Mark Blyth On Brexit, the Euro, Austerity, and the Rise of the Technocrats and Oligarchs

"Europe will be forged in crises, and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for those crises.”

Jean Monnet, Memoirs


"I’m very pro-European, but I’m against the euro, so if I still lived in the UK I would have an interesting choice.  Now if you look at Larry Elliott in The Guardian, he thinks he should vote for exit because this might be the existential crisis that blows up the euro. Now why would you want to blow up the Euro, because 'that would be terrible etc. et cetera'.  Because the long-term effect of the euro is going to be to drive Western European wages down to Eastern European levels in global competition for export share with the Chinese.

That’s one interpretation as to where this all goes.  And that’s going to be fine for the Eastern Europeans coming up.  It’s going to be great for very efficient exporters in the North.  It’s going to be a disaster for France and parts of Italy, if not all, and certainly for Greece.

Now if you have a system in which one side runs a surplus and the other side cannot run a deficit because of the rules, the only thing the other side can do is permanently contract their economies to allow someone else to make money selling BMWs.  I don’t see this ending well so perhaps it’s better to nip it in the bud when you’ve got the chance."

Mark Blyth

While in some ways this analysis by Mark Blyth (and similarly by Thomas Frank) can be construed as an over-simplification.  But on the other hand it represents an insight into a fundamental reality that is driving much of what we are witnessing today, a reality that seems inexplicable to the political class of both left and right.

The liberals blame the irresistible imperatives of globalization and technology, and the conservatives blame immigration and everyone who isn't them or completely like them in outlook and customs.

Each has their own extreme prescriptions for the problems, many of which they have a part in causing, from free money gifted within the status quo structure,  to debt serfdom for most except the few.

And both are tragically misplaced in their judgements, because they are caught in a credibility trap of their respective ideologies that have displaced fundamental morality, fairness, and goodness.

It is hard to tell which side is more reluctant to see the systemic forces which are at play, and where they are leading. Both are willfully blind at their core, taking refuge in contempt for others (cf. Hillary and Romney) and elaborately conceived condescension towards any form of dissent, even the mildest.

At the best of times the powerful will not listen, and at times like these most have joined them on either side to escape the pain of thinking.   The decline and fall of a privileged class that is out of touch with the people, and the extremes committed by their enablers, are so common as to be a cliché of history.

So why bother even bringing it up at all?   For the same reasons perhaps that groups like the White Rose and the early church wrote their pamphlets, in their respective times of general madness— to keep a light burning in the dark, for those who follow.

Hopefully our own situation will resolve well before we reach such an extreme disassociation of reason and power and justice.

"Caesar was swimming in blood. Rome and the whole pagan world was mad.   But those who had had enough of transgression and madness, those who were trampled upon, those whose lives were misery and oppression, all the weighed down, all the sad, all the unfortunate, came to hear the wonderful tidings of God, who out of love for men had given Himself to be crucified and redeem their sins.

When they found a God whom they could love, they had found that which the society of the time could not give any one—  happiness and love."

Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis: In the Time of Nero

Mark Blyth On Neoliberalism, Brexit, and the Global Revolt Against the 1% and their Unelected Elites

"...a full 95% of the cash that went to Greece ran a trip through Greece and went straight back to creditors which in plain English is banks. So, public taxpayers money was pushed through Greece to basically bail out banks...So austerity becomes a side effect of a general policy of bank bailouts that nobody wants to own. That's really what happened, ok?

Why are we peddling nonsense? Nobody wants to own up to a gigantic bailout of the entire European banking system that took six years. Austerity was a cover.

If the EU at the end of the day and the Euro is not actually improving the lives of the majority of the people, what is it for? That's the question that they've brought no answer to.

...the Hamptons is not a defensible position. The Hamptons is a very rich area on Long Island that lies on low lying beaches. Very hard to defend a low lying beach. Eventually people are going to come for you.

What's clear is that every social democratic party in Europe needs to find a new reason to exist. Because as I said earlier over the past 20 years they have sold their core constituency down the line for a bunch of floaters in the middle who don't protect them or really don't particularly care for them. Because the only offers on the agenda are basically austerity and tax cuts for those who already have, versus austerity, apologies, and a minimum wage."

Mark Blyth

Although I may not agree with every particular that Mark Blyth may say, directionally he is exactly correct in diagnosing the problems in Europe.

And yes, I am aware that the subtitles are at times in error, and sometimes outrageously so.  Many of the errors were picked up and corrected in the comments.

No stimulus, no plans, no official actions, no monetary theories can be sustainably effective in revitalizing an economy that is as bent as these have become without serious reform at the first.

This was the lesson that was given by Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.  There will be no lasting recovery without it; it is a sine qua non.  One cannot turn their economy around when the political and business structures are systemically corrupt, and the elites are preoccupied with looting it, and hiding their spoils offshore.

Modern Economics: Austerity

"In Greek mythology Sisyphus (Greek: Σίσυφος) was the king of Ephyra. He was punished by the gods for his chronic deceitfulness by being compelled to roll an immense boulder up a steep hill, only to watch it roll back down, over and over again."

In the modern mythology of bizarre economics, austerity can be described as 'the Reverse Sisyphus.'

The victims of systemic bank fraud and widespread cheating and manipulation of markets and laws are forced to pay the price, in an endless cycle of booms and busts, for the deceitfulness and injustice of the powerful financial interests and their privileged friends.

 

Related:  Bubblenomics

 

 

 

The NeoLiberal Colossus

"Keep, ancient lands, your human dignity!" cries she

With curling lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the weak, the homeless, the victims all to me,

And I will grind their bones, forevermore!"

 

 

Syriza Wins Greek Election, Leader Alexis Tsipras Declares 'End to Vicious Cycle of Austerity'

This is from the live updates at The Guardian Newspaper here.

Here’s summary of a momentous election result for the future of Greece and Europe:

• The anti-austerity far left party Syriza has won the Greek election by a decisive margin, but just short of an outright majority. With more than three-quarters of the results in Syriza is projected to win 149 seats in the 300 seat parliament.


• Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras said his party’s victory marked an end to the “viscious cycle of austerity”. Referring to the neoliberal conditions set by the IMF, the European Commission and the European Central Bank, he said: “ The verdict of the Greek people renders the troika a thing of the past for our common European framework.”


• Outgoing prime minister Antonis Samaras conceded defeated by acknowledging some mistakes. But he added: “We restored Greece’s international credibility”.


• To Potami, the centre-left party could be the kingmakers in the new parliament, with a project 16 seats. Its leader Stavros Theodorakis has not ruled out a deal with Syriza. “It’s too early for such details,” he said.


• The far-right Golden Dawn party is projected to come third in election, despite having more than half of its MPs in jail. Speaking from prison its leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos said the result was a “great victory” for the neo-fascist party.


• Syriza victory has been greeted with alarm in Germany. The ruling CDU party insisting that Greece should stick to the austerity programme. But Belgium’s finance minister said there is room for negotiation with Syriza.


• Leftwingers across Europe have hailed Syriza win. Spain’s anti-austerity party Podemos said Greece finally had a government rather than a German envoy. Britain’s Green Party said Syriza’s victory was an inspiration.

Related: Greek Elections About To Call Time On Five Years of Austerity

FOMC On QE III: Mission Accomplished

It is mission accomplished for the Fed's third stimulus program, if one keeps in mind that Quantitative Easing is a subsidy program for the one percent and Wall Street, not the general public and Main Street.

It is the fallacy of trickle down economics at its most blind and pernicious.

At the end of the day, the Fed's objective has been to bail out and preserve their owners in the Banking System, largely intact, down to their thoroughly rotten core.   The Fed is not the government.  The Fed works with its friends in the government.  The Fed is a creature of the Banks.

And the public is being forced to pick up the tab through financial repression and a stealth austerity through market manipulation, money printing, and price rigging.

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

Release Date: October 29, 2014

For immediate release

Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in September suggests that economic activity is expanding at a moderate pace. Labor market conditions improved somewhat further, with solid job gains and a lower unemployment rate. On balance, a range of labor market indicators suggests that underutilization of labor resources is gradually diminishing. Household spending is rising moderately and business fixed investment is advancing, while the recovery in the housing sector remains slow. Inflation has continued to run below the Committee's longer-run objective. Market-based measures of inflation compensation have declined somewhat; survey-based measures of longer-term inflation expectations have remained stable.

Consistent with its statutory mandate, the Committee seeks to foster maximum employment and price stability. The Committee expects that, with appropriate policy accommodation, economic activity will expand at a moderate pace, with labor market indicators and inflation moving toward levels the Committee judges consistent with its dual mandate. The Committee sees the risks to the outlook for economic activity and the labor market as nearly balanced. Although inflation in the near term will likely be held down by lower energy prices and other factors, the Committee judges that the likelihood of inflation running persistently below 2 percent has diminished somewhat since early this year.

The Committee judges that there has been a substantial improvement in the outlook for the labor market since the inception of its current asset purchase program. Moreover, the Committee continues to see sufficient underlying strength in the broader economy to support ongoing progress toward maximum employment in a context of price stability. Accordingly, the Committee decided to conclude its asset purchase program this month....

The Banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, with balance restored to the economy, before there can be any sustainable recovery.

Related: US Child Poverty Highest In Twenty Years

Naomi Klein on Global Neoliberalism

Yellen's Trickle Down Dilemma

Why is the economy so sluggish?

Even if real wages are stagnant, and consumers are tapped, the Banks have been saved and stand ready to loan from an abundance of freshly created money (that they can obtain for almost nothing).

Why won't consumers make a leap of faith and borrow more, betting their last assets on an indifferent Congress and an elusive recovery?  

 

It's heads we win and tails you lose for the bailout Banks. 

 

And from a Banker's perspective it probably makes sense.

 

Mark Blyth - Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea

Adjust to the accent and speed of delivery if you must, what he has to say is worth hearing and he is quite informative in an entertaining and lively way.

I think it is fair to say that the purpose of his talk is to demonstrate why austerity is a corrosive policy choice. And he does this quite well. In doing so he tends to ignore the roots of the financial crisis, emanating as they did from New York and London in this talk, the distortions caused by regulatory policy changes in the financial system, and the systemic frauds that followed. He does touch on this at the very end in the Q&A which is heartening.

It is not equivalent to say that because austerity is bad, therefore stimulus must be good. If only the world were so linear and simple.

The corruption of the regulatory and political process by Big Money is the bigger long term issue. Therefore he appears to take a more mechanically optimistic, model based view of a US recovery, which I think is unfortunately not correct.

I hate to say on such thin evidence but the talk sounds conventionally Keynesian. He also gives unnecessarily short shrift to the regulation of the growth and quality of credit expansion, but that is probably unfair based only on this talk. I intend to read his book after I listen to this a few more times.

I think we will see a repeat bubble and collapse in the US as we did in the tech stock and housing bubble cycles unless reform occurs. Or the long run trend of inequality will become so severe that the political system will evolve. He speaks of Germany's role in Europe quite a bit, but barely touches on China.

He used Germany's growth out of the depression as a positive model of state activism to cure unemployment. But he ignores the school of thought that this growth never became organic, and was much like a Ponzi scheme. To keep growing it had to expropriate wealth, much of it from the Jews, and engaged in wars of aggression to obtain even more resources that it could not otherwise procure. So National Socialism never really became self-sustaining. I suppose it cold have done so by engaging in the export of goods rather than of bombs and bullets, but that never quite seems to work out either. Think the industrial policies of Germany and China today.

This example has to do with government sponsored stimulus and economic management without reform, and an unhealthy concentration of power, and the the two seem to go together.

He also does not address the currency wars, and imbalances in world trade flows because of governmental policies, which are one of the greatest economic macro changes in our generation. In the past they often have been resolved by military war and the rise of empires. So we will have to see what comes next in this particular iteration of conflicts of interests.

I am not saying Mark Blyth is wrong. I am merely saying that he does not address these things because they lay a bit outside his chosen topic which is the short term dilemma being faced in Europe and the UK. I find his style refreshing and his thought process and ability to tie things together fascinating. I have listened to any number of lectures on the history of economics, and his is one that informs while not making one's eyes glaze over. And for me that is high praise. I wish I knew Mark Blyth well enough to discuss these things over a few beers. He seems like a great guy.

If one is comparing the US to Europe I would grant that it certainly looks better because their system is inherently unstable and not sustainable. And the theme or purpose of his book and talk are that austerity is doomed to failure. And I agree. But I also think that stimulus is also going to fail, unless the system that caused the problems is changed through meaningful reform.



h/t Yves

Austerity During a Recession Is Economically Insane - A Warning From History

"The German’s and the ECB are not demanding any sacrifices from European elites. They explicitly target the working class and government workers’ wages and oppose any increased taxation of the wealthy. The Berlin Consensus is a road map to ever greater inequality."

Bill Black


"Thank God the US opted for bailouts and not handouts...People in economic distress should suck it up and cope."

Charlie Munger

I will not mince words with this. I see a world on the brink of war, for all the same old reasons. It will take many forms political and financial, at first civil and then regional. If this does not resolve the situation then the conflict will expand and continue by other means.

The elites' price for peace will be a world without borders, or at most three or four spheres of influence, under their direct control and planning.

Appeasement will only serve to inflame their lust for power and dreams of domination.  They see themselves as moving from victory to victory. The tide of reform is being turned aside by special interests, compromise is viewed as ideological impurity, and legitimate protests are met by not by recognition and justice but by indifference and repression. This will not stand.

"The technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities...

In the technotronic society the trend would seem to be towards the aggregation of the individual support of millions of uncoordinated citizens, easily within the reach of magnetic and attractive personalities effectively exploiting the latest communications techniques to manipulate emotions and control reason."

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technotronic Era, 1970

In fairness to Brzezinski, the above quotes in context seem more a forecast, and a threat to be feared rather than a prescription to be followed. 

But others do not fear it, and the threats are real, and with much precedent in history.  They have been viewed favorably by any number of groups where the elite get together to discuss their plans and goals.  Their contempt and distrust of the individual, inferior beings unlike themselves at least in their own minds, is perennial.   The infamous Project for the New American Century that was a center for neo-conservative thinking is just one such example.

Stimulus without significant economic reform leads only to bubbles and more of the same conditions that led to the financial crisis in the first place. The answer is growth, but growth that is real and more broadly based.

The greatest impediment to this solution is greed and financial corruption of the financial predator class that has benefited the most from the distortions that they promoted in the last three decades.

Austerity *might* have a chance if it was accompanied by significant financial reform that did not rely on highly regressive wage reductions to bridge the economic gaps. But it is not likely.   

Without reform, austerity is economic tyranny, a form of neo-colonialism that has been promoted until recently by the developed nations on the Third World, which itself is beginning to rebel against the viceroys and puppets of the powerful.   But now it has come home to feed on its own, and the faithful middle class stands aghast, in quiet disbelief.

The propagandists like to frame the question as 'who will pay,' rather than 'how do we stop the stealing, corruption and waste, and resume healthy growth in the real economy?  So as they often do, they entice the professional and middle class to back their plans from fear, until it is too late.

"...propaganda is entirely founded on the exploitation of the weakness of the human heart. It does not address itself to the strong or the heroic. It tells the rich they are going to lose their money. It tells the worker this is a rich man's war. It tells the intellectual and the artist that all he cherished is being destroyed by war. It tells the lover of good things that soon he would have none of them. It says to the Christian believer: 'How can you accept this massacre?' It tells the adventurer - 'a man like you should profit by the misfortunes of your country.'"

Edouard Daladier, 29 January 1940, radio address to the French people

Will the people never learn? Will their leaders set Europe on fire again before they come to their senses and have to be put down?  And how soon afterwards will the UK and the US have their own moments of crisis?

Although we have been fortunately insulated from this in the developed nations in this generation, it is the oldest theme of history, and one to which we seem determined to return.  And despite the delusions of many, there are never any real winners, only heartache and destruction.

"...Overall, European nations showed significant budgetary restraints in the decade leading up to the Great Recession. Most of the periphery did so – Greece is a special case. The Cato Institute, for example, praised Iceland and Ireland as models of restraint. Spain also received praise. The claim that the periphery was “profligate” through large budgetary deficits in the run up to the crisis reverses the facts.

Austerity during a serious recession is economically insane. It is a pro-cyclical policy that makes the recession more severe. A more severe recession is a mass destroyer of wealth and quality of life. It is pure waste.

It is the primary cause of dramatic increases in public deficits and debt. Unemployment reduces tax payments and increases demands for public spending. One cannot decide to end a budgetary deficit during a recession by adopting austerity. Austerity (some combination of cutting government spending and increasing taxes) reduces private and public sector demand.

This means that imposing austerity is likely to deepen the recession and can make the national deficit and debt larger. It is analogous to the medical insanity of bleeding patients to cure them of disease – and then bleeding them more because the prior bleeding make them sicker.

Europeans of the periphery are having austerity imposed on them by German demands – and they are subjected to repeated insults from German and Dutch leaders for failing to balance their budgets because the austerity imposed by Germany deepened their recession and slashed their tax revenues.

Germany’s demands for austerity have thrown the euro zone back into recession – but it has forced the periphery into Great Depression levels of unemployment. German-imposed austerity, the Berlin Consensus, is even more draconian than the Washington Consensus in Latin America. Germany and the ECB are open that they are not simply demanding austerity and massive privatization – they are also demanding dramatic reductions in working class wages throughout the EU.

The German’s and the ECB are not demanding any sacrifices from European elites. They explicitly target the working class and government workers’ wages and oppose any increased taxation of the wealthy. The Berlin Consensus is a road map to ever greater inequality..."

Read the rest here.

The Berlin Consensus is a road map to civil unrest and war.  It is a war which the powerful few think that they can win, and in their arrogant pride they may be willing to attempt it --- again.  The same industrial and financial interest intend to try and tame the madness once again to serve their self-serving ends, no matter which way in which they try to rationalize it.

But they forget that the madness serves none, only itself.

May God have mercy on us.

Michael Hudson: Debt: The Politics and Economics of Restructuring

I have been watching the presentations from the New Economic Thinking's (INET) Paradigm Lost Conference in Berlin.

Here is Michael Hudson's talk on Debt and Restructuring from April 13, 2012

Unenlightened Self-Interest: Deficit Hawk Down On Tax Cuts and Financial Reform

"Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man." Henry Hazlitt

The argument that 'tax cuts for the wealthiest few stimulates growth' aka the trickle down theory needs to be buried alongside the 'efficient markets hypothesis' and the other principle beliefs of voodoo economics that have brought the US from the world's greatest nation to third world status in a generation.

It was the irresponsible tax cuts enacted by Bush II while increasing military spending on two wars, one highly discretionary, along with the increasing financialization of the economy through deregulation, fraud, 'one way globalization,' and crony capitalism that have undermined the foundation of the American economy.

The banks must be restrained, the financial system reformed, and balance restored to the real economy before there can be any sustained recovery.


h/t The Economist's View for the cartoon

The following charts are from the ContraryInvestor but all annotations and comments are mine.

Think about what this chart below is saying. Will a return to the status quo through Fed intervention 'work?' Is austerity directed at the middle class the answer, as in the suffering endured by the many in the Great Depression?



What would happen if the economy 'recovered' with the same fundamentals in place? Fundamentals such as an overly large financial sector, increasing wealth disparity, and a stagnant median wage?

Can 'the many' continue to borrow to maintain a constant standard of living? Can a democracy be maintained in conditions that start to resemble a third world country? How long before a 'strong man' rises to take control of the political situation on behalf of the national society of workers? And how long after that would it be before the industrialists and oligarchs lose control of this strong man, as they always seem to do?

Can the US afford to maintain 800 overseas military bases while the domestic tax base continues to erode through a parasitical transferal of wealth from the many to the few based on leverage, speculation, monopoly, asset bubbles and fraud?

Closer View of the Rise of Neoliberal Economics and the Ponzi Economy



US Federal Debt Only as a Percent of GDP Since 1792



What the US needs right now, more than ever, is a coherent industrial policy and a national strategy focused on the median wage, a serious reform movement, a reduction in its military spending, and a set of encompassing social principles with a longer term vision for the country as its goal.

Americans may not trust government as a recent tenet of dogmatic faith, but in doing so they are entrusting their futures to other people's governments, and soulless multinational entities who are in fact using globalization and the 'free markets' to aggressively advance their own ends and benefits, which are probably antithetical to yours.

Bringing a dogmatic neo-liberal bias for "free markets" (ironically promoted by political neo-conservatives) into a game where every other major country is executing a well thought out industrial policy based on increasing net exports is like bringing a knife to a gun fight, and then stabbing yourself in the back as an opening move.