Fundamental Causes

by digby

We really are all socialist hippies now:

JPMorgan Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon, in a letter to shareholders, touched on a theme that critics of the Iraq war were highlighting more than a year ago: That spending on the war was damaging to the economy. Dimon cited “an expensive war in Iraq” as one of the possible triggers of the economic collapse. Spending on the war ballooned the deficit and crowded out investment in domestic priorities. Meanwhile, the trade deficit soared…Dimon also cites the 2008 energy crisis as a shock to the economy that played a part in bringing it down. The energy crisis may still have occurred without the instability in the Middle East caused by the U.S. invasion, but with Iraq’s oil supply knocked off-line for years, it didn’t help.[…]
“Many other factors may have added to this storm — an expensive war in Iraq, short-selling, high energy prices, and irrational pressure on corporations, money managers and hedge funds to show increasingly better returns,” offered Dimon.

Right, and the “irrational pressure” to personally keep collecting millions even today apparently still exists even though “we face a truly global, massive recession — and it still is not over.” There were those who tried to bring up the costs of our Big Iraq Adventure and we were shouted down as traitors, I believe. I wonder if Dimon ever brought it up with his buddies in the vari ous sectors of the ruling classes during those summers on Nantucket. Somehow I doubt it. The only people who dared to suggest that spending the country into oblivion so that insecure Republicans could feel like Real Men might just have some negative ramifications for the economy were the “unhinged left.” Everybody else was too busy treating Alan Greenspan like the Oracle of Delphi and George W. Bush like Winston Churchill to hear it. Welcome to the tribe Jamie. Don’t bogart the joint.