David Stockman — History In the Balance: Why Greece Must Repudiate Its “Banker Bailout” Debts And Exit The Euro by David Stockman

You read that right, David Stockman and not Bill Mitchell or Michael Hudson. And, yes, it is that David Stockman.

Now and again history reaches an inflection point. Statesman and mere politicians, as the case may be, find themselves confronted with fraught circumstances and stark choices. February 2015 is one such moment. 

For its part, Greece stands at a fork in the road. Syriza can move aggressively to recover Greece’s democratic sovereignty or it can desperately cling to the faltering currency and financial machinery of the Euro zone. But it can’t do both. 

So by the time the current onerous bailout agreement expires at month end, Greece must have repudiated its “bailout debt” and be on the off-ramp from the euro. Otherwise, it will have no hope of economic recovery or restoration of self-governance, and Syriza will have betrayed its mandate. 

Moreover, the stakes extend far beyond its own borders. If the Greeks do not take a stand for their own dignity and independence at what amounts to a financial Thermopylae, neither will the rest of Europe ever escape from the dysfunctional, autocratic, impoverishing superstate regime that has metastasized in Brussels and Frankfurt under cover of the “European Project”. 

Indeed, the crony capitalist corruption and craven appeasement of the banks and financial markets that have become the modus operandi there are inexorably destroying the EU and single currency. By fleeing the euro and ECB with all deliberate speed, therefore, the Greeks will give-up nothing except the opportunity to be lashed to the greatest monetary train wreck ever recorded. 

So Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has the weight of history on his shoulders as he makes the rounds of European capitals this week. His task in not merely to renounce the ham-handed “austerity” dictated by the Troika. Apparently even the French are prepared to acknowledge that the hideous suffering that has been imposed on Greece’s less fortunate citizens must be alleviated. Yet the latter is only a symptom of what’s wrong and what stands in the way of a real solution.

File under OMG!

David Stockman's Contra Corner
History In the Balance: Why Greece Must Repudiate Its “Banker Bailout” Debts And Exit The Euro
David Stockman |  former Congressman from Michigan, former Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan, and former partner at The Blackstone Group

David Stockman — Christmas 2015—–Why There Is No Peace On Earth

David Stockman joins Paul Craig Roberts as a premier critic of US foreign and military policy.

Why is there no peace on Earth? Follow the money and politics (military-industrial-governmental complex).

Good historical summary of why there is no peace and won't be until the Machine is dismantled.

On this analysis Stockman's perennial complaint about "unfunded social welfare entitlements pales against the rationale for defunding military adventurism and the neo-imperialism on which it is based.

The current Ukrainian policy farce emanating from Washington is not only a reminder that the military-industrial-beltway complex is still alive and well, but also demonstrates why the forces of crony capitalism and money politics which sustain it are so lamentable. The fact is, the modern Warfare State has been the incubator of American imperialism since the Cold War, and is now proving itself utterly invulnerable to fiscal containment, even in the face of a $19 trillion national debt. 

So 101 years after the Christmas truces along the Western Front there is still no peace on earth. And the long suffering American taxpayers, who foot the massive bills generated by the War Party’s demented and destructive policies, have no clue that Imperial Washington is the principal reason.

These concluding paragraphs of the long article are the only point at which Stockman introduces his erroneous monetary and fiscal analysis, but it is the logical conclusion of his primarily historical exposition. Hopefully, he will refocus on the the military extravagance  instead of his misdirected attack on the welfare state. But it is not likely.

Contra Corner
Christmas 2015—–Why There Is No Peace On Earth
David Stockman

The best thing Ronald Reagan ever did...fire David Stockman

Ronald Reagan will always be remembered for many things--Winning the Cold War, bringing back pride in America and calling her the "Shining City on a Hill," comforting a grieving nation following the Challenger disaster--but the BEST thing Reagan ever did was to fire his incompetent budget director, David Stockman.

Stockman thankfully disappeared from public view for a long time after that, but he has since come back with a vengence, spewing forth all this hysterical, nonsensical, crap about the debt and deficits. Every time I see him I literally want to puke. This guy is an absolute moron.

Some of you may remember a run-in I had with Stockman at Fox Business last year. It was very eye-opening, to say the least.

Stockman's been all over the news again lately, saying things like we'd be "better off" if we just jumped off the fiscal cliff, and that we are "living beyond our means" (how's that with 20 mln unemployed?).

Stockman argues, with a straight face, that "thowing the economy into recession," would allow us to "come out with some better fiscal balance on the other side." Nevermind that we've seen this prescription applied in Europe with exactly the opposite consequences.

Stockman is really one dumb jackass, but sadly, there are many "Stockmans" out there in the real world. Let us all acknowledge that Moody's has recently joined that list.

Wrong as usual, that fool David Stockman doubles down...

That clown otherwise known as David Stockman, former Reagan budget director, is out once again with another over the top, gloom and doom, dumb ass prediction that is based on nothing other than his own, sheer, misguided ideology and frustration.

Stockman is now predicting a stock and bond market crash because "the Fed has reflated the bubble to an even more gigantic proportion."

Here's some more of what he says...

On CNBC's " Futures Now " Thursday, the former OMB Director said that excessive monetary policy has forced central banks all over the world into a corner, and as a result, "the markets are going to be in for a huge, nasty morning after as people begin to look at where we really are." Read more. 

"Begin to look at where we really are?" What the hell does that mean, anyway?

I had several run-ins (here and here) with Stockman in the past when I was still working at Fox. He's a total moron and a ball of contradictions.

Actually, I don't know who is more pathetic, Stockman or that joke of a network, CNBC, for constantly parading losers like Stockman and Schiff around on their air and not ripping them a new one for their years of bad advice and ridiculous predictions. (Hyperinflation, surging gold, spiking interest rates, foreigner dumping Treasuries, depressions, etc.)

WTF is wrong with you, CNBC? Nik Deogun?

The Fed may raise interest rates soon and then it's feasible that bonds will tank although some of that discounting is probably going on now. The interesting thing, however, is what will happen to stocks and the economy if rates are increased? That's a fiscal injection.

What if rates are raised and GDP accelerates? And stocks climb?

What will Stockman and other idiots like Schiff say then? I'm sure CNBC will have them on to "explain."

Stay tuned.

David Stockman's reluctant and embarrassing admission

I ran into David Stockman at Fox yesterday. Several months ago I bumped into him as well and we got into a conversation about the debt. Stockman was Reagan's budget director until he got fired, probably because he protested too much against the huge deficits that Reagan ran (which created an economic boom). After he left the White House he disappeared for quite a long time, but has since resurfaced as the new "debt Cassandra," warning everyone who will listen that the debt is going to bankrupt the country unless we get it under control, yada, yada, yada.

The last time I met Stockman I asked him what would happen if we didn't get the debt under control? He said interest rates would spike and it would be impossible for us to service our debt. I said that interest rates wouldn't spike, necessarily, so long as the Fed kept them low and even if rates did go up, the U.S. would have no inability to pay the debt service becuase it was simply a matter of the government crediting bank accounts in U.S. dollars, which it does all the time.

He took issue with my assertion that the Fed set the rates.

I asked him about Japan, which has a debt almost three times that of the U.S. yet yields on 10-year Japanese gov't bonds were only 1.0%. (Back in March 10-year U.S. Treasury yields were about 3.6%.) He said that Japan was "different" because it was "internally financed" as opposed to our problem of having external finance. When I countered that the U.S. was also "internally financed" because it's all in dollars, he got annoyed and basically walked out in a huff, shaking his head the whole time as if I was some ignorant fool.

Well, yesterday, Stockman was on Cavuto and he started in with his usual debt rant--unsustainable debt, bankruptcy, etc. But then he said this: "We should abolish the Fed."

Neil Cavuto looked at him and said, "Abolish the Fed? Why?"

He said, "Because the Fed is keeping interest rates artificially low and that is bad."

I couldn't believe my ears. Just a few months earlier this guy was arguing adamantly that the Fed did not control rates and that rates would spike and we wouldn't be able to pay the debt service. Meanwhile, over that short period of time, deficit spending has continued and the U.S. even had its credit rating dowgraded and interest rates had fallen even further. It was obvious that none of the things he had been predicting were coming true.

When he came back to the green room from his segment I said to him, "David, I thought you said in our last discussion tht the Fed didn't control rates and now you just said that it is keeping rates down?"

His face froze for a second and I could see he was trying to collect his thoughts and think of a comeback. Then he just said, "Yeah, but eventually rates are going to spike up. They have to. They can't stay low forever. The Fed will have to raise them to attract capital." (Notice, he says, again, the FED WILL HAVE TO RAISE THEM...)

Unbelievable. These are our policymakers. Clueless, arrogant, people who are so full of themselves and so deep into their club of false beliefs that it is mindboggling. If they weren't so destructive these guys would be truly laughable.

David Stockman — Mitt Romney: The Great Deformer

Oh my. David Stockman deconstructs Bain Capital, leaving Mitt Romney naked.

The Daily Beast
Mitt Romney: The Great Deformer
David Stockman
(h/t Kevin Drum at Mother Jones)

David Stockman — How the Deep State Really Works

If you take away the Korean threat, if you recognize the Iranians aren’t a threat, if you see that Russia is a tiny little country that’s not going to invade Western Europe and crash through the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, and so forth—

All of a sudden somebody is going to do the math as we get into the coming fiscal crisis and say, “We can’t afford all this defense that we don’t need. Let’s cut it back dramatically.”

They don’t want this to happen. And so, they have to keep these hot spots burning and these threats maintained or inflated, because they know if the real truth of the world were considered by Congress, the defense budget would be slashed dramatically.…

The president of the United States should be leading the great global disarmament conference of 2021, and yet that won’t even come up. It’s not even on the radar screen.

It’s not even mentioned [in the campaign] because, as I say, the Warfare State machinery essentially squelches any kind of debate, suffocates any kind of thought that at all deviates from the status quo.

The big issue in the world today is war and peace, and we’re facing a campaign in 2020 where it won’t even be mentioned.

We knew this already but here is former US budget director telling us how it works in the warfare state versus the welfare state. Follow the money.

International Man
David Stockman on How the Deep State Really Works
David Stockman

Richard Reeves — Stockman Redux

As he became president in 1981, Ronald Reagan called in a 34-year-old congressman from Michigan named David Stockman, considered by many to be the most articulate and intellectually imposing Republican of the moment.

Stockman had impressed the new president by humbling the old man in practice debates before Reagan took on President Carter back in September.

“Dave,” said Reagan, “I’ve been thinking about how to get even with you for that thrashing you gave me in the debate rehearsals. So I’m sending you to the OMB (Office of Management and Budget).” Commented David Brinkley of NBC News: “He’s so fast with big figures that he scares old Washington hands.”

Stockman had only days to come up with a balanced budget that fulfilled Reagan’s campaign promises to cut taxes and build up the military. He was fast, but not necessarily accurate or truthful. Not by a long shot. What he did was use a pre-Reagan-projected budget with a $75 billion deficit the first year. But he already knew the real figure would be more than $600 billion after totaling Reagan’s new programs. On the revenue side, he used asterisks instead numbers. Lots of asterisks.

Stockman retired after four years, wrote a book, a confessional of sorts, went to Wall Street and made a lot of money. He turned down interview requests and kind of faded away.

Until last week, when he wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times. The headline was: “Paul Ryan’s Fairy-Tale Budget Plan.”

truthdig
Stockman Redux
Richard Reeves

As they say, "it takes one to know one.

David Stockman — "We're Not Useful Idiots!"

While David Stockman's economics is way out of paradigm with MMT, his geopolitics is much more realistic. His researched view on the Ukraine-Russia crisis is worth taking into consideration.

Zero Hedge
Stockman: "We're Not Useful Idiots!"
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/stockman-were-not-useful-idiots

Stockman: Why the Deep State Is at War With Trump

David Stockman is a lot better at analyzing politics than economics. He presents the case against Russiagate and shows how it is based on the politicization of intelligence and fake news reverberating in the media echo chamber. It is joining Paul Craig Roberts and Pat Buchanan as an establishment "turncoat."

"the Deep State has turned its own crimes during and after the 2016 election into nothing less than a coup d'etat against American democracy"

Russia Insider
Stockman: Why the Deep State Is at War With Trump

David Stockman

David Stockman disses the Ryan budget

In an op-ed piece for the New York Times Monday, David Stockman, who served as the Office of Budget and Management’s director under Ronald Reagan, slammed the vice-presidential candidate’s financial plan for lacking decisive policy measures.

“The Ryan Plan boils down to a fetish for cutting the top marginal income-tax rate for ‘job creators’ — i.e. the superwealthy — to 25 percent and paying for it with an as-yet-undisclosed plan to broaden the tax base,” Stockman wrote. “Of the $1 trillion in so-called tax expenditures that the plan would attack, the vast majority would come from slashing popular tax breaks for employer-provided health insurance, mortgage interest, 401(k) accounts, state and local taxes, charitable giving and the like, not to mention low rates on capital gains and dividends. The crony capitalists of K Street already own more than enough Republican votes to stop that train before it leaves the station.”

Raw Story
Reagan budget director attacks Paul Ryan’s economic policies
Arturo Garcia

"Starve the Beast"

Since the 1970s, the Republican Party has fallen increasingly under the influence of radical ideologues, whose goal is nothing less than the elimination of the welfare state — that is, the whole legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society. From the beginning, however, these ideologues have had a big problem: The programs they want to kill are very popular. Americans may nod their heads when you attack big government in the abstract, but they strongly support Social Security, Medicare, and even Medicaid. So what’s a radical to do?

The answer, for a long time, has involved two strategies. One is “starve the beast,” the idea of using tax cuts to reduce government revenue, then using the resulting lack of funds to force cuts in popular social programs. Whenever you see some Republican politician piously denouncing federal red ink, always remember that, for decades, the G.O.P. has seen budget deficits as a feature, not a bug.

The New York Times | Opinion
The G.O.P.’s Existential Crisis
Paul Krugman | Professor of Economics, Princeton University

David Stockman admitted this back in 1985, as reported by Tom Wicker in "Stockman leaks 'real' reasons for budget deficit."

...it now appears that the deficit was created by Reagan to do away with Democratic social programs dating back to the New Deal.

Who says so? David Stockman, the departing budget director, at second hand, and Friedrich von Hayek directly....

(h/t JK via email)

Moron Metaphor Alert! Stockman: Obamacare will cause a "fiscal hemorrhage"

The Yahoo!Finance people are at it again, providing their usual one-sided video platform for dispensing of falsehoods here today putting up an interview with former OMB Director David Stockman who is no fan of "Obamacare" so-called.

So why should it be repealed?

“It is the worst law ever passed in the last four decades by the federal government,” Stockman argues in the video above.

“It is a massive entitlement to end all entitlements. It is going to cause a fiscal hemorrhage that is not even yet anticipated.

Here its Stockman's turn this time to be the messenger who can carry and deliver the always manifest false metaphor which is required to keep the rubes in the dark.

Hey Stockman you idiot!  Its a CLOSED SYSTEM you moron!  It CAN'T "hemorrhage" you dope!

Moron Metaphor Alert> Stockman: "...the budget monster that's hurtling down the road..."

More false metaphor tailor made for the rubes from the moron Stockman who gets a permanent first position to spew nonsense on the terminally disgraced CNBC cable channel here.

Stockman's false childish pagan metaphor "monster" here provided as part of commentary on the recent Budget Committee compromise:

House Republicans "capitulated" in agreeing to the two-year budget deal reached last night and left the country to deal with an unsustainable fiscal situation until the peak of the presidential primaries in 2015, when nothing will get done, former federal budget director David Stockman told CNBC on Wednesday. 

"First, let's be clear—it's a joke and betrayal," Stockman, who served under President Ronald Reagan, said on "Squawk on the Street." "It's the final surrender of the House Republican leadership to Beltway politics and kicking the can and ignoring the budget monster that's hurtling down the road."

I didn't know "monsters" could drive... what drivel passes for informed commentary these days.

And it gets worse, this imbecilic nonsense is amplified this time by being featured as the headline in The Drudge Report see the capture below:

The moron-fest of the disgraced continues in earnest facilitated by the fully culpable and most powerful venues in the old and new media.

At least WE are not caught up in any of this.

John Aziz — On Stockman & Liquidation

Everyone is piling on David Stockman as the cranky old man he is, but John Aziz observes that there's good — Stockman's analysis of what's wrong with Wall Street and its cozy relationship with government — with the bad — debt and deficit hysteria. Stockman is one of the people on the right that is not blaming everything on government, anyway.

Azizonomics
On Stockman & Liquidation
John Aziz

David Stockman - Genocidal’ Saudi Arabia Is ‘Our Worst Ally in a Bad Neighborhood’

In my opinion, this is essential viewing. David Stockman, a former budget advisor to President Reagan, might not be MMT kosher, but listen to what he says about Saudi Arabia and their war on Yemen. 

Syria and beyond

David Stockman may be out of paradigm economically, but he gets this largely right.

The Truth About the War in Aleppo (David Stockman) 

Orlov is a keen analyst that writes with humor.

Oops! – A World War! (Dmitry Orlov)

ht The Automatic Earth

Is It Propaganda Or Not? On "Fake News"

The now infamous Washington Post editorial about "fake news" sites is based a list provided by PropOrNot and published anonymously. "The List" includes Consortium News, Counterpunch, David Stockman Counter Corner,  Drudge Report, Information Clearing House, Lew Rockwell, Naked Capitalism, Off Guardian, Op Ed News, Paul Craig Roberts, The Vineyard of the Saker, Truthdig, Truthout, Unz, and Zero Hedge. Many, many others made the list as well, but not MNE. What's up with that?

Looks like the Establishment has lost it and is flailing about.

Is It Propaganda Or Not? — PropOrNot.com

The List– An Initial Set of Sites That Reliably Echo Russian Propaganda

All kidding aside, this is serious.

By these standards, any outlet that raises the alarm about the considerable presence of extreme right-wing elements among the post-Maidan Ukrainian government or which questions the Western and Saudi-funded campaign for regime change in Syria can be designated as a Russia dupe or a paid agent of the FSB. Indeed, while admitting that they have no idea whether any of the outlets it blacklisted are being paid by Russian intelligence or are even aware they are spreading Russian propaganda, PropOrNot’s authors concluded that any outlets that have met its highly politicized criteria “have effectively become tools of the Russian intelligence services, and are worthy of further investigation.”…

The message is clear: Stamp out the websites blacklisted by PropOrNot, or submit to the malevolent influence of Putin’s “new global empire."

It can't happen here?

AlterNet
Washington Post Promotes Shadowy Website That Accuses 200 Publications of Being Russian Propaganda Plants

Max Blumenthal

Tyler Durden is already on the case. I am confident that Drudge, Ron Paul, Paul Craig Roberts, David Stockman,  and Yves Smith will be, too. Get out the popcorn.

Zero Hedge

Washington Post Names Drudge, Zero Hedge, & Ron Paul As Anti-Clinton "Sophisticated Russian Propaganda Tools"

Tyler Durden

Sputnik International
Washington Post’s Piece on Fake News Promotes Fake List of Unreliable Sources

US Corporate Media Execs Turn Into 'Fascists' Trying to Gag Alternative Outlets

The Ukrainian Influence Peddling Rings–A Microcosm of How Imperial Washington Rolls — David Stockman

Way more than just Hunter Biden and his dad.

Anti-War
The Ukrainian Influence Peddling Rings – A Microcosm of How Imperial Washington Rolls

David Stockman

Rob Kall — Paul Craig Roberts Transcript; Part 1-- The Biggest Economic Disaster in History, Globalism, the Undoings of the West

Paul Craig Roberts is an economist — Georgia Institute of Technology (B.A., Economics) University of Virginia and (Ph.D., Economics) — that was an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration and one of the developers of Reaganomics. He has been a consistent critic of the Bush and Obama administrations for violations of rights, as well as for the proliferation of crony capitalism and corruption. At the close of interview he cites Michael Hudson's work on financial capitalism as a factor that is undermining the US economy.

While both Paul Craig Roberts and David Stockman are coming from the right in their criticism, there is agreement on the left among progressives on many points. Many of the issues that David Stockman brought up were anticipated by William K. Black, and Paul Craig Roberts is reading Michael Hudson. Something's up?

OpEdNews
Paul Craig Roberts Transcript; Part 1-- The Biggest Economic Disaster in History, Globalism, the Undoings of the West
Interview with Rob Kall