Monday, July 12, 2010

Being Capitalists

Here is an excellent-thought-provoking animated video on the "Crises of Capitalism."

23 comments:

septembermom said...

Now that would be an interesting way to present this topic to a college class. I know that I would be engaged in the discussion.

zorro said...

The mortgage tax deduction is interesting. Canada does not have it and they also have a much lower home ownership rate than we do - and their economy has done better that most during the crisis.
Also, there was an interesting piece on NPR's talk of the Nation on Tuesday. A study done at the University of Minnesota found that facts rarely change peoples political views. They found that facts that go against a person views tend to harden a persons point of view to what it was before presented with the fact.

JOHN O'LEARY said...

Hey Judith, did you ever see the classic Annie Leonard animated clip - "The Story of Stuff"? http://noolmusic.com/youtube_live/the_story_of_stuff_.php

She's got interesting animated clips on bottled water and cap & trade too, though the latter has been critiqued by some progressives.

zorro said...

Arthur Laffer, the brains behind Reaganomics gives his take on the Reagan economic miracle.
It was all Paul Volker. Tax cuts had nothing to do with it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt6T9tqFdSM

JOHN O'LEARY said...

It's interesting that Volker has come around to the position that banks should only take deposits and make loans. Who'da thunk?

Judith, if you're on vacation now, good for you. But if you're around I'd love to see you weigh in on the Shirley Sherrod fiasco!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/russell-simmons/re-hire-shirley-sherrod-i_b_653643.html

zorro said...

Two items from wiki about Volker


Volcker has been known to defy the stereotype of a Wall Street insider. A profile in The Week magazine for February 5, 2010, claimed that Volcker
doesn't even buy the conventional wisdom that "financial innovation" is necessary for a healthy economy. In fact, he likes to say, "the only useful banking innovation was the invention of the ATM."[24]


Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz said about him in an interview:
Paul Volcker, the previous Fed Chairman known for keeping inflation under control, was fired because the Reagan administration didn't believe he was an adequate de-regulator. .[9]



I'm convinced that the worst President we have ever had was Reagan. There was no Reagan Miracle - it was the Volker Miracle via Jimmy Carter. The economy is a wreck because we followed Reagan's deregulation off a cliff. The Sherrod case is symptom of the winking at racists begun with Reagan when he kicked off his Presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi in a park known to be used for KKK rallies. Today, with youtube and video cameras everywhere, that would have been a fatal campaign move. We are divided racially on purpose by people in power to keep us distracted from what is actually wrong.

zorro said...

Here is Bob Herbert with some more facts about Reagan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/opinion/13herbert.html

JOHN O'LEARY said...

You are singing to the choir, z! RR ranks as the most dangerous US President of the 20th century IMHO. He destroyed a nascent environmental movement, promoted a no-limits fossil-fuel energy policy, thwarted civil rights progress here and abroad (i.e. South Africa), supported every anti-Democratic junta in the Western Hemisphere, and wasted billions fighting a cold war against a decaying USSR. And of course he was the prime mover behind deregulation, for which we're now paying heavy costs on many fronts. At the moment I can't think of anything he did right.

zorro said...

The Laffer quote for me seals the point that there was no Reagan Economic Miracle. On NPR, they interviewed an author of a book about Reagan and the cold war. Before Reagan made his 'tear down this wall' speech, he had met with Gorby and Gorby had assured him that Eastern Europe was eventually going to be let go by the Soviets. When Gorby saw Reagan make the speech, he was confused because he saw no need for the speech. I bet Reagan did it because it was a good bet that the wall was coming down and he knew the clip would be played for all posterity.

JOHN O'LEARY said...

Or maybe Reagan forgot he spoke to Gorby. (I wish I was kidding.) Yeah, I think I heard that interview on NPR.

zorro said...

Have you seen the PBS documentary on Poppy Bush?
The debate that put Reagan on the map took place in New Hampshire where Reagan paid for the cost of the debate.
There were rules that both Bush and Reagan agreed on and Reagan changed the rules 24 hours before the debate. Bush couldn't back out without looking bad. During the debate, he broke the previously agreed upon rules and the moderator called him on it and turned off his microphone - Reagan yelled out 'sir, I'm paying for this microphone, so I demand you turn it back on.' This move won him the primary and onto the Presidency - and the documentary shows how the whole incident is almost a word for word recreation of a scene from a 1949 Spencer Tracy movie. I doubt Reagan forgot what he talked about with Gorby. He knew how to put on a performance.

JOHN O'LEARY said...

I haven't seen the PBS piece but I knew RR took the "I'm paying for this microphone" line from a movie. You may be right about his remembering his meeting with Gorby - but as time went on RR began losing it (remember the Iran-Contra scandal in 1986?) and by 1987 (when he made the "tear down that wall" speech) a lot of Washington insiders were worried about his mental clarity. But I'm not surprised that in the 1980 primary he was sharper. And he always remembered the really important things, like movie lines. :-)

Hey, I hate to beat on the guy. I think he was sincere and meant well but he was delusional on SO many things—from his concern about Armageddon (literally) occurring on his watch to his belief in the inherent supremacy of the white male American culture. Geez, I could write a book about it...

zorro said...

I'm sure Nixon meant well. Per Oliver Stone's pic, Nixon was upset/confused that the kids hated him so much. Even Cheney means well. For sure, W meant well. I wish RR wasn't so Teflon. It one of the things that give the conservatives so much credibility.

zorro said...

According to the NPR interview, Reagan had no strong feelings about nuclear annihilation until he saw the 1983 ABC miniseries The Day After. Until he saw a made for TV miniseries about Nuclear War, he had no idea how devastating a nuclear war would be. Too bad that back in the day, someone couldn't have made a miniseries about the negative effects of deregulation.

JOHN O'LEARY said...

Boy, that says it all, doesn't it? Reagan FINALLY gets it by watching a 3rd rate movie about nuclear devastation. Perhaps his handlers were working overtime trying to find famous movies for him to watch so he could grasp world issues.

Yeah, I tend to think of these political characters as well-meaning. I went to school with Bush Jr. and he hasn't changed much. Still a kid emotionally, living in a Disney World of Good vs. Evil. Cheney's more complex of course. I know a few folks (including a respected real estate attorney in the Boston area) who think they're all Illuminati - with reptilian bloodlines. (I'm not kidding.)

zorro said...

Stats about the shrinking middle class. http://tinyurl.com/26e7wx5

JOHN O'LEARY said...

Good article, z. These numbers jumped out at me: "83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people. 61 percent of Americans 'always or usually' live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007." If the Democrats run on this issue — that the GOP's laissez-faire economics has been gutting the middle class - maybe they can hold onto the House of Representatives.

JOHN O'LEARY said...

Just read a great piece by Chris Kelly in today's Huffington Post about the right wing news: "a universe where straight, rich white men are the only victims of anything, ever, and shrieking like an infant is their only defense; where Christianity and capitalism are in constant peril, where black lesbians and the very, very poor run everything and Iran has the Bomb and we don't." Whew!

zorro said...

Its scary the that people on the right believe what they do. The stuff that people like Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh push is no different in its level of extremism then the idea that Bush orchestrated 911. The difference with the Becks and the Limbaughs is although they are extreme, they are accepted by millions of people. These guys make millions from their views.

JOHN O'LEARY said...

Yup, people forget the business side of talk radio/Fox news. They're absolutely cleaning up. It incentivizes a thuggish approach to news reporting.

Hey the 911 Truth stuff is out of control in my neck of the woods. I'll go to a party in Cambridge and realized I'm the ONLY guy in the room who believes Al-Qaeda is behind 911. As I may have said on these pages, a prominent real estate attorney here emails everyone about the Illuminati (with reptilian bloodlines) who are running the country. You can't make this stuff up.

zorro said...

They used to say the Alabama was where everyone thought the moon landing was fake and wrestling was real. The implication was everyone in Alabama was a moron. The problem today is highly intelligent people believe complete BS. From 911 conspiracy theories on the left to the birthers on the right. These people have simply decided to live in their own reality. Cable news encourages it. Fox of course, but MSNBC leaves out details when they want to make a point. To them supporting a certain narrative is more important than the truth. But then, it all over the place. The current Atlantic Magazine has a headline 'The End of Men'. Its all about how men don't have the tools to do well in the new economy (whatever that is these days). They cite an academic article as a source of their data - I found that journal article and it shows that companies with women in senior management are better at innovation - but it completely ignores the same article's research that finds women at the CEO have a negative effect on company performance. I'm not trying to win a battle of the sexes here - but I am tired of popular non-fiction and popular magazine articles that need a compelling story to get published and will use data in such a way that the narrative gets supported even if it ignores the truth.

JOHN O'LEARY said...

The problem of course with "highly intelligent people" believing "total BS from 911 conspiracy theories on the left to birthers on the right" is its displacement of serious discussions on REAL threats.

For instance, even a news junkie like myself missed the fact (until today) that the first five months of this year were the warmest on record going back to 1880 and May was the hottest month ever. Not that this proves anthropogenic global warming, but it should be on the front pages.

zorro said...

An interesting article.

http://tinyurl.com/2fq697p