The Bloomberg/Business article Romney Free-Enterprise ‘Trial’ Aligns Republicans With Obama, sees the same thing I do.

Republican front-runner Mitt Romney, who has cast the 2012 presidential campaign as “free enterprise on trial,” finds himself in a struggle over the role of capitalism in an unlikely place: within his own party.

As Romney attempts to frame a general election contest with President Barack Obama on the economy, some of his rivals for the Republican nomination have made many of the same arguments against him that Democrats have.

I noticed this as soon as I saw the promo for The Suffering Began When Mitt Romney Came To Town.

Bill Moyers will have a new show starting this weekend on PBS.

I saw his announcement of the show on Truth Out, Bill Moyers: Back With a New Series.

WGBH-HD | Channel #: 2.1
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WGBX World | Channel #: 44.2
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The provenance of this paper is a little confusing to me, but is has no bearing on the value of the paper.  The summary and link to the paper is published on the Global Development And Environment Institute At Tufts web site.

Unstable global capital flows to developing countries have been characteristic of the world economy in the wake of the global financial crisis. Such flows have triggered asset bubbles and exchange rate appreciation in a number of emerging and developing country markets, especially from 2009 until the Eurozone jitters in the fourth quarter of 2011. In response, some individual nations have deployed capital controls. Resorting to these measures has met a mixed response. On the one hand, institutions such as the International Monetary Fund have supported the use of controls in limited circumstances. On the other hand, there has been a vociferous response by leading politicians, distinguished economists, and in the blogosphere claiming that the use of capital controls amounts to financial protectionism.

This paper argues that such claims are unfounded. Specifically, the paper shows that:

1. There is a longstanding strand of modern economic theory that dates back to Keynes and Prebisch and continues to this day that sees the use of capital controls as essential to financial stability, the ability to deploy an independent monetary policy, and to maintain exchange rate stability.
2. The empirical record has shown that capital market liberalization was not associated with growth in developing countries.
3. In a most recent development, economists have developed a “new welfare economics” of capital controls that sees controls as measures to correct for market failures due to imperfect information, contagion, uncertainty and beyond.

Taken as a whole, rather than the “new protectionism,” capital controls should be seen as the “new correctionism” that re-justifies a tool that has long been recognized to promote stability and growth in developing countries.

The actual paper The Myth of Financial Protectionism: The New (and Old) Economics of Capital Controls is published by Political Economy Research Institute at the University Of Massachusetts Amherst.

This paper reminds us of the sound theoretical foundation for the use of capital controls that had seemed to go out of vogue in the era of deregulation worship and over worship of supposedly free markets.  It is one thing for economic theorists to put forth theories along with their explanations as to why they ought to work.  It is quite another to measure the effects of putting these theories into practice.  When one does do the measurement, one often finds that the results are not quite what was expected due to other forces in action that the theory did not take into account.  This does not mean that the theory wasn’t consistent within its framework of explicit and implicit assumptions.  It meant that those assumptions were not representative of the economic climate at the time.  In other words, the theory could become applicable if the conditions of the economy became consistent with the assumptions.  Of course, the trick in economic forecasting is to know what are all the forces then dominating in the economy and knowing how they might change with the introduction of a new policy.

I think the lesson to be learned here, and one that I have always promoted, and thought that President Obama promoted too, is that we have to be humble in our belief about how much we can know of  all the economic forces that exist now and may exist in the future.  In the face of the uncertainty, whenever we propose policy changes or even to make no changes, we must be constantly measuring the effect of policy to detect deviations from our expectations as soon as possible.

As President Franklin D. Roosevelt did, Obama should have made clear to the public that each policy initiative was an experiment that needed to be monitored.  If it did not work as desired, it would be modified or completely abandoned as measured evidence would suggest.  President Obama used this management style during his campaign.  I fully expected that he would maintain this effective management style when he became President.

Also my pejorative remarks about deregulation worship must be taken in perspective of the lessons learned here.  When the urge to deregulate began, it probably was a reasonable tactic to adopt.  The failure is in treating deregulation as a religion.  Use it as long as it works.  Keep measuring its effects.  Stop using it when it no longer produces good results.  Oh yes, and make sure you measure the effects in all dimensions of relevance.  It may be great if the average income is going up, but not so great if some people end up starving in order to boost the average.

It pays to keep in mind the statistical quality control techniques that W. Edwards Deming so successfully taught the Japanese companies as they rose to dominance. One such technique that I learned about is the use of process monitoring charts.  There were limit lines drawn on the charts that showed how far a process could deviate and still make acceptable product.  However, there were lines drawn that were closer to the set point that showed that a process was straying out of control and action needed to be taken before unacceptable product was produced.

I found the interview Occupy Boston Live- Housing Crisis Working Group on the New Shows from Occupy Boston TV web page.

In the show Cherie K. mentions her blog I Am Homeless Girl.

With apologies to my friends and relatives who still live in Texas, but Sharon, my wife, and ex-native Texan, insisted that I post this. You know I wouldn’t have posted this if she hadn’t insisted.

The podcast mentioned in the previous post Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory is now available online. Click on the link in the previous sentence to get to the 62 minute podcast.  I wanted to make this new post to bring your attention to the update in case you read the previous article before the podcast was available.

I now realize that this and another previous post are related.  They tell a story from two different perspectives.

The previous post The Suffering Began When Mitt Romney Came To Town tells the story of what happens in America when jobs get outsourced to other countries.  Amazingly, the story is told by a Super PAC connected to Newt Gingrich.

The previous post Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory tells the story of what happens in China when those outsourced jobs get there.

March 17, 2012.

You might want to follow up by reading, Artist admits to shortcuts in show about Apple.

Apparently this this is how Newt Gingrich is going to strike back at Mitt Romney.

Winning Our Future | King of Bain “When Mitt Romney Came To Town” [Trailer]

For tens of thousands of Americans, the suffering began when Mitt Romney came to town.

The message of this Gingrich film is exactly what progressives like me have been trying to get across,

Capitalism made America great … the building blocks of the American dream, but in the wrong hands some of those dreams can turn into nightmares. … Wall Street’s corporate raiders getting rich at the expense of American workers.

How wonderful it is for the Republicans to amplify the message from MoveOn, Mitt Romney: Job Creator?

If the Republicans sink Mitt Romney with this campaign, how will the eventual Republican nominee avoid the blowback?

I first learned about this video from an article in The San Francisco Chronicle, Romney Bain Leadership Attacked as Exploiting Companies for Cash.

For months, Mitt Romney has seldom been challenged on his claim that his leadership at Bain Capital LLC offers evidence that he knows how to create jobs. That has ended as his Republican rivals are accusing him of exploiting companies and firing workers in a quest to make millions.
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A Bloomberg News review of several Bain deals during Romney’s tenure found that not all Bain’s investments were beneficial for workers. Several companies ran into trouble, laying off hundreds of workers, filing for bankruptcy, facing federal fines, or lawsuits from shareholders who said they were misled by management. One example was Dade Behring Inc., a Deerfield, Illinois-based medical-testing company, where Bain cut least 1,600 jobs after taking over the company.

I post this video for the only reason that it is harder to hate people when you can see them as human beings.

Thanks to Hassan Moradi for posting the link to this travelogue on his Google+ page.

I used my previous post How America And The Mainstream Media Got Breitbarted On NDAA as a defense of Obama against some of the comments in The Raw Story article Obama pledges to exempt Americans from indefinite detention law.

I received quite a bit of pushback from my post.  One of the comments begins:

Have we been Breitbarted?  NO.  THE NDAA IS DANGEROUS TO EVERYONE-

To borrow from a fellow blogger’s comments from politicususa.com:

“…simply wrong. It does, absolutely, apply to U.S. citizens. I’ve read it, here’s a breakdown of the logical structure of it:  …

Rather than this commenter quoting another commenter explaining it to me and then me explaining it to you, why don’t I give you a link to the document and let you read it yourself. The National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2012.

The bill is 926 pages long, so I will ease your burden a bit by extracting the relevant sections indicating the pages in the document.  You are free to read the original document for more context than what I have extracted here.

p 1

112TH CONGRESS
1ST SESSION S. 1867
AN ACT

To authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2012 for military
activities of the Department of Defense, for military
construction, and for defense activities of the Department
of Energy, to prescribe military personnel strengths
for such fiscal year, and for other purposes.

p 426

15 Subtitle D—Detainee Matters
16 SEC. 1031. AFFIRMATION OF AUTHORITY OF THE ARMED
17 FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES TO DETAIN
18 COVERED PERSONS PURSUANT TO THE AU-
19 THORIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE.
20 (a) IN GENERAL.—Congress affirms that the author-
21 ity of the President to use all necessary and appropriate
22 force pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military
23 Force (Public Law 107–40) includes the authority for the
24 Armed Forces of the United States to detain covered per-

p 427 

 1 sons (as defined in subsection (b)) pending disposition
 2 under the law of war.
 3 (b) COVERED PERSONS.—A covered person under
 4 this section is any person as follows:
 5 (1) A person who planned, authorized, com-
 6 mitted, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred
 7 on September 11, 2001, or harbored those respon-
 8 sible for those attacks.
 9 (2) A person who was a part of or substantially
10 supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces
11 that are engaged in hostilities against the United
12 States or its coalition partners, including any person
13 who has committed a belligerent act or has directly
14 supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy
15 forces.
16 (c) DISPOSITION UNDER LAW OF WAR.—The dis-
17 position of a person under the law of war as described
18 in subsection (a) may include the following:
19 (1) Detention under the law of war without
20 trial until the end of the hostilities authorized by the
21 Authorization for Use of Military Force.
22 (2) Trial under chapter 47A of title 10, United
23 States Code (as amended by the Military Commis-
24 sions Act of 2009 (title XVIII of Public Law 111–
25 84)).

p 428

 1 (3) Transfer for trial by an alternative court or
 2 competent tribunal having lawful jurisdiction.
 3 (4) Transfer to the custody or control of the
 4 person’s country of origin, any other foreign coun-
 5 try, or any other foreign entity.
 6 (d) CONSTRUCTION.—Nothing in this section is in-
 7 tended to limit or expand the authority of the President
 8 or the scope of the Authorization for Use of Military
 9 Force.
10 (e) AUTHORITIES.—Nothing in this section shall be
11 construed to affect existing law or authorities, relating to
12 the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident
13 aliens of the United States or any other persons who are
14 captured or arrested in the United States.
15 (f) REQUIREMENT FOR BRIEFINGS OF CONGRESS.—
16 The Secretary of Defense shall regularly brief Congress
17 regarding the application of the authority described in this
18 section, including the organizations, entities, and individ-
19 uals considered to be ‘‘covered persons’’ for purposes of
20 subsection (b)(2).
21 SEC. 1032. REQUIREMENT FOR MILITARY CUSTODY.
22 (a) CUSTODY PENDING DISPOSITION UNDER LAW OF
23 WAR.—
24 (1) IN GENERAL.—Except as provided in para-
25 graph (4), the Armed Forces of the United States

p 429 

 1 shall hold a person described in paragraph (2) who
 2 is captured in the course of hostilities authorized by
 3 the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public
 4 Law 107–40) in military custody pending disposition
 5 under the law of war.
 6 (2) COVERED PERSONS.—The requirement in
 7 paragraph (1) shall apply to any person whose de-
 8 tention is authorized under section 1031 who is de-
 9 termined—
10 (A) to be a member of, or part of, al-
11 Qaeda or an associated force that acts in co-
12 ordination with or pursuant to the direction of
13 al-Qaeda; and
14 (B) to have participated in the course of
15 planning or carrying out an attack or attempted
16 attack against the United States or its coalition
17 partners.
18 (3) DISPOSITION UNDER LAW OF WAR.—For
19 purposes of this subsection, the disposition of a per-
20 son under the law of war has the meaning given in
21 section 1031(c), except that no transfer otherwise
22 described in paragraph (4) of that section shall be
23 made unless consistent with the requirements of sec-
24 tion 1033.

p 430 

 1 (4) WAIVER FOR NATIONAL SECURITY.—The
 2 Secretary of Defense may, in consultation with the
 3 Secretary of State and the Director of National In-
 4 telligence, waive the requirement of paragraph (1) if
 5 the Secretary submits to Congress a certification in
 6 writing that such a waiver is in the national security
 7 interests of the United States.
 8 (b) APPLICABILITY TO UNITED STATES CITIZENS
 9 AND LAWFUL RESIDENT ALIENS.—
10 (1) UNITED STATES CITIZENS.—The require-
11 ment to detain a person in military custody under
12 this section does not extend to citizens of the United
13 States.
14 (2) LAWFUL RESIDENT ALIENS.—The require-
15 ment to detain a person in military custody under
16 this section does not extend to a lawful resident
17 alien of the United States on the basis of conduct
18 taking place within the United States, except to the
19 extent permitted by the Constitution of the United
20 States.

Before I can understand this language myself, I think I am going to have to go back and put in hypertext links on references to other sections so that I can figure out exactly what words qualify what sections. Any lawyers in the audience care to write a concordance?

Now these just may be the types of political ads that gets some people’s attention. Maybe this will disabuse some working class Republicans of the idea that President Obama is the one killing jobs and the Republicans are the ones to create them.

Does Mitt Romney Care About Jobs or Just Making Money?

Mitt Romney: Job Creator?

Thanks to Bill MacDonald for posting these on his Facebook page.