Monthly Archives: October 2012

American weirdness seeks to intervene in Honduras

Posted on October 8, 2012 by | 16 comments

By William K. Black

Michael Strong is an American businessman who is a devotee of  the Austrian school of economics.  Austrians view democratic governance as so inherently illegitimate that they claim that virtually any governmental program irretrievably consigns us to the “Road to Serfdom.”   Strong has decided to save Hondurans from their government.  He wants his corporation to buy a Honduran city named Puerto Castilla and turn it into his first global “model city.”  The Honduran government holds power through a coup that removed that forced out Manuel Zelaya, the democratically-elected President.  The coup occurred during the Obama administration and returned the oligarchs to power.  The administration criticized the coup but recognized the (eventual) newly elected President Profirio Lobo.  The constitutional chamber of Honduras’ Supreme Court (which provided a fig leaf of respectability for the coup) rule 4-to-1 that it was unconstitutional to create privately run cities.  (The decision is expected to be appealed to the full Supreme Court.)

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Ideology trumps science and blocks regulation

Posted on October 8, 2012 by | 10 comments

By William K. Black
(Cross posted at Benzina.com)

This column was prompted by a story that ran Friday entitled “Congressman Calls Evolution Lie from ‘Pit of Hell.’”  Yes, unintentional self-parody continues to reign supreme.

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Letter to My Brother

Posted on October 5, 2012 by | 55 comments

By J. D. Alt

My brother, Jeff, is a very smart guy who went to West Point, got a masters degree at Purdue, had a successful career as a business man and now, in his retirement, can sometimes beat his wife at golf. I sent him the NEP link to Playing Monopolis Monopoly and the other two essays I wrote as well, Men on a Wall and New Sense Common Sense. Since then we’ve been corresponding about MMT—with me trying to get him to “see” it, and he, to his credit, actually doing his best to “see” it while also collecting a lot of other opinions on the topic. Recently he sent me one of these other opinions, which included a textbook circular flow diagram that seemed to prove that MMT was impossible. Continue reading →

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The Peril of Obama’s “Man Crush” on Geithner is exposed by the Debate

Posted on October 5, 2012 by | 57 comments

By William K. Black

FDR transformed the nation when he was confronted with the Great Depression and World War II.  He famously welcomed the hate of the banksters.  President Obama wanted the love (and the contributions) of the banksters.  He chose Timothy Geithner to be his pipeline to the banksters because Geithner shared Obama’s lack of passion for holding the banksters accountable for their frauds that drove the ongoing crisis.  We have known the core of these sad facts for years, for they were revealed (irony of ironies) in a May 22, 2010 article whose theme was that we had all done Geithner and Obama a terrible injustice by criticizing them for their servile approach to the banks.  The key facts that the article disclosed can be summarized in a sentence:  Obama developed a “man crush” on Geithner and decided to follow Geithner’s policies to bail out the banksters rather than hold them accountable for the frauds that made them wealthy and caused the Great Recession.  Obama’s “man crush” is particularly odd given the fact that Geithner is a Republican who, as a fig leaf, became an independent.

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JPMorgan targeted for role in financial crisis

Posted on October 3, 2012 by | 4 comments

JPMorgan Chase & Co. has become the first target of the task force that the  Justice Department created this year to hold big Wall Street banks accountable for their role in the financial crisis. NEP’s William Black provides input regarding these first steps taken by regulators to prosecute in an article at the LA Times. You can read the LA Times article here.

The Globe and Mail has also published an article on the prosecution of JPMorgan Chase & Co with input from William Black. You can read the Globe and Mail article here.

 

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Ryan Talks Jobs and Exposes the Lies about the 47%

Posted on October 3, 2012 by | 12 comments

By William K. Black
(Cross posted at Huffington Post)

This Monday, I posted an article entitled:  “Let’s test Romney’s claims about the 47% by offering the unemployed jobs.”

The article explained that Romney, Ryan, and Charles Murray claim that 47% of Americans receive governmental assistance because they are morally defective and shiftless.  It goes through why Romney and Ryan know that they are lying when they use the 47% figure to slander Americans as refusing to “take personal responsibility and care for their lives” and as failing to pay taxes.  Continue reading →

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MODERN MONEY: The way a sovereign currency “works”

Posted on October 2, 2012 by | 7 comments

By L. Randall Wray

Presentated at the conference: Central Banks, Financial Systems, and Economic Development, Banco Central de la Republica Argentina in Buenos Aires, Argentina on 10/2/2012

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Robert J. Samuelson tries to create a moral panic about deficits

Posted on October 2, 2012 by | 41 comments

By William K. Black

The Washington Post leads the pack when it comes to generating what scientists term a “moral panic” about budget deficits.  As part of that effort they generated the series of myths that Paul Ryan was “serious,” “courageous,” and “expert” about “solving” the “deficit crisis.”  The newspaper’s theme is that anyone who doesn’t fall for their effort to create a moral panic is not “serious” and should be ignored.  The paper runs a column by Robert J. Samuelson that is devoted to generating a moral panic about the deficit.  Like Ryan, his central targets are imposing austerity and cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.  Continue reading →

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Let’s test Romney’s claims about the 47% by offering the unemployed jobs

Posted on October 1, 2012 by | 28 comments

By William Black
(Cross posted at Benzinga.com & Huffington Post)

I have explained how Governor Romney and Representative Ryan have self-destructed because they have followed Charles Murray’s demands that the wealthy denounce working class Americans’ supposed refusal to take personal responsibility for their lives by refusing to work.  Murray is the far right’s leading intellectual.  Murray’s Myth is that the wealthy are rich because they are morally superior to the lazy poor and that the poor are not employed because they are lazy.  Murray’s explanation for his support for Governor Romney says it all:  “Who better to be president of the greatest of all capitalist nations than a man who got rich by being a brilliant capitalist?” Continue reading →

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