Yearly Archives: 2019

The People’s Money (Part 1)

Posted on October 15, 2019 by | 23 comments

An Explanation of the Federal Reserve Money system and what it means for the potential accomplishments of American Democracy

By J.D. ALT

 

“Reserves”—that esoteric term in money-talk that postures to explain everything but explains nothing at all—have been much in the news of late. The Wall Street Journal even tried, recently, to explain what they are! They didn’t do such a great job. That’s unfortunate because, properly explained and understood, Reserves hold a big key to the political befuddlement—especially acute in the present election cycle—about what we can “afford” to accomplish as a collective society. This includes “paying for” real solutions to the five, money-intensive, life-defining dilemmas America now confronts: (1) climate change (2) healthcare (3) student debt (4) early child-hood care and development (5) affordable housing. It is therefore well worth the effort, I think, to attempt an explanation of “Reserves” that might actually be grasped by the collective consciousness of our political dialog.

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MMT: REPORT FROM THE FRONT (PART2)

Posted on October 14, 2019 by | 6 comments

By L. Randall Wray

PART 2

In Part 1 I discussed the third annual MMT conference that was recently held at Stony Brook, and you can find the program as well as videos of the conference here: (https://www.mmtconference.org/). In this Part 2 I discuss a special issue of real-world economics review devoted to MMT (http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue89/whole89.pdf). As usual, my report stretched out to become too long for just 2 blogs so there will be a Part 3, coming later this week. And who knows, maybe I’ll need a Part 4.

First, the good news. The editors seem to have played the game reasonably fairly. They invited contributions by MMT proponents and opponents. Often editors will give the opponents an advantage—for example, letting them see the contributions by MMTers in advance, without letting the MMTers see the contributions by the opponents. When it comes to MMT, editors don’t like to play fairly. It looks to me like proponents and opponents were treated equally. That is highly unusual when it comes to MMT “debates” which are almost always stacked against its proponents.

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The Kurds, The Most Frequently Betrayed Group, Experience Trump’s Betrayal

Posted on October 9, 2019 by | 3 comments

William K. Black
October 9, 2019     Kansas City, MO

The most betrayed people in the world are likely the Kurds.  They have the misfortune to live in a particularly violent region dispersed among five nation states – Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria, and Armenia.  They are a large ethnic group (the fourth largest in their region).  They are overwhelmingly Sunni.  Kurds have tried to be a nation, and the West betrayed them.  Kurds have tried to develop ‘home rule’ within the nation states they inhabit, and everyone betrayed them.  The majority population of each of the nation states they inhabit tends to despise Kurds as non-Arabs or fake Turks.  Turkey pretends they do not exist and calls them “mountain Turks.”

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Eric Holder is the Official Missing from Discussions of the Bidens’ Ukrainian Efforts

Posted on October 8, 2019 by | 9 comments

By William K. Black
October 7, 2019     Kansas City, MO

Michelle Goldberg published an excellent column on September 30, 2019 “Trump’s Claims About Biden Aren’t ‘Unsupported.’  They’re Lies.”  It accurately describes Trump’s lies and his unlawful and unethical acts of trying to use the power of our government to induce Ukrainian and Chinese officials to smear his political opponents.  The House should cite those Trump lies as part of the basis for impeaching him.

Rule No. 1:  No Freebies

I am not a politician or political tactician.  A campaign for the presidency (nomination or ‘general’) is above my pay grade.  Nevertheless, I know Rule No. 1 – Never give your political opponents freebies to use against you.  That was my rule during the savings and loan debacle when we blew the whistle on the Speaker of the House, the five Senators who became known as the “Keating Five,” the White House, Vice President Bush’s office, and the head of our own agency for his cowardice in surrendering to the political extortion.  Our goal was to end our leaders’ corrupt and cowardly surrender to Charles Keating, the nation’s most corrupt banker.  We know that Keating hired private detectives at least twice to investigate me.

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MMT: REPORT FROM THE FRONT

Posted on October 7, 2019 by | 7 comments

By L. Randall Wray

PART 1

As many readers know, the third annual MMT conference was recently held at Stonybrook, and you can find the program as well as videos of the conference at the link: (https://www.mmtconference.org/). In addition, real-world economics review has just issued a new volume devoted to MMT (http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue89/whole89.pdf). I’ll briefly address both, in two parts. I’ll talk about the conference in this one, and about the RWER papers in the second part.

Part 1: The Third International MMT Conference

Unfortunately, I missed the first day of the conference as I was the plenary speaker at the annual ABFM (Association for Budget and Financial Management) conference in Washington DC. This invitation resulted from a chance meeting with a member of the group when I was teaching on a Fulbright to Estonia. At first he was shocked at the views I was propagating, but quickly became a convert, converted another member, and that led to the invitation. This group mostly researches state and local government finance—obviously those are currency users and need to balance budgets—but they tend to apply what they know to the federal budget. MMT of course explodes that because the finances of the sovereign currency issuer are nothing like those of the non-sovereign government entities. However, many of the attendees were open to MMT—or, at least, now they want to know more. It was a pleasant experience—and I learned more about a whole sector of the academy that I didn’t know much about. Many of those attending are in Masters of Public Administration schools. My own Professor Minsky’s first graduate degree was an MPA. I actually wrote a paper on the topic of the problems of state and local government finance, up here at Levy (http://www.levyinstitute.org/publications/fiscal-reform-to-benefit-state-and-local-governments-the-modern-money-theory-approach).

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The Terrible Cost of Politically Induced Hate of Minorities

Posted on September 24, 2019 by | 2 comments

By William K. Black
September 23, 2019      Kansas City, MO

Muslims and Jews in America and Israel share some common experiences.  In Israel and the territories Israel occupies, they are the targets of murderous hate from each other.  They have competing, horrid stories of mistreatment by other ethnic and religious communities and each other that go back over a thousand years.

In the United States, the relationship between Muslims and Jews is vastly better, but mixed.  The American hate killers of Jews and Muslims are overwhelmingly right-wing supremacists who hate Jews, Muslims, people of color, and the ‘left.’  So far, the nightmare scenario of waves of revenge pogroms by American Jews and Muslims has not occurred.  We all need to work to prevent that nightmare from ever occurring.

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Trumps Asks the Right Question, Provides the Wrong Answer

Posted on September 23, 2019 by | 10 comments

By William K. Black
September 23, 2019     Kansas City, MO

Since the Trump administration began, I have been making a series of predictions that any white-collar criminologist would find obvious.  I discuss three of those points in this article.  First, Trump is leading the most corrupt administration in our nation’s history.  Second, over time, only the sleaziest, most cowardly, and least competent mid and senior level officials would remain in power.  Third, Trump exemplifies the “Dark Triad” – the toxic mix of psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism.  People beset by the Dark Triad personality characteristics are serial liars.  Each of the three predictions has proven true, but any competent, honest white-collar criminologist would have made the same predictions, so I take no pride in their proven accuracy.

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Two-Cent Message

Posted on September 20, 2019 by | 15 comments

By J.D. ALT

Elizabeth Warren has succeeded, I think, in framing an argument as close as anyone is going to get (in the present election cycle) to the progressive position of MMT. Warren acknowledges that she’s proposing goals and undertakings that will “cost” a lot of money. She further acknowledges that everyone asks: “How are you going to pay for it?” And she gives a very specific and simple answer: an “ultra-millionaire tax”—which she details as “two-cents on every dollar of income over $50 million.” She then goes on to list what those “two-cents” will accomplish: The cancellation of college debt; free two-year college education; universal pre-school day-care…etc.

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48 States to Investigate Google: Anti-Trust or Politicking?

Posted on September 17, 2019 by | Comments Off on 48 States to Investigate Google: Anti-Trust or Politicking?

While there are real reasons to be concerned about Google’s immense power, this investigation is quite politically motivated, NEP’s Bill Black on The Real News Network. You can view here with a transcript.

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Democrats Should Refuse to Continue to Support Stupidity and Cowardice

Posted on September 16, 2019 by | 6 comments

William K. Black
September 15, 2019      Kansas City, MO

A craven group of Democrats is furious with Beto O’Rourke for calling for the mandatory sale of assault rifles to the United States.  Reuters’ headline says it all:  “O’Rourke’s ‘hell yes’ vow to take away rifles worries U.S. lawmakers pushing for gun limits.”  Seriously?  Democratic lawmakers (who have adopted no meaningful federal law in response to tens of thousands of gun deaths and maiming) are upset because a prominent Democrat proposed a law to get military-style assault rifles out of civilian life.  Granted, the Republicans have patented their right to be the party of stupid, but Democrats should not compete by becoming the party of less stupid, but equally cowardly.

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