By William K. Black
(Cross posted at Benzinga.com)
P.J. O’Rourke’s column: “Dear Mr. President, Zero-Sum Doesn’t Add Up” claims that the following metaphor explains President Obama’s world view and policy choices: “life [is] like a pizza, where if some people have too many slices, other people have to eat the pizza box.”
A zero-sum interaction occurs when one party’s gain must exactly match the other party’s loss. Continue reading
A little bit of economics can be a truly terrible thing, for the introductory classes in micro and macro-economics are the most dogmatic and myth-filled part of the neo-liberal curriculum. Dogmas that have been falsified for 75 years (such as austerity) are taught as revealed truth. The poor indoctrinated student is then launched into the world “knowing” that austerity is the answer and that mass unemployment and prolonged recessions are small prices to be paid (by others) to achieve the holy grail of a balanced budget. Students are taught that national budgets are really just like household budgets. These dogmas are not simply false, they are self-destructive and cruel. Neo-liberal economics is so bad and has gone downhill at such a rapid rate that it now worships the economic analog to bleeding patients – austerity – as a response to a Great Recession. Millions of people are indoctrinated annually into believing this long-falsified nonsense, and that includes people who consider themselves progressives. Continue reading
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is every administration’s heavy artillery on budget issues. OMB’s staff is dominated by neo-liberal micro-economists under every administration, so it is institutionally conservative. OMB personnel obtain promotions by killing programs, cutting spending, and either blocking the adoption of regulations or weakening the regulations. OMB is institutionally predisposed to embrace austerity. OMB is also expected to be a zealous advocate for the President. Continue reading
Posted in William K. Black
Tagged austerity, budget, fiscal cliff, geitner, lew, neo-liberal, obama, OMB
On Friday, December 21, 2012, President Obama announced:
“‘As of today I am still ready and willing to get a comprehensive package done,’ Obama said, specifically urging lawmakers to craft a deal that would protect middle-class Americans from a tax hike set to be implemented if no deal is met.
Obama said he spoke with GOP House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) Friday, asking the congressional leaders to come up with a smaller fiscal package in the next 10 days.
‘Now is not the time for more self-inflicted wounds, certainly not coming from Washington,’ Obama said.”
Donald Trump’s specialty is unintended self-parody and his recent statements on Fox News about how Republicans should engage in domestic economic terror by using a “nuclear weapon” against our economy prove that one can become wealthy and famous without having even the most tenuous grasp of patriotism, reality, logic, or ethics. Here is Newsmax’s story of Trump’s treasonous ode to nuking the nation. (Newsmax is an ultra-right site sympathetic to Trump, so their description was not slanted against him.) Continue reading
By William K. Black
(Cross Posted at Benzinga.com)
Everyone now agrees that the so-called “fiscal cliff” is a stupid policy that threatens our economy and our people. Everyone agrees why the “fiscal cliff” is stupid – it inflicts austerity at a time when it is likely to throw the nation into a gratuitous recession. Causing a recession leads to increased unemployment and a larger budget deficit. We have all seen austerity force the Eurozone into a gratuitous recession in which Italy, Spain, and Greece have Great Depression levels of unemployment. Continue reading
In November 2011, President Correa appointed Pedro Delgado as head of Ecuador’s Central Bank. The appointment was controversial. The obvious controversy was that Delgado is Correa’s cousin. Conservatives claimed that Delgado lacked integrity. Some progressives shared the concerns about his integrity and saw Delgado as too supportive of Ecuador’s largest banks and bankers. The recent banking crisis, in which the owners and managers of Ecuador’s four largest banks began a bizarre campaign of threatening to induce a run on their institutions to extort Correa into withdrawing his very sensible program of increasing the banks’ taxes and reforming the bankers’ dangerously perverse executive compensation, provided a test of these concerns by Correa’s supporters about Delgado. I explained how irresponsible the banking oligarchs’ campaign was in interviews in Ecuador and the U.S. and an article. I explained the vigorous manner in which U.S. regulators of my era would have acted to end the oligarchs’ efforts to extort the government and people of Ecuador by threatening to cause a banking run. Continue reading
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
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
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
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