Jonathan M. Feldman's article, "From Warfare State to "Shadow State": MILITARISM, ECONOMIC DEPLETION, AND RECONSTRUCTION", will be coming out in the next issue of the journal Social Text, due to come out by the end of June, 2007

Jonathan M. Feldman's article, "Congress and the Iraq War Vote: A scandal that began in the 40s", has now been posted at Counterpunch.

Check out my postings at Jon Rynn's posts on Grist.

My blog is now on blogger, at http://jonrynn.blogspot.com. Thanks!

Your humble correspondent had meant to blog every day, and did for a few months, but a pending move to the Chicago area has rendered the blog very spotty. Starting Monday, March 5, there may be an occassional entry, picking up speed after March 9. Thanks for your patience, and this is hard, because I'd really like to comment on the global economic stock market roller coaster, but reality intrudes! And please read old entries, there's plenty of info there.

I didn't think I'd ever see this, but the generally conservative commentator Ben Stein (he worked for Nixon) has inadvertently pointed out that for the past several years, the U.S. corporate class has been ripping off the bottom 80% of the population with low wages, and doesn't know what to do with its ill-gotten gains (The article is called "It’s a Great Country, Especially if You’re Rich").

You see, there have been a lot of stock buybacks recently, that is, a stock purchase in which a company buys back its own stock. In 2006, the amount of stock buybacks was $325 billion, in 2005 it was $200 billion. That means that instead of investing in their companies, and in particular, instead of investing in machinery such as computers and factory equipment, they simply bought stock. According to Stein, this means a return on investment of 5%, which ain't too hot. Why are they doing this, besides some possibly semi-corrupt shenanigans designed to boost the stock and thus the value of a CEO's stock? One other hint: the top 500 corporations (the S&P 500) now hold $2.6 trillion, in cash, which means they aren't investing that either.

In the article "When it comes to innovation, geography is destiny", the N.Y.Times again points to the remarkable sets of innovations that can come from one, fairly small geographical area. In this case, Silicon Valley is highlighted, and the wonder is that it keeps coming up with new innovations, currently best-known for the iPod and Google. Here is the nub of the argument:

"Google’s astonishing rise and Apple’s reinvention are reminders that, when it comes to great ideas, location is crucial. “Face-to-face is still very important for exchange of ideas, and nowhere is this exchange more valuable than in Silicon Valley,” says Paul M. Romer, a professor in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford who is known for studying the economics of ideas.

An article in the N.Y. Times today, entitled "In Niger, Trees and Crops Turn Back the Desert" is a nice piece of positive news in an ordinarily grim region of the world. Without any huge governmental effort or program, the farmers of an area of Niger decided to stop clearing trees from their fields and let them grow instead. The result is a large increase in food and a decrease in desertification.

The logic is described in this section:

"“The benefits are so many it is really astonishing,” Dr. Larwanou said. “The farmers can sell the branches for money. They can feed the pods as fodder to their animals. They can sell or eat the leaves. They can sell and eat the fruits. Trees are so valuable to farmers, so they protect them.”

...or just "overheating"? Apparently, there is a roaring debate about whether India is overheating in the conventional sense, that is, growth is increasing so fast that the "factors of production", that is, capital and labor, are in shorter and shorter supply, and so there will be a bad inflation. As in the U.S. and any other country, if growth is matched by higher productivity, then more and more goods can be pumped out of the economy, so that even as demand soars (because more people are employed in good jobs) output keeps pace, and inflation doesn't.

Now, the global problem, from a long-term perspective, and one that is central to this blog, is: will the assault on the biosphere, in the form of using up fossil fuels, global warming, destruction of ecosystems, and, most overlooked, the precarious state of the global agricultural system, lead to a long-term global shrinking of output? If it does, economists will simply use aggregate macroeconomics jargon to cover this up; you'll hear phrases like "supply bottlenecks" or "failed harvests" or "disruptions", as if the problems where temporary.

Incredibly, the New York Times gave op-ed space to Gar Alperovitz, one of our most innovative thinkers. Alperovitz has long been interested in economic democracy and local power. In his op-ed piece, "California Split" (might be behind subscriber wall), he discusses the idea that a continent is too large an area for a single political unit, as the U.S. is today. He advocates, if not breakup, "regional devolution", something proposed by Kennan long ago:

"Kennan proposed that devolution, “while retaining certain of the rudiments of a federal government,” might yield a “dozen constituent republics, absorbing not only the powers of the existing states but a considerable part of those of the present federal establishment.”..A new wave of regional devolution could also build on the more than 200 compacts that now allow groups of states to cooperate on environmental, economic, transportation and other problems."

In the N.Y Times article, "Gaping reminders of aging and crumbling pipes" (2/8/2007), William Yardley lets loose with this indictment:

"Local and state officials across the country say thousands of miles of century-old underground water and sewer lines are springing leaks, eroding and — in extreme cases — causing the ground above them to collapse. Though there is no master tally of sinkholes, there is consensus among civil engineers and water experts that things are getting worse.

The Environmental Protection Agency has projected that unless cities invest more to repair and replace their water and sewer systems, nearly half of the water system pipes in the United States will be in poor, very poor or “life elapsed” status by 2020. "

...called "How to create an efficient fossil-fuel-free economy" (say that fast three times), in which yours truly sallies forth on the economic reconstruction of society...or maybe it was a global makeover...in any case, please feel free to comment by emailing me at jonrynn@economicreconstruction.com.

In today's New York Times, in an article entitled "Once a Dream Fuel, Palm Oil May Be an Eco-Nightmare ", we find a succinct statement of this slow-moving disaster:

"...last year, when scientists studied practices at palm plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia, this green fairy tale began to look more like an environmental nightmare.

Rising demand for palm oil in Europe brought about the clearing of huge tracts of Southeast Asian rainforest and the overuse of chemical fertilizer there.

An earlier blog entry I asked what other cities are becoming walkable, or at least livable without a car. In today's N.Y. Times Op-Ed page in the article "The City that never walks", Robert Sullivan reports that New York City is becoming less walkable while other cities are becoming more walkable: " as far as pedestrian issues go, New York is acting more like the rest of America, and the rest of America is acting more like the once-inspiring New York."

One of the reasons for more cars is that "the city is the new suburb. Families have returned to the New York that was abandoned years ago for lawns and better public schools. They’ve brought with them a love of cars. A new study by Bruce Schaller, a local transportation consultant, shows that half the drivers in Manhattan are from the city — and that more city residents than suburbanites drive to work every day. " I would have thought that one of the reasons people want to move into the city is because they don't need a car, they can just walk. Maybe they are such car zombies that they think that the meaning of entertainment being closely packed together means that their car trips should be shorter? In every city, being close to the downtown walkable district is more expensive -- isn't the attraction the walkability? or people want both walkability and to use their cars, which is of course going to kill off the walkability?

The decline of the dollar is supposed to help correct the American trade deficit, but according to a story in the NY Times ("Trade Deficit Stubbornly Defies the Dollar's Slide ", January 27, 2007), that is not happening:

"But, so far, the dollar's slide has not helped enough. Although the dollar has lost a lot of ground against many of the world's major currencies -- including the euro, the British pound and the Canadian dollar -- the nation's trade imbalance with the world has continued to rise, reaching $702 billion in the first 11 months of 2006, on track to easily outstrip the $717 billion of 2005 and set another record."

In today's NY Times, Paul Krugman (may be behind subscriber wall) ends his discussion of global warming policy with this statement:

"But there’s still a huge gap between what obviously should be done and what seems politically possible. And I don’t know how to close that gap. "

This is the third of such statements I have collected, here being the other two, a little more articulate:

"The maximum that seems politically feasible still falls far short of the minimum that would be effective in solving the crisis" -- Al Gore, from Policy Address at NYU, September 18, 2006.

...or at least, one of the reasons (besides a better job).

Your loyal blogger (well, I wasn't too loyal last week, I'm kinda busy with the move) is a member of a family of four: a lovely wife plus two lovely boys plus me. Last year, after the price of our 900 square foot apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan went up to $2,700, we tried to find a cheaper place. The upper west side is very nice in that 1) you don't need a car, 2) there are lots of people walking around, almost 24 hours, 3) there's lots of public transportation, 4) you can shop by walking a few minutes, 5) there are goods schools and 6) you don't need a car. The only problem: it's expensive as hell for housing. The only way that any family making less than at least $120,000 or even $150,000 can live there is because 1) they bought awhile ago, 2) they rented a long time ago, and they are rent controlled because their rent is less than $2,000, after which the roof gets blown off on rent increases, or 3) they lied to their landlord about having a family and they are stuffing themselves into a studio or one bedroom. We tried number 3, although we didn't lie, and no landlord would rent a one bedroom to us for the required $2500 (maybe just as well).

On the right hand side of this site, in the section entitled "Recent Articles", I have posted a new article, "Why the sky is falling and how to save the U.S. and the planet" (I figured I might as well push the title to the limit; limits to title?). Anyway, I will update this from time to time, this is version .7. Any comments would be appreciated.

Overheard by Hazel Henderson, "Wealth as opposed to Illth", "Goods as opposed to Bads". Apparently illth was coined by John Ruskin in the 19th century. Henderson puts together an alternative quality of life, counter-mainstream national accounting system. She's also putting together a TV series called "Ethical economics", which has a website. Henderson has been toiling as a sustainable economist for decades.

There is also a Herman Daly es

In "Is Energo-Fascism In Your Future?", Michael T. Klare lets loose with another insightful overview of the global political economy. In the book "Blood and Oil", he gave one of the best analyses of the box that the neocons were in before they invaded Iraq, that in order to continue to have an oil-based economy, they had decided that it was necessary to insure that the oil would always flow, and to prevent nonoil alternatives from appearing.

Klare defines "Energo-fascism, or the militarization of the global struggle over ever-diminishing supplies of energy...Either we will be compelled to participate in or finance foreign wars to secure vital supplies of energy, such as the current conflict in Iraq; or we will be at the mercy of those who control the energy spigot...or sooner or later we may find ourselves under constant state surveillance, lest we consume more than our allotted share of fuel or engage in illicit energy transactions"

In "What $1.2 Trillion Can Buy" by David Leonhardt in the 1/17/2007 edition of the N.Y. Times, the graphic accompanying the article compares the annual cost of the Iraq war -- $200 billion -- with a few other annual figures:

$100 billion -- Universal health care for all pepole in the U.S. without it
$35 billion -- Universal preschool, half-days for 3-year olds and full days for 4-year olds
$10 billion -- Carrying out the 9/11 Commission recomendations (also the figure for not losing Afghanistan)
$6 billion -- Annual cancer research budget

News flash! Someone concerned about global warming has actually mentioned the idea of...mass transit! In "Wacky Weather", Glen Barry states:

"Many rightly do what they can individually, but are discouraged by the fact that many necessary changes like widespread public transportation, caps on emissions, and universal adoption of a low-carbon energy economy require societal changes beyond an individual's immediate grasp. Goddamn it, snap out of it! "

Right on! First of all, to quote The Terminator 3, "Anger is better than despair.

An excellent article in Counterpunch by Ismael Hossein-Zadeh ties the interests of the U.S. military-industrial complex (MIC) to both the reasons for invading Iraq and the reasons for not leaving Iraq. As the author points out, since 9/11/2001 the U.S. military budget has increased by 50%, not even including the Iraq/Afghanistan wars.

He writes: "At the heart of the reluctance to withdraw from Iraq lies the profiteers' unwillingness to give up further fortunes and spoils of war...opponents of social spending are using the escalating Pentagon budget (in combination with drastic tax cuts for the wealthy) as a cynical and roundabout way of redistributing national income in favor of the wealthy. As this combination of increasing military spending and decreasing tax liabilities of the wealthy creates wide gaps in the Federal budget, it then justifies the slashing of non-military public spending-a subtle and insidious policy of reversing the New Deal reforms, a policy that, incidentally, started under President Ronald Reagan. "

This article comes from our friend Colin Wright, at the web site eatthestate.org

First few paragraphs:

"It is no exaggeration to say that we are facing the largest human crisis since at least the nuclear arms race. Of course, instead of building up nuclear warheads, we are building up carbon dioxide.

But because global warming is a slow, drawn out affair, we are the proverbial sedentary frog in the warming pot. We are programmed to respond to immediate, physical needs and threats. Future-planning, race issues aside, is not our strong point (as Jared Diamond warned us in Collapse).

Just heard an interview by Thom Hartmann of Chris Hedges, author of the just-released "American Fascists: The Christian right and the war on America", talking about "dominionists" who want a theocratic state in the U.S. Dominionists are similar to the Salafi tendency in Islam, out of which Al-Qaeda emerged as a violent branch, who believe that sovereignty does not rest with the people, but with God, and that the laws created by people are blasphemous, because only God's law is real law. They therefore undermine the whole idea of a state, which was first codified in 1648 as a result of a series of...religious wars! Including the 30 years war, which had just ended, resulting in the death of perhaps a third of the population of the German states.

Friend of the website Olivier gave us this link to a Bloomberg article on the state of the art for geothermal energy, which has the huge advantage of being available all the time, therefore not requiring storage solutions as in the case of solar and wind energy. Unfortunately, there is only a tiny amount being generated now, and most experts don't think much can come from geothermal.

However, it should be noted that oil, coal, and natural gas are not just ancient solar energy, but geothermal energy, because the Earth had to bake and pressurize fossil fuels to make them usable.

About a century ago, the Republicans were in control of the White House and the Congress, and were arrogantly acting as if they owned the place (this comes from an excellent book by Walter Karp). The public wanted tariffs, which were quite high, to come down, but just to show them who was boss (and to make some of their benefactors richer), they increased the tariff. The next election they were slaughtered, and, much as today, it was not because the Democrats were so much better, they just weren't the Republicans.

Just so, George W. Bush, it seems to this observer, is going to escalate the Iraqi occupation just to show the American public who is boss. "You want out of there?", I can almost hear him thinking, "well, I'm going to go further in! ha ha! I can do what I want, and you can't stop me!"

In its January 2007 cover story, "Amazon: Forest to farms, battle to stop the land grab", the National Geographic gives an excellent overview of the good and bad going on there. On the good side, it seems that the indigenous people of many parts of the Amazon have been given enough rights, and I suppose have enough resources, to serve as a break on the invasion of the Amazon much further. On the bad/good side, the bad news is that a very activist nun named Dorothy Stang was brutally murdered for trying to prevent the destruction, and for helping small-scale sustainable farmers there (apparently such farmers do not do long-term damage to the forests).

In "Paying in pollution for energy hunger", the N.Y.Times continues its excellent series on energy, this time with a look at the booming business of dirty diesel generators, mostly sold by that enthusiastic defacto supporter of global warming, China. These things are so dirty that even a coal-fired electrical plant would be a great improvement, but it turns out that some rural areas, as in India, have actually de-evolved to a state where they are not even on the electrical grid. So as the article puts it, if there is a choice between having TVs and clean air, TVs win -- as it does in the industrialized world, of course. People is people.

This from Bob Herbert in the N.Y. Times, quoting Andrew Sum, of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston:

"There are 93 million production and nonsupervisory workers (exclusive of farmworkers) in the U.S. Their combined real annual earnings from 2000 to 2006 rose by $15.4 billion, which is less than half of the combined bonuses awarded by the five Wall Street firms for just one year."

He continues, "Fairness plays no role in this system. The corporate elite control it, and they have turned it to their ends.