My fundamental understanding of the world has been warped by a now challenged approach. I'm not alone.…
In the end, the chief byproduct of my general education exposure was a kind of indoctrination into the centrality of markets to understanding human behavior and the apparent importance of economics professors.
I’m not alone. Introductory economics could be one of the most widely received credits in all of higher education. And unlike other common courses (like say, first-year writing), Econ 101 is extremely similar institution to institution. Supply and demand is framed as a law in the same fashion as gravity. When supply and demand does not seem to work according to the “law” (e.g., health care) it is the not the law that is faulty, but the market itself, with much public policy effort going toward trying to bring the market in compliance with the law, often to negative effect.
That supply and demand might not be a law doesn’t seem to occur. Higher education seems to be bumping up against these tensions as well....
A few lonely voices disputed this consensus. In their view, these two distinct mysteries weren’t actually distinct — or all that mysterious. The reason wage growth wasn’t rising as one would expect with the economy near full employment was that the economy wasn’t near full employment. And the reason the economy wasn’t near full employment was that all those prime-age workers who’d supposedly exited the labor force for reasons totally unrelated to the strength of the economy hadn’t actually exited the labor force for reasons totally unrelated to the strength of the economy.
In this view, both of the supposed mysteries stemmed from the same mistake: Economists had too much faith in the official unemployment rate. That rate counts only those who say they’re actively seeking employment as available workers. And yet many Americans who say they aren’t looking for a job (and are, therefore, classified as nonparticipants in the labor force) also say that they would like a job if one presented itself. Meanwhile, survey data show that even those Americans who say they aren’t looking for a job – anddon’t want one – can abruptly change their minds. Such workers often go from being “outside the labor force” to being employed without ever registering as “unemployed” in the government’s data.
This reality has a major implication: The pool of surplus labor that employers have at their disposal at any given time is much larger than the unemployment rate lets on.…New York Magazine — Intelligencer
The expansion of banks such as Citigroup into Cuba, Haiti, and beyond reveal a story of capitalism built on blood, labor, and racial lines.
Scrubbed from the pages of glossy coffeetable books, the history of U.S. imperialism can be found in the archives of Wall Street’s oldest, largest, and most powerful institutions. A deep dive into the vaults and ledgers of banking houses such as Citigroup, Inc., and J. P. Morgan Chase and Co. reveals a story of capitalism and empire whose narrative is not of morally pure and inspiring economic growth, technological innovation, market expansion, and shareholder accumulation, but rather of blood and labor, stolen sovereignty and pilfered resources, military occupation and monetary control. Sugar comingles with blood, chain gangs cross spur lines, and the magical abstractions of finance are found vulgarized in the base manifestations of racial capitalism.
After seven years of economic research and developing forecasting models that have outperformed the experts, author, blogger, and physicist Dr. Jason Smith offers his controversial insights about the major driving factors behind the economy derived from the data and it's not economics — it's social changes. These social changes are behind the questions of who gets to work, how those workers organize, and how workers identify politically — and it is through labor markets that these social changes manifest in economic effects. What would otherwise be a disjoint and nonsensical postwar economic history of the United States is made into a cohesive workers' history driven by women entering the workforce and the backlash to the Civil Rights movement — plainly: sexism and racism. This new understanding of historical economic data offers lessons for understanding the political economy of today and insights for policies that might actually work.…Information Transfer Economics
The world's most powerful central bankers are preparing to pump a whole lot of cash into the global economy https://t.co/qHfjTzilNP pic.twitter.com/Hv837xhXz9
— Bloomberg Economics (@economics) June 24, 2019
I wonder what @BernieSanders and @ewarren think about @joebiden’s long-history of trying to cut social security benefits for elderly Americans? pic.twitter.com/eRkZwHQMmF
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) June 22, 2019
6CO2 + 6H2O ------> C6H12O6 + 6O2
Another great extract from a 2002 GAO report on CB operating capital:— Rohan Grey (@rohangrey) June 21, 2019
"Federal Reserve Board officials have acknowledged publicly the argument that a central bank may not need capital to absorb losses because ...
1/xhttps://t.co/FFrcPxT0qM
....On Monday they shot down an unmanned drone flying in International Waters. We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights when I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General. 10 minutes before the strike I stopped it, not....— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 21, 2019
President Obama:— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) June 21, 2019
Killed thousands of innocents with drone strikes
Received a Nobel Peace Prize
President Trump:
Decided not to retaliate and kill 150 people over an unmanned drone
Called a warmonger
š¤
“The Reserve Banks provided for remittances to the U.S. Treasury of $65.3 billion in 2018, including two lump-sum payments totaling approximately $3.2 billion that were necessary to reduce the aggregate Reserve Bank capital surplus to $6.8 billion as required by the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 and the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act.”
With sanctions re-imposed on Iran’s oil exports last year and recently applied in part to its petrochemicals exports as well, the U.S. is now looking to roll out the next phase of its sanctions plan against the Islamic Republic. This is to gradually employ increasingly tight sanctions on Iran’s gas sector, whilst ensuring that Europe’s mechanism for enabling ongoing business with Iran does not succeed. These policies taken together are aimed at limiting Iran’s energy export revenues to no more than US$14 billion per year, a senior energy source who works closely with Iran’s Petroleum Ministry told OilPrice.com last week. “This is the level of revenue targeted by the U.S. as being required to catalyse a popular uprising to remove the current regime in Tehran but not to cause an outright humanitarian disaster,” he added.…
The ultimate fall-back position for the U.S. – actual military intervention against Iran – remains an option, said the Iran source who added that: “The U.S. is at 90% operational readiness for full military action if necessary.” Any real or false flag action – along similar lines to the recent incidents involving oil tankers in and around the Persian Gulf – would suffice as catalysts to engage militarily but the preferred option, said the source, remains a “war of attrition” against Iran. “If the U.S. cuts all energy related revenues down to the US$14 billion cap then the Iranian people will have a big decision to make,” he concluded.Good luck with that strategy.
