Thursday, March 15, 2012

Intellectual Dishonesty & Rationalizations - Are Stephen Roach’s Comments About China His Irving Fisher Moment?

Before Roach became a shill for what clearly is rationalized intellectual-dishonesty, I commented on here often that I appreciated his surly views as a contrarian.   That said, Roach has never been shown to be an authority on money or the dynamics behind globalization and China’s role in those dynamics.    But, since Roach is no longer involved in economics day-to-day and now has the self-interests of both his employer and his own career as head of Morgan Stanley’s China business, his comments and beliefs seem to be better described as rationalizations and intellectual-dishonesty than any type of reality. 

As human beings we are all capable of tremendous self-deceit and intellectual-dishonesty.   There is simply no way to run from who we are as the duality of the manifested self and our core being or higher power.  As part of the human condition, we often rationalize our own world through interests on behalf of  ourselves.  This manifests itself in endless forms and is a major reason why those in a bubble are oftentimes the only ones who never realize the bubble exists.  Just ask Washington lobbyists, Wall Street criminals and politicians if they believe they are in a bubble.  The answer most certainly would be a resounding no.   They are consumed by the self and the rationalizations that they are doing God’s work or the work of democracy or the work of creating our economy or society.   

That Roach has bought the cooking of centrally-planned communism-fascism in this article and this video is truly staggering to me and shows how even someone who embraced often contrarian views can be consumed by the vested interest of the self and his position of Morgan Stanley’s Asian Chairman.  These rationalizations or lies of the mind have trumped the reality of human behavior, economics, human rights and the truth of what is actually going on in China.  

Never in the history of humankind has an illegitimate authority that has murdered upwards of sixty to one hundred million of its own citizens and rules by authoritative decree ever led to any type of sustainable truth; economically or otherwise.  And, never in this history of humankind has economic central planning ever created anything other than misery and economic slavery due to loss of humanity’s participation in economic determinism; a central tenant to inalienable rights, the human need for self-actualization and personal determinism and the human need for community.  

There is some substantial modicum of truth that when the state or anyone else thinks for me, I no longer need to think for myself.  And, more importantly, the human mind seems designed to be intellectually-lazy if it is allowed to be.   So, most people will no longer even give any consideration to thinking for themselves.  ie, I outsource my personal responsibilities to the parental state as our inner child continues to desire until we die.  I become institutionalized; a very, very, very common occurrence to the financial idiots, corporate bureaucrats, politicians, those who are active members of the Republican and Democratic parties, the military-industrial complex and the like who blindly serve the corporatocracy in the United States.   Outsourcing our lives and what we are capable of being responsible for, and more importantly outsourcing who we were meant to become, always leads to human misery as someone else or the state imposes their control upon our lives.  -->> Loss of our intellectual freedom and loss of our own identity and our own determinism without even realizing it.  In other words, centrally-planned economics in China and around the world is going to end in catastrophe.     

Roach believes a communist-fascist authority that limits freedom of expression, free thought, freedom of movement, freedom of invention and countless other human rights, as well as countless economic rights including property rights (property defined as intellectual property, tangible property, property of the person and his thoughts and expressions, etc as defined by our Constitution), is going to lead the future of humanity with a centrally-planned five year objective of becoming a self-sustaining consumer nation.  And he notes that the future five year plan of urbanization and creation of social safety nets is going to drive that dynamic.  Contrarily and almost unbelievably, we wrote on here many years ago the exact opposite statement.  That is, China’s urbanization (placing people now squarely reliant on capital and the communist-fascist state) without a social safety net was going to be a contributing factor to its demise.  There is no social safety net in China yet Roach believes one is magically going to appear.  Contrarily, we have written for half a dozen years that China is broke but simple doesn’t realize it yet. 

I find it interesting that capital flows through the global economy and in China are now painting a very stark picture of what is to come for the centrally-planned economy.   This exactly at the time that Roach is opining about a bullish future for the communist-fascist state.   

Is this Roach’s Irving Fisher moment? 

"There may be a recession in stock prices, but not anything in the nature of a crash." -- Irving Fisher, leading U.S. economist , New York Times, Sept. 5, 1929

China, currently the biggest and most rapidly growing US export market, is well on its way to “create a consumption dynamic that will outstrip the growth of any consumer market in the world,”  -- Stephen Roach, leading U.S. economist, McKinsey interview, March 2012

posted by TimingLogic at 1:59 PM