A disconcerting voice of discord on Obama's bail out policies
During difficult moments it isn’t easy to go against the grain. That’s applies for what happens in the bedroom as well as what happens in places like Washington D.C. Not long ago you would have been something of a freak if you suggested that there was something wrong about President George Bush’s ultra conservative notions, the god-like position given to "free market economics." But then all of a sudden things began to fall apart, the ship seemed to have run into an iceberg, and liberal economic thinking was taken out of the den as a sort of last minute life vest.
Liberal to a certain extent, because if you take a hard look at the people President Barack Obama has embraced to bring the ship afloat, you conclude that the promises of change are being edited by seasoned establishment figures more interested in patching up than rocking the boat. Anyway, in economics as well as in politics, not to speak of religion, the important point is belief. And the millions of dollars being pumped into the economy, the churning of the printing presses, certainly seem to augur a happy end to the crisis. So why not look at the bright side of things instead of barking and balking?
One of the barking voices is a man called Paul Krugman, the economist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics last year. As a sign of the times he has also become a blogger, and his numerous articles in the New York Times and elsewhere have brought a bit of clouds to what seemed to be a fairly clear and sunny day form establishment liberal thinking.
The White House anti-crisis plan involves a super-dupper package of some $800 billion and a bail out of a billion for the financial sector, and for anyone those figures seem to be beyond imagination’s power of deduction. Yet Krugman insists that the amount of money being injected into the patient is far too little to prevent a deepening of the crisis, more unemployment, etc. The error, says Krugman, is to suppose that the main U.S. banks continue to be solid and just need a bit of back patting. After all, wasn’t that what President Bush said about the U.S. economic when it began to groan: that the economy was basically solid?
Well, there are lots of people around the world who are not economists, not even politicians, who also wonder whether the multi-million dollar first aid treatment will work. For example: how many people--even those living in the world’s slums--have dollars hidden under their matresses? Uuuups! They hide their dollars thinking they are like jewels, that they will always be worth a lot. What if they were to suddenly cease to believe in the purchasing power of those dollars?
It is no discovery that economic and political systems are based on belief...for that reason, perhaps, those who invented the dollar also invented a phrase: "in God we trust." Still...one cannot help asking disturbing questions. Can an economy that is (like it or not) increasinly global continue to rely on the dollar? What if groups of countries were to leave the dollar aside for some other unit for doing trade? What if the system of "swaps" or dedollarization inaugurated by China were to catch on?
If Krugman is right, how many more dollars must be rushed off the printing presses to bring back prosperity? How will they be paid back? By more consumer society buying sprees? What might that mean at a time when the world is also concerned about its backyard, about the warming up of the planet, dry spells, the scarcity of water, disappearing forests...
Is there no limit to the amount of debt the U.S. can stack up? In any other country in the world such multi-digit indeptedness would bring on furious outcries from the IMF and practically every other existing financial institution. There is of course one key fact: the U.S. continues to be the world’s dominant political and economic power, a power based on belief in the benefits of the economic motor which drives it. That's why people in power get a bit nervous when someone comes along to suggest that maybe we shouldn't believe everything we read or hear or are told in school.
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aldescubierto -
gracias por recibir este email es una colaboracion periodistica.Priori luz verde .Estado abierta:Para su publicacion un saludo cordial .Derechos Humanos
Aldescubierto
miércoles 8 de abril de 2009
Finalmente, el caso de Madeleine McCann comienza - Windows Live
Finalmente, el caso de Madeleine McCann comienza - Windows Live
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