This post concerns ten recent Marxist claims about MMT and one about Kalecki (a forerunner, in certain respects, of MMT). Some Marxists claim that:heteconomist
This is such a good video! It's not about the after life, but it's spiritual.
In December 2015 I was involved in a near-fatal accident on my motorcycle. I spent 9 days in the hospital and went through several surgeries. I then spent almost a year in physical therapy trying, to walk again That whole time being confined to a wheelchair. My story should be one of motivation and inspiration. I want anyone who watches this video to understand that each one of us has a hard-luck story to tell. We all have hardships in life to overcome. In the years since the accident, I've been able to reflect on the accident and reveal that what I once thought of as the worst thing that ever happened to me turned out to be the best.
This is good!
House of Representatives Oversight Committee held hearings with the CEOs of the largest oil companies where Chairwoman Maloney read quotes from internal Exxon documents, which exposed that Exxon knew for years that fossil fuels were causing global warming and that it would lead to catastrophic consequences. She attempted to get the CEOs to acknowledge having lied, which they refused to do. This is an excerpt from the House of Representatives Oversight Committee held on October 28, 2021
Analysis News - House Committee Chairwoman Maloney Nails Oil Executives
These funds are often really just tax dodges, which grow in size as they give money away. This doesn’t mean to say that they don't always do a lot of good, says Sorelle Amore, because some are excellent, but it's wise to read the small print.
Caught hiding in the celler.
This one's a pest!
A beautiful world!
Yoko Ono Quote: I love nature, but nature doesn't love me.
High fat, high protein foods are filling and satisfying, and can lead to weight loss. I certainly found that adding olive oil to my food made me feel more comfortable and satisfied.
I can remember having scrambled egg on toast as a boy, and loaded with butter, it was scummy, which left me feeling full for hours on end.
From what I've read recently, high carb diets are excellent for fit and active people, but if you are inactive, or in poor health, a high carb diet can push your insulin levels up too high, leading to weight gain and ill health. So everyone is different.
David S. Ludwig, MD, PhD, is a practicing endocrinologist, researcher, and professor at Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health. He received a PhD and an MD from Stanford University School of Medicine and completed an internship and residency in pediatrics and a fellowship in pediatric endocrinology at Boston Children's Hospital.
Dr. Ludwig also directs the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at Boston Children’s Hospital. His research focuses on the effects of diet on hormones, metabolism and body weight. He developed a novel “low glycemic load” diet (i.e., one that decreases the surge in blood sugar after meals) for the treatment of obesity-related diseases. In addition, his group has done some of the original studies linking sugar-sweetened beverages and fast food to excessive weight gain, heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
Described as an “obesity warrior” by Time magazine, Dr. Ludwig has fought for fundamental policy changes to restrict junk food advertising directed at young children, improve the quality of national nutrition programs, and increase insurance reimbursement for obesity prevention and treatment.
Russia didn’t cause Europe’s current energy crisis, which has seen natural gas prices spike 5x over last year, but Vladimir Putin seems intent on using it to his advantage....
Steve Keen did it again. This Manifesto is a lucid deconstruction of fallacies in neoclassical economics, a reflection on its puzzling persistence, a passionate plea for another kind of economics, and a demonstrationof the hands-on creation of that alternative in two areas, monetary economics and environmental economics. All this comes in a slim volume of less than 160 pages, with copious notes and extensive references added. The book is at once accessible, engaging and scholarly. The breadth of Keen’s reading and analysis is impressive, ranging from the earliest history of economics to the profession’s latest newspaper polemics, from population biology and complexity science to implications of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and from the primeval origins of money to the latest fashion in monetary theory (‘MMT’).…
Supply chains, which account for 80 percent of the world’s total carbon emissions, would require as much as $100 trillion of investment if they are to become net-zero emission by 2050, new research by HSBC and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) showed....Oilprice
There are only about 20,000 graduates in cybersecurity each year, while the talent gap ranges from 500,000 to one million. “It's still a conservative estimate,” said Wang, “and the talent shortage is everywhere in the industry.”
To address the problem, the Chinese government has urged colleges and universities to set up majors to cultivate talents in data protection and information security, Wang said.…
Growing field. Probably not just in China.
ECNSThese online brokers are engaged in “illegal financial activities” because they have no “driving licenses” to operate in China, Sun Tianqi, a senior People’s Bank of China official wrote in an article published on the website of Finance 40 Forum. Sun didn’t name the brokers, and added that calling them illegal has nothing to do China’s capital control rules....
The Bank of Canada released its October 2021 Monetary Policy Report, and I just want to make some brief comments.Bond Economics
Even patriotic Brits know that their hero Winston Churchill did not win World War 2 or fly a Spitfire. What they, and others, may not know is how his statements often shed a clear light on British imperialism. From Britain’s reliance on colonies, to the political rationale for giving the working class some welfare services, Churchill’s rhetorical flourishes in speeches, newspaper articles, and deliberations with his peers, illuminate things all too often absent from contemporary political consciousness.MR Online
The text cited below is in chronological order. Information is taken from many sources,1 including articles previously on this blog and from other material I have put onto Twitter and Facebook. But it should not overtax the modern attention span. I do not claim or aim to cover everything, and will give a few lines of context where these might be helpful.
When all of these statements were made, except one, Churchill had a senior position in the British government of the day, or had even been Prime Minister. They are not just the musings of a random reactionary and empire enthusiast....
Which countries are to blame for this failure to do anything remotely close to avoiding the environmental disaster. China is usually picked out as the main culprit. It is currently by far the world’s biggest emitter of CO2 and is planning to build 43 new coal power plants on top of the 1,000 plants already in operation. But China has some excuses. It has the largest population in world and so its per capita emissions are much lower than most other major economies (although it’s the mass that counts). Second, it is the manufacturing centre of the world providing goods for all the rich countries of the Global North. As a result, its emissions are going to be huge because of the consumer demand for its products globally.Implies that the geoeconomic system based on capitalism's assumption of unlimited growth must be reconfigured. Michael Roberts is pessimistic about this happening. Too many interests and too much investment involved.
Moreover, historically, cumulative emissions built up in the atmosphere in the last 100 years come from the rich previously industrialised and now energy consuming North. There is a direct, linear relationship between the total amount of CO2 released by human activity and the level of warming at the Earth’s surface. Moreover, the timing of a tonne of CO2 being emitted has only a limited impact on the amount of warming it will ultimately cause. This means CO2 emissions from hundreds years ago continue to contribute to the heating of the planet – and current warming is determined by the cumulative total of CO2 emissions over time…
MMT-compliant. Worth a read.
Stumbling and MumblingGiven my inflation report yesterday, I have shifted my usual Wednesday light blog post day and music feature to today. The economic debate has moved in recent years from ‘when is the government going broke’ to ‘hyperinflation is approaching’. It amazes me how puerile the economic commentary is as journalists and economists seeking headlines trot out headlines about how bad something (insert: insolvency, inflation, whatever is the latest craze) is going to be and what needs to be done about it. Nothing much happens in the real world and they keep their jobs and begin the next mania. Replay. And so it goes. It seems though that within this fictional world, that masquerades as informed economic commentary, subtle changes are underway. Governments worked out that during the GFC, the only weapon they had that would save the system was fiscal policy. They also worked out that large-scale bond buying by their central banks complemented the effective use of fiscal policy and didn’t deliver all the maelstrom that the mainstream New Keynesian textbooks predicted. The pandemic has accentuated that. And now there is this sort of stand-off between the ‘markets’ that were given too much latitude in the pre-GFC period and governments. The market players, who have become accustomed to manipulating government policy to ratify their speculative bets, which delivered massive profits to the hedge funds and the like, are now confronting central banks and treasuries that actually have power and cannot be bullied into delivering such policy ratification. That is progress and interesting to observe....Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Whaaaaaaaaaaatttttttt?????
White House Urges GOP To Make 2022 Budget Offer, Begin Talks - BBG https://t.co/K9qpBMCyXD
— LiveSquawk (@LiveSquawk) October 27, 2021
All together now! LFG!
😂 LOL right on cue… now it’s “the bond market is forecasting a slowdown!” anthropomorphism from these zombie Art degree morons… you knew it was coming…
🤔 So let me get this straight from these people … first it went “inflation!” then it went “hyperinflation!” then it went “stagflation!” now it’s just going “stag!” ? What happened now to the “flation!” ?
Bond Curves Flash Warning On Growth As U.S., U.K. Yields Slide - BBGhttps://t.co/sCMbxyVgx7
— LiveSquawk (@LiveSquawk) October 27, 2021
The rise of tribalism is threatening to lead the world to a future of great-power conflict and runaway climate change. The only way to mitigate this risk is to negotiate a new social contract that addresses inequality head-on....A virtual impossibility in the current climate. Any viable solution requires a modification of the world system in ways that are not feasible politically. So the problem will be left to the kids and grandkids, and subsequent generations not yet borne.
In the introduction to “The Spoils of War,” an extraordinary new book by Andrew Cockburn, he makes a straightforward assertion about the U.S. military. “War-fighting efficiency has a low priority,” he writes, “by comparison with considerations of personal and internal bureaucracies. … The military are generally not interested in war, save as a means to budget enhancement.”…
Summarizing what has been known for decades.
The InterceptApparently, inflation in Australia has come ‘roaring’ back, if you believe one financial commentator today. There has been a lot of talk about how inflation is spiralling upwards and it demonstrates the MMT ‘quackery’. If you examine today’s data release from the Australian Bureau of Statistics – Consumer Price Index, Australia (October 27, 2021) – which relates to to the September-quarter 2021, then it becomes clear that the slightly elevated CPI result is largely due to uncompetitive cartel behaviour and deliberate government petrol pricing policies that ensure that the cartel behaviour is ratified in the form of higher local petrol prices. Not much more to see than that really. Nothing much to do with Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) at all. Sorry about that. The CPI rose by 0.8 per cent in the September-quarter 2021 and 3 per cent over the 12 months. The two main drivers were the rise in prices for New dwelling purchases by owner-occupiers (3.3 per cent) and Automotive fuel (7.7 per cent). Last quarter, the annual rate of CPI increase was 3.8 per cent, which makes statements like ‘roaring back’ seem ridiculous and designed to attract headlines.After years of ZIRP doing nothing to raise the inflation rate to the central banks' targets, a moderate rise in some prices "owning to MMT quackery" is viewed as the beginning of hyperinflation "as predicted." Bonkers analysis.
This month, the Vanderbilt Law Review published a 69-page paper by Saule Omarova, President Biden’s nominee to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Federal regulator of the largest banks in the country that operate across state lines. The paper is titled “The People’s Ledger: How to Democratize Money and Finance the Economy.”Sounds like a (pretty radical) plan.
The New York Times article (October 1, 2021, updated October 15, 2021) – Nobody Really Knows How the Economy Works. A Fed Paper Is the Latest Sign – reported on a paper by one Jeremy B. Rudd, who is a senior advisor in the Research and Statistics division at the Federal Reserve Bank in the US. The paper – Why Do We Think That Inflation Expectations Matter for Inflation? (And Should We?) – published as Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2021-062, by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, argues that a core aspect of New Keynesian macroeconomic orthodoxy “rests on extremely shaky foundations … and adhering to it uncritically could easily lead to serious policy errors.” The paper rejects the central notion in mainstream macro that the trajectory of inflation is driven by expectations. The idea that expectations are the key force has led central banks deliberately using the unemployed to fight an (imaginary) inflation threat. It has led fiscal authorities to pursue contractionary policies that have forced millions into unemployment. The Rudd paper is important because it shows the mainstream edifice is collapsing – it jettisons an other core concept. There is not much left in mainstream economics that hasn’t been rejected by evidence or exposed as being theoretically inconsistent....Bill Mitchell – billy blog
News Corp’s dramatic U-turn over climate policy. Critics call its Mission Zero campaign ‘greenwashing’ but we argue it is a significant shift for Australia’s largest media company.
News Corp's dramatic climate change backflip
If people were to bear the cost of their decision, rather than let the rest of us pick up the tab, they might rethink their decision.
Executives at some companies are now starting to charge unvaccinated workers more for health insurance premiums.
They say they are doing so to encourage workers to get vaccinated and to offset costs incurred when employees are hospitalized for COVID-19.
The policies are similar to those invoked on employees who smoke.
Most employees will continue to have the right to choose whether or not to get vaccinated against the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19.
The vaccines only slow down transmissions for 3 months, so the antivaxxers are asking why should they get a vaccine? They have a point, except they are overloading our hospitals are burning the staff out, but also, mutations are more likely to occur in the unvaccinated.
Anyway, some antivaxxers are now tweeting the research below, which shows that in a society where a large amount of people are vaccinated, but where not everyone is, mutations are more likely to occur, so they are blaming the the high amount of vaccination for the mutations, but they haven't read the research properly, because the scientists are recommending that everyone should get vaccinated to reduce mutations.
The new model underscores the risk of letting SARS-CoV-2 spread unabated, particularly when a large fraction of people — but not everyone — is vaccinated. That said, the model doesn't perfectly match reality, and we're still contending with big unknowns, Kondrashov said.
The best way to snuff out vaccine-resistant mutants before they spread is to get shots in arms as quickly as possible, while also keeping viral transmission low, the authors found; in their model, they assume low transmission rates reflect the adoption of behavioral measures like masking and social distancing.
Vaccine-resistant coronavirus 'mutants' are more likely when transmission is high, new model finds
The crazy world of arguing with antivaxxers and climate change.
The Truth Why Stupid People Think They Are Smart
Some Marxism without mentioning Marx.
CaitlinJohnstone.com
- It looks like Senator Joe Manchin will stand firm in his stance against the climate change provisions in Biden’s infrastructure bill
- When it comes to the climate bill it looks like there are no winners here, with both Manchin and Biden failing to secure anything concrete from negotiations
- Ultimately, the bill is unlikely to have a significant impact on a transition that is clearly underway already within the United States
There’s been a fun (but silly) long-running debate on Twitter whether economists need to read canonical texts: Smith, Marx, Ricardo, Keynes, etc. What caught my eye is that a mainstream economist compared economics to mathematics — why don’t we learn calculus by studying the history of calculus? Why this is interesting is that is showed a lack of understanding of the situation in both mathematics and economics.As an aside, having spent a good deal of time as an educator, I think that teaching the history of all subjects is worthwhile, both individually and as a whole in terms of major periods. This should begin in grammar school when the study of history is introduced.
Please note that this article is a discussion of the philosophy of teaching at the university level, so do not expect any conclusions that will help make analysing bond markets easier. That said, there is an outline of a critique of the core methodological principles of neoclassical macro.
I will first start with mathematics....
It takes a while for the mainstream organisations in economics, banking and finance to start to realise that the framework they use cannot explain the actual events in the real world, without serious revision. The problem though, is that the overall framework is flawed and the typical ‘response to anomaly’ approach, which changes a few assumptions to get ‘novel results’ is inadequate because it leaves one blind to all the possible policy solutions. The latest example is the Bank of International Settlements paper – Indebted Demand (released October 19, 2021) – which was written by three economists from Princeton, Harvard and Chicago Booth, respectively. They now recognise that rising inequality and massive household debt is a major problem for economic growth and macroeconomic stability. But, in maintaining ‘conventional’ assumptions about the government sector, they miss the vital linkages in the story, that Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) economists have been providing for the last 25 or so years. Whether these responses to anomaly represent progress or different variations in a flawed ‘chess’ strategy is a matter of opinion. My thought is they are a largely a waste of time, although marginally, they demonstrate that elements of mainstream macro theory that were considered core elements a decade ago are no longer sustainable....Bill Mitchell – billy blog
It beats the alternative.The Lens
Interesting video!
Capsian Report seem to be neutral, but I need to find out more about them. I don't know how correct their analysis is, but it seems feasible.
The world is a pretty dangerous place, with countries still up for grabbing each others resources and wealth, if they can, so China needs to hang into its inner regions, Tibet and Xinglian, etc, as a buffer zone against attack. But these regions are poor, so the richer coastal parts of China have to subsidise them, hence communism still serves China a purpose.
Southern China can suffer from floods, but the North can suffer from droughts, and both these have caused famines in the past, so the government is spending billions on one of the worlds most ambitious projects, and is building waterways to take some of the water from the South up to the North. But much of the water in the south comes from the rivers that flow from the mountains in Tibet, so China has always insisted that this region is part of its mainland because of its need for water security.
President Xi Jinping pledged to redistribute wealth while turning up the heat on China’s upscale citizens and businesses. So, what keeps Chinese communism going?
Capsian Report - Why China cannot abandon communism
Usually, a question in the title of an article is a teaser and the answer is almost always "no." Not in this case. The standard argument is that economic growth is necessary to create jobs and that unemployment results from the slowing or interruption of growth.Econospeak
Even advocates of degrowth or a steady-state economy assume a positive connection between growth and employment. Advocates prescribe reduction of working time as a means to mitigate job losses that would otherwise result from productivity gains.
In chapter 25 of Capital, volume one, however, Marx claimed that the same factors that spur economic growth also stimulate an expansion of the population supplying labour power and the "industrial reserve army." He proclaimed the growth of the surplus population relative to employed labour to be, "the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation."
That, of course, was just an assertion. Defenders of the conventional view argue that Marx either didn't explain a mechanism for his "absolute general law" or if he did it was either wrong or incoherent.
I don't want to pretend expertise on whether Marx's theory stands up to rigorous critique. I sort of suspect every economic theory has a crack in it. That's how the light gets in.
What I want to do instead is suggest that there was a more compact version of Marx's surplus population argument in the Grundrisse that hasn't been refuted because it has mostly gone unnoticed....
"Sanctions," Iran’s new president, Ebrahim Raisi, told the UN General Assembly, "are the US’s new way of war with the nations of the world." At least nineteen countries are currently besieged by the economic warfare of US sanctions.
As when they wage military war, the US is willing to accept the high civilian cost of sanctions. In their book Why Civil Resistance Works, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan cite studies showing that sanctions "often harm the civilian population more than the targeted regimes." .…
Though sanctions do not produce the desired effects, they do, ironically, produce four undesired effects....
The current political era is best understood as a “great recoil” of economic globalization. It is a moment when the coordinates of historical development seem to be inverting, upsetting many of the assumptions that dominated politics and economics over the last decades. This moment corresponds to the “second movement” socialist economic historian Karl Polanyi described in his book The Great Transformation, when phases of capitalist expansion recede and are met by “societal responses.”ROAR
According to Polanyi, in phases of profound crisis like that opened by the 1929 Wall Street Crash, society tends to act defensively, erecting forms of social protection against a capitalist logic that has manifestly failed to deliver prosperity, yet becomes even more aggressive in its attempts to extract profit. During this moment, societies are involved in a process of “re-internalization” that aims to “re-embed” the economy in society....
Excerpt from Ours: The Case for Universal Property by Peter BarnesLike Marx said would happen due to internal contradictions in the design leading to breakdown.
Capitalism as we know it has two egregious flaws: it relentlessly widens inequality and destroys nature. Its ‘invisible hand,’ which is supposed to transform individual self-seeking into widely shared well-being, too often doesn’t, and governments can’t keep up with the consequences. For billions of people around the world, the challenge of our era is to repair or replace capitalism before its cumulative harms become irreparable.…
When I say the elite, I mean the ruling class, but when the Right say the elite, they mean educated people and academics, like climatologists, psychologists, and epidemiologists, etc.
If there’s one epithet the right never tires of, it’s “elitism.” Republicans are constantly accusing Democrats of it this campaign season, as when Kentucky Senate nominee Rand Paul attacked President Obama as “a liberal elitist … [who] believes that he knows what is best for people.” With the Tea Party’s rise, conservatives have even begun accusing each other of it, as Sharron Angle, the Nevada GOP nominee did when she charged that Robert Bennett, the outgoing senator from Utah, “has become one of the elitists that is no longer in touch.” Other days, they simply lament that the entire country is falling prey to it, as California Senate nominee Carly Fiorina recently did in asserting that “the American Dream is in danger” because of the “elitists” in charge of the government.
Thus did the son and grandson of admirals, a millionaire who couldn’t remember how many houses he owned, accuse his mixed-race opponent, raised by a single-mother and only a few years past paying off his student loans, being the real elite candidate in the campaign.
One of the great political changes of my adult lifetime has been the right’s abandonment of free market economics, as illustrated by the government imposing trade frictions within the UK and putting up the tax burden to what the OBR says will be “its highest level since Roy Jenkins was Chancellor in the late 1960s.” Two books I’ve read recently pose a question: might this shift be due in part to an awareness that markets are no longer the foundation of freedom we once thought they were?...Interesting contrast between libertarians of the right like Friedman, Hayek and Thatcher, and libertarians of the left, here Marx in particular.
Jack thinks we’re going “hyperinflation!”… “hahper!”… if we don’t get it, this could turn out to be another Trump Curse situation… he’s already dressed for it… wouldn’t have to change clothes…
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's dire warning: 'Hyperinflation' will soon 'change everything'https://t.co/dsP3ZoNhFO
— FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) October 24, 2021
American comedy this week.
I don't look for comedy, it just turns up in my YouTube app, but not so much has turned up lately.
FAT DRUNK PIG ROLLS DOWN A HILL[TRY NOT TO LAUGH]
This thing had a good 2 days Thursday and Friday… and it appeared to be in “liquidation only” on Friday my broker would not accept a market order to buy…. I don’t know if an ipo was ever treated like that before…
This is interesting from the Zero Hedge people here I don’t know if this is accurate or not:
Finally, we note that DWAC would have to reach $1,739 to be as large as Twitter... food for thought for analyst price targets.
And if Pinterest is supposed to be worth $50b I have to think the Trump thing would be worth at least as much as that…
Trump's "Truth" SPAC Halted 5 Times, Now 'Only' Up 120% Today $DWAChttps://t.co/KR17fgaAlJ
— 2 Cent Oil Baron (@avgjaneexp2) October 22, 2021
One topic in the coalition talks to form a new government in Germany is the legalization of cannabis products. All three parties are in favour of a regulated system for cultivation, trade, and sale. German pharmaceutical companies are also hoping for a boost from this.
When cannabis was legalized in Canada three years ago, many customers were eager to make the first legal purchase of marijuana. Today, the legal cannabis industry in Canada posts more than two billion euros in sales annually. The government there closely monitors cultivation and sales.
Germany on the brink of legalizing cannabis | DW News
But Nick Wright's negative experience is not uncommon.
How to scuttle relations right out of the box in choosing diplomats.
First, the Biden administration sends Victoria Nuland to negotiate with Russia, and now is proposing an outspoken China hawk as ambassador to China. Beyond dumb unless you want to program the outcome to fail, where in your own mind failure of better relations is success. A similar situation is unfolding in negotiations with Iran that guarantee no deal.
The US is sounding more and more like the British Empire before its dissolution as a result of WWI, engineered by Britain to preserve its empire, and then WWII, which was a direct result of WWI. Let hope that is not a precedent. The US and NATO have not fought a war where the other side could actually fight back since the stalemate in the Korean War after China entered it even though China then was only a shadow of what it is now.
But ka-ching for the MICIMATT (Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex) and maybe some points in the toxic environment of US domestic politics.
AntiWarA study published in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association finds that getting the influenza vaccine lowers a person’s odds of a having heart attack, stroke, heart failure, or other major cardiac event—including death—by about a third over the following year.
What’s the connection between flu and cardiovascular problems? “When you get the flu, your body mounts an impressive immune response, which causes a lot of inflammation. As a result, the plaque inside your blood vessels can become unstable, which can lead to blockage and a possible heart attack or stroke,” says study leader Jacob Udell, MD, a cardiologist at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto and a clinician-scientist at the University of Toronto.
Julia Corliss - "Flu shot linked to lower heart attack, stroke risk - Harvard Health"
BlackRock Inc. CEO Larry Fink shared a cloudier view on climate change efforts and inflation than Bank of America Corp. CEO Brian Moynihan at a virtual industry gathering on Tuesday.
Fink said the U.S.’s long-term shift toward a gig economy has left workers without traditional pensions and other benefits, and is feeding a drive toward sharper wage increases nowadays.
“You have more flexibility, but we lost the connection between our workers and many companies,” Fink said in his remarks at the Institute for International Finance (IIF) annual meeting. “The fragmentation and polarization of society is because of these issues.”
Market Watch
Black Rock’s Larry Fink blames gig economy for stoking inflation
BlackRock - The company that owns the world?
#BlackRock. There’s a good chance you have never heard of them.
In less than 30 years, this American financial firm has grown from nothing to becoming the world’s largest and most trusted manager of other people’s money. The assets left in their care are worth a staggering 6.3 trillion US dollars – a figure with 12 zeroes.
Now it got Alec Baldwin…. They continue to drop like flies….
BREAKING UPDATE: Sheriff says Alec Baldwin fired what was supposed to be a prop-gun on a movie set that killed head of photography and injured director - https://t.co/JiyE1CA9Nq pic.twitter.com/ezFTdcMcCg
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) October 22, 2021
Although my parents weren't religious they still sent my brother and me to Sunday school because they thought that we would pick up some good values there. A big black van would turn up outside people's houses every Sunday and all the kids would be bundled into the back. There were no seats or windows inside the back part of the van where they put us so we were just driven about like cattle. Fortunately, the Sunday school was just around the corner, so I didn't get travel sickness, something I suffered a lot from when I was young.
Most of the time what they taught us at Sunday school just went right over my head, especially as I had never seen a miracle before, and most of the teaching was about the miracles, like walking on water, and turning water into wine, etc, but none of it seemed to relate all that much to the world that I lived in which was a council estate in South London (see below). I don't think I really believed the stories all that much either, or rather, I didn't know quite what to make of it all.
They taught us the teachings of Jesus and he seemed to be a very nice person, who was very compassionate and considerate. They also told us about the parables: The Eye of the Needle and the Rich Man, Turn the other cheek, Forgive your enemies, etc.
Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
Also they also told us what Heaven and Hell was like:
In Hell, they said, there were tables full of food, but everyone was hungry, because the spoons were really long, so they were unable to feed themselves. But in Heaven, everything was exactly the same, except no one was hungry because they fed each other with the long spoons.
Would Jesus recognise right-wing evangelical Christianity today ? I doubt it very much somehow.
White evangelicals are often seen as a solidly Republican voting bloc. In the 2020 election, 84 percent of them voted for Donald Trump. In fact, according to the Pew Research Center, many of Trump’s supporters began identifying as evangelical during his presidency.
But white evangelicals aren’t a monolith. In our first episode of Political Outliers, meet two devout evangelicals who were raised in conservative households, but are now self-proclaimed “progressives.” They both say that their political views became more liberal as they immersed themselves deeper into their faith
Why Some White Evangelicals Are Rethinking Their Politics l FiveThirtyEight
I went bit off the beaten track here last night when I added this part, but I decided I might as well post it now. The above article really got me into thinking about that early part of my life.
The Brandon Estate
I lived right next to the Branden Estate in Southwark, South London, between the ages of 6 to 8 years old and had many friends there who I would play on the estate with. I was amazed to find this old footage of the Branden Estate recently which was shot in 1961, although I live there between 1964 and 1966. The estate had a bad reputation although I don't remember there being any problems, but it might have got this reputation later. The kids were quite friendly too and I was never bullied by anyone here.
There’s no sound, and it may not be riveting, but it's exactly how it was, so it was fascinating to find it, but black and white makes it look more gloomy than it was.
Below is our prefab where we lived from 1964 to 1966, which was tempory home that was supplied by the council. They called these ones Mobile Homes to distinguish them from prefabs, but like the prefabs, they were made in a factory and then transported on a lorry, afterwhich a crane would put them into place. It was quite nice really, a detached bungalow, in fact, but there was one big problem - the whole thing was made of asbestos!
You can see the Brandon Estate in the background in the photo below.
The large flower pot is a barrow my dad cut in half. He was a butcher and he would get them from where he used to work. It was a popular idea where he worked.
My mum with me in the front garden. Apparently, that toy bus is worth a fortune now. I think my mum gave it away when I was very young after I hadn't played with it for years.
We went to St John's The Devine School, which was Protestant and very strict. In the background of the above photo you can see the steeple of St John's The Devine Church.
At school one day they got us into the assembly room to tell us about the school rules, and that if we broke them we would be severely punished, which might mean even getting the cane. I was only 6 years old and was very new at the school, and I had no idea what rules were, so I thought they must be 10 inch long glass rods that they kept in a locked glass cabinet in the headmasters room. They must be very special, I thought, but I couldn't figure out what the hell they would be used for, or how anyone could break one if they were in a glass box.
My mum made the Batman and Superman suits. She was a seemstress and she made us a lot of clothes. In the photo I have the Batman the suit on.
The church is regarded as a fine example of Victorian Gothic. The general construction is of red brick, but all parapets, window openings, doorways, etc. are dressed with stone. The upper part of the spire is entirely of stone. At over 260 feet, it is the tallest spire in south London and can be seen for miles around. The poet John Betjeman remarked that St John the Divine was "the most magnificent church in South London."
