Thank you Kevin. One more time.


A letter in the June 22 Nation.

 

Mount Dora, Fla.

It did my heart good to read Katha Pollitt's  May 18th " Subject to Debate " with its mention of the Japanese use of the "water treatment" - as we called it during my two and a half years of torture, starvation and  beatings  from April 1943 to September 1945. Since all the fuss about the recent US torture programs, nobody seems to refer to the Japanese use of this useless type of interrogation or how it was adjudicated at the war crimes trials in Tokyo in 1946 at which my skipper testified about our treatment at various camps (including the illegal navy camp at Ofuna).

 At the trials one, perhaps more, of our guards was sentenced to hang and several more given prison sentences. All this serves to support the prosecution of American leaders like Bush, Cheney, Addington, Yoo, etc., who planned and carried out the torture program of the past several years.

Kevin Harty.

I believe we're not supposed to quote in full items which appeared elsewhere.

You tell me where any part of this could be cut.

 

Niall Ferguson


begins his letter in today's FT" Sir, I am glad to have furnished grist to Martin Wolf's mill"

Then subsequently tell us  " the normally hard-headed Mr Wolf must be dreaming"  and that "Mr Wolf blithely writes::" etc. and as  a parting shot , summarizes " the Fed is less insouciant than your columnist."

That's Wolf. The well known insouciant.

You might ask what this is all about. In broad terms it's about the self destruction through over exposure of a possibly competent historian who presents his deeply conservative  biases as self evident ecomomic truths, Or, more colloquolly, it's about the fact he's cluelss.

This episode kicked off three weeks ago in a New York Review of Books symposium in which NF magisterially presented his view that the projected 2019 deficit in  Obama's plan would drive up current interest rates thus frustrating  the  2009 recovery which is his immediate goal.

The other guests,for the most part,  stared into space ,glanced at their watches or otherwise occupied themselves until NF finished.

And then carried on an economic discussion among economists.

Krugman ,courteously I thought, disagreed with NF.saying there was a world wide savings glut which would ensure against interest rates becoming a problem.

 In the following  weeks interest rates did escalate by a couple of percentage points ( or two hundred basis points as you might learn by taking  my course in "Teaching Wall Street Jargon  as a Second Language"). Which was followed by an NF  FT op ed last  Weekend modestly declaring hs defeat of the assembled forces of Keynesdom as personifed by Krugman. Interest rates had indeed risen said he and Obama's plan was failing just as he had warned and The End Was Near.

I'd expected Krugman to enter the fray but instead the next round was a column by the FT's impeccably conservative Martin Wolf. The interest rate rise over the last 3 weeks was indeed  significant  said he. It proved Obama's plan was working.,The true danger continued Wolf had been  deflation. And Obama/Geithner had slain it and left its lifeless body ornamented with a cross stuck  in its heart.

Digression. Deflation kills economies. It means that if you spend a buck to buy a widget  intended for resale, when you do resell it , it'll be for 98 cents.Not a way to make a profit. 

Consequently,said Wolf, the recent rise in rates showed  the market believed Obama had preserved us from Deflation so normal  business could be resumed.

Stung by this rejection of his own self adulation from Saturday NF returned to the attack  by striking out at Wolf in a letter in today's FT.Whose graceful  passages I quoted above.

Why do intelligent , well edited publications like the NYR or the FT give the guy column inches ? You might well ask

My theory is that an English accent will get you anywhere.As is so unfortunately true of  Christopher Snitchens. Particularly if you are able to support yourself by polishing up the handle of the big front door , issuing irrelevant proclamations and pretending they're serious positions. 

   

.

 

 

 

And the new champion of the economic world :Niall Ferguson. Niall Ferguson ?


In today's FT Niall Ferguson takes a victory lap, savoring his defeat of Paul Krugman in the April 30 New York Review symposium on the economy. - see the June 11 NYR.

At the symposium

Ferguson:  "the federal debt will rise over the next.....ten years to 100% of the GDP" or maybe 150%. This projected relationship in 2019 will cause a spike in interest rates interfering with the recovery.

Krugmann:  ' There's a global savings glut" ..."There is no excess demand ...to drive up interest rates"

'We've been as high as 100% (debt to GDP) .It's an issue but not a show stopper'

Ferguson: "I'm depressed"  '..."We're going to regulate...Where were you in the 1970s  ...I don't remember that going too smoothly"

Today in the FT

Ferguson: 'Interest rates have gone up in the last 3 weeks.That shows I was right and Krugman was wrong'

                                      ----------------------------------------------------------

Flavius: Hmn: 2017's projected debt to GDP which didn't spook the debt market 3 weeks ago is now wreaking havoc. So Krugman was wrong  that that dire  projection won't affect interest rates right now. Is it maybe possible that the equity rally is causing that? When stocks go up, interest rates go up for reasons perhaps not  obvious to the Laurence A Tisch Professor of History at Harvard and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Stay tuned. Watch the FT for Krugman's reply. Should be fun.

. .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just Wars are just impossible


The New York Review dated June 11 continues a debate about Israel and the Rules of War between  on one side Avishai Margalit and Michael Walzer and on the other  Asa Kasher an Israeli  Philosophy professor and General Amos Yadlin .

The gist of the debate is this : Kasher and Yadlin argue that the IDF  behaves justly because he does not intend to harm civilians; Margalit and Walzer argue that's not enough,  it should intend not to harm them. 

Is this a worthwhile discussion? Of course. They should care, It's good that the Chief of the IDF's Intelligence feels deeply about getting this right. But useless.

Wars to reprise a saying of the 60s are "unsafe for human beings and all other forms of life" Whatever the justice of the cause (as if we aren't capable of convincing ourselves that what we want to do , we should do) and whatever the committment to fighting  Just War, all wars end with Abu Ghraibs and Andersonvilles , with  missiles fired aimlessly at Siderots and a television commentator trying to direct his country's forces to save the life of a young woman whose father regularly saves lives in the attacker's hospital.

What do I recommend instead? Don't ask? There's no way of making it better. But lose the condemnation of the warriors. On all sides. They're doing what they always do sooner or later once a War begins..

 

 

flavius

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  • Location Long Island
  • Party Democratic
  • Politics slightly left of the party's center

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  • Favorite Blogs Brad Delong
  • Favorite Books Skidelsky's biography of Keynes; Naipaul's "In a Free State"
  • Favorite Quotes First they came for the socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out etc. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out etc. Then they came for me-and there was no one left to speak for me.

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Worked outside the US for 15 years.

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