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 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.
=====================================================================

Americans always have seen this nation as fundamentally middle-class. We deplore royalty and aristocracy. Our politicians feign middle-class roots, or claim a Horatio Alger rise from poverty.

We sneer at the lower classes as, at least partly, deserving their poverty and somewhat dishonest. We despise the upper classes as not deserving their wealth and significantly dishonest. And, we identify with the middle class as being solid, honest, real Americans.

The “American dream,” — married, children, good job, home in the suburbs — is a middle-class dream.

Today, Barack Obama, elected to a final term, focuses on his life after office and on his legacy. Will he and his children know wealth? Will they hobnob with the rich and the famous? Will there be grossly over-paid speeches before adoring crowds? Will he be received in the halls of power. Will he be Bill Clinton?

And how will history rank him?

The two questions, wealth and legacy, are intertwined, for while Obama does not want to be considered a “President-for-the-rich,” he is acutely aware the rich have the financial power to give him the life to which he now has become accustomed, and they have the media power to write history.

He must cater to the rich, by giving them what they want, so they will give him what he wants. They, after all, have given him what he has wanted thus far, and he understands they can continue to do so.

More specifically, his fealty must be given, not to the rich, but to the super-rich, the upper .1% income/wealth people. They have more income and/or wealth than the rest, the 99.9%.

The key word is “more.” Being in the upper .1% is not an absolute measure; it is a comparative measure.

Years ago, being an American millionaire would have put you well into the upper one-tenth-of-one-percent (.1%). Today, it barely gets you into the one percent (1%), and nowhere near the .1%.

The difference between the super-rich and the rest of us is the “gap.” If there were no gap, everyone would be equal and no one would be rich or poor.

When the gap widens, the super-rich grow richer and more powerful, which is why the super-rich do not care about their absolute wealth and income. The super-rich care about the gap.

There always will be a large cap between the super-rich and the poor, so for Barack Obama to curry favor with the rich, he must help them increase the gap between the rich and the middle class. That is what they really want, and that is what they pay for.

He either must:
A. Increase the wealth and income of the super-rich, and/or
B. Decrease the wealth and income of the middle class.

But there is one other, less obvious requirement:
C. Obama must seem to favor the poor.

In a classic “Nixon-goes-to-China,” seeming to favor the poor provides an anti-rich disguise, that allows Obama to crush the middle class with minimal objection from the middle class.

He safely can help he poor, so long as he punishes the middle.

US funding bill to make sequester cuts permanent
By Andre Damon, 19 March 2013
Hundreds of thousands face unpaid furloughs

Congress is moving to make permanent $1.2 trillion in spending cuts. On top of these cuts (are) provisions to freeze federal pay through the end of this year.

Leon Panetta said that the “vast majority” of the Defense Department’s 800,000 civilian employees would take pay cuts of 20 percent.

Federal employees are part of the hated “big government,” so punishing federal employees is considered just and proper, engendering scant outcry from the public. But, of course, federal employees are middle-class Americans. Cutting their pay widens the gap.

Obama is resolutely pushing for cuts in Social Security benefits and hundreds of billions of further cuts in Medicare, as well as the introduction of means-testing, which will begin the transformation of the medical insurance program for seniors from a universal program to a poverty program, a major step toward its destruction.

AP correspondent Peter Arnett writing about Bến Tre city, quoted a U.S. military official: “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.” Obama long has spoken of “saving Social Security” by cutting it.

Nearly 4 million long-term unemployed who receive federal unemployment benefits will see an 11 percent cut in their benefits, or about $130 per month.

These are America’s middle class, being pressed down into poverty. They are portrayed as lazy slackers, who should not be given handouts, but rather made to work (in non-existent jobs) or starve.

The joint goal of the Obama administration and congressional Republicans and Democrats is to manufacture an atmosphere of crisis, in which an immense assault on social services and workers’ living standards can be carried out.

The White House is seeking to spin this historic attack as a boon to the “middle class” and a “fair” and “balanced” approach to the deficit by linking it to token tax increases on the rich. Any such increases, however, would be more than made up for by a “reform” of the tax code that slashes corporate taxes and shifts the tax burden further from the wealthy to the working class.

Whenever any politician uses the words “fair” and “balanced” (as in “fair taxes” and “balanced budget” hold tight to your wallet. They are Obama’s favorite words.

There are dozens more examples (raising FICA is a huge one) — too many for a blog post — but you will be able to keep track of them by asking one simple question, every time you hear about any government action: “Will this benefit or will this hurt the middle class?”

Obama wants to burnish his legacy and his after-office wealth. Ultimately, he will do so, not with historical accomplishment, but rather by sucking up to the .1%.

It is the .1% who will give him his large Presidential library in Chicago. They will hire him for lucrative speaking engagements, ala Bill Clinton. The media, owned by the .1%, will praise Obama for “saving” America’s middle class.

But despite his, and the .1%’s, best paid plans, history ultimately will remember Barack Obama as the man who crushed America’s middle class and America’s dream, all for his own ego, ambition and greed.

His name forever will be linked to Herbert Hoover and to Benedict Arnold.

So much for legacy.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

====================================================================================================================================================

Nine Steps to Prosperity:
1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Medicare — parts A, B & D — for everyone
3. Send every American citizen an annual check for $5,000 or give every state $5,000 per capita (Click here)
4. Long-term nursing care for everyone
5. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone
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

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 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.
=====================================================================

Euro zone urges Cyprus to spare smaller savers from bank levy
By Michele Kambas and Harry Papachristou
NICOSIA/ATHENS | Mon Mar 18, 2013 5:22pm EDT

(Reuters) – Euro zone ministers urged Cyprus to let smaller savers escape a levy on bank deposits, before a parliamentary vote on Tuesday that will either secure the island’s financial rescue or threaten default.

A weekend announcement that Cyprus would impose a levy on bank accounts as part of a 10 billion euro ($13 billion) bailout by the European Union broke with previous practice that depositors’ savings were sacrosanct.

Translation: To a bankster, “sacrosanct” is money in their pockets. These are the same criminals President Obama refuses to prosecute. Mr. Obama doesn’t bite the hand that feeds him.

Under the deal struck in Brussels on Saturday, bank deposits under that level would have faced a levy of 6.7 percent, ripping up the protection savers thought they enjoyed on insured deposits up to that limit, while those above would be stung for 9.9 percent.

“All Eurogroup ministers said today they wished there was no tax below 100,000 euros but you can’t force a country to not do that,” the Greek source told Reuters.

“Cyprus doesn’t want to impose a large tax above 100,000 because the money will flow out. Two thirds of deposits are from abroad.”

Translation: A tax on deposits below 100,000 euros is economically destructive. A tax on deposits above 100,000 euros also is economically destructive. So let’s do both.

The decision to target bank accounts stunned Cypriots . . . Residents emptied cash machines over the weekend and investors feared a precedent had been set that could reignite turmoil in the single currency area that the European Central Bank has calmed in recent months with its pledge to do whatever it takes to save the euro.

Translation: The ECB calmed the eurozone with a pledge to do “whatever it takes” – i.e. “takes” from the people and gives to the banks.

“It is up to the government alone to decide if it wants to change the structure,” European Central Bank policymaker Joerg Asmussen, who was pivotal in the weekend negotiations, told reporters in Berlin. “The important thing is that the financial contribution of 5.8 billion euros remains.”

Translation: It’s not up to the people; it’s up to the government. The people are not important; the banks are.

“They are treating us like guinea pigs,” said Takis Georgiou, 49. “We’d be better off leaving the euro and returning to the pound. We don’t want to end up like Greece.”

Translation: We’d be better off if our government had not voluntarily surrendered the single most valuable asset our nation has – its Monetary Sovereignty. Who would have thought?

“The most important question is what would happen the following day if the bill isn’t voted,” Cyprus central bank governor Panicos Demetriades told parliament.

“What would certainly happen is that our two big banks would need to be consolidated. This doesn’t mean that they would be completely destroyed.”

Translation: Oh horrors. Consolidate our banks? We would rather punish our citizens than inconvenience the banksters.

“If I were a saver, certainly in Spain or maybe Italy, I think I’d be looking askance at these measures and think this could yet happen to me,” said Peter Dixon, global financial economist at Commerzbank.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, who has talked with his EU counterparts, was monitoring developments closely and expected a “fair” solution, Washington said.

Translation: As a member of the Obama team (following the the footsteps of Tim Geithner), Lew feels a “fair” solution is one that rewards criminals at the expense of the public.

Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades, a conservative elected just three weeks ago, said in a TV address that the tax was an alternative to a disorderly bankruptcy. It was painful, but “will eventually stabilize the economy and lead it to recovery”.

Translation: “Disorderly” means the banksters would lose money. “Stabilize” means the public will lose money.

“Essentially parliament is called to legalize a decision to rob depositors blind, against every written and unwritten law,” said Yiannakis Omirou, speaker of parliament and head of EDEK, the small Socialist party.

Translation: Right. That’s the Obama/Geithner approach. Any problem?

And then something amazing happened:

Cyprus lawmakers reject bank tax; bailout in disarray

(Reuters) – Cyprus’s parliament overwhelmingly rejected a proposed levy on bank deposits as a condition for a European bailout on Tuesday, throwing euro zone efforts to rescue the latest casualty of the currency area’s debt crisis into disarray.

Translation: The battered woman refused to be raped again by her attackers, throwing the criminals into disarray.

The vote by the small state’s legislature was a stunning setback for the 17-nation euro zone, after lawmakers in Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy had repeatedly accepted unpopular austerity measures over the last three years to secure European aid.

Translation: “We screwed our citizens. Why can’t you do the same?”

French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici said the euro zone could not lend Cyprus any more, since the country’s debt would become unmanageable.

Translation: “Your debt is too big. You can’t pay it back. So, we suggest making your debt even bigger. But first you must impoverish your people further.”

The one smart person in the eurozone: “We’d be better off leaving the euro and returning to the pound. We don’t want to end up like Greece.”

We could use his wisdom in the U.S. Here, the President and Congress pretend we are not Monetarily Sovereign. The purpose: To widen the income/wealth gap between the rich and the rest.

The people are unemployed, but bribery works.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

====================================================================================================================================================

Nine Steps to Prosperity:
1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Medicare — parts A, B & D — for everyone
3. Send every American citizen an annual check for $5,000 or give every state $5,000 per capita (Click here)
4. Long-term nursing care for everyone
5. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone
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

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 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.
=====================================================================

Bill Black is a professor at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, a school that seems to have a near monopoly on economics professors who understand economics.

While the U. of Chicago, Harvard, Stanford et al, have seemed to receive the accolades, UMKC has the single best economics department in America, if not the world.

Put the names Bill Black, Randy Wray, Mat Forstater and Stephanie Kelton, all UMKCers, on your list of economists who know what they are talking about (There are more, but I don’t know them well enough). One day, someone should tell me who is responsible for all these people coming together into one department.

Anyway . . .

Bill Black recently wrote another in a long list of terrific articles that appeared in

New Economics Perspectives, titled, “Slate Agrees that Obama’s Vanity Drives the Grand Betrayal – and Praises the Betrayal.

Quoting from the article:

Obama is driven by concerns for his “legacy.” In more human terms, he is intensely vain about how history will perceive him. . . Obama sees inflicting the “Grand Bargain” on the Nation as his means of achieving his legacy.

The “Grand Bargain,” which Black calls the “Grand Betrayal” is Obama’s willingness (lust, actually), to effect a so-called compromise with Republicans by doing what he always has wanted to do: Gut social programs and dismantle the New Deal and Great Society – programs that have benefited the 99.9% and helped close the income/wealth gap between the ultra rich and the rest of us.

I urge you to read Black’s artile.

After reading the article, I wrote Bill the following note:

Bill,

As usual, your most recent article (“Slate Agrees that Obama’s Vanity . . . Betrayal”) was brilliantly written. I take issue with one conclusion, however.

While I agree that legacy is Obama’s motivation, there is more to it.

As a lifelong Chicagoan, I understand the Chicago political way. Consider how Obama rose from “community organizer” (whatever that means??) through state Senator, federal Senator and President of the United States, all without doing anything of significance.

How? By doing exactly what he was told by the moneyed interests. He was, in short, “dependable.”

The moneyed interests want the income/wealth gap, between the .1% and the 99.9% widened. The gap is what makes them rich, as without the gap, no one would be rich, and the wider the gap, the richer and more powerful the rich are.

Yes, Obama craves his legacy, but merely cutting the deficit won’t do it, especially when the economy will suffer. Austerity is not a legacy vehicle.

So how does he get his legacy? It must be bequeathed to him by the .1%.

They must build an impressive Obama Library, here in Chicago, that will provide an everlasting memorial to his greatness, and Chicago billionaire Penny Pritzker will make sure it’s built.

The media, virtually all owned by the rich and powerful, must write about him in Godlike terms. They must anoint him a saint. They must re-write history.

Since the rich have the power to re-write history, and Obama knows this, he will continue to do what the rich want. It lifted him to where he is today. Why change now?

It even got him his Chicago house. And though the guy who gave it to him (Tony Rezko) languishes in jail, Obama was lifted up and up to glory, by obeying the rich and powerful.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

It worked for Bill Clinton, who left office in the midst of a personal disgrace, and who caused a recession by running a federal surplus at the end of his term. But, because he widened the gap, he was rewarded by the rich, and was resurrected by the (rich-owned) media into a very wealthy, and much honored and revered ex-President.

Heroes and saints are not created by the masses. They are created by the rich and powerful.

Obama may be a weak President who punishes the poor, but he understands politics and he takes orders well. So as his reward, the media and the .1% just might give him that beautiful legacy he so desperately craves.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

====================================================================================================================================================

Nine Steps to Prosperity:
1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Medicare — parts A, B & D — for everyone
3. Send every American citizen an annual check for $5,000 or give every state $5,000 per capita (Click here)
4. Long-term nursing care for everyone
5. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone
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