Monthly Archives: September 2016

‘Control Fraud’ – Corrupt Bankers Do It, Congress Ignores It

The bipartisan shellacking Senators gave John Stumpf, the Wells Fargo CEO, last week made for great television, but did nothing about the real scandal: Our government continues to look the other way as many top bankers thumb their noses at fraud laws.

There is a term for the criminality that infects our biggest banks and damages the economy, and there is a solution to this problem. But there is also an obstacle.

Read more of David Cray Johnston’s post: ‘Control Fraud’ – Corrupt Bankers Do It, Congress Ignores It | Investopedia

CROWDSOURCING the COLLECTIVE “WE”

By J.D. ALT

Let’s jump ahead to the day (surely it will come, right?) when we realize a general consensus has actually been established that, yes, it IS possible to sustainably pay for collective goods and services by the direct issuing of sovereign fiat dollars―that our federal government doesn’t have to collect taxes in order to have dollars to spend, that it doesn’t have to issue Treasury bonds to get the dollars it needs but imagines it doesn’t have.

Now that we’re here in this future moment, it’s clear we have an even BIGGER problem than we had before!

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Does a Golden Parachute Await Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf?

NEP’s Bill Black appears on The Real News Network and explains why criminal prosecutions of executives time after time are not happening. The video is below and if you would like to view with a transcript, click here.

WHY ARE WE GATHERED HERE? Remarks Made at the 13th International Post Keynesian Conference

L. Randall Wray

The following text reproduces my notes for my talk on the final night of the conference; I think there is a video of the entire panel that will be posted up on the conference site later

This conference is dedicated to the memory of Landon Rowland, a local Renaissance man. You have heard both Robert Skidelsky and Chancellor Leo Morton speak of his accomplishments.

Over the years, Landon regularly invited Bill Black and me to lunch to discuss our view of the state of the world. We’d meet at a local restaurant where all the wait-staff knew Mr. Rowland by name, and knew where he wanted to sit and what he liked to eat.

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NEP’s Bill Black appears on The Monitor

NEP’s Bill Black talks with Mark Bebawi – host of The Monitor on KPFT in Houston. The topic of conversation is the Wells Fargo scandal and the settlement. You can listen to the podcast here.

Minsky Meets Brazil Part IV

By Felipe Rezende

Part IV

This last part of the series (see Part I, II, and III here, here and here) will focus on the Brazilian response to the crisis.

What Should Brazil do?

The Brazilian current crisis fit with Minsky’s theory of instability (see here, here and here). The traditional response to a Minsky crisis involves government deficits to allow the non-government sector to net save. That is, if the private sector desire to net save increases, then fiscal deficits increase to allow it to accumulate net financial assets. The sharp increase in budget deficits in 2015 comes as no surprise. Rezende (2015a) simulated Continue reading

The Charade

By J.D. ALT

My last essay, “A Perfect Example,” elicited six thoughtful and compelling questions from a reader with the moniker “MadcapMongoose.” They deserve an equally thoughtful response, which I’ve been trying to formulate, off and on, these past many weeks. Each formulation I come up with, however, seems to be missing a larger and deeper issue that I keep getting glimpses of. So, with apologizes to Mongoose, instead of answering him (or her) directly, I’m going to try to mine the topic obliquely to see if I can get at that deeper vein.

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Living in the Web of Soft Climate Denial

Michael Hoexter, Ph.D.

Contents

  1. Conventional “Hard” Climate Denial
  2. A Web of Soft Climate Denial
  3. The Foundations of Soft Climate Denial in Economics
  4. Settling on Neoliberal, “Market-Based” Carbon Gradualism
  5. Soft Climate Denial, Fossil Fuels, and the Hedonic Self

1. Conventional “Hard” Climate Denial

The Rio Olympics opening ceremony highlighted global warming as a major theme of international concern even on an occasion of diversion from the cares of the world.  That most Brazilians understand intuitively and uncontroversially that climate change is a real threat contrasts with the still substantial fights that occur in parts of the Anglophone world regarding the reality of human caused climate change.  A powerful minority in that world, strongest in the United States and Australia, holds to the idea that climate change is a hoax.   The Republican governor of Florida, a state that almost certainly will lose population centers and land area to rising seas, has, for instance, banned the use of the words “climate change” by state employees.  Meanwhile we are, due to a strong El Nino and climate change combined, experiencing record average global temperatures and are seeing signs that we may be approaching tipping points in the destruction of the habitable biosphere to which we are adapted as a species and civilization.  Due to the ravages of 2016’s heat, the Anglophone world even might now eject climate deniers from the arena of legitimated public discourse.

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Minsky Meets Brazil Part III

By Felipe Rezende

This part of the series (see Part I and II, here and here) will focus on macroeconomic and microeconomic aspects to financial fragility and provision for liquidity. Minsky’s framework not only sheds light on how to detect unsustainable financial practices, but the position adopted in this paper is that the current Brazilian crisis does fit with Minsky’s instability theory. This is a Minsky’s crisis in which during economic expansions market participants show greater tolerance for risk and forget the lessons of past crises so economic units gradually move from safe financial positions to riskier positions and declining cushions of safety.

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Complaining of “Taco trucks on every corner” Is Capitalist Heresy

By William K. Black
September 2, 2016     Bloomington, MN

Donald Trump’s opponents have been having a field day with the latest gift from a Trump surrogate.  One of Trump’s few remaining Latino supporters, Marco Gutierrez, a businessman and founder of Latinos for Trump, made an unintentionally hilarious prediction about how awful America’s future would be if Trump were not elected.

“My culture is a very dominant culture and it’s imposing and it’s causing problems,” he told MSNBC.

“If you don’t do something about it, you’re going to have taco trucks on every corner.”

The context of Gutierrez’s nightmare of a nation besieged by omnipresent taco trucks was his attempt as the founder and leader of Latinos for Trump to make the best case for supporting Trump’s “great wall” and mass deportation of immigrants.  The strongest argument Gutierrez was able to conjure up in support was his fear of omnipresent “taco trucks.”

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