[...]Fools’ Days. « Some of Patrice Ayme’s Thoughts[...]…

In general, Obama is very good at missing big chances. He could have come in, extend Medicare and Medicaire in the first five minutes, by decree. The Congress he controlled would have signed the next day (or at least it would have if Obama had balls, like Thatcher). Health problem solved.

Afghanistan: he should have divided the troops by 3, not multiplied by 3. Ah, the math, so complicated: divide, multiply, whatever…
Banks Too Big To Fail: he could have done whatever needed to be done with them: first make them smaller.

Stimulus: he could have made it enormous. Indeed. CCC all over the place; high speed trains, solar plants…

However truth is Obama is small time. He knows how to navigate, supremely. He is the best at that. But he is not the supreme philosopher king he needs to be. As we know even Krugman does not get it, as much as is needed.

California’s in place a 30% renewables by 2020 for electrics is an excellent plan, even better than what the EU has in place (I think?). And it can be done, by leveraging from natural gas, says Brown, who does not know a thing, but admits it, and means well…

Overall, one should stop playing nice with China, its IP theft, and the opening of the public markets, and stopped being nice with the plutocrats… what you and others call “CAPITALISM”… Except of course, the greatest detentors of capital, human and financial, are the states. The real problem is that they are led by the nose by the plutocrats (private individuals).

A Chinese minister just admitted as much: China TBTF banks are making free money on everybody’s back, the PRC ought to do something about it… the difference with Obambi, is that the PRC is going to do something about it.
PA

So sad.

France is always a good counter-example to plenty of things. She maintains a way of life arguably richer than in the USA (free health, free schools, so far rock solid retirements, plenty of vacations), but while using, per unit of nominal GDP, only one third of the CO2 the USA, Australia and Canada waste…

And it’s only partly about nuclear energy. It’s mostly about efficiency, including going all electric… no coincidence Denmark and Israel are heading the same way…

Going all electric, with solar PV in the tropics, has a great future… Simply the West should resist Chinese dumping… Let alone IP theft…
PA

And GDP is a rotten measuring stick. There are better ways to measure happiness (pursuit of), satisfaction, etc etc. other than how much crap one can buy or accumulate, how big a house, fancy a car, etc etc.

High time we figured this out, because we are entering into a period of lower carbon use.

Thank goodness.

1) The main complaints of Greco-Roman intellectuals, under the Antonine emperors (Gibbon and others naive imperialists view that time as the greatest of Rome) was that :”THE WORLD IS GETTING OLD”
Why? It was harder and harder to get yields, especially in mines. We have clearly reached this stage. See fracking and ultra extreme fossil fuel drilling, with the BP, Chevron and (the on-going) TOTAL disaster in the North Sea.

2) You are right. Clinton was clearly much less of a democrat than the four republican presidents who preceded him (and that includes Nixon!). The fact so called democrats cannot see this means they are fake too. No wonder Obama took Larry Summers as (chief!) economic adviser.

3) There is feudalization going on. True plutocrats fear real change, such as technological change; that is why Roman emperors deliberately blocked it. Under the Franks, technology was advantaged again: the Franks became the hard edge of the Roman army for two centuries, precisely because of their weapons. For centuries after the Islamist empires took much of the world over, the Franks actually exported their steel weapons to the Islamists! (So much for Damascus steel!)

4) Right you are about Ponzi and fractional reserve. Fractional Reserve banking ought to be PUBLIC. As it is, it’s used by a few private individuals who have captured the state.

5) Now the way out of the ecological crisis is not to shrink. Contrarily to what all too many pseudo ecologists think. Shrinking means billions killed, civilization going back to Dark Ages (maybe for good, and certainly for millennia). The way out is precisely what plutocracy detests, namely, revolutionary technological change. The California law forcing electric utilities to get 30% from renewables by 2020 is a very good law, by the way. If we got electricity 100% from renewables (and I include nuclear in this, because, in practice, the right nuclear techs are renewable), we could sustain civilization indefinitely. What gov Brown is saying about all this makes sense (Schwarznegger was not bad either, that way).

Obama’s true direction is harder to fathom. Cutting money to some major big science in recent weeks (Mars, Neutrino Observatory) was not smart.

One way to keep having money for super science is to save in the military-industrial area, by cooperating with Franco-Britannia. It seems to me that for fighter-bombers and rockets, Obama should rise the white flag, and go to the French (who have better tech). (Liquid hydrogen) Ariane V could launch human crews any time one screws the right capsule on top. As the Rafale and Ariane could be modernized and americanized, that does not mean American tech would disappear, quite the opposite. (The French, after they fail in graphite-gaz, swallowed their pride, and bought basic nuke tech from Westinghouse… Although (already) Nobel Irene Joliot Curie had discovered/invented nuclear energy in 1936-1937, and the French military nuclear program was launched in 1938…)

The reverse trade could be made about drones (where Franco-Britannia is developping its own independent means, at great cost, althogh the USA is ahead).

Anyway… Now the Obamas are claiming they thought about going Medicare/Medicaid only, when they saw all the opposition. Next they are going to claim they never wanted to triple troops in Afghanistan, that they wanted to multiply by 1/3, not 3… Obama ought to read the right things more carefully, in a more timely manner…
PA

Fractional Reserve Banking is the world’s oldest and only officially sanctioned Ponzi scheme. In fact, it gives Ponzi a bad name, for he was only a small time operator.But, when kept in check and insured as it was here before that great democrat Bill Clinton signed the bill deleting Glass-Steagall and banning regulation of derivative trading, it served us pretty well for half a century.

However, those 50 years were years of “growth” especially in Europe which had been flattened in WWII. By the 70s, our high cost labor was displaced by the new Europe (who in return has been displaced by the Chinese). Capitalism waves no flag – only the flag of PROFIT, and moves on when costs so dictate.

The question I have been pondering (and with no answer) is whether Capitalism as we have come to know it, can serve us in the half century to come, where the will be NO GROWTH, maybe even SHRINKAGE?

The earth, having been ruthlessly exploited for 300 years, is saying, “Sorry, we’re closed.”

And she’s not reopening anytime soon.

We need another plan. Will it include fractional reserve banking?