John Ralston Saul, The Collapse of Globalism (Woodstock and New York: The Overlook Press, 2005).

I’m halfway through it. Checking the index, I don’t see any mention of corporate criminality—Johnson’s “tunneling” has been a major advance in the discussion—but Saul does discuss, among many other topics, the “vaporization” of real value in the speculative economy. (For example, pp. 147–148: “. . . why were—are—no questions asked about the vaporization of the new wealth that women have brought to the economy? . . . If you were to look at a middle-class family in the 1960s, you would find that it did all right on one salary. Now two are required. The real wealth contributed by women has somehow been inflated away, while a great deal of new paper wealth has been created in such areas as money markets and mergers. In other words, real growth input [of women in the workforce in large numbers and at various levels] has not produced growth, while inflationary input has produced not growth but artificial wealth.”)

P. 144: “There was nothing new in the delusion that speculation and a consumption-based economy could last forever. And there was nothing new in the conviction that it would lead to disaster. . . . What was new was the effective loss of the old global trading idea that Keynes had described as ‘the duty of saving,’ a ‘virtue’ that permited ‘the growth of the cake.’ The myth of Globalization still includes this idea of trading to feed growth—an idea built on saving—while in reality the conversion into a speculation or consumption or vaporizing society does the exact opposite. And so the cake—particularly inside the developed economies—does not grow, because the global system does not wish it to grow.”

Pp. 141–142: “. . . Why did the astonishing and continuous expansion in trade not produce broad economic growth, spread wealth and reduce unemployment?

“I asked earlier whether the new phenomenon of trade between subsidiaries of the same transnational should be counted as trade at all. . . . If it isn’t trade, we shouldn’t expect it to have the effect of trade. . . .

“. . . But if the whole process is internal, it resembles not so much market trade as the earlier mercantilist model or that of the nineteenth-century empires. . . .

“The additional factor here is that, thanks to mass production, most of these markets are permanently in surplus production. The need is not to invest but to prop prices up.”

I am not an economist, but wasn’t the Great Depression prolonged, if not actually caused, by capacity overhang?

“. . . The challenge, therefore, is to develop a corporate growth strategy that has little to do with growth in the economy outside the corporation. Part of the solution has been to funnel this wealth into mergers and acquisitions, which permit corporations to become ever larger, but to no economic purpose.” The actual purposes are to keep prices up by restricting competition by various means, including influencing public regulations.

As you can see, he’s a wonderfully direct, accessible writer. The book is about the conflict between a theological view of economic “inevitability” and the public good.

I don't get too worried about the great financial apolcalypse. As I misunderstand it, money's just a promise against someone else's current or future production. Stirling Newbury has pointed out that the current elites have promised themselves more than will ever be produced. The over-promises will lead to vicious political fights, which may become actual physical fights, but finally, we can just repudiate the corrupt promises.

We can never hope to match the oligarchy in the sheer mystification of why they should get everything for ever, but we should set our goal as firmly on their pile of plunder as they set on our Social Security.

This isn't to say that a society can be prosperous without a well-regulated economy. It's just to say that I don't contemplate letting all our productivity go to a bunch of fat, swollen leeches waving the pieces of paper they wrote claiming we owe them gazillions of trillions of dollars. So life will be much better for everyone if we just up the marginal income tax rate to Eisenhower levels, tax all income the same, and adopt a virtually confiscatory estate tax. (I actually like calling it the "death tax"; who better to tax than dead people?)

Of course, 30 years ago, I would never have believed that Americans would let all increased productivity go to an oligarchy without a fight, so what do I know.

"On the coming neo-feudalism"by Benign Brodwicz (yes, new to me; well worth reading).

It does seem as if the vast majority of people in the United State of America are going to become like medieval serfs, living at what feels in the post-gilded-age new realities like subsistence, watching a small slice of society from a distance as they jet in and out of the country, monopolize the ski resorts, continue to live in big houses with two or three thousand square per person, and so on.

The Baby Boom doesn’t have enough money to retire (quaint notion) and will be working till they drop, which will actually extend their lives. The Gen X’ers will continue to live on scraps. The Millennials are idealistically waiting their turn to be heroes while trying to find a way to support themselves in a workforce that is top-heavy with whining Boomers and cagey Gen X’ers. Most of us will work for large or small corporations at a wage that is enough to support a modest lifestyle, but holidays will be spent close to home. We will worry that we may be next to join the ranks of the unemployed, many of whom and whose stories we know—stories of lost jobs, houses, children’s sense of security in forced moves to strange communities. The health consequences of the current crisis are no doubt predictable. In a PBS special on other countries’ health programs, a German was asked if unemployed people lose their health benefits there. Of course not, he said. They are under great stress and risk to their health. They need health benefits more than anyone.

It's not a long piece, but very shrill....

It's not going to get better unless people take back their government. Or the Chinese buy us out and...who knows what will happen then?

Berhnard at Moon of Alalbama posted the link from Yves at Naked Capitalism