New Cabinet

Pres.-elect Obama has just asked Dick Cheney to stay on in his role as Commander in Chief, at least through the first year they will be co-deciders. It is also reported that his first act as President will be to grant a pardon to Bernie Madoff and put him on his council of Economic Advisors. He wants to "listen to all sides". A great idea in my opinion (full disclosure : the Madoff sons Mark and Andy are clients at the fishing lodge I work for) (really) and in keeping with centrist, liberal openness to ideas. Is Margaret Thatcher available?

Heard a tremendously entertaining piece on BBC tele last night by business editor Robert Preston titled The New Capitalism. Echoing centrist-liberal Pres.elect Obama, he called for "more upstanding attitudes" from those in the Financial Sectors, a return to "more responsibility"and "less greed". A courageous stand! Preston conceded that some new regulation may be required (at least till the masses have been mollified and re-anesthisized) but the important thing is for the Masters of the Universe to take a hard, long look in the mirror (perhaps each morning as they shave?) and ask themselves: "Am I prepared to do the right thing today?"

In the last thread Renegade Eye directed me (us) to a piece by the windy but thorough Marxist scholar Alan Woods who describes just this type of sentimental and un-scientific approach to political economy in a scathing critique of the work of Arno Peters and Deiterich. The latter tries to develop the "theoretical" foundation of Venezuela's Socialism for the 21st Century. Anyway, I have a pretty good grasp of materialism and use-value vs exchange-value etc. and realize this is why folks of different ideological stripes have such difficulty in dialogue. Terms like value, price, wage, or labor remain disputed. Obama and Preston and CB and I are using the same words but with different meanings. The liberals have a romantic, sentimental view based in"natural" justice, a la Saint Simon or Proudhon. The conservatives are metaphysicians. I am a dialectician and all this talk of rights and fairness is just so many words flying past each other. It is why the Jews have spent so much time in hot water over "usurey", a moralistic term with no meaning and therefore malleable to whatever ends Power wishes to use it for. Interest good. TOO MUCH interest bad! Profit good. TOO MUCH profit bad. Who decides what is "too much"? You get the point.