Tag Archives: platinum coin seigniorage

Misdirection: Rampell Views Entitlements Through the Generational War Lens

Posted on April 18, 2014 by Joe Firestone | 2 comments

Some of the favored children of the economic elite who have a public presence, work hard in their writing and speaking to divert attention from inequality and oligarchy issues by raising the issue of competition between seniors and millennials for “scarce” Federal funds. That’s understandable. If millennials develop full consciousness of who, exactly, has been flushing their prospects for a decent life down the toilet, their anger and activism might bring down the system of wealth and economic and social privilege that benefits both their families and the favored themselves in the new America of oligarchy and plutocracy.

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Tagged #PCS, Abby Hunstman, baby boomers, Catherine Rampell, congress, consols, deficit spending, entitlement spending, FDR, generational war, medicare, millennial, platinum coin seigniorage, Randy Wray, seniors, Social Security, SS, SS solvency, the Fed, Treasury

The Village Still Ignores the Most Important Point

Posted on April 1, 2014 by Joe Firestone | 2 comments

By Joe Firestone

In recent posts I reviewed two commentaries by Abby Huntsman on Social Security and other entitlements, also noting points made in other critiques of her narratives. Abby’s commentaries are here, and here, and my critiques are here and here. The most important point I emphasized in my two rebuttals is that there are no fiscal solvency or sustainability issues related to Social Security, or other parts of the safety net, but that the issues involve only the willingness of Congress to appropriate entitlement spending, and either the removal of current constraints on Treasury to spend appropriations such as the debt limit, or the willingness of the Executive Branch to use its current legislative authority either to a) generate sufficient seigniorage from platinum coins to spend such appropriations; or b) use a type of debt instrument, such as consols, which aren’t counted toward the debt limit.

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Tagged #PCS, Abby Hunstman, congress, consols, DC village progressives, deficit spending, platinum coin seigniorage, Richard Eskow, Social Security, SS, SS solvency, the Fed, Treasury

When You Really Look, Financial Quicksand Turns Into Oligarchical BS

Posted on March 30, 2014 by Joe Firestone | 3 comments

By Joe Firestone

Abby Huntsman’s first rant about entitlements soliciting generational warfare got a lot of pushback from defenders. I reviewed the main points made in defense of entitlements, and then added “the most important point of all” as well. Abby made a second try, however, this time singling out Michael Hiltzik’s reply to her to respond to and adding a few more points, while withdrawing a bit from her claim that life expectancy has changed very much for seniors since the New Deal period. Hiltzik took issue with that one too. Let’s review Huntsman’s reply to Hiltzik by analyzing the MSNBC transcript of her second rant against entitlements.

Abby Huntsman:

. . . the need for entitlement reform. there was a firestorm of reaction. an article in the ” l.a. times” went as far as to say i want to lead my generation into poverty. come on, man. this isn’t about me. it’s about the major problem.

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Tagged #PCS, Abby Hunstman, deficit spending, economic opportunity, inequality, Michael Hiltzik, platinum coin seigniorage, Social Security, SS, SS solvency, the Fed, Treasury

The Most Important Point of All Was Ignored

Posted on March 23, 2014 by Joe Firestone | 11 comments

By Joe Firestone

MSNBC’s right wing representative on The Cycle, Abby Huntsman, got a lot of pushback from Social Security defenders after her rant last week. They made points similar to the following in countering Huntsman:

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Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged #PCS, Abby Hunstman, deficit spending, economic opportunity, inequality, platinum coin seigniorage, Social Security, SS, SS solvency, the Fed, Treasury

What Now?

Posted on February 12, 2014 by Joe Firestone | 61 comments

By Joe Firestone

Today, John Boehner bowed to the inevitable logic of the impending political season and placed a “clean” debt ceiling increase bill on the floor of the House. At this writing, the bill passed with 28 Republican and 193 Democratic votes. Now it moves on to the Senate, where it is expected to pass in time to allow the Treasury to keep issuing debt instruments.

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Tagged #PCS, $60 T coin, 2014 elections, debt ceiling crisis, democrats, Green Party, High Value Platinum Coin Seigniorage, HVPCS, platinum coin seigniorage, republicans, US Mint

Does the Debt Ceiling Have to Be Raised?

Posted on January 30, 2014 by Joe Firestone | 9 comments

By Joe Firestone

Lately, the word out of Washington, DC from the plugged in people is that there will be no debt ceiling crisis coming up before the election. Politico says so, and so does the National Journal. MSNBC also agrees.
But not so fast, says the Washington Post, echoing the Wall Street Journal provided the House Republicans can agree on “. . . an extortion demand.” If they can, then we wll have another debt ceiling crisis.

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Tagged CAF, Center for American Future, consols, Dave Johnson, debt ceiling crisis, Jack Lew, platinum coin seigniorage, Politico, republicans

More Tropes of the New Populism

Posted on January 26, 2014 by Joe Firestone | 80 comments

By Joe Firestone

The New Populism, if it exists, and isn’t just a creation of Washington villagers wanting to give an attractive name to the new feint of the Administration toward the progressive base of the Democratic Party, can be a turning point for America’s domestic economy, but only if it can avoid certain tropes, shibboleths, and myths that people associated with it, such as Bernie Sanders, and various other supposedly “left” members of the Democratic Party in Congress seem to delight in reinforcing. Again, Robert Borosage’s little piece on “The New Populism” provides more examples of such tropes:

Much of this debate has been framed around the faltering recovery, as the Congress perversely punted on the opportunity to rebuild America when we could borrow money for virtually nothing, with construction workers idle and eager to work. But in the end, this is a question of making the public investments we need, and paying for it by ending the tax dodges and tax breaks that enable the rich and the multinationals to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. The Congressional Progressive Caucus budget shows what is possible, while still bringing our long-term debt under control.

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Tagged Borosage, industrial policy, platinum coin seigniorage, Taxing the rich, The New Populism

The New Populism Needs to Get This Straight

Posted on January 25, 2014 by Joe Firestone | 25 comments

By Joe Firestone

Let’s look again at the new populism through the lens provided by Robert Borosage in his recent attempt to tell us what it is about. He says:

The apostles of the new inequality have unrelenting sought to starve the public sector. President Reagan opened the offensive against domestic investments. Perhaps the hinge moment was in the final years of the Clinton administration when the budget went into surplus, and Clinton, the finest public educator of his time, pushed for paying down the national debt rather than making the case for public investment. He left the field open for George W. Bush to give the projected surpluses away in tax cuts skewed to the top end.

The hinge moment wasn’t then. It was when he decided, either early in his first term, or even before he took office, to rely on deficit reduction coupled with low interest rates from Alan Greenspan, on the advice of Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, rather than on deficit spending on human capital investments as advocated by Robert Eisner and Robert Reich. Rubin’s victory in the internal debates within the Administration was well-known at the time (1993), and set the deficit reduction course that played along with the Fed’s bubbles to create the private sector debt-fueled “goldilocks” prosperity, and surpluses of his second term. By the time Clinton faced the choice Borosage refers to, the die had already been cast. It was very unlikely that Clinton would turn away from further Government austerity policy, and turn instead toward investments in infrastructure, public facilities and “human capital.”

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Tagged #PCS, Alan Greenspan, bill clinton, CAF, Congressional Progressive Caucus, CPC, goldilocks economy, MMT, modern money theory, platinum coin seigniorage, Robert Borosage, Sector Financial Balances, the Job Guarantee, the new populists, trade deficits, trade surplus

Bernie Sanders: Self-shackled Champion of the People

Posted on October 31, 2013 by Joe Firestone | 42 comments

I gotta love Bernie Sanders, because he seems so much like people I grew up with and like myself too, and he also seems to have that passion for equality and democracy that is so important for the future of America. Sometimes I think Bernie is one of the few champions of the people left in Congress. But I also think that along with other progressives he has constructed chains for himself that prevent him from being as effective a champion of the people as he otherwise might be. Continue reading →

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Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged Austerians, austerity, bernie sanders, budget plans, budget projections, CBO projections, debt and deficits, Medicare Solvency, MMT, modern money theory, platinum coin seigniorage, progressives, Social Security Solvency, Social Security Works, tax justice

Dick Durbin Insults Everyone Else’s Intelligence About Social Security

Posted on October 21, 2013 by Joe Firestone | 20 comments

By Joe Firestone

Yesterday on Fox, Senator Dick Durbin said:

WALLACE: I’m going to talk about ObamaCare on a second, but you’re not answering my question. Why does taxes — why do taxes have to be on the table? Why can’t you just make a deal, short-term spending for long-term entitlement reform — which, Senator, you support and President Obama support. You have supported the idea of some entitlement reform.

DURBIN: That’s right. I do, and I’ll tell you why — because Social Security is going to run out of money in 20 years. I want to fix it now, before we reach that cliff.

Medicare may run out of money in 10 years, let’s fix it now. And that means addressing the skyrocketing cost of health care. That’s what ObamaCare is focused on, and yet, the Republicans want nothing to do with it.

If we don’t focus on the health care and dealing with the entitlements, the baby boom generation is going to blow away our future. We don’t want to see that happen. We want to make sure that Social Security and Medicare are solid.

The “. . . may run out of money. . . . ” and “. . . dealing with entitlements. . . “ memes, in reply to Chris Wallace’s question together suggest that a deal trading increased revenues for Social Security and other entitlement cuts is acceptable to him. So, Durbin’s argument is that because Social Security Trustee and CBO projections, based on very pessimistic economic growth projections for the whole period, show a shortfall in the Social Security “Trust Fund” in 20 years, it is acceptable to make entitlement cuts now if the Democrats can get increased revenue from higher taxes, as if entitlement “reform” were the only way to meet the perceived Social Security solvency problem. But who would it be acceptable to?

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