Author Archives: Devin Smith

Let’s Celebrate the Failure of the July 2011Great Betrayal

Posted on December 20, 2012 | 29 comments

In July 2011, President Obama and Speaker Boehner reached an agreement in principle on a deal crafted to inflict $4 trillion in austerity by raising taxes modestly, slashing social spending, and beginning to unravel the safety net. The deal would have been a disaster for America. Unemployment was 9.1%. The deal would have thrown us back into a recession and caused unemployment to surge. Recessions and increased unemployment cause tax revenues to fall and increase demand for social services (e.g., for unemployment compensation) – they produce large deficits. Austerity kills jobs and frequently increases deficits. The Eurozone is the latest demonstration of this fact. Continue reading →

29 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged austerity, fiscal cliff, great betrayal

The Miraculous Turnaround in Ecuadorian Migration under President Correa

Posted on December 19, 2012 | 6 comments

By William K. Black

I have recently presented a series of talks and authored a series of articles on Ecuador’s and Italy’s leaders’ policy responses to their nation’s challenges.

Why is the failed Monti a “technocrat” and the successful Correa a “left-leaning economist”?

Note to Italy: Please send us more Saracenos

Ecuador: Bank Spreads, Taxes, Executive Compensation and Growth

Craziness on Three Continents

Continue reading →

6 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged Austerity Doctrine, correa, ecuador, ireland, Italy

Did Obama and Cameron require HSBC to aid the prosecution of Tax Frauds?

Posted on December 17, 2012 | 3 comments

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

I have explained in prior columns that HSBC is not only a criminal enterprise, but also a recidivist of epic proportions. The U.S. and the U.K. have refused to prosecute not only HSBC, but even its officers who directed the frauds and covered them up from the U.S. government. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) claimed that one of the reasons it failed to prosecute was that HSBC gave it “immediate, full cooperation.” Continue reading →

3 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged banksters, frauds, HSBC, prosecution, tax fraud

The Second Great Betrayal: Obama and Cameron Decide that Banks are above the Law

Posted on December 17, 2012 | 23 comments

By William K. Black

One of the “tells” that reveals how embarrassed Lanny Breuer (head of the Criminal Division) and Eric Holder (AG) are by the disgraceful refusal to prosecute HSBC and its officers for their tens of thousands of felonies are the false and misleading statements made by the Department of Justice (DOJ) about the settlement. The same pattern has been demonstrated by other writers in the case of the false and disingenuous statistics DOJ has trumpeted to attempt to disguise the abject failure of their efforts to prosecute the elite officers who directed the “epidemic” (FBI 2004) of mortgage fraud.

Continue reading →

23 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged banksters, Breuer, DOJ, HSBC, SDI, to big to prosecute, Treasury

Platinum Coin Seigniorage, Issuing Debt, Keystroking Deficit Spending, and Inflation

Posted on December 16, 2012 | 17 comments

By Joe Firestone

The most frequent objections to proposals that we use Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PCS) to create reserves for debt repayment and deficit spending, frequently come back to inflation. Perhaps people can’t get over the association they learned in high school Social Studies, or perhaps in American History, or Economics 101, that when Governments create money and then just spend it without any compensating deflationary action, inflation or hyperinflation happens. Maybe they can’t forget those cartoons about people in Weimar Republic days pushing wheelbarrows full of money to the market to buy some bread. So, I’ve been promising for about a week now, to blog about the likely expected relationship between the different PCS options and inflation using the framework laid out by Scott Fullwiler!

Continue reading →

17 Comments

Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged #PCS, $60 T coin, debt ceiling, debt-subject-to-the-limit, fiscal cliff, Fiscal Policy, hyperinflation, inflation, MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, platinum coin seigniorage, Trillion Dollar Coin

New MSM Trillion Dollar Coin Wave: Here’s The Big Story

Posted on December 14, 2012 | 37 comments

By Joe Firestone

The one thing that jumps out at you when reading the mainstream posts of the past week-and-a-half bringing Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PCS) into the forefront of attention again, for the first time since last year’s debt ceiling crisis, is that every mainstream blogger or commentator is telling a story about minting a Trillion Dollar Coin (TDC), or a few trillion dollar coins as an option the President can either use or not to get around the debt ceiling. But no one is telling us the much bigger story of the enormously increased authority to cause the creation of fiat money, delegated to the Executive Branch by the Congress in the 1996 legislation enabling PCS. And no one is telling us what the possible implications of this change are for our political and economic systems. Continue reading →

37 Comments

Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged #PCS, #TDC, $60 T coin, debt ceiling, debt-subject-to-the-limit, fiscal cliff, Fiscal Policy, Fiscal Responsibility, Fiscal Sustainability, MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, platinum coin seigniorage, Trillion Dollar Coin

Alternative Framing of Money: Coda

Posted on December 14, 2012 | 79 comments

By L. Randall Wray

Today George Lakoff had a new piece on Michigan’s “right to work” law. I won’t go into that issue, but obviously the framing involved in the naming of a law that is diametrically opposed to “right to work” is worth examining. Instead I just want to quote a couple of particularly insightful (incite-ful?) paragraphs. Continue reading →

79 Comments

Posted in L. Randall Wray

Tagged framing, MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, money

New MSM Trillion Dollar Coin Wave Misses the Big Story: Bradford and Plumer

Posted on December 13, 2012 | 4 comments

By Joe Firestone

In my last three posts, I’ve critiqued the new wave of mainstream posts and commentary on Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PCS) on my way to making the case that the MSM are missing “the big story” about PCS. These include posts by Pethokoukis, Wiesenthal, Carney, Drum, Yglesias, Yglesias, and an MSNBC cable segment by Chris Hayes. All of these have looked at PCS in terms of the Trillion Dollar Coin (TDC) and its possible impact on the impending debt ceiling shakedown. None have viewed it from a broader point of view. Let’s now look at commentaries by Harry Bradford, and Brad Plumer. Continue reading →

4 Comments

Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged #PCS, #TDC, $60 T coin, Bradford, debt ceiling, debt-subject-to-the-limit, fiscal cliff, Fiscal Policy, Fiscal Responsibility, Fiscal Sustainability, MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, platinum coin seigniorage, Plumer, Trillion Dollar Coin

New MSM Trillion Dollar Coin Wave Misses the Big Story: Drum and Yglesias

Posted on December 13, 2012 | 29 comments

By Joe Firestone

In my last two posts I’ve been reviewing the new wave of mainstream posts and commentary on Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PCS) by way of providing background for making the case that the MSM are missing “the big story” about PCS. Thus far I’ve reviewed recent posts by Pethokoukis, Wiesenthal, and Carney, and an MSNBC cable segment by Chris Hayes. All four have looked at PCS in terms of the Trillion Dollar Coin (TDC) and its possible impact on the impending debt ceiling shakedown. None have viewed it from a broader point of view. Let’s now look at the commentaries by Kevin Drum and two from Matthew Yglesias here and here. Continue reading →

29 Comments

Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged #PCS, #TDC, $60 T coin, debt ceiling, debt-subject-to-the-limit, fiscal cliff, Fiscal Policy, Fiscal Responsibility, Fiscal Sustainability, Kevin Drum, Matthew Yglesias, MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, platinum coin seigniorage, Trillion Dollar Coin

Why did Obama and Cameron save a Criminal Enterprise like HSBC?

Posted on December 13, 2012 | 4 comments

By William K. Black

Why is HSBC still in operation? On the same day (December 10, 2012) that the Obama administration leaked the story of the HSBC settlement a story ran in the New York Times that was full of self-praise by the Obama and Cameron (U.K.) governments for their “cooperative approach” to cracking down on systemically dangerous institutions (SDIs). SDIs are treated as “too big to fail” because they pose a global systemic risk when they fail. The HSBC settlement puts the lie to the Obama/Cameron crack-down on the SDIs for it revealed a disgrace – Obama and Cameron treat the SDIs as too big to prosecute. Indeed, HSBC demonstrates that the SDIs’ senior officers are treated by Obama and Cameron as too elite to prosecute. The propaganda meme of the NYT story – that the SDIs would never again be given special favors due to reforms being adopted by Obama and Cameron – lasted four hours before it was destroyed by the disgraceful reality of the Obama and Cameron governments’ refusal to prosecute HSBC and its officers for their tens of thousands of felonies.

Continue reading →