In No Mood for D-Fault

Zandi does not factor in the one plausible escape route from this debacle, . . . to raise marginal income taxes on the upper income levels

Mr. Poster is plainly on the better or anti-Zandi side of the _Klassenkampf_, yet it would not hurt to grasp the viewpoint of the _Finanzkapital_ community, if one can do so without making unwarrantable concessions.

To wonder whether that community in general, plus Moody’s and Party Neocomrade M. X. Zandi in particular, consider it ‘plausible’ that (their own and perhaps especially their corporations’) income taxes should be increased may not be the best way to approach this factor. ‘Professional’ duty to their patients or customers would seem to require them to point out that tax rates in the USA could be -- have been -- much higher than they are now without the roof falling in. However, since it is their Class’s own pocketbooks and piggie banks of which we speak . . . .

Well, I find it plausible enough that the neocomrade and his employers would prefer to lay that particular factor aside. Perhaps Moody’s and Moody’s ‘clients’ might volunteer a little something, sacrificewise, if firmly and repeatedly asked, but it is asking too much of fallen humanity to expect them to bring up such a displeasing subject unilaterally.

In any case, at the moment M. X. Zandi is worried -- presumably on behalf of his employers and his employers’ ‘clients’ and, indeed, in the interests of his Class as a whole -- about the implications of a failure by the United States of America to meet our financial commitments. The neocomrade’s handy-dandy "How to cut the deficit --" is too vague to be taken very seriously, but perhaps no more is required when his attention is so fixed on "-- and what happens if we don’t." [*] My guess is that M. X. Zandi set out to agitate and propagandize that deficit cuttin’ is so easy a business that our hack pols and statespersons would have to be quite exceptionally incompetent to manage not to do it. [**]

From this standpoint, the interesting thing is that the man from Moody’s seems to be seriously concerned they actually might not.

More interesting than that, and a far better topic for the neocomrade analyst’s special expertise, would be to have told us what measures he has recommended to the clients of Moody’s and to his Class in case Obamageddon does come to pass. Presumably they take their yen and their Euros out of Uncle Sam’s treasury notes at once -- any fool of an uninstructed lay sheep can guess that much -- but ¿then where do they go with them?

Needless to say, however, the neocomrade can not be expected to give away to all and sundry _gratis_ what his employers’ clients are billed to the gills for. Furthermore, if there do in fact exist nifty strategies for financial self-protection in the event of a ‘default’ by poor Sam, almost certainly the fewer folks know about them, the better they will work. The patients or customers of Moody’s would be *doubly* betrayed, if what they have forked over their semi-good Bernanke bucks for were not only handed out as a freebie via Fox-on-15th but rendered more or less inoperative in the process. [***]

Happy days.

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[*] Some editor at Fox-on-Fifteenth-Street may be responsible for the header, but, for once, it does correspond tolerably well to the contents of the article.

[**] If deficit cuttin’ be in fact extremely easy, then anybody can draw the inference that there are probably lots of different ways of doin’ it. That, in turn, means that M. X. Zandi need not ask for trouble by draggin’ in "taxes on the upper income levels." I mean, ¿Why put ideas in their heads?

[***] In theory, at least, it might be the case that no nifty options exist, or none that Moody’s Analytics knows about. M. X. Zandi could not be expected to admit it, were that the case, but it would certainly inspire him to true urgency about "-- and what happens if we don’t."