An economics, investment, trading and policy blog with a focus on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). We seek the truth, avoid the mainstream and are virulently anti-neoliberalism.
CDC research notes that the birth rate in the US has been below replacement level since 1971. It is now a problem across all major racial groups including Hispanics, non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic blacks, and non-Hispanic Asians. All have below replacement birth levels.…
You can ignore the conspiracy theory stuff at the end of the article. Interesting numbers otherwise.
I saw a letter published by IPPR – who call themselves “The Progressive Policy Think Tank” – urging the BBC to change the way it conducts economic commentary. The letter – Economists urge BBC to rethink ‘inappropriate’ reporting of UK economy – was sent to the Director-General of the BBC following some “BBC reporting of the spending review” which they say “misrepresented the financial constraints facing the UK government and economy.” The H.M. Treasury – Spending Review 2020 – was published on November 25, 2020. I decided not to comment on it publicly given that my time is poor at the moment with lots of writing deadlines and travel now resuming with pent-up demand for my services (in person). It was what you would expect from the British Treasury. But some of the signatories to this latest letter criticising the BBC coverage of the Spending Review should look in the mirror. They seem to have short memories or perhaps they are learning the error of their ways. We can only hope....
Bill Mitchell – billy blog Those in glass houses … Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia
It can even tell bosses how well-connected you are to other employees, which will indicate to them how successful you are likely to be in driving the company forward.
Microsoft has expanded the analytics provided with its Office 365 suite of productivity applications into a “full-fledged workplace surveillance tool” according to privacy advocates.
The tool, called Productivity Score, allows employers to know the number of days a person was active on Microsoft Word, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, Skype and Teams over the previous four weeks and on what type of device.
J.S. Nelson is an associate professor of law at Villanova University who studies workplace surveillance. She told Forbes the software is “horrendous.” “Why are they monitoring people this way and what is that telling people about the relationship they should have with their employers in the workplace? What message are you sending?” she asked.
The world’s newest trade pact could bolster commodity trade among its members, thanks to reduced or eliminated tariffs on oil, gas, and coal among those members. Analysts believe that membership in the trade bloc could help to defuse the current strained relations between Australia and China, a major exporter and a top importer of fossil fuels in the region, respectively.
Yet, the pact could further sideline U.S. exporters of energy to the world’s most resource-thirsty region, especially if the upcoming Biden Administration makes good on its promise to ban new drilling on federal lands and waters, Ariel Cohen, Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council and Founding Principal of Washington D.C.-based risk advisory International Market Analysis, wrote in an article in Forbes....
I read a very interesting study by two Dutch academics last week – The ECB, the courts and the issue of democratic legitimacy after Weiss – which will be published in the Common Market Law Review (Vol 57, No 6, 2020). It examines the way in which the ECB operations and policy interventions have gone way beyond their original conception in the Maastricht Treaty and now conflict with democratic accountability. While the authors propose ways to address the democratic deficit, I am sceptical. Essentially, there needs to be a fundamental change in the Treaty and the establishment of a federal fiscal capacity embedded into a genuine European government. But then pigs might fly!
Right on schedule, Chinese officials have declared they have officially met the target of eliminating extreme poverty by 2020. The anti-poverty campaign was one of Xi Jinping’s signature initiatives over the past three years. With its focus on the rural poor and neglected regions, the initiative had a more “socialist” flavor compared to Xi’s two other major political campaigns, for environmental cleanup and financial rectitude, which focused on issues of more concern to urban elites.
Now all three of those campaigns are wrapping up, and the bureaucracy is starting to plan a whole new cycle of initiatives for the beginning of the next five-year plan in 2021. So what’s next? What kind of goal or program could meet some of the same political and ideological goals as the anti-poverty campaign? Various official comments and policy documents suggest that China’s government is preparing for a stronger focus on redistribution and reducing inequality, using more specific and quantitative targets than before....
Some commenters who are sympathetic to MMT seem unfamiliar with the standard view of why money matters. They argue that swapping base money for an equal dollar value of bonds doesn’t matter, because the recipient of the new money is no better off than before. It’s true they are (approximately) no better off, but that’s NOT why economists think money matters. It would be nice if commenters showed they understood the traditional view, and then explained why it’s wrong and MMT is right....
More questions. Still stuck in the old paradigm that base money matters.
The Money Illusion Why money matters Scott Sumner | Ralph G. Hawtrey Chair of Monetary Policy at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University
Modern monetary theory (MMT) is a lens for properly understanding how the government funds its spending in a country that controls its own currency. MMT accurately describes how money, debt, and taxes actually work in our modern economies. Yet MMT is often badly misunderstood and misrepresented, so let’s expand on what it means.
At its heart, MMT shines a light on two core truths about a government that issues its own currency, known as ‘fiat’ currency. These truths aren’t theories or suggestions about how we should or could run our economies. They don’t belong to either the political left or right. They simply describe what happens in the real world, right now. And they apply to our government as the issuer of the New Zealand dollar.
Move comes amid reports and speculation Trump administration may take military action against Tehran before Biden enters office
The United States this week rapidly deployed several heavy bombers to the Middle East this week in an apparent threat to Iran, amid swirling speculation that US President Donald Trump plans to take military action against Tehran before President-elect Joe Biden enters office.
US Central Command said the planes were sent into the region “to deter aggression and reassure US partners and allies.”
Crypto assets worth more than $4.2 billion have been seized by Chinese police over the PlusToken Ponzi scheme.
In addition, they have also seized over 830,000 ETH, 1.4 million LTC, 27 million EOS, 74,000 DASH, 487 million XRP, 6 billion DOGE, 79,000 BCH, and 213,000 USDT
Republicans are preparing to re-embrace their inner deficit hawk after greenlighting big spending bills under President Trump.
GOP senators say they expect to refocus on curbing the nation’s debt and reforming entitlement programs starting in 2021, as the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the debt has surpassed the size of the American economy.
“I think that’s kind of getting back to our DNA. ...I think spending, entitlement reform, growth and the economy are all things that we’re going to have to be focused on next year and, yeah, I would expect you’ll hear a lot more about that,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican.
The shift could pose a significant headache for a new Biden administration that will need GOP support in the Senate to move its agenda. It is also likely to complicate efforts on a debt-ceiling deal.…
Grand bargain on SS, Medicare and Medicaid to be back on the table?
CNN: "So, the outcome would be to re-elect Donald Trump. Trump doesn't need to do anything other than to simply accept this outcome, which is Constitutional."
Maybe he should try trading Treasuries. He might discover something.
The Money Illusion A –> B –> C, Does A imply C? Scott Sumner | Ralph G. Hawtrey Chair of Monetary Policy at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University
Also from SS
In Thanksgiving Message, Trump Says ‘We’re Like a Third-World Country’
The Resolution, already adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 18, 2019, was approved by the Third Committee with 122 votes in favor, including the votes of Russia and China, two permanent members of the Security Council.
Only two members of the United Nations voted against it: The United States (a permanent member of the Security Council) and Ukraine.
The other 29 country NATO members, including Italy, certainly due to an internal directive, abstained. So did the 27 members of the European Union, 21 of them belonging to NATO. Among the 53 abstentions are also Australia, Japan, and other NATO partners....
This accounts for why fascism is not going away. It's not just "pure evil" as often represented. There are other reasons that people are attracted to it and are willing to overlook the historical excrescences as aberrations. Fascism remains a viable political theory, just as is communism. While the current historical dialectic is chiefly about liberalism and traditionalism, both fascism and communism are in the mix also.
The levies come roughly three months after Beijing began investigating complaints made by the Wine Industry Association of China that Australian winemakers have flooded the market with cheap wine since 2015. Mainland China is an $850 million market for Australia’s wine exports and the leading consumer, consuming about 40% of Australia’s total overseas shipments....
The CARES Act was signed into law on March 27. Congress earmarked $454 billion of that stimulus money to be distributed by the Treasury to the Federal Reserve to be used for emergency lending programs to save businesses and jobs during the pandemic and keep credit flowing to the U.S. economy. The catch was that the Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, would have to give his approval for each of the programs.
Since June, Wall Street On Parade has been reporting that $340 billion of the $454 billion that Mnuchin was instructed to turn over to the Fed was unaccounted for. We noted that 98,000 businesses had permanently closed in the U.S. while this money, intended for economic relief, went missing....
Scientists discovered the Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR), where tiny sounds, like tapping beads and glass, whispers, rustling paper, flicking your fingers, etc, can trigger a relaxation response. Then alternative health practioners started making ASMR videos by whispering, rustling paper, and playing with glass beads, but they weren't very effective.
When I was 14 years old our music teacher played to the class some white noise which I thought sounded horrible, but few years later I listened to a program on the BBC which described the different types of white noise and most of it sounded much better than pure white noise, especially the pink noise.
Many of the sounds in nature are types of white noise, for example, wind, rain, the sea, trains and cars in the distance, thunderstorms, the rustling tree leaves, etc, and are some of my favourite sounds. ASMR is based on white noise too.
Nowadays ASMR has come a long way and incorporates the different types of white noise too. The two ASMR videos below are absolutely stunning, which I see as works of art, where the paintings are alive, move, and have sound. They are designed to chill you out and so are very slow. My brother sees nothing in them, but I get mesmerised by their spooky enchantment. They strike a sense of awe in me.
Three hours long for the first one and ten hours long for the second. I wonder if they use computers to model real cats as their movements are so natural and authentic.
mRNA vaccines are a new type of vaccine to protect against infectious diseases. To trigger an immune response, many vaccines put a weakened or inactivated germ into our bodies. Not mRNA vaccines. Instead, they teach our cells how to make a protein—or even just a piece of a protein—that triggers an immune response inside our bodies. That immune response, which produces antibodies, is what protects us from getting infected if the real virus enters our bodies.
A Closer Look at How COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines Work
COVID-19 mRNA vaccines give instructions for our cells to make a harmless piece of what is called the “spike protein.” The spike protein is found on the surface of the virus that causes COVID-19.
COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are given in the upper arm muscle. Once the instructions (mRNA) are inside the muscle cells, the cells use them to make the protein piece. After the protein piece is made, the cell breaks down the instructions and gets rid of them.
Next, the cell displays the protein piece on its surface. Our immune systems recognize that the protein doesn’t belong there and begin building an immune response and making antibodies, like what happens in natural infection against COVID-19.
So much for jobs coming back to the US. And Indonesia has even come online line as far as cheap labor goes. And in the background are Latin America and Africa.
I don't see "capitalism" being transformed into something that is clearly not "capitalism" before the whole world is developed economically. Of course, there are many varieties of capitalism in addition to classical economic liberalism and contemporary neoliberalism, and neoliberalism is beginning to collapse of its own weight.
Some on energy, some on social, political and economic factors. Cites Peter Turchin's research on the coming age of discord. Not much new, but he brings it together to paint a picture of what is likely to come: Tough challenges emerging with an ungovernable country and broken political system to deal with them.
The establishment Democrats that control the party are not up to the job and I would expect them to lose the House in the mid-term and likely the presidency in the next general. I would not yet count out a Trump victory in the this round either, but he is no more qualified that Joe Biden. There would just be a different set of winners and losers, but the munnie would continue to flow to the top, which is the overarching problem for the US, as Turchin's analysis shows.
Joe Biden’s presidency amounts to a golden opportunity to initiate a direct and honest dialogue with China on issues that require constructive engagement. But time is of the essence. If Biden begins his term by choosing division over dialogue, changing course will soon become difficult, if not impossible.
Good luck with dialogue. Corporate shill Biden ("I haven't got a progressive bone in my body") has a nightmare neo-con war hawk cabinet bent on US hegemony (economic, political, and military dominance) and liberal interventionism (Western crusading). More endless war on the table.
Andrew Sheng, Distinguished Fellow of the Asia Global Institute at the University of Hong Kong, member of the UNEP Advisory Council on Sustainable Finance, and a former chairman of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, and Xiao Geng, Chairman of the Hong Kong Institution for International Finance and professor and Director of the Research Institute of Maritime Silk-Road at Peking University HSBC Business School
The notion that racism and sexism were the primary factors driving the Trump vote is not born out by the data, economics was very important too. The rural working-class found their lives a little better under Trump and don’t believe the Democrats care about them. Will Biden address the inequality or bend to the demands of Wall Street? Thomas Ferguson joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news podcast....
Interesting and about what one would expect from a digital-native generation. Looking good for the new program of "double circulation," that is, exports along with developing the consumer market domestically. That will mean breaking the traditional saving habit and Gen Z seem to be into credit.
A modern consumer economy depends on three things — 1) low-cost plentiful desirable goods through technology and innovation, 2) demand stimulation through marketing and advertising, and 3) easy credit. The Chinese seem to be catching on to that formula and Gen Z is buying in.
Jia Zhou is an Associate Partner in the Beijing office; Felix Poh is a Partner in McKinsey & Company's Shanghai office, where Cherie Zhang is a Knowledge Expert; Daniel Zipser is a Senior Partner in the Shenzhen office.
This was an incisive post from B. Gray, which I thought deserved much more attention:
It follows:
Austerity has two parents: greed and fear, both of which are powerful motivators among the wealthy elites and the politicians that do their bidding....
Short.
Elites fear if the public understood MMT and the power of the government purse, it would lead to anarchy in the allocation of real resources, which would lead to a reduction in the elites share of resources, as well as their influence in the political process.…
I don't think elites fear anarchy in allocation. Rather, what elites fear is redistribution of resources more equitably through public policy than market provision.This policy would be empowered by a correct understanding of the money system in a monetary production economy in which government is a major factor economically and financially.
A seemingly strange phenomenon of a smaller dose of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine being more effective than a bigger one is reportedly explained by it first being tested on a younger group.
A very good article here that comes closer than most to what I consider the crunch issue. The key point is that if a currency moves down so that imports become ‘more expensive’, then the ‘inflation’ that goes off is a distributional response that tries to eliminate some of those imports so that the exchange demands equalise. That also eliminates somebody else’s exports.
The important thing to remember is that when a currency goes down, all the others in the world go up in relation to it and nations that rely upon exports (export led nations) start to lose trade - which depresses their own economy.
Any one of those other economies can intervene in the foreign exchange markets, purchase the ‘spare’ currency and that will halt the slide for everybody. And all exporters to an import nation have a central bank with infinite capacity to do that....
The decline of the dollar as a world currency has set a new record recently. In October, the euro replaced the dollar as the preferred currency for international payments for the first time in seven years. In the same month, the growth of the pound sterling and the Japanese yen as alternative models of global payment was impressive, indicating even more rejection of the American currency, until now considered absolutely hegemonic.
About 37.82% of the money transfers that the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (Swift) reported last month were in euros, which means that there has been an increase of more than six percentage points since the end of last year - meanwhile, the use of the dollar has fallen by about from 4, 6 percentage points since last December, reaching 37.64% of transactions in the month of October....
Scott Sumner is not satisfied with the answers he received.
If I were to try to develop a radical new macro theory, I’d try to come up with a way of explaining my new model using the framework of existing models. Actually, I often do that here, translating market monetarism into New Keynesian language. I’m not seeing that with MMT. And it’s not just me. I see other bloggers like Noah Smith, Paul Krugman, Brad DeLong, Nick Rowe, etc., who seem to have an equally hard time trying to figure out what MMTers are claiming. MMTers should understand why we are confused, and have plausible answers. One sign that you are truly on top of an issue is if you can see why others hold a different view, and explain things in their language.
Uh, maybe because they are criticizing the framework.
BTW, as a philosopher I can report that this is the situation with Wittgenstein's criticism of philosophy on logical grounds. The framework is just wrong because it ignores what's actually going on with the logic and not what is supposed. As result many philosophers don't get Wittgenstein's criticism of their methodologies.
What is Wittgenstein's major point? Look and see. Pretty much the same point that MMT economists make from the institutional/accounting perspective.
The MMT economists criticism is the same as Wittgenstein's in philosophy: You are setting about it in the wrong way. The assumptions are not supported by the actual system structure and dynamics.
The Money Illusion MMT bleg, one more try Scott Sumner | Ralph G. Hawtrey Chair of Monetary Policy at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University
Whatever the reason, the darkness that started growing around the crimes committed by the big Wall Street banks during the Obama administration has now evolved into such a complete dark curtain that regulators are refusing to say what the crimes actually are that are being settled for huge amounts of money....
While India is managing the COVID-19 pandemic, it cannot lose sight of climate risk, which is rising. The coronavirus crisis holds profound lessons that can help us address climate risk—if we make greater economic and environmental resiliency core to our planning for the recovery ahead. Indeed, economic stimulus in the wake of the pandemic can help restore growth, while also addressing climate risk.
India faces a rapidly changing and degrading physical environment. The challenges of water scarcity and air pollution are well known. Less well appreciated is the impact extreme heat and humidity will likely have on the economy and the toll it could take on human life. In this case study we analyze the direct impact of climate change-driven heat and humidity extremes on India....
It is Wednesday and just some odds and ends today, including a fabulous tapestry that has just been framed for me. In addition, there is a podcast and some great music. A typical Wednesday that is. And tomorrow, I am catching a plane for the first time in nearly 6 months as the internal borders open up within Australia, which means I can return to my Melbourne residence/office. I am worried about what state the fridge will be in after being idle for so long. And, on Friday, December 18, my Melbourne band will be performing live for the first time since March 2020 via a live stream of the show to YouTube. Details will follow. As the restrictions ease and zero cases continue, life is looking more … well … open!
Prime Minister Scott Morrison says Australia's pursuit of its national interests on the world stage has been wrongly interpreted as siding with the United States over China, declaring his government will not make a "binary choice" between the superpowers.
In fresh attempts to thaw the frosty relationship between Canberra and Beijing, Mr Morrison used a speech to a British think tank to declare the most significant geopolitical challenge of the future would be dealing with the complexities of tensions between the world's largest economic and military powers.
Today, we have another contribution from a guest blogger in the guise of Professor Scott Baum from Griffith University who has been one of my regular research colleagues over a long period of time. He indicated that he would like to contribute occasionally and that provides some diversity of voice although the focus remains on advancing our understanding of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and its applications. It also helps me a bit and at present I have several major writing deadlines approaching as well as a full diary of presentations, meetings etc. Travel is also opening up a bit which means I can now honour several speaking commitments that have been on hold while we were in lockdown. Anyway, over to Scott for another one of his contributions …
President-elect Joe Biden has been teasing his cabinet picks lately like he's a mid-tier indie rock band beginning a press campaign for a new album. This week, he hinted at a news conference last week that "all elements of the Democratic Party" would like his choice for Treasury Secretary. Now, he's set to unveil all of his official cabinet selections on Tuesday with the New York Times already reporting that Biden is picking Antony Blinken for Secretary of State. Now, I know you're probably thinking: "Wait, is this the Anthony Blinken who's behind the dad-rock project ABlinken on Spotify? The singer behind the sub-1000 streamed songs "Lip Service" and "Patience"?" And the answer is yes, that's him.…
This raised several questions: first, what's "wonk rock"? Is it rock music about Modern Monetary Theory or ballads on global geopolitics? Is it a ska band called Better Than Ezra Klein? Or is it just rock music made by Washington D.C. nerds? It turns out, it's the latter. But as far as this definition of "wonk rock" goes, it's less derivative than Joe Scarborough's music and much better dressed than Mike Huckabee's band. It's actually not awful!...
I don't think the policy really changed under Donald Trump, for two reasons. First, he was constrained by the policy establishment and secondly, his differences with the establishment were more over strategy than policy. The goal was always US global hegemony. Donald Trump simply preferred economic warfare to kinetic, while also promising to increase US military capability to dominate through increased spending.
Biden will simply revive the traditional strategy, which implies more liberal interventionism and greater reliance on the military in pursuing policy goals.
Winslow T. Wheeler has spent 40 years working on national security, defense budgets and military reform for both political parties in the US Senate and in the Government Accountability Office and the Center for Defense Information. Pierre Sprey worked for 30 years as a systems analyst, aircraft and weapons designer and consultant in the Pentagon and in industry and, overlapping that period, has worked on military reform for 40 years.
Compared to Paul Volcker, Yellen is a dove as lily-white as they come, but compared to her contemporaries, it's clear that she stands mostly opposite the growing chorus of adherents to Modern Monetary Theory.
Biden ran as a centrist and will govern as a centrist, to the peril of the Democrats.
Image below of this m-fer... electron micrograph color enhanced out of Ft Detrick...
The yellow mass is I guess the somewhat normal lipoprotein part and the green elements are the proteins forming the wreath/crown of thorns part aka linear arranged "spike proteins" that increase system efficacy...
Elanah Uretsky, Associate Professor of International and Global Studies, Brandeis University
I live in a democracy. But as Thanksgiving approaches, I find myself longing for the type of freedom I am seeing in China.
People in China are able to move around freely right now. Many Americans may believe that the Chinese are able to enjoy this freedom because of China’s authoritarian regime. As a scholar of public health in China, I think the answers go beyond that.
My research suggests that the control of the virus in China is not the result of authoritarian policy, but of a national prioritization of health. China learned a tough lesson with SARS, the first coronavirus pandemic of the 21st century
“The Oxford vaccine is… striking, since the point was to pay researchers, but not to rely on patent monopolies to generate large profits.” – Economist Dean Baker
The world is abuzz today after a team of medical researchers from Oxford University in the United Kingdom announced that advanced trials of their experimental coronavirus vaccine were a roaring success, with the vaccine possibly being rolled out before Christmas. Testing was done on 24,000 volunteers in the U.K, Brazil, and South Africa, with an average effectiveness of over 70%. However, when the vaccine was administered as a half dose, then patients were later given a full one, effectiveness increased to 90%. Encouragingly, there were no serious side effects registered among any of the volunteers, none of whom had to go to the hospital as a result of being immunized. The U.K. government has already ordered 100 million doses.
"China is trying to beat countries into submission by egregious economic coercion," one senior official told the WSJ. "The West needs to create a system of absorbing collectively the economic punishment from China’s coercive diplomacy and offset the cost."
After spending the last half millennia beating other countries and peoples into submission not only economically but also militarily through colonization and the neo-colonization that is ongoing, the West is now complaining about China? Really? These folks appear to be delusional.
By recognizing and investing in the strengths of pioneering cities and regions, China has developed a powerful mechanism for organizing and advancing its economic transformation. Judging by the tremendous success of Shenzhen and Shanghai, it seems clear that China will continue to reap the rewards of this approach for decades to come.
One of the most difficult and challenging areas of economics is development economics. The success have been somewhat rare. However, China has broken the mold and created paths to development that have shown themselves to be successful.
Project Syndicate A Tale of Two Chinese Cities Zhang Jun | Dean of the School of Economics at Fudan University and Director of the China Center for Economic Studies, a Shanghai-based think tank
Also of interest a Project Syndicate
Parsing of the vote based on US law that is not based on the majority, as in most democracies, but on the republican nature of the US Constitution, which is based on electoral votes that do not reflect the total population accurately. So it is possible for a candidate that gets the majority of votes to lose the election. Based on this, the election was very close, decided by a few votes in a few counties in the battleground states. And owing to quirks in the US Constitution, political maneuvering, and incompetence in managing elections, the election is still undecided.
A lot of the campaign on both sides involved demonizing the other side, so in the end many people were motivated by what they opposed rather than what they supported. On one hand, the demon was "Russia," and on the hand, it was "socialism."
Does this mean that both sides had unusually attractive candidates? Not exactly. While 80% of Trump voters told pollsters they were specifically voting for the candidate himself, 56% of Biden voters described their decision as a vote against Trump.
A better explanation, then, is that voters turned out in record numbers on both sides because they emphatically did not want the opposing party to win. Moreover, this “negative partisanship” is symmetric. Democrats and a few moderate Republicans and independents did not want another four years of Trump, and most Republican voters appear not to have wanted to pass the baton back to the mistrusted “coastal” elites, globalists, “biased” liberal media, and Washington insiders.
The State of America’s Disunion Michael Spence, Nobel laureate in economics, Professor of Economics Emeritus and a former dean of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, member on the Academic Committee at Luohan Academy, and co-chair of the Advisory Board of the Asia Global Institute; and David W. Brady | Professor of Political Science and Leadership Values at Stanford University and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
See also
It was a strange narrative that seemed to move away from the provable to the unbelievable. The question is, why?
One possibility: to raise sweeping allegations with insufficient time to resolve them in order to force an Electoral College fight. The idea would be to give license to Republican-controlled legislatures to intervene with their own sets of electors or block the submission of any set of electors. Concern over such a strategy was magnified when Trump called key Republican leaders from Michigan’s legislature to the White House on Friday.
Call it the “Death Star strategy.”
As they say, all's fair in love, war and politics.
Andrew Oldham was a Rolling Stones producer in the 60's and he knocked this little tune based on their song, The Last Time. Not many people can hear the original melody in this version which goes at a much slower tempo, but also has chopped up bits of the original melody going at a much faster tempo.
On YouTube people accused me of lying when I said I could hear the melody, they said no one can. Other people said that the Last Time only inspired Andrew Oldham's version, but is not the same song.
I couldn't hear the melody the first time I listened to it, but I could on the second. Many of my friends cannot hear it either, but it's plain obvious once you get it.
I will sing the Last Time melody out to my friends and family when playing the Andrew Oldham Orchestra version, but only a few people can hear the original Stones melody. It's probably because it needs a bit of perseverance to get it, but once you do hear it, it's everywhere, and like a fractal, there are fragments of the melody in every tiny piece of the tune.
'This could be the last time
Maybe the last time
I don't know, oh no, oh no',
This uses the whole orchestra but goes at a very slow tempo.
"This will be"
This is in the Bells and in the violin section which goes at a faster tempo moving quickly up and down the scales.
The original: The Rolling Stones - The Last Time
The Andrew Oldham Orchestra - The Last Time
Andrew Oldham considered this to be muzak which he had made for a bit of fun, but I think it's rather good. It's very slow compared to the Stones version.
Bittersweet Symphony by the Verve has a string section that was copied from the Andrew Oldham version, but in this extended mix the Andrew Oldham version is also woven into it.
I will still wear one when going shopping, but they are difficult to keep on all the time in social situations or at work. If I'm around a lot of people I shall still wear one. I've never worn one in the street, except in very crowded ones, as it intuitively seemed to be pointless. Some people wear them in their cars even though they are the only person in it.
We carried out a comprehensive review of the evidence about how face masks and other physical interventions affect the spread of respiratory viruses. Based on the current evidence, we believe the community impact is modest and it may be better to focus on mask-wearing in high-risk situations.
Abstract This paper explores the fundamental importance of sociality to monetary sovereignty, investigating the apparent contrast between the state and the market in theories of money. Sociality deserves attention given the recent increase since the 1990s of denationalised, regional and, more recently, crypto currencies, which are different from legal tender. First, we examine the classification of metalism and chartalism, that is, the commodity theory of money on one hand and the chartal theory of money on the other (Section 2). The former has been dominant in the history of economic thought, focussing on catallactics, or the function of money as a medium of exchange, while the latter lays more importance on the function of money as a means of payment and relies on literature in history and anthropology. We then concentrate on the meaning of the institution of payment and debt, with which a person can participate in the society to which he/she belongs (Section 3). People’s belief in the perpetual validity of this institution is indispensable for monetary sovereignty. Further, we investigate the idea of the social credit given a hundred years ago, when the trust in this institution and the state itself was severely lacking, as an important application of the sociality of money. In conclusion, we show that sociality among people, embodied in the existence of monies and currencies, cannot be reduced to the market nor to the state.
One aspect of commercial life that has always annoyed me is the habit of some project managers to refer to people as “resources”. It’s a wonderfully dehumanising phrase that lumps human beings, with their thoughts, feelings and aspirations, into the same category as steel ingots and rebar, to be shipped around as required by an unfeeling bureaucracy. That same disconnect is now creeping into opinion pieces as they struggle with the Modern Money reality we live in...
The settlers have been trying to push us from our Jerusalem home since 2009. Now they might succeed.
This Saturday, November 21, Israeli settlers, backed by police and military, will likely force my family out of our home forever. This fate of dispossession looms over much of my neighborhood. Our lives are consumed by the anxiety of living on the brink of homelessness. As I study thousands of miles away in New York City, my hands feel tied, which traps my fury.
The universe is similar to a huge human brain, scientists have found.
A new study investigated the differences and similarities between two of the most complex systems in existence, though at entirely difference scales: the cosmos and its galaxies and the brain and its neuronal cells.
They found that while the scale is clearly different, the structure is remarkably similar. In some cases, the two systems seemed more similar to each other than they did to the parts that make them up.
The rigor of scientific method in causal explanation stems from balancing intuition in discovery, mathematical formalism in theory construction, and empirical data as the basis of evidence in testing hypotheses.
Formalists lost the plot, which is providing naturalistic causal explanation of natural phenomena (objects and events). They conflated science with modeling and overly minimized the significance of interpreting of theory in terms of data. They also ignored the influence of institutional arrangements, which MMT has attempted to correct regarding the relationship of economics, finance, accounting, law, and policy.
This was disastrous for economics since the subject matter of social science, and also life science to a great extent, is fundamentally different from the subject matter of natural science. The subject matter of natural science is ergodic and social science is non-ergodic for reasons Lars Syll cites in the references he provides in the post.
Time makes a difference in social science. As Karl Marx emphasized, economics is historical.
Abstract The ergodic hypothesis is a key analytical device of equilibrium statistical mechanics. It underlies the assumption that the time average and the expectation value of an observable are the same. Where it is valid, dynamical descriptions can often be replaced with much simpler probabilistic ones — time is essentially eliminated from the models. The conditions for validity are restrictive, even more so for non-equilibrium systems. Economics typically deals with systems far from equilibrium — specifically with models of growth. It may therefore come as a surprise to learn that the prevailing formulations of economic theory — expected utility theory and its descendants — make an indiscriminate assumption of ergodicity. This is largely because foundational concepts to do with risk and randomness originated in seventeenth-century economics, predating by some 200 years the concept of ergodicity, which arose in nineteenth-century physics. In this Perspective, I argue that by carefully addressing the question of ergodicity, many puzzles besetting the current economic formalism are resolved in a natural and empirically testable way.
My message is clear: I recommend one child per couple to lower the population, avert future famines, and avoid wars over water. If that sounds radical, then maybe it is time for radicalism. In a culture that bemoans a falling fertility rate because it will damage the economy — instead of praising smaller families because it means less crowding, more nature and better quality of life for all — there is great need for more voices of sanity. Voices like Edward Abbey who said, “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
The last five years has seen a sharp rise in anti-science rhetoric in the United States, especially from the political far right, mostly focused on vaccines and, of late, anti-COVID-19 prevention approaches. Vaccine coverage has declined in more than 100 US counties leading to measles outbreaks in 2019, while in 2020 the US became the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now the anti-science movement in America has begun to globalize, with new and unexpected associations with extremist groups and the potential for tragic consequences in terms of global public health. A new anti-science triumvirate has emerged, comprised of far right groups in the US and Germany, and amplified by Russian media.
Vince Cable takes the same approach as me about China, that whatever the CPC's past or crimes, it might not be the same party today. Where China is going, I don't know, but it's looking good to me, although I prefer the Scandinavian model. But China is considering a stronger welfare state.
Throughout history all powerful nations have been brutal, but could China be different? We will have to wait and see, but I can't see anything being much worse than what we have had up to now.
Eminent Australian scientist Professor Frank Fenner, who helped to wipe out smallpox, predicts humans will probably be extinct within 100 years, because of overpopulation, environmental destruction and climate change.
Easter Island is famous for its massive stone statues. Polynesian people settled there, in what was then a pristine tropical island, around the middle of the first millennium AD. The population grew slowly at first and then exploded. As the population grew the forests were wiped out and all the tree animals became extinct, both with devastating consequences. After about 1600 the civilization began to collapse, and had virtually disappeared by the mid-19th century. Evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond said the parallels between what happened on Easter Island and what is occurring today on the planet as a whole are “chillingly obvious.”
If there is damage to the prefrontal cortex in an individual then their cognitive flexibility may be impaired. It means that open-mindedness presents a challenge; and since religious fundamentalism involves a strict adherence to a rigid set of beliefs, it would seem like the comfortable option for such an individual.
This is why Dr. Grafman and his team predicted that participants with lesions to this region of the brain would score low on measures of cognitive flexibility and trait openness and high on measures of religious fundamentalism – which they did. These results suggest that damage to the vmPFC (prefrontal cortex region specific to cognitive flexibility) indirectly promotes religious fundamentalism by suppressing both cognitive flexibility and openness.
In conclusion, these findings suggest that impaired functioning in the prefrontal cortex—whether from brain trauma, a psychological disorder, a drug or alcohol addiction, or simply a particular genetic profile—can make an individual susceptible to religious fundamentalism.
However, a new report released Tuesday by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) states that climate change is an even “bigger catastrophe” than the pandemic and “has been building for many decades.”
Dr Stanton is the founder-president of Genocide Watch, an organization that works to predict, prevent and stop genocide and other forms of mass murder in the world. He also served in the U.S. State Department in the 1990s when he drafted the UN Security Council resolutions that created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
He stated that the “systematic crimes against humanity is already underway” in India. He mentioned the demolition of Babri mosque and building of a temple as “important in the development of cultural underpinnings for genocide.”
CJ Werleman is an atheist liberal who disliked all fundamentalist religions, but when one day he experienced a suicide bombing when two young Muslims sat on a park bench and blew everyone around them up. He couldn't understand why anyone would do that, so he researched into it and found out that the cause was despair, humiliation, suppression, and poverty. He then changed his mind about Islam, but he's still a liberal atheist. Also, look at the racist diabolical comments under the video.
Journalist CJ werleman, his journey, from anti-Muslim bigot to activist for Muslim human rights
CJ Werleman , a journalist, published author, political commentator, and activist who provides insights into the Israel-Palestinian conflict, injustices carried out against Muslims under the guise of the US' global war on terrorism, and rising anti-Muslim discrimination. Insights the mainstream media too often ignores.
From Palestine to Kashmir; from Burma to Syria; from India to Chechnyna; from refugee camps in Germany to those in the South Pacific; Muslims are being occupied, oppressed, bombed, and vilified.
As has becomes the norm, however, crimes and injustices carried out against Muslims are too often overlooked by the Western media, while crimes carried out by Muslims are exaggerated and overrepresented in the media by 449%
In antipoverty push, President Xi wants to repopulate rural towns with entrepreneurs and consumers; ‘there was hope in our hometown
For decades, just about the only way for someone born in Dawan to make money was to follow the winding dirt road down from the mountain village and move to one of China’s big cities.
That is what Wang Liangcui did in the early 1990s, when she was 20. She landed in Shanghai, where she worked in factories, drove a taxi and hawked pancakes. All over China, people just like her moved to the city from similar hardscrabble hamlets, supplying the inexpensive labor that got the nation’s economy sizzling.
Now, thanks to President Xi Jinping’s push to create new opportunities for China’s have-nots, Ms. Wang is back in her hilltop hometown. Last year, she and her family returned and plowed their modest savings into a guesthouse they named “Meet Come Enjoy.”
How long might immunity to the coronavirus last? Years, maybe even decades, according to a new study — the most hopeful answer yet to a question that has shadowed plans for widespread vaccination.
This article explains why the Chinese coped with Covid-19 better than us in the West. The Chinese save all their money and so had a nest egg to fall back on. They just work and save. To be fair to the rest of the world and the West, the Chinese government now recognises that China needs to buy more of our produce too.
China is pivoting to a more consumption and importation oriented country to strive for a more peaceful coexistence with the West and the rest of the world. China will endeavor to become more western, ie, becoming more cicada and less ant.
China is adjusting its policy. The traditional policy to stimulate an economy is three thronged, ie, investment, consumption and exportation. This is what China has been adhering to in the past decades. Now China is pivoting to an importation and consumption oriented society. Importation of goods from all over the world is being actively encouraged.
The immense trade deficit incurred by the US is the cause of the intense persistent animosity of the US leading to the trade war which further leads to the current anti-China hysteria. During the trade negotiations, US urged the Chinese not to work so hard and not to save so much money. Chinese people should be encouraged to consume American products. Even though such an expectation from the US seemed to be fantasist at the moment and was rejected for consideration, now China is reversing its position. Chinese people and companies are being encouraged to consume more foreign products albeit for the sake of world peace.
The Chinese way of living is not exactly particular to the Chinese. Working hard saving money are also protestant values, except that the Chinese people adhere more massively and more intensely to the austere protestant values. Traditionally, Chinese work hard, save all their money, never spend anything beyond the strict necessary. Chinese are the stereotype ants and the Westerners are the stereotype cicadas. And exactly as is depicted in the fairy tale, the cicadas reap the ruin and the ants enjoy the fruits of their virtue (which by the way makes them smug and righteous). This time, the different anti-Covid19 performances between the East and West exemplify the stereotype between ants and cicadas.
No wonder the angry cicadas are inventing horror genocide stories about the ants. Even though the ants are glorified in the fairy tale in order to teach children the virtue of delayed gratification, in reality the ants people are hated. They get the better of everyone and gloat about it. They are usually boring sullen lack luster and have zero charisma. Even if they come out of the calamities of life situations fine, nobody wants to imitate their life style. This time during the pandemic, Chinese families lost their incomes for several months but that's a bearable burden for most Chinese families, because each family has a nest egg. This In turn has lessened considerably the fiscal pressure on the Chinese government which doesn't need to organize financial relief. That's typical ants reaping the fruit of virtue...
One of my concerns about mainstream economic methodology is the dependence upon hidden variables that are estimated with techniques like the Kalman Filter. The issue is that the resulting methodology is non-falsifiable: it will always end up being consistent with any observed data (admittedly, some outright bizarre behaviour might be rejected).
Although this might appear to be my own hobby horse, I just want to note that I was not the first person to make such a complaint. Various heterodox authors have levelled similar complaints, but my feeling they have done so in such a long-winded fashion that non-heterodox readers like myself have a very hard time picking out what is a straightforward -- but important -- point. In reading Prosperity for All: How to Prevent Financial Crises by Roger E. Farmer (Amazon affiliate link), he makes the same point with respect to the natural rate of unemployment....
