From Josh Marshal noting what I’ve noticed over the past few weeks – every time some economic report comes out it’s “worse than assumed.”
I’m going to start feeling better, or at least stop feeling worse, when I hear about the release of a major economic indicator that the economic forecasters hadn’t assumed — even after all the gloom and pessimism — would be better than it turned out to be. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not looking for ‘good’ numbers. I expect them all to be bad for some time to come. What continues to surprise me, however, is that even after we’ve gotten to an apparent consensus that we are in for a recession that is much more severe than anything we’ve endured in the post-war era, and even after six months in which each successive month looked worse than the last, that with each new number we’re still surprised that it’s even worse than we’d realized — still worse than the consensus assumptions.
Maybe we need better assumers before we can get out of this mess.
In my socialist teenage youth my fellow travellers’ many lessons included a metaphor about phases of capitalist crisis. We have bus with engine in full working order and roaring. The driver has showed up and is in his seat. The commuters are at the stop waiting to board. The weather is good, the traffic is clear. But nobody is moving, because the tokens were never delivered.
The point was made even more profoundly in the famous British science fiction comedy radio show Life, the Universe, and Everything, where a planet’s economists predicted a major depression. The economists having no solution, the planet’s scientists devised a means for the entire population to be placed in suspended animation until the depression blew over.
The whole idea behind socialism, folly or not, was that we as a species actually do have control of what we do, but pretend we do not. Socialism represented the idea that we could make conscious collective decisions about what we were doing – some models democratic and others quite obviously not. As I’ve said on this blog before, the free marketer notion of individuals acting on their own and the collective will paying homage to the Newtonian machine which will work nearly perfectly so long as we don’t interfere with it is about as utopian and requires just as much faith as the most radical of socialist proposal – among the propositions which “work well on paper.” The planet has the same means of production it had 10 years ago. but we can’t take action to right our course until we wait for cosmic signs in “indicators” upon which our “assumers” seize upon to gauge the success or failure of action or inaction.
To quote Samuel Goldwyn, “we need some new cliches.”
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February 27, 2009 at 10:29 pm
moviedad
I am afraid to proclaim that I am a: “Socialist” Mostly because I don’t know what the hell that word means. I was born in 57′ so the word socialist was part of the USSR. and that was that.
What has really been a victory for the Wealth-Class, is the way the success stories of Norway, Sweden, The Netherlands, have been kept hidden from the population. When Moore’s movie: “Sicko” showed people in France, and Holland talking about how simple their lives are when it comes to, what is for us. life ending issues around health, illness and financial losses; people didn’t believe it. It couldn’t be possible. That’s our mind set. it must be bullshit, because we are the Americans, and we have better than anyone in the world. Geez, we are a third-world country when it comes to everything that matters, like the futures of our children.
Everyday I am reminded that my government enforces, with violence, the right for groups of rich businessmen to plunder my wages in insurance fees, banking fees, mortgages, and of course medical cost.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Medical costs, insurance cost/coverage. are just too huge for us to apply it individually. we have become slaves to the various corporations that are insinuated into our survival. These costs would be small if we bore them cooperatively.
This country has suffered the greedy capitalists since we were founded by greedy capitalists. it’s time to abolish this government and start over. that is what the constitution is, a means to abolish and re-create governments and still be the country of the United States.
February 28, 2009 at 3:05 am
Annonymous
Socialist has become a lick and stick Republican label. Every economy in the world is a mixed economy. Its just a matter of what % that mix is and what the elements are in the mix. If socialism means caring about the people who have less than you do and their overall quality of life and their kids’ educations (remember your kid will need these other kids to be smart as adults)… count me in. I am a socialist in that case and proud of it.
As for the news being worse than bad of course it is… the books have been cooked for the past eight years. You got to get the correct basic measurement back before you can make accurate assumptions.
February 28, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Not A Native
The president’s address today really starts to clearly define his slogan of “change”. During the campaign, his opposition accused him of using “change” as hollow rhetorical trick to be all things to all people. Dissatisfaction with Iraq and the spectre of economic collapse made “change’ seem like a good thing to enough voters in Nov., but I don’t think there was real concurance as to what it meant.
Today, he laid down the gauntlet to his opposition. I just hope his bite is as tough as his bark and his desire to get consensus doesn’t deflect him. But the only way he can prevail is if the electorate supports his version of change at the polls. If you haven’t seen/heard his address, I really recommend it.
March 1, 2009 at 5:15 am
Annonymous
You should read the Frank Rich column in today’s New York Times. The polls are with Obama.