Now look what you went and made me do

Long time-no post greetings, avid readers!

What could make me go through the password reset ritual and fire up the old blog again? No less than Jack Welch, former CEO of GE and ridiculously shameless shill for the financial snake-oil notions that bill themselves as "libertarianism" or "market fundamentalism" or any number of other names for the Gordon Gecko greed-is-good ethos.

As I was flipping channels, he was on Bloomberg (rather than on his own CNBC, home of Larry Kudlow, the Wolfowitz of Wall Street) and he actually said "government doesn't invent anything".

Enough!

This came from a man who headed a conglomerate that made jet engines and nuclear reactors.

Yesterday, Paul Krugman mused as to why the Wall Street Journal editorial page prints such obvious lies that they know damn well are lies. He concludes that they must think they are serving a higher truth though he does not know what it is. I, like the Nobel committee, think he's on to something.

This reflexive "gummint bad, cut my taxes" trope has become our civic religion. Jack Welch apparently wants to be its St Augustine. This religion serves it flock even less well than Catholicism served Ireland in the age of Parnell. It has actually started trending toward Jonestown.

The broad prosperous middle class that was built by the New Deal and nurtured under the greatest socialist program ever, as Jack Welch certainly knows, US Cold War defense spending, has brought about its own demise in the name of this new faith. Apparently, when St Ronnie spoke of getting government off "your" backs, we should have asked for a clearer explanation of "you". It certainly did not work out well for labor (stagnant real median wages) or anyone paying college tuition.

I can understand why Jack Welch and the rest of the financial world wants to continue offer their financial innovations to what's left of the middle class, because as one of their spiritual mentors once said, that's where the money is.