Tag Archives: filibuster

What Would You Have the President Do? Part II, Getting to Full Employment

Posted on July 29, 2013 by Joe Firestone | 22 comments

Responding to 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 ”What would u have him do?” in connection with his promised effort to restore prosperity to the middle class and the poor. In this series I’m giving my answer to that question. In Part I, “Necessary First Moves,” I offered and described two of these. Ending the filibuster, and using High Value Platinum Coin Seigniorage (HVPCS) to fill the Treasury General Account (TGA) with $60 Trillion in reserves. Continue reading →

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Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged $60 Trillion Coin, austerity, debt and deficits, deficit spending, entitlement guarantee, fiat money, filibuster, High Value Platinum Coin Seigniorage, HVPCS, job guarantee, MMT, modern money theory, Social Security, state revenue sharing

What Would You Have the President Do? Part I, Necessary First Moves

Posted on July 28, 2013 by Joe Firestone | 37 comments

There were varying reactions to the President’s recent speech at Knox College this week. My reaction was that the speech was deeply dishonest in light of the President’s previous policies, actions, and results, and I intended to do a critique, but Michael Hudson and Yves Smith beat me to it. In a fine post at Naked Capitalism, entitled “Michael Hudson Shreds Obama’s Orwellian Speech On Middle Class Prosperity,” Michael Hudson, with occasional added comments from Yves, deconstructs the speech paragraph by paragraph, and sometimes line-by-line, pointing out disingenuous assertions and outright dishonesty. In her introduction Yves remarks on the context: Continue reading →

37 Comments

Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged $60 Trillion Coin, austerity, debt and deficits, deficit spending, fiat money, filibuster, Hight Value Platinum Coin Seigniorage, HVPCS, MMT, modern money theory

Is It Really About “Dysfunctional” Partisanship?

Posted on March 9, 2013 by Devin Smith | 24 comments

By Joe Firestone

The popular narrative in Washington, DC these days among the MSM pundits is that the Congress is “dysfunctional” in the sense that it is very difficult for it to pass a budget and rise above periodic “fiscal” “debt” and “deficit” crises. This difficulty is attributed to the failure of our representatives to rise above their party interests and to accept compromises proposed by “adults” such as the President, which would, it’s claimed, resolve our long term “fiscal sustainability”/”fiscal responsibility” problem through a “balanced” long-term $4 Trillion deficit reduction plan.

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