"Countercyclical price stabilization through buffer stocks is important beyond oil. We also need it for critical minerals to encourage investments in the green supply chain and for food staples like grains to avoid violent commodity price fluctuations in the wake of extreme weather events.
In addition to buffering essentials, we need policies that align public and private interests with resilience. As long as corporations see profits go up thanks to threats of shortages in times of disaster, we cannot assume that they prepare for emergencies in the best interest of the public. Price-gouging laws and windfall-profit taxes are relevant policy tools here.
Of course, the main task remains tackling the root causes of the emergencies. But this is a momentous task, especially in our climate change era, and in the interim a systemic set of buffers, regulations and emergency legislation is necessary. Without this economic disaster preparedness, people’s livelihoods and the outcome of elections remain at the whim of the next shock."
These recommendations reflect closely the insights in Weber's fascinating book, How China Escaped Shock Therapy (2021). No small irony then that this should appear in a newspaper whose house economist called Weber "truly stupid" just last year and has ignored studiously the greedflation element in recent price increases and helped legitimize a return of an indicted campaign that claims it is about to embark on the biggest project of free market shock therapy ever attempted in the world. The neoliberal order, corporate rule since 1980, anyway, precludes and scorns as "socialism" the kind of government buffering and stabilizing of markets that Weber proposes as essential. This feels, frustratingly, a little bit like the NY Times publishing their big story about Grump's decades of financial fraud a year after he's elected POTUS in 2016. Where were you guys when this was up for debate? Continuing to thrive and prosper economically while confronting climate change in the coming years and decades will require "industrial policy," government leadership and coordination, and the electorate just launched a new government hellbent on "deregulation" and "destroying the administrative state" forever. Not smart, and terrible for workers and the earth and everybody but the oligarchs.
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