Harvard Professor of History Niall Ferguson is often called upon for his urbane punditry on a wide array of issues. Frankly, I suspect much of that comes from the fact that Americans think posh British accents just sound inherently smarter. Ferguson is also conservative, which of course, makes him very attractive to traditional media suits. Criticizing Obama with an accent has so much more gravitas, doesn't it?

Unfortunately, as a historian, Ferguson sometimes likes to argue with what he calls "counterfactual history":

I think that's the key. It's not a matter of plucking imaginary scenarios out of the air. Virtual history -- and this is a very, very important point, which isn't understood by many people who dabble in "what if" questions -- is only legitimate if one can show that the alternative that you're discussing, the "what if" scenario you're discussing, was one that contemporaries seriously contemplated. In all the essays in the book Virtual History, the contributors were asked to make it absolutely clear what the evidence was for their alternative scenarios. After all, that's not difficult to do, because in the present, we don't know the future. We have plausible futures from which to choose. We make plans. We build scenarios. We do this in our everyday lives, because we've absolutely no idea what's coming a year from now. So it's not difficult to go back and find that in 1914 -- just to give that example again -- British politicians were imagining plausible scenarios, including non-intervention. That's how they made the decision. They set these scenarios out. They discussed them, and they opted for intervention because they saw a nightmare future of German domination of the continent.

That's the key point. You've got to look at the alternatives contemporaries considered. After all, if we are in the business, as Ranke said we should be, of capturing the past, "Viez aiglen les te vezen," as it actually or essentially was, that has to include the experience of decision-making, the experience of contemplating futures, including futures that never actually happened.

Right...it helps though--and you wouldn't think this would need to be explained to a Harvard professor--if you do have a basic grasp of the facts in the first place. But that's not going to bother Ferguson. He has published articles with half-truths and lacking basic fact-checking before.

Most conservatives are not big fans of Keynesian economics. Few take it to the level Ferguson opted to go this week at a conference for financial advisors, opting to take it to an ugly homophobic level:

Ferguson responded to a question about Keynes' famous philosophy of self-interest versus the economic philosophy of Edmund Burke, who believed there was a social contract among the living, as well as the dead. Ferguson asked the audience how many children Keynes had. He explained that Keynes had none because he was a homosexual and was married to a ballerina, with whom he likely talked of "poetry" rather than procreated. The audience went quiet at the remark. Some attendees later said they found the remarks offensive.

It gets worse.

Ferguson, who is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, and author of The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die, says it's only logical that Keynes would take this selfish worldview because he was an "effete" member of society. Apparently, in Ferguson's world, if you are gay or childless, you cannot care about future generations nor society.

Alrighty then. While it's true that Keynes did in fact have openly homosexual relations in and around the famed Bloombury Group, he also fell madly in love with Lydia Lopokova and married her. It was not a platonic arrangement as Lopokova did miscarry in 1927. He stayed with her until his death in 1946.

But moreover, his statement is just offensive on every level. So only straight people with children care about the future? The mind reels at the ugliness from which that stems. And Ferguson realized it quickly afterwards, issuing an unqualified apology:

My disagreements with Keynes’s economic philosophy have never had anything to do with his sexual orientation. It is simply false to suggest, as I did, that his approach to economic policy was inspired by any aspect of his personal life. As those who know me and my work are well aware, I detest all prejudice, sexual or otherwise.

My colleagues, students, and friends – straight and gay – have every right to be disappointed in me, as I am in myself. To them, and to everyone who heard my remarks at the conference or has read them since, I deeply and unreservedly apologize.

But sadly, here's the thing: this isn't the first time that Ferguson took a homophobic jab at Keynes, as Raw Story points out:

While Ferguson may be backing off the aspersions he cast at Keynes as a brief moment of public misspeech, economist Justin Wolfers pointed readers to this excerpt from Ferguson’s The Pity of War, in which takes a gratuitously homophobic swipe at Keynes, insinuating that the economist’s misgivings about World War I were traceable to the lack of anonymous gay sex in London.

Sigh. Would it be too much to hope that Harvard reconsider allowing this man to teach students? I know that there's nothing he could do to get taken off television.

What does it mean to be an American? What does it mean to be an American corporation? An article in the Wall Street Journal the other day should trigger questions like these.

WSJ: Domestic-Based Multinationals Hiring Overseas,

Multinational companies based in the U.S. boosted their global work forces in 2011 almost entirely by hiring workers overseas, underscoring the slow growth in the U.S. job market.

... The paltry hiring at home reflects where multinational companies are focusing their attention. Stronger economic growth in overseas markets in Asia and Latin America is driving their expansion, reinforcing their shift toward cheaper labor or closer access to customers.

The U.S. parents of multinational firms account for about one-fifth of total private U.S. employment. Since 1999, employment by U.S. multinationals is down by 1.1 million inside the U.S., while it is up by 3.8 million overseas.

The hiring by American companies is not happening in the U.S. At the same time these companies are holding $1.7 trillion of profits outside of the country, away from their own shareholders and our economy to avoid their taxes, while pushing to dramatically lower the taxes they pay us – and even to get out of paying any taxes at all on money they make outside of the country!

Why Do We Have Corporations?

Why do We the People even have laws that allow corporations and give them special benefits? The answer obviously is for our common benefit -- why else would we do it? The corporate form of a business enables the company to easily obtain capital from investors, in order to accomplish large-scale projects that benefit us. To encourage this we give these entities special privileges. For example, we limit liability which means the investors are not held liable for the actions of the company – they won't lose more than their investment if the company gets sued for some reason. We provide a system that helps them obtain financing, insurance, market liquidity and all kinds of things to help those investors get a good return on their money.

Benefit: We the People want railroads, but it takes a lot of money to build and operate a railroad. And our system wants private companies to do the work of building and operating railroads instead us just doing it ourselves. So we set up a way for a private company to gather investment from lots of people.

Why Do We Want "American" Corporations?

Why don't we just contract with any old corporation that comes along to get things done for us? Who cares what country these entities are from? Why should we as a country want to encourage and support our American corporations? Because American corporations make money for us. That is the whole point.

Other countries see themselves as countries, and compete with us as a country, for their benefit and the benefit of their people. As much as some of us might want a world in which we all cooperate and share and have "free trade" and other ideals and dreams, the fact is that other countries understand themselves as countries. Companies and industries located in other countries are operated to benefit their people. Their governments give them special benefits to help them compete with our companies. And then they are taxed so their country can have good schools and infrastructure and all the rest of the benefits of the modern world, for them.

And if we do not respond in kind, then their people end up better off at the expense of our people.

As long as other countries operate for the benefit of their people, it is our job to keep up our end of the bargain as it exists and operate as a country for the benefit of our people. This means that we support our companies, and expect them to bring the money they make back here, and share the returns with us.

We The People Used To Understand Who Is The Boss

We the People (used to) understand that these companies exist for our common benefit and (used to) expect certain things back from these corporations. We (used to) expect them to provide high-quality products and services and not engage in fraud and trickery. We (used to) expect them to provide a safe and fair work environment with good wages and benefits. We (used to) expect them to be good citizens that benefit the communities where they operate. And our laws and enforcement (used to) make sure they operated that way – for our common benefit.

Continue reading »

That's right, our old friend Pete Peterson. PRWatch, with all the gory details:

As the Center for Media and Democracy detailed in the online report, "The Peterson Pyramid," the Blackstone billionaire turned philanthropist has spent half a billion dollars to promote this chorus of calamity. Through the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, Peterson has funded practically every think tank and non-profit that works on deficit- and debt-related issues, including his latest astroturf supergroup, "Fix the Debt," which has set a July 4, 2013 deadline for securing an austerity budget.

Reinhart, described glowingly by the New York Times as "the most influential female economist in the world," was a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics founded, chaired, and funded by Peterson. Reinhart is listed as participating in many Peterson Institute events, such as their 2012 fiscal summit along with Paul Ryan, Alan Simpson, and Tim Geithner, and numerous other Peterson lectures and events available on YouTube. She is married to economist and author Vincent Reinhart, who does similar work for the American Enterprise Institute, also funded by the Peterson Foundation.

Who else funds AEI? Oh, I know! David and Charles Koch! They give millions to AEI each year, as does the DeVos family, and the rest of the billionaire cadre.

Kenneth Rogoff is listed on the Advisory Board of the Peterson Institute. The Peterson Institute bankrolledand published a 2011 Rogoff-Reinhart book-length collaboration, "A Decade of Debt," where the authors apparently used the same flawed data to reach many of the same conclusions and warn ominously of a "debt burden" stretching into 2017 that "will weigh heavily on the public policy agenda of numerous advanced economies and global financial markets for some time to come." (Note that not everyone associated with the Institute touts the Peterson party line.)

While all eyes have been fixed on Boston and West, Texas this week, Simpson and Bowles have been skulking around Congress trying to revive their austerity agenda with revised numbers for a 'deal'. Flushed with the realization that their primary foundation has washed away in a tidal wave of flawed scholarship, they're now resorting to saying it's just 'common sense' dictating the need to reduce spending. No deal, boys. Give it up.

Meanwhile, over on the Obamacare aisle, the Club for Growth has parted ways with Eric Cantor about including funding for pre-existing condition insurance pools in the budget because we just can't afford it, they say. Cantor is pimping it because he thinks it's an 'alternative' that could justify getting a repeal of Obamacare before the effective date in favor of these high-risk pools. Cantor and the Club for Growth can suck their shoes for all I care. Just leave Obamacare alone, boys.

The austerians are beginning to realize they've lost their footing in this debate. Time to step up and keep reinforcing the truth -- austerity harms the economy. It is no help at all to anyone other than possibly billionaires who want to have it all as the serfs grovel for their crumbs.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio gave a "Republican Response" to the President's State of the Union address. He said that taxes cause employers to reduce hours or lay people off. Others say that raising the minimum wage will mean layoffs. Let's take a closer look at that.

In Wednesday's post, What Do Republicans, Rubio And Rand Have If They Don’t Have Deficits? I focused on one line from Rubio's speech,

One line of Rubio’s stands out: “Because more government raises taxes on employers who then pass the costs on to their employees through fewer hours, lower pay and even layoffs.”

With this Rubio is trying to scare people who are worried about jobs. Business taxes are on profits. Good businesses employ the right number of people, so a company that is making profits isn’t going to reduce staff or hours. That is simply preposterous to anyone who has ever run a business.

I was in a local CVS store today. There weren't enough employees in the store, and there was a long line of people waiting to pay for items at the only checkout register. There was also a long line of people in line at the pharmacy. I saw a one person give up, leave their nearly-full carrier on a shelf, and just leave the store. I saw another person come in the door, take one look at the line and leave. I left without buying anything and went to a different store -- not a CVS, for what I was looking for.

Was this CVS "saving money" by employing fewer people? Or were they being "penny-wise and pound-foolish" and costing themselves business today as well as in the future?

How many times have you seen this happen at a business that is not employing enough people to "save money?? You are at a business, they don't have enough people working, and people give up and take their business somewhere else?

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (259)

PLAYS: (2454)

Embed

I hate the analogy that Lindsey Graham and his deficit-scold buddies use -- that America is moments away from becoming Greece if we don’t Fix The Debt © now. It’s good for fear mongering to destroy our social safety nets, but not much else. But after seeing the Internation Monetary Fund implore Great Britain to ease off its austerity program so their economy could heal, I had a little change of heart.

See, one of the only reasons why many countries in Europe have suffered so much after the financial collapse has been because, instead of turning towards Keynesian policies that Paul Krugman has begged for, they’ve embraced the Conservative principles that the UK’s Cameron touted. And that decision ushered in very painful austerity measures upon the people of their nations. The effects of those decisions has been a non-existent financial recovery to their economy and an accompanying nightmare to their population.

“The IMF has never been wildly enthusiastic about Osborne's tough austerity plan for the British economy and has been saying for at least a year that the Treasury should ease off if recovery falters. But up until now it has tended to avoid telling Osborne that his policy is failing.

No longer, it appears. "We said that if things look bad at the beginning of 2013 – which they do – then there should be a reassessment of fiscal policy", Blanchard said.

Fiscal policy involves changes to tax and public spending, and Blanchard noted that the chancellor has the perfect opportunity "to take stock and make adjustments" in the March budget, due in less than two months.”

So in a way, Graham is right -- only his formula is wrong. If we don’t want to become Greece (which can't happen, anyway), we should never, ever consider austerity measures or conservative principles. How quickly the world forgets that it was under a conservative George Bush presidency that the global economy collapsed. Why should we ever turn to his acolytes' beliefs to fix the problem now?

I got to thinking about the fact that the historic Stock Market Crash of 1929 took place two days before Halloween, ruining the holiday for millions.

The Crash was actually a two-day affair, with the market plunging 12.8% on October 28th, and another 11.7% the very next day, loosing nearly a quarter of its total value in just two days (today's equivalent of losing 3,200 points). With no safety-nets like the FDIC or Unemployment Insurance, the Middle Class was devastated as banks lost people's entire life savings in the stock market. Try to imagine, your bank "losing" all of your money, and not a damn thing you can do about it. What would you do? No job, no money, and no help on the way (until Roosevelt promised "a chicken in every pot" "a New Deal between the government and the American People" in 1932. [correction: actually, it was a 1932 GOP ad that promised everyone chicken.])

In the immediate aftermath, crime spiked (uncorroborated) just as it does every time people become desperate & easily irritable. Halloween became "Hell Night" as mischievous kids with no money and lots of time on their hands turned to acts of vandalism on Halloween.

By 1936, to curb this rise in mayhem among kids with nothing better to do, the Roosevelt Administration encoraged the creation of local events to provide activities for children and their families:

WPA posters of Halloween Skating Carnival in Central Park, 1936
 

By 1939, the rash of vandalism was no longer a common occurrence, giving birth to the term "Tricks or Treats" as an idle threat for neighbors that if they didn't provide candy... well... remember all than vandalism a few years back? (okay, it was "extortion"... but the cute kind.)

Under FDR, government stepped in and changed peoples' lives, not just the big stuff like protecting your money and providing jobs, but even expressing concern for families because back then, people understood that the future of our country depended on the future of our children.

A little thought to carry with you this holiday. Happy Halloween.

It's amazing what you catch when you're trying to detox from too much David Gregory. After Meet the Press ended, I was in the process of gathering my notes from the show of what clips we would highlight this Sunday and a local show called "Press:Here" came on, which looks at media issues centering around the San Francisco Bay Area. Anat Shenker-Osorio, an Oakland-based consultant, has written a book entitled "Don't Buy It: The Trouble with Talking Nonsense about the Economy" featuring my personal favorite bugaboo: framing issues. (I've had the book on my radar for a few weeks; I'll try to get Anat here for a chat in the near future)

Anat's thesis is that the way the media frames issues like the economy can unconsciously change the way we react to the news. When we speak of the economy as some sentient entity, capable of feelings and actions, we absolve ourselves of our collective responsibility as part of the economy. When we speak of unemployment rising and falling, we lose sight of the individuals affected by having their jobs taken from them or employers seeking out more people for more production. From a DKos book review by SusanG:

[A]s Shenker-Osorio discusses in her new book, Don't Buy It, she sees progressives make these same mistakes over and over and over again. In particular, the progressive messaging on the economy—especially the metaphors we adopt in discussing it—have contributed to a massive communication failure.

In a nutshell, when we insist on talking about the financial meltdown and its effects in terms of an unstoppable force of nature–like I just did with meltdown, in fact, or as many, many other well-intentioned liberals discuss it in terms of a crash, an earthquake, a "flood of bad mortgages," "the perfect storm" of circumstances—all these terms cry out that we must hunker down and pray instead of actively work for change.

Body metaphors are little better—an "unhealthy economy," a "sluggish recovery"—these too imply outside agency swooping in and destroying us, usually from within, like germs or cancer. But these scenarios are flatly wrong.

The economic crisis was neither an act of God nor a natural disaster, not an attack by microbes or internal organ breakdown. It was the result of choices—bad ones—made by specific human beings who benefitted from human-created policies at the expense of a majority of the population. And if our language does not reflect that this crisis is human-made, it follows that it cannot be human unmade either, which plays into the shrugging, no-fault stance of conservatives.

I've said again and again: He who frames the debate wins. It's time for us to take back the framing and help people understand the debate on progressive terms.

We're forgoing our regular weekly candidate chat this week to talk about another the choice voters have to make in November-- the choice between Austerity and Prosperity. Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney and Co. have brought back Voodoo Economics under a new, more respectable (in certain non-C&L circles) name: Austerity. Yeah, that thing failing miserably in every single European country that's ried it, including the U.K., which is currently experiencing a double dip recession. The alternative, Prosperity Economics, is what our candidates have been talking about all year.

Progressives are in an awkward position right now. It's pretty essential the our most important task is to help as many progressives as possible win seats in Congress. And we have to do what we can-- those of us in swing states-- to prevent Wall Street from imposing their anti-democracy ticket, Romney/Ryan, on the country. But after that we're still going to have to contend with a Barack Obama who doesn't quite live up to the progressive approach we need to move the country forward. In fact, certain people-- if you accept Romney's definition of "people"-- are already looking forward to a post-election "bipartisan" lame-duck session in which Obama and Boehner will sell out working families to Big Business. Over the weekend, the president did a major interview with AP's White House correspondent Ben Feller which sounds, on first glance, like some standard reelection stuff about how radical the GOP has become. But digging just a little deeper you find some scarier stuff than that... stuff about Washington's conservative consensus that threatens America almost as much as Romney/Ryan.

Obama's view of a different second-term dynamic in Washington, even if both he and House Republicans retain power, seems a stretch given the stalemated politics of a divided government. He said two changes-- the facts that "the American people will have voted," and that Republicans will no longer need to be focused on beating him-- could lead to better conditions for deal-making.

If Republicans are willing, Obama said, "I'm prepared to make a whole range of compromises" that could even rankle his own party. But he did not get specific.

Those last 6 words should chill you to the bone. Judging by actions he's taken in the past-- particularly in appointing Wall Street shills, from Rahm Emanuel, Tim Geithner and Larry Summers to Simpson/Bowles to key economic positions-- the kind of compromise the president is talking about leans very heavily towards thos same failed Austerity programs being pushed by Ryan and Romney and their Wall Street masters. It's the wrong way to go. And that's why that video of Jacob Hacker talking about Prosperity Economics is up top. I hope you watched it already. If not, please do so now. I'll wait; don't worry.

Obama didn't get specific... but he should-- and he should in exactly the way Professor Hacker has laid out, in the video and at the Prosperity Economics website. Short version:

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (517)

PLAYS: (3012)

Embed

Wow, who spiked Chris Matthew's coffee this morning? Tweety was in feisty form, and not taking any prisoners while discussing Obama's re-election chances with Chris Jansing and former Bush 43 Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto.

While generally agreeing that the direction the unemployment rate is going by October will either make or break his election chances, Matthews barreled over Fratto's talking points on the economy:

Matthews continued with a fiery admonition of President Obama’s reelection strategy thus far:

He’s got to be aggressive. He’s got to be big time. Stop this nickel and dime – a couple bucks for the teachers. A couple bucks for the firefighters. I’m going to reduce the payroll tax. This is pissant. You can’t get reelected with tactics. He needs a strategy. Which is, we’re different from the Republicans. They’re basically free-marketers who sit around and wait for business to deliver this country from hell. Business has let us down.

At this point, former Deputy Press Secretary to President George W. Bush, Tony Fratto, interjected and said that he says the American people want the public sector to take the lead on the economic recovery.

Matthews interrupted, “it has failed, and it keeps failing.” Matthews said that the private sector is conspicuously keeping money on the sidelines. Fratto retorted that the private sector will invest when they are certain there will be a return on that investment.

“Okay, here’s the idiot Republican argument,” said Matthews. “If you just give them a bigger tax cut than Bush gave them.”

Fratto responded that he was not talking about tax cuts, but Matthews continued to attack Fratto while he refined his thought. Matthews said that he should travel to Asia and take a look at their high speed rail trains, “while we have Amtrak.”

“I feel like I’m teaching first grade here,” Matthews continued. “Business and the Republican party are the same thing.”

“That’s crazy,” said Fratto.

“I don’t know how you can deny the obvious,” Matthews replied.

Seriously, Chris? They've been denying the obvious (as well as facts, science and empathy) for decades. Where've you been?

DOWNLOADS: (417)

PLAYS: (5646)

Embed

On Sunday's "This Week," Carly Fiorina feebly trotted out an old GOP canard: that the "highest corporate tax rate in the world" is to blame for our stubbornly-high unemployment. In fact, the effective tax US corporations pay is much lower than most industrial nations. This is how a corporation like GE paid effectively no taxes in 2010.

Well, Paul Krugman would have none of it.

FIORINA: ...I said there were three structural issues in the economy. One is small business. There are two others.

The rest of the world has also changed. And the two other structural problems in our economy are we now have the single highest business tax rate in the world. Guess what?

With the highest tax rate in the world, we see the same thing around the world that we see in states -- states with lower tax rates have more jobs, more people. People leave states with higher tax rates. The data is crystal clear. [...]

KRUGMAN: Just..

FIORINA: -- a robust recovery.

(CROSSTALK)

KRUGMAN: Nothing you said about business taxes is actually true.

FIORINA: Everything I said...

(CROSSTALK)

FIORINA: -- about business taxes...

KRUGMAN: -- we can have that discussion (INAUDIBLE) place...

FIORINA: -- is true.

KRUGMAN: But -- but it's not true. If you look at the actual tax collections...

FIORINA: This isn't an academic discussion. It's clear it's true.

KRUGMAN: If you look at the actual tax collections in the United States on business, they're lower than -- than other advanced countries. And if you look at the alleged finding that high business taxes cause job losses in states, it -- it goes away -- on even the kick the tires, even slightly and the whole thing falls apart. It's just not true.

Beautiful.

I really don't know why Republicans think they can get away with spouting falsehoods when Krugman's on the show, but I hope they keep doing it.