Thursday, the government stated GDP rose at at a 3.5%, but take away the government stimulus across the board and the economy was basically flat, so says the boys at Goldman Sachs. I'm not of the economic priesthood and while away no hours inanely discussing faith based orthodoxies of private spending versus government spending, for in matters of real economic output, it makes no difference. Is that car or house you purchased any less real because of a government subsidy?

The reason our economic church's discussion on such matters are of little economic relevance to anyone outside the priesthood is in reality they are questions of power, and there are no power equations in modern economics. The last three decades, America saw an enormous shift of economic power from government to both the financial sector and our leviathan corporations. The last year and half has seen not an expansion of government power in the economy, but the government playing a unprecedented and massive role in propping up the existing economic order of the last three decades. What becomes increasingly clear from the third quarter's economic numbers is this government role is necessary for any continuation of the established order.

In the months ahead, we will see a growing chorus for continued stimulus. At a purely hack political level, future stimulus is likely to be a necessity to keep Democratic congressional majorities, and well, who could argue against that if it is to keep the knuckleheads calling themselves Republicans these days from coming to power? But this once again only begs the question, are we so politically crippled
to not be able to come up with a viable alternative to our increasingly harmful two party politics?

From a larger political economy view more stimulus is problematic as the entrenched economic order controlling our political economy uses the money to continue a unsustainable status quo, the harmful clash for clunkers program being the best example. Last week saw the price of oil once again go above $80 a barrel and there is no stimulus large enough to reflate the past three decades American economy at $80 a barrel. Today, each new internal combustible engine only insures
greater future economic problems.

We need to fundamentally reform the American political economy and that means a fundamental reform of the American government and politics. Most of the questions needing to be answered are questions of power. Today's economic solutions are not simply how to produce and consume more stuff, but questions on the distribution of power. How can people gain value by being included into decision making processes, and this necessitates a reformation of political and economic power.

The employment problem of today will not be solved with increasing production and consumption, but by cutting work hours, reducing consumption and production, while increasing public space and the role of the citizen. In large part, the 20th century
industrial model is what this crisis is about. 20th, much less 19th century solutions are not going to fix it.



In helping understand the mindset such a political economy reformation will necessitate, The Nation has an interview with Mikhail Gorbachev on the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Mr. Gorbachev states about the thinking necessary for reform:

I am an intellectually curious person by nature and I understood that many changes were necessary, and that it was necessary to think about them, even if it caused me discomfort. I began to carry out my own inner, spiritual perestroika--a perestroika in my personal views...I began to understand that society needed a new vision--that we must view the world with our eyes open, not just through our personal
or private interests. That's how our new thinking of the 1980s began, when we understood that our old viewpoints were not working out.

Some great wisdom from the last man to pull out of Afghanistan, and remember, going into Afghanistan isn't the death of empires, pulling out is, paraphrasing Carl Spackler, "So, we got that going for us, which is nice."

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