Export-Import Bank? Instead, How About A MiddleClass Consume-What-You-Produce Bank? What? That's Called A Treasury Dept? So Just Lower All Taxes On Labor?

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)





We could make this simple, and thereby make things better for all people.

But no. The US Chamber of Commerce has a more complicated idea, and crows that:

Ex-Im Has Financed $2Billion Worth Of Exports From Indiana Companies Since 2007

Huh? We're supposed to be impressed? We're LOANING our own fiat, to foreigners, so that they can buy what we produce ... and won't let ourselves consume? Anyone see a contradiction here? How do we grow if we export too much of what we produce?

If we'd just lower taxes on the Middle Class, then WE could buy what we're shipping to foreigners! Why export? Why give excessively to others when we could give to ourselves?

Ever see that little message on airplanes? "In case of an emergency, fasten your own oxygen mask before trying to help others." It's there for a good reason, as was our Middle Class. If we don't maintain our Middle Class, our nation won't be here TO help anyone.

[So why DO we export so much? Answer: The same old why. Exports are still used primarily as a way to take resources from poor people in exporting countries and give it to rich people in importing countries. Plus, we divert & lose that amount of our own fiat that is skimmed off at every step, by rich people in rich countries - through the miraculous evil of FINANCIERS impounding most of OUR fiat - which they then tell us we're out of, and must borrow back from them. How dumb do they think we are?]

Let's get this straight. If we have a fiat currency system ... then why on earth do we reserve most of our own fiat units for hoarding by the mere bean-counting clerks that track OUR fiat units FOR US? Ever seen a dog with 90% of its assets tied up in it's tail? They don't last long, and their last days are not pretty, as the cancerous tail kills it's host.

[Fiat] Taxes for [Fiat] Revenue Are Obsolete

Until every citizen in the USA learns that simple fact in highschool, or before, we will NEVER have sane, adaptive policy in this country. Every subsequent topic is just noise still distracting us from fundamental context.

Nevertheless, the Aiken Standard newspaper of South Carolina is on board with the bullshit, to serve the usual cast of characters.

[Propaganda]: Export-Import Bank is vital to state’s economy

How many people know who owns the Aiken Standard?

Worst yet, this cast of characters has nearly every labor union convinced that lowering Middle Class real incomes and expanding wealth disparity is in the self-interest of labor unions. Doh!

This is sad. Most Labor Unions are actually tied up arguing over which foot to shoot. That's pathetic, and they don't even know it.

Citizens don't let citizens operate ignorantly?

Electorates don't let Labor Unions swallow hooks, lines & sinkers?

What's worse than a drunk behind the wheel? A NeoLiberal in a policy office?

Exporting Stasis: Euro-zone Politics & Social Instability Seem To Be Inching Towards A Showdown

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson.)

Time to say goodbye? Shauble Calls on Italy to Pursue Structural Reform

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble called on Italy to pursue its ambitious structural reform efforts if it wants to boost its economic-growth prospects. “Especially since growth forecasts for Italy have been reduced recently, it’s important to reform and cut the debt level convincingly,” he said. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has presented ambitious and broad-based reforms, he added. “The Stability and Growth Pact is the foundation for politico-economic cohesion in Europe,” said Mr. Schäuble.

Euro-zone politics & social instability seem to be inching towards a showdown over making a simple choice. Neuter the fiat? Or allow cultural growth? Seems like an easy choice, for those able to think clearly, so what, exactly is Schäuble demanding? Three distinct interpretations come to mind, but they're all guesses.

#1 Is Schäuble calling for every country to be a net exporter, like Germany? Really?

It's hard to imagine a collection of stereotypical engineers ... who nevertheless won't admit that the sources/sinks of production/consumption (not the dimensionless liquidity units) have to roughly balance in a growing global economic system.

There still seems to be a widespread inability to separate liquidity units from saving units. Schäuble isn't the only one blind to the obvious.

Fiat currency is NOT the right vehicle for stable, long-term savings.
That is WHY the linguistic terms "asset appreciation" & "interest rate" were invented!
Labor wages can't be the ONLY variable that "inflates!"

I blame our outmoded education system - & Germany's too - for not including something so fundamental as a basic part of education. There is a difference between dynamic & static assets, and how they are denominated. Failure to grasp that is half killing many aspects of policy.

#2 On the other hand, perhaps Schäuble is drawing a line in the sand & saying - for EEU "politico-economic cohesion" - that there can be only one .... net exporter? Fine. He still doesn't come out & acknowledge the required, running sectoral balance between production & consumption - and the tolerance limits for deviations from it, in the form of demand leakages (savings). Has anyone met this guy, and hence have any idea what he's really thinking?

#3 Do you suppose that Schäuble's master plan is to export static assets to the future? :) Instead of exporting increasing options to future generations? Perhaps he has a point worth considering ... for maybe 5 seconds. Just imagine where we'd be if our grandparents had put every Model-T into long term storage, instead of using them at the time. :)  Fine again! If Schäuble's message is really all that valuable, surely the Europeans should just put HIM into cold storage, and preserve his valuable message for some time in the future, when his descendants will clamor to stop doing whatever they're doing, and instead do less. :)

He might want to take an extra pair of pj's to the cryo chamber, in case the slumber party lasts longer than he expects. Good way to export pj's too! :)

All joking aside. It's no longer clear what structure Schäuble is keen on reforming, but his own brain circuits might be the best place to start. It's rumored that vigorous exercise of both body & logic ward off Alzheimers and preserve the ability to think clearly.

Exporting clarity & Context Awareness? What a novel thought!  :)  Now that might be a way for Germans to have their exports and increase their dynamic value too!

US & EU Both Pledge "1 billion" ($/euro) Loan Guarantees For Ukraine - While Pledging Nothing More For Their Own Electorates

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Loan Guarantees For Ukraine

This raises two sets of questions, about what we're doing domestically, and why, compared to what we're doing internationally, and why. Initial questions about why domestic US/EU electorates can't guarantee fiat investment in themselves, and instead submit to austerity ... is exceeded only by the sheer number & depth of half-truths, mis-conceptions and outright lies included in this article.

Example? Reduced tariffs go directly back to the exporter? No, that only reduces costs for the importing consumers (maybe only the intermediary merchants), and MAY increase the volume of exports being extracted from the "beneficiary" country. In reality, look for more EU/US firms to set up subsidiaries in the UK, and move yet more jobs from serfs in receiving countries to even lower-paid serfs in sending countries being looted. Can you say "internal devaluation?"

Where have we heard this story before?

Read on, & decide for yourself what these loan guarantees really imply.

There's a theme to the last 40 years? When electorates cede all governance to their merchant classes, they get what they claim was unpredictable ... less innovation, invention & leadership ... and more risk control, "management" and stagnation.

What, exactly, WOULD the Desired Outcome for national policy be, if we bothered to survey our actual citizens? Can we pick some worthwhile goals FOR OURSELVES, and go for them, instead of merely managing existing risks? Forget defense & offense, the best cultural evolution is an active Adaptive Rate?

Nominate Your BS for the Best Tragecomedy of the Week

commentary by Roger Erickson

This is the best tragecomedy I've received so far this week.  To keep from crying, I've learned to laugh out loud at this kind of BS.

"Nominate Your Company for an Exporter of the Year Award"

Now, for any novice readers, understanding this tragecomedy depends on achieving a modern perspective and paradigm. Why would YOU want to send our real resources to foreigners, for them to use in their country? Better to build insanely great products or services that further build our capabilities of and opportunities within the USA. What the heck do you need THEIR fiat currency for, when we already have our own fiat currency?  As long as we can build & do new things here that simultaneously improve the confluence of faster+leaner+better, then we can always let less-accomplished nations export things that are no longer rate limiting for us.

However, we should do that only IF they can't self-organize by any other means than agreeing to at least practice by exporting real real goods to us instead of using them to improve the general welfare of their own people.  In reality, we allow that only to give them an organized purpose they're failing to do by other means, just as we let them mow our lawns & clean our houses & go to our schools. After all, people with less useful currencies are still clamoring to acquire our fiat currency.

The best things you can do for people in foreign countries are:
1) make USA economic practices a beacon for them to emulate;
2) volunteer to help educate & train them, and help them practice;
3) donate critical resources to them if you feel that's more productive than making your country something even more worth emulating.

Best thing you can do for YOUR country?  Don't slow down our relentless progress in "making a more perfect union."

Nirvana = having a fiat currency and knowing how to use it - and demonstrating that to other countries.

Meanwhile, here's the clueless BS of the week, below.

****************


Exporter of the Year Award Nominations Now Being Accepted: Deadline is Sept. 30th   [Imagine that!  BS comes with deadlines!  Didn't know it could get stale.]

ThinkGlobal Inc. is seeking nominations for the 2013 USA Exporter of the Year awards.   [Note, their use of the word "think" here proves their misuse of the term.  "ThinkIndentured would be more appropriate."]

ThinkGlobal Inc. is the publisher of Commercial News USA, the official export promotion magazine of the U.S. Commerce Department. Commercial News USA is a catalog-style magazine distributed to a quarter million international buyers in 178 countries worldwide in print, and 25,000 buyers per month online.

Awards will be given to U.S. companies in all of the categories included in the magazine.

Winners in each industry will be chosen by the ThinkGlobal publishing team based on the total number of documented export deals completed, total percentage increase in sales, exports as a percentage of total sales, the company's commitment to exporting, the company's commitment to customer service, and the company's innovation and originality in marketing products or services.

To be eligible for the award, the nominee must be a company that is exporting from the United States. Companies may nominate themselves for the award.

There is no cost for applying for this award. Winners will be recognized in a special section in Commercial News USA. Plus, winners will have an unique opportunity to promote their products and services to international buyers in an online, streaming media, presentation.

Register Now for the Exporter of the Year Awards

Michael Hudson: Great Points, Some Still Missing

Michael Hudson on Fictitious Capital

We need more people capable of rethinking the processes they're trying to scale up, and actually exploring indirect methods that will scale ... because our current practices won't.

Michael makes many great points - except his suggestion that we do not want other countries to industrialize doesn't ring true. Since WWII we've consistently gone to great lengths to make China and many other countries into industrial, exporting powers. Are we changing our minds? Doubtful.  That would be schizophrenic.

The bigger issue that we're finally failing at is making our own population able to buy & utilize everything that we AND the rest of the world can produce. Not only that, we're failing to keep our group intelligence growing fast enough to demand insanely useful products, instead of cheap, intoxicating distractions ... including most of the trinkets sold at WalMart.  Not only are we voluntarily utilizing less, our remaining selections are declining in quality.

Did our form of national schizophrenia manifest post-WWII, with the assumption that we could ALWAYS utilize everything the entire world produced, while completely neglecting our responsibility to manage and scale up our own utilization rates?  Is it that simple?

We have the whole world making whatever they can for us to utilize, and willing to export whatever we ask them to.  So what are we DOING with our historic opportunity?  With all our extra time and options?  It's handed to us on a silver platter ... and we're failing to take the ball and run with it?  How long can we keep doing that, and why would we even start the habit of sitting idle, neglecting continuous mobilization?  Nothing is stopping us from being all that we can be ... except our own, collective policy choice.

Michael's also got it wrong about foreign countries lending us "money" by buying treasuries.  Pervasive confusion over that simple yet key point seems to be one of the main reasons we decline to seize our opportunities.

Yet he is right that other countries purposely depreciate their currencies in order to maintain exports to the USA.  However, the only connection between that decision and their own development is conscious policy. It's not an obligatory relationship. Buying our T-bonds is completely separable from both issues.

Other countries could all make more effort to develop their own ability to consume what they produce.  The only impediment to that is class-based hoarding in all those countries.

We really do have to save the entire world from it's own useless misers, who are distributed throughout all countries as the mindlessly-hoarding 1%.  The BEST way to do that is by setting an example of how to do so, by first saving ourselves from our own useless misers.  Methods drive results.

It boils down to the 99% everywhere allowing a tiny minority to wage a class war against humanity.  That small fraction are ignorant "traders" that don't understand they needn't even wage their war of suppression & hoarding.  There are even better ways for traders to benefit all, while also delivering even more real benefits to themselves than they can presently imagine. Their mercantile thinking is holding us all back, keeping us from being anywhere near what we could be.   Plus, we - the 99% - are the ones passively letting their trade lobbies get in the way of our own national aspirations.  It's our own fault.  If we're going to pursue democracy, we have to start acting like co-owners.

If there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, I hope they don't contact us until we sort this out. It's embarrassing. We can do so many amazing things, but we can't organize our efforts to increase our own adaptive rate? Seems hard to believe.