Saturday, February 29, 2020

Today’s Social Democrats Should Be More Like Olof Palme — Daniel Suhonen

Swedish prime minister Olof Palme was assassinated on this day in 1986. He was an internationalist and the last social-democratic leader to really believe in a world beyond capitalism.
Jacobin
Today’s Social Democrats Should Be More Like Olof Palme
Daniel Suhonen

Should the Rising Deficit Worry CRE Executives? — Paul Fiorilla


MMT and Stephanie Kelton.

CRE — Commercial Property Executive
Should the Rising Deficit Worry CRE Executives?
Paul Fiorilla


Sanders presidency could start with US jobs program, then scale up — Howard Schneider


MMT and Stephanie Kelton.

Journal Pioneer
Sanders presidency could start with US jobs program, then scale up
Howard Schneider

Condivergence: Why standard finance theory is incomplete — Andrew Sheng

Mainstream finance theory suggests that money is the life blood of the real economy, helping to provide liquidity, means of payment, store of value, market price discovery and risk management, and reinforcing credit and governance discipline.
These basic functions appear as self-evident truths — logical, consistent and convincing. But the 2007 global financial crisis revealed that these four functions can only operate depending on at least five more key interrelated preconditions of stability. Change in any one element would destabilise money and finance. These are: law and institutions, technology, politics, social inequality and climate change.
Mentions MMT skeptically.

The Edge Markets
Condivergence: Why standard finance theory is incomplete
Andrew Sheng

Afghanistan Treaty


Trump doesn't want to kill millions of them all... which we could EASILY do in a few days apparently even without the new tactical nukes.... making a deal instead...




New 'hoax'


For even MORE entertainment, watch how the people responsible for ANY f-ed up material systems issue have an Art Degree...







Cerno on Index investing...


Needs Mike's 'mental game':





This Supermajor [Royal Dutch Shell] Is Diving Into The Green Hydrogen Game — Haley Zaremba

Hydrogen is often hailed as a silver bullet solution to emissions-free fuel since it burns clean, leaving nothing but water vapor, but the reality of using and producing green hydrogen is much more complicated. Hydrogen is already used as a power source in a lot of modern industries, including ammonia production, in refineries and as a feedstock for chemicals. The vast majority of the hydrogen in use, however, is not green hydrogen, but instead is what is known as “gray hydrogen.” While the hydrogen itself burns clean, the means of producing that hydrogen is actually fossil-fuels intensive (most often using coal or natural gas) and therefore does nothing in the way of decarbonizing the industries in which it is used.
While gray hydrogen is currently the industry standard, however, green hydrogen is already in production as well--albeit at a much higher cost. But, as Oilprice reported earlier this month, all that is about to change. The green hydrogen revolution is upon us. While system costs of green hydrogen are standing in the way of scaling up production today, that won’t last long, according to Recharge News. “Everybody is predicting that the cost curve will come down, just as it has with solar and wind power,” they report. “Though, to get the price point right, you have to reach economies of scale. Then it’s just a matter of when, and industry is primed to take the next step.”
And now, less than a month after that report, oil supermajor Royal Dutch Shell has announced a new large-scale project to create green hydrogen using offshore wind farms in the Dutch North Sea instead of the traditional fossil fuels....
Important. Lots of hype around hydrogen as a transportable fuel, but it usually ignores the production costs in carbon units. Until recently the ratio between clean energy output and carbon input has not been encouraging.

Oilprice

Political Calculations — Maths on the Back of an Envelope


Fun on one hand but it finishes with an estimate of the effect of the coronavirus epidemic on the Chinese economy, so read to the end.

Political Calculations
Maths on the Back of an Envelope

Dee Hock — IS A SECOND HAND LIFE WORTH LIVING?


Not important, but Dee Hock is a good thinker and worth reading.

Dee W. Hock
IS A SECOND HAND LIFE WORTH LIVING?
Dee Hock | Founder and former CEO of Visa and author of Birth of the Chaordic Age (1999) with an edition named One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization (2005) which includes two new chapters

Princes, Prostitutes, Politicians and Bribes 💰| Andrew Feinstein

The arms industry is extremely profitable, but to keep the profits coming in it needs constant enemies. Russia and China for the bill nicely.

Peace is bad for business.


Welcome to the Most Corrupt Industry in the World ☠️

Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade

http://www.theshadowworldbook.com/



Boing Boing — Trump administration considers a centrally planned economy to deal with coronavirus

The Trump administration is reportedly considering the possibility of re-implementing the Defense Production Act. Originally enacted during the Korean War, the Act essentially empowers the President to control the means of production—the idea being that it would be in the interest of the nation's defense to force private manufacturers to focus their production efforts on things that would benefit the country in a time of tenuous resources....
"Reportedly." Rumor maybe, but interesting.

China did not really have to implement this, since it is largely the current system there, but the Chinese leadership gripped the reins tighter, basically shutting the country down. This made sense especially at the time of Chinese New Year, when the entire country "goes home" for vacation to their ancestral locations.

Boing Boing
Trump administration considers a centrally planned economy to deal with coronavirus

See also
Dr. Bruce Aylward, who led the 25-member team, said that in absence of a drug or vaccine which could have fought the virus, China resorted to publicly available standard health tools like case finding and contact tracing with the kind of rigor and innovation “on a scale that we have never seen in history.”...
Dr. Aylward also said that China’s response was agile and science-driven. It was said that by the time the report had been compiled, the Chinese government had updated its clinical guidance six times in total as new findings about the virus and the illness kept coming in.
Stringent measures such as sealing off towns and ordering people to stay in their homes changed the course of the outbreak, Dr. Aylward said, mentioning that the decline is now happening sooner than expected....
Dr. Aylward also noted that the world is not ready to tackle the epidemic yet, but with the model that China has produced, the process can be sped up. He urged countries on the brink of the epidemic to take up tough and aggressive programs, mentioning that key steps could be planning for the heavy demand on hospitals, providing respiratory support such as ventilators and deployment of staff for contact tracing....
Peoples Dispatch
COVID-19: WHO-China joint mission says China’s handling of the disease is historic
Sandipan Talukdar

Uncertainty — Brian Romanchuk

The coronavirus news flow is getting worse, and generating corresponding news flow. I just want to make a couple comments that stick close to my limited expertise. From a markets standpoint, the market that matters is the credit market, and not equities. I am not plugged into the credit market news flow, but I do not see anything that indicates that anything is irreversibly broken. Otherwise, the situation underlines the big difference between randomness and uncertainty. This is a geeky distinction, but is one of the things that distinguishes post-Keynesian thinking from neoclassical....
Bond Economics
Uncertainty
Brian Romanchuk

Fed Rate Cut


Looks like they are going to have to cut the IOR:

Current factors are at $4.2T in latest H.4.1 and their $80b/mo. UST buying policy has rates plummeting to where the 3 year UST is currently yielding only 0.85%.

So if they were to roll the whole portfolio into this 3 year duration of USTs  (which is their current policy goal) now at 0.85% that would yield about $35B annual...

IOR right now is at 1.6% on the $1.7T (and rising...) of Reserves at Depositories so that creates a liability for them of $27B so that would only leave an excess of $8B for them to have to run the FRS and have any to return to the Treasury account...  and this is TOO SMALL imo...

They are going to have to cut the IOR liability or risk the continuation of the bond rally they are fomenting to leave them "out of money!"...  which they are never going to let happen in a million years...

or perhaps they are ignorant of any of this and will let themselves "run out of money!"... who knows...  they let their own system run out of minimum Reserve Assets in September... I guess you never know without being able to debrief these people...

This hypo cut in the risk free rate would help stabilize risk asset prices ... which are in free fall this month with the Fed adding 10s of $Bs of Reserve Assets to Depositories while holding the risk free IOR rate constant...



Why hand washing really could slow down an epidemic

To prevent viral infections, doctors suggest practicing good hand hygiene. In light of the recent coronavirus outbreak, public health guidelines continue to emphasize this. Is hand washing really that helpful in the context of an epidemic? New research suggests that it is.

Medical News Today 

Why hand washing really could slow down an epidemic

Tom Clark - Thomas Piketty’s capital idea

The French economist with a celebrated theory of inequality is back—this time with a theory of everything in 1,100 pages. But is he, Paul Krugman asks Prospect, sufficient a polymath to pull it off?

But before long, Piketty was receiving—and rejecting—all sorts of highly-paying corporate invitations to speak: the Davos set sensed an argument it could not afford to ignore. Six years on, there is no closing down the discussion that he blasted open: the Democratic primaries in the US have seen Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in a bidding war over progressive wealth taxes, and Michael Bloomberg’s billions are proving to be almost as much of a political problem as they are a campaigning asset. By ranging across even more countries, and tightening the argument about how far political choices about taxation have sometimes reduced inequality, the new book provides more powerful ammo, especially when combined with the recent manifesto of two of Piketty’s closest collaborators, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay.

Prospect

Tom Clark - Thomas Piketty’s capital idea

Friday, February 28, 2020

The Great Transformation — 75 Years Later — Oleg Komlik

Karl Polanyi’s masterpiece The Great Transformation was written during the Second World War and published in 1944, but the relevance and importance of this preeminent book has continued to grow. 75 year later, The Great Transformation — an admirable treatise debunking the false creed of economic determinism and market fundamentalism, and elaborating on their hazardous ramifications — remains fresh and enlightening, and it is indispensable for understanding the current phenomena of our turbulent time. The book was slow in arriving at public and scholarly domains, but has kept on surfacing and then gradually become a canonical text and highly influential research in social science and humanities. Since the 1980s, this Polanyi’s classic work and his other writings have greatly inspired and impelled the rebirth and development of economic sociology, political economy and history of capitalism....
Economic Sociology and Political Economy
The Great Transformation — 75 Years Later
Oleg Komlik | founder and editor-in-chief of the ES/PE, Chairman of the Junior Sociologists Network at the International Sociological Association, a PhD Candidate in Economic Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Ben-Gurion University, and a Lecturer in the School of Behavioral Sciences at the College of Management Academic Studies

Why Keynes was a socialist — Andrew Jackson

In an important new book Keynes Against Capitalism: His Economic Case for Liberal Socialism (Routledge, 2019) James Crotty argues that Keynes was a socialist who advocated a much more radical economic agenda than most mainstream economists and political analysts realize. Based on a very close reading of Keynes’ work, Crotty argues that core Keynesian economic ideas should inform democratic socialism today....
Progressive Economics Forum
Why Keynes was a socialist
Andrew Jackson

Ndongo Samba Sylla – What does MMT have to Offer Developing Nations?

Last year, five Republican senators made a political move unprecedented in a formally democratic country like the United States: they introduced a resolution calling on the US Senate to condemn an economic theory the implementation of which would “pose a clear danger to the economy of the United States”. They were talking about Modern Monetary Theory, or MMT. But what was so outrageous about the incriminated economic theory that it deserved the rejection and anger of right-wing politicians in the first place?

Brave New Europe 

Ndongo Samba Sylla – What does MMT have to Offer Developing Nations?

China’s completed ‘artificial sun’ to start operation in 2020

China’s HL-2M nuclear fusion device burns with the power of 13 suns



Chinese scientists are working on harvesting the energy of the Sun, but it's not solar energy. The country has developed its very own “artificial sun,” a nuclear fusion research device that is supposed to pave the way for clean energy -- similar to the real Sun.The completion of the reactor was announced on Tuesday, and it’s expected to start operation in 2020, Xinhua News reported.

PIONEER NEUROSCIENTISTS BELIEVED THE MIND IS MORE THAN THE BRAIN

Part 2.

In a podcast discussion with Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor talks about how many famous neuroscientist became dualists—that is, they concluded that there is something about human beings that goes beyond matter—based on observations they made during their work [4:24 min].

PIONEER NEUROSCIENTISTS BELIEVED THE MIND IS MORE THAN THE BRAIN

Thursday, February 27, 2020

Bernie Finally Puts a Number on Cutting Military Spending — David Swanson


It's not straightforward. David Swanson explains the nuance.

Counterpunch
Bernie Finally Puts a Number on Cutting Military Spending
David Swanson

How We Stay Blind to the Story of Power — Jonathan Cook


I had a mentor who emphasized the necessity to understand power. At first I didn't quite know what he was talking about. Subsequently, I discovered that he was correct. For example, C. Wright Mills's The Power Elite was a real eyeopener.

Counterpunch
Jonathan Cook

Ndongo Samba Sylla – What does MMT have to Offer Developing Nations?

According to its main authors, MMT is not “ultimately” about money. Money is just a prerequisite for addressing the more important issue of mobilizing domestic resources for the full employment of the labour force and other public endeavours....
Good introductory article.

Brave New World
Ndongo Samba Sylla – What does MMT have to Offer Developing Nations?
Ndongo Samba Sylla | Research and Programme Manager for the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation

Rohan Grey — Administering Money: Coinage, Debt Crises, and the Future of Fiscal Policy

Abstract
The power to coin money is a fundamental constitutional power and central element of fiscal policymaking, along with spending, taxing, and borrowing. However, it remains neglected in constitutional and administrative law, despite the fact that money creation has been central to the United States’ fiscal capacities and constraints since at least1973, when it abandoned convertibility of the dollar into gold. This neglect is particularly prevalent in the context of debt ceiling crises, which emerge when Congress fails to grant the executive sufficient borrowing authority to finance spending in excess of taxes. In such instances, prominent legal and economic scholars have argued that the President should choose the “least unconstitutional option” of breaching the debt ceiling, rather than impeding on Congress’s even more fundamental powers to tax and spend. However, this view fails to consider a fourth, arguably more constitutional option: minting a high value coin under an obscure provision of the Coinage Act, and using the proceeds to circumvent the debt ceiling entirely. Reintroducing coinage into our fiscal discourse raises novel and interesting questions about the broader nature of, and relationship between “money” and “debt.” It also underscores how legal debates over fiscal policy implicate broader social myths about money. As we enter the era of digital currency, creative legal solutions like high value coinage have the potential to serve as imaginative catalysts that enable us to collectively develop new monetary myths that better fit our modern context and needs.
The platinum coin redux.

Rohan Grey
Administering Money: Coinage, Debt Crises, and the Future of Fiscal Policy

If 50% of the world’s investments are going to ethically invested within five years there’s going to be a massive demand for accounting reform — Richard Murphy


The shoe is dropping.

Tax Research UK
If 50% of the world’s investments are going to ethically invested within five years there’s going to be a massive demand for accounting reform
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

Michael Roberts — Marx’s law of profitability at SOAS

Last week I gave a lecture in the seminar series on Marxist political economy organised by the Department of Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). The Marxist Political Economy series is a course mainly for post-graduates and has several lecturers on different aspects of Marxian economics. Course Handbook – Marxist Political Economy 2019-20 (8)
Mine was on Marx’s law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Not surprisingly, the department team has noticed that I am apparently ‘obsessed’ by this law, at least according to critics of it.
Anyway, I thought it might be useful to go through my lecture in a post, with the accompanying slides referred to. So here goes....
Michael Roberts Blog — blogging from a marxist economist
Marx’s law of profitability at SOAS
Michael Roberts

See also

Short summary of Karl Marx's view of property relations.

Most interesting:
 Karl Marx sought to further distinguish between the personal possession of (mainly) consumer goods, which he termed “personal property”, and the absentee ownership of capital goods, which he somewhat confusingly termed “private property”. Marx then went on to critique the exploitation that arises structurally when the means of production are privatised.
Hence we arrive at the first problem with private property, in that there exist two conflicting interpretations, neither of which has gained universal acceptance. That said the broader Lockean take tends to prevail in common usage, which can be somewhat problematic when discussing the abolition of exploitative arrangements arising from private property.... 
The phrase "private property" is ambiguous. In the terminology of John Locke it includes personal property. In the terminology of Karl Marx it doesn't. When Marx spoke of the need to abolish private property to put an end to capitalist expropriation of surplus value from workers, he meant changing the relations of production. He excluded personal property from the category of private property and he was not advocating collectivizing a tradesperson's tools, for example.

Here, Marx was making a connection between capitalists as absentee owners and the landlords of feudalism that either owned slaves or collected rents.

In the industrial age under capitalism, factories and machines became the dominant mode of production rather than agricultural land, which was the dominant mode of production in the agricultural age that was characterized politically by feudalism. 

Marx sought to show how surplus value was the "rent" that capitalists extracted from hired workers and not having contributed to production.

Thus, in this view both feudalism and capitalism are related forms of oligarchy that stand in opposition to liberal democracy. Under capitalism, land was simply folded in to capital.

Black Cat Workers Collective
The problem with private property

TGA


Treasury may be trying to counter-act the nutty Fed policy of buying up the whole savings deficit of $80B USTs per month...   by increasing the rate of UST issuance and running up the TGA...

This is just like last summer under the "debt ceiling!" redux...  enjoy the bond rally while it lasts....






I think this $470B might be an all time high on the TGA...

Maybe trying to increase the issuance rate to get at least SOME Tier1 UST assets to the non-govt so Fed doesn't spike the Reserve Assets at the banks again and crash the whole thing again like 2008.... which interestingly was another election year...

If the Fed crashes it again here I think it would be harmful to Trump...

But on the Trump side, the other thing is now with this account up at $470B is the Treasury going to operate to keep it there even after the Fed stops buying all the UST issuance after Tax Day?  If they run it back down by $250B quickly (providing appearance of reducing "teh deficit!" heading into election day???) it may even be worse than what the Fed is currently doing as Fed is only adding $60B per month...

Without debriefing the policy makers its impossible to know for sure....






Leith van Onselen - Fake left Guardian demands more low-wage migrants

The Guardian’s open borders fetish is a betrayal of the working class and plays straight into the hands of the neoliberal capitalists it purports to fight.

The economics is indisputable: continually increasing labour supply via immigration, and enabling employers to recruit workers from a global pool and to forgo training, necessarily reduces workers’ bargaining power and ergo wages growth.

Fake left Guardian demands more low-wage migrants


Leith van Onselen debates immigration on the Today Show


Immigration lowers wages in the UK and Australia 


Wednesday, February 26, 2020

Zero Hedge — Hong Kong Embraces Helicopter Money - Govt Gives Every Adult Citizen HK$10,000


HK "goers there."

Zero Hedge
Hong Kong Embraces Helicopter Money - Govt Gives Every Adult Citizen HK$10,000
Tyler Durden

Sputnik International — RT France Hires Former French Economic Intelligence Chief as New Host


"Russian interference."

Sputnik International
RT France Hires Former French Economic Intelligence Chief as New Host

Also

Sputnik International
How Dare You! Bernie Chastised by Twitter Users Over His Wife's Interview With "Russian TV"

The Afghanistan ‘peace deal’ riddle — Pepe Escobar


Backgrounder. More complicated than meets the eye. As always, it about money and power.

Asia Times
The Afghanistan ‘peace deal’ riddle
Pepe Escobar

“America Exists Today to Make War”: Lawrence Wilkerson on Endless War & American Empire

Retired U.S. Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff from 2002 to 2005, says the escalation of tensions between the U.S. and Iran today is a continuation of two decades of U.S. policy disasters in the Middle East, starting with the 2003 run-up to war with Iraq under the Bush administration. “America exists today to make war. How else do we interpret 19 straight years of war and no end in sight? It’s part of who we are. It’s part of what the American Empire is,” says Wilkerson. “We are going to cheat and steal to do whatever it is we have to do to continue this war complex. That’s the truth of it. And that’s the agony of it.”



Going green: China continues massive investment in renewable energy



Chinese state-owned power company, China Three Gorges Corporation, has announced it has started developing more than two dozen of new green energy projects, requiring the total investment of $8.2 billion.

The construction of 25 new projects with a total installed capacity of 3.92 million kilowatts was started simultaneously in 14 provinces and regions, the Beijing-based company announced on Monday. The initiatives are expected to create 17,000 jobs for locals and help the nation's industrial chain to resume work and production, as well as optimize the local industrial structure.

RT

Going green: China continues massive investment in renewable energy

Bill Mitchell — Our sequel to Reclaiming the State in now in progress

As part of my recent European speaking engagements, I went to Rome on February 5, 2020 to speak at the Italian Senate on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and the dysfunctional state of the European Union. The next day I had long discussions with one of my co-authors, Thomas Fazi, who I wrote – Reclaiming the State: A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post-Neoliberal World (Pluto Books, September 2017) with. We have been working on the sequel to that book for some time, and, in the process, have had to work through some difficult issues on which there has been some degree of difference in our viewpoints. While I was in Rome, Thomas and I also recorded a video of a conversation where we talk about our sequel. We provide that video here as well as a brief discussion outlining some of the major issues that the book will address....
Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Our sequel to Reclaiming the State in now in progress
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Musicians Algorithmically Generate Every Possible Melody, Release Them to Public Domain Samantha—Cole

Damien Riehl and Noah Rubin generated and saved every possible melody to a hard drive, then turned it back around to the commons.
Vice
Musicians Algorithmically Generate Every Possible Melody, Release Them to Public Domain
Samantha Cole

Nearly All Coral Reefs Will Disappear Over The Next 20 Years, Scientists Say



Over the next 20 years, scientists estimate about 70 to 90% of all coral reefs will disappear primarily as a result of warming ocean waters, ocean acidity, and pollution.

Expand that out to 2100 and it’s “looking quite grim,” says Renee Setter, a marine scientist at the University of Hawaii in Manoa. By 2100 there will be nearly zero suitable coral habitats remaining, eliminating nearly all living coral reef habitats.

Forbes 

Nearly All Coral Reefs Will Disappear Over The Next 20 Years, Scientists Say?

Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming



The deniers like to point out where some scientists (not usually climatologists) and commentators made inaccurate predictions about climate change, but on the whole climatologists got it right.


Climate change doubters have a favorite target: climate models. They claim that computer simulations conducted decades ago didn’t accurately predict current warming, so the public should be wary of the predictive power of newer models. Now, the most sweeping evaluation of these older models—some half a century old—shows most of them were indeed accurate.

“How much warming we are having today is pretty much right on where models have predicted,” says the study’s lead author, Zeke Hausfather, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley.

Science Mag 

Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming

Tuesday, February 25, 2020

Has the internet helped China contain the coronavirus? — Mu Li


Cutting through the BS surrounding Chinese government's response to the coronavirus.

But the origin of the virus is yet unestablished. This is a limitation on prevention.

East Asia Forum
Has the internet helped China contain the coronavirus?
Mu Li | Professor of International Public Health at the Sydney School of Public Health, The University of Sydney

David Ricardo’s explanation of the case for free trade rests on some basic economic principles, but also has a big public policy blind spot — Miles Corak


There are more issues with David Ricardo's theory of trade than Miles Corak observes, but it highlights an important one. Worth a read.

To summarize, Ricardo built a toy model that is useful for thinking a simplified level but it is too simplistic to useful as a model for the actual practice of political economy.

Miles Corak points out that failure of trade specialists, not to mention economists that don't specialize in trade, can be traced to their being overly influenced by Ricardo's model without seeing the limitations imposed by its assumptions.

Note further than conventional economics is based on assuming scarcity, opportunity costs, and marginal reasoning," and, I would add, maximization and equilibrium, as the starting points. This severely limits the scope of economy theory and vitiates its use as it stands for political economy and policy formulation.

Economics for public policy
David Ricardo’s explanation of the case for free trade rests on some basic economic principles, but also has a big public policy blind spot
Miles Corak

Bill Mitchell — Rounding off the Masterclass in London last weekend

Last Saturday, I held an MMT Masterclass or Teach-In in London. It was an experimental session because I wanted to see what level of difficulty people would find useful as we work on developing the pedagogy and materials for MMTed, which is intending to provide free teaching resources for those interested to learning Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) from first principles. Given the time constraints, I didn’t quite finish Module 1. So I thought I would provide the slides here with a written explanation of what I would have said so that you get the complete context and application of the concepts that we developed together during the class. So this blog post completes the lecture. Thanks to all those who attended and to those who have sent me the requested feedback. This will help us improve the material and presentation approach....
Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Rounding off the Masterclass in London last weekend
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Michael Hudson — In a struggle between oligarchy and democracy, something must give

Until Nevada, all the presidential candidates except for Bernie Sanders were playing for a brokered convention. The party’s candidates seemed likely to be chosen by the Donor Class, the One Percent and its proxies, not the voting class (the 99 Percent). If, as Mayor Bloomberg has assumed, the DNC will sell the presidency to the highest bidder, this poses the great question: Can the myth that the Democrats represent the working/middle class survive? Or, will the Donor Class trump the voting class?
This could be thought of as “election interference” – not from Russia but from the DNC on behalf of its Donor Class. That scenario would make the Democrats’ slogan for 2020 “No Hope or Change.” That is, no change from today’s economic trends that are sweeping wealth up to the One Percent.
All this sounds like Rome at the end of the Republic in the 1st century BC....
Markets in everything, including political office.

Note: I am refraining from posting links to overtly political posts or articles. While Michael Hudson's post is heavily political in one sense, being about the crisis in the Democratic Party, it is more than that in that it is really a post about political economy, a discipline that has been overshadowed by conventional economics and needs to be revived. While Michael Hudson has a degree in economics and has been involved in finance professionally, it is one of the few political economists operating in this environment, more remarkably as a closet Marxist.

Michael Hudson — On Finance, Real Estate And The Powers Of Neoliberalism
In a struggle between oligarchy and democracy, something must give
Michael Hudson | President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and Guest Professor at Peking University

Also

Important tidbit about US politics.

"Everyone knows" that US general elections are dominated by swing states that are in play. But not many also realize that it comes down in the end to a few swing counties that are in play.

Econospeak
Who Wins Prairie du Chien Wins the White House
J. Barkley Rosser | Professor of Economics and Business Administration James Madison University

Fecal-Oral Route...


Its not called the 'turd world' for nothing... looks like its in the water...





Coronavirus


We might just have an entire ROW that is basically germ-o-phobes... it'll be interesting to see the US response in comparison if it ever comes here...




Time is NOT real: Physicists show EVERYTHING happens at the same time

TIME is not real - it is a human construct to help us differentiate between now and our perception of the past, an equally astonishing and baffling theory states.





Some physicists think that if the universe started collapsing instead of expanding, then time would go backwards, but it seems that we would still perceive time as going forward. As time slips back each second, we would perceive this as the new now, while completely forgeting the moment before. We would still have memories of our past, which we would slowly forget as we go through each moment. This is the complete opposite of time going forwards. Instead of remembering, we are forgetting, which is the opposite of a world going forward in time.

As we approach the speed of light time slows down, but we wouldn't notice it and everything would seem to be normal. If time were to skip backwards, would we notice that either?

But what if there is no time at all, and everything is here at once?

Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist Max Tegmark, told space.com: "We can portray our reality as either a three-dimensional place where stuff happens over time, or as a four-dimensional place where nothing happens [‘block universe’] — and if it really is the second picture, then change really is an illusion, because there's nothing that's changing; it's all just there — past, present, future.

“We have the illusion, at any given moment, that the past already happened and the future doesn't yet exist, and that things are changing. 

Daily Express 


Time is NOT real: Physicists show EVERYTHING happens at the same time


Monday, February 24, 2020

Over $12.4 Billion USD Transacted On China’s Official Blockchain Project, PBoC Affiliate Report — Lujan Odera

After studying trade and finance as the main use of the blockchain, the bank launched the first sovereign blockchain in 2018, registering a couple of patents along the way. So far, the country ranks as the largest blockchain patent holder in the world.
The PBoC maintains the bank will not support any public blockchain yet as it focuses on its own blockchain project. So far, its blockchain project that offers multi-stage accounts receivable financing, a fast track for rediscounts and supervision over foreign trade payments is on the rise. Watch out for blockchain adoption across China.
CoinGape
Over $12.4 Billion USD Transacted On China’s Official Blockchain Project, PBoC Affiliate Report
Lujan Odera

Socialism Without Anti-Imperialism: A Different Flavor of Tyranny — Comrade Hermit (Nicky Reid)


"Libertarian socialism."
The reality is, if you really break it down, socialism is just some system of governance which affords some form of social ownership over the means of production. Democrats and Republicans alike have almost always supported some variant of socialist policy when it suits them. I myself follow a decidedly purist strain of this philosophy often referred to as libertarian socialism.
While in the past I've danced with the devil of full-tilt Bolshevism and I continue to stubbornly defend the legacy of Third World state socialists like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, I've come to the hard fought conclusion that the only way for truly empowered social ownership of basic human rights like healthcare and education to exist is for it to be wholly decentralized, voluntary and operated from the bottom up. The idea of Bernie's Medicare for All just sounds like swapping masters to me, from corporate bag munchers to federal bag munchers. I'm already experiencing Medicare for Some as a legally disabled agoraphobic and let me tell you, there is exactly nothing empowering about it. I feel like shit being barely strung along by the very same folks who brought us Waco, Ludlow and My Lai, and that brings me to the biggest bug I have up my ass about millennial socialism....
Exile in Happy Valley
Socialism Without Anti-Imperialism: A Different Flavor of Tyranny
Comrade Hermit (Nicky Reid)

The Kremlin Plans to Modernize Russia, Again — Stephen F. Cohen

With all this “living history” in mind, Putin’s plan for such large-scale (and rapid) investment has generated the controversy in Moscow and resulted in three positions within the policy class. One fully supports the decision on the essentially Keynesian grounds that it will spur Russia’s annual economic growth, which has lagged below the global average for several years. Another opposes such massive expenditures, arguing that the funds must remain in state hands as a safeguard against the US-led “sanctions war” (and perhaps worse) against Russia. And, as usual in politics, there is a compromise position that less should be invested in civilian infrastructure and less quickly....
The Nation
The Kremlin Plans to Modernize Russia, Again
Stephen F. Cohen | Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies, History, and Politics at New York University and Princeton University

Renegade Inc - The great NHS heist

If you want a lesson in how not to deliver healthcare, look at the broken American healthcare system. But since Brexit and talk of a US trade deal, American corporations and insurance companies have had their eye on one of the greatest British social achievements: The NHS. Host Ross Ashcroft is joined by NHS doctor and campaigner Dr. Bob Gill to discuss his recent documentary exposé on the stealth privatisation of the NHS.


Sunday, February 23, 2020

John T Harvey (The Cowboy Economist): The NHS And Healthcare Economics

An excellent podcast by John T Harvey. He seems to have exactly the same political and economic views as me, and his host does too. And guess what, he's English, a London boy, like me, and he was born in Edgware, about 14 miles from where I was born, in Deacon Street, Southwark, and we're about the same age too.

But we have something else in common as well, we both gave ourselves tinnitus listening to loud rock music. Damn!

He explains where the free market prevails, and where public provision serves us better. 

In the UK the government is thinking of putting up barriers in the North Sea to stop Scotland's coastal regions from flooding due to climate change. Now in a libertarian state the locals would not be able to afford these defences, and so if the floods come their livelihoods are likely to be ruined. But collectively, as a nation, we will all pay for the flood defences and I doubt if many people would mind as we see the benefit of the collective security of government. One day my region may need help from the government too. 



Deacon Street got flattened in the late 60's, so only B&W photos left.




Are we all being gaslighted by the government? — Richard Murphy


This has become the m.o. of corporate media. It's progressed beyond propaganda to gaslighting.

"Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?"

Tax Research UK
Are we all being gaslighted by the government?
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

Dutch former anti-Islam MP says he's become a Muslim



Islam "the biggest disease to have hit our country in the last hundred years" has become a Muslim in a shock conversion. 

Joram van Klaveren was an MP from 2010 until 2017 for the far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) led by anti-Islam and anti-immigration firebrand Geert Wilders. Mr van Klaveren once fiercely advocated Mr Wilders' policies of banning the Koran and closing down mosques. 


However, he has now said that he discovered out he had more in common with Islam than he initially thought when he started research for a book criticising the religion, which caused him to completely change his view. 

The Telegraph 

Dutch former anti-Islam MP says he's become a Muslim

Quantum Biology [Part 1] - How Plants Use Quantum Mechanics

Biologists are one up on the quantum physicists at the moment. Quantum computers have to be near absolute zero to work properly, but plants can utilise quantum mechanics at normal temperatures.


Saturday, February 22, 2020

Project Syndicate — Who's Afraid of Fiscal Policy?


Stephanie Kelton, among others.

Project Syndicate
Who's Afraid of Fiscal Policy?

Pete Buttigieg and the Myth of Deficit Responsibility — Luke Darby

Stony Brook University economist Stephanie Kelton is a proponent of something called modern monetary theory (MMT), a new school of economics that argues that as long as a country is in charge of issuing its own sovereign currency, it can't "run out of money." According to MMT, if Greece were still using its own currency, the drachma, instead of the euro, then it could have printed more money to pay off its debts, especially if inflation was low to begin with. Instead, as part of the European Union, it had to turn to the European Central Bank which dictated the terms of Greece's bailout.
Kelton argues in the New York Times that the way we think and talk about deficit is entirely wrong. When governments run up deficits, it's because they're pumping money into their economy or spending it on social welfare programs. Kelton writes, "The problem is that policy makers are looking at this picture with one eye shut. They see the budget deficit, but they’re missing the matching surplus on the other side. And since many Americans are missing it, too, they end up applauding efforts to balance the budget, even though it would mean erasing the surplus in the private sector."...
GQ
Pete Buttigieg and the Myth of Deficit Responsibility
Luke Darby

Fossil fuel funder JP Morgan warns of climate threat



The report’s authors, David Mackie and Jessica Murray, said that deaths, immigration and conflicts would only rise as the planet heated and water supplies dwindled, while famines would increase and species would be wiped out. “We cannot rule out catastrophic outcomes where human life as we know it is threatened,” they said.

They added that carbon emissions “will continue to affect the climate for centuries to come.

The Times

Fossil fuel funder JP Morgan warns of climate threat

Alain de Botton - THE MATERIALISTIC WORLD: An Ordinary Life Is No Longer Good Enough


Chinese scientists develop cancer-fighter

Remote-controlled gene-editing device uses infrared light to kill cancer cells





Scientists at the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Nanjing university have designed a remote-controlled gene-editing platform by using light, which can precisely target and kill cancer cells, Global Times reported.

This is what Antarctica looks like without snow

Not much money in skying now, so they are switching to mountain bikes.


Friday, February 21, 2020

Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech



Limitless, non polluting energy, which may be very cheap too.

"We are sidestepping all of the scientific challenges that have held fusion energy back for more than half a century," says the director of an Australian company that claims its hydrogen-boron fusion technology is already working a billion times better than expected.

New Atlas

Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech

What Is "Democratic Socialism"? — J. Barkley Rosser


Backgrounder.

Econospeak
What Is "Democratic Socialism"?
J. Barkley Rosser | Professor of Economics and Business Administration James Madison University

REVIEW ESSAY–The Reformation in Economics: A Deconstruction and Reconstruction of Economic Theory by Philip Pilkington Marc Morgan


Book review.

American Affairs
Marc Morgan | research economist at the World Inequality Lab of the Paris School of Economics.

Thursday, February 20, 2020

Vast Subsidies Keeping the Fossil Fuel Industry Afloat Should be Put to Better Use, By Alex Lenferna



To hide this reality |fossil fuel subsidies], 
the fossil fuel industry has invested in a massive public relations scheme (read: propaganda campaign) to paint itself as the defender of the free market. In the US, the fossil fuel industry has even, quite successfully, duped Evangelicals into associating the fossil fuel industry with free markets, and free markets with God’s will. Thus, attacks on the fossil fuel industry become attacks on God’s will. But if God’s will was really aligned with the free market, then the fossil fuel industry would be doing the devil’s work.

The fossil fuel industry is increasingly relying on the heavy hand of the government to protect fossil fuels from competition. Subsidies and protective policies shield fossil fuels from the reality that renewable energy has become the cheapest energy source worldwide.

Vast Subsidies Keeping the Fossil Fuel Industry Afloat Should be Put to Better Use

National Projects: Russia’s New Development Paradigm — Yaroslav Lissovolik

Russia’s new initiatives associated with sizeable increases in social spending and outlays on national projects as outlined by President Putin in his address to the Federal Assembly in the beginning of this year mark a new beginning in Russia’s economic policy. After extended periods of prioritizing the accumulation of savings and building of reserves, Russia’s economy is switching into spending mode, with greater weight accorded to economic growth compared to an overarching emphasis on securing macroeconomic stability in the past. In effect Russia’s economic model becomes more open and more geared towards development as compared to a defensive mode of economic policy, which sought to minimize external shocks and prioritize self-sufficiency and import-substitution.
Summary: The Russian leadership believes to have beaten back the sanctions and is now striking out on new path to build the domestic economy while also increasing exports....
Ultimately, within the new paradigm of Russia’s economic policy, which may be likened to a “Big Push” modernization effort (see Russia’s “Big Push paradigm”, Valdai discussion club, October 8, 2019) fiscal policy is likely to take precedence over monetary policy in delivering the growth stimulus. After amply showing that Russia is capable of notably increasing fiscal revenues and tax compliance the key goal is now to demonstrate the capability to attain modernization via significant increases in the efficiency of fiscal spending. In a way with fiscal policy shifting into spending gear, monetary policy is likely to be relatively more conservative with continued emphasis accorded to macroeconomic stability. The CBR is likely to closely follow the implications of fiscal loosening with respect to inflation and may limit the scope for further reductions in the key rate if inflation risks start to increase.
An important element of Russia’s “Big Push” to increase fiscal spending will need to be the maintenance of the fiscal rule and a rules-based framework more generally. This implies conservatism in allowing the change in the cut-off oil price for the budget’s fiscal rule operation as well as the existence of clear targets on the evolution of the overall fiscal balance and the non-oil budget deficit. The maintenance of the fiscal rule together with the relatively more conservative stance of the CBR are likely to be sufficient in ensuring the maintenance of the bulk of macroeconomic stability secured in the preceding years....
Analytics Valdai
National Projects: Russia’s New Development Paradigm
Yaroslav Lissovolik

Andrew Sullivan - Boris’s Blundering Brilliance

Brexit has given the U.K’s self-seeking Prime Minister the opportunity to show he actually knows what he’s doing.



An interesting look at Boris Johnson, a very liberal Conservative. 

Wealth has always been about power — Blair Fix

What has confused economists for centuries is that they’ve focused on what’s inside the fence of property rights, not the fence itself. And who can blame them? Historically, the things that were owned were easy to see. In contrast, the act of ownership — the institutional fence of private property — was abstract. And so economists tied wealth to property, not the property-rights fence.…
In reality, wealth had always been non-material — a social relation of exclusion. The digital revolution just laid this fact bare because it emptied out property, leaving only the fence of property rights. The digital revolution got rid of land. It got rid of physical capital. It got rid of all the physical things on which to pin wealth. All that was left (in digital tech firms) was the fence of property rights. And this fence was put up around the most non-material of things — ideas themselves..…

RWER Blog
Wealth has always been about power
Blair Fix

Open Democracy
To tackle inequality, we need to start talking about where wealth comes from
Laurie Macfarlane

The Monetarist fantasy is over — Robert Skidelsky


Quite a good piece that pushes the MMT view without naming it.

Progressive Economy Forum
The Monetarist fantasy is over
Robert Skidelsky | Crossbench peer and Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at Warwick University

Clariant: »Power-to-X« How greenhouse gases are turned into valuable base chemicals

Admittedly a promotion video, but interesting none-the-less. If CO2 can become a valuable commodity, then we won't be letting it escape into the atmosphere anymore.


Climate change and its consequences is one of the biggest challenge of the 21st century. According to leading scientists, global CO2 emissions must be cut in half by 2030 to prevent serious climate impacts, such as severe weather conditions, long droughts or the melting of glaciers and icebergs. To avoid these impacts new technologies for energy conversion, energy efficiency and storage are necessary. Innovative Power-to-X technologies can play a crucial role in this.



Wednesday, February 19, 2020

The 1 economic experiment Shinzo Abe won't try Jeff Spross


Spoiler: MMT-informed fiscal policy.

The Week
The 1 economic experiment Shinzo Abe won't try
Jeff Spross

Inflation Is NOT The Most Significant Factor Determining Bond Prices — Brian Romanchuk

One of the pieces of pseudo-science that floats around in popular discussion of bonds is the belief that bond investors are deadly afraid of inflation. In particular, bonds "lose money" every time the Consumer Price Index rises -- which is most months, in most developed countries. As far as I can tell, this is the legacy of some Economics 101 textbook story that has been passed on from "expert" to "expert" over the decades.
The correct answer is that nominal yields largely reflect the expected path of the short-term nominal policy rate, and is thus a reflection of the central bank's "reaction function." (At this point, some people will jump in and start going on about the term premium. However, unless we using an obviously dysfunctional term premium model, the term premium is only a small deviation from the fair value determined by rate expectations.)
The advent of inflation-linked bond markets adds some extra qualifications to the previous statements. (My previous book discusses the inflation-linked markets.) If a bond investor is overweight inflation-linked bonds, they can get a big fat bonus if inflation turns out higher than expected. However, the beliefs about bond investors that I am discussing here were formed in an era when inflation-linked markets did not exist, so economics textbook writers were free to write in whatever campfire ghost story they wished.... 
Bond Economics
Inflation Is NOT The Most Significant Factor Determining Bond Prices
Brian Romanchuk

Robert Skidelsky - The Monetarist fantasy is over

It will be interesting to see what Boris Johnson does, he seems to be more pragmatic and less dogmatic than other Conservatives.

I've read he wants to keep his new voters, so he has shifted slightly to the left.


The forced resignation of the United Kingdom’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sajid Javid, is the latest sign that macroeconomic policy is being upended, and not only in the UK. In addition to completing the ritual burial of the austerity policies pursued by UK governments since 2010, Javid’s departure on February 13 has broader significance.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is determined to overcome Treasury resistance to his vast spending ambitions. The last time a UK prime minister tried to open the government spending taps to such an extent was in 1964, when Labour’s Harold Wilson established the Department of Economic Affairs to counter Treasury hostility to public investment. Following the 1966 sterling crisis, however, the hawk-eyed Treasury re-established control, and the DEA was soon abolished. The Treasury, the oldest and most cynical department of government, knows how to bide its time.

Robert Skidelsky - The Monetarist fantasy is over

Americans increasingly see climate change as a crisis, poll shows

A growing number of Americans describe climate change as a crisis, and two-thirds say President Trump is doing too little to tackle the problem.

The results, from a poll conducted by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), point to a growing disconnect between Americans worried about the warming planet and Trump administration officials, who have aggressively scaled back Obama-era environmental regulations and relinquished the nation’s role as a global leader in pushing for climate action.

Washington Post 

Beijing is still pretty empty


Looks like Xi is going to have to get the cattle prods out...






Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Links — 18 Feb 2020

Anti-Empire
USA Is the World Spying Champion, That’s Why It’s Fighting the Simple Fix to China Spying Fears
Christian Stöcker 

Sputnik International
Unimaginable That BND & CIA Conducted Joint Spying Op For 23 Years – German Intelligence Expert
Jason Ditz

Why the Mind Cannot Just Emerge From the Brain — Robert J. Marks and Michael Egnor


Interesting critique of emergence in natural systems.

Is the brain the producer of consciousness, or is the brain a receptor?

MindMatters
Why the Mind Cannot Just Emerge From the Brain
Robert J. Marks in conversation with neurosurgeon Michael Egnor

WHY THE MIND CANNOT JUST EMERGE FROM THE BRA

WHY THE MIND CANNOT JUST EMERGE FROM THE BRA

WHY THE MIND CANNOT JUST EMERGE FROM THE BRA

After Neoliberalism — Ganesh Sitaraman

The last 10 years have seen the collapse of neoliberalism. The question now is, what comes next?
For 40 years, we have lived in a neoliberal era, an era defined in public policy by deregulation, liberalization, privatization, and austerity. Starting with the Thatcher and Reagan revolutions, neoliberal ideas spread to capture the center and even the left, ultimately becoming the reigning policy consensus by the mid-1990s.
But over the last decade, that neoliberal consensus has collapsed. We can now see that its results were disastrous....
The central question of our time is what comes after neoliberalism. New political paradigms emerge in response to the challenges and failures of the preceding era, and today, four possibilities for the future are emerging.
  • The first possibility is reformed neoliberalism.…
  • The second possibility is nationalist populism, which combines ethnic, religious, or cultural nationalism with economic populism.…
  • The third possibility, which many refer to as authoritarianism, has gotten the most attention.… The better term for this third future is “nationalist oligarchy,” and Trumpism is its American variant..…
  • The final possibility is that a new era of democracy will follow the age of neoliberalism.…
The neoliberal era has put us in this moment of crisis, and the central battle of our time is now between nationalist oligarchy and democracy. The fight for a great democracy will require boldness and creativity, courage and resolve. If we want to save democracy, we will first need to achieve democracy.
Insightful.

The Nation
After Neoliberalism
Ganesh Sitaraman | professor of law at Vanderbilt Law School

Trump’s “Currency Manipulation” Con — Anne O. Krueger

The long-awaited "phase one" deal between the United States and China has not ended US trade warfare. Instead, President Donald Trump's administration has devised yet another tool with which to tilt the playing field against foreign competitors, all but ensuring that damaging and unnecessary trade conflicts will continue.
The US is all for "free markets, free trade, and free capital flows when it  benefits the US elite, but not so much when the table turns as US firms are outcompeted. Ain't capitalism great! (snark)

Project Syndicate
Trump’s “Currency Manipulation” Con
Anne O. Krueger | Senior Research Professor of International Economics at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Senior Fellow at the Center for International Development, Stanford University, and former World Bank chief economist and former first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund 

Why the US is losing its war against Huawei — David P. Goldman


American "exceptionalism" at work. (snark)

Asia Times
Why the US is losing its war against Huawei
David P. Goldman

Why the fantasy world of neoclassical economics is undermining our wellbeing — Richard Murphy


Richard Murphy comments on Peter Bofinger's article, linked to here at MNE yesterday. Progressives and others on the so-called left need to read and understand this. The right won't pay any attention to it since it is Keynesian.

Tax Research UK
Why the fantasy world of neoclassical economics is undermining our wellbeing
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

Fed Doesn’t Want Another Repo Crisis, But Treasury Isn’t Helping


They are on to it a bit but still don't understand the Reserve policy effect on regulatory leverage ... so could cause another GFC2 at any time with a big Reserve increase...

GFC2 still 100% in play...

They still think "more Reserves is better!" which fits with their Monetarist axiom "banks lend out the Reserves!"...  ie their continuing reification error... ie Monetarist morons in charge thinking the Accounting abstractions are real...

Mnuchin evidencing some ignorance on the issue:

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin isn’t convinced. In fact, he suggested such a shift could lead to even bigger financial-stability problems. “If you’re a regulator, you wouldn’t want a major bank’s balance sheet to go up and down based upon what could be very, very large cash movements,” he told Bloomberg News in an interview last month. “It shouldn’t impact the market one way or another whether we put money at the Fed or at a bank.”

Well sorry hate to break the news to you but it does... increases non-risk assets at the banks and depresses your own regulatory leverage ratio which you are supposed to be in charge of... oh well... can't expect people to be technically qualified I guess...


Then here ... Fed and Trump Treasury still at daggers and not coordinating ...this is always nice to see:

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said in December that bank officials had yet to discuss the topic with their Treasury counterparts. Nevertheless, he added that “there may come a time when we talk about that.”

Oh that's just perfect.... Recipe for another GFC2 disaster from these morons still in place... conditions have not changed...


And then the even dumber left-wing Art Degree nutters will say it is all a big "neo-liberal conspiracy!"  lol...

When the hunter becomes the hunted

This hunter gets a real pounding!


It looks really dated now, but this Planet of the Apes human hunt scene frightened the living daylights out of me when I was 11. It reversed everything, where humans became worthless, and hunted and exploited for gain. The whole film was depressing, although brilliant!





New green technology generates electricity 'out of thin air'

Renewable device could help mitigate climate change, power medical devices




Some scientists on twitter describe themselves as climate optimists and say it's not too late to avert disaster. Let's hope so?

Electrical engineers and microbiologists have created a device they call an 'Air-gen.' or air-powered generator, with electrically conductive protein nanowires produced by the microbe Geobacter. The Air-gen connects electrodes to the protein nanowires in such a way that electrical current is generated from the water vapor naturally present in the atmosphere.

New green technology generates electricity 'out of thin air'


Why the UK may hold the secret to providing the world with limitless energy

Experts in Oxford believe they can win the race to produce cheap clean power despite the many challenges, says Ellie Zolfagharifard




The deniers say they are pro-capitalism, but they are not very entrepreneurial as they hate any new forms of energy over the old fossil fuels. I tell them that they are Luddites who stop capitalism from working properly, i.e, creative destruction, and that they support crony capitalism and rent seaking. If this new technology works, it will make some people very rich.


Nick Hawker is standing inches away from a gun that can fire bullets at 33,500mph. “Let’s just say, it wouldn’t end well if somebody got hit,” he laughs. This is the fastest railgun in Europe; a 40ft (12 metre) pulsed-power machine capable of discharging up to 200,000 volts – the equivalent of 500 simultaneous lightning strikes.

The device is in the secretive laboratory of First Light Fusion, in a bucolic corner of Oxfordshire. This place, claims the 34-year-old scientist, is one of the best hopes the planet has of creating limitless clean energy through nuclear fusion.

The Telegraph

Why the UK may hold the secret to providing the world with limitless energy