Charlie Rose

doodah  07/08/2011 11:27 AM Report

... Bankers vs. Bums.?. That is the question.

They are rebalancing the equation. If their greed blinds their intellect, they shall perish Too.

doodah  07/08/2011 09:15 AM Report

... the million dollar answer is in No Way, stuffing the pockets of bums with Monopoly money (MonetareKeynesianism); No Way that will sustain. And is just as Foolish as a Gold Crutch (a crutch made of gold). ..hmmmm

doodah  07/08/2011 07:40 AM Report

"Something's going to have to be figured out, or this Reality that you mentioned Will quite frankly lead to a condition known as 'Armageddon'. And when it manifests, All the Money in the world that the privileged FEW have in their bank accounts won't do them an ounce of good. by then it will be to late for all of us all (non-believers AND believers) as the heavy hand of humanity flushes the toilet to oblivion." - Alan Greenspan (distinguished former Chairman of the Federal Deserve)

JohnGelles  07/07/2011 11:29 PM Report

We need a popularization of economics that may be called "THE GENERAL THEORY OF WORK, MONEY, SUPPLY, DEMAND AND TAXES."

In it we need to broadcast the economic rights to work and income that are possible today -- possibly for the first time since trade replaced farming as the employer of most people.

It should be an open source code book that puts in simple declarative sentences rules to guarantee jobs, income and rational outcomes wherever possible.

Because it's open, it would invite constant improvement. Because it's brief, and invites pluralism not dogmatism, it will be possible to correct it till it works.

JohnGelles  07/07/2011 02:49 AM Report

In the "News" they say the President may issue an Executive Order to honor the national debt with money borrowed, earned or acquired by lawful means.

This (or even the hint of it) may create the money to create the jobs the nation is waiting for. The man who shoots as straight as the President now in office, ought to take aim at Lincoln's courage and his nerve. The path is open to the American future more glorious than the past. Everything he needs to take that path is open in plain sight.

robdverity  07/05/2011 05:16 PM Report

Gelles prediction vs mine.

The debt ceiling will not be raised. We are already a banana Repub.

Obama's calculus: USA default = O's reelection.

JohnGelles  07/05/2011 03:57 PM Report

PRESCRIPTION: a FULL EMPLOYMENT BUDGET financed by fiat debt free money and fractional reserve bank loans and stocks and public offerings. Also by ending direct taxation of wages and profits -- using instead, new money and high inflation protected middle class savings. Teaching that money can be created in quantities limited only by a balanced quantity of the things that money must buy.

..... In other words money is created when output is produced. But currency or deposits must actually be inside the system to exercise effective demand.

PREDICTION: USA will do what above requires in time to prevent its own descent to banana Republican status.

OLAN  07/04/2011 06:21 PM Report

Is Mr.Ash expecting one-fifth of humanity of the world that is in China to continue being under Communism, an ideology that has no root in the culture, and for their followers to continue to speak for and represent the people?

I hope he is more patient than the Chinese, communists included.

“The leadership is very smart.” We are all very smart. And you don’t have to be Communists to be very smart.

“The leadership is nervous.” Wouldn’t you be nervous if you were in their position?

If they are very smart and nervous, how long you think the emperor or the monopoly or the oligopoly or the horse in Animal Farm wants to stay on the throne?

People in general believe in overcoming evil with good.

robdverity  07/04/2011 05:01 PM Report

tabs - I agree - must be flawed then, eh?

BENEZRAA  07/04/2011 08:53 AM Report

A NON-EXPANSIVE CHINA? SPOKEN WITH STRAIGHT FACES?

One has no crystal ball going forward in history. But, to suggest that China has not been expansionist requires profound denial of historical knowledge, including the relatively recent invasion, economic rape, and continuing occupation of Tibet; China has done the same in Siangkang; and all the mountain regions of the Himalyas have suffered terrible violence and border wars, if not by China directly, by proxies of China. As we celebrate July 4 in the USA; as we celebrate American Independence from a smug and arrogant British Empire; we should resolve to continue to signal freedom here and abroad, most especially for Tibet and Siankiang.

tabs  07/03/2011 07:49 PM Report

"I can clearly see the ship on the reef with the broken back."

A fact of life is that business does not care whether it is Americans, Chinese or any other nationality for that matter who are employed. Their main responsibility is to make a return on capital for their shareholders. Thus business will go to where ever they can maximize that return.

So sorry for American workers if the business environment is not hospitable for that capital to be invested in America. If Americans want jobs they need to make the business environment hospitable for that capital to be invested in America. Americans are not ENTITLED to jobs because they are special nor unique.

Americans seem to have forgotten that reality. BO and his minions especially don't get it. They think that they can heap upon business anything that they perceive is for the social good. The end result is going to be no more business and America is going to turn into the economic sick man of the world. Unemployment and rampant poverty is going to be the end result of their enactment of their perception of the social good.

Let us take a short look at the history of what made America so prosperous and the causes of its malaise.

1, WW2 destroyed or damaged EVERY industrial country in the world except America, thus it was American industry and its workers that got rich from the rebuilding.

2. By 1965 business had OPTIONS of where to invest capital as the world was now pretty much rebuilt and beginning to be developed. Thus America started to face competition for that capital.

3. What did America do but continue to believe in its own supremacy, and continue on as if nothing was changing. Further we kept on adding to the overhead that government is.

4. To maintain the illusion that America was supreme, America started to use debt instruments which over time has eroded its fiscal foundations. Till we get to 2008.

It was in 2008 when the illusion cracked that America was supreme. Now America realizes there are limits, and that Americans not only can't have it all, but will have to start doing with less. Yet some didn't get the message and their solution is for bigger government to right the situation. Further to accomplish that goal they have had to use debt instruments to try and alleviate the fiscal affect of not only competition but of those debt instruments that were used to maintain the illusion of prosperity. This is compounding the situation which if it comes home to roost is going to be to the detriment of the Global economy.

Now some might bring up Europe and Germany in particular as the stunning success of a model of social democracy to emulate. What they don't factor in is the following:

1. Germany after 1990 had to rebuild the East after the fall of the Wall.

2. Germany uses shorter work weeks and long vacations to hide underemployment

3. Germany has had a ready and willing consumer for its goods and services in America (among others), which presumably could afford it all.

4. Germany has not had to have a REAL military to defend itself, thus it didn't have to divert capital into an overhead expense and could presumably afford its social programs. It has relied upon America for its defense. Take for example German troops have not left German soil since WW2 except for their NON COMBAT ROLE in Afghanistan.

5 German and Euro debt in general is not exactly nothing and has the potential like the American debt to bring the whole house of cards down.

Further China is an export nation and without customers to buy their product,they become unemployed. One can ditto that state of affairs for most of the developing world.

One can see where we have been, where we are and where we are going. It is called the Arc Of History The problem is that the leadership on the Hill and the Street don't see it clearly at all. They are too consumed with day to day exigencies and or their own ambitions and misconceptions..

Time is passing and the water is getting deeper by the minute. If the leadership did see clearly and act with purpose they could at least ameliorate the damage if not the fall. However the moment of clarity may come too late to avert a dire outcome as too much damage has been done and the dire affect becomes an inevitability. We are fast approaching that moment. It is difficult if not impossible to gauge when that moment will arrive?

doodah  07/03/2011 07:56 AM Report

The evidence 'the press' has shown, robd, certainly looks that way. I guess ole Levi was able to pull some strings, now, 'the press' thinks he should walk free.

Ah, those 'journalists', they march in tune with big $Dollar signs$ in their smiling, lying and ass-kissing eyes.

robdverity  07/02/2011 08:41 PM Report

D. Strauss-Kahn epitomizes why we are a doomed plutocracy, where justice is the first victim. The NYC maid spit on the sidewalk. Raping her is only a reasonable recompense. She had it coming.

JohnGelles  07/02/2011 11:28 AM Report

How Big Must the Economic Security Agency be to replace the IRS Money-stealing Enterprise with a MONEY-PAYING System that tames the business cycle to where it does no harm to workers and to nations?

It must be big -- but smaller than the IRS to calculate additions to every workers wages.

But to react to natural disasters and crises that escape prevention, it will have to be as big as necessary: there is certainly no shortage of people and of thinking machines.

IF it has to be bigger than all the armies of the world, it will still be a bargain and well within our means.

JohnGelles  07/02/2011 11:11 AM Report

..... WAKE UP TO CORPORATE PROFITS --

..... THEY SHOULD MEAN NATIONAL WEALTH

The Rose-Ash dialog did cover the waterfront--but it did not do that in vain.

There are a pack of issues it shone its light on, like DEBT; DESIGN (of the new world order); DAWN (of freedom among the nations where the Ottoman Empire ruled and have not yet decided if their glad that Hitler lost his war to enthrone his Master Race); CHINA (will it do the world's hard work and then buy up all their mines and ports to assure its manufacturers that getting rich was not a mistake -- or will it build a Navy to replace Chimerica with sea power writ large?); A POST-WEST NORM (will the American model of equality when you're born and die -- but competition to be best in show -- and charitable if you are, be replaced by an amalgam of dreams to accommodate being born and staying home in a land that remained anchored in Europe or is called China, India, Russia, Brazil, or any other name); and GREEN (will Sweden, Stockholm and Scandinavia set an example that cannot be but copied if our climate and our governments are to last a while before the asteroid hits).

..... BUT THE GREAT ISSUE IT TREATED LIGHTLY

..... WAS FINANCING CORPORATE PROFITS

..... SO THAT, LIKE GOOGLE, THEY DO NO HARM

.

The corporation that built the Dutch, British and other empires and made America dominant in the 20th Century, moved the individual off the farm and into both heaven and hell at the same time.

It had to keep its profits to be ready for the next new thing. But it had to give them all away, to workers and to owners, if consumption was to balance out supply. A profit of from ten to forty percent (or less of more as events may prove out) had to be supplied IN THE FORM OF MONEY if the history we've lived was to be successful.

Keynes and others spotted this. In fact a new book about the history of DEBT covers the facts of man's material life over 5000 years and counting.

Corporations put DEBT and STOCK-EQUITY together to create an engine suited to their task. But that task has included nasties (like war, slavery, poverty, pollution, wage slavery, financial crises, and the business cycle).

If we recognize that the task of Corporations is the public good, and the function of money is to employ on a job or in a business that they own, every person on earth and to support them when their born and are too young to work and when they've had enough and should be living on a pension (at say Greece's norm of 58 -- or lower age -- so younger people can move up as 50's move out of their way), if WE recognize the obvious truth of our material life, then we will add to the pot of financial incentive sustenance that extra measure of purchasing power that corporate profits make necessary for success.

Why we do not do this in the open is mostly because governments who create our money and license our corporations have not yet got around to it in enough places for a long enough period of time.

Hayek thought the corruption inherent in any system that could compute a fair stipend based on fair wages and profits was bound to destroy the goose that laid the golden egg. Was he right or wrong?

We can see that no government is perfect. If our own Supreme Court cannot see the difference between free speech and freedom itself (to make a living and be protected from political and game-industry industrial poison) then we know Hayek had a point. To give government a job at a higher level than corporate power reaches, is no easy thing to do.

But the Rose - Ash dialog did not point to the demand side missing money with the emphasis we need -- and to the supply side missing shelves of necessities in stock that all that extra money must have waiting for it.

doodah  07/02/2011 08:15 AM Report

Nothing causes WAR more than UNEMPLOYMENT. When that point reaches unbearable, that's when we will crank up the Black Sabbath and march on the Chinese. . or the filthy rich

doodah  07/02/2011 07:57 AM Report

notty notty

doodah  07/02/2011 07:57 AM Report

Has this fellow sued the bastards, Clementine?

JohnGelles  07/02/2011 05:58 AM Report

Historian Ash and Table-Meister Rose cover the waterfront. A new world order is on the horizon. Debt and Development (Growth) contend for constituencies. North Africa wants Islamic version of Freedom. Please predict and prescribe.

Rose had the pressure to say THEY AGREE ON THE PROBLEM -- NOT THE SOLUTION. My God -- what nonsense: No one agrees on the WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?

If you answer DEBT it is because you do not understand currency, money, credit, debt, taxes, output, input, wealth, politics, power and political-economy in the atomic age.

If we add to the generalities of Rose Ash, the errors of REMant and the sentences of all of us, you will have Duck Soup. Eat it.

Charlie ended at a good beginning:

..... ..... Food, Water, Fuel and Climate.

If we start again at his beginning and limit ourselves to brief prescriptions, we might make sense and make progress.

charlizecourriers  07/01/2011 05:35 PM Report

The problem is human nature expressing greed, over prudence. Magical moments can rest on prudence or they can rest on greed. These expressions of greed are not being addressed by leaders around the world. Here in the USA we are stuck with hope, change and denial. But the political process will address this question in 2012, with the next national election. On the question of the Han dictatorship, I find it ludicrous for an historian to suggest that a Han hegemony is in the future. Any historian who says this doesn't understand the meaning of hegemon. Unless of course Ash means that North Korea accepts the Han dictatorship as its hegemon. No one else does. Without that acceptance by others the notion of hegemon is meaningless. China's neighbors will make this fantasy null and void. When Obama is thrown out of office next year this liberal gibberish will be null and void also.

anne4444  07/01/2011 05:28 PM Report

Fear is always the greatest motivation for the war.

tabs  07/01/2011 04:46 PM Report

An E-mail sent to Mr Rose on 5/20/09. The Reader has to make the assessment of whether this e-mail from 2009 is an accurate assessment or not?

Midnight At The Crossroad

Wed, 05/20/2009 - 11:38 — tabs

America is now at the crossroads of its destiny. If the USA should choose the Obama road of increased governmental activism and determinism then our fate is sealed. President Obama has proved himself to be a pragmatic administrator, however that is not to say that his approach to solving problems is not from the left of the political spectrum. The fact that he does not please all those on the left only shows that he marches to his own vision of what America should look like. The great failing of his vision is the pejorative tones that he implicitly impugns the investor class with. His upbraiding of Chrysler Bond holders as being UN American is a prime example of this mind set. As any devotee of the rule of law would tell you the Bond holders have first call on any assets after the accounts payable are paid.

With President Obama's huge Stimulus Bill and Budget with massive deficits running well into the future it is imperative that the US mollifys any fear on the part of those who would invest in America. However this has not been the case with the Chinese and the expression of their fears. The Chinese are of a want to quietly express their concerns and to once more make a less subtle overture to make sure that one gets the message. If that message falls on deaf ears then they will then start a process of going around you. To this end the Chinese have backed off of their purchases of US Treasury debt and have started buying commodities as they have calculated that with a larger then life public debt the USD will begin to fall in value and inflation will set in.

This is not the only unintended outcome of the Obama administrations vision as the US is going to need revenue to meet its obligations taxes are going to have to be raised. This will put a further drag on the economy. As the Obama vision of America going forward requires certain new federal mandates about Carbon Caps, Increased fuel mileage, health care reform and education reform will also stymie economic growth. The end result of these new federal requirements will make the US a less than attractive place for capital to be invested. Instead of a once vibrant economy that was attractive for new capital these new regulations will not only be unattractive for new capital investment but will also drive existing capital offshore.

If this were not enough on the plate, with the recent Wall Street debacle and attending global crisis the mantle of being the preeminent financiers in the world is going to be called into question. Americans are going to be seen as less then sage investors and this will cause a reassessment in the world of Americas standing as the preeminent financiers to the world. This will end Americas dominance in the area of finance where other centers of finance will rise as gateways of capital flows. Hong Kong has long had the infrastructure of being a center of finance and trade but now would also enjoy being the gateway to the most vibrant economy in the world. It would be an easy transition from NYC to Hong Kong as being financial capital of the world.

All these factors leads one, not to the conclusion of the Obama administration that America will once again rise to its former economic glory with sustainable "Green Growth. For the underlying economic pillars of that growth will have been undermined by federal regulations, mandates and taxes. However a more plausibe scenerio will take place and that is once the Stimulus and increased Budget money wears off the economy, the USA will start a fairly preciptious slide into oblivion. One where inovation that was once a hallmark of American industry is now stymied. America will fall into disrepair and disunion resembling the economy of Moldovia.

.

tabs  07/01/2011 02:19 PM Report

Mr Ash seems to be asserting that European "Decadence" = Social Democracy and that America is hurrying under Obama to catch up to their European brethren. Mr Ash's perceptions are typically those as seen through the rose coloured glasses of a Western or European perspective. Especially with his assertions that the Chinese are carving out "spheres of influence," are wanting to be "hegemonic" in their neighborhood and that war is inevitable. To make it crystal, Mr Ash being from the West is from Mars and the Chinese are from Venus, or a ascription of motivations and goals is is being applied due to cultural perceptions. This is something DR K among others did warn about.

Further it is what Mr Rose didn't ask that is like missing an elephnat in the room. That question should have been what are the ramifications of a US debt crisis on the Global economy and security if and when one should occur? If this "Tent Pole" as Friedman calls it of the world economy should fail Mr Ash among others is going to have to throw his perceptions of the world into the ashcan and start a major rethink. One should start by thinking in terms of chaos, fragmentation and the survivability under those circumstances of economies of scale that R&D is dependent upon. What one should consider here is that the Western model of civilization that has been the dominant civilization for the last 600 years is now tottering on the brink of collapse due mainly to its own financial hubris.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  07/01/2011 02:16 PM Report

Here he is over on "The Colbert Report" for five and half minutes instead of 35 minutes: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/391149/june-30-2011/timothy-garton-ash?xrs=sha re_copy.

At the 4:23 mark and at the beginning of the interview we see a bit much of "the Oxford attitude".

At 5:10 "competitive decadence" is discussed and America wins because of The Cheesecake Factory.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  07/01/2011 01:58 PM Report

The French political scientist Pierre Hassner characterized the relationship between the superpowers as that of "competitive decadence," in which the issue for each was managing its mounting internal problems better than the other.

To most of us "competitive decadence" means moral decay. Not to worry here. Our Supreme Court is on the case with video games--no nipple slips but ripping women in half is just fine: (4:36) http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-june-30-2011/moral-kombat?xrs=share_copy

REMant  07/01/2011 11:40 AM Report

Sorry, I can't see the argument that the euro means the EU has to unite politically. A lot of countries use other's currencies without problems. At one time almost all of them used one currency - ounces of gold. There's nothing that says political clout is necessary to stop spending, nor that a country should have an elastic currency. Greece has problems because ppl were foolish enough to lend to them and for no other reason. If anything they have suffered from too much EU interference, not too little. This really is a purely Keynesian/mercantilist argument and nicely illustrates the latter's authoritarian nature.

The US is in decline because it has lost its virtue, but it matters a great deal how you define virtue and I don't think mine is the same as anyone's at the Hoover Institution.

I'm certain that Chinese power will not only be constrained, but a fairly long time in exerting itself, if ever. And, as was intimated. power is more often lost, than won, and often in futile conflict, Britain being a prime example, but also France, and Spain if you go back further. I would be much more worried about what the US will do in the face of that than China.

I have a strong feeling that precipitous Chinese democratization would be far worse than the current govt. I also think Chinese support for its trading partners, while perhaps seen as fair, is both potentially morally hazardous, and economically risky, just as ours was for Europe, and Japan's and Saudi Arabia's for us.

While I think many of these Middle Eastern protests are in many ways legitimate, despite the enthusiasm of their proponents, they have been instigated by forces well beyond anyone's control at this point, and not likely to succeed to any great extent. The best that can be hoped for is what seems likely in Egypt, a change of masters and cautious liberalization.