18 December 2008
02 December 2008
07 November 2008
05 November 2008
30 October 2008
29 October 2008
26 October 2008
Literary criticism is dead; long live the new literary criticism
On or around 2000, literary criticism died, died, died.
More on this if I ever have the time and inclination.
More on this if I ever have the time and inclination.
25 October 2008
22 October 2008
21 October 2008
15 October 2008
05 October 2008
03 October 2008
01 October 2008
The glacial shift of institutional opinion
"Bush was a laughing stock in the gray corridors of the UN" (Spiegel; September 30, 2008)
It took nearly eight years, two wars, torture, extraordinary rendition, and animpending global recession to tarnish the office of the US presidency. Such is the massive weight of institutional opinion. This has Bush's most extraordinary accomplishment.
It took nearly eight years, two wars, torture, extraordinary rendition, and an
26 September 2008
27 August 2008
The declining (plummeting) dollar
I first started thinking along these lines in 2004 when the dollar was approaching 1..30 against the Euro. Imagine a rate as low as that! And let's not even start on this summer's exchange rate with the pound. This has been not just a decline for the dollar but a free fall, spun euphemistically as a "confirmed, long-term downtrend."
The foreign exchange market - which was among the first to globalize in the mid 1970s - is the largest global market at the moment and probably the most important. There is a well-documented relationship between currency exchange and national deficits: when exchange rates were fixed under the Bretton Woods system, national debt had to be financed out of official reserves, so governments could not run up huge deficits as the U.S. has done now. (We could also not run up massive credit card debt as we do now, with the average individual debt at $8,562 and total consumer credit at $1.7 trillion.) Now, it is precisely "the towering" deficit of $427 billion that will decrease the value of the U.S. dollar against other currencies.
One obvious consequence of the debt bubble will be the increased cost of imported goods. (Right now, China pegs its currency to the dollar, so these imports would not significantly rise in cost, but it remains to be seen if the new "third-way" China will or can continue to hold its currency to the dollar.) Conversely, the strong dollar meant low-cost imports and the much-heralded "US financial hegemony" in the 1990s. It's not for nothing that there was a pervasive sense of optimism in the Clinton years. Another consequence - and one apparently desired by Bernanke et al because it would, again apparently, contribute to job growth - would be the growth of US exports because they are now cheaper. But there are other consequences: there is some speculation that the Euro will replace the dollar as the reserve currency of choice.
In sum, the free fall of the dollar indicates the loss of faith in the dollar itself. As a counter measure, everyone seems to be preaching the IMF doctrine, "a thorough macro economic and fiscal restructuring." As we know, interest rates are going to have to be raised, which will stabilize the housing market but lead to quite a few repossessions as people find they can no longer afford the payments on their jumbo loans, even with two-three jobs. What will this restructuring and debt crisis mean for the US political scene?
Since the assertion of military power is often read as a compensation for the loss of global economic and cultural power, I think we can understand the prioritizing of the PNAC agenda over the last four years in these terms. There are of course other reasons why the neocons have been given free reign but I do not think we can overlook the economic basis of the desire for military hegemony. This may seem a cheap conclusion but we cannot forget that it took an economic crisis for the NSDAP to come to power in Weimar Germany.
The foreign exchange market - which was among the first to globalize in the mid 1970s - is the largest global market at the moment and probably the most important. There is a well-documented relationship between currency exchange and national deficits: when exchange rates were fixed under the Bretton Woods system, national debt had to be financed out of official reserves, so governments could not run up huge deficits as the U.S. has done now. (We could also not run up massive credit card debt as we do now, with the average individual debt at $8,562 and total consumer credit at $1.7 trillion.) Now, it is precisely "the towering" deficit of $427 billion that will decrease the value of the U.S. dollar against other currencies.
One obvious consequence of the debt bubble will be the increased cost of imported goods. (Right now, China pegs its currency to the dollar, so these imports would not significantly rise in cost, but it remains to be seen if the new "third-way" China will or can continue to hold its currency to the dollar.) Conversely, the strong dollar meant low-cost imports and the much-heralded "US financial hegemony" in the 1990s. It's not for nothing that there was a pervasive sense of optimism in the Clinton years. Another consequence - and one apparently desired by Bernanke et al because it would, again apparently, contribute to job growth - would be the growth of US exports because they are now cheaper. But there are other consequences: there is some speculation that the Euro will replace the dollar as the reserve currency of choice.
In sum, the free fall of the dollar indicates the loss of faith in the dollar itself. As a counter measure, everyone seems to be preaching the IMF doctrine, "a thorough macro economic and fiscal restructuring." As we know, interest rates are going to have to be raised, which will stabilize the housing market but lead to quite a few repossessions as people find they can no longer afford the payments on their jumbo loans, even with two-three jobs. What will this restructuring and debt crisis mean for the US political scene?
Since the assertion of military power is often read as a compensation for the loss of global economic and cultural power, I think we can understand the prioritizing of the PNAC agenda over the last four years in these terms. There are of course other reasons why the neocons have been given free reign but I do not think we can overlook the economic basis of the desire for military hegemony. This may seem a cheap conclusion but we cannot forget that it took an economic crisis for the NSDAP to come to power in Weimar Germany.
14 August 2008
No, Condi, it is indeed not Czechoslovakia, 1968
Czechoslovakia -- no
Chechnya -- that's the analogy you probably want
Chechnya -- that's the analogy you probably want
03 January 2008
Oratory is back
What links Obama and Huckabee? They are both excellent public speakers. Obama's speech tonight was excellent, as many have noted. Edwards gave what I thought was a competent closing argument; his rhetoric is almost always that of the legal profession and is limited by being such. Hillary gave us the stump speech, which seemed especially hollow given the situation. But to return the main point: Obama and Huckabee are both gifted and practiced orators. Oratory of course used to be quite central not only to public life but to civic life; politics were unthinkable without oratory. The last eight years have been remarkable for numerous reasons, but certainly among them would be the fact that we have a president who is not only anti-intellectual but strangely and openly hostile toward language itself.
Granted, one does not really want to listen to all that Jesus business, but Huckabee's oratorical skill has to be acknowledged. I knew the instant I saw him perform in the last debate that he would win Iowa and I actually think it is fantastic that he can compel an audience through speech. I know we should be thinking in terms of the fascist mob but we have drifted so far from the seductions of public oratory -- and his support is still so contained to the ranks of the evangelicals -- that I don't mind the fact that he can quickly and easily captivate an audience of believers and non-believers alike. Without a doubt, he mopped up the floor with Romney and Giuliani. More to the point, Huckabee highlights Romney's plasticity in much the same way that Obama highlights Hillary's falsity. It's not for nothing that Romney and Hillary are both regarded as false, inauthentic, fake, suave, superficial, all surface -- as in fact, "politicians." They have their own inherent qualities that produce these impressions but they are also produced as fake by the contrast with Huckabee and Obama, respectively. [Also, note that both Romney and Hillary are botoxed and injected to the nines. This would of course also cause one to regard them in terms of surface.]
But I think the resurgence of oratory is more interesting: I want to think of it as part of the strong turn away from Bush. It would be fantastic if the recoil were about both form and content, performance and ideology. It would be even more fantastic if it were not just about performance but intellectuality; that is, if the country has realized at last that one does not in fact want a stupid president. How wonderful to think that we might banish all aspects of this idiocracy in just a few months. One dares to dream.
Granted, one does not really want to listen to all that Jesus business, but Huckabee's oratorical skill has to be acknowledged. I knew the instant I saw him perform in the last debate that he would win Iowa and I actually think it is fantastic that he can compel an audience through speech. I know we should be thinking in terms of the fascist mob but we have drifted so far from the seductions of public oratory -- and his support is still so contained to the ranks of the evangelicals -- that I don't mind the fact that he can quickly and easily captivate an audience of believers and non-believers alike. Without a doubt, he mopped up the floor with Romney and Giuliani. More to the point, Huckabee highlights Romney's plasticity in much the same way that Obama highlights Hillary's falsity. It's not for nothing that Romney and Hillary are both regarded as false, inauthentic, fake, suave, superficial, all surface -- as in fact, "politicians." They have their own inherent qualities that produce these impressions but they are also produced as fake by the contrast with Huckabee and Obama, respectively. [Also, note that both Romney and Hillary are botoxed and injected to the nines. This would of course also cause one to regard them in terms of surface.]
But I think the resurgence of oratory is more interesting: I want to think of it as part of the strong turn away from Bush. It would be fantastic if the recoil were about both form and content, performance and ideology. It would be even more fantastic if it were not just about performance but intellectuality; that is, if the country has realized at last that one does not in fact want a stupid president. How wonderful to think that we might banish all aspects of this idiocracy in just a few months. One dares to dream.
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