Month: June 2015

–Read this declaration and see how it applies to today’s government by the rich.

Twitter: @rodgermitchell; Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

Mitchell’s laws:
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
●The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes. .
●Liberals think the purpose of government is to protect the poor and powerless from the rich and powerful. Conservatives think the purpose of government is to protect the rich and powerful from the poor and powerless.
●The single most important problem in economics is the gap between rich and poor.
●Austerity is the government’s method for widening the gap between rich and poor.
●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.
●Everything in economics devolves to motive, and the motive is the Gap.

=========================================================================================================================================================================================================================

Today, our United States has a government ruled by the rich.

The U.S. Supreme Court has made legal, the unlimited bribery of the President and Congress, by pretending that bribery is nothing more than “free speech,” a unique description, never contemplated in our history.

Thus, our puppet politicians, dependent on bribery to attain power and greedy for bribery to become rich, do exactly as the rich tell them.

In that sense, they are no different from the puppet masters sent to our colonies by King George, and just as cruel and greedy.

I suggest, therefore, that you do something you have not done for many years: Read again the Declaration of Independence. (below)

Don’t skim it. Read it closely, and while you read it, visualize how each line applies to today’s political climate — the politicians, judges and bankers who rule us. You will be astounded at the similarities.

The Declaration of Independence:
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Here, the fundamental purpose of government is detailed: To help us achieve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Think now about what our government is doing, can do and should do, to achieve these three ends.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

People tend to suffer bad governments until the situation becomes unbearable. I submit to you that a government by the rich, for the rich and of the rich is unbearable for the 99% who are not rich.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.

To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

For instance, refusing to eliminate the noxious “debt ceiling” laws that have no purpose other than to extort and delay.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

Consider the refusals by Congress, to approve the dozens of each President’s nominees. (Obama’s nominees have been confirmed at a rate similar to those under Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton — 76.6 percent for Obama compared with 77.9 percent under those two presidents.

But longer wait times have become a serious deterrent. As of Wednesday, 114 executive-branch nominees have been waiting an average of 210 days.)

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

Does the obstruction of the naturalization of foreigners sound familiar?

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

–For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
—For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
–For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
–For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

Aside from some local tax issues, have you ever “consented” to a new tax? Surely not a federal tax. And this is especially galling, because though local taxes fund local sending, federal taxes do not fund federal spending.

–For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
–For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
–For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
–For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
–For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

FEMA essentially has abdicated its duty to protect our people against the ravages of natural disaster. Ask the survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy how well FEMA has protected them.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.

A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us.

We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.

They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

No, we do not suggest a war against the federal government or any other kind of physical war. That would be self-destructive.

We already are in a civil war: A war between the rich and the rest. And our problem is that most of us don’t even understand such a war is being waged.

Instead, the rich have used the power of their wealth to set person against person — liberal against conservative, religious against atheistic, gay against straight, middle-class against the poor, citizens against immigrants — in a “divide and rule” effort.

And it has worked. They have divided us, and they rule. And we have only ourselves to blame.

Believe it or not, there was a time when politicians respected ideas and those who expressed them, even ideas that differed from their own.

Today, a politician can’t be nominated, much less elected, unless he can prove he hates some group more than his competitor does.

If you don’t hate undocumented immigrants, you can’t be elected to a Republican office. Similarly, if you don’t hate the people who want to criminalize all abortions, you can’t be elected a Democrat.

It is doubtful that the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence agreed on all things. But they came together to fight a greater evil.

The greatest evil facing America is the widening Gap between the rich and the rest, which begets ever greater control of our lives by the rich.

That is our real enemy and that is what we should fight.

Not each other.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

===================================================================================
The Ten Steps to Prosperity:

1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Federally funded Medicare — parts A, B & D plus long term nursing care — for everyone (Click here)
3. Provide an Economic Bonus to every man, woman and child in America, and/or every state a per capita Economic Bonus. (Click here) Or institute a reverse income tax.
4. Federally funded, free education (including post-grad) for everyone. Click here
5. Salary for attending school (Click here)
6. Eliminate corporate taxes (Click here)
7. Increase the standard income tax deduction annually. (Refer to this.)
8. Tax the very rich (.1%) more, with higher, progressive tax rates on all forms of income. (Click here)
9. Federal ownership of all banks (Click here and here)
10. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99% (Click here)

Initiating The Ten Steps sequentially will add dollars to the economy, stimulate the economy, and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.
——————————————————————————————————————————————

10 Steps to Economic Misery: (Click here:)
1. Maintain or increase the FICA tax..
2. Spread the myth Social Security, Medicare and the U.S. government are insolvent.
3. Cut federal employment in the military, post office, other federal agencies.
4. Broaden the income tax base so more lower income people will pay.
5. Cut financial assistance to the states.
6. Spread the myth federal taxes pay for federal spending.
7. Allow banks to trade for their own accounts; save them when their investments go sour.
8. Never prosecute any banker for criminal activity.
9. Nominate arch conservatives to the Supreme Court.
10. Reduce the federal deficit and debt

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.
1. A growing economy requires a growing supply of dollars (GDP=Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending + Net Exports)
2. All deficit spending grows the supply of dollars
3. The limit to federal deficit spending is an inflation that cannot be cured with interest rate control.
4. The limit to non-federal deficit spending is the ability to borrow.

THE RECESSION CLOCK

Long term view:
Monetary Sovereignty

Recent view:
Monetary Sovereignty

Vertical gray bars mark recessions.

As the federal deficit growth lines drop, we approach recession, which will be cured only when the growth lines rise. Increasing federal deficit growth (aka “stimulus”) is necessary for long-term economic growth.

#MONETARYSOVEREIGNTY

–On being thrown off the cliff: Where is the George Washington of Greece?

Twitter: @rodgermitchell; Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

Mitchell’s laws:
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
●The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes. .
●Liberals think the purpose of government is to protect the poor and powerless from the rich and powerful. Conservatives think the purpose of government is to protect the rich and powerful from the poor and powerless.
●The single most important problem in economics is the gap between rich and poor.
●Austerity is the government’s method for widening the gap between rich and poor.
●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.
●Everything in economics devolves to motive, and the motive is the Gap.

=========================================================================================================================================================================================================================

In the previous post, we showed how federal deficit cutting (austerity) and the misguided attempt to create a government surplus, harms the middle and lower income groups (the “99%”) by draining dollars from the economy.

We described how deficit cutting has been sold to the 99% as “prudent” economics, while in reality, it is a plan to widen the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.

Not well understood is that the widening of the Gap is a self-perpetuating process that once begun, can continue and accelerate of its own momentum.

It’s much like being thrown from a cliff.

G-7 Throws Greece Under the Bus
Posted on June 8, 2015 by Yves Smith

Statements coming out of (the G-7) signal that the U.S., Canada, Germany, France, Japan, Italy and the U.K are backing the creditor position.

The Obama administration had changed its position in February from pushing the lenders to come up with more pro-growth policies (meaning give relief to Greece) to stressing that Greece needed to “find a constructive path forward in partnership with Europe and the IMF to build on the foundation that exists.”

“There was unanimity of opinion in the room that it was important for Greece and their partners to chart a way forward that builds on crucial structural reforms” and returns to growth, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters.

This means, continuing the analogy, that Greece, having been thrown from the euro cliff, now must find a way magically to fly back up, with no help.

Greece does not own sufficient euros to pay its bills. Austerity already has ravaged Greece’s economy, so it has no way to generate euros. The G-7 “solution” is more austerity, which will ravage Greece’s economy further in an unending, unstoppable fall.

The G-7, having applied leeches to Greece’s economic bloodstream, and seeing that the leeches caused the inevitable economic anemia, now demand that more leeches be applied.

Poverty begets poverty by making the climb out of poverty increasingly difficult.

Impoverished people suffer from poor primary education. The schools themselves are inferior.

Additionally, college may be unaffordable, and even those few colleges that are affordable don’t have the cache to provide entry to the best jobs.

Even less understood are the austerity effects on the people themselves. Poverty begets more poverty by changing the impoverished, in body and mind.

Less nutritious food, leading to physical exhaustion, inhibit work, study and thought. Job seeking and job keeping become less successful.

But there is even more:

Look What Austerity Does to a Child’s Brain
Posted on Jun 7, 2015

The stressful conditions of poverty—“overcrowding, noise, substandard housing, separation from parent(s), exposure to violence, family turmoil”—can have toxic effects on the developing brain, permanently diminishing the ability to think clearly and calmly.

Profiling the work of Pat Levitt, a developmental neuroscientist who serves as science director of the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, Madeline Ostrander writes at The New Yorker:

These conditions provoke the body to release hormones such as cortisol, which is produced in the adrenal cortex.

In a pregnant woman, the hormone can “get through the placenta into the fetus,” Levitt told me, potentially influencing her baby’s brain and tampering with its circuitry.

Later, as the same child grows up, cortisol from his own body may continue to sabotage the development of his brain.

The negative effect of poverty on the human brain has been documented.

In March, in the journal Nature Neuroscience, a group of researchers from nine hospitals and universities published a major study of more than a thousand children.

They took DNA samples, made MRI scans of the children’s brains, collected data on their families’ income level and educational background, and gave them a series of tests for skills like reading and memory.

The DNA samples allowed the scientists to factor out the influence of genetic heritage and look more closely at how socioeconomic status affects a growing brain.

As might be expected, more educated families produced children with greater brain surface area and a more voluminous hippocampus.

But income had its own distinct effect: living in the lowest bracket left children with up to six per cent less brain surface area than children from high-income families.

Wealth can’t necessarily buy a better brain, but deprivation can result in a weakened one.

In a longer-term study published two years ago, neuroscientists at four universities scanned the brains of a group of twenty-four-year-olds and found that, in those who had lived in poverty at age nine, the brain’s centers of negative emotion were more frequently buzzing with activity, whereas the areas that could rein in such emotions were quieter.

Elsewhere, stress in childhood has been shown to make people prone to depression, heart disease, and addiction in adulthood.

The above findings are expanded upon in the June 4, 2105 article, What Poverty Does to the Young Brain by Madeline Ostrander.

Bottom line: Greece’s austerity-riven economy is in a depression. The nation, deeply in debt, has insufficient sources of euros ever to pay that debt.

But the “troika” — European Central Bank (ECB), the European Commission (EC), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – knowing Greece never will repay, still insists Greece apply more of the same austerity that pushed Greece into depression.

The troika’s fear is that Greece will awaken, leave the euro, become Monetarily Sovereign by re-installing the drachma, and reclaim its sovereignty. That would put an end to the troika’s free lunch at Greece’s expense.

The myth, that Monetary Sovereignty would drive Greeks into a greater hardship than they already suffer, is ridiculous on its face (greater hardship than the current depression??)

The myth is promulgated by the banks, to dissuade Greece from freeing itself from their greedy clutches.

The troika’s even larger fear is that other euro nations, seeing Greece’s escape and resultant success, would themselves leave the euro, and then, for the rich banks, the feeding frenzy would be over.

Already impoverished, the Greek people face an increasingly difficult road, making emergence from debt ever more unlikely. The difficulties not only are financial, but physical and mental.

Ultimately, if the troika has its way, the Greek people would be turned into idiot slaves of the rich, desperate and with no hope or facilities for recovery, thankful for the crumbs the rich allow them.

Greece can put a stop to the torture of its people, simply by refusing to pay any more tribute to the troika.

This would require political courage, but just as George Washington led the United States to freedom from tyranny, the leader who leads Greece from troika tyranny, forever will be remembered as the “George Washington of Greece.”

Let us pray that, like George Washington, such a leader somehow emerges.

And let us pray that another George Washington arrives to save us from our own greedy and pusillanimous leaders, before we too are swallowed by the current austerity and the rich.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

===================================================================================
The Ten Steps to Prosperity:

1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Federally funded Medicare — parts A, B & D plus long term nursing care — for everyone (Click here)
3. Provide an Economic Bonus to every man, woman and child in America, and/or every state a per capita Economic Bonus. (Click here) Or institute a reverse income tax.
4. Federally funded, free education (including post-grad) for everyone. Click here
5. Salary for attending school (Click here)
6. Eliminate corporate taxes (Click here)
7. Increase the standard income tax deduction annually. (Refer to this.)
8. Tax the very rich (.1%) more, with higher, progressive tax rates on all forms of income. (Click here)
9. Federal ownership of all banks (Click here and here)
10. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99% (Click here)

Initiating The Ten Steps sequentially will add dollars to the economy, stimulate the economy, and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.
——————————————————————————————————————————————

10 Steps to Economic Misery: (Click here:)
1. Maintain or increase the FICA tax..
2. Spread the myth Social Security, Medicare and the U.S. government are insolvent.
3. Cut federal employment in the military, post office, other federal agencies.
4. Broaden the income tax base so more lower income people will pay.
5. Cut financial assistance to the states.
6. Spread the myth federal taxes pay for federal spending.
7. Allow banks to trade for their own accounts; save them when their investments go sour.
8. Never prosecute any banker for criminal activity.
9. Nominate arch conservatives to the Supreme Court.
10. Reduce the federal deficit and debt

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.
1. A growing economy requires a growing supply of dollars (GDP=Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending + Net Exports)
2. All deficit spending grows the supply of dollars
3. The limit to federal deficit spending is an inflation that cannot be cured with interest rate control.
4. The limit to non-federal deficit spending is the ability to borrow.

THE RECESSION CLOCK

Long term view:
Monetary Sovereignty

Recent view:
Monetary Sovereignty

Vertical gray bars mark recessions.

As the federal deficit growth lines drop, we approach recession, which will be cured only when the growth lines rise. Increasing federal deficit growth (aka “stimulus”) is necessary for long-term economic growth.

#MONETARYSOVEREIGNTY

–What is the fundamental difference between Greece and the U.S.? What is our excuse?

Twitter: @rodgermitchell; Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

Mitchell’s laws:
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
●The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes. .
●Liberals think the purpose of government is to protect the poor and powerless from the rich and powerful. Conservatives think the purpose of government is to protect the rich and powerful from the poor and powerless.
●The single most important problem in economics is the gap between rich and poor.
●Austerity is the government’s method for widening the gap between rich and poor.
●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.
●Everything in economics devolves to motive, and the motive is the Gap.

=========================================================================================================================================================================================================================

What is the fundamental difference between Greece and the U.S.?

First a bit of background. Federal deficit spending creates dollars by adding them to the economy. A federal surplus destroys dollars by taking them from the economy.

It’s that simple.

Syriza Commits to Deep Austerity in Its Proposal to Creditors
Posted on June 7, 2015 by Yves Smith

We’ve been telling readers, to sometime hostile responses, that Syriza has in fact already agreed to a continuation of austerity.

“Austerity” is another word for deficit reduction, i.e. removing money (in Greece’s case, euros) from Greece’s economy.

(Finance minister) Varoufakis (is committed) to continued austerity even as he tries to present it as the reverse.

“What are we talking about? Of an independent tax agency, of keeping forever a reasonable primary surplus, of a sensible and ambitious privatization program… of a true reform of the pension system …of liberalizations of markets for goods and services etc,” he wrote.

Translation: A “reasonable” primary surplus occurs only when taxes exceed government spending.

Ask yourself this: If I give the government more in taxes than what the government gives me, will my wealth increase or decrease? Will I be able to spend more or spend less?

Will businesses, which rely on my spending, have more or less income and be more or less profitable? And will this grow the economy or shrink it?

In short, for any nation, there is no “reasonable” primary surplus.

Now as we’ve stressed, any primary surplus is contractionary, and will be particularly damaging in an economy already in depression like Greece’s.

The leaked creditor proposal offers a (surplus) target of 1% (of GDP) in 2015, 2% in 2016, 3% in 2017 and 3.5% in 2018 and beyond and asks that Greece introduce a supplementary budget for 2015 to meet the new target.

Translation: The criminal banks want to extract as much money from Greece as possible, as soon as possible. The reason: They know Greece is insolvent and will not, for long, be able to pay its suppliers of goods and services.

So the banks scramble to suck up the remaining euros, before other creditors get them, while pretending the rape of Greece is prudent economics.

The current Greek VAT system includes 3 rates (6.5%, 13%, 23%). Creditors ask to move to a 2-rates system, with the two rates being 23% and 11%.

VAT is a sales tax system, that like all sales taxes, is regressive. It punishes most the middle and lower income groups — the people who spend the greatest percentage of their incomes on goods and services.

The rich, who invest most of their income, are mostly immune to VAT. And that is the whole point. The euro system was sold as a way to improve trade efficiencies and thus, to benefit workers and small businesses.

It was a clever lie, aka “the Big Lie.”

The purpose of the euro system is to empower the rich (1%) and to enslave the middle and the poor (99%). And that is exactly what austerity mathematically must do.

By draining the blood from an economy, the rich act as the leeches, forcing the 99% to be the blood donors.

Pension reform: The creditors ask for “further immediate steps to improve the pension system, that are expected to yield around 1 percent of GDP in savings annually in 2016-17, including significantly tightening early retirements rule, increasing health contribution for pensioners, and phasing out the non-pension solidarity grant”.

Translation: The words “reform” and “improve” are euphemisms for “cut.” The rich want to cut the pensions on which the 99% survive.

The rich also want to force the 99% to work longer (“tighten early retirements”), pay more for health care insurance and eliminate government contributions to their version of Social Security.

All this so the bankers can be paid, and the Gap between the rich and the rest can grow.

And lest you believe this is a problem solely affecting the Greek people:

Obama is on track to leave a budget surplus

Bill Clinton left the presidency with a budget surplus. And although the first five years of Barack Obama’s presidency have featured high (but falling) deficits, it’s starting to look like Obama could do the same.

Obama leaving office with a balanced budget would come as a big shock to those who have compared the U.S. to crisis-stricken countries like Greece, or claimed that Obama is spending like a drunken sailor.

But that is exactly what the U.S. is on trend to do.

What does the following graph tell you about when recessions occur?

monetary sovereignty

Recessions never seem to occur when the federal deficit — the measure of federal government money being added to the economy — is above 3% of Gross Domestic Product. The strong tendency is for recessions to occur after the federal deficit falls below 3% of GDP.

And where is the line now?

Although President Clinton loves to boast about the surpluses his administration ran, the fact is that those surpluses of the late 1990s led to the recession of 2001.

There was no reason for surpluses. Inflation was low and bore no relationship to federal deficit spending:
monetary sovereignty

The surpluses were created at the behest of the rich.

The title question asks: What is the fundamental difference between Greece and the U.S.?

Greece, being monetarily non-sovereign, has no sovereign currency. It does not have the unlimited ability to create its own currency. It uses the euro, over which it has no control.

It neither can prevent nor cure recessions and depressions. It floats helplessly in a boat steered by its banker creditors, the “Troika” — the International Monetary Fund (IMF) the European Commission (EC) and the European Central Bank (ECB).

The Greek people are suffering victims of the banks.

By contrast, the U.S. is Monetarily Sovereign. It originally created, and has total control over, its sovereign currency, the dollar. It can create as much as it needs, merely by pressing a computer key.

The U.S. never can be unable to pay its debts.

Why then does the U.S. use the same austerity — the same deficit cutting — as Greece? Because just as the rich control the Greek economy, so too do the rich control the U.S. economy, specifically by controlling the President and Congress.

This control is in the form of campaign contributions and promises of lucrative employment later. In short, our government is bribed to do as the rich wish, courtesy of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The American rich want to cut pensions (including Social Security), cut Medicare, cut aids to the impoverished, cut aids to education, and make the 99% pay more for services — the same as what the European rich are doing to Greece.

It is the rich who bless American gun ownership, then look on, mouthing “tsk tak” while the 99% kill one another.

The rich are the same the world over. Their greed knows no bounds. No amount of money, wealth and power satisfies them. The distance between the rich and the rest never is great enough, despite how much the Gap has grown.

monetary sovereignty

Dictators assemble armies to beset their own countrymen; the rich assemble followers to beset the 99% who object to economic abuse.

These followers have been trained to sneer at “libs” who demand government services, and taught to claim falsely that federal spending causes inflations, sloth and dependence.

Like pet parrots, they speak the words given them by the rich, not understanding it is they, the followers, whom the rich despise for their ignorance and subservience.

The Greeks have fallen into the economic maelstrom called, “the euro.” They cannot help but be sucked down, down, down, with no depth of poverty sufficient to satisfy the rich.

But here in America what is our excuse?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

===================================================================================
The Ten Steps to Prosperity:

1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Federally funded Medicare — parts A, B & D plus long term nursing care — for everyone (Click here)
3. Provide an Economic Bonus to every man, woman and child in America, and/or every state a per capita Economic Bonus. (Click here) Or institute a reverse income tax.
4. Federally funded, free education (including post-grad) for everyone. Click here
5. Salary for attending school (Click here)
6. Eliminate corporate taxes (Click here)
7. Increase the standard income tax deduction annually. (Refer to this.)
8. Tax the very rich (.1%) more, with higher, progressive tax rates on all forms of income. (Click here)
9. Federal ownership of all banks (Click here and here)
10. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99% (Click here)

Initiating The Ten Steps sequentially will add dollars to the economy, stimulate the economy, and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.
——————————————————————————————————————————————

10 Steps to Economic Misery: (Click here:)
1. Maintain or increase the FICA tax..
2. Spread the myth Social Security, Medicare and the U.S. government are insolvent.
3. Cut federal employment in the military, post office, other federal agencies.
4. Broaden the income tax base so more lower income people will pay.
5. Cut financial assistance to the states.
6. Spread the myth federal taxes pay for federal spending.
7. Allow banks to trade for their own accounts; save them when their investments go sour.
8. Never prosecute any banker for criminal activity.
9. Nominate arch conservatives to the Supreme Court.
10. Reduce the federal deficit and debt

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.
1. A growing economy requires a growing supply of dollars (GDP=Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending + Net Exports)
2. All deficit spending grows the supply of dollars
3. The limit to federal deficit spending is an inflation that cannot be cured with interest rate control.
4. The limit to non-federal deficit spending is the ability to borrow.

THE RECESSION CLOCK

Long term view:
Monetary Sovereignty

Recent view:
Monetary Sovereignty

Vertical gray bars mark recessions.

As the federal deficit growth lines drop, we approach recession, which will be cured only when the growth lines rise. Increasing federal deficit growth (aka “stimulus”) is necessary for long-term economic growth.

#MONETARYSOVEREIGNTY

–Welcome child, to America, where everyone is frightened, armed and dangerous

Twitter: @rodgermitchell; Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

Mitchell’s laws:
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
●The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes. .
●Liberals think the purpose of government is to protect the poor and powerless from the rich and powerful. Conservatives think the purpose of government is to protect the rich and powerful from the poor and powerless.
●The single most important problem in economics is the gap between rich and poor.
●Austerity is the government’s method for widening the gap between rich and poor.
●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.
●Everything in economics devolves to motive, and the motive is the Gap.

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Ooh-oo child
Things are gonna get easier
Ooh-oo child
Things’ll get brighter

Welcome child, to America, where everyone is frightened, armed and dangerous.

Slightly fewer than 4 million babies are born in the United States each year

.

The figures show that there have been 16,808,538 (gun purchase) applications (only from federally registered dealers) in 2012 so far to the end of November. If they were approved, that would be enough weapons to stock every member of Nato’s armed forces nearly five times over.

The system has received 156,577,260 applications since 1998 and the US has the highest gun ownership rate in the world.

Four guns for every baby born in America. Welcome child, to America, where everyone is frightened, armed and dangerous.

Idaho school buys guns to enhance safety: ‘We wanted to be prepared’
By Kimberlee Kruesi – Associated Press – Saturday, June 6, 2015

BOISE, Idaho — It takes at least 45 minutes for officers to reach the Garden Valley School District — a district made up of less than 300 students in one building — where limited funds have prevented the school from being able to afford hiring police officers to patrol the building during school hours.

As a result, the school board approved this month purchasing guns to remain locked inside the school and trained six employees to use the weapons in an emergency.

What is the danger to Garden Valley students? With just 300 students, every child and every family, knows one another. And, they are geographically isolated so any strangers would be rare and immediately noticed.

So what is the danger that requires them to stock guns in the school?

And if the guns are locked, how accessible are they in an “emergency”?

And why do they keep the guns locked, if everyone in Idaho already has the right to carry a gun?

And how intensive is the training? And who are the trainers? And is the training repeated to keep the employees sharp? And what are they trained to do with those guns in a school filled with students?

And why do they require training, if everyone in Idaho already is allowed to carry a gun, without such training?

Ah, questions, questions, questions.

Welcome child, to America, where everyone is frightened, armed and dangerous.

In Idaho, bringing guns into a school as a safety measure is (an) accepted option where Second Amendment rights are highly protected and libertarian ideals run deep.

In 2013, an eastern Idaho school district approved installing gun safes in its high schools and middle schools in order for school resource officers to have easy access to rifles if needed – the same year the Idaho School Board Association rejected a plan to set up gun training for education staff and teachers.

Easy access to rifles (rifles in high schools??), and no training? What could possibly go wrong with that?

It happens that there is a National Association of Resource Officers (NASRO). So I wrote to every state association listed on their site, the following note:

“Dear NASRO member,

Can you please provide examples of how a school resource officer used his (her) gun to thwart and armed intruder. If you also could reference newspaper articles, that would be helpful.

Thank you for your assistance.”

I’ll keep you apprised of the answers.

I was curious to know how arming our schools is working out. If it seems to work, we might want to arm our movie and show theaters, our churches and synagogues, our restaurants and bars, our parks and playgrounds, our sports arenas, our beaches, our buses, our trains, our buildings, our stores, our streets — everywhere that people gather.

But, on second thought, we already are doing that. No training needed.

Welcome child, to America, where everyone is frightened, armed and dangerous.

Ooh-oo child
Things are gonna get easier
Ooh-oo child
Things’ll get brighter

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

===================================================================================
The Ten Steps to Prosperity:

1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Federally funded Medicare — parts A, B & D plus long term nursing care — for everyone (Click here)
3. Provide an Economic Bonus to every man, woman and child in America, and/or every state a per capita Economic Bonus. (Click here) Or institute a reverse income tax.
4. Federally funded, free education (including post-grad) for everyone. Click here
5. Salary for attending school (Click here)
6. Eliminate corporate taxes (Click here)
7. Increase the standard income tax deduction annually. (Refer to this.)
8. Tax the very rich (.1%) more, with higher, progressive tax rates on all forms of income. (Click here)
9. Federal ownership of all banks (Click here and here)
10. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99% (Click here)

Initiating The Ten Steps sequentially will add dollars to the economy, stimulate the economy, and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.
——————————————————————————————————————————————

10 Steps to Economic Misery: (Click here:)
1. Maintain or increase the FICA tax..
2. Spread the myth Social Security, Medicare and the U.S. government are insolvent.
3. Cut federal employment in the military, post office, other federal agencies.
4. Broaden the income tax base so more lower income people will pay.
5. Cut financial assistance to the states.
6. Spread the myth federal taxes pay for federal spending.
7. Allow banks to trade for their own accounts; save them when their investments go sour.
8. Never prosecute any banker for criminal activity.
9. Nominate arch conservatives to the Supreme Court.
10. Reduce the federal deficit and debt

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.
1. A growing economy requires a growing supply of dollars (GDP=Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending + Net Exports)
2. All deficit spending grows the supply of dollars
3. The limit to federal deficit spending is an inflation that cannot be cured with interest rate control.
4. The limit to non-federal deficit spending is the ability to borrow.

THE RECESSION CLOCK

Long term view:
Monetary Sovereignty

Recent view:
Monetary Sovereignty

Vertical gray bars mark recessions.

As the federal deficit growth lines drop, we approach recession, which will be cured only when the growth lines rise. Increasing federal deficit growth (aka “stimulus”) is necessary for long-term economic growth.

#MONETARYSOVEREIGNTY