Charlie Rose

vongleichent  02/27/2012 09:52 AM Report

I wish this people exactly had the power. We would be so much better off.

JohnGelles  07/21/2011 01:59 AM Report

Rob ~

Thank you for undeserved words.

My beliefs two months short of 86 are few, controversial, and stubbornly held. They involve the old saw:

..... There is nothing certain but DEATH and TAXES.

I do not buy the conventional way we look at death and taxes. Taxes first.

1. Taxes are thought to be gov't theft of your money.

In fact my IOU's are not legal tender to discharge debt. Only govt't can create legal tender. Today fed reserve notes and US Treasury coins and deposits of same, are money in America. The gov't creates it IF IT SPENDS IT. Such money will lose its value relative to purchasing THINGS -- unless within its borders it can MATCH money so created by THINGS supplied by its producers -- private or government-owned.

2. So tax revenues are not needed to pay for government spending, lending or investment.

3. Taxes are only needed to cancel gov't-created money when there is too much of it trying to buy what producers sell.

4. Since workers and producers can produce much more than we currently do, all new production can add to the money gov't wants to solve defense and civilian supply that is needed to keep prosperity and peace going and pollution at the lowest possible level.

5. The fact that the President and Congress do not subscribe to this opinion about money and taxes leaves us in the fix we claim to be in today. They say WE (YOU AND I) have the money and they have to tax it way. Obviously we don not have the money -- gov't has the money.

6. Until my belief prevails, we are in danger of another great depression. The result may be fascism or communism. In my life time these systems proved to be one-way roads to tyranny and war.

7. China, Russia or Europe will likely switch to my way of thinking soon enough. Then we will switch too. Or some other nation will be first. There are today tens of thousands of people who believe as I do -- but they tend to write books and hope to sell them.

8. Richard C. Cook, American author on Amazon, is my favorite authority in this matter of urgently needed reform.

9. If all of us on the Charley Rose forum got together with Richard C. Cook we would end this nonsense about unemployment and debt in America immediately. It would be WW II financial tools all over again -- over night. We would have a billion steel collared workers in almost no time and leave all other nations in our dust. We would NOT have to sell or export anything -- we would only have to produce and use all we need to bring Utopia to all of us and all of them that deserved it.

==========================

Second big belief: DEATH is not well handled by our culture.

1. We must die.

2. Death should be arranged by each individual according to his or her own beliefs.

3. I believe I should die before I ever get too sick or hurt to have a really enviable death.

4. I should be able to pay, not for a funeral, but for a last good time. It would be on a vacation that ended with me in heaven and others coming home to tell the story.

5. I would go on that vacation when I wanted to -- no questions asked, if I was old -- or if not old, I could prove I was not depressed.

6. How old is old? Three score and ten.

robdverity  07/20/2011 03:58 PM Report

John - your ingenuous innocence is profound, esp. for a man in mid-80s. You have the sensitivity of a poet. Ever tried it?

JohnGelles  07/19/2011 07:49 PM Report

The more we add to the issue that Gross and Chambers presented, the more confused it all gets: Gross votes for stimulus by government to grow the economy and improve the lot of all of us. Chambers want's a signal by way of delivered or promised austerity to prevent hyperinflation that excessive stimulus spending may ignite.

We could say both are right.

WW II type spending saved democracy for the ages.

The possibility of hyperinflation seems to be ever present. But its chance may be so low that austerity remains a poison not called for by conditions as they are.

Individuals, like ourselves want to say a last word. But there is none. Today becomes tomorrow and what was mystery turns into history. A few of us predict progress -- because we are used to it. Some predict -- return to hard times and even more deadly wars.

I do predict the time is coming when issues and forums such as these will be supported by better communications -- such that everybody's ideas will be reconciled to each other's via artificial intelligence. And an on going poll of all the votes that are cast will make so called public opinion a more objective measure.

This would be progress toward more and better democracy.

In addition I predict, economic democracy will become a fact. There will still be the rich. But there will be no poor. They are no longer necessary. Robots will see to that.

"Deus ex machina", God takes on machine-like productive power. Scarcity of material need will be gone.

Will we be starved for love and glory and suffer want of a different kind with no less pain? Very possibly.

And so I say to you: it's not the end of history, it's only the end one more text among so many that only AI will be able to handle the load.

robdverity  07/19/2011 02:42 PM Report

We need a progressive VAT, that escalates on luxury goods to (as an example) 200% on yachts etc.

In short we need class warfare (already declared by the big boys via the meltdown). We need merely to respond. Anarchy in short. They shuttered an (imperfect) but workable system. [Well, maybe not all that workable. Too susceptible] to venality.]

robdverity  07/19/2011 02:27 PM Report

Gelles Utopian call for fiat money is tireless. It would ipso facto create a two-tiered exchange rate value, create black mkts. and inflation. Why bother? The dollar will have the same affect.

He also states, "There is no chance at all that we will allow another great depression to permanently destroy the American Middle Class represents our values and our history."

The financial wise-guys have already achieved this thru the meltdown. It hasn't fully matured yet, but rampant poverty AND HUNGER are fast encroaching.

slightly_optimistic  07/19/2011 09:43 AM Report

Far from dispensing with the idea of a debt ceiling, as contributors were suggesting for the United States, Germany and France are instead promoting the concept. In order to improve eurozone competitiveness the two countries want others to insert a "debt alert mechanism" into national constitutions.

JohnGelles  07/19/2011 06:33 AM Report

THE PLEDGE (see below) :

I pledge to the taxpayers of the district I represent and to the American people that I will:

ONE, oppose any and all efforts

to increase the marginal income tax rate for

individuals and business; and TWO, oppose any

net reduction or elimination of deductions and

credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further

reducing tax rates.

=========================

This pledge would not interfere with revenue raising by the US government from import duties or other means outside the income tax.

Although I agree with the spirit SharksLazers sentiments to raise revenue in the public interest, I oppose the income tax and the way it has corrupted are nation.

We do not need to tax the income of Americans because our government already owns the monopoly central bank which has the power to monetize production instead of taxing income (which invades our privacy and reduces our ability to produce our needs).

This may be a complicated matter -- but if income tax is so hated by so many people, and was never supposed to tax anyone in the manner it has turned out to use today, it must be repealed and replaced by a fair and efficient means of having money to support the public interest.

Democracy demands that the people love their own government. Why are some parties so thick that they would rather have people hate their government then improve the efficiency of their tax system?

Nobody gave Grover Norquist an exclusive right to seek repeal of the Income Tax. We all have that right and and should tell Grover to move over and let an honest party end that tax.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  07/19/2011 03:48 AM Report

The Republicans Are Held Hostage By A Crook.

The reason Republicans won't move on increasing revenues is the pledge.

THE PLEDGE AND SIGNERS:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/atrfiles/files/files/Federal%20Pledge%20Signers%20112th%20Congress.pdf

Stephen Colbert signs the tax pledge:

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/167408/may-14-2008/grover-norquist?xrs=share_c opy

236 House Members

41 Senators

13 Governors

1200+ State Legislators

Grover requires two witnesses and then puts the pledges in the safe.

Pledge does not have "under God" in it and the pledge has not changed in 25 years.

Raising taxes is never the right thing to do--even if you have to give up grandma (at the 5:18 point) http://www.hulu.com/watch/253986/the-colbert-report-grover-norquist

Grover is a crook and funneled money for Jack Abramoff to fund lobbyists but of course as a crook he skimmed his own cut. He hates government but through lobbyists creates his own government without any checks nor balances:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/24/AR2006062401080.html

Unlike Jack Abramoff, Grover has stayed out of jail but he still throws around money, enough to damage the country. Which of the pledge signers is still receiving Jack Abramoff type campaign contributions?

Why is it that Grover Norquist creates Republican Dogma?

Bill Maher on Grover:

http://rackjite.com/archives/7662-Bill-Maher,-Grover-Norquist-as-Bad-as-it-gets,-July-15-2011.html

JohnGelles  07/19/2011 02:22 AM Report

Bill Gross wants to government to create a development bank to put us all to work (basically the Keynesian solution we know will work.)

John Chambers and the rest of you are against this, or not enthusiastically in its favor. You believe that only war-time unity allows such change from laissez-faire to work.

As my record shows, I'm for the Gross' and Keynes' prescription. I could call all other comment in support of doubt over this prescription, or faith in "constructive destruction" of Schumpeter (a laissez-faire economist), all sorts of bad names -- but such name calling is useless.

We are forced on account of politics to wait and see which solution is coming at us. If Gross, Gelles, Keynes and Krugman are all correct, we will see the Treasury and the Fed, with or without Congress leading from the front or rear of the parade, resort to a new bank and its loans -- or to our old banks and fiat money to do the same.

If we the Keynesians are wrong, the same scenario will unfold AFTER a few big reorganizations of debt will occur that seem to be different but are really the same thing.

What you will not see is any change in the military power of the United States -- and that is all that counts.

When push comes to shove Obama will command economic mobilization or his successor will.

There is no chance at all that we will allow another great depression to permanently destroy the American Middle Class represents our values and our history.

Infrastructure (including green and independent energy for the future, digital IT channels, water, sewer, and transportation systems, etc.) will be built the way we build a war machine. Similar trillion dollar programs for health, education, employment (training and re-training) will be financed.

In short, Obama will create Obama-nomics or his successor will -- by another name. The BRIC nations will, with Japan and Europe, be are partners or our semi-rivals.

If we have some of the enemies now shooting at us in the game, they will be sorry if they do not quickly decide that war is hell and they want none of it.

Is Obama the right man for these times? Maybe. He is less a threat to our friends and the environment than his political rivals. But if he is replaced in 2012 it will most likely be by a centrist who will follow Gross and Keynes NOT Standard and Poors, Moodys, or the Univ of Chicago idea of what money is and why we need it.

tabs  07/18/2011 08:11 PM Report

What we have here and on every other Talk Show in the modern world are a bunch of Old Nellies sitting around and talking about how the sky of Sovereign Debt (EU and USA) is falling. Quite frankly your going to talk yourself right into it, as everybody starts to pay attention, gets concerned and then looks for the exit. The Debt Ceiling Battle has brought the subject to the forefront of the evening news and that is all that everybody is talking about now that Casey Anthony has fallen off the front pages. All that this media exposure has done is to highlight the dysfunctionality of the political leadership who act more like children than adults, especially when they are angling to position themselves to be reelected. What has becomes apparent is that reelection has become a more important goal to achieve than to do the job one has been elected to do. The solutions to Sovereign Debt are not so hard to figure out, the only fly in the ointment is whose set of solutions are best and should be applied. One thinks that it is time for the elected leadership to start acting like adults and do something which is not about them calculating ones political advantage on every issue. This is kind of important at this juncttion in time because if one should stop and take a good look around one would notice that Gold went over $1600 today and more importantly the developing world markets (India and Brazil) are starting to get jittery and the next thing you know is that there is going to be that stampede for the door. One should also have done the mental calculations that if that rush to thr exit occurs, the end results is that there is no place for anyone to run to on Gods green earth where one will not be affected.

robdverity  07/18/2011 04:12 PM Report

REM - you are one well read dude. Wish I understood (really) what you said, as I think I agree. Particularly when the meltdown was augmented by Robert Rubin and Sandy Weill of Citigroup buying the repeal of Glass-Steagall.

You must have an impressive library.

REMant  07/18/2011 11:10 AM Report

While I disagreed with Gross's comments about the dire effects of an interest rate hike the other day in the Post, and will again here now, I do agree that the fight is over Keynesianism and that our government is terribly inefficient. It is not clear to me that a parliamentary system would necessarily be anymore efficient - consider Italy and France - but what is clear is that many of this persuasion tend to be authoritarian. Gross is a doctrinaire Keynesian. The WPA didn't work (often literally). I used to walk over a very nice carved stone bridge they made, past another very nice Neo-Gothic building, and another containing a large mural of theirs, about every day. The latter is considered a museum piece, but I do not know what real usefulness any of them had, altho the office of 2009's Nobel prize winner in economics had an office in the building. Employment does not equate to productivity, nor does it resolve the issue with China. And, of course, in the absence of productivity, inflation raises the price of commodities.

The Europeans should be told that the consolidation of the American Revolutionary War debt by Hamilton is what set this country on its path to a financial crisis every dozen years or so. It was rather two-faced, since a ppl who would print money to win wars, ought not, with consistency, be averse to sponging debts after one, but of course many of the Federalists had been closet Tories. Nor was it really new.

Charles Sumner remarked he could have avoided a lot of trouble if he had read Adam Smith. But he almost certainly had by that time. His friend Rufus King* had, because he wrote their mutual friend Gouverneur Morris remarking that if Smith were right American policies were on entirely the wrong footing. Hamilton's idea that a bank could leverage its capital, indeed that that capital might consist only of IOUs, and that the government could benefit thereby contains all the elements of current monetary policy, and precipitated a panic almost immediately. Opening Pandora's box, it certainly helped motivate the frauds perpetrated by banks large and small throughout the 19th c. Passing notes on nothing of value IS fraud. John Adams wrote in 1809: "Every dollar of a bank bill that is issued beyond the quantity of gold and silver in the vaults represents nothing and is therefore a cheat upon somebody." Thomas Jefferson in 1813 said that banks debased the currency and made a mockery of men's promises, using logarithms to show the depreciation. They were hardly alone. The present "recession" is little different from the situation in 1837. That was not caused by Jackson's effort to rein in this activity, but by banks floating bogus notes with which to buy British goods, or speculate in land, etc, resulting also in the 1840's railroad bust and the panic of 1857 (nicely detailed by Sumner, BTW, whose History of Banking in the US is available online at http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=2237&Itemid=27 and http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924092584196). To them it smelt of Walpole, a century before, and they were exactly right. It might interest you to know that the idea of separating deposit or commercial and investment banking originated not with Volcker, or even Rep Steagall and Sen Glass, but as long ago as the mid-19th c with Lord Overstone. Incidentally, Marx, a proto-Keynesian you might say, hated him. The only real question is why in this civilized age we are still doing this, even in an "advanced" country.

*What do Crosby, of Crosby, Stills and Nash, Admiral Bull Halsey, and Jane Wyatt have in common? Answer: They are all descendants of Rufus King.