My apologies for the light updating (although not so light as Digby... what's he up to?) but it's been largely due to low access to computers from which I can properly update.

(Either multiple windows aren't allowable, which means that linking is a severe hassle, or the computer simply doesn't run Blogger properly. Or it uses Netscape 4.7, which is by far the worst problem of the three. Yecch.)

Still, I did want to address one comment that was made over at Talking Points Memo, which is this idea that some have made that attacks on neo-conservatism are actually Anti-Semitic. In a word, this is ludicrous, no matter how you define the word "Semitic". If you're referring to the genetically related ethnic group, then it's a complete non-starter, as political beliefs have squat to do with race/ethnicity. If you're talking about adherents of the Jewish religion, then that doesn't make sense either, because there's no reason why anyone Jewish would adhere to a particular political creed any more than anyone else. If you're talking about some sort of cultural nexus of the two, then that doesn't make sense either, because there's no connection I can possibly see between Strauss-influenced conservatism and Jewish beliefs, culture, and doctrine.

(Indeed, Straussian neo-conservatism might be considered as threatening to Jewish minorities, as it is through liberal concepts of minority protection and individual (and collective) rights that minorities are protected within modern liberal democracies. I'm no expert on Strauss, though, so I may be off on that.)

The only reason one can possibly bring forward for this is that because many neo-conservatives are Jewish, those who are criticizing one are criticizing the other. It fails, however, both for the reasons mentioned above and the simple problem that it would be uselessly ineffectual as criticism. As I've said earlier, although the set "Jewish" and the set "Neo-Conservative" overlap, you'd be wasting enormous time and energy attacking the "Neo-Conservative" set in order to attack the "Jewish" set. You'd be ticking off conservatives and leaving everybody else somewhat befuddled as to the point of the attacks. Why bother, when one could simply attack Jewish people? As many, many far right wing people do, something ignored too often nowadays?

Heck, what was that quote about Dubya saying that the first thing he's going to say to Jewish supporters is that they're all going to hell? Taking potshots at Wolfowitz's policy is pretty pale compared to that.

These sorts of transparent attempts to turn political critique into racism have not been accepted when aimed at the right by the left. Why on earth they think they can get away with it in reverse is beyond me.

Paul Krugman's column on Saturday (it can be found here, at the Unofficial Krugman archive), has prompted a lot of debate and discussion, but one of the better discussions I've found is over at Bradford DeLong's message board, where the various aspects of (and solutions to) a liquidity trap have been analyzed and dissected.

What interests me the most about this situation is not that the Bush tax cut will be near-useless for pulling out of any such trap. That was obvious. It's that the apparent way out is for governments to somehow force up demand. Various solutions for this were proposed in the discussion, but some of the most interesting include environmental efficiency measures, connecting the "last mile to the home" with fibre optics, and various other regulatory boosts to demand, as corporations (and individuals) spend in order to get "up to spec".

(One person even suggested that maybe there should be a large-scale migration to HDTV- while interesting, it's not exactly justifiable in any way other than as a boost to consumption.)

This may put the United States in a unique situation. It means that the normal rules for "fiscal prudence" have been utterly reversed. The sort of affinity to governmental incentives and increased regulation that is usually painted as the reason why Democrats shouldn't be trusted with the economy is now precisely the thing that the economy may need. That doesn't mean the regulations and incentives should be pushed without thought as to their economic impact, but it does mean that when Mr. Bush is finally removed, the Democrat that replaces him will have a unique opportunity to employ spending to improve not only the economy, but everything else about the United States as well. Environmental spending, infrastructure spending, increased aid to the least fortunate, education spending... all the things that are normally cut to ribbons in the name of "responsibility" will be, instead, the salvation of the economy.

Come to think of it, this may be why the Republicans have been so vocal about tax cuts lately. After all, there are two ways to get out of a recession or slowdown- tax cuts and properly managed spending. The latter, however, is inimical to their entire worldview, as to forgo the idea of cuts as a solution to all problems would also bust the Republican coalition wide open. I imagine that the advice that the Bush administration and other Republicans have received is very similar to what I mentioned above, but any attempt to do it would not only ruin their rhetoric, but place them in a vice versa situation regarding Roosevelt's "false republicans and real Republicans", where the Democrats can easily reclaim their legitimacy and constituencies. Worse than that, it could possibly be the ruin of the Republican party- even without the breakdown of the coalition, the claim to greater financial responsibility that is the bedrock of Republican electability would be shown to be a lie. Supply-side economics would also be thoroughly discredited in the minds of the populace as well, as they get to discover that spending works just as well as the tax cuts. They'd be, in a word, screwed.

So, in essence, they have to do something, and if that something isn't tax cuts the Republican party will end up marginalized at best. They've made their bed, and have to lie in it. It's odd, actually, because most people (including myself) were under the impression that they deliberately chose tax cuts. I wonder whether that's true. I wonder whether or not the problem is that they're trapped, politically and economically.

It's unfortunate, though. They've stepped into the trap, but it's the American people that will feel its teeth.

Hmm... not sure whether it's the computers I'm using, Blogger, Blogspot, or something else, but I'm not getting the site to show up. If anybody can see this, can they email me?

(It's probably due to the new Blogger that they're rolling out. )

Edit: well, at least one person can see it. Must just be my bad luck.

Perhaps in answer to his critics (or, more likely, simply because he sees the issue as pertinent right now) Paul Krugman has written a piece about the possibility of a liquidity trap, and the danger of deflation. This isn't new, of course... explaining the idea of the liquidity trap was the main idea behind several of his Slate articles and featured in more than a few of his books... but it's always useful to see it laid out in a forum as high-profile as the Times.

The key idea behind the piece is that the United States' economy now looks like the Japanese economy of the mid-90's. This is a huge problem:

In fact, it's striking how gradually Japan's catastrophe unfolded. When the stock bubble of the 1980's burst, Japan's economy didn't fall off a cliff. By and large the economy continued to grow, if slowly, and the nation didn't have a severe recession until 1998. But year after year, Japan underperformed, growing less than its potential. Though the Japanese government tried to stimulate the economy using the usual tools — deficit spending, interest rate cuts — it was never enough. By 1995 or so the economy had slid into a liquidity trap; by the late 1990's it had entered into a deflationary spiral.

Our own situation is strikingly similar in some ways to that of Japan a decade ago. Like Japan circa 1993 or 1994, the United States is now facing the aftermath of a huge stock market bubble — the Nikkei and the Standard and Poor's 500 both tripled in the five years before their respective peaks.

Also like Japan, we face a problem not of sharp downturn but of persistent underperformance — an economy that grows, but too slowly to prevent rising unemployment and falling capacity utilization.

What's different is that we have Japan as a cautionary example. Is forewarned forearmed?

The key to understanding the situation is that concept of "underperformance". It's not that either the Japanese economy then or the American economy now is failing to perform, or to grow. The key problem is that productivity gains (normally so welcome) are outstripping the efforts of economic actors to take advantage of them. It's kind of like the old cartoon cliche of a fast racecar zipping along, with the driver's body hanging back, holding on only to the steering wheel. Sure, he's still moving along, but it's only a matter of time before it just becomes too much, and the car leaves him behind. With that in mind, it becomes apparent that the political debate largely misses the point, and (as Prof. Krugman points out) ignores the necessity of dealing with the situation if and when things go in a direction that hadn't been planned. Sure, it's probable that things will be ok, but the question is whether or not the unplanned will sink things.

As Prof. Krugman said, "Like the Fed, I hope that [deflation] doesn't happen. But hope is not a plan."

Figures. I wrote a long post yesterday, and the thing crashed on me as I tried to post it, and didn't have time to rewrite it. Ah well.

The post in question was about economic nationalism. Several sources I've read recently (including CNN, and the Washington Post) seem to imply either explicitly or implicitly that the current economic weakness in the United States is partially due to other countries "taking away American jobs". Whether or not the accusation is made directly by the media or as quotations from "another source", there's little doubt that the meme is out there, and it's more than a little disturbing. I had thought that that particular interpretation of events was pretty much dead, but it would appear that economic xenophobia returns reliably whenever the economy is weak. It happened in the early 90's, and it's happening now.

The difference now, though, is the presence of its political counterpart. While the question of whether "everything changed" after the 9/11 attacks is under constant debate, what has certainly changed is the level of overt nationalism in American political culture. This is worrisome in itself, and has lead to the spectacle of what can only be described as "bottom-up" censorship. Those that question American culture, American politics, or American leadership often become the targets of a barrage of criticism (if not outright hatred) that aids the Bush administration (and the cause of nationalism) tremendously. One need only look at the reaction to France for its opposition to the American invasion of Iraq; it's striking that a country became demonized for its opposition to a pre-emptive war that many Americans were leery about before the easy victory and all-pervasive "liberation" spin convinced them that it was for the best, and that objectors were sympathetic to dictatorship. It has turned the American body politic towards an "us vs. them" sort of viewpoint, intolerant of criticism and unpleasant ideas.

Economic nationalism, however, could make this even worse. Even at the height of political xenophobia, the simple fact that the United States needs and benefits from trade with other countries can do a lot to dampen down this sort of distrust. If other countries are seen as economic competitors and political opponents, however, then there is little to tie the United States with other countries except their common humanity... which isn't exactly a popular concept nowadays. (Shared political systems, while seemingly a cause for common understanding, aren't that useful either- witness the opposition to the thoroughly democratic Canadian, French, and German governments for listening to the will of their citizenry, and the reaction to the Turks can be added in for good measure).

This combination of economic isolationism and political unilateralism could (and quite likely will) lead the American population to a sort of mercantilist viewpoint, where the key idea in trade is "beating the other guy"... turning into economics into the sort of zero-sum game that most economists could never take seriously. There's no way that the United States could or would become autarkic, but it's quite possible that it will start connecting the political with the economic, only trading with countries that it sees as allies, and cutting off ties to countries that are seen as political "competitors". This could be disastrous.

One example I can think of showing why this would be disasterous would be China. It is definitely an economic threat from a zero-sum perspective- it is "taking jobs away from Americans" at a quicker rate than any number of Mexican "Maquiladoras" and is unlikely to move to western salary levels anytime soon. It is also a political threat- it is home to a hostile political system, is a regional threat to traditional allies Taiwan and Japan, and loudly defends the very concept of national sovereignty that the United States is now so profoundly and absolutely hostile towards. The old Clintonian way of looking at things would be to acknowledge their political opposition while also acknowledging their economic cooperation, with the hope that things will improve with "capitalization". What would happen, however, if a Chinese action prompted a Cuba-like economic pullout of American interests, prompted by economic nationalism? It would turn China into a serious threat overnight, seemingly reconfirming U.S. conceptions. They'd have a point, too.. the Japanese and Taiwanese would sense the threat and call for help immediately, prompting at the very least a regional cold war. That would quickly turn Southeast and East Asia into another Middle East. Nobody wants that, but we may end up there.

How to solve this? Not sure, except to remind people that trade isn't a zero-sum game; that economic nationalism and xenophobia are bad ideas that create worse circumstances. It also shows once again that the United States cannot abandon the multilateral political institutions that shape and support the world's economy and political landscape. It's not just that they're relevant. It's not just that ignoring them puts one in an insoluble ethical and moral dilemma (as I mentioned below). It's that without them, the world becomes a scary, dangerous, and violent place for everybody that no amount of arms can contend with. The United States is no exception.

he mass graves found in Iraq are troubling, if not surprising. As others have pointed out, we've always known that Saddam killed a lot of people, and throughout much of that time he was doing it with the implicit or explicit blessings of the United States...and, to be fair, much of the west, especially during the Iran-Iraq war.

There is, however, a paradox at the core of the massive coverage of this situation. The terrible thing about mass graves and the hidden slaughter that prompts their usage is that they aren't either a new or exclusive thing. There are, no doubt, mass graves on every continent in the world, with the possible exception of North America. Certainly the South American rightist dictatorships that the United States backed in their fight against Communism left their countries riddled with them, and the Khmer Rouge were infamous for their pyramids of skulls. The only way that people heard about these travesties was, maybe, through some sort of leftist agitator. Therein lies the paradox- these mass graves are being used to justify the historically unique intervention of the United States by the supposedly unique evil of the Iraqi regime, yet the existence of these graves only shows that there was nothing unique about Saddam. His evil was a sadly common one.

Saddam was indeed the "tinpot dictator" that those opposed to his media transformation into Hitler reincarnated called him. He didn't appear to have much in the way of WMDs, and his megalomaniacal tendencies aren't exactly unique. It reminds us, however, that that term carries with it a whole series of horrors that a lot of people in the west are unfamiliar with, and that everybody else should be.

So the question is, what is to be done? (Ironically enough, that was the name of one of Lenin's best known books, and you know how well that turned out.) It is entirely illogical and devious to attempt to employ mass graves as an ex-post-facto justification for intervention, because the point is to prevent such things in the first place. By attempting to employ them (and the other horrors of dictatorship) as sole justification from the get-go, however, intellectual honesty implies that if its justification in one situation, it's justification in any other.

This drops Bush (and his supporters) right back into the "why Saddam" quandry. It prompts a choice- either intervene anywhere where mass graves and the like exist, or don't intervene at all. Choosing to intervene in one area and not another may grant someone the responsibility for ending horror in one area, but also carries with it the responsibility for continuing it in another. Yet it's impossible to intervene everywhere. Without some other form of justification, then, America is caught in a terrible and impossible quandry, where it decides who should live and who should die. Before this current war, that justification was national interest, but the intervention in Iraq is only barely in the national interests of the United States- it could (and likely has) prompted more terrorist attacks, bolster the cause of Islamism, and create a divided country at the center of the middle east. WMD was supposed to be the justification now, but that's come up empty. Multilateralism and respect for national sovereignty can be used as rules of thumb as to what's acceptable and what isn't, but that's been thrown out the window.

So the next time someone is "disappeared", the question will hang in the air.

"Why them, and not us"?

Well, unfortunately, computer problems are once again plaguing me. (This time it appears to be the monitor: the picture that once spanned the whole screen suddenly switched to a horizontal box about three inches high, then merely a bright horizontal line).

This will mean that I will have to update from other sites. (I'll still be updating, but turnaround time will be a little slow for comments threads and the like.)

One bit of news I saw was that the U.S. WMD inspectors are close to pulling out of Iraq, after having their hopes of finding WMDs pretty thoroughly dashed. No surprise here- the quick switch from a "removing a threat" argument to the "liberate the people" argument already hinted that they weren't expecting to find anything, and this would appear to be pretty clear proof that this has taken place. Honestly, I doubt this will change many minds. Those who were convinced that Saddam needed to be removed are now opening admitting it was a figleaf, and those who were never convinced will feel justified, but are up against the changed justification.

Still, it's something for people to remember when Bush supporters start crowing about Saddam. As RonK pointed out, the lack of WMDs not only vindicates Blix, but implies that what the U.S. did was directly against international law and the charter of the United Nations, as Iraq had not violated any of the resolutions regarding WMDs. (The whole "they didn't provide information" bit was always dodgy, and now looks worse.) Coupled with the news that the U.S. and U.K. are now classifying themselves as "occupying powers" in their new resolution (and, therefore, the lie that was "liberation" being brought to life) I imagine that those in the international community that distrusted the U.S. before will now consider them about as reliable as a Yugo.

Maybe less so.