Peter's summing up of the standard neo-classical approach to job safety is exactly right. There are some exceptions. Robert Frank, for instance. Frank, whose work I admire, is a little bit like the proverbial carpenter who, having only a hammer, thinks everything is a nail. In his case, the hammer is the idea that people care not just about income, but also relative income. In *Choosing The Right Pond* he uses his hammer on the work-place safety issue. Here is a little example based on his ideas that I use in the Principles course. (By the way, I teach economics at Bowling Green State University in Ohio: hello fellow bloggers!).
Suppose there are two types of jobs, safe and risky, and 2 workers. Safe jobs have a safety index of 2 and pay $20,000, while risky jobs have a safety index of 1 and pay $30,000. Further suppose workers utility is the product of three factors: income measured in thousands of dollars, safety( measured by the index), and relative income. Now we have a standard prisoner's dilemma. If you take the safe job, taking the safe job as well gives me utility of (20)(2)(1) = 40. Taking the risky job gives me (30)(1)(3/2) = 45, so I take the risky job. If you take the risky job, I get (20)(2)(2/3) = 26.67 if I take the safe job and (30)(1)(1) if I take the risky job, so I take the risky job in this case too. Each of us does better choosing the risky job whatever the other does, but when we choose the risky job we are worse off, with utility of 30 each, than had we both taken the safe job and gotten utility of 40 each.
Making safety level 2 mandatory makes both workers better off and has no effect on employers (the pay differential is assumed to reflect the cost of making the workplace safer) and is thus a Pareto-improvement. Also note that if we were to infer from the fact that workers reject the safe job (without regulation) that the added safety is worth less than $10, 000, and go on to use this as input into an estimate of the value of life, we would be seriously wrong: deciding collectively, workers would be willing to pay up to $15,000 each for the safer job, since an income level of 15 and safety level 2 gives the same utility, 30, as the risky job when relative income isn't a factor.
The neat thing about Frank's hammer is that the result is consistent with perfectly competitive labor markets and no lack of knowledge on the workers' part of the true risks they face. When these conditions are not met - as they aren't - then the case for regulation is a fortiori. But Frank shares with the neoclassicals a vocabulary that is incapable of talking about injustice.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Monday, September 3, 2007
Perp Walk
Hmmmm. I guess I should say a word about myself, so as not to be too different from everyone else? (Q: What are you going to do when you grow up? A: Find some people, dress like them and follow them around. --Firesign Theater)
I am Peter Dorman, an economist and long-time political obsessive, not affiliated with any school, camp or fire ring. I teach at the Evergreen State College, known for its extraordinarily demanding brand of wanton indulgence. I do a little of this and that academically, never wanting to specialize to the point ofaccomplishment boredom. Some topics over the years: occupational safety and health, benefit-cost analysis, trade theory, international political economy, child labor, unemployment insurance, climate change, the precautionary principle.
Bloggers seem to be pronouncing themselves on free trade and liberty, so for my part I will say I have theoretical and political issues with the justification for unregulated trade, and I would like to reduce the role that hierarchy and authority (institutional not moral) plays in our world. What really irritates me is nationalism, the utopia of ages past that has now attained a gruesome hegemony.
I will mostly post on economics-related matters, since I figure the web is overrun with everything else, and because I think there is mostly a big hole where serious economic thinking ought to be in the discourse of the left.
I am Peter Dorman, an economist and long-time political obsessive, not affiliated with any school, camp or fire ring. I teach at the Evergreen State College, known for its extraordinarily demanding brand of wanton indulgence. I do a little of this and that academically, never wanting to specialize to the point of
Bloggers seem to be pronouncing themselves on free trade and liberty, so for my part I will say I have theoretical and political issues with the justification for unregulated trade, and I would like to reduce the role that hierarchy and authority (institutional not moral) plays in our world. What really irritates me is nationalism, the utopia of ages past that has now attained a gruesome hegemony.
I will mostly post on economics-related matters, since I figure the web is overrun with everything else, and because I think there is mostly a big hole where serious economic thinking ought to be in the discourse of the left.
Crandall Canyon, One More Time
Before the Crandall Canyon disaster recedes into media oblivion, it’s worth spending a moment to think about what economics does and doesn’t have to say about this grisly series of events.
The standard theory, which can be found in any labor economics textbook and even some principles texts, is that dangerous work is essentially a non-problem. Workers will only take a dangerous job if they get extra pay to compensate. This gives employers an incentive to make jobs safer up to the point when the cost of more safety exceeds the added wages they would have to pay. The result: the level of safety is efficient (marginal benefit of safety improvements equals marginal cost), workers with a taste for risk are efficiently matched with employers whose technologies make risk harder to reduce, and workers in dangerous jobs are no worse off than those in safe ones, since they have bigger bank accounts to keep them happy. There are two big regulatory implications: interference, like enforcing safety rules, is against the interest of both workers and employers, and the wage-safety tradeoff can be used to calculate a “value of statistical life”, which comes in handy whenever cost-benefit analyses need to be performed.
I kid you not.
The “consensus” view in the profession is that a wealth of empirical data validates this theory. The Environmental Protection Agency holds earnest discussions on whether the value of a life should be raised or lowered a bit, or perhaps set at a higher level for some groups (like the rich) compared to others.
There’s no point getting into a full-scale disquisition on this topic; my book from 11 years ago says it all. (Except for everything I’ve been saying since then....) One pertinent question we might ask, however, is this: what, if anything, does conventional economic theory tell us about a disaster like Crandall Canyon? Is this a theory for large data sets only, or can it be applied to a particular incident? My view: if it doesn’t make sense in any particular case, it doesn’t make sense in 60,000 cases.
So what do we have?
1. Efficiency: no, with the practice of retreat mining.
2. Risk-loving workers: we don’t know the psychological profile of the miners, but it would be outrageous to claim that the courageous rescuers, three of whom died on the job, simply had a higher tolerance for risk. Not knowing the difference between getting a kick out of risk and putting it on the line for others is typical of utility theory.
3. Fair distribution of risk: dubious. The tipoff is that three of the six miners now buried in the mountain were Mexican nationals; my guess is that they were not being offered whatever plum jobs were available in rural Utah.
Would it be too much to ask for an economics that, instead of spinning fantasies, asked practical questions like, what kind of labor market structures lead to this devaluing of human life? How can competition be prevented from leading to a race to the bottom (OK, not the best metaphor for coal mining) in safety practices? What forms of regulation can most effectively achieve the essential goals of public health and social justice?
The standard theory, which can be found in any labor economics textbook and even some principles texts, is that dangerous work is essentially a non-problem. Workers will only take a dangerous job if they get extra pay to compensate. This gives employers an incentive to make jobs safer up to the point when the cost of more safety exceeds the added wages they would have to pay. The result: the level of safety is efficient (marginal benefit of safety improvements equals marginal cost), workers with a taste for risk are efficiently matched with employers whose technologies make risk harder to reduce, and workers in dangerous jobs are no worse off than those in safe ones, since they have bigger bank accounts to keep them happy. There are two big regulatory implications: interference, like enforcing safety rules, is against the interest of both workers and employers, and the wage-safety tradeoff can be used to calculate a “value of statistical life”, which comes in handy whenever cost-benefit analyses need to be performed.
I kid you not.
The “consensus” view in the profession is that a wealth of empirical data validates this theory. The Environmental Protection Agency holds earnest discussions on whether the value of a life should be raised or lowered a bit, or perhaps set at a higher level for some groups (like the rich) compared to others.
There’s no point getting into a full-scale disquisition on this topic; my book from 11 years ago says it all. (Except for everything I’ve been saying since then....) One pertinent question we might ask, however, is this: what, if anything, does conventional economic theory tell us about a disaster like Crandall Canyon? Is this a theory for large data sets only, or can it be applied to a particular incident? My view: if it doesn’t make sense in any particular case, it doesn’t make sense in 60,000 cases.
So what do we have?
1. Efficiency: no, with the practice of retreat mining.
2. Risk-loving workers: we don’t know the psychological profile of the miners, but it would be outrageous to claim that the courageous rescuers, three of whom died on the job, simply had a higher tolerance for risk. Not knowing the difference between getting a kick out of risk and putting it on the line for others is typical of utility theory.
3. Fair distribution of risk: dubious. The tipoff is that three of the six miners now buried in the mountain were Mexican nationals; my guess is that they were not being offered whatever plum jobs were available in rural Utah.
Would it be too much to ask for an economics that, instead of spinning fantasies, asked practical questions like, what kind of labor market structures lead to this devaluing of human life? How can competition be prevented from leading to a race to the bottom (OK, not the best metaphor for coal mining) in safety practices? What forms of regulation can most effectively achieve the essential goals of public health and social justice?
The Mysterious Productivity Lead of the US Economy
First of all, I am enthusiastic about joining this distinguished group. Here is my initial post regarding the subject Sandwichman brought up -- the supposed elevated level of productivity in the US:
The International Labour Organisation just released a report showing that labor in the United States is the most productive in the world. Four points are relevant here.
First, part of that productivity reflects the fact that workers in the United States spend more time on the job than workers elsewhere. Even so, the output per hour is still the second highest in the world — after Norway.
Second, conventional economics teaches us that wages reflect productivity, yet for more than three decades hourly wages (corrected for inflation) have shown a slight decline, while productivity has soared.
Third, a country can become more productive merely by shutting down some of its less productive operations. In that sense, increasing productivity can be nothing more than an indication of deindustrialization. I don’t think that is the case here, but the ongoing illumination of less productive businesses has been a factor. According to conventional theory, deindustrialization could mean rising wages for the same reason that productivity increases. By eliminating the low salaries, the average of the remaining salaries would be higher — except that the resulting increase in unemployment allows business to drive wages down.
Fourth, productivity can mean something very different from what people might think I was productivity. This statistic is nothing more than the gross domestic product divided by the amount of labor. Consider a fictitious country named Nike. It has a single product — shoes, which it can market throughout the world. This country has four workers: a lawyer to make contracts, a marketer to advertise the product, a shipping clerk, and an accountant. Rather than making shoes by themselves, they contract with a sweatshop in China which sells them shoes for $5 a pair. The country exports 4 million pairs of shoes year for $100 a pair.
A statistical agency would credit each of the four workers with producing a million shoes, representing a net increase in value of $95 each. Nike would certainly be the most productive country in the world. Or would it be?
Iraq
speaking of dumping Iraq's Maliki: he would probably like that. He's likely got a lot of swag by now and would like to escape that country. The US may also give him a good retirement program.
and Mike Meyer is right: Bush would be perfect king for that country. He should be installed pronto.
JD
and Mike Meyer is right: Bush would be perfect king for that country. He should be installed pronto.
JD
hi,there
thanks to Barkley for his self-defining broadside. I'm not very good at presenting myself that way. I usually respond to specific questions and/or answers. I'll try to introduce myself that way, in response to parts of Barkeley's statement.
I wasn't aiming to be totally anonymous. I just like the nickname "Econoclast," which I've been using on and off for 15 years or so. I'm Jim Devine and a profess economics at Loyola Marymount University, a Jesuit university in Los Angeles.
I may have to drop the nickname. Others use it on the web. Maybe we should have a contest to decide on a new nickname.
As for free trade: one of the main reasons I'm against "it" is that usually such agreements as the NAFTA aren't really about free trade at all. Rather, the NAFTA was about greater rights for capital and fewer for labor. Free trade works nicely in theory, but in practice it usually stinks. That's because the details and effects of actual laws reflect the balance of power in society. And capital has much more power than it used to (say, in the 1960s). It's used "free trade" to increase that power, as part of the neoliberal vicious circle. So now we have labor arbitrage, the gradual reduction of wages and conditions to the lowest common denominator.
as for liberty: I'm in favor of it. But the only true freedom is that created democratically. Locke- or Friedman- or Hayek-type freedom involves the freedom of the rich at the expense of the poor. Democratic freedom involves compromises amongst peers.
JD
I wasn't aiming to be totally anonymous. I just like the nickname "Econoclast," which I've been using on and off for 15 years or so. I'm Jim Devine and a profess economics at Loyola Marymount University, a Jesuit university in Los Angeles.
I may have to drop the nickname. Others use it on the web. Maybe we should have a contest to decide on a new nickname.
As for free trade: one of the main reasons I'm against "it" is that usually such agreements as the NAFTA aren't really about free trade at all. Rather, the NAFTA was about greater rights for capital and fewer for labor. Free trade works nicely in theory, but in practice it usually stinks. That's because the details and effects of actual laws reflect the balance of power in society. And capital has much more power than it used to (say, in the 1960s). It's used "free trade" to increase that power, as part of the neoliberal vicious circle. So now we have labor arbitrage, the gradual reduction of wages and conditions to the lowest common denominator.
as for liberty: I'm in favor of it. But the only true freedom is that created democratically. Locke- or Friedman- or Hayek-type freedom involves the freedom of the rich at the expense of the poor. Democratic freedom involves compromises amongst peers.
JD
Hello and Happy Labor Day
"Is this thing on?......The bombing begins in 10 minutes."
(That is one of the greatest of union-busters, Ronald Reagan, amusing himself)
For Labor Day, I have a story. My grandfather was a shop steward for UE at Westinghouse in Philadelphia, militant to a fare-thee-well. My father was the first in this (my) shanty-Irish family to attend college, where he studied physics and eventually became a physicist. One summer during college, my grandfather helped get him a job doing research at the plant. At some point during the summer, a grievance issue led my grandfather to call a strike and set up a picket line. And across this picket line, he proceeded to escort my father, his son!
I should add that we learned early on from my dad that a scab was one of the worst things one could be, and that crossing a picket line was a sin for which the recitation of no amount of hail-marys could atone.
Anyway, my grandfather, who died in the late 60's, was the kindest man I have ever known. Happy Labor Day, Da-Bill.
(That is one of the greatest of union-busters, Ronald Reagan, amusing himself)
For Labor Day, I have a story. My grandfather was a shop steward for UE at Westinghouse in Philadelphia, militant to a fare-thee-well. My father was the first in this (my) shanty-Irish family to attend college, where he studied physics and eventually became a physicist. One summer during college, my grandfather helped get him a job doing research at the plant. At some point during the summer, a grievance issue led my grandfather to call a strike and set up a picket line. And across this picket line, he proceeded to escort my father, his son!
I should add that we learned early on from my dad that a scab was one of the worst things one could be, and that crossing a picket line was a sin for which the recitation of no amount of hail-marys could atone.
Anyway, my grandfather, who died in the late 60's, was the kindest man I have ever known. Happy Labor Day, Da-Bill.
ARE LAZY U.S. WORKERS TOO PRODUCTIVE?
by the Sandwichman
I have to run off to work, but I wanted to leave you lazy Americans with a Labor Day holiday a "sandwich":
August 24, 2007: Are Americans too lazy?: U.S. workers can't compete globally unless they work harder, writes Fortune's Geoff Colvin.
September 2, 2007: Report: U.S. Workers Are Most Productive: U.N. Report: U.S. Workers Most Productive in World; Each Produces $63,885 of Wealth Per Year By Bradley S. Klapper, Associated Press Writer.
What a difference a week makes, eh?
I have to run off to work, but I wanted to leave you lazy Americans with a Labor Day holiday a "sandwich":
August 24, 2007: Are Americans too lazy?: U.S. workers can't compete globally unless they work harder, writes Fortune's Geoff Colvin.
September 2, 2007: Report: U.S. Workers Are Most Productive: U.N. Report: U.S. Workers Most Productive in World; Each Produces $63,885 of Wealth Per Year By Bradley S. Klapper, Associated Press Writer.
What a difference a week makes, eh?
RAISING THE ROOF
by the Sandwichman
It's interesting that Barkley should bring up raising the ceiling on Social Security contributions as an example of a possibly progressive change that he would steer away from for fear that it would open the door to all sorts of regressive changes. Years ago (12), when I started my analysis of policy on working time, one of the first angles I came up with was the idea that eliminatiing the quasi-fixed (see note below) characteristics of payroll taxes and other employer-paid fringe benefit contributions would remove an obstacle to redistributing working time.
I suppose it might be a good tactic at times to hunker down around the status quo to prevent an opponent from using any progressive change as an invitation to ransack it. It can't be a good long-term strategy, though.The opponent will persistently probe for vulnerabilities and if defenders of Social Security "do nothing", then that passive conservativism will itself become a vulnerability. A program or policy that doesn't adapt to changes in its environment eventually becomes a liability to its defenders and erstwhile beneficiaries.
This is not to say that raising the ceiling on Social Security contributions is necessarily the best way to respond to changes in the workplace and in the employment policy regime since the 1930s. Take Back Your Time, an organization I'm involved with, has a campaign to add vacation entitlements to the Fair Labor Standards Act (that's not necessarily my personal choice of priority either). All I'm saying -- for now -- is you can't move forward by standing pat, especially when the ground you're standing on is under attack.
"quasi-fixed": this is a bit of economists' jargon the Sandwichman will elaborate on in a subsequent post. In a nutshell, it refers to employment costs that (supposedly) don't vary in proportion to the number of hours worked.
It's interesting that Barkley should bring up raising the ceiling on Social Security contributions as an example of a possibly progressive change that he would steer away from for fear that it would open the door to all sorts of regressive changes. Years ago (12), when I started my analysis of policy on working time, one of the first angles I came up with was the idea that eliminatiing the quasi-fixed (see note below) characteristics of payroll taxes and other employer-paid fringe benefit contributions would remove an obstacle to redistributing working time.
I suppose it might be a good tactic at times to hunker down around the status quo to prevent an opponent from using any progressive change as an invitation to ransack it. It can't be a good long-term strategy, though.The opponent will persistently probe for vulnerabilities and if defenders of Social Security "do nothing", then that passive conservativism will itself become a vulnerability. A program or policy that doesn't adapt to changes in its environment eventually becomes a liability to its defenders and erstwhile beneficiaries.
This is not to say that raising the ceiling on Social Security contributions is necessarily the best way to respond to changes in the workplace and in the employment policy regime since the 1930s. Take Back Your Time, an organization I'm involved with, has a campaign to add vacation entitlements to the Fair Labor Standards Act (that's not necessarily my personal choice of priority either). All I'm saying -- for now -- is you can't move forward by standing pat, especially when the ground you're standing on is under attack.
"quasi-fixed": this is a bit of economists' jargon the Sandwichman will elaborate on in a subsequent post. In a nutshell, it refers to employment costs that (supposedly) don't vary in proportion to the number of hours worked.
Sunday, September 2, 2007
CHECKING IN AND SAYING HELLO
So, I am Barkley Rosser, aka rosserjb@jmu.edu, here, I guess, my email address. Those of you who are fans of the predecessor of this blog, Maxspeak, You Listen! of the sainted Max Sawicky, who will shut it down tomorrow on Labor Day (the irony!!!), you may remember that I am one of the old co-bloggers there. So, to the extent this is a sort of continuation of that, I would like to say hello to everybody and also a "welcome aboard" to the new co-bloggers, some of whom seem to be wanting to be "cool" bloggers with phoney identities. I am not going to object to that, although I am sort of mystified at tenured full professors doing it. But, so be it.
One observation I shall make is that several of the new co-bloggers are from a well known progressive list, PEN-L, which has long been run by michael perelman, who is co-blogging here openly under his own name, unlike at least a couple of his regulars that I have been told are here, but are hiding under monikers. I and Max were also longtime regulars over there, although I drifted over to the blogosphere some time ago, except for the hes list, which is more academic. PEN-L has long been a high quality list, so if this becomes a sort of semi-PEN-L blog, well, worse could happen, even while we will miss Max. (Will you be keeping PEN-L up, michael?).
For those who do not know michael, I will note that he is a professor at Fresno in CA and the author of many interesting books. He is an iconoclast, even though there is an "econoclast" here. Michael achieved some greater degree of celebrity earlier this year when was quoted in the "hip heterodoxy" article by Christopher Hayes in The Nation that set off a major storm throughout much of the econoblogosphere. He was the one who declared to Hayes as they watched the suits come out of the reception for Milton Friedman's Free to Choose, while standing outside the EPI reception where Max also made a mention in the article, that the neoclassicals (in their suits) are "a mafia," with "neoclassical mafia" becoming a headline for a bunch of the related postings. Anyway, it will be a pleasure to be co-blogging with the ever effervescent and knowledgeable Michael P.
Regarding my own perspectives, I note that in 1984 I was a sub-adviser to the George McGovern campaign. No, this was not the 1972 campaign when he was the Dem nominee with Bill Clinton and all kinds of DLCers coming out of there. This was when he ran as the "conscience" of the Dems, with the major candidates being Walter Mondale (who got the nomination, only to lose 49 states to Reagan), Gary Hart, and Jesse Jackson. I crafted his proposal to cut the DOD budget by $63 billion, which he touted in Iowa. After he came in a surprising third there, he dropped out of the race.
One oddity of me is that I have some libertarian impulses, left over from a libertarian phase in my youth, which weakened when I realized after reading Barry Goldwater's _Conscience of a Conservative_ that there might be conflicts between property rights and human rights (in the context of the civil rights movement). I realized that unlike Barry, I would take the human rights over the property rights. However, I have a kind of (late) Millian position, that liberty is the default assumption, and that one must argue for why it should not hold, although I am a lot easier to convince on those exceptions than I was in my youth and a lot more open to the existence of social collectivities and all that. I also am probably the only one here who might defend free trade from time to time (probably my major difference with old Max), although this leads to things like my biggest criticism of NAFTA being that it was unequal in favor of the US corn industry against the Mexican one because of the subsidies issue, with many thousands of poor Mexicans being thrown off their ejido farms, thus depressing wages in Mexico.
However, I do not generally post on that issue. Expect more out of me on the upcoming war whoop that Cheney and the neocons are reported by Juan Cole and badger at arablinks to be about to assault us with this month, not to mention housing, financial markets, and a lot of other odd stuff. (Those of you who have been around maxspeak already have a pretty good idea what to expect from me).
Oh yes, and in some ways I am sort of conservative, that is in the sense of not wanting to change certain things. So, I am notorious for piggishly opposing in strenuous terms any changes to the social security system of the US. I recognize that some proposed changes might be progressive, for example lifting or eliminating the cap on income for taxation. However, I view opening the door to any change as opening the door to all kinds of other changes that will be lousy: privatizations, lousy indexing, and so and so forth. All the better to fight to get the public educated about how hysterically off the wall the official projections are and to get ready to fight any "reforms" that a future Dem prez might feel inclined to push to show how "responsible" he or she is.
And, for the record, I am a Professor of Economics at James Madison University. I have not seen where one can put a link to one's url, but mine is http://cob.jmu.edu/rosserjb, for what it is worth. A bunch of papers there on all kinds of stuff.
One observation I shall make is that several of the new co-bloggers are from a well known progressive list, PEN-L, which has long been run by michael perelman, who is co-blogging here openly under his own name, unlike at least a couple of his regulars that I have been told are here, but are hiding under monikers. I and Max were also longtime regulars over there, although I drifted over to the blogosphere some time ago, except for the hes list, which is more academic. PEN-L has long been a high quality list, so if this becomes a sort of semi-PEN-L blog, well, worse could happen, even while we will miss Max. (Will you be keeping PEN-L up, michael?).
For those who do not know michael, I will note that he is a professor at Fresno in CA and the author of many interesting books. He is an iconoclast, even though there is an "econoclast" here. Michael achieved some greater degree of celebrity earlier this year when was quoted in the "hip heterodoxy" article by Christopher Hayes in The Nation that set off a major storm throughout much of the econoblogosphere. He was the one who declared to Hayes as they watched the suits come out of the reception for Milton Friedman's Free to Choose, while standing outside the EPI reception where Max also made a mention in the article, that the neoclassicals (in their suits) are "a mafia," with "neoclassical mafia" becoming a headline for a bunch of the related postings. Anyway, it will be a pleasure to be co-blogging with the ever effervescent and knowledgeable Michael P.
Regarding my own perspectives, I note that in 1984 I was a sub-adviser to the George McGovern campaign. No, this was not the 1972 campaign when he was the Dem nominee with Bill Clinton and all kinds of DLCers coming out of there. This was when he ran as the "conscience" of the Dems, with the major candidates being Walter Mondale (who got the nomination, only to lose 49 states to Reagan), Gary Hart, and Jesse Jackson. I crafted his proposal to cut the DOD budget by $63 billion, which he touted in Iowa. After he came in a surprising third there, he dropped out of the race.
One oddity of me is that I have some libertarian impulses, left over from a libertarian phase in my youth, which weakened when I realized after reading Barry Goldwater's _Conscience of a Conservative_ that there might be conflicts between property rights and human rights (in the context of the civil rights movement). I realized that unlike Barry, I would take the human rights over the property rights. However, I have a kind of (late) Millian position, that liberty is the default assumption, and that one must argue for why it should not hold, although I am a lot easier to convince on those exceptions than I was in my youth and a lot more open to the existence of social collectivities and all that. I also am probably the only one here who might defend free trade from time to time (probably my major difference with old Max), although this leads to things like my biggest criticism of NAFTA being that it was unequal in favor of the US corn industry against the Mexican one because of the subsidies issue, with many thousands of poor Mexicans being thrown off their ejido farms, thus depressing wages in Mexico.
However, I do not generally post on that issue. Expect more out of me on the upcoming war whoop that Cheney and the neocons are reported by Juan Cole and badger at arablinks to be about to assault us with this month, not to mention housing, financial markets, and a lot of other odd stuff. (Those of you who have been around maxspeak already have a pretty good idea what to expect from me).
Oh yes, and in some ways I am sort of conservative, that is in the sense of not wanting to change certain things. So, I am notorious for piggishly opposing in strenuous terms any changes to the social security system of the US. I recognize that some proposed changes might be progressive, for example lifting or eliminating the cap on income for taxation. However, I view opening the door to any change as opening the door to all kinds of other changes that will be lousy: privatizations, lousy indexing, and so and so forth. All the better to fight to get the public educated about how hysterically off the wall the official projections are and to get ready to fight any "reforms" that a future Dem prez might feel inclined to push to show how "responsible" he or she is.
And, for the record, I am a Professor of Economics at James Madison University. I have not seen where one can put a link to one's url, but mine is http://cob.jmu.edu/rosserjb, for what it is worth. A bunch of papers there on all kinds of stuff.
Saturday, September 1, 2007
DO-IT-YOURSELF POP-UP GUIDE TO JOY IN WORK
by the Sandwichman
I should specify that by 'joy in work', I'm not referring to garden-variety job satisfaction, mere fun or pride in accomplishment. What I have in mind hinges on a comment regarding the Saint Simonians by Walter Benjamin:
I should specify that by 'joy in work', I'm not referring to garden-variety job satisfaction, mere fun or pride in accomplishment. What I have in mind hinges on a comment regarding the Saint Simonians by Walter Benjamin:
with the Saint Simonians, industrial labor is seen in the light of sexual intercourse; the idea of the joy of working is patterned after an image of the pleasure of procreation.
Test
This is to test embedding video. I know, it's basic.
Please click on the "Read more..." link below:
Read more...
And here's my test:
Will it work?
Please click on the "Read more..." link below:
Read more...
And here's my test:
Will it work?
HTML Bleg
The main shortcoming of the design here, aside from the fact that it sucks deeply, is the lack of the extended post feature where for long posts the continuation is found under a link. A proposed hack for that problem is here, but when we tried it we got a 404 error. Any suggestions for a fix would be welcome. Leave them in the comments. Other suggestions to improve the design are welcome. Blogger says the overall width we are using is best to fit the widest variety of browsers and monitors, so that won't change. Otherwise we are wide open for improvements.
Thinking the Unthinkable: Iraq
How the U.S. can pull out of Iraq and that country might actually do O.K.
Prelude.
Before starting, we must remember that the horse has likely already left the barn. The Bushwhackers have messed Iraq up so royally that is probably impossible to save Iraq from its worst nightmares.
Alas, it is unlikely that the Bush League will abandon their war goals -- even though that abandonment is absolutely necessary to my plan working. Rigidity is their strong suit. In addition, the Cheney gang is too busy building for a war against Iran to even think about changing the war goals.
Even though I can't read their "minds," I use the economists' "revealed preference" technique* to interpret those goals as being:
(1) getting and keeping strategic control over Iraqi oil; and
(2) having permanent military bases in Iraq to "project power" over the entire Middle East. (The latter represents a second major military presence, in addition to that of that U.S. loyal ally, Israel.)
My guess is that the Bushies have already likely gave up on the idea of helping their friends (Halliburton, etc.) make gigantic profits -- because those profits are likely very small nowadays. But they are unlikely to give up on these big two. If they want to have just a little bit of law and order in Iraq, they'll have to do so.
As I've said before in my e-mail rantings, Iraq is like a monkey trap: the hunter catches the monkey because it (the simian, not the hunter) reaches into the coconut to get the food and is unwilling to release the food in order to make its paw small enough to exit the coconut. The hunter has chained the coconut down, creating the trap. As with all analogies, this one is not totally accurate: there is no "hunter." Our Fearless Leaders created their own monkey trap. However, if Osama had any dreams before 911, they likely included the creation of such a trap.
Fugue.
But what's my plan? In case you forgot it in the middle of my ramblings, I was proposing a plan to allow the U.S. to quickly pull out of Iraq while allowing that country to do O.K.
The plan first involves giving up on the whole idea establishing capitalism (what the Bushies call "democracy") in Iraq in the immediate-to-intermediate future.
Creating capitalism not possible without a sustained regime of law and order. Capitalism and markets cannot prevail without secure property rights and a general atmosphere of trust. So much Rumsfeldian "stuff" has "happened" that Iraq has become a poster child for the Hobbesian war of each against all.
What the U.S. elite needs to do is to establish feudalism. So my plan should be dubbed "Operation Iraqi Feudalism." (The government won't have to change their operation's initials. They can continue to use the same luggage, etc., without changing the monogram.)
When feudalism arose in Western Europe, it was a natural-seeming (decentralized) outcome of the collapse of the Roman Empire and a long series of wars, civil wars, "barbarian" invasions, and the like.** For Iraq, however, feudalism would have to be feudalism imposed from above.
1. The U.S. power elite has to get rid of Maliki and the current Iraqi "government." The U.S. has to rule with raw power rather than hiding behind the fig-leaf of Iraqi "rule." This presents a real problem with legitimation with U.S. taxpayers, for sure. But it probably wouldn't make any difference to Iraqis. They know what's happening in their country. They know who's really in power (to the extent that the U.S. actually has power).
2. The U.S. leaders have to create power "on the ground." This creates the basis for local law and order, which in turn can eventually allow the creation of a central state. Here, following the late political economist Max Weber, a state monopolizes the generally-accepted use of force within a geographical area. My plan starts with mini-states (fiefdoms) and then hopes to create a centralized state to impose law and order on the country-wide level.
A. First, the U.S. has to use information that it should have collected a long time ago. That is, they needed to break Iraq into a large number of districts -- as small as possible. Next, the Bushwhackers -- or their "think" tanks -- have figure out which military or paramilitary group has the most power in that area.
Both military power and issues of legitimacy have to be considered, but if it's a toss-up, it's the ability to use force that's more crucial to the creation of law and order.
B. Then, the U.S. must turn local power to the most powerful group in each district. That group could be parts of the official Iraqi army; it could be "death squads"; it could be Saddamite dead-enders; and it could even be allied with "al Qaeda in Iraq" (if that organization really exists).
However, foreign groups -- including the U.S. armed forces, what's left of the so-called "coalition of the willing," and the actual "al Qaeda in Iraq" -- would be excluded from this role. Law and order must be created by Iraqis, even if they do not live up the exalted moral standards that we in the "West" claim to believe in. After all, the point is to give Iraq back to the Iraqis.
C. If possible, larger districts could be built out of the smaller ones, so that it's not just a matter of a large number of fragmented districts of an equal size. But these larger districts should not be designed with the current provincial system in mind. It should be built from the bottom up, because that's what's most likely to create and maintain law & order within each district as soon as possible. The larger provinces are abstractions, not realities.
3. The leaders of these military organizations should then be named as rulers -- dictators -- of their districts. They could be called "barons" (or whatever the Arabic term for "baron" is). They might be given hereditary office -- to honor classic European feudalism -- but that wouldn't matter in practice. After all, it's only the more powerful and effective barons who would be able to pass their power down to their offspring.
One difference with classic W. European feudalism is that I am not suggesting that serfdom should be recreated. However, it's quite likely that everyday Iraqis will surrender their rights (in land, etc.) to their local baron in return for military/police/mafia-style protection (against other barons, bandits, etc.) That looks a lot like serfdom. But it's hard to believe that it's worse than the current situation that Iraqi peasants and workers face now.
Serfdom might be recreated -- but only in some districts. Just as European feudalism, there would be a tremendous amount of variation between areas. The greater amount of individual freedom in some districts might inspire people in other districts to fight for their democratic rights.
4. The central parliament should be replaced with a council of barons. That would be responsible for managing the collective interests of the entire Iraqi state. It's sometimes forgotten that such councils existed in the Western European version of feudalism and often played a significant role. (That's where that stuff about the "First Estate," the "Second Estate," etc. came from. The feudal classes had political organizations.)
5. The U.S. should then appoint strongest baron in the land as the king. In the feudal era, the kings often took on the name "Caesar," trying to dress up as Roman emperors. So maybe the new Iraqi King should be called "the Saddam" -- or "the Bush." If the king is a Shi'ite, of course, the king would not be a Saddam. He wasn't their idol.
The king should be given control over all of the U.S. military bases, the Green Zone, and other properties that the U.S. has stolen from Iraq. This would establish the kind of system that prevailed under European feudalism -- with the king as the biggest baron. It would also bias the system toward the creation of a more centralized system (under the king's thumb, natch).
In general, having an uneven distribution of territories and power among the barons (including the king) would create more possibilities for the creation of a country-wide coalition to impose law and order. In plain but purple prose, if there is a small number of Big Barons, it's easier to come to a compromise and form a real centralized state.
6. As noted, the U.S. should forget about controlling Iraqi oil. Instead, oil revenues should be distributed to each Iraqi citizen in equal amounts, after taking about 1/2 to finance the Saddam's new Iraqi government. (This is the plan actually used with Alaska oil revenues.)
Also, such things as the power grid should be turned over to the new central government and its
king. Anything that must be under centralized control should be centralized, if possible.
Will this work in practice? No. The distribution of oil revenue and the electricity will continue to be severely disrupted.
But the centralized political organizations -- the council of barons, the king's bureaucracy -- would have some incentive to end this dislocation. If they have enough power to move toward the creation of centralized state power, they can institute the oil revenue plan and the like. They'll likely skim off a lot of revenues for themselves, but having the "Alaska" oil plan in place would create a precedent in the popular mind that would limit the corruption a little.
In the end, only the Iraqi people can make things right. But for this to happen, the country first needs law and order to prevail from border to border.
7. After creating the barons, the king, and the Alaska plan precedent, the U.S. should pull its troops out completely and as quickly as possible. The current civil war might intensify for awhile. However, the speed of this intensification might actually be slower than nowadays.
There would be a lot of population movement between districts, along with ethnic cleansing and similar disgusting phenomena. Life will continue to be nasty, brutish, and short. For quite a while, just as many Iraqis would die per month as are doing so nowadays.
There would be a multi-sided war as the various barons fight with each other, but the king -- or some new king -- would eventually become the hegemon as exhaustion set in. In sum, Iraq would recapitulate the bloody history that European feudalism went through. Unfortunately for Iraq, they won't be able to conquer other parts of the world (the way Europe did) to exploit them and to moderate its transition process.
Whoever the king is, he (or she?) would likely end up being as bloody-minded as Saddam was. However, it's got to be remembered that the kings who created our beautiful "modern" nation-states were exactly the same way. They used an iron fist to create their nations. Absolutist kings such as the French Sun King were no pussycats. They ruled with fire and iron.
Then, Iraqis would have to struggle to establish a full-scale state of the modern sort, i.e., one that monopolizes the means of violence within the country. Then democracy or capitalism could be established (or an unstable combination of both). As noted, both of these would be extremely hard to establish under current conditions. "Extremely" seems an understatement in this context.
8. The international relations piece of this puzzle would be exceedingly sticky. Kurdistan would want to split off. Turkey would invade. Etc., etc., etc.
I guess that the solution would be for the U.S. to guarantee Iraqi borders: the country is not allowed to split up and other countries are not allowed to invade. This seems quite unlikely, since it goes totally against the U.S. imperialist grain. However, the U.S. owes Iraq a lot.
In addition, the U.S. should try to limit the flow of arms into that country. That would speed up
the end of the civil wars and help create a unified power.
This may be one of those cases where "if wishes were SUVs, homeless folks would waste gasoline" cases. We cannot assume that the U.S. will do the right thing. But in most cases, the U.S. elite has the incentive to preserve national boundaries. There are other incentives that can undermine that one, of course. But I can't see what they are, once the rest of the plan is followed.
Coda.
Of course, the whole plan is extremely unlikely. However, the situation in Iraq is so bad that neither W nor Hillary will be able to fix it the way they'd like to. The results are likely to be even
worse -- and more expensive -- than under my plan.
As usual, I would enjoy hearing from the experts on this subject.
* That is, I look at what they do, not what they say. But it sounds better when draped in jargon, doesn't it?
** The word "barbarian" is in quotes because those folks have received a bad rap.
Prelude.
Before starting, we must remember that the horse has likely already left the barn. The Bushwhackers have messed Iraq up so royally that is probably impossible to save Iraq from its worst nightmares.
Alas, it is unlikely that the Bush League will abandon their war goals -- even though that abandonment is absolutely necessary to my plan working. Rigidity is their strong suit. In addition, the Cheney gang is too busy building for a war against Iran to even think about changing the war goals.
Even though I can't read their "minds," I use the economists' "revealed preference" technique* to interpret those goals as being:
(1) getting and keeping strategic control over Iraqi oil; and
(2) having permanent military bases in Iraq to "project power" over the entire Middle East. (The latter represents a second major military presence, in addition to that of that U.S. loyal ally, Israel.)
My guess is that the Bushies have already likely gave up on the idea of helping their friends (Halliburton, etc.) make gigantic profits -- because those profits are likely very small nowadays. But they are unlikely to give up on these big two. If they want to have just a little bit of law and order in Iraq, they'll have to do so.
As I've said before in my e-mail rantings, Iraq is like a monkey trap: the hunter catches the monkey because it (the simian, not the hunter) reaches into the coconut to get the food and is unwilling to release the food in order to make its paw small enough to exit the coconut. The hunter has chained the coconut down, creating the trap. As with all analogies, this one is not totally accurate: there is no "hunter." Our Fearless Leaders created their own monkey trap. However, if Osama had any dreams before 911, they likely included the creation of such a trap.
Fugue.
But what's my plan? In case you forgot it in the middle of my ramblings, I was proposing a plan to allow the U.S. to quickly pull out of Iraq while allowing that country to do O.K.
The plan first involves giving up on the whole idea establishing capitalism (what the Bushies call "democracy") in Iraq in the immediate-to-intermediate future.
Creating capitalism not possible without a sustained regime of law and order. Capitalism and markets cannot prevail without secure property rights and a general atmosphere of trust. So much Rumsfeldian "stuff" has "happened" that Iraq has become a poster child for the Hobbesian war of each against all.
What the U.S. elite needs to do is to establish feudalism. So my plan should be dubbed "Operation Iraqi Feudalism." (The government won't have to change their operation's initials. They can continue to use the same luggage, etc., without changing the monogram.)
When feudalism arose in Western Europe, it was a natural-seeming (decentralized) outcome of the collapse of the Roman Empire and a long series of wars, civil wars, "barbarian" invasions, and the like.** For Iraq, however, feudalism would have to be feudalism imposed from above.
1. The U.S. power elite has to get rid of Maliki and the current Iraqi "government." The U.S. has to rule with raw power rather than hiding behind the fig-leaf of Iraqi "rule." This presents a real problem with legitimation with U.S. taxpayers, for sure. But it probably wouldn't make any difference to Iraqis. They know what's happening in their country. They know who's really in power (to the extent that the U.S. actually has power).
2. The U.S. leaders have to create power "on the ground." This creates the basis for local law and order, which in turn can eventually allow the creation of a central state. Here, following the late political economist Max Weber, a state monopolizes the generally-accepted use of force within a geographical area. My plan starts with mini-states (fiefdoms) and then hopes to create a centralized state to impose law and order on the country-wide level.
A. First, the U.S. has to use information that it should have collected a long time ago. That is, they needed to break Iraq into a large number of districts -- as small as possible. Next, the Bushwhackers -- or their "think" tanks -- have figure out which military or paramilitary group has the most power in that area.
Both military power and issues of legitimacy have to be considered, but if it's a toss-up, it's the ability to use force that's more crucial to the creation of law and order.
B. Then, the U.S. must turn local power to the most powerful group in each district. That group could be parts of the official Iraqi army; it could be "death squads"; it could be Saddamite dead-enders; and it could even be allied with "al Qaeda in Iraq" (if that organization really exists).
However, foreign groups -- including the U.S. armed forces, what's left of the so-called "coalition of the willing," and the actual "al Qaeda in Iraq" -- would be excluded from this role. Law and order must be created by Iraqis, even if they do not live up the exalted moral standards that we in the "West" claim to believe in. After all, the point is to give Iraq back to the Iraqis.
C. If possible, larger districts could be built out of the smaller ones, so that it's not just a matter of a large number of fragmented districts of an equal size. But these larger districts should not be designed with the current provincial system in mind. It should be built from the bottom up, because that's what's most likely to create and maintain law & order within each district as soon as possible. The larger provinces are abstractions, not realities.
3. The leaders of these military organizations should then be named as rulers -- dictators -- of their districts. They could be called "barons" (or whatever the Arabic term for "baron" is). They might be given hereditary office -- to honor classic European feudalism -- but that wouldn't matter in practice. After all, it's only the more powerful and effective barons who would be able to pass their power down to their offspring.
One difference with classic W. European feudalism is that I am not suggesting that serfdom should be recreated. However, it's quite likely that everyday Iraqis will surrender their rights (in land, etc.) to their local baron in return for military/police/mafia-style protection (against other barons, bandits, etc.) That looks a lot like serfdom. But it's hard to believe that it's worse than the current situation that Iraqi peasants and workers face now.
Serfdom might be recreated -- but only in some districts. Just as European feudalism, there would be a tremendous amount of variation between areas. The greater amount of individual freedom in some districts might inspire people in other districts to fight for their democratic rights.
4. The central parliament should be replaced with a council of barons. That would be responsible for managing the collective interests of the entire Iraqi state. It's sometimes forgotten that such councils existed in the Western European version of feudalism and often played a significant role. (That's where that stuff about the "First Estate," the "Second Estate," etc. came from. The feudal classes had political organizations.)
5. The U.S. should then appoint strongest baron in the land as the king. In the feudal era, the kings often took on the name "Caesar," trying to dress up as Roman emperors. So maybe the new Iraqi King should be called "the Saddam" -- or "the Bush." If the king is a Shi'ite, of course, the king would not be a Saddam. He wasn't their idol.
The king should be given control over all of the U.S. military bases, the Green Zone, and other properties that the U.S. has stolen from Iraq. This would establish the kind of system that prevailed under European feudalism -- with the king as the biggest baron. It would also bias the system toward the creation of a more centralized system (under the king's thumb, natch).
In general, having an uneven distribution of territories and power among the barons (including the king) would create more possibilities for the creation of a country-wide coalition to impose law and order. In plain but purple prose, if there is a small number of Big Barons, it's easier to come to a compromise and form a real centralized state.
6. As noted, the U.S. should forget about controlling Iraqi oil. Instead, oil revenues should be distributed to each Iraqi citizen in equal amounts, after taking about 1/2 to finance the Saddam's new Iraqi government. (This is the plan actually used with Alaska oil revenues.)
Also, such things as the power grid should be turned over to the new central government and its
king. Anything that must be under centralized control should be centralized, if possible.
Will this work in practice? No. The distribution of oil revenue and the electricity will continue to be severely disrupted.
But the centralized political organizations -- the council of barons, the king's bureaucracy -- would have some incentive to end this dislocation. If they have enough power to move toward the creation of centralized state power, they can institute the oil revenue plan and the like. They'll likely skim off a lot of revenues for themselves, but having the "Alaska" oil plan in place would create a precedent in the popular mind that would limit the corruption a little.
In the end, only the Iraqi people can make things right. But for this to happen, the country first needs law and order to prevail from border to border.
7. After creating the barons, the king, and the Alaska plan precedent, the U.S. should pull its troops out completely and as quickly as possible. The current civil war might intensify for awhile. However, the speed of this intensification might actually be slower than nowadays.
There would be a lot of population movement between districts, along with ethnic cleansing and similar disgusting phenomena. Life will continue to be nasty, brutish, and short. For quite a while, just as many Iraqis would die per month as are doing so nowadays.
There would be a multi-sided war as the various barons fight with each other, but the king -- or some new king -- would eventually become the hegemon as exhaustion set in. In sum, Iraq would recapitulate the bloody history that European feudalism went through. Unfortunately for Iraq, they won't be able to conquer other parts of the world (the way Europe did) to exploit them and to moderate its transition process.
Whoever the king is, he (or she?) would likely end up being as bloody-minded as Saddam was. However, it's got to be remembered that the kings who created our beautiful "modern" nation-states were exactly the same way. They used an iron fist to create their nations. Absolutist kings such as the French Sun King were no pussycats. They ruled with fire and iron.
Then, Iraqis would have to struggle to establish a full-scale state of the modern sort, i.e., one that monopolizes the means of violence within the country. Then democracy or capitalism could be established (or an unstable combination of both). As noted, both of these would be extremely hard to establish under current conditions. "Extremely" seems an understatement in this context.
8. The international relations piece of this puzzle would be exceedingly sticky. Kurdistan would want to split off. Turkey would invade. Etc., etc., etc.
I guess that the solution would be for the U.S. to guarantee Iraqi borders: the country is not allowed to split up and other countries are not allowed to invade. This seems quite unlikely, since it goes totally against the U.S. imperialist grain. However, the U.S. owes Iraq a lot.
In addition, the U.S. should try to limit the flow of arms into that country. That would speed up
the end of the civil wars and help create a unified power.
This may be one of those cases where "if wishes were SUVs, homeless folks would waste gasoline" cases. We cannot assume that the U.S. will do the right thing. But in most cases, the U.S. elite has the incentive to preserve national boundaries. There are other incentives that can undermine that one, of course. But I can't see what they are, once the rest of the plan is followed.
Coda.
Of course, the whole plan is extremely unlikely. However, the situation in Iraq is so bad that neither W nor Hillary will be able to fix it the way they'd like to. The results are likely to be even
worse -- and more expensive -- than under my plan.
As usual, I would enjoy hearing from the experts on this subject.
* That is, I look at what they do, not what they say. But it sounds better when draped in jargon, doesn't it?
** The word "barbarian" is in quotes because those folks have received a bad rap.
where next?
Lawrence Summers (a very famous economist who seems to have a problem with arrogance) writes:
>Over the past 20 years major financial disruptions have taken place roughly every three years, starting with the 1987 stock market crash; the Savings & Loans collapse and credit crunch of the early 1990s; the 1994 Mexican crisis; the Asian financial crises of 1997 with the Russian and Long-Term Capital Management events of 1998; the bursting of the technology bubble in 2000; the potential disruptions of the payments system after the events of September 11 2001 and the deflationary scare in the credit markets in 2002 after the collapse of Enron.<
... and now we see the housing/credit crunch.
But where's the next financial "disruption" going to hit? Suppose that the Fed reduces rates and eases credit further either (1) to prevent the spread of the financial mess to the rest of the economy or (2) to moderate the recession that hits when the financial mess does spread. Suppose further that the Fed succeeds, so that all the US sees is a mild recession of the sort seen in 2001. (Of course, as wotj that one, it's likely to be less "mild" for those of us who have to find jobs in labor markets.)
So a "soft landing" is achieved (even though that phrase should make our backbones go into
frigid overdrive).
But in the previous financial crunches that Summers mentions, the Fed's response simply caused a delayed reaction in other sectors. For example, the Fed's response to the "Asian financial crises of 1997 with the Russian and Long-Term Capital Management events of 1998" helped to cause the "the technology bubble" which burst in 2000. Then the 2001 "save" sparked the housing bubble that's currently pulling the U.S. economy down.
So what sector is most likely to be hit if the Fed succeeds now?
My crystal ball is on the fritz, so I'm stopping there. And this is not a rhetorical question.
>Over the past 20 years major financial disruptions have taken place roughly every three years, starting with the 1987 stock market crash; the Savings & Loans collapse and credit crunch of the early 1990s; the 1994 Mexican crisis; the Asian financial crises of 1997 with the Russian and Long-Term Capital Management events of 1998; the bursting of the technology bubble in 2000; the potential disruptions of the payments system after the events of September 11 2001 and the deflationary scare in the credit markets in 2002 after the collapse of Enron.<
... and now we see the housing/credit crunch.
But where's the next financial "disruption" going to hit? Suppose that the Fed reduces rates and eases credit further either (1) to prevent the spread of the financial mess to the rest of the economy or (2) to moderate the recession that hits when the financial mess does spread. Suppose further that the Fed succeeds, so that all the US sees is a mild recession of the sort seen in 2001. (Of course, as wotj that one, it's likely to be less "mild" for those of us who have to find jobs in labor markets.)
So a "soft landing" is achieved (even though that phrase should make our backbones go into
frigid overdrive).
But in the previous financial crunches that Summers mentions, the Fed's response simply caused a delayed reaction in other sectors. For example, the Fed's response to the "Asian financial crises of 1997 with the Russian and Long-Term Capital Management events of 1998" helped to cause the "the technology bubble" which burst in 2000. Then the 2001 "save" sparked the housing bubble that's currently pulling the U.S. economy down.
So what sector is most likely to be hit if the Fed succeeds now?
My crystal ball is on the fritz, so I'm stopping there. And this is not a rhetorical question.
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