Monthly Archives: March 2014

NEP’s Bill Black speaks at FLACSO about Ecuador’s Miracle

Posted on March 22, 2014 by William Black | 3 comments

For our Spanish speaking friends. While Bill Black speaks in English, the Spanish language translator tends to swamp Bill’s audio.

3 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

An Open Letter to Don Beyer, VA – 8th Candidate for Congress

Posted on March 21, 2014 by Joe Firestone | 2 comments

By Joe Firestone

My Congressman, Jim Moran, is retiring this year and his seat is up for grabs in the VA – 8th Congressional District. This is a solidly blue district made even more solid by the Republican gerrymander following their win in the disastrous elections (for poor people, for women, for the middle class, and for minorities) of 2010 in Virginia. So, the question is, which of the eleven candidates who are running in the primary will win it, and become the heavy favorite to win the Congressional election in November.

The heavy primary favorite is Don Beyer, a noted auto dealer in Northern Virginia, who has served as Lieutenant Governor twice, and also as Ambassador to Switzerland. My impression of Ambassador Beyer has been favorable. I have a friend who bought cars from him over many years and who had his Volvos serviced at his dealership all the while, and he had nothing but good things to say about the integrity of the service he received.

That said, however, and personal characteristics aside, I’d like Beyer to clarify his positions on the issues. So, I’m addressing this open letter to him.

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2 Comments

Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged austerity, deficit reduction, Don Beyer, entitlements, High Value Platinum Coin Seigniorage, HR 676, HVPCS, job guarantee, medicare, medicare for all, MMT, Modern Monet Theory, plutocracy, representation, Social Security, VA - 8th primary

Rescuing the 1%

Posted on March 19, 2014 by Devin Smith | 35 comments

By J.D. ALT

lsaver In an earlier essay I suggested we just forget the 1%. This was an idea not entirely supported by the commentary that followed. On reflection, I’ve decided it isn’t the right approach after all. What we really need to do is rescue the 1%.

They may seem like the last people who need rescuing, but when you consider the facts it becomes clear they really do need to be tossed a life-preserver. The problem is their basic business model is self-annihilating. This is not a new observation in history, but it is worth thinking through again. CEOs and board members are required by fiduciary law to maximize profits for their shareholders. If they fail to aggressively pursue this goal with every business decision, they might actually get sued by an angry shareholder deprived of his maximum return on investment. So maximizing profits is the order-of-the-day—every day. This imperative has been dramatically reinforced (and distorted) over the past three decades—as explained and illustrated by William K. Black—by evolving corporate compensation rules awarding huge bonuses to upper level managers based on the short-term profits their business and “accounting” strategies are able to generate.

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35 Comments

Posted in J. D. Alt

Tagged 1%, MMT, Modern Monetary Theory

NEP’s Randy Wray appears on Euro Truffa

Posted on March 19, 2014 by Devin Smith | 1 comment

Euro Truffa (eurotruffa.it) interviews Randy Wray about MMT in this video from March 13, 2014. After the Introduction which is presented in Italian, the questions are presented in English with Italian subtitles.

1 Comment

Posted in L. Randall Wray

Tagged MMT, Modern Monetary Theory

NEP’s Bill Black on GamaTV in Ecuador

Posted on March 18, 2014 by William Black | 1 comment

NEP’s Bill Black is interviewed on GamaTV in Ecuador, 3/18/2014. Note: Interviewer speaks Spanish but a translator translates all questions to English.

1 Comment

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged correa, ecuador

Still Not Over: CPC Update

Posted on March 18, 2014 by Joe Firestone | 7 comments

By Joe Firestone

The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) recently issued its “Better Off Budget” document as an alternative to the White House/OMB document, and the coming House budget document, a Republican/conservative alternative. The “Better Off Budget” has received enthusiastic evaluations from writers affiliated with the DC progressive community. Richard Eskow’s recent treatment is typical and provides other reviews that are laudatory. These “progressives” clearly see the CPC budget as anything but an austerity budget. But is it, or is it not?

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7 Comments

Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged austerity, Better Off Budget, budget plans, budget projections, Congressional Progressive Caucus, CPC, debt and deficits, MMT, modern money theory

Executive Orders: A Fair Ranking of Presidents from Least Active to Most Active

Posted on March 16, 2014 by Joe Firestone | 1 comment

By Joe Firestone

Lately, Republicans have been riding the hobby horse of charging the President with being a dictator. Well clearly he is not that, or he would have had them imprisoned, or worse, a long time ago. On the other hand, the President’s hands are far from clean when it comes to activities like illegal surveillance of Americans, drone strikes without due process, collusion of the Government with local authorities to repress Occupy exercising its rights of free speech and assembly, and failure to enforce the law with reference to torture of prisoners, and control frauds in the FIRE sector.Have I covered everything, or did I forget something?

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1 Comment

Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged Executive Orders, Executive Orders per year, presidential norms, republicans, violations of the constitution

An Even Better Way to Get Money Out of Politics

Posted on March 16, 2014 by Joe Firestone | 7 comments

By Joe Firestone

A couple of weeks ago, I posted on a simple solution to the problem of getting money out of politics. I said then:

If the election you’re voting in is virtually a two candidate contest, then vote for the candidate, who, in combination with her/his supporters spends the least amount of money. In a virtual multi-candidate contest, do the same thing.
That’s the proposal, in its simplest form. Its objective is to reverse the current race to the bottom in buying elections by ensuring that there would be a powerful incentive to start a race to the top to raise and spend as little money as possible in campaigns. That incentive is that if you spend too much you lose, pure and simple.
The other rationale for the rule is that the person who raises and spends the least amount of money for a campaign, will generally be the person who is “less bought” by wealthy people, financial interests, and large corporations. Eventually, if the rule took hold it would no longer be said of the Congress that “the banks own the place.”

I cross-post at a number of sites, and at Daily Kos I received a comment from “Musial,” which being of a certain age, engaged me immediately. The comment advised me to read the “money outta politics” solution, which “Musial” felt was superior to my own. It says:

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7 Comments

Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged bought politicians, Buckley v. Valeo, Citizens United, congress, Getting money out of politics, jurisdiction stripping, money in politics, the Supreme Court

The Most Dishonest Number in the World: LIBOR

Posted on March 15, 2014 by William Black | 13 comments

By William K. Black

The FDIC has sued 16 of the largest banks in the world plus the British Bankers Association (BBA) alleging that they engaged in fraud and collusion to manipulate the London Inter-bank Offered Rate (LIBOR). BBA called LIBOR “The most important number in the world.”

LIBOR is actually many numbers that depend on the currency and term (maturity) of the loan. The collusion involved manipulating most of these rates. A vast number of loans and derivatives are priced off of these “numbers.” Estimates of the notional dollar amount of deals affected by the collusion range from $300-550 trillion in deals manipulated at any given time. The LIBOR frauds began no later than 2005 and continued through 2011.

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13 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged Libor, libor scandal

Risk managers should learn from the mistakes of others

Posted on March 14, 2014 by William Black | Comments Off

Bill Black has just received unsolicited praise for his book about control fraud theory from one of the most credible sources possible. Vincent Kaminski was Enron’s (honest and exceptionally skilled) top risk officer. His positive, but ultimately futile, role at Enron is discussed in all the best books about that classic example of an accounting control fraud. Kaminski has just written that:

“There is one particular book I wish I had read in the early days of my business career, which would have saved me and the firms I worked for a lot of money.

The book, entitled The best way to rob a bank is to own one: how corporate executives and politicians looted the S&L industry, was written by William Black, associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. It is based on his experience as a regulator of savings and loans (S&L) institutions during the S&L crisis of the 1980s and early 1990s. Within its pages, Black introduces the concept of ‘control fraud’ – effectively, a very simple recipe for great riches and limited civil and criminal liability.”

NEP thanks Energy.net and Risk.net for their kind permission to reprint the excerpt of Mr. Kaminksy’s post that was originally posted on 12 March 2014.