Tag Archives: austerity

Obama commits Unilateral Disarmament as a Debt Ceiling Negotiator

Posted on January 15, 2013 by Devin Smith | 23 comments

President Obama is getting ready to negotiate (or if you believe him, not negotiate) an extension of the debt limit. The Republicans control the House and are promising to follow Donald Trump’s suggestion that they use what he called the “nuclear weapon” to terrorize the U.S. economy and people in order to gain negotiating leverage over Obama. That act of treachery was designed to produce two other acts of betrayal of the American people. First, Trump’s urged the Republicans to use their “nuclear weapon” to force Obama to inflict austerity on our Nation and force us back into recession. Second, Trump urged the Republicans to use their leverage to force Obama to gut the safety net. It is somehow fitting that Trump’s advice to act in unprincipled manner was designed to produce policies that would enrich the wealthy and cause immense harm to the Nation.

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23 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged austerity, debt ceiling, debt limit, grand bargain, great betrayal

Ezra Klein Chooses Fear Mongering the Big Coin, I Choose Ending Austerity!

Posted on January 11, 2013 by Devin Smith | 29 comments

By Joe Firestone
(H/t to Lambert Strether for the title!)

Here’s a commentary on Ezra Klein’s recent diatribe against Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PCS).

But there’s nothing benign about the platinum coin. It is a breakdown in the American system of governance, a symbol that we have become a banana republic. And perhaps we have. But the platinum coin is not the first cousin of cleanly raising the debt ceiling. It is the first cousin of defaulting on our debts. As with true default, it proves to the financial markets that we can no longer be trusted to manage our economic affairs predictably and rationally. It’s evidence that American politics has transitioned from dysfunctional to broken and that all manner of once-ludicrous outcomes have muscled their way into the realm of possibility. As with default, it will mean our borrowing costs rise and financial markets gradually lose trust in our system, though perhaps not with the disruptive panic that default would bring.

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29 Comments

Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged #PCS, #TDC, $60 T coin, austerity, beowulf, debt ceiling, debt-subject-to-the-limit, Ezra Klein, Fiscal Policy, game-changing PCS, MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, Philip Diehl, platinum coin seigniorage, small ball PCS, Trillion Dollar Coin

Krugman and Obama’s Dangerous Austerity Myths

Posted on January 11, 2013 by Devin Smith | 18 comments

By William K. Black

Austerity in response to the Great Recession has proven to be an economic weapon of mass destruction. On January 10, 2013, Paul Krugman (Nobel Laureate in Economics) and President Obama launched the same dangerous austerity myth in remarkably similar language.

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18 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged austerity, Geithner, lew, MMT, Modern Monetary Theory

NEP’s William Black appears on Democracy Now

Posted on January 11, 2013 by Devin Smith | 2 comments

NEP’s William K. Black appeared along on Democracy Now. The appearance has been split into two parts and posted below.

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2 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged austerity, banksters, crony capitalism, Jack Lew

Wake Up Progressives: the Trillion Dollar Coin Can Be Game-Changing!

Posted on January 10, 2013 by Devin Smith | 35 comments

By Joe Firestone

Well, not really. But if you view the Trillion Dollar Coin (TDC) meme, as I do, as a short-hand for the more general idea of using Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PCS), then yes, it can change the whole political game for progressives if President Obama dares to use it.

Literal TDC proposals would solve the debt-ceiling, but they won’t solve the larger problem of defeating the austerity politics that is so close to getting the cuts to social safety net and important discretionary government programs that austerians have long sought. PCS game-changer proposals are the ones calling for, or analyzing the impact of, PCS options aimed at paying off the national debt and covering anticipated federal deficit spending for some years. Continue reading →

35 Comments

Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged #PCS, #TDC, $60 T coin, austerity, debt ceiling, debt-subject-to-the-limit, fiscal cliff, Fiscal Policy, game-changing PCS, krugman, Linkins, MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, O'Brien, platinum coin seigniorage, small ball PCS, Trillion Dollar Coin, Wiesenthal

“Third Way’s” “Fresh Thinking” – the EU is our model for Austerity

Posted on January 10, 2013 by Devin Smith | 4 comments

By William K. Black

On September 15, 2011, a Wall Street lobbying organization known as “Third Way” proposed that the congressional “super committee” adopt a stringent austerity program.

Third Way’s tag line on its web site is “Fresh Thinking,” but it simply a mouthpiece for Wall Street’s curdled ideas. Continue reading →

4 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged austerity, Third Way

Jacob Lew: Another brick in the Wall Street on the Potomac

Posted on January 10, 2013 by Devin Smith | 2 comments

By William K. Black

The New York Times has just run two articles confirming that President Obama intends to appoint Jacob Lew as Treasury Secretary Geithner’s replacement. Most people assume that Geithner is a creature of Wall Street through direct employment, but Geithner never drew a paycheck directly from Wall Street. Geithner worked for a wholly-controlled subsidiary of Wall Street – the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Lew is the real deal, another brick in Obama’s creation of Wall Street on the Potomac. While the first NYT article ignored Lew’s work on Wall Street, the second article simply tries to minimize it. Continue reading →

2 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged austerity, banksters, crony capitalism, Jacob Lew, MMT

EU austerians rely on US stimulus to bail them out of recession

Posted on January 8, 2013 by Devin Smith | 21 comments

By William K. Black

The New York Times’ web version ran a story this morning (January 8, 2013) entitled “Unemployment Continues to Climb in Euro Zone.”

Eurostat reports that Eurozone unemployment has reached the record rate of 11.7%, with 18.8 million unemployed (an increase of two million in a year). “[Y]outh unemployment continues to grow, with 5.8 million people under 25 classified as jobless in November, up 420,000 from a year earlier.” As youth unemployment surges it becomes common for college graduates in the periphery to emigrate. The article shows that Berlin’s insistence on inflicting austerity on Spain and Greece has forced them into Great Depression levels of unemployment. Italy’s level of youth unemployment is also at Great Depression levels.
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21 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged Austerians, austerity, eu, european debt

America’s Deceptive 2012 Fiscal Cliff – Part 4

Posted on January 4, 2013 by Devin Smith | 16 comments

By Michael Hudson

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] […]

The ideological crisis underlying today’s tax and financial policy

From antiquity and for thousands of years, land, natural resources and monopolies, seaports and roads were kept in the public domain. In more recent times railroads, subway lines, airlines, and gas and electric utilities were made public. The aim was to provide their basic services at cost or at subsidized prices rather than letting them be privatized into rent-extracting opportunities. The Progressive Era capped this transition to a more equitable economy by enacting progressive income and wealth taxes. Continue reading →

16 Comments

Posted in Michael Hudson

Tagged austerity, fiscal cliff

Austerity’s Irrationality: The Age of Economic Anorexia

Posted on January 2, 2013 by Devin Smith | 14 comments

By Michael Hoexter

Rational public debate about the economy and government’s role in the economy is currently in extremely short supply. In a debt-deflation, a weak economy saved from Great Depression-level misery by half-way, inadequate government action, government spending is now blamed categorically for the ills of the economy by the aggressive austerity campaign that has captured the political discussion in major capitals. Previous flaws in the economic theory of the state and theory of money, typically consigned to the realm of different economic “tastes” or moral persuasions, are now revealed to be catastrophic gaps in most economists’ and the public’s understanding of the basics of the capitalist economy. The predatory austerity campaigners, many originating from within the financial industry, have turned what should have been an era of greater clarity about government’s critical role in the economy into a scapegoating of government for ills perpetrated for the most part by components of the financial sector or by the subservience of the public sector to the financial sector. Austerity policies when implemented are the equivalent of ‘economicide’ as they strangle government’s ability to spur lagging demand for real goods and services as well as government’s role in steering the economy to deal with challenges that the private sector can’t or doesn’t want to face on its own.