–The single biggest issue in the coming Presidential election

Mitchell’s laws:
●The more budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes.
●Austerity is the government’s method for widening the gap between rich and poor, which leads to civil disorder.
●Until the 99% understand the need for federal deficits, the upper 1% will rule.
●To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments.
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
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You may hate or love Obama or Romney. You may feel the nation is headed in the right or wrong direction. You may feel it’s time for a change, or to stay the course. These are the generalities of the coming election.

Many specific issues are involved – abortion, minimum wage, stem cell research, gay marriage, the deficit, taxes and tax rates, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the military, immigration, gun control.

Though Mitt Romney has stood on two sides of most issues, he has been consistent about one issue, and it is the most important one. It encompasses all of the above, and more: The makeup of the Supreme Court.

Contrary to the hopes of the Founding Fathers, the Supreme Court is the most politically extreme of the three government branches. The other two, the Legislative and the Executive, are forced to be less politically extreme, because their members repeatedly must answer to an electorate that tends nearer to the middle. But the Supreme Court answers to no one.

Conservative Scholars Bullish That A Romney Supreme Court Could Reverse Longstanding Liberal Jurisprudence
Sahil Kapur, October 26, 2012

Liberal-leaning Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 79, and Steven Breyer, 74, are likely candidates for retirement during a Romney administration, the GOP nominee has vowed to appoint staunch conservatives.

Over time, if a robust five-vote conservative bloc prevails on the court for years, the right would have the potential opportunity to reverse nearly a century of progressive jurisprudence.

Roger Pilon, director of the libertarian Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies and a member of the Federalist Society, told TPM that one more solid conservative vote would pave the way for “fundamental shifts on the Court” toward “a revival of greater protection for economic liberty and a direct assault on the modern regulatory state.”

Translation: The extreme right wing favors business protection over consumer protection, wealth protection over personal protection.

“If Romney were to appoint [conservative] justices and lower court judges, then we would see greater protection for economic liberty and greater scrutiny for regulation — whether they be environmental regulations, regulations for property rights, regulations for affirmative action, regulations of all sorts,” Pilon said.

Pilon says. “I expect that a Romney-appointed court would be more sympathetic to efforts to change the Medicare and Medicaid [and Social Security] programs because they’d come from that school of thought that says government has limited power.” It also means the Court would seek to narrow the berth for Washington to “engage in the kind of expansive programs like we saw with Obamacare and Dodd-Frank [financial regulatory reform],” he says.

Translation: Cut Medicare, cut Social Security, cut Medicaid, cut every social program that benefits the lower and middle classes, and cut out all those messy, consumer-protecting regulations designed to keep banks and big business from stealing.

Randy Barnett, a constitutional law professor at Georgetown University [is] hopeful that a more conservative Court could cut away at regulatory measures and adopt a “this far and no further” approach to federal authority, to thwart further expansion of the social safety net . . . . mentioning elements of Obamacare, Dodd-Frank and environmental regulations as targets that conservatives are already building cases against.

. . . the staunchest legal conservatives hope a fifth vote might lead to the eradication or restructuring of programs like Medicare and Social Security. . .

Translation: The losers: The lower- and middle-classes. The winners: The wealthiest 1%.

Tim Jost, a liberal law professor at Washington & Lee University, warns that . . . conservatives could scale back the federal government’s authority to compel states to participate in federal-state partnerships like Medicaid and . . . they could also curtail the Supremacy Clause to prevent low-income Americans from suing if they are denied government [Medicaid] benefits under the law. . .

Jost continued. “The Affordable Care Act survived by one vote, and four in the dissent were willing to get rid of all of it. Four members of the court have shown that they’re perfectly happy to get rid of pretty major progressive initiatives if they disagree with them.”

Roe v. Wade . . .survives now on a fragile 5-4 margin, which would likely flip if Ginsburg, Breyer or even Kennedy were to be replaced by a down-the-line-conservative justice.

“Women’s access to abortion is likely to be significantly curtailed under a Romney court,” said Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor at UCLA School of Law.

And the expansion of gay rights would likely hit a wall, Winkler adds, perhaps ending same sex marriage advocates’ hope that the Court will strike down the Defense of Marriage Act.

Translation: Though conservative justices are proud of their role as Constitutional originalists (when convenient), the nation may well be surprised that being an originalist means taking the nation back to 1789. As with Taliban-style religious originalists, Constitutional originalists will return us to the dark ages of imperial law.

Romney could also meaningfully impact the Court, even without replacing liberal justices, if aging conservatives like Antonin Scalia, 76, and Anthony Kennedy, also 76, were to retire. Replacing them with younger conservatives would tilt the balance of the court for decades to come, likely solidifying the right-wing consensus on issues like campaign finance, affirmative action, civil rights and gun rights.

Cato’s Pilon believes that replacing one liberal justice with a conservative could pave the way for a slow return to the Lochner Era — when the Supreme Court invalidated minimum wage and child labor laws as unconstitutional.

“The court could find Social Security unconstitutional tomorrow, and that would be a good thing . . .”

Translation: For the extreme right wing, finding Social Security unconstitutional is a “good thing,” because the program provides no real benefit to the rich, but primarily helps the lower and middle classes.

A Romney Supreme Court Would Change The Constitution Without Amending It
By Ian Millhiser on Oct 11, 2012

*Eliminating The Right To An Abortion

*Judges For Sale: Romney named Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito as his models should he be allowed to pick new judges. All four said the Supreme Court should have done nothing when a wealthy coal baron payed $3 million to place a sympathetic justice on the West Virginia Supreme Court. That justice then cast the key vote to overrule a $50 million verdict against the coal baron’s company. Romney may even want his justices to go much further in permitting the very wealthy to buy elections — he previously endorsed allowing billionaires to give unlimited sums of money directly to his campaign.

*Government In The Bedroom: Only five of the Supreme Court’s current justices joined the landmark Lawrence v. Texas decision, which struck down Texas’ “sodomy” laws

To quote from “Romney Poses Greatest Danger to the Supreme Court” by Earl Ofari Hutchinson, “Romney flatly said that the judge that he longed to have on the current court is Robert Bork. Bork’s rabid, fringe, and at times borderline zany views and interpretation of judicial and constitutional law were so repulsive that his nomination to the court by President Reagan in 1987 was virtually DOA during the confirmation hearings.”

In summary, Romney’s extreme right wing supporters wish to follow a 1789 interpretation of the Constitution, a document written when consumer protections and individual rights were less important than a strict “Talibanesque” rule of law favoring the wealthiest and most powerful.

In four or eight years, Obama and Romney will be gone. But the Supreme Court justices will rule us for decades.

And that is the single biggest issue in the coming Presidential election.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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Nine Steps to Prosperity:
1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Medicare — parts A, B & D — for everyone
3. Send every American citizen an annual check for $5,000 or give every state $5,000 per capita (Click here)
4. Long-term nursing care for everyone
5. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone
6. Salary for attending school (Click here)
7. Eliminate corporate taxes
8. Increase the standard income tax deduction annually
9. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99%

No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth. Monetary Sovereignty: Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia. Two key equations in economics:
Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption – Net Imports

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–Honest Henry Blodget: Do you believe him?

Wikipedia
Henry Blodget (born 1966) is an American former equity research analyst, currently banned from the securities industry for lying in his stock analyses, who was senior Internet analyst for CIBC Oppenheimer during the dot-com bubble and the head of the global Internet research team at Merrill Lynch. Blodget is now the editor and CEO of The Business Insider, a business news and analysis site, and a host of Yahoo Daily Ticker, a finance show on Yahoo.

Here is what honest Henry and his honest pals, say about the economy:

CEOs Launch Campaign To Get Congress To Finally Fix The Deficit
By Henry Blodget | Daily Ticker

One of the biggest challenges for the U.S. going forward is the country’s massive debt and deficit problem.

Right away you know you are about to read bullsh*t, since as you will see, the so-called “problem” never is identified. It only is criticized for being “massive,” as in: The U.S., being a “massive” nation, has created a “massive” amount of dollars. And this is a “massive” problem.

The U.S. government is currently spending about $1 trillion more every year that it takes in, and we’ve now piled up $16 trillion of debt. So far, this debt burden has been sustainable, but only because interest rates are at generational lows. If and when our creditors wake up and start demanding higher rates of interest, our ballooning debt-service costs will quickly swamp everything else in the budget.

Henry made a “massive” amount of money by lying, and he just can’t get out of the habit. The “debt burden” is sustainable because it isn’t a burden. Federal debt simply is the total of deposits in T-security accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank. I never have heard of a bank complaining that its deposits weren’t sustainable. In fact, though banks no longer give away toasters for deposits, they still solicit for deposits.

Blodget is waiting for poor, sleepy China et al to “wake up” to the notion that interest rates are low, something he suggests is a secret from the Chinese, though obvious to every other human on this planet. And when China et al “wake up,” Henry expects them to demand higher rates, or else . . . or else, what?

Will they stop buying T-securities? No, but if they did, who cares? China’s dollars go into China’s T-security account at the FRB, and there they reside, until the T-securities mature, at which time, China takes their dollars back. Never does the U.S. Treasury receive or even need those dollars.

A mere glance at the federal budget reveals to any reasonable human being that we can’t go on like this.

A “mere glance,” and a crook, might say that, but an honest, informed analysis says the opposite. There is zero possibility the FRB will be unable to pay China et al back, or create sufficient dollars to pay interest. No taxes needed.

And yet, so far, our elected leaders have refused to do anything about it. Instead, our elected leaders have formed themselves into two ideologically-driven camps that, like groups of children, refuse to compromise. The Republicans want to fix the debt by cutting spending. The Democrats want to fix the debt by raising taxes, especially on rich people.

Well, yes, if you’re going to reduce the deficit, you have to cut spending and/or increase taxes. Duh. And, by the way Henry, either approach would bring on a recession.

And Henry, it’s not “especially” on rich people, it’s only on rich people. That’s the real problem, isn’t it?

And, for some reason, our leaders seem to think it is okay to simply hunker down and stick fast. Never mind that, with every day that goes by, our debt burden grows larger.

And never mind that a growing federal “debt” is required for a growing GDP. Henry, don’t you remember that GDP = Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending – Net Imports? Sure you do, but you don’t want to admit it.

The consensus of non-partisan economists (and reasonable people everywhere) is that the only way to solve our debt and deficit problem is to do it in a balanced way: To trim spending AND increase revenue.

Currently, government spending is running at about 24% of GDP, and tax revenues are only coming in at about 17% of GDP. The only way to reasonably expect those lines to cross is to reduce spending and increase revenue, perhaps converging at about 20% of GDP. And if we don’t agree on this soon and make the tough decisions necessary to gradually get there, our situation will only get worse.

Yes, to trim spending and increase taxes, aka “austerity” is a great solution – if you consider prosperity to be a problem and poverty to be a solution. And where did you get that phony 20% figure? You have no idea. It just popped into your head like your fake research numbers.

The good news is, reasonable people everywhere will now have the help of some of the country’s business leaders, who have formed a campaign to pressure Congress into coming up with a long-term deficit reduction plan.

According to the Wall Street Journal, about 80 CEOs have joined this group, which is dedicated to ending the deficit dysfunction in Washington. Politically, the CEOs hail from both sides of the aisle, but they’re united in this common purpose.

“There is no possible way; you can do the arithmetic a million different ways” to avoid raising taxes, said Mark Bertolini, CEO of Aetna. “You can’t tax your way to fix this problem, and you can’t cut entitlements enough to fix this problem.”

Translation: “About 80 rich people want to reduce federal spending (the vast majority of which benefits the poor and middle classes) and to broaden the tax base (to tax more poor and middle class people).” What a surprise that you and those 80 rich people would want to increase the income gap.

Jeffrey Immelt of General Electric (GE), J.P. Morgan’s (JPM) James Dimon and Honeywell’s (HON) CEO Dave Cote support this call for a balanced approached the deficit.

And these three gentlemen are widely revered for their humble, aesthetic lives and their concern for the welfare of the 99%. And, what is that “balanced approach” BS? Why not call it a “balanced budget“?

Oh, yeah. Economists now have come to realize that a balanced budget causes recessions, so the new euphemism is “balanced approach,” whatever that means.

But big oil executives, who fear higher taxes on their record profits, have not fallen into line on this push. For the sake of the country, let’s hope that support for this purpose only grows.

Perhaps we can spare big oil by cutting Social Security, Medicare, food stamps and federal workers’ pay.

You know you’re on the wrong side of the argument if ever you find yourself agreeing with honest Henry Blodget and his 80 honest CEOs.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–Much ado about nothing. The end of the dollar as reserve currency

People often predict the dollar’s imminent demise as world’s “reserve currency,” and cite this as proof of something or other – i.e. U.S. bankruptcy, hyper-inflation, depression, global warming, the Chicago Cubs or anything else that’s bad in this universe.

The following article is an example:

Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty
China, Others, Urge Move Away From Dollar As Reserve Currency
March 24, 2009

(RFE/RL) — Should the world ditch the dollar as its reserve currency? It’s an idea that seems to be gaining ground.

The latest call came from China’s central bank governor, who said on March 23 there should be a new international reserve currency. And a UN panel this week is to recommend moving away from the dollar and adopting a shared basket of currencies instead.

Zhou Xiaochuan’s message seemed aimed at an international audience. His essay was published on the central bank’s website in English, as well as Chinese.

In it, the governor said the global financial crisis had revealed “vulnerabilities and systemic risks” in the current monetary system.

Instead, he said the world needed something more stable — what he called a “super-sovereign reserve currency.”

Zhou didn’t mention the dollar specifically. But his comments came two weeks after the Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao expressed concern over the safety of China’s estimated $1 trillion worth of U.S. investments.

A “reserve” currency is nothing more than the currency most nations use in international trade. It is just a trading convenience. International trade is easier if nations quote the same currency when pricing goods and services, and nations use the same currency when paying bills. And that’s it: A convenience.

The euro was invented as a European reserve currency, and it functions quite well in that role, though it’s a screwed up mess in its role as a common currency. Any benefit that accrues to the U.S., as a result of the dollar being the reserve currency, is so minuscule as to be unworthy of mention.

Getting back to China’s “concern over the safety of China’s estimated $1 trillion worth of U.S. investments”:

1. China isn’t concerned about the safety of its financial investments.

2. It’s a political concern. China’s aspiration is to be viewed as the big dog of international economics, and ending the dollar as reserve currency is part of that political aspiration.

Let’s assume that a giant meteor selectively destroys the U.S., and the dollar, not just becomes worthless, but disappears from the world. Is this a problem for China and its $1 trillion worth of T-securities? Not a bit. China is Monetarily Sovereign. It can continue to buy goods and services as always, using its unlimited availability of renminbi. China would be no poorer for the loss of all its dollars.

And as for Chinese citizens who owned T-securities: The Chinese government merely could give them renminbi to make up for their losses, and everything would be as before.

The giant meteor might be a problem for the euro nations, because they are monetarily non-sovereign, so can’t create euros — except the EU could do what it should have been doing all along: Provide euros to all euro-using nations. It might be a problem for a tiny island nation that pegs its currency to the dollar (are there any left?), but they simply could peg to some other currency.

The whole reserve-currency brouhaha is silly, which is why government leaders pay attention to it. (Heaven forbid they address real economic issues.)

China Not Alone

The worry is that U.S. efforts to tackle the financial crisis — including printing money — could erode the value of the dollar and of China’s dollar-denominated reserves. Chinese officials are not alone in calling for a move away from the dollar as the world’s chief reserve currency.

Earlier this month, Russia said it would propose a new reserve currency for discussion at the G20 summit set for April 2. And a UN panel of experts is this week recommending a switch away from the dollar as part of an overhaul of the global monetary system.

If anything should send shivers of fear up your spine, it’s the thought that a UN panel of “experts” (experts at what?) has become involved. Are these related to the experts who created the disastrous euro, or the experts who run the International Monetary Fund, those austerity loving buffoons?

And if China is worried about a U.S. inflation that would result from erroneously called “printing money,” where is the inflation? The U.S. has “printed” more than a trillion dollars each year, for the past four years, and we are closer to deflation than inflation.

(In fact, money creation has not caused inflation in the U.S. The reason: The Fed controls inflation by controlling demand for dollars via interest rate changes.)

“Now is the moment to think seriously about a new reserve currency, a shared reserve currency,” panel member Avinash Persaud told Reuters. “When part of the world wants to save more than it did before, this won’t lead to a concentration of assets in one place, but more spread around the world. It’s good for those people who’ve got the savings, [because] their assets are diversified, and it’s good for those people where the money is flowing.”

A beautiful example of gibberish. A reserve currency has nothing to do with a “concentration of assets” or “where money is flowing.”

Zhou, the Kremlin, and to a lesser degree the UN panel — all are advocating an expanded role for the SDR, or “special drawing right.” That’s a kind of artificial currency created by the International Monetary Fund 40 years ago. Its value is based on a basket of “real” currencies — the dollar, the euro, and others.

And this is where it really gets squirrelly. A basket of currencies has a value based on the cumulative values of all the currencies in the basket. But that leaves the problem of weighting. Say you have a basket consisting of dollars, yen, euros, renminbi, zlotys, pounds and a few other currencies. How many of each will be in the basket? How will that be determined, and will that allocation always remain the same?

All forms of money are forms of debt, and all debt requires collateral. The collateral for the U.S. dollar is the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. What would be the collateral for a basket of currencies?

The basket of currencies is a complex, cockamamie solution to a non-problem — in short, a perfect “panel of experts” solution.

Zhou says the SDR could become a “widely accepted” means of payment in international trade and financial transactions. He also advocates creating financial assets denominated in SDRs. Such a move would, the argument goes, reduce the kind of “global imbalances” that contributed to the current economic crisis.

Chief among them are America’s huge current-account deficits and China’s equally huge surplus. China invested its surplus in massive purchases of U.S. treasuries, a factor blamed for contributing to low borrowing costs in America that fueled its housing bubble.

More gibberish. America’s current-account deficit merely means the U.S. imports more than it exports. Does the world really want America to import less? And China’s “massive purchases of U.S. treasuries” did not create low borrowing costs. It is the Fed, not the treasury market, that determines borrowing costs.

So the United States might even take a favorable view, says Vanessa Rossi, a senior research fellow in international economics at the Chatham House think tank in London. “Since they’ve complained so much about these problems about imbalances, and the flows of money associate with it, they might welcome some of the strain being taken off the dollar and the dollar markets in the future. Very immediately they might think that,” Rossi says.

“Imbalances,” “flows,” “strain,” blah, blah, blah. It’s all meaningless spouting, with no basis in reality. But I will allow that U.S. politicians might favor something ridiculous. They are good at that.

But Rossi says a new reserve currency would pose major challenges, and any move would be over the longer term. That’s because even if the idea picked up more steam, it’s likely to face huge technical, logistical, and political obstacles.

And it would clearly have negative implications for the dollar. Even those taking aim at the dollar wouldn’t welcome a sudden move, as this could trigger a sell-off of the dollar and erode the value of their holdings.

Perhaps explaining why Zhou said the establishment of a new reserve currency “may take a long time.”

Sergei Seninski of RFE/RL’s Russian Service contributed to this report

Yep — “huge technical, logistical and political obsticals — in addition to being foolish. Which probably is why it will remain a topic of discussion.

Bottom line: A reserve currency is just a convenience. It needn’t be an “official” reserve. The market naturally seeks a reserve just to make trading easier. In our ever-more computerized world, there very well may emerge a non-political currency — a currency of no specific nation.

But whatever emerges, let’s not give it more significance that it deserves. It’s just a convenience.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

What is the federal debt? A primer for politicians.

MONEY IS NOT A PHYSICAL THING

To understand U.S. federal debt, you first must understand money, specifically the dollar. There is no physical entity called a “dollar.” You never have seen, smelled, touched or tasted a dollar. In today’s economy, a dollar is nothing more than a number in an accounting balance sheet.

The dollar bill in your wallet is not a dollar; it is a title to a dollar. It merely is evidence you own a dollar, much like a house title is evidence you own a house, or a car title is evidence you own a car or a patent is evidence you own an invention.

But unlike a house or a car, a dollar is no more physical than is, for instance, the number six. Although the number six and a dollar are real, you can’t see, smell, touch or taste either of them.

Is it possible to own something that is not physical? Consider a copyright. It demonstrates ownership of a book. But that book is not a physical thing. If I go to a store and I buy your book, who owns the book? I own the physical representation of the book, but your copyright gives you ownership of the non-physical book.

DOLLARS ARE ONLY NUMBERS

Your bank checking account and savings account do not contain dollars. They contain numbers that tell how many dollars you own.

Imagine you are one of the lucky employed, and you have a bank checking account and a bank saving account. Today, your boss gives you your first paycheck: $1,000. What exactly has your boss given you? Money? No, that paycheck is not money.

That paycheck is a set of instructions to your bank, telling your bank to increase the number in your checking account by 1,000. So, for instance, if your checking account number had read 3,476, now that number reads 4,476.

Although for convenience, you might say you now have 4,476 dollars in your checking account, you really have nothing in your checking account but the number, 4,476.

Let’s say you give someone your check for 3,000 dollars. Your check instructs your bank to reduce the number in your account by 3,000 and to increase the number in your creditor’s checking account by the same amount. Although, for convenience, you say you have transferred dollars from your account to your creditor’s account, there really has been no transfer. It’s just that your bank has reduced the number in your account and your creditor’s bank has increased the number in his account.

DOLLAR TRANSFER IS AN ILLUSION

When you wait at a railroad crossing, you see a red light moving back and forth, back and forth. Except the red light really isn’t moving. It’s two lights that blink alternately, and give the illusion of motion, an illusion so powerful that though you know it’s a illusion, you won’t be able to see it as two lights, blinking alternately. Try it.

Similarly, the illusion that dollars move from one account to another is so powerful, we all (including me) talk about dollars moving. But dollars, being non physical, cannot move.

Let’s say that the number in your checking account is 4,476, and you write a check for 6,000 (i.e. send instructions to reduce your account, and increase your creditor’s account by 6,000) Your creditor’s bank will follow your instructions, and increase his checking account number by 6,000. Then his bank will route the check to your bank for “clearing.” But, because your checking account number is too small, your instructions won’t “clear,” and your bank will return the check to your creditor’s bank, i.e the check will “bounce.” Your creditor’s account will be reduced 6,000.

ALL BANK DEPOSITS ARE BANK DEBTS

When you deposit dollars in your bank accounts, you actually lend to your bank. Those dollars are loans, not gifts. Your bank owes you those dollars, and if you want them, your bank is obligated to give them back to you. If you tell your bank you want the dollars in your savings account transferred to your checking account, will this be a problem for your bank? No, your bank simply will debit your savings account and credit your checking account.

By depositing dollars into your checking or savings account, you have forced your bank into debt. All bank deposits are bank debts. Banks love to be in debt. They actively solicit debts (deposits). Being in debt is the mission of a savings bank.

Bank deposits are not “unsustainable,” nor do they cause bankruptcies. Though a bank can become bankrupt, the fault is not deposits, but rather poor business practices. No bank ever went bankrupt because its deposits were too large.

ALL FEDERAL DEBTS ARE BANK SAVINGS ACCOUNTS

All federal debt is just the total of T-security deposits (T-bills, T-notes, T-bonds) in accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank (FRB).

Today, the total federal debt is about 12 trillion dollars. This means the total of deposits in T-security accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank, is about 12 trillion dollars. When you buy a T-bond, you “lend” dollars to the Federal Reserve Bank. You deposit dollars into your T-bond account at the FRB. You are a creditor to the FRB.

Your T-security account at the FRB is essentially identical with your savings account at your local bank. You put dollars in (credit); you take dollars out (debit), and meanwhile you earn a bit of interest.

Whenever you want your dollars back from your “loan,” you merely wire or mail instructions to the FRB to reduce the number in your T-bond savings account, and increase the number in your checking account. The FRB can do this all day long, in any amount. It’s a simple exchange of existing balances.

WHAT IF OUR CREDITORS WANT THEIR MONEY BACK?

Debt hawks worry about what will happen if all our creditors – China, Japan, European nations et al – suddenly want their dollars back. No problem. The FRB simply would debit all their T-security accounts and credit all their checking accounts. Instantly, all federal debt would disappear.

So, why can’t you and I pay off our loans that way? Why are our debts a burden to us, while the FRB’s debts are not a burden to the federal government?

There is a fundamental difference between a loan and a deposit. You aren’t the Federal Reserve Bank. When you borrow, you are not accepting a deposit. If someone lends you dollars, he is not opening a savings or checking account with you.

You borrow in order to spend, so if your creditor wants his money back, you may have spent it. But the FRB does not spend depositors’ dollars. It holds 100% of those dollars in T-security accounts. The FRB always can debit T-security accounts and credit checking accounts. There never has been a time when the FRB was unable to credit checking accounts, and there never will be.

So to all you people who worry that the federal debt is too large, the debt/GDP ratio is too large, the debt is “unsustainable,” China “owns” us, or somehow the U.S. government will not be able to pay its debts, I have some good news. The FRB could pay off 100% of all federal debt tomorrow, simply by transferring already existing dollars from T-security savings accounts to checking accounts.

If you are a lender to the federal government, your money is all there, right in your T-security account at the FRB. All of it. Every cent. So is China’s money, Europe’s money, Japan’s money – every one of those 12 trillion dollars of federal “debt,” all sit safely in FRB T-security accounts.

And despite what the fear mongers tell you, you don’t owe a penny of it. Nor do your children, nor do your children’s children. The FRB owes it all, and it’s all there in T-bill accounts.

So stop worrying about the size of the federal debt. Stop worrying that the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank has too many dollars on deposit. It’s not possible for the FRB to have too many dollars on deposit.

WHY DOES THE GOVERNMENT BORROW DOLLARS?

It doesn’t. It allows interest paying deposits in T-security accounts at the FRB. Why then, does the federal government issue T-securities? It’s an obsolete process based on an obsolete law that, very simply says: The total of T-securities issued each year, must equal each year’s total federal deficit.

Not that there is any functional relationship between deficits and T-security accounts (There isn’t.) It’s just that by law the two numbers must be equal. So, for instance, if the federal government spends $10 million and receives only $3 million in taxes, it runs a $7 million deficit, and is required by law to issue $7 million worth of T-securities, though T-securities have no relationship to deficits.

It’s almost like having a law stating for every car there also must be a horse – a meaningless relationship.

Years ago, there was a reason for this strange law, but no more. Change the law, and the government could run that deficit without issuing a single T-security. The dollars in T-security accounts are not used for federal spending. They just sit there, at the FRB, waiting to be paid back.

WHY ARE GREECE AND ILLINOIS GOING BROKE?

The U.S. “debt” is 100% in dollars, our sovereign currency. Being the sovereign creator of dollars (aka Monetarily Sovereign), we never can run short of dollars. So anyone wanting dollars from the FRB, will have no trouble getting them. The U.S. does not spend the dollars it “borrows.” Those dollars are kept in T-security accounts at the FRB.

When the U.S. spends, it send instructions to creditors’ banks to increase the dollar numbers in those banks. These instructions are cleared by the FRB. This is how the U.S. government creates dollars.

But Greece and Illinois are monetarily non-sovereign. They do not have a sovereign currency. Greece uses euros, which it does not have the power to create. It cannot store borrowed euros in its central bank. Greece needs to spend the euros it receives from borrowing.

Illinois too, uses dollars, but dollars are not its sovereign currency. Like Greece, Illinois has no sovereign currency. It spends the dollars it borrows, rather than being able to store them in a bank account.

BOTTOM LINE

Federal debt is not like non-federal debt. Same word; two different meanings. Federal debt is the total of deposits in T-security accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank. The Federal Reserve Bank has more that $12 trillion in deposits. Many private banks have billions in deposits.

Bank deposits are a sign of strength, not weakness.

Federal “debt” is a myth, promulgated by people whose agenda is to reduce federal spending for the poor and middle classes. Pay no attention to these evil people. Growing federal debt is a sign of strength, not weakness.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

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