Timothy Birdnow

Here is an interesting article although I strongly disagree with many of his points, most especially his statist vision of prosperity.

The author is Michael Hudson, is President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. And like many economists he's clearly Keynsian in outlook.

 He's also wrong; governments were not there to promote "equity" of economic outcome and never were. They were, in fact, almost always run by the wealthy and for the wealthy and the peasant did very poorly. Does anybody really think ancient China was in any way a government by and for the People? The peasants were nearly slaves to the wealthy, and especially to the Emperor, who often simply conscripted them to work for him.

I also don't know anyone who took that idiotic book "The End of History" seriously.

He's also wrong about Spain; their problems stemmed from bringing too much gold and silver back home and depressing the value of those precious metals. It had nothing to do with inequities or conquest but with a lack of understanding of the difference between wealth and money - the same problem we have today.

I know; this guy was speaking to the Chinese and wanted to butter then up, but I disagree with much of his poor assessment of Western Civilization. Much as Paley said of Gibbons "how do you refute a sneer?" In many ways this essay was a sneer. That said I do agree with some of it, especially about modern thinking on money and the New World Order aspect of this.

He is correct about the rising fiscal polarity in the West, and how it has become THE international program.

 Hudson (this was adapted from a speech he gave in China) calls Chinese socialism a  "return to basic ideas of resilience that characterized most civilization before classical Greece and Rome."  You know the kind that gave them grinding poverty and despotism nearly equal with the Communist.

Oh, and he also claims Margaret Thatcher destroyed Britain! I kid you not! He apparently doesn't know how bad it was in Britain after decades of rule by Labour. And how it was Thatcher who largely brought the country back from the brink.

He's also a bit confused on the historical timelines. And he fails to grasp the fact that the West is where the ideas of democracy came from  - as well as other things such as pluralism and civil rights.

And he praises the Jubilee year in Israel and other debt forgiveness, but fails to understand that this means lenders only give out six year loans, thus credit is stifled for big ticket items (like homes.) Without long-term mortgages and the like it is impossible to buy such items for the working class. Hardly anybody owned their own homes in the "good old days" before mortgages. And why should there be debt forgiveness? The lenders put their own money out and now should simply eat it?  That is guaranteed to stifle lending. He is an economist; he should know that.

I'm sorry, but 2500 years of Western Civilization is not an aberration. We advanced civilization and brought astounding prosperity for everyone. The current anger at our financial system is not based on any sort of oppression of the poor or whatnot, but rather is a result of overwhelming prosperity; people have the time to indulge covetousness and envy. You don't have this in truly poor places. The current anti-Americanism is primarily a function of rich people looking for a grievance to occupy their time and make them feel as if they are being abused. We've created a culture that reveres being oppressed.

At any rate, it's long but do read it when you have time.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:53 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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