But “the disintegration of our industrial base” is a direct consequence of previous downward adjustments in wages and employment.

Not to mention that it’s hard to see how the domestic auto industry’s collapse would in any way assist in recovering that fading industrial base.  It seems to me that allowing global correction might be the best course to take, but we might as well write off being industrial producers if we do.

“The service sector must shrink and manufacturing must expand to fill the void.”

I agree with the former, but I am not sure about the latter.  If what is being manufactured can not be sold (see car industry), expanding the manufacturing may not help either.  I am not a fan of central planning, but it maybe that the world is manufacturing too much nowadays.

But the general points of the article about runaway consumption are correct.

I also think that the solution has to supercede the economic realm, because the problem is deeper.  It is also social, cultural, religious, etc.  It has to be (and will be) more about a shift in values, and I suspect that in the new set of values consumption and also manufaturing and production will be less significant than now.

“...As we painfully learned in the housing bust, lending people money that they cannot pay back makes no sense. This applies equally to foreign central banks lending to America as it does to commercial banks lending to homeowners.”

Now THAT’s conservatism.  Kudos to Taki’s for bringing Schiff aboard as an alternative to paleocon national socialism.

This is a the root an energy crisis.  It is about the coming collapse of the petroleum (and ultimately fossil fuel) economy.

The car economy is dying.  The vast amounts of energy it requires to manufacture and run them will no longer be available. Not even “green” cars will be economical. 

There is little that can be done about this.  No mere “financial stimulus” or “rescue” will change the geological reality.  We are now burning through the last half of the geological patrimony of 5 billion years, and when it’s gone, it’s gone.  Irreparably gone.  We are about to be immeasurably poorer. 

This is all to say we are feeling the tremors before the “Big One” right now. 

Barring the discovery of revolutionary new energy technology (which I think absurdly unlikely, but which most Americans blithely expect) we are in for some very interesting times. 

Apocalyptic ("Revelatory") ones.

Let’s all enjoy the ride, shall we?

Maybe Bernanke and Paulson already believe above.  Perhaps to them, the US is already bankrupt and they are trying to double down on their bets before the casino gets on to them.  As to UAW, it should be diced to size of one company one union.  The legacy benefits need to be disposed of.  Romney is right that we should guarantee the warranties.

Peter,

You hit the proverbial nail on the head.  The hollowing-out of our industrial base is the “root cause” of the looming catastrophe.  Until that is rebuilt we are doomed to a declining economy with severe and ongoing shocks to come.  Only the extraction industries, farming/ranching and manufacturing actually create wealth.  Wall Street has never created $1’s worth of wealth it just siphons it off from those that actually create wealth.  And, the Military Industrial Complex must be put on a major reduction plan; our largest welfare rat-hole into which vast sums of wealth are dumped.  We need to take 1/2 of our current Pentagon budget and invest it in education and infrastructure, not on weapons of mass destruction and playing the world’s biggest bully.  A large dose of humility is sorely needed.  I spend a considerable amount of time overseas and have for the past 35 years.  The world’s perception of the US is at an all time low and deservedly so.

The American public has been sold a bill-of-goods since the Reagan Era - Reaganomics, the largest fraud ever perpetrated on the American public - about service jobs substituting for manufacturing jobs.  I must say I’ve been aghast at the ignorance and downright stupidity of our political leadership.  Well, we’ve had very little of that - leadership - for a long time.  The US corporate elite will almost always do what is in their short-term economic interest with little regard for the future of this country or even their own companies.  Until the short-term focused greed and arrogance is dealt with there is little chance the US economy will do little more than slide into its rightful “declining empire” status, so richly deserved.

Quote: “The dollar must fall, wages in America must be brought down to a competitive level, and hopefully government spending and burdensome regulation can be reduced.”

Since when has falling wages been associated with increased production and manufacturing?

Can our real wages which have been deceasing for 30 years ever fall enough to match the 27 million+ outright slaves in the third world? 

Schiff is wrong about ‘printing money” means the decline of the dollar. This is a monetarist myth that amount of sheer paper determines the value of the currency.

The reason why the dollar will decline is because we don’t make anything the world wants to buy using the trillions of dollars we’ve printed and destroying the machine tool capacity in Detroit and the nation at large will means an acceleration of the decline of the dollar.

Schiff is right that we that can’t compete with making stupid little “Green Cars” but the answer isn’t to further degrade the value of labor in a mad race to the slave shop bottom.

We lost the international auto making competition as far back as 2005 and we can get no where fast building cars.

The answer is to reorganize into worker co-ops and retool for making High Tech Mass Transit, High Speed Rail, and Nuclear Power plants.

To survive as a civilization you must move to higher degrees of complexity and social organization not try to recreate the economy of the last century. It is Malthusian foolishness to try and remake, as the Peak Oilers want, a “World Made by Hand.”

Now greater degrees of complexity in social organization doesn’t means greater centralization but rather the opposite as individual members of take advantage of society’s institutions to improve the their workmanship and knowledge using technology and science for the care of humanity. Technology, the arts and sciences must be directed to the edification
and care of man not the other way around.

I would actually argue that the reason we so dazzled by gadgets, Science Fiction, and consumerism is because we have mystified those things because we don’t have a real scientific understanding anymore and aren’t producing good technology anymore so we dominated by technology rather than being the masters of it.

Quote: “By accepting a lower standard of living today, we will eventually be rewarded with a higher one tomorrow.”

Tell that to the Africans who keep accepting lower standard of living decade after decade. I see that calls for Schachtian
austerity is still popular among the Monetarist School like Schiff.

We need production Not Austerity. Austerity produces nothing in itself. 

The problem is culture. We have inverted values which tell us things like economics is about the individual consumer, credit and prices rather than the knowledge level in society, production, labor and savings.

at least detriot makes things that conceivably have some use even if it’sdone inneffiently.  why would anyone buy stock in any of these investment banks?  so they can take your money and lose it whilemaking billions for themselves? 

let them all fail.  no TARP.  the TARP money is going to go to me when I short goldman saks and these other morons on wall street.

lester gets the TARP that’s my new movie

Septius7,

You said in quotes:

“Since when has falling wages been associated with increased production and manufacturing?”

A falling dollar and falling wages will make our goods and services more competitive in the global marketplace and prime the manufacturing pump.  And, the first place to start cutting wages is at the top, not the bottom.  When US executives make 400 to 600 times what their average worker makes in Fortune 500 companies, we know our compensation system is out of whack.  In the rest of the developed world that factor is still, as it was in this country in the 70’s, about 20 times the average worker’s compensation.

“Schiff is wrong about ‘printing money” means the decline of the dollar. This is a monetarist myth that amount of sheer paper determines the value of the currency.”

More money in circulation chasing the same amount of goods must always mean inflation, no “monetarist myth” there, simply human behavior.

“We need production Not Austerity. Austerity produces nothing in itself.”

Austerity is necessary.  If no austerity there will be insufficient capital to invest in: the educational excellence we need, infrastructure that is crumbling and our manufacturing base that is being erased as we speak.

“The problem is culture. We have inverted values which tell us things like economics is about the individual consumer, credit and prices rather than the knowledge level in society, production, labor and savings.”

Americans have been brainwashed to be mindless consumers.  You remember our “Great Leader” saying, “Go to the mall and shop” while he was flushing untold wealth down the proverbial toilet that is Iraq and Afghanistan.  Certainly you remember Detroit’s “planned obsolescence?” Our children are started down the road to mindless consumption from a young age; gimm’me, gimm’me, I want, I want.  The best and brightest in the advertising and marketing professions work diligently to program children to badger their parents into buying them “stuff.” And, they -marketers and advertisers - do their best to make consumers feel insecure if they don’t have the latest and greatest widget.  Whist taking an advanced marketing course many years ago in “B” school I had an eureka moment; “Satisfied consumers aren’t.” That is once satisfied consumers stop consuming.

Americans are the most wasteful people on this planet and we have been trained that way.  We need to be deprogrammed.  And, I would posit, that the only effective deprogramming method is forced austerity; that is, we’ve got no more money so we’d better learn how to conserve.  Now that’s the original “conservative” idea, no?

Mr Shiff sed: “The argument that energizes the pro-Detroit camp is that the government should extend the same courtesy to the rank and file auto workers that it lavished upon the fat cats of Wall Street….the fact remains that the Wall Street firms are still floundering despite the bailouts. What’s worse, the money spent was either printed or borrowed from abroad. Both options are destructive to America…With no money of our own, our ability to bailout our own citizens is completely dependent on the world’s willingness to foot the bill…Like any bailout, our foreign creditors should consider the moral hazard of rewarding bad behavior..Washington bails out General Motors, the funds will never be recovered. GM will simply burn through the bailout money and then be back for more.”

The first part is true…we are borrowing the money to finance the bailouts. But you are wrong on several points on the rest of your commentary.

Wall Street is still floundering because the real estate bubble---the work of “libertarian” Alan Greenspan and American Finance Capitalists---has not hit bottom yet. The Wall Street bailouts are necessary because a radical market readjustment will make the entire monetary ponzi scheme fall apart, with disastrous results not only for the average Joe on Main Street, but the entire global financial system. Thanks to the “deregulation” fantasy of the Lazy Faires---in both the Democrat and the Republican Party---who repealed Glass Steagall, and allowed this to happen.

Secondly, the rest of the world is as dependent on the ponzi scheme as the United States is, as they have built and subsidized EXPORT oriented economies in their own countries, built on low wages…consequently, their consumers cannot afford to buy the products they produce, they are completely dependent on the US economy to keep their bloated manufacturing afloat. Remember, it is high wages that stimulate growth---not low taxes. Nobody will invest in new factories or businesses if nobody has money to buy anything. See Mexico and Latin America for an illustration of the futility of giving the rich more at the expense of the rest of the population. The rich just sit on their money! No investment occurs!

Third, the US economy and the standard of living of our workers was built on economic nationalism---limiting the growth of the labor force by shutting down immigration, high tariffs, restrictions on the transfer of capital abroad, high tariffs and economic policies that made the US independent of foreign manufacturing and food supplies. Furthermore, the auto industry in the US is the BASE on which our manufacturing economy was based. Letting it falter---mostly because it’s competition is being deliberately subsidized by foreign governments who have built their economic growth on exports.

Fourth, the argument for bailing out the Auto Industry is really not about equity, it is about profiteering---by dumping the “legacy costs” of worker retirees on the state. This is exactly what happened to the steel industry and the airline industry. They went through bankruptcy, worker pensions were dumped on the government, as were the promises for health insurance to the retirees. Then the finance capitalists picked up the infrastructure at bargain basement prices and “reorganized” shed of the responsibility of decent wages, retirement plans, and health insurance for their work force.

Now if you think a “race to the bottome” is good for America, then fine. But if you give a dang about America and the middle class--which is has been the basis of the conservative political base, then you’d reconsider the “bailout” of the Big Three, or what will happen to that industry will follow the model of the steel and airline industry. And the result will be Democrat victories, and all of the social “multiculturalism” that goes with it.

Mr Schiff: you have hit another home run. We need to be like the Swiss and Japanese, save, work and mind our own business. Get the troops home, mine, drill oil and gas, dig oil shale, convert coal, atomic power. We must slash spending by the govt. at all levels. Quit wasting money personal and govt. thrift and hard work are the only answer. We have huge resourses in this country, human, mineral, and agricultural, lets use them and get to work.

original jack - the government doesn’t believe in common sense solutions like that.  we had a growing illegal immigration problem in the 90’s.  their solution was NAFTA:  we would develop and profit from latin americas growth and people wouldn’t want to leave there thus we would have less illegal immigration.  of course, the opposite is what happened, we got more illegal immigration and most of us and latin americans lsot money on the deal. thugh elites on either side made a bundle.  the same with iraq which i call middle east nafta.  to solve our terrorism problem, we will bring capitalism to baghdad and johnny jihadi will be so happy he will work for minumin wage at baghdad starbucks instead of becoming a terrorist.  now we have a worse terrorism problem.  these are the solutions they like the kind that don’t work at all!!

http://www.dartblog.com/data/2008/11/008414.php

^somali pirates in talks to aquire citigroup

The notion that only manufacturing and not service creates wealth is sorely mistaken.  Know-how is irreplaceable from the creation of wealth. You can have all the mineral resources in the world, but without understanding how to use them, you have nothing. Know-how, understanding, insight, planning are all “service sectors.” The more we know, the less raw materials we need to use. Look at the change from vast arrays of copper cable to wireless, representing just a fraction of raw materials to do the same job. Look at the impact of information technology on material use, on such processes as JIT (Just in Time) manufacturing.  As industry matures, it gravitates naturally from manufacturing to service.  It’s not just raw materials, but intelligence, and increasingly the codified intelligence of IT that creates wealth.

And I wouldn’t be too sure about running out of hydrocarbons any time soon.  Geologists don’t really know how petroleum forms. If the same processes that produced coal also produced petroleum, then we’d always find the two raw materials together, but we never do.  Many geologists report that what they considered to be spent wells are actually refilling. Some maverick geologists even hold that petroleum results not from fossil decomposition but from a combination of thermal and microbial action on methane deep within the earth. And the world has never had a shortage of natural gas. The chapter isn’t closed on petroleum. It may be a tad too early to bring out the hair shirts and look for the Second Coming.

Daniel Theodore wrote,

“The best and brightest in the advertising and marketing professions work diligently to program children to badger their parents into buying them “stuff.” And, they -marketers and advertisers - do their best to make consumers feel insecure if they don’t have the latest and greatest widget.”

I have to work diligently to deprogram my six year old from that very thing you describe.  It is even so ingrained in our culture that notice how charities only solicit new toys in packages for the poor as if a used toy in good condition is no use to a poor child with nothing.  Even charity is used to put money into the hands of the Chinese.

@Nicholas II,

True knowledge has added much in value with such innovations as JIT and wireless communication.  Unfortunately the value has not been fairly passed on to consumers, workers, etc. but has been absorbed by management. 

@Septeus7,

Great points regarding what Detroit needs to shift the manufacturing to in rail, etc.  I know that a lot more people would be willing to make use of public transportation if it were to be improved.

How shall we have a change of culture when the means of disseminating culture is in the hands of those who would see this country turn us into a nation of servants in a neo-feudal world.  The reason businesses can not and will not pay higher wages is because they must chase the dragon of hyper-growth.  All this talk of “sustainable living” from greens and I don’t hear one word about “sustainable” levels of debt and money creation.  And I agree, Wall Street produces nothing but fraud.  They make piles of paper.

All the above are very interesting in many ways but nobody seems to ready to admit that the so called free market and the whole bla bla bla around it it’s a myth, a big lie, even if it is a useful lie for the elite, for the few. Free market doesn’t exist my friends and never existed. All the rest is very good stories for the kids, making them willing to go to bed for a deep energizing slip.

What gets me is all this ‘we must have free trade” talk.  I look at it this way....free trade is bad. it allows us to outsource all our production and kills our ability to produce a product for ourselves, since walmart gan give it to us for so much cheaper.  It is like free trade between two buckets of water, the one filled with water will become equal with the one who started empty.  Right now the USA used to be full, but free trade is allowing all our wealth to spill over to the empty buckets.

We need huge taxes on imports.  Protect america and allow it to grow once more.

NicolasII said:

“The notion that only manufacturing and not service creates wealth is sorely mistaken.  Know-how is irreplaceable from the creation of wealth.”

When I referred to “manufacturing” I was talking about the total supply chain and all of the functions it takes to produce goods consumers want to purchase at the time and price requisite.

Of course: “Know-how is irreplaceable for the creation of wealth.” I would actually categorize it as a “necessary condition” for the creation of wealth and must be imbedded in the manufacturing company throughout; from the workers on the line, those that maintain the production equipment and plant, to the Board Room and every function in-between.

There is much to ruminate about in this post and the many thoughtful comments.  I have two concerns.

If the cost of living remains what it is, and wages fall faster than rents, taxes, food and fuel prices, will this not create suffucient suffering to trigger revolution?

Investing in education other than on Science and Technology will breed a new generation of useless revolutionaries.  Our present fix is in large part due to the channeling of the GI bill and Sputnic educational spending programs into bogus Arts and Humanities sinicures for societal parasites.

I favor reducing standard educational funding in order to drain our adacemic swamp. No society can produce the numbers of historians, poets, philosophers, of merit that we fund. Funding and encouraging so many slots for so few actual talents was guaranteed to produce the subversive mediocrity we now see everywhere among the “Educated Elite.”
We need a serious, credentialed vocational counterweight to the present university system if we are to return to the inventor/mechanic/entrepreneurial roots of the successful Republic we once were.

I’d love to hear Professor Gottfried’s thoughts on this last point. Perhaps a blueprint for the overhaul of higher education is a goal we post movement Conservatives need to address?

Marius,

You are 100% correct when you said:

“All the above are very interesting in many ways but nobody seems to ready to admit that the so called free market and the whole bla bla bla around it it’s a myth, a big lie, even if it is a useful lie for the elite, for the few. Free market doesn’t exist my friends and never existed.”

Our economy is dominated by large, politically powerful corporations.  Remember, corporations are artificial entities created by government charter.  And, when they become very large they can have undue influence on their particular economic sector as well as our governance.  When that happens there can be no “level playing field.”

Our government’s first priority should be defending this country from attack and securing our boarders.  Next, as Teddy Roosevelt said, government must protect the people” from “malefactors of great wealth.” We don’t have a:

.......government of the people, by the people, for the people........

We have:

A government of the corporations,
By the corporations,
For the corporations.

By the way, the above is the very definition of fascism: an autocratic government controlled by corporations.

Neither NAFTA, GATT, nor CAFTA were ever meant to have any materially beneficial effect vis-a-vis the American worker.
Indeed, while our beloved Decider continues to push for another such agreement during his blessedly final days in office he can be justifiably proud of the three million plus manufacturing jobs that have been outsourced during his tenure in office.  And not being content therewith, he expanded visa programs, ad nauseum, in an effort to rob skilled Americans of gainful employment, in the tech sector particularly, all on the taxpayer dime while padding the wallets of feckless fat cat mavens such as the execrable Bill Gates.  And what jobs could not be destroyed legally or supplanted “legally”, the unhindered invasion across our Southern Border cast yet another dagger in the heart of the American worker in the low-skilled labor market.  And as an added bonus we have people here by the untold millions who have no regard whatsoever for the sovereignty of this nation, which thing they have in common with our current chief executive, and who steal identities, commit all manner of larceny, violent crime, make our roads fields of slaughter, and accelerate our inexorable slide into the third world.
I would hazard a guess that Mr. Schiff hazarded squat for the nation which gave him the opportunity to get rich.  So my advice to you Mr. Schiff is to take the vow of poverty first for you and your family and let us know how it works out.
What our cognitive dissonant in chief started, the utterly false Obama will surely finish.  Rely upon it.

And in a speech today Obama said we need another, much larger “rescue bill” since the last one “wasn’t big enough”.

This is insanity; I feel like throwing up.

Re: Auto Industry.

Did you happen to notice that there were four guys sitting before Congress: three from the car manufacturers and one from the UAW. Most of the legacy costs were derived directly from that anomaly. One union representing ALL the workers in the industry?

The companies are proscribed from working together on labor/management issues; but the union can utilize ALL the resources of the union representing ALL the workers in the industry. They gang up on a single company, and considering the fierce competitiveness of the companies with each other, no company can resist union demands without losing market share permanently. If a customer buys a competitor’s car, he is locked in to the providers of that vehicle’s parts and service for that vehicle’s lifetime.

I maintain that Detroit actually served their customers well. They built what the market (you and I) wanted. Or do you actually believe that all three manufacturers conspired to be WRONG? And, Toyota, Nissan, Honda, the Germans and Koreans built similar BIG trucks and SUVs. But, they did not have the Congress imposed legacy costs.

All the foreign manufacturers give back VAT taxes (or equivalent) upon export, but levy them on our cars. Why not a similar rate tariff on imported cars here?

Between Congress mandated legacy costs (due to labor legislation which cause the labor relations imbalance), and our stupid “free trade” policies, we have almost destroyed the car companies with much of the other manufacturing base.

But then, isn’t this what the Globalists want?

No, the free market does not exist per se.  Yet, there is a difference between a 1985 market system and what we are now witnessing.  “There’s something happening here; what it is ain’t excatly clear.”

For a more interesting view of what the bailouts are about, - China, Paulson, Soros, Goldman Sachs, the EU - see below (quoting Schiff in the process).  We seem to be living through a slow-motion international coup d’etat. 

“Wall Street and the Rise of Obama” - Fascinating.
http://www.aim.org/aim-report/wall-street-and-the-rise-of-obama/

“Bush Hands Over Reins of U.S. Economy to EU”
http://www.newsmax.com/morris/g_20_economic_summit/2008/11/19/153044.html

A short article to consider....

http://organizationsandmarkets.com/2008/11/21/in-praise-of-the-us-auto-industry/

Here’s a quote:
‘Axelrod warned automakers seeking billions in government help to stave off collapse to devise a plan to RETOOL and restructure that they can present to Congress next month. Otherwise, he said, “there is very little taxpayers can do to help them.“‘

...my emphasis on the retool - so Congress will now help decide what tooling the auto business needs to please them...might they help to design the vehicles next?
Terence Corcoran in the Financial Post (Canada) wrote a great column the other day, not in favor of a bailout, and the point he makes is that by kowtowing to Congress for bailout money they will have lost control of their business forever. Every fad environmentalist (or other looney left) ‘solution’ would have to be incorporated into the business plan, the legacy overhead costs would never be resolved and the whole effect would be the further destruction of the business.
It’s helpful to remember that GM and the other companies were built on the absorption of (often) bankrupt auto companies, of which there used to be hundreds of before there was the ‘big three’.

Tom Meehan: “If the cost of living remains what it is, and wages fall faster than rents, taxes, food and fuel prices, will this not create suffucient suffering to trigger revolution?”

What do you think Tom?

“Investing in education other than on Science and Technology will breed a new generation of useless revolutionaries.”

Useless revolutionaries?  LOL!  The system is not salvagable.  Time to clean house.

“Perhaps a blueprint for the overhaul of higher education is a goal we post movement Conservatives need to address?”

And just how would that happen until White men who rule for White people have power?  It will not, until.

We get power, then we clean house.  That is how it works.

Tom Meehan:

Yes, that’s exactly what we need - more people who are good with gadgets but don’t understand philosophical concepts like liberty or justice, don’t have any of the empathy for other human beings one gets from literature, and haven’t learned a single lesson from history because they don’t know any.

The idea that we will be “saved by science” is pure Star Trek fantasy. Without history, literature, or philosophy in our knowledge base, we will keep making the same mistakes over and over - just more quickly and efficiently.

Here, here...what Nergol just said!!!  We need well balanced citizens that understand what went before so they can make better, more informed decisions about future directions.

Quote: “A falling dollar and falling wages will make our goods and services more competitive in the global marketplace and prime the manufacturing pump”

It is absolute nonsense that a falling dollar helps make our goods more competitive unless you are arguing that we use like the Chinese Model and devalue our currency and under consume our own production, and under invest in domestic infrastructure to support other people’s bad habits. Yes, you can engage in this form of economic warfare for awhile but it comes with a huge cost in the long as the Chinese are now finding out that supporting dead weight is stupid.

If you make good products that people want to buy efficiently by improving technology then folks will buy your currency to buy your products easily and thus demand for your nations currency rises. Your idea of devaluation “priming the manufacturing pump” idea violates supply and demand because the currency demand is an after effect of national commodity production not vice versa.

Production supports the currency not the other way around. Mankind kind invented money to support trading produced goods. We did not make money and then start producing goods to trade.

Quote: “And, the first place to start cutting wages is at the top, not the bottom.  When US executives make 400 to 600 times what their average worker makes in Fortune 500 companies, we know our compensation system is out of whack.”

That doesn’t mean that wages are too high but that wages are not correctly distributed and this is why I suggested reorganization into worker Co-Ops instead of the old style corporate structure. When wages aren’t correctly distributed it reduces productivity and distorts the composition of the labor supply.

Quote: “ More money in circulation chasing the same amount of goods must always mean inflation, no “monetarist myth” there, simply human behavior. “

But this assumes a stasis in the amount of goods and cost of production but the commodity production is dynamic along with creative processes that go into production. If more money is directed into more efficient physical production then creative dynamic processes in physical production creates more goods than the increase in money.

This fact was demonstrated in practice by the Jacques Rueff and the Asain Tigers. This idea is also found in the American System and Binary Economics. It’s a very old Cameralist idea. New money chasing new ideas and new physical production works.

Quote: “Austerity is necessary.  If no austerity there will be insufficient capital to invest in: the educational excellence we need, infrastructure that is crumbling and our manufacturing base that is being erased as we speak.”

Wrong. You are confusing credit and capital. Austerity doesn’t create capital, people do. If you deny the people a decent standard of living and the economic security and stability that comes with that standard of living by economic austerity policies you destroy the means of capital production by destroying the culture and the people who are the necessary source of capital. 

Only reason we may lack sufficient capital goods in the form of money for proper investment is because the nature of a debt-based monetary which generates credit only by cannibalizing existing capital by collateralization with debt instruments. If we end the Federal Reserve and return to a Constitutional credit system then we wouldn’t have this problem.

Rather than wonder what capital we sacrifice to so we can keep promises to the City of London and the International Banksters for the credit we use.  We’ll simply make our own credit without giving jack to the banksters for the their printing press. Hell, we should even seize their printing presses and computers. Nationalization the Fed and subject issuance of credit to a open process of public law under the Congress. End the Fed before it end Us. National Austerity is only necessary under European style monetary systems not our Constitutional credit system.

Quote: “ Americans are the most wasteful people on this planet and we have been trained that way.  We need to be deprogrammed.  And, I would posit, that the only effective deprogramming method is forced austerity; that is, we’ve got no more money so we’d better learn how to conserve.  Now that’s the original “conservative” idea, no?”

No, that is not conservative and that is exactly Hjalmar Schatch and the Fascists did and it resulted in Death Camps.

Weimar Germany was decadent, corrupt and consumerist as were other countries taken over by the fascists but fascism, which promises the return of national greatness by mindless faith in the political party, used special financing institutions such as the “Mefo-Institut” which sucked the domestic economy dry and gave the wealth to party insiders while justifying it under “austerity” for the military and defense of the Fatherland.

You cannot create more production with a culture of destroying people and the promise of life. No amount of Romanticism about “the simple life” or “sacrifice for the Fatherland” can make a hungry unemployed man want to work harder to produce better technology, arts, and science when he knows it will taken by taxes, global warming carbon credits, rationing and fines. Therefore “National Service” and youth camps for a “homeland security corp” to “help with the War on Terror” by rounding up trading unionist, catholic Priests or Muslim Clerics will deployed with whatever other fascist austerity programs the government can come up with to justify the stealing, looting, and unrest needed to create the Fear by which they rule with their iron fists. That is the politics of Fascism and Austerity is always part of the program because Austerity is rule by fear of want and the degrading of the human being.

No, you fix the problem by returning to the classical values where the care of the human being comes first and we act in the interest of the other because that’s how we will be treated in the end. Back to the Harmony of Interest and cultivation of the human mind things that matter: Virtues, Civility, and Discipline.

We needs things like Arts based on the edification of the human spirit toward virtue and away from romantic passions. We need to starting doing as Western Man as his best does and work for the things of permanence and beauty.  It is the European tradition of the Italian Renaissance and its continuation in the American Republic to rule not as Zeus did with Fear and Austerity and stealing the “ the means of life” but as Aeschylus’ Prometheus did by teaching them not only fire but writing, mathematics, agriculture, medicine, and science. We need to return to our ideas of own American Prometheus, Benjamin Franklin who gave us electricity, Libraries, Firefighting Stations, and so much more.

Let’s start with Franklin’s Virtues and ask yourself if we would be in this mess if we had followed them? 

1. “TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.”
2. “SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.”
3. “ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.”
4. “RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.”
5. “FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.”
6. “INDUSTRY. Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.”
7. “SINCERITY. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.”
8. “JUSTICE. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.”
9. “MODERATION. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.”
10. “CLEANLINESS. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.”
11. “TRANQUILLITY. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.”
12. “CHASTITY. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.”
13. “HUMILITY. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.”

Septeus7: “Yes, you can engage in this form of economic warfare for awhile but it comes with a huge cost in the long as the Chinese are now finding out that supporting dead weight is stupid.”

The Chinese do what they do out of ethnic solidarity and to funnel money and power to the Party bosses.  A mongrelized, third-world Brazil Norte sewer will be the ultimate dead weight.  We must no longer worry about what others do and concern ourselves with the health and interests of the White race - it is not healthy nor is it in the interest of the White race to be mongrelized and ruled over by non-Whites.

“If you make good products that people want to buy efficiently by improving technology then folks will buy your currency to buy your products easily and thus demand for your nations currency rises.”

As we once did, and Germany once did, when they were for White people.

“Nationalization the Fed and subject issuance of credit to a open process of public law under the Congress. End the Fed before it end Us. National Austerity is only necessary under European style monetary systems not our Constitutional credit system.”

That is damn right, tell the parasites to go f*** themselves.  What is more, we need to re-industrialize our economy and re-direct it towards autarky and trade with other White nations.  If America becomes a country ruled by White men, for White people, the race-replacement regime in Western Europe will crumble - if it does not we will crush it.  We will save our race!

“No, that is not conservative and that is exactly Hjalmar Schatch and the Fascists did and it resulted in Death Camps.”

There were no “Death Camps” in Germany in which people were intentionally exterminated by the hundreds of thousands.  Germar Rudolf went to Auschwitz and did tests on the walls of the supposed ad hoc “gas chambers” to find out if there was the chemical residue on said walls that there would have been if gassings had occured - he found nothing.  That is ball game.  Germar Rudolf was once a chemist at the prestigious Max Planck Institute, guess where he is now as a result of his fine work - jail. 

Are you talking about concentration camps then?  The British used them against the Boers.  We used them against Japs, Italians and Germans during WWII.

But to your point, no, concentration camps will not be necessary.  Stripping those who brainwash our people with anti-White, genocidalist filth of their ability to so do will however be necessary.  If we are serious about saving our race how would it not be?  If you put other petty issues, like your pathetic bourgeois ‘repectablility’ before your loyalty to your people, you are not serious about saving your race from desruction; in which case you had best sit on the sidelines while real men go to work.

“...used special financing institutions such as the “Mefo-Institut” which sucked the domestic economy dry and gave the wealth to party insiders while justifying it under “austerity” for the military and defense of the Fatherland.”

LOL!  Is that why White men had work, good wages, vacation time and a community feeling based upon the common purpose of building a better future for their people?  Is that why White women were happily restored to their proper biological role and had many White children?  Could that be why they voted accordingly?

Further, there was the existential threat of Bolshevism that necessitated a robust military.

There is no such threat now, once the existence of the White race is secured in North America all the other dominoes will fall, it not, we will push them down - and it will not be hard.

“You cannot create more production with a culture of destroying people and the promise of life.”

Your flacid approach is a recipe for racial suicide.  If the White race is not preserved, unmongrelized, there will be no “culture” or a “promise of life” to speak of.  By working towards the preservation and elevation of the White race we will be constructing a culture to accomplish said and thereby give our people the promise of life.

You seem to think that none of this needs to be done on an explicit basis, expressly aimed toward the survival and renewal of our race.  Hogwash!  If we don’t our race with wither on the vine, if it is not outrightly annihilated.

“No, you fix the problem by returning to the classical values where the care of the human being comes first and we act in the interest of the other because that’s how we will be treated in the end.”

Yup, screw tribalism and just take everyone as an individual.  LOL! That is not the way the evolved human mind actually functions - genetic similarity theory.

What, the lemmings are going to go for all your high flown virtues?  LOL! 

They never have and they never will.  As you said earlier, what they care about is the food on their plate.  We can give them that in spades.  A White nation ruled for White people?  Of course we can!  What does inspire many of the lemmings, though, is precisely that which you decry and would deny them - explicit pride in their peoplehood.  You would deny them what Tom Wolfe refers to as “championism”.

You, sir, are an intellectual, as well as emotional, lightweight.

Congress controls the currency.  Before the Fed can expand the money supply it must get the approval of Congress.  To approve Congress must increase the debt limit.  That increase foretells what will happen to the money supply.  How about posting those figures.  I would like to know what the current debt limit is. I tried to find out from http://www.eh.net (the historical economic statistics of the United States and other countries but they do not have it.  Can Peter Schiff get those figures?

Nergol,
The legions of water cooler philosophes who already drank deep of what that American Higher Education has to offer just gave us Obama. How do you like the effect of higher learning so far?
The level of Literature, History, Civics you want is what used to be taught in high school. Indeed a lot of the basic civic morality you crave used to be taught in grammar school. 
Nowhere do I advocate the exclusion of humane learning from the public. What I do think is a waste is the trooping of people through courses of study that the vast majority will never pursue.  Expanding these disciplines to accommodate the hoards of ordinary people just trying to get ahead in life only corrupts them and the academy. Universities are elite institutions or they are nothing. That’s why most of us should study applied sciences in the service of our economy and way of life.
Your Star Trek crack is unworthy of comment.

M sed: “We need huge taxes on imports.  Protect america and allow it to grow once more.”

The only thing that putting huge taxes on imports would be to increse the cost of computers and electronic whiz-bangs that we all depend on. ‘Cause we don’t make computers, circuit boards, flat screen tvs, lcd screens and computer processors---and that would destroy our “new” economy.

Look, there is nothing to “protect”...don’t believe me? Then check out your local Fry’s Electronics or Microcenter Computer store. Can you find ANYTHING that isn’t “Made in China”? Oh, yeah, maybe some hard drives made in Thailand or Malasia.

America exports waste paper and scrap metal, and food...check out our REAL economy----it’s not high-tech. High tech is what we IMPORT. The only thing that American produces that the rest of the world wants are “third world” stuffs.

America? It’s been destoryed, hollowed out...by the “libertarian” idea that “free trade” benefits our country. It doesn’t...and those “Free Traitors” should be run out of the conservative movement, for the slimy left-wing “me-too-ism” that that is their REAL agenda.

I tried sharing with Pelosi, but no dice, I’m not in her district!  She won’t listen.

All this back and forth is well and good.  Most agree that we are in real trouble, and bailouts will likely disguise rather than cure.  The question remains, What do individuals do with the little wealth they have left?

If the government prints enough money, inflation will actually make the stock market go up.  Gold seems like a store of value, but we’ve already seen that it can go down as the world sells everything just to keep the lights on.  If it does go up, you’ll owe taxes, and still come out behind.  Can’t see how you can do anything but break even in gold.  Oil, too, can take a hit in a stagnant economy.  To come out ahead, you need to invest in growth.  What is growing?

The union labor to build a vehicle is only about 8% of the cost of the vehicle.

What many people are missing is that the big three got deeply involved with synthetic derivatives just like Bear Stearns, Lehman, AIG, Fannie and Freddie and citigroup etc etc.

And, since 1913, since the FED was created your dollar has lost 96% of its purchasing power.

America became a debtor nation decades ago.