Charlie Rose

NeilMacCallister  07/31/2011 07:19 PM Report

America needs a Balanced Budget Amendment.

***

Alexander Hamilton told us:

"In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men the great difficulty is this: You must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control itself."

And this:

"Power over a man's subsistence is power over his will."

***

Mr. Hamilton's second quote has supplied our Democrats the answer to that "first difficulty".

A Balanced Budget Amendment is our obvious answer for conquering that "next".

***

It has been 200 years!! ..What are we waiting for???

SharkswithfrikingLazers  07/28/2011 05:19 PM Report

I would still like to know which would hurt the rich more--the foretold Wall Street crash without a compromise or raising their taxes.

I think it is the former and the Republicans will be killing their own base while claiming to help them.

robdverity  07/28/2011 01:59 PM Report

Is it possible our system is out of sync with our technology? If technology (robotics etc) continues to replace workers, retraining can only solve a fraction displaced. Ultimately a different system of distribution of assets (wealth?) will be needed. The masses can't buy what the robots make without it.

It seems that ultimately a form of (gasp, choke) socialism will have to be initiated proportionately with technology. Probably with a lag that causes social disruptions caused by the unemployment. Making people feel useful may develop into a national dilemma.

JohnGelles  07/28/2011 01:58 AM Report

We do NOT know where we are or what we're doing. The compromise that reflects answers will come IMO and many will claim it was clear all along that we would not experience another great depression or another Republican victory against the middle class (it once called its base).

I'm going with the big money -- and I expect Obama to have enough to campaign and when he campaigns to promise more than the Republicans will.

If I am wrong, the Republicans will have to out-promise Obama. They will have to promise a very large electorate a very large amount of growth and good fortune.

Possibly, Obama will lose his nerve, luck and bearings. If he does, my guess will be wrong and we will return to Reagan-omics. This will work if we reform and lower taxes and keep middle and upper class entitlements as high as possible. If we protect the middle, we can survive results no worse than China's. It won't be pretty, but we're used to it.

If we desert the middle class and cater only to "losers", we may be in for trouble for decades to come.

It often looks like our current President has deserted the middle class and is carrying water for the worst opportunists in the Democratic party. He follows a Republican-light agenda.

I know I'm trying to hedge my guesses. Such hedging is not fair when we play the pundit game. But I'm being unfair because Obama is too. He wants the center to hold -- but will not go all the way to the center and satisfy the dreams of people who want a break, who want a job, who want economic security beyond long shot opportunities. He refuses to sit with Bernanke and the DOD to promise the industrial and manufacturing growth, the high wages unions need, and the rejection of corporate treason that is responsible for our decline.

If we have to promise corporate tenure to earn national and social tenure via managed trade and liquidity, wew should do it.

If Obama thinks we can sell taxes and fight dreams he is crazy. Keynes won the war against communism and fascism. The Univ of Chicago offers only zero-sum financial games. These lead only to war -- and we cannot afford them any longer. Cost accounting and cost plus contracting will inflate us back to where we can avoid hyperinflation without inviting tea party madness. Obama must find allies who understand Krugman and will not move anywhere to his right.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  07/27/2011 05:41 PM Report

President Obama asked me to call my Congressman and I called him.

However, with the Grover Norquist pledge that my Congressman signed I am not sure if my call meant anything to anybody.

Well . . . here's to hope!

tabs  07/27/2011 05:01 PM Report

Of course Gearld Selb is correct when he states that what it all boils down to, is that the two competing visions of what America should be have come head to head. However he is a bit late in drawing that conclusion.

"America will become all of one thing or all of another. America will have a choice to make, either travel down the road to Social Democracy and social justice or retain the values of entrepreneurialism, innovation,and American Exceptional-ism one can not have both and once the choice is made there is no going back." TABS 7/15/11 CR Comment Board under "Debt Debate" 7/13/11.

He is also correct in his historical timeline that this confrontation began in 1980 with the election of Ronald Raagan. This was also the time when the National debt started its precipitious rise and the structural malaise in the US economy began to seriousily erode the American economic engine.

robdverity  07/27/2011 04:40 PM Report

CR commenter survey: what currency will replace the dollar as the next world reserve currency [with or without default]?

Choices might include: Chinese Renminbi (RMB). IMF SDRs (Special Drawing Rights - I don't know what that means), Euro, mixed basket, others (you choose).

Merely a rhetorical device to emphasize where we're headed. Thanks largely to the intransigence of the TEA party insurgence. Pointing out the debt excess was good, no compromise on its reduction is bad.

So economic toilet here we come. FLUSH!!!!

Well - beyond rhetorical, is the Ghinese RMB the most logical candidate? If not, why not?

P.S.: Agree with Ben's rant and JDC's poignant comment.

charlizecourriers  07/27/2011 04:05 PM Report

The issue is not the debt ceiling. The issue is the debt and deficit. Obama is going to lose populartiy, every month until the election,until he comes up with a meaningful plan. By the way, what is Obama's plan? Or what was it? P.S. Raising taxes won't solve either problem, especially if one is 'late to the game.'

BENEZRAA  07/27/2011 03:57 PM Report

ADDENDUM: TSUNAMI'S COMING, SURF'S UP, SKY'S FALLING, "WOLF, WOLF, WOLF, WOLF...."

In today's politics of demagoguery the only way out of one crisis is to create another, larger crisis. So, grab your surf board and head out to sea or head for high ground -- most of us can't really tell for sure, if the Tsunami is today, yesterday, or even as close as tomorrow or next week -- or the politicians may just be crying "wolf" -- or maybe the wolf is really here now and nobody believes the now because of yesterday's lies. (Playing the game of Musical Chairs or Pass the Grenade can be so much fun....)

BENEZRAA  07/27/2011 03:45 PM Report

Q: HOW HAS THE DEBT-CEILING CRISIS CONFUSED AND DEMORALIZED THE PUBLIC, EVEN AS CONGRESS PICKS OUR POCKETS?

Q: HOW HAVE 'BREAD AND CIRCUSES' REPLACED MEAT AND INDUSTRY?

Q: HOW DID THE U.S. GOVERNMENT BECOME THE COMPANY STORE?

Q: HOW HAS A CENTRALIZED FINANCIAL INDUSTRY REPEATEDLY RAPED THE NATION BY FABRICATING ONE CRISIS AFTER ANOTHER?

Q: HOW HAS THE CITIZEN-SOLDIER BEEN REPLACED BY PRIVATE AND PUBLIC MERCENARY ARMIES?

Q: IS THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY HERE TO STAY AS A NATIONALIZED VERSION OF THE PINKERTONS OF OLD?

------------------------------------

By placing a dollar value (salary) on elected public office,

by eliminating the Military Draft and by incentivising the Military in the name of "'service to the country",

by sub-contracting military activities to private armies operating under the euphemism "security services",

by eliminating the Gold Standard and by shrinking the value of the dollar beyond ordinary comprehension,

by anarchising laws of banking, finance, and insurance into one three-headed monster industry,

by failing to adequately fund and enforce existing financial regulatory mechanisms,

by purchasing "Toxic" Assets in the name of Financial Bailout and then reselling the "Toxic" Assets back to the original owners (de facto if not de juree) at discounted prices with devalued dollars (an exponential dollar shell game),

by fostering ubiquitous Media (thought-lessness for food-lessness) devoted to Circuses (so called Reality TV, Professional Sports, Professional Wrestling, Manufactured Popular Music, Tell-All TV, Talking Head News Media, etc.),

by developing a fast-food industry devoted to inferior Bread (food-lessness for thought-lessness).

So, say "Hello," to the Government Company Store, which pretty much now owns everything and everyone jointly with Big Industry, Big Finance, and Big Military.

Don't be alarmed, however. Homeland Security is here to stay and Homeland Security will protect you.

robdverity  07/27/2011 03:16 PM Report

CR commenter survey: what currency will replace the dollar as the next world reserve currency [with or without default]?

From Wikipedia: "As emphasised by the economist Avinash Persaud reserve currencies come and go. "International currencies in the past have included the Chinese Liang and Greek drachma, coined in the fifth century B.C., the silver punch-marked coins of fourth century India, the Roman denari, the Byzantine solidus and Islamic Dinar of the middle-ages, the Venetian ducato of the Renaissance, the seventeenth century Dutch guilder and of course, more recently, sterling and the dollar.”

Choices might include: Chinese Renminbi. IMF SDRs (Special Drawing Rights - I don't know what that means), Euro, mixed basket, others (you choose).

Merely a rhetorical device to emphasize where we're headed. Thanks largely to the intransigence of the TEA party insurgence. Pointing out the debt excess was good, no compromise on its reduction is bad.

So economic toilet here we come. FLUSH!!!!

JDC  07/27/2011 02:39 PM Report

In the discussion of the debt, etc., there does not seem to be any attention to the enormous cost of military activity. My intuition is that the involvement in Afghanistan will not result in an effective outcome... which begs the question, "what are all of these resources being spent on this hopeless cause?"

REMant  07/27/2011 11:44 AM Report

Again, raising the debt ceiling is not the only alternative to default. They can liquidate. Sell off California, or even New York. It is said, however, that Aug 2 or 3 is too soon as the Treasury has received more in tax receipts than expected. Ms Lagarde looks like she would be more comfortable sailing or on the beach. I am not sure why she took the position. The president's speech Monday said nothing more than he had in his news conference pout Saturday and was, as usual, disingenuous. And as usual Mr Rose has tried to put words in the mouths of his guests.

But the issue of big govt is secondary, just as it was under Hoover and FDR. The current financial crisis is a virtual duplicate of the 1929 Crash and Depression and the run-up to them, both caused by cheap money and resulting in stock mkt and real estate bubbles. The only real differences being that we have shamelessly depreciated more and earlier (tho not new), that the world is somewhat less fragile and dependent because of the multiplication of multinational corps, and it is China which occupies our former place and we, Britain's. Too, despite bank and consumer overextension, highly conservative American industry remained in much stronger position. In a fantasy world, the British failed to take steps several years earlier that would have prevented catastrophe, just as we, now. However, it was not just their banks or govt, but the entire country. Lowering wages and prices, cutting welfare, simply were not done. Industry failed to change old ways and old equipment, declined to increase hours or shifts, was paralyzed by unions, and engaged in Japanese-style price fixing combinations, their banking industry also highly concentrated. They lowered the bank rate instead and drove gold out of the country.* But gold per se had nothing to do with any of what happened, tho it might have prevented it if in any serious way the gold standard had been respected. But it was ignored or evaded. The only disadvantage to gold you might say was that it was part of an international system of cooperation and trade, which took longer to break down than would have been the case without it, meaning that countries would likely have paid an even greater price for their folly and sooner, and perhaps not so many of them burned. Protectionism is not much of an answer. Mercantilists have always engaged in protectionism, always favored their own, always overspent, always printed money. There's nothing new in it, hardly modern or benevolent or egalitarian. The truths of Enlighentment equilibrium theory were abandoned by those who reverted to it, and the consequences dire. It can be fairly said that going off the gold standard capped a decade of British financial irresponsibility and IMHO did more to cause WWII than any other single event. It immediately brought down the Banks of France and The Netherlands who had trusted them, and eventually our own banking system. It is ironic that while much of the world is engaged in revolution for freedom, we stand pat in our self-righteousness, just as the British. Like the US today they thought the prestige of the pound would see them through. But a US default today would likely be much the same as Britain's abandonment of gold. Indeed, as today, the Germans were the only honest and hard-working of the major powers.

I would, BTW, pay the bondholders.

* Benjamin Anderson quipped: "Britain demonstrated what the present writer believes to be a universal economic law, namely, that any country can have heavy unemployment if it is willing and able to pay for it." See in particular Chaps 22 and 34 of his excellent history of the period, "Economics and the Public Welfare," written in 1949 (http://mises.org/books/economics_public_welfare_anderson.pdf). Anderson was Chase's economist through the '20s and '30s and later professor of banking at UCLA (http://mises.org/about/3226).