Are You Leaning Far Enough to the Right to be Considered a Fascist? - Page 5 - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

loquitur · 03-26-2008, 01:54 PM

RB, I'm afraid that if you look at the historical academic literature you'll find a marked inability to provide a definition of fascism that is generally acceptable. You will find such definitions by people who have a political interest in defining the term in ways that suit them. That's why I linked the Orwell quote about fascism now being used as a general term to refer to political ideas the speaker doesn't like. I'm not quibbling right now with your definition because I'm not at the moment looking at it, though I do recall that when I read it I found parts of it too narrow and parts of it too broad.

If the definition is limited to the actual tenets of the Italian Fascist Party, that's one thing, but if it gets generalized outside that context, the task of definition becomes troublesome. Even in the Italian context, people will disagree about which aspects of Fascist rule were the ones that were truly definitive and which were incidental. For instance, the anti-Semitism was a late arrival to Italian fascism, roughly contemporaneous with the alliance with Germany - so is racial thinking and bigotry part of the definition of fascism or not? Or is it an inevitable consequence of nationalism, which is a related but distinct concept?

The word gets tossed around pretty loosely. For instance, host and will think that the Fed's bailout of Bear Stearns was fascist, and came up with some twist on the concept of "corporatism" to justify it. I can think of lots of bad ways to describe the bailout but fascist is definitely not one of them. The bailout didn't involve commandeering large businesses to the service of the government and the military. It was unwise and unduly generous to JPM, and saddled the govt with stuff it shouldn't be saddled with (to my mind, they should have let Bear file chapter 11, but that's a discussion for another day) - but it wasn't fascist. It makes some people feel better to label things they don't like "fascist." But then they shouldn't be surprised when other people use the same trick to criticize things that they like.

roachboy · 03-26-2008, 04:23 PM

for what it's worth, i've spent a lot of the past 15 years working on the history of the french left. anyone, anywhere who was not liked by group or party x was fascist. so yes, i know about that.

there are a core of ideas that enable people to use the word fascism to refer to a range of political ideologies...without that the idea would have no content at all--there are obvious variations--in your second paragraph, you introduced anti-semitism knowing that it was a feature of german fascism in ways that were particular to it--had you wanted to argue the point in another way, you might have isolated the tendency to eliminate all political opposition from the left--*that* is a constant--like the notion of national destiny, the united volk, the military Mission blah blah blah.

what seems to be the real problem for you is that fascism is actually quite difficult to render entirely Other than capitalist nationalism. this was a *real* political problem for the americans by the end of world war ii--how to enframe fascism as outside the purview of a nationalism that they themselves were fully invested in. it is a variant of nationalism in the straight capitalist mode. there is no way around that.

the fact that this is the case might lead you or anyone else to want a CLEAR idea of what fascism is in order to be able to react coherently when the line that separates ordinary capiralist nationalism from it started to blur. it does not come from Elsewhere, it is not an Import, it is not Alien--it is the intensification of tendencies that are central to the ideology of nation. period. this is the "political problem" that seems to bother you.

but instead of thinking about that, you seem to prefer to play this silly game of wanting to dissolve the category fascism, as if by doing that you can wish away the fact that nationalist ideology can be dangerous.

or worse, you'd prefer to make some separation between fascism and the capitalist ideology of nation. but you can't do that, and i suspect you know as much.

......

btw: i dont agree with how host uses the term "corporatism"---i think it's a mistake. the ideology of corporatism has to do with a notion of an organic division of labor, which gets grafted onto a rightwing reading of aristotle on the one hand, and onto a basically fascist notion of nation as organic community on the other. so it's not the same thing as oligarchy (you've pointed that out before as well) nor is it the same thing as domination by trans-nationals....
but if it is a tendency that is constantly available because it is a versioning of nationalism itself,

loquitur · 03-26-2008, 05:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

what seems to be the real problem for you is that fascism is actually quite difficult to render entirely Other than capitalist nationalism. this was a *real* political problem for the americans by the end of world war ii--how to enframe fascism as outside the purview of a nationalism that they themselves were fully invested in. it is a variant of nationalism in the straight capitalist mode. there is no way around that.

* * *

or worse, you'd prefer to make some separation between fascism and the capitalist ideology of nation. but you can't do that, and i suspect you know as much.

Um, no. Classically liberal capitalism, which is what I advocate, tends to separate the government from the economy. The original sin that leads to degradation of that kind of system is the opportunism many companies partake in when they go to the government for goodies. In my perfect world the govt would tell them to get lost, for a number of reasons, which are beyond the scope of this discussion. Fascism as I understand it entails, on the economic side, commandeering the economy to achieve nationalist ends - in effect, putting national greatness ahead of normal economic functioning of the free market.

That's the reason I see little difference between socialism and fascism - whether the govt owns the production or merely controls it, splitting the goodies with its cronies, makes very little difference. Both systems foster corruption and tyranny.

tisonlyi · 03-26-2008, 05:48 PM

Socialism does not necessarily mean that the government owns anything or everything.

It means that all is under the control of the community directly influenced by or influencing it and there are many, many ways of implementing this.

Cooperatives are one means of directly introducing socialism from within a capitalist organisation. There are many styles of these which fall under the Rochdale Principles (so named after the first truly successful cooperatives in the mid 19th century England).

Workers cooperatives are probably those which spring immediately to mind, these are more in tune with the general understanding of socialist ideology as it is widely broadcast. Direct worker control.

Consumer cooperatives' members/owners are it's consumers. The largest of these in the world happens to be based in the UK. The Co-op (wiki)

It took almost half a millenium from the emergence of the Yeoman or their ilk for the first revolutionary class to take control of the planet.

Socialism hasn't had 200 years yet, give it a chance.

roachboy · 03-26-2008, 05:56 PM

so loquitor, i take it you like such stalwart fellers as alfred j nock?

http://www.barefootsworld.net/nockoets0.html

loquitur · 03-26-2008, 06:13 PM

more of a Hayek/Friedman kind of guy.
I promise you, I'm sane.

roachboy · 03-26-2008, 06:46 PM

just checking.

guyy · 03-26-2008, 07:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by loquitur

It says Mussolini moved from socialism and developed fascism. I didn't think that was a particularly controversial historical point. The controversial point these days is how much socialism was imported into Fascist thought, and how significant the imported elements were.

Fascism was often thought of -- mostly by fascist ideologues themselves -- as the Hegelian sublation of liberal capitalism AND socialism. Right wing thinkers believed capitalism didn't work, and in the Great Depression, who could argue otherwise? Socialism was wrong, but the crisis demanded action. You could say that fascists were post-socialist, but that 'post' is there for a reason.

You should also realise that there are different types of fascists and several axes to fascist thought. There's a populist/national axis, a militarist axis, a control axis. These cut through other ideologies obliquely. Some liberals ended up as fascists. Others fight it.

Another result is that fascism itself is cut into factions. On fascism's left wing you have someone like Kita Ikki, who seems to have been genuinely interested in poverty. Interestingly, his scheme for "rebuilding" Japan inspired many of Tanaka Kakuei's pork barrel projects, projects which became the financial motor of the postwar right. On the other extreme you have the pure militarists, like the S. American fascists so popular in Washington.

This is one reason why mapping the early 20th c. terms into a one-dimensional scheme such as the neo-liberal anxiety about the state and collective action -- i'm thinking of those Chicago boyz cited above -- you end up with absurd formulations like fascist = socialist.

I'm curious what will happen with this anxiety about collective action as the neo-liberal engineered economy swirls further down the toliet.

Ustwo · 03-26-2008, 08:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by guyy

I'm curious what will happen with this anxiety about collective action as the neo-liberal engineered economy swirls further down the toliet.

Never mind we live in the greatest prosperity EVER in the history of mankind, its swirls down the toliet as you say because we have an approaching recession, something we have NEVER seen before!

I think you need a dose of perspective.

host · 03-26-2008, 11:06 PM

Ustwo, you're funny...where do you get this "stuff"? It would be soooo much easier for me to post here if I could just say anything, without anything to back it up.....like you do!

All of the following information, from a wide variety of sources, including from economist Roubini, who has correctly predicted the unfolding economic conditions, meshes. Each article reinforces the other articles.... each opinion reinforces the other opinions....all except one.

We'll revisit this post one year from today....count on it!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

Never mind we live in the greatest prosperity EVER in the history of mankind, its swirls down the toliet as you say because we have an approaching recession, something we have NEVER seen before!

I think you need a dose of perspective.

Quote:

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/...3-24037412.htm
Paulson says 'premature' to give brokers permanent Fed loan access UPDATE
March 26, 2008: 12:00 PM EST

WASHINGTON, Mar. 26, 2008 (Thomson Financial delivered by Newstex) -- The Federal Reserve deserves praise for its creativity in the face of unprecedented financial market problems, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said today, but the kind of expanded lending the Fed has been doing to investment companies needs to be limited to emergency conditions only.

'It would be premature to jump to the conclusion that all broker-dealers or other potentially important financial firms in our system today should have permanent access to the Fed's liquidity facility,' he said.

But it is not premature, he said, to think about new or different regulations. We must all 'think more broadly about the regulatory and supervisory framework that is consistent with the promotion and maintenance of financial stability.'
Paulson told a US Chamber of Commerce capital markets conference that the credit markets' current problems are an exceptional circumstance, and 'at this time, the Federal Reserve's recent action should be viewed as a precedent only for unusual periods of turmoil.'
Besides putting up 29 bln usd to help to finance the JP Morgan Chase takeover of Bear Stearns (NYSE:BSC) -- a deal in which the Treasury Secretary was himself involved -- <h3>the Fed has also opened its discount window to non-banks for the first time since the Depression and greatly expanded its lending of Treasury securities to broker-dealers.</h3>

The rapid extension of hundreds of billions of dollars in Fed support to non-banks has inevitably raised a question which Paulson pointed out: 'The trade-off for this subsidized funding (for banks) is regulation tailored to protect the taxpayers from moral hazard this insurance creates.'
But Wall Street firms have faced nothing like the detailed rules and detailed examination of their finances that are mandated for banks. Unsurprisingly, there are now calls in Congress to more heavily regulate the brokerage firms.....

Quote:

http://www.investmentnews.com/apps/p.../REG/767507756
By Janet Morrissey
March 24, 2008

Nouriel Roubini, one of the biggest bears on Wall Street, wasn't surprised by the fire sale at The Bear Stearns Cos Inc. of New York. He said it just reinforces his 12-point gloom-and-doom outlook, which he unleashed on Wall Street in February, and he now thinks that total financial losses in the credit debacle may top the $1 trillion he previously projected.
Mr. Roubini, 49, a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business and founder of RGE Monitor, a New York-based economic research firm, was met by skepticism when he first predicted a downturn in a July 2006 report, "A Coming Recession in the U.S. Economy." <h3>Today, few doubt his early insight.</h3>

.....Q. The Fed agreed to provide financing of up to $30 billion to cover the Bear assets that were less attractive to JPMorgan Chase & Co., and this marked the first time the Fed has offered a bailout to a non-regulated bank since the Great Depression. Are you concerned?

A. It's the beginning of a radical change in monetary policy. It's not just the $30 billion that the Fed confirmed to Bear Stearns via JPMorgan — there were two other major options that went in the same direction. One was the decision [two weeks ago] to provide $200 billion so that all primary dealers, including non-bank financial institutions, would be able to swap their illiquid and toxic MBS [paper] for safe Treasuries. The other was the Fed giving any primary dealer, including non-banks, access to the Fed discount window on the same terms as banking institutions. This is a radical change; we haven't seen anything like this since the Great Depression.

These are financial institutions that are not regulated or supervised by the Fed. The Fed has no idea of whether they are just illiquid or insolvent, which creates a massive moral hazard problem. It's a radical shift in the way the Fed operates — and a dangerous way, I would argue.

Q. Dangerous in what way?

A. You're telling people that even if they have made reckless lending and investment decisions, mismanaged risk or continue to do stupid things, the government will bail them out. We are in a systemic financial crisis.

Q. In your 12-step prediction, you estimated total financial losses from subprime lending, credit cards and auto loans at $1 trillion. Has your view changed after Bear Stearns?

<h3>A. The losses that we're facing at this point — $1 trillion — is the floor, not the ceiling. Losses might be much bigger than that.</h3> Even if you believe subprime losses might be in the order of $300 billion to $400 billion, more losses are going to be derived from commercial real estate, credit cards, auto loans, student loans and leverage loans, as well as from corporate defaults and losses from city assets.

Eventually the monolines will be downgraded, which means we'll see another round of write-downs on the things that they insured.

Q. Where are home prices going?

A. Two years ago, I predicted home prices would fall cumulatively 20%, but now I believe it will be at least 30%.

With a 20% fall in home prices, about 16 million households are under water. They have negative equity, which means the value of their homes is below the value of their mortgages. With a 30% drop in prices, you have 21 million households that are in negative equity. And since the mortgages are no-recourse loans, essentially they can walk away.

Even if only half of the 16 million households were to walk away, that alone could lead to losses for the financial system of $1 trillion. Even a 20% drop in home values may imply losses of $1 trillion that are not priced into the market today. So that's the floor. Again, it could be higher — as much as $2 trillion — if prices fall 30% and more people walk.

Q. You are predicting problems in commercial real estate, which we haven't seen yet. When do you expect the crisis to hit?

A. The same kind of reckless lending practices that occurred in subprime also occurred in commercial real estate — things like really high loan-to-value ratios and inflated estimations of how much rent would increase. If you look at the CMBX index (which tracks bonds backed by real estate loans), the spreads imply a huge number of defaults on existing commercial real estate loans. More important, the market for new commercial real estate loans is totally frozen, like the one for subprime new originations.

Q. But when will this happen?

A. That shoe has not dropped yet. But I expect the severe recession in residential housing will lead to a severe recession in commercial real estate. The reason is simple: If you go west, you have entire ghost towns outside of Phoenix, Las Vegas and throughout California. Who is going to be building new shopping centers, shopping malls, offices and stores where you have ghost towns? Also, there has been a lot of commercial real estate activity in the last couple of years, including a huge increase in retail capacity at a time of consumer-led recession. So, I expect [a commercial real estate] collapse will occur in the next few quarters.

<h3>Q. How bad will things get?

A. I would argue this is the worst financial crisis the U.S. has had since the Great Depression. We haven't seen this type of real financial turmoil for the last 70 years. Of course, it's not going to be as bad as the Great Depression. But this isn't your typical run-of-the-mill recession that in the last two episodes lasted only eight months with a minor contraction in output.</h3> This is going to last at least 12 months and more likely 18 months, which is something we haven't seen in decades.

Q. So you expect the economy to start turning around in mid-2009?

A. The real economic activity, yes. But some parts of the system are going to be in a severe contraction for much longer; home prices are going to keep falling for another three years, in my view. And the financial mess is going to take years to clean up.

Quote:

http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?...39260820080326

Goldman sees credit losses totaling $1.2 trillion
Wed Mar 26, 2008 1:01am EDT
NEW YORK (Reuters) - <h3>Goldman Sachs forecasts global credit losses stemming from the current market turmoil will reach $1.2 trillion, with Wall Street accounting for nearly 40 percent of the losses.</h3>

U.S. leveraged institutions, which include banks, brokers-dealers, hedge funds and government-sponsored enterprises, will suffer roughly $460 billion in credit losses after loan loss provisions, Goldman Sachs economists wrote in a research note released late on Monday.

Losses from this group of players are crucial because they have led to a dramatic pullback in credit availability as they have pared lending to shore up their capital and preserve their capital requirements, they said.

Goldman estimated $120 billion in write-offs have been reported by these leveraged institutions since the credit crunch began last summer.

"U.S. leveraged institutions have written off less than half of the losses associated with the bursting of the credit bubble," they said. "There is light at the end of the tunnel, but it is still rather dim."

Of the cumulative losses expected by these leveraged players, bad residential home loans will represent about half, while poor-performing commercial mortgages will represent 15 percent to 20 percent.

The rest of the losses will come from credit card loans, car loans, commercial and industrial lending and non-financial corporate bonds, Goldman economists said.

Facing more credit losses, leveraged institutions have raised about $100 billion in new capital from domestic and foreign investors and reduced dividend payouts. This amount is more than three-quarters of the write-offs to date, the report said....

Quote:

http://www.financialweek.com/apps/pb.../REG/736472226

Corporate liquidity begins to dry up

By Megan Johnston
March 24, 2008

The credit crunch is taking a toll on corporate liquidity, as the soaring cost of debt—for both commercial paper and private placements—pinches the balance sheets of all but the most highly rated non-financial companies.

Cash and short-term investments of non-financial companies dropped by $250 billion in the second half of 2007, the first decline in the nine years that consultancy Treasury Strategies has been tracking the data.

Corporate liquidity had risen steadily, from $3.9 trillion in 1999 to $5.5 trillion in June 2007. But at the end of last year, it had fallen to $5.25 trillion, a 5% drop.

The findings are part of a survey of 135 corporate treasurers conducted by Treasury Strategies between July 1, 2007, and Jan. 1, 2008. Treasury Strategies then adjusted that data with findings from its annual survey of 600 corporate treasurers.

Anthony J. Carfang, a co-founder of Treasury Strategies, attributes much of the drop to a decline in commercial paper issuance. Many companies issue commercial paper not just to finance operations but to bolster the cash on their balance sheet. “As companies have tightened up, they’re shrinking balance sheets just a little bit by borrowing less,” Mr. Carfang said. “A lot of companies had been directly issuing commercial paper because it was easy to do, and keeping a little cash cushion as a result.”

But when the credit crunch began, it became expensive for all but the most highly rated companies to issue paper. As a result, he said, cash balances dropped.....

Baraka_Guru · 03-27-2008, 03:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

Never mind we live in the greatest prosperity EVER in the history of mankind....

I thought that was the Roaring Twenties....

loquitur · 03-27-2008, 05:16 AM

Host, Baraka..... I think the two of you have fallen prey to the recency/proximity fallacy, which is that the events closest to you in time and space get used to define baselines for comparison of ongoing events to "normal." Hitting an economic rough patch is a sign of a healthy, correcting economy that is purging toxins from its system. It's roughly the same as your kid running a fever that has to run its course so that the virus can be killed off: it looks pretty worrying while it's happening, but it does pass and then the kid goes on to grow.

If you step back and look at the main indicators of material well-being, which to my mind include things like life expectancy and nutrition, we are better off now than we ever have been. Not to beat a dead horse here, but we have the richest poor people in history - our poor people are obese rather than starving. The standard of living of a middle class person in the US at the turn of the 20th century was lower than the standard of a poor person at the turn of the 21st.

This does NOT mean we live in Utopia, nor does it mean we have no economic problems, nor does it mean things can't be improved. But this notion that there is impending economic doom is simply not supported. I suspect some of it is due to the obsessive focus on income inequality and the insistence that unless everyone has the same amount of stuff, that means the people who have a bit less than others are ipso facto deemed to be miserable - which is manifestly not true, unless you think envy is a good thing.

Ustwo · 03-27-2008, 07:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru

I thought that was the Roaring Twenties....

Nope.

host · 03-27-2008, 07:24 AM

Quote:

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/...3-24037412.htm
WASHINGTON, Mar. 26, 2008 (Thomson Financial delivered by Newstex) -- The Federal Reserve deserves praise for its creativity in the face of unprecedented financial market problems, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said today, <h3>but the kind of expanded lending the Fed has been doing to investment companies needs to be limited to emergency conditions only.....</h3>

....the Fed has also opened its discount window to non-banks <h3>for the first time since the Depression</h3> and greatly expanded its lending of Treasury securities to broker-dealers.

Quote:

http://www.investmentnews.com/apps/p.../REG/767507756
Q. How bad will things get?

A. I would argue this is the worst financial crisis the U.S. has had since the Great Depression. We haven't seen this type of real financial turmoil for the last 70 years. Of course, it's not going to be as bad as the Great Depression. But this isn't your typical run-of-the-mill recession that in the last two episodes lasted only eight months with a minor contraction in output.

This is going to last at least 12 months and more likely 18 months, which is something we haven't seen in decades.

Q. So you expect the economy to start turning around in mid-2009?

A. The real economic activity, yes. But some parts of the system are going to be in a severe contraction for much longer; home prices are going to keep falling for another three years, in my view. And the financial mess is going to take years to clean up....

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

Never mind we live in the greatest prosperity EVER in the history of mankind, its swirls down the toliet as you say because we have an approaching recession, something we have NEVER seen before!

I think you need a dose of perspective.

Quote:

Originally Posted by loquitur

Host, Baraka..... I think the two of you have fallen prey to the recency/proximity fallacy, which is that the events closest to you in time and space get used to define baselines for comparison of ongoing events to "normal." Hitting an economic rough patch is a sign of a healthy, correcting economy that is purging toxins from its system. It's roughly the same as your kid running a fever that has to run its course so that the virus can be killed off: it looks pretty worrying while it's happening, but it does pass and then the kid goes on to grow....

okay....??? Are we over reacting....I have posted quite a bit of supporting material for my opinions?
...or, are loquitur and Ustwo exhibiting indications that they are in deep denial in reaction to what is already upon us?

How can "toxins be purged", when our "national socialist" leaders have constructed a "floor" for what they claimed was a "free market"? They didn't create a ceiling, and they worked mighty hard to help those who reaped the profits of the "up move", pay the smallest percentage of taxes on their gains since....well.....since 1932!

Looks like a once in 75 years "event" to me.... the economic downturn unprecedented in the living memory of over 90 percent of the US population.....BWDIK.... I only painstakingly support everything I post, and these two guys have earned advanced degrees and are in professional practice in their respective fields....

loquitur · 03-27-2008, 07:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

Looks like a once in 75 years "event" to me.... the economic downturn unprecedented in the living memory of over 90 percent of the US population.

Right now it's a prediction, Host - your opinion. We'll know in a year if you're right, won't we? I just think it's an overreaction. Not every slowdown is a cataclysm. We haven't had a cataclysm since the 1930s, and to get that one we needed a perfect storm of worldwide economic foolhardiness. But look, you might be right and I might be wrong. We'll know in a few months.

Ustwo · 03-27-2008, 07:43 AM

Sooner or later we may well have another great depression.

So what?

Did we have children starving to death in the streets?

Did we have millions dead?

The socialists did, be it on purpose at times in an act of genocide or just a failure of the system.

At our very worst we were still better than the alternatives.

host · 03-27-2008, 07:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by loquitur

Right now it's a prediction, Host - your opinion. We'll know in a year if you're right, won't we? I just think it's an overreaction. Not every slowdown is a cataclysm. We haven't had a cataclysm since the 1930s, and to get that one we needed a perfect storm of worldwide economic foolhardiness. But look, you might be right and I might be wrong. We'll know in a few months.

This is not prediction, loquitur:

Quote:

....the Fed has also opened its discount window to non-banks
for the first time since the Depression.....

It is upon us....it is the same bullshit as descibed by:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gaetano Salvemini

....the State pays for the blunders of private enterprise... Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and social."....

Under the Axe of Fascism (London: Victor Gollancz, 1936), p. 416.

...and, it didn't work last time out, because it is about creditworthiness of borrowers, and market value of collateral, not about availability of funds to borrow.....

Quote:

http://news.google.com/archivesearch...UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
New York Times, October 11, 1931

New Era In Banks Seen In Hoover Plan

Last week brought forth two developments of extreme important to bankers, each of which, in a different way, is calculated to assist the banks of the country in meeting the hardships brought upon them by the prolonged depression.
The most important step was President Hoover's announcement early Wednesday morning of plans for a $500,000,000 corporation to discount sound banking assets which are not eligible for rediscount at the Federal Reserve Banks.
[...]
the formation of the credit organization outlined by President Hoover, on which work was speedily begun by a group of New York bankers, is expected to have a profound effect in relieving bankers of one of their greatest sources of anxiety. The institution is to be called the National Credit Corporation, will provide facilities whereby
banks all over the country may realize upon sound assets that are not liquid at present due to abnormal conditions.

So what exactly were those sound assets that were were "not liquid at present"? Why mortgage-backed securities of course. Just like today.

http://news.google.com/archivesearch...UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
New York Times, October 8, 1931

Real Estate Men On Hoover Plan

Skepticism as to President Hoover's plan to liquidate frozen bank assets was expressed yesterday by Charles G. Edwards, president of the Real Estate Securities Exchange. The exchange deals almost exclusively in real estate bonds, of which it is estimated that $1,500,000,000 at par value are in default throughout the country.
[...]
"President Hoover's financial plan," Joseph P. Day said in part, "is a step in the right direction towards making real estate investment more liquid. The system will make it possible for the Federal Reserve Bank <h3>to issue acceptance notes against sound real estate securities, thus stabilizing their values. Real estate mortgages are commonly regarded in banking as frozen assets. The Hoover plan seeks to take these substantial investments from the frozen asset class and give them a recognized value."</h3>

They were not "frozen assets"....the bids for these "assets", just as now, were based on their perceived value at that moment in time. Market participants perceived that they would be worth very little, immediately or soon after they were purcahsed. The Fed is accepting shit from these criminals on wall street, and loaning them money as if they were putting up "shinola" as collateral....at 2.25 annual interest.

Here is the way it worked last time...we are fortunate to be able to see the results, in advance, of taking in the brokerage firms' "shit" at the Fed discount window, but the Fed is doing it anyway....desparate? Cornered?

Quote:

http://news.google.com/archivesearch...UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
CREDIT IS NARROWED DESPITE EASY MONEY; Reserve Bank Here Deplores ...
$3.95 - New York Times - May 30, 1932
... outcome of the 1931 credit program of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, ... The report, transmitted to the Federal Reserve Board by J. Herbert Case, ...

The inferior ability of an easy-money policy to bring credit into use when confidence is lacking was demonstrated by the outcome of the 1931 credit program of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, according to the annual report of that institution, made public today.....

...and on July 8, 1932....the Dow 30 Industrial Average <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=%5EDJI&a=06&b=8&c=1932&d=06&e=9&f=1932&g=d">closed at 41</a>....down more than 350 pts. from it's Sept., 1929 high at 393 pts.

It's a broken system, loquitur....not a prediction....a broken system now, receiving welfare from the taxpayers....first time it's happened in 77 years.
You'll come to think it's never gonna bottom, never gonna end....just as your great grandfather did, last time it happened!

loquitur · 03-27-2008, 08:31 AM

Host, the fact that the Fed opened the window to inv banks for the first time since the 30s does not mean this is a repeat of the 30s in other respects. You're resting a huge inverted pyramid of inference on a data point that won't support it. We don't have Smoot-Hawley, we don't have general tightening of credit at the Fed level (we have the reverse), we don't have an industrial, hard-asset based economy anymore. There are lots of other differences, too. Remember, we have an economy of something like $18 trillion (I might be off on the number); there's a lot of room for error before things turn into a disaster.

It seems almost like you want to see an economic implosion in this country. Why? Or am I just imagining it?

silent_jay · 03-27-2008, 09:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

Nope.

Well if Ustwo says it wasn't it must be true.

Ustwo · 03-27-2008, 04:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by silent_jay

Well if Ustwo says it wasn't it must be true.

If you figured that out in your constant trolling, you would be a better man.

roachboy · 03-27-2008, 04:18 PM

sometimes it seems like discussions become contests the point of which is to see who can say the stupidest possible thing and no-one tells me that it happens.
so plod along i do expecting that there might somewhere be an interesting debate, and then i start hitting shit like this:

Quote:

The socialists did, be it on purpose at times in an act of genocide or just a failure of the system.

At our very worst we were still better than the alternatives.

no-one tells me anything...

so, hooray, comrade: a champion you are.....

a tribute:

but maybe flush with triump though you may be, you might riddle me this:

how is it that relative economic prosperity enjoyed by particular class elements/sections/fractions--however measured (and the devils in the details of course--but that would require that you read a fucking book or three...)----is anything like a measurement of the ideological characteristics of the regime that enables that prosperity?

Ustwo · 03-27-2008, 04:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

how is it that relative economic prosperity enjoyed by particular class elements/sections/fractions--however measured (and the devils in the details of course--but that would require that you read a fucking book or three...)----is anything like a measurement of the ideological characteristics of the regime that enables that prosperity?

You know roachboy if you bitched about the system less and worked with the system more you could achieve some of that relative economic prosperity, though it might cut into that reading time for those fucking books.

Seriously dude, learn to function in the system before deciding it needs to be changed.

Really I have no idea why they made you a moderator, sorry you don't like my opinions but really you go to far in your objections, your saving grace has always been how few people bother to read your disjointed posts to know how insulting you can be.

sapiens · 03-27-2008, 05:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

how is it that relative economic prosperity enjoyed by particular class elements/sections/fractions--however measured (and the devils in the details of course--but that would require that you read a fucking book or three...)----is anything like a measurement of the ideological characteristics of the regime that enables that prosperity?

At least in the case of loquitor's post earlier, he's not using economic prosperity of a particular class as an argument for the American system. Is he?

Quote:

Originally Posted by loquitor

If you step back and look at the main indicators of material well-being, which to my mind include things like life expectancy and nutrition, we are better off now than we ever have been. Not to beat a dead horse here, but we have the richest poor people in history - our poor people are obese rather than starving. The standard of living of a middle class person in the US at the turn of the 20th century was lower than the standard of a poor person at the turn of the 21st.

This does NOT mean we live in Utopia, nor does it mean we have no economic problems, nor does it mean things can't be improved. But this notion that there is impending economic doom is simply not supported. I suspect some of it is due to the obsessive focus on income inequality and the insistence that unless everyone has the same amount of stuff, that means the people who have a bit less than others are ipso facto deemed to be miserable - which is manifestly not true, unless you think envy is a good thing.

How do you measure the ideological characteristics of a regime?

ubertuber · 03-27-2008, 06:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

You know roachboy if you bitched about the system less and worked with the system more you could achieve some of that relative economic prosperity, though it might cut into that reading time for those fucking books.

Seriously dude, learn to function in the system before deciding it needs to be changed.

Really I have no idea why they made you a moderator, sorry you don't like my opinions but really you go to far in your objections, your saving grace has always been how few people bother to read your disjointed posts to know how insulting you can be.

You know, your approach here is basically a smug personal attack. Roachboy's economic status isn't something that you know about, it isn't something that is your business, and it has nothing to do with the topic here.

Also, it's a lame point since you you are implying that only wealthy people know enough to have an opinion.

I'm also not surprised that you have no idea why he's a moderator. Like the above, it isn't something you know about, it isn't your business, and it has nothing to do with the topic. If you've got a problem, take it up through PM.

host · 03-27-2008, 07:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sapiens

At least in the case of loquitor's post earlier, he's not using economic prosperity of a particular class as an argument for the American system. Is he?

Quote:

Originally Posted by loquitur

If you step back and look at the main indicators of material well-being, which to my mind include things like life expectancy and nutrition, we are better off now than we ever have been. Not to beat a dead horse here, but we have the richest poor people in history - our poor people are obese rather than starving. The standard of living of a middle class person in the US at the turn of the 20th century was lower than the standard of a poor person at the turn of the 21st.

This does NOT mean we live in Utopia, nor does it mean we have no economic problems, nor does it mean things can't be improved. But this notion that there is impending economic doom is simply not supported. I suspect some of it is due to the obsessive focus on income inequality and the insistence that unless everyone has the same amount of stuff, that means the people who have a bit less than others are ipso facto deemed to be miserable - which is manifestly not true, unless you think envy is a good thing.

How do you measure the ideological characteristics of a regime?

The US is distinguished by how remarkably unaccomplished, in areas that it's government and society should be committed to improving, actually are:

Here's Denmark's stats:

Quote:

https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat...da.html#People

GDP - per capita (PPP):
$37,400 (2007 est.)

Infant mortality rate:
total: 4.45 deaths/1,000 live births
male: 4.49 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 4.41 deaths/1,000 live births (2007 est.)

The problem is that loquitur's argument vs. the facts, is unimpressive, as is what has been accomplished in the USA, even with all of the wealth, in key areas, the US performs below a third world neighbor lacking in medical facilities equipped with state of the art technology and medicines:

Quote:

https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat...cu.html#People
<h3>........... Cuba ..................... United States</h3>

GDP - per capita (PPP):
$4,500 (2007 est.) ......................$46,000 (2007 est.)

Median age:
total: 36.3 years ...................... 36.6 years
male: 35.7 years ....................... 35.3 years
female: 37 years (2007 est.) ........... 37.9 years (2007 est)

Death rate:
7.14 deaths/1,000 population (2007 est.) 8.26 deaths (2007 est)

Infant mortality rate:
total: 6.04 deaths/1,000 live births ............. 6.37 deaths
male: 6.76 deaths/1,000 live births ............. 7.02 deaths
female: 5.26 deaths/1,000 live births (2007 est.). 5.68 deaths (2007 est)

Life expectancy at birth:
total population: 77.08 years ............... 78 years
male: 74.85 years ........................... 75.15 years
female: 79.43 years (2007 est.) ............. 80.97 years (2007 est)

Literacy:
definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 99.8% ..................... 99%
male: 99.8% ................................. 99%
female: 99.8% (2002 census) ................. 99% (2003 est.)

loquitur · 03-27-2008, 07:13 PM

Host, I take it you didn't adjust things like, for instance, the greater number of preemie kids kept alive in the US, which brings down average life expectancy? or the higher number of miles driven, which does likewise? or any number of other culturally-driven factors?

Which criteria do you deem significant? Personally, I value personal freedoms quite a bit. OF course you wont' find much of that in Cuba...........

host · 03-27-2008, 07:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by loquitur

Host, I take it you didn't adjust things like, for instance, the greater number of preemie kids kept alive in the US, which brings down average life expectancy? or the higher number of miles driven, which does likewise? or any number of other culturally-driven factors?

Which criteria do you deem significant? Personally, I value personal freedoms quite a bit. OF course you wont' find much of that in Cuba...........

Can you explain the "preemie kids kept alive" point, how would it lower the US live birth stats compared to Cuba and to Denmark? Shouldn't Cuba, from your POV, experience a higher percentage of infant mortality, per your question?

It doesn't though....could nutrition and access to medical care be reasons?

Which country has the screening technology to most likely "weed out" predicted defective fetuses, long before they are at the delivery stage, Cuba, or the US?

They're "free" in Mexico, and our presidents form fast friendships with Mexican presidents....here are Mexico's stats:

Quote:

Infant mortality rate:
total: 19.63 deaths/1,000 live births
male: 21.54 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 17.62 deaths/1,000 live births (2007 est.)

Your last question, loquitur, amounts to an assertion of "better dead than red", and we have debated that in other threads....

loquitur · 03-28-2008, 05:42 AM

Host, the US tends for cultural reasons to have higher obesity rates and mortality from car accidents (mainly becaues we drive more). That means our health statistics are not strictly comparable to countries with greater population density because they have fewer automotive-related deaths and countries with better eating habits than Americans. That's just two factors off the top of my head. Americans also tend to insist on more drastic measures to save marginally viable babies, so the infant mortality numbers are somewhat worse in the US than in other countries. These are cultural differences, not differences in quality of health care, and they have very little to do with the government. They are a consequence primarily of the individualist culture in this country.

Your stats are interesting but you're drawing inferences that may or may not be justified. You haven't established anything about why the numbers are different, only that they are different. Beyond that you're just making assumptions. For example, in a town of Jehovah's Witnesses where they refuse blood transfusions, there are going to be more deaths of a certain type than in other places - but it won't be due to inadequate medical care in the JW town, it'll be due to the cultural difference about transfusions. In other words, you're succumbing to the same fallacy I talked about earlier, which is that you're isolating a data point and constructing a huge inverted pyramid of inference on top of it that isn't warranted.

And my other point isn't better dead than red, that is a massive misstatement. It is that you should consider carefully your romance with left-wing dictatorships. A country whose self-glorifying dictators purchase the submission and quiescence of its citizens with "free" medical care is not a model we should want to follow. Socialized services were originated by Bismarck as a way to keep the populace quiet and narcotized in order to stave off demands for democracy. Cuba is no different.

host · 03-28-2008, 06:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by loquitur

If you step back and look at the main indicators of material well-being, which to my mind include things like life expectancy and nutrition, we are better off now than we ever have been. Not to beat a dead horse here, but we have the richest poor people in history - our poor people are obese rather than starving. The standard of living of a middle class person in the US at the turn of the 20th century was lower than the standard of a poor person at the turn of the 21st......

You touted the points above to make your "it's a great country, a great system" case, I assume.....

I showed you a country with just ten percent capita US GDP that must have equalled "nutirtion" experienced in the US....it had a tad lower deaths per live births stats, didn't it?

I showed you an ODC, Denmark, with 19% lower GDP per capita than in the US, that achieves dramatically lower deaths per live births than the US does.

I showed you Mexico's live birth stats....it's a free country, but you have to survive birth to "enjoy" the "freedom".

You dispell none of that with your traffic and obesity morbidity argument. Your
"better dead than red" argument, in an earlier post, as an argument against Cuba's achievements in a core quality of life area, when Mexico is pulled up alongside, is.... what it is....meaningless, just as the argument you started out with:

Quote:

If you step back and look at the main indicators of material well-being, which to my mind include things like life expectancy and nutrition....

Denmark and Cuba put the US to shame in those categories, and Mexico's government/economic system is greatly preferred by our political and business establishment, over Cuba's...... so what does that speak to, about your standards, or the standards of our establishment?

Quote:

Originally Posted by loquitur

......And my other point isn't better dead than red, that is a massive misstatement. It is that you should consider carefully your romance with left-wing dictatorships. A country whose self-glorifying dictators purchase the submission and quiescence of its citizens with "free" medical care is not a model we should want to follow. Socialized services were originated by Bismarck as a way to keep the populace quiet and narcotized in order to stave off demands for democracy. Cuba is no different.

I've made two equity options trades in the past half hour and you come at me with that "crap"? If you want to paint me as one who is having a love affair with "marxism", you need to become better acquainted with me. Can you not fathom that I can be critical (openminded?) about US failings and yet not be advocating a socialist model? I pointed out Denmark and Mexico, too. Which country, if you had a choice, would you prefer to be conceived and delivered in, if your were a fetus with a choice, in Mexico, or in Cuba....in Denmark, or in the US? Remember....again, you brought up life expectancy and nutrition, to support your argument....

Couldn't it just as easily be that I exhibit an openminded political demeanor and you come off like a predictably indoctrinated American?

loquitur · 03-28-2008, 10:22 AM

host, you really don't see the mote in your own eye, do you....... Please accord me the basic respect of having my own opinions, fairly arrived at.

This discussion started because you posited that our economy sucks, we are collapsing, the depression is nigh, etc etc etc. I called bullshit so you started this diversion comparing life cycle indicators in various countries. I'm kicking myself for letting you pick out details and change the subject to the one you prefer.

No, host, I'm not playing by your rules as you try to shift the terms of discussion every time the subject gets too tough for you. You don't get to move the goalposts. Come back to what we were talking about. If you think the economy is collapsing, why are you trading options? You should be buying gold and preparing to emigrate.

Put up or shut up, host - prove that the US economy is collapsing into a depression. And I mean depression: cratering of the Dow, 25% unemployment, stuff like that. I'll wait. I had said that there is no evidence of depression and that we are materially better off than we have ever been. Your response is that other people are better by certain indicators - which is irrelevant. There is no depression on the way and we in fact are better off than we have ever been by any objective measure.

And we still have the richest poor people in the history of the world. You wanna change the topic? You still haven't explained obese poor people as a historical phenomenon.

host · 03-28-2008, 10:49 AM

I sold some Lehman Apr 35 put options that I bought late yesterday @ $2.60

Sold them @ $4.00 shortly after the open this AM:

Quote:

LEH Apr 35 Put OPRA: +LYHPG | Research the underlying symbol
Get Quote(s) Symbol lookup
Go

$3.70 -0.80 (-17.78%) Buy Sell Set Triggers View Option Chain
Implied volatility: 146.43Time value: 3.70Days to expiration: 22

Quote detail
Bid 3.65 B/A size 102X137
Ask 3.75 Last size 5
Last 3.70 Last trade Fri Mar 28 2008 14:42:57
Change -0.80 Open 3.80
Change % -17.78% Close 4.50
Volume 7,499 High 4.10
Open interest 50,156 Low 3.10
Exchange OPRA Asset type Option

All of the brokerages are "short plays", now....here's why...unprecedented since the depression....more regulation translates to bringing their leverage down to the level of the regulated banks who also get to use the Fd discount window. Banks leverage limit is 7:1, Bear and Lehman are at 30:1 .

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ie...=1&sa=N&tab=wn

Brokerages can choose to stop dropping their crap collateral off at the Fed discount window in exchange for borrowed T-Bills loaned to them at the face value of the near worthless MBS they put on the FED (i.e., on the taxpayer)
....T-Bills sold into the market (short sales, since they are borrowed from the Fed...) or, if they won't accept de-leveraging, they can get along in the free market, and go BK like Bear would have without a JP Morgan fronted, Fed nationalization......

loquitur · 03-28-2008, 10:49 AM

Matter of fact, Host, I just went back and looked at my first post in this subdiscussion, and it is a complete answer to what you just said:

Quote:

Host, Baraka..... I think the two of you have fallen prey to the recency/proximity fallacy, which is that the events closest to you in time and space get used to define baselines for comparison of ongoing events to "normal." Hitting an economic rough patch is a sign of a healthy, correcting economy that is purging toxins from its system. It's roughly the same as your kid running a fever that has to run its course so that the virus can be killed off: it looks pretty worrying while it's happening, but it does pass and then the kid goes on to grow.

If you step back and look at the main indicators of material well-being, which to my mind include things like life expectancy and nutrition, we are better off now than we ever have been. Not to beat a dead horse here, but we have the richest poor people in history - our poor people are obese rather than starving. The standard of living of a middle class person in the US at the turn of the 20th century was lower than the standard of a poor person at the turn of the 21st.

This does NOT mean we live in Utopia, nor does it mean we have no economic problems, nor does it mean things can't be improved. But this notion that there is impending economic doom is simply not supported. I suspect some of it is due to the obsessive focus on income inequality and the insistence that unless everyone has the same amount of stuff, that means the people who have a bit less than others are ipso facto deemed to be miserable - which is manifestly not true, unless you think envy is a good thing.

After I write something like that, and you come back extolling Cuba, I can hardly conclude anything other than that you like Cuba.

OMG I just read your last post, Host - you just said that regulation kills off wealth! That's an amazing insight!

host · 03-28-2008, 11:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by loquitur

Matter of fact, Host, I just went back and looked at my first post in this subdiscussion, and it is a complete answer to what you just said:After I write something like that, and you come back extolling Cuba, I can hardly conclude anything other than that you like Cuba.

OMG I just read your last post, Host - you just said that regulation kills off wealth! That's an amazing insight!

No, loquitur, the leverage that the brokers use, kill off wealth, ala Bear !

If you are leveraged 30:1 and you experience losses of just 3.33%, you could be insolvent.... you no longer have any principle remaining in the porfolio. The next dollar lost is the dollar of the lender.... all of your portfolio is composed of debt.

If you put down 5% on a home purchase and borrow, 95%, and the home is appraised at $200k and you pay $200k, if the appraised value drops below $190K, you owe more than the house is worth, and your equity is gone, and that is an example where leverage is only 20:1.

If banks and brokerages were limited to 2:1 leverage, and all mortgage applicants were required to put a 50% downpament into their home purchase, do you suppose we would have lower, stable, home prices, and almost no foreclosures? Leverage is the cancer that makes the flood of money that bid up home prices, until they crashed, possible. Leverage does the same thing to equity markets.

This month, has our government socialized major losses, where it was previously in the process of minimizing the taxes on the profits of participants in the speuclative housing market bubble?

<h3>What do you call a political/economic system that does those two things, back to back?</h3>

Here is another explanation about leverage:

Quote:

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/2...sion-part.html

...The model of EVER INCREASING LEVERAGE is and ALWAYS WAS bankrupt.

It was a FICTION.

Ever-increasing leverage as the foundation of a financial spiral is trivially easy to prove as mathematically impossible. Charles Ponzi created the "original" scheme of this sort in American Jurisprudence but he was not the last one to try it, and the latest incantation of CHARLES PONZI'S WORK is now found in these "credit default swaps"!

These swaps NEVER HAD ANY CHANCE OF PERFORMING UNDER STRESS because eventually the ever-increasing spiral of geometrically-increasing amount of new business that underlay this model MUST RUN TO EXHAUSTION, and when it does THEY ALL BLOW UP, just as Charles Ponzi's scheme did.

YOU CANNOT CREATE MORE VALUE IN A POOL OF LOANS, AS EXPRESSED BY THEIR ORIGINAL RISK-ADJUSTED RETURN, THAN WAS THERE ORIGINALLY....

It's been a Ponzi scheme, loquitur...even the 7:1 leverage that the Fed permits the banks to max out at....is a Ponzi scheme.... It is the lack of regulation, the printing of fiat script out of thin air....fronted as "money: that permits the leveraging, that destroys wealth, the regulation is not the cause of wealth destruction.

The creation of the Fed was a deregulating mechanism, counter to the language about creation of money, specified in the constitution:

Quote:

http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#A1Sec8
....Section 8 - Powers of Congress

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;....

I'm sounding like Ron Paul, now, but he would refuse to socialize Bear, Lehman, and Merrill's losses, I hope.

loquitur · 03-28-2008, 11:32 AM

I understand how leverage works, Host. I have a client whom it killed, whom I had to help out of a mess.

But leverage killing wealth is not what you posted:

Quote:

more regulation translates to bringing their leverage down to the level of the regulated banks who also get to use the Fed discount window.

The regulation is what's killing the wealth according to that sentence. Leverage, when used properly, can create wealth - but it's tied to risk, and sometimes risks go sour as it did with Bear. How much risk should you handle? More than regulators will let you, less than some people will want. Those who lend the money for the leverage are at risk, too - if they take the risk of lending too much, they get slammed as well. That's called a market.

The Fed keeps leverage down for entities it helps because it wants to cut its own risk. Can't blame the Fed, but that doesn't mean there is some ideal level of risk that the Fed knows and others don't. Like most bureaucrats, the Fed will choose low risk levels. That puts a ceiling on profitability, because reward follows rational risks.

Oh, and if someone is leveraged 30:1 on a large percentage of his wealth, then he's a fool and deserves to go under, right?

I'm with you that losses by people who took risks and lost shouldn't be socialized. That's what we have bankruptcy laws for.

tisonlyi · 03-28-2008, 03:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by loquitur

I'm with you that losses by people who took risks and lost shouldn't be socialized. That's what we have bankruptcy laws for.

On the scale we're talking, I don't think that level of laissez-faire can work. Smacks of schadenfreude, but with far reaching and unpredictable effects...

One can only say that the laissex-faire solution to the '29 crash didn't work out too well.

loquitur · 03-29-2008, 06:43 PM

the govt's actions re the '29 crash weren't laissez faire. That's a myth.

roachboy · 03-29-2008, 08:12 PM

Quote:

the govt's actions re the '29 crash weren't laissez faire.

so herbert hoover wasn't passive enough for you?

guyy · 03-29-2008, 08:32 PM

Quote:

Host, the US tends for cultural reasons to have higher obesity rates and mortality from car accidents (mainly becaues we drive more). That means our health statistics are not strictly comparable to countries with greater population density because they have fewer automotive-related deaths and countries with better eating habits than Americans.

Really? How about comparing Canada and Australia then? They drive a lot in those places, too. These countries have brought down their road death rates down more than the US.

And if the Irish had had a better, more varied diet during the 19th C. fewer of them would have starved or had to emigrate. The potato famine had nothing to do with global trade, colonialism, distribution of wealth, or anything like that. It was all the fault of white trash culture. Right?

Quote:

Americans also tend to insist on more drastic measures to save marginally viable babies, so the infant mortality numbers are somewhat worse in the US than in other countries.

Babies are saved so infant mortality rates are worse? This makes no sense.

Quote:

These are cultural differences, not differences in quality of health care, and they have very little to do with the government. They are a consequence primarily of the individualist culture in this country.

Or perhaps the individualist culture is a an adaptive response to the inadequacies of the American social infrastructure.

Quote:

Socialized services were originated by Bismarck as a way to keep the populace quiet and narcotized in order to stave off demands for democracy. Cuba is no different.

It being one of the features of a socialist society, it would be odd if Cuba didn't have socialised services.

loquitur · 03-30-2008, 01:03 PM

so, come up with the numbers for Canada and Australia. I would expect that they are higher on some measures and lower on others.

On the infant mortality numbers, if you count marginally viable babies as live births, you use heroic measures to save them and a higher percentage of them die, you adversely affect the life expectancy numbers. If you don't use heroic measures and deem the extreme preemies lost causes so that they die, as in many other countries, they count as miscarriages rather than live births. That's what I was getting at. No big mystery.

guyy, I didn't understand what you were talking about with the Irish emigration and the potato famine.

And I agree that it's possible to dispute the direction of causality between culture and government, but in general, over the long term people get the government they really want. It's a revealed preference, to use the economic term.

My point about socialized services in Cuba was that those services aren't necessarily the sign of an enlightened society, given that they were originated by Bismarck as a way to keep the masses quiescent and to stave off demands for democracy.

host · 03-30-2008, 01:33 PM

loquitur, according to this impressively impartial study, in 2003, Cuba experienced 39.5 maternal deaths per 100,000 births, almost twice the rate of death of black American mothers, and four times the rate of white Americans.....

The thing I wonder, and I should think you would want to wonder about too, is whether or not your political attitude towards Cuba is part of a collective influence that has the literal effect of killing people.

If your political prejudices are in actuality, an avoidable outcome of your political ideology, is there a political attitude that could be more treacherous or ignorant, expecially since it's practitioners consider themselves, almost unquestionably, to embrace "reasonable" political POV?

Quote:

http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/35/4/817
International Journal of Epidemiology 2006 35(4):817-824; doi:10.1093/ije/dyl175

Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association © The Author 2006; all rights reserved.

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

Review

Health in Cuba
Richard S Cooper1,*, Joan F Kennelly2 and Pedro Orduñez-Garcia3

......Cuba's role in global health assistance

Given its limited economic resources, Cuba can only rarely afford direct aid.20 Instead it has adopted a strategy that relies on human resources. First targeted to Africa, the programme has now placed physicians, nurses, dentists, and other professionals in 52 countries.20,65,66 The most prominent episodes involved sending doctors to post-apartheid South Africa, providing long-term care for Chernobyl victims, and giving disaster aid to Central America after hurricane Mitch. Cuban personnel also staffed a new hospital in Gonaives, Haiti, which had been constructed with the Japanese aid; this facility was subsequently destroyed during the anti-Aristide strife in 2004 although the Cuban physicians have remained.67

To move from emergency assistance to a sustainable programme, a multicountry collaborative plan has recently been developed to improve health services in poor Latin American countries.66 A medical school was established in Havana in 1999 and more than 6000 students, primarily from Africa and Latin America, are currently being given a medical education at no expense.7,68,69 In the past 3 years more than 14 000 physicians and dentists have been placed in slums and rural communities in Venezuela as part of the new the partnership between Cuba and the Chavez government, and this number is set to rise to 20 000.68 Cuba has also agreed to educate 40 000 new physicians for Venezuela over the next several years.69

Cuba's medical assistance campaign has a number of dimensions. Like all foreign aid programmes, it assumes that some political benefits will be forthcoming in return. <h3>However, most of the countries that have been assisted, for example, Ethiopia, The Gambia, and Haiti, have nothing to offer in return. Unlike many donor programmes, placing physicians where none have practiced before has been overwhelmingly well received by the local communities.</h3>69 Thus, while the arrangement with Venezuela has direct economic benefit to Cuba, it has also transformed the health system by giving large segments of the Venezuelan population access to modern medical care.69

The special character of health sector development in Cuba can perhaps be best appreciated by considering the challenge any other society would face if it tried to send tens of thousands of physicians to live in slum communities in a foreign country for 2 years. While a range of incentives and motivating factors unique to the Cuban social context are operating, these assignments are accepted as a professional obligation by the vast majority of the Cuban practitioners and they perform effectively in the host communities. Much like the experience of military personnel on long tours of duty, the Cuban programme of assistance does nonetheless require extraordinary sacrifice and the hardship is not always borne lightly. Furthermore, the mobilization for assistance to Venezuela has meant that many Cuban neighbourhoods must share facilities. These sacrifices must, of course, be balanced against the conditions of desperate need in the communities on the receiving end. Many of these countries, particularly in Africa, have watched helplessly as the majority of their health professionals emigrate to the US and Europe.70 <h3>Offhand dismissal by observers in industrialized countries of the Cuban medical aid programme, which has such a powerful impact on these marginalized communities, is a clear indication of how perilously divided the discourse over global development has become.</h3>

Does Cuba's experience have broader significance?

The history of science is replete with stories of the delayed acceptance of unpopular or unfashionable ideas. The approach to improving global health taken by the donor community and academic medicine in rich countries is no exception. While criticisms of the basic approach are voiced—as in the recent assertion that the external measures of development have no meaning for the general population71,72—these critical voices have little influence on the practice of large international agencies. It is not the intent of this article, however, to summarize and make a judgment on economic assistance and progress in global public health. Instead, based on the weight of the evidence presented on the Cuban experience, we pose the following question: <h3>‘Why has the debate on solving the most urgent challenges in public health in poor countries ignored the experience of success?’ </h3>Traditionally, whether the experience is derived from randomized trials, high survival rates in clinical series, or favourable trends in vital statistics, biomedicine embraces the winner and seeks to imitate it. Precisely the opposite has happened in this instance.

There is, of course, no shortage of historical and ideological reasons why a debate on the ‘Cuban question’ has never reached maturity. Blind optimism is thought to have discredited the sympathetic scholarship about the Soviet Union, and to a lesser extent China, in an earlier era.73–75 Some observers are too concerned about putative restraints on civil liberties and the independent character of its foreign policy to develop any enthusiasm for the objectively more successful aspects of Cuban society. <h3>None of these concerns, however, undermine the force of the question, why have we ignored what works? </h3>

Before recommending components of the Cuban model for use in other settings, a thorough and balanced assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of those components would be required. That assessment would require a very different study of the health system's organization, capacity, and services. Our intent here is to demonstrate that sufficient cause exists to undertake that assessment. For an objective evaluation of the Cuban experience to succeed, an acceptance of certain ground rules would be required. First, this evaluation cannot be undertaken with the goal of winning a political argument. Although the trajectory of social development in Cuba over the past 50 years is both complex and controversial, as in all other countries, the public health experience should be subjected to judgment on the basis of the usual rules of science. Second, this judgment cannot be permanently postponed by skepticism about the validity of the data or concern over unrelated broader social questions. Ongoing, careful scrutiny of Cuban public health data is justified and to be welcomed; however, sufficient data now exist in several key areas to demonstrate that skepticism can no longer be the basis for a refusal to engage the question. Likewise, many societies embrace domestic and foreign policies that are questioned and even condemned by broad segments of the world community, yet the attempt to evaluate progress in improving the health of their populations is not thereby condemned as illegitimate or unnecessary. Third, the apparent successes recorded by Cuba should be seen as consequences of a well-defined strategy; the value of these underlying principles, not the accumulation of better numbers, is what holds implications for other poor countries, and not a few well-resourced societies.

Two aspects of the Cuban experience serve as reasonable demonstrations of the value of that strategic approach. In the area of infectious disease, for example, the operative principles are particularly straightforward: once a safe and effective vaccine becomes available the entire at-risk population is immunized; if a vaccine is not available, the susceptible population is screened and treated; where an arthropod vector can be identified, the transmission pathway is disrupted by mobilizing the local community which in turn requires effective neighbourhood organization and universal primary health care. The joint effect of these strategic activities will result in the elimination or control of virtually all serious epidemic infectious conditions. In terms of child survival, a ‘continuum of care’ that provides for the pre-conceptional health of women, prenatal care, skilled birth attendants, and a comprehensive well-baby programme can quickly reduce infant mortality to levels approaching the biological minimum. Many observers will regard these propositions as reasonable, yet hopelessly too ambitious for the poorer nations of the world. It must be recognized, however, that these principles have been successfully implemented in Cuba at a cost well within the reach of most middle-income countries.

Although other aspects of society, such as education and housing obviously make independent contributions to the success of public health campaigns, the Cuban strategy outlined here serves as a model that should be thoroughly evaluated. Needless to say, its implementation would face many challenges specific to the geography and politics of a region. Other models that dictate public health strategies face the same gamut of uncertainties and challenges, however, and none can be said to have met with similar success.76 The World Health Organization, for example, promulgated a set of principles in the Alma Ata ‘Health for All’ Declaration of 1978, many of which were incorporated into the Cuban approach.77 In recent years, however, international agencies have favoured privatization and reduction in state support for health systems.78 The record of achievement with privatized systems in poor countries has often been very limited.79 A debate which can use as a point of departure extensive empirical evidence of progress would provide a healthy reorientation in a discipline distracted by controversy and divided over political aims.

The health professions have little opportunity to intervene directly on historical events. However, in the conduct of our science we have both choice and responsibility. Challenging the acquiescence of the scientific community to ostracism of some of its members in an earlier era, Einstein remarked, ‘Political considerations, advanced with much solemnity, prevent... the purely objective ways of thinking without which our great aims must necessarily be frustrated’ [Ref. (80) p. 80]. <h3>If the accomplishments of Cuba could be reproduced across a broad range of poor and middle-income countries the health of the world's population would be transformed. This fact creates an obligation for health scientists.</h3> We should debate the merits of the principles embedded in the Cuban attempts to improve the health of populations.

03-26-2008, 04:23 PM	#162 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	for what it's worth, i've spent a lot of the past 15 years working on the history of the french left. anyone, anywhere who was not liked by group or party x was fascist. so yes, i know about that. there are a core of ideas that enable people to use the word fascism to refer to a range of political ideologies...without that the idea would have no content at all--there are obvious variations--in your second paragraph, you introduced anti-semitism knowing that it was a feature of german fascism in ways that were particular to it--had you wanted to argue the point in another way, you might have isolated the tendency to eliminate all political opposition from the left--that is a constant--like the notion of national destiny, the united volk, the military Mission blah blah blah. what seems to be the real problem for you is that fascism is actually quite difficult to render entirely Other than capitalist nationalism. this was a real political problem for the americans by the end of world war ii--how to enframe fascism as outside the purview of a nationalism that they themselves were fully invested in. it is a variant of nationalism in the straight capitalist mode. there is no way around that. the fact that this is the case might lead you or anyone else to want a CLEAR idea of what fascism is in order to be able to react coherently when the line that separates ordinary capiralist nationalism from it started to blur. it does not come from Elsewhere, it is not an Import, it is not Alien--it is the intensification of tendencies that are central to the ideology of nation. period. this is the "political problem" that seems to bother you. but instead of thinking about that, you seem to prefer to play this silly game of wanting to dissolve the category fascism, as if by doing that you can wish away the fact that nationalist ideology can be dangerous. or worse, you'd prefer to make some separation between fascism and the capitalist ideology of nation. but you can't do that, and i suspect you know as much. ...... btw: i dont agree with how host uses the term "corporatism"---i think it's a mistake. the ideology of corporatism has to do with a notion of an organic division of labor, which gets grafted onto a rightwing reading of aristotle on the one hand, and onto a basically fascist notion of nation as organic community on the other. so it's not the same thing as oligarchy (you've pointed that out before as well) nor is it the same thing as domination by trans-nationals.... but if it is a tendency that is constantly available because it is a versioning of nationalism itself, __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

03-26-2008, 05:48 PM	#164 (permalink)
tisonlyi Nothing	Socialism does not necessarily mean that the government owns anything or everything. It means that all is under the control of the community directly influenced by or influencing it and there are many, many ways of implementing this. Cooperatives are one means of directly introducing socialism from within a capitalist organisation. There are many styles of these which fall under the Rochdale Principles (so named after the first truly successful cooperatives in the mid 19th century England). Workers cooperatives are probably those which spring immediately to mind, these are more in tune with the general understanding of socialist ideology as it is widely broadcast. Direct worker control. Consumer cooperatives' members/owners are it's consumers. The largest of these in the world happens to be based in the UK. The Co-op (wiki) It took almost half a millenium from the emergence of the Yeoman or their ilk for the first revolutionary class to take control of the planet. Socialism hasn't had 200 years yet, give it a chance. __________________ "I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place." - Winston Churchill, 1937 --{ORLY?}--

03-26-2008, 05:56 PM	#165 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	so loquitor, i take it you like such stalwart fellers as alfred j nock? http://www.barefootsworld.net/nockoets0.html __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

03-26-2008, 06:46 PM	#167 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	just checking. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

03-27-2008, 07:43 AM	#176 (permalink)
Ustwo Pissing in the cornflakes	Sooner or later we may well have another great depression. So what? Did we have children starving to death in the streets? Did we have millions dead? The socialists did, be it on purpose at times in an act of genocide or just a failure of the system. At our very worst we were still better than the alternatives. __________________ Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

03-26-2008, 01:54 PM	#161 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	RB, I'm afraid that if you look at the historical academic literature you'll find a marked inability to provide a definition of fascism that is generally acceptable. You will find such definitions by people who have a political interest in defining the term in ways that suit them. That's why I linked the Orwell quote about fascism now being used as a general term to refer to political ideas the speaker doesn't like. I'm not quibbling right now with your definition because I'm not at the moment looking at it, though I do recall that when I read it I found parts of it too narrow and parts of it too broad. If the definition is limited to the actual tenets of the Italian Fascist Party, that's one thing, but if it gets generalized outside that context, the task of definition becomes troublesome. Even in the Italian context, people will disagree about which aspects of Fascist rule were the ones that were truly definitive and which were incidental. For instance, the anti-Semitism was a late arrival to Italian fascism, roughly contemporaneous with the alliance with Germany - so is racial thinking and bigotry part of the definition of fascism or not? Or is it an inevitable consequence of nationalism, which is a related but distinct concept? The word gets tossed around pretty loosely. For instance, host and will think that the Fed's bailout of Bear Stearns was fascist, and came up with some twist on the concept of "corporatism" to justify it. I can think of lots of bad ways to describe the bailout but fascist is definitely not one of them. The bailout didn't involve commandeering large businesses to the service of the government and the military. It was unwise and unduly generous to JPM, and saddled the govt with stuff it shouldn't be saddled with (to my mind, they should have let Bear file chapter 11, but that's a discussion for another day) - but it wasn't fascist. It makes some people feel better to label things they don't like "fascist." But then they shouldn't be surprised when other people use the same trick to criticize things that they like.

03-26-2008, 06:13 PM	#166 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	more of a Hayek/Friedman kind of guy. I promise you, I'm sane.

03-27-2008, 05:16 AM	#172 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	Host, Baraka..... I think the two of you have fallen prey to the recency/proximity fallacy, which is that the events closest to you in time and space get used to define baselines for comparison of ongoing events to "normal." Hitting an economic rough patch is a sign of a healthy, correcting economy that is purging toxins from its system. It's roughly the same as your kid running a fever that has to run its course so that the virus can be killed off: it looks pretty worrying while it's happening, but it does pass and then the kid goes on to grow. If you step back and look at the main indicators of material well-being, which to my mind include things like life expectancy and nutrition, we are better off now than we ever have been. Not to beat a dead horse here, but we have the richest poor people in history - our poor people are obese rather than starving. The standard of living of a middle class person in the US at the turn of the 20th century was lower than the standard of a poor person at the turn of the 21st. This does NOT mean we live in Utopia, nor does it mean we have no economic problems, nor does it mean things can't be improved. But this notion that there is impending economic doom is simply not supported. I suspect some of it is due to the obsessive focus on income inequality and the insistence that unless everyone has the same amount of stuff, that means the people who have a bit less than others are ipso facto deemed to be miserable - which is manifestly not true, unless you think envy is a good thing.

03-27-2008, 08:31 AM	#178 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	Host, the fact that the Fed opened the window to inv banks for the first time since the 30s does not mean this is a repeat of the 30s in other respects. You're resting a huge inverted pyramid of inference on a data point that won't support it. We don't have Smoot-Hawley, we don't have general tightening of credit at the Fed level (we have the reverse), we don't have an industrial, hard-asset based economy anymore. There are lots of other differences, too. Remember, we have an economy of something like $18 trillion (I might be off on the number); there's a lot of room for error before things turn into a disaster. It seems almost like you want to see an economic implosion in this country. Why? Or am I just imagining it?

03-27-2008, 07:13 PM	#186 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	Host, I take it you didn't adjust things like, for instance, the greater number of preemie kids kept alive in the US, which brings down average life expectancy? or the higher number of miles driven, which does likewise? or any number of other culturally-driven factors? Which criteria do you deem significant? Personally, I value personal freedoms quite a bit. OF course you wont' find much of that in Cuba...........

03-28-2008, 05:42 AM	#188 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	Host, the US tends for cultural reasons to have higher obesity rates and mortality from car accidents (mainly becaues we drive more). That means our health statistics are not strictly comparable to countries with greater population density because they have fewer automotive-related deaths and countries with better eating habits than Americans. That's just two factors off the top of my head. Americans also tend to insist on more drastic measures to save marginally viable babies, so the infant mortality numbers are somewhat worse in the US than in other countries. These are cultural differences, not differences in quality of health care, and they have very little to do with the government. They are a consequence primarily of the individualist culture in this country. Your stats are interesting but you're drawing inferences that may or may not be justified. You haven't established anything about why the numbers are different, only that they are different. Beyond that you're just making assumptions. For example, in a town of Jehovah's Witnesses where they refuse blood transfusions, there are going to be more deaths of a certain type than in other places - but it won't be due to inadequate medical care in the JW town, it'll be due to the cultural difference about transfusions. In other words, you're succumbing to the same fallacy I talked about earlier, which is that you're isolating a data point and constructing a huge inverted pyramid of inference on top of it that isn't warranted. And my other point isn't better dead than red, that is a massive misstatement. It is that you should consider carefully your romance with left-wing dictatorships. A country whose self-glorifying dictators purchase the submission and quiescence of its citizens with "free" medical care is not a model we should want to follow. Socialized services were originated by Bismarck as a way to keep the populace quiet and narcotized in order to stave off demands for democracy. Cuba is no different.

03-28-2008, 10:22 AM	#190 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	host, you really don't see the mote in your own eye, do you....... Please accord me the basic respect of having my own opinions, fairly arrived at. This discussion started because you posited that our economy sucks, we are collapsing, the depression is nigh, etc etc etc. I called bullshit so you started this diversion comparing life cycle indicators in various countries. I'm kicking myself for letting you pick out details and change the subject to the one you prefer. No, host, I'm not playing by your rules as you try to shift the terms of discussion every time the subject gets too tough for you. You don't get to move the goalposts. Come back to what we were talking about. If you think the economy is collapsing, why are you trading options? You should be buying gold and preparing to emigrate. Put up or shut up, host - prove that the US economy is collapsing into a depression. And I mean depression: cratering of the Dow, 25% unemployment, stuff like that. I'll wait. I had said that there is no evidence of depression and that we are materially better off than we have ever been. Your response is that other people are better by certain indicators - which is irrelevant. There is no depression on the way and we in fact are better off than we have ever been by any objective measure. And we still have the richest poor people in the history of the world. You wanna change the topic? You still haven't explained obese poor people as a historical phenomenon. Last edited by loquitur; 03-28-2008 at 10:38 AM..

03-29-2008, 06:43 PM	#196 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	the govt's actions re the '29 crash weren't laissez faire. That's a myth.

03-30-2008, 01:03 PM	#199 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	so, come up with the numbers for Canada and Australia. I would expect that they are higher on some measures and lower on others. On the infant mortality numbers, if you count marginally viable babies as live births, you use heroic measures to save them and a higher percentage of them die, you adversely affect the life expectancy numbers. If you don't use heroic measures and deem the extreme preemies lost causes so that they die, as in many other countries, they count as miscarriages rather than live births. That's what I was getting at. No big mystery. guyy, I didn't understand what you were talking about with the Irish emigration and the potato famine. And I agree that it's possible to dispute the direction of causality between culture and government, but in general, over the long term people get the government they really want. It's a revealed preference, to use the economic term. My point about socialized services in Cuba was that those services aren't necessarily the sign of an enlightened society, given that they were originated by Bismarck as a way to keep the masses quiescent and to stave off demands for democracy. Last edited by loquitur; 03-30-2008 at 01:04 PM.. Reason: Automerged Doublepost