While the aspirations of the Wobblies have been diminished as grandiose for a century, they were trying to make a decent world for all. What do we make of a nation that allows itself to be enthralled by the pleasure principle of an Uber negotiator? His pleasure is somehow our own.
His id might not be the best political-economic organizing principle for society. We may be about to find out anyway. He may wobble, and we may all fall down.
In Freudian psychoanalysis, the pleasure principle (German: Lustprinzip)[1] is the instinctive seeking of pleasure and avoiding of pain to satisfy biological and psychological needs.[2] Specifically, the pleasure principle is the driving force guiding the id.[3]
Our ego is his id
Trump sits on the stool of the economy blowing gas and flipping birds at the opposition, to the raucous cheers of his base (as long as his base gets bailed out anyway). The economy is his, more so than any president in our lifetime, so much so that the economy has, to him and ideally to the engulfed us, become an almost anthropomorphic expression of himself. Think of his base as the top of his stool, happy to have him sitting on top and confident that he, the man who said Mexico would pay for it, has a plan. And the legs of the stool are his legs too.
While his legs one and two get him back and forth from the Presidential golf cart in fairly traditional fashion, it is his third leg that rules his self-image and so much else. His reelection, like his assumption of immunity from removal in the Senate, rests on the expectation of a “strong economy.” Looking beneath the stool helps to see how strong this expectation is. What such a look reveals is increasing wobbliness, with the third leg likely to lead to his eventual hugely embarrassing failure. In fact, the third leg is so disproportionately short, the whole stool seems designed to fail.
Despite its occasional anti-establishment rhetoric, Trump’s 3-legged id-economic stool in practice is:
1. Trump’s right leg: Conventional late 20th century Republican fiscal policy—highly regressive gutting of tax rates, regulations, and safety net programs; anachronistically sexed up with
2. Trump’s left leg: 19th century Republican mercantilism under the control of a supposed Uber negotiator—national industrialist protectionism as a totem for national worker protection; who has a quaintly onanistic
3. Trump’s middle, and dominant, leg: Animal spirits belief that stock market and Main Street growth are susceptible to continuous beneficent stimulation by low interest rates—maintenance of what were initially intended as emergency low interest rates as the new norm in perpetual economic orgasm, all boom, no bust. (I’m told that’s not the way the ... economy [Ba Dum Tss] works.)
The first two legs are not working out so well. The first leg depends on such notions as supply-side economics that have long been disproven, so much so that even St. Ronnie had to back off.
The second leg is interesting in a rudimentary theoretical sense but in practice not working out so well. In a debt-ridden consumer society lacking solidarity, price-sensitive Walmart shoppers who will ultimately pay for tariffs combined with export-dependent farmers, transnational companies, and financial elites who do well under neoliberal trade regimes are gradually outweighing in expressions of dissatisfaction those few whose jobs have been brought back. That does not mean that some form of duly-noticed trade war in the moral service of a just cause may not be necessary (namely fighting global warming, www.dailykos.com/...). It does mean that isolated fights for trade justice under the autocratic guidance of a fascist nitwit and, needless to say, outside of the larger unification of the workers of the world, is a cruel farce at best, pitting workers against workers in bread wars fought for the benefit of further capital accumulation by the wealthy.
Trump’s id be done
But ah, Trump’s third leg. His precious. Site of his Vietnam. Above all, Trump must have his way in matters of stimulus. Basis point by basis point, the pleasure principle embodied in the financial flesh. To go down is to go up.
Continuing good times for Wall Street, right? Not so fast:
Falling interest rates may make mortgages and lots of other loans cheaper, but they don’t necessarily mean good things for the stock market.
Treasury yields have had a big move lower this month, as trade war fears rose and economic data disappointed. Yields move opposite price, so the move lower in interest rates suggests investors are finding safety in bonds. Since the beginning of the month, the S&P 500 has lost 4%.
Credit Suisse analysts Tuesday looked at the period between Dec. 24, the days stocks plunged and bottomed out, to last Friday, and found that the down days for interest rates actually meant lower stock prices.
Even Cramer is worrying.
"I think we could be on the verge of a significant slowdown in the U.S. economy if something doesn't change soon," the "Mad Money" host said. "Consumer and corporate confidence [is] waning. Things just don't feel right in this country."
...
Cramer also noted that "yields don't protect you anymore ... the stocks keep falling on fears of a worldwide tariff-related slowdown." He noted that dividend stocks have not gone higher as they usually do when U.S. Treasury bond yields fall to their current levels.
But surely Main Street will do fine, right? If it just keeps on smiling, all will be well.
Along those lines, the recent slide in stocks and long-term bond yields may be a more important indicator of sentiment than last month's consumer confidence measures. The US 10-Year yield recently hit its lowest level since September 2017.
That may not be enough to set off recession or bear market alarm bells just yet. But it could be a sign that earnings and economic growth may have peaked for the foreseeable future.
"While we are not projecting a downturn yet, the message from the financial markets is clearly one of a slowing economy," said Joseph LaVorgna, chief economist for the Americas at Natixis, in a report Tuesday.
It’s time to, not make America great again, but save the world and expand, not contract, our understanding of “we.” The greater mystery is why Trump, third leg in hand, was ever expected to save us. Much better to admit that inside we are each as individuals weak, a little bit wobbly even, but hoping that together we can do our job of saving each other.
All of our research has shown so far that the origin of the term Wobbly cannot be determined, and so we have to unfortunately admit that we don't honestly know the answer. Though the true origin of the epithet "Wobbly" remains a mystery, most of us IWW members gladly use it to describe ourselves, because the term has become an integral part of the IWW's history and culture.
‘In Vancouver, in 1911, we had a number of Chinese members, and one restaurant keeper would trust any member for means. He could not pronounce the letter "w" (due to the "l" sounds in the pronunciation of the letter), but called it "wobble" and would ask, "you Eye Wobble Wobble?" and when the [red] card was shown credit was unlimited. Thereafter the laughing term amongst us was "I Wobbly Wobbly".’