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

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 ultimately 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.
●Everything in economics devolves to motive.
============================================================================================================================================================================
France has just announced it will abandon the euro. The French people just don’t yet know it.

France to seek 14 billion euros in cuts next year: paper
Reuters, 6/29/13

France will pursue 14 billion euros ($18.2 billion) in spending cuts next year as it attempts to reduce the public deficit to 3 percent of economic output by 2015.

Translation: Our economy is in the toilet, so our “solution” is to destroy another 14 billion euros. Flush!

France’s Socialist government aims to tame the deficit by trimming ministerial budgets, cutting state aid to companies and reducing local government funding.

Translation: We’ll cut government benefits to the middle classes and the poor. We’ll make our businesses weaker and we’ll stop helping local governments provide their benefits. That should work.

With the economy back in a shallow recession, jobless claims at an all-time high and his approval ratings around 30 percent, President Francois Hollande has been reluctant to accelerate the cuts.

Translation: We know cutting the deficit will hurt the economy, and increasing the deficit will grow the economy. But we became monetarily non-sovereign by adopting that failed currency, the euro, so we have no choice but to cut our own wrists.

Annual growth in overall wage costs for French public employees will be cut to 0.15 percent from 3 percent, chiefly through pay restraint.

Translation: These people make too much money.

Funding for services such as the CNRS research institute and Meteo France weather forecaster will be cut 4 percent.

Translation: This is CNRS:

Institute of Biological Sciences (INSB)
Institute of Chemistry (INC)
Institute of Ecology and Environment (INEE)
Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences (INSHS)
Institute for Information Sciences and Technologies (INS2I)
Institute for Engineering and Systems Sciences (INSIS)
Institute of Physics (INP)

Hey, who needs that stuff, anyway? And if you’re worried about the weather, carry an umbrella.

The Cour des Comptes, which overseas France’s public accounts, warned on June 27 that the deficit could overshoot its 3.7 percent (of economic output) target for 2013. It recommended spending cuts of 13 billion euros next year and 15 billion in 2015 to meet the 3 percent goal.

Translation: We know that cutting deficits reduces economic output, which increases the deficit percentage — it’s a dog-chasing-tail exercise. But who cares? The purpose is to punish the middle and lower classes and to widen the gap between the rich and the rest. Working pretty well, isn’t it?

There is no question that France will leave the euro. The only question is: How much punishment will the French people absorb before they riot in the streets and kick the rich deficit-cutters out.

I believe the timing depends on two factors:

1. When Greece leaves the euro. Being the sickest of the EU nations, one would think Greece would come to its senses first. When they re-adopt the drachma, and shortly thereafter, become one of the wealthier European nations, the French people (not their leaders) will have an epiphany.

2. When the EU forms a European republic. If the rich EU martinets see rioting all around them, they suddenly will “realize” monetary non-sovereignty doesn’t work for nations, so will form some sort of European republic, in which a central source will provide (without lending) euros to each nation.

My guess: #1 will happen first. Then there will be some “serious talk” about #2, while trying to convince Greece to return.

But the talks will go nowhere, so Italy will leave. Then France, and the whole, ridiculous euro idea will come crashing down.

Just before each nation leaves the euro, it will suffer a depression; the rich will point fingers at the “lazy” poor; millions of the middle- and poorer-classes will suffer and fall into poverty.

Finally, after re-instating Monetary Sovereignty, each nation will return to prosperity, at which time its rich again will push it back toward austerity.

Like a zombie that cannot be killed, austerity will rise again and again to destroy the lives of the ignorant.

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. Click here
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%

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.
Two key equations in economics:
1. Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
2. Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption – Net Imports

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

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

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 ultimately 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.
●Everything in economics devolves to motive.
=====================================================================

Remember the big bankers? They are the rich crooks whose gambling helped cause our worst recession since the Great Depression. The also are the rich crooks whom the federal government bailed out.

And they are the rich crooks who continue to rake in multi-million dollar compensations, even after their banks needed bailing out.

And they are the rich crooks, not one of whom even has been prosecuted, much less convicted by the Obama administration, because let’s face it, bribery works.

(Those campaign contributions and promises of lucrative employment later, create a protective barrier for rich crooks.)

Anyway, if you remember those rich crooks, the following graph will interest you. It compares the 100 largest banks with the rest of the banks, based on mortgage delinquency.

For many years, the mortgage delinquency rate was low and essentially the same for the largest and smaller banks. But once the big banks started accepting, bundling and selling “liars loans,” that all changed.

When those liars loans inevitably fell apart, the rich crooks should have had to pay the price — except for one small detail: President Obama (the self-proclaimed friend of the poor) gave the big banks money — enough money to pay off their losses and enough money to continue paying multi-million dollar salaries.

So, while the rich bankers bleat about getting “big government” off their backs, it turns out, big government is nowhere to be found — except on the backs of the poor and middle classes.

Today, nothing has changed. The laws and federal oversight of banks remain weak and untouchable.

As you know, bribery works.

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. Click here
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%

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.
Two key equations in economics:
1. Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
2. Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption – Net Imports

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

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

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 ultimately 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.
●Everything in economics devolves to motive.
=====================================================================

What do Greece and Chicago have in common? First, they both are monetarily non-sovereign.

Unlike the U.S., UK, Canada, China, Japan, Australia et al, neither Greece nor Chicago can create their sovereign currency. Why? Neither has a sovereign currency.

Greece uses the euro and Chicago uses the dollar, which are, to them, “alien” currencies. By contrast, the Monetarily Sovereign nations mentioned above, each has a currency over which it is sovereign.

Each can create as much or little of its sovereign currency as it wishes, and give any value to that currency it wishes. None ever can run short of its sovereign currency, even if all national government taxes were 0. That is what “sovereign” means.

O.K., you knew that. But, what else?

You also may have known that a monetarily non-sovereign entity cannot survive long term without more money coming in than going out.

You are monetarily non-sovereign. You can’t survive long term without more money coming in than leaving you. A company too, being monetarily non-sovereign, needs more income than outgo to survive long term. States, cities, counties and euro nations have the same requirement.

But what happens when a city or a euro nation has more outgo than income, year after year. Well, it could raise taxes, i.e. take more money from the citizens. But that is only a short-term, and ill received measure.

Eventually the citizens run short of money, and become a bit restive (as in bloody riots and Guillotines). So the monetarily non-sovereign entity eventually resorts to another short-term fix: It sells pieces of itself.

Christian Science Monitor, 2009
The great sell-off: Chicago auctions city assets
The city is auctioning private assets to the highest bidder. But private ownership of parking meters stirs a backlash.

No city in America beats Chicago when it comes to selling public assets – garages, bridges, even parking meters. the Windy City under Mayor Richard M. Daley has sold or leased out public institutions such as the Chicago Skyway ($1.83 billion), underground garages beneath Grant and Millennium Parks ($563 million), and, more recently, city parking meters ($1.15 billion).

That’s not exactly chump change, especially for a city still grappling with a $469 million budget shortfall from last year, not to mention an estimated $300 million deficit this year.

“It’s fraud; it’s extortion,” says Sam Wolfson, owner of String-A-Strand, a crafts-supply store in the Lincoln Square neighborhood, where meter rates have jumped from one quarter to four quarters for one hour.

There are two problems with selling piece of yourself.

1. You may run out of pieces, without solving the income/outgo imbalance.
2. You may sell your profit-making pieces, which exacerbates the income/outgo imbalance, and steals even more money from taxpayers.

And, oh yes, there’s a third problem:

3. The populace might become thoroughly irate at crooked politicians (are those synonyms?) forcing ever-higher taxes AND higher costs for services.

In Chicago, the sale of assets not only didn’t solve any long-term problems, but forced users to pay far more for tolls and parking.

[As an aside, the politicians usually tell the taxpayers a little white lie: That privately owned services are more efficient than public ownership, which is true right up until the private, for-profit services raise prices sky high — generally on the first day after the sale.]

Greece faces collapse of second key privatisation
By Kerin Hope in Athens, June 27, 2013

Greece is struggling to avoid the collapse of a second big privatisation deal, amid threats and pressure from bidders for the state gaming monopoly to change key terms of the deal they agreed last month.

The problems with the €700m sale of Opap (Greek Organization of Football Prognostics) threatens to add to tension with Greece’s international creditors, who fear the slow pace of privatisations will require further spending cuts to keep the country’s bailout programme on track.

Greece’s privatisation agency, Taiped, failed to deliver one flagship privatisation this month when Gazprom unexpectedly pulled out of the bidding for the state natural gas supplier Depa.

Taiped has pulled off one sizeable deal this year: the €400m sale of Desfa, the natural gas grid operator to Socar, the state gas operator of Azerbaijan.

A review of Greece’s bailout by the IMF this month found that income lost through slippage of the privatisation programme would contribute to a hole in Athens’ budget and “additional financing will need to be identified”.

Now ask yourself. Why does Greece have a state gaming monopoly? Right. It’s an alternative to raising taxes, but accomplishes the same thing: It takes money from the poor private sector and gives it to the public sector.

But if Greece sells its monopoly, the money will go from poor private to rich private, and the Greek government will have to beg taxpayers for more money.

The IMF continues to coerce Greece into selling its income-generating assets, as a “solution” to its past and future budget shortfalls.

This would be akin to the neighborhood bakery selling its ovens hoping to cover past and future operating losses. And the people in Greece are buying this IMF nonsense!

I pity the current mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, who inherited this mess from the previous mayor, Richard Daley. Emanuel cannot control the monetary non-sovereignty problem. Only the federal government can do that. (The state government could help, but it has its own monetary non-sovereignty problems.)

But, I have no pity for the Greek government (though my heart goes out the the Greek people.) The government could solve the problem tomorrow, simply by taking back its most valuable former asset: Its Monetary Sovereignty.

Simply dump the euro and reinstate the drachma. The process would be no more difficult than was the original foolish surrender of the drachma to adopt the euro.

Will Greece do it? The rich people don’t want it, because it instantly would solve Greece’s financial problems. An impoverished populace is easier to dominate.

The people — the poor people — they have been poisoned with so many lies, they don’t know what is best for them. (Something like the American public). They may already have been beaten down into acquiescence (Also, something like the American public).

Whenever you read or hear the word “privatizing,” know that it means selling public property to rich, political graft payers, explained by the myth that private ownership always is more efficient than public ownership.

Privatization might delay, but definitely will exacerbate, financial income/outgo imbalances. And it has no financial benefit to a Monetarily Sovereign nation.

Is privatizing being proposed, or has it already happened, in your state, county, city or village? If so, heaven help you.

Your politicians won’t.

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. Click here
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%

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.
Two key equations in economics:
1. Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
2. Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption – Net Imports

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

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

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 ultimately 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.
●Everything in economics devolves to motive.
=====================================================================

The July, 2013 issue of Scientific American contains an article about tuberculosis. Remember TB? Vaccination had it licked, and anyway, it only killed slum-dwellers, who didn’t get their shots, thus deserving their fate.

So why worry?

Well TB is back; it’s worse; it’s in a person near you; and even if you’ve been vaccinated, you could catch it.

Scientific American
New Genetic Insights Show How Tuberculosis May Be Evolving to Become More Dangerous
By Sally Lehrman

Today most people in the richer parts of the world think of tuberculosis, as a ghost of history. Throughout ancient times the tenacious bacterial infection consumed the bodies of untold millions, rich and poor, filling their lungs with bloody sputum.

As TB spread in the centuries that followed, it continued to attack across economic and class lines, affecting both the famous and the obscure.

Contrary to popular wisdom, rich people can get TB, but you need a weakened immune system. Right?

Wrong. It’s worse than that. Much worse.

By the early 20th century humanity had begun fighting back with public health campaigns, improved living standards, and eventually antibiotics and a modestly effective vaccine.

Although in 2011 TB sickened nearly nine million people, killing 1.4 million of them, mostly in the poorer regions of the globe, the mortality rate has nonetheless fallen by more than a third since 1990. Things are looking up—or so it may seem.

And here comes the amazing, counter-intuitive part. Having been vaccinated and having a strong immune system, may actually be a negative:

About a third of the global population harbors a latent TB infection until stress or another illness reactivates the bugs, setting transmission to other individuals in motion.

So, to be safe, make sure you don’t have stress or another illness, and don’t come near that 1/3 of the world’s population. Should be easy, shouldn’t it?

New genetic research, however, suggests that the bacterium responsible for TB could be poised to emerge stronger and more deadly than ever before — and not just because some strains have become resistant to treatment with the standard set of antibiotics.

Vaccines are designed to boost the body’s immune response. Yet for TB, this enhancement could perversely enhance transmission. A family of bacteria that has evolved to boost the immune response might be helped, not hurt, by a vaccine that has further activated the immune system.

Peter Small, now a senior program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, explains: Once inside the body, the TB germ actually does not do very much. It is the body’s own attempts to rid itself of the infection that causes the most damage.

Evolutionary biologist Paul W. Ewald of the University of Louisville, backs up Small’s concerns. (He) suggests the vaccine in use today, may have inadvertently encouraged more deadly strains (of the TB bacterium) to flourish.

This suggests that improved housing and living conditions may help slow TB.

Yes, even if you yourself are not poor, fighting poverty may help prevent you and your loved ones from coming in contact with the more aggressive form of TB bacteria.

It implies the need for aid to housing, education, healthcare and nutrition for the poor – all of which not only could save the poor, but could save the middle-classes and the rich, too.

(Sebastian Gagneux, at Stanford University), foresees the need to bring together immunologists, ecologists, evolutionary biologists, population geneticists ande social scientists to tackle all aspects of TB’s ability to transmit itself, cause disease and adapt to different environments.

So who will pay for the better housing, better education, better healthcare and better nutrition for the poor? We are, after all, in a federal austerity mode.

And who will pay for bringing all those scientists together, in a kind of “Manhatten Project” to cure TB? Who will pay for the research and development There is, after all, a loud call for “smaller government” and less federal spending.

The National Institutes of Health reduced its spending on TB to a meager $300,000 in 1985, and the academics who studied TB practically could squeeze themselves into a single minivan.

Shall we just hope and pray the for-profit, pharmaceutical companies, voluntarily will spend millions or billions to develop a drug to cure a disease that first infects the poor (and only later, the middle and rich)?

Perhaps prayer is all we have, for as the right wing, Tea Party and Republican John Boehner assure us, the federal government is “broke.”

Stay healthy, my friends.

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. Click here
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%

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.
Two key equations in economics:
1. Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
2. Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption – Net Imports

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY