Charlie Rose

correcaminos  04/22/2012 11:45 PM Report

The World Economic Forum 2011 & 2012 Worlds Risk Agenda, pointed out the biggest treats for the decade, The number one in 2011 was climate change, it was the most likely and with the most economic impact. On 2012 came as number two.

How come they do not consider this macro cause of concern that affects all planing ahead.

Climate change happens every some thousands of years, but this time the man speeded up the process

slightly_optimistic  04/16/2012 06:30 AM Report

The NATO security summit takes place in Chicago next month. The agenda apparently intends to focus on three main themes: Afghanistan; capabilities for future challenges; and strengthening NATO's network of partners across the globe.

In view of the many comments the above interview has attracted, it would be helpful if the agenda could concentrate on the rationale for what seems a crucial international/diplomatic alliance. After all, there's no point doing the wrong thing well.

The agenda could include 1. The point of introducing new rules, bearing in mind 1971; the definition of global public goods and who should pay for them? 3. wars of choice

robort  04/14/2012 03:54 PM Report

Our form of government is broken (hello!)

Even if world competition were reduced to just one other competing country, we remain paralyzed - at near stand still - with ground to make up.

This is no time to be sitting on the side of the road broken down.

I have been following politics and government for years in search of missing clarity for better understanding.

We have come a long way to this point in time with uncovering issues, such that there is no longer any reason to drag this out.

There is a recent documentary film which cuts to the chase locating our "compound fracture" and how to repair it.

Check it out if you haven't already become too numb to care about yourself and/or those around you.

http://www.pricelessmovie.org/

slightly_optimistic  04/14/2012 05:27 AM Report

The need to stabilise the Indo-Pacific region etc?

Wars of choice are getting more critical attention as globalisation evolves.

Gelles  04/11/2012 02:58 AM Report

The debt-based money model risks deflation if production does not find buyers who can afford its price structure.

So it makes less sense to me than a model that can avoid un-repayable debt while it grows supply to meet need.

Gelles  04/11/2012 02:48 AM Report

The West still recommends two models -- only one of which makes sense to me:

1. Model financed with debt-based money: Here, the economy grows when borrowed money buys a system that will sell enough at a price sufficient to repay loans and interest and to leave producers with profits to reward owners of common stock.

2. Model financed with debt-free money: Here, the economy grows when borrowed money buys a system that will sell enough at a lower price -- sufficient to repay loans (without interest) that leave producers with profits to reward owners of common stock.

Both models work; but only if the volume of production is high enough to accomplish missions and objectives vital to the future interests of the nations that produced the models.

OLAN  04/10/2012 01:40 PM Report

The western model is based on a culture that is transformational. It embraces and will bring the world forward.

slightly_optimistic  04/10/2012 07:54 AM Report

Yes Gelles, it is difficult to reconcile the logic of continuing the present model of global finance with the events of 1971 when the safeguards against world war were so easily overturned, Europe was attacked and the need to stabilise the Indo-Pacific region.

finalfantasytown  04/10/2012 01:17 AM Report

I believe most of human being species are living in a major hierarchical design. 2012 is a milestone year in which Manny's dream of 'one big happy family' collapses. This dream has been proved not possible in the design in the pre-human history, that means Americans have experienced the old story. Also, Kongfu might be invented in that period. I think the new story includes three parts at least: first trans parents into human being; second, identification which is the key to build defense system to wrong combinations because all reality (even diseases) comes from human minds; third, trans human being into next generation who has better imitation system and more powerful mind and will.

I like Japanese Manga, especially the new creatures they draw which are different from anyone in nature. This is flatter.

Gelles  04/09/2012 02:06 PM Report

Dear Slightly Optimistic ~

You are catching on and catching fire.

What you fear is fearsome.

What we need is aggressive progress in the Info-tech revolution addressed to financing middle class success (and success in moving anyone below the middle to a nearly-middle class status -- allowing zero poverty, and minimum force to prevent major war.)

Such an invention is less complicated than heart by-passes.

We do not need debt, when people will save as much as they can and the system guarantees that savings will hold adequate purchasing power forever. The key to everything is simplification of all text where the same is possible, and maximum productivity to supply the necessities of life for which people save their money for a rainy day.

Where is our "can do" attitude toward reform to achieve: ..... clean energy provisioning systems,

..... effective education and training systems,

..... wholesale health systems in reach of every sick or injured person, free to all, and making use of para-medics, young serious persons, every modern tool for training medics -- similar to our Army and Navy systems, etc.

..... anti-corruption systems that encourage people to behave and invite second and third chances to many idiots that only need same to get their heads straight.

..... etc.

Gelles  04/09/2012 01:45 PM Report

Tabs and others witnessing formation of a new global financing system ~

The current Silicon Valley excitement over Face-Book and billion member advertising supported platforms (to sell information products that may not be geared to output of the material necessities of real working people) MEANS:

a. More Internet share-value bubbles that may have to burst -- if we have not developed techniques for full employment following very large deflation in share prices (we know must follow capital asset price inflation everyone loves to watch, and/or actually time perfectly to become rich, in hard money or stable corporate producers.)

b. The current absence of full demand, full employment, systems, both necessary to prevent wreckage of job markets and middle classes, may be contingent on government understanding and legal remedies for economic diseases inherent in too free trade and too free financial games that corrupt elites are using the way lesser "elites" use drugs.

Austerity is never an answer. Protecting creditors and gamesters is not enough. We must invent protections for debtors and worker-customers that reverse the IRS and its income tax: we must rather pump cash to individuals and families whose income is essential to supply the money spending on which their jobs depend.

I see no need to over-regulate ourselves to death. Rather, an economic security agency (ESA) can have connections to every purse to make sure it is never empty.

The thought that moral hazard awaits a full employment system is baloney. People want work and success. Unemployment and failure is a recipe for more of the same.

slightly_optimistic  04/09/2012 12:44 PM Report

Paper promises?

Following the devastation of WW2, the international community decided at Bretton Woods that in order to prevent a repeat global currencies needed to be linked to gold.

This link lasted until 1971.

Coggan's book sees 1971 as a colossal turning point. Following the US overspending on Vietnam, LBJ's big society etc the Nixon administration decided it wouldn't repay its debts in gold. The world's safeguard against serious instability [the link to gold] was consequently allowed to be removed.

Incidentally the resulting looseness in the world's monetary system also allowed the new embrionic European currency to be attacked, at great cost to some countries including the UK on Black Wednesday in 1992.

Financial arbitrage is widespread now, partly because international audit is discouraged. New rules could be introduced by the G20, but what's the point if they cannot be enforced as we saw in 1971.

Gelles  04/09/2012 11:13 AM Report

Dear Tabs ~

My long post below has too many typographical errors and it is too long to read.

The short version is that there is a new book by Philip Coggan, "Paper promises: Debt, Money, and the New Wold Order". WE ALL MUST WORK WITH THAT BOOK and assure that the new world order makes more sense than ever before.

Paper promise can not all be kept. Some debt must be reorganized, as prices go down and up, and expectations may be disappointed.

We must keep our eyes on the real prize: full employment, radically growing supply to meet need and demand created to match supply, an end to poverty ASAP, and avoidance (at all cost) of thermo-nuclear war.

Gelles  04/09/2012 10:47 AM Report

You are forecasting the decline of American industrial power (and financial and military power) over future years of the present century.

Gelles  04/09/2012 10:45 AM Report

Dear Tabs ~

You are forecasting the decline of America industrial power (and financial and military power) over this years of the present century.

For this to come true, another nation, like China , or military industrial treaty organization, like Russia and China, or United Nations type treaty, will have to replace the USA as leader of a free or wage-enslaved world.

Your forecast may possibly be correct. But your ideas of what to do to arrive at a better future are incomplete and far from clear.

You seem to want an austerity program to wreck all chance that Keynesian solutions will be applied by America -- and, therefore IMO -- America will lead the world back to Keynes and the end of wage slavery.

Below my comment is a book review by Serge J. Van Steenkiste of Philip Coggans essential new book, "Paper Promises: Debt, Money, and the New World Order".

The Van Steenkiste review is useful -- reading the whole book is essential. The review has a gross error, IMO. It suggests that Keynesian solutions (like Bernanke's debt-free money supplements to US a harder US dollar) will not increase production. This notion is wrong. Debt-free money supplements will solve our needs for far greater demand to match current supply and far greater supply to match the current need to end BOTH poverty and wage slavery.

The Van Steenkiste review says China wants a fixed foreign exchange regime treaty, and the USA wants floating exchange rates.

I am convinced at the moment that fixed rates are preferable to floating rates. But the concepts Keynes against wage slavery and Diamandis (author of "Abundance") against scarcity, are the ideas that will win the day.

I offer the review below (of text from Amazon.com website) at the teachable moment for educational non-commercial purposes in accordance with applicable law.):

Customer Review:

Excessive Debt or the Illusion of Wealth, February 6, 2012

By Serge J. Van Steenkiste

This review is for: Paper Promises: Debt, Money, and the New World Order (Hardcover) Philip Coggan

Philip Coggan explores with much clarity the different cycles in which money and debt have expanded. Mr. Coggan reminds his audience that money is concomitantly a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value. Two of these monetary roles - the means of exchange and store of value - lie at the heart of the ongoing struggle between creditors and debtors.

Starting in the United Kingdom in the late eighteenth century, the Industrial Revolution resulted into accelerated economic growth, significant population increase, and more trade across the developed world and its colonies.

This burst of activity required more official money that remained based on precious metals until WWI. The United Kingdom led the way once again with the adoption of the gold standard among developed economies in the first half of the nineteenth century.

The absence of universal suffrage allowed the upper or creditor classes to whom central bankers usually belonged, to favor a policy of sound currency backed by gold, regardless of the pain inflicted to the lower social classes.

WWI resulted into the suspension of the gold standard and the massive increase in paper money.

Power shifted to debtors during the inter-war period due to the widespread adoption of democracy and the impossibility to restore the gold standard because of the burden of international debts, especially war reparations.

During this period, the global money supply expanded, resulting in more paper money relative to gold.

The crisis of 1931 resulted into a deflationary trap and the shift toward the modern welfare state to try to mitigate the effects of persistent mass unemployment in the 1930s.

Widespread trade protectionism compounded the difficulty for governments of advanced economies to manage the economic cycle during this period.

Under the leadership of the U.S., the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates was introduced in 1944 and remained in place until 1971.

This system was built on the control of capital flows and the confidence of international investors in the U.S. economic policy. Currencies were linked to the U.S. dollar, which was itself linked to gold.

Only central banks were able to convert paper money into the gold that the U.S. owned. During this period, economic activity far outstripped the supply of precious metals.

Confidence in the U.S. economic policy broke down in 1971. The final link with gold was removed by the U.S.

The combination of paper money and the adoption of floating exchange rates, in the developed world at least, resulted into a massive increase in the volume of debt.

Governments, mainly in the developed world, further fueled this debt bonfire by making more and more unfunded promises to their (aging) electorates.

The past decades witnessed first runaway inflation, then a series of bursting asset bubbles from the 1980s onwards.

During the same period, the increase in consumer prices was constrained thanks to globalization, technological advances, and the greater role of women in the workforce.

The current global debt crisis, which started in 2007-2008, has witnessed the return of the problems associated with the 1930s, i.e., debt/deflation spiral and the paradox of thrift.

Central banks have not hesitated to sacrifice the value of their currencies to protect the financial system.

To his credit, Mr. Coggan clearly articulates the likely long-term consequences of this debt crisis, i.e., inflation, stagnation, and default.

1. High inflation is very tempting to the central banks of heavily indebted countries. However, creditors will push back by asking for the same real rate of interest, regardless of the level of inflation.

Furthermore, quantitative easing (QE), which also sacrifices creditors' interests to the benefit of those of debtors, is an unproven tactic that is unlikely to work.

..... [John Gelles disagrees and believes QE + Abundance = "the magic bullet" to begin to end poverty and wage slavery.]

As Mr. Coggan learns from Lee Quaintance and Paul Brodsky, two hedge fund managers, printing money and extending credit do not create wealth. QE at best redistributes wealth; at worst may temper its creation.

..... [Again, John Gelles disagrees and believes QE + Abundance = "the magic bullet" to begin to end poverty and wage slavery.]

2. Low interest rates, which reward debtors at the expense of creditors, and low growth, go hand in hand. The cost of capital and the return of capital tend to be at the same level. Therefore, if this is the case, the Western world is following a deeply flawed strategy.

..... [John Gelles says NONSENSE. Low interest rates and QE (injections of debt-free money from central banks and parliaments) go hand in hand with high growth based on government investment in high technology spurred hyper-productivity of new energy, materials, and techniques in science and business based on information theory and revolutionary development.]

Electorates will push sooner or later their representatives to erode the debt, in real or nominal terms, to try to escape from stagnation. Nonetheless, creditors will push back as it was noted previously.

3. The temptation to default is also high. The political unpopularity involved in paying "greedy" (foreign) creditors will overwhelm any other issue associated with a default.

The best that creditors can do is to cut off (temporarily) the defaulting debtors from access to further borrowing.

..... [John Gelles says private sector creditors should cut off their loans where prudent. Central banks and parliaments must create debt-free money (with anti-inflation programs in place) to spur demand and supply to accomplish our full employment objectives. (Theoretically, debt-free money will not be necessary if zero interest rates are chosen to be offered instead.)]

It does not matter which of these three scenarios ultimately gets the upper hand, writes Mr. Coggan. Debt is unlikely to be repaid in the form of money with the same purchasing power as when it was lent. Breaking these paper promises will damage the interests of both debtors and creditors.

..... [truer words were never spoken -- says JG]

Many developed Western economies are unlikely to escape from this crisis by achieving high growth due to population and productivity constraints as well as higher energy prices. Some developed countries will be able to muddle through; others will be ensnared into a debt trap. The developing countries will have to review their options under these circumstances.

..... [JG offers options as above presented]

Mr. Coggan concludes his examination of the history of money and debt by looking at the outlines of a new international currency system resulting from a world economy in crisis.

The U.S. and China are at odds with each other about the outlines of this new system. China prefers a system of fixed exchange rates, the U.S. a system of floating exchange rates.

In summary, Mr. Coggan does a great job in making a complex subject accessible to a wider audience.

===end review from Amazon, with JG commentary===

I hope, Tabs and others, including Serge J. Van Steenkiste, will use the Coggan book, "Paper Promises: Debt, Money, and the New World Order" to great advantage. Amazon offers a forum for the book or for the author. Such forums might be useful.

.

useful index to recent Charlie Rose Shows

www.utaxreform.us/.crs.htm

tabs  04/09/2012 08:47 AM Report

One is tired of saying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Nothing has changed so one has resorted to pulling out older pieces that reflect the continued reality of the US and Global economies. The only thing that has changed is that the US, Europe and Japan have sunk ever deeper into the waters of deficit and debt, which makes their economies ever more unresponsive and unwieldy. Simpson Bowles is a year and half old now, and one wonders if their recommendations are now approaching obsolescence? One thing is certain and that is that everyday that passes the hole grows deeper and the solution becomes evermore painful to implement. One has been of the opinion since 1980 that the US government will conducted business as usual until it can not beg, borrow, steal, tax nor print another dollar. Call it the hubris of the Rich Nation Syndrome, which has laid many an empire low in the past. In other words no other nation has defeated the US, America has done it to itself. Hollowed out and destroyed from within.

What one has been paying attention to and thinking about is the dynamic of how the established power structures whether it be social, political or economic declines which gives rise to increasing chaos, failure and how out of that failure new power structures are established.

There are two different ways an established power structure can come to an end and that is with a bang or with a whimper. One is not so certain that Fed Chairman Bernanke is not trying to orchestrate a managed or controled ending or failure if it is coming to that? Which will be accomplished by printing so many USD's that they in affect will become so deflated in value as to be almost worthless, or perhaps one morning the world will wake up to find that the USD was devalued during the night. Under this scenario US assets fall to their real value, and whoever is holding them gets a haircut but the structure of the Global economy remains largely intact in this reckoning and re balancing. As previously stated the US gets to play a lot of games with the USD because it is the Reserve Currency in which oil is paid for, and that is making a lot of people around the world hot under the collar because they are paying for American intransigence.

The other scenario is that the world wakes up one morning to find that there has been a run on either the USD or US debt instruments. This would in affect create an economic and political tsunami that would engulf the world in chaos. This scenario effectively ends the Global Economy and pushes mankind back a century or two? If one is dumbfounded with disbelief one should open the hood of any modern car and count the number of different nations that contributed parts to its manufacture. Then consider if that supply chain is irreparably disrupted. Here one only needs to consider one factor among several others that would prevail under a condition of dysfunction and that is if the US could not afford to provide Global Security to maintain peace and tranquility in the world.

With the Federal Reserve according the WSJ buying 61% of the US debt instruments one wonders just how big can the Federal Reserve expand the balance sheet before gravity takes hold? In any event the US political regime is playing with fire whose consequence is dire indeed. As such the US political regime is being irresponsible and should be held accountable as it holds the fate of the world in its hands.

slightly_optimistic  04/09/2012 08:45 AM Report

NATO has much potential. Canada was a founding member of the international alliance 60 years ago, and perhaps in anticipation of today's troubles, it had the foresight to introduce into the NATO treaty an economic clause.

Lester Pearson had a pivotal role in drawing up the NATO treaty and in particular he pushed for the inclusion of an economic clause -- a novel idea for a mutual defence treaty. Article 2 – the so-called Canadian Article -- reads: "[The Parties] will seek to eliminate conflict in their international economic policies and will encourage economic collaboration between any or all of them.")

finalfantasytown  04/09/2012 08:27 AM Report

This is food chain game. See the world respond to the common enemy

finalfantasytown  04/08/2012 10:53 PM Report

Hitler returns? My Führer, the enemy is Chinese. They are stealing money, jobs, and destroy our democracy. They are unwelcomed, unwanted, and they are everywhere.

slightly_optimistic  04/08/2012 05:52 AM Report

For discussion at NATO's summit in Chicago in May? The definition of global public goods and who should pay for them.

Incidentally, Tabs you say the dam finally broke in 2008. A key moment before this was in 1971 when Washington's actions had enormous adverse consequences for global financial stability.

Gelles , Kagan's comments that US military power is needed to stabilise the Indo-Pacific region seem to echo those of Kaplan.

finalfantasytown  04/08/2012 04:35 AM Report

Peace, I love peace. I always dream that one day I stand on the stage having Nobel Peace Prize with the feeling of joy with sorrow.

finalfantasytown  04/08/2012 04:29 AM Report

The source of capitalism is emotion which has several distinct forms. It is proved Japanese has precision mind. Especially during these two years, Japanese as a whole has handled that kind of emotion successfully.

But one day when having to face massive evolution which is still far away from the exit because of human being's physical and mental limits of imitation and limits of will, what is the reaction?

I become interested in the typical moods of Karl Marx, who is the typical character of communism.

Gelles  04/07/2012 09:41 PM Report

Dear Tabs ~

You are a total idiot.

You have not read ABUNDANCE by Peter Diamandis. It is about productivity, especially hyper-productivity.

Until now the world economy was constrained by BOTH supply and demand.

Imagine, if you can, by thought experiment, that the supply constraint is shattered by revolutions in materials, information and biological theory, practice, and real results.

What is going to happen, for sure, is that the constraint on demand in the advanced industrial nations will be eased enough for more than 10% annual growth of every economy on earth.

It is true this may be delayed. But only world war or natural calamity can stop it.

All the nonsense you believe is out of date.

What to do? Avoid world war. Demand full employment and full realistic growth in annual aggregate demand to sell to all of us all our needs.

Taxation and counter-productive complexity must be fought tooth and nail by the like of YOU and ME ! The private elite professions are just as guilty as government at the moment. Reform, WHOLESALE, must be our motto, mantra and profound belief.

Excuse my bad language and yelling. But you are willing defeat. You must convert to be a desciple of Singularity University, a partnership between NASA and the private sector, which votes for success in the future. If not, people like me must shout you down. Don't be a copperhead defending wage slavery. Workers are customers too. Wages convert to sales, when our professionals correct the paradox of debt-based money: it does not work unless added to that money is enough debt-free money to create necessary demand.

Of course, you are to be forgiven. CHARLIE ROSE IS THE CULPRIT -- he has never promoted monetary reform to fix age old monetary error.

tabs  04/07/2012 08:12 PM Report

Now Comes Part Two:

The following was posted to this Board in 3 parts on or about the date indicated. The question the reader has to ask themselves is just how accurate was this commentary about future events?

The Reckoning & Re Balancing

Mon, 04/11/2011 - 15:57 — tabs

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

The United states has lived beyond it means for 40 years. At first the over spending was hardly noticed as we just took it out of the national saving but as time has gone on the US has resorted to ever greater financial bubbles, accounting gimmicks, and being over leveraged to maintain the illusion of prosperity. The dam finally broke on this ponzi scheme in the fall of 2008. Since then there has been the beginning of a reckoning.

Since this great collapse in 2008 of an over leveraged financial system the US has been in a transition period of which we still have not seen the end of. What is clearly happening is that the equity of the world is being transferred to the new rightful owners. To facilitate this great re balancing of wealth the US has embarked on an expansion of the money supply with the stated aim of not only resurrecting a morbid economy but changing what should be a deflationary environment into a inflationary one.

The net affect is that with a cheaper or devalued USD, commodity prices are going to climb in the US and that means higher prices at the pump and grocery store for everyone. However what makes this a re balancing of the wealth is that wages and RE are not going to participate at the same pace as commodities. Which in the long run means that Americans are going to have their standard of living rebalanced.

Another factor has to be included into this equation and that is, as the population of the world rises as does their level of expectations there is going to be evermore competition for the resources and food supplies of the world. This will lead to a less stable world politically and economically as the threat and or shortages occur.

What one has stated here is nothing new as one has been posting this argument over a lengthy period of time. What is new is that the Kudlow discussion on CNBC talked about this morning was rising commodity prices, stagnation of wages and the transfer of wealth out of the USA. . Thus it will not be long now before the leading economic lights will figure it out that the US has faced a reckoning and is now re balancing itself into a new era.

Yet the specter remains in the room of the collapse of the Mother of all Bubbles and that is the Sovereign Debt Bubble of the United States. That would be the day of reckoning for the entire world. Whether this Bubble collapses or the US is able to contain and deflate the bubble without catastrophic circumstance remains to be seen. The Obama Presidency and Democrat Congress apparently don't even recognize the danger ahead as none of their plans or recommendations addresses this issue in the least meaningful way. Thus it is only the Republican Congress that remains as a pillar of fiscal reality.

The real issue here is one of confidence or as some might say "animal spirits." As long as ones believes in the "FULL FAITH OF THE US GOVERNMENT" everything will continue on as before. However all it will take is for someone to say I don't believe the US is going to get it's fiscal house in order for there to be a loss of that "FULL FAITH'; in the US government.

.

tabs  04/07/2012 07:56 PM Report

To Mr Rose via e-mail and various other places on or about the date indicated.

YA Can't Put Humpty Dumpty Back Together Again

Thu, 08/05/2010 - 11:14 — tabs

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

You don't have to tell me things are bad, worse than bad. But the sky isn't going to fall, the end isn't nye and we are not doomed. What is going to happen and we are well on the road to this end is that the USA is just not going to be as prosperous nor as powerful as it once was.

The Middle Class is going to shrink, there is going to be a relatively large underclass of working people and unemployed. Wages for the American worker are going to more closely parallel that of the worlds wage structure and the living standard is going to decline. The economy of the USA is going to more closely resemble 1910 than its post war heyday of 1960.

What truly amazes is the lack of vision on the part of ALL the economists, politicos and media. These people don't seem to understand the historic inevitability of this end. It does seem that they are stuck in the present and when trying to remedy problems are trying to formulate some grand plan that will "fix" America so that it can retain its supremacy in the world. What these people fail to realize is the fact that it took one step, one decision at a time over a number of decades to reach the situation America now faces. To "fix" the problem a grand plan of action or legislation is not going to work for any plan is based on present knowledge and conditions and can not foresee future conditions or problems. One gets themselves into trouble one step at a time and one gets one self out of trouble the same way. Anything else is simply not going to work. That is not to say that one can not have a direction or policy to move towards.

Further all the efforts to rectify America's problems is like the kings men trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again for these same economists etal also fall to understand the arc of history. Again they seem rooted in the moment or at best looking back a mere decade. To get a truly accurate assessment of Americas current status one has to look at its economic and political history going back 65 years.

After WW2 America entered into an unprecedented wealth building Post War Prosperity Boom that lasted roughly 20 years. This prosperity boom was fueled by 5 main ingredients

1. America was the only unscathed industrial power in the world and the world needed rebuilding.

2. The GI's returning from WW2 started families and needed everything refrigerators, washing machines, televisions, cars and houses.

3. After WW2 there was a dearth of consumer goods as very few were produced from 1930 to 1945 due to the Great Depression and the World War. Thus there was 15 years worth of pent up demand.

4. The rise of the large middle class, where a man without an education could attain middle class status was due to corporations thinking that they were making so much money that they could meet Union demands for higher wages. These corporations felt they would lose more money by going on strike than paying its workers higher wages and benefits.

5. The Cold War demanded that higher military budgets be kept in place. This one might say was a continual government stimulus program.

By 1965 this unprecedented status began to change first with competition from Europe and Japan and later Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, China, India and Brazil. If one remembers the first of the American industries to fall to foreign competition was the American ship building industry, followed by autos, steel and electronics..remember those American icons of American electronics Zenith,, RCA, and Westinghouse? This trend has continued on to this very day.

Also one has to mention the inflection point where the US government and society in general began to feel that as a "Rich" nation we could afford it all without consequence and that was the day LBJ put the SS Trust into the General Account in 1968. This act merely disguised the true national debt by using an accounting gimmick of placing that debt into accounts payable.

By examining the causative factors that led to the Great American Prosperity Boom of the post war period one has to realize those conditions that created it no longer exist, there is a new paradigm at work. America is saturated with consumer goods, debt and is faced with continually steeper competition in the world. The mere fact that American politicians are trying to resurrect the past is in of itself a causative agent for failure. America has to face this new reality and not try and delude itself into thinking Humpty Dumpty can be put back together again.

Gelles  04/07/2012 06:17 PM Report

We amateur pundits and professional citizens of the United States embrace our Preamble -- it is whom we are -- above all other allegiances, ideologies and permanent interests:

..... "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

If a new world order is always forming, especially in the wake of wars and global financial crises, we know what we want and how hard is its achievement.

We are no longer just the West. China, India, Japan and the Asian Tigers, together with the Russian and European nations and provinces, form a great partnership for development and peace. North and South America will do well to draw closer together, too.

Left out of the above is the menace of potential Islamic terrorism and North Korean confusion.

A current article in the New Yorker on Macau, as China's gift to global gambling (not far from Hong Kong), tells a story of "Chimerica" that portends a future in which China and the United States never again fight each other as they did in Korea and did differently in Vietnam. I want to believe that such will be our fate. Our greatest minds have always counseled against a great war between opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean.

We are now, under this discussion of ends and means, advised by Robert Kagan:

..... "U.S. military power in the Indo-Pacific is needed not only to manage the peaceful rise of China but also to stabilize a region witnessing the growth of indigenous civil-military post-industrial complexes."

..... Kagan is right -- but more must be said. Peace is our primary goal. The blessings of liberty are only obtainable with great patience. America withheld human rights from more than half of our population for more than 100 years.

..... But our example of belief in the Preamble for great numbers of our citizens led to its expansion in the past and will lead to real economic rights ASAP in the foreseeable future.

The human race loves to talk and loves to gamble. Money is a language that talks and is convenient for a good deal of gambling.

If can make money a tool for peace more useful than it is for war, our chance for peace and prosperity will improve.

No one person need provide the answer we seek. Keynes and Lerner have done enormous good work already. I hope amateurs like www.ustaxreform.us -- (Electric Money) -- will add a bit to solutions. A Wiki-policy system, open to every brain, that uses human editors to help grow consensus around public domain thoughts, will become a product of that website and countless others.

dsdmtom  04/07/2012 03:46 PM Report

Can someone explain why this video doesn't play properly on Firefox with the latest Flashplayer (according to Adobe)? Seems the first couple of segments play fine, and then the player hangs, never retrieving the next one.

slightly_optimistic  04/07/2012 01:51 PM Report

The competing geopolitical views of US and China merit attention. A Stratfor newsletter this week suggests the world would suffer if the US was prevented from supplying global public goods in the Indo-Pacific region. Defence analyst Robert Kaplan writes:

"Were the United States not now to turn to the Indo-Pacific, it would risk a multipolar military order arising up alongside an already existent multipolar economic and political order. Multipolar military systems are more unstable than unipolar and bipolar ones because there are more points of interactions and thus more opportunities for miscalculations, as each country seeks to readjust the balance of power in its own favor. U.S. military power in the Indo-Pacific is needed not only to manage the peaceful rise of China but also to stabilize a region witnessing the growth of indigenous civil-military post-industrial complexes."

blank  04/07/2012 03:54 AM Report

subject; Business in China

that's pretty smart to initiate a democratic system at the village and county level

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12245

Gelles  04/07/2012 01:01 AM Report

My ad hominem attack against a fellow traveler with Charlie Rose compels me to apologize to Mr. REMant.

He sets my teeth on edge every time he speaks in print upon my screen.

His argument against E.O. Wilson's theory of cooperation in colonies of insects and mammals in the wild is not my peeve. It is his wish for Americans to retreat and our enemies to advance that makes me angry.

..... If only he and Chomsky could be banished to Iran until that land reforms and, there and then, he is free to write to us his everyday experience, I could be happy with their scholarship. You say it will not happen? Well he could pretend it did -- and write us what he thinks he would experience if such exile were a fact.

Gelles  04/07/2012 12:33 AM Report

This presentation, of the centrist positions of Francis Fukuyama, Gideon Rose and Charlie Rose, was very effective. Their positions are pro-American, pro-democratic, and pro-human rights -- in the historical struggle between absolute tyranny and Abraham Lincoln's version of the American dream and destiny.

REMant demonstrates his peculiar distaste for Roosevelt and Lincoln's ideals, and his fondness for:

..... The anti-human rights elements of the French Aristocracy (who stood against equality before the French Revolution, aka, the Ancien Regime),

..... Fascism,

..... Communism, and

..... Islamo fascism.

REMant is a remnant of the anti-New Dealers who fail to follow Keynes and today are about as misinformed as Ron Paul -- on everything that matters. But I would not be surprised if REMant also oppose Paul. He has his own unique beliefs. As, indeed do I. We are opposites to a degree. Every thing he writes is like finger nails scratching slate.

I will be absent from the forum for a week or more. he best thing about such absence will be not reading REMant.

Meanwhile, Gideon Rose, Charlie and Francis F., would like

to restore postwar American hegemony, to protect democracy and a mixed economy, and to solve the central Keynesian challenge to the rule of anachronistic debt and intolerable war and poverty, (as REMant and the interview claim).

Why would REMant want to bring back Hooverism and move toward Hayekian pessimism?

..... Why is he so hard to fathom? Probably for the same reasons all of us are hard to fathom: we have a mind of our own, no matter that his is filled with garbage -- (as in garbage in - garbage out, when computers are left around for us to use.)

I have also written on this Fukuyama interview in the archive under Pinker's interview yesterday.

.

www.ustaxreform.us/.crs.htm

Gelles  04/06/2012 11:48 PM Report

First the ancien regime, then fascism, then Communism became the scapegoats Islam is now, and the Chinese would likely be if they didn't hold several trillion of our debt. Ditto the Saudis. The fact is we've never given genuine Liberalism a try.

vongleichent  04/06/2012 03:27 PM Report

This is what we see happening with the arab spring revolution. The people going against there governments with very good reasons. Unemployment will always be on the forefront.

REMant  04/06/2012 02:07 PM Report

This is a plug for the Jan-Feb issue of Foreign Affairs reprinting many of its old articles. See http://www.foreignaffairs.com/issues/2012/91/01 But the Council on Foreign Relations is such a sham. And its editor seems to know no history. His idea is to restore postwar American hegemony, which he mistaken thinks "mutually supporting liberal democracies with mixed economies [that] solved the central challenge of modernity." And it appears the articles were selected with that in mind, as they are nearly all by Labourites of one sort or other, the "clash" superficial, and his appearance on this show, with that in Charlie's mind. Fukuyama's commentary calling for "a new populist ideology that offers a realistic path to healthy middle-class societies and robust democracies" would seem to indicate he doesn't agree with the volume's thrust.

Lord Geoffrey Crowther, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Crowther), BTW, was a protege of Keynes, made editor of The Economist at age 31. He appears tho not to have been privy to actual goings on in allied foreign offices.

Hoover was in fact the liberal, Roosevelt the reactionary, when he took office. But the same things have happened then as now. The world took up neighbor-beggaring, in its monetary policies as well as its protectionism, and is again looking to God knows what to bail them out. Then it was the breakup of Britain's empire we pinned out hopes on; now it's China. First the ancien regime, then fascism, then Communism became the scapegoats Islam is now, and the Chinese would likely be if they didn't hold several trillion of our debt. Ditto the Saudis. The fact is we've never given genuine Liberalism a try. Too, mixed govt is not synonymous with mixed economy. Nor is revolution in the name of modernization, peace.

I notice there's also several, probably specious, or rather specie-less, essays concerning monetary problems, along with the usual bomb-everyone we hate stuff.

As I mentioned in a comment elsewhere Wednesday, I feel certain the US is busy trying to get China to assume some of the white man's burden we took up after the war along with Britain's trade. But why not have Gabriel Kolko discuss this? He would be in his 80's now, but he wrote the book on this, The Limits of Power, in 1972, and I notice he's not to be found among the venerated.