Paul Craig Roberts — For Economic Truth Turn To Michael Hudson

The reeducation of a Reaganomics supply-sider.

It's the rent, stupid.

Michael Hudson
For Economic Truth Turn To Michael Hudson
Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts and Michael Hudson — The Atlanticist Tactic Revisited

Paul Craig Roberts and Michael Hudson team up to analyze the Russian economy and economic policy. MMT-friendly.

Michael Hudson
The Atlanticist Tactic Revisited

Paul Craig Roberts and Michael Hudson

No Brains In Washington — Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts was the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy in the Reagan Administration and one of the developers of supply side economics. He was also associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. When he starts agreeing with Noam Chomsky and Michael Hudson about "neoliberal economics" being the problem, you know that something is up. This is not supposed to happen in a normal world.

No Brains In Washington — Paul Craig Roberts

Podcast: My phone conversation with Paul Craig Roberts

Podcast for April 13: My phone conversation with Paul Craig Roberts.

This started out as a podcast, but it got contentious and sloppy, so I am summarizing with this podcast.

Dmitry Orlov and Paul Craig Roberts on Crimea and US strategy

Should the US obtain the Russian Black Sea naval base at Sevastopol in the Crimea, Russia would be finished geostrategically. It's looking like this was a major objective of the Maidan that was foiled. Russia quickly became aware of this and acted to prevent the takeover, but only after Crimeans themselves stopped the advance.

In the Plane Truth’s podcast, “Permission to Steal Everything” with political expert Dmitry Orlov, the real intentions of the US/EU backed coup in Ukraine is brought into focus, revealing that the overthrow of the Yanukovich government had little to do with Kiev, and lots to do with placing Crimea firmly under NATO/US control. 

No wonder the US and EU are so crazy livid about Crimea returning back to Russia. In short, Putin foiled their major Maidan objective.
Skip to the 5:00 minute mark to get to the good stuff on Crimea, Ukraine and America’s sneaky land grab.

Some comments and observations from Zerohedge users are worth noting:

I just listen[ed] to D. Orlov give a long interview about Ukraine. He pointed out that the main and first goal of the western coup was to snatch the Crimea as a military base as quickly as possible.

Euro Maidan troops left for Crimea the day After the coup succeeded in Kiev. They were followed next day by Urkainian Army troops. The Maidan crowd could not cross the border due to former Ukrainian security police guarding the crossing points. 

By the time the Ukrainian army arrived, Cossacks loyal to Russian Crimea arrived in numbers and began mining the border and digging defenses. One try to break this line by the Madian failed, and a following attempt by the army to break a hole on a secondary road also failed.

Once Maidan could not enter Crimea, the USA was enraged that the coup had not reached there! Thus the extreme anger by the USA. The plan was to take Kiev, and within 5 days flood the Crimea with the entire Euro Maidan thousands, with Ukrainian Amry troops following. But it was too late. Russian Navy troops faced down the 20,000 Ukrainian troops in Crimea. Many of whom defected to the Russian army, the rest were allowed to leave.

Anyways. Orlov said that Crimea was what the west was really after, and events seem to back that up.

Another Zerohedge commenter clearly outlines the major benefits in the US’s plan to take Crimea.

D. Orlov is correct in his analysis.

I have written extensively in other posts on this topic, but to summarize, Crimea was the BIG prize that the USSA sought to capture for the following reasons:

• World’s best Military Naval Base, with literally 100’s of billions in Dollar equivalents developing it.
• Commanding control over the Black Sea, and thus countries bordering it.
• Hundreds of Billions in offshore Oil and Gas resources
• Gateway to the creation of the WhiteStream Pipeline, that would have transported gas from the ME, and connected into the Ukraine, displacing Gazprom
• Loss of Crimea would have a huge psychological blow to the Russians, akin to losing Florida.

My favorite part of watching this unfolding drama is listening to the Neocon screeches after Putin gave them a huge poke in the eye, by taking the best part of the Ukraine (including Donbass), and leaving them with the Nazi losers. Once Odessa, Karkov and Nikolaiev leave, the ruin of the remaining rump of the Ukraine will be complete.

Red Pill Times
Geo-political expert Dmitry Orlov explains how Crimea was going to be America’s big prize after the coup in Kiev
Alexrpt

While Washington works assiduously to undermine the Minsk agreement that German chancellor Merkel and French president Hollande achieved in order to halt the military conflict in Ukraine, Washington has sent Victoria Nuland to Armenia to organize a “color revolution” or coup there, has sent Richard Miles as ambassador to Kyrgyzstan to do the same there, and has sent Pamela Spratlen as ambassador to Uzbekistan to purchase that government’s allegiance away from Russia. The result would be to break up the Collective Security Treaty Organization and present Russia and China with destabilization where they can least afford it. For details go here:  http://russia-insider.com/en/2015/03/18/4656

Thus, Russia faces the renewal of conflict in Ukraine simultaneously with three more Ukraine-type situations along its Asian border.

And this is only the beginning of the pressure that Washington is mounting on Russia.
On March 18 the Secretary General of NATO denounced the peace settlement between Russia and Georgia that ended Georgia’s military assault on South Ossetia. The NATO Secretary General said that NATO rejects the settlement because it “hampers ongoing efforts by the international community to strengthen security and stability in the region.” Look closely at this statement. It defines the “international community” as Washington’s NATO puppet states, and it defines strengthening security and stability as removing buffers between Russia and Georgia so that Washington can position military bases in Georgia directly on Russia’s border. 

In Poland and the Baltic states Washington and NATO lies about a pending Russian invasion are being used to justify provocative war games on Russia’s borders and to build up US forces in NATO military bases on Russia’s borders.....

All of this is being done in order to coerce Russia into handing over Crimea and its Black Sea naval base to Washington and accepting vassalage under Washington’s suzerainty....

PaulCraigRoberts.org
Russia Under Attack
Paul Craig Roberts | Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury in the Reagan Administration and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal

Mark Thoma — 'Stupidest Article Ever Published?'

:)

Economist's View 

'Stupidest Article Ever Published?'
Mark Thoma | Professor of Economics, University of Oregon

Wrong & Wronger

A reader at a widely circulated, state "Monetary Policy" group circulated the following statement. They'll go unnamed to protect the innocently ignorant from embarrassment. Neverthless, this is a warning example of how UN-informed our electorate has become, and their "expert advisors" as well.

"Paul Craig Roberts was an editor at the WSJ and worked at treasury. So, his observations are interesting and credible. I suggest his post today on Collapse at Hand."

And Herbert Hoover once worked for the US government! People are wrong all the time, even totally out of paradigm, and that is exactly what Paul Craig Roberts is.  There may well be a collapse, but it will be caused by public ignorance, not any problem with a fiat currency supply!

PCR's essay is so wrong that it's embarrassing to read. It's wronger than wrong.  It's so bad it's not even wrong!  I left the following comment at the site in question, but wish there were some way to distribute MANY VARIATIONS of the following introduction to all "experts," teachers, parents, students and citizens nationwide - this week!

Everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING, about fiscal & monetary policy changed when we exited the gold std for a fiat currency std. That occurred first in 1933, and the last vestige went in 1973, when Nixon closed the inter-gov gold/$US convertibility window.

First, look up the dictionary definition of "fiat." Then tell yourself that we have a fiat currency std.

Then actually think about what that means.

It means we manage the currency supply to serve economic demand, and the currency supply is NOT yoked to any arbitrary commodity definition of static value.

What IS the currency value linked to? First, fiat currency value floats, and is meant to float, exactly so that it can respond in real time to the agile demands of an agile, GROWING electorate. Fiat currency is essentially "backed" ONLY by the constantly expanding will, initiative and credit of the US population.

Until we run out of public initiative, we can't run out of fiat currency.

1) We have no national debt, except in an accounting sense, which is a total, semantic misuse of our daily understanding of debt. National "debt" tracks growth of the fiat currency supply, which by definition is that amount of currency spent into existence by the USA and NOT clawed back via taxes. As such, the supposed national "debt" = national private savings, to the penny. Sheesh! This is not rocket science, people. This has been amply discussed and written about since Ben Franklin's first paper on fiat currency, in 1727 (and long before that, too).

2) We owe China nothing. Our Treasury Securities are NOT national debt.
China sends us real goods, and receives $US as payment, which they accumulate as currency reserves. Hence, China has already been paid in full, as have all other groups who export to the USA. What do other nations DO with the $US currency reserves they accumulate? They either sit on them, exchange some of them back into their local currency (which drives up their currency & lowers the value of their exports, so they try not to), or they buy things sold in $US denominations (our exports, and notably oil). If they sit on them, they MAY decide to transfer some of their Currency Reserves to Treasury Securities, which simply transfers the reserves from one to another account at our Federal Reserve. Along the way, people buying TS's get some trivial, fiat interest, of no consequence to a fiat currency issuer.

3) The dominant goals of fiscal & monetary policy in a fiat currency system are:
..
a) don't have so much currency circulating that we cause inflation
(seen any NET inflation recently?)
..
b) don't have so little currency circulating that a growing population
experiences deflation (what we're currently seeing, overall).

Everything else falls under the heading of controlling graft, corruption and sharing of misinformation - which we're definitely seeing a LOT of the past 39 years. It's scarcely to be believed how poorly informed our electorate has become, about it's OWN, public operations. Tom Jefferson & John Adams would be appalled!

4) Why do we even bother selling Treasury Reserves? It's actually simply a habit left over from the long-ago gold-std days. The ONLY function of Treasury Reserves - since 1933 - is to fulfill bankers obsession with double-entry bookkeeping practices. Treasury Securities are sold ONLY to drain Banking Reserves from the Federal Reserve accounts of private banks. It's that simple.

"The Treasury tax and loan account system was designed as a mechanism for minimizing the dislocations on bank reserves and the money market arising out of the sizable and irregular transfers between the Government and the public."
Treasury tax and loan accounts and Federal Reserve open market operations

TTL Note Accounts and the Money Supply Process

Those wanting a primer on how a modern currency system works should read Warren Mosler's little Dick & Jane money book for citizens, or the many articles by Bill Mitchell, Randall Wray or Stephanie Kelton, etc, etc.

Maybe someone could even get Paul Craig Roberts to do a book review on Warren Mosler's book?  If PCR learns to read more widely, maybe Timmy the Mole could too?  Even some President of the USA?  Sky's the limit folks.  One little ounce of shared knowledge could set us free.