Stiglitz and Rogoff talk. Bush isn't listening

["John Gelles" <johng@xxxxxxxxxx>]

    A discussion of the Stiglitz-Rogoff debate was moving
    in many directions -- yet its fundamental importance to
    success in the Bush years compels me to try to focus
    it there:

    o  You seem to believe that if a distressed government
        issues more currency, its citizens will suddenly think
        it more valuable. You seem to believe that when
        investors are no longer willing to hold a government's
        debt, all that needs to be done is to increase the
        supply and it will sell like hotcakes.
                       -- Rogoff in debate with Stiglitz

    o  Real investment, productivity and production.
        These few words should be burned into everyone's
        economic thinking. They will bring social stability
        and political harmony - to the full extent that they
        are pursued honestly and without the corruption of
        false dogmas intended to serve particular and
        vested interests.
                       --  Ambassador James Cumes

    o  How can we make foreign aid work for the people
        not officials ?  [ Moreover, if we do: ] increasing
        foreign assistance may have merit on a number of
        scores. Yet it is not clear that the terrorist problem
        can be solved by foreign aid...
                       -- Jozef Imrich and Carol Graham

    o  Balanced protectionism, investment in industries
        with a reasonable chance of successful export in
        exchange for stronger currencies, nurture of
        domestic production to strendthen domestic
        currency and improve the domestic fiscal budget,
        -- these three are elements of a solution to high
        rates of poverty and unemployment.
                       -- Paul Riesz


        Paul wants "balance".  James wants "real" instead
        of solely speculative investment -- and that with
        minimum corruption coming from moneyed and
        politically powerful interests. Jozef and Carol want
        domestic tranquility, international peace, and a better
        life for the oppressed human beings whose lot might
        have been our own.

        Rogoff, however, is my favorite by far. He wants
        an answer to the only question that matters --
        show me the money that buys what I need.

        We know fascism with its resort to hate and killing
        can organize production and turn poverty into a an
        engine of aggression.

        We know communism with its resort to envy and
        the gulag can organize production and turn poverty
        into a confused resistance to fascism, capitalism
        and religion.

        Therefore, we reject investment and production
        along fascist and communist lines.

        Which leaves non-police-state methods for
        motivating work and invention on a path to
        problem solving by fair and effective systems.

        If such systems will resort to money and some
        elements of auction markets, Rogoff must be
        answered.  Some money, unrelated to indirectly
        mortgaged property, must be found to put all
        nations on a steady path to growth. This money
        is what Stiflitz found in special drawing rights
        issued by international authority acting as a
        super central bank.

        The same money is found by Gelles in taxless
        debtless national government spending systems
        that he thinks can start from scratch anywhere
        people already produce food enough to eat.

        One thing is for sure: George Bush and John
        Gelles are in trouble.  The President has no
        intention of spending his way out of the slump
        we have entered and may get stuck in. This
        will lose him his office and the chance we have
        to put terror to rest. Gelles' decision to vote
        Republican may have zero effect as his
        democrats remain soft on Islamic fascism
        and Bush cannot cotton to Keynes-Adler
        functional finance solutions.

            John Gelles