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  • Kunstler, shame and failure

    A large percentage of people in the public sector are there because they can't survive in the competitive private sector.
    Now, do they come up with TERRIBLE ideas of governance because of their innate insecurity?
    OR
    Do they come up with terrible ideas ofg governance because they have no understanding of human nature?
    I'm going to post the entire text of an article from James Kunstler.



    Cluster**** Nation
    For your reading pleasure Mondays and Fridays

    Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page

    How might we account for the strange melding of neuroticism and dishonesty that has gripped America’s thinking class since the ascent of Donald Trump as an epically reviled figurehead on our ship of state? It all seems to come down to shame and failure.

    There is, for instance, the failure of America’s leading economic viziers to arrest the collapse of the middle class — and with it, the disintegration of families — that more than anything produced the 2016 election result. What is a bigger emergency: the destruction of all those towns, cities, and lives in flyover-land, or the S & P stock index going down twenty points?

    The choice made by the “experts” the past ten years is obvious: pump the financial markets at all costs by using dishonest policy interventions which they are smart enough to know will eventually blow up the banking system. They did it to preserve their reputations long enough to retire out of their jobs. The trouble is that the damage is now so extreme that when the time comes for them to apologize it will not be enough. They will lose their freedom and perhaps their heads.

    The neuroticism and dishonesty is exactly what turned two of this country’s most sacred and noble endeavors, higher education and medicine, into disgraceful rackets. Sunday night, CBS 60 Minutes covered both bases in their lead story about how the NYU medical school recently declared its program tuition-free. This great triumph was due to an enormous cash gift from one of the founders of the Home Depot company, billionaire Ken Langone. Nowhere in the broadcast did CBS raise the question as to how the cost of a degree became so outrageous in the first place. Or how Mr. Langone made his fortune by putting every local hardware store in America out of business, which enabled him to capture the annual incomes of ten thousand small business owners and their employees. NYU’s grand gesture is just a way to paper over the shame of the University executives’ role in the college loan racket that may destroy countless lives.

    Neuroticism and shame is what drives identity politics with all its weird ritual persecutions and punishments. It was the thinking class that led the civil rights campaign of the 1960s. Here we are fifty years later with dozens of ruined cities, failed public school systems, and prisons stuffed with black men way out of proportion to their actual demographic in the general population (nationally 37 percent versus 13 percent). In California, it’s 29 percent while only 6 percent of the state’s male residents are African American. The favored narrative of the thinking class says that the high incarceration rate is due to unfair application of drug laws for relatively minor offenses, especially being caught holding weed.

    Okay, marijuana has been legal in California for several years now. Has that altered the statistics? I guess we’ll find out soon. Is there another explanation? Perhaps disproportionate bad behavior of other kinds: assault, robbery, murder? Perhaps the result of government policies engineered by the thinking class to promote single-parent households with no fathers present for three generations now?

    After all this time and all the evidence of how pernicious this condition is, why is there no debate about it? Why is the thinking class so dishonest about the most ruinous ingredient in everyday public schooling: bad behavior, violence, and constant classroom disruption. The thinking classes must be ashamed and appalled by all this, since it appears to contradict all the mighty efforts made to uplift the black underclass. And so what was the most notable response? The Obama Department of Education directed school districts to stop suspending and disciplining black kids who behaved badly because it looked bad, and that policy is still in place. How’s that working out?

    The latest appeal among the thinking class to remedy these otherwise intractable and embarrassing problems is the panacea of reparations for the descendants of slaves. Of course, the money spent on social services the past half-century, if simply distributed as cash, would have made every African American a millionaire. Personally, I can’t imagine a worse way of ginning up racial animosity across America to the breaking point than these proposed reparations. We will surely hear more about this in the long slog to the 2020 elections, and it will only make the USA look more insane to the rest of the world.

    The thinking class’s position on both legal and illegal immigration is possibly even more cynical — because they surely know how dishonest it is, even through the fog of self-deception. Last week California’s attorney general Xavier Becerra proposed that illegal immigration be decriminalized. Surprisingly, nobody laughed at this extraordinary exercise in casuistry. Meanwhile, the state slides into hopeless insolvency, squalor, and chaos — a reminder that people don’t necessary get what they expect, but rather what they deserve.

    RussiaGate, of course, has been the most acute locus of neurotic dishonesty across this land the past two years. The primary information organs of the thinking class — The New York Times, The WashPo, CNN, MSNBC — have not only omitted to apologize for the dangerous hysteria they knowingly propagated, but they persist in supporting the matrix of fantasies at all costs in what must now be seen as a hopeless attempt to preserve their reputations and perhaps even their livelihoods. The repudiation of this nonsense by chief inquisitor Robert Mueller could not be more absolute, even if he was compelled by reality against his own wishes and instincts to do it. And now, what avenue will all this diseased animus of the thinking class go down in its destructive, shame-fueled frenzy to justify itself?

    Comment


    • Socialism, NO,,,, socialism for bankers, YES

      MMT has a lot of people scared. Here is a very deceptive article from Armstrong.
      "This same mistake is leading many down the path of MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) which assumes we can just print without end and Quantitative Easing proves there will be no inflation. They are ignoring the clash between fiscal policy carried out by the government and monetary policy in the hand of the central banks. This is a major confrontation where central banks have expanded the money supply to “stimulate” inflation."
      It's OK to pump money into the upper loop and inflate stock & bond markets. It just isn't OK to pump any money into the lower loop.

      "Governments are obsessed with enforcing laws against tax evasion and it is destroying the world economy and creating massive deflation."
      What about the $250 trillion created by GOV in the last 10 years? What about the drop in corporate taxes? What about most of the tax burden being laid on the middle class? What about the $243 billion spent by GOV just in February? GOV pumped in mega-pixels of new debt that went to the upper loop. Then, GOV squeezed some of this back out.

      "Therefore, all the theories behind MMT are once again wrong for they are only looking at one side of the equation."
      "Therefore, in the ’30s, Milton’s criticism of the Fed was justified because there was no massive hunt for taxes from the fiscal side. Today, we have the fiscal policies hunting capital resulting in a contraction economically (declining in investment) while you have QE just funding the government – not the private sector."
      SO, stock markets are at a historical high BUT, the hot money is just funding the GOV.

      Wall Street decries any thing that smells like socialism,,, almost.
      Socialism for the bankers is an ongoing thing.
      https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...-dimon-bailout

      4/09 75,000 more stores need to close across the US, as online sales grow – CNBC
      4/09 Market concentration is threatening the US economy – Project Syndicate

      "Mr. Langone made his fortune by putting every local hardware store in America out of business, which enabled him to capture the annual incomes of ten thousand small business owners and their employees."
      Market concentration is threatening the little guy.
      Keep in mind that; if all the insects die, mankind dies shortly after.

      Comment


      • Population deflation,,,MMT and bonds

        Ageing and Asian markets.
        "From Japan and South Korea to China and some parts of Southeast Asia, aging populations are about to fundamentally change societies, business strategies and government policies."
        "The ageing threat has been discussed for years, but the latest signs suggest the region's worst fears are beginning to become a reality.
        "I want a child," said one South Korean wife in her 30s. "But we still don't have a house, and when we think about the money, we're unable to take the plunge."
        The State tries to grow the economy by pumping hot money to the speculators. The speculators drive up the price of housing out of the reach of would-be parents. There is quite a lag between cause & effect but, it is here.

        "TOKYO -- The Asian century is going to be gray.

        From Japan and South Korea to China and some parts of Southeast Asia, ageing populations are about to fundamentally change societies, business strategies and government policies. Moreover, the trend could tilt the regional and global power balance, as some economies are stunted while others continue to grow on the back of still-plentiful labor.

        The ageing threat has been discussed for years, but the latest signs suggest the region's worst fears are beginning to become a reality.

        "I want a child," said one South Korean wife in her 30s. "But we still don't have a house, and when we think about the money, we're unable to take the plunge."

        Many South Koreans express similar sentiments and refrain from having children. The working-age population, ranging in age from 15 to 64, declined for the first time in 2017. Now, the total population is also projected to go into decline as early as next year, the country's statistics agency warned at the end of March.
        A newborn at a hospital in Japan: As births decline, Asia is rapidly getting older. (Photo by Ken Kobayashi)

        By 2065, South Korea is forecast to become the grayest developed nation.
        In China, the government abolished its one-child policy in 2016, but this appears to be a case of too little, too late. Births continued to decrease in 2017 and 2018.
        The number of Chinese aged 16-59 began falling in 2014, according to the United Nations."
        Japan plans to lower the interest rate so that Japanese couples will have more children. Does it seem that there is a BIG disconnect between State perceptions and reality?
        Notes;
        China "All that has contributed to soaring house and rental prices, which are pushing younger, first-time homebuyers out of the market. In recent decades, housing prices have risen nearly twice as fast as disposable income,"
        "Chinese investors are inflating housing markets in the US, Canada, and Australia"
        Since the land under the houses is owned by the State, it tries to inflate the price. Everybody with extra money buys up the housing to rent of resell later. High RE prices drive down birth rates. At the same time, investors are demanding these high prices never drop.
        "Public anger in China spreading as property prices drop | South China ...
        https://www.scmp.com › News › China › Society Oct 11, 2018 "

        "Japan is farther along on this fast track to nowhere. Its population of 15- to 64-year-olds started shrinking in 1995, about the time the country descended into "lost decades" of economic stagnation and deflation. The total population has been falling since 2008.
        The outlook for all three countries is grimmer still: From 2020 to 2060, working-age populations are projected to plunge 30% in Japan, 26% in South Korea and 19% in China, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. "

        "In Japan, social security outlays have ballooned over two decades, forcing the government to borrow more to keep the system going. The public debt is now more than twice the gross domestic product, making Japan the most indebted developed economy."
        https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/As...n-to-come-true
        This is one more thing that markets can not cope with.

        4/10 Schiff: democracy has failed, not capitalism – Market Sanity
        CRONY capitalism has used regulatory capture to kill representative democracy.
        4/10 Small businesses layoff workers to comply with minimum wage law – SHTF Plan
        Crony capitalism at it's finest. The big banks want to roll back any legislation that might limit their power to gamble.
        "Reform advocates have long sought to make banks smaller, and also to make sure financial companies keep depository banking and gambling activities separate. The bill proposed would represent a step back on both fronts.

        Although the bill is opposed by powerful Senators like Elizabeth Warren, other influential Democrats co-sponsored it, including Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Jon Tester of Montana, and Mark Warner of Virginia.

        “This bill increases the risk of another taxpayer bailout, and I will continue to challenge supporters of this bill — from both parties — to explain why they stand on the side of big banks instead of working families,” said Warren."
        https://medium.com/rollingstone/taib...s-172e65c3dbc2

        Armstrong, "The hard landing is economic and will have its greatest impact outside the USA"
        "The ECB has been on its hands and knees, pleading with the Fed not to raise rates when they will have to continue their QE programs or face sovereign debt defaults."
        https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/a.../hard-landing/
        Armstrong expects capital inflows to U.S. equities to continue. This drains capital out of Europe. The ECB must continue with QE OR, it must implement MMT. Even that might not save them. China has a $1 trillion capital outflow per year. The outflows cause domestic deflation of the circulating money supply. Somebody has to make up the difference one way or another. Much of the outflows are tied to investor confidence that the GOV will not protect their investment.
        Globalization and unlimited capital flows are a direct weapon against socialist tendencies and irresponsible governments,,,, what the bankers consider "irresponsible".
        This motivates the State to escape this control. MMT completely sidelines the bond speculators. The bond speculators most definitely don't want to be sidelined. When the pension crisis really hits, there will be demands to escape the control of the bankers.

        Comment


        • SDR,, the little train that couldn't,,, population reduction

          Once again, my post got bleeped into oblivion.
          The world is at a bifurcation point. Part of the PTB want global population reduction. Part want continual population growth to supply continual growth in credit and finance markets.
          Armstrong decries any attempt at population reduction.
          A fraction of the PTB are in the process of pushing the U.S. dollar off a cliff to usher in a one-world currency. The new one-world currency would be referenced to the special drawing rights and anchored to the blockchain.
          Here is an excellent article that lays out the whole process.
          Globalists Are Bringing Their One World Currency Plans Out Into The Open

          The article makes NO MENTION of racism. It makes NO MENTION of human nature. Asia is the main source of population. Russia has $ 75 trillion in natural resources. No one-world currency would be viable if it weren't accepted in the East. Will the Chinese subscribe to a currency system created by their historic tormentor and enemy?
          Will Russia trade their resources to the West who destroyed Russia by fomenting the Bolshevik revolution? The Chinese are quite racist,, like everyone else. Will they let the West impose a new reserve system on them that shows no particular advantage?

          It is obvious that a fraction of the PTB is working on population reduction. Russia gives out free apartments and medals to couples that have lots of children. Why would Russia subscribe to a control system created by the West (SDR)
          The working population of China drops by 1 million a year. I doubt that they have any interest in dropping it much faster. They rescinded their one-child policy.

          The article posits that the Central Banks would create a crypto-currency referenced to the blockchain. The CBs would replace the private banks. This is obviously an attempt by the State to replace the private banks. I doubt that the idea will fly.

          The State is working on absolute control.
          "The company behind the creation: Bichip, state that their human implant is the first and only distance readable human microchip with internet connectivity. Originally designed to store medical data, drivers license and passport details, the newest upgrade now allows for the safe storage of cryptocurrency."
          https://www.chepicap.com/en/news/213...n-implant.html
          This could be the ultimate state of socialism. Every facet of your life could be monitored or deleted. This could be the ultimate state of fascism.
          The chip combined with the blockchain could be used to compel you to work regardless.
          The chip combined with the block chain has the power to pull your labor-value to either the rich OR the poor.
          China is locking down State control with their social credit system. They are in the end-game of a MASSIVE State-sponsored misallocation of resources. China has spent enormous sums on creating a food-production infrastructure in Africa. They don'y need anything from the West. Why would they accept a credit instrument from the West?
          The same is true for Russia. They don't need anything from the West.
          Last edited by Danny B; 04-12-2019, 03:12 AM. Reason: screw up

          Comment


          • S.O.P. throwing darts at the crash-calendar

            There is a general appreciation that we are getting closer to SHOWTIME.
            Rolling Stone, "The federal rescue of Wall Street didn’t fix the economy – it created a permanent bailout state"
            "to prop up the economy and save the world from financial catastrophe. What we actually ended up doing was the exact opposite: committing American taxpayers to permanent, blind support of an ungovernable, unregulatable, hyperconcentrated new financial system that exacerbates the greed and inequality that caused the crash,"
            " Paulson actually told members of Congress that $5.5 trillion in wealth would disappear by 2 p.m. that day unless the government took immediate action, and that the world economy would collapse “within 24 hours.”
            "Can you, like, give me some money?” Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio, remembers a call with Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke. “We need $700 billion,” they told Brown, “and we need it in three days.” What’s more, the plan stipulated, Paulson could spend the money however he pleased, without review “by any court of law or any administrative agency.”"

            "But within days of passage, the Fed and the Treasury unilaterally decided to abandon the planned purchase of toxic assets in favor of direct injections of billions in cash into companies like Goldman and Citigroup. Overnight"

            https://www.rollingstone.com/politic...ailout-113270/
            OK, this is pretty much standard operating procedure when the banks control the State,

            "Let's start with the Ray Dalio Effect, which strikes financiers who've exploited our rigged system to skim billions while creating zero goods and services or public good:"
            "Meanwhile, in the real world of people creating wealth with their labor, workers' share of the national income has cratered while the financiers piled up their billions. The greatest expansion of wealth in U.S. history has created the greatest expansion of wealth inequality in U.S. history."
            Standard operating procedure.
            Very good article, oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: Blind Faith vs. the Bottom Line

            4/10 American savers lost $500 billion due to low interest rates since financial crisis – CNBC
            Well, we HAD to save the banks.
            4/11 Baby boomers face retirement crisis — little savings, high health costs – CNBC
            No interest income but, IT WAS WORTH IT.
            4/11 Short-term growth policies risk new financial crisis, IMF warns – Guardian
            Is the IMF r eferring to, US budget deficit hits record $234 billion in February, national debt

            "Yet in their desperation central banks may have set a combustion process in motion that they can’t stop, one that may bring about even more ghastly consequences than the market troubles they sought to avert in the first place."
            Yes, but, it was worth it to save the banks.
            “Mr. Trump’s willingness to bend policy to please the markets is now clear — and it’s risky. In recent years the stock markets have grown larger than the economy, and they are now big enough to take the economy down with them when they deflate.“"
            Trump DID inherit this problem.
            GOOD graphs. "How’s this relevant? Check what happens when you combine all 3 trend lines on one chart:"
            https://i1.wp.com/northmantrader.com...24%2C442&ssl=1

            "I kid you not. Freak coincidence? I can’t say, I also can’t say if the apex will be met, but were it to get hit it would be a point of unprecedented historical confluence resistance.

            The 2.618 fib and 3 historic trend lines converging at the same point in time. When?
            October 2019:"
            https://northmantrader.com/2019/04/10/combustion/

            "You must understand that 75% of today’s wealth is in the hands of retirees and pre-retirees. Most have a significant portion of their money in index funds, and they’re going to see significant erosion of their retirement assets. I’m thinking especially of those depending on public pensions,"
            "The Bernanke Fed’s answer was quantitative easing—essentially a way to stimulate lending at longer maturities. It had an effect but not the intended one. Instead of going to productive use, the new stimulus helped banks deleverage and public companies leverage up and repurchase their own shares, or as we will discuss below, simply buy their competition and short-circuit the “creative destruction” cycle"
            "Now a Bank of America Merrill Lynch study finds roughly the same thing: 13% of developed-country public companies can’t even cover their interest payments. "


            Three companies control about 80% of mobile telecoms. Three have 95% of credit cards. Four have 70% of airline flights within the U.S. Google handles 60% of search. The list goes on. (h/t The Economist)

            In agriculture, four companies control 66% of U.S. hogs slaughtered in 2015, 85% of the steer, and half the chickens, according to the Department of Agriculture. (h/t Open Markets Institute)

            Similarly, just four companies control 85% of U.S. corn seed sales, up from 60% in 2000, and 75% of soy bean seed, a jump from about half, the Agriculture Department says. Far larger than anyone — the American companies DowDuPont and Monsanto.

            As we have reported, some economists say this concentration of market power is gumming up the economy and is largely to blame for decades of flat wages and weak productivity growth."
            NO mention of weak consumption.
            https://www.mauldineconomics.com/fro...lism-gone-wild

            4/11 Prepare for $80 oil this summer as ‘wounded bulls’ rise, RBC warns – CNBC
            Inflated prices are deflationary to the consuming economy.
            4/11 US budget deficit running 15% higher than a year ago – AP
            AND ??
            4/11 Growing public pension crisis an ‘existential financial threat’ – Epoch Times
            About that public pension crisis.
            "the liabilities of major U.S. public pensions are up 64% since 2007 while assets are up only 30%."
            "In the next bear market the pension funds that are already wildly underfunded will fall into a financial black hole from which they’ll never be able to escape.

            Those states and cities – many of which are issuing bonds to cover their day-to-day expenses – will be exposed as junk credits (as Chicago was recently) and will have to either pay way up to borrow or enact some combination of tax increases (politically almost impossible) or pension benefit cuts (legally impossible in many places) which will cause chaos without fixing the underlying problem. "
            "The weakest cities and the states in which they reside will be forced to default on some of their obligations, stiffing suppliers, creditors, and/or employees. This will throw the municipal bond market into chaos "
            " there’s a good chance of the crisis spreading from pensions to currencies, as the world finally realizes that the bailouts are just beginning, with US states and cities soon to be followed by student loans, emerging markets, and European failed states. "
            https://www.dollarcollapse.com/what-...rong-pensions/
            If you are a prepper, this is the most likely scenario to prepare for. If you hear about a general strike by police and fire fighters, it is time to load up the car. Bring money and a tent and,,, camp out at a national park.

            Pension charts, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...sion-nightmare

            Comment


            • There is a reason that bankers hate MMT

              The assumption is made that; when city and State pension funds go broke, FED GOV will borrow tons of money and, bail them out.
              4/12 Each American taxpayer would owe almost $700,000 to pay down US debt – Watchdog
              The alternative would be a system-wide default.
              I found an interesting Doc that I must excerpt heavily. It is too deceptive to just link to.
              "Federal debt accelerations ultimately lead to lower, not higher, interest rates. Debt-funded traditional fiscal stimulus is extremely fleeting when debt levels are already inordinately high. Thus, additional and large deficits provide only transitory gains in economic activity, which are quickly followed by weaker business conditions."
              Yet, long term government bond yields dropped sharply in all four
              areas. This result contradicts the view that the supply
              of government debt determines long-term risk-free yields. In microeconomic models and standard supply/demand analysis, increasing the issuance of debt could push yields higher. "
              They keep using that term, "risk free"

              "This increased debt level will weaken economic activity, thus inflation, pushing long-term yields lower, thereby continuing the now almost three-decade long trend to lower long-term Treasury yields. The empirical evidence is clear. In the past two decades, the government debt-to-GDP ratio rose by 45%, 119%, 15% and 63% in the U.S., Japan, the euro area and the U.K., respectively, unprecedented amounts for any peace time period. At the same time, government bond yields dropped 285, 235, 380 and 400 basis points, respectively (Charts 1, 2, 3, 4). Despite a current gross debt-to-GDP ratio of 106% and a CBO estimate of 110% in seven years, there are currently strong recommendations for even larger deficits and higher debt-to-GDP ratios."

              Since U.S. sovereign debt is "risk free', the higher the demand, the lower the rate that it pays. The CBs world-wide pump in mega-tons of liquidity. OF COURSE it flows to risk-free investments. Since U.S. debt is more "risk free" than European or Chinese debt, US debt attracts foreign capoital inflows.
              "The empirical evidence is clear. In the past two decades, the government debt-to-GDP ratio rose by 45%, 119%, 15% and 63% in the U.S., Japan, the euro area and the U.K., respectively, unprecedented amounts for any peace time period. At the same time, government bond yields dropped 285, 235, 380 and 400 basis points, respectively"

              "The Brookings Paper. The Brookings study starts with the point that stimulative monetary policy options are now inefficacious. RS write that the Fed could take steps to boost private indebtedness, but this might lead to a crisis."
              Sure give more lair-loans and, wait for more defaults.
              "With monetary policy sidelined, RS contend that fiscal policy must do much more to contain chronically weak demand,"

              Wages no longer support demand because of banker-engineered price inflation.

              "Three considerations suggest the RS thesis will not work as advertised. (1) Many historical case studies, including findings from Japan and the U.S., do not support the RS thesis. (2) There exists an insufficiency of national saving (private and government combined) to fund greater deficits without sharply reducing investment in plant and equipment and/or consumer spending."
              Now, we're getting somewhere. Not enough money in the system.
              "This further explains the empirical truth that large government debt and indebtedness leads to lower, not higher, interest rates. Borrowing is indeed much greater, but large indebtedness eventually slows economic growth as resources are transferred from the highly productive private sector to the government sector."
              NO mention of all the liquidity locked up by the banks

              "Declining marginal productivity of debt. When a factor of production is overused, real GDP follows the law of diminishing returns. With debt accelerating even faster under the RS thesis, the marginal productivity of debt should contract further, creating the same pattern evident in the U.S., the U.K., Japan and China. Diminishing returns is a non-linear concept, which means more is not more, it is less. In 2017 and 2018, the GDP generating capacity of debt for all reporting countries was 17.4% lower than 10 years ago."
              NO MENTION that falling productivity is caused by the fact that productivity is useless without consumption demand.

              "Monetary base (mb) times the money multiplier (m). They present algebraic proof that while the Fed can influence m by changing reserve requirements, they cannot control it and thus, under existing laws, the Fed does not have the tools/mechanisms necessary to “print money”. They could and did change the level of the monetary base by purchasing U.S. and agency securities, and indeed the base quadrupled in QE 1, 2 and 3. However, they could not control m, which fell from 9 to 3, and M2 growth remained generally subdued."

              The money all went into inflationary speculation, NOT into wages or consumption.
              "There is currently, however, a real live proposal to make the Fed’s liabilities legal tender so that the Fed can directly fund the expenditures of the federal government – this is MMT – and it would require a change in law, i.e. a rewrite of the Federal Reserve Act."
              MMT rears it's ugly head.
              "This is not a theoretical exercise. Harvard
              Professor Kenneth Rogoff, writing in Project-Syndicate.org (March 4, 2019), states “A number of leading U.S. progressives, who may well be in power after the 2020 elections, advocate using the Fed’s balance sheet as a cash cow to fund expansive new social programs, especially in view of current low inflation and interest rates.”
              The LIE rears it's ugly head. Interest rates have noting to do with money created out of thin air. Also, this proposes that the FED create this (debt-loaded) liquidity and NOT the Treasury.

              "The Treasury would issue zero maturity and zero interest rate liabilities to the Fed, who in turn, would increase the Treasury’s balances at the Federal Reserve Banks. The Treasury, in turn, could spend these deposits directly to pay for programs, personnel, "
              Do you see any reason for the FED to be in the loop?
              "Thus, the Fed, which is part of the government, would be funding its parent with a worthless IOU."
              I OWE NOBODY.
              "There would be no real increase in services or money"
              True, but, there would be a difference on where the money went.
              "If the government responded by issuing more central bank legal tender, the inflationary process would become self-perpetuating, and as was the case in numerous historical instances this would lead to hyper-inflation."
              Consumption and demand have flat-lined because of banker-created price inflation. Injecting debt-free money into the lower loop would bring back consumption and therefore, production. BUT, it would diminish demand for credit.

              Now, we come to the big lie.
              "Moreover, the central bank would have no capability of reducing the money supply. All they could offer would be the zero maturity, zero interest liabilities of the government, but there would be no buyers."
              So, exactly what is a zero-interest liability?
              True, there would be no buyers. There would be NO NEED for intermediaries. The money bypasses the banks.

              http://www.hoisingtonmgt.com/pdf/HIM2019Q1NP.pdf

              Comment


              • Disfunction every where that you look

                That was a difficult post copying from a PDF that had problems with columns. I had to be very careful not to lose it.
                Part of the PTB see socialism as the cure for automation. That means huge wealth transfers to the non-producers.
                Armstrong, "We are reaching an extremely important change in trend. You can see the pressure and all that is at stake for the EU itself has set up a site it pretends to be a Fact Checker. This is indicative of the rising tensions.

                Then we have total insanity with BREXIT where Prime Minister Theresa May is really working for the EU against her own country."
                "May hopes that it will come down to accepting whatever terms the EU demands. She hopes Britain will surrender all sovereignty to Brussels or accept a hard exit, which she thinks everyone would reject. She believes the choice will be a hard exit. She is pitching it as the end of the world or remain and overrule the people and democracy.

                In all the years I have worked around the world with various governments and political figures, I have never seen the entire world in such total chaos.

                Historically, there was always some bright spot where the sun still shined. Today, it just seems to be gray and overcast everywhere we look. We seem to be on track to fulfil our manifest destiny whichever direction that will be — toward liberty or totalitarianism"
                https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/i...-of-rome-2020/

                Russia is the largest supplier of energy in the world. That means that she receives a huge amount of fiat currency in payment for this energy. She is dumping fiat currency in favor of gold.
                https://www.goldmoney.com/research/g...ws-in-the-wind
                Both Russia and China are buying LOTS of gold. Do you see any reason for them to sign on to the SDR?
                4/12 Germany to halve 2019 economic growth forecast to 0.5 percent – Reuters
                Obviously, this has nothing to do with falling population.
                4/12 Shadow banking is now a $52 trillion risk to financial system – CNBC
                BRING IT ON ! We're tired of being screwed by bankers.
                4/12 “Psychologically, they’re ill-prepared” – Canadian chaos looms – Zero Hedge
                Psychology is too important to be overlooked like it is.

                4/11 Chinese scientists have put human brain genes in monkey – Tech Review
                Hopefully, they didn't take these brain genes for lawyers or politicians.

                Most production is done by automatic machines.
                The blob State is sucking the producer dry.
                The banks are sucking the producer dry.
                There is no robot tax. The money has all flowed to the upper loop.
                4/11 Elizabeth Warren wants to raise $1 trillion with 7% corporate profits tax – CNBC
                Sorry, won't do.

                Comment


                • The battle for Brexit

                  ALL OUT Tory Brexiteers push to get May out of No10 on Wednesday – so Britain can quit the EU at 11pm on Friday
                  https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/brexit...sa-may-brexit/

                  Keep in mind that this comes from The Sun. This vid has an observation of the different people who read the different papers in Britain.
                  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGscoaUWW2M

                  Comment


                  • About GDP

                    Mnuchin 'Not Worried at All' About AI Displacing Workers - The Atlantic
                    Tech community "dumbfounded" by Mnuchin's dismissal of AI impact ..

                    "the unemployment rate is down to just 3.8%, the entire post-crisis gap between actual real GDP and the CBO estimate of potential real GDP has been eliminated,"
                    Hussman Funds
                    Paper from Harvard, "Our exploration suggests that while GDP, as currently defined, is not a comprehensive measure of welfare or even economic well-being,"
                    https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...XGOBesy23DjIyW

                    GDP is just a measure of how much money there is in the economy,,, total of goods and services.
                    Finance and advertising are included. So is defense spending.
                    Finance has grown until it is now 40% of GDP. Nothing is produced but, everything looks better if finance is included. U.S. GOV spent $243 billion in February, much of it for defense.
                    "GDP's inventor Simon Kuznets was adamant that his measure had nothing to do with wellbeing."
                    "Kuznets was uneasy about a measure that treated all production equally. He wanted to subtract, rather than add, things he considered detrimental to human wellbeing, such as arms, financial speculation and advertising. "
                    "From GDP’s perspective, bigger is always better. In the real world, that is not always so. When the financial sector got bigger and bigger, it ended in financial crisis. "
                    https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/...owth-delusion/

                    "Though Kuznets is credited with generating the first national income accounts, they did not reflect a method he desired to use. Kuznets wanted to create a measure that could be used to understand welfare, not simply output. He thought advertising, financial industries, speculative activities, subways, and certain types of expensive urban housing, among other things, including government spending ought not be included (p. 14). "
                    https://mises.org/library/gdp-tool-p...-not-economics

                    GDP during the war years;
                    Dec 31, 1944 7.95%
                    Dec 31, 1943 17.02%
                    Dec 31, 1942 18.88%
                    Dec 31, 1941 17.71%
                    https://www.multpl.com/us-real-gdp-g.../table/by-year

                    Comment


                    • The woes of Japan spreading to the R.O.W.

                      Here is a graph of U.S. debt.
                      http://garykaltbaum.com/wp-content/u...-1972-2015.png
                      Here is a graph of the % of the GDP that is attributed to finance.
                      https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ncialShare.jpg

                      Armstrong, "This seems to be connected largely to the collapse of socialism and government promises. It even appears that many governments are deliberately trying to instigate a war that they can use as an excuse to suspend debt payments which would allow them to deny their fiscal mismanagement for decades."
                      "the higher the debt to GDP rises, the greater the risk that the debt will force higher taxes resulting in lower economic growth. While everyone bashes the USA because it has the largest debt, it also has the largest economy. The debt to GDP in China exceeded 250% at the end of 2017."
                      You can see the great temptation of MMT.

                      There is beginning to occur an appreciation of the effects of a falling birth rate.
                      "Japan experienced rapid growth following World War II as the US and others helped rebuild its economy.
                      This eventually led to a roaring expansion that culminated in the 1980s Japanese asset bubble, which popped in the early 1990s. There followed what came to be called the “Lost Decade.” It was really more than a decade, as the early 2000s brought only mild recovery. GDP shrank, wages fell, and asset prices dropped or went sideways at best.

                      The Lost Decade had monetary roots, namely the 1985 Plaza Accord that drove the yen higher and inflated the asset bubble. The Bank of Japan tried to pop the bubble with a series of rate hikes beginning in 1989. This chart shows the BOJ’s benchmark rate."
                      "Meanwhile, the government tried assorted fiscal policies: infrastructure projects, deregulation, tax cuts, etc. They had little effect, too. GDP growth has been stuck near zero"
                      No mention that population growth was stuck at zero.
                      "The Bank of Japan has bought every bond it can except those the government will create to fund future deficits, which is why they are buying stocks not just in Japan but in the US as well. They are trying to put yen into the system in an effort to generate inflation. It simply hasn’t worked."

                      "I will admit the Fed’s $4 trillion balance sheet expansion surprised me at the time. Fool me once, shame on you. We’ve now seen the new playbook. At a minimum, they will keep the balance sheet at its present, barely-diminished size and eventually add a lot more when we go into recession. I think $10 trillion is almost a sure thing by the mid-2020s, by which point we will have been through our second recession."
                      MMT
                      "The Federal Reserve holds roughly 35% (give or take) of US government debt. Can we even imagine the Federal Reserve at some point holding $20 trillion of US government debt? "
                      [B]So, the FED has a choice. It can hold this $10 trillion in GOV debt and, collect the interest OR, GOV can print money to pay it's bills and, bypass the FED and the bankers. [/B https://www.mauldineconomics.com/fro...ed-world-ahead

                      "That brings us to a new study from researchers at the University of Tokyo and Sweden’s Karolinska Institute. It finds that as of 2015, roughly a quarter of Japanese under 40 are essentially virgins. That’s up from about 20% two decades ago."
                      "Yet the University of Tokyo-Karolinska study is interesting on two fronts. For one thing, it notes that for young Japanese, “their lack of sexual experience may be involuntary,” citing stagnant incomes and increasingly unstable job prospects as driving the trend"
                      "Jim Rogers avoids Japanese debt is a mismatch posing repayment questions. Or, as he put it in November 2017: “Japan has staggering debt. They have a declining population and debt that's going through the roof. If I were a 10-year-old Japanese, I'd get myself an AK-47, and I'd leave.”

                      "As 2019 unfolds, Japan faces a worsening global economy. Exports have now fallen for three straight months" " It hiked sales taxes in 2014 to 8% from 5%, ostensibly to pay down debt. It backfired. A resulting recession had Tokyo upping borrowing to revive growth. Another tax increase planned for October–to 10% from 8%"
                      " will magically make Japan more innovative and productive. The Olympics themselves will increase English proficiency, morph Tokyo into a key financial center, catalyze startup activity, cut bureaucracy, fatten paychecks, internationalize Japan Inc."
                      "Nor will magical thinking prod young Japanese to date more, marry earlier and have more kids. The issue is not a lack of interest in family, connection or committed relationships. "

                      "The problem is rigid corporate schedules that make a reasonable life-work balance hard to achieve. It’s about exorbitant living costs, elevated stress and lower confidence in one’s future earnings potential. "
                      "“Parents don't have kids for lots of reasons but clearly the cost of raising them, difficulties in securing daycare combined with long working hours make having a family a tough call for increasing numbers of couples.”
                      https://www.forbes.com/sites/william.../#531a32504e83
                      Yep, no money,,,, no kids.

                      "For example, taxes have been rising continuously. The recent increase in consumption taxes (national sales taxes) has gotten a lot of attention. However, one of the biggest taxes in Japan is what we would call a payroll tax on income. It was apparently 14.42% for companies in 2013, and 13.94% for individuals, for a total of 28.36%. And, there is no upper limit on income.

                      I don’t have good data on historical payroll tax rates in Japan, but as a percentage of National Income, the revenue from the tax was 5.4% in 1970, 13.6% in 2000, and 17.1% in 2012. The consumption tax did not exist in 1988; in 1989, it was introduced at 3%. It is scheduled to rise to 10% in 2015."
                      And they wonder why the Japanese can't afford kids.
                      The solution,,, as proffered by the corporatocracy, "If Japan is going to have another period of prosperity, with a graying population, the eventual solution will be the same: to make working-age people as productive as possible."
                      https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanl.../#368d27889ff5

                      Comment


                      • Zombies and job niches

                        I've always maintained that there is NO cure for efficiency and NO way to roll back automation. From a tangential view, this becomes obvious.
                        FED GOV spent $243 billion in February 2019. Where did it go. What did they spend it on?
                        Boeing Didn't Get Any Commercial 737 Orders in March - WSJ
                        Lockheed Martin, Boeing get most money from federal government
                        OK, so, why did GOV spend it?
                        " a zombie company is a technical term for a business which, if it is not yet numbered among the undead, is only earning just enough cash to pay the interest on its borrowings. " But the bursting of the Japanese asset bubble changed everything. Larger companies were kept afloat by government supported banks to keep their people in work,"
                        "Around the world, the number of zombie companies has risen since the Financial Crisis of 2008. The Bank of International Settlements (BIS) has estimated that 10% of all US public companies can be defined as zombies."

                        "you might ask if zombie companies were good or even necessary for the wider economy. Employees of zombie companies would argue that they are still employed, still paying taxes and still spending in the shops."
                        Also, zombies are low productivity companies. With no cash to invest and hoarding skilled labour"
                        https://www.aberdeenstandard.com/en/...any-apocalypse

                        13% of the world's companies are 'zombies.' That's not healthy - CNN
                        "It started last December, when the IMF published a blog discussing the "Walking Debt: China's Zombies" (a topic we first covered in October 2015 in "More Than Half Of China's Commodity Companies Can't Pay The Interest On Their Debt"). Slamming China’s “zombies”, the IMF said they "are non-viable firms that are adding to the country’s rising corporate debt problem, and are bad business. Zombie firms are highly indebted and incur persistent losses, but continue to operate with the support of local governments or soft loans by banks—adding very little value to economic prospects."
                        https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...xtinction-2019
                        "China's Zombie Firms Can't Lurch Forever – Foreign Policy
                        https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/14...lurch-forever/

                        Mar 14, 2018 - China's Zombie Firms Can't Lurch Forever .... with the motivation to keep companies alive, their workers employed"
                        "They’re defined as companies that make enough revenue to service the interest on their debt, but not any profit, or (worse still) need constant cash injections to stay alive"
                        "The problem with zombie companies isn’t that they’re necessarily destined to fail – many are able to cover their fixed costs (including rent, payroll and suppliers) for years or even decades"
                        "For many large zombie companies, such as Japan’s Daiei supermarket chain, their fate is inescapable. With billions in debt and hulking corporate structures in need of an overhaul, a fast turnaround is all-but impossible. Instead, these firms lumber from repayment to repayment while enduring lengthy restructuring programmes."
                        Co-incidently, Japanese public debt is 260% of GDP.

                        You get the idea, zombie companies are certainly the walking dead BUT, they employ the living. The CBs created about $247 trillion in new liquidity since the 2008 crisis.
                        The 2008 crisis was brought about in America because the bottom of the economic chain ( the middle class consumer) defaulted.
                        The State is in a panic. The consumer ran out of money. He desperately needs a job.
                        The CB pumps money into the banks.
                        The banks pump money into zombie companies.
                        The zombie companies maintain jobs for their people.
                        This has slowed down the wholesale destruction of job niches and maintained spending of the middle class. A wholesale default of impoverished middle class people would wipe out a lot of banks. "They" are trying to stave off defaults by propping up zombie companies who have employees. What about people who don't have jobs?
                        Twenty-two percent of student loan borrowers fall into default
                        Student Loan Debt Statistics In 2018: A $1.5 Trillion Crisis - Forbes


                        It isn't just the West.
                        "Banks issued 5.81 trillion yuan (US$865 billion) of new loans between January to March, beating last year’s previous high of 4.86 trillion yuan, the People’s Bank of China said on Friday.
                        In March alone, banks issued 1.69 trillion yuan (US$251 billion) in loans,"
                        "lending, jumped to 2.86 trillion yuan (US$425 billion) last month, while the January-March amount was 8.18 trillion yuan (US$1.2 trillion), up by 2.34 trillion yuan from a year ago, the central bank data showed."
                        So, what did the Chinese need this "extra" 2.34 trillion yuan for?
                        "When China’s currency and markets faltered in late-2015/early-2016, Beijing backed away from tightening measures and was again compelled to aggressively engage the accelerator."
                        Ah, the tiger has an accelerator pedal.
                        "Why can’t extremely fast credit growth continue forever? Because at any given time there are only so many borrowers capable of paying back big loans"
                        Chinese banks are loaning irrespective of whether or not a customer can make repayment. The loan volume is up (2.34 trillion Yaun) because debt-rollover is more expensive than the original loan.
                        https://www.dollarcollapse.com/soaring-chinese-debt
                        Trump is using the last vestiges of our Bretton Woods credit card to bludgeon the Chinese economy. By lowering the global mean wage, China has exported unemployment AND imported a default cycle.
                        The whole world is trying to maintain employment in the face of rising automation. Mass default and mass unemployment awaits the loser.

                        Comment


                        • run the presses at hyper speed to avoid deflation

                          The CBs print trillions to keep people working. GOV never pays off sovereign debt so, the only cost is the interest burden. With hundreds of trillions of new liquidity sloshing around in markets worldwide, there is too much supply and, too little demand. This has driven interest rates to an effective zero of below. Gov must lie about price inflation or investors would realize that their bond investments are losing far more purchasing power than they are led to believe. ZIRP means that the State can afford to keep the zombies financed for a long time.
                          Various States are printing and, hopefully looking for price inflation. They are deathly afraid of deflation in any of it's guises.
                          4/15 Trump, despite solid U.S. growth, says Fed should fire up stimulus – Reuters
                          Fight off deflation at any cost.

                          These Chains Have Announced a Ton of Store Closings in 2019
                          4/13 U.S. retail stores’ planned closings already exceed 2018 total – NY Times

                          Deflation is closing in from all sides.
                          "Fed should fire up stimulus"
                          I guess that most people are fooled. The GDP figures are just a measure of all the money sloshing around in the upper loop.
                          “By one measure, the amount of investment-grade bonds has doubled to $52 trillion since the financial crisis. And yields have, on average, fallen to roughly 1.8 percent, less than half the level in 2007. If they were to rise by a mere half-percentage point, investors could be looking at almost $2 trillion in losses."

                          The money required to support the zombies is only tolerable with ZIRP. Otherwise, it carries too much debt load. ZIRP has wiped out anybody who depends on interest income. Banks crash without a constant infusion from the CB.
                          "With interest rates at or near zero, governments and corporations went on a historic borrowing binge — and investors gorged on debt that yielded little in return.

                          These worries aren’t new, of course, but they’ve attracted fresh attention as the amount of negative-yielding debt has climbed past $10 trillion. "
                          You pay the government for the privilege of guarding your money.
                          "The world is trapped in debt. Central bankers are trapped by the very construct they helped enable."
                          https://northmantrader.com/2019/04/14/mind-the-gaps/

                          In it's original charter, the FED was forbidden from buying public debt. Over the decades, this prohibition has given way to a mandate. The FED MUST buy sovereign debt. They tried to sell off some of this last year. They sold off about 10% and then, the market puked. Balance sheet reduction acted the same as an interest rate hike. NO CAN DO.
                          It is projected that the FED balance sheet will grow to $10 trillion.
                          The ECB is even more trapped. The lack of a common debt market means that a few States will always be shunned by investors. The BOJ is buying up all public debt and, doesn't need investor money.
                          Obviously, there is a lot of temptation from the FED and ECB to emulate the BOJ. This is even greater at the PBOC. China may very well have to put the credit tiger in a cage.

                          Zero Hedge, Even the President is Terrified of the Dreaded "D" Word
                          It is claimed that MMT would create inflation. Here is what trump has to say.
                          https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...?itok=4DtakftN
                          4/15 Trump struggles to reshape Fed – The Hill

                          During wars, the GDP goes way up. This proves that the economy is NOT constrained by productivity. It is constrained by consumption. That is why various leaders push their countries into war to escape economic doldrums. The inflation policies of the bankers have now killed consumption.
                          BUT, as we move away from kinetic wars and into cyber wars, there is far less opportunity to run up big bills and kill lots of people. Even the kinetic wars are showing that cheap missiles are far superior to expensive navies. There is a big push to go big on space war. This is a non-starter because NOTHING can be protected.

                          Comment


                          • The coming war between the upper loop and the lower loop

                            Automation has reduced aggregate wages and pushed money into the upper loop. The sovereign governments don't have enough money to fulfil all their promises. They want to print new money with NO debt load and, push it into the lower loop. This would end the public bond market. The finance industry depends on the pass-through of liquidity from;
                            FED to Gov bonds to primary dealers to retail banks to consumer loans.
                            MMT would short-circuit all of this. The finance industry calls this potential development a red-pill.... blue-pill moment. Naturally, their arguments are loaded with lies. MMT isn't a panacea but, there is no cure for efficiency.
                            If allowed to take a natural flow, the pension crisis will kill off many millions. The insolvency of SS is DIRECTLY a result of war finance. The FED GOV will use some version of MMT or Chartalism to keep this from happening.
                            Here is a MMT article that must be examined.

                            "Clearly MMT, which has actually been around for decades, is currently a hot topic at the highest levels.
                            what exactly is it?

                            The answer is complicated as there is no central MMT textbook. Neither is it an accepted school of thought within market economics, or in orthodox economics departments at universities. As such, most working economists have only a passing familiarity with the name at best, and there is misunderstanding about what MMT does and doesn’t actually encompass.
                            The role of taxes is to drain money out of the economy after the government has spent it in order to manage aggregate demand and keep it in line with available supply of resources.
                            If the economy gets overheated by inflation, the State collects taxes to cool it down. Other than this, taxes are NOT needed
                            "For example, if a major war were to break out tomorrow, governments would immediately run very large budget deficits without worrying about how to finance them via taxation first. History shows this to be the case. So the issue is then political: what constitutes an emergency that society should focus its resources on?"
                            So, if a war breaks out, this constitutes and emergency that demands lots of money. If the working class crashes, well, that's just bad luck.

                            "conversely, public austerity means the private sector must borrow. "
                            Why do you think that banks love austerity so much?
                            "So is MMT a “magic money tree”? No. MMT is more nuanced than that.'
                            "MMT also recognises there is another limit to the government’s ability to finance itself: inflation. MMT fully recognises inflation is not desirable above a certain level and once self-financed fiscal stimulus exceeds what the real economy can supply such spending would have to be cut back to avoid damaging wage-price spirals – or taxation would have to increase. "

                            Currently, the FED conducts "open market" operations to tune up inflation-deflation in the UPPER LOOP. MMT would do this to the lower loop.
                            "First, is the argument that governments cannot create money because true money is exogenous: the public being able to conjure up money is ‘voodoo’."
                            Yep, only the CB should be able to conjure up money
                            " contrast, MMT is based on chartalists such as Knapp (1925), Lerner (1943), who argue money is always a political construct. Polanyi (1944) and Graeber (2011) also demonstrate the actual historical record of money is chartalist: there was never a transition barter > gold > credit; with the exception of the gold standard (18151931) the norm across human societies has been to start with local credit, rarely repaid, in order to keep the economy moving. That is a tradition which MMT builds on.

                            That is also a red pill/blue pill moment for many!"
                            The transition to electronic money and debt creation has been extremely beneficial to banks. but, it greatly distorts all of the original rules about money
                            "Second is the argument that MMT is simply “Keynesian” fiscal stimulus via bond issuance renamed, already a well-established theory even if has become politically unacceptable"

                            Bonds demand repayment of principle and interest. MMT does NOT
                            "MMT notably also does not believe in the ‘loanable funds’ view that bank loans require savings first, and that banks intermediate between savers and borrowers "
                            THAT idea went away years ago when banks just created credit from your signature.
                            "Notably, while economics textbooks still teach loanable funds, the Bank of England admits this is not how money creation and banking operates – it is de novo; MMT then posits the government has greater powers of money creation than banks in this regard given public liquidity does not require a liability to be created at the same time."
                            ah, but that liability is the bankers salary.
                            "If a bond is issued under Keynesian theory then a liability and an asset are created; but that bond can be bought by the central bank with electronically ‘printed’ money and the liability de facto removed under MMT."

                            "Yet that leads to the third criticism, the government is not the actor that would finance itself: that role falls to the central bank. Naturally, central bank independence would have to end under MMT."
                            You don't even NEED the CB. The treasury takes over.
                            " While a dual inflation and fullemployment mandate already exists at key central banks such as the Fed, and inflation-targeting might still be built into a new MMT policy framework,"
                            Inflation targeting is ONLY needed to produce new money to pay off loans that are interest+principle that is greater than the money in circulation. Circulate more money.

                            "Fourth, and a crucial corollary, interest rates become largely irrelevant under MMT. The cost of money would not matter as much as the quantity of money (i.e., the supply of funds into the real economy fiscally). Indeed, MMT suggests that interest rates should be set to zero. "
                            NOOOOOOO, bankers salaries would be set to zero.
                            "Yet a fifth issue then emerges: how would the government yield curve respond under MMT? The curve would start very low and flat. However, what if MMT succeeds in achieving inflation? Bond yields would rise "
                            There would be no bond and no debt service cost.
                            "While the Phillips curve is broken under our present global model that strengthens capital vis-à-vis labour bargaining power, under MMT it would rapidly return. Wage inflation would then rise again "
                            https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...ll-moment-many
                            I don't need to cite any more. The answer is simple. Do we continue with money origination being fed into the banks and upper loop OR, does money origination go straight from the Treasury to the wage earner?

                            Comment


                            • China has no plan to save itself,,,Japan everywhere

                              Armstrong, "China has added a new fiscal stimulus package in order to prevent a sharp slowdown. Local governments will be allowed to issue up to 320 billion USD in special purpose bonds to fund infrastructure projects, which is an increase of over 59% from last year."
                              China Plans To Build An Astonishing 200 New Airports In The Next 15 years
                              China's Expensive New Airports Lack One Thing: Passengers - WSJ
                              Welcome to The World's Largest Ghost City: Ordos, China - Gizmodo
                              There may be as many as 64 million empty apartments in China;

                              hotels with no guests, stores with no customers and even airports with no flights. It's hard to calculate how many “ghost cities” are sitting uninhabited in China
                              World's biggest mall a China 'ghost town' - CNN
                              So, local governments are going to increase their infrastructure spending by 59%
                              China is long past the point of no return. The credit tiger will eat China and bring a revolution.
                              "Jack Ma, head of the Chinese giant Alibaba, was criticized today after stating that the 9am to 9pm working day was “blessed” claiming it was the driving force of China today."

                              China operates on a business plan that eschews profits in the name of unending growth. They took the jobs of their best customers and export growth fell. In the West we pay about 50% of the cost of an item is for finance. China pumps out giga-tons of money pixels and drives the cost of production-finance way down. This makes it much easier to undercut Western finance. BUT, liquidity MUST grow to keep up with debt-service costs. If exports and sales are falling, the only way to grow liquidity and pay debt service is to print new liquidity. China is growing liquidity far faster than the West. The $320 billion "for infrastructure" will just be used to rollover existing debt and prevent defaults. That is the name of the game at this point. Prevent defaults.
                              China was hoping to switch to a domestic consumption economy. They can only do that by raising wages. They can't afford to raise wages.
                              https://sputniknews.com/business/201...ction-iphones/

                              Meanwhile, the Pentagon has made confetti out of the paper trail for their spending.
                              https://www.rt.com/usa/456593-matt-t...acted-tonight/

                              "When the U.S. recession began during the global financial crisis of 2008, Bernanke promised that he would not make the same mistakes the Japanese made in the 1990s. Instead, he made every mistake the Japanese made, and the U.S. is stuck in the same place and will remain there until the Fed wakes up to its problems.

                              Bernanke thought that low interest rates and massive money printing would lead to lending and spending that would restore trend growth to 3.2% or higher."
                              https://dailyreckoning.com/japan-on-a-larger-scale/
                              "he ratio of corporate debt to U.S. GDP rose above 40 percent prior to each of the last three recessions, but this time around we have found a way to top that. According to Forbes, the ratio of nonfinancial corporate debt to U.S. GDP is now nearly 50 percent…"
                              We Have Seen This Happen Before The Last 3 Recessions - And Now It Is The Worst It Has Ever Been

                              4/16 BOJ’s Kuroda vows to patiently continue current monetary stimulus – Reuters
                              It's not like he has any choice.

                              "We get taxed on how much we earn, taxed on what we eat, taxed on what we buy, taxed on where we go, taxed on what we drive, and taxed on how much is left of our assets when we die, and yet we have no real say in how the government runs, or how our taxpayer funds are used.

                              Case in point: Lawmakers across the country have been acting as fronts for corporations, sponsoring more than 10,000 model laws written by corporations, industry groups and think tanks such as the American Legislative Exchange Council.

                              Make no mistake: this is fascism disguised as legislative expediency."
                              https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/...ial-tyranny-2/
                              For all practical purposes, much of the world is run by organized crime. "They" just buy whatever laws they need to fleece us.
                              Insider trading is a serious crime and many people have been prosecuted for it. The U.S. congress voted to allow insider trading for congress people. This was a bit too blatant so, it was rescinded after a few years.
                              Honest government, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1efOs0BsE0g

                              Comment


                              • Damn the torpedoes, fund the military

                                Here is a look at the budget; https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...?itok=c0-5mjo4
                                “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.” ― Dwight D. Eisenhower

                                "It wasn’t a coincidence World War II began exactly eighty years after the onset of the American Civil War"
                                "We are now eighty years gone since the outset of World War II "
                                https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...ling-precipice

                                It's not just the White House: At Pentagon and State Dept., the press is ...
                                https://www.washingtonpost.com/...pe...1fd-b7b05d5bed...
                                Jan 31, 2019 - Briefings are cut back and so is travel with the leaders of military and ... daily press briefing — once held literally daily — has become a hit-and-miss event. ... “Everything has changed in the Pentagon since Trump,” said Kevin ...
                                Trump sees war as wasteful. Why should he listen to the venom from the Pentagon on a daily basis?
                                Navy's $128 Billion Nuclear Sub Project Faces Audit Over "Unreliable Cost Estimates"

                                Bank of America makes case for oil prices above $100 per barrel
                                https://www.rt.com/business/456668-o...merrill-lynch/
                                So, Pox Americana lays sanctions on oil producing nations like Venezuela, Iran and Russia. This drives up the price of oil. The price of oil goes up and, bankers make more profit. This extra profit is rolled into instruments. None of it goes to wages. Very little goes to capital improvements. So, while a high price for oil is inflationary for the bankers, it is deflationary for the lower loop.

                                Here is a graph of world trade, https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...ade%20data.png
                                https://news.goldcore.com/world-trad...cial-crisis-2/
                                China is printing money to make up for lost trade. Look at the angle of the decline and you will see why China increased stimulus by 59% yoy. Trump is playing them like a yo-yo,,,,, just waiting for the string to break.

                                4/18 California owes $7 billion for pensions next year – Sacramento Bee
                                4/18 No, California’s finances are not back in black – Forbes


                                Armstrong, "Trump has stated that it remains an option for his administration to dump undocumented immigrants in “sanctuary cities,” namely send them all to California and let them pay for them. What is really amazing is that California can’t even manage its own state pensions. It has been secretly lobbying Washington to seize all private 401Ks and hand them to CALPERS to manage. That way, they can take the profits of private pensions and hand them to state employees"

                                Good article, "In “Rendezvous with Oblivion,” Frank explains how such guardians of democracy as higher education, newspapers and America’s small towns have been undermined by the moneyed professional elites cherished by the modern Democratic Party."
                                https://www.cannonbeachgazette.com/o...f1c8432dd.html

                                4/18 Luxury car-sharing service hacked; 100 Mercedes stolen – Zero Hedge

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