New Economic Perspectives

By William K. Black
June 24, 2016     Kansas City, MO

Roger Cohen

Roger Cohen published a column decrying BREXIT.

Warnings about the dire consequences of a British exit from President Barack Obama, Britain’s political leaders, major corporations based in Britain and the International Monetary Fund proved useless. If anything, they goaded a mood of defiant anger against those very elites.

This resentment has its roots in many things but may be summed up as a revolt against global capitalism. To heck with the experts and political correctness was the predominant mood in the end. A majority of Britons had no time for the politicians that brought the world a disastrous war in Iraq, the 2008 financial meltdown, European austerity, stagnant working-class wages, high immigration and tax havens for the super-rich.

That some of these issues have no direct link to the European Union or its much-maligned Brussels bureaucrats did not matter.

Yes, “Project Fear” failed in its goal of intimidating voters.  It isn’t simply the “politicians” that failed, it was the “experts” – the elites that rig the system in finance and the ideologues who create the self-inflicted wounds of EU austerity – who designed the failed policies and grew wealthier and more powerful because of those policies.  Cohen ignores that obvious point, but much of the public has come to realize that the foreign policy and financial “experts” are dishonest and self-serving.  Their principal competence is making themselves wealthy at our expense.  I urge people to understand that ideology and self-interest rather than competence is what causes these elite “experts” to act as if they were stupid.  They are typically not stupid; they are skilled parasites.

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By William K. Black
June 24, 2016     Kansas City, MO

The UK vote in favor of BREXIT has stoked the fears of the New York Times to a fevered pitch.  Their greatest collective fear is the rise of “populism.”  The NYT fashions itself the last redoubt of “serious people” under siege by the rabble.  BREXIT is an opportunity to drive home to the rabble the folly of failing to fall in line with the policies of the serious people featured in the NYT.  The moral of the story is a simple one – when the electorate in a democratic election ignores the technocrats the result is an economic and social catastrophe.

Even for the NYT, however, their attacks on the UK electorate for daring to vote for BREXIT were extraordinary in their intensity and multiplicity.  At least seven articles, each of them negative about the UK voters, were featured in today’s paper.  (I had no strong views on the vote.  I think reasonable UK voters could disagree on the desirability of BREXIT.)

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