Who are these people?luiz said:
So who fits the definition then? Does anyone? Or do I just have to take your word that "they" fit the definition?luiz said:
luiz said:
I don't know whose "they" are?
Who. Are. These. People.luiz said:
Argentina and the latest failure of heterodox economics
- Thread starter luiz
- Start date
I don't know whose "they" are?
As I said, there's no official list of orthodox economists / institutions. But here are some whose orthodoxy I think can hardly be questioned (note that some are more of purely neoclassical bent while others have a bit of a neokeynesian twist, but I'd call all of them orthodox):
-Robert Lucas (supported QE)
-John Taylor (generally opposed QE, with caveats)
-Greg Mankiw (supported QE)
-Alan Greenspan (supported QE but has been pushing for tapering to begin sooner rather than later)
-Douglas Holtz-Eakin (supported QE but also demanded tapering before the Fed was comfortable with it)
-and many others
I also generally consider institutions like the Fed, the ECB, and to a lesser extent the IMF and even lesser the WB to be bastions of orthodoxy.
-Robert Lucas (supported QE)
-John Taylor (generally opposed QE, with caveats)
-Greg Mankiw (supported QE)
-Alan Greenspan (supported QE but has been pushing for tapering to begin sooner rather than later)
-Douglas Holtz-Eakin (supported QE but also demanded tapering before the Fed was comfortable with it)
-and many others
I also generally consider institutions like the Fed, the ECB, and to a lesser extent the IMF and even lesser the WB to be bastions of orthodoxy.
kochman
Deity
- Joined
- Jun 8, 2009
- Messages
- 10,818
Well, the Krugman point is valid, as you point out.
But the idea is, from the threat title, that attempts, in the plural, of HE are failing.
More data is needed to support this point than Argentina.
I have finally found this thread and have some time to answer.
The thing is, you've not ever 'experienced' Peronism.
Peronism was a movement created as a verticalist civilian-militaristic structure that aimed to keep Juan Domingo Perón in power for all eternity. JDP had taken power as the man behind the man after some internal struggles among the perpetrators of the 1943 coup d'état, and then had run as the candidate of the newly formed Labour Party (Partido Laborista) to clinch the 1946 elections by a landslide.
Perón had accumulated the powers of the Labour Ministry (formerly a thir-tier "Department"), from where he struck deals with trade unionists and outlawed any trade unions that didn't toe the line; of the War Ministry, which served to cement a power base among the armed forces; and finally the vice-Presidency which made him in effect the unelected ruler of the country.
After the aforementioned elections, he simply continued to pass laws by decree except when he needed to get political credit, by that time Congress was subservient to him, the military having drawn up the electoral districts at will and being allowed to gerrymander as much as they wanted.
All of his Labour laws had been proposed by the Socialist Party, which he conveniently neglected to mention. Perón basically pillaged the reserves accumulated by previous administrations, failed to build up a heavy industry and brutally repressed anyone who opposed him, such as unions who didn't want to join the CGT; indigenous tribes who simply wanted to be left alone -some of them nearly exterminated by the Army-; and the middle classes who didn't -and don't- fit into a soldier's representation of the world as a place where people either rule or are ruled.
Perón never managed to really industrialise the country and sixty years later the country is still largely a huge farming estate where everyone prays for next year's harvest to be good, or else bankruptcy will be imminent.
He also had the Constitution changed to give himself better powers and the possibility of unlimited reelection.
The cult of personality grew: being a Party member was a prerequisite for being a state employee (including, crucially, teachers in the public education system), the Party anthem -an ode to Perón and his greatness- was mandatory as well, and children's nursery rhymes and texbooks were oficially altered to teach the children how good Perón was, better than even your own parents!
When Perón was deposed (stupidly, because if he'd been left to his own devices for the last three years of his term he would have collapsed), he bought passage abroad with part of his ill-gotten gains to Stroessner's Paraguay and eventually ended up living as Franco's protégé. Perón had propped up Franco's regime in the 1940s.
Meanwhile, the Peronists still behaved like a well-disciplined troop for a while, during which their main goal was to bring Perón back to power (screw the old ideals about justice and equality), but eventually they divided into a right-wing and a left-wing, both of which took turns to fight or ally with each other, the Radicals and the military governments. Perón formally disowned left-wing Peronism in 1974 when he was President.
Meanwhile, to make a long story short, Peronism has entrenched itself at all levels of the civil administration, to the point that in many provinces you have to be at least a nominal Peronist to be able to get work, as the provincial governments are the primary employers. Peronism has formally ruled for all but 2 yars in the past 25, as of tomorrow. In Alfonsín's time they simply boycotted him and forced shortages and had a general strike every month. Peronism pardoned all the guerillas and military men that had been convicted upon the return to democracy to gain credit as pacifiers in the early '90s, then retried them a decade later.
A sad aphorism, these days is "no se puede gobernar sin el peronismo". Three of the four main contenders for next year's presidential elections are Peronists, and they'll probably regroup after the election. Congressmen don't even bother to debate or propose bills, they simply vote yea or nay directly on the President's orders. The hierarchy is too well-structured.
Military governments only became outdated when a military organisation dressed up as civilians took power, among a society which had grown acustomed to following orders. It's awful if you bother to think about it, which is why most people don't think.
I'll write more on this later, as I have to leave for class, but Perón set out like any soldier: what's important is that his and his movement's opponents were defeated, not that he did anything good. Largely, he and his followers managed to destroy or cripple everybody else, and continue to get rich while doing so.
In effect, they've depreciated the peso to nearly the value of toilet paper.
Cheezy, your analysis is outdated. The unions are the force by themselves, and what is worse, they don't even answer to their own members. You're still thinking that unions and the unionised workers whom they represent are the same, but no. The unions are just another actor in their struggle for power and their leaders are people who haven't worked in decades. The teamsters pushed for the destruction of the rail network once upon a time, and as the dominant branch of Peronism at the time had struck a deal with the IMF to get humungous loans in bad terms in exchange for selling off all public services , it was quickly agreed to.This isn't the vacuous opinion it seems to be at first glance (because of layout, not because of content).
Argentina is in a pretty unique situation because of Peronism, which gives its government a host of interests to satisfy which is different from almost any other Latin American state. "Populism" is a good word to use here, because that's the strongest legacy of the Perons. The state-run unions are a force unto themselves, but have no direction; robbed of their radical origins decades ago, they've effectively become political pawns of various elites. They don't have a strong political bent anymore, and with upwards of 40% of the Argentinian workforce unionized during Juan's tenure, they have a huge hammer and don't know how to swing it, so they become the pawns of whomever has a loud enough voice to direct that hammer elsewhere: in this case, most often the state. The government knows it relies on the power of the unions to maintain its own power, which is largely what fuels the populism. Fascism has always hinged upon populism and bribing the public, so this legacy shouldn't surprise anyone.
The thing is, you've not ever 'experienced' Peronism.
Peronism was a movement created as a verticalist civilian-militaristic structure that aimed to keep Juan Domingo Perón in power for all eternity. JDP had taken power as the man behind the man after some internal struggles among the perpetrators of the 1943 coup d'état, and then had run as the candidate of the newly formed Labour Party (Partido Laborista) to clinch the 1946 elections by a landslide.
Perón had accumulated the powers of the Labour Ministry (formerly a thir-tier "Department"), from where he struck deals with trade unionists and outlawed any trade unions that didn't toe the line; of the War Ministry, which served to cement a power base among the armed forces; and finally the vice-Presidency which made him in effect the unelected ruler of the country.
After the aforementioned elections, he simply continued to pass laws by decree except when he needed to get political credit, by that time Congress was subservient to him, the military having drawn up the electoral districts at will and being allowed to gerrymander as much as they wanted.
All of his Labour laws had been proposed by the Socialist Party, which he conveniently neglected to mention. Perón basically pillaged the reserves accumulated by previous administrations, failed to build up a heavy industry and brutally repressed anyone who opposed him, such as unions who didn't want to join the CGT; indigenous tribes who simply wanted to be left alone -some of them nearly exterminated by the Army-; and the middle classes who didn't -and don't- fit into a soldier's representation of the world as a place where people either rule or are ruled.
Perón never managed to really industrialise the country and sixty years later the country is still largely a huge farming estate where everyone prays for next year's harvest to be good, or else bankruptcy will be imminent.
He also had the Constitution changed to give himself better powers and the possibility of unlimited reelection.
The cult of personality grew: being a Party member was a prerequisite for being a state employee (including, crucially, teachers in the public education system), the Party anthem -an ode to Perón and his greatness- was mandatory as well, and children's nursery rhymes and texbooks were oficially altered to teach the children how good Perón was, better than even your own parents!
When Perón was deposed (stupidly, because if he'd been left to his own devices for the last three years of his term he would have collapsed), he bought passage abroad with part of his ill-gotten gains to Stroessner's Paraguay and eventually ended up living as Franco's protégé. Perón had propped up Franco's regime in the 1940s.
Meanwhile, the Peronists still behaved like a well-disciplined troop for a while, during which their main goal was to bring Perón back to power (screw the old ideals about justice and equality), but eventually they divided into a right-wing and a left-wing, both of which took turns to fight or ally with each other, the Radicals and the military governments. Perón formally disowned left-wing Peronism in 1974 when he was President.
Meanwhile, to make a long story short, Peronism has entrenched itself at all levels of the civil administration, to the point that in many provinces you have to be at least a nominal Peronist to be able to get work, as the provincial governments are the primary employers. Peronism has formally ruled for all but 2 yars in the past 25, as of tomorrow. In Alfonsín's time they simply boycotted him and forced shortages and had a general strike every month. Peronism pardoned all the guerillas and military men that had been convicted upon the return to democracy to gain credit as pacifiers in the early '90s, then retried them a decade later.
A sad aphorism, these days is "no se puede gobernar sin el peronismo". Three of the four main contenders for next year's presidential elections are Peronists, and they'll probably regroup after the election. Congressmen don't even bother to debate or propose bills, they simply vote yea or nay directly on the President's orders. The hierarchy is too well-structured.
Military governments only became outdated when a military organisation dressed up as civilians took power, among a society which had grown acustomed to following orders. It's awful if you bother to think about it, which is why most people don't think.
I'll write more on this later, as I have to leave for class, but Perón set out like any soldier: what's important is that his and his movement's opponents were defeated, not that he did anything good. Largely, he and his followers managed to destroy or cripple everybody else, and continue to get rich while doing so.
What? Oh dear. The explicit unofficial goal of this government and Peronism in general is to annihilate the middle classes, as they don't fit their two-class (officers and enlsited men) system of.Cheezy the Wiz said:
The government has printed money in dementedly large quantities to pay their own internal debts, so much that the amount of 100-peso bills now exceeds the amount of all the other-denomination bills put together.
In effect, they've depreciated the peso to nearly the value of toilet paper.
This is basically inflation-fuelled. You can't have a stable exchange rate if the inflation is so high that it feeds on itself.
Argentina is never a valid sample for anything.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
I very nearly PMed you about it!
Even fascism, apparently. Fascism is nearly always a middle-class-driven movement which despises unions, how could fascists seek to annihilate their two bases of support, the anti-union workers and the middle class who are angry at the degenerating economic situation threatening their class status?
