Tweet
Vampire Squid
Individuals who strongly want to cut Social Security and Medicare see the upcoming lame duck session as their best chance in years. Already big pocket donors are raising millions to spend on promoting a “grand bargain” after the election and Wall Street CEOs are out promising that the certainty pixies will sprinkle their magic dust to make everything better if a deal is reached. From Politico:
“Imagine what kind of stimulus it would be if politicians just reached some kind of long-term budget agreement to eliminate all this uncertainty?” Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein told POLITICO in an interview. “It’s not that it’s easy to do. It will require some political sacrifice on both sides. But the solutions are so clearly within our means.”
Added Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JP Morgan Chase: “Either a President Obama or Romney will have to deal with this and reach some kind of agreement that will take this threat off the back of the economy both now and in the longer term.
I can’t tell if Blankfein’s statement is part of an active campaign of deception or a result of him believing this nonsense, but it hardly matters. If pushing through a deficit reduction package during a weak economy created growth we would expect England’s economy to be soaring right now. Instead it has suffered greatly as the result of the Conservatives’ misguided decision to completely reject Keynesian economics and focus on deficit reduction.
What I find most ironic about these CEO deficit hawks complaining about the “uncertainty” that is hurting the economy is that they are the ones responsible for helping to create said uncertainty to begin with. The deficit obsession created the uncertainty about raising the debt ceiling. Similarly, they constantly pushed for a big deficit deal resulting in the creation of the sequesters, which are seen as a big source of the fiscal uncertainty at the moment. The main “uncertainty” about government policy right now is how the government will clean up the mess created by past efforts to force a deficit deal.
Expect the magic of the certainty pixies to be evoked often during the lame duck session to justify adopting policy that the American electorate opposes.
9 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About FDL Action
Speaking of hacks…. See Kevin G post below.
“Imagine what kind of stimulus it would be if politicians just reached some kind of long-term budget agreement to eliminate
all this uncertaintypoor, middle-class and old people?” Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein told POLITICO in an interview. “It’s not that it’s easy to do. It will require some political sacrifice on both sides. But the solutions are so clearly within our means.”FTFY.
So much for “risk takers”
Are there two individuals-anywhere, at any time in history-, more responsible for the financial ruin of more people, than Jamie and Lloyd?
Now they have a chance to cause penury on an unprecedented scale. And it’s the Democratic Party, and its titular head, who stand ready to do their dirty work for them.
Unless we have certainty I will have to put on hold the purchase of a new Gulfstream G650 and hiring two new pilots so I hope Obama or Romney can jamb this shared sacrifice down the public’s throat pretty quickly after the election because my option on the model with the teakwood interior runs out end on Jan. But hey it’s not about me it’s about what is best for the Country and thank you Jamie for doing God’s work.
F$ck Blankfein and Dimon and the corrupt congress that stopped them from going down.
The above comments share a fundamental misunderstanding of monopoly capital .No one has any interest in economic expansion within the ruling class or their political system .They either buy or crush any competitive threat and without any anti trust enforcement ,one would be a lunatic to take long-term risks if short-term gain is incentivized .
When austerity creates fire-sale prices on real wealth ,watch the furious certainty of that $2 trillion of royalist money as it leaves the sidelines to prey on America’s rotting vital entrails .
This isn’t some humble opinion ,it can be evidenced throughout euroland .If you continue thinking in an outmoded paradigm ,as opposed to the neoliberal agenda of corporate globalism ,then you are fucked .
They’re already fucked. They bet on the fraudulent, fictional capital whose returns will be supplemented with taxes. Even their government is privatized.
Amen Ludwig .I no longer believe it’s stupidity ,but instead ,a near-religious belief in a system that now overtly betrays them .Bucky Fuller once said ,’institutional conformity is the cruelest form of mental retardation ‘ . He was speaking about the threat one must avoid when pursuing higher education ,but politics is the same beast .
I know I would rather have congenital limitations ,because I could deal honestly with them and still be able to think for myself when hard times require resourceful thinking .