–Holder clarifies: Banks not too big to jail. Or wait, maybe they are. Or not.

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.

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

The National Memo reported that Attorney General Eric Holder made it crystal clear: Banks are not too big to jail.

Holder: Banks Are Not ‘Too Big To Jail’
May 15th, 2013, Jason Sattler

Attorney General Eric Holder told the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday that big bankers are not “too big to jail.”

O.K., that’s a relief. Now some criminals, people who have stolen billions, will be in jail alongside those other desperados: People who smoke pot.

But wait:

In March, Holder had told the Senate Judiciary Committee, “I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them.”

Responding to a question from Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) about his comment from March, Holder conceded again on Wednesday that such prosecutions may be too difficult . . .

Uh, oh. Maybe the criminal bankers are too big to jail.

But wait:

. . . but (Holder) stressed that “there’s no bank, there’s no institution, there’s no individual that cannot be prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice. Let me be very, very, very clear… banks are not too big to jail,” Holder added.

O.K., now we understand. Those criminal bankers are going to jail.

But wait.

The DOJ has not brought any criminal charges against the big banks since the financial crisis of 2008 forced taxpayers to bail them out.

Got it now. The banksters are too big to jail, but they’re not too big to jail, but they are too big to jail — especially when your boss has been bribed to give these crooks a pass. Simple?

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) sent a letter to the Justice Department earlier this week, calling for explanations into the settlements that have been made with the big banks.

If large financial institutions can break the law and accumulate millions in profits, and if they get caught, and settle by paying out of those profits, they do not have much incentive to follow the law,” she wrote.

Liz, we love what you’re trying to do, but there are no “ifs” involved. President Obama has made sure large financial institutions can break the law and accumulate millions in profits, and when they get caught, they can settle by paying out of those profits. It’s called a “cost of doing business.

And yes, Mr. Obama has made sure these big-contributing, job-promising, Obama-Library-building .1%ers have zero incentive to follow the law. It’s called “gratitude” and “paying it forward.”

High priced speaking gigs coming soon to Barack, Michelle, Natasha and Malia.

Ka-ching!

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

P.S. And by the way, Obama Assets Valued Between $2.6 million And $8.3 million. How did a former “community organizer” and government employee accumulate that much money?

Just askin’.

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

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:
1. Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
2. Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption – Net Imports

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

Are you enjoying your austerity?

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.

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

Our Monetarily Sovereign government, which has the unlimited ability to create its sovereign currency (the dollar), has been bribed by the upper .1% income group (via campaign contributions and promises of lucrative employment later), to cut the number of dollars in the economy (also known as “austerity”).

Monetary Sovereignty

The purpose of austerity is to widen the gap between the rich and the rest, as federal deficit spending benefits the 99.9% more than the .1%. The GINI ratio demonstrates this increasing gap.

Monetary Sovereignty

The average American has been brainwashed by the politicians and the media and major universities (which are owned by the .1%) into agreeing that the number of dollars should be cut.

Here are excerpts from a pertinent article in the National Memo:

The Chilling Reality Of America’s Worsening Jobs Crisis
May 15th, 2013, Jim Hightower

More than a third of working-age Americans are either out of work or have given up on finding a job.

Monetary sovereignty

Monetary Sovereignty

Also, last month’s hiring increase was almost entirely for receptionists, waiters, clerks, temp workers, car-rental agents and other low-wage positions with no benefits or upwardly mobile possibilities.

Monetary sovereignty

On the other hand, manufacturing — generally the source of good, middle-class jobs — did not add workers in April and has cut some 10,000 jobs in the last year.

Monetary Sovereignty

Especially problematic was the continued rise in underemployment — people wanting full-time work, but having to take part-time and temporary jobs. Underemployment is also pounding college graduates. While they’ve been more successful than non-grads at landing jobs, they’re not getting jobs that fit their career goals or even require the degrees they spent money and time to obtain.

Monetary Sovereignty

Monetary sovereignty

In May, another headline shouted: “Stock Market Soars.” It expressed delight that the Dow Jones Average topped 15,000 for the first time in its history.

Yet this index of Wall Street wealth gives a totally false picture of our nation’s true economic health. Yes, the privileged few are doing extremely well. But the workaday many are struggling — and falling further and further behind as the jobs market sinks steadily from mere recession down into depression.

The stock market is doing well because profits are up, and profits are up because employment costs are down.

President Obama hailed the news that unemployment dipped to 7.5 percent in April. This good-news dip was not due to a jump in job offerings, but to a bad-news labor market so weak and discouraging that more and more Americans are dropping out of it or never entering it.

Monetary Sovereignty

More than a third of our working-age population is no longer even in the job market, and only 58.6 percent of us are employed. Put the opposite way, 41 percent of the potential workforce is not working — about 102 million people.

Our people are trapped in a jobs crisis that is sucking the economic vitality out of our nation, but our leaders refuse even to acknowledge it, much less cope with it.

Our leaders not only do not “cope” with it; they intentionally cause it. They have been bribed to widen the income gap. Destroying the middle- and lower-income groups is the best, fastest, easiest method.

In fact, corporate chieftains are deliberately exacerbating the crisis by hoarding trillions of dollars that ought to be rushed into job-creating expansions, and politicians keep adding to the casualties by gleefully eliminating the middle-class jobs of hundreds of thousands of teachers, firefighters, police and other valuable public employees.

Why would corporations “rush into job-creating expansions,” when they can make more profit by not hiring?

America’s middle class is burning to the ground, while Washington fiddles with nonsense and Wall Street feathers its own nest. It’s disgraceful.

America’s middle class is complicit in its own conflagration. Ask any of your friends whether the federal deficit should be reduced. Ask the unemployed whether the debt is too high. They will shout, “Yes!”

Average Americans have begged Congress and the President to reduce the supply of dollars in the economy, thereby demanding their economic suicide and the economic murders of their children.

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:
1. Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
2. Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption – Net Imports

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–Why, this year, you have a greater chance of losing your house and your life to fire.

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.

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

When politicians speak of deficit reduction (austerity), they make it sound like a prudent financial policy. After all, doesn’t everyone want their deficits and debt reduced?

Never mind that the federal government, being Monetarily Sovereign, never can run short of dollars, and never can be unable to pay its bills. President Obama pretends not to understand the difference between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, so why should we care about the difference?

The same politicians neglect to mention what deficit reduction really means in terms of human hardship. This blog has run numerous posts describing these individual negative effects of federal deficit reduction — the destruction of the middle- and lower-classes, the starvation, the homelessness, the untreated illness.

Whenever such a post runs, we usually receive one or more comments from debt hysterics about our favoring “socialism” and “if socialism were so good, why is the economy struggling.”

This has been happening for years, and I despair of ever teaching the debt hysterics that socialism is NOT government spending (It’s government ownership). And while every nation is at least partly government owned, (i.e. partly socialist), our nation is mostly capitalist. So, I suppose their question should be, “If capitalism were so good, why is the economy struggling?”

(One debt hysteric even suggested that benefits to the poor should be cut, because those people simply will give the dollars to the rich, anyway. Yikes!)

And, of course, the answer is: Deficit reduction always, always, always reduces economic growth, leading to recessions and depressions.

Anyway, here is yet another negative consequence of deficit reduction, as described in the following excerpts:

Chicago Tribune
Wildfire risk runs high, but budget cuts mean fewer firefighters
By Wes Venteicher, Washington Bureau, May 13, 2013

WASHINGTON — The drought that caused record wildfires in California and other Western states last year is expected to persist through the summer, but fewer firefighters will battle this year’s blazes in other regions because of federal budget cuts, top federal officials said Monday.

The U.S. Forest Service will hire 500 fewer firefighters this year, the result of “line by line” budget reductions required by Congress, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said. The reduced staffing also means 50 fewer fire engines will be available, Vilsack said.

So if your house burns down, or your dog, cat or human loved ones die in a fire, at least you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing the politicians say they are being prudent.

Vilsack and Interior Secretary Sally Jewel said much of the West would face severe fire danger this summer.

California is expected to be the most imperiled of the dry Western states. The state this year has received only 25% of the rainfall that it received in the same period for 2012, National Interagency Fire Center fire analyst Jeremy Sullens said. Other states expected to be hit hard are Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon and Idaho, along with portions of other states.

Because of the danger California is in, the Forest Service does not plan to reduce hiring there, Harbour said. The reductions will more likely affect Eastern states, where the danger is less serious this year.

Translation: Although last year was a record fire year, and the danger to the Western states is even worse this year, there will be no increase in firefighter hiring. So the outcome will be much worse.

Things also will be worse out East, where we’ll see personnel reductions.

The Forest Service cut $50 million from a fire preparedness fund. When more firefighters have been needed, the Forest Service has shifted money out of accounts for things such as road maintenance, campgrounds, wildlife and range management programs.

I feel better already. Less fire preparedness, less maintenance of roads, campgrounds, wildlife and ranges, fewer fire fighters and fire engines. We don’t need those, anyway.

So add death-by-fire to the long, long list of austerity’s negative effects. You can put this right next to the list of deficit cutting benefits, which are . . . uh . . . well, exactly none.

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:
1. Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
2. Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption – Net Imports

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–How austerity could kill you and your family: Bird flu

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.

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

Several posts in this blog (“You never will know what you have lost” I, II, III and IV) have described the many invisible costs to you and your loved ones of deficit reduction (aka “austerity).

An article in the May 6, 2013 issue of NewScientist Magazine, tells how one bit of deficit reduction could kill you. Here are a few excerpts:

Why we are sitting ducks for China’s bird flu
by Debora MacKenzie

The Strategic Health Operations Centre (SHOC) at the World Health Organization in Geneva is like a war room for diseases. On a screen I could see a count of flu cases, now topping 100 – more in two months than the long-feared H5N1 bird flu racks up in two years.

Last week WHO flu chief Keiji Fukuda described H7N9 as “an unusually dangerous virus for humans” and “definitely one of the most lethal influenza viruses we have seen so far“.

H7N9 is a blend of bird flu viruses that has acquired a few mutations adapting it to infect people. The worry now is that as H7N9 sporadically infects people, it might be acquiring the mutations it needs to go on the rampage.

Maybe we’ll get lucky and find that H7N9 can’t acquire those mutations and cut loose in mammals. But if it can, killing and vaccinating poultry and preventing human infections won’t stop a pandemic strain emerging. It will only slow it down.

When that happens, we will need vaccine.

Oh dear. In the 2009 pandemic, vaccine arrived too late in the US to reach many people in the second wave – and many countries got none at all. Luckily, that flu was relatively mild.

Most vaccine is still made by growing flu virus laboriously in chicken eggs, which takes six months – if you’re lucky. A few new factories that grow virus in cell cultures instead can expand production more readily, but are no quicker.

And commercial factories won’t switch from ordinary flu vaccine to H7N9 until a pandemic is imminent. By then it will be too late.

As for antiviral drugs, normal supply doesn’t meet pandemic demand and cannot be ramped up quickly. The US ran short this year just from worse-than-usual winter flu.

What does this have to do with deficit reduction? Read on:

There are several promising new technologies able to churn out vast quantities of pandemic vaccine quickly. But R&D funding has been limited. Only one is licensed, and for ordinary flu, not pandemic. It has one small manufacturing plant. None of the rest has even had a large-scale trial of its vaccines in people.

The U.S. government, which has the unlimited ability to create its sovereign currency, the dollar, instead intentionally and for no good reason, has cut back on dollar production. One of the first things to go: Research and development that your save your life and the lives of your loved ones.

It could have been so different. After H5N1 appeared in 2004, or after the 2009 pandemic, we could have launched a major global programme to develop and test those technologies, modelled on the government-private sector partnerships that develop treatments for other unprofitable diseases such as TB. We didn’t.

Why didn’t we? I’ll give you the answer in one word: Money — or the lack thereof.

Maybe if we start now, and slow the virus down, we will have enough time. Chances are low, but if we don’t even try they are zero.

As it stands, the WHO’s top brass will watch any H7N9 pandemic unfold from the SHOC. Information will flood in; body counts will mount. Governments will be told that their demands for vaccines and drugs cannot be met. The SHOC will issue declarations, hold briefings, organise research, tell people to wash their hands and stay home. Mostly, though, it will just watch helplessly.

Buy the magazine and read the article in full. These few excerpts do not convey the full horror of what we face.

You may die. Your parents may die. Your brothers and sisters may die. Your children may die. The world’s economies may die. All you know may wither and die. Unnecessarily die.

So, remind me again: Why exactly are you more afraid of deficits than of you and your loved ones dying?

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:
1. Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
2. Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption – Net Imports

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY