WSJ NEWS ALERT:
CEOs Press Congress for Deficit Action

I disagree with this as short-sighted, unaware of the underlying dynamics and a large threat (as is Romney sad to say) to deflation…and the positive reinforcing loop that is underlying all things deleveraging.

I actually believe that a multi-faceted fed strategy to take off the bad mortgage debt (which in effect de-fuels the positive loop–albeit postponing it)…and allowing this storm to pass slowly rather than trying to fix a long cycle with short-cycle actions which are going to aggravate the long-cycle effects holds less risk then turning what is a full-blown paradigm shift into a disaster for people around the planet…!

I have switched my ideas in the last few days as Romney has spoken of firing Bernanke and replacing him with possibly the Stanford professor who would alter the current strategy which I think has the best chance to work, largely because, of what is happening in a convergence between energy and demand.

If America suddenly, and it appears so, becomes more energy independent (through no-fault of credit of OBAMA, btw–actually in spite of him and his cronies)…and we can repatriate 500 billion a year we are sending to the middle east, et al, into our own economy, making the cost of doing business here much cheaper, we’ll repatriate significant manufacturing networks back to the place where good are consumed, this time with robotics, high tech and hybrid SMART products which we are capable of creating here with large investments…fueling an already "entrained" consumption-literate public, opening the doors to significant immigration of "smart people" like Canada does, increasing our population at the low-age end by at least 10% over the next decade, we can, with Bernanke’s policies and this convergence, be positioned to restore the economic growth to long-term viability.

We will need the CORPORATIONS to do there part and stop whining about increasing healthcare benefits and payments to employees, asking everyone to deleverage, and pay some more taxes while making credit available for the purchase of long-term assets at low interest rates.

We will need the banks, financial institutions to assume a more effective role instead of lining the pockets of the 1-5% of the people who won nature’s lottery.

we can get the 15 trillion in investment needed now to do all of this and to accelerate it by offering LONG-BONDs of 50 years secured with the assets of the USA, it’s natural resources, apparently huge in many cases with minerals, which would be paid off by the orderly sale of them over time, and lease-back to ignite glocal investment for the entire system to re-equilibrate.

This would solve the long-term cycle issue without a depression that would wipe out the largest part of the middle class and set the country back too far behind the emerging and developing world, who do not have large amounts of debt.

I do not think we have to balance the budget, but we need a different kind of government rather than the wrong government we have now, and we need to deploy the largest part of the boom assets and capability on devising a new form of structured civilary, to fill the gaps that reducing our present form of government has in a pseudo profit-non-profit design that would eventually pay down the debt, the LONG-BONG ASSET holders and the current debt we have which needs to be held at low-interest rates.

We could only do this if people had the notion (derivative-like) that the USA had a long term plan, and stop with all this short-term political crap that is producing short-term thinking.

FREE MARKET philosophies can only hold up a portion of the scaffolding needed in complexity (which is the culprit) which allows fewer and fewer to manage in more complex times…we need a better design than one that sends the majority of the resources to be allocated among fewer and fewer capable people over time, as we have to fractionalize complexity in order for the average person to manage through it, leaving more and more gain for those who can navigate complexity due to NO-FAULT of their own–nature’s and nurture’s lottery.

While this might seem like a radical plan, it is no less radical than the short-sighted solution offered by greedy CEOs who are only looking in their own basket short-term for more public support for private largesse.

It is the CORPORATIONS that have gotten us into this mess by pretending they don’t have any responsibility for the consumption at all costs, profit at all costs on society mentality that drives the corporate engine around the world.

it is the banks who share in that blame for providing easy credit for people who are improperly scaffolded, thinking that it was THEIR choice to go into debt and it’s a free country, little did they know that the entire gambit was putting more and more money in the hands of those most able to profit, through no-fault of their own.

I realize this might seem like a radical position, but it is basically a simple recognition and regulation of the fact that people are irrational decision-makers, they are not created equal, therefore providing them with equal freedoms to act, usually relegates those least able to the life that is enslaved by money and credit, taking our current school loan debacle as just another example of people without inappropriate scaffolding being used to transfer money from those that have it to those that need and profiting on the margins–including those margins that relegate people to indentured slavery indirectly.

everyone doesn’t deserve the best life, that we constantly purport as the good life, the dream and the hope of the future…people deserve what is fair, and what is going to make society stronger, more peaceful and more content with the human experience as it is, but not as we dream it might be…unfortunately, there are too many of us now, and too many of us on the way, which will require significantly more scaffolding than free market economics can properly allocate.

we need a new philosophy, a new design, and a new set of measurements and scaffolding by which to guide people to the good life…and that will be the efforts of a great society…

I will provide additional detail on this set of ideas on my annual forecast update Nov 7, 2012, but wanted to get this out before the election, I believe that our best chances lie not in "restraining" the economy, and leaving it to the free market, or socializing it per se, as noted by the older socialistic ideas, but offering a third way, where combinations, and stratification of our present system can provide the best hope for our society to become a great society by recognizing differences in the face of accelerating complexity.

along those same lines, I’ll show you the way through this mess instead of the impending disaster of the 1-5% continuing to have their way with the world and producing even larger indirect transfers to the people who are least likely to be able to manage it, indenturing millions on that path, of indirectly slavery without increasing levels of happiness or success…as we trudge through the post-modern winter.

Of course, all financial disclaimers are evoked, I am not a financial advisor, I am a developmentalist and my opinions are thus skewed in that fashion, and you should seek professional help at every stage of your investment needs. <G>


mike