Professional Documents
Culture Documents
by
Kumar David-
However, I believe the reasons for the economic flop are not subjective
errors of individuals or group. Crisis was as inevitable as night follows day,
given the drift of global capitalism over the previous decades. The decline
of production (the real economy), the new hegemony of vapid finance
capital, asset and housing bubbles, and Chinas economic assent, all this
could not have been prevented. Its not Obama stupid! The trouble is
global capitalist gridlock.
Allow me to cast doubts about two oft accused culprits. First is, low
interest rates, easy credit, rising debt and above all encouragement of the
shift to a finance economy, all on Alan Greenspans long watch. True all
this contributed to the transformation of the US from a production powerhouse to a land in a finance capital trance. However had Greenspan as Fed
Chairman, not gone along, he would have been replaced by a pliable
person. It was not Greenspan, Bluespan or any other individual who drove
these processes; in the 1990s and 2000s US capitalism was going through
these mutations as the only way in which it could to prolong its death
rattle, albeit temporarily.
Secondly, purists pour imprecations on Greenspans successor, Ben
Bernanke, and Treasury Secretaries Henry Paulson and Timothy Geithner
for shoving loads of cash at a palpably moribund economy, holding interest
rates down to near zero, and bailing out all the great corporate names. But
had they not done so half the banks, finance houses, mortgage trusts and
many of Americas famous brand names would have gone bust leading to
massive layoffs, evaporation of life-savings, evictions from homes and
therefore social unrest. Figuratively, the revolution would have come to
America. I reckon it pretty contradictory that some who want these
bastions of capitalism thrown under the train are themselves staunch
devotees of capitalism in the abstract; an inconsistency I never could
fathom.
There is a paradox to this mid-term election; the backlash on the economy
hit Democrats and Obama just as the economy had began an upturn. The
unemployment rate is down to 5.8% and over 200,000 jobs are being
created each month, well above the normal need of 200,000. GDP growth
at 1.7% is better than Europe, which teeters on the brink of yet another
recession, and energy prices are way down. Conversely the income and
wealth gap shows no sign of closing, wages are stagnant and the benefits
of the mild and maybe temporary upturn are not filtering down.