How to Compost....First, think of compost as the organic meal for soil microorganisms. Assuming that healthy meals produce healthy soils, your basic five star compost menu consists of a fixed ratio of carbon and nitrogen ingredients (30 parts carbon to 1 part nitrogen).
The latest ruminations on macro-finance after the global financial crises (sponsored by the IMF) focus on understanding how the Fed will transition from its current balance sheet that reads a 2.4 trillion deficit, back to the pre-crises balance sheet of an approximately 800 million deficit.
The panelists suggest that current macro-economic policy is geared toward aggregate growth, possibly creating a new bubble (or reflating the old bubble) and it will produce a jobless recovery. Perhaps the job situation will return to "normal" in 2015.
Now, consider that macroeconomic strategy as it relates to the Obama Administration's re-election strategy. Here is one, although not a definitive, read on that re-election strategy (using the basic political science axiom that the activities of all politicians are geared toward re-election)
1. It suggests they (Obama political strategists) are moving away from the grassroots funding (or the myth of grassroots funding) that grounded their previous campaign, toward a strategy based on the utilization of a small army of large campaign bundlers. Perhaps a risky strategy considering that Wall Street views politics in terms of Twiddle Dum and Twiddle Dee. They hedge their bets by giving to, and therby owning, both major political parties.
2. It suggests they are relying on the good will of the African American community, hit hardest by the financial crises and helped least by the macro-economic strategy, to turn out in as large numbers in 2012 as they did in 2008.
3. It suggest they are relying on the remainder of their electorate base to remain loyal, rather than indifferent (not voting) or oppositional (voting for the alternative).
4. It discounts the fact that an aggregate growth, jobless recovery plays into the hands of Republican Party challengers. After all, the Republican Party would have pursued a very similar, if not identical macro-finance strategy (i.e., promote aggregate growth to the indifference of job creation using the same "jobs as a lagging indicator" defense)
(I'm not debating the relative merits of the standard macro-economic proposition that jobs are a lagging incidator, I'm suggesting there are other economic or political-economic ways to theorize about unemployment such as economic upheaval ---> permanent job loss, or economic upheaval ---> permanent job loss ---> political conflict (as with the case of the Great Depressions and WWII).
Nonetheless, because Republican Party challengers do not govern, they need only play the political hand they are dealt, the Obama Administration's macro-economic strategy deals the Republican Party a very good political hand.
5. The four year re-election strategy is at the very least indifferent to the normal two-year Congressional cycle. While the macro-economic experts acknowledge that the bulk of spending for the recovery package will take effect in 2010, they also agree that it will do little to improve aggregate employment numbers. That fact does not hold promise for the re-election of a Congress that largely bases its jobs on the jobs of its constituents.
Politically speaking, it takes money to make money. I would suggest moving the Fed Balance sheet closer to the 3.4 trillion level to promote long term, sustainable job growth. That also means that the Republican Party, when they finally regain their footing, will actually have to put their proverbial money where their mouths are. For the past three decades they talked the low government spending and pro "free" market talk, while walkiing the borrow and spend us to unstainable debt walk. It will be an experiment in political science to see exactly how the Republican Party would actually rule if they had to practice what they have preached over the past three decades.
In short, the Democratic Party should stop stacking the deck for the Republican Party.
