from webster tarpley: Is the United States now inexorably fated to follow the Soviet Union on the path leading to social breakdown, internal collapse, secessionism, and general chaos? This question is objectively now on the agenda. And not surprisingly, a gaggle of foundation-funded professors and other experts, led by that notorious British reactionary Niall Ferguson, are gloating in Schadenfreude and jubilation that the United States is now irrevocably doomed to imperial implosion, based largely on Paul Kennedy’s dangerous half-truth about imperial overstretch. And not only that: Niall Ferguson appears to be preparing the ground for some kind of massive bear raid against the US dollar emanating from London, some kind of a speculative thunderbolt capable of bringing the US breakdown crisis to a fast-track culmination.The answer presented here to the question posed in the title is that, while the gravity of the US crisis is undeniable, it would be criminal stupidity to assert that we are dealing with some kind of irresistible cycle of US national decline. Quite the contrary: the historical experience of the New Deal, if properly evaluated, reliably indicates a broad array of economic reform measures which are immediately available to lead the US and the world out of the current crisis. The challenge to all serious American thinkers is to specify the needed components of a general US return to a regulated and dirigistic New Deal economic model, and to make these measures intelligible to the vast majority of the US population, and to agitate effectively for their implementation. (Need we point out that both Obama’s corporatist Democratic Party and the right-wing radical Republican Party are hysterically hostile to the New Deal?) Analysts who imagine that their role is to produce ever more dazzling or bombastic rhetorical invectives against the Wall Street collapse we see all around us are simply irrelevant at this point. Every real intellectual leader needs to have an answer ready for the question, “What is your program for overcoming the current world economic depression? Where are your solutions?” Those who do not deal in such answers can no longer be taken seriously.
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video: ohio official tells residents to 'arm themselves' amid police cuts*
bilderberg group will meet jun3-6 in spain*
kyrgyzstan's head reveals overthrown president left only $80m in the budget*
1 comment:
It seems to me there are many solutions to the current world economic depression but they all share a common trait: they are not politically feasible. I have read book after book full of detailed prescriptions for solving the problem ranging from amending the Constitution to make it clear corporations are not persons, to prosecuting the bankers and their allies in government who perpetrated the frauds that initiated the collapse, to removing all incumbent members of Congress and replacing them with independents. None of these can possibly happen. We are left with the phony left vs. right, Dem vs. Repub "debate", flights of fantasy from idealists of one economic stripe or another, and the depressing narratives of the realists.
If you find someone with a rational, achievable program that can overcome the current crisis, I hope you publicize it far and wide. Good luck.
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