Has America, ‘abandoned all of its prior principles to a pragmatic state centralism based on tax increases’?
According to Alexandre Adler of French Newspaper Le Figaro, not only has the Reagan model been effectively abandoned and the embrace of state-capitalism begun, the military phase of the war against terrorism is over – with one notable exception:
“America is concluding the military phase of the war against terrorism, and is choosing a voluntarist economic model that could lead to a formidable strategic revolution: fewer ‘police operations,’ a radical redefinition of priorities brought on by a new financial austerity, but contradictorily, within Pakistani confines, perhaps the outline of a real war against a genuine army in Pakistan, in an alliance with India and Israel, and who knows what the result would be of a new Iran which is closer to Washington.”
The Chronicle of Alexandre Adler
Translated By Sandrine Ageorges
September 27, 2008
France – Le Figaro – Original Article (French)
Once again a few months ago, I annoyed readers with my taste for paradox by saluting the advent of a sort of “American socialism ” primarily based on a hard-to-measure influence from the past – that of public power. I won’t go into detail here, since the idea is about to become a truism: For example, Time Magazine published a cartoon of the American flag which after a moment transforms into a French flag, meaning that under the impact of the current crisis, America has abandoned all of its prior principles to a pragmatic state centralism based on tax increases. Because no one believes the claims that the credit being offered to collapsing financial institutions will be repaid, nor in their financing through further debt, which despite impressive Chinese goodwill in this area, has also reached its physical limits.
What remains controversial in this case is the form that that this great turning point for American civilization will take – a civilization which has already hit the floor in terms of its fundamental infrastructure: Wall Street. There is little likelihood that the market economy and the strong and obvious inequality in wages are at stake, nor even the wide presence of the United States in the world.
Rather than a possible comparison with the Soviet Union during the years 1988-1989, one would more likely invoke the United States during the years 1979-1980 which marked the end of Rooseveltism and the seizure of power by the new monetarist and populist coalition that Ronald Reagan managed to forge during the 1970’s in California [Reagan was California governor].
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