Mitchell’s laws:
●The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes.
●Austerity is the government’s method for widening the gap between rich and poor, which leads to civil disorder.
●Until the 99% understand the need for federal deficits, the upper 1% will rule.
●To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments.
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
●The penalty for ignorance is slavery.
==========================================================================================================================================
The previous post described the upper .1% income group’s conspiracy to widen the income gap by claiming the “Big Lie,” that the U.S. is in financial trouble, and must embrace austerity, i.e. cut deficits, or become insolvent. Several people have written to express discomfort with “conspiracy theories” in general, feeling they have a bad name and any such talk reduces credibility.
For those reluctant to discuss any conspiracy, remember Sherlock Holmes’s line, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”.
It is impossible that neither Obama nor Bernanke, nor Greenspan, nor Geithner, nor all of the bankers and economists at the Fed and the Treasury, nor any of their highly educated and experienced assistants and associates, nor any of the 535 members of Congress — not one of them — understands the U.S. cannot run short of dollars. Simply impossible.
Yet none admit it, except on the rarest of occasions. So we are left with a conspiracy, however improbable some may think it is.
And when you have a conspiracy, you need a motive. I can think of two:
1. To benefit the .1% by widening the income gap between the .1% and the 99.9%.
2. To prevent endless voter requests for increased federal spending, supposedly leading to inflation, i.e. the easily countered, debt-hawk, “Weimar Republic” excuse.
Both have a role, though #1 surely is the more important. The .1% continuously demonstrate their motive by funding “think tanks” that invent the Big Lie, by funding politicians who vote the “Big Lie,” and by funding the news media that promulgate the Big Lie. The Kochs et al do not spend their valuable time and political millions for altruistic reasons.
Intuition is powerful. Brainwashing is powerful. And well-funded conspiracies can be quite powerful. Together they can be more effective than the simple truth. But, conspiracies prefer the dark. They melt in the sunlight. To defeat this conspiracy, we first must acknowledge it, then reveal its members and display their motives and their victims.
We have three weapons in this war: The populace already is predisposed to hate the rich and the politicians, so correctly attaching these two despised groups to this conspiracy, gives us an opening. Further, the populace loves a good scandal. And finally, what Monetary Sovereignty describes and proposes will benefit the populace.
We have not succeeded, nor will we ever succeed, using economics education, alone. We must teach both the economics and the conspiracy. That combination will provide the powerful, compelling story for the populace, needed to overcome the many years of intuition, brainwashing and conspiracy.
Today, America suffers. Europe fades. The Big Lie is kills the world. Austerity is the universal poison.
So, our every article, our every speech, our every letter and every interview must contain both the economics and the conspiracy truths.
Teach the economics. Reveal the conspiracy. Save the world.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty
====================================================================================================================================================
Nine Steps to Prosperity:
1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Medicare — parts A, B & D — for everyone
3. Send every American citizen an annual check for $5,000 or give every state $5,000 per capita (Click here)
4. Long-term nursing care for everyone
5. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone
6. Salary for attending school (Click here)
7. Eliminate corporate taxes
8. Increase the standard income tax deduction annually
9. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99%
No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth. Monetary Sovereignty: Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia. Two key equations in economics:
Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption – Net Imports
#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 
This is in my view the proper framing and a good strategy going forward. Hopefully it will get some cross-posting love, esp. over at Mike Norman Economics which is becoming the center of MMT-related discussion.
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Motive No 3:
90% of voters cannot see what’s wrong with comparing government to a household. Plus there are a significant number of right wing economically illiterate politicians who seriously think the comparison is valid. Therefor every other politician has to go along with the lie, else they get voted out of office, and an even worse right of centre government comes to power.
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Rodger, we do NOT have monetary sovereignty..the federal reserve does..that’s why we’re in such a “mess” that congress has always had the ability to get rid of, but has not “for some reason”.
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Uh oh, another person who thinks the Fed, not Congress and the Treasury, makes the money-creation decisions for America. After we get rid of the insolvency myth, maybe this one will go away, too.
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I think what he’s getting at is that only the Fed can unilaterally pull dollars from thin air. When the Treasury wants extra dollars, it has to be backed by debt, through leverage the private sector and selling bonds. They could change the law requiring spending to be backed by debt, but until then they’re a quasi user/issuer of currency.
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The dollars created by the Treasury are not “backed by” debt, i.e. not backed by T-securities. The dollars are backed only by the full faith and credit of the United States.
The issuance of T-securities is a separate operation.
To buy a T-bill (misleadingly called “lending” to the government) you ask the Federal Reserve Bank to debit your checking account and credit your T-bill account. The operation essentially is the same as transferring dollars from your checking account to your savings account at your local bank.
The dollars in your T-bill account do not “back” anything. The government is not borrowing your dollars, because at no time, does the federal government receive your dollars, nor can the government use the dollars in your T-bill account.
Then, to “pay off its debt” (again, misleading language), the government simply debits your T-bill account and credits your checking account. No new dollars are created. I
t’s a simple transfer of your dollars, from one of your accounts to another of your accounts. A deposit is quite different from what typically is considered a loan.
Think of it this way: When you transfer dollars from your checking account to your savings account, do you consider it a loan to your bank?
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All LIES ! Then why is even the “interest” on the national debt so high mr. smartypants ?
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>>> Yes, the money we deposit in a T-securities account is a loan to the Fed, just as a deposit in any bank is a loan to the bank. This is a separate matter from federal government spending. The U.S. government does not need or use that lent / deposited money, just as U.S. government spending does not need or use tax revenue. (Nonetheless the government will tax $2.9 trillion out of the economy in FY 2013. Just what a depressed economy needs, aye?)
Bropelini writes: “Only the Fed can unilaterally pull dollars from thin air.”
>>>Oh? What about the $3.8 trillion that the federal government plans to create from thin air, and spend in FY 2013? (Which runs from 1 Oct 2012 – 30 Sep 2013)
Bropelini writes: “When the Treasury wants extra dollars, it must be backed by debt, through leverage the private sector and selling bonds. They could change the law requiring spending to be backed by debt, but until then they’re a quasi user/issuer of currency.”
>>>Because of obsolete federal laws that date from the gold standard days, the Treasury is required to sell T-securities in an aggregate amount that equals the federal deficit each year. If the Treasury cannot find enough buyers, then the Treasury sells T-securities directly to the Fed, or to intra-government agencies. This is done by simply changing the numbers in computers. The game is silly, but it fulfills its purpose, which is to keep the public confused.
The U.S. deficit for FY 2013 is expected to be $901 billion, which means the U.S. government will spend $2.9 trillion directly, without any T-securities being involved.
What about the $901 billion in T-securities that must be sold for FY 2013? Is the U.S. government be “in debt” for that? Technically yes, since the U.S. government must back the Fed’s operations, creating money to pay off any Fed debt. However this debt is trivial for the U.S. government. It’s just a game.
If you could legally print money in your basement, then you could be in “debt” if you wanted, but it would be merely a game, since you could always print more money.
Therefore (on a side note) when ratings agencies downgrade U.S. Treasury securities, it is absurd, but it serves a political purpose. It lets Republicans and Democrats blame each other for the downgrade, when the downgrade itself is utterly meaningless. However the public remains confused and submissive — which is the whole point.
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RMM,”Uh oh, another person who thinks the Fed, not Congress and the Treasury, makes the money-creation decisions for America.”
Sorry,just some foolish questions, in hope of some profound answers.
A. Isn’t the Fed responsible for setting margin (reserve requirements) for the “private for profit banks” ?
B. Didn’t Greenspan mention in 2001 that he had decided not to use that option. A decision that perhaps could have prevented the 2008 “credit expansion ” crisis ?
C. Would mandating 100% reserve for all “private for profit banks” force them to be solvent as well as stop them from “printing” money “out of thin air” since being on 10% reserve means they are legally allowed to issue the other 90%?
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Justa,
Let’s assume the reserve % meant something, which it doesn’t, because the Fed provides banks with all the reserves they need. So the reserve “requirement” is a financial fiction. Banks could live with a 200% reserve requirement, the way the system now operates.
Anyway, depending on how the law was phrased, a 100% reserve requirement could mean the bank would be unable to lend at all. “Reserves” are deposits not lent, so with 100% reserve requirement, lending even $1 could exceed the maximum — again depending on how the law was phrased..
Assuming you really don’t want to end bank lending (or do you??), all lending, whether by banks or by you to your brother-in-law, creates money out of thin air — if he gives you his note in return.
A dollar bill is a “Federal Reserve “NOTE”. If you lend your brother-in-law $100 dollars, and he gives you his NOTE, he has created money out of thin air. Just as the Federal Reserve NOTE is evidence of money, so is your brother-in-law’s NOTE evidence of money.
All money is debt, and the broadest form of money is “Debt Outstanding Domestic Nonfinancial Sectors.”
You repeatedly have asked the same question, because you believe lending is the transfer of money from one entity to another. It isn’t. That’s called “giving.”
Lending is the exchange of one form of money for another form of money. So when you borrow, you receive a checking account deposit (one form of money), in exchange for your note (another form of money).
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“All money is debt” ? I think not.
Labor exchanges itself for goods and services in barter, for which there is a temporary “debt” until the reciprocal exchange is made. That is simple debt, like borrowing $100 from your brother.
Then there is fiat money, legal tender “debt”; a note to pay the bearer on demand, as stiplulated by government, etc.
Then with my system, there would be short term sovereign debt of the country, which in our case can be paid off in several ways as is applicalbe by the bills enacted to whit, eg.
1. tax and fee revenues in already issued government notes; legal tender
taken in as above stated and in the general fund for disbursement.
2. New money, created from nothing by the government, but without
debt, instead of as now with the federal reserve system of securities
and other monetary horrors…if the new money roughly tracks the
GNP and asset structure, etc., there is little inflation/delfation IMO.
So, I am obviously curious as to how you see “money as debt”, as I would not support a system such as we have now, with it’s huge, so-misframed “national debt”.
This post relates closely with those of mine above to do with a possible monetary system of my own design, not of the profession of course. Comments always welcome.
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powerful post, rodger!!
here’s yet another video from the young turks network that underscores your point about the 1% and their need to maintain, in fact, increase “the gap” (includes excerpts of a recent interview by none other than lord, er, lloyd blankfein):
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Terrific video. It’s exactly why MMT and Monetary Sovereignty should stress the conspiracy aspect of austerity.
A bit of irony. We think the populace is kind of stupid for not seeing that the U.S. cannot run out of money and that deficits should be increased. But how smart are we for believing education will overcome the brainwashing by the .1%, so we never mention the conspiracy?
And that is the professorial mentality at work.
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The USA cannot run out of money as it is now only due to the fact that the debt ceiling keeps on being raised….due to the fact that we have “loaned” non-sovereign money…fed/funny money period. If we got rid of the fed private banks, and adjudicated all cases of printing since 1913, we’d be in great shape. Your thoughts on the QE problem would be appreciated also.
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The video says the “Fix The Debt” group includes 71 CEOs, including Lord Blankfein. Actually the group includes 146 CEOs and CFOs who want to slash social programs and eliminate the middle class. They are from multiple industries, on and off Wall Street. It is these who control Washington. (People like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are not part of this group.)
You can see a list here (.pdf)…
Click to access CEO%20Fiscal%20Leadership%20Council%20Membership%2012-7-12%282%29.pdf
The “Fix The Debt” maggots are all focused on the meaningless debt / GDP ratio.
Therefore it is disgusting to see MMT people claim that there is no conspiracy, and that the “Fix The Debt” maggots simply have a “misunderstanding.”
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I’m waiting for the state’s rights people to start their own currencies for each state and file against the fed and congress to rid us of the 1913 act as should have been done a long time ago.
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Rodger writes, “None admit it, except on the rarest of occasions. So we are left with a conspiracy, however improbable some may think it is.”
>>>I am a member of the 1%. Yes we maintain a conspiracy. It is called class consciousness. I don’t know many people in my conspiracy, but I know they exist. We don’t make plans in smoke-filled rooms to advance our conspiracy. We never mention it at all. To be in the 1%, you must have money, but you must also have the correct values and beliefs. You must show that you will never threaten us by exposing the lies and illusions that we depend on. All your actions and your words, however trivia, must be correct. For example, you must never speak of cutting Social Security. Instead, you must say that SS needs to be “reformed.” You must affirm that federal government deficits are evil, since deficits take power from us and give it back to the stupid peasants. You must repeat this so often that you say it in your sleep. Then you too will be part of our conspiracy.
Rodger writes, “To defeat this conspiracy, we first must acknowledge it, then reveal its members and display their motives and their victims. We will never succeed using economics education alone. We must teach both the economics and the conspiracy.”
>>>Joe Average knows that he’s getting shafted by bankers, politicians, and wall Street types. He doesn’t know how they do it. He figures it is too sophisticated for his grasp. Think how angry and empowered Joe Average would feel if he saw that the bastards simply change the entries in computer ledgers.
Rodger writes, “Our every article, our every speech, our every letter and every interview must contain both the economics and the conspiracy truths. Teach the economics. Reveal the conspiracy. Save the world.”
>>> The 1%, the bankers, and the politicians know the power of repetition. It works. Repetition makes their slaves use only the terms and definitions dictated by their masters. For example, anti-war types say they oppose “intervention,” a term given to them by the corporate media. The USA does not bomb, murder, or pillage. It merely “intervenes.” Cut the deficit. Zimbabwe. Cut the deficit. Weimar Germany. Cut the deficit. Debt crisis. Cut the deficit. Cut the deficit. Repetition works. So does counter-repetition.
MMT types won’t even mention the conspiracy, let alone repeat it. They consider themselves “above” such things. Thus, they remain beneath contempt. They will die unknown and unrecognized. And rightly so.
It’s up to us.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Tom LaMar writes, “We do not have monetary sovereignty. The Fed does. That’s why we have such a mess.”
Tom LaMar does not realize there are two ways that money enters the U.S. system. One is by bank lending, which ultimately involves the Fed. The other is by U.S. government spending, which uses the Fed, but does not originate with the Fed. Once the U.S. government budget is decided on, the spending phase happens through the Fed, because it involves the selling of T-securities. However the money does not originate with the Fed, any more than Tom LaMars’ deposit at his local bank originates at the local bank. That deposit came from Tom LaMar.
Each year the Congress and president draw up an annual U.S. government budget. The Fed has no involvement in this process at all. Indeed Bernanke has often criticized the debt ceiling charade, but admits he can do nothing about it. He correctly says it’s up to Congress.
In fiscal year 2013 (which runs from 1 Oct 2012 – 30 Sep 2013), the U.S. government expects to spend about $3.8 trillion. Not one penny of that will come from the Fed, from China, or from anywhere else except the Congress and the President themselves.
THE PROBLEM is that $3.8 trillion is nowhere near enough to get us out of the current depression. And since banks are not lending, we are stuck.
Even when we do not have a depression, we have given far too much power to private banks to create the part of the money supply that exists as bank loans. Hence we have nightmares like a $1 trillion student loan debt.
And lest you think that a genuinely public banking system is the answer, in which banking is regulated like a utility, Rodger has already covered this several times, and he agrees with it. (So do I.)
In the meantime, what we need right now is dramatically increased government spending.
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fine; private banks all; fed and others, creating money as needed…and the principal is destroyed as loans are paid up right ? HOGWASH. show me the ledgers….Look, I’m in the wrong profession, but you are not being very helpful in my efforts here. If I treated my patients as you carry on, they’d all be in dentures in a year. Good Americans must try to help each other rid the country of such trash as is at the top now, and most of the way down, including all key industry chiefs, judges, etal. many of whom are now in Uruguay, etal. “undisclosed locations” world-wide.
One my biggest complaints/demands deals not only with sovereign money from the government, to be issued without debt, but also that nobody should be able to “buy our debt”, except for public benefit programs and properly declared wars to save the nation. As things are, the so-called national debt is little more than a debt tranfer vehicle of the superj-rich to impoverish “we the (little) people” imo.
Further, there should NEVER be a DEFICIT if the country had sovereign money ! If the tax and fee receipts are too little for the government’s bills, they just print money, as in war or emergency and we all suffer inflation, which in war can be remedied by repatriation of resoureces ,etc….but for all the people, not just the super-rich, by making gas available to all at say eg…. $.20/gal., etc,
Finally,
You mean debt to private individuals and corporations ? It shoul NOT be allowed period. ! The national debt should be public benefit only,
not some guarantedd, private investment ROI scheme as it is now and
since 1913. or are you “one of those” ??
If were younger I’d run for congress and push for such reforms…and much more….as on my small blog….
http://usssaratoga2.blogspot.com/
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Tom,
You are 100% on the money. We are a sovereign country, but the government is not in charge of the money supply. The fed and the banks are.
Food for thought…
The fed/banks manipulate the money supply for profit, period. They dont care about any of us. The fed has created bubble after bubble via the manipulation of the money suppky. Politicians have also shown that they’d sell each and everyone of us for a few votes. They would pass any stupid law as long as it gets them re-elected without having to face any responsibilities for their mistakes. IMO, money supply should not be in the hands of the fed nor the government.
In the end this is what it boils down to. Each and everyone of us thinks something should be done to make things better. We should end hunger, have free healthcare, better schools, free college, and the list keeps going and going. Do you think anyone ever stops to think how this, what i am trying to push, negatively impacts the country? No, nobody does and no-one cares.
In the end we end up with a society that is so distant from reality they actually believe things can be free, re mmt ms. Perhaps it was all the fruit of all the LSD from the 70s,
We cant be too far off from an all out conflict. When it happens, look in the mirror.
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“We are a sovereign country, but the government is not in charge of the money supply. The fed and the banks are.”
Don’t let Congress and the President know.
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Malcolm, we aren’t even really a sovereign nation anymore either, as poor as our effect was before the likes of “citizens united”; now that’s gone, and my reps barely acknowledge my queries but with form letters usually.
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Good question. If we are truly sovereign, why run a deficit and a national debt? Why not just pay, in cash, the entire stock of bonds outstanding? Why not transfer credits directly from the Treasury?
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Yeah, why not pay the retirees their pensions in one lump sum today, and wish them well with a smile? Don’t you guys realize govt debt is the one and only safe, bankruptcy-proof store for your money, especially for your future benefits?
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a bond paying a negative rate relative to inflation is a sure long term loser. The bond principal may be guaranteed thus considered safe but the low rate ensures a guaranteed loss of purchasing power.
A monetary sovereign should be able to pay interest that exceeds inflation…is that the conspiracy?
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Justaluckyfool asks, Didn’t the Fed admit that they can never run out of money?
Federal Reserve: Can We Run Out of Money?
Posted on 3 April 2012 by admin
Guest Author: Stephanie Kelton
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke gave his fourth lecture at George Washington University yesterday. Buried in the lecture, beginning at about 19:18 in the video (shown below), Bernanke explained where the Fed got the money to “pay for” the assets it purchased as part of its Quantitative Easing (QE) policies.
I remember when the Fed announced the first round of QE. Those who don’t understand Fed operations – think most mainstream economists – went nuts. Many worried that the Fed would be unable to “unwind” its positions (i.e. divest itself of the assets – MBS, Treasuries, etc. – it had purchased) because banks would refuse to swap their nice safe cash for riskier instruments when the economy recovered. Others insisted that QE was “stuffing the market full” of too many dollars and that this, inevitably, would result in hyperinflation.
John Carney just wrote a very nice piece, showing that not only was the Fed able to find buyers for its assets but that markets actually bought them back at a premium. Bernanke addresses the second objection in his remarks below – idle balances don’t chase any goods – but it’s the financing of the asset purchases that I want readers to understand, because this is fundamental to understanding Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).
The Federal Reserve, like any bank, can acquire an asset simply by crediting a bank account. In other words, the bank pays by creating money. As Alan Greenspan explained, the Fed has an unlimited capacity to spend in US dollars. It can pay trillions of dollars with a single keystroke. Here is Chairman Bernanke (Readers can follow is presentation beginning on page 17):
“Now, you might ask the question, well, the Fed is going out and buying 2 trillion dollars of securities – how did we pay for that? And the answer is that we paid for those securities by crediting the bank accounts of the people who sold them to us, and those accounts, at the banks, showed up as reserves that the banks would hold with the Fed. So the Fed is a bank for the banks. Banks can hold deposit accounts with the Fed, essentially, and those are called reserve accounts. And so as the purchases of securities occurred, the way we paid for them was basically by increasing the amount of reserves that banks had in their accounts with the Fed.
So you can see this, here, this is the liabilities side of the Fed’s balance sheet. Of course, assets and liabilities (including capital) have to be equal. So the liabilities side had also to rise near 3 trillion dollars, as you can see.
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Re: “MMT types won’t even mention the conspiracy, let alone repeat it. They consider themselves “above” such things.”
This is largely true. Even Mosler says the frauds are “innocent.” They aren’t innocent, but they are indeed deadly. There is nothing innocent about a Greenspan, a Robert Rubin, a Henry Paulsen, a Tim Geithner, let alone the likes of a Dimon or a Blankfein. These people are predators and they want the power. And they have indeed “rigged” it so that they can buy what they want.
However, I recommend you avoid, for purely rhetorical reasons, the word “conspiracy.” It will get you sidelined every time. The right words are extremely, crucially important. Find another way to frame this gross injustice (which actually is nothing new in the US, merely exacerbated owing to the financialization of the economy since the Clinton era (that miserable cur). Thank you for all the deregulation, boys (Greenspan, Rubin, and congressmen opportunists).
The problem is that the household economy metaphor has everyone by the shorthairs and the media are thoroughly corrupted by their corporate owners. Forget about trying to educate the lazy opportunistic politicians.They have been bought and their time is spent on other things than intellectual enrichment.This is a political problem and that’s the way to go after it. It is only derivatively an economic problem. Since it is a political problem it has to be framed as one that will fly in American space. Whatever can be pilloried as “conspiracy” or “socialism,” gets shut down right away. The Young Turks video frames it the right way–as a game that is rigged. This is something Americans can understand, readily accept, and sink their teeth into. The idea is to arouse indignation in the face of flagrant theft, abuse, injustice. The aim must be to force legislation that would eliminate big money funding politics as well as legislation restoring regulation and overseeing corporate bonus paying. Bill Black and others have shown what needs to be done, while on the other hand, James Galbraith has very lucidly shown just how difficult it will be to get it done–to write effective legislation for all this. We are definitely in a bad way and are paying for our consumerist softness, tv and entertainment addiction, and overall decadence. In a normal world, a good King would have seen to it that a lot of heads rolled.
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I agree completely. I posted the following on Zero Hedge the other day:
zero hedge 12/6/12
If not MMT…what? We have been off the Gold Standard since Aug 1971 and….Boo!!!
Nothing happened except economic expansion and periodic business cycle recessions. Also 2 serious oil price shocks, the financial manipulation of Savings and Loans, the financial manipulation of bundling mortgages and over leveraging our housing stock.
The main reason we are economically slow today is the cutback of State and Local govts due to the percieved lack of ability of the Federal govt to provide funding during this severe economic shock.
Again, if not MMT…what?
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George Orwell is as relevant as ever.
Power.
Control.
Privilege.
That is what it’s all about.
To protect and retain those PCP in their hands, inner party members (the 1%) need to keep the proles poor and ignorant. Thus the assault on public education and the mantra for more fiscal austerity.
P.S.:
In addition to the bankers, rent seekers, robber barons, and plutocrats; Church hierarchies (both Catholic and Protestant) are very much in on this power madness scheme.
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Headline in Yahoo News: Obama: Republicans blocking middle-class tax cuts
In “media-speak,” a tax “cut” is keeping the taxes at the same level as they have been for many years. Apparently, the media feel the “real” tax level is the pre-Bush level, and what we have been paying is a tax cut.
That attitude expresses the underlying belief that the government owns everything we earn, and anything we are allowed to keep, is a “cut” or a “loophole” or a “tax break.”
The article ends with: “Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said in the Republican response Saturday that tax increases will not solve the nation’s $16 trillion debt. Only economic growth and reform of entitlement programs will help control the debt, Rubio said.
“Reform of entitlement programs” means “cut programs that benefit the 99%, like Social Security, Medicare, unemployment compensation, food stamps and other aids to the poor and middle classes.”
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Latest member of the idiot patrol, Paul Begala, who in the December 10, 2012 issue of Newsweek wrote an article titled: “Our Nitwit CEOs.” In it, Begala says:
The nitwit is Begala, with the only question being: Is he a nitwit because he is part of the conspiracy destroying our nation, or is he a nitwit because he is clueless about our economy?
You can ask him which nitwit he is, at: peb@georgetown.edu
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Is Summers already a member, “Our Nitwit CEOs”?
Perhaps even president of the club.
The Deficit is Growing Faster Than the Nation’s Income, Summers …
http://www.forbes.com/…/the-deficit-is-growing-faster-than-the-nations-inc...
2 days ago – Larry Summers fingered the devilish problem holding ransom on the economy tonight in a Harvard Business School alumni session at the Asia Society in New York; it is …
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Required reading for everyone striving for answers and solutions. Graeber’s “Debt, The First 5000 Years”
“It would be interesting to reflect at length on capitalism and its time horizons: what is it about this economic system that it seems to want to wipe out the prospect of its own eternity? On the one hand, capitalism being based on a logic of perpetual growth, one might argue that it is, by definition, not eternal, and can only recognise itself as such. But at other times those who embrace capitalism seem to want to think of it as having been around forever, or at least 5 thousand years, and stubbornly insist it will continue to exist 5 thousand years into the future. At yet other times it seems like a historical blip, an insanely powerful engine of accumulation that exploded around 1500, or maybe 1750, which couldn’t possibly be maintained without some sort of apocalyptic collapse. Perhaps the apparent tangle of contradictions is the result of a need to balance the short term perspectives needed by short term profit-seekers, managers, and CEOs, with the broader strategic perspectives of those actually running the system, which are of necessity more political. The result is a clash of narratives. Or maybe it’s the fact that whenever capitalism does see itself as eternal, it tends to lead to a spiraling of debt. Actually, the relations between debt bubbles and apocalypse are complicated and would be difficult (though fascinating) to disentangle, but I would suggest this much. The financialisation of capital has lead to a situation where something like 97 to 98 percent of the money in the total ‘economy’ of wealthy countries like the US or UK is debt. That is to say, it is money whose value rests not on something that actually exists in the present (bauxite, sculptures, peaches, software), but something that might exist at some point in the future. ‘Abstract’ money is not an idea, it’s a promise — a promise of something concrete that will exist at some time in the future, future profits extracted from future resources, future labour of miners, artists, fruit-pickers, web designers, not yet born. At the point where the imaginary future economy is 50 to 100 times larger than the current ‘real’ one, something has got to give. But the bursting of bubbles often leaves no future to imagine at all, except of catastrophe, because the creation of bubbles is made possible by the destruction of any ability to imagine alternative futures. It’s only once one cannot imagine that we are moving towards any sort of new future society, that the world will never be fundamentally different, that there’s nothing left to imagine but more and more future money. ”
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/David_Graeber__Debt__The_First_Five_Thousand_Years.html
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