I’ve been slammed with other stuff so haven’t posted here much lately, but I’ve had a few stray thoughts:
- In the context of “Brexit,” which also relates to both Trump and Sanders as alternatives to global corporate elites’ hegemony over the governments of nation states, this Twitter thread by Matt Stoller was of great interest to me: https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/746765092218277888. Stoller’s point is that we’re constantly being presented with a manufactured choice between xenophobic, racist, warmongering, hyper-nationalism, in the form of rightist populism (Trump, Boris); and multicultural, tolerant, diplomatic corporatism, in the form of neoliberalism (Clintons, EU). He tracks how things got that way — how internationalist elites came to see corporate power as more legit than sovereign power. They actually think they’re peaceniks.
- Yesterday I heard a soundbite from Cameron after a lovely but sad goodbye EU dinner that he and the other leaders of member nations attended. Cameron said something like he was sorry, in a way, that the “leave” voters couldn’t have attended that dinner with him; they might gotten seen how jolly goodhearted it all is.
- Finally, I wish I had time to go wild in detail on these remarks by James Traub. Did you guys see this? The headline sounds like controversy clickbait, but it actually reflects what’s in the piece. The attitude expressed here 100% disingenuous in its crisis-mongering, since this is the point of view apologists for the upper crust have been taking for thirty years or so. The lead grafs alone are one big howler: Traub thinks the nation is now in an existential crisis that makes the 1960’s look mild. He’s my age yet seems not to recall three decisive political assassinations; nearly every major American city repeatedly engulfed in flames (at one point, gun emplacements at the top of the Capitol steps); nearly 50K U.S. combat casualties; [UPDATE: skyrocketing crime rates]; etc. This is the kind of crap that gets you a Trump and a Brexit.
In at The End of The World 
Oh my, the Traub essay. Where to begin? Where to find the time to be appalled line by line with what he writes. The conflict is one between the “sane and the mindlessly angry.” The Brexit vote featured the brazen repudiation of bankers and economists. That was the only part of Brexit that I really liked. So, in this debate, one is either mindless and ignorant or on the side of global finance? Because I always thought that the IMF and Goldman and Brussels had my back. The people who work there really get me. I’d like to have a beer with them.
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Somebody tweeted “This is the kind of article that makes me embarrassed to have gone to college.”
I think Traub really does have beers with the giants of finance — or functionaries delegated to have beers with him — and thinks they’re good guys. Why wouldn’t he? It’s like Cameron: If only the people could put on white tie, top hat, and tails and come eat foie-gras with us, they’d see that we really are taking the best possible care of them.
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On a related topic, Dean Baker today rips David Brooks for constructing the “choice,” as Traub does, as sophisticated openness vs. dumbass protectionism. Baker points out that trade agreements open *labor* markets while *protecting* industries that shift wealth upward. If the drug market were open, e.g.,drug costs in America would fall precipitously. But that’s not what “open” trade agreements do. http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-class-bias-is-so-deep-he-doesn-t-even-realize-he-is-a-protectionist I think with Warren banging the drum for HRC, these issues are going to have to get on the table– no doubt in weird form — during the general election?
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Loved the Baker article.That he digs into the numbers a bit. Everyone knows that when people defend trade agreements with abstract statistics that somehow none of that is going to translate into people’s paychecks. Baker shows us the numbers behind that disconnect. Is it possible to have a policy debate about trade with some nuance? Trade agreements aren’t going away. We aren’t going to throw up tariff walls that bring back, say, the domestic tire industry, for example. And it’s hard to put the government is a position to pick winners and losers. Tires,no, but Carrier air conditioners, yes. But, surely there is some middle ground between unrestrained movement of capital to cheaper sources of labor and full-on protectionism? A middle ground that would protect job security and allow for global trade? Are policy makers even trying here?
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