The US economy is in a death spiral. Las Vegas shows the future as much as Detroit. Obama thinks we can borrow our way out. Republicans huff and puff and just oppose whatever Obama is for though he’s a re-run on steroids of their own boy Dubya. In the meantime, we flounder, with no end in sight, just like the BP oil disaster in the Gulf.
The Great Depression of the Thirties was ‘solved’ by the Nude Eel–Ezra Pound’s term–by war, the permanent arms economy & debt. These policies were continued by Republicans. Indeed, the Reagan Regime is an interesting study in military Keynesianism. Now the string has run out, and then some.
With Democrats and Republicans re-arranging chairs on a sinking Titanic, it behooves us to look anew at Lawrence Dennis, the leading nationalist intellectual at the time who offered an alternative which was ignored.
Back in 2000, libertarian-minded Justin Raimondo, in his website ANTIWAR.COM, said this of Dennis:
“Dennis’s first book, IS CAPITALISM DOOMED? (1932), established him as a much more acerbic and perceptive critic of capitalism than any of the leftist ideologues who threw their lot in with Marxism.”
In his book, Lawrence Dennis made a closely argued attack on the policy of allowing investment bankers to determine the use and allocation of capital. This sounds a lot like Goldman Sachs and the rest today.
Beginning as a trickle during the tail end of the Nixon Regime, and then going full bore under Reagan-Bush, the investment bankers underwrote the strip-mining of America’s manufacturing base. Yet without the ability to create REAL wealth in our own country, no true economic recovery is possible. The Democrats, Republicans and the largest Third Party group, the Libertarians, ignore this altogether. So does Nader; he talks about a fairer split of wealth, but without real wealth being created, it’s a dead letter.
Ron Paul goes against the grain, up to a point, by calling for an Audit of the Fed. So what? A major accounting firm audited Enron’s books. Audit or no audit, the books were cooked.
A Lawrence Dennis today would call for nationalizing the Fed. He’d call for nationalizing the investment banking houses, without compensation, and hanging the lot of them as traitors.
Then the economics of Friedrich List, really a continuation of Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay and Lincoln, could be brought back into play.
Everything needs to be on the table. including distributism, social credit, et al.
Right now, table is bare.
Mauryk2's Blog 