Monday, April 18, 2016

Bill Mitchell — Don’t fall for the AAA rating myth

We once believed the Earth was flat. Then someone sailed out to the edge and came back the other way or something like that with apologies to Pythagoras and others in 5BC. At some other point in history, alchemists were convinced that they could take base metals (for example, lead) and turn them into ‘noble’ metals (like gold). More recently, the German Nazis convinced a nation that there was a Master Race (them) which had to purify civilisation by exterminating the parasitic (non-Aryan) races. The lowest races were considered to be Lebensunwertes Leben. Millions died unnecessary and cruel deaths as a result of that piece of national deception. Sometimes these demonstrations of national ignorance are relatively benign. Other times, as history shows the outcomes are devastating. The World is, once again, in the grip of another major deception, which is generating negative consequences at the worse end of the scale. As Australia approaches May, fiscal hysteria reaches its apex each year. Add the prospect of a general election (as early as July 2016) and the lying politicians and the media frenzy that support them extend themselves beyond the normal day to day idiocy and prevarication. On the world stage, the IMF prances around, wiping the blood of millions of citizens that it has impoverished over the years with its incompetence and bloody-mindedness, lecturing nations on what they should do next. Whenever, a nation follows their advice unemployment and poverty rises and the top-end-of-town walk off with even more loot. Loot is what pirates stole. These looters, however, do not even have the panache and elan that we associate with the romance of piracy. They are just sociopaths and cheats. Welcome to a new day in neo-liberal hell!…
Bill is on a roll.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Don’t fall for the AAA rating myth
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

14 comments:

Dan Lynch said...

Of possible interest to MNE -- recent article on Polanyi. I had never heard of him but apparently he was one of the intellectual fathers of "democratic socialism?"

Unlike Marx, Polanyi viewed the transformation of a more balanced commercial society into a market-dominated one as neither natural nor inevitable. For Polanyi, as Block and Somers observe, “progress could only come through conscious human action based on moral principles."

Matt Franko said...

" I will negotiate the sale of .... the Statute of Liberty"

YES! get that copper clad Fing thing the hell out of here!!!! Who the hell invited her in the first place????

Peter Pan said...

Twas a gift from France?

Tom Hickey said...

Of possible interest to MNE -- recent article on Polanyi. I had never heard of him but apparently he was one of the intellectual fathers of "democratic socialism?"


Promoted to a post. Thanks, Dan. Nice summary of The Great Transformation and its relevance.

Andy Blatchford said...

You had never heard of Karl Polyani Dan? Stunned! The Great Transformation isn't just a must read it's an essential read IMHO.

Dan Lynch said...

I've added it to my reading list, Andy.

Polyani's cultural approach to economics would seem to mesh well with Fromm's (which I'm still reading, sigh).

Andy Blatchford said...

You will love it. Graebers Debt owes (pun intended)a lot to it.

Tom Hickey said...

When one examines all the counter-evidence, one wonders how TPTB ever won the information war in econ and political economy with their ridiculous ideology and dodgy models.

Andy Blatchford said...

It's how I got into all this Tom, I didn't really pay any attention to econ & politics before 08. I got curious due to the crash and started reading and was stunned by the nonsense that is apparently 'economics' they have no clue how the real world works. It's apathy that allows it, the information war is just throwing more confusion onto confusion and everyone gets bored.

Matt Franko said...

its gold standard stuff Tom... happening upon mass measures of those metals via mining was a stochastic process... so if we were still under gold, probably a lot of their thinking could be still relevant...

Tom Hickey said...

Same with me, Andy. The last econ book I had cracked was Samuelson as an undergraduate. I stayed interest because I used to trade for my own account some time ago. It because clear to me that something was drastically wrong in the RE market beginning in about 2005. After Bear, I started asking some questions that led me to MMT as I came to realize how loony econ is.

Dan Lynch said...

If it is due to ignorance then it must be a very selective ignorance because TBTB understand money well enough when there is a war to fight or banks to bail out.

Tom Hickey said...

if we were still under gold, probably a lot of their thinking could be still relevant...

Right, Matt. That's why so many of them want gold back. They think that system is unmoored.

Tom Hickey said...

If it is due to ignorance then it must be a very selective ignorance because TBTB understand money well enough when there is a war to fight or banks to bail out.

Feigned ignorance?