America Is a Horror Show

Posted on May 1, 2015 by | 3 comments

This is from earlier this year. If you have not yet viewed this episode, it is worth taking the time to do so. (Description provided by Bill Moyers’ site).

David Simon, journalist and creator of the TV series The Wire and Treme, talks with Bill about the crisis of capitalism in America. After President Barack Obama’s annual State of the Union address, it’s a reality check from someone who artfully uses television drama to report on the state of America from an entirely different perspective — the bottom up.

“The horror show is we are going to be slaves to profit. Some of us are going to be higher on the pyramid and we’ll count ourselves lucky and many many more will be marginalized and destroyed,” Simon tells Moyers. He blames a “purchased” Congress for failing America’s citizens, leading many of them to give up on politics altogether.

Watch the episode here.

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Ridiculing Concerns About TPP Tyranny

Posted on April 29, 2015 by | 17 comments

People who support the Administration’s efforts on the TPP have been known to reply to my posts on this subject by attempting to ridicule the scenarios I’ve presented as possible under the TPP Agreement as “out there” speculation of the tin foil variety that will never actually happen. For those who think that my examples of what is possible under the TPP are just this kind of speculation, please keep in mind that I don’t have the proposed draft agreements to work from.

This is due to the President’s decision to classify the drafts and seek Fast Track Authority before disclosing them more freely even to Congress for an up or down vote. However, there is no indication from anyone that the actual drafts of the agreement contain rules that would definitively prevent the possible very damaging consequences I’ve mentioned here for example. Continue reading →

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GOP Opposition to Lynch

Posted on April 28, 2015 by | Comments Off on GOP Opposition to Lynch

Here is an excerpt from my most recent opinion piece at Al Jazeera.

Yesterday Loretta Lynch was sworn in as the nation’s 83rd attorney general. On April 23, the Senate voted to confirm her nomination after obstructing it for almost half a year. While their reasons were baseless and self-defeating, Republican leaders did not avail themselves of an excellent reason to reject her candidacy. That they ignored it speaks to our corrupt politics.

Shortly before confirmation, The New York Times ran with prominent placement an article titled “Republicans in quandary over vote on Loretta Lynch.” What was the dilemma GOP leaders faced?

Read the complete post here…

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President Obama Should Apologize for Labelling Americans a Murderous Mob

Posted on April 28, 2015 by | 2 comments

By William K. Black
Quito: April 28, 2015

This column was prompted by Charles M. Blow’s excellent column about the slanderous way that the term “lynch mob” is used by the right-wing to denounce Americans whenever we protest police violence against (primarily) people of color. The protesters want justice. They do not want to lynch anyone. The same is true of the American people’s demands that the banksters be brought to justice.

President Obama, however, began his term of office by slandering the American people who wanted him to restore the rule of law and bring the banksters to justice. Simon Johnson and James Kwak, the authors of Thirteen Bankers, cite Obama’s claim to the 13 bankers at the infamous March 31, 2009 meeting so close to the start of his term of office that he was all that was protecting them from the public’s “pitchforks” as the defining event of the administration on financial issues.

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James Galbraith Reminds Me That He Too Pointed Out Mankiw’s Error about Adam Smith

Posted on April 27, 2015 by | 3 comments

By William K. Black
Quito: April 27, 2015

My citation of one of New Economic Perspectives’ distinguished academic readers from the field of economics, Michael Meeropol, prompted another distinguished academic reader from the same field to note that he had made the same point about the distortion of Adam Smith’s views on topics like “outsourcing” through foreign investment. The context was N. Gregory Mankiw’s distortion of Smith to try to support the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Here is how Jamie made the point in his classic book The Predator State.

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Michael Meeropol on Mankiw’s Mendacity about Adam Smith

Posted on April 27, 2015 by | Comments Off on Michael Meeropol on Mankiw’s Mendacity about Adam Smith

By William K. Black
Quito: April 26, 2015

One of our many distinguished readers of New Economic Perspectives is the economist Michael Meeropol. Mike contacted me after reading my columns about Mankiw pushing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to alert me to another way in which Mankiw, who purports to be relying on Adam Smith, actually willfully misinterprets Smith through what Mike refers to as “pedagogical malpractice.” I thank him for bringing it to my attention.

Mike laid this out in an article in 2004. Reading Mike’s entire superb article is, of course, the best solution. For those with less time I have quoted extensively from the most relevant portion of his article, which includes a lengthy footnote. Mike’s major point can be summarized briefly: Smith believed fervently in emphasizing domestic manufacturing and agricultural production, domestic trade, and domestic investment as the essential means of building a Nation’s wealth. Mike’s article builds on the work of Joseph Persky. I’ve deleted two footnotes from his text.

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Indicting the Trans – Pacific Partnership: Even One of These Counts Is Sufficient to Vote to Kill It!

Posted on April 27, 2015 by | 8 comments

To really appreciate what a travesty the TPP is, and the scandal of the failure of our Congress to reject it, and the “Fast Track Authority“ sought for it, out of hand, I’m going to list 23 negative consequences that would likely follow from it. Any one of these, would, by itself be sufficient for any representative of the people, Senator or Congressperson, to vote to kill it. I’ll offer this list in the form of stanzas appropriate for a chant, except for the starting point in the list.

The tune of the chant that might be used is the tune used for Dayenu, the passover seder chant in which Dayenu means “It would have been sufficient,” where the reference is to all the things the almighty is purported to have done for the Israelites on their way out of Egypt and during their wanderings in the Sinai. I’m sure the President is familiar with this chant since he has had seders at the White House more than once. I’m also sure that he never envisioned using Dayenu to highlight the horrors of one of his favorite projects, the passage of “Fast Track Authority,” the TPP, and other “free trade” agreements such as the TTIP, and the TISA, all of which would get “Fast Track Authority” if the present bill passes. Continue reading →

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Mankiw Mendacity and Morality and his League of Failed Economists

Posted on April 26, 2015 by | 7 comments

By William K. Black
Quito: April 24, 2015

I met N. Gregory Mankiw for the first and only time in 1993 when he was a discussant for George Akerlof and Paul Romer’s paper on “Looting: The Economic Underworld of Bankruptcy for Profit.” The meeting was at Brookings, so it was attended by a wide range of economists. Brooking was by that time working closely with AEI on an anti-regulatory agenda, particularly in finance. Those of us old enough to recall when Brookings was referred to under Republican administrations as “the Democratic Party in exile” are very old. I attended as Akerlof and Romer’s specially invited guest because of my contributions to their article. The meeting taught me a great deal about Mankiw and the state of the economics academy.

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Obama & TPP: Every One That Doeth Evil Hateth the Light

Posted on April 25, 2015 by | 19 comments

By William K. Black
Quito: April 25, 2015

President Obama wants the world to know that he takes it personally that the Democratic Party’s base opposes his latest effort to sell out the people of the world to the worst corporations through the infamous Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal. Obama blurted out at a press conference a number of conservative Republican memes as his sole basis for pushing TPP. He then launched personal attacks on Senator Elizabeth Warren and labor leaders (without naming them). Obama, who is famous for keeping his cool when criticized by the GOP, is thin-skinned when criticized by Democrats. Obama never raged at the Republicans’ “death panel” attacks on him, but he raged at Warren as supposedly making an equivalently openly dishonest attack on TPP’s secret drafting process.

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How Can Our Senators and Representatives Vote for Giving Away Our Monetary Sovereignty?

Posted on April 24, 2015 by | 22 comments

Right now the US fulfills the three essential conditions for monetary sovereignty: 1) it issues its own non-convertible currency, 2) which it allows to float on international currency markets; and 3) it owes no debts in any currency other than dollars. Because it is monetarily sovereign, and can always meet its obligations the US can never be forced into insolvency.

It can become insolvent due to Congressional decisions such as failing to raise or repeal the debt ceiling, or Executive decisions such as failing to use its platinum coin minting authority to fill the public purse and then pay its bills once it has reached the debt ceiling. But again, it cannot be forced into insolvency by external financial or economic factors that are beyond the control of the Federal Government (including the Congress).

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