Charlie Rose

Gelles  04/03/2012 02:33 AM Report

It is Monday night, 10:30 pm Pacific DST, April 2, 2012. This Baker interview (or clip) covers the so called "it's the economy","it's the economy","it's the economy" -- a chant -- to remind us of the deflation all around us, and the losses and stress it is delivering to the poor and the middle class. Many of the rich are also in a bind -- but have enough wealth and money to avoid severe hurt others are experiencing.

This clip 12266 (from March 28) may be the best one to use -- because there does not appear to be a later page in April to which I can address the following comment.

..... I heard on TV today, 2 April, that what the global economy acutely needed was DEMAND-DRIVEN ECONOMIC GROWTH -- to escape deflation and depression -- as full employment and prosperity begin to take hold (at least in the imagination of activists who would pursue the goals of the Preamble, IF they possibly could.)

.

What the hell do we mean, by "DEMAND-DRIVEN ECONOMIC GROWTH"?

..... We mean to engineer DEMAND in the form of spending by government first, (and by others enabled to spend because government had broken the ice,) until deflation changes to mild inflation and full employment follows.

..... This is radically different from SUPPLY SIDE emphasis, that seeks profits for sellers more than jobs for people and food on their tables.

In fact we must have both demand and supply, (or supply and demand,) to offer 7 billion people reason for hope and confidence in their economic habits. But, "DEMAND-DRIVEN" tells us money in our purse is the "starter". While SUPPLY-DRIVEN would require the "common people" to borrow in order to buy. They would be exploited by advertising and credit that empowered banks and profiteers -- and would tend to make customers jobless over time.

I have been explaining this difficulty for years: the more we refuse to guarantee DEMAND the less we will be able to sustain SUPPLY. If we reverse our rule, and ignore DEMAND's essentiality, we may induce deflation: and if we follow our rule, we may induce inflation. The solution we must apply will be able to grow output all the time and grow the universe of well-heeled buyers at a perfect rate.

I'll come back again and again to this difficulty. At the moment I need a rest.

DonB41  04/02/2012 10:52 AM Report

James Baker did make some fine contributions to foreign policy, but his domestic record is less than what is widely claimed by Republicans:

1) The 1986 Tax Reform did strip out a lot of tax loopholes (expenditures) that deserved to go; but they (or equally bad ones) were returned to the tax code over the next 10 to 20 years. And the types of income that had been included in the Alternate Minimum Tax to ensure the biggest loopholes of the most rich were subject of taxation where changed so that they mainly affected the upper middle class instead. That is the major reason that the AMT has to be "adjusted" each year as inflation pushes more of the middle class income into the regions subject to the AMT.

And it is time that Republicans were totally disabused of their "Voodoo Supply Side" economics. A close look at GDP growth from the Reagan years through 2008 shows that the supply side economics DID NOT WORK. The performance during the high tax years 1950-1973 was hugely more beneficial to the whole population than anything since and the Clinton years did much better than the Reagan-Bush (G.H.W.) years. If Congress had cut spending as Baker says they "agreed to do," the economy probably would not have started its recovery even as soon as it did and G.H.W. Bush would have had an even harder time trying to say the economy was recovering in his race against Clinton.

DonB41  04/02/2012 10:38 AM Report

Bartholomew is so correct on Obama's approach to Simpson Bowles! There was a lot of good there but with it a real lot of bad, not allowing enough spending in the short run to get the unemployed back to work before they become permanently unemployable and so they can contribute to reducing the deficit.

Given that the FED is not going to let inflation rise to a level between 4% and 6% per Rogoff/Krugman (and others), raising taxes on capital gains would put some money in the Treasury to spend on infrastructure and other incentives for mitigating the impact of rising CO2 generation. This would produce more jobs than is produced by any project currently proposed for fossil fuels.

The government needs to INCREASE spending on Pell Grants, etc. and other approaches to reduce the debt overhang of graduating college students, particularly while unemployment is so high that many graduates are working at under $10/hour jobs. And people wonder why they are not getting married and starting independent households which might generate demand in housing?

Neal Degrasse Tyson has a book out on Space and the way it generates demand throughout the economy for education (to fill the STEM jobs that the future of this country will need) and the offshoots (development of computer algorithms to make use of the early fuzzy pictures from the Hubble Telescope by improving the image; those algorithms were later used to improve breast cancer detection). This cross-fertilization would certainly have been delayed if not for the need in the astronomy groups, where funding comes largely from the government. It was an approach that might not have been taken by those working in breast cancer detection.

As for medicine, the biggest shortage of doctors is in the general practitioner group and the incentives (pay structure) needs to change to encourage recent interns with a high debt load to choose that rather than high-paying specialties. This structure is currently set by a group in which general practitioners are underrepresented relative to specialists.

And a shout-out to galise for calling out Charlie's continual interruption of his guests with his interpretation of the answer the guest is giving but before it is finished. If the guest is inarticulate, this might be justified; but otherwise not until the guest has finished and maybe has left aspects of the issue in "expert fog." Another interviewer I find to be positive and encouraging to guests on both sides of the issue, while demonstrating his own expertise (and acknowledging inexpertise when it applies), is Chris Hayes on MSNBC's "UP with Chris Hayes" on Saturday and Sunday mornings, 8-10 a.m.

Bartholomew  03/31/2012 04:37 AM Report

The subject of the Simpson-Bowles budget proposal was raised, and Charlie alleged he did not understand why the president did not support it. If Obama had supported Simpson-Bowles, it wwould have the kiss of death. Nothing the president supported was going to pass. The only way to accomplish the Simpson-Bowles plan was, and is, to let the Republicans repeatedly prove themselves to be the hand-out kings to the rich, as Paul Ryan has again shown. and let them get beat up over and over again, until they realize it's their best last hope on their own, and then let them force it on him. It is Obama's finest strategy.

I'll talk about the issue later about how lowering taxes discourages job growth, because it discourages spending, and encourages profit taking.

Using the fifties as a model, government spending on legitimate governmental objectives like infrastructure, and scientific research (jobs at home), and education, coupled with a very high tax structure that encouraged re-investment instead of profit taking is the way to go.

One note about the education, I have no problems with the fact that India and China are doing well. But the fact that both countries train more engineers PER CAPITA than we do, means we are doomed to failure. We must invest in our future, but the investment must be based on policy, not the whims of teenage interest. The other problem with our healthcare system is that WE DO NOT train enough doctors. The proof of that fact is that we import so many. There is no reason why we can not train enough doctors to supply our health care system. Once again, countries that were third world not so long ago, train more doctors per capita than we do.

Education, infrastructure, and scientific research.

BetterWorld  03/29/2012 10:36 PM Report

Deficit during Reagan years was the tax cuts. Clinton brought it back through a tax increase to surplus plus the welfare reform. This interview is the weakest pandering performance I have ever witnessed of you Charlie. You let him lie right to your face and get away with it. You know I'm right. Why?

BetterWorld  03/29/2012 10:20 PM Report

Did he forget Truman's actions through the UN during the Korean conflict. Like "Desert Storm" was the first "police action" of that oft' maligned institution...Really?

galise  03/29/2012 11:18 AM Report

I found Charlie Rose's constant interruption extremely annoying. He was obviously trying to show off how much he knew. Maybe he should watch Brian Lamb to learn some humility.

winter  03/29/2012 10:26 AM Report

Iran says their nuclear program is for energy and we say its for WMD. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice ...?

Who really knows? The camera in the sky knows, then it goes to the department of "What we think the public should know and think." Ours is not the reason why? Why? Wonder what WikiLeaks has on this?

Baker is funny. "Deficit? What deficit? We had a throw money at the problem party and none of it trickled down.

Ruminated on like a true oligarch's friend. Gangsters.

Gelles  03/29/2012 04:40 AM Report

This was a high point for me among news and opinion interviews here. Baker is a champion among Americans who have influence and a legacy.

I am trying to come up with a strategy for Iran that does NOT include a preventive attack on their assets below ground. As, for instance, a MASSIVE non-lethal attack with dummy paper missiles that prove they are exposed to overwhelming defensive-offensive power as they continue to ruin our global determination to prevent a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

If such paper leaflets are followed by real death and destruction dealt out to Iranian innocents trapped at home by their leaders, such real war should be initiated by a grand coalition of democracies, not by a small one. That is what I'm thinking. A smaller coalition may not be effective -- it may only strengthen the regime we are trying to turn around.