The Race To The Bottom

Gordon Brown, or the guy believed to be the brains behind Tony Blair, has acknowledged that:

Ex-prime minister Gordon Brown admitted that he made a "big mistake" in not seeking tighter regulations on banks in the lead up to the financial crisis. The former leader told a conference in the US that he had not fully appreciated how "entangled" the global financial system had become when establishing the Financial Services Authority (FSA), the country's regulatory body.
"We set up the FSA believing the problem would come from the failure of an individual institution," Brown said. "That was the big mistake. We didn't understand just how entangled things were.
"I have to accept my responsibility."

He now understands that:

"There should be an international agreement, otherwise you'll just have banks threatening to move from one country to another," continued Brown.

"Britain was under relentless pressure from the City (Britain's financial centre) that we were overregulating. All through the 10 to 15 years, the battle was not that we regulated too little, but that we regulated too much," he added.

Yes, Gordon, you don't give the banks what they want and they threaten to go off shore..  You don't give business what they want and they threaten to go off shore.  The reality is, if you are going to buy into the concept of globalization and free markets then we need to start regulating our banking and financial industries globally. 

Glad to see that Gordon Brown finally understands! 

That then brings us to the democrats in the United States.  Here is a really good article on how the battle over raising the debt ceiling is going to be played out:

The Republican Playbook for the Debt-Limit Fight

   

Democrats, or at least those who we will now call "Obama Huggers" pay close attention to this:

If the early rhetoric is any indication, House Speaker John Boehner is going to rely on the same playbook he used to best Democrats this time around - leveraging his hard-liners to wrest away most of what he wants. And it is probably going to work once again.

Of course it will work again, because there isn't any hard-liners on THE LEFT to counter balance the threat that the Tea Party presents! 

Obama will present his "spending plan" this week and of course all the "Obama Huggers" will cheer and get all weak in the knees to race out and blog their support.  Its time to realize, as Gordon Brown has on the banking industry, that until someone comes up with a "REVENUE PLAN" all the "Obama Huggers" will have to champion is a less draconian "Path To Prosperity." 

Its such a shame that the "Obama Huggers" continously want to attack the "THE LEFT" without realizing that "THE LEFT" is all they got as an alternative to the Tea Party.

The "Narrative" Continues

I cannot help but notice that the Democrats lack the ability to control "the narrative" of current politics.  Barack Obama made a gallant attempt in 2008 to change the narrative and the Democrats thus found themselves with a mandate and overwhelming (in regards to current political history) majorities in the House and the Senate.  With the financial meltdown the Democrats also found themselves in an environment very conducive to a change in the narrative.

But the narrative did not change.  The narrative today, is neoliberalism, as it has been since 1980:

"Neoliberalism describes a market-driven approach to economic and social policy based on neoclassical theories of economics that stresses the efficiency of private enterprise, liberalized trade and relatively open markets, and therefore seeks to maximize the role of the private sector in determining the political and economic priorities of the state.


The term "neoliberalism" has also come into wide use in cultural studies to describe an internationally prevailing ideological paradigm that leads to social, cultural, and political practices and policies that use the language of markets, efficiency, consumer choice, transactional thinking and individual autonomy to shift risk from governments and corporations onto individuals and to extend this kind of market logic into the realm of social and affective relationships."

The reality is that Republicans and Democrats have bought into the idea of "...maximizing the role of the private sector in determining the political and economic priorities of the state."  The conservative bloc of the Republicans still attempt to call this "statism" but the reality is it is not; it is corporatism.

The only real difference between the two parties is in regards to "...shift(ing) risk from grovernment and corporations onto individuals and to extend this kind of market logic into the realm of social and affective relationships."  

The narrative is ideal for the Republicans and it allows them to capture the anti-government anger, the belief that government benefits everyone but me, and all the other strains of malcontent that exists in a society.  The Democrats on the other hand find their support among the 'rose colored glasses' 1960's radicals, the unions, and the various other minority groups that believe that government can make a difference.

As Bill Clinton so famously stated in 1996, "...the era of big government is over." 

The Path To Prosperity, which is the title to Paul Ryan's long term budget proposal, is just an obvious continuation of neo-liberalism, and should be viewed as the exclamation point to the sentence, "...the era of big government is over!"  

The reality is that this proposal is our new narrative!  The Democrats will find themselves debating "less" against "more" because they lack prescriptive alternatives not only to Ryan's plan but to neoliberalism in general.

You cannot argue that tax cuts do not create jobs, when your stimulus proposal was made up of almost 70% tax cuts.  You cannot argue that tax cuts do not create jobs when you extend the Bush era tax cuts to....create jobs and stimulate the economy!  You cannot argue against a proposal that lowers the highest tax rate to 25% because....that creates jobs!  

It is near impossible to argue against shifting medicare to a voucher system (here is a tough argument to argue against inregards to vouchers) and medicad to block grants when in your own healthcare reform bill you never seriously considered a single payer option and you never once questioned why we rely on business to provide the vast majority of our citizens with access to health insurance.  The reality is that the seeds for the Ryan proposal were planted during the Obamacare debates.

Until the Democrats find an alternative to neoliberalism they will never be able to change the narrative.  Until such time, the pressure will be for smaller government, lower taxes for the rich and corporations, more deregulation, and a shift from the federal, to the state, to local, and eventually to individuals of risk, and the too big to fail will only grow bigger.