The American Central Bank's Militant-Economists Turning To Nepal

We note a lot of “unknowns” in the analysis of expert economists when it comes to the macro-economy, and these unknowns are often concerned with the unpredictability of military events in global warfare and in geopolitically tense regions. This lack of knowledge of the relationship between military events and macro-economy is a result of the fact that military events are not factored-in in the analysis conducted by Central Banks and the strict responsibility of the predictions and analysis of military events are reserved solely for military departments.

There is no factoring-in of military events in the American Central Bank's economic model (known as the FRB/US) because it is unclear to the frustrated economist which side the perpetrator of a military event is: when a military event occurs, is it definitely an enemy's doing or the doing of the “secret service” of oneself's own government? Clarity in whether it is the “self” or the “other” undertaking a military event is important to macroeconomic models because economists use “self-other” distinctions to label some military events as negative “external shocks” coming from the other and some military events as positive “internal operations” coming from the self. This divide between friendly self and enemy other, even in these times of advanced “neoclassical economics,” shows that there is little room for understanding that self-driven military events can also be detrimental to the macro-economy. The American Central Bank's macroeconomic model must read self-driven/self-perpetrated military events as negative “shocks” as well. 

The American Central Bank needs more “militant-economists” who are able to obtain military knowledge beyond the capabilities of other economists and factor this knowledge into economic modeling and policy making. Militant-economists in the making can turn to non-militarized Nepal to look at the impact of specific global military events on a national-level macro-economy without dividing these military events along the lines of “self-initiated” and “other-perpetrated” and looking at military events neutrally. 

“Brexit” And Britain As The Foucauldian Limit-Experience Of The EU

No longer is the term “border” sufficient to name the dividing line between Britain and the EU. A border is a line which divides two territories, but it is a passable line, a form of continuity remains between the two sides, and this continuity allows the flow of migrants, for instance. With “Brexit,” we must come to abandon the idea that only a “border” separates Britain and the EU, and instead employ the word “limit” borrowed from the Foucauldian term “limit-experience,” to mean that now when the EU seeks Britain, it encounters a kind of final limit, and going to Britain or interacting with it is a “limit-experience” for the EU populace and also for migrants. 

With “Brexit,” Britain is turning towards becoming a nation with a more authoritarian and oppressive tendency. Usually borders are porous, and there tends to be some form of continuity between two sides of a border, which suggests a peace between the two territories, but it is only in authoritarian and oppressive regimes where borders are turned into limits, where borders are closed off and there is no possibility of easy passage. With a limit imposed in place of a border, Britain is effectively and emphatically saying that it is not the EU. Going forward, we can expect Britain to stubbornly act on being not-EU, by changing its laws, cultures, political system etc; in short, by obsessing over its difference from the EU to a great degree and hence exercising a high level of control into what happens within its territory.

It could also be that being the limit to EU will send Britain into obscurity, make it a kind of “alien nation” devoid of signs and markers we expect from other nations of the EU and the wider world. A nation seeking to be a “limit nation” would not look and feel similar to other more “centralized” nations; it would have very few and basic signs of being a nation at all, it would lose its defining national signs and symbols, such as popular landmarks in its capital city, and its people could lose their spirit of nationalism, becoming "Zombies" in a sense. Disagreeing with Foucault's idea that a limit can be experienced, we believe that any experience at the limit is impossible. A limit is a “zero-point,” a point which is not included in any territory, it is like the edges of a three-dimensional solid, which is not a part of anything and where theoretically nothing can exist to experience it. EU populations will find, in seeking the limit-experience of being in Britain, that it is like being in a stifling zero-point, and hence that there is nothing desirable about going to Britain because it simply does not have signs and symbols which can be experienced. Even after Britain has left the EU, ultimately it will be the EU's disappointment with Britain being at the limit which will bring about Britain's obscurity.

A true limit is a point which is far away, something too drastic and undesirable for most, something at the edge of an extensive distance, something that is almost impossible to reach, a place which is completely obscure and alien. Hence, given this possibility of becoming completely obscure, alien and undesirable, it is more likely that we will see Britain continue to have a national identity and hence not in fact turn into a zero-point to cause a true limit-experience. Being a true limit to the EU would entail a thorough destruction of Britain, a thorough dismantling of everything which has been built up in tandem with the EU nations, or a leveling of everything like in a war. Since this will likely not happen, “Brexit” may very well imply that Britain is putting up a performance, and does not intend to be a true limit. Its isolation and its differentiation will be moderate, and similarities with the EU will persist. “Brexit” will enable EU populations to experience a “lite limit-experience,” and therefore Britain may continue to be a draw as a a kind of amusing simulation of a true limit.   

Teachers' Pension Funds And The Parent-Teacher Meeting Of The Future

We hear of state-level "XYZ teachers' pension funds" as clients to big financial organizations. While being associated with a financial organization was in the past a good thing for teachers because the financial organizations were considered role-models of society, given the current negative perceptions of financial organizations, these teachers/future pensioners may find themselves considered greedy, undisciplined or generally of a bad character due to their association with the big financial organizations.

Even when there is evaluation of how the teachers are doing their jobs by financial organizations that are working in the guise of local or national government, this evaluation will ultimately be driven by the logic that if the teachers do their jobs better, their pension funds will be better, and consequently, the financial organizations themselves will be better rewarded. Nowhere will the benefit of a proper education to a child be mentioned in all this supervision and evaluation.

In the future, there will be a secret preferential treatment of the students by the teachers based on which parents are able to give the best investment advice and tips in the parents-teachers meetings. The merits of the parents will decide the fate of the children: the children in the classroom will be considered vehicles of investment tips and advice that they have learned from their parents; contributions to class will be interpreted based on the finances of the teachers and how they could be made better. In recognizing the importance of the pension and the pension fund, we must be critical of the idea that teachers determine the quality of the future of their students, because we may find that students determine the quality of the future of their teachers to an even higher degree.

Eventually, a particular branch of economics, a kind of “macro-economics-by-elementary-school-kids” will be born and taken seriously, and TV shows such as “Are You Smarter Than A 5^th Grader?” will re-emerge with much more advanced material; some 5^th graders will become well educated enough in advanced finance and macro-economics to be hired by the big financial organizations with teachers as middle-men/agents as well as clients. Economics will be a major subject of study from the earliest years of school education, and it will be seemingly concerned about the world economy, but also blatantly anxious about the pension fund. Open class discussion will blatantly focus on the health of the pension funds and seek advice from the smarter 5^th graders. Unlike in the young-adult and adult world, the anxiety over finances and the future does not need to be hidden from the youngest section of the populace, which means there is a far more productive environment for the discussion and problem-solving of the financial issues in the elementary school classrooms. Thus, we hear today of how the university is linked to the big financial organizations, but we may find elementary schools with even more effective relationships with big financial organizations in the future.

The Old, Late Nepali Prime Minister's Car And Wristwatch: From Political Objects To Museum Pieces

We walk around inside a Nepali museum, and see, among the artifacts and animal bones in exhibition, the late Prime Minister's car and wristwatch on display, and they appear lustrous, as if full of an aura which speaks of their historical importance in the making of landmark political decisions. What is problematic about this placement of the Prime Minister's possessions in the museum is that it cuts off these possessions from any political significance they may have carried into politics today; these items are not used and suggest that the politics of the past is not important in the present. It is part of a wider problem in the relationship between an older generation and a younger generation in politics: at no point does a Prime Minister who is close to natural death write down a “political will" on the side, a will document which would give over his/her possessions to future politicians rather than abandoning them to the public sphere of the museum. In fact it is their abandonment which gives the Prime Minister's possessions a luster and aura, it is their lack of use in the world which ensures that they are dust-free.

And yet we stand before the late Prime Minister's car or watch in a museum exhibition space to look at them and expect them to suddenly burst to life, for the car's engine to start or the watch to tick again. This is a way in which we fantasize and are expressive of the need for the late Prime Minister to contribute to the current political climate and activities of Nepal. If there had been a will that the Prime Minister had written, we would have in our hands a document which was a gesture that defied death, that essentially suggested that the Prime Minister was challenging natural death, and hence we would feel his/her resolution, positive stubbornness, and power at trying to challenge natural death and maintain himself/herself as a political actor even after his/her natural death. Instead, we have a significant depoliticization of the late Prime Ministers after his/her biological death, suggesting that in politics too the link between the biological body and professional activity is very close. We have the myth of the importance of the body in shaping one's identity and legacy: when the body passes away, so do one's identity and legacy. Perhaps we see the Prime Minister's car or watch as extensions of his/her biological body, so that all these “possessions” (we mean possession here also in the sense of being possessed by the Prime Minister's “soul” or “ghost”) become identity-less once the Prime Minister passes away, as if they were parts of his/her body, and hence too we expect these possessions of the late Prime Minister to burst to life in the silent museum, before our eyes, as if they were body-parts.

Perhaps the unspoken transfer of politician's possessions from political realms to cultural spaces is due to the need for the objects to be kept secret in a way for current political acts and events to function. In a museum, the car or the watch is severed from the political agendas of which they were integral components, because in a museum we think these objects are symbols of the whole of the politician's politics and not practical elements that contributed to the evolution of the politician's political thought and action/work, and can continue his/her work for him/her even today. We have in Foucault the idea that being too visible to outside eyes causes one to be understood/disciplined by knowledge-based power, yet we have the disproof of this idea in the museum: the more visible/prominent a political object in a museum, the more secretive it is, the more it does not link with the political activities of which it was a part in the past. 

Did Narrating The Nepali Budget Give A Power Trip?

Narrating the Nepali budget entailed reading about the ways in which the Nepali government would influence many different parts of Nepal with large sums of money. The coverage of the whole of Nepal, such a huge territory to be governed, and the play of large sums of money to help this territory undoubtedly gave a power-trip to the individuals who narrated the budget.

However, the experience of having a power-trip is different from the experience of feeling actual power. And importantly, the experience of feeling power, or even more crucially, of becoming powerful, is highly suppressed in Nepali politics and state-based activities. Nobody involved in Nepali politics and state-based activities is allowed to feel actual power, but there are plenty of figures within the halls where decisions are made that experience power-trips. In the case of the narrating the budget, the power-trip will be sustained, celebrated and historically established as a major political event, yet feeling actual power would have been a far greater experience, and it would entail sidestepping etiquette and order in an otherwise formal political event, eventually sidestepping the whole of field of politics itself. Actual power is not constrained by the performance of the role of a powerful figure, but it moves beyond the field of the political, and makes visible the pleasure derived from engagement with the political. Had there been a feeling of actual power in the narrating of the Nepali budget, we would have seen more excitement and more informality in addressing the audience. 

It is clear that actual power did not feature into the performance of the narration of the Nepali budget. The most crucial role and strategy in the suppression of actual power was played by the other figures in the national-political positions, especially the politicians and statesmen in the audience as the budget was being narrated. One could see that these people were inattentive, talking among themselves, and perhaps even asleep as the Nepali budget was being narrated. It is in a scenario where the audience to a political performance is for all purposes passive that there is no actual power for the narrator, rather only a power-trip supported by fantasies of an attentive audience is generated. Yet if one wanted to really appreciate actual power in this narrating of the Nepali budget, one would have to go to the previous night, when perhaps the narrator stood before the mirror in his room, with the budget document in hand, and narrated the budget before his image in the mirror. This narration to the mirror-image is not simply the rehearsal to an actual political performance, it is in fact the political act itself. For we know, following Lacan's writings on the mirror stage, that we are jealous of our mirror-image, and we actually compete with this mirror-image, so that before a mirror-image there is an actual power game, with the possibility of gaining actual power if the image is somehow defeated in this power game. If the narrator felt he was better than his own mirror-image, then he gained actual power, and his relationship with his mirror-image will have a bigger impact on Nepal politics and state-based activities than the narration before a passive audience would. 

Is Capitalism A Surplus?

Strangely, we find that banal utilitarian and “break-even” processes and events within capitalism continue to make capitalism attractive, that surplus pleasure is never the end objective of capitalism. This is strange to us because we usually wrongly think that the possibility of extra pleasure, the translation of profit into pleasure, is what lures workers and capitalists alike to production and business, and thereby drives capitalism forward. We have looked enough at why capitalism is attractive in the wealthy West, and instead we need to turn to look at its endurance and success in places like Nepal, the poor places in the world, places that more or less fail to profit from capitalism.

Surplus of pleasure is important and prior to surplus of the symbol in the early life of a capitalist subject. The capitalist child is a symbolizing machine, but fails to symbolize surplus pleasure because he/she considers surplus pleasure to be trivial and unimportant; some pleasure is surplus to requirements at that age in life, some of the signals coming from the big Other need not be interpreted, pleasure and leisure are secondary to “labor,” even for the child. Or rather, the child is occupied in symbolizing other objects and processes before turning his/her attention to surplus pleasure to symbolize it, and there is never the resources left to symbolize surplus pleasure, so that there is a surplus pleasure that remains unsymbolized. However as the child grows, his/her capacity to name and think about the objects and processes he/she finds becomes very strong and so he/she can turn to recognize and name the surplus pleasure that had always been ignored in early life. As a grown-up, his/her symbolization-machine has surplus potential.

Even so, surplus pleasure is always barred from our experience. The child who is growing up does not seek to obtain pleasure as such, but rather is limited to the symbolization of that pleasure, submitting surplus pleasure to a symbolizing gaze, but not concerned in trying to feel that pleasure which he/she had ignored earlier in life. For the grown-up, surplus pleasure gives way to surplus symbols, there is a surplus of symbols in the place of the surplus of pleasure, and so we see that capitalism is in a very fundamental way defined by a surplus. Indeed, the Lacanian Symbolic Order is itself a surplus, a surplus to requirements of socialization, as much as the Imaginary is necessary for socialization and the Real is natural and unavoidable. In the capitalism of the grown-up, the experience of pleasure as such continues to be ignored just as it was ignored by the child.

The proper anti-capitalist gesture arrives when the grown-up capitalist tendency to obtain a symbol from pleasure is replaced by the intentional and poetic gesture of obtaining pleasure from a symbol. Only with this flip, with this anti-capitalist turn, only with the obtainment of poetic pleasure from the symbol will the process of becoming anti-capitalist succeed in a way in which the poet continues to be very conscious of capitalism and its mechanisms as they are ingrained in, or wholly internalized by, the capitalist child and grown-up. This poetic pleasure from the symbol is a new pleasure, one that does not turn back to the pleasure that had been barred in childhood, but one which acts upon capitalism and the Symbolic Order without avoiding it or escaping from it, but by being actively engaged in it.    

The Rise Of Financial-Governmental Figures And Their Confession To The Government

We know the much discussed practice of financial industry figures joining the government; indeed we can call certain functional positions within the financial industry as “financial-governmental positions,” because the sole design of these positions may be to enable the figures in those positions to “go to government.” This move from finance to government appears motivated by the wish to “serve the people” that financial figures may feel after having served private interests for so long. But in truth the financial industry does not fragment once one of its members joins the government, rather, it gets even stronger, for it now has one of its own inside government and can influence the image and punishment of the financial industry.

The weakness of government when dealing with the financial-governmental figure is what can be called government's “confessional mode.” Whenever a financial-governmental figure approaches it, the governmental establishment swells with pride in anticipation of the admission of guilt that will come about through a confessional conversation of wrongdoing (involving greed.) The governmental establishment thinks that upon the admission of guilt, the financial figure will be “purged of the sin of greed” and will wholeheartedly work towards providing governmental service to the people. At no time does the government consider that the financial-governmental figure is a representative of the financial industry, and therefore the government does not act against the financial industry as a whole via a visible punishment, but acts only to slightly amend the constitution in order that the particular governmental-financial figure may be stopped from committing another sinful act.

The lack of strict punishment as a whole may be even more aggravated when the governmental establishment has figures who derive pleasure from the confessional mode. When there is pleasure in hearing a confession, there is no meaningful punishment of anyone in order that the financial-governmental figures can continue to do wrong and therefore continue to confess to government. We may turn to Foucault who shows us how integral visibility of the punished figure is to confirm effectively the role of punishment in society, but today there is no visible, meaningful punishment besides the slight and technical amendment of the constitution, which looks more of a symbolic gesture than justified punishment to the citizens.

One may say the willingness of financial figures to “go to government” shows the openness of government these days, an openness which may inspire the financial figures to share more and eventually work to change the financial system as a whole. However the confessional mode is shrouded in secrecy: we know from confession in churches where a screen separates the figures when they discuss the sin, and similarly in government, there are ways in which the confession is made vague and opaque, when not all of the guilt is conveyed, when only that much is said with which one oneself may continue to remain secret. In all, this confessional mode within government is in crisis and this is a serious problem, because even when the financial-governmental figures feel guilty and admit this guilt they are not able to enact meaningful change through the government, partly because the government itself does not properly interpret and act on this guilt and its confession.