ANOTHER STIMULUS PACKAGE BY OBAMA?

ANOTHER STIMULUS PACKAGE BY OBAMA?

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Good evening from the paradise boondocks south of Manila!

The weather in this tropical area where I reside right today has been so fine for almost two (2) weeks now, and this is unusual for the month of September when four (4) storms pass over the country on the average. At any rate, this makes me a bit happy, enough to ruminate again about the global economy specifically the White House policy pronouncements.

I was among those analysts and development experts in my country who made a go for stimulus packages as core ‘pump priming’ strategy for staving off the ill effects of the global recession. To recall, I even went to the extent of saying my kudos for America’s own stimulus package that was pronounced late by then president Bush and then extended by the new president Obama.

Being all to familiar with pump priming, as I had been witness to how this tool was wielded every time we experienced the pains of spiraling crash right in my own country, I have been all too eager to see the tool be employed judiciously in the Northern countries (EU, USA-Canada, Japan) that have either remained flat growth-wise for successive years or crashed calamitously such as what the USA went through in 2002 and 2007.

The Obama administration had its chance of employing this tool, with no less than $800 Billion as war chest for its execution, and somehow the pump priming proved to have stopped the catastrophic collapse that went on after the implosion of the realty bubble in ‘07. As per my own textbook orientation in macro-economics, it takes two (2) years for a stimulus program to optimize the economy back from appalling sub-optimal performance accountable to a recessionary crash.

The two (2) years since the package was begun by Bush yet will end this month, as far as I can recall the beginnings of it. After the two (2) year gestation period is over, it is standard task for policy-makers and stakeholders to evaluate the overall performance of the measure. The evaluation will unveil what kinks remain that were largely un-addressed by the measure.

It is surprising on my part to learn of the latest pronouncements from the White House that the US president is again ready to launch a new stimulus package on top of the existing one, coming at a time when the first package has never been evaluated to the fullest. The next package includes tax cuts that are but a rehash of the Bush-era stimulus for big business.

I just hope that the pump priming won’t be misconstrued as rendering the stimulus tool into a permanent policy tool. Just by pronouncing that a new stimulus package is on the drawing board can already send jitters to business stakeholders as the pronouncement is a tacit acceptance of the failure to revive the economy as a whole, and that a new round of recession could be in the offing.

Maybe the White House has in mind not only the US economy but also that of its Atlantic partner Europe. Hasn’t the USA been handling fresh cash to Europe to mitigate the bursting of bubbles and gnawing crisis there? Did the White House or Federal Reserve even bother to submit a report to the US Congress about the subsidies to Europe, subsidies that should be hands-me-down to America’s laborers who continue to suffer from the ballooning unemployment in the homeland?

The White House pronouncement is also sending bad signals to Asia’s emerging markets that have already been growing appreciably over the past eight (8) months of the year. Asia’s own stock markets, financial and money markets are trembling over the Obama stimulus news, and there are now silent moves inside board rooms to map out contingency measures in case that the USA will go thru another round of recession in the aftermath of the failure of the first stimulus package to induce totally recovery.

If there is anything I can advise to the White House and Federal Reserve technocrats at this point, it is to desist from making such an untimely measure. Ensure that the most optimal results from the first stimulus package were achieved first of all, report the results to the US congress and the world community, and show clear patterns of transparency in the dealings regarding the pump priming.

If a stimulus package is utilized largely to fatten the purses of corporate executives and owners, who will then use the same to buy new yatch and spend most luxuriously for their board meetings, then the clear message is this: forget about stimulus package!!!

[Philippines, 14 September 2010]

[See: IKONOKLAST: http://erleargonza.blogspot.com,

UNLADTAU: https://unladtau.wordpress.com,

COSMICBUHAY: http://cosmicbuhay.blogspot.com,

BRIGHTWORLD: http://erlefraynebrightworld.wordpress.com, ARTBLOG: http://erleargonza.wordpress.com,

ARGONZAPOEM: http://argonzapoem.blogspot.com]

PUNISH BUSH & NEO-CONS FOR WAR CRIMES!

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

A global Establishment has already galvanized before us, just as the global order had been established by the capitalist oligarchy that constitutes this Establishment. The same Establishment has been defining for us who should be punished for war crimes and who should not, and this is truly bothersome for us global citizens.

The likes of Bush, both father and son, who espoused hawkish policies of war and attrition in the guise of America’s role as global policeman, are indubitably war criminals. Yet they roam the world so freely like the wildest monsters that call the shots in a jungle.

I will never forget the Bush father & son, as the war policies they hatched emboldened the hawkish policies of the army of my own country, an army that is a compliant clone of the Pentagon up North. Not only did the peoples of Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, and countries affected by their war policies suffer miserably, my very own Muslim compatriots and countryside folks suffer from the war policies of the neo-cons clone army here.

With displeasure I regard those actuations of Western liberals who condemn the war crimes of the leaders of Sudan and Serbia but who are blind to the very war crimes of the hawkish leaders of their hegemonic countries. For if they indeed are sincere with condemning such war crimes of their leaders, they should by now be prospering in the cases they file at the International Criminal Court versus such criminals.

One would say, “hey the ICC is funded by Soros & cronies, so how can the ICC ever punish the likes of Bush father & son and crony neo-cons who are their colleagues in the global Establishment?” True indeed, the Establishment funds the ICC, and it may prove futile to file cases against their members.

Be that as it may, why don’t the West’s liberals and New Left advocates push through with the filing of war crimes just the same? Whether they file it at the ICC or in their own home countries, the challenge of the day is for such cases to be filed most urgently.

Monsters that were responsible for the destruction of nations and genocidal deaths to millions of people, such as what the Bush & crony neo-cons have factually committed, shouldn’t be allowed to roam freely around the planet.

Failure to file such cases can be misconstrued by us Eastern observers as an attempt of White liberals and their colored humanoid clones to cover up for their Establishment sponsors. So to speak, an instance of White intellectual prostitutes paid to kowtow to their own kind, or paid dogs of Establishment masters who can rock the boats provided that they don’t touch their masters who feed them lusciously.

The cycle of mass terminations by the likes of Bush & neo-cons have to cease soon enough. And the Establishment war criminals should be made to pay dearly for their crimes. Just exactly when will such a payment of crime happen, if in case it would happen at all?

[Philippines, 13 July 2010]

[See: IKONOKLAST: http://erleargonza.blogspot.com,

UNLADTAU: https://unladtau.wordpress.com,

COSMICBUHAY: http://cosmicbuhay.blogspot.com,

BRIGHTWORLD: http://erlefraynebrightworld.wordpress.com, ARTBLOG: http://erleargonza.wordpress.com,

ARGONZAPOEM: http://argonzapoem.blogspot.com]

POPE HONORED UNPRECEDENTLY IN USA: WHY SO?

Erle Frayne  Argonza

 

U.S. President George Bush seems to have honored the Vatican’s chief prelate with an unusual pomp. The news were all revelatory of the unprecedented treatment the Pope received in his recent visit, a behavior that quite baffles many observers most especially the foreign relations experts.

 

Not even chiefs-of-state from other countries normally receive such a treatment accorded on the Pope, a fact that the state officials themselves pronounced. Yet here is the Vatican’s chief-of-state receiving precisely that ‘most preferred status’ among the various chief executives of the planet.

 

The most obvious answer that can be advanced by unthinking observers is that the Pope is a pious figure. This being so, he deserves the accolades and respect that any eminently pious personage deserves to have. This reasoning is old hat, simplistic or simpleton reasoning and has nothing to do with the reality of the moment.

 

That reality has a great deal to do with economic malaise that America and its northern allies are currently experiencing. Growth has all but flattened in most OECD nations, including Japan and Canada. The USA is coming off as worst, given that it already experienced a recession at the inception of this new decade (2001-02), and here it comes off again with a 2^nd recession within the same decade.

 

The recession is surely bad news for America. For an economy of a size so large it contributes to 22% of the World Gross Product or WDP, a 2^nd recession within a decade spells enormous disasters bordering catastrophe and total collapse. The collapse could lead to a depression, and the depression could lead to massive capital flight by both portfolio and strategic corporate investors.

 

Americans surely don’t know the gravity that the economic malaise had befallen their super-nation, don’t know the consequences of faulty actions and old solutions that hardly work anymore. Among those old tools are the interest rate intervention, fiscal incentives (tax cuts) and further liberalization of the economy. A faulty action would be the rescue of bankrupt banks such as that done on the Bear & Stearns, which was copied from Japan’s experience in the 1990s of ‘crisis management’.

 

The Vatican is watching all of these events, on top of its keen observation of the political aggressions of the USA from 2001 onwards. The aggressions have angered Moslems no end, and the political volcano of the Islamic world could very well spill over into Europe which is the Vatican’s home sweet home. Likewise does the Vatican, which is so awash with money, watching the unusual cross-border financial flows occurring as the Northern economies, led by the USA, are in panic response over their respective shocks and crisis.

 

The world has to admit this: the Catholic Church is the largest global corporation. There resides the power of the Vatican: in the power of its purse. So huge is the Church organization-wise, so vast its financial and estate assets, that no one single corporate group can ever match its resources at hand.

 

It would surely be stupid and suicidal for any corporate group or nation to ever challenge the might of the Vatican head on. Instead of clashing with the Vatican, the appropriate foreign relations template must be that of cooperation and dialogue.

 

And this is what the inner circles of Bush surely have in mind during the Pope’s visit to America lately. Show some semblance of infatuation with the Church, for it can potentially help the USA solve its cash starvation to pay $50 Trillion worth of debts, balance its perennially deficit budget, put some plugs on capital flight, and loan out gold bullions to shore up the pathetically low gross international reserves.

 

That, fellows, is the true reason behind the unprecedented reverence and most honorable treatment on the head of the Catholic Church by the state officialdom of America lately. And that show of respect must have paid off well in the short run.

 

[Writ 28 May 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]