Too many people in South Dakota and the US are drinking in the TEA PARTY poisonous brew of economic and political nonsense and candidates are exploiting that nonsense and the naive TEA partiers. These angry ignorants may want to save America, but are generating the kind of nonsense that can lead to further social and economic disaster if they (and we) follow the plutocrat grifters who fund renewal of "Zombie Economics". Below is a review of a recent book with that title and also a summary of a column by "The Curious Capitalist" in TIME magazine.
"In the graveyard of economic ideology, dead ideas still stalk the land.
The recent financial crisis laid bare many of the assumptions behind market liberalism--the theory that market-based solutions are always best, regardless of the problem. For decades, their advocates dominated mainstream economics, and their influence created a system where an unthinking faith in markets led many to view speculative investments as fundamentally safe. The crisis seemed to have killed off these ideas, but they still live on in the minds of many--members of the public, commentators, politicians, economists, and even those charged with cleaning up the mess. In Zombie Economics, John Quiggin explains how these dead ideas still walk among us--and why we must find a way to kill them once and for all if we are to avoid an even bigger financial crisis in the future.
Zombie Economics takes the reader through the origins, consequences, and implosion of a system of ideas whose time has come and gone. These beliefs--that deregulation had conquered the financial cycle, that markets were always the best judge of value, that policies designed to benefit the rich made everyone better off--brought us to the brink of disaster once before, and their persistent hold on many threatens to do so again. Because these ideas will never die unless there is an alternative, Zombie Economics also looks ahead at what could replace market liberalism, arguing that a simple return to traditional Keynesian economics and the politics of the welfare state will not be enough--either to kill dead ideas, or prevent future crises.
(John Quiggin is professor of economics at the University of Queensland in Australia.)
Link to above at Princeton Press
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9270.html
The Curious Capitalist: Debt Doesn't Matter
Zachary Karabell Time Magazine November 8, 2010 page 34
Whatever the TEA Party says, we haven't mortgaged our future, We've endangered our present.
A too brief summary of a full page: Tea party candidates are screaming from the rooftops and political podiums that federal debt and spending must be drastically reduced. Debt can be foolish and dangerous, but it can also be a powerful tool for nations when properly used. Government by itself is not the total answer, sparkplug spending must be coupled with wised fiscal policy focused on investment. We will not cut and slash our way to renewed prosperity.
Karbell concludes with, "If the philosophy of auterity dictates policy from now on, our children and grandchildren will not praise us for the reduced deficits we leave them; they will reproach us for refusing to mobilize our vast resources to reinvent ourselves. But we were being prudent, we will say. No they will reply, you were being cheap. You were running scared.
The Tea partiers are pushing a kind of crystal math scary fear rhetoric. Don't fall for this humbug. Don't vote for candidates like Kristi Noem.
*** Stay tuned even if Zombie Economics is not your idea of Halloween fare---- Doug Wiken
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