Dark Visions

It's worst than you think. I'm not talking about the war in Iraq, ubiquitous corruption, or the CIA's "black sites" in Eastern Europe. I'm talking about Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers and soon to be Federal Reserve Chairman. Bernake, who's luv'd by Wall Street, the Republicans and the Democrats! has been proselytizing about "the global savings glut." The U.S. is financing its current account and fiscal deficits mostly from the savings of foreigners. Bernanke argues that Asians and Germans are saving too much, and thereby suppressing their economic growth. According to Bernake were it not for American "profligacy," this foreign propensity to save would produce a global recession. Bernanke applauds and encourages Americans' enthusiastic spending habits.

Growing the economy of the world as the solution to global poverty is what Bernake and his acolytes in both parties are espousing. They claim aggregate growth will do more for the poor than redistribute measures. Bernake's approach is the neoclassical economic theory that believes there are no physical parameters and that physical resources must be used to promote growth. However populations of human bodies and accumulations of capital goods cannot grow forever. You cannot develop growth beyond the environment's carrying capacity. Economic policy should not be to maximize production and consumption but rather to minimize it so as to enable us to maintain the biosphere in which we must live.

Neoclassical economists, the NeoCons, do not believe that economic policy is a subset of the environment. They are going to destroy our planet through rampant over-production and conspicuous consumption. Our heirs will never forgive us.

@Copyright 2005 Howard Fallon