We were backed into this corner by an unwinnable negotiations

No, we were backed into this corner by living beyond our means and now the piper must be paid. Boom-and-bust cycles are historically inevitable as Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff described in their book “This Time Is Different.”(sarcasm)

What we need are ways to cope with this situation, not to deny it, especially now that The Guru has called it what it is, a depression.

when the president talks about doing something “big and meaningful” i worry.

he sounds more like a dreamy teen-age boy than a president.

the wise “big and meaningful” effort would have been to oppose the macroeconomic nonsense of the tea party debt fetishists from the beginning and replace it with a presidentially-led debate over the need for tax revenue and, separately, for current govt spending at all levels to counter business non-spending.

There are ways out of this box – minting a trillion-dollar platinum coin, for example.

beowulf original published in january at myfdl: Coin Seigniorage and the Irrelevance of the Debt Limit

But there’s no evidence that anyone in power wants a deus ex machina to arrive on the scene at this point.

none at all. but i’d like to think there’s a small chance someone in congress would at least speak up if out-of-the-box options were made known to them.

When the federal government has a daily deficit of four billion dollars and 43 cents of every spent dollar must be borrowed then less spending is called for, not more.

It was interesting to see Kent Conrad on last night’s PBS Newshour,
being interviewed along with Saxby Chambliss to represent the Gang of Six.
Conrad was low-affect for almost the entire time, except when Judy Woodruff questioned
him about criticism from the left – then his juices got flowing and he lashed out at the DFHs
that make it so hard for serious people to make the hard choices blah blah blah.
He didn’t say `professional left’ or `sanctimonious purists’, but he may have well as.

That’s it! A new coin will solve the problem! That’s what DD means by “Coins a Phrase”! Can we get serious?

We were backed into this corner by an unwinnable negotiations, but also because all sides of the deal have policy prescriptions uniquely unsuited to the economic moment.

My bold.

Perfect wording DDay.

Perfect wording as far as it goes, except DD wants even more spending, as if this were a minor recession instead of a depression caused by deep economic structural problems which require fundamental changes in the size of government and its spending on worthless enterprises, like war.

agree – most excellent wordsmithing

p.s. about that platinum coin

almost giggling too much to type this out – but can not believe the fundies haven’t gone batshit crazy over this (or maybe they’re too blissed out about their impendinng meet up with Mr Jesus) but isn’t there something in the book of Revelation about the Anti-Christ having his own currency ??

Dear moderator:

Please delete the duplicates!

I come right after “cbl.”

Once takes care of me.

Have a nice weekend!

DD wants even more spending, as if this were a minor recession instead of a depression

Oh, if it’s a depression, we need less spending???
Is that you, Herbert?

It isn’t like most of us out here in the real world aren’t telling them the easiest ways to fix it.

resident troll. Ignore and your blood pressure will be fine.

You appear to be equating the Government’s deficit to a family deficit.

Please read up on the economics. you could try Googling “Modern Monetary Theory.”

Then you could add some meaning to the discussion, instead of repeating uniformed talking points, and misplaced sarcasm.

The US “debt” is not debt as we personally understand debt. It is interest bearing money (T-Bills) issued by our Government. Money because T-Bills are very liquid, and can be used to buy other assets. T-bills could be replaced by non-interest bearing money (dollars) and we’d have no interest payments, and no other change to the economy.

The “Good Faith” behind T-Bills is the same “Good Faith” behind the dollar.

There was an “end of the world as we know it” moment yesterday on MSNBC when neo-con David Frum said essentially the same thing. You don’t make grand bargains about the long term economy in the heat of a summer debt ceiling hissy fit, or even in the midst of an economic down cycle.

It’s all come too quick for awesome O, President, Nobel prize, without any preceding real accomplishments. How does he top himself?

I think I have finally figured out what makes Obama tick, and why he will be a failure as President.
He has a need to be a great President, and that informs his decisions rather than actual values.

My bold:

The dominant story of the current political debate is that the government is broke. We can’t afford to pay for public services, put people to work, or service the public debt. Yet as a nation, we are awash in money. A defective system of money, banking, and finance just puts it in the wrong places.

Raising taxes on the rich and implementing financial reforms are essential elements of the solution to our seemingly intractable fiscal and economic crisis. Yet proposals currently on the table fall far short of the need.

(excerpt from “How to Liberate America from Wall Street Rule,” July 19, 2011)

Matt Taibbi asks, “Corporate Tax Holiday in Debt Ceiling Deal: Where’s the Uproar?
(July 22, 2011)

There are lots of means. It is just that 1% of the population has 90% of it.

“…they seem determined to perpetuate it…”

Certainly; they’re getting us conditioned to the rich getting even richer and more powerful, while most of us are steadily being reduced to the status of maids, gardners, and burger flippers.

income re-distribution; do business only with income equals; develop the practice of barter exchanges and lower consumption

And as Krugman says, this is a Hobson’s choice.

A Hobson’s Choice is no choice at all. And that appears to be exactly where he is headed. He has unwittingly empowered the Tea Party and Eric Cantor. They will pretty much determine what passes the House — putting the Senate Dems in a no-win position. (The Dems he kept out of the “negotiations.”)

That’s why he’s so fucking wild. Eleven-dimensional chess???
Uh, check mate.

Ding

Obama whined last night about so much pressure on him from ‘interest groups’. I think he was referring to us. We aren’t an ‘interest group’. The banksters who want to get their hands on Social Security are an interest group. We are human beings trying to get along in the world and make ends meet. Maybe, if we are lucky, hope for a chance for a retirement that isn’t impoverished. The Obamas and interest groups keep making that less and less of a possibility.

One thing that Romney said that I applaud. We aren’t bumps in the road the road to recovery. We are people, damn it.

What surprises me (not actually too much of a surprise) is all the Democrats who say Obama is winning – when it’s more like #winning. Obama is actually making default not look so bad in that at least would only be short term pain while he is negotiating for both short term (anti-stimulus spending) and long term pain (cutting Social Security and Medicare). The Republicans could be doing us a favor by not dealing, though it seems like Obama and Reid are doing what they can to take the blame – they’re yet again saying grand bargain or no bargain, which is taking the blame away from Boehner. It seems like the best the Democrats can hope for is owning a depression if no grand bargains are struck but if a deal is struck the Democrats will own both a depression as well as cutting Social Security.

When the Democrats had Congress, they should have significantly raised the debt ceiling, but I think they didn’t do that because they actually want to cut Social Security and Medicare.

I’m just a human being trying to make it in a world that is very rapidly losing its understanding of being human.

John Trudell

I will look him up. Thank you.

“Obama whined last night about so much pressure on him from ‘interest groups’.”

Yeah, that’s rich coming from Mr No Transparency Backroom Deal who cut backroom deals with corporate lobbyists.

I think the cracks were starting to show in that little performance last night.

Why is this happening? because Rupert Murdoch has convinced the ignorant rubes of this country that the Paradox of Thrift does not exist.

Live within our means! This is not how a business is run!

In actuality, businesses take on debt when the investment can produce a suitable internal rate of return. Right now our country needs to invest in it’s people in order to jump start the economy and that requires taxes.

The twisted reality is that many of the higher earners in this country pay lower effective tax rates than do waiters, teachers or other low income earners of the like.

What this debt deal showdown boils down to is the richest and most powerful in this country don’t want to pay taxes and they’re willing to burn the world’s economy to the ground to reach that end.

Austerity slows the economy and when the economy is going badly, that is extremely dangerous. However, the Murdochs, the Kochs, the Coors and Donohues of this country simply do not care – all they see is increasing their personal holdingings to the nth degree – using any and all political means necessary in the process – turning a blind eye to all the death and suffering it will cause.

Does anyone have an update on the proposed meeting today between Obama and the congressional leaders ? I saw where Boehner accepted the invitation but haven’t seen anything on the others or any details. I assume DD will post something about this at some point. Not sure where it stands though.

Check your history books, 1936-1937 as the Guru recommends. Less spending means less economic activity, less tax revenues and downward economic spiral. Higher revenues is the only permanent solution. Higher taxes on the wealthy brings money into the American economy, whereas that money would otherwise be invested in Chinese factories, Brazilian bonds, French vineyards, Australian mining ventures, German Bunds, offshore tax hideouts, etc. American workers’ produced income/wealth over the last 30 years was redirected to the top 1%, it should be returned to American families and workers who earned it in the form of much higher estate taxes and income taxes on the top 1%. Let’s recognize the giant ripoff that has occured since Reagan’s attack on the middle class began. Tax the rich, as favored by the vast majority of Americans.

When the government can borrow interest free, it doesn’t have to worry about borrowing. (I thought you were a big believer in the wisdom of the market. Or is it only when that wisdom hurts workers.)

To a sane person, not blinded by ideology, very high unemployment; the ability to borrow at historically low interest rates; and a crumbling infrastructure demonstrate the need and feasibility of a massive jobs program.

Lakota, formerly a leader in AIM. Wife, children and MIL murdered by arson many suspect was initiated by the FBI.

“Why is this happening? because Rupert Murdoch has convinced the ignorant rubes of this country that the Paradox of Thrift does not exist.”

I’d look more towards Obama’s buddy Pete Peterson and Obama himself as I think this is part of the ruling class itself.

“Austerity slows the economy and when the economy is going badly, that is extremely dangerous. However, the Murdochs, the Kochs, the Coors and Donohues of this country simply do not care – all they see is increasing their personal holdingings to the nth degree – using any and all political means necessary in the process – turning a blind eye to all the death and suffering it will cause.”

Again this goes toward the whole ruling class – look at us with our strong support of the IMF. It’s no surprise that the ruling class who supports what the IMF is doing abroad would do the same thing here.

Can you please tell me why the President of the United States cannot simply come to the podium and say what you just said above? I get so furious when Lawrence ODonnell pats me on the virtual head and explains that when the President says X he really means Y.

Stuff that shit. It is way past time for some simple truth-telling.

As my Irish grandma used to say, “He would lie when the truth would do.”

According to Krugman, his interest in economics began with Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels, in which the social scientists of the future use “psychohistory” to attempt to save civilization. Since “psychohistory” in Asimov’s sense of the word does not exist, Krugman turned to economics, which he considered the next best thing.

He has described himself as a “Loner. Ordinarily shy. Shy with individuals.”

Hilarious!

He was never able to escape the Darth Vader in his blood.

That meeting only started about 45 minutes ago; so it’ll be a while before we hear anything I think.

Obama explained yesterday why he’s doing what he’s doing:

He thinks – or wants us to think – that the only way for them all to be serious about dealing with this manufactured crisis is to make the poor and middle class do all the heavy lifting.

What makes you think it was “unwittingly?” I suspect he was a bit surprised that they didn’t go along with his offer to trade social security, Medicare, and Medicaid for extending depreciation of corporate jets. But the general outline seems pretty much according to his plan.

That makes the quote even more poignant.

So by reducing spending you take more money out of the hands of the middle class consumers and send hundreds of thousands (if not millions) more Americans onto unemployment rolls. Great plan you got there.

There is a better solution: RAISE TAXES.

Increase revenues, reinstitute the progressive tax scale (we currently do not have one) therefore requiring the government to borrow less.

If you want to cut waste out of the budget, fine. Cut out the corporate giveaways and corrupt no bid contract privatization bullshit that has sent the cost of government through the roof. Cut the entrepreneur out of inherently governmental service. Start instituting cost controls on the medical industry. Rescind the drug company giveaway.

Make government about public service, as it should be, and not about corrupt profits.

There are ways out of this box – minting a trillion-dollar platinum coin, for example.

David, your link here is to an article at Donkeylicious, which links to a July 20 article by Mark Kleiman that calls the idea “an absurd charade.”

This notion of bypassing bond sales via coin-seigniorage is very sound and originated over six months ago with beowulf and letsgetitdone at FireDogLake. You should link to their excellent work on this matter.

If you peel back the layers, you’d likely find that the same puppetmasters who are controlling the Tea Party movement are also controlling Obama and most of the leadership of the Democratic Party.

We know the solution. We’ve known since the thirties. Has everyone forgotten the name John Maynard Keynes?

Thanks

There is a better solution: RAISE TAXES.

Obama’s already explained that you aren’t a serious person if you think raising taxes is a better solution.

Yes, serious people are at the negotiating table.

Democrats suck.

Why do you think austerity has become a palatible, if not preferrable option to those it would hurt the most? PROPAGANDA!

Without the proper public sentiment, NONE OF THESE AUSTERITY POLICIES WOULD BE ON THE TABLE.

That’s the truth.

That is interesting information. So we have Krugman informed by the writers of science fiction and the Libertarians informed by the Rand the writer of fiction. No wonder economics is so randomly and dramatically destructive.

Is there anyone out there in economics who grasps the notion of reality testing and science?

That proposal is very serious. It’s a legally sanctioned way for the Fed to credit the account from which the Treasury pays the government’s bills. So long as that account has a credit balance, the government is, by definition, solvent and can pay its bills.

There is one aect of Krugman’s piece that has received not attention. The way out of the Great Depression was not the New Deal, but World War II; not because there was any lack of economic analysis or policy proposals, but because of the politics of the time (1937 et.seq.) which unsurprisingly offers a mirror to our own times. FDR could generate enough political support for the amount of public spending to pull us out of that crisis only by going to war. We see the same political dynamic in play today – Dimon, Blackfein et al are not going to permit any economic policy to exist that does not satisfy their personal and corporate greed. Sadly, the only kind of public spending that generates political support, sufficient demand and extreme profitability is war on a scale far greater than already exists. Likely to have an African focus to begin with, the War will be a a “win-win” for everybody, other than those miliions, or billions, who will lose everything. Including Muslim-Americans, the “New Jews.”

Bernanke knows the Great Depression. Greenspan privatized Keynes. Lost memory is not the problem. Lost faith is.

What makes you think it was “unwittingly?”

He may get a two-month extension — and have to come back three times more between now and the election. Did he plan that?

FUCK YOU WHERE YOU STAND.

You want me to work until I’m 67 and then fork over what meager life savings I have to the health insurance industry within the first couple of years of “retirement” ensuring that I die impoverished?

If that’s what you’re suggesting the sum of my life existence becomes then me and you we got a MAJOR FUCKING PROBLEM.

Do you have a link for your quote?

And what’s your point? Krugman’s interest in a fictional social science led him to an interest in a very real social science. So what?

It’s not like his analyses or ideas are informed by Asimov’s fictional psychohistory the way that the analyses and ideas of many on the right ridiculously justified by Rand’s philosophical nonsense.

There is a better solution: RAISE TAXES.

The solution is to mint more money now and eventually RAISE TAXES to fight the resulting inflation, which won’t happen until most of the slack is out of the economy.

Krugman Coins a Phrase: “The Lesser Depression”

interesting too, I pointed this out to paul when he came here to hawk his book, he didn’t respond but he certainly did not tell me my take was wrong

I asked him;

since real wages are down (or deoressued), american based investments are down, jobs are down assets are down,

how is this a recession instead of a depression?

I added;

“you know, the great depression is not the minimum, it’s the maximum of depressions”

so I guess he took me up

I wonder if he gave me credit anywhere

If the Democrats frame this debate as the Republicans seeking to dismantle social security and medicare in order to protect millionaires and big corporations that pay no taxes (GE) then they will win not only the debate, but the next elections.

Ah, what a meatball.

Maybe you would have understood the snark if I had put the word “serious” in quotation marks?

Who’s losing and who’s winning?

Seems like the winner’s reality is quite solid.

They’ve got no commitment to your reality.

I don’t think there is any difference between LOD making those smug analyses and dik morris making the same assertion about the president’s motives/negotiation. Both placate the red fringe. It is probably the kind of smoke o’donnell has to blow to keep his job and is payback for his dissing trump and the nbc suits.
Finally the msm is coming around from the
great recession’ to the ‘lesser depression’
It was a mistake from the beginning NOT to call this what it is. That is one of the many short comings in the administration’s messaging to the people.
It has been exacerbated by the administration’s coziness with Pharma and insurance during the heath care ‘debate’ which was the prelude to what is happening today. His willful ignoring of the jobless, and abandonment of the 99ers.
The administration’s refusal to hold accountable those who were CRIMINALLY responsible for the state of the economy.
Hiring dickie daley as COS and jeff immelt the inventor of outsourcing, to advise on’job creation’.
As crazy and venal as the republicans are, this president would doing battle on higher ground had he not inflicted these wounds, with a comparable venality, upon his administration and the American People in favor of the 1%.

Bullshit. What more can I say.

Yes, they do. They’re just apparently too small-minded to know that they do.

More bullshit.

Isn’t the FAA shut down the start of the national republican-driven breakdown?
Should anyone be flying?

Yes, and FDR only had to wait for the implosion of European Imperialism. Who is bidding time till the Empire’s implosion?

War begins at home.

Why do we have to go to the mats now? Raise the debt ceiling and let’s make this an issue in 2012. Let the American people decide, since these assholes can’t/

No idea what your problem is with Krugman. He’s a Keynesian. He advocates increased spending, particularly on extended unemployment benefits and infrastructure, and substantially more progressive taxation if we ever have a solid economy again. He’s been among the most accurate forecasters.

He made what many here consider the one crime worthy of capital punishment when he ultimately supported Obama’s health insurance industry bailout. I didn’t agree with him, but it was still possible to believe at that time that Obama would be at least a moderate liberal and not passing something on health care would have been a huge blow to his presidency.

If you throw out Paul Krugman and Dennis Kuncinich, I’m not sure how many people you have left.

I like Krugman very much, but some times he has problems with logic, e.g.:

Well, the feds have the Fed, which can print money. [...] but too much reliance on the printing press leads to unacceptable inflation. (Cue the MMT people — but after repeated discussions, I still don’t get how they sidestep the issue of limits on seignorage.)

So taxes are, first and foremost, about paying for what the government buys (duh). It’s true that they can also affect aggregate demand, and that may be something you want to do. But that really is a secondary issue. And if, as he claims “too much reliance on the printing press leads to unacceptable inflation,” then the reason for taxation is to fight inflation (duh).

… The only reason to raise taxes now, or promise future rises, is to address solvency concerns.

If, as he claims, “the feds have the Fed, which can print money,” then by definition insovency is an impossibility.

let’s see we can:
(A) Mint a coin
(B) Use the 14th Amendment
(C) Kick the can down the road
(D) Default. Fuck Eric the piss ant and Wall Street too.

Those are the only options I’m currently agreeable to. Any others?

… only if Obama can keep his hand away from the scalpel or hide the blood on his hands.

You are of course correct.

I have a somewhat friend who was one of the sub secretaries of Treasury under Reagan. He actually believes economics is science and they know all the truths of human nature.

The Asimov notions in the Foundation series have also contaminated my generation of scientists with dehumanizing fantasy. For good or ill a good story tops careful research every time

If you didn’t see Glenn Smith’s diary on the topic it is worth a read.here.http://firedoglake.com/2011/06/26/conservative-lies-about-human-nature/

In a nutshell. Simple truth.

But I also agree with what myshadow says in #61-Obama has lost the moral high ground and shown his true colors by his appointments.

At this point I don’t care about moral high ground as much as what these bastards (Dem and Repub) and their paymasters are doing to the rest of us. Frame it honestly and screw the GOP into the ground

For entertainment only.

My point? Well if I had to have one point, I suppose it would be that not only did Krugman advocate the precursors of this deluge (if you dig enough), not only is he consistently flaccid now when poking power, but it seems he imagined himself a psycho-hero.

Doesn’t that intrigue you?

I got my economics license in Wal Mart. Where’d you get yours? Down on the farm by the bullshit?

You must be kidding. Power does not aggrandize by being “small-minded”.

I just listened to Michael Hudson’s Euthanasion of Industry interview on Guns & Butter with Bonnie Faulkner. One of the commenters mentions the good cop / bad cop Obama / Tea Party routine.

There’s one thing I can’t understand in Krugman’s piece, and it’s something he keeps repeating. I wrote to him about it, but he’s a busy man and didn’t respond, so I’ll ask it here. He writes,

“In particular, cash-rich corporations see no reason to invest that cash in the face of weak consumer demand.”

This doesn’t work. There may be weak consumer demand overall, but the cash rich corporations themselves aren’t experiencing it. Take, for example, a particular cash rich corporation, Apple Computer Corp., one of the cash richest. It just published record profits, made the headlines in the SJ Mercury News, it’s primary choirgirl. Apple is a consumer electronics and internet sales corporation for its product portfolio. So there is no way that record profits show that it is facing “weak consumer demand”. The weak consumer demand figures are the result of consumer durables — those items that require borrowing large amounts of money, and also coincide with buying houses. Just wanted Paul Krugman to know that. Those corporations are holding back because they are expecting to be relieved of their obligation to pay taxes, and no other reason.

You’re down to two? We’re making progress.

Ron Paul and Dean Baker have been suggesting a special case of (D) where the government “destroys” (repudiates?) the $1.6T of bonds held by the Fed, whcih decreases the national debt by $1.6T giving the Treasury $1.6T of headroom to sell more bonds.

On the contrary, small-minded people often end up wielding power. There aren’t too many true philosopher-kings out there.

If you read Krugman’s Return to Depression Economics, he supplies figures to show that this contention deserves some caveats. The so-called real economy, the main street economy, jobs, had returned to normal before the war. What had not returned was the so-called nominal economy, the investment economy, or Wall Street economy. That was the economy jump-started by the war. So while it is true that the full economy did not return to normal until after World War II, it is only the banking and speculation economy that was lagging by the time the war came around. Main street had returned. That’s why the discrepancy in points of view often breaks down on party lines as to whether the New Deal or the War fixed the economy last depression.

You have no point. And I’m not intrigued at all.

The issue of holding back to avoid taxes is only an issue re assets corporations hold outside the U.S. They have plenty of reserves in the U.S. Capacity is relatively easy to track. If you feel like playing on google for a few minutes you can find out how much excess capacity the U.S. economy has now. It’s large. By definition, excess capacity demonstrates demand is less than the ability to supply goods and services.

I hope this helps.

I like your idea.

Oh look. Somebody else got a point. You? None.

Party on.

Except that any competent fact-checking, and certainly most of the well-informed of FDL, will reveal plainly that it’s OBAMA seeking to do these things. Enabled by an awful lot of Dems in the House and Senate.

What else do you call it when the President _rejects_ a clean bill to raise the debt ceiling–which would allow the rest of these issues to be debated without the manufactured panic of “ZOMG! Default! Shutdown!”

(Yeah, wigwam, ya beat me to it. Whatcha drinkin?)

That diary rang my bell, too.

Lets entertain the notion here3 that in reality the kabuki show is just that and the the real agenda IS to collapse the worlds economy by those who have no use for democracy either here or abroad.

This is world conquest by the elite through economic subterfuge and no amount of political activism outside direct non violent action by the majority of the American population will end this obscene spectacle in Washington DC.

Millions of people are struggling as hostages held by a few hundred individuals who have lost their connection (if they ever had any ) with the rest of humanity !

Apparently such accumulated wealth is an anathema to democracy and should be cut out by the general population as a cancer !

Or you stop giving money to the richest corporations in the world. You know, the OIL COMPANIES. And you reclaim the income you stopped collecting from the job-exporters. When you have a deficit, it is no longer “the American people’s money”. It is the American people’s debt they ALREADY INCURRED. Time to pay up.

Economists have a multitude of inconsistencies and very few consistencies. Look for those.

He could have been a great President had he been a Progressive President. Now he’ll be simply Hoover President.

We are millions while those standing against us are no more than hundreds . Simple math shows that all that is necessary is that 99% of the population stop cooperating with their own castrations.

Asimov is responsible for what again?

Ideologies that reduce life to materialism are what you’re talking about, and you can’t pin that on conservatives, even if they applied it to capitalism in their own unfunny way.

A short biography of John Trudell.

Some of his work includes a video on his thoughts regarding “Democracy” plus shorter music videos as “Rich Man’s War,” “Spirit Horses,” and “Crazy Horse.”

Don’t miss Trudell’s short, food-for-thought musings on “Religious vs Spiritual” Perception of Reality (video).

I am not sure I understand. Are you saying that the less cash-rich are waiting for a handout?

Krugman doesn’t mind a little dance for socialism for the rich.

He should check himself in for counseling at gambling anonymous. I am tired of him going in to negotiations with a poker face , where the republicans hand him his ass on a silver platter. Then he comes crawling back to our side for more shit to give them. When his supporters whisper in his ear sotto voce that certain things were not his to put on the gambling table.He becomes disgruntled and throws a hisi-fit. How do a person carry themselves who habitually feels wells and self contained when there is moral miasma to ones lies?

“Deficits don’t matter.”

Sound familiar?

The dumbest thing in the world is to run a credit card up and then insist that you need to stop paying for rent and food in order to pay that card balance down.

The first order of business should be JOBS, decent jobs that create enough income that require people to pay revenue to the government rather than take revenue away in the form of food stamps,UE, subsidized housing, etc. etc.

Yes, except that empire was anathema to Democracy too.

Now that you can’t sell a Beamer for every garage it’s time to fold the grand illusion.

No, you won’t pin that on conservatives because you can project it onto other “Ideologues”.

Economic warfare has been practiced by our policy makers all over the third world for decades .

For decades all over South America elites which were representative of maybe one or two percent of the population, who had the right family names and skin color, ruled with an iron fist. These fascists were bolstered or brought to power by our own government for the very purpose of economic domination by American corporate interests and their peoples ,many millions of them suffered horribly .

The same lack of humanity on display over decades practiced by our political elites in the third world is now being practiced at home .

The old joke , ” Why has their never been a coup in the US ? Because there’s no American embassy there.” is about to be outdated .

If you become friends with someone who murders and abuses others for sport can you really be suprized when they turn on you with the same behavior ?

Yeah. Let’s rejuvenate that joke.

Why has there never been a coup in the US?

Because they didn’t need an American Embassy.

I just got back from 11 days in DC with 40,000 people who didn’t know each other and who cooperated and got along just fine. The bankstas think of us as their cattle and would like us to adopt their viewpoint to make their job that much easier.

“The Perception Management Squad vs The Love Police” (video, May 7, 2011)

With a lot of pressure including that of Avaaz members, “Murdoch drops bid for UK’s BSkyB” (MediaLifeMagazine.com, by Bill Cromwell, July 13, 2011), but I say don’t stop there. Americans, Canadians, Aussies, and Brits are piling on to take down the international Murdoch lie factory (links for action here).

think globally – act globally. how does one explain the apparent contradiction between record corporate profits and weak consumer demand? two simple answers that i’m sure K understands: 1) Apple is a transnational corporation selling to a global, not national, market; 2) profits are being generated by illusion: currency manipulations, CDOs, derivatives, fraud, robbery, etc. having nothing at all to do with “supply” or “demand” or any other “free market” fantasy.

Why not have the fed buy up, oh, I don’t know, say 10T of the outstanding debt and burn it.

My point is that the corporations with the cash aren’t the same corporations that are experiencing the lack of consumer demand. So it isn’t them that are waiting to hire because of lack of consumer demand.

Gee, that isn’t what their report said. Do you actually know that, or are you just creating it out of whole cloth? They cited actually their sales of products and those product’s related contracts. Which means they aren’t experiencing any lack of consumer demand at all. They talked about making a market push into China, but that was a future plan. They are one of the corporations holding a lot of assets offshore. They are doing some hiring, but they are not exactly opening the floodgates here in the U.S.

So explain. Apple is not holding back because of weak consumer demand.

What do you mean by “we”? You mistakenly conflate the top 0.5% of Americans with the bottom 99.5% of America. You are correct that the top 0.5% which consists of wealthy speculators, corporate CEOs, and Wall Street executives have indeed been living beyond their means committing legalized corporate embezzlement and bankrupting their company and country by firing middle class employees, shipping jobs overseas, maximizing dividends and stock price appreciation for large shareholders, paying themselves outrageous, excessive, and unjustified multi-$10,000,000 bonuses and pay packages, using corporate funds to buy several mansions, jets, and luxury cars, and crying to those same middle class taxpayers that they victimized for a bailout, subsidies, tax breaks, and salvation from free market discipline after they ran their companies and the economy into the ground.

Yes, the top 0.5% of Americans have been living beyond their means which is why the top 0.5% should be taxed, fined, jailed for corruption, sabotage, and treason, and exiled to a deserted island in the Pacific.

The bottom 99.5% have been victims of this racket perpetrated by the rich. They have NOT lived beyond their means. They have suffered stagnant wages, reduced job prospects, higher consumer prices, and fraud by bankers, credit card companies, lenders, and politicians they elected to office. There are two Americas. The top 0.5% of America caused this crisis and were REWARDED for causing the crisis while the bottom 99.5% of America have been victimized for the past 40 years.

Only someone as stupid and uneducated as you, donbacon, could naively lump everyone into the word “we”. Maybe you are part of the top 0.5% and, if that is the case, then I don’t blame you for resorting to spin right-wing pro-bank, pro-rich talking points, and distortion of history to preserve the states quo. But, if you are a member of the bottom 99.5%, you are a MORON and you are victimizing YOURSELF by advocating for cuts because, if the economy, the poor, and seniors go down, YOU WILL GO DOWN TOO.

Oh, BTW, tell your friends at stupid.com that I said “hi”.

Worse… Rand was a satirist!

… which makes the fact her silly rantings in a satiric novel (seriously? How does one hold up the world, exactly, when one is standing on top of it?) became the basis for our economic policy… tragic.

Nothing is more frightening to the autocrat in power than the people coming together.

it’s a world in which the wealthy no longer need the proles (that would be us)

Their fortunes are the new Emperor’s new “products” — what were formerly considered “financial services” were transformed into “products” which are instruments that move other people’s money into their bank accounts.

Neat, eh?

Worry not. These periods of unspeakable greed and self-absorption historically are short-lived. That’s because there are more of us than them and they can’t kill us fast enough to avoid finding their grandkids swinging from lampposts.

Further, since this time their greed is multinational and global, so will be the backlash.

Take care of you and yours, become as self-sustaining as you can. This storm will blow over much more quickly than you think.

She certainly intended to do more than entertain. She was openly hoping to influence the world. I don’t do theology very well but I know she certainly worshiped and elevated sociopathy to acceptability. As you likely know one of her early mentors was a child killer.

Asimov I think simply dehumanized through narcissism and the worship of technology.

The Fed has already bought up roughly $2T of federal debt. (Dean Baker and Ron Paul say $1.6T, while following David’s link eventually leads to an July 20 article by Mark Kleiman in which he says $3T.) In any case, buying up that $2T of debt didn’t have much of an impact on the economy one way or the other. It didn’t kick off inflation, nor did it cure unemployment.

So, what if the bought up say $10T of debt? Hmmmm.

I used to think of the national debt as a reservior along a river. When the river floods one could divert water into the reservior, protecting the downstream population from flood. And during a drought, one could release water from the reservor saving the crops downstream.

The MMT people, particularly Stephanie Kelton, have convinced me that’s wrong in that our highly efficient bond markets give bonds roughly the same liquidity as gold. I had the notion that money tied up in bonds did not participate in bidding up prices, just like water tied up in a reservoir doesn’t participate in floods. Stephanie has convinced me that this reservoir leaks so badly that it makes no difference.

From that perspective, I’d expect the Fed buying up $10T of U.S. debt wouldn’t have much effect. Ultimately, bond holders would be swapping bonds for credit at the Fed and other banks, which is a bit more liquid and pays a bit lower interest rate.

But now lets get to the part about “destroying” those bonds. I suspect that doing so is illegal; they are after all federal property. Secondly, it would shake the confidence of many who would consider doing so to be the repudiation of debt.

But, that said, there is a very legal way to accomplish the equivalent. The Treasury could mint a $10T platinum coin and buy those bonds from the Fed. At that point, those bonds are a debt of the Treasury that the Treasury has paid off. It’s all documented to be legal and sound bookkeeping.

There are two things the MMT people have never convinced me of: One is that their system will work in a global economy where there are multiple governments functioning as multiple sources/sinks of money. The other is that all of their equations deserve to be linear, the way they do them (they are linear because they are homogeneous with respect to time, like a balance sheet). Those two suspicions are enough to make me not want to drive off the cliff the first time with an economy the size of the U.S. to try the theory. I am always startled at a theory that is linear. And I am always startled at a theory that can be uncoupled. So I’m always suspicious.

Sound like a call for the enactment of the Progressive budget

The ”Congressional Progressive Caucus People’s Budget” can be found at http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=70

I agree MMT solutions will cause folks in other countries to sell dollars, lowering the value of the dollar, and causing other problems, but it may be a better result than harming Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

So lets just mint that $30 trillion dollar coin and retire all US debt!

I agree that the lack of feedback loops means MMT is not reality – but it is a perspective that does suggest new policy.

I’m ready for a lower value dollar!

I’ll say a little more.

He’s an idiot. All our money went to bail out the corrupt banks. More in one year than the US had spent in the previous 206 years:

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/06/bailout-costs-vs-big-historical-events/

People are losing everything, but 99.99% of them lived right and obeyed the law. No fraud, no corruption, just companies run into the ground while CEOs walked away with billions, and then got taxpayer bucks to bailout the mess they made.

MODS: I thought you would have edited the comment @54 by now. Letting a comment like this one stand opens the door to far lower standards for what constitutes appropriate discussion than those that usually exist at FDL.