Closure

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I would like to conclude the Jack Silverman economics blog. Now I know what b-people (businesspersons) mean when they say "the time had come" to end the project, or the run on B'way (Broadway), etc.

Also, I have to go to the beauty parlor to get pigtails, and I'm going to be all day taking care of these.

I feel alright with what I did. The way most persons seem to work is that they feel secure at the beginning; and then they do something fake. I seem to feel secure upon looking back at what I did in the end and finding out that it was OK. At that point I feel alright with it. Well, I could say something stupid now, but I think I'll just close.

worldcitizenjs@gmail.com

773-934-7221 Jack Silverman

p.s. also, a warm "thank you" to the Chinese who had begun to follow me.

Capitalsim have white Europe a break

Capitalism gave white Europe a break. It delivered them from the evil of their ways. It re-arranged its relational or social system. Capitalism opens up possibilities for human equality. But unless the distributional promise is fulfilled, everything may go awry. Why do I say that?

It is the multiplicity of factors, all occurring at once, that allow capitalism to happen at all. What man has to do, after this opening occurs, is take note of all these factors at work. Then mankind needs to intentionally create the factors that increase the good in capitalism and decrease the bad. (Instead we have the philosophy of "hands off" or "do not interfere," which is obscurantism.) There are quite a few of these factors (for example, how much emphasis should be given to oil drilling, including in water, over windmills and other sources of energy? Did anybody monitor this issue? Or did we just "let the market decide"?). But human beings are totally not up to the task.

On of all these factors is distributional. While capitalism works, to some extent, for those few centrally-oriented countries (firstly, Holland or England, and then the U.S. are a few main examples to consider), there is a very obvious, simple problem that shows up and that is the fact that while the capitalists penetrate every section of the earth's surface, the persons living in those countries do not share in the benefits (or course some do and some don't but it is true that in general those persons are not all sharing in the benefits). This is a contradiction with the principle of capitalism as treating all entrants into this system as equals, simply based on the products they offer. There is no cultural remedy for these "outsider" countries whom capitalism invades but then fails to benefit. That is why one of the first areas to intervene in that I would mention would be these much less-wealth far-flung or "3rd world" countries. If intentional intervention -- and there are ways to do it -- would be done for those human beings, a tremendous amount of human capital would be released. All of this would ensue if the capitalists would simply agree to treat everyone equally.

Capitalism gave the European white people a break, but if they won't give the other persons on the face of this earth a break, they will capsize their capitalism as well.

"My Paper Chase," by Harold Evans

Evans, a newspaper editor from Great Britain, in his lovely booke of the year 2009, gives us an idea of life in a capitalistic society. His mother and Dad are entirely dissimilar - and he entirely dissimilar from them. No doubt. Yet Dad had success, in his own way. And Mom in hers. Western Europe finds its way out of feudalism and out of the strict class division of the time by tolerating disagreement and variety. And the method for doing so is called capitalism.

Rogues to the right of me, here I am

Today I am in a different motel, in Madison Wisconsin. There is a party of "rouges" who checked in last night, had no respect for anything, and made noise until three a.m. Today, they seem be acting slightly differently. The behavior reminds me of scam or con game. They have a "Palin 2012" bumper sticker on their van. Nothing means anything?
Now when I go to the computer, I see five screens uploaded for Facebook slash Mafia Wars. Here it is: [http://www.facebook.com/MafiaWarsFans?ref=ts]. I read some of the copy: they use all the crime terminology in interacting with their public, and when they sell product to customer they call it "loot."
This is a very interesting mentality, which I have no doubt is the same as the one they use at Goldman Sachs or at those brokers that went under in 2008. I do not think there would any difference. Would there. It's what Loretta Napoleoni calls "Rouge Capitalism."

Random Comment (Emlenton, PA: restaurant)

Why is it that individuals bringing us news on T. V. pretend they are experts?
I am struck by this pretense of expertisticalness from the good folks at Fox while I am watching Fox News. I'm in the restautant after staying at the motel, next door.
Obviously, any person can think anything he/she likes. The Fox people have a lot of things to say today, mostly about immigration in Arizona. When talking about one's thoughts, there is a very basic requirement that we show some rationality. That is one of the first things we are going to need to do, as, after all, you need to use language. You need to have some basic grammar going for you, as well as semantics, syntax, grammer...an occasional mispelling is alright.

But here is the Fox Corp. caption that erupts under the screen while I m watching my morning News. It's definitely fresh and "New." "People protests better working conditions" -this is an actual caption seen in the restaurant. On the great Fox news network. It is regarding something European, or course. Not only that, it is a May Day demonstration.

Those Europeans is crazy aren't they.

I guess people like to make sense; but this time a caption writer stumbled.
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Transcations (Blankfein on TV)

Blankfein. (AP) "...we do hundreds of thousands, if not millions of transactions a day, ... ... he said, adding that behind every transaction there was a buyer and a seller, creating both winners and losers." What he said was rubbish, just a load of hot air from someone who cannot defend what he does. But we'll accept what he said anyways, which is that in the trades there are winners and losers.

Yeah, those two: And, thirdly, middlemen. Umpires. Armchair quarterbacks. Brokers or bankers or compradors... Merchants, basically using money. Nothing wrong with that. Right? Maybe not.

First of all -- you can verify from earlier posts of mine -- I think they are psychopathological hypocrites. The decent folks made their money on Wall St. and retired, to run art galleries and bed and breakfasts, or grow organic soybeans.

The banking industry shot down critics at least as far back as the 19th century. They were in the U. S. farmers' or agrarian movement (which had elected some U.S. Senators), and they lost, and the dominant banker interest has continued to dominate such critics ever since. But there was tremendous opposition during much of the 19th century.

As this destruction of the level-headed, perfectly rational opposition to financiers continues, the end result matters. It is not an abstraction. It is matter. And it matters and their behavior in the end causes suffering. This suffering will happen to real people ---- if not to bankers, ha ha ---- what a cute harmless joke. Well of course it causes suffering anyway: you could say that all this behavior has caused plenty of suffering already. (Or do "middlemen" brokers have no responsibility?) Then it will cause more. It will cause more suffering.

Eventually there will be a collapse of civilization, "empire," "epoch," or kalpa or whatever you call it. Then we'll all die. Boy. What a dumb post this one turned nout to be. Pointless. Totally pointless. What do I even think I am doing?

As we struggle mightily to smooth out such periodic business cycles/crises as historians have noted do occur. The problem is this. It is that bankers are peaceful men, who do not kill.

They just keep cheating.

Capitalism is just one big killing machine, because we cannot regulate it or do any better with it.

So what is the point of this blog?

Money, and Men's Ideas About It

To do anything at all, one needs money. That money either comes from the financial sector of the economy, which is to say the casino-like atmosphere of derivatives and the like, or it comes from the what some economists actually call the "real" economy.

All through history, capitalism has been a combination of these two phenomena, which may also be called the fraudulent side and the honest side.

If the fraudulent side is kept in check by natural forces, that's all well and good. But what if it is not? If it is not, then humans have to intervene. That is when human beings have to use their wisdom to intervene and control the economy. We think "control the economy" is a dirty word(s), due to the conditioning we have received from the society in which we live. Actually, that may be wrong thinking.

There are no simple answers. We cannot say simply that "the economy" is a thing in itself or a magical force that takes care of itself, all the time. Why would that be? Yet this is the view that was upheld, and it went on for decades.
Only now is this view being questioned once again and its defenders have suddenly scattered like flies --- and that proves there was nothing to it. But you can see books lining the shelves. There were these books coming out every week, I used to monitor them, books that came out anytime in the last thirty years or more, giving this "magic of the markets" view.
Capitalism comes to rule, and after it does, first, money takes over; then, ideology takes over.
Where are those pundits and masters of economic theory now? Where is their defense of their position? Where even is an admission, "I was wrong"? Nowhere. Doesn't exist. WE hear nothing from them. (Oh yeah. I did see that Kudlow guy on T.V. a few months ago!)