We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, November 26, 2012

Fiscal Cliff An Artificial Crisis

Click here to access a 10:37m video featuring an interview with Prof. Michael Hudson, from The Real News Network.  (Amended commentary, 4pm PST)

The only problem that I have with Hudson's view is where he argues that all the Fed needs to do is print money as it did for the Wall Street bailout:
...exactly what it did when it took on the $13 trillion bailout of Wall Street. It just prints the money. There's no need to tax the money to pay Social Security. The government simply spends it into the economy. That's what central banks do.
Well, this is true except that one should understand what this means. The ability to "print money" that is not based on an increase in productivity requires an aggressive foreign policy backed up and enforced by armed forces so that other countries are forced to accept this money in one way or another. That is precisely why the core of any capitalist class has always gone after control of what constitutes money (and/or the issuance of money as debt from their banks) and constructed powerful militaries to enforce their policies. 

In our own War of Independence those two objectives were vigorously pursued immediately by the so-called "Federalists" (they were really nationalists) after the successful conclusion of this war. Robert Morris and Alexander Hamilton in 1782 established a central bank (privately owned as are nearly all central banks) (Bank of North America), but it didn't last long largely because they were unable to enforce their policies on the country which was still ruled under the Articles of Confederation, a decentralized type of government. Most of the states recognized various forms of money or means of exchange: paper money, tobacco, farm animals, local bank issued notes, etc. Hence, to insure the success of a central bank, it was necessary to centralize all authority in the hands of a national government with a powerful army. This they accomplished by secrecy and trickery in a convention in 1787 which the elites called ostensibly to modify the existing Articles of Confederation, but immediately set about, and succeeded, in establishing a new US Constitution that met these requirements. In 1791 they successfully established the First Bank of the United States. (Notice how they always hide private ownership under names that sound like government bodies owned by the public. Today we have the Federal Reserve which has a thin veneer of government participation. Deception is always a major weapon in class rule.)

The newly independent capitalists with their newly created central government saw the huge potential of riches and power that could be derived from the continent--only "savages" stood in their way. To get in the game of exploitation they needed to join in the mercantilist game that the other capitalist ruling classes were engaged in: trading goods from their new manufacturing firms to markets which were secured with the use of, or the threat of, force by their powerful militaries; and the use of slave labor to produce raw materials and food in regions under their control.  However, to engage in commerce with the other powerful capitalist nations (Britain, France, The Netherlands) and to obtain credit (in the form of gold or backed by gold), they had to adopt the use of gold which was the latter's medium of exchange imposed on their countries by their ruling classes.

Hence, the new US ruling class immediately forced citizens, who greatly favored paper money issued by the government as was used during the war, to use gold as a legal currency. Few ordinary Americans possessed gold, and this change caused them considerable hardship. Those that owed debts to banks had their farms and properties taken away from them if they couldn't pay off their debts in gold. They rebelled all over the states, but the ruling class with their new national army suppressed these rebellions.  (Shays' Rebellion, and the Whiskey Rebellion are about the only ones we learned about in school. An excellent source for more information is Toward an American Revolution by Jerry Fresia.)