Student Indoctrination

“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.”

By Walter E. Williams

The new college academic year has begun, and unfortunately, so has student indoctrination. Let’s look at some of it.

William Penn, Michigan State University professor of creative writing, greeted his first day of class with an anti-Republican rant. Campus Reform, a project of the Arlington, Va.-based Leadership Institute, has a video featuring the professor telling his students that Republicans want to prevent “black people” from voting. He added that “this country still is full of closet racists” and described Republicans as “a bunch of dead white people — or dying white people” (http://tinyurl.com/lve4te7). To a student who had apparently displayed displeasure with those comments, Professor Penn barked, “You can frown if you want.” He gesticulated toward the student and added, “You look like you’re frowning. Are you frowning?” When the professor’s conduct was brought to the attention of campus authorities, MSU spokesman Kent Cassella said, “At MSU it is important the classroom environment is conducive to a free exchange of ideas and is respectful of the opinions of others.”

That mealy-mouthed response is typical of university administrators. Professor Penn was using his classroom to proselytize students. That is academic dishonesty and warrants serious disciplinary or dismissal proceedings. But that’s not likely. Professor Penn’s vision is probably shared by his colleagues, seeing as he was the recipient of MSU’s Distinguished Faculty Award in 2003. University of Southern California professor Darry Sragow shares Penn’s opinion. Last fall, he went on a rant telling his students that Republicans are “stupid and racist” and “the last vestige of angry old white people” (http://tinyurl.com/185khtk).

Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy

Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy

Murray Rothbard’s 1984 analysis of modern American history as a great power struggle between economic elites, between the House of Morgan and the Rockefeller interests, culminates in the following conclusion: “the financial power elite can sleep well at night regardless of who wins in 1984.” By the time you get there, the conclusion seems understatedindeed, for what we have here is a sweeping and compressed history of 20th century politics from a power elite point of view. It represents a small and highly specialized sample of Rothbard’s vast historical knowledge coming together with a lifetime devoted to methodological individualism in the social sciences. It appeared first in 1984, in the thick of the Reagan years, in a small financial publication called World Market Perspective. It was printed for a larger audience by the Center for Libertarian Studies in 1995, and appears in 2005 online for the first time.

Theoreticians Left and Right are constantly referring to abstract “forces” when they examine and attempt to explain historical patterns. Applying the principle of methodological individualism – which attributes all human action to individual actors – and the economic principles of the Austrian School, Rothbard formulated a trenchant overview of the Americanelite and the history of the modern era.

Rothbard’s analysis flows, first, from the basic principles of Austrian economics, particularly the Misesian analysis of banking and the origin of the business cycle. This issue is alsodiscussed and elaborated on in one of his last books, The Case Against the Fed (Mises Institute, 1995). Here, the author relates the history of how the Federal Reserve System came to be foisted on the unsuspecting American people by a high-powered alliance of banking interests. Rothbard’s economic analysis is clear, concise, and wide-ranging, covering the nature of money, the genesis of government paper money, the inherent instability (and essential fraudulence) of fractional reserve banking, and the true causes of the business cycle.

As Rothbard explains in his economic writings, the key is in understanding that money is a commodity, like any other, and thus subject to the laws of the market. A government-granted monopoly in this, the very lifeblood of the economic system, is a recipe for inflation, a debased currency – and the creation of a permanent plutocracy whose power is virtuallyunlimited.

In the present essay, as in The Case Against the Fed, it is in the section on the history of the movement to establish the Federal Reserve System that the Rothbardian power elite analysis comes into full and fascinating play. What is striking about this piece is the plethora of details. Rothbard’s argument is so jam-packed with facts detailing the social, economic, and familial connections of the burgeoning Money Power, that we need to step back and look at it in the light of Rothbardian theory, specifically Rothbard’s theory of class analysis.

Rothbard eagerly reclaimed the concept of class analysis from the Marxists, who expropriated it from the French theorists of laissez-faire. Marx authored a plagiarized, distorted, and vulgarized version of the theory based on the Ricardian labor theory of value. Given this premise, he came up with a class analysis pitting workers against owners.

One of Rothbard’s many great contributions to the cause of liberty was to restore the original theory, which pitted the people against the State. In the Rothbardian theory of class struggle,the government, including its clients and enforcers, exploits and enslaves the productive classes through taxation, regulation, and perpetual war. Government is an incubus, a parasite, incapable of producing anything in its own right, and instead feeds off the vital energies and productive ability of the producers.

This is the first step of a fully-developed libertarian class analysis. Unfortunately, this is where the thought processes of all too many alleged libertarians come to a grinding halt. It is enough, for them, to know the State is the Enemy, as if it were an irreducible primary.

As William Pitt put it in 1770, “There is something behind the throne greater than the king himself.” Blind to the real forces at work on account of their methodological error, Left-libertarians are content to live in a world of science fiction and utopian schemes, in which they are no threat to the powers that be, and are thus tolerated and at times even encouraged.

The Middle East and its elemental descent

What lurks beneath the prevailing chemical weapons trope, is the re-ascendant primacy of water

By Norman Ball 

The art of warfare ... will be vastly different than it is today ..."combat" likely will take place in new dimensions ... advanced forms of biological warfare that can "target" specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool. - Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces, and Resources For a New Century, Project for the New American Century, September 2000. 

As we will be wading through normative waters, I'll get to the deep end straightaway by suggesting it's hard to imagine a more sinister statement, albeit couched in the hopeful language of political utility, than the one cited above. 

As banality rendezvous with evil, eugenics manifests in militarized form. There is nothing "transformative" about gene-based weaponization unless one's real beef with ethnic cleansing all along was its surgical imprecision. Suddenly we discover ethnic cleansing without collateral damage was the elusive Holy Grail. Now there's a Strangelovian nightmare we can really pour our atavist hearts into. 

I cannot share enthusiasm for this hermetic ideal, the perfect bombing campaign of the future which, with almost Biblical prescience, skips certain houses while leaving others engulfed in flames. Such touted "advances" are not so much transformative as regressive. They champion a retrograde village mentality at the cost of the global village. The world is too small now to absorb parochialized retreat. 

Allow me to contradict myself already, by confessing in true nativist fashion, to a home team bias. I hope, over the intervening 15 years, that the military industrial complex has at least managed to perfect a nationalist "geno" strain that shields America's heterogeneity from incoming bombs with a "Made in USA" label proudly affixed. Not that we deserve such innovations. We certainly don't. Failing that, I'd like to see (hear) some sort of audible alarm system that alerts us when weapons of our own devise lurch suddenly into reverse gear. We should have Raytheon look into that. Even if we're undeserving of such discriminating firepower, Chinese bondholders, at a minimum, deserve the preservation of their investment. 

Wait, I hear something ... 

Beep ... beep ... beep ... 

"Keeping America in a state of tension and anticipation does not cost us anything but [organizing] dispersed strikes here and there. In other words, just as we defeated it in a war of nerves in Somalia, Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan, we must afflict it with a similar war in its own home."- al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri 

Domestic cancers in government, finance and corporate America

Why Obama Allowed Bailouts Without Indictments

The following article by Janet Tavakoli is an excellent reminder of the extraordinarily destructive coup pulled off by financial oligarchs in fall of 2008, when the rule of law was suspended and total theft institutionalized. I have written many times about my experience on Wall Street when the bailouts happened. How I ranted and raved on the trading desk about how TARP marked the end of any semblance of free markets and that there was no turning back. How I was told to “take a walk around the block” to cool off.

All of the suffering and hardships the majority of Americans are experiencing today are directly related to the coup pulled off by the crony financial oligarchs in the fall of 2008, and all of the media and political minions that helped them do it. People realize we have become a Banana Republic and they have now lost all hope. That said, there should always be hope and we can certainly restore society to better days, but not until we have remove our domestic cancers from their positions in the highest offices of government, finance and corporate America. That is what we must peacefully achieve.  
Now here’s Janet Tavakoli:

In November 2008, President Obama was elected, and he was sworn in January 2009. The country was promised change and reform. Recently two democrats close to the top of President Obama’s administration made excuses to me for the lack of financial reform in the United States. Their separately related versions were remarkably similar, so similar they seemed scripted: 

The administration made a bargain, and I’m not sure it was the right decision. The world was teetering on the edge of collapse. There was a crisis of confidence. There would have been unimaginable consequences. So bad even your imagination can’t handle the truth? 

It was the lesser of two evils to let a lot of people get away scot free than to risk a collapse in confidence.  There were only two choices according to this narrative. 

It was better to let a lot of people get away scot free than to have the first African American president take on the establishment while the country was deeply divided and he needed agreement on big things like ending wars, health care, Supreme Court nominees (and LGBT rights). There were lots of battles without taking on the financial establishment.  It seems to me that reforming our financial system is a big thing. As for at least two of the narrative’s big issues: health care costs are zooming up, and it looks as if we’re rattling our swords for another military conflict. 

The president was elected in part on his promise to effect change on the really tough issues, and there was no better time than when the crisis was fresh, and he had a groundswell of popular support. 

The most amusing thing about all of this is that people wanted President elect Obama to stick it to the financial oligarchs. Instead, he gave them trillions and offered immunity. More from Janet:

Death of Birth, meet Man-Made Global Warming

Low Birthrate Scaremongering: Al Gore-Style Global Warming Hysteria From The Right Wing

By John Tamny

“…the whole of the earth’s surface forms a single economic territory.” – Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism, p. 83

Writing in the New York Times back in 2010, global warming fabulist Al Gore aggressively went after the warming skeptics. The former vice president wrote of the “unimaginable calamity” the earth faced for climate science deniers failing to heed his calls for corrective environmental action.

To support his apocalyptic claims Gore referenced a NASA report revealing the “the hottest decade since modern records have been kept.” Fair enough, but the Cato Institute’s Pat Michaels, one of those skeptical scientists whom Gore presumably decries, has more recently cited statistics showing that “we’re about to finish 17 straight years with no statistically significant warming in any of the annual global surface temperature records.” Whom should we believe?

The answer to the above is that it really doesn’t matter which side is correct. Better it is to simply rely on market signals to tell us whether or not global warming presents a real threat. Even if we assume that all the hysterical talk about warming from Gore et al is true, market indicators are strongly telling us there’s nothing much to worry about.

Indeed, as evidenced by all the demand for New York City apartments, along with Hamptons and Malibu beach houses, the presumed “calamity” that is global warming is nothing of the sort. If what Steve Forbes once referred to as a “massive human delusion” really were the threat that Gore says it is, the latter would show up in falling prices in the locales mentioned, not to mention an inability to insure properties in those same locations.

We're coming up on 1937

The long-term pernicious effects of Ben Bernanke's monetary policies have yet to be felt

By Martin Hutchinson 

Five years after the 1929 Wall Street Crash, the US economy was in deep trouble but beginning to enjoy a vigorous recovery from the depths of a very unpleasant depression. The rest of the world, on the other hand, with the notable exception of Britain, was mired in Depression and in several cases Fascism. 

This time around, five years after the Lehman crash, we have avoided the Fascism, but the world economy is recovering only feebly. In the 1930s, the US was again plunged into deep depression in 1937, an indication that policymakers had got it wrong. This time around, different mistakes have been made but the likely outcome appears to be very similar. 

There is still considerable discussion about the policy mistakes that converted the 1929 stock market crash into the Great Depression, but three failures stand out. First, the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff zapped world trade just as it was in a fragile position, causing its volume to decline by 65% from the 1929 peak. 

Second, while the Fed kept interest rates low, they did not adjust properly for the decline in money supply caused by bank bankruptcies from late 1930 onwards. This caused a sharp decline in prices that made real interest rates very high - the debt deflation about which Ben Bernanke has nightmares. 

Third, in early 1932, when the depression appeared to be bottoming out, president Hoover forced through a massive tax increase, raising the top marginal income tax rate from 25% to 63%. Keynesians and Austrians, otherwise opposed in their policy prescriptions, can agree that this was a bad idea, giving the Depression another leg downwards to its unspeakable bottom, with real GDP 25% below its 1929 high. 

After 1933, there is less agreement. In 1933 the government threw darts at the US economy, removing the gold peg and instituting Fascist-type business regulations through the National Recovery Administration. Whether these worked or not, the economy bounced nicely in 1933-36 and seemed headed back to equilibrium, although real GDP was still well below the 1929 level in spite of a greater US working-age population and rapid productivity growth. 

Then recession unexpectedly hit again in 1937, and proved to be deeper than any post-war recession, with GDP falling more than 5% and unemployment rising sharply. Keynesians claim this was caused by a very modest move towards a balanced budget, which included minor further income tax increases and spending cuts, but from what we know now this policy move was too small to have had such an effect. Monetarists claim the Fed inappropriately tightened, raising reserve requirements and draining liquidity from the banking system. This may have been part of the cause, but again the modest cause appears too feeble to have had the large effect. 

The Boy Who Starved to Death In Public

Daniel Pelka’s death raises troubling questions about the state of social solidarity

By TIM BLACK

In March 2012, four-year-old Daniel Pelka, having been beaten and starved for months by his mother Magdalena Luczak and her boyfriend Mariusz Krezolek, was left, as he always was, in the unheated box room of his Coventry home. And it was there, on his urine-stained mattress, that he spent the final 33 hours of his miserable, short life.

This week, following the life sentences dished out to Luczak and Krezolek in August, a serious case review of Pelka’s death was published. What emerges from that document, and the case in general, is a disturbing conclusion: a young boy died in plain sight. The starvation, the visible bruises, the broken bones - none of this happened behind the mythical ‘closed doors’ of endless child abuse-awareness-raising campaigns. No, it happened in full view of teachers, nurses and other adults. He was starving to death in public. And no one seemed to have the wherewithal even to give him some food.

Taken together, the indications that something was wrong should have prompted someone in his social milieu to do something. This was the boy who came to school with a broken arm one week, black eyes the next. This was the boy who had been caught scavenging for food by teachers. This was the boy who was seen pulling a muddy, grit-peppered pancake out of a school bin, the boy who was seen retrieving the remains of a pear from the playground and desperately gnawing on it, the boy who used to try to steal food from other children’s lunchboxes. This was the boy who had become so thin by February 2012 that, in the words of one teacher, his ‘clothes were hanging off him’. And yet despite the signs that something was seriously wrong with Pelka, the adults with whom he was coming into contact with at school and at home failed to respond spontaneously, intuitively. In the words of Peter Wanless, chief executive of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children: ‘No amount of training or form filling or processes in the world can replace the fact that when a grown adult, especially one in a position of trust… sees a skinny child scavenging for food in a bin, alarm bells need to ring and action needs to be taken. It’s simple common sense. But people didn’t trust their instincts…’

Wanless has it right: people did not trust their instincts. What should have been common sense – to see that there was a problem and help Pelka – was confounded. What should have been near enough spontaneous – to check what was wrong with the child eating sand – was stymied. And this indicates something rather profound: a breakdown in social solidarity. The adults here, from teachers to neighbours, were not responding to the sight of an emaciated child starving before their eyes, instinctively; they were not recognising their own humanity in a child who, it seems, was clearly suffering.

Deflation Vs Progress

Defining Deflation

By Jim Grant

A derangement of money or credit, a symptom of which is falling prices. Not to be confused with a benign, i.e., downward shift in the composite supply curve, a symptom of which is also falling prices.

In a genuine deflation, banks stop lending. Prices tumble because overextended businesses and consumers confront the necessity of selling assets in order to raise cash. When prices fall because efficient producers are competing to deliver lower-priced goods and services to the marketplace, that is called “progress.” 

An extreme example of a genuine deflation occurred after World War I. During the war, belligerent governments resorted to money printing to bridge the gap between income and outgo. In the United States, the Federal Reserve quashed interest rates and liberally extended credit to induce the public to buy war bonds. The result was soaring consumer prices—up 18% in 1918—and artificially low borrowing costs.

By late 1919, the inflated structure of wartime prices began to sag. In early 1920, a worldwide depression got under way. In the United States, the governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Benjamin Strong, confided that “[w]e must deflate.” Up went interest rates and down plunged commodity prices. From May to December 1920, the Federal Reserve’s index of 12 commodity prices fell by 40%. Between July and December 1921, a price index of 10 crops plunged by 57%. Wages and consumer prices registered substantial, though less dramatic, declines. By mid-1921, America’s depression had bottomed and recovery begun. Prices stabilized, and deflation ended.

In 2013, central bankers the world over define deflation as a fall in prices, no matter what the cause. Many central banks, including the Federal Reserve, the Bank of Canada, the Reserve Bank of Australia and - as of January 2013, the Bank of Japan - “target” a rate of rise in prices of around 2%, and they fret that a rate of inflation of less than 2% will somehow lead to deflation. The merits of this approach to monetary policy can be endlessly argued, but the fact is that it’s something new under the sun.

Ο νεοναζισμός δεν είναι οι άλλοι

Το κτήνος που περιέχουμε μέσα μας

(Κείμενο του συνθέτη Μάνου Χατζιδάκι για το νεοναζισμό και τον εθνικισμό που έγραψε τον Φεβρουάριο του 1993, λίγους μήνες πριν τον θάνατό του, το οποίο  είχε δημοσιευτεί στο πρόγραμμα αντιναζιστικής συναυλίας που είχε δώσει η Ορχήστρα των Χρωμάτων με έργα Βάιλ, Λίστ και Μπάρτον)

Ο νεοναζισμός, ο φασισμός, ο ρατσισμός και κάθε αντικοινωνικό και αντιανθρώπινο φαινόμενο συμπεριφοράς δεν προέρχεται από ιδεολογία, δεν περιέχει ιδεολογία, δεν συνθέτει ιδεολογία. Είναι η μεγεθυμένη έκφραση-εκδήλωση του κτήνους που περιέχουμε μέσα μας χωρίς εμπόδιο στην ανάπτυξή του, όταν κοινωνικές ή πολιτικές συγκυρίες συντελούν, βοηθούν, ενυσχύουν τη βάρβαρη και αντιανθρώπινη παρουσία του.

Η μόνη αντιβίωση για την καταπολέμηση του κτήνους που περιέχουμε είναι η Παιδεία. Η αληθινή παιδεία και όχι η ανεύθυνη εκπαίδευση και η πληροφορία χωρίς κρίση και χωρίς ανήσυχη αμφισβητούμενη συμπερασματολογία. Αυτή η παιδεία που δεν εφησυχάζει ούτε δημιουργεί αυταρέσκεια στον σπουδάζοντα, αλλά πολλαπλασιάζει τα ερωτήματα και την ανασφάλεια. Όμως μια τέτοια παιδεία δεν ευνοείται από τις πολιτικές παρατάξεις και από όλες τις κυβερνήσεις, διότι κατασκευάζει ελεύθερους και ανυπότακτους πολίτες μη χρήσιμους για το ευτελές παιχνίδι των κομμάτων και της πολιτικής. Κι αποτελεί πολιτική «παράδοση» η πεποίθηση πως τα κτήνη, με κατάλληλη τακτική και αντιμετώπιση, καθοδηγούνται, τιθασεύονται.

Ενώ τα πουλιά… Για τα πουλιά, μόνον οι δολοφόνοι, οι άθλιοι κυνηγοί αρμόζουν, με τις «ευγενικές παντός έθνους παραδόσεις».

Κι είναι φορές που το κτήνος πολλαπλασιαζόμενο κάτω από συγκυρίες και με τη μορφή «λαϊκών αιτημάτων και διεκδικήσεων» σχηματίζει φαινόμενα λοιμώδους νόσου που προσβάλλει μεγάλες ανθρώπινες μάζες και επιβάλλει θανατηφόρες επιδημίες.

Πρόσφατη περίπτωση ο Β΄ Παγκόσμιος Πόλεμος. Μόνο που ο πόλεμος αυτός μας δημιούργησε για ένα διάστημα μιαν αρκετά μεγάλη πλάνη, μιαν ψευδαίσθηση. Πιστέψαμε όλοι μας πως σ’ αυτό τον πόλεμο η Δημοκρατία πολέμησε το φασισμό και τον νίκησε. Σκεφθείτε: η «Δημοκρατία», εμείς με τον Μεταξά κυβερνήτη και σύμμαχο τον Στάλιν, πολεμήσαμε το ναζισμό, σαν ιδεολογία άσχετη από μας τους ίδιους. Και τον… νικήσαμε. Τι ουτοπία και τι θράσος.

Αγνοώντας πως απαλλασσόμενοι από την ευθύνη του κτηνώδους μέρους του εαυτού μας και τοποθετώντας το σε μια άλλη εθνότητα υποταγμένη ολοκληρωτικά σ’ αυτό, δεν νικούσαμε κανένα φασισμό αλλά απλώς μιαν άλλη εθνότητα επικίνδυνη που επιθυμούσε να μας υποτάξει.

Ένας πόλεμος σαν τόσους άλλους από επικίνδυνους ανόητους σε άλλους ανόητους, περιστασιακά ακίνδυνους. Και φυσικά όλα τα περί «Ελευθερίας», «Δημοκρατίας», και «λίκνων πνευματικών και μη», για τις απαίδευτες στήλες των εφημερίδων και τους αφελείς αναγνώστες. Ποτέ δεν θα νικήσει η Ελευθερία, αφού τη στηρίζουν και τη μεταφέρουν άνθρωποι, που εννοούν να μεταβιβάζουν τις δικές τους ευθύνες στους άλλους.

(Κάτι σαν την ηθική των γερόντων χριστιανών. Το καλό και το κακό έξω από μας. Στον Χριστό και τον διάβολο. Κι ένας Θεός που συγχωρεί τις αδυναμίες μας εφόσον κι όταν τον θυμηθούμε μες στην ανευθυνότητα του βίου μας. Επιδιώκοντας πάντα να εξασφαλίσουμε τη μετά θάνατον εξακολουθητική παρουσία μας. Αδυνατώντας να συλλάβουμε την έννοια της απουσίας μας. Το ότι μπορεί να υπάρχει ο κόσμος δίχως εμάς και δίχως τον Καντιώτη τον Φλωρίνης).

Δεν θέλω να επεκταθώ. Φοβάμαι πως δεν έχω τα εφόδια για μια θεωρητική ανάπτυξη, ούτε την κατάλληλη γλώσσα για τις απαιτήσεις του όλου θέματος. Όμως το θέμα με καίει. Και πριν πολλά χρόνια επιχείρησα να το αποσαφηνίσω μέσα μου. Σήμερα ξέρω πως διέβλεπα με την ευαισθησία μου τις εξελίξεις και την επανεμφάνιση του τέρατος. Και δεν εννοούσα να συνηθίσω την ολοένα αυξανόμενη παρουσία του. Πάντα εννοώ να τρομάζω.

Ο νεοναζισμός δεν είναι οι άλλοι. Οι μισητοί δολοφόνοι, που βρίσκουν όμως κατανόηση από τις διωκτικές αρχές λόγω μιας περίεργης αλλά όχι και ανεξήγητης συγγενικής ομοιότητος. Που τους έχουν συνηθίσει οι αρχές και οι κυβερνήσεις σαν μια πολιτική προέκτασή τους ή σαν μια επιτρεπτή αντίθεση, δίχως ιδιαίτερη σημασία που να προκαλεί ανησυχία. (Τελευταία διάβασα πως στην Πάτρα, απέναντι στο αστυνομικό τμήμα άνοιξε τα γραφεία του ένα νεοναζιστικό κόμμα. Καμιά ανησυχία ούτε για τους φασίστες, ούτε για τους αστυνομικούς. Ούτε φυσικά για τους περιοίκους).

Ο εθνικισμός είναι κι αυτός νεοναζισμός. Τα κουρεμένα κεφάλια των στρατιωτών, έστω και παρά τη θέλησή τους, ευνοούν την έξοδο της σκέψης και της κρίσης, ώστε να υποτάσσονται και να γίνονται κατάλληλοι για την αποδοχή διαταγών και κατευθύνσεων προς κάποιο θάνατο. Δικόν τους ή των άλλων.

Η εμπειρία μου διδάσκει πως η αληθινή σκέψη, ο προβληματισμός οφείλει κάπου να σταματά. Δεν συμφέρει. Γι’ αυτό και σταματώ. Ο ερασιτεχνισμός μου στην επικέντρωση κι ανάπτυξη του θέματος κινδυνεύει να γίνει ευάλωτος από τους εχθρούς. Όμως οφείλω να διακηρύξω το πάθος μου για μια πραγματική κι απρόσκοπτη ανθρώπινη ελευθερία.

Ο φασισμός στις μέρες μας φανερώνεται με δυο μορφές. Ή προκλητικός, με το πρόσχημα αντιδράσεως σε πολιτικά ή κοινωνικά γεγονότα που δεν ευνοούν την περίπτωσή τους ή παθητικός μες στον οποίο κυριαρχεί ο φόβος για ό,τι συμβαίνει γύρω μας. Ανοχή και παθητικότητα λοιπόν. Κι έτσι εδραιώνεται η πρόκληση. Με την ανοχή των πολλών. Προτιμότερο αργός και σιωπηλός θάνατος από την αντίδραση του ζωντανού και ευαίσθητου οργανισμού που περιέχουμε.

Το φάντασμα του κτήνους παρουσιάζεται ιδιαιτέρως έντονα στους νέους. Εκεί επιδρά και το marketing. Η επιρροή από τα Μ.Μ.Ε. ενός τρόπου ζωής που ευνοεί το εμπόριο. Κι όπως η εμπορία ναρκωτικών ευνοεί τη διάδοσή τους στους νέους, έτσι και η μουσική, οι ιδέες, ο χορός και όσα σχετίζονται με τον τρόπο ζωής τους έχουν δημιουργήσει βιομηχανία και τεράστια κι αφάνταστα οικονομικά ενδιαφέρονται.

Και μη βρίσκοντας αντίσταση από μια στέρεη παιδεία όλα αυτά δημιουργούν ένα κατάλληλο έδαφος για να ανθίσει ο εγωκεντρισμός η εγωπάθεια, η κενότητα και φυσικά κάθε κτηνώδες ένστιχτο στο εσωτερικό τους. Προσέξτε το χορό τους με τις ομοιόμορφες στρατιωτικές κινήσεις, μακρά από κάθε διάθεση επαφής και επικοινωνίας. Το τραγούδι τους με τις συνθηματικές επαναλαμβανόμενες λέξεις, η απουσία του βιβλίου και της σκέψης από τη συμπεριφορά τους και ο στόχος για μια άνετη σταδιοδρομία κέρδους και εύκολης επιτυχίας.

Βιώνουμε μέρα με τη μέρα περισσότερο το τμήμα του εαυτού μας -που ή φοβάται ή δεν σκέφτεται, επιδιώκοντας όσο γίνεται περισσότερα οφέλη. Ώσπου να βρεθεί ο κατάλληλος «αρχηγός» που θα ηγηθεί αυτό το κατάπτυστο περιεχόμενό μας. Και τότε θα ‘ναι αργά για ν’ αντιδράσουμε.

Ο νεοναζισμός είμαστε εσείς κι εμείς - όπως στη γνωστή παράσταση του Πιραντέλο. Είμαστε εσείς, εμείς και τα παιδιά μας. Δεχόμαστε να ‘μαστε απάνθρωποι μπρος στους φορείς του AIDS, από άγνοια αλλά και τόσο «ανθρώπινοι» και συγκαταβατικοί μπροστά στα ανθρωποειδή ερπετά του φασισμού, πάλι από άγνοια, αλλά κι από φόβο κι από συνήθεια.

Και το Κακό ελλοχεύει χωρίς προφύλαξη, χωρίς ντροπή. Ο νεοναζισμός δεν είναι θεωρία, σκέψη και αναρχία. Είναι μια παράσταση. Εσείς κι εμείς. Και πρωταγωνιστεί ο Θάνατος. 

The Riddle of Schumpeter

Given the destructive consequences of the kind of economic philosophy he favored, Schumpeter is a thinker in need of re-evaluation

By Pedro Schwartz

I have been immersing myself in Joseph A. Schumpeter's History of Economic Analysis. My reason for re-reading this classical work was to find the answer to an enigma: why did Schumpeter call the object of his ambitious work "a history of analysis", when to an unprepared reader it seems to be a straightforward history of economic thought? Whoever looks at the matter covered will find so much more than analysis—page after mesmerizing page on the socio-political background, on the intellectual scenery, on developments in neighboring fields, all adorned with wistful reflections on the vanishing civilization of Europe of which he was such a distinguished product. What did Schumpeter mean by "economic analysis"? With this odd denomination, did he want to signify something important about the whole enterprise of economics? I now think that, in the anti-market atmosphere of the central years of the 20th century, this was the proclamation of contrarian principles rather than the mere affectation of a writer who loved to surprise.

I first studied Schumpeter's History at the behest of the great Lionel Robbins, who had just become my doctoral supervisor. My intention was to write a thesis on John Stuart Mill and I felt I needed to be well versed in economics before approaching Mill's work. Robbins told me to start by reading two books: Alfred Marshall's Principles of Economics1 and Schumpeter's History—two weeks for each, he said. It took me much longer than that! The two books set me on the path to becoming an economist but also left me with an ambivalent attitude to their two authors. Marshall made me impatient with his ploy of banishing difficult theoretical problems to the mathematical appendix, especially his crucial exposition of a general equilibrium model. Not for nothing did Joan Robinson call him "Marshall, the old fox". As to Schumpeter, I did not know what to make of his choice of heroes: François Quesnay extolled for his Tableau économique, Antoine Cournot placed above David Ricardo, Karl Marx presented as a better economist than Mill, Leon Walras portrayed as the giant above all others—and Adam Smith demoted to being a late mercantilist. Also, I was confused by his constant sniping at free trade. On the other hand, the broad canvas on which he painted his story I found beguiling. Let me leave Marshall for another day and concentrate my attention on 'Schumpeter, the seductive sphinx'.

Does the West Believe in Itself?

Man’s search for comfort and security always makes us vulnerable to the totalitarian temptation

By JR Nyquist

Toward the end of his book From Dawn to Decadence [1], Jacques Barzun noted that the popular culture of our time has not “suffered from inertia.” It is mobile and ever-changing, wrote Barzun “in proportion to its predicaments….” It is a culture driven by “paralysis in one domain” and “incompetence in many.” Science and technology have continued to advance while art and literature are suggestive of outright decline. Many observers are reluctant to use the word “decadence” to describe what has been happening to us since the middle of the last century. Such reluctance, said Barzun, is only natural. But if we look at the economic side of culture, considering the sphere of business, production, trade and the market, we will find many worrisome trends. For in the sphere of economics we can track stagnation objectively.

The economy is a part of a larger culture. When cultural decadence appears, economic trouble is not far behind. It is no wonder that the economic growth rates of Europe and America have tended to slow over the last century. Many parallel developments might be cited as partial causes, or corollaries, of economic slowing. Barzun copied out an “anonymous” analyst who held that, “After a time, estimated at a little over a century, the western mind was set upon by a blight: it was boredom.”

Taking up the theme, Diana West has characterized the essential corollary of this boredom in her book The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization [2]. According to West, 

“The world of sensation engulfs grown-up and child alike. And just as we have erased the boundaries that once defined the domain of traditional childhood, we have also erased the boundaries that once regulated the patterns of average adulthood. Such boundaries – long established according to religious commandments, the law, and related conventions of self-restraint – largely vanished from the courts and the culture by the end of the 1960s.”

A Double-Bind with no exit

The Fed will blow up the economy if it continues money-pumping, but it will choke off the fragile recovery if it cuts back its money-pumping

by Charles Hugh-Smith

The Federal Reserve is in a classic double-bind: as its policies to boost growth bear fruit, interest rates rise, threatening the very recovery the Fed has lavished trillions of dollars of quantitative easing (QE) to generate.

Higher growth naturally leads to higher interest rates, which then choke off growth.

The Fed's goal was a self-sustaining recovery, in which growth reaches "escape velocity," i.e. is strong enough to support higher interest rates.

But the pursuit of that goal via trillions of dollars of asset purchases has inflated asset bubbles in stocks and real estate.The Fed's goal was to push speculative and institutional money into risk assets such as stocks, generating a "wealth effect" that was supposed to spill over into the real economy via higher borrowing and spending.

The pursuit of "the wealth effect" via inflating asset bubbles has created another double-bind: now that markets have become dependent on Fed money and liquidity pumping, the Fed cannot reduce its QE money-pump (currently $1 trillion a year) without tipping the stock market into free-fall.

If the Fed continues its massive monetary easing programs, asset bubbles will only inflate to speculative extremes, to the point where violent bursting becomes a matter not of "if" but of "when." (This is also known as "the music stopping.")

If the Fed cuts back its money-pumping and asset purchases, interest rates will rise, as interest rates will seek a market level that isn't pushed to near-zero by the Fed's financial repression.

Higher rates will choke off tepid Fed-induced growth. We already see home refinancing rates plummeting to 2009 recessionary levels.

So the Fed risks blowing asset bubbles that will devastate the economy if it continues the QE pumping, but it risks killing the tepid recovery if it cuts back its pumping. Darned if you do, darned if you don't.

Put another way: if growth is needed to boost corporate sales and profits, but growth leads to higher interest rates and reduced central-bank suppport of markets, this is a double-bind with no exit.

David Stockman On 2008: "Hank Paulson's Folly: AIG Was Safe Enough to Fail" Part 1

America’s fantastic collective binging on debt, public and private, had no historical precedent

by David Stockman

A decisive tipping point in the evolution of American capitalism and democracy—the triumph of crony capitalism—took place on October 3, 2008. That was the day of the forced march approval on Capitol Hill of the $700 billion TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) bill to bail out Wall Street. This spasm of financial market intervention, including multi-trillion-dollar support lines provided to the big banks and financial companies by the Federal Reserve, was but the latest brick in the foundation of a fundamentally anti-capitalist régime known as “Too Big to Fail” (TBTF). It had been under construction for many decades, but now there was no turning back. The Wall Street bailouts of 2008 shattered what little remained of the old-time fiscal rules.

There was no longer any pretense that the free market should determine winners and losers and that tapping the public treasury requires proof of compelling societal benefit.Not when AAA-rated General Electric had been given $30 billion in taxpayer loans and guarantees to avoid taking modest losses on toxic assets it had foolishly funded with overnight borrowings that suddenly couldn’t be rolled over.

Even more improbably, Goldman Sachs had been handed $10 billion to save itself from alleged extinction. Yet it then swiveled on a dime and generated a $29 billion financial surplus—$16 billion in salary and bonuses on top of $13 billion in net income—for the year that began just three months later.

There is no such thing as a 'free lunch'

The world always proves to be more complex and refractory than the theories of even the best economists

By THEODORE DALRYMPLE

Thus, I could not but smile a little wanly when President Barack Obama said this week that he hoped an increase in the use of generic drugs, together with an expert commission to examine the cost-effectiveness of medical treatments, would make a significant impact on the vast budget deficit of the United States. We in Britain have been there and we have done that, and our health-care costs doubled, perhaps not as a result, but certainly at the same time.

The best that might be said for these measures is that the increase in health-care costs was lower than it might otherwise have been. That is certainly not enough to save a country from a financial apocalypse, or even enough to be a major contribution to its salvation.

In Britain we have been prescribing generics for years; I cannot remember a time when I personally did not. Our National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE, a typically Blairite acronym) has done cost-benefit analyses of drugs and procedures, often very sensibly, for years. But despite its best efforts, our system has been highly inventive in finding other ways of wasting immense quantities of public money.