Thursday, August 30, 2007

One Of My Favorite Epigraphs:

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone. -- John Maynard Keynes
Discuss:
Addendum (5:30 pm): Surfing the Web today, I ran into the following story, by George Monbiot, on Alternet:
"For the first time the UK's consumer debt exceeds the total of its gross national product: a new report shows that we owe £1.35 trillion. Inspectors in the United States have discovered that 77,000 road bridges are in the same perilous state as the one which collapsed into the Mississippi. Two years after Hurricane Katrina struck, 120,000 people from New Orleans are still living in trailer homes and temporary lodgings. As runaway climate change approaches, governments refuse to take the necessary action. Booming inequality threatens to create the most divided societies the world has seen since before the first world war. Now a financial crisis caused by unregulated lending could tur(n) hundreds of thousands out of their homes and trigger a cascade of economic troubles.

These problems appear unrelated, but they all have something in common. They arise in large part from a meeting that took place 60 years ago in a Swiss spa resort. It laid the foundations for a philosophy of government that is responsible for many, perhaps most, of our contemporary crises."


The project of neo-liberalism for 60 years has been to overturn Keynsianism. Officially, at least, Nixon is rebutted: We are not Keynsians anymore. Interesting that Pilger pins the blame on Mad Mag Thatcher.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Henry Ford probably did as much as anyone ever has to create the prosperity for the working class that is now being destroyed by the most wickedest of war/economic criminals. So there is a basis, historically, for capitalism.

from Ruth

Unknown said...

Here's one they shoulda shot down!

Never mind. They escaped. PURPLE HEARTS AND SILVER STARS FOR EVERYBODY!!!



(CNN) -- A U.S. military plane carrying three U.S. senators and one member of the House of Representatives came under rocket fire Thursday night and had to make evasive maneuvers as it left Baghdad for Amman, Jordan.


Clockwise from top left: Sen. James Inhofe, Sen. Mel Martinez, Rep. Bud Cramer, Sen. Richard Shelby

"Our plane leaving Iraq was fired upon, and it was a close call, but this is something that our men and women in combat face every day," Rep. Bud Cramer, D-Alabama, said in a statement. "The flight crew was outstanding, and I credit them for the way they handled the situation."

Sens. Mel Martinez, R-Florida; Richard Shelby, R-Alabama; and James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, were also on the flight.

Multi-National Force-Iraq, in a statement issued Friday, said the C-130 crew "dispensed flares as a defensive countermeasure and conducted standard evasive maneuvers. The aircraft, crew and passengers safely completed their flight."

Shelby told CNN affiliate WVTM in Birmingham, Alabama, that the rockets were "near misses."

"I was looking out the window, a little small window, and I saw a shell or something," Shelby said in a phone interview from Amman, where the plane landed safely. "And then I see a flare. Our plane started maneuvering and changing directions and shaking all around."

Anonymous said...

Money, get away
Get a good job with more pay and your O.K.
Money it's a gas
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash
New car, caviar, four star daydream,
Think I'll buy me a football team
Money get back
I'm all right Jack keep your hands off my stack.
Money it's a hit
Don't give me that do goody good bullshit
I'm in the hi-fidelity first class traveling set
And I think I need a Lear jet
Money it's a crime
Share it fairly but don't take a slice of my pie
Money so they say
Is the root of all evil today
But if you ask for a rise it's no surprise that they're
giving none away