Global Money Notes #26 Countdown to QE4? — Zoltan Pozsar

Repo.

Credit Suisse
Global Money Notes #26 Countdown to QE4?

Zoltan Pozsar

The debt delusion — Michael Roberts [book review]

Michael Roberts reviews and critiques The Debt Delusion by John Weeks.

Michael Roberts Blog — blogging from a marxist economist
The debt delusion
Michael Roberts

As Secret Pentagon Spending Rises, Defense Firms Cash in — Marcus Weisgerber

Black budget.

Defense One

As Secret Pentagon Spending Rises, Defense Firms Cash in

Marcus Weisgerber

Economics Intersect
The World's Biggest Arms-Producing Companies
Niall McCarthy

BBG: Banks low on "cash!"

LOL what do these Bloomberg journo morons think the Fed has been doing by reducing system Reserves by $50B/mo for the last 3 years?????

Ever take a f-ing Accounting course you unqualified assholes?????

Even as hedge funds and smaller broker-dealers lean more heavily on the biggest U.S. banks for borrowing in repo markets, the lenders’ cash holdings have been declining https://t.co/ug3c7LTkUz pic.twitter.com/mqOXz5vn92

— Bloomberg Markets (@markets) December 10, 2019

Consortium News - 'A Determined Effort to Undermine Russia’

Retired Australian diplomat Tony Kevin, in conversation with former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr, says the West is unnecessarily determined to undermine Russia.De

At an event last week in Sydney, Kevin and Carr discussed how the West, led by the United States, has been on an aggressive campaign to destabilize Russia, without cause.

When Kevin said he returned to Russia after more than 40 years in 2016 he realized he “had to take sides” in the U.S.-Russia standoff when all Nato countries boycotted the Moscow celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.

“I had to take a moral position that it is not right for the West to be ganging up on Russia,” Kevin says in his conversation with the former Australian foreign minister.

The New Cold War can traced back to a broken promise made to Moscow on Nato expansion eastward. “London and Washington are orchestrating a disinformation” campaign today against Russia, as the New Cold War has heated up over Syria, Ukraine, NATO troops on Russia’s borders and Russiagate.

Watch the hour-long in depth discussion which was filmed and produced by Consortium News’ CN Live! Executive Producer Cathy Vogan.

Links — Dec 9 — Part 2 UPDATED

Oilprice
China Is Winning The Offshore Oil Game

Julianne Geiger

Zero Hedge
'A Clear Abuse': Barr, Durham Object To IG FISA Probe Findings In Stunning Statements
Tyler Durden

John Solomon Reports
Just how bad was the FBI’s Russia FISA? 51 violations and 9 false statements

John Solomon

Sana (Syria)
The interview that Italian Rai News 24 refrained from broadcasting…

Zero Hedge
China's Central Bank To Lead Real-World Pilot Of Digital Yuan: Report
William Suberg via CoinTelegraph.com

Sputnik International
Hong Kong Protests Calm Down After Arrests, Leaving Only ‘Isolated Group of Hardcore’ Activists

Zero Hedge
China Launches 'Competitor' Pipeline Mega-Company In Gambit To Double Oil & Gas Infrastructure
Tyler Durden

Sic Semper Tyrannis
Horowitz's Futile Attempt to Polish the FBI Turd

Larry C Johnson

The Vineyard of the Saker
Making sense of the Paris summit: a quick analysis
The Saker

Bill Mitchell— Free flows of capital do not increase output but do increase inequality

There was an IMF paper released in April 2018 – The Aggregate and Distributional Effects of Financial Globalization: Evidence from Macro and Sectoral Data – that had a long title but a fairly succinct message. It indicates that the IMF is still in a sort of schizoid process where the evidential base has built up so against the political voice and practice that the IMF has indulged itself as a front-line neoliberal attack dog that elements in its research division are breaking ranks and revealing interesting information. In part, the Brexit debate in Britain has been characterised by economists supporting the Remain argument claiming that free capital flows within Europe (and Britain) are the vehicle for strong output growth and better living standards. They claim that when Britain leaves the EU global capital flows will be more restricted in and out of Britain and that will be damaging. It is really just a rehearsal of the standard mainstream economic claims found in monetary, trade and macroeconomics textbooks. What the IMF paper does is provide what they call a “fresh look at the at the aggregate and distributional effects of policies to liberalize international capital flows” and the researchers find that, “financial globalization … have led on average to limited output gains while contributing to significant increases in inequality”. That is, the pie hasn’t really grown much as a result of all these free trade moves but a growing share is being taken by an increasingly wealthier few. And workers are the losers....

Bill Mitchell – billy blog

Free flows of capital do not increase output but do increase inequality
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Links — 9 Dec 2019 — Part 1

Oxfam Blogs — From Poverty to Power
Links I Liked
Duncan Green, strategic adviser for Oxfam GB

Reminiscence of the Future
And This Is The News Exactly How?
Andrei Martyanov

Anti-Empire
China Just Opened the Suez Canal of Our Era and No One Blinked

Geoffrey Aronson

Fort Russ News
China will remove US technology from government computers
Paul Antonopoulos

People's Dispatch
Argentine delegation confirms crimes against humanity committed by Bolivian coup regime

Venezuelanalysis
Venezuela’s Civilian Militia Surpasses Target, Reaches 3.3 Million Members
Paul Dobson

John Solomon
The Comey FBI’s 17 worst failures, inaccuracies and omissions flagged in the Russia FISA report

IG excoriates FBI conduct in Russia probe, concludes FISA warrants misled court

IG report lays out compelling evidence FBI misled FISA court in Russia case, sources say

Sputnik International
Russiagate Origins Probe Chief Durham: We Don’t Agree With IG Report’s Conclusions

The future of money and the payment system: what role for central banks? Lecture by Agustín Carstens

The economics of money is back in the limelight. Even five years ago, I cannot imagine that a lecture on money and the payment system could have been a subject for an event like today’s. Theoretically speaking, money is a social convention. People accept money in the expectation that everyone else will do the same. According to this bare-bones definition, anything could serve as money provided that everyone, as it were, buys in. In economic parlance, this equilibrium analysis gives rise to a theoretical notion of a currency area consisting of users in a community, as shown in a recent paper by our host Markus Brunnermeier and his co-authors. In giving further texture to the analysis of money as a convention, economists and central bankers have learned over the years that the institutional details matter when it comes to how durable and how efficient any economic arrangement can be. To define money as a self-sustaining convention is not the same as nailing down the nitty-gritty details of the monetary system’s architecture.

"...money is a social convention. People accept money in the expectation that everyone else will do the same." Right. As David Graeber showed in Debt: The First 5000 Years, the concept of "money" arose from prehistoric tribal societies that operated on the  "gift economy," when gifts were considered social obligations to be reciprocated. Adherence to such customs generated social trust, not only for "money" as a social construct but also for the rule of law (justice) over the rule of men (power) as a matter of reciprocity and fairness, in addition to utility.

Money and other constructs (arrangements) that underlie institutions later evolved into institutionalized debt and record-keeping using a unit of account, as Michael Hudson showed. "Credit money" as a social construction was developed prior to the advent of state monies that were tax-driven to generate demand. See the work of A. Mitchell Innes.

It was the temple and not the palace that seems to have given rise to institutional monies. Interestingly, the Federal Reserve is referred to as "the temple." It is the palace (state) that backs the temple. I am thinking specifically of William Greider's Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country.

Subsequently, the palace (state) took over from the temple. Georg Friedrich Knapp described "chartal money" in The State Theory of Money (1905). Institutionalists, Post Keynesians and MMT economists later elaborated on this, as well as legal scholars.

The highlight of the lecture is central bank money as a public good.

The monetary system is founded on trust in the currency. This is something that only the central bank can provide. Like the legal system and other public goods, the trust underpinned by the central bank has the attributes of a public good.3 To coin a phrase, I would like to refer to “central bank public goods”.

This is a huge step in the right direction. The state's power to create currency is delegated to the central bank as the government's fiscal agent. This power derives from the constitution of the state. Thus, the currency issued on this fashion is a public good rather than a private good.

The function of the central bank is also involved in the creation of the public-private institution of commercial banking, where banks are given access to the central bank's payments system and the central bank as lender of last resort. In turn, banks agree to state regulation.

Bank for International Settlement (PDF)
The future of money and the payment system: what role forcentral banks?
Lecture by Agustín Carstens General Manager, Bank for International Settlements
Princeton University, New Jersey, 5 December 2019

Donald Trump Tweet - NATO and Fake News

I got NATO countries to pay 530 Billion Dollars a year more, and the U.S. less, and came home to a Fake News Media that mocked me. Didn’t think that was possible!

VIDEO: TRUTH ABOUT CORBYN’S POPULARITY – “PUBLIC LOVE HIM”, HE’S PM MATERIAL. HOW THE HELL DID IT GET ONTO BBC? (AN HOUR LATER, IT DIDN’T)

This broadcast went out live on air where two commentators talk in glowing terms about Jeremy Corbyn. When the show was re-broadcasted an hour later, the BBC removed this segment.

I recently tweeted this about Jeremy Corbyn :

There's definitely something special about him. He's modest and yet he stands up to the toughest. Even Gordon brown says he's a phenomenon.

Gordon Brown now supports Jeremy Corbyn, and says New Labour got it wrong about neoliberalism.

A newspaper editor’s frank account of Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘rock star’ popularity ‘wherever he turns up’ and his ‘prime ministerial’ status astonishingly made it into the 10.30pm newspaper review. By the 11.30pm review, the article in question was not discussed at all

‘The public love him. Wherever he turns up he’s greeted like a rock star’

Saturday night’s edition of the BBC’s nightly review of the following day’s newspapers featured an almost unheard-of event – a frank, unfiltered admission of Jeremy Corbyn’s massive popularity with the public.

Even more astonishingly, it also included the confession that Corbyn is ‘prime ministerial’.

Astonishing slip by BBC News allows unfiltered positivity about Corbyn onto the airwaves

Corbyn’s phenomenal energy, stamina and work-rate were also covered – and as if that weren’t enough, the strength of Labour’s social care policies versus the Tories’ complete absence of any was also included.

Video clip here with more commentary.

The Skwawkbox

VIDEO: TRUTH ABOUT CORBYN’S POPULARITY – “PUBLIC LOVE HIM”, HE’S PM MATERIAL. HOW THE HELL DID IT GET ONTO BBC? (AN HOUR LATER, IT DIDN’T)

Links — 8 Dec 2019 — Part 2

Asia Times
What really Happened in Iran?
Pepe Escobar

The Vineyard of the Saker
America’s troops love Russia, and Kremlin mind control is to blame – Pentagon officials
The Saker

Tareq Haddad - WHITE PHOSPHORUS MELTS CHILDREN'S FLESH—BUT NO GOVERNMENT WANTS TO INVESTIGATE, AND THE U.S. KEEPS USING IT, TOO

Tareq Haddad resigned from Newsweek last week when they refused to print his story on the Syrian chemical weapons attack OPCW scandle, where they had fabricated the evidence that Syria did it.

The military says it needs phosphorous to illuminate battlefields at night, but they illegally use it to kill people.

 

Airstrikes and mortar shells from Turkey and its Arab militias rained down on the northern Syrian border town of Ras al-Ayn a few weeks ago. Images from the attack showed children with raw, flayed flesh, screaming.

The munitions allegedly contained white phosphorus—a self-igniting chemical that can burn at upwards of 4,800 degrees Fahrenheit once it makes contact with air.

"It's a horrific weapon. It burns things to the ground and terrifies people," Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, the former head of the British Army's chemical weapons unit, told Newsweek.

"It's extremely painful," said Erik Tollefsen, head of the weapons contamination unit for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

"I've seen these burns first-hand when trying to assist and provide first aid to the victims of these attacks and it's devastating... It burns deep, deep, deep into the body and the trauma it causes can be severe."severe."

Newsweek 

Tareq Haddad - WHITE PHOSPHORUS MELTS CHILDREN'S FLESH—BUT NO GOVERNMENT WANTS TO INVESTIGATE, AND THE U.S. KEEPS USING IT, TOO

The US Will Consider a Draft Bill on the Possibility of Recognising Russia as a “Sponsor of Terrorism”

Washington is freaking scary! 

The US Senate will consider a draft bill that will oblige the State Department to check whether Russia can be recognised as a “state sponsor of terrorism”. The document was submitted by Republican Cory Gardner. The draft bill also suggests that the State Department will answer another question: whether “Russian-controlled armed formations” in Donbass can be considered “terrorists”. At the same time, Moscow has repeatedly noted that it is not a party to the conflict in the southeast of Ukraine and does not provide military support to the DPR and the LPR. According to experts, Gardner’s initiative became another element of the anti-Russian course of the American establishment.


The US Will Consider a Draft Bill on the Possibility of Recognising Russia as a “Sponsor of Terrorism”

Jimmy Dore - Pro-War "Bellingcat" Smears Anti-War Journalists

The CIA have noticed Jimmy Dore now.

Links — 8 Dec 2019 — Part 1

The Grayzone
US and UK military-intelligence apparatus campaigns to destroy Jeremy Corbyn

Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal

The Grayzone
US government drops case against Max Blumenthal after jailing journalist on false charges

Ben Norton

Real-World Economics Review Blog
Super-rich in US paid a lower tax rate than the bottom 50%

Internationalist 360º [linked to previously but important if you didn't get to it then]
Inside the Organized Crime Syndicate Known as the CIA: An Interview with Douglas Valentine
Heidi Boghosian and Michael Steven Smith

Beat the Press
Dean Baker – Simple Economics that Most Economists Don’t Know
Dean Baker | Co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C

Land Destroyer Report
West Seeks Control Over Asian Rivers
Land Destroyer

Jacobin
Emmanuel Macron Wants to End France’s Welfare State
Stathis Kouvelakis

Occidental Observer [backgrounder on the Alt-Right from the viewpoint of the Alt-Right]
The ABC’s of the Alt-Right: A Guide for Students
Thomas Dalton, Ph.D | pen name of a professor of humanities at a U.S. American university

GlobalResearch.ca
Fascists, with Help from the US, Are Trying to Take Control of Latin America
William Camacaro

PopularResistance.Org

Kansas City, Missouri Approves Free Public Transit for All
Kevin Zeese

Crooks and Liars [It's the American way]

Sen. Cory Booker: Dems Creating 'System That Rewards Big Money'
Karoli Kuns

Pentagon Says It Needs Low-Yield Nukes

More options...

Why the Pentagon Says It Needs Low-Yield Nukes | via @PopMech @KyleMizokami #NuclearWeapons #LowYieldNukes #USMilitary #DoD https://t.co/84j5O3uN1B pic.twitter.com/vF9zAM8p8d

— RealClearDefense (@RCDefense) December 8, 2019

Violence Is Sometimes the Answer — Kai M. Thaler

Uh huh.

Foreign Policy
Violence Is Sometimes the Answer
Kai M. Thaler | assistant professor of global studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara

RT
Hong Kong police retrieve [Glock semi-automatic] PISTOL & 100+ live rounds for 1st time aimed at 'creating chaos'

The Opium War — Martin Armstrong

Short video backgrounder. 

Virtually no one in the West remembers this and those that do likely don't consider it a major historical event of the period. All Chinese are intimately familiar with the Opium War as the onset of a century of humiliation for their country, and the Chinese are extremely nationalistic.

Armstrong Economics
The Opium War
Martin Armstrong

There is No Economics without Politics: Every economic model is built on political assumptions — Anat Admati

I would add philosophical, social, and scientific to economic assumption. For example, academic economics focuses on homo economicus, ignoring that there is no clearcut, hard and fast distinction among the aspects of life that the various disciplines study. In previous times, when knowledge as a whole was more tractable, one was expected to know the fundamentals of the spectrum of life and knowledge. With the proliferation of information and knowledge, this is no longer possible.

But even in the days when a broader scope was the rule, the field of knowledge was largely limited to that of one's down culture and language. The intellectual tradition meant "the Western intellectual tradition" and that was further narrowed to one's linguistic group.

This presents a challenge in the age of globalization, in which different groups view the world through their own lenses. The result is the silo thinking that Anat Admati warns to avoid. Each of these silos has its own lens embedded in its assumptions, stated, unstated, and often simply presumed as assumptions hidden even from the ones assuming them.

Just about everyone confuses reality with their own worldview, which is a presumed framework that structures one's approach to life.

Evonomics

There is No Economics without Politics: Every economic model is built on political assumptions
Anat Admati is the George G.C. Parker Professor of Finance and Economics at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University.

Mathew Ehret - Macron’s Great Leap East Revives the Spirit of De Gaulle

De Gaulle hated imperialism and wanted peaceful relations with Russia and China. The Western Deep State tried to assassinate him several times.

De Gaulle strategically fought tooth and nail against the pro-NATO fascists led by General Challe who attempted two coup attempts against De Gaulle in 1960 and 1961 and later worked with MI6 and the CIA using private contractors like Permindex to arrange over 30 assassination attempts from 1961-1969.


De Gaulle was not only successful at taking France out of the NATO cage in 1966, but he had organized to ensure Algeria’s independence against the will of the entire deep state of France who often worked with Dulles’ State Department to preserve France’s colonial possessions. De Gaulle also recognized the importance of breaking the bipolar rules of the Cold War by reaching out to Russia calling for a renewed Europe “from the Atlantic to the Urals” and also an alliance with China with the intent of resolving the fires lit by western arsonists in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam whose independence he was committed to guaranteeing. De Gaulle wrote of his plan in his Memoires:

Mathew Ehret - Macron’s Great Leap East Revives the Spirit of De Gaulle

Your Slavery is their Freedom | George Monbiot

George Monbiot exposes the billionaire class. 

Once upon-a-time people were free to own slaves, but we put a stop to it.

George Monbiot's critique of libertarianisn

Martin Farreh - Turning the economic tide: could a radical monetary theory fix Australia’s woes?

Bill Mitchell, the leading Australian proponent of modern monetary theory, argues that governments should abandon their obsession with budget surpluses

It looks like some countries might be gearing to try MMT, as the MSM is continuously warming to the idea. 

Even sceptics admit that the crisis proved to some extent that MMT might work. The independent Australian economist Saul Eslake says that the key tenet of the central bank effectively writing cheques for the government has to an extent already happened in Japan after years of quantitative easing, the money creation scheme seen in many countries after the GFC.

“The evidence of the last 10 years can support the idea. Despite fears about quantitative easing leading to a collapse of the US dollar or runaway inflation, this has not happened. The problem is that inflation is too low across the western world.

“The country that has come closest is Japan, where government holds debt equal to about 100% of GDP.”

Mitchell notes that what has happened in Japan has confounded mainstream economists. Despite decades of money creation, the country has a stable economy with low inflation and low unemployment. “The Bank of Japan BOJ says we are not a MMT laboratory but it makes me laugh,” he says. “Mainstream economists can’t explain any of it but MMT can explain all of it.”

The Guardian

Martin Farreh - Turning the economic tide: could a radical monetary theory fix Australia’s woes?

Spitting Image: Royal Family lose fortune in recession & move to council flat

Queen Elizabeth's nightmare that her family lose all their money and move into a high-rise council block, where they have to resort to crime to survive. Prince Charles later becomes a cabbie. Also stars Princes Philip, Edward & Andrew, Sarah Ferguson & late Queen Mother.

THE GREAT NHS HEIST PRE-ELECTION FREE PLAY

Given the imminent threat to the NHS we have decided to give free access to The Great NHS Heist film, in the run up to the General Election. Information is the lifeblood of democracy & to this end we hope this film will help you decide how to vote and become active citizens in the defence of the NHS.

The free market can't touch it, which adds uneccessary bureaucracy and expense.

Video: Diver removes hooks from sharks mouths.

Watch: Woman hypnotizes sharks, removes fish hooks from their mouths

This woman sticks her hands in sharks’ mouths to help when they get caught on hooks 🦈❤️

Once a shark has had its hook removed, it goes and tells all the others.

Video on twitter

 https://t.co/J7ww9DcuTM

Turning the economic tide: could a radical monetary theory fix Australia's woes? — Martin Farrer

Bill Mitchell, the leading Australian proponent of modern monetary theory, argues that governments should abandon their obsession with budget surpluses

The Guardian

Turning the economic tide: could a radical monetary theory fix Australia's woes?

Martin Farrer

Russia and China Have Built a New Gas Pipeline That Has Everything—Except Profit — Geoffrey Smith

Making a profit is not the object here, as the article goes on to explain. It's part of a larger system in the making. 

Did Amazon make a profit out of the gate? The objective was to dominate the emerging online market down the timeline, and that has been successful.

The Sino-Russian strategic alliance is about building the Eurasian system.

Fortune
Russia and China Have Built a New Gas Pipeline That Has Everything—Except Profit
Geoffrey Smith

Donald Trump Tweet - China and money creation

Why is the World Bank loaning money to China? Can this be possible? China has plenty of money, and if they don’t, they create it. STOP!

Links — 6 Dec 2019

FAIR
With People in the Streets Worldwide, Media Focus Uniquely on Hong Kong
Alan MacLeod

Irrussianality
Napoleon, Kutuzov, and the changing international order
Paul Robinson | Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa

Mint Press News
Study Reveals How UK Intelligence Works with Media to Smear Jeremy Corbyn
Alan Macleod

Zero Hedge
Epstein Was A Mossad Agent Used To Blackmail American Politicians, Former Israeli Spy Claims
Paul Joseph Watson, Summit News

Zero Hedge
Massive Leak Confirms Turkey's "Gold-For-Gas" Scheme To Evade US Sanctions On Iran
Tyler Durden

The Vineyard of the Saker
Book review: Andrei Martyanov’s “The (real) Revolution in Military Affairs”
The Saker

Pensacola

Gee a Saudi Arabian (OPEC human scum) in the US to learn how to fly an airplane kills a bunch of US citizens... hmmm.... where have I heard about that before?? Hmmmm???

What did Einstein say about DOING THE SAME THING and expecting a different result????

BREAKING: Pensacola mass shooter identified as Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, a member of the Saudi Arabian military who was in the U.S. for aviation traininghttps://t.co/Tqbe58Sora

— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) December 6, 2019

Boot-edge-edge!!!!

LOL!!!!! Democrat dip-shits....

Buttigieg- “My party’s not known for worrying about the deficit or the debt too much but it’s time for us to start getting into that.”

Actually @PeteButtigieg President @BillClinton took the deficit balanced the budget and left America with a surplus. https://t.co/QdanbPrjqR

— Tom D'Angora (@TomDangora) December 6, 2019

BRITISH DEFENCE MINISTRY DOCUMENT REVEALS SKRIPAL BLOOD EVIDENCE IS MISSING – FAKE CHAIN OF CUSTODY MAKES NOVICHOK EVIDENCE WORTHLESS — John Helmer

Usually I aggregate such posts but this deserves featuring.

Dances with Bears
BRITISH DEFENCE MINISTRY DOCUMENT REVEALS SKRIPAL BLOOD EVIDENCE IS MISSING – FAKE CHAIN OF CUSTODY MAKES NOVICHOK EVIDENCE WORTHLESS
John Helmer

Michael Roberts Blog— Understanding socialism

Michael Roberts comments briefly on Richard D. Wolff's two new book, Understanding Marxism and Understanding Socialism.

Probably the salient point: "As Wolff has said: 'If you want to understand an economy, not only from the point of view of people who love it, but also from the point of view of people who are critical and think we can do better, then you need to study Marxian economics as part of any serious attempt to understand what’s going on. Not to do it is to exclude yourself from the critical tradition.'”

I would add, at the very least. Marx and Engels, and subsequent Marxists and those influenced by Marx are still highly relevant and they are becoming more so as capitalism is more and more in crisis owing to neoliberalism, neoliberal globalization and the challenge of climate change. Change is coming.

Michael Roberts Blog — blogging from a marxist economist
Understanding socialism
Michael Roberts

The difficultly with approaching Marx today is twofold. First, he is lightening rod, so most things written are either by proponents or opponents.

Secondly, Marx was a philosopher in his own right and a public intellectual in this time as a journalist and writer of political tracts in the context of the contemporary debates. It would be a mistake to consider him either only from the point of view of economic or even as "an economist."

Marx lived before economics had become a separate academic discipline comparable to the present day. He was a philosopher, social and political activist, political theorist, historian, and one of the founders the disciplines that later became sociology and economics. In fact, when I was grad student in philosophy, I studied the aspects of Marx's contribution other than to economics.

This type of broad thinking falls largely to the philosophers that preceded him. Subsequent to Marx, the fields of knowledge became highly specialized and silos began to form.

Who are accounts really for? – my first column now I am back with AccountingWEB — Richard Murphy

Important. Richard Murphy reports that the era of responsibility to shareholders rather than stakeholders is over. TPTB recognize that capitalism has to be "reset." It's not working as it is and the result is social unrest.

Tax Research UK
Who are accounts really for? – my first column now I am back with AccountingWEB
Richard Murphy | Professor of Practice in International Political Economy at City University, London; Director of Tax Research UK; non-executive director of Cambridge Econometrics, and a member of the Progressive Economy Forum

Lars P. Syll — The ergodicity problem in economics (wonkish)

Less wonkishly, the basic problem here can be viewed in terms of the logical fallacy of hasty generalization. Hasty generalization involves extending one's one's position, or that held by one's group, universally. In philosophy this result in claims of naturalism to humanity as a whole. For example, natural law is often reducible to a particular set of Western values that is generalized. The "laws" of economics are largely of this sort, and homo economicus as a rational agent that carries them out is basically a reflection of the economists that posited them, assuming all to be like them.

This fallacy has been a temptation from ancient times, but it culminated in the scientific age with the discovery of invariant laws of nature, in physics and astronomy in particular, in that these discoveries could be rendered universally using mathematical expressions. Subsequently, this formalism became a criterion of truth that prevailed for formalists above empirical observation. Owing to the success and prestige of the natural sciences, would-be scientists in other fields, and philosophers as well, sought to emulate the formalism of the natural sciences.

However, the great success of the natural sciences in discovering invariant lays in the ergodicity of the subject matter, which is rendered the mathematical expressions and formal models time-invariant. Lacking ergodicity of subject matter, this would not apply strictly. There is a significant difference between a general case and specific cases. In Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of The Dismal Science, Dani Rodrik argues that of the art or craft of economics is being able to discern which model applies in which case. The natural sciences are not concerned with this kind of decision in the same way. There is a clear difference among theoretical science, experimental science, and engineering.

There is an old joke about some engineers and an economist shipwrecked with nothing to eat other than canned food. The engineers set about trying to figure out how to open the cans by applying their theoretical expertise and practical experience. The economist chimed with, "Let's just assume a can opener."

This actually happened in a less dramatic way. In effecting his synthesis of Keynesian and neoclassical thought, Paul Samuelson was confronted with Keynes having posited future uncertainty at the foundation of the "moral sciences," which we now call social science, including economics.

Samuelson solved the difficulty by assuming ergodicity as a methodological convenience for tractability, as had neoclassical economics in assuming equilibrium. This view became orthodox in conventional economics. The follow-up retort to heterodox objections then became, "The methodological debated is already settled." As Paul Krugman asserted, equilibrium and maximization as a framework.

This doesn't mean that economics or the other social sciences are not scientific or cannot be scientific. It just means that they are not the same as natural sciences and that making claims that approach this are unjustified.

Moreover, there is a difference between the meaning of being a science and being scientific. Being scientific just means observing the scientific method. Engineering is scientific in its approach, but this is applied science.

Being a science assumes a framework in terms of which theories can be compete. For example, the framework of physics includes the conservation laws, which are universal and independent. Of course, there is change over time in physics owing to motion and entropy, for example. But these phenomena are explained using models that data supports. The explanation (formula) is time-invariant, even though the data change.

Economics has no such framework, which is why there are competing views of how to approach economics in the first place. "The law of supply and demand" is not the same as the conservation laws in physics, and the assumption of equilibrium is not ergodicity.

Not being ergodic, economics is not a natural science, which is not the same as saying that economics cannot discover universal invariances that data support regardless of time series, economics, like the other social sciences, being historical. Moreover, social systems are complex adaptive system subject to reflexivity (learning from feedback) and emergence (change that is unforeseeable based on priors).

So the next time someone says, "Where's your model," ask them, "Which one?" 😀

Not one in business or finance takes forecasts as the same as or similar to the physics, and no one confuses weather forecasts to astronomical invariances. But economic forecasts and the reasoning which they are based are often treated as dogma in policy circles. That's a problem.

Lars P. Syll’s Blog
The ergodicity problem in economics (wonkish)
Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Michael Hardt And Antonio Negri — Empire, Twenty Years On — V. Ramanan

Most important at this aristocratic level of Empire is the extent to which, despite appearances, its general contours remain unchanged. From this perspective, the much-heralded return of the nation-state—along with nationalist rhetoric, threatened trade wars and protectionist policies—should be understood not as a fracturing of the global system, but rather as so many tactical manoeuvres in the competition among aristocratic powers.

The elite may no longer be titled aristocrats, but the class structure of feudalism and the imperial designs remain in place.

Vietnamese proverb: "The dung heap remains the same, only the flies change."

The diagnosis is obvious. But can the workers of the world unite to change the status quo?

This involves replacing the hierarchical organizational model based on class power that is prevalent with an inclusive consensual organizational model that establishes genuine governance of, by and for the people. That would be some type of democratic socialism on a global scale.

What would that look like practically speaking, and how to get from here to there?

Globalization is happening owing to the introduction of technology that makes it possible. The bottom line question is what interests are going to control it. Dominance and submission has been the ongoing political dynamic across history. The difference now is the scale that technology has brought..

The Case for Concerted Action
Michael Hardt And Antonio Negri — Empire, Twenty Years On
V. Ramanan

Treasury and Fed attempting to coordinate monetary policy

They are going to add a lot of Reserves to Depositories next week:

Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Steven Mnuchin said he’s work­ing closely with Fed Chairman Powell to make sure there are am­ple re­serves fol­low­ing fund­ing strains in money mar­kets in September, which he attributed in part to bank liquidity rules.https://t.co/xA76QhGFvV

— Kate Davidson (@KateDavidson) December 5, 2019

Treasury ops adding about 38B Tues+Thurs and Fed adding another 25B via new operation Monday... 20B social security Weds... maybe 75Bish total... then it will all quickly reverse with qtrly taxes due on Monday the 16th... might bring total Reserves at Depositories closer to 1.7T by end of week...

Laurel & Hardy: Rare Interview with an Iconic Comedy Duo (1947) | British Pathé

This old clip just turned up on my phone. I thought it was good.

Stephen F. Cohen - Who Is Making US Foreign Policy?

An anti-neocon president appears to have been surrounded by neocons in his own administration.

I recent survey I came across was checking for antisemitic views in the American population. One question was, Do you think Jews hold too much power in this country? The answer yes was considered to be an antisemitic viewpoint.

In the UK, 80% of Conservative Party politicians are members of Friends of Isreal, and something like 30% of Labour Party politicians are.

The larger question is who should make American foreign policy: an elected president or Washington’s permanent foreign policy establishment? (It is scarcely a “deep” or “secret” state, since its representatives appear on CNN and MSNBC almost daily.) Today, Democrats seem to think that it should be the foreign policy establishment, not President Trump. But having heard the cold-war views of much of that establishment, how will they feel when a Democrat occupies the White House? After all, eventually Trump will leave power, but Washington’s foreign-policy “blob,” as even an Obama aide termed it, will remain.

The Unz Review 

Stephen F. Cohen - Who Is Making US Foreign Policy?

Philip Giraldi: The International Zionist Conspiracy - it poisons everything it touches

The Unz Review 

https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/the-international-zionist-conspiracy/

George Galloway - The Clintons, Epstein, and the CIA

More conspiracy theories, you decide?

Is the US run by organised crime?

The Clintons, the Clinton Body Count, blackmail, the Mossad, the CIA, cocaine, drug smuggling, Epstein, and Prince Andrew.

Go to 1:46:00

This link might take you straight to the spot.

https://t.co/UPrD13Gwoa

Bill Mitchell — Q&A Japan style – Part 5b

This is the final part of a two-part discussion about the consequences of a currency-issuing government exercising different bond-issuing options. The basic Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) position is for the currency-issuing government to abandon the unnecessary practice of issuing debt (which is a hangover from the fixed exchange rate, gold standard days). Currency-issuing governments should use that capacity to advance general well-being and providing corporate welfare to underpin and reduce the risk of speculative behaviour in the financial markets does not serve any valid purpose. However, when we introduce real world layers (politics, etc) we realise that some pure MMT-type options are not possible. This question introduces just such a case in Japan. Given the political constraints, we are asked to choose between two options for central bank conduct, when the government does issue debt: (A) Buy it all up in the secondary bond markets. (B) Leave it in the non-government sector. In this final part, I go through some of the considerations that might influence that choice....

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Q&A Japan style – Part 5b
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Michael Roberts Blog — Economics as a social science

There is no substitute for the ‘big picture’. Economists should not be doctors but social scientists, or more accurately they should develop an economics that recognises the wider social forces that drive economic models, in particular, the social mode of production that is capitalism. That is political economy, mostly not taught in universities and certainly not practised in international agencies....

Michael Roberts Blog — blogging from a marxist economist
Economics as a social science
Michael Roberts

Potholer54 - The Moon is Made of Cheese -- and other scientific conspiracies

Peter Hadfield on conspiracy theories.

Abby Innes - This general election is a choice between the end of democracy or the end of neoliberalism

Britain at a crossroads.

Boris wants to turn Britain into a low wage ecomomy, despite neoliberalisn consistently failing for forty years.

Given the dismal empirical record of forty years of pro-market reforms, the only way this Conservative Government can create the low tax, low regulation, law and order state of Neoliberal fever dreams is under the cover of other projects. Brexit offers a unique opportunity: it allows a government of economic extremists to manipulate our cultural identity to endorse a rewriting of the entire institutional rule-book. The recent assertion by Michael Gove that Brexit offers no lesser a liberating moment than the fall of the Berlin Wall is exactly wrong. Electoral success for the Conservatives will complete the capture of state authority by private business actors and consolidate the Conservative Party as a self-serving broker, first and foremost, between the residual powers of the state and the now largely unrestrained economic power of large private business and increasingly extractive financial interests.

LSE

Abby Innes - This general election is a choice between the end of democracy or the end of neoliberalism

Subhash Kak - Quantum Supremacy Is Unlikely, Scientist Says

I don't know if this is a good thing or bad thing. Quantum computers seemed to be so powerful I thought they mignt be dangerous, on the other hand, they may have saved a lot of power - which would have be great for cryptocurrencies. 

Because they work on quantum probability, it seems you can never be sure how it's going to go. 

Google announced this fall to much fanfare that it had demonstrated "quantum supremacy" — that is, it performed a specific quantum computation far faster than the best classical computers could achieve. IBM promptly critiqued the claim, saying that its own classical supercomputer could perform the computation at nearly the same speed with far greater fidelity and, therefore, the Google announcement should be taken "with a large dose of skepticism."

This wasn't the first time someone cast doubt on quantum computing. Last year, Michel Dyakonov, a theoretical physicist at the University of Montpellier in France, offered a slew of technical reasons why practical quantum supercomputers will never be built in an article in IEEE Spectrum, the flagship journal of electrical and computer engineering.

Live Science 

Quantum Supremacy Is Unlikely, Scientist Says

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Donald Trump is losing his trade war with China, and running out of economic time

Donald Trump has got away with his many trade wars over the last eighteen monthts because the US economy has been on steroids, a form of macroeconomic cheating that briefly steals growth from the future but catches up with you.

The rest of the world has been struggling with an auto-led manufacturing slump. This came close to recession conditions earlier this year and touched bottom in August.

The Telegraph 

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Donald Trump is losing his trade war with China, and running out of economic time

Ben Norton - Ukrainian neo-Nazis flock to the Hong Kong protest movement

Ukrainian fascists who previously fought in a US-backed neo-Nazi militia joined the anti-China protests in Hong Kong, sharing their tactics and showing off their tattoos.

Neo-Nazis from Ukraine have flown to Hong Kong to participate in the anti-Chinese insurgency, which has been widely praised by Western corporate media and portrayed as a peaceful pro-democracy movement.

The Greyzone 

Ben Norton - Ukrainian neo-Nazis flock to the Hong Kong protest movement

Sputnik — ‘A Threat to Global Humanity’: For 70 Years, NATO Has Formed ‘Matrix’ of Imperialism

“We said that this gathering [the summit] should be seen as a threat to global humanity. It’s quite clear from its history - that is NATO’s history - that it is a structure that is used to maintain and advance Western global capitalist interest, and for that it should be seen as a threat. Most of the interventions by NATO have been beyond the pale of legality,” [Ajamu] Baraka, [national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace,] told hosts Eugene Puryear and Sean Blackmon.

“The very fact that this structure has the kind of respectability among Western forces is quite troubling and … reflects the current contradiction, which is a contradiction between the Western interests, Western powers, Western capitalist powers and the vast majority of global humanity,” he continued, also referring to NATO as a “very important instrument” used by the ruling elites to further their capitalist and white supremacist goals....

Not buying "spreading freedom and democracy."

Sputnik International
‘A Threat to Global Humanity’: For 70 Years, NATO Has Formed ‘Matrix’ of Imperialism

See also

Douglas Valentine is an investigator and author with a rare and tenacious approach toward research. His writing results in uniquely incisive and revealing books on the dark side of U.S. intelligence activities and the National Security State. His latest book, The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World, draws parallels between CIA operations in Vietnam—as exposed in his well-known 1990 book, The Phoenix Program: America’s Use of Terror in Vietnam—and recent/current operations in Afghanistan, El Salvador, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere. In the following interview, Valentine reflects on a variety of issues including the Phoenix Program, plausible deniability, paramilitary wars, drug trafficking, sabotage, blackmail, propaganda, Operation GLADIO, class interests of the CIA establishment, Trump, the Mueller Report and the Bidens. —CAM Editors

Doug Valentine has written numerous books and articles on the CIA based largely on interviews with former CIA officers revealing how the CIA is not just an intelligence organization tasked with intelligence gathering and analysis, as many suppose it to be, but also it is also a paramilitary operational organization tasked with carrying out covert operations based on plausible deniability.

Internationalist 360º
Inside the Organized Crime Syndicate Known as the CIA: An Interview with Douglas Valentine

Heidi Boghosian and Michael Steven Smith

Insurance Companies Are Spending Millions on Attack Ads Against Medicare for All — Alan Macleod

Healthcare corporations are spending millions of dollars on astroturfed attack ads against Medicare for All. The Partnership for America’s Healthcare Future, for example, a coalition of hospitals and insurance companies, has spent $1 million on a television campaign against changes to the current healthcare system they profit from.

The commercial presents the Partnership as a grassroots organization of concerned citizens, rather than that corporate front group exposed by The Intercept that it is. It features a range of actors of different races, ages and occupations expressing their concern over Medicare for All. “We come from different walks of life but we agree on one important thing: we don’t want to be forced into a one size fits all government insurance system” the commercial states, without telling the viewer that “we” does not refer to human beings, but an amalgamation of corporations. It warns that any changes to the system would result in “higher taxes or higher premiums” and “lower quality care” and features one actor scoffing over the idea of “politicians and bureaucrats in charge of our healthcare.”...

Mint Press Review

Insurance Companies Are Spending Millions on Attack Ads Against Medicare for All
Alan Macleod

British Deep State contra Jeremy Corbyn

Defend Democracy Press
Army and Secret Services are threatening Corbyn with coup d’ etat

British Secret Services attack Jeremy Corbyn

British Generals: They like crimes like the Iraq War and Libya bombing, they hate Corbyn!

A real threat: A very British coup

The Independent

British Army 'could stage mutiny under Corbyn', says senior serving general
Caroline Mortimer

Indians Shall Not Govern — Maria Paez Victor

The diplomat then proceeded to tell me who was and who was NOT Latin American, and pointing to the photo of a needy child which graced every table, he said: “For instance, that child there is not Latin American”. Astonished I asked how can you say that? She is Peruvian! “No, she is Indian. Latin Americans are those of us who stem from Spain and Portugal.” He was not kidding nor making some sort of epistemological statement on the origin of Latin languages. He was unashamedly, sneeringly , racist, making a clear distinction between himself and that poor child. Our conversation deteriorated from then on to reach a point when he said that “those” children got sick because their mothers were too ignorant to know how to care for them....

Who said that fascism is dead?

Counterpunch
Indians Shall Not Govern
Maria Paez Victor

See also at Counterpunch
Bolivia’s Five Hundred-Year Rebellion
Peter Lackowski

How Can We BEAT Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism is the defining economic idea of our current moment, and we're all suffering for it. What is it, and how can we beat it?

Why Rate Expectations Dominates Bond Yield Fair Value Estimates — Brian Romanchuk

Although there are various attempts to downplay rate expectations as an explanation for bond yields. the reality is that they dominate any other attempt to generate a fair value estimate by using "fundamental data". (Since we cannot hope to explain every last wiggle of bond yields without having a largely content-free model, we need to look at fair value estimates.) The reasoning is rather straightforward: so long as the risk free curve slope is related to the state of the economy, bond yields are pinned down by the front of the curve, and the slope....

Bond Economics
Why Rate Expectations Dominates Bond Yield Fair Value Estimates
Brian Romanchuk

Who Will Tell the Truth About the So-Called ‘Free Press’?­ — Jeremy R. Hammond

Longish but detailed exposé of the corporate media as the "custodians" of the narrative, with "the paper of record" in the lead.

Foreign Policy Journal
Who Will Tell the Truth About the So-Called ‘Free Press’?­
Jeremy R. Hammond

At China-Kazakh border: New Silk Roads in action — Pepe Escobar

Central Asia, between China and Europe, is bustling

Take the tour with Pepe.

Asia Times
At China-Kazakh border: New Silk Roads in action
Pepe Escobar

Danielle Ryan - Media linking NHS leak to Russia is absurd, but using the Atlantic Council & Ben Nimmo as the source is journalistic malpractice

Jeremy Corbyn had a leaked document showing the secret talks between the Conservatives and America diplomats on the trade talks where the NHS was discussed. Boris Johnson was embarrassed as he said there had never been any meetings.

Anyway, who leaked the documents?

Well, would you believe, now they are saying the Russians did it.

The new effort to cast doubt over leaked NHS documents as a potential ‘Russian influence’ plot is nothing more than a pre-election smear campaign against the Labour Party, concocted by con artists and amplified by the Tory press.

But who would be willing to bravely step up to the plate and point the finger at Moscow. Enter the Atlantic Council — the omnipresent US-funded ‘think tank’ where researchers specialize in magicking up Russia links wherever a desperate status-quo protecting political party might need them. This astonishing talent for sniffing-out alleged traces of Russkie interference is matched only by their ability to have the establishment media collectively gasp in admiration at their sleuthy skills.

RT

Danielle Ryan - Media linking NHS leak to Russia is absurd, but using the Atlantic Council & Ben Nimmo as the source is journalistic malpractice

The Hill — Majority of voters support a federal jobs guarantee program

From 30 October but I just saw it. Harris Poll.

The Hill
Majority of voters support a federal jobs guarantee program

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson: ‘I would take the side of Russia’ if it’s between Russia and Ukraine

I couldn't agree more!

On Monday’s edition of Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” during an interview with Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Carlson doubled down on his recent suggestions that the United States should be supporting Russia in its conflict with Ukraine, rather than the other way around.

“I should say for the record that I’m totally opposed to these sanctions and I don’t think we should be at war with Russia and I think we should probably take the side of Russia if we have to choose between Russia and Ukraine,” said Carlson.

Raw Story

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson: ‘I would take the side of Russia’ if it’s between Russia and Ukraine

China’s Schoolchildren Are Now the Smartest in the World

I hope they are not stressing them out.

Chinese students far out-stripped peers in every other country in a survey of reading, math and science ability, underscoring a reserve of future economic strength and the struggle of advanced economies to keep up.

Bloomberg 

China’s Schoolchildren Are Now the Smartest in the World

The "myth!" of "crowding out!"

"Crowding out!" is not a "myth!" its simply employment of the typical figurative language favored by the Liberal Art trained people...

But here is the thing... Why is it when Liberal Art trained hit their technical limit with their exclusive use of figurative language, they will not simply abandon this second rate figurative approach for proper abstractions of Science?

What they seem to always do is instead re-label the figurative language as "myth!"... then think this is somehow going to help... they ALWAYS do this...

Hard to understand how their brains operate.... serious cognitive deficiencies with these people...

The myth of crowding out https://t.co/dyQHg5F4TE

— Clint Ballinger (@clintballinger) December 3, 2019

Australian QE

Uh oh... not good:

Australian fund managers are already betting on quantitative easing https://t.co/FBiuqhQVNu

— Bloomberg (@business) December 3, 2019

Is the US Winning?

Sputnik International
New US Legislation Will Sanction Turkey for S-400 Purchase, Russian Nationals for Syrian Ties

Reuters
House debates Uighur bill demanding sanctions on senior Chinese officials

Reuters
U.S. has not ruled out imposing tariffs on imported autos: Commerce chief Ross

Reuters
Huawei urging suppliers to break the law by moving offshore: Ross

Reuters
Factbox: Trump has upended relationships with nine of 10 top U.S. trading partners

Anti Empire
Let the Show Begin! NATO Bitterly Divided as London Summit Starts
Alex Lantier

 

More than a third of millennials polled approve of communism

Biggest threat to world peace? 27% named President Trump, 22% said Kim Jong-Un, and 15% tapped Vladimir Putin

Someewhere, Bernie Sanders is smiling.

A new survey released by the Washington, D.C., nonprofit Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation reflects that, if the younger generation gets out and votes in 2020, those running for office on the far left have reason to be hopeful.

Market Watch, Shawn Langlois

More than a third of millennials polled approve of communism

Links — 3 Dec 2019 — Part 1

Orinoco Tribune
Members of Argentine Delegation in Bolivia Tell the Horror They Recorded (Coup Repression)

The “Influencers” of Hopelessness – Black Friday in Venezuela (Images and Videos)

Asia Times
Hong Kong: A different kind of Cold War

David P. Goldman

Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
What’s wrong with Bayes
Andrew Gelman | Professor of Statistics and Political Science and Director of the Applied Statistics Center, Columbia University

The National Interest
Donald the Meek: Three Times Trump Announced a Syria Withdrawal and Three Times He Broke Under Pressure

Daniel L. Davis

Craig Murray Blog
Violence and the State

Free the Truth – A Short Speech [video]
Craig Murray, formerly British ambassador to Uzbekistan and Rector of the University of Dundee

Irrussianality
No such thing as Russophobia
Paul Robinson | Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa

SouthFront
“My Swastika has Curved Edges, I am not a Nazi”: Ukrainian Defender Of Democracy To Dutch Media

Sputnik International
'Forced Rendition': WikiLeaks Editor Warns Assange's Extradition to US May Set 'Dangerous Precedent'

NEO
NATO Ups the Military Ante against China and Russia

Salman Rafi Sheikh

Sputnik International
Trump Reiterates ‘We Keep the Oil’ in Syria Mantra, Says US Can Do With Fuel ‘What We Want’