Charlie Rose

dianrib  06/03/2012 08:38 PM Report

Krugman is correct on economics. GOP IS holding US economy hostage to beat / crush Obama make him fail just as the GOP vowed to do Brooks was fair in his comments Not like most Repubs .

NeilMacCallister  08/11/2011 12:39 AM Report

I don't want to be Ronald Reagan, doodah, ..heck! ..he's dead isn't he???

I just want an END to those stupid people like Paul Krugman and Barack Obama who continue to try and sell Americans on the ruse that "If you will just give everything you have to me, ..you will be very much the better!"

I thought we had already passed through "the dark ages"????

Why do we still sit and listen to such drivel?????

doodah  08/05/2011 05:42 AM Report

...everytime :)

doodah  08/05/2011 05:42 AM Report

... but nice try.

doodah  08/05/2011 05:41 AM Report

That's right Neil, all we have to do, as average Americans, is turn a blind eye to the hypocrisy of the republicans (fake conservatives) and their recently elevated cohorts, 'Tea Par-Teh', to their preferences FOR 'corporate Welfare' (ON MANY DIFFERENT LEVELS) mind you. If businesses are 'hoarding', as Edgar and others have pointed out, they obviously are NOT being oppressively taxed. As you, and your, foaming-at-the-mouth' 'Tea Party' FOOLS lie out their buttocks about.

But hey, never mind all that, I'm sure 'the Gipper' is smiling up (or down) at ya. Not because he's proud, but like 'Patrick Buchanan', you'll never be him (and neither will any of the Tea Party Fools)

HAH!

NeilMacCallister  08/01/2011 09:39 PM Report

Hah!! ..I guess you have finished-off your surging toward "rational circumspection", ..eh winter???

No matter. You know, today I delivered a repaired window screen to a chinese lady's house (..Chinese born, not "abc").

She was attentive, cheerful, knowledgeable, exacting, and fair.

Why do we not have national calls for an "Asian" in the White House? ..or even in Congress???

Has that California "party loyalist" John Chiang ruined it for a whole people??? ..a very talented people???

***

But back to the candidates mentioned below....

Who would you choose to head your business operation if you wanted it to last for future generations??? ..Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Ron Paul, or Barack Obama???

(..After challenging you with this question earlier, winter, I thought about this as I was installing a gate-latch on that smart lady's fence.)

I have decided Herman Cain. He has a shown ability to raise a business enterprise up and keep it afloat.

Now, I love what Ron Paul speaks, ..but I worry that maybe he can only recite his wisdoms, and not know how to see them implemented.

Michele Bachmann fits in between those two, ..knowledgeable theory, ..and some evidence of management skill.

I would not pick Barack Obama because he advocates unsound theories, and prefers to either "manage from behind" or not manage at all.

Herman Cain seems like the type of person who would drive by the jobsite and declare "Hey, ..You guys have'nt lost that concrete yet! ..Come on! ..Let's get busy!!" ..as he grabs a pair of trowels from behind the seat of his truck and gets out on that sun-baking slab.

That's the kind of person America needs.

Say? ..Is Mr. Cain still available for an interview?????

winter  08/01/2011 06:32 PM Report

I'm afraid your affliction is beyond anything I can help you with.

NeilMacCallister  08/01/2011 03:20 PM Report

"And where does the money get spent?", winter? ..so you are admitting that the "cycle of money" does flow in the direction of business to government?

Of course it does! ..those business taxes are paying our government employees' wages!

***

You complain that some businesses balance their budgets, ..and even show a profit.

Why doesn't our government evidence such business acumen??

Oh, that's right, ..they're too busy touring the world, attending concerts, and playing golf.

***

The lady I mowed the lawn for yesterday has an MBA, ..does our President have an MBA???

***

The government doesn't WANT you to have a job!!!!!!

(..That might make you vote Republican!)

They love you poor and hungry, so that they can buy your vote with a food stamp.

***

If Congress wanted you to work, ..they would lower our world-high business tax rate, and allow first-year tax deductions on plant expansions and new machinery.

As it is now, ..there are tax and cost PENALTIES for hiring any new workers!

**

You say that if our Congress trims its budget, you will be "cut to the bone, ..and into the MARROW".

Wow! ..do you really get that much money from the government???

What? ..do you teach at a Junior College or something?? ..are you on a city road-crew???

Government employees are paid more than the private sector workers that they tax.

Maybe YOU should "share the wealth"!!

**

Go Tea Party! ..Go Michele Bachmann! ..Go Herman Cain!! ..Go Ron Paul!!!

You know, ..we just might be able to save this country!!!

winter  08/01/2011 11:43 AM Report

And where does the money get spent? ...business. Whose lap does it come to rest in the longest, since it does constantly cycle? ...the lap who can actually afford to hoard. Those trillions don't disappear its still with us and conspicuously enough in treasuries of businesses as evidenced by quarterly reports that seem to be feeling no pain while the jobless rate looms and jobs are passed out with as much patriotic ingredient as checks from tobacco lobbies passed out on the floor of the people.

Typical of the Teaparty using cynicism to stand in for rational circumspection. There seems to be an inertia to it. Lord knows its gathered momentum since Limbaugh's spewings came on the scene -- the Genesis of daily post hypnotic suggestion reinforcement. And, they seem to be installing garrisons all about key informational distribution channels. Lean and mean is finished with cutting to the bone and now is working on our marrows.

NeilMacCallister  07/31/2011 10:06 PM Report

Hah! ..winter depicts private businesses as "the child", and government as "the parent dispensing largesse" to that child.

HAH!!!!!

***

winter, ..haven't you noticed that it is ALWAYS the government asking business to "contribute" more for Congress to spend???

Our government is a drunken college student always writing home for more money to spend!

***

See the world as it IS winter! ..The truth may set you free!!

winter  07/31/2011 04:30 PM Report

We keep advocating incentives for business to do the right thing. It seems business has learned, the way a child learns, that the parents' largesse will never stop coming the more it pouts. The economy is being held hostage by a Dutch Auction Federalism extortion of business pitting one community against another for the best deal even if they're thriving.

Jobs get transferred not created since no corresponding demand follows. Now its said businesses are on the sidelines because "they're scared". What they should be afraid of is a lack of demand because the great middle classes working people have been underpaid for decades. We might consider The Economy not as enterprise but as how to maintain a civilization and address the overriding cycles that fit human nature not musical chairs grading on a curve. That is the invisible hand not the Market as its been superimposed for public consumption. American markets have learned to collude tacitly - esp. customer service (... damn whoever invented voicemail!) Prices come down it seems only for cheap electronic gadgets but even there its only because they have us needing to renew every 2 years. Back to the original suggestion I've digressed from; let us invoke penalties as disincentives for doing the wrong thing and hold some feet to the fires consumers and the jobless have to deal with.

JohnGelles  07/30/2011 06:34 AM Report

Neil ~

Imagine a nation where no one owed because all had money and always paid cash, by check or by debit card.

That could easily be the case. If Bill Gates is in that circumstance, it does not seem to have hurt him.

Among my retired friends, we are all mor or less like Gates. We avoid debt. It works fine.

You say it would tend to kill young people.

We have a few very young retirees. It has not killed them.

NeilMacCallister  07/27/2011 05:21 PM Report

"..our government debt is the net savings of the population"?????? .."deficits are not optional"????

..OMG!!!! ..Edmund Burke! ..How you have changed!!!

***

To John Gelles: ..I finally tracked down a transcript of this episode:

"Ninety-nine billion of debt on the wall,

Ninety-nine billion of deebbbtttt...

We took more money down, and threw it around,

Now there's 100 billion of debt on the wall!!!

"One-hundred billion of debt on the wall,

One-hundred billion of deeebbbbttt...

We'll keep taking more down, to pass it around,

1-0-1 billion of debt on the wall!!!

"1-0-1 billion of debt on the wall,

1-0-1 billion of deebbbttt..."

(.."Hey Falstaff?? ..Where's that page with my gd beer???")

"14.3 trillion of debt on the wall,

14.3 trillion of deebbbbtttt.....

We'll just write some more money, and hand it around,

14.4 trillion of debt on them all!"

burk  07/26/2011 07:57 PM Report

As usual, David Brooks doesn't really know what he is talking about. Let me isolate one item- his description of the public perception of the government and its ongoing deficit as "shameful", "irresponsible", and the like, about 2/3 or 3/4 through the segment.

Clearly Paul Krugman didn't have the time to correct this misconception, (other than to note that the pending interest burden is not a big deal), but it completely misrepresents the US macroeconomic situation. The government budget deficit is not optional or a moral weakness. It is simply a matter of our position in the world and the demands others place on our currency- it is in very high demand, for growth, not only domestically, but abroad.

The US has issued debt from the very beginning, and Hamilton recognized it as the source of great wealth- the net savings of the population are equivalent to the government's debt. The government has also never redeemed debt to any significant net extent. Rather, the wealth of bond-holders has increased apace, as the government has issued debt to accommodate the country's growth.

So it is completely wrong to be pulling moral judgements out of the completely false equation of private debt to public debt. Whenever the nation has run net budget surpluses, it has soon thereafter gone into recession, for the simple reason that the deficit is the mechanism by which the government furnishes money for economic growth. No deficit = deflationary pressure. Surely the government can issue too much money and debt and that causes inflation, as in the late 60's and 70's. Now, we face deflation, not inflation.

So Brooks is a false guide. Instead of educating the public to the crucial distinction between the public debt (safe, productive, stable, not to mention essential), and private debt (prone to instability, especially if highly leveraged), he fans their ignorance.

RolandKausen  07/26/2011 12:54 PM Report

Thank you very much for the clear and rational discussion of the debt ceiling debate! However, it seems to me that Mr. Brooks seems somewhat disingenuous in ascribing the obstinate obstructionism of the Republican-dominated house to antipathy to Pres. Obama's allegedly arrogant demeanor. To attribute the Republican leadership's totally irresponsible scorched-earth strategy on PBS's NewsHour (07/22) to "the President's tone" which Mr. Brooks described as "insulting... arrogance and self-superiority" seems an extremely weak defense of the indefensible. It seems that Obama has had to contend with three years of determined opposition intransigence that represents the sole Republican mission of rendering Obama a "one-term president". Last night (07/25), John Boehner's response to Obama's measured and statesman-like address to the nation sounded infuriatingly like an abjectly cynical partisan political diatribe that seemed to reflect that short-sighted Republican mission and probably only deepened the rift and conflict and intensified antipathies on both sides of the aisle. It seems they continually attempt to obfuscate the issues, and to try and frustrate and bait Obama into reciprocal bitter partisanship. Why can't the parties and, more specifically and emphatically, the Republican leadership, engage in as civil and rational a discussion as that between Messrs. Brooks and Krugman?

JohnGelles  07/26/2011 12:58 AM Report

Part of the American problem is profound corruption in Congress and the Supreme Court -- where the love money has blinded them to our potential to be the economic democracy we were becoming by the end of WW II. Millions of Americans were deceived by the 80th Congress and the Taft Hartley anti-labor law.

The end result is loss of high wages in the private sector and the absence of rational tenure for small business and private corporations whom we expect to employ are most skilled people and deliver our most necessary COMPLEX products and systems for defense and for our defense industries.

As a consequence we will sweat if we do not unite with all the super-powers to make common cause against war.

Such unity is now essential. So a slow and balanced shift from US hegemony to US leadership and partnership is the only way to keep from experiencing nuclear war on a major scale.

Immediately, we need managed trade, debt-free money enough to end direct taxes and similar invasions of privacy, and massive government spending until all individuals are out of debt and "in the money" (like the song says).

All this is Keynesian-Adlerian (Abba Lerner) functional finance -- a system that uses money "on purpose" not on a bet at the crap table of global markets.

Markets have their uses -- when they perform as well as local farmers markets in California towns -- and in larger markets whose proof of good effect is measurable by honest ordinary people with some help of experts in many cases.

Our political economy today can take full advantage of the IT capacity to build cost accounting systems that do what profit and loss accounting systems cannot: deliver the goods all the time to every place.

It is true that power corrupts. It is true that the when the left takes power from the aristocracy they often do what Fidel Castro has done and every other dunce who ever grabbed a gun with no fear of using it to have his way.

So we must not look to the streets for rescue from present nagging problems. We have to look at problems and solutions as they are developed to correct our mistakes as fast as possible without causing vibrations that make the bridge collapse.

JohnGelles  07/26/2011 12:23 AM Report

amw [a married woman/a man of wisdom] on

07/25/2011 04:31 PM posted (see below):

..... ..... "It is a joy to watch Paul Krugman..."

All that amw wrote for our benefit was pure good and common sense. It was equally a joy to read.

I will not repeat it -- but not a word of it was out of place or off the mark.

On the other hand, REMant offered gibberish and self-contradiction with every line.

REMant has one redeeming quality: he understands that PRODUCTION of scarce necessities, like food; clean water; shelter; medicine; information; skills; weapons to defend nations against tyranny, aggression and injustice, etc.; and millions of other stock keeping units that represent SUPPLY to achieve wealth and prosperity in place of poverty and want, is CRUCIAL.

He is also commended for NOT being a COMMUNIST, FASCIST, or uninterested bystander who sees problems and is afraid to think about them and try to find solutions.

But he is so sore about low interest rates that he has blinded himself to what Keynes wrote and wanted. Keynes wanted to make free enterprise work.

Free enterprise can and does run on money and the things that money can buy if you live under a monetary system of production.

We on earth today do live under monetary systems of production.

The American system is operating way below its potential -- way below par.

The Chinese system is a near copy of ours -- but having low wages and low living costs for manual workers has enabled it to create a wealth class of sons of bitches who working with their engineers in government are making progress.

China may fail if it cannot develop demand at home in its own money to keep up the progress it has achieved by copying others.

America, on the other hand, has sought to maximize corporate profit and minimize wages and salaries (except at the top). This has resulted in outsourcing and now deflation that will destroy our industries and our human rights.

The purpose of money, as Keynes and others have pointed out, is full employment of capital and labor to -- prevent scarcity of necessities, poverty, pollution, and war itself.

tabs  07/25/2011 05:30 PM Report

Mr Krugman There is REALITY and then there is DELUSION. The trick is being able to set aside ones own pernicious bias to attain the clarity that only the light of truth can bring. So don't cloud the issue with your stereotypical antipathy, for those who don't share your brand of delusional thinking.

amw  07/25/2011 04:31 PM Report

It is a joy to watch Paul Krugman systematically tear apart the GOP talking points (and without being disagreeable while doing it)about the national debt. (Did David Brooks ever take Economics 101? And what ever gave him the idea he has ANY expertise in the area of economics and economic and fiscal policy?)

I am SO-O-O sick of listening to the endless stream of economically illiterate politicians and pundits on your show, Charlie, blathering on about the national debt snf other economic issues, endlessly parroting Frank Luntz's and other conservative talking points, without having a clue about what they are talking about. AND it's really unfair to your viewers to offer up these economically illiterate politicians' and pundits' fact-free opinions as actual facts. For example, while Senator Tom Colburn may be a very nice person, he is an economically illiterate conservaative ideologue who is either lying about or willfully ignorant about almost everything that comes out of his mouth.

You should have Paul Krugman on whenever you have on any politician or pundit discussing economic policies or issues. That is especially true when you have on one (or more) of that "Gang of Six," super-rich white guys who want to tell the rest of us to "suck it up" and "share the sacrifice" while none of them or their children will suffer not a bit under their proposals. Frankly, I am sick and tired of listening to super-rich white guys who have sat on their asses their whole lives telling waitresses and truck drivers and construction workers (probably not a large part of your demographics) that they're going to have to "share the sacrifice" and work until they are 70 — if anyone would hire them in the first place.

And I am REALLY sick of people like David Brooks telling people in the working and middle classes that we are just going to have to "share the sacrifice." That man has never done a day of hard work in his life, he will not have to worry about living off what he gets from Social Security (which will be a nice monthly tip for him when HE retires), he will never have to make a choice between buying food or buying prescription medicine, and he will never have to keep or take a low-paying job just so he can feed his family, even though he knows his boss will pay him as little as possible.

Charlie, if you read this, way to many of your guests — and I include David Brooks in this category — are either lying through their teeth or simply don't know what they are talking about. And you do a disservice to your viewers to give them a platform for their lies or ignorance without even challenging their "facts."

tabs  07/25/2011 04:25 PM Report

THE CONTINUING ADVENTURES OF HARRY REID

On July 19, 2011 TABS made the following comments under the Senator Portman interview.

"Of further interest Steve Wynn let loose a tirade blaming President Obama for fostering uncertainty which acts like a "wet blanket" on the economy. Mr Wynn went on to say that President Obama was a Socialist in that he was redistributing the wealth. It is quite notable that Mr Wynn is a large supporter of Harry Reid and Democrat Party."

And isn't it interesting that on Monday 7/25/11 that Senator Harry Reid has announced his own Debit Limit Crisis plan. Wnich lifts the debt limit by some 2.5 T USD and cuts spending by some 2.7 T USD WITHOUT ANY INCREASE IN REVENUE.The conclusion that one can draw from this is that Harry Reid knows where his bread is buttered and that is by the Steve Wynn casino, resort owners in Las Vegas. And isn't it interesting that Preident Obama not to be thrown under the bus has endorsed the plan?

So what is gong to be next in this continuing adventure? If one were to gaze into a crystal ball one would be looking for signs that out of exasperation and self preservation the Democratic Party leadership is now taking the bull by the horns and is in fact going around Obama to get the job of governing done.

doodah  07/25/2011 03:08 PM Report

I think Krudman is hitting the nail on the head here. The extreme radicalization of the republican party led by the loony nutty Michele Bachman and company, may as well be the Bozo the Clown Show. She's a good lookin, beautiful lady. But when she gets a whiff of power, she's got a crazy (almost Hitler) look to her. She's just eating up all the 'serious' attention being bestowed upon her now, and then it's off to the Deep End ('conservative' la la land). .. Hail 1984 Reagan! Cut Taxes=Stimulate the Economy! blah blah blah! Raise Interest rates=Cut the Inflation blah blah blah! . It Has to Work!!! Everytime! We Saw That Movie Before! Ronald Reagan Liked Movies! No Reason to Apologize! Blah...Blah... Blahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Bleeping Idiots!!!!!

REMant  07/25/2011 11:52 AM Report

I agree with Brooks that this had to be the time to confront this, and not just for "political" reasons. If Congress doesn't then the Fed certainly will end up doing it, which would be infinitely worse, and I wouldn't be surprised to discover that being used as a stick. Bernanke said as much. So also the credit rating agencies, tho Prof Krugman apparently doesn't give them much credence. Altho I was delighted to not hear him not just saying we to spend more, it was short-lived, and what he calls "sound basic macroeconomics" is actually unsound convoluted mercantilism, basic only perhaps in that Fisher called it "man-in-the-street" economics.

In a very real sense, it's the so-called microeconomists - Say, Ricardo, et al - who deal with things on a macro level and the so-called macroeconomists who do so on a micro level, because of the latter's belief in physical causes instead of monetary ones. In their view only real scarcity can cause inflation, and that is due to monopoly power. Costs, therefore, are not really anything physical such as the labor expended, but determined by other, ie, the market. In other words, they are prices. Hence prices determine the money supply, not the money supply, prices. Financial crises occur because there is too little money, not too much.

But if mercantilists believe, as it seems they do, people possessive and miserly, then it would seem to make little sense to give them more money to hoard, because that's what lowering interest rates does do, and if they don't believe that, money surely can't "stimulate" trade either. It may be that they think somehow the public will be fooled into re-starting the economic pump before inflation ensues. That perhaps such crises are merely a matter of borderline psychology. But it may be because they do not see money as an obligation, a commitment, but merely a thing, as if it had no role in production different from any commodity, and they may hold no theory of production at all. But their argument seems to me entirely self-motivated and their opposition to gold would seem to have always been simply that someone else has it, while a similar notion justified the idea of passing fraudulent banknotes. You can consider mercantilists equity investors; classicals buy bonds.

"Austerity" is simply the deflation mercantilists have always resisted to prevent wages and prices from adjusting, no matter whom they blame it on. It used to be termed a "revulsion." It is to prevent this as much as liquidation or unemployment they say the world must be flooded with money. They've always had a problem with the fact that in a bubble the demand for money rises faster than it can be created and despite a deluge of it interest rates still rise. Without any change in productivity, at some point it must therefore burst.

Keynes went so far as to argue with his usual hyperbole that free-trade could only work under totalitarianism. And with even greater irony, peddled his program to the Nazis. That puts him on a par with the elder Plato, who, tho, I'm sure, as an intuitionist, he must have detested. It is much the same argument as that conflict can be ended by abolishing weapons. Nations should stay home and mind their own business, set up their own currencies and make their own goods. Contra Montesquieu and much of Church tradition, Keynes alleged commerce leads to war.

Mercantilism arose with nationalism when king allied with townspeople against aristocracy, and sought support via the revenue from trade, a politics called Court Whiggism. That is clearly the attitude that still informs Keynes. Tho most think the world wars were about nationalism, Keynesians prefer to blame feudalism.

Britain did try Keynesianism after WWII, forgetting what it had just fought a war against, nationalizing industries and boosting welfare, despite facing bankruptcy and promises to return to convertibility, and in the knowledge that to prosper it would have to import. The country declined relatively, usually blamed on a host of non-monetary factors, which were evident, but savings and investment dropped well below its rivals, and wages rose far faster than output or productivity.

There is, I hope, nothing wrong with the ideals of socialism, whether Keynesianism can be considered it or not. The Church's animus against usury is not misplaced. The only question is how all is to be achieved and maintained. If accomplished in a manner consistent with individual freedom and initiative, it is no different from the enlightened self-interest of classical economics, but no one has yet managed to raise kids or develop nations along the lines of Emile. The General Theory, however, smacks of class warfare. This is not out of line with his entirely Liberal critique of the Versailles peace treaty, and it would appear that coming on top of that experience, the Depression radicalized him like many others.

I would suggest ppl are buying Treasuries at low rates simply because they have nothing better to invest in. Many can still borrow at lower rates from Uncle Ben than the bills are paying, altho I think they might be better off, as the Chinese have, to be buying gold instead, and there has been little let up in the sums going to developing economies. Paradoxically, however, Keynesian theory suggests interest rates should be high with so much money around. Bernanke would have been wiser to have shown more concern with preserving the value of money, rather than its quantity. I'm afraid tho he doesn't see any difference.

The debt was something like $1 trillion in the Carter admin, rose steadily until W's, exponentially since then and now stands at $14.3 trillion. That could well be entirely inflation, because it equates to 9-10% rate of growth over the period, which we have found to be the growth in many prices over the same period. Since more of that increase has accrued to the wealthier (the reason why they are considered wealthy) they probably should be paying more, whether Keynesians believe the theory or not, and that's also the main reason for getting rid of the tax expenditures.