Nobody lost the argument – there was no argument

Crisis? What Crisis?, Economy
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Brad DeLong wonders how it’s possible that the universal response to the economic crisis has devolved into cut government spending and bring down the deficit, when it’s so clear that this is exactly the wrong thing to do. Since the private sector isn’t investing or creating jobs, government should step in, but most governments seem to think that after having bailed out the banks in 2008-2009 and having provided a bit of a cushion for the side effects of the collapse of the financial markets they’ve done enough and now that it seems these markets are getting back on track it’s time to let the voters pay for this rescue. Now that the open anger at the banks has dimmed a bit, it seems safe to do so, yet it’s still clear to economics like DeLong (or just anybody with open eyes) that doing so will only worsen the crisis; so why didn’t they win the argument:

Somehow we seem to have lost the argument–within the ECB, within the French and the European governments, within the British Liberal Party, within the Bank of England, within the Federal Reserve, with U.S. Senator number 60, and even within the White House.

And I do not understand how, or why we have lost the argument.

DeLong is either genuinely clueless or willfully ignorant, because any fool could see that this was going to be the only likely outcome. We’ve had thirty years of an ideologically driven consensus on how the economy should be run, why would he think that just because the largest economic crisis since the Great Depression happened the people who actively promoting and supporting this consensus would suddenly see the light? For those who grew up with this consensus, is it even possible to imagine any governmental response that doesn’t involve subsidies for the rich and cuts for the poor and middleclass? DeLong may now be somewhat of a rebel, but he himself has been an supporter of this orthodoxy for years if not decades.

Even if you don’t want to ascribe evil motivations to people like George Osborne helping out their bank chums by making sure school children can’t get free meals anymore, they’re caught up in an ideological framework that’s been proven wrong and which they cannot break out of. Meanwhile any opposition to this consensus has long been broken, with all major parties agreeing on this point. Therefore, when governments say that there is no alternative to these cuts, they’re right, but only because they cannot imagine any alternative and there’s nobody left now who can force them to consider the alternatives.

CotD: American Chernobyl edition

Comment of the Day, Life under Capitalism
Published on 1 Comment on CotD: American Chernobyl edition

Jim Henley on the wider implications of the BP oil spill:

There can’t be three foreigners not in the employ of Rupert Murdoch who, today, can read about the “American model of democratic capitalism” without sniggering. This is a country whose elites can cry real tears about the pensions of Britons while regarding the pensions of American autoworkers as the next thing to a crime. While there is a real principle at stake in the difference, it’s not one you’re supposed to voice: Concern for British pensions is a way to keep powerful and connected people unaccountable for their actions; Auto worker pensions can only cost such people money.

You would’ve thought though that Katrina would’ve done this already.

Urgent appeal: 24 Hours to Save Refugee and Migrant Justice

Bloody Lawyers, Civil liberties, UK politics
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Please help save the indispensible Refugee and Migrant Justice:

A consortium of charitable trusts and city law firms, supported by Simon Hughes MP, are putting together a proposal to Government to save Refugee and Migrant Justice (RMJ). The proposal asks the Government to at least pay the money that it would have to pay anyway on insolvency on the understanding that this will be matched with up to £1,000,000 by way of grants, secured loans and donations to meet cash needs to finance work in progress.

We need concrete commitments for these funds today or as early as possible tomorrow – actual cash can come a bit later. So far today, we have been pledged £193, 625. Significantly more could follow from charitable trusts and others we are already talking with. But at this point it is clear that this is going to be a very considerable challenge without some additional help.

The aim of the plan is to enable, with full transparency and without prejudicing the position of creditors, a 3 month period in which the Government can consider whether it might change the payment system, there might be time to look at some innovative solutions with the Office of Civil Society and banks and RMJ would demonstrate that it had a viable forward business model. If all that fails, at least it would provide time for an orderly transfer of our clients’ cases. We have 10,000 clients, including 900 unaccompanied children who may otherwise be left in limbo.

We are appealing for donations, however small, to help save RMJ and secure its services over the next three months. If funds from both Government and other funders can be agreed, RMJ’s administrators would, in principle, support the proposal to take RMJ out of administration.

To make a pledge, or for further information, please telephone Kathleen Commons on 07872 161 271 or email savermj@gmail.com

Refugee and Migrant Justice is one of the few organisations on the side of socalled illegal migrants or “bogus asylum seekers”, helping to defend some of the most vulnerable people in Great Britain. If it should disappear through lack of funds it would be a disaster.

What drives me nuts about BBC science reporting

Blinded by Science, Health, Media
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Dilbert.com

Is neatly captured in the above Dilbert strip. Any report about some new research finding out cheese causes cancer in middle aged women e.g. never quantifies the risk enough to know how serious you should take it, nor puts it into context. If there’s a “significant increase” in getting cancer from eating cheese, what does it? Does it mean of a 100 non-cheese eating women none get cancer and of 100 cheese eating women, all get cancer? Or does it mean two in the non-cheese group and 3 in the cheese group, or…

What I expect from these stories, but never get, is a) how reliable is the finding b) how does the bad/good thing used as story hook compares to not doing it and c) context with other risks and likelyhood of having to care about it because the risk/benefit is high enough to make it worthwhile. If eating grapes makes me better resistent to Alzheimers, it matters whether eating a bunch a week means I never get Alzheimers or whether I need to eat a ton a day to get a five percent less high risk of getting it…

Innocent!

Civil liberties, UK politics
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Simon Winchester, who was there on Bloody Sunday, shows why the Saville report was worth the time and money:

Minutes later, in perhaps the most hauntingly memorable of all of Britain’s post-imperial moments, the prime minister got to his feet in the Commons and publicly apologised for what his country’s soldiers had done, all those years ago. It was impossible to defend the indefensible, he said.

Men of the support company of the 1st Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, had shot without justification. Victims had been shot in the back, or while they crawling away, Soldiers had lied under oath. The episode would never be forgotten, could never be forgotten.

There was a roar of cheering at the high points of Cameron’s speech – and barely no jeering, even during the obligatory utterances of praise, destined for the shires, for other soldiers in other places. But when it was over, the square was filled with a vast silence. It was as though they could scarcely believe what they had just heard, a British prime minister, a Tory at that, offering a formal and sincerely-meant apology for what his soldiers had done nearly four decades ago to men and women who were guilty only of protesting at the excesses and longevity of British colonial rule of Ireland. It was a speech unprecedented in its tone, its scope and its content.

It doesn’t really matter whether or not any of the soldiers will be prosecuted; what matters was that the victims were exonerated, finally officially declared innocent, no longer smeared as having brought their murders upon themselves. That and that alone more than justifies the Saville report; if not for that it would be pointless. In the end it’s about the best you can expect from a colonial power investigating its own crimes.

What’s interesting is that despite Cameron’s full and unqualified apology and taking of responsibility, there still was a backlash against the findings as soon as they became public, with Stephen Pollard talking big on PM about conclusions drawn not supported by evidence — assholes remain assholes on any topic. Yet it is probably true that the soldiers named and blamed in the report are not completely responsible for the massacre, as it seems pretty clear that Bloody Sunday was the outcome of a deliberate policy to crush the civil rights/freedom struggle in Northern Ireland with violence, similar to how the British army had handled other colonial disturbances. The only difference was that it happened closer to home and in the sight of news cameras.