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.
●Cutting the deficit is the government’s method for taking dollars from the middle class and giving them to the rich.
●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.
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Tim Geithner, the conservative in disguise (very poor disguise), never met a rich man he didn’t love.
In the Geithnerland, when a wealthy man or a big company has financial problems, the government should step in and not just bail them out, but reward them. Tax cuts are the best reward, but pay increases will do.
By contrast, if a poor man loses his job, his healthcare or his home, conservatives tell him it’s really his fault and he should not ask for federal help. In fact, whatever federal help he receives should be cut, because receiving Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, etc. is a sign the poor man is a lazy sloth and a leech on the rest of us.
Punishing the poor for being poor is a kind of “tough love” that teaches them a valuable lesson. And, rewarding the rich for being rich is good, because these people are special.
Washington Post
Report: Treasury approved excessive pay for executives at bailed-out AIG, GM and AllyWASHINGTON — The U.S. Treasury Department disregarded its own guidelines by allowing large pay increases for executives at three firms bailed out during the financial crisis, a report released Monday says.
The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program said Treasury approved all18 requests it received for executive raises at American International Group Inc., General Motors Corp. and Ally Financial Inc. Of those requests, 14 were for $100,000 or more. One raise, for the CEO of a division at AIG, was for $1 million.
Remember that these are executives who did such an inept job their companies needed to be rescued by the government.
The report says Treasury bypassed rules under the 2008 bailout that limited pay. Treasury approved raises that exceeded pay limits and in some cases failed to link compensation to performance, it notes.
If compensation had been linked to performance, these rich boobs would have been fired on the spot. Lots of poor- and middle-income people were.
The report also said Treasury officials had been warned a year ago that the department needed to reform its procedures to ensure that the pay guidelines are followed.
Hmmm . . . now let me think. Who received the warning, who supervised the entire bailout process and who had the authority to “bypass rules”? One might think it was Tim Geithner, but he probably was busy with more important projects than economic stimulus, for instance . . . uh . . .
Wait! We have a scapegoat, well-paid I hope:
Patricia Geoghegan, the Treasury official who approved the raises, said it’s unfair to call the pay excessive.
She said Treasury must strike a balance between limiting compensation and approving pay packages that are consistent with executives in similar jobs.
How many executives in “similar jobs” drove their companies to the edge of bankruptcy, then were rewarded for it?
Geoghegan called the 50th percentile “a benchmark.” She noted that some pay packages at the three companies exceeded that level in 2012. But she said more than half at AIG were at or below that level, while nearly half at GM and Ally were below it.
In Treasury-speak, a rule is just a “benchmark.” So next time you are pulled over for doing 80 in a 30 mph zone, explain to the officer that you thought the speed limit was just a benchmark, and since more than half the drivers were obeying the speed limit, you thought you could exceed it.
If that doesn’t work, and you are arrested, call Geithner for bail money. Bail is his specialty.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty
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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 
Rodger ..Do you personally respond to each comment made here?
Are you a soloist, and if so, ‘off the top of your head’ or what resources
do you most refer to when replying .. Great show, Sir, nonetheless!
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No, mostly when I want to teach or learn.
Yes, a soloist.
Newspaper articles, MMT, economic discussions, Internet
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Never have I seen politicians and media morons so openly and blatantly eager to serve the rich at the expense of the poor. The higher the unemployment rate, the louder the call for austerity. The more damage caused by austerity, the louder the call for increased austerity.
What depresses me is that average people want austerity too. For the average unemployed person, reducing the deficit is more important than creating jobs.
As for Geithner, all indications are that his replacement, Jack Lew of Citigroup, will be even worse. Lew is a big proponent of austerity and the “grand bargain” with Republicans. He will give the peasants what they want . . . more austerity.
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As rich parasites take everything, now comes a 3 ½ minute video from the American Enterprise Institute that says we have an “entitlement crisis,” and a “nation of takers” (i.e. Social Security recipients).
The video is done in Dr. Seuss fashion, dividing everyone into “makers” (the rich) and “takers” (everyone else). Its viewpoint recalls the notorious sociopath Ayn Rand, hero of Paul Ryan and Pete Peterson.
Since the video wants cuts in social programs, it focuses on federal taxation. That is, the public has been brainwashed into thinking the U.S. government is “broke.” Therefore the right wing says, “Our goal is to reduce taxes. To reach that goal, we must reduce social programs.”
This is the reverse of the truth. In all cases the real goal is reduced (or privatized) social programs. Taxes are irrelevant. The rich do not care about taxes, since the rich do not pay taxes. The rich only whine about taxes in order to get reduced social programs, and a wider gap between the 1% and the peasants.
The video claims that “entitlements” have created a burden of $30,000 on every American family, but the video does not explain whence it derives such excrement.
It was released in conjunction with last October’s publication of “A Nation of Takers: America’s Entitlement Epidemic,” which claims that “entitlement” spending accounts for two thirds of the federal budget.
(In reality it is about a fifth. Another fifth is given to weapons makers, and another fifth is spent in interest on T-securities. Plus there is QE, plus massive and continuous bailouts of rich corporations. All these arch-parasites are called “makers.”)
The author says that “takers” include people who receive disability (like my daughter, who lives in a wheelchair and is nearly a quadriplegic). He says they are a “drain on the federal coffers” (even though the federal government creates infinite money on keyboards).
The author claims that social programs are “corrupting recipients.” This despite the depression, despite extreme unemployment, and despite hysterical calls for more austerity (always more austerity).
As the rich steal more and more, the author refers to average Americans as a “give-me-more generation.”
I would love to meet this guy in person, but I won’t explain here what I would do to him if I did.
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Rodger.. What was it that triggered your insight re. ‘Fed. Money Autonomy’? It’s so off- intuitive…..
It”s said that: ‘Genius Is The Will To Stupidity’. ‘Simplicity’, you’d counter, I’m sure. Rodger are you sure?
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60 years ago, a high school teacher said to me, “All money is debt,.” words I promptly forgot. For reasons unknown, I remembered that comment about 15 years ago, and began to think about it.
From those 4 counter-intuitive words, and working only from my own logic, I developed a book titled, “The Ultimate America,” which I later revised to “Free Money.”
Randy Wray saw Free Money and asked me to speak to his class at UMKC. I was prepared to have tomatoes thrown at me. I was astounded to learn that a discipline called MMT preached much of what I was preaching. I had thought I was the only one in the world who believed as I did.
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