By William K. Black
This column was prompted by an unusual source for me. Cuenca High Life is a site for ex pats living in Ecuador. It often discusses serious issues of national importance. The three issues a recent volume discussed are all important economic issues and they have prompted a fourth economic issue I will discuss in this column.
In Part One of this series, I considered “Fix the Debt’s” claim that high levels of debt cause high unemployment and gave a few reasons why this is a false claim. In Part Two, I followed with a review of the historical record from 1930 to the present and showed that it refutes this claim throughout this period, and that there is not even one Administration where the evidence doesn’t contradict “Fix the Debts” theory. In this part I’ll continue my examination of the other four “top reasons” why “Fix the Debt” insists that the National Debt should matter to you.
Posted in Joe Firestone
Tagged $60 Trillion Coin, austerity, CBO projections, debt-to-GDP ratio, deficit reduction, deficit spending, High Value Platinum Coin Seigniorage, HVPCS, interest rates, MMT, modern money theory, national debt, Peter G. Peterson, Social Security, unemployment, “Fix the Debt”
By Dan Kervick
Josiah Neely enters into a recent discussion in the economics blogosphere about the potential impact of religious orientation on attitudes toward monetary policy. I find that discussion, which began with a partially tongue-in-cheek Project Syndicate piece by former Moody’s VP Christopher Mahoney, to be a bit tasteless for my tender sensibilities, and I have no intention of entering it myself. But Neely doesn’t actually spend much time on religious beliefs and instead zeroes in on cultural and political attitudes:
Still, I do think Mahoney has put his finger on one reason why many conservatives and libertarians view monetary expansion with such a jaundiced eye. If there is one economic lesson the Right has internalized, it is Heinland’s aphorism that There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. And attempts to improve the economy by what is often derisively described as “printing money” can at first blush seem like, if not a free lunch, then at least as free lunch money.
Posted in Dan Kervick
By William K. Black
(Cross posted at Benzinga.com)
FBI Director Robert Mueller is taking his victory lap as he steps down after 12 years of service. I have done three articles in a series that explains how the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) conned the FBI into adopting the Tea Party’s mythology about the causes of the crisis – virginal banks beset by ultra-sophisticated fraudulent hairdressers. The MBA created a faux definition of mortgage fraud under which the bank and its senior officers were always the victims instead of the perpetrators.
Posted in William K. Black
Tagged accounting control fraud, banksters, FBI, mortgage fraud, Robert Mueller, white collar crime
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