Daily Archives: February 1, 2014

Jamie Dimon’s $10 Million Raise is a “Common Sense” Fraud Reward

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Devin Smith | 6 comments

Andrew Ross Sorkin (and his “Deal Book” team at the New York Times) seemed to have built an insurmountable lead in the race to be declared the most unctuous panderer to the financial plutocrats who grew wealthy by leading the frauds that blew up our economy. As I wrote recently, Politico became my instant dark horse candidate for the Street’s sycophant-in-chief with Ben White’s fantasy that “In 2009, Washington went to war against big Wall Street banks.” I noted that the “war” consisted of the Treasury and the Fed dumping trillions of dollars on the biggest Wall Street banks and evoked Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof: “May the Lord smite me with [such a “war”]. And may I never recover!”

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Posted in William K. Black

Tagged jamie dimon, JPM, JPM Chase

Introducing Modern Money Monopoly (MMM)

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Devin Smith | 16 comments

By Alex Hofmann

Coming back to Stephanie Kelton’s “A Contest: MMT for Eighth Graders” from last May, we have yet to find a good way of explaining basic modern money concepts to children. I followed the blog thread with much interest, but it seems that the initiative has got stuck on the fundamental challenge of finding child-like analogies for concepts that are too abstract even for well-educated grown-ups. As has been pointed out many times, didactics or ‘framing’ is perhaps MMT’s biggest strategic challenge.

Looking at my own children, a lot if not most of their learning happens not by chewing on concepts but through play, often enough by integrating recent experiences into their favourite games. Hence, what might work better than verbal explanations is an adaptation of the popular ‘Monopoly’ board game: Modern Money Monopoly (MMM).

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16 Comments

Posted in Guest Blogger

Tagged MMM, Modern Monetary Monopoly

President Obama, Are You Going to Detonate the World’s Largest “Carbon Bomb”?

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Devin Smith | 22 comments

By Michael Hoexter

January 31, 2014

Dear President Obama,

I campaigned for you in the primaries and general election of 2008, write about the economics of climate change, work in the area of energy efficiency and renewable energy, and am a climate activist in Northern California. I am writing you to appeal to your highest ethical values and best understanding of scientific reality to deny approval to the Keystone XL pipeline project as well as deny approval to retrofits and new construction of other cross-border pipelines, such as the Alberta Clipper line which will enable more economical exploitation of the Albertan tar sands oil deposits. The Albertan tar sands were described by the climate scientist James Hansen as the largest “carbon bomb” still untapped by the fossil fuel industry, which if exploited mean “game over” for a climate hospitable to human beings and our civilization.

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