Krugman on American healthcare and the unfair TeaParty movement

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Credibility, Chutzpah and Debt
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Publishedin the NY Times: August 7, 2011
Source

To understand the furor over the decision by Standard & Poor’s, the rating agency, to downgrade U.S. government debt, you have to hold in your mind two seemingly (but not actually) contradictory ideas. The first is that America is indeed no longer the stable, reliable country it once was. The second is that S.& P. itself has even lower credibility; it’s the last place anyone should turn for judgments about our nation’s prospects.

Let’s start with S.& P.’s lack of credibility. If there’s a single word that best describes the rating agency’s decision to downgrade America, it’s chutzpah — traditionally defined by the example of the young man who kills his parents, then pleads for mercy because he’s an orphan.

America’s large budget deficit is, after all, primarily the result of the economic slump that followed the 2008 financial crisis. And S.& P., along with its sister rating agencies, played a major role in causing that crisis, by giving AAA ratings to mortgage-backed assets that have since turned into toxic waste.

Nor did the bad judgment stop there. Notoriously, S.& P. gave Lehman Brothers, whose collapse triggered a global panic, an A rating right up to the month of its demise. And how did the rating agency react after this A-rated firm went bankrupt? By issuing a report denying that it had done anything wrong.

So these people are now pronouncing on the creditworthiness of the United States of America?

Wait, it gets better. Before downgrading U.S. debt, S.& P. sent a preliminary draft of its press release to the U.S. Treasury. Officials there quickly spotted a $2 trillion error in S.& P.’s calculations. And the error was the kind of thing any budget expert should have gotten right. After discussion, S.& P. conceded that it was wrong — and downgraded America anyway, after removing some of the economic analysis from its report.

As I’ll explain in a minute, such budget estimates shouldn’t be given much weight in any case. But the episode hardly inspires confidence in S.& P.’s judgment.

More broadly, the rating agencies have never given us any reason to take their judgments about national solvency seriously. It’s true that defaulting nations were generally downgraded before the event. But in such cases the rating agencies were just following the markets, which had already turned on these problem debtors.

And in those rare cases where rating agencies have downgraded countries that, like America now, still had the confidence of investors, they have consistently been wrong. Consider, in particular, the case of Japan, which S.& P. downgraded back in 2002. Well, nine years later Japan is still able to borrow freely and cheaply. As of Friday, in fact, the interest rate on Japanese 10-year bonds was just 1 percent.

So there is no reason to take Friday’s downgrade of America seriously. These are the last people whose judgment we should trust.

And yet America does have big problems.

These problems have very little to do with short-term or even medium-term budget arithmetic. The U.S. government is having no trouble borrowing to cover its current deficit. It’s true that we’re building up debt, on which we’ll eventually have to pay interest. But if you actually do the math, instead of intoning big numbers in your best Dr. Evil voice, you discover that even very large deficits over the next few years will have remarkably little impact on U.S. fiscal sustainability.

No, what makes America look unreliable isn’t budget math, it’s politics. And please, let’s not have the usual declarations that both sides are at fault. Our problems are almost entirely one-sided — specifically, they’re caused by the rise of an extremist right that is prepared to create repeated crises rather than give an inch on its demands.

The truth is that as far as the straight economics goes, America’s long-run fiscal problems shouldn’t be all that hard to fix. It’s true that an aging population and rising health care costs will, under current policies, push spending up faster than tax receipts. But the United States has far higher health costs than any other advanced country, and very low taxes by international standards. If we could move even part way toward international norms on both these fronts, our budget problems would be solved.

So why can’t we do that? Because we have a powerful political movement in this country that screamed “death panels” in the face of modest efforts to use Medicare funds more effectively, and preferred to risk financial catastrophe rather than agree to even a penny in additional revenues.

The real question facing America, even in purely fiscal terms, isn’t whether we’ll trim a trillion here or a trillion there from deficits. It is whether the extremists now blocking any kind of responsible policy can be defeated and marginalized.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on August 8, 2011, on page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: Credibility, Chutzpah And Debt.

McCain-RP election victory, world order, China and the Middle East

If, let's say, the McCain campaign managers buy Ron Paul's recent argument (that Washington policy makers have been behaving like drug addicts since 9/11) and McCain's campaign managers pick RP as McCain's running mate on Sept. 2, promising to abolish the IRS laced with revolutionary Founding Father rhetoric, McCain-Paul would definitely win the 08 election. And let's say that over the course of 4 years in office McCain does everything Ron Paul says in his revolutionary book, then there would be a very different world order. Ron Paul opposes all supranational government bodies, like the UN so McCain would evict the UN from their NY HQ.

This probably won't happen because the Republicans prolly won't pick RP to be McCain's running mate. I'm not making predictions here. I'm just speaking hypothetically. This is an outlandish possible scenario. I'm just theorizing...for kicks.

So with a true gold standard (with the Fed abolished) the prices of goods and services (including oil) traded internationally would stay the same for Americans. Inflation would effectively be abolished. Actually, that's a half truth. Oil would no longer increase in price, as long as OPEC doesn't overcharge. And goods like electronics like computers manufactured in Chinnese factories would stay the same, as long as China doesn't start setting unfair prices, they could, after all, because they have a monopoly in this industry, if you add together all the electronics manufacturers.

Additionally, w/o an American hegemonic order on the planet, there would be a political vacuum and political crisis in Iraq with US troops arriving home before the end of 2009. All military and financial aid to Israel would cease. All 700 military bases strategically placed around the globe would be disbanded. If this were the case, with total international anarchy, then China could do what ever it pleases, perhaps establishing its own order over the planet, an anti-humanist order at that. Let's say China invades the entire middle east starting in 2012, after McCain and RP do everything RP promises. China at this point would have a monopoly over oil resources, exploiting the political crises of the US withdrawal from Iraq. If this were the case (this is a pretty flippin outrageous scenario) ALL Middle Eastern Arabs and Muslims would be united against their new imperial oppressors, a spectacular challenge for the religion of Islam. The West's War on Terror problem would be solved because America would no longer be the target of Islamic fundamentalists. Cool, eh?

I'm probably overlooking all sorts of logical possibilities resulting from an unlikely revolutionary McCain-Ron Paul election victory. What do you think could happen after US hegemony?

Now let's say some of Alex Jones' conspiracy theories are true, (not the 9/11 inside job ones, the other ones about the NWO that are argued for in Jones' (2007) "End Game") and the CFR, the Bilderbergh Group and Trilateral Commission members are indeed planning an Asian Union (AU) and North American Union (NAU) cooperating with the Chinese business class in secret, outside the public eye. What follows from this? The world's Power Elite could pull off a NAU and AU, if there were a need for it, like an inflationary crisis which provoked the ignorant public to demand a solution, trusting their governments and expert economists. If this were the case (I could be wrong, but let's pretend I am right), the Power Elite's behaviour would be tyrannical, similar to the behavior of Hitler who exploited an economic crisis to gain support from the insecure Middle Class in Wiemar Germany. Mugabe in Zimbabwe has drawn the world's attention to his tyranny based on (in part) hyper inflation. Informed Ron Paul revolutionaries (a passionate bunch) are well aware of how tyranny works. Ron Paul essentially argued this point in the senate in mid of June of this year. RP argues that governments are known for exploiting economic crises to gain more power, a humble and useful lesson. Check it.

InfoWars is Alex Jones' really intense blog, so popular among young people that it gets more comments below each story than DailyKOS stories get. "We Are Change" is Jones' legion of dangerous revolutionary activists. I am not one of these activists, but I read InfoWars every day because I am fascinated by the anarchy and freedom of the internet. Without internet censorship, conspiracy theories flourish. I suppose if these conspiracy theorists get out of hand who, by getting violent in the streets, become a danger to the peaceful domestic order provided by the state in America, then maybe the state will have to intervene and start censoring the internet.

The Law of Attraction linked to the New World Order?

Here is a very rough draft of an essay I assembled. My influences are Rhonda Byrne's The Secret, New World Order conspiracy theories, Ron Paul's REVOLUTION, Antonio Gramsci and left wing activism. I put a lot of love into these ideas. If you like what you see, feel free to take some of it to create your own ideas. This essay is incomplete.

The best explanation of 9/11 comes with the law of attraction. Did innocent Yankees in the World Trade Centres attract the terrorist attack on 9/11? No. For their financial greed, America’s business elite attracted jealousy from Al Qaeda. The elite “co-created” 9/11 together with Al Qaeda. The world’s business elite are responsible for the killing of 3000 innocent Americans at the superpower’s economic financial heart. 9/11 is an example of a grave injustice. According to Canadian public intellectual Gwen Dyer, the Taliban since the 1980s increasingly became desperately resentful and jealous of the world's business elite. If it weren't for democracy, the world's business elite could impose a capitalist empire over the entire planet, similar to the way Kings of ancient Rome imposed their democratic empire all over Europe and the Middle East. Similarly, Al Qaeda wants to impose its own Islamic empire over the word. Unfortunately for Al Qaeda they are weak. So over time, they became extremely jealous. Al Qaeda was not jealous of the American middle class experience of freedom and prosperity. Al Qaeda were and are jealous of the power the world's elite have over the planet. In general, someone is mentally and spiritually unhealthy if greed, resentment and jealousy is their life experience. That kind of existence is called depression and it's not sustainable. That ugly combination has produced conflict and a “war on terror.” On the other hand, the experience of gratitude, hope and joy, the experience of the middle class, especially around the winter solstice, is healthy and produces peace and harmony.

Placing the blame on the business elite for being greedy or placing the blame on Al Qaeda for being jealous is really irrelevant for those who wish to create a peaceful world order. For believers in The Secret and the law of attraction who wish to achieve peace in the Middle East, focus on the teachings in The Moses Code.

Now, Al Qaeda is a select group of dangerously fanatical religious fundamentalists who believe in a radical ideology. The same is true about the world's ruthless business elite. The ruthless elite are a group dangerously fanatical about capitalist ideology. Will the middle class be crushed by the intense emotional battle between Al Qaeda and the elite?

Before I answer that question, first I answer: must the middle class be enlightened by The Secret teachings in order to succeed in ridding the world of war, anger, resentment, greed and jealousy? The middle class is already enlightened. We don't need to be told what the secret is, because we already know it. On the internet, according to Google, there is more, love, hope, happiness, joy and gratitude than there is fear, jealousy, greed, anger and resentment. We already think prosperous thoughts. We already know how to manifest our goals more or less successfully. This is true at least for the world's healthy middle class which has access the internet. If anything, the elite and Al Qaeda are about to be crushed by the middle class' overwhelmingly positive energy.

The world's middle class needs to continue its path along prosperity, freedom and humanism.

Since its inception, Homeland Security and the whole war on terror has only created more terrorism, according to leading professor of global peace studies at Bradford University in northern England, Paul Rogers. According to Reuters, Paul Rogers “described the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq as a "disastrous mistake" which had helped establish a "most valued jihadist combat training zone" for al Qaeda supporters.” Paul Rogers claims, "Going to war with Iran will make matters far worse, playing directly into the hands of extreme elements and adding greatly to the violence across the region. Whatever the problems with Iran, war should be avoided at all costs." Therefore the war against terrorism only perpetuates terrorism. The “war on terror" produces more terrorism. Byrne's success coaches teach this too. A better name for the ruthless elite's imperial ambitions is “war of terror”. The ruthless elite are losing the war of terror dismally because they don't have consent from the public. Donald Trump sums up the state of affairs in the US very concisely on CNN:



Assuming scarcity, jealousy creates greed and greed creates jealousy. Since 9/11 perhaps the elite have become more power hungry and greedy, while the same is true about Al Qaeda's jealousy.

The outrageous income of just the world’s top 691 billionaires in 2005 is spectacular. According to Lea Goldman and Luisa Kroll from Forbes magazine, “The collective net worth of the 691 billionaires we could find is $2.2 trillion, up $300 billion from the combined worth of the 587 people listed last year”( quoted from Goldman and Kroll's “The World's Richest People” in Forbes magazine, 3 October 2005). By comparison, the World Bank estimates that it would cost $600 Billion to feed and educate the world’s poor for 7 years. That is, according to page 47 of the World Banks' Millennium Development Goals, titled Agriculture and Achieving The Millennium Development Goals: Agriculture and Rural Development Department). By educating the world’s poor to read and write, the rich could simultaneously teach the world’s poor how to sustain themselves. Education is definitely a worthwhile cause. With this over abundance of wealth accumulated by the rich, the middle class in Ontario for example doesn’t need to sacrifice their warm showers nor their Christmas presents to eliminate world hunger. With this over abundance of wealth accumulated by the rich, the middle class in America for example doesn’t need to sacrifice their prosperity. The middle class is so spiritually healthy, so prosperous, we need not sacrifice our warm showers nor our Christmas presents to reduce world poverty. Heartless, the business elite are now trying to take away what the American people rely on for their prosperity: the economy. Greed is a vice. Prosperity is a virtue. It's now up to the Facebook/iPod/Google generation to dissolve this hateful war between the elite and Al Qaeda by asserting ourselves with love by sharing our prosperity and our happiness with all our neighbours and friends and especially our enemies. People who posses prosperity consciousness are protected by the universe’s spiritual energy forces, so the existing middle class in the West has nothing to fear.

END

Pretty neat eh? I came up with that argument in December 2007. It's incomplete, though. There is more. The following is extremely experimental which I may develop into a more coherent essay at a later date. If anyone reading this blog sees what they like from the following, feel free to borrow it and develop it yourself. You don't need to give me credit. Good luck:

Tangent:
(1) Speculate about Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, Gnosticism --> Spiritual foundation of the constitution using Graham Hancock and RObert Bauval's (2004) Talisman: Democracy is "the liberated great-grand-child of this Hermetic-Gnostic tradition."

(2) the important moral of the creation story in Genesis is that humans have free will, and therefore, the foundation of humanity's intelligence and language adventure is J S Millian negative liberty. Luckily, Millian liberalism is read into the US constituition.

(3) humans did for animals what god and the angels did for us: the angels granted humanity humanism. Millian utilitarianism and humanism is a spiritual doctrine, counter to the spiritual doctrine of Nazism. Nazism is a problem with the human soul. Nazism is a psychological and spiritual problem:

“Nazism can be explained only in terms of psychology, or rather in those of psychopathology. Hitler is looked upon as a madman or as a “neurotic,” and his followers as equally mad and mentally unbalanced…The sources of fascism are to be found in the human soul, not in economics.” (Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom, 1943: page 206)

Nazism is a spiritual problem. The spiritual is political. To Fromm, spontaneous creativity and artwork allowed in democracy provides safety. Creativity and democracy is a spiritual solution to the human condition.

Conclusion:

The US constitution is a spiritual document which haunts the greedy business elite night after night. The American public, since Bretton Woods, has developed a world view, a consciousness, which is exceptionally spiritually healthy. Their worldview is informed with revolutionary ideas of absolute political freedom and universal human and animal rights.

You know what song I listen to as I write this? Andy Hunter's “The Wonders of You” from The Matrix. Here is part of the song:



Now read my final conclusion:

The public’s worldview involves prosperity and an abundance of hope and love. Abundance out numbers scarcity on Google by a ratio of 4:1. Hope, love ,happiness and abundance is more powerful, so the spiritual consciousness of ordinary people will trump that of the consciousness of the business elite when the crisis happens before 2012. The public which assumes abundance is prepared to collide with the elite’s greedy ideology and agenda which assumes scarcity. The public, now a giant marauding bear with wings, is ready to squash Satan. [define Satan with JP2 quote from Walsch's What God Wants page 156] This is why I am so optimistic.

In an article titled, “Pentagon boosts 'media war' unit,” dated 31 October 2006, the BBC news reports that the war of ideas keeps Rumsfeld up at night.

The biggest sustained political demonstrations in world history will be spontaneous. It'll come out of nowhere, just like the amnesty protests by Hispanics in California in 2005 + 2006. Enlightened, all of us and especially young people will be conscious participants in a worldwide political demonstration and general strike made possible with the internet to defend the constitution. The answer to 1984 is 1776, as Alex Jones says in EndGame: Blueprint for Global Enslavement.

Thesis:

The public is enlightened, 9/11 was the test. Instead of riding the insecurities of nationalism into World War 3, the youth have chosen to ride the horse of spiritual energy forces: absolute freedom, justice and humanism, into the light.

I have a strong intuition that the illuminated elite at recent Bilderberg meetings and Trilateral Commission meetings are very divided. Half the elite want to greedily horde all the money for themselves, the other half want to enlighten humanity. The elite are in crisis mode and the world is ripe for revolution. RON PAUL REVOLUTION: Think "TeaParty07" and the fifth of November in 2007. Who is Ron Paul, how does he represent indigo children and the iPod Generation? Why is Ron Paul important? See my previos post. And here is me on Ron Paul's revolutionary economics. Oh and if interested, here is me on how creationism and intelligent design will be synthesized within the next 30 years by the indigo iPod generation.

MOVE OVER, 'cause here comes the Google generation:

END

This is, by the way, good to know:

As the credits role in The Secret, Esther Hicks says: “There is nothing you are supposed to do, only that which you want to do.” This quote can be ramified by a point made by Neale Donald Walsch on his blog. Walsch says that you are perfect just the way you are, “there is nothing you have to know, nothing you have to do, and nothing you have to be except exactly what you are knowing, doing, and being Right Now.” You don't have to do anything. Participation in the war of ideas or Anonymous protests are optional. Participate only if you choose.

Here is an aphorism that doesn't quite fit yet in the above essays:

The Universe manifests abundance at a mere thought, then why is there so much poverty, starvation and death? Does the law of attraction imply that all starving children in Africa have to do is “think prosperity”? The answer to that question is yes and no. First read Bob Proctor’s explanation for how rich people maintain their power:

It is not difficult…for children today, born into families of great wealth-like the Kennedy's or the Bronfman's-to think these prosperous thoughts and to have this prosperity consciousness, since that is the only type of thinking they were subjected to, right from birth. We say they have been conditioned in, or to, prosperity. However, the majority of people have not been born into that kind of an environment and so they were not surrounded by that type of thinking. (See Bob Procter's You Were Born Rich, p11)

Bob Proctor’s point about rich people maintaining prosperity consciousness is related to why starving children in Africa are stuck in what I call, “poverty consciousness.” Poor people maintain their adversity, not because they choose to, but because it’s probably excruciating difficult to think prosperity if you are always hungry. It’s not their fault they’re poor.

Here is another great aphorism that sorta belongs in the above essay, but doesn't fit very well:

Success guru Bob Proctor provides a concise social class analysis in The Secret. Bob Proctor asks, “Why do you think that one percent of the population earns around ninety six percent of all the money that's being earned? Do you think that's an accident? It's no accident! It's designed that way.” Who is “they”? Bob Proctor is referring to the business elite of course, “They understand something. They understand the secret. And you are being introduced to the secret.” Whatever special knowledge the business elite have, we are being introduced to it. From this, what can I infer about world order? Maybe the law of attraction was discovered by John Davison Rockefeller and Henry Ford in the early 1900s; and, in 1913, conspiring with Woodrow Wilson, the elite committed a discrete coup d'état, creating a central American bank, the Federal Reserve system (Zeitgeist, 2007).

“Give me control over a nation's currency and I care not who makes its laws.” Baron Rothschild

I’m guessing that Baron Rothschild is illuminated. Rockefeller, Rothschild, Ford, Warburg, Aldrich and other American elites in the early 1900s, perhaps, asked the universe for consent using hermetic abilities similar to the law of attraction.

more tags: Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, Gnosticism, nwo, capitalism, law of attraction, conspiracy theories, corruption, Demartini, social justice, bob proctor, anarchy, 9/11, world, us, the left, sustainable, taxes, the left, world, life, hitmen, globalization, future, emotions, empire, HOPE, ron paul, asdf, ronpaul2008, ronpaul