social effects as its continuing rottenness, now propped by massive government subsidies (a 0.16% interbank funds rate for example) and complicity in the perpetuation of the shadow banking system that caused the problem in the first place. You know most of these folks too: the sober Simon Johnson and James Kwak at the Baseline Scenario, Dayen on housing, and Yves Smith at the remarkable Naked Capitalism on housing, banking as a criminal enterprise, and idiotic political dynamics that are forcing a choice between shooting the economy (Republicans) or bleeding it to death (Dems).
Cassandras of Systemic Failure. The lead people here are in Europe, with Martin Wolf at the front of the pack. These are a mixture of journalists and economists who accept the need for "adjustment" of the most crisis-ridden economies -- read drastically lowered living standards for the 99 percent -- but think politicians aren't being smart or independent enough to manage even that. Wolf recently predicted a lost decade unless governments simply cranked up the printing press and created money, denouncing sadism towards populations along the way. He often points out that economic failure was not caused by bad behavior but by not very enlightened market judgements, e.g. public debt burdens that were lower in Ireland and Spain than in France and Germany. This is the Japan Syndrome writ large by pro-capitalists who see that financial corruption and momentum have undermined the systems that made capitalism stable for a while.
Raging Traders. These are working investors, many of whom write blogs to attract customers to their investment business, which often consists of selling their trading advice. Post-facto posts are the sign over the entrance meant to encourage signing up for the live action inside the tent. These people trade every day, feel shafted and betrayed, and are absolutely furious.
Here's the boss of Phil's Stock World on the horn last December talking about Obama's capitulation on the tax cut extensions. Remember, Phil likes numbers.
Good job Congress!
Way to take it from your new Republican Masters! Not since Jack sold his cow for some magic beans has a deal like this been made by our "leadership" where families earning between $35,000 and $64,000 go $7,800 further into debt to get a $613 tax break while families earning between $5M and $10M get $38,590 and families earning $50M to $100M get $380,590 and families (or Corporations, of course) earning $500M to $1Bn get $3,859,000 or about 12,590 times more than the average middle class family but, then again, they deserve it because – they are that much better than you are!
Face it, unless you are in an income category where your tax benefit has 5 digits, you are what George Orwell (who worked in England’s Ministry of Propaganda) called a "Prole." In 1984 the Proles (proletariat) were the vast majority of the populace, the working class of Oceana. Though the proles are the majority, they are unimportant. The Party explicitly teaches that the Proles are "natural inferiors who must be kept in subjection, like animals". As one of the Party Leaders observes: "the relative freedom of working-class people is merely a symptom of the contempt in which they are held". . . .
You’re not going to be any trouble are you? Enjoy your $613, little people. That’s what, about a month’s worth of gasoline and cable TV? Congratulations on your voting acumen – you certainly have gotten the Government that you deserve! . .. .
Congressman Ryan Paul . . . points out: "Whose money is this after all?" It’s not your money that your family is going $7,800 further into debt to protect – it’s THEIR money. THEY earned it and THEY are darned well going to keep it. "Hey," you might say, "I work for THEM – didn’t I make that money and isn’t this OUR country that’s in debt and needs responsible fiscal policy?" Well, that’s just Commie talk and you’d better watch yourself – we’ve already sent your name of to HomeSec so consider yourself on notice…
The Proles in this country are dumb enough but what amazes me is the people who support the tax cuts thinking you are "one of THEM" when "they" look at you the same way you step over a homeless man in the streets. $858Bn is the NATIONAL Debt that we are taking on to fund these cuts. The cuts work out to about 0.75% of your income and your family share of the additional debt burden is $7,800 so, unless you are making AT LEAST $1M PER YEAR as a corporation or individual, this tax cut is a net loss for you. Once you clear that $1M hurdle, it’s all gravy flowing uphill to your plate! Even better if you are a "Corporate Citizen" – you have no real debt obligation to this nation because, like Haliburton and many, many others – you can simply move whenever you want – to avoid taxation AND prosecution!
As Bloomberg proclaims today "It’s a Great Time to Be Rich,"
You can often read this kind fury on Phil's blog. The "Long Con" is a fascinating example for its somewhat Marx-like systematicity. Phil makes his money every day by betting on the blindly destructive greed and cowardice of financial and political leaders, which he describes as such.
Here's another professional financial advisor, Adam Lass, the editor of Wealth Daily, writing about Wealth Preservation During Depression
The central bankers want us to think their fountains of unlimited imaginary money are our sole hope of escaping yawning pits of economic hell. For these apparatchiks, it's all about hanging on to the levers of power any way they can.
The private bankers claim that if we just turn them loose from the stranglehold of post-crash regulation — and allow them to tangle the world in a impenetrable web of insanely profitable derivatives and bonds again — they will plant our feet firmly on the road to financial nirvana.
Here its class war on Wall Street, not just between Wall Street and Main Street.
To these guys, you and I are just foot soldiers and cannon fodder. Our jobs, homes, wealth, and health? Collateral damage.
My final example is from the Wall Street Examiner, where Lee Adler states, "I Stand with the Protestors." It is a howl of rage that starts like this:
We as a society must stop pretending. Most of us think that we still have money in the bank to protect, so we go along with the game of extend and pretend. For some of us, the game has already ended. The rapacious zero interest rate policy that I call Bernankecide has already robbed millions of savers of their life savings. This is the reality that has yet to hit home for many Americans who are content to wallow in the status quo. Unfortunately, the longer it takes for them to wake up, the worse their, and our, fate will be.
My mother and millions of other senior citizens are among the victims of the game that policy makers and those who empower them are playing. Their life savings are gone because Bernankecide, the financial genocide of the elderly, forced them to spend their principal. Now the government is indirectly confiscating 8% of my income because I must support my mother. That percentage is likely to grow as her health deteriorates.
Millions of other boomers are in the same boat. They are forced to pay this immoral hidden tax because Ben Bernanke decided that the innocent must pay for the sins of the guilty. While Bernanke’s ZIRP goes on allowing the banksters to continue to collect their fat bonuses, it steals the savings of millions of Americans, eliminates their disposable income, and cuts the spending power of millions of others who must now support those rendered destitute. The guilty benefit, and the innocent are punished.
Bernanke knows that, yet he continues to side with the criminal bankers in support of the financial genocide of the super elderly, and their children, the baby boomers who must increasingly support them.
Adler identifies himself in effect as Wall Street's 99 percent - screwed by the investment Bigs and with no end in sight.
In the late 1990s I wrote an article called "Business Civil Wars." It was clearly premature. Occupy Wall Street has brought this last group to the surface, and they are providing endless detail about the contradictory social relations within finance capitalism itself.
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