Amphictyonis
21st November 2010, 09:19
http://www.alternet.org/story/9278/seeing_the_system%3A_alan_greenspan_and_intentiona l_unemployment/?page=entire
From 2000 when Greenspan had a moment of honesty^
The good thing for those of us who are radicals however, is that every now and then we get a little help in proving the larger point from the most unlikely of sources, and this week was no exception. For as I write this, Americans have just been told that we must brace for a ratcheting up of interest rates: three times in one day as we enter May, and another likely hike in the middle of the month. And why? Well, as Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan explains, the economy is too healthy, unemployment has fallen too low, and wages -- God forbid -- have started to inch upward for too many, thereby raising the specter of dreaded price hikes. As such, it has now become necessary according to the worldview of the Fed -- one that is shared by all major players in both the Democratic and Republican parties and certainly by their Presidential candidates -- to raise the cost of borrowing money, thereby cooling off the expansion and hiring spree, and perhaps even nudging unemployment numbers back up a bit.
But wait: what was that? Intentionally slowing down job and wage growth? Intentionally doing something to push unemployment up -- and thus, put folks out of work? Exactly right, and thus, it is Alan Greenspan who has demonstrated this week the accuracy of radical analysis as to the nature of the economy under which we labor and live. This former devotee of the market-worshipping, pseudo-intellectual cultist, Ayn Rand, now demonstrating clearly that pain and suffering, low wages and poverty are not the result of individual moral failings or a decline in the Protestant work ethic, but rather, are built-in to the nature of modern capitalism. Millions and millions of people in capitalist gulags, trapped in a dehumanizing profit making machine- a deeper level of exploitation that denies them the 'honor' of exploitation under wage slavery. Where do you think the dispossessed workers end up? Both from outsourcing and from structural unemployment necessary for profits? 21'st century chattel slavery. They end up in private for profit prisons.
The next ploy Obama is going to pull is a push by the FED for full employment. When we start seeing this in the Media we need to immediately call bullshit and not let our fellow working class fall for it. It's just another sham. Capitalism cannot survive actual full employment. I'm not into predictions but I see this as his (the bourgeoisie's) next scam on the American people.
I'm not even sure that matters, what matters to me is younger people understand structural unemployment and the effects it has on our society (after seeing a poster here lambast 'throw away' workers and drug addicts.)
From 2000 when Greenspan had a moment of honesty^
The good thing for those of us who are radicals however, is that every now and then we get a little help in proving the larger point from the most unlikely of sources, and this week was no exception. For as I write this, Americans have just been told that we must brace for a ratcheting up of interest rates: three times in one day as we enter May, and another likely hike in the middle of the month. And why? Well, as Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan explains, the economy is too healthy, unemployment has fallen too low, and wages -- God forbid -- have started to inch upward for too many, thereby raising the specter of dreaded price hikes. As such, it has now become necessary according to the worldview of the Fed -- one that is shared by all major players in both the Democratic and Republican parties and certainly by their Presidential candidates -- to raise the cost of borrowing money, thereby cooling off the expansion and hiring spree, and perhaps even nudging unemployment numbers back up a bit.
But wait: what was that? Intentionally slowing down job and wage growth? Intentionally doing something to push unemployment up -- and thus, put folks out of work? Exactly right, and thus, it is Alan Greenspan who has demonstrated this week the accuracy of radical analysis as to the nature of the economy under which we labor and live. This former devotee of the market-worshipping, pseudo-intellectual cultist, Ayn Rand, now demonstrating clearly that pain and suffering, low wages and poverty are not the result of individual moral failings or a decline in the Protestant work ethic, but rather, are built-in to the nature of modern capitalism. Millions and millions of people in capitalist gulags, trapped in a dehumanizing profit making machine- a deeper level of exploitation that denies them the 'honor' of exploitation under wage slavery. Where do you think the dispossessed workers end up? Both from outsourcing and from structural unemployment necessary for profits? 21'st century chattel slavery. They end up in private for profit prisons.
The next ploy Obama is going to pull is a push by the FED for full employment. When we start seeing this in the Media we need to immediately call bullshit and not let our fellow working class fall for it. It's just another sham. Capitalism cannot survive actual full employment. I'm not into predictions but I see this as his (the bourgeoisie's) next scam on the American people.
I'm not even sure that matters, what matters to me is younger people understand structural unemployment and the effects it has on our society (after seeing a poster here lambast 'throw away' workers and drug addicts.)