Debt Ceiling Nonsense

Debt Ceiling Nonsense
Jim Kavanagh

“Could the Treasury skip the rigamarole and pay its bills without bonds? Economically, sure. Why doesn't it? Well, the Fed has regulations governing “overdrafts” -- but apart from these, the answer is plain: to do so would expose the ‘public debt’ as a fiction, and the debt ceiling as a sham.” - James K. Galbraith

It is infuriating to watch this “debt ceiling” charade play out again, and terribly depressing to see so many self-identified leftists accepting, and bargaining within, the ridiculous, fictional framework that guarantees their perpetual defeat within a never-ending cycle of such nonsense.

Just about everybody—certainly everybody with any “progressive” inclinations—recognizes what a tiresome farce this is. We all know the “debt ceiling” is the atavistic remnant of a 1917 gold-standard-era law that was ignored until Newt Gingrich dug it up in 1995 to start the now-perennial stunt cycle; that it exists in no other country besides Denmark, where it is set astronomically high precisely to avoid making it a political weapon; that it is used hypocritically by Republicans as a political weapon against Democratic presidents, to cut social spending and attack “entitlements” (Social Security and Medicare); that it enables a ludicrous, blatantly unconstitutional “do-over” by which right-wing legislators, who were unable to get the social program cuts they want through normal Congressional votes, try to force the Executive to stop spending that the Congress has already authorized, etc.  (For a nice critique of the constitutional pretzel-twisting the Republicans are engaged in, see Robert Hockett’s Stop the Charade: The Federal Budget Is Its Own ‘Debt-Ceiling’.)

Syriza’s Final Charade

In my February post on The SYRIZA Moment (and in a revision of that piece, forthcoming in Canadian Dimension), I expressed great skepticism about the Syriza leadership’s commitment to the radical change the party promised to enact.

I pointed out that the leadership, as represented by Alex Tsipras and Yanis Varoufakis, refuses on principle to have a strategy for “replacing European capitalism with a different, more rational, system.” In Varoufakis’s own words, they are “tirelessly striv[ing] in favour of schemas the purpose of which is to save” the current “indefensible …anti-democratic, irreversibly neoliberal, highly irrational,” European socio-economic system. All this, because, as he understands it, “it is the Left’s historical duty…to save European capitalism from itself.” Varoufakis’s whole negotiating strategy, I suggested, was centered on persuading the masters and mistresses of the Eurozone, through his brilliant “immanent critique” of their own capitalist economic theories, that it would be in their own, and capitalism’s, best interest to help Greece restore some semblance of social democracy.

Certainly, the left factions of the party sincerely wanted it to be an “anticapitalist,” “class-struggle” formation that would be unlike “any European social democratic party today,” and that would have “an agenda of really breaking with neoliberalism and austerity,” and the capitalist TINA (There Is No Alternative) consensus. These currents defined Syriza’s 40-Point Program and its Thessaloniki Program, upon which it ran for election, and which promised a “National Reconstruction Plan that will replace the [Troika] Memorandum as early as our first days in power, before and regardless of the negotiation outcome.”

But even the hopeful left militants recognized that the party leadership, under Tsipras, was increasingly prone to ignore the base, and cultivated a “creative ambiguity” about crucial issues. Tsipras’s message to the base was a rejection of illegitimate and unpayable debt, and a radical break with austerity; his message to the Eurozone ruling class was a firm commitment to staying in the Euro and playing by the rules of capitalist finance. The message to the electorate was: We can do both of those things. And if we can’t… Well, yes we can!

This was a deeply dishonest deception and self-deception. It was the worst kind of electoral evasion, promoting false hopes that so many wanted to hear, and burying the need to prepare for the inevitable fight that was coming—thus virtually guaranteeing that the fight would be lost.

Good for the Gander:Ukraine's Demise Accelerates

A further look at the Ukraine debacle, in seven pieces.

Montagueski and Capuletovitch

(Cool Photo. Remember what happened to Romeo and Juliet.)

Ukraine, Interrupted

“Ukraine” means “borderland,” and if there were ever a country suffering a borderline personality disorder—barely “keeping itself together,” as we say—it is Ukraine. Suddenly, it’s been deprived of its meds (discounted gas and other Russian-provided subsidies), and goaded into a schizophrenogenic family crisis (the American-sponsored overthrow of its elected government, resented by half the country).  After the maidan mania, came the Crimea depression, and now, it seems, rapid and radical decompensation.

Before the maidan winter games, if some in the country (Kiev “liberals”) were looking for the cure from Dr. America and Nurse NATO, standing by to treat the flailing patient with their straitjacket of austerity and electroshock-and-awe therapy, perhaps some are now realizing that these practitioners’ cures only increase the crazy.

Since my last detailed post, the Ukraine situation has indeed been devolving rapidly, both within the country and on the level of international geopolitics.  It’s hard to see where Ukraine is going—whether it will survive as a unified state at all (even sans Crimea), and it is hard to see how seriously the world will be riven by a “new Cold (or even hot) War.” American political and media discourse is now completely dominated by the “aggressive Russia/nasty Putin” meme, but it would be wise to look carefully at the different axes of major, and lesser-included subsidiary, contradictions to see the real web of tensions which the “new Cold War” narrative is designed to occlude.