At the opposite end of the spectrum from the joyous outpouring at Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closing above 10,000 for the first time since 1999, the United Nations Food Program announced this month an enormous lack of food aid to hungry people all around the world. International food aid, both from public funds and private donations, will meet massive shortfalls in the next year largely due to the effects of the global economic downturn.
A Sept. 16 Reuters story, http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKLG270557 quotes UN World Food Program (UNWFP) executive director Josette Sheeran detailing the inexorable increase in famine resulting from cuts to food aid by the world's wealthiest nations and the relationship of this crisis to the current international financial crisis.
Sharon Lindores writes for Reuters, "The number of hungry people passed 1 billion this year for the first time, [Sheeran] said, adding the WFP has barely a third of the funding it needs to feed 108 million people this year. To date the WFP has confirmed $2.6 billion in funding towards its $6.7 billion budget for 2009. It would take less than 0.01 percent of the global financial crisis bailout package to solve the hunger crisis, [Sheeran] said.
Following Sheeran's comments by a month, major news channels trumpeted the Wall Street achievement while the story was reported only by the fringes of the business press.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2285493/dow_jones_average_climbs_above_10000.html
Still many on and off Wall Street consider genuine indicators of recovery--for instance reduction of monthly job losses, the re-issuing of loans to small business and decrease in monthly home foreclosures--to follow strength in consumer confidence.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/confidence-drops-for-second-straight-month-2009-10-27
Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch reporter Greg Robb writes on Oct. 27, "U.S. consumers doubt that the much-touted economic recovery is under way, according to the latest report on consumer confidence released by the Conference Board on Tuesday. The consumer confidence index was much weaker than expected, falling for the second straight month as the assessment of present-day conditions fell to its lowest level in 26 years."
Analysis: Monitoring economic indicators that tell you only about the daily lives of a specific range of citizens can only provide false readings on recovery or any kinds of stability trends. Current economics, under the constant influence of Wall Street culture, do not look at the lives of the poor in the US and elsewhere to tell them about the health of financial institutions, which is most often the health analysts and investors are concerned about. People all around the world with no access to regulation of banks (or lack thereof entirely) are not facing the repair of central financial institutions like it is something we all caused and haven't the expertise to fix, but monitoring the usual media outlets we don't get that impression. Instead, powerful individuals who knew precisely what would happen and what to ask for when it did happen are looking at the rest of the world's literate population trying to interpret the current financial crisis as a routine system crash that seemingly caused itself and only our patience and adherence to the notion we're dealing with forces we can't understand without a masters degree in economics. There are perpetrators here with names and families and lives who, unlike Bernard Madoff, are getting away. They have been getting away since December of 2007 while the rest of us tried to make sense of what happened to the financial sector. They are not absconding to a secret island in the South Pacific or a mountain redoubt in the far reaches of the Swiss Alps. They are retreating into the rhetoric created by so many people who have worked so hard to obfuscate justice in economic crime, to make the situation appear so complicated that not only is it impossible to bring the culprits to a fair hearing and ultimately to justice, but also to construe this as the impossibility of even defining what justice is, therefore rendering it unattainable. What this allows is not only the exoneration of those who knew what the consequences of their enormously reckless acts would be. This prevarication also creates the possibility to commit these crimes again on the same order of magnitude, arguably by the same names and faces now running to safety behind a flimsy wall of "financial might makes financial right."
For a more critical look at the financial crisis, don't miss Jeff Madrick's piece on financial regulation in the Nov. 5 issue of the New York Review of Books: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=23323 (online content is premium with three pay options available; newsstand copy runs about $6 and can be found at many bookstores)
Also, the action group Showdown in Chicago rallied just this weekend to raise awareness about banking and decisions being made right now by financial institutions. Under the "What's Broken" tab on their site are both html and pdf versions of a sensible prognosis in the woe that is our current financial predicament. http://www.showdowninchicago.org/whatsbroken.html
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Party Dominance and the Separation of Powers
[This post is originally part of the blog Statesubterfuge, which was very different in intent from Extraordinary Edition; therefore some discontinuity exists between this entry and those that follow]
Tuesday, November 2 is a peak on the graph of political curiosity in the U.S. Not until we return to the lead up to the first November Tuesday in 2012 (and maybe not even then) will persons of every background and walk of life turn their eyes to events and ideas in the political realm, unable to look away for more than a few hours at a time.
The New York Times reports today, amid analysis of hardened foreign policy outlooks offered by each candidate, that Democrats could find their party in a position of control in the event of a Barack Obama victory, a set of circumstances House Speaker Nancy Pelosi alluded to at the onset of the primaries.
“The possibility of a victory by Senator Barack Obama combined with significant Congressional gains by his party could give Democrats extraordinary muscle to pursue an ambitious agenda on health care, taxes, union rights, energy and national security. Democrats, who are within reach of the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster in the Senate, would also face high expectations, especially from the party’s more liberal quarters, that could be difficult to meet even with enhanced numbers in the Senate as well as the House. And they would be at risk of overreaching, a tendency that has deeply damaged both parties in similar situations in the past.”
Living in the world of Bush, one might not be too quick to point out that with power comes responsibility. The extensive mocking of focus groups by Bush and Cheney suggests to the contrary that the winners take all while the losers can sit by and wait it out until power shifts at the end of the next two-year cycle.
Still, if the suggestion marks a political reality both sides of the aisle will take notice.
“Armed with polls that raise the possibility of decisive wins in House and Senate races, Congressional Republicans are trying to turn the situation to their advantage, warning voters about unchecked one-party government and urging them to split their tickets to deny Democrats unfettered control. The Republican presidential nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, issued warnings about one-party control as he campaigned Friday and Saturday.”
If we are truly not panicked as the election winds down over its last nine days, thinking calmly and rationally about a United States that will in either outcome be lead by a very powerful party as old as the nation itself, what we might ask is how this system came to be designed to operate with, say, an executive, an upper house, a lower house and a Supreme Court stacked with party members who share the ideology of one national committee? Does party dominance undermine the fundamental democratic concept of the separation of powers?
To address these questions, we will be taking a look at the concept itself, the separation of powers, which we know as the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government. Credited with the foundational work on the theory is Charles de Montisquieu, who relied upon lessons of the Roman republic and was influenced by Greek political thought dating to the Second Century. Montisquieu contributed to the Constitutional Convention adopted in Philadelphia in September of 1787.
Tuesday, November 2 is a peak on the graph of political curiosity in the U.S. Not until we return to the lead up to the first November Tuesday in 2012 (and maybe not even then) will persons of every background and walk of life turn their eyes to events and ideas in the political realm, unable to look away for more than a few hours at a time.
The New York Times reports today, amid analysis of hardened foreign policy outlooks offered by each candidate, that Democrats could find their party in a position of control in the event of a Barack Obama victory, a set of circumstances House Speaker Nancy Pelosi alluded to at the onset of the primaries.
“The possibility of a victory by Senator Barack Obama combined with significant Congressional gains by his party could give Democrats extraordinary muscle to pursue an ambitious agenda on health care, taxes, union rights, energy and national security. Democrats, who are within reach of the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster in the Senate, would also face high expectations, especially from the party’s more liberal quarters, that could be difficult to meet even with enhanced numbers in the Senate as well as the House. And they would be at risk of overreaching, a tendency that has deeply damaged both parties in similar situations in the past.”
Living in the world of Bush, one might not be too quick to point out that with power comes responsibility. The extensive mocking of focus groups by Bush and Cheney suggests to the contrary that the winners take all while the losers can sit by and wait it out until power shifts at the end of the next two-year cycle.
Still, if the suggestion marks a political reality both sides of the aisle will take notice.
“Armed with polls that raise the possibility of decisive wins in House and Senate races, Congressional Republicans are trying to turn the situation to their advantage, warning voters about unchecked one-party government and urging them to split their tickets to deny Democrats unfettered control. The Republican presidential nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, issued warnings about one-party control as he campaigned Friday and Saturday.”
If we are truly not panicked as the election winds down over its last nine days, thinking calmly and rationally about a United States that will in either outcome be lead by a very powerful party as old as the nation itself, what we might ask is how this system came to be designed to operate with, say, an executive, an upper house, a lower house and a Supreme Court stacked with party members who share the ideology of one national committee? Does party dominance undermine the fundamental democratic concept of the separation of powers?
To address these questions, we will be taking a look at the concept itself, the separation of powers, which we know as the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government. Credited with the foundational work on the theory is Charles de Montisquieu, who relied upon lessons of the Roman republic and was influenced by Greek political thought dating to the Second Century. Montisquieu contributed to the Constitutional Convention adopted in Philadelphia in September of 1787.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Please. Don't be frightened. Your assistance is requested.
[This post belongs to the previous manifestation of this blog, Statesubterfuge, which is very different in intent from the current manifestation, Extraordinary Edition. Accordingly, the bent of this entry will resonate differently in tone than those that follow it. While you are welcome to view the mission and purpose of Statesubterfuge, the mission and purpose of Extraordinary Edition are along the lines of news analysis where the former was political theory]
Greetings. Welcome to the very serious-faced outlet of political information and ideas being created here. The only thing to do now that this page has such a serious face is create and accumulate much serious-face-themed material—issue-based news and commentary posted in the spirit of inquiry and intellectual pursuit—under the auspices of visitors to the site being able to make sense and use of it. Please remember ‘subterfuge’ is really just a big word for lying, and also please try thinking of ‘state’ as something created by humans in quite the way a machine is—to serve its originally intended function, and when found to fail that function, to duly be dismantled or replaced with something intended to function better than the obsolete incumbent mechanism.
A specific theme that will be recurrent here is the tendency of power in the modern liberal democracies to centralize within the population, boil down to two ideologically opposed leading forces still in pursuit of some of the same things—be they Democrats and Republicans in the U.S., Labor and Tories in the U.K., Socialist and Social Democrat to a more left-leaning populace, Center-Right and Christian Democrat to one leaning more to the right—and proceed to lock the doors behind them, the duopoly increasingly resembling a monopoly wearing two suits as time accumulates more wealth and power beneath the symbol of each leading force.
Under this theme we’ll look for what happens to human issues and the rules we impose upon ourselves (call it ‘the law’) within a system that bears the contours described above. Let’s also examine possible social arrangements precluded by monolithic (sorry, ‘duolithic’) dominance in the political sphere. What might life be like if [circumstances we could never have because the most powerful people we’ve heard of would never consent to it, therefore it shall never be] didn’t exist? If we wanted this world badly enough, what steps would have to occur in order to bring that world into existence? And, since achievement requires sacrifice, would it be worth the sacrifice?
This endeavor is proposed with at least one foot on the earth at the beginning and end of each engagement. We will commit to focusing on the world into which we were born and own up to each of the problems with which we all are faced. This pledge will rein in the dreaming only to the extent that the ship’s crew does not lose sight of the shore before developing instruments by which to navigate on a voyage of discovery to a world of possibilities we’re unable to see from where we now stand. The discussion will be superior in value if you’ll be so kind as to join in.
Greetings. Welcome to the very serious-faced outlet of political information and ideas being created here. The only thing to do now that this page has such a serious face is create and accumulate much serious-face-themed material—issue-based news and commentary posted in the spirit of inquiry and intellectual pursuit—under the auspices of visitors to the site being able to make sense and use of it. Please remember ‘subterfuge’ is really just a big word for lying, and also please try thinking of ‘state’ as something created by humans in quite the way a machine is—to serve its originally intended function, and when found to fail that function, to duly be dismantled or replaced with something intended to function better than the obsolete incumbent mechanism.
A specific theme that will be recurrent here is the tendency of power in the modern liberal democracies to centralize within the population, boil down to two ideologically opposed leading forces still in pursuit of some of the same things—be they Democrats and Republicans in the U.S., Labor and Tories in the U.K., Socialist and Social Democrat to a more left-leaning populace, Center-Right and Christian Democrat to one leaning more to the right—and proceed to lock the doors behind them, the duopoly increasingly resembling a monopoly wearing two suits as time accumulates more wealth and power beneath the symbol of each leading force.
Under this theme we’ll look for what happens to human issues and the rules we impose upon ourselves (call it ‘the law’) within a system that bears the contours described above. Let’s also examine possible social arrangements precluded by monolithic (sorry, ‘duolithic’) dominance in the political sphere. What might life be like if [circumstances we could never have because the most powerful people we’ve heard of would never consent to it, therefore it shall never be] didn’t exist? If we wanted this world badly enough, what steps would have to occur in order to bring that world into existence? And, since achievement requires sacrifice, would it be worth the sacrifice?
This endeavor is proposed with at least one foot on the earth at the beginning and end of each engagement. We will commit to focusing on the world into which we were born and own up to each of the problems with which we all are faced. This pledge will rein in the dreaming only to the extent that the ship’s crew does not lose sight of the shore before developing instruments by which to navigate on a voyage of discovery to a world of possibilities we’re unable to see from where we now stand. The discussion will be superior in value if you’ll be so kind as to join in.
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