The technocrats who sank the Democrats

Will somebody make this soulless asshole shut up and go away?

Larry Summers:

"It is true the economy is not fulfilling the promise many of us saw in the spring," Summers said. "I think that is a reflection of three factors. It's a reflection of the shocked confidence that came out of what was happening in Europe that raised risk premia, depressed markets, created uncertainty, and that proved to be much more virulent than most people expected. It's a reflection of the end of the inventory cycle, which had been a substantial source of tailwind leading to increased employment, increased hiring as inventories were replenished... And it's a reflection of the difficulty that firms have had in getting over the threshold and making a decision to expand their hiring, which led to lower levels of income which in turn led to lower levels of hiring."

No, you cyborg.  The economy stinks because people keep losing jobs, people aren’t getting jobs, people with jobs haven’t had raises in years, they’ve had their pay cut, they’ve had their benefits cut, and meanwhile the bills keep piling up and you and your fellow technocrats in the White House and Congress have refused to do anything significant about it!

Run that technobabble through Babelfish and you’ll find that what Summers is saying is that the System failed to self-correct.

The System!

That’s all they’ve been looking at. That’s all they see.  The System.

They don’t see the stinking economy as a disaster making the lives of millions of human beings miserable.

They see it as a systemic problem affecting and affected by technocratic elites making “reasonable” decisions designed to keep the System running.  The trouble is that some of those reasonable decisions have had undesirable results that have harmed the efficient functioning of the System.

The way Summers and the other technocrats see it hiring---that is people getting jobs---is a cause leading to a desired effect, the recovery of the System’s functionality.

Here, where human beings live and work people getting jobs is supposed to be the object.  If the System isn’t creating jobs, the System needs to be junked.

It gets worse:

"On average, the economy forms about 1.5 million family units each year," Summers said. "Housing starts are running at four or five hundred thousand. That's a natural economic response to the kind of inventory that exists. That's a reflection of the fact that family formation slows in more difficult times. But people aren't going to live with their parents forever. Family formation will come back to normal and indeed will catch up to reflect the delays that have taken place."

Who wrote this robot’s software?

The economy doesn’t form families.  Families form the economy.

Technically, you can put it the way Summers puts it.  But that’s the horror of it.  He puts it and everything technically.  It’s the way he sees things.  The problem isn’t that families are hurting .  The problem is that the System is failing to form families at the proper level of efficiency.

Therefore, there’s a glitch in the System that must be repaired.

The first impulse of the technocrats has been not to help people directly but address the glitches in the System.

I’ve said this before.

They saved the System and they’re proud of it and they think that’s all they were required to do and they want us to thank them for it.

All they’re asking is that we give them a little more time in office to tinker with the System to address the glitches in order to make the System run a little more smoothly and efficiently.

And what about us?  What are we supposed to do?

Wait.

One of President Obama's top economic advisers said Tuesday that the economy will eventually improve and that "people aren't going to live with their parents forever."

Speaking at the National Journal's Workforce of the Future conference, Larry Summers touted Democratic legislation to spur the economy and Obama's proposal to reauthorize expiring tax cuts for the middle class. He also said he took comfort in the "inherent cyclicality to economies."

I’m so glad he’s comforted by the inherent cyclicality.  It makes it so much easier for people to stand on line at the unemployment office knowing that eventually the inherent cyclicality will come to their rescue.

The economy will improve.  Eventually.  Fires burn themselves out, diseases run their course, droughts end in rain. This is Hooverism, pure and simple.  It’s what Republicans believe.  It’s what they count on.  It’s why they can be so heartless.  Things will get better, eventually.

The question is when and what are we supposed to do in the meantime?

Suff.

Tighten our belts.

Be grateful we can still pay the cable bill.

The difference between Democrats and Republicans is supposed to be that the Democrats help people out in the meantime.

The difference is supposed to be that Democrats believe that doing the things that help people out in the meantime will make the economy get better faster and stay better longer.

What we have, though, is Democrats who believe that it’s our job to sit and be patient while they tinker with the System that we all loathe and despise.

So the Democrats are running on the promise that things will get better if we sit and be patient while the Republicans are running on the promise that things will get better if we scream and yell and throw temper tantrums and project our fears and resentments on whatever Other they can paint a bulls eye on this week.

Gee, it’s no wonder we can’t wait to rush out and vote.

Comments

[wsn]

I wonder if he/they would even recognize or understand this argument put in this way.

And speaking of belt tightening - you said in that post something I don't think the administration gets:

Cutting back on your Christmas and Hanukkah gift list incites an internal argument in which you don’t know which voice inside your head is the angel’s and which is the devil’s.

Every time someone has that internal argument they have a chance to listen to the devil. Given enough chances, it will happen.

It's part of the American myth that we got out of the Great Depression because we pulled together and we as a country became stronger. Whether or not that's actually true (I wasn't around and don't know enough about the era to really say one way or the other) is besides the point. We want it to be true.

But at least back then we had leaders and politicians who were trying to figure out a way for everyone to pull together. Now, as you observe, we only have leaders and politicians who want to sit around and wait for us to figure out how to do it ourselves.

And so given all that I wonder if (assuming) we get out of this we will not emerge smaller and more willing to listen to our devils.

But, as you say, the System will be fine.

[Jason Lefkowitz]

An important related point:

It's easy for them to see economic swings as abstractions, because to them, they are abstractions. For the technocratic class there will always be work, lending their glittering personages to corporate boards and university faculties and high-rent consultancies, regardless of whether they have covered themselves so far in their career with glory or with infamy.

Larry Summers, in other words, is not worrying about whether he'll be able to get a new job when he leaves the White House. I doubt if the idea would ever even cross his mind. As a paid-up member of the technocratic class, he is insulated from such petty concerns.

This is why the statements of Summers and his fellow technocrats so often sound disconnected from reality: they experience our common reality differently than we do. We hear the economy crashing and recoil in fear at the sound; they hear the crash too, but the sound is distant, muffled by thick layers of privilege.

So it's no wonder that they can take comfort in the cyclical nature of the economy -- the cycles don't effect them. Their bases are covered no matter what the economy does.

[mac macgillicuddy]

"Be grateful we can still pay the cable bill."

Which, despite the fact that technically the "economy IS improving," more and more people cannot do.

[KLG]

C'mon guys! Clap louder! Listen to Bobby Gibbs and Joey Biden. The Obama Administration has been the Second Coming of FDR, Truman, and Johnson all put together! Get with the plan! Don't be such party poopers.

Now, where did I put my tumbrel? Somebody needs a ride.

[PurpleGirl]

Jason Lefkowitz: Spot on, 1000%.

They want me to wait for the system to self correct? Well, will they allow me to move in with them when I'm evicted because I didn't have the rent money? Will they give me the money to put my stuff in storage? To pay for storage going forward? Or am I supposed to lose everything? And I do mean everything.

[Ralph H.]

You're being too hard on Summers. Sure, he's one of those guys who's far too smart for his own good and too well-educated to connect with the rest of us, but he generally speaks truth to power and powerless alike (which has gotten him into trouble in the past). Like many of Obama's economic advisors his first concern was stabilizing the banks and beyond that he probably wanted a larger stimulus than was politically feasible. Anything this administration has been able to do on the economic front has been accomplished in the teeth of relentless GOP obstructionism, aided and abetted by the media. I wouldn't want to have a beer with Summers, but I'll usually listen to what he has to say. Not that I'll understand it, of course....

[JMG]

Obama chose as a key adviser a man who had to leave the ultimate no-lifting sweet Establishment gig, President of Harvard, because said man shot his mouth off in a particularly ignorant and worse, impolitic way. So he deserved what he got for the choice.

[PurpleGirl]

No, we aren't being hard enough on Summers and his ilk. They deserve to lose their investments and have to exist on Social Security alone like so many of us will. They deserve to lose their health insurance and financial security. Lose income and discover that they fall through all the cracks possible -- no food stamps, no housing help because you can't apply for welfare if you don't have someone who will guarantee half of your rent payment when your state will only give you $284 a month toward rent, because there are no new Section 8 vouches (Congress cut the money a while back). If I sound bitter, I am. If I sound like I want revenge on these bastards, yes I do.

[Joel Patterson]

Compare Summers' detached views with those of Marriner Eccles, FDR's key economic advisor and appointee to the Federal Reserve, in 1930, after as a banker, he'd withdrawn credit to shore up his bank:
"I awoke to find myself at the bottom of a pit without any known means of scaling its sheer sides... I saw for the first time that though I'd been active in the world of finance and production for seventeen years and knew its techniques, I knew less than nothing about its economic and social effects."
Check out Robert Reich's After Shock. That guy understands what the System is doing to people.

[moby doug]

Summers is a leading light of the Rubinista banking cabal which, by deregging the financial octopus, set the stage for the gigantic collapse/swindle/heist of the Fall of 2008. How "smart," Ralph H, was that?

Moreover, Summers, as a good Rubinista, has done little to rein in and/or the big banks SINCE the great Fall 08 swindle. So we can expect something like it to happen again. Thanks a lot, Larry!

Essentially, the Wall Street billionaires have been bleeding America's working and middle classes to death for decades. It's a war, and Larry S is NOT and never has been on the side of the common man. It's very sad, and a dreadful betrayal, that Obama, elected by a progressive landslide, named him his Economic Adviser.