topic by
real watcher
7/3/2002 (7:38) |
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Larry Kudlow -- one of the most revolting and loathosme Wall Street shills -- who has been bullish all the way down, now advocates attacking Iraq to help the US economy. Needless to say Kudow is a fanatic neoconservative Jew.
July 3, 2002
PURE EVIL
Larry Kudlow and the economics of the War Party
If you want to see the face of pure evil, cast your eyes on a recent
column in National Review Online by resident financial guru Larry
Kudlow, 'Taking Back the Market By Force.' The market is down,
he moans, and it isn't really about corporate corruption and the
Bush administration's anti-free market policies: these, we are told, are
'only partly to blame.' So, what's the problem? Not enough war!
The ongoing 'war on terrorism' isn't big enough, and too many
Americans think we aren't winning. 'There has been a big drop in the
American spirit,' according to Kudlow, and the only way to uplift it is
to embark on some 'decisive follow-through' an invasion not only
of Iraq, but potentially of the entire Middle East. Kudlow praises
Bush's recent speech on the Mideast, and suggests that the principles
touted by the President free markets, democracy, and the rule of
law be imposed at gunpoint throughout the region:
'Bush wasn't only speaking to Iraq, Iran, and Syria, but also to
Saudi Arabia, and perhaps even Egypt. But these are just more
words in this global and just war on terror. The president must now
execute and follow-through in support of these fine principles.'
If he'll only forget the American national interest, and unequivocally
take up Israel's cause in deeds as well as words, then we'd be on our
way to Nirvana, but that is only the beginning of the Kudlow Plan. It is
even more important, Kudlow thinks, to launch an immediate attack
on Iraq, because, well just because it's there: 'Americans,' he
grandly declaims, 'have never liked loose ends.' So for that reason,
tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians must die in order to satisfy the
American antipathy for 'loose ends.'
In normal times, no one outside an insane asylum would even dare to
suggest such a warped rationale for war. In the post-9/11 era, such
outbursts of homicidal madness are routinely emitted by our leading
pundits. Indeed, our warhawks seem to be in a friendly competition to
see who can come up with the most outrageously immoral arguments.
The winner of the Bloodlust Award, up until recently, has been Max
Boot, without question. Who, after all, could top his argument that we
didn't suffer enough casualties in the Afghan phase of the current
war? The same sort of monstrous moral inversion, however, is the
theme of Kudlow's piece, which essentially says that war will bring us
renewed prosperity:
'The shock therapy of decisive war will elevate the stock market by
a couple-thousand points. We will know that our businesses will
stay open, that our families will be safe, and that our future will be
unlimited. The world will be righted in this life-and-death struggle
to preserve our values and our civilization. But to do all this, we
must act.'
This, of course, is precisely what the Marxists say: that capitalism
feeds on human destruction, and top-hatted capitalists are the
merchants of death, human vultures who live off the pain and
suffering of others. Both Kudlow and the commies are wrong.
In their mutual ignorance of how markets work ? and, perhaps in
Kudlow's case, on account of a deep cynicism and real malevolence ?
the warhawks of the Right and the anti-capitalist dunderheads of the
anti-war Left have the same analysis: Kudlow and the Commies are
merely represent different sides of the same coin of doubtful value.
For the economic assumptions of both camps are equally false, based
as they are on a profound misconception of what capitalism is and
how free markets function. As Ludwig von Mises, the founder of the
'Austrian' or pure free-market school of economics, put it:
'War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or plague
brings. The earthquake means good business for construction
workers, and cholera improves the business of physicians,
pharmacists, and undertakers; but no one has for that reason yet
sought to celebrate earthquakes and cholera as stimulators of the
productive forces in the general interest.'
Surely Mises was not expressing anti-capitalist sentiments by
recognizing that war, like all human activity, is governed by the
invariable laws of the market, and that some will profit from the
spilling of human blood. The existence of what we might call the
Undertakers Lobby should hardly come as a shock to conservative
and libertarian critics of Big Government and isn't Kudlow just too
perfect as their official spokesman? We, the Merchants of Death,
recommend 'shock therapy' for a benumbed nation just what we all
need in the aftermath of 9/11. Shock us, torture us, jolt us into
prosperity! If the Marquis de Sade had founded a school of
economics, instead of writing all those obsessively long and quite
boring pornographic novels, this is the doctrine he would have
enunciated.
The Kudlow Doctrine is dead wrong, and profoundly anti-capitalist.
For war sets the stage for the eventual strangling of free markets. High
taxes, more systematic government regulations, and the massive
physical destruction of capital, including especially human capital
these are the conditions for the eradication of market mechanisms
and their replacement by the machinery of the State. The war spirit
also gives added impetus to the arguments of our latter-day
Mensheviks, the Blairites, Clintonites, and various and sundry other
Third-Wayers who argue that war means the era of Big Government is
back.
For all his talk of exporting the idea of 'free markets' to the Arab
world, it seems that Kudlow doesn't understand how economic
freedom is being threatened right here on the home front. Worse, he
doesn't seem to understand or care that the 'shock therapy' he
recommends could send world markets crashing, as Bill Powell
speculates in his Fortune piece, 'How a War With Iraq Will Change
the World.'
Powell makes the argument that the markets live in fear of Gulf War
II and its possible consequences. He points out that consumer
confidence 'fell off a cliff' during the first attack on Iraq, and
convincingly argues that the same pattern is likely to hold this time
around. He also brings up the question of cost: with Japan and the
Saudis, not to mention the Europeans, failing to write generous
checks, record federal deficits make a tax hike inevitable.
'The mother of all economic nightmares,' Powell writes, 'revolves
around oil.' While pro-American members of OPEC could easily
make up for the withdrawal of Iraqi oil from the market during the
fighting, there may not be any pro-Americans left anywhere in the
Arab world especially if Ariel Sharon has anything to say about it.
As Powell puts it:
'The oil-driven disaster would probably come only if a wider war
involving Israel prompts an Arab embargo, something angry
populations might demand and quaking Gulf governments would
accede to. Six months of oil at $50 a barrel would stick the U.S.
economy with the equivalent of a huge tax increase. As Mark Zandi,
chief economist at economy.com, points out, a mere $10 increase in
the price of oil shaves a full percentage point off of GDP. Another
oil shock may not be likely, but to dismiss it out of hand would not,
as President Bush's father used to say, be prudent. For that and
other reasons George W. Bush needs to do as his father did in 1991
and make sure the Israelis stay out of it when Saddam's remaining
Scuds take flight. But in this environment, and with Ariel Sharon as
Prime Minister, will they?'
I would argue that Israel need not be directly involved to spark a
Mideast conflagration. US military action against Iraq would
strengthen the hand of groups like Hamas and Al Qaeda
immeasurably, and the conflict would quickly become region-wide,
possibly leading to a revolutionary ultra-Islamist upsurge against the
pro-American monarchies of the Gulf, as well as in Jordan and quite
possibly Egypt. Even solidly secular Turkey would be shaken to its
foundations: for this chain of events would re-ignite their
long-simmering war against the Kurds, emboldening rebel factions to
seize their chance for independence. The possibility of 'oil shock,'
however, is not the only looming danger depressing the American
economy. There are deeper problems
.
Those faint rumblings you hear a falling dollar, the recent vote to
increase the limit on the national debt, the stock market hovering
around post-9/11 lows may be the fore-shocks of a coming
economic earthquake, if James Pinkerston is right. While everyone is
fixated on dishonest accounting practices and other forms of
corporate crookery, the real problem, he avers, is the rapidly
weakening dollar. The President can get up on his bully pulpit and
scold corporate rip-off artists to much applause, but the paying
customers have already walked out of the theater. As Pinkerton
points out:
'Maybe it's too late to avoid substantial damage, because
foreigners have reached a negative judgment about the U.S.
economy a judgment that has already eroded the value of our
money and could even cause a crash in our stock market.'
Describing the course of capital flight from the US, Pinkerton argues
that Americans have good reason to be worried. He cites a recent
Goldman Sachs study that predicts a further decline, by 8
percent,over the next year, and still the dollar will fall. If it falls far
enough, fast enough, the result could be catastrophic:
'Given the rotten state of corporate America, such a further
dollar-decline might be inevitable, and yet the Goldmanites note a
greater danger if our money loses too much too soon. Their report
recalls a brief interlude of dollar deterioration, from 1985 to 1988,
when the dollar fell by about a third. During those years, the
decline in the dollar destabilized financial markets in the United
States, and this destabilization was 'the trigger mechanism that
helped to generate the 1987 stock market crash.'
'Yikes. Remember Black Monday, Oct. 19, 1987, when the Dow
Jones Industrial Average fell 508 points 22.6 percent?'
It could happen again, says Pinkerton, although the Goldmanites
don't seem to think so. But George Soros, the man who broke the
Bank of England, now tells us he 'wouldn't be surprised' if the dollar
sinks by as much as 30 percent in a period of a few years. As
Pinkerton trenchantly points out:
'And since a one-third drop in the dollar helped trigger the '87
crash, a dollar-watching doomsayer could predict another Black
Day for the market sometime soon. In today's numbers, such a fall
would clip off about 2,000 points from the Dow. That would be
ruinous to many investors, but it's not so hard to imagine because
it's happened before.'
Sometime soon, eh? Maybe that's why Kudlow and his fellow necons
are in such a hurry to drag us into a Middle East war: they want to
start it before anyone realizes that we'll have to mortgage the future
economic health of this country well into the next century in order to
pay off mountains of debt. Such are the dubious rewards of Empire.
George W. Bush and his neocon amen corner think they are going to
launch a war of 'liberation' against Iraq, and even the entire Arab
world, but they may face yet another Pearl Harbor, not a new
terrorist strike but a sneak attack coming from a completely different
direction. Let Bush 'lecture Wall Street' all he wants, writes
Pinkerton:
'But he should also keep in mind that the world market is watching,
too, looking for signs that he is focused on the economy, stupid. And
that means keeping the dollar strong, dammit.'
Focused on the economy he is not. Instead, we are mired down in
this endless 'war on terrorism.' Resources and energy that might
have gone into productive uses are instead re-directed and
malinvested in a parasitic and essentially useless bureaucracy. Even
bankrupt Amtrak, which was slated for privatization (or a
much-deserved death), has been saved in the name of 'national
security.'
War is the centralizing, State-empowering dynamic that has propelled
the growth of Big Government in America. Two world wars and a third
one served 'cold' were enough to bloat the federal Leviathan far
beyond the Founders' worst fears. 'War is the health of the State,' as
Randolph Bourne famously put it, and an affliction on the private
sector. This is a lesson many conservatives will have to re-learn.
Their forefathers on the Right knew it, the much-maligned
'isolationists' of liberal lore, who dared ask: why defeat national
socialism in the trenches, and let another form of national socialism
win on the home front? While the ideological implications of the
'Homeland Security' campaign can easily be overdrawn, it should be
clear to many conservatives that a perpetual 'war on terrorism'
entails a radical assault on personal as well as economic liberty. Will
these two pillars of conservative principle be demolished and
replaced by the odious Kudlow Doctrine perpetual war for
permanent prosperity?
The odd mixture of Sadean economics, Christian Zionism, and
world-saving neo-Wilsonianism that National Review and the
Weekly Standard are peddling seems too exotic for its own good.
Certainly it seems far too kooky for mainstream conservatives. That
's why I'm pleased to report that my recent series of columns on why
we need to turn toward the Left and leave the Right to the neocons
may have been premature, to say the least. The launching of a new
fortnightly magazine by Pat Buchanan and Taki, The American
Conservative, couldn't have come at a better time. At last the
hegemony of the necons is broken, and the guff handed out by
Kudlow and his ilk won't go unchallenged for much longer.
Yes, I've been challenging them here, in this space, for some time: but
I can't tell you what a relief it is to know that reinforcements are on
the way.
For the Kudlow Doctrine better living through mass murder is, by
far, the worst product of the conservative movement's degeneration
into little more than a pack of bloodthirsty monsters. Kudlow wins the
Bloodlust Award hands down. His scheme is far uglier, morally, than
anything Max Boot has come up with. Beside Kudlow's 'let's kill our
way out of the recession' scenario, National Review editor Rich
Lowry's proposal to 'nuke Mecca' seems innocently schoolboyish.
Aside from the laughable economics of Kudlow-ism, even if he was
right, and Mises was wrong even if, somehow, the laws of the
market, and of nature itself, could be repealed in wartime, by special
dispensation from a Higher Authority and war did bring us
prosperity, still it would be the wrong course to take. Indeed, one
could argue that the crime would be even greater, insofar as the
motive was purely mercenary. By this standard, what Kudlow is
proposing amounts to an expression of pure evil.
The moral meaning of the Kudlow Doctrine is all too plain: these guys
will stoop to anything in order to drag us into a permanent war on a
global scale. If Christian Zionism and fairy tales of the 'end times'
don't work, try anthrax conspiracy stories blaming Saddam. If that
doesn't work, then tell them a Middle East war will usher in a new era
of prosperity. Lie, cheat, smear your enemies, and spread the
poisonous 'memes' of the War Party far and wide. What a rotten
bunch! Thank God for Pat Buchanan, the heroic Taki, and the
indefatigable Scott McConnell. The calvary has arrived, or, at least,
they're on their way. The Old Right is back and not a moment too
soon.
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