SSP is the Public Face of the North American Union

I got an email from a colleague and it had on one of those cced spp.gov. So I wondered what was this?

Well it turns out that it stands for the Security and Prosperity Partnership Of North America.

Apparently the SPP people are also aware of all the conspiracy talk about their work as they have created a facts vs myths page on their website.

Yeah you guessed it the SPP is the place where they are plotting one world government in the form of the North American Union. Convservatives are very suspicious of this and indeed recently I was dialoging with one who thought that with the election of Obama that it was all over. Interestingly though he seemed quite suspicious of Bush as well.

Oddly enough I also did some research on Robert Pastor because Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times came up with a selection of what he thought would be ideal candidates for the Obama Presidency. It actually seemed surprisingly like a rehash of the Clinton's Cabinet and I thought well for one of the high level diplomatic positions why not consider Robert Pastor who I remember wrote a book that inspired me about finding solutions to what then in the 90s seemed a real problem in the relationship between the US and Latin and particularly Central America.

I then found the interesting connection between the email about Obama and the Robert Pastor link they both pointed to SPP!

Is that a case of Syncroncity or what?

While elite and establishment thinkers can make fun of those who live by the reality of the conspiracy theory, the reality is that humans have throughout history known to conspire against each other. And often these conspiracies would include secret agreements to manage large amounts of resources, land and people without their knowledge or consent.

Why would we expect that contemporary life would be absent such machinations? As we face a world dominated by power elites as never before questions about the intentions and machinations of the people at the top understandably invite concern and even distrust and suspicion.

So for those that seek to promote more multi-lateral or multi-lateralism in the world as compared to unilateralism of the US supported by the vague but potentially menacing notion of American Exceptionalism there is one simple answer to address the concerns of both the far left and far right: we must balance the need for more regional and global cooperation with a clear and compelling strategy to give power back to local regions.

One term for this process is Glocalisation and has been pioneered by the efforts of Paolo Lugari in Columbia at Gaviotas.

Obama's Short List for Treasury Includes Larry Summers

I recently caught word that Obama was considering his cabinet officials as was to be expected after his big win...

And the Contenders for Treasury are:

This WSJ article has listed four Candidates:

• Former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers,
• Sen John Corzine of NJ (also a Goldman Sachs alum like Rubin but also credited with having some populistic economic policies),
  
• Former Fed Chief Paul Volcker (credited with helping to get the economy out of the deep 80-81 recession)
  
• Federal Reserve Bank of New York President Timothy Geithner (one of the operatives that has been driving and designing the current system and also served and is linked closely with Rubin and Summers during their reign as the Economic Czars during the Clinton Admin)
  

A bit about the Two Presumed Finalists for Treasury Secretary

From a passage on the WSJ it seems that its already been narrowed down to choice between Summers and Geithner:

According to a person familiar with the matter, Mr. Obama's economics advisers are split between the two men. Some have also floated giving the job to former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker for a short time. An outside candidate is New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, a former co-chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., a post he shared with current Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

It seems that Rubin, Summers and Geithner are really kozy all part of the same network...so not matter who of the two is actually selected we get about the same approach and links to the very network that caused this problem in the first place...the report goes on...:

Adding an intriguing personal element: Mr. Summers, 53 years old, has long been a sponsor of Mr. Geithner, age 47. To this day, they attend a summer tennis camp in Florida together.

Some Critical Thoughts

On Summers wikipedia page there is listing of a stunning number of missteps he made during his time at Harvard but apparently he was well liked but the students who opposed his eventual removal by the Faculty Senate by 57 to 16%.

Also noted is his famous signing off the memo written by his assistant at the World Bank at the time Lant Prittchet in 1991. The leaked memo quickly became a symbol within the anti-globalization movement became in the words of Brazil's then Secretary of the Environment Jose Lutzenberger (he was later fired after making that comment.) a demonstration of the:

...arrogant ignorance of many conventional 'economists' concerning the nature of the world we live in.

I was mulling this idea of Obama selecting Summers and found this video and commentary titled "Larry Summers + Obama = More of the Same?"

In the post made Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez she points out that:

While Summers is blessedly big on government regulation on banks and commerce, it must never be overlooked that he was essentially forced to resign from his job as President of Harvard University because he insulted women, minorities and environmentalists by attacking all of them in his typical arrogant way.

Summers is the man who told an academic conference he believed men were inherently superior to women at math and science. He is the man who signed a letter by Lant Pritchett, saying developed countries should export their pollution to underdeveloped nations, because the cost would be less there (one assumes because people in those places matter less?). He is the man who accused famed professor Cornell West of being lazy and inept. He is the man who caused the only African-American member of the Harvard Corporation board to resign in protest of Summers' sexist comments and the university's continued support of him in light of them.

Summers is hardly compelling to me and yet I think its not fair or so easy to label Summers as a racist or sexist. In fact we need to get away from that kind of name calling esp when it is based on anecdotal evidence.

A more valid point she makes is that Summers was Treasury secretary during the height of a great economic time which turned out to be a mirage.

A bit of History (How quickly we forget?)

Still to this day there is a tendency on the part of some to point to the "Clinton glory days"...you know when the American economy was humming, unemployment was low, major wealth was being created through metoeric rises in securies and real estate and America seemed atop the world as the world's most competitive and efficient economy.

It was during this time that the Clinton Consensus model emerged. That is the moderate policies of the Democratic Leadership Council pushing the Dems to the center and inviting Wall Street "insiders" to run the economy and even fix a "broken" government and make it run more efficiently (like a business).

That insider was first and foremost Robert Rubin, a thoughtful Wall Street operative who had worked wonders at Goldman Sachs making a tidy sum for both the select partners of Goldman Sachs as well as for himself (he is worth several hundred million dollars). He then went on to forge a unique and close working relationship with Alan Greenspan, that helped to ensure that any bumps in the economic road to unprecedented American prosperity were quickly smoothed out.

Dean Baker put the case well focusing on the key factors that led to the current economic free fall and Summer's role in those policies and giving us some background on the role of Summers in promoting the very policies that led us to the current sad state of the American Economy:

As Treasury Secretary, Summers embraced the high dollar policy promoted by his predecessor Robert Rubin. While it offered short-term benefits in the form of cheap imports and lower inflation, the high dollar also produced a large and growing trade deficit. Just like tax cuts that cause unsustainable budget deficits, the high dollar policy of the Clinton years was unsustainable over the long-run.

Trade deficits also sap demand. In Summers' Treasury years, this demand gap was made up by a consumption boom, which was in turn driven by the stock market bubble. Like the rest of the Clinton crew, Summers cheered on the stock bubble.

Of course the stock bubble was not sustainable and when it collapsed in 2000-2002, it threw the economy into a recession. While the official recession was short and mild, the economy continued to shed jobs for almost two years after the recession ended. With the over-valued dollar causing the trade deficit to continue to rise, the only way to sustain demand was another consumption boom, this one driven by the housing bubble.

Greenspan kept interest rates at 50-year lows, while the housing bubble expanded to ever more dangerous level. Summers was no longer Treasury secretary at this point, but he did have ample opportunity to weigh in on a wide range of policy issues. While he offered his wisdom on a variety of economic issues during the housing bubble years, he never bothered to take note of an $8 trillion housing bubble or the catastrophe that its collapse would cause.

Silence was not Summers only contribution to the growth of the housing bubble. As Treasury Secretary, he had been a vigorous advocate of the one-sided financial deregulation (the Wall Street big boys all want the government security blanket of "too big to fail"). In particular, Summers had worked alongside Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan to prevent any regulation of credit default swaps, an instrument that helped provide the financial fuel of the housing bubble.

The collapse of the housing bubble has left one-fifth of homeowners underwater in their mortgages, owing more than the value of their house. Tens of millions of homeowners now find themselves at the edge of retirement with almost nothing other than their Social Security to rely upon. And the economy will quite likely experience the worst recession since World War II as it struggles to overcome the loss of $8 trillion in housing bubble wealth.

Short Term Memory Loss

It is not clear from these kind of selections that the Obama team has a really clear understanding of the larger picture of who and what is at the root of the economic problems we now face.

The idea of seeking guidance from the very people who made the decisions leading to American Economic Bubble seems very short-sighted.

A case could be made that if the President added a non-establishment economist that this would only add questions about the ability of Obama to govern. So it is probably a safer choice to add someone who is reliable...

I made a possible list of outsiders who might while putting forward alternative and dissident views also have considerable experiences and credentials:

1. Robert Reich
2. Joseph Stiglitz
3. Paul Krugman
4. Katherine Austin Fitts

None of these are really Marxist leaning and even socialist leaning. They all seek to promote careful and critical thinking about what is the fundamental issues driving our economy.

As a critical and pragmatic idealist - might ask the critical question:

Why is a "Yes We Can" president-elect talking about selecting the very same Yes MEN that promoted the short sighted-thinking leading to the current economic crisis that we are reeling from?