William K. Black — The New Democrats’ Addiction to Austerity Will Not Die

I know the Republicans are complete hypocrites about federal deficits and debt. I know their dishonesty and faux deficit and debt hysteria, when a Democrat is president, harms the Nation and the world through the infliction of self-destructive austerity. Austerity’s primary victims are the working class and government social programs for the poor and working class. That means that the Democrats should never mimic the Republicans’ dishonesty, hysteria, and willingness to inflict austerity on the people of America and the world.…

Unfortunately, the New Democrats embraced the economic malpractice of austerity with the passion of a convert. Michael Meeropol, an economist whose work I respect greatly, has rightly chastised me for failing to explain that fiscal austerity produces enormous winners, not just losers, and that this fact helps explain why the economic malpractice of austerity is so common. Austerity is a policy that aids the wealthy and harms the non-wealthy. One of the greatest triumphs of the wealthy is to get vast numbers of the non-wealthy to fail to understand this point. The New Democrats’ passionate support for austerity reflects the interests of its primary donors – Wall Street elites....

New Economic Perspectives
The New Democrats’ Addiction to Austerity Will Not Die
William K. Black | Associate Professor of Economics and Law, UMKC

Yves Smith — Two New Papers Say Big Finance Sectors Hurt Growth and Innovation

In a bit of synchronicity, two new papers confirm the long-held suspicion that Wall Street is sucking the life out of Main Street.

Naked Capitalism
Two New Papers Say Big Finance Sectors Hurt Growth and Innovation
Yves Smith

Why Doesn't He Pitch Fiat, White Collar Crime Relief To Citizens?

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson.)

Not a big enough protection racket?

Ex-NSA Chief Pitches Banks Costly Advice on Cyber-Attacks

Where's the line between innocent fraud & racketeering?

Are we assigning enough people and resources to adequately monitor that line ... and regulate who crosses it?

Who's telling Main Street that the financial industry was among the likely ... initiators ... of a major attack on the Middle Class?

$1 million/month? Is he joining a crowded field of .... White Collar Criminals ... or just demonstrating that the MICC can co-opt Wall St. any time it wants to?

After all, he and the NSA must have information that most tycoons ... shall we say, 'don't want brought to light' any time soon?

If he's that good, why doesn't he just go to work for Google, IBM, Yahoo, or other existing IT industry titans? Move over good dogs, a mean old dog's moving in?

And the touted threat? Rerouting data that might be used to make money in rogue stock-market transactions? I thought that's what Wall St. DID with Main St.'s financial resources? Translation: Banksters want to retain that business for themselves, and the NSA can show them how? [For a hefty piece of the action.]

Two decades after gutting every financial regulatory agency, from CFTC to the FBI White Collar Crime Task Force and on to the SEC itself - not to mention gutting Glass-Steagall - we now need more people in select regulatory positions? No one could have predicted this, right?

Banks that not long ago had 10 or 15 people repelling computer invaders now have 50 to 100 people “that do nothing but respond to attacks and review intelligence,” Joe Nocera, head of the financial-services cybersecurity group at PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP, said in an interview. 

The largest banks are allocating the most resources. JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) has 1,000 people focused on the danger and will spend $250 million this year, Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said in an April letter to shareholders.

And it only gets more unbelievable.

“I don’t want to be Chicken Little and say the sky is falling,”Benjamin Lawsky, superintendent of New York’s department of financial services, said in an interview. “But we really need to focus on this issue.”

And, says a clueless Congressperson:

“What I’m concerned about is we’re going to have a 9/11 in cyberspace,” he said. “We don’t need to suffer this kind of attack.”

Really? Sort of like the ones that Edward Snowden revealed? And, what about the massive policyspace attack that ALREADY OCCURRED, and hit the Middle Class on Main Street? Apparently that segment of our nation isn't as important to these so-called public servants?


ps:  watch to see which banks (domestic or foreign) are able or allowed to hire this particular "protection" service, and what accessory "services" follow soon after. Sadly, since we the people are "running out of fiat," the Middle Class will never again be able to afford similar protection .... from it's own leaders - unless we da peeps make some fundamental changes in national governance.

Randy Wray — MMT and Main Street vs Wall Street

Here’s a pretty good piece on MMT, by a “retired career PhD scientist” who has recently “become a serious student of macroeconomics and the role of government in our economy.” What I’d like to know is why this is so hard for PhD macroeconomists? Why can’t heterodox macroeconomists–who studied most of the same economics literature that Stephanie Bell, Scott Fullwiler, Eric Tymoigne, Bill Mitchell, Mat Forstater, Ed Nell, and I (and a handful of others)–get this? I realize that it is a bit easier for those who come straight out of financial markets–like Warren Mosler–to understand the details of monetary operations, or those like Charles Goodhart who saw the monetary ops first hand. But after a quarter of century of hundreds of published articles, thousands of blogs, and far too many conference presentations to count, why is this still so difficult for most PhD economists?

Economonitor — Great Leap Forward
MMT and Main Street vs Wall Street
L. Randall Wray | Professor of Economics, UMKC