Tag Archives: sequestration

Bipartisan Budget Deal

NEP’s Bill Black appears on TheRealNews.com. The discussion is about the new budget deal and the fact that it secures austerity policies and fails to extend unemployment benefits. (Bill appears at the 8:00 minute mark).

IN PRAISE OF POLITICAL DYSFUNCTION

By Marshall Auerback

The lamentable state of American political parties has become common sport amongst the chattering classes in DC and beyond. Although, one wonders whether this dysfunction has really been such a bad thing, when considering how united bipartisan “responsible” action always seems to result in yet more budget cuts.

By virtue of the fact that Congress and the Obama Administration couldn’t agree on much for the past few years, America’s deficits got large enough to put a floor on demand. The transfer payments via the automatic stabilisers worked to stabilise private sector incomes and allowed a general, albeit tepid, recovery in the economy.

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“Fixing the Debt Without Breaking America” now available

NEP’s Joe Firestone has just published a kindle book  timed to coincide with the arrival of the sequester deadline. The book, Fixing the Debt without Breaking America: Austerity, the Trillion Dollar Coin, and Ending Debt Ceiling, Sequester, and Budgetary Crises, consists of reorganized content from Joe’s blogs plus three completely new chapters. You can follow this link to get a copy.

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Sequestration – Fourth Austerity Shoe Drops

Latest segment from The Black Financial and Fraud Report at theRealNews.com

REAL NEWS NETWORK — “Welcome back to the Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay in Baltimore. And welcome to this week’s edition of The Bill Black Financial and Fraud Report. [Professor] Black now joins us from Kansas City, Missouri. Bill’s an Associate Professor of Economics & Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He’s a white-collar criminologist, a former financial regulator. He is the author of the book, The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One.

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Stephanie Kelton and the Sequestration on UP with Chris Hayes

Stephanie appeared on UP with Chris Hayes this morning (3/3/13) discussing the sequestration. You can view the program by clicking this link or the image below.

The Sequester Is Awful And Obama Didn’t Even Try To Stop It

NEP’s William Black appears on Daily Ticker with Henry Blodget. With two days to go before “sequestration” chops an indiscriminate $85 billion out of Federal government spending, the blame game has reached a fever pitch. Bill explains it is dumb economics and some of the short term impacts of the sequester.

You can view the episode at this link. (Sorry no embedding Yahoo videos)

[Yahoo was having technical difficulty – if video is not Henry and Bill, click image of House of Representatives to immediate right of Richard Branson beneath video.]

Some One Penny Bets

By James Stuart

This post is not about the TDC, although I am a big fan. This is about putting into the MMT conversation a different point of view about Obama. Most MMTers seem to think that the President is a Trojan Horse – attractive on the outside; dangerous, even lethal on the inside. I have a different perspective. What I often do now, when I disagree with someone, instead of arguing, I make one penny bets. The bets need to be about something definite and measurable. If I win, my position on the issue may not be proven, but it is at least partially vindicated.

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The Political Economy of the Coin and the Debt Ceiling

By Matthew Berg

A fateful Saturday in January

On Saturday afternoon, the White House ruled out using platinum coin seignorage as a way to defuse the political crisis caused by Congressional Republicans’ unwillingness to raise the debt ceiling. In the words of press secretary Jay Carney:

“There are only two options to deal with the debt limit: Congress can pay its bills or they can fail to act and put the nation into default.”

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