Daily Archives: March 4, 2015

The Millennials’ Money (Pt 2)

By J.D. Alt

The comments on Part 1 have given me pause and food for thought—and they are much appreciated. Obviously, the generational theme is a lot more complicated than simply BGXers versus Millennials, but I don’t want to get lost explaining or defending the generational theories of Strauss & Howe. I’m sensitive to the critique that making BGXers out the way I am is a dramatic oversimplification and might, in some degree, be counterproductive to my goals by alienating the BGXers themselves. I’m struggling with that because, on the other hand, I want the book to be a “simple” and highly focused message—and the message is (a) that understanding and effectively using modern fiat money could very usefully become the “political brand” of the Millennials, and (b) the BGXers, because of their ideological baggage, can be expected to resist the whole way down the road.

In the meantime, what comes next in the proposed book is the essay Diagrams & Dollars, which I won’t repeat here, since it is already posted. The beginning and end of the essay will be re-written to better flow with the Millennial narrative. The section after D&D is what follows below. This is a particularly difficult segment for me: I am trying to convey, accurately, the money operations described by L. Randall Wray—which is a bit like trying to describe the rotations of a rubric’s-cube puzzle—and to do it in a way that won’t wrangle the brain of a typical Millennial reader who isn’t aspiring to being a banker. Comments here will be especially helpful!

Continue reading

A Question to Our Bank CEOs Who Are Criminals: “Have You No Sense of Decency”?

By William K. Black
Quito: March 4, 2015

The FCPA Blog, an invaluable aid to anyone involved in the effort against corruption, has just run a story that epitomizes the neo-liberal approach to “liberty.” There is a massive movement, well-funded by political contributions, to privatize our prison systems. The private jailors overwhelmingly want to deal with the lowest risk jail populations – and then claim that they are “less expensive” than other prisons owned by the State.

The “Cash for Kids” Scheme

In Pennsylvania, in a fitting illustration of the dark side of von Hayek’s praise of “spontaneous order,” this privatization movement reached its neo-liberal peak when the owner of two privatized juvenile detention facilities bribed two Pennsylvania judges to send more kids to jail and maximize the owners’ profits. The huge size of the bribes demonstrates the scale of the miscarriage of justice and the enormous profits that injustice produced for the owner of the privatized juvenile detention facility. The FCPA Blog tells the sickening tale.

Continue reading