I want to close by noting that I actually agree with you that it’s probably not the best of ideas to move most of the U.S.’s manufacturing base to the PRC. But that ship has long since sailed, and, much as I’d like it to be able to, Obama’s winning smile isn’t going to change that.

When your empire ends, you have to have an exit plan (besides going nuts and subsequently invading foreign countries). Throwing the people in steerage into the water and taking off on your capital-flow lifeboats is not exactly the ideal solution for most.

A lot of political economy people describe the thirty years or so as an extended crisis in capitalism. E.g. Robert Brenner says it’s the result of overcapacity of manufacturing. For which only stopgaps have been offered like extending massive amounts of credit thgrough low interest rates and mortgages and other things so people can go into debt buying things and sustaining the economy. Of course, one might suggest actually allowing wages to rise or simply providing people with money or otherwise creating demand rather than supply, but that would have been way unfashinoable from 1980-2008.

In any case, although Obama’s winning smile or Hillary’s unwilling one might not change anything, they’re at minimum close to being grown-ups about how to run an empire (though I’m fairly suspicious of Baby Boombers, but she does sound like she knows what she’s talking about and if she ditched her asshat husband, I might support her).

Whether anyone should be in a position to run an empire is an entirely different question ;)

In the first place, I wonder about your assertions that the popped bubbles are getting worse and worse. Neither the 1990-2 recession nor the 2001-3 recessions were anywhere near as traumatic as the 1982 one.

As for “lifting one’s eyes from the spreadsheets,” I recall that, in general, from about 1998 to late 2001 getting a decent-paying job was simply a manner of saying, “I want to get a job.” Inflation was low and jobs that paid well were fairly plentiful–entry-level burger flippers were starting at $8.00 an hour. Why don’t you think that with Clinton-esque fiscal and regulatory policy, the employment situation of 1994-2001 would be the norm?

I want to close by noting that I actually agree with you that it’s probably not the best of ideas to move most of the U.S.’s manufacturing base to the PRC. But that ship has long since sailed, and, much as I’d like it to be able to, Obama’s winning smile isn’t going to change that.

Let me say I take well the criticism that I am of a kind with those I tried to pillory; consider though, that I at least am kind enough to use a nom de plume, which while not an outright admission, at least shows some cognizance of multiple=personality-disorder.

As for elegaic narratives, and “They,” and “Shadows”, I usually try to name names, though sometimes I fall into rhetorical vagueries, admittedly. I also try to take the long view, and I think Nixon’s economic shenanigans in the early 1970′s, brought on by European mutterings about an American inability to back up Bretton Woods promises with gold reserves, began a series of decade long speculative financial bubbles, accelerated by globalization, that get worse each time they pop. 1980′s=cheap corporate debt, 1990′s=IPO stock written on charmin+globalized accounting techniques like SIVs, 2000′s=real estate & RE backed securites, and God knows what’s next.

There are respites for those of us who work with our brains and not our backs, while the bubbles inflate, but the decade to decade story is clear to me. There comes a reckoning, a day-after-the-party. Here in Ohio, we’re in that now. It’s not pretty.

From where Rubin sits, and in the company Rubin keeps, globalization and the post-Bretton Woods era seems great. Manhattan is an island, no? But if you lift your eyes from the spreadsheets, and stop thinking of growth and benefits from a human perspective instead of a corporate one, the view get ugly fast.

Wall street will out, I’m sure. So I don’t follow the Dow to gauge economic health. I look to the Bankruptcy courts, where I practice, and watch common people struggle under a new law written by Rubin’s pals at Citigroup, which keeps credit card company profits safe while permitting Multinationals to bail on pension and health care responsibilities so they can compete with China in Rubin’s vaunted Earth-wide economic melee. They’re coming in droves, with dilapidated 401(k)’s and second mortgages that never should’ve been approved. Fired by GM, sucker punched by Rubin’s Citigroup, they’re reduced to paupers and told to feel shame for having shirked their responsibilities to usury.

Me: a former conservative, and shards of those bones remain. I believe, mostly, in a free market, but lack of fair regulation, transparency, common sense and public economic literacy has turned our market into something resembling a corporate kakistocracy–do you really have choice what you buy and who from? Where’s your lobby in Congress against telecom immunity, or to grant special patent suit immunity, as with check scanners? Congress seems to grant me and mine nothing but liabilities, or cheap $600 bribes, which I gladly take.

It’s hip to pretend anyone who questions this global order is misinformed or uninformed, or maybe even a “conspiracy theorist.” It’s comforting, a little ennobling, but a little tired. It smacks of apology, and things are getting squirrely enough that few excuses I can think of will do, and most of those were suggested by the front page of the sorely missed Weekly World News.

The time comes when you put good evidence against shocking claims, and maybe they line up pretty nicely. I could be quite wrong, but I feel pretty good about calling bullshit on the current system. 40 years seems long enough, if you want put a life span on bad ideas and bad practice. At any rate, there are bad people with bad ideas galavanting about, Andrew R., as loathe as we are in this pomo world to admit that. And Rubin is one of them.

Yet I’m willing to be convinced, despite what I know of his record. I’d also like to see your more optimistic rendering of the major economic and political events of the past half century. You have the floor, and for my part the last word.

You’re hauntingly elegaic narratives of the decline of America are really part and parcel of the same such treatment provided by folks like O’Reilly. It’s more emotionally satisfying to write that They are lurking in the shadows, destroying all that we hold dear for their own vile motives, but all that emotional satisfaction that such a narrative brings pales in effectiveness in comparison to supplying a good helping of Robert Rubin.

…while implementing American forces in Pakistan.

on a similar note, i got tipped to this via chain email. don’t forget, indeed.

I’m somewhat new to your blog, by the way. I’ve been reading for a few months but this is my first time commenting. This is one of the best blogs I’ve stumbled upon in awhile – great stuff. :)