Another long article with not a single word from Oren about Craig Breslow and the Red Sox priorities at the trade deadline. Will they be sellers? Or buyers? Is their pitching good enough? Sure Crochet is a Cy Young candidate, but Oren is close-lipped about Giolito and Bello and the plethora of low-experience arms that follow. I could go on, but we all know Oren is just angling for that cushy front office gig as assistant under-secretary of blah blah blah. Meanwhile, the masses continue to suffer.
You're correct, maybe he doesn't really, really want the job:). With an actual policy job comes imperfect real world tradeoffs and incessant second guessing by fellow elites. But like virtually all the elites in my former party, while knowing the truth, he capitulates on the most important of issues. I'm groping for which former Republican, or Democratic prez, he would continue to alibi for after they incited an armed insurrection? His former mentor, the rino Mitt, figgered it out, then he was cast out...
Your reply has nothing to do with the Red Sox and their trade deadline decisions, nor on Oren's position on these issues. What is the point of your comment?
So if Foreign company x decides to increase prices to customers a,b,x and d in order to offset our tariffs; isn't profit taking there not only monopolistic but also inflationary for a,b,and x ??
You often talk about how, let’s nicely say, “missing the mark” a lot of economists are. But in this post you use economists to prove your point about inflation, just that that was a bit ironic. My question to you is, and maybe this was already explained, but why do you and the economists believe that the price increase is only temporary? If true, then I agree that you’re right to draw this distinction between inflation and a price increase. Most recently when prices were jacked up during the pandemic, there was backlash about how those price increases were sticky and not temporary. Shouldn’t we worry that would happen again?
“ From the end of WWII onward, a legitimating discourse was fabricated to make the actions of the Federal government seem reasonable with respect to the economy. The rationale for keeping American workers poor, uneducated, and desperate was / is that doing so keeps inflation from arising, went the argument. That wars are the major cause of inflation historically was tossed onto the trash heap in favor of the argument that workers being paid too much is. So, from 1948 or thereabouts, every time that wages started to rise, the Federal Reserve stepped in to create a recession.
Doing so has one meaning if workers are being paid too much relative to economic output (the Phillips Curve argument), and quite another if war spending produces too much competition for limited resources. In the first case, economists blame American workers for inflation. In the case of war spending, economists never got around to creating a theory for the economically appropriate level of war spending. Further, economists aren’t even interested in the question.
Why? Because wars are considered to be transitory affairs, and Western economists are only interested in timeless and universal causes. The reason is partly methodological— economists can only incorporate certain types of thought-objects (operational) into their models. And they only have jobs as long as they exclude plausible explanations from outside of their purview. Stated differently, economists prefer implausible economic explanations to plausible accounts from other disciplines because that is all that they allow themselves.
A central fact of the ‘most capitalist nation in the world’ is that it is also the most militaristic nation in the world. While individual wars, coups and regime change operations may be transitory, American militarism has been quite constant for two centuries. Read the list (link above), please. If the US has a purpose in the world, it is to slaughter innocents and destroy nations. So, why would Western economists find the Phillips Curve to be a plausible explanation of inflation, but not permanent US wars?
Now, place yourself on the side opposing the US in this. The IMF (International Monetary Fund) makes a loan to a ‘leader’ of your nation. But when it comes time to repay the loan, it turns out that it is the citizens of your nation that are on the hook for repaying it, not the leader who borrowed the money. As a consequence, the IMF orders that wages be reduced, taxes raised, and property seized to repay the loan. Three minutes later, Wall Street predators arrive to buy up what is left of your nation for pennies on the dollar.
Question: why would any nation accept this type of predatory behavior? Because if the citizens don’t pay, US economic sanctions and / or bombs are likely to follow. In fact, during the first Green Revolution, US funds lent to foreign nations were regularly redeposited into US banks in the names of foreign leaders alone. The US was using debt to manage its empire, paying off foreign leaders to sell out ‘their’ people so that the US could loot and plunder with impunity, aided by local politicians who profited by keeping ‘their’ populations in line.
From approximately the Reagan era on, this same program has been applied to American workers. The Reagan – Clinton — Trump line had it that this is the road to renewed prosperity for the US. The plan has been / is to make the US an internal colony and treat everyone but the very rich like illegitimate invaders who have no right to exist. (Recall the term ‘super-predators?’) If this seems overstated, much of the once-prospering Rust Belt still looks like Beirut circa 1982. This is American capitalism.
Those who have been paying attention over recent decades couldn’t have missed the explanation that has accompanied every economic downturn since 1980 or thereabouts. Once the proximate causes are identified, the explanation is always, always, always that it wasn’t ‘real’ capitalism that had failed. The explanation is that it was state ‘interference’ in the economy that caused capitalism to fail. That this explanation is never claimed during economic upturns points to a conceptual flaw in the economic logic being applied.”
Finally, Oren is getting to his point. Recommending a piece suggesting a king to fight "shallow commitments to defend democracy". A tip, start with your buddy JD. Remember he's the guy who said, repeatedly, he wouldn't have done what Mike Pence did. To advance politically, he stated he would have eschewed his constitutional duty and not certified the 2020 election. He claimed "big tech rigged the election". So, he'd have plunged the nation into a constitutional crisis. Perhaps there is something worse a national "leader" can do than attacking election integrity and the peaceful transfer of power, but nothing comes to mind.
As we all know, election denial is a pre-requisite for holding a position in Don's administration. Apparently Oren is desperate enough for a job that he's completing his interview in public. Another tip, remember how things ended for Mike Pence (and will eventually end for JD). And, do you really wanna be Kevin Hassett, forced to publicly humiliate yourself on national tv defending the actions of the king? Then again, you've forever tethered your professional reputation to an aging, angry, incoherent, imbecile. Might as well go all the way. JD did.
To the "next China shock will be worst" I still find hard to believe that even so called "experts" don't understand that China does not really want your western culture or ways. They really don't like you even. The only thing about the west they like is our money. That's it. The money. They'll say whatever they think we want to hear in order to get the money. Bottom line.
Just finished Harrington's article.Sounds like digital Fascism.
Another long article with not a single word from Oren about Craig Breslow and the Red Sox priorities at the trade deadline. Will they be sellers? Or buyers? Is their pitching good enough? Sure Crochet is a Cy Young candidate, but Oren is close-lipped about Giolito and Bello and the plethora of low-experience arms that follow. I could go on, but we all know Oren is just angling for that cushy front office gig as assistant under-secretary of blah blah blah. Meanwhile, the masses continue to suffer.
/karl
You're correct, maybe he doesn't really, really want the job:). With an actual policy job comes imperfect real world tradeoffs and incessant second guessing by fellow elites. But like virtually all the elites in my former party, while knowing the truth, he capitulates on the most important of issues. I'm groping for which former Republican, or Democratic prez, he would continue to alibi for after they incited an armed insurrection? His former mentor, the rino Mitt, figgered it out, then he was cast out...
Your reply has nothing to do with the Red Sox and their trade deadline decisions, nor on Oren's position on these issues. What is the point of your comment?
Just telling the truth my friend:). Why so defensive?
So if Foreign company x decides to increase prices to customers a,b,x and d in order to offset our tariffs; isn't profit taking there not only monopolistic but also inflationary for a,b,and x ??
You often talk about how, let’s nicely say, “missing the mark” a lot of economists are. But in this post you use economists to prove your point about inflation, just that that was a bit ironic. My question to you is, and maybe this was already explained, but why do you and the economists believe that the price increase is only temporary? If true, then I agree that you’re right to draw this distinction between inflation and a price increase. Most recently when prices were jacked up during the pandemic, there was backlash about how those price increases were sticky and not temporary. Shouldn’t we worry that would happen again?
Tariffs are a variety of industrial policy. As such, they have costs and benefits.
There’s only one way to ‘get back on track’ - https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/07/18/socialism-is-the-path-to-liberty/
“ From the end of WWII onward, a legitimating discourse was fabricated to make the actions of the Federal government seem reasonable with respect to the economy. The rationale for keeping American workers poor, uneducated, and desperate was / is that doing so keeps inflation from arising, went the argument. That wars are the major cause of inflation historically was tossed onto the trash heap in favor of the argument that workers being paid too much is. So, from 1948 or thereabouts, every time that wages started to rise, the Federal Reserve stepped in to create a recession.
Doing so has one meaning if workers are being paid too much relative to economic output (the Phillips Curve argument), and quite another if war spending produces too much competition for limited resources. In the first case, economists blame American workers for inflation. In the case of war spending, economists never got around to creating a theory for the economically appropriate level of war spending. Further, economists aren’t even interested in the question.
Why? Because wars are considered to be transitory affairs, and Western economists are only interested in timeless and universal causes. The reason is partly methodological— economists can only incorporate certain types of thought-objects (operational) into their models. And they only have jobs as long as they exclude plausible explanations from outside of their purview. Stated differently, economists prefer implausible economic explanations to plausible accounts from other disciplines because that is all that they allow themselves.
A central fact of the ‘most capitalist nation in the world’ is that it is also the most militaristic nation in the world. While individual wars, coups and regime change operations may be transitory, American militarism has been quite constant for two centuries. Read the list (link above), please. If the US has a purpose in the world, it is to slaughter innocents and destroy nations. So, why would Western economists find the Phillips Curve to be a plausible explanation of inflation, but not permanent US wars?
Now, place yourself on the side opposing the US in this. The IMF (International Monetary Fund) makes a loan to a ‘leader’ of your nation. But when it comes time to repay the loan, it turns out that it is the citizens of your nation that are on the hook for repaying it, not the leader who borrowed the money. As a consequence, the IMF orders that wages be reduced, taxes raised, and property seized to repay the loan. Three minutes later, Wall Street predators arrive to buy up what is left of your nation for pennies on the dollar.
Question: why would any nation accept this type of predatory behavior? Because if the citizens don’t pay, US economic sanctions and / or bombs are likely to follow. In fact, during the first Green Revolution, US funds lent to foreign nations were regularly redeposited into US banks in the names of foreign leaders alone. The US was using debt to manage its empire, paying off foreign leaders to sell out ‘their’ people so that the US could loot and plunder with impunity, aided by local politicians who profited by keeping ‘their’ populations in line.
From approximately the Reagan era on, this same program has been applied to American workers. The Reagan – Clinton — Trump line had it that this is the road to renewed prosperity for the US. The plan has been / is to make the US an internal colony and treat everyone but the very rich like illegitimate invaders who have no right to exist. (Recall the term ‘super-predators?’) If this seems overstated, much of the once-prospering Rust Belt still looks like Beirut circa 1982. This is American capitalism.
Those who have been paying attention over recent decades couldn’t have missed the explanation that has accompanied every economic downturn since 1980 or thereabouts. Once the proximate causes are identified, the explanation is always, always, always that it wasn’t ‘real’ capitalism that had failed. The explanation is that it was state ‘interference’ in the economy that caused capitalism to fail. That this explanation is never claimed during economic upturns points to a conceptual flaw in the economic logic being applied.”
Finally, Oren is getting to his point. Recommending a piece suggesting a king to fight "shallow commitments to defend democracy". A tip, start with your buddy JD. Remember he's the guy who said, repeatedly, he wouldn't have done what Mike Pence did. To advance politically, he stated he would have eschewed his constitutional duty and not certified the 2020 election. He claimed "big tech rigged the election". So, he'd have plunged the nation into a constitutional crisis. Perhaps there is something worse a national "leader" can do than attacking election integrity and the peaceful transfer of power, but nothing comes to mind.
As we all know, election denial is a pre-requisite for holding a position in Don's administration. Apparently Oren is desperate enough for a job that he's completing his interview in public. Another tip, remember how things ended for Mike Pence (and will eventually end for JD). And, do you really wanna be Kevin Hassett, forced to publicly humiliate yourself on national tv defending the actions of the king? Then again, you've forever tethered your professional reputation to an aging, angry, incoherent, imbecile. Might as well go all the way. JD did.
To the "next China shock will be worst" I still find hard to believe that even so called "experts" don't understand that China does not really want your western culture or ways. They really don't like you even. The only thing about the west they like is our money. That's it. The money. They'll say whatever they think we want to hear in order to get the money. Bottom line.
Think silver from back in the early 1800's.