–The words which will live in infamy

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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Here are the words which will live in infamy, and which will define the Obama Presidency for history. In his 2011 State of the Union address, President Obama said,

“. . . we have to confront the fact that our government spends more than it takes in. That is not sustainable. Every day, families sacrifice to live within their means. They deserve a government that does the same.”

“A government that does the same”?? A government that sacrifices to live within its means? And exactly what is the government’s “sacrifice” to which he refers? Will our government be unable to pay its rent? Will our government lose its home and be forced to live in the streets? Will our government go to bed hungry and be unable to feed its children? Are those the government’s sacrifices?

Will our government lose its job? Will our government go broke, or be unable to send its children to college, or not have warm clothes, or be unable to afford medical care, or face old age without income?

Exactly what government “sacrifice” is he talking about?

There is no government sacrifice. Obama was talking about your sacrifice and my sacrifice – and by his premeditated twist of logic, he makes it sound as though the government heroically will sacrifice to protect you and me.

What unabashed dishonesty!

“Every day, families sacrifice to live within their means. They deserve a government that does the same.” That, in one succinct statement, is the expression of the Big Lie – the lie that the federal government’s finances are like yours and mine and like the states,’ counties,’ cities’ and euro nations.’

It is a lie, a Big Lie, because on August 15, 1971, the U.S. became Monetarily Sovereign, i.e. sovereign over the U.S. dollar. As a result of this enormous change, the U.S. government now can create as many dollars as it wishes, any time it wishes.

Unlike you and me, the U.S. government never can run short of dollars. It can pay any debt denominated in dollars. It never needs to ask anyone for dollars – not you, not me, not China. For that reason, the U.S. no longer needs to borrow its sovereign dollars from anyone or tax anyone to get dollars.

But Obama tells the Big Lie about the government needing to “sacrifice” and to “live with its means.” What are the “means” for a nation that has the limitless ability to pay its bills? What are the “means” for a nation that creates its sovereign currency simply by paying its debts?

Lie after lie after lie after lie, an ongoing litany of mendacity. The man has no shame and no concern for the American people. He is a traitor, doing more damage to America than Osama bin Laden ever could have hoped. Yes, a traitor. What better description is there for someone who intentionally injures his own nation?

Obama wants you to “sacrifice,” and for what? What do your sacrifices bring you? Poverty. Sickness, Homelessness. Unemployment. Lack of schooling. Recession. Depression. Yes, Mr. President, what reward will our sacrifices bring us?

For many years, I had labored under the misconception that the problem was one of ignorance, and if only we could educate the President, Congress, the Fed, the media and the mainstream economists, these intelligent people would see the error of their ways, and the problem would be solved. MMT still believes it.

But, I have changed my mind. It simply is not possible that the President of the United States, the Treasurer of the United States, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States and other assorted experts do not understand how dollars are created and destroyed.

Bernanke is well aware of the truth. He already has admitted he creates dollars by pushing a computer key. Greenspan has said the same thing.

So the only question is: Why does Obama lie? Why does he pretend not to understand. Why does he intentionally and unnecessarily injure us Americans? And the only answer I can come up with is: He, and his accomplices are bribed to pretend, bribed by campaign contributions to the Democratic party.

No other conclusion makes any sense at all.

Who has both the money and the motive to bribe them? The wealthiest Americans have the money, and their motive is to increase the gap between the 1% and the 99%, and that is accomplished via austerity, i.e deficit reduction, with a focus on reduced federal spending.

Yes, reduced federal spending is the bullet into your heart and my heart and into hearts of all the 99%. Cut Medicare; cut Medicaid; cut Social Security; cut food stamps and all the various programs for the poor. Cut the agencies that monitor our food, our medicine, our investments, so the rich can get richer selling us bad food, bad medicine and bad investments.

Cut, cut, cut. That in the President’s double-speak, is how the government “sacrifices.”

MMT and MS have been fighting the battle on the basis of facts, logic and education. Our approach has been: “Because people don’t understand, we have to teach them.”

So we continually write articles trying to make the idea simpler and simpler, to the point where any high school freshman could understand it while simultaneously driving and texting. Only when you, the populace, get angry enough, write enough letters, and threaten the politicians with being voted out – will these liars take notice and change this cozy and unholy partnership with the rich.

Today, Obama and Boehner are discussing your future. They are deciding how much they can screw you without getting caught. Soon they will announce, to everyone’s great relief, that they have worked together to save America from the fiscal cliff they invented.

In the spirit of cooperation, they heroically will cut the deficit. That is, they will reduce your savings. You will sacrifice to avoid their fiscal cliff.

The government will not sacrifice. Nor will the 1%, even with slight tax rate increases. You and I will be sacrificed on the alter of political contribution, by traitors to America.

And sadly, rather than being angry at the lies and deceit and the sacrifices, the brainwashed victims will cheer this bipartisanship. The cattle will march happily into the slaughterhouse, thanking their executioners.

“. . . we have to confront the fact that our government spends more than it takes in. That is not sustainable. Every day, families sacrifice to live within their means. They deserve a government that does the same.” Remember those words. Remember those lies.

You’ll hear them again, as the “fiscal cliff, invented by the President and Congress, is “solved” by the President and Congress.”

They, and Barack Obama, will live in infamy and another four years of lies.

Do you care? And if you care, what are you doing about it?

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

–Obama’s legacy: He could have. He should have. He didn’t.

President Obama won a huge victory. He won the electoral college vote 332 to 208. He won the popular vote 51% to 48%. This was not the “squeaker” many had predicted. It was the kind of victory that allows a President a springboard to memorable accomplishments and to inscribe his legacy among our greatest.

But Barack Obama shows no energy for memorable accomplishments. His one accomplishment, Obamacare, was lifted from Mitt Romney (who denied it on alternate days), and was passed through the efforts of the Democrats (who complained about the lack of help from the President).

Mostly, he just went along, and let his party do the heavy lifting.

Another example:

Chicago Tribune
JPMorgan, Credit Suisse settle with SEC for $417 million

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – JPMorgan Chase & Co and Credit Suisse Group AG will pay a combined $416.9 million to settle U.S. civil charges that they misled investors in the sale of risky mortgage bonds prior to the 2008 financial crisis, regulators said on Friday.

JPMorgan will pay $296.9 million, while Credit Suisse will pay $120 million in a separate case, with the money going to harmed investors, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said.

Both settlements addressed alleged negligence or other wrongdoing in the packaging and sale of risky residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS), including at the former Bear Stearns Cos which JPMorgan bought in 2008.

The banks settled without admitting wrongdoing, and in separate statements said they were pleased to settle.

“In many ways, mortgage products such as RMBS were ground zero in the financial crisis,” SEC enforcement chief Robert Khuzami said in a statement. “Misrepresentations in connection with the creation and sale of mortgage securities contributed greatly to the tremendous losses suffered by investors once the U.S. housing market collapsed.”

Each settlement is . . . the latest SEC settlements not to punish individuals.

It’s four years after the crimes, and the Obama administration has shown neither the energy nor the desire to punish the bankers who cost America not millions, not billions, but trillions. The banks were too big to fail, and the bankers were too big to punish. All were rewarded.

Obama just looked the other way and collected the political bribes. He could have demonstrated that criminal behavior will not be tolerated, no matter how wealthy the donor. He should have sent the full force of the federal government after those crooks.

He didn’t.

And then, there’s this:

Chicago Tribune
Obama says resolving fiscal cliff is urgent business

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama said he and congressional leaders must quickly get down to work to avert upcoming automatic tax hikes and spending cuts as he sat down for talks with lawmakers on Friday.

“We’ve got to make sure that taxes don’t go up on middle-class families, that our economy remains strong, that we’re creating jobs, and that’s an agenda that Democrats and Republicans and independents, people all across the country share,” he said.

Obama repeated his position that the solution to avoiding the so-called fiscal cliff must balance increased tax revenues against any cuts to spending or reforms to social safety net programs.

So here is Barack Obama, the Great Compromiser, the great defender of middle-class families, preparing us for his cuts to Medicare and Social Security. Now that he has won the election, and never will have to risk a run again, surely he could have told the truth about federal financing.

He should have said, “There is no need to increase any taxes, not even taxes on the rich, and there is no need to cut any social programs. The federal government, being Monetarily Sovereign is not like you and me. It’s so-called deficits actually are a measure of the private savings it adds to your pockets. The government can provide Medicare for everyone and higher Social Security benefits, and it will not cost anyone anything — not you, not your children, not your grandchildren.”

Unless we see a reversal in style, his legacy will be that of a mediocre, enervated compromiser, a man displaying no strong beliefs, who has been carried along like a leaf on the river, first by the Chicago Democratic machine, then by the Illinois democratic machine and finally by the national party.

The Democrats, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi fought for the party’s ideals, while Obama led from the rear. With nothing to lose, and a legacy to burnish, he easily could have; he really should have.

He didn’t.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–Chicago Tribune nominated for Guinness World Record

The November 15th edition of the Chicago Tribune, contained two related stories. The first, titled “Guinness World Records made to be broken today.” It said:

The eight annual global celebration of the weird and wacky will see more than 420,000 people attempt to smash old favorites of the record-breaking world, many for charity.

I am from Chicago, but I don’t want you to think I am playing to home-team pride when I nominate my home town newspaper editors to a Guinness record. This strictly is well deserved, as I’m sure you will agree, when you read the rest of this post and the editorial that earned the nomination. Here it is:

U.S. House and Senate leaders will meet Friday at the White House with President Barack Obama. The president plans to greet Republicans with a reiteration of his revenue proposal from last winter — a plan popular with his liberal base, but which didn’t get a single vote in Congress last spring:

The president will call for $1.6 trillion in new taxes over the next decade, double the amount that House Speaker John Boehner offered Obama during their failed budget talks in mid-2011.

Republicans likely will resist Obama’s call to raise tax rates for high earners but suggest alternative ways for the government to soak the rich.

Translation: ” . . . didn’t get a single vote” and “soak the rich” are clues to readers that Obama’s plan is not liked by the wealthy editors of the Tribune.

A week ago, we explained why, with the economy in danger of toppling off a fiscal cliff of tax hikes and across-the-board spending cuts Jan. 1, this is the ideal moment to cut the sort of “Go Big” deal that eluded Obama and Boehner last year. The urgency of the cliff offers an opportunity — an excuse, if you prefer — for a bargain that also encompasses tax reform, entitlement programs now headed for insolvency and a $16.4 trillion federal debt limit that also arrives at year’s end.

Translation: The “fiscal cliff” is the recession to be caused by deficit reduction. So this is the ideal moment to “Go Big” with deficit reduction. (??)

“Tax reform” means cut taxes on the wealthy while broadening the tax base, by taxing more poor people. Entitlement programs, being federal agencies, never can be insolvent unless Congress refuses funding. No federal agency ever has been bankrupt.

If Congress and the president can’t reach a grand bargain in the next 47 days, there is an alternative solution. We poached a few of these ideas from interviews with Marc Goldwein, senior policy director for the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Goldwein probably has forgotten more about these crises than most of us ever will know:

Translation: We know absolutely nothing; Goldwein knows next to nothing. So he knows more than us.

•At minimum, our leaders need to temporarily extend today’s tax and spending rates rather than drive off the fiscal cliff.

•Second, Congress would signal that it’s serious about attacking deficits by plucking some low-hanging fruit, such as ending mortgage deductions for second homes, certain breaks for oil and gas companies, and deductions involving those corporate jets that so many politicians scorn (when they’re not flying in them as VIP guests).

Translation: The solution is to temporarily extend the current deficit. Meanwhile, Congress should cut the deficit. (“Mother may I go out to swim? Yes my darling daughter; hang your clothes on a hickory limb, But don’t go near the water.”)

•Third, Obama and the leaders . . . would agree that going forward, here is how much money we’ll budget for social programs and other discretionary spending, for employee pension and other mandatory spending, and for health care. Here’s how much tax revenue we’ll raise. And here’s our dollar target for Social Security reform.

Translation: Although we should not reduce the deficit (that would hurt the economy), here is how we should reduce the deficit: Screw the middle and lower classes by cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and other social programs. And as a final stomp on the head, let’s also attack pensions for the middle and lower classes.

•The point would be to demonstrate to Americans and the world that, in future years, deficits will fall and debt will be a declining percentage of our Gross Domestic Product. “We want our growth rising faster than our debt,” Goldwein says, “not our debt rising faster than our growth.”

Translation: The guy who forgot more than we knew also forgot that GDP = Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending – Net Imports, so cutting the deficit has a negative effect on GDP growth (it’s simple algebra).

A The Simpson-Bowles report remains a superb framework for a Go Big deal. Strengthening that plan’s entitlement reforms should push to more than $4 trillion the amount that Simpson-Bowles would slice from federal deficits over 10 years. That’s enough to begin lowering our perilous ratio of debt to GDP.

Translation: A $560 billion, first year deficit reduction would send us over a “fiscal cliff,” because deficits reduce GDP. So we recommend a $4 trillion “Go Big” deficit reduction over ten years — $400 billion per year. No problem, there.

Simpson-Bowles is thick with proposals to cut spending, overhaul taxation, target health care costs, raise eligibility ages for Social Security and use a stingier measure of inflation to drive increases in all manner of government (social) programs.

One of Simpson-Bowles’ great features was its explanation (not recommendation) that eliminating all deductions, credits and other so-called tax expenditures would allow today’s tax rates to plummet to 8, 14 and 23 percent. A middle approach that retains but limits deductions and credits for charitable giving, mortgage interest, retirement savings and employee pensions, and that phases out the deduction for employer-provided health insurance over 25 years, would let rates drop to 12, 22 and 28 percent.

Translation: This would save low income taxpayers $0, and middle income taxpayers next to $0. But the rich would benefit big time. And anyway, why encourage charitable giving, saving for retirement, pensions and health insurance? Who needs that stuff?

Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen of Congress: Cut a Go Big deal right now. Or set its parameters now and commit to meeting those parameters early in 2013. Please, though, no cliffs. We’ve seen “Thelma and Louise.”

“Go Big” but no fiscal cliff. A perfect ending for a thoroughly stupid editorial in a long list of stupid editorials.

Based on this editorial, and numerous similar editorials through the years, I nominate the Chicago Tribune Editors for the Guinness World Record: Most Stupid Big City Newspaper Editors in America.

I challenge anyone to top them.

O.K., I admit it. This was not stupidity by the Tribune editors. They know full well what they are doing. They are shilling for the wealthy. They themselves are wealthy and they suck up to the wealthy. So maybe they don’t deserve the Guinness “Most Stupid Editors” award.

Maybe the Tribune Editors deserve the Romney/Trump Contempt for the Poor Award.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–Sorry to say this: Obama really is a liar and a traitor to the middle class. But Romney would have been worse

Are you shocked that someone should be so disrespectful as to call the President of the United States a liar and a traitor? Even I am shocked at my own words. They burn in my throat. But what else can you call a man who was elected on the solemn promise, often repeated, that he would benefit America by lifting the struggling middle and lower classes — a man who had zero intention to do so?

By Jake Horowitz (jhorowitz@policymic.com), 14-Nov-2012

Obama Sets Steep Tax Target – (via WSJ) “President Barack Obama will begin budget negotiations with congressional leaders Friday by calling for $1.6 trillion in additional tax revenue over the next decade – double the $800 billion discussed in talks with GOP leaders during the summer of 2011.

Mr. Obama, in a meeting Tuesday with union leaders and other liberal activists, also pledged to hang tough in seeking tax increases on wealthy Americans. In one sign of conciliation, he made no specific commitment to leave unscathed domestic programs such as Medicare, leaving the door open to spending cuts many fellow Democrats oppose.”

So here is how Mr. Obama will help the middle and lower income groups. He will raise taxes on the upper income group and he will cut Medicare, Social Security and food stamps.

Got it? He will claim to remove $1.6 trillion from the economy. (Will that help you and your children?) He will reduce social programs (Will that help you and your children?)

And he will continue to tell you that in some mysterious, magical way, this will make you happy. That’s called an “Obama compromise:” Give the rich what they really want – an increased gap between them and the rest of us – then claim this is good for us.

And it continues:

Today, Obama meets with CEOs from GE, Honeywell, Wal-Mart, Ford, Chevron, and IBM to discuss the fiscal cliff.

What do you think all those rich guys will tell Obama? Will they say, “Raise rich people’s taxes, don’t raise poor people’s taxes, and above all, don’t cut the social programs they need so desperately”? Sure they will.

For many years, MMT and Monetary Sovereignty have been working under the delusion that the President “doesn’t get it,” and if only we could explain it better and more simply, he would see the error of his ways. It was a fool’s mission. The President gets it. He’s no fool. And he has plenty of smart people advising him, and they get it, too.

But he does the bidding of the 1%. He learned about money in Chicago, from people like convicted swindler Tony Rezko, who magically got Obama some real estate at a big, big discount. Obama believes in magic, and hopes you will, too.

The demand that taxes be raised on the 1% is a magicians misdirection, forcing you to believe he is for the “little guy.” The rich don’t give a fig about that income tax increase. They never will pay it. But the President wants to cut social spending even more, and that is what will increase the gap.

Obama’s whole “grand bargain” is a charade to fool the voters. It really is a discussion about the best way to increase the gap without being too obvious. As you will see, when this all is resolved, the middle and lower classes will take a big hit, and the 1% will not even be scratched.

Bottom line: Any plan to reduce the deficit will reduce the money supply, and by formula, will reduce Gross Domestic Product. There is no mechanism by which any tax increase and/or any spending cut can have a positive effect on economic growth. Obama knows this. The rich know it. The poor, who elected Obama, don’t. So he will let them suffer for their ignorance. “Liar”? “Traitor”? Add “cruel” to the description.

But then, Romney would have been even worse. He would have appointed another Scalia. That’s why I voted for Obama.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

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