Category Archives: Joe Firestone

Ezra Is Terrified Because of His Framing

Posted on September 18, 2013 by Joe Firestone | 52 comments

Here’s an exchange from last Friday’s Chris Hayes “All In” MSNBC show among Chris, Robert Costa of the National Review, and Ezra Klein of The Washington Post’s “Wonkblog.” In what follows I’ve slightly edited the MSNBC transcript to get rid of obvious verbal deviations but haven’t corrected for punctuation.

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Tagged #PCS, $60 Trillion Coin, debt ceiling, debt limit, debt-subject-to-the-limit, default, deficit spending, Government shutdown, High Value Platinum Coin Seigniorage, MMT, modern money theory, President Obama, public debt

Do the Democrats Really Want to Bear the Blame for a Crash that Wall Street Will Cause?

Posted on September 14, 2013 by Joe Firestone | 41 comments

By Joe Firestone

This post by Lynn Parramore makes the point that the next crash is coming and probably will be blamed on the Democrats. It’s a great point, but it needs to be pursued further.

What if we have another Republican sweep in 2014, like 2010, but worse? Then we’re going to have more policies that increase inequality. Even less regulation, causing even more domination of our politics by corporations and the financial sector.

We’ll have more military spending and more wars, along with more shredding and privatization of the social safety net. We’ll have even less environmental regulation, and even more global warming; more drill baby drill, and less and less of public education. At the State level, we’ll have more of the war on women, blacks, seniors, and hispanics; more corruption from corporations and the rich giving “gifts” to officeholders; more voter suppression, even more police brutality and denial of first amendment rights, more religion in our schools accompanied by more guns everywhere, and more Scalias, Alitos, Thomases, and Robertses subjugating everyone to corporations.

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Tagged #PCS, $60 Trillion Coin, debt ceiling, debt limit, debt-subject-to-the-limit, deficit spending, High Value Platinum Coin Seigniorage, MMT, modern money theory, President Obama, public debt

Declaring the Grand Bargain Dead Is Premature

Posted on August 31, 2013 by Joe Firestone | 34 comments

By Joe Firestone

Stories in The Washington Post and the New York Times have some in the blogosphere proclaiming that it’s time to celebrate the death of the Grand Bargain, and others at least raising a question about its death. I’ll go on record as saying that celebrating its death is definitely premature.

It is so because we’ve yet to go through the budget or continuing resolution-passing activities coming up in September, and also have yet to go through the debt ceiling conflict to come in October. Mainstream Washington commentators believe John Boehner is determined to avoid a government shutdown crisis of the budget/CR conflict and that one or the other will be passed before October 1. Assuming they’re right, that still leaves the matter of the debt ceiling “crisis,” which the same commentators are saying will happen because Boehner has to promise his tea party caucus a chance to coerce the Administration, if he’s going to get their acquiescence on the budget/government shutdown matter.

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Tagged #PCS, $60 Trillion Coin, austerity, debt ceiling, debt limit, debt-subject-to-the-limit, default, deficit spending, High Value Platinum Coin Seigniorage, Jack Lew, MMT, modern money theory, President Obama, public debt, Secretary of the Treasury

Jack Lew: Avoiding Default Is Your Responsibility Too

Posted on August 29, 2013 by Joe Firestone | 12 comments

By Joe Firestone

With the end of the Summer break, now comes the return of the debt limit dance. From Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew’s letter to John Boehner:

“Congress should act as soon as possible to protect America’s good credit by extending normal borrowing authority well before any risk of default becomes imminent.

“Based on our latest estimates extraordinary measures are projected to be exhausted in the middle of October. At that point, the United States will have reached the limit of its borrowing authority, and Treasury would be left to fund the government with only the cash we have on hand on any given day, The cash balance at that time is currently forecasted to be approximately $50 billion.

“. . . A cash balance of approximately $50 Billion would be insufficient to cover net expenditures for an extended period of time. And, on certain days, net expenditures could exceed such a cash balance.

“. . . Protecting the full faith and credit of the United States is the responsibility of Congress because only Congress can extend the nation’s borrowing authority . . .“

OK. So, only Congress can extend the nation’s borrowing authority. But it doesn’t follow from that fact that protecting the full faith and credit of the United States is solely the responsibility of Congress.

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Tagged #PCS, $60 Trillion Coin, 14th Amendment, austerity, debt ceiling, debt limit, debt-subject-to-the-limit, default, deficit spending, High Value Platinum Coin Seigniorage, Jacob Lew, MMT, modern money theory, President Obama, public debt, Secretary of the Treasury

The Five Worst Reasons Why the National Debt Should Matter To You: Part Four, Three REAL Reasons

Posted on August 27, 2013 by Joe Firestone | 10 comments

By Joe Firestone

This is the concluding post in a four part series on the “Top” reasons why the national debt should matter. In Part One, I considered “Fix the Debt’s” claim that high levels of debt cause high unemployment and argued that 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 Debt’s” theory. In Part Three I showed that the other four reasons advanced by “Fix the Debt” also had very little going for them. In this part, I’ll give reasons why the national debt does matter, and why we should fix it without breaking America, or causing people to suffer.

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Tagged $60 Trillion Coin, austerity, bernie sanders, CBO, CPC Budget, debt-to-GDP ratio, deficit spending, High Value Platinum Coin Seigniorage, HVPCS, John Conyers, medicare for all, MMT, modern money theory, national debt, Peter G. Peterson, “Fix the Debt”

The Five Worst Reasons Why the National Debt Should Matter To You: Part Three, The Other Four Worst Reasons

Posted on August 26, 2013 by Joe Firestone | 4 comments

By Joe Firestone

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.

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4 Comments

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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”

The Five Worst Reasons Why the National Debt Should Matter To You: Part Two, the Record Since 1930

Posted on August 25, 2013 by Joe Firestone | 13 comments

By Joe Firestone

In Part One, of a critique of the most important of “Fix the Debt’s” reasons for “Why the National Debt Should Matter To You,” I asserted that high debt levels haven’t caused high unemployment in the United States, and that, if anything causation was in the other direction. I didn’t want to disturb the flow of the argument there with a relatively lengthy survey of some of the numbers in the historical record since the 1930s. But let’s test the idea that High debt causes fewer jobs and lower wages in the United States by looking at that record now.

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Tagged austerity, debt-to-GDP ratio, deficit spending, fiat currency, GBC, goldilocks economy, Government Budget Constraint, MMT, modern money theory, national debt, Peter G. Peterson, sectoral financial balances, unemployment, “Fix the Debt”

The Five Worst Reasons Why the National Debt Should Matter To You: Part One, High Debt Levels and Jobs

Posted on August 24, 2013 by Joe Firestone | 28 comments

By Joe Firestone

I came across a post from the “Fix the Debt” campaign last month called “The Top Five Worst Reasons Why the National Debt Should Matter to You.” It’s a post full of debt/deficit lies that cry out for correction. That’s what I’ll provide in this series. Continue reading →

28 Comments

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Tagged $60 Trillion Coin, austerity, debt-to-GDP ratio, deficit spending, High Value Platinum Coin Seigniorage, HVPCS, MMT, modern money theory, national debt, Peter G. Peterson, unemployment

“Makers and Takers:” They’re Projecting Again!

Posted on August 20, 2013 by Joe Firestone | 28 comments

By Joe Firestone

I found a segment on MCNBC’s Up With Steve Kornacke show revealing for what it did not say. The segment started off with a clip from a Recent Town Hall of John McCain’s. Senator McCain took a question from a woman who said, with more than a little emotion.

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Woman: “It kills me every time i hear senators, especially republicans, talk about those takers. they’re just taken. the takers. i paid taxes for over 30 years and i have a rare illness and now i’m disabled. the state of arizona raised the eligibility for a program that was paying $100 a month for my medicaid to 3.4%. consequently, i was cut off. $100 a month, which meant (breaks down) i could no longer go to physical therapy. do it intentionally to cut as many people as they can for as long as they can from benefits that are desperately needed and it’s just not right. we’re the takers.”

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Tagged austerity, Control Fraud, deficit spending, fixing infrastructure, housing crisis, john mccain, makers, medicare for all, Social Security, SS benefits, Steve Kornacke, takers, takings

What Would You Have the President Do? Part III, Doing Some Economic and Social Justice

Posted on July 30, 2013 by Joe Firestone | 46 comments

The first two Parts in this series began answering the question “what would u have him do?” It arose in the context of a Post at Naked Capitalism by Michael Hudson with some additions by Yves Smith. A commenter, objecting to the criticism of the President’s Knox College speech, issued the challenge in connection with the President’s promised effort to restore prosperity to the middle class and the poor. Continue reading →