LI was talking with our friend and far flung correspondent, Mr. T., on the phone last week. We both were yammering on about what is happening in the economy, and Mr. T. said something like, what we need now is another trillion dollar line of credit.
Which is very true. Leading me to this brief post, in which LI gives unsolicited advice to the Democratic Presidential candidates.
Look, next year will suck for the economy. It will suck so bad that the majority of Americans (for whom the economy has sucked for some time but who read in the paper that the economy is going terrifically well, and thus suffer from cognitive dissonance) are going to be reading in the paper that the economy sucks. It will be that rare alignment of existence and propaganda – an opportunity not to be missed!
So, here’s what you do. You make a speech saying what everybody knows – that the price of oil has tripled since we invaded Iraq because the oil dealers have a pretty shrewd idea that we are going to be tripping over the supply line for some time to come. But, you say, I am going to bring the price of oil down. How, you ask – easy. I am going to make peace with Iran, which will easily remove many of the artificial roadblocks to the exploration and exploitation of Iranian oil. That’s all. On the news – if, that is, you are a credible candidate – oil futures will fall. This is almost a no brainer play. And when they fall, you make a second speech pointing out that they fell because of your first speech. And so on – the point being that if you want those votes in the methamphetamine states where Jesus is almost king, just press on those gas prices. They’ll holy roll themselves your way.
On the other hand, doing this won’t make the petro-gun club up in D.C. happy, and really, politics in this country is about keeping the petro-gun club in D.C. happy. So maybe you shouldn’t do it. After all, even if you are defeated, you’ll get big hugs from the liberal side, which has learned to embrace rejection, using Dr. Scruggs patented Ignatz luv conditioning method - as Dr. Scruggs says, it only means luv if it hurts! - and you can always become a big wheel in one of those private equity corporations. And God wants you to be rich. Fuck it. Ignore this advice.
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This is very funny stuff, Roger. So much so that it hurts; by the criteria with which I'm credited, that also makes it lurve.
ReplyDeleteDigressing, how much of this really has to do with greed? By that I mean acquisitive greed. They all seem much more driven by fear of loss (and not just material loss) than by desire to accumulate. According to the Squirrel Dialectics, once the nut cache is full, the chitterers put a greater focus on preventing a threatening parity of accumulation than they do on acquiring more. So the job of the Dems would be to manage an aggressive recession, as warfare, which would
a) leave the petro-gun club less worse off than their foreign counterparts
and
b) promote domestic immiseration
Actually, Mr. Scruggs, I think the petro part of the petro gun club has a shrewd idea that Dems are not helpful in maximizing their profits. Of the three legs to the Clinton prosperity - low oil prices, stabilized health costs, and the tech bubble - the low cost of oil was crucial. I think you could make a case that the more than tripling of the cost of a barrel of oil during the Bush administration might be the one (although secret) achievement Bush's base is proudest of.
ReplyDeleteI found some lovely charts on the historical prices. They do tend to support the correlation between who holds the White House and profit maximization. OPEC's production climbed steadily and strongly during the Clinton years too, which must have been galling to the petros.
ReplyDeleteLooking over the rest of the charts, they benefit most from chaos and disastrously belligerent foreign policy. Steady hegemony does them little good.