The Clinton 90s Considered Part 2

    As I owe you guys a post here it goes. http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2011/12/clinton-90s-consdiered.html

    How do we assess the Clinton 90s? I think we give due credit but not over credit. This is important as as I suggested in post 1 listed above, it seems the Obama Democrats have largely lived under his shadow and some of the lessons learned were the wrong ones-like that budget deficits are the path to economic growth. As Stiglitz shows this was largely accidental and unrepeatable.

    While some may give Clinton too much credit there are no shortage of liberals who give him very little credit and see him as the liquidator of liberalism. This is not implausible as you can argue that "the end of welfare as we know it" was only possible under Clinton and that Republicans were more successful in liquidating the welfare state in the Clinton 90s than the Reagan 80s even.

   It is important to keep in mind though, Stiglitz's point ("The Roaring 90s") that Presidents play the hand they've been dealt. In recent years I don't know what's come over me but I've become something of a Nixonphile. I know, as a liberal Democrat I find myself more and more coming to the realization that Nixon really was our last liberal President as many liberals and leftists have quipped-from Noam Chomsky to Slavoj Zizek.

   It turns out there's a whole cottage industry of liberals who have discovered belatedly the virtues of Nixon.

   http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2011/10/mr-we-could-use-president-like-richard.html

   http://books.google.com/books?id=EGotj0CmbiwC&pg=PA329&lpg=PA329&dq=nixon+savings+and+loans&source=bl&ots=SVHsOxRTTJ&sig=Fm8CXriC_GOeUgGPzyo-UFuftc4&hl=en&ei=fAW6TvnVCcbcgQf6nujgCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=nixon%20savings%20and%20loans&f=false

   It's easy to hold up Clinton-and Obama-to Nixon and point out that the latter's policies were much more liberal. Yet this is more the fact that as liberals we are looking back nostalgically on a more liberal age. As we see from this year with Newt Gingrich running against himself in 1994 when he advocated the healthcare mandate in a conservative age everyone in both parties keeps getting more conservative just as in Nixon's age-the tail end of a liberal age, even conservative Republicans were much more activist than even today's liberals.

   In the comments to yesterday's Part 1, Foppe said this: "The surpluses weren't due to dumb luck, they were due to asset bubble blowing, and a careful start (at that point fairly modest) of the housing bubble."

   "Also, I would recommend you don't trust Stiglitz's accounts too much. He's not bad per se, but he's still got ideological blinders on. For a longer-term perspective, I'd really recommend David Harvey's The Enigma of Capital. "

   While I myself am not a Marxist-and David Harvey clearly is, it is true that this is a good book. I have read much Marxism staring with Marx himself, I'll read anyone provided they can help me better understand the fiscal and monetary world. While I am not anti-capitalist-though I am anti-Laissez Faire-it would be shortsighted indeed to limit myself only to those who agree with me.

   Who knows, maybe there are unique insights than can only come from a theory that explicitly assumes capitalism must be ended as opposed to one that thinks it is all things being equal the optimum system, though not necessarily so.

   In browsing Harvey last night he did have some interesting thoughts, like the idea that the current stage of
capitalism with an inhuman face" was begun due to the labor shortages Capital suffered in the late 60s. So while liberals like myself look back on that age as the optimum system-"capitalism with a human face" there may have been pressures that necessarily threatened it.

  Still today the problem is as Harvey says the opposite-there is no labor shortage today, to the contrary Capital is too strong, for its own good. With labor so weakened there is no effective demand for Capital's products. Can Capital do what the U.S. did after WWII and deliberately strengthen a potential adversary-as the U.S. strengthened Western Europe and Japan?

  If only this were possible-if not Labor may strengthen itself on its own as it indeed is making some steps toward with the rise of Occupy Wall Street.