So, when someone holds the President accountable for a host of American objectives and forces which are beyond his office, the conflation into America the monolithic is complete. But I see things such as the Big Oil, Big Pharma, the Military Industrial Complex, Big Money, as being transnational in scope. The Presidency of the USA is rather diminished given that globalist outlook. One can be a cheerleader (Bush) for these entities or one can resist them (Obama) but in the end, they still hold sway. So when the USA is written off because so many of these transnational structures dominate the world from a USA base, the attitude invariably only strengthens these entities by installing cheerleaders.
Robert Gates, by all means part of that complex, is at work hacking away at the big military industrial projects that were set in motion by Bush. Defense shields, advanced fighter planes, missile systems, etc. This constitutes resistance. Having tea with Russia and making agreements also constitutes such resistance.
In the end, the question is, how important is this resistance to the military industrial complex?
I would say it's very important.
And this is why Europeans would be better off looking at what they have in common with the interests of average Americans--as represented by leaders like Obama--than with dismissing America totally so that the elite transnational entities can fill that vacuum.
Since the biggest obstacle to progress on those fronts is the rampant deficit errorism in Europe. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
Since the biggest obstacle to progress on those fronts is the rampant deficit errorism in Europe.
The bigger issue is the shift to the Right in Europe which facilitates neo-classical economics, militarism, and a lack of social/environmental investment. Unfortunately the greater the economic crisis - even when caused by the Right - often leads to a flight to the Right in the belief that adopting corporate friendly policies supports jobs and recovery.
We don't have quite the ideological opposition to state investment in the economy as in the US, but sadly a shift in that direction corresponds with an unprecedented opportunity to strengthen state and global institutions and regulation in cooperation with Obama. The Times cheer leads the deterioration of US EU cooperation precisely to head off such "socialist" cooperative policies. Index of Frank's Diaries
I don't think that's where Obama is coming from, even though he has reportedly done some weird things to brace old ideas about free capitalism since in office.
That is another ugly reality which Obama appears unwilling to confront. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
But then Bush-Cheney came on the scene with tax relief for the wealthy, a lowering of the capital gains/dividend tax to 15%, on the belief that the deficits which it caused, doesn't matter. Wealth and income inequality of course increased even more. In 2000, an NYU study showed that the top 10% of families in the US owned 85% of the stock market and 90% of all business assets. As a right wing pro-wealth free-market Republican, Bush knew what he was doing.
At present most of the money being spent by the US Government is either going to the military or to the financial sectors, both of which are black holes for wealth. Staving off financial collapse via current means only increased wealth disparity. In response to crisis the US is squandering its resources by incurring ever increasing debt for socially harmful purposes. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
Clinton was able to bypass this period through reasonable taxes on capital gains/dividends and was able to build a surplus, even though it never began to chip away at the national debt.
The thousand pound gorilla in that room is the current accounts deficit, though. Because it means that the sovereign surplus during the Clinton years was essentially made up of fake money - Clinton restored the sovereign cash flow to surplus, but he did nothing to confront the structural trade deficit, which meant that the sovereign surplus could only continue as long as the private sector ran a net deficit. That is, as long as asset prices increased fast enough to cover the increased borrowing to finance the private sector's deficit spending. Which, translated from econospeak to English, means only as long as the bubble was still inflating.
Now, don't get me wrong - the phony wealth was generated in the private sector, and it was entirely appropriate of Clinton to make sure that as much of that phony wealth as possible went towards reducing the sovereign's obligations to bondholders. But to look only at the Clinton-era sovereign surpluses is to miss the real story of the US economy in the '90s. And on the underlying issue of structural import dependency and de-industrialisation, Clinton barely even slowed the trend.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
it reinforces my belief that europe's lack of enthusiasm for american wars, and its slowness to respond to america's taunts that it can't defend itself are positive traits the usa is behind on, and the latter is bait to be not bit into.
let them taunt, it just makes them look like overadrenalised bullies. ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
From this side of the ocean, we're already wondering what would happen if the Republicans win the next presidential election. The current cast of GOP characters makes George W. Bush look like a good ole boy, rather than the malevolent creep he really was.
