Reactions From the Hive

Swarms Over Stockman

We published several days ago an extended argument by David Stockman about the economic catastrophe looming in the United States.  Until recently Stockman was a Washington insider, but now not so much.  The establishment has turned upon him.  No surprises there. 

What is interesting to note is the style of argumentation and rebuttal Stockman has faced.  The upshot is that he stands unscathed and the establishment reveals itself to be as intellectually bankrupt as it has made the country fiscally bankrupt.

The Financial Times reviews the reaction:

It takes a lot for an official who served at the heart of the White House to go beyond the pale in Washington, but a diatribe against all economic policy since 1933 – attacking everyone from Franklin Roosevelt to Milton Friedman – is one way to manage it.  David Stockman, budget director for Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1985, is the man who will be short of dinner party invitations after becoming the most mainstream figure to argue that all America’s economic problems stem from the welfare state and the end of the gold standard.

Here is a (more gentle) reaction from the establishment Left:

The reaction, left and the right, was scathing. Jared Bernstein, former economic adviser to vice-president Joe Biden, gave one of the gentler liberal critiques. Mr Stockman, he said, was “about 11.8 per cent absolutely and totally on target” with his criticisms of crony capitalism. But the other 88.2 per cent was “a horrific screed, an ahistorical, dystopic, Hunger Games vision of America based on debt obsession and wilful ignorance of macroeconomics and the impact of market failure”.

Stockman had written an "horrific screed", was a victim of a "debt obsession" and guilty of "wilful ignorance".  The poor chap is near mentally unstable and deliberately ignorant.  Ad hominem near its worst.  So far, Stockman's argument stands unscathed.

And here is a a reaction from the establishment Right:

The right was not much more impressed. David Frum, a speech writer for former president George W. Bush, called it “primitive” as economics, “silly” as advice, and diagnosed Mr Stockman with a mild case of elderly depression.  “As an insight into the gloomy mindset that overtakes us in older age, it’s a valuable warning to those still middle-aged that once we lose our faith in the future, it’s time to stop talking about politics in public,” he wrote.

Frum's "argumentation" represents ad hominem close to its worst: condescending drivel.  But on those who are alert, the irony will not be lost.  These utterances come forth at a time when Europe and the UK is reeling. punch drunk from exorbitant debt.  But the mindset of the Washington establishment is that such calamities would never happen in America. This is American Exceptionalism at its highest and most stupid.  The realities of ordinary mortals and nations do not apply to us.  We are too big, too wonderful, too exceptional to be thus snookered.

The die is cast.