FLAT EARTH ECONOMICS TAKES A HIT

From the website of Bucknell University, courtesy of Eschaton, CNBC's capitalist guru Jim Cramer attacks a much loved central assumption of the prevailing economic orthodoxy:

Jim Cramer challenges 'laissez faire' government

"Ever since the (President) Reagan era, our nation has been regressing and repealing years and years worth of safety net and equal economic justice in the name of discrediting and dismantling the federal government's missions to help solve our nation's collective domestic woes," he said. "We call it deregulation … a covert attempt to eliminate the federal government's domestic responsibilities."

And

He said that deregulation is the equivalent of saying that "private industry will do it better, that volunteers will do it better, that business if left unfettered will produce so many rich people that they will do it better than the government can."

Even the best of the nation's private enterprises, Cramer said, citing companies like Wells Fargo, Pepsi, United Technologies, Google, and Costco, can't meet those demands.

And

In the end, he said, laissez faire policies are but a "fraud meant to get around the true role of a government in promoting the general welfare and enriching a select few" and called on enlightened caring capitalists to reassess the abilities of an unregulated marketplace and for the country to readdress the role of regulators "who would leave us at the hands predator capitalists."

It is necessary, Cramer said, to get the limitations of capitalism back on the agenda for the next generation in order to fulfill the mission statement made by the Founding Fathers "to promote the general welfare for all."

Click here for the rest.

All of this, back during the Great Depression and well into the 70s, was once well known by most Americans who knew anything at all about business and economics. I myself, as well as countless other left-wing bloggers, have been echoing Cramer's statements for years now. Actually, it's pretty obvious to anyone who thinks about such issues for about five seconds or so, but most people don't think: they simply repeat the laissez faire mantras they hear in the mainstream news media.

That such a well respected and popular capitalist as Cramer has dared to point out the obvious is a significant event.

Man, I don't even know where to begin addressing this; it's been a major theme for my online writing for the five years I've been blogging. Here's a thought. Back when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 signaling the end of the Soviet world, my old pal Matt told me that a historian who had predicted the fall of communism had also predicted the fall of capitalism. "Impossible," I thought at the time, but over the years this scholar's prognostication is becoming increasingly valid. The USSR fell apart because it couldn't get a fully state-controlled economy to work in the real world; The US is now falling apart because its ever increasing attempts to make a fully unregulated economy work in the real world are an abject failure.

That is, as American capitalism appears to be collapsing on itself, by way of a shrinking middle class, an ongoing health care crisis, increasing oil prices, a mortgage and lending crisis which threatens to dick everyone in the ass, and countless other "imbalances," it now appears that some of our popular economic ideology's biggest cheerleaders are having second thoughts about "greed is good." And when you get right down to it, what's amazing here is not that somebody like Cramer has decided to trash the concept of laissez faire; rather, what's amazing is that anyone ever bought into the bullshit in the first place.

I mean, think about it: "greed is good." That's like saying gluttony or murder is good. You know, fire is good too, but it's also widely understood that fire is pretty fucking dangerous, as well. The notion that countless organizations, all trying to maximize profits, to squeeze lots of blood from lots of stones, without any outside restraint at all, is somehow the greatest thing we can accomplish as a nation...well...that's just psychotic, and obviously so. That so many Americans don't understand or accept that there are inherent dangers associated with capitalism is the opus of the public relations and advertising industries.

And now that the whole shithouse appears to be caving in, guys like Cramer are abandoning the ideological bullshit that have made them media stars. Why couldn't they have come to their senses ten years ago?

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