–What next? Recession or recovery? Here’s the clue:

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.
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Do this: First read the short post: An interesting and timely graph that may signal a coming recession, Apr 6 2012.

It explains the following graph, which predicted all seven recessions since 1968. (Soon after the line dips below 0.0, we have a recession):

Monetary Sovereignty

Now here’s a similar graph. It blends “Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI), Monthly, Not Seasonally Adjusted” with “Real Potential Gross Domestic Product (GDPPOT), Quarterly, Not Seasonally Adjusted”

It shows pretty much the same thing as the above graph, except the data are a few months more current. Again, soon after the line drops below 0.0, and almost immediately after it drops to -0.2, we have a recession.

Monetary Sovereignty

Here is a better view of just the most recent years:

Monetary Sovereignty

After the recession of 2008-2009 “officially” ended, the line rose just to the 0.0 mark, and since then has hovered below, reflecting the sick reality of our economy.

We have continued in an unofficial, though economically real recession, exacerbated by deficit reduction (i.e. austerity). The question now is: What, if anything, is the government doing to turn that red line up?

The answer: Nothing. Not one thing.

The sequester continues. Austerity continues.

The President, the Democrats and the Republicans continue to focus on cutting Social Security, cutting Medicare, cutting Medicaid, cutting federal employment, cutting research and development, cutting investment in the infrastructure, cutting investment in education, cutting even school lunches and food stamps — all steps to remove money from your pockets and from the economy.

Congress can’t even decide whether to increase student loan interest or leave it at its current excessive level. Eliminating student loan interest, as we should, hasn’t entered the conversation.

And all the while, Americans buy into the fiction that they have too much money, while the government has too little money, so the people are told to send more to the government, while the government sends less to the people!

And as this near-recession grinds on, I hear the whining and bleating growing louder: “How did this happen? Whose fault is it? Why am I struggling? Why are my children suffering? What will become of us?”

The blame for that dipping red line belongs to all those accept the government’s BIG LIE that the deficit should be reduced.

So long as the government believes it can continue to fool the voters, it will continue to fool the voters. Only when the voters realize that increased federal deficit spending is absolutely necessary to grow the economy, will the government take the steps to improve our lives.

Until then, why should it? Financially, the politicians are doing just fine. You don’t really believe they care about you and your loved ones, do you?

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. 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

How to build a dictatorship with the approval of the people

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

I previously had added this to the Comments section of the previous post. But on second thought, with the government’s over-the-top pursuit of Edward Snowden (for the crime of revealing the government’s crimes), I thought it deserved its own post:

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The following letter was reprinted in the 6/24/13 Chicago Tribune:

The war on terrorism cannot be won. There always will be people who hate the U.S. So every day, the government will “have to” create some new restriction on our freedoms, justified by the never-ending war.

Today, the government tracks your Emails.
Tomorrow, the government reads your Emails.
The next day, the government reads your snail mail.
The next day, the government censors your snail mail.
The next day, the government plants listening devices in your office.
The next day, the government plants listening devices in your home.
The next day, the government bans criticism.
The next day, the government bans all criticism and arrests accused critics

Where does it end?

It doesn’t.

Each step is justified by “national sercurity.” Each day, the populace approves it because, “I have nothing to hide.”

And that is how all dictatorships are built — step by step, with the acceptance of the populace.

–Rodger Malcolm Mitchell, Wilmette

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Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

Which traitors monitor your every move? Hey, everybody’s doing it.

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

In the post Police state: Which vital secret did Edward Snowden reveal? PART II Monday, Jun 17 2013, we asked, “Exactly which vital secret did he (Edward Snowden) reveal.”

We showed that the Taliban, President Obama and Congress all knew about the NSA’s monitoring of phone calls. So exactly what secret did this “traitor” (according to John Boehner and Dick Cheney) reveal?

“He faces 30 years for charges including unauthorized communication of national defense information and theft of government property.” Yikes! Thirty years? Isn’t that a bit excessive for “unauthorized communication and theft of property.”

Really, exactly what secrets did he reveal? To quote an old hamburger commercial, “Where’s the beef?”

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said, “I’ve always thought this was a treasonous act. I hope Hong Kong’s government will take him into custody and extradite him to the U.S.”

Wow! More cries of “treason,” and calls for extradition. And oh yes, they nullified his passport. All this for “unauthorized communication and theft”? But guys, exactly what secret did he reveal?

O.K., you know the answer. He revealed the secret, not from our enemies, but from us Americans, that our government was spying on us. And, government secrets from Americans are the most important secrets of all.

But wait! It’s not just the American government that spies on its citizens and keeps it secret from us (though not from our enemies):

The Guardian
GCHQ taps fibre-optic cables for secret access to world’s communications
Ewen MacAskill, Julian Borger, Nick Hopkins, Nick Davies and James Ball, Friday 21 June 2013

Britain’s spy agency GCHQ has secretly gained access to the network of cables which carry the world’s phone calls and internet traffic and has started to process vast streams of sensitive personal information which it is sharing with its American partner, the National Security Agency (NSA)

One key innovation has been GCHQ’s ability to tap into and store huge volumes of data drawn from fibre-optic cables for up to 30 days. That operation, codenamed Tempora, has been running for some 18 months.

GCHQ and the NSA are consequently able to access and process vast quantities of communications between entirely innocent people, as well as targeted suspects.

Hmmm . . . Until now, NSA has tried to hide behind the fiction that its spying first was cleared through U.S. judges. But do U.S. judges clear GCHO spying?

The existence of the programme has been disclosed in documents shown to the Guardian by the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden as part of his attempt to expose what he has called “the largest programme of suspicionless surveillance in human history”.

Now, poor Snowden, whose main crime seems to have been to tell the people that their government is filled with, and authorized by, criminals — now this poor guy will have the Brits after him.

But wait, again!

By 2010, [the UK spy system, Tempora] was able to boast it had the “biggest internet access” of any member of the Five Eyes electronic eavesdropping alliance, comprising the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Yikes. Now it’s the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand who are spying on their own people. We always knew about massive spying on their own citizens, by Russia, China, Cuba and North Korea. I mean, those are dictatorships. We expect that kind of thing from thugs.

But could such a thing happen in the “free” world?

Yes, because power corrupts. Our government increases its power over us by spying on us, which corrupts our government even more, which leads to even more spying — in an ever widening helix of corruption and government power.

The excuse for this spying is to protect us from our “enemies,” but in fact, more people have been enslaved by their own governments than by foreign powers.

What hero will step forward to save us from our enemies in Washington? Until someone tells me exactly what secret he has revealed, my “hero” vote goes to Edward Snowden.

A traitor is “one who betrays another’s trust” (Merriam-Webster). So, who has betrayed our trust: Snowden or Congress and the President?

Who has lied to us, again and again, and stretched our Constitutional protections beyond all recognition?

Who illegally has used census information, that is supposed to be confidential, and engaged in warrantless searches?

Who tortured prisoners, then denied it until a whistleblower revealed it — all in the name of security?

Who lies that “America is broke” so as to starve the poor and reward the rich?

Who murdered an American without trial, with the excuse that he may have been Taliban?

Who killed and maimed thousands of innocent young Amerians, in wars based on lies?

Who takes bribes not to prosecute criminal bankers — they who have cost America trillions — while mounting the full weight of the federal government against a man who revealed the truth?

Who are the real American traitors?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

What the heck is a “meme” and why should you care?

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

Those of us who are sophisticates have been using the word “meme” for eons, mostly to impress you dullards. We fashionable types could use the words “belief” or “idea” or “premise” or even “axiom.” But that wouldn’t demonstrate we are cool with the latest jargon.

There is an acceptable definition of “meme” in Wikipedia at Meme But the Daily Bell has an even better one:

A meme is a dominant social theme with the strength for propagation from one generation to another.

A dominant social theme is a belief system (usually concerning a purported social or natural problem) promoted by the monetary or power elite.

The related problem, as it is presented, may be centered on people themselves (e.g., overpopulation) or be caused by people (e.g., global warming).

A dominant social theme typically is launched from one or more centers of the elite’s global architecture, such as the United Nations, World Bank, World Trade Organization or World Health Organization.

The theme is then rebroadcast by the mainstream media. Dominant social themes are notable for their resistance to contrary evidence, and they invariably imply a need for unaccountable, elite authorities to impose a solution.

With sufficient repetition in the mass media (including “news” and entertainment presentations) and through enshrinement in school curricula, a dominant social theme can become so ingrained in the public mind that it is passed from one generation to the next, as though it were folk wisdom.

It becomes virtually exempt from questioning.

The fear of overpopulation is a meme, as the worry now has spanned generations. A generalized fear that the world may run out of resources, including basic resources such as oil and water, appears on its way to becoming a meme.

After, “religion-equals-morality,” which is the world’s favorite meme, economists might say today’s dominant meme is the belief that the finances of a Monetarily Sovereign nation are the same as the finances of a monetarily non-sovereign entity — government, business or person — so a Monetarily Sovereign government must “live within its means” (aka “austerity”) or suffer recession, depression or inflation.

Harking back to that wonderful Daily Bell definition:

1. This need-for-austerity meme has the “strength for propagation from one generation to another.” (Not just generations, but centuries).

2. It is “promoted by the monetary or power elite.” (Promoted by political leaders).

3. It is “launched from one or more centers of the elite’s global architecture, such as the United Nations, World Bank, World Trade Organization.” (All of them plus others.)

4. It is “rebroadcast by the mainstream media.” (All of them.)

5. It is “resistant to contrary evidence.” (Bingo!)

6. It “implies a need for unaccountable, elite authorities to impose a solution.” (Every government plus famous economists and other experts.)

7. It is enshrined enshrined in school curricula (Nearly all college economics departments, with the notable exception of UMKC, teach it.

8. It has become “virtually exempt from questioning.” (In fact, those who dare to question it are attacked. See Ignaz Semmelweis.)

The fundamental problem with memes is #8, above. They aren’t questioned, at least not seriously enough. And they often are wrong.

“Overpopulation” has not occurred, probably won’t occur this century and may never occur.

“Global warming” is happening, in that the world is getting warmer, but the meme that global warming is a curse, has begun to show cracks — perhaps it’s not so imminent and maybe it’s not so bad as Al Gore says. On balance, it actually might prove to be beneficial.

“Running-out-of-oil” keeps getting pushed farther into the future as unforeseen technology finds new sources and new substitutes.

“Religion-equals-morality” is a meme that meets all of the above 8 criteria, plus one that magnifies its power. Call it criterion #9: The meme is vital to important people, in this case religious leaders.

The “need-for-austerity” meme has that 9th criterion. It is vital to the important, upper .1% income group, because it leads inexorably to a wider gap between the rich and the rest. The gap is what make them rich, and the wider the gap, the richer they are.

Thus, the need-for-austerity meme, as factually wrong as it is, may be with us forever. That’s why you should care.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

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