Mitchell’s laws: The more budgets are cut and taxes inceased, the weaker an economy becomes. To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments. Austerity = poverty and leads to civil disorder. Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
==========================================================================================================================================

I continue to be amazed by the Chicago Tribune. Its reporters do some great investigative journalism, possibly the best in the nation. They dig for months into secret files, and bring together data that has been hidden from the public, exposing criminality by public a private officials.

But its editors are completely clueless about data that stares them in the face –even information directly handed to them. Reporters, great. Editors, clueless.

Here are excerpt’s from the latest nonsense editorial.

Is Europe catching?
Hope that the eurozone can survive a Greek collapse

Why would anyone wish the eurozone to survive. It already has shown to be a failed model. Forcing nations to surrender the single most valuable asset they own — their Monetary Sovereignty — is, and has been, the basis for disaster. It’s a disaster I predicted six years ago.

Europe is coming to Chicago in the next few days and the great temptation is to set up a quarantine room at O’Hare International Airport. Our visitors have a bad case of the financial flu. We can only hope it’s not catching.

The euro nations, not being inoculated with Monetary Sovereignty, do not have the ability to fight off recession. Fortunately, the U.S. has that ability (though our politicians don’t understand it), so we can create the dollars necessary to grow our economy.

Greece could collapse in a matter of weeks when its banking system runs out of funds. The tiny Aegean nation’s economic illness could spread to the sickly and much larger economies of Italy and Spain.

That would be disastrous for Europeans and a serious problem for Americans. U.S. economic growth depends on the success of the 27-nation European Union, which, taken together, is America’s biggest trading partner. Eleven of those 27 countries have slipped back into recession.

Exactly! Not being Monetarily Sovereign, these nations cannot create euros. So they cannot prevent their banking system from running out of funds. Eventually, all euro nations will collapse, even Germany.

Here’s a quote from CBS Moneywatch:

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner applauded the softer tone emerging among European leaders. “You are seeing them talk about a better balance between growth and austerity, meaning a somewhat more gradual, softer path toward restoring fiscal sustainability,” Geithner said. The shift shows that European leaders recognize that countries can’t increase their economic growth if they’re forced to focus solely on cutting spending and reducing debts. Geithner said European countries would benefit from investment in public works projects, like roads and schools.

Sadly, Geithner still doesn’t understand the difference between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, so he thinks austerity is the same as “fiscal sustainability.” But at least he is does understand a nation cannot recover from a recession but cutting deficit spending (Hello, Tea/Republicans and Democrats, alike).

Back to the Tribune editorial:

Many of them would like to stimulate their way out of recession with government spending. But practically every nation in Europe’s southern tier has piled up way too much debt and cannot afford to keep borrowing. Germany, the strongest economy, has rightly forced austerity measures on its free-spending neighbors as a condition of bailouts.

Change one word and the above paragraph will be accurate. Change “rightly” to “stupidly.” It’s amazing. These people think they can cure starvation by cutting calories.

Greece agreed to slash public spending, rewrite rigid labor rules that throttle its private sector and pay off part of its debt over time. In exchange, its banks got a cash infusion and its creditors agreed to write off more than half its debt.

In the wake of the deal, though, unemployment has gotten worse and money has become more scarce. The Greek economy has shrunk for five consecutive years, with no end in sight.

What a surprise. After they cut spending, unemployment got worse and the economy shrunk. Who could have imagined that?

If a new government rejects austerity and renounces its debt, Greece probably will be forced out of the eurozone, the common currency union.

Long term, this would be the best thing that could happen to Greece and its citizens.

Greece would have to print its own currency, which would be extraordinarily weak because it wouldn’t be backed by wealthier European nations.

So with that “weak” currency, Greek exports would soar, and within two years, Greece would wealthier than any of the euro nations.

With time to prepare, systemic risk has been reduced. Governments have made contingency plans and banks have limited their exposure. Financial firewalls are in place to keep a Greek collapse from spreading to Italy, Spain and other vulnerable countries like Portugal and Ireland.

That’s a shame. But despair not. If they stay with the euro, their economies will collapse, too.

Europe really has no choice but to work off its huge debt over time, though that will hamper economic growth. Its monetary union may wind up losing one or more members. It faces years of slow growth or no growth … or worse.

There are two better choices than applying leeches to cure anemia:

1. Form a republic — a quasi United States of Europe — with the EU supplying its member nations with euros, as needed
or
2. Each euro nation re-adopting its own sovereign currency.

That’s it. There are no other solutions. The so-called “bailouts” merely were loans to countries that cannot service their current debt, let alone trying to service additional debt. This is exactly what the American banks did when giving mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them.

It’s what caused the U.S. recession, which is being ameliorated by federal stimulus spending.

Stimulus today; stimulus tomorrow; austerity never. My question: Why is this so hard to understand?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
http://www.rodgermitchell.com

==========================================================================================================================================
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 exports

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

Mitchell’s laws: The more budgets are cut and taxes inceased, the weaker an economy becomes. To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments. Austerity = poverty and leads to civil disorder. Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
==========================================================================================================================================

Let’s predict.

Unfortunately, to predict, we tend to use today as a starting place, then visualize a linear transition to the future. So, our predictions generally include more powerful computers, better medicine, more efficient rockets – in short, more/better versions of today. A hundred 100 years ago, who could have predicted the Internet, a seemingly non-linear transition from 1900?

So, given that caveat . . .

Those of you who are Star Trek fans – the Captain Picard version – will remember the Borg. They were an alien people, part humanoid and part machine, the defining characteristic of whom was a “hive mind,” i.e. all knowledge and decisions linked by radio. Individuals were not individual, but were part of the collective, perhaps less independent even than ants and bees.

My prediction is that one day, possibly within the lifetimes of my grandchildren, we all will be well on our way toward becoming cyborgs, and this will have a profound effect on economics.

.
—-CAPTAIN PICARD IS FORCED TO JOIN THE BORG COLLECTIVE

An article in NewScientist Magazine hints at this:

Beyond Kinect: Gestural computer spells keyboard death
15 May 2012 by Jim Giles

The advent of multi-touch screens and novel gaming interfaces means the days of the traditional mouse and keyboard are well and truly numbered. With Humantenna and SoundWave, you won’t even have to touch a computer to control it, gesturing in its direction will be enough.

(A technology called) Humantenna uses the human body as an antenna to pick up the electromagnetic fields – generated by power lines and electrical appliances – that fill indoor and outdoor spaces. Users wear a device that measures the signals picked up by the body and transmits them wirelessly to a computer. “It’s just an electrode that measures voltage, digitises it and sends the signal for processing,” says Desney Tan of Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington.

By studying how the signal changes as users move through the electromagnetic fields, the team was able to identify gestures, such as a punching motion or swipe of the hand. In all, the researchers found that the technology could detect 12 gestures with over 90 per cent accuracy.

One version of the system, presented this week at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Austin, Texas, runs off a sensor that sits in a small bag. With training, that sensor can learn to recognise specific gestures. Another paper, under review, describes a version that relies on a much smaller wristwatch-sized sensor. Thanks to advances in processing techniques, this newer system needs no training to recognise the same 12 gestures.

Our brain causes our hand to gesture. A computer senses and decodes our gesture, and makes something happen. But what if instead of decoding our gesture, the computer were able to decode our brain’s signal. Our thoughts alone could make something happen. Such technology already exists.

Monkey think, monkey do with robotic arm
By David Templeton / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Making things happen with the mind has long been a favorite topic of science fiction. But with new technology developed at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, a rhesus monkey, with arms comfortably restrained, learned to use a robotic arm to feed itself by thinking about the action.

The monkey used the arm to grasp marshmallows and fruit and put them in its mouth. It even used the grasper, as it would its own hand, to prevent the food from falling from its lips. In a 2004 study, Pitt researchers taught a monkey partially to use a robotic arm, but in the latest research published in the journal Nature they taught the monkey to control the arm fully with its mind.

Back to the NewScientist article:

All sorts of applications would open up if Humantenna can be commercialised. The body could become a kind of universal remote control, and basic gestures such as pointing or swiping might be used to control lights, appliances and computers in the home. Fitness monitoring is another possibility, says Tan. We already have devices that can infer how hard a person is exercising by tracking step patterns, but Humantenna could provide a more holistic measure by monitoring whole body movements.

Imagine switching a phone to silent mode just by pressing a finger to your lips. This is one possible application of Touché, a system that turns any object, including the human body, into a touch interface.

Researchers at Disney Research in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, built Touché by sending a small current through everyday objects. A person touching the object changes the flow of electricity depending on the type of touch, be it a finger or a firm grasp.

The system can also send low levels of current through the human body. The current changes when users clasp their hands or touch their faces. The signal generated could one day be used to control a phone or other electronic device.

I don’t know how far and how fast this will go, but clearly the merger of machine and human — the cyborg — is ahead of us. Biology is frail. Machines can be stronger, faster, more accurate and with better sensors — superior in every way to our human body. Consider this article:

Self-Repairing And Self-Sustaining Autonomous Machines
The George Washington University

Machines are subject to wear due to friction between moving parts. Researchers at the George Washington University have developed a real-time sensor and nanotechnology-based system that detects the component surface damage in moving parts, such as gears, and repairs and sustains the moving parts of the machines automatically.

Our future cyborg body not only will be stronger, faster, more accurate and with better sensors, but will be self repairing. We could live forever. And this unstoppable train is bearing down on us, faster and faster. Our grandchildren or great grandchildren will see it happen.

What will be the economics of a “Borgworld”?

Some things will become less important than they are, today. The traditional “big three” — food, clothing and shelter — surely will become far less important. Visualize you, as a borg, standing outdoors. You don’t care about the elements. You use power only to heat or cool your brain, and any other human body parts that remain. Compare that minimal energy use with heating and cooling all the air in all the rooms in your house.

Two-dimensional, human-controlled, surface transportation will give way to three dimensional, computer controlled, air transportation. With dramatic decreases in agriculture (for food, clothing and housing), more efficient transportation (i.e. no traffic jams), and less need to heat and cool homes, much less energy will be used.

Our need for oil, coal, natural gas and certain ores used for shelter-building, will fall dramatically. The resultant reduction in pollution will reverse the trend toward global warming. Farm land will return to nature; trees will convert carbon dioxide to oxygen.

The incidence of disease will decline. Sports will change. Religion will change. Our need for creature comfort will decrease, since “comfort” merely is our brain’s translation of sensory input. Given the appropriate programming, our brains could translate a bed of spikes into “comfort.”

Computers will create any product, just by following your thoughts. Product lack and envy will become less important in the demand equation, so crime will decrease. Economics, being greatly dependent on human desire, will reflect the new reality. Or it may disappear as a science.

With our reduced need for food, shelter, clothing, along with less crime and envy, our need for money and for security will decline. And because the primary purposes of governments are to provide food, shelter, clothing, security and money, our desire for government will decline. A benign form of anarchy-in-unity will emerge — one language, one source of information, one “human nature.”

All human knowledge will be available to everyone, instantly. We won’t have to look for information on the Internet; we will live the Internet. Of course, we don’t have the mental capacity to assimilate all that is on the Internet, so in the final conversion, our brains too, will be replaced.

Homo sapiens will have been a transition species. And at last, immune to aging, radiation and boredom, we will be ready to fly to the stars.

I truly believe, that with the ever-increasing rate of technological advancement, it all will be accomplished well before the end of this century.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
http://www.rodgermitchell.com

==========================================================================================================================================
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 exports

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

Mitchell’s laws: The more budgets are cut and taxes inceased, the weaker an economy becomes. To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments. Austerity = poverty and leads to civil disorder. Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
==========================================================================================================================================

#Occupy Wall Street and its sister groups around the world, seem to take inordinate pride in not having leaders. I’m not sure why, but perhaps it’s because #Occupy wishes to disassociate themselves from their “enemies,” i.e. governments and big business,” which do have leaders.

For whatever the reason, lacking a head, #Occupy runs aimlessly, chicken-like, and expends great energy for little gain. It wishes to deliver a message, but what message? Ask the person in the street what #Occupy stands for or wants, and you surely will get a mixture of anti- this and anti- that, and for very little.

They seem like a group of young people for whom protest is an exciting break — think Spring Break on Daytona Beach. And like all young people whose primary mission is to have fun and outdo each other in daring naughtiness, they break things, flout authority and incite trouble. “Innocently” camping in the park for weeks on end, is neither innocent nor meant to be. The sole purpose is to provoke authority, then whine about their First Amendment rights, when authority gets tough. Even the worst police show more discipline than the protesters.

Pity, because #Occupy’s message should be to close the gap between rich and poor, by lifting the poor. But the message is lost in the medium.

If #Occupy had a head, he/she would be smart enough not to come to Chicago for the NATO summit.

Questions: Why NATO and why the summit? NATO has only a distant relationship to #Occupy’s prime message, whatever it may be. Mostly, NATO is a combination war and anti-war organization (depending on how you look at it), specifically designed to protect Europe from the Soviet Union, and more recently as a military alternative to the unwieldy United Nations. Do you think of #Occupy as primarily being an anti-war group? I don’t. If it is, I must have missed the message.

And in any event, if you don’t like NATO, the last place you want to be is the summit, where every kook from around the world, is coming to march, yell, carry some sort of sign, and possibly cause a bit of bother. What is the key message the world will get from the upcoming summit protests? Just one: How well, or how poorly, the Chicago police “handled” the protesters.

As for which message, take your pick: Poverty? War? Global warming? Energy? Tyranny? Starvation? Disease? Ecology? Overfishing? Overlumbering? Pollution? Save the birds? The list goes on and on, and for each item a group of protesters will scream, march, carry nutty signs and attempt to provoke the police, while acting oh-so put upon if the police respond. (Think wild 12-year-olds trying to tickle the noses of the human statues guarding Buckingham Palace.)

Is this the message with which the headless, leaderless, messageless #Occupy wishes to associate itself? Is this is the memory #Occupy wishes the public to carry away?

If #Occupy wishes to make a statement, first it should have a statement to make — a sharp, clear, focused statement. And then it should make that statement, not in the maelstrom of a thousand screaming children, but on a calm, clear day, when their voices are the only ones to be heard.

In short, #Occupy, to get ahead you need to get a head, preferably one with enough good sense not to try painting a picture while standing under a waterfall. Sure, come to Chicago, but not at a time when you’ll be blamed for every misdeed, and accomplish nothing, except to have your message drowned out. Come when yours is the one voice, so the media can support your ideas.

#Occupy, please stay the hell away from Chicago during the NATO summit.

(Ah, but it’s too late, isn’t it?)

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
http://www.rodgermitchell.com

==========================================================================================================================================
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 exports

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

Mitchell’s laws: The more budgets are cut and taxes inceased, the weaker an economy becomes. To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments. Austerity = poverty and leads to civil disorder. Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
==========================================================================================================================================

My family has a saying: “Good comes from bad.” Certainly, Greece’s suffering has been awful. But perhaps some good can come from it. Perhaps the world at last will understand the folly of restricted government spending and the need for Monetary Sovereignty.

(U.S. Tea Party, are you listening?)

BBC News, Europe
EU central bankers ponder Greece euro exit

European central bankers have been openly expressing views on the possibility of Greece leaving the eurozone as its leaders struggle to form a government.

Germany’s top banker said it was up to the Greeks to decide, but if they did not keep to their bailout commitments, they would receive no new aid.

This is the best thing that could happen to Greece: Leave the euro and don’t accept any more “aid” (i.e additional indebtedness, unemployment, poverty and austerity).

After last week’s elections in France and Greece, two things began to change in the eurozone. First was the talk that “spending” could replace “austerity” as a way out of the crisis. That’s perhaps more aspirational than practical but it pleased the voters.

This is news??? The voters are smarter than their leaders. Government spending is the only way out of a recession or depression. Reduced government spending (ala the U.S. Tea Party foolishness) always has the same consequences: Worse recession and deeper depression.

Second was the growing confidence amongst eurozone ministers that Greece could – and maybe should – quit the euro. Some speculate it’s a PR exercise to manage expectations – slowly re-introducing the notion that the 17 Euro nations could soon be 16. Others suggest it’s a long overdue move, that would have eased the problems much sooner.

I said this more than six years ago.

If the country simply quits the euro and resurrects the drachma, while still trying to pay off its debts, an inevitable slump in the value of the drachma would make those debts even more unaffordable.

Absolutely false. First, there is no evidence, one way or another, that the drachma would be valued less than the euro. I personally would rather lend to a “drachma Greece” than to a “euro Greece.” More assurance of being paid.

Second, even with inflation, a Monetarily Sovereign nation (which Greece then would be) can pay any debt of any size, any time. No debt is “unaffordable.” Using the word “unaffordable” demonstrates ignorance of the difference between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty.

Greek voters punished mainstream parties which backed the bailout at last Sunday’s parliamentary election.

As well they should have. Only the EU would call additional lending to a nation that already is unable to pay its debts, a “bailout.” The U.S. banks did exactly the same thing, which led to the Great Recession.

Visualize the Mafia extending additional credit to a guy who already can’t pay what he owes them. Is that a “bailout”?

Syriza – a leftist, anti-bailout party – firmly rejects the terms of the most recent EU-IMF bailout, which requires tough austerity measures in return for loans worth 130bn euros.

They reject additional, unaffordable debt and more austerity. As the kids say, “Well, DUH!

On Saturday, German central bank chief Jens Weidmann said: “If Athens doesn’t keep its word, it will be a democratic choice. The consequence will be that the basis for fresh aid will disappear.”

Translation: The basis for deeper Greek austerity will disappear, and all of us “1%ers” who foisted the euro on an innocent public, will look like total idiots, and possibly lose our jobs. Hey, are they building a guillotine outside my window?

“We’re a breath away from the drachma and disaster,” liberal Greek daily Kathimerini warned on Saturday.

Translation: We’re a breath away from fiscal freedom.

Within two years after Greece leaves the euro, and re-adopts the drachma, its economy will grow, while the other euro nations sink deeper and deeper into austerity.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
http://www.rodgermitchell.com

==========================================================================================================================================
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 exports

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY