Twitter: @rodgermitchell; Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
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Long con: A complex scam that happens over weeks, months or even years. and involves a long series of steps and even scripts and costumes, like a play. The purpose is to rob the victim of greater amounts than could be accomplished in a “short con” of a day or two.
Question: What is the best way to swindle an egotist? Answer: Appeal to his ego.
Which of these two world leaders will outwit the other?
Putin says ‘clever’ Trump will soon grasp weighty role
Moscow (AFP) – President Vladimir Putin in an interview aired Sunday called US President-elect Donald Trump intelligent and predicted he would quickly grasp his new level of responsibility and act accordingly.
“Since he managed to achieve success in business, that shows he is a clever person,” the Russian strongman said in an interview with NTV television that has already aired in the country’s far east, quoted by TASS news agency.
“If he’s clever, that means he will fully and quite quickly grasp a different level of responsibility.”
Putin said that Russia “expects that he will act precisely on this basis.”
The Kremlin said last month that the two men agreed, in their first phone call after Trump’s election win in November, on the need to “normalise” Russia-US relations.
In Putin-speak, “normalize” means to do what Putin wants, which given enough flattery, Trump appears quite amenable.
Here are some of Trump’s comments about Putin, comments that demonstrate Trump’s insatiable lust for compliments.
- “Look at Putin — what he’s doing with Russia — I mean, you know, what’s going on over there. I mean this guy has done — whether you like him or don’t like him — he’s doing a great job in rebuilding the image of Russia and also rebuilding Russia, period.”
- “Putin has big plans for Russia. He wants to edge out its neighbors so that Russia can dominate oil supplies to all of Europe. I respect Putin and Russians but cannot believe our leader (Obama) allows them to get away with so much…Hats off to the Russians.”
- “Will he (Putin) become my new best friend?”
- “I think he’s done really a great job of outsmarting our country.”
- “I think the biggest thing we have is that we were on ’60 Minutes’ together and we had fantastic ratings. One of your best-rated shows in a long time. So that was good, right? So we were stable mates.”
- “I think that I would probably get along with him very well. And I don’t think you’d be having the kind of problems that you’re having right now.”
- “I got to know him very well because we were both on ’60 Minutes,’ we were stablemates, and we did very well that night.” (Actually, he and Putin had been interviewed in separate countries at different times for the same news program.)
- After Putin praised Trump as a “talented person,” Trump said, “It is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond.”
- In defending Putin against allegations he had been killing reporters, Trump said, “He’s running his country and at least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country. I think our country does plenty of killing also.”
- “I have no relationship with (Putin) other than he called me a genius. He said Donald trump is a genius and he is going to be the leader of the party and he’s going to be the leader of the world or something. These characters that I’m running against said, ‘We want you to disavow that statement.’ I said what, he called me a genius, I’m going to disavow it? Are you crazy? Can you believe it? How stupid are they.” (Putin never called Trump a “genius.”)
- “I don’t think he has any respect for Clinton. I think he respects me. I think it would be great to get along with him.”
Seemingly, Putin will be able to lead Trump to do anything, merely by dangling praise in front of Trump’s nose.
Putin on Thursday reiterated Moscow’s readiness to work with Trump’s administration once the president-elect takes office in January.
“It is important to normalise and start to develop bilateral relations on an equal and mutually-beneficial basis,” Putin said in his annual state of the nation address.
During the US election campaign, Putin praised him for appealing effectively to disenchanted American electors.
“He represents the views of a significant part of society in the United States that is tired of those elites who have been in power for decades,” he said in October.
Trump is just an “ordinary” (?) billionaire who doesn’t like those elites who already have been in power for decades. Here are a few of those “ordinary, non-elites “ he has appointed:
Steve Mnuchin, Treasury secretary, former investment banker, hedge fund investor and executive at Goldman Sachs. Owns a $26.5 million house in Bel Air, California.
Wilbur Ross, Commerce secretary, billionaire investor and former banker.
Elaine Chao, married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, served as the 24th, formerly United States Secretary of Labor under George W. Bush, and Deputy Secretary of Transportation under George H. W. Bush.
Rep.Tom Price, has been in the House for six terms.
Betsy DeVos, Education secretary, billionaire married to Dick DeVos, an heir to the Amway fortune.
Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, attorney general, ten years in the U.S. Senate
Todd Ricketts, deputy Commerce secretary, co-owner of the Chicago Cubs, and the son of Ameritrade founder and billionaire Joe Ricketts.
Seema Verma, founder, president and CEO of the health policy consulting firm SVC Inc. Created thr Healthy Indiana Plan, the health insurance program that requires low-income participants to pay into a health savings account and has high deductibles. According to Verma, “You have to make your contribution every month, with a 60-day grace period. If you don’t make the contribution, you’re out of the program for 12 months. It’s a strong personal responsibility mechanism.” As of 2014, SVC Inc. had been awarded over $3.5 million in Indiana state contracts. Verma was accused of conflict of interest because she concurrently was employed with Hewlett-Packard, earning over $1 million during a period when the company had secured $500 million in state contracts.
Stephen Bannon, chief strategist and senior counselor, executive chair of Breitbart News, a far-right website and is associated with the white supremist alt-right.
Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, national security adviser. Was fired from the Pentagon’s top intelligence job. Called Islam “a cancer” and “a political ideology” that “hides behind this notion of it being a religion.”
Putin’s compliments, so unlike his public persona, are part of his long con, getting a neutered Trump on his side, when Russia makes its inevitable aggressive moves.
We already have seen it:
Donald Trump said that Russian President Vladimir Putin won’t make a military move into Ukraine — even though Putin already has done just that, seizing the country’s Crimean Peninsula.
“He’s not going into Ukraine, OK, just so you understand. He’s not going to go into Ukraine, all right? You can mark it down. You can put it down. You can take it anywhere you want,” Trump said in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on “This Week.”
“Well, he’s already there, isn’t he?” Stephanopoulos responded, in a reference to Crimea, which Putin took from Ukraine in early 2014.
Trump said: “OK — well, he’s there in a certain way. But I’m not there. You have Obama there. And frankly, that whole part of the world is a mess under Obama with all the strength that you’re talking about and all of the power of NATO and all of this. In the meantime, he’s going away. He takes Crimea.”
When you hire an inexperienced, self-absorbed, teenaged, twitter child to do a serious, experienced, man’s job, that is exactly what you get: an inexperienced, self-absorbed, teenaged, twitter child.
My fear and my prediction: Putin will flatter, cajole and seduce Trump’s inflated ego, while eating America’s lunch.
Meanwhile, Trump, along with his billionaires and right-wing extremists, will accelerate the 1%’s attack on the middle class and the poor.
This is a prediction I pray will be wrong, but the signs aren’t good.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty
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THE LAWS
•Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
•Any monetarily NON-sovereign government — be it city, county, state or nation — that runs an ongoing trade deficit, eventually will run out of money.
•The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes..
•No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth.
•Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia.
•A growing economy requires a growing supply of money (GDP = Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending + Net Exports)
•Deficit spending grows the supply of money
•The limit to federal deficit spending is an inflation that cannot be cured with interest rate control.
•The limit to non-federal deficit spending is the ability to borrow.
•Until the 99% understand the need for federal deficits, the upper 1% will rule.
•Progressives 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 the rich and the rest.
•Austerity is the government’s method for widening the Gap between the rich and the rest.
•Until the 99% understand the need for federal deficits, the upper 1% will rule.
•Everything in economics devolves to motive, and the motive is the Gap between the rich and the rest..
MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 
Out of curiosity, what does it mean for Putin to “eat America’s lunch”?
If it has anything to do with foiling the blood-soaked imperialist evil of rich Americans, then I’m all in favor of Putin.
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Got it. America is evil; Russia is good. Criticizing America for its imperfections, while giving a pass to all other countries is oh, so chic on college campuses these days. Cuba, Russia, Gaza. Who’s next for the whitewash?
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Got it.
America is good.
Every other nation is evil.
So say right-wing extremists in progressive clothing. So say fake leftists, lying “populists, and “humanitarian” poseurs.
As for college campuses, I have no connection with that.
Nor do I criticize the 1.8 million people in the Gaza Death Camp, since they are trapped inside 30-foot-high walls (twice as high as the old Berlin Wall).
By the way, thanks for the refusal to clarify what “eating America’s lunch” means.
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My prediction is that Putin will be excused for any outrageous act. Which specific outrageous acts? Only the future will answer your question.
But Russia does have a long history of invasion and dictatorship. Presumably, Trump’s dissing of NATO for Putin’s benefit, will encourage that.
If you hate “right-wing extremists in progressive clothing,” “fake leftists,” “lying populists,” and “humanitarian poseurs,” who have you excluded from that list?
Names please.
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QUESTION: “My prediction is that Putin will be excused for any outrageous act. Which specific outrageous acts? Only the future will answer your question.” ~ RMM
ANSWER: That’s back to the “would haves,” and the hypothetical “might dos” that you previously condemned. Not that I blame you. Some hypotheticals are etched in granite — e.g. politicians’ continued upholding of the Big Lie. .
I myself do not romanticize Putin. For me he is merely a politician. Meanwhile Russia is a competitor, not a savior.
Indeed people falsely romanticize the BRICS countries because they do not realize that in India, for example, neoliberalism rages even more fiercely than in the USA. Even in “Communist” China, politicians indulge in neoliberalism (e.g. privatization and gratuitous austerity). Even in Israel and Iran. The plague is truly global.
QUESTION: “If you hate ‘right-wing extremists in progressive clothing,’ ‘fake leftists,’ ‘lying populists,’ and ‘humanitarian poseurs,’ who have you excluded from that list? Names please.”
~ RMM
ANSWER: I exclude RMM when he dissects neoliberalism, or when he discusses the mechanics of federal finances and the Big Lie. That’s why I visit this blog.
However I have problems with people who imagine that one side of the duopoly is better than the other side (Republicans vs Democrats). Or with people who praise U.S. military aggression by saying, “Go team!” Or people who defend refugees without mentioning the neoliberalism and the wars (both military and economic) that create refugees in the first place.
I disdain politically correct people who are okay with the mass imprisonment of blacks, for example, but who shriek if someone uses the “N’ word. Politically correct people oppose the vilification of Muslims inside the USA, while they cheer the extermination of Muslims outside the USA. They cherry-pick which refugees they weep for, and which they condemn. They call someone a “terrorist” or a “dictator” if politicians or the corporate media outlets tell them to.
They blame everything on the rich while ignoring how average people vigorously defend the lies that enslave them. All these are examples of right-wing extremism in progressive clothing.
Or, if you don’t like that description, then all these are examples of bickering about the emperor’s new clothes, or bickering about how many leeches we should apply to “cure” anemia.
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There’s this:
And then, there’s this:
Once again, Donald Trumps demonstrates he is a “shoot-from-the-lip,” inexperienced, inconsistent amateur, who is great at selling the ignorant but has no business running the most powerful nation in world history.
To those who voted for Trump, this is something I’m sure I’ll say frequently in the next four years: You bought him; you own him.
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Frankly, I am in favour of Trump and Putin getting along. It’s a vastly superior option to the alternative that has the neocons pushing Russia as an enemy. As for the games you describe, we’ll just have to wait and see, but I think it will be more fun than fear. It’s good to get along and if the contest works either way it’s one reason I thought Trump’s win was not a terrible result.
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“Getting along” is a good thing, though I am not clever enough to discern the strategy that creates better relations with Russia and worse relations with China.
Trump must be very deep, indeed.
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Mr. Mitchell, you remember “Steve”? The guy in the video who was talking about MMT? He and his friends over at the Youtube channel ‘Real Progressives’ have listed your blog in the videos where Steve talks about economics. They are aware of you, but I think they still talk about full employment and stable prices; and not the gap between the 99% and the 1%.
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Rodger and I contend that the authentic study of economics must by necessity hinge on gap dynamics — i.e. the desire to maintain one’s place in the social pecking order, and to keep people below us on the ladder of wealth and power.
This drive is not in every individual, but it characterizes every human society, and always has.
I watch YouTube videos about ancient civilizations (China, Babylon, Egypt, Rome, Greece, etc). Gap dynamics was in full operation there, and also in African and Native American societies. All human societies have social strata maintained by lies and delusions that are religious in nature (i.e. faith based) whether or not the delusions involve deities or supernatural dogma.
For example, average Americans know that the U.S. government can “print” limitless dollars, yet they also believe that the U.S. government is “bankrupt” and has a “debt crisis.” The “bankrupt” belief is faith-based. In Europe the faith-based belief is that they must have the euro.
Put another way, all human societies are based on variants of the “emperor’s new clothes.” An example is the “divine right of kings.”
Any discussion of economics that does not take gap dynamics into account is nonsense. It is designed to both justify gap dynamics, while distracting from the reality of gap dynamics.
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What level of equality do you and Mr. Mitchell think is right? What parameters do you have to measure such equality?
Are you and Mr. Mitchell for or against the hierarchical nature of capitalism?
Do you think worker-owned business provide the workers with not only greater incomes, but also higher satisfaction in their work?
Do you think that if the majority of people in America knew and accepted the central tenets of MMT/MS, the puppets of the rich will agree to invest more in the American people? Would another type of action be needed in order to achieve said thing?
If inequality between social classes is the most important debate in economics, is it safe to say that Karl Marx was right? Now I know that conservatives, right-wing libertarians and so-called “anarcho”-capitalists like to refer to left wing ideas as “Marxist”. They throw that word around like feminists throw around the word “misogynist” and race baiters throw “racism” around to the point of making these words cliche; but this is a legitimate question, were his views and analysis on society, politics and economics correct? NOTE: His analysis, not his proposed solutions.
It’ll be great if you share your input.
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There never can be complete equality, because people are not equal. Your question could be rephrased, “What level of equality among people is right?”
Obviously, impossible to answer.
I only can say now that the financial inequality is too great, because I doubt that personal inequality — however that is measured — justifies today’s financial inequality.
Since Karl Marx, like all other human beings, said many things, quote any one of his sentences, and I’ll tell you whether or not I agree with it.
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