Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

This is the introductory paragraph of my 4 page op-ed on Star Wars for the New York Times. Star Wars, directed in 1983 by Steven Spielberg, is a black and white documentary set in the fields of Avalon in a post-industrial...

So Tracer, you're pretty convinced that we can grow our way out of any sovereign debt levels that were to become problematic?

if we can't we're screwed regardless

fuck the rich

As far as I'm concerned the US can be infinity dollars in debt and everything will be fine.

We could mint a platinum infinity dollars coin!

Sadly even if we paid our creditors our infinite debt with our infinity dollar coin we'd still have infinite debt. The good news is that if we keep the infinity dollar coin we can write infinite infinity dollar checks.

the only thing that can break this terrible cycle? infinite love.

//easter 2013
//praise

Somewhat more prosaically, debt is the other side of credit and credit is a form of trust. Dollars, in which our country's debts are measured, are largely composed of trust. The loud gnashing of teeth by the deficit doomsayers is a reflection of their own personal loss of trust, which they project upon the markets, thinking that if their trust is so radically compromised, the markets must surely be feeling the same way because markets are rational and must see how reasonable it is to mistrust the dollar.

As Krugman never tires of pointing out, this projection has proved to be a total delusion and the markets feel entirely different than the deficit doomsayers. This fact does not penetrate the doomsayers' minds, because the strength of their projection requires that the markets feel as they feel. If the markets do not now, then they soon must. There is no alternative scenario that the doomsayers can accept as true. Stockman is true to his type and his tribe in that.

The disaster is always in the imminent future, no matter how many imminent futures have come and gone without its arrival.

chicken little bullshit about the debt is just a way for the rich to make sure the cards stay stacked against everyone but their own kids, who they deal royal flushes generation after generation. same as it ever was

Political life without the doomsayers would be tragically boring and nothing would "get done".

I think there's a tendency to conflate "we won't default on our debt" with "everything will be fine." Obviously we can monetize our debt forever, but at SOME hypothetical point that would have SOME consequences.

not before jellyfish take over the earth I would think

How do we prevent the rich from stacking the cards?

big, powerful blower fans, iirc

if the debt rises at a rate that is less than wealth creation that is financed with such debt, why couldn't debt be monetized forever?

Political life without the doomsayers would be tragically boring and nothing would "get done".

― The Great Forgiver (dandydonweiner), Monday, April 1, 2013 3:08 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what exactly is "getting done" right now iyo

not much

Oh wait, it looks like there might be some federal gun control coming.

if the debt rises at a rate that is less than wealth creation that is financed with such debt, why couldn't debt be monetized forever?

― Philip Nunez, Monday, April 1, 2013 3:17 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not really sure what you are asking. Monetizing debt = increasing money supply to pay for debt. If "wealth" is rising faster than debt, you wouldn't really be monetizing debt, you'd be paying it off with the new "wealth" in your scenario, as I understand it. So far, what you're describing is not happening though.

x-post to dandy don
Nah, Republicans are blocking background checks now

i don't mean necessarily wealth in govt coffers, but wealth creation as a whole.

So Tracer, you're pretty convinced that we can grow our way out of any sovereign debt levels that were to become problematic?

i'm not an expert obv but I find Dean Baker convincing on the debt. Here's what he wrote a couple of weeks ago in response to a Steve Rattner column about the demographic "threat" to the federal balance sheet. He beats the same drum pretty regularly so apologies if you've read similar before:

We have seen an enormous upward redistribution of income over the last three decades. As a result most workers have seen little of the benefits of economic growth. If this upward redistribution continues, then our children are unlikely to see much of the gains of growth in the future.

Rather than have people focus on the policies that have led to this upward redistribution (trade policy, too big to fail banks, patent policy etc.), wealthy people like Rattner use their money and power to try to divert attention to the cost of Social Security and Medicare. They have thrown enormous resources into trying to scare people with the prospective burdens posed by these programs. For example, Rattner today tells us that with Social Security:

"The present value of the unfunded liability is 'only' $9 trillion."

Are you scared yet? After all, it's "only" $9 trillion. Didn't you love that sarcasm? Yes, $9 trillion is a lot of money, none of us will ever see that much money, even Bill Gates or Warren Buffet. But if we are having a serious discussion, we would talk about this as a share of future income. It's about 0.7 percent of future GDP. Does that scare you?

That's a bit less than half of the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq over the last decade, that's hardly trivial, but that expense would not impoverish our kids. Medicare and Medicaid are projected to cost more but that has nothing to do with the old stealing from the young, their higher costs are the result of doctors, drug companies, medical supply companies and other providers in the industry charging us two to three times as much as their counterparts in other wealthy countries. If we paid the same amount per person for our health care as people in other wealthy countries then we would be looking at long-term budget surpluses rather than deficits.

The reality is that the hit to future living standards from demographics is relatively modest. It is easily dwarfed by the gains from projected productivity growth even under very pessimistic assumptions. Even if productivity just grows at the same rate as it did in the slowdown era from 1973-1995 the gains from productivity growth through 2035 would be more than three times the potential hit that our children would face from supporting a larger population of retirees. And after 2035 productivity continues to grow, even as the demographics barely change.

But this story depends on our children being able to capture the gains of productivity growth rather than seeing them all go to the top. That requires a reversal of the policies of the last three decades. But rather than having people talk about the policies that are causing this massive upward redistribution, Rattner is trying to set children against their parents and grandparents. And the NYT is apparently happy to give him the space to do so.

good book

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/books/the-end-of-loser-liberalism

The debt is mostly owed TO OURSELVES. China owns 8 percent of the debt total. It's mostly owned by rich Americans that have been fucking the country over from the beginning and will continue fucking it over until the end.

But yeah, poor people want money and it's an ENTITLEMENT. This poor person feels ENTITLED to money. They don't really deserve it but they think they do.

If the poor deserved money, they would be rich. They are not rich, therefore they do not deserve money.

The debt is mostly owed TO OURSELVES. China owns 8 percent of the debt total. It's mostly owned by rich Americans that have been fucking the country over from the beginning and will continue fucking it over until the end.

― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, April 2, 2013 12:15 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the second sentence of this is not correct, the largest holders are (1) the Social Security Trust Fund, (2) the Fed, (3) China, and the rest of the list includes pensions, federal, governmental institutions, banks, insurance companies, and various other foreign governments besides China. But the fact that a lot of it is "owed to ourselves" doesn't really matter. The question is at what point the debt becomes unsustainable, i.e. people begin to doubt it will be repaid, demand higher interest rates, the government has trouble financing its activities, etc. Or alternatively, if we go the monetization route, at what point that requires so much expansion of the money supply that it creates dangerous inflation. Either of these things can happen, the debate is more about when, and when is the appropriate time to deal with it. Krugman et al say better to focus on getting the economy on track, and that greater economic activity will ultimately help reduce the debt.

inequality is the ultimate source of the debt. this extreme it's unsustainable in a market economy where we are our number one customers. it would be one thing if the oligarchs were competent and the *job creators* created a reasonable sufficiency of decent paying jobs. but they don't, and here we are. everyone should refuse to pay their bills at once and see how the kochs and coors and mellon-scaifes and waltons etc and their trust managers like it

The game’s been heavily stacked in favor of the wealthy ideologues, who seek to extract the most resources from this country while paying the least back. Only by challenging supply-side assumptions at their core can we hope to have politicians who will enact meaningful, strong reforms that might serve to prevent — or at least mitigate — another economic disaster like the last.

http://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/do_americans_still_not_get_reaganomics/

on that npr piece: https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/unfit-to-report/1fccea431e8d291b31731f8c86cf32a80b06c78c/

that looks like its a share from a paywall that'll go away soon, so here are some links from inside:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lennard-davis/npr-reporter-chana-joffew_b_2971443.html
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/planet-money-misses-the-boat-on-social-security-disability
http://mediamatters.org/research/2013/03/22/this-american-life-features-error-riddled-story/193215

http://observer.com/2012/08/adam-davidson-planet-money-media-ethics-08092012/
http://www.fair.org/blog/2012/08/17/at-npr-you-can-take-money-from-banks-just-dont-protest-them/
http://mediamatters.org/authors/hannah-groch-begley/188

piece had problems but the idea that it was due to NPR being paid off by banks is lol

the present is full of doom if the elites have turned your life to shit

yeah I've been following the kerfuffle over that piece. I had missed some of the more problematic statements in the planet money version that I think were absent from the TAL version (stuff along the lines of "SSI Disability is not achieving its mission and is failing" or whatever. That's bullshit. But I also think the reaction is missing a lot of the insights of the piece and reading stuff in that's not there (e.g. I didn't actually hear anything that suggested "moral turpitude" of the beneficiaries). I thought the point of the piece was largely that the economy has fucked these people and left them with little option other than to seek SSI disability, which seems to be exactly the point that people taking issue with the piece are also making. So IDGI.

i think the open question the piece left (tho it had a heavy bias) is if most ppl going on SSI were in fact disabled. It left itself open to the 'freeloaders off the guvment' interpretation, although there was obviously more interesting stuff going on.

https://www.nsfwcorp.com

?

well the bigger picture is 'in fact disabled' is not really a y/n thing

a constantly evolving interpretation of the word disabled is a very good thing in a country w/ no other long-term safety net for people under 62. it seems like it could evolve into a min guaranteed income over time. that's what I got out of the piece but you can very easily read the gd-freeloaders stuff in there. it was kinda all over the place, but def not a conspiracy by npr-funding banks.

i think heard all of the pm version, my thought at the time was that it did a not terrible job of pointing to a big structural problem, with a predictable, misleading side portion of disablility fraud. i wished it pointed out more explicitly that if all people had reliable healthcare coverage, much of the conflict between employment and disability qualification would be resolved.

the nsfw thing is interesting to know. i'm so used to finance's capture of journamalism everything, i just kind of -_- right by that shit.

I don't think the piece necessarily suggested it was fraud when people w/ no other options ended up on disability but if somebody wanted to read that into it, it wouldn't be hard

again tho the idea that finance 'captured journalism' here is just so lol, oh yeah ally bank has it out for people collecting disability

My first alert to the disabilities piece was the few right-wingers on my FB feed posting it, so I had an idea what to expect going in. But I thought the reporting was more fair and nuanced than the left-wing critics are making it out to be. I mean, it's the kind of piece where everybody's going to hear what they want to hear, but it did point out that for a lot of people, non-physical labor is not really an option. I'm including most service sector jobs in physical labor: standing on your feet, stocking shelves, running cash registers are all things that are hard to do with any kind of chronic physical condition. And it might not make anyone comfortable to note out that for a lot of families, getting a kid on disability is a way to get much-needed money, but it being uncomfortable doesn't make it untrue. (I am personally fine with people in need receiving assistance to help with their disabled kids, even if the disabilities are learning disabilities or whatever. But in any case, you can't have an honest discussion about it without acknowledging the incentives the system creates.)

i think the argt is more subtle, or at least there's a more subtle argt to be had w/r/t capture, which isn't about conspiracy theories or the like, but more about ongoing questionable deals w/r/t conflict-of-interest/disclosure/journos-too-close-to-topic stuff, and if there's an element where the consistently most ideologically libertarian segment on npr (which i guess this is, dunno?) happens to be the one solely funded by a single big bank, then it at least should be pointed out and make you go 'hmmm'.

financial reporting is one of the few forms of journalism left that actually make money (for proprietors, for journalists themselves) i.e. reuters' "normal" reporting is a loss-leader for their energy, bond, equity etc reporting; not too weird to think that shifts the agenda a little bit

it's Thompson Reuters now so it's probably all a loss leader for expensive legal compliance products like the one my dad edits.

you could also levy a variant of the journalistic capture stuff at sorkin at the times, for example, and certainly at nocera.

the article was written by this woman:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2009/05/who_am_i_and_where_did_i_come.html

I started in radio volunteering as a host and news writer at a outside Seattle. After that I spent several years of late nights learning from the generous people at , and NPR. I covered education, business and technology for Seattle's local stations and for and NPR. I also did a brief, really fascinating stint covering rural issues in central Washington state for the Northwest News Network

is it possible that she has been captured by banking interests? that her editors put stuff in because the piece wasn't right-wing enough? sure. I guess. I think it's more likely that she's a nice person who was just a little too ambitious w/ this, didn't even understand the extent that she was making a piece w/ any ideological bent and ended up w/ an article on a good subject but with an incoherent thesis.

I mean banks have more to gain from a huge underclass receiving disability checks than a huge underclass starving to death so it doesn't even make sense as a conspiracy

finance is a lot more than banks. ally is an interesting example in that it would seem gmac would have a different market bias. as i recall, they also suspended lobbying efforts for a while due to the federal bailout.

also, shit happening in the open while youre not really inclined or able to pay attention is not a conspiracy, really.