Populism on the Rise

[Wolf DeVoon]

Sometimes a news headline makes one think.

 

WSJ

Populism on the Rise in GOP Race for President

Candidates bash big banks, the Fed, corporations and international trade deals

 

All of a sudden, it sounds like Teddy Roosevelt in the Gilded Age, denouncing Rockefeller and Morgan.

 

 

 

Roosevelt's "Square Deal" domestic program included a promise to battle large industrial combinations, or trusts, which threatened to restrain trade. In 1902, his government brought a successful suit under the previously ineffective Sherman Antitrust Act against the Northern Securities Company, a railroad combination formed by James J. Hill, E.H. Harriman and J.P. Morgan. [History.com]

 

Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican vice-president who succeeded McKinley when McKinley was shot by a lunatic anarchist. Plenty of lunatic anarchists would like to shoot President Trump, I'm sure, and The Donald is goofy enough to go out in public and shake hands once too often. That might put Tea Party populist v.p. Ted Cruz in the White House.

 

It isn't much of a mental stretch to imagine Ted Cruz taking down Warren Buffett and Jamie Dimon.

 

 

Next question is whether we have a William Randolph Hearst "yellow press" stirring up envy and resentment?

 

"All good yellow journalists ... sought the human in every story and edited without fear of emotion or drama. They wore their feelings on their pages, believing it was an honest and wholesome way to communicate with readers." While most editors of the time "believed their papers should speak with one voice on political matters," Hearst "helped to usher in the multi-perspective approach we identify with the modern op-ed page." [Wikipedia quoting Kenneth Whyte]

 

Know anybody who fits that description today?

 

 

Roger Ailes, media baron behind Fox News, creator of Rush Limbaugh's empire, pals with Rachel Maddow.

 

Hmm ... ominous parallels indeed.

[Brant Gaede]

Progressivism fed off the vigor of a young, growing nation and sluiced the country right into WWI. (The country was still too tired of that war to gin up for another in only 20 years, but Pearl Harbor washed that away.) What you might call "progressivism" or "populism" today means we are going to end up in a big war centered in order of likelyhood on the Persian Gulf, Eastern Europe or the South China Sea. For war, Cruz could be the super Bush.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

We could look to the solutions offered.

In olden times, trust-busting was by law.

Now, it is being proposed by refusing bailouts and rescinding regulations.

The crony capitalism collusion resulting in a big business plus big government oligarchy is still a menace irrespective of which solution one promotes.

So when the Teddies (Cruz and Roosevelt) are both labeled populists, that makes me think the term populism misses a lot.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

The really number one important thing respecting the next President is will he or will he not follow policies resulting in a major conflict--a conflict that may result in the use of nuclear weapons? It's not that other issues are unimportant, it's that this most important one is not being addressed. The appropriate label for the rubric of policies to come is a triviality.

--Brant

[Wolf DeVoon]

We could look to the solutions offered.

In olden times, trust-busting was by law.

Now, it is being proposed by refusing bailouts and rescinding regulations.

The crony capitalism collusion resulting in a big business plus big government oligarchy is still a menace irrespective of which solution one promotes.

So when the Teddies (Cruz and Roosevelt) are both labeled populists, that makes me think the term populism misses a lot.

Michael

The parallel with the Gilded Age is almost exact, 1% versus 90 million working age people not in the workforce, subsisting on easy credit and entitlements, doing a little worse each year notwithstanding BLS "hedonic" adjustments that make 10% annual inflation disappear statistically and 25% unemployment disappear because folks fell off 99-week unemployment compensation. FDIC doesn't have enough cash to indemnify the regional banks, and there's not enough cash on earth to rescue the money center banks. The most alarming economic indicator is US retail gasoline sales. Demand is off 60% since 2007. The world is producing more oil and natural gas than it can use, primarily because ZIRP shoveled money into unprofitable domestic shale -- and the junk bond party is over, whether the Fed eases again or tightens a smidge. Domestic producers and oil service companies are going to default. Capital spending has already been cut, which means retrenchment and layoffs in a wide swath of our few remaining heavy industries. Deregulation and/or opening more Federal lands for oil exploration won't fix it.

I'm alert to what Brant said about war, but I think MAD will hold. It's domestic policy that worries me. This is the Land of Plenty -- and most people are plenty sore about things they don't understand. All they see is the 1%, Apple's billions parked offshore, and GE paying no Federal tax. If any of the "fair tax," or "flat tax," or national sales tax ideas gain traction, the whole economy goes poof. That's why Boehner and McConnell were unable to change anything.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The parallel with the Gilded Age is almost exact...

Wolf,

"Almost" works for me if the difference is Teddie Cruz instead of Teddy Roosevelt.

(But I have a Trump card.)

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

The parallel with the Gilded Age is almost exact, 1% versus 90 million working age people not in the workforce, subsisting on easy credit and entitlements, doing a little worse each year notwithstanding BLS "hedonic" adjustments that make 10% annual inflation disappear statistically and 25% unemployment disappear because folks fell off 99-week unemployment compensation. FDIC doesn't have enough cash to indemnify the regional banks, and there's not enough cash on earth to rescue the money center banks. The most alarming economic indicator is US retail gasoline sales. Demand is off 60% since 2007. The world is producing more oil and natural gas than it can use, primarily because ZIRP shoveled money into unprofitable domestic shale -- and the junk bond party is over, whether the Fed eases again or tightens a smidge. Domestic producers and oil service companies are going to default. Capital spending has already been cut, which means retrenchment and layoffs in a wide swath of our few remaining heavy industries. Deregulation and/or opening more Federal lands for oil exploration won't fix it.

Any country that issues its own sovereign currency and has debts only in that currency can produce and supply that currency at will to pay down any and all of those debts just as you might be able to counterfeit dollars so well you could use them to pay down your own personal debts.

This is why the entire national debt of the US is a de jure formality. De facto there is no real national debt. Zip. Other debt is another matter. Don't worry about the FDIC banks.

--Brant

[Wolf DeVoon]

De facto there is no real national debt.