Peter Martin — Loan repayments destroy credit money. Right? Wrong. They don’t.

It is important to distinguish between the IOU of the borrower held by the bank when the loan is issued, which is indeed destroyed on repayment of the loan and the credit money issued by the bank, which is not destroyed.

Modern Monetary Theory: Real Economics
Loan repayments destroy credit money. Right? Wrong. They don’t.
Peter Martin

Post Keynesian Conference Goes Live Tonight

The 12th International Post Keynesian conference, cosponsored by the University of Missouri–Kansas City, Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, and Levy Institute, with support from the Ford Foundation, begins this evening at UMKC with a keynote by Bruce Greenwald. The full schedule for the conference can be accessed here.…

Multiplier Effect
Post Keynesian Conference Goes Live Tonight
Michael Stephens

There is no lending solution to an income problem

Working people need more income, not more debt. Yesterday’s release of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data revealed that lending to African-Americans slipped to 4.8 percent in 2013 from 5.1 percent in 2012, while whites are taking a bigger chunk of the mortgage market-- 70.2 percent ofborrowers last year, and 69.9 percent of borrowers in 2012. While this new information is terrible and unsurprising, I fear that it could lead to a renewed push for weakening of lending standards, under the banner of expanded credit opportunity.

In my experience as an intern in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Office of Community Affairs, I regularly interacted with advocates from community, religious, ethnic, and consumer protection groups. They were all lovely people who were smart, passionate about what they did, and tough as hell. The success, and even the existence of the CFPB is testament to their ability to stand up against powerful banking lobbyists, who were usually paid much more than them. And while I agreed or at least sympathized with most of what these folks advocated, there was one issue where I found their means to be questionable. 

While I think the ends  that they were advocating for (equality of opportunity, empowering minority groups and the poor, fair lending) were all fantastic, the means that they advocated for often left me shaking my head, especially when it came to credit availability. The overriding thought process of these advocates was that minorities needed more access to credit, aka debt. Unfortunately, this often meant that these advocates supported weaker lending standards, and found themselves in the odd position of agreeing with banking industry lobbyists. This was especially true during the development of the Qualified Mortgage (QM) and Qualified Residential Mortgage (QRM) rules.  

However, I always felt that these folks were advocating for the wrong tools. The economic struggles of the poor and minorities stem from a lack of income, not a lack of debt. It is high levels of unemployment and deterioration of unions that have caused a collapse in incomes, and therefore creditworthiness, in these communities. Therefore, restoring income growth should be the primary focus of minority and consumer advocates.  Lowering lending standards to meet these lower incomes is certainly not the solution to this problem, as we already tried this experiment in the last decade. No amount of lent money can replace a lack of earned money, and deliberately weakening underwriting standards to paper over insufficient incomes is a fool’s errand. As we now know, it was minority groups, especially African-Americans, who lost, and have not recovered, the most wealth in the financial crisis, since most of their wealth was in their homes. And of course, at the height of the bubble, many fly-by-night originators were more than happy to push out ARM NINJA loans to minority communities, who were rarely able to make payments after the teaser periods expired. 

The political implications of this are even scarier. We already know how conservatives love to blame the entire financial crisis on the federal government incentivizing lending, (through the GSE's and Community Reinvestment Act) to “those people.” I fear that trying this experiment again will not only set minorities back, but it will further inflame the lunatic fringe that empowers the very politicians who make income inequality worse.

As far as I know, the MMT community is the only one that clearly elucidates the relationship between national spending, incomes, lending, and debt. I think it’s vital that the ethnic/community/consumer groups come to fully understand MMT and the stock/flows that we describe. Without it, they may continue to walk down the beaten path, and over the cliff once again. 

Whoops: Caroline Wozniacki forgot to pick up her $1.45 million check at the U.S. Open

Revealing story at FoxSports here.

Turns out Wozniacki doesn't concern herself with finances, barely keeping track of the nearly $10 million a year she earns in endorsement deals with companies like adidas and Rolex, among others. 

"I never think about my brand," the 24-year-old Dane told WSJ. "I want to do well for myself and my sponsors...but I feel no pressure, because I don't play for the money. 

"I have enough to eat, buy nice shoes," Wozniacki said. "For me, it's about the tennis and the trophies. I'm not motivated by money."

This young lady is in the "rations" cohort of mankind vs. many others who remain in the "wages and debt" cohort.

She has worked herself into a position where she is doing what she wants to do (and seems to be very good at doing) and has all she needs; she has obtained what to her has become an income guaranty.

She is a "slave to Tennis" or a "Tennis warrior", content to slave/war for Tennis while receiving what to her are (very) robust rations as her means of subsistence and provision.

I would offer this as empirical evidence that, with the establishment of a universal income as a new economic policy, it would hardly result in "everyone would stop working".

Dmitry Sokolov-Mitrich — The Russia They Lost

Powerful confessional about the loss of American soft power, and really, the loss of America. Is the great experiment over? Has America morphed into the British Empire it won its own independence from?

This is a moving story of disappointment and even betrayal.

SLAVYANGRAD.org

The Russia They Lost
Posted by S. Naylor
Original article by Dmitry Sokolov-Mitrich
Translated by: Daniil Mihailovich
Edited by: S. Naylor

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard — Germany's Ukip threatens to paralyse eurozone rescue efforts

Trouble in Deutschland. Trouble in France. And trouble for the EZ.

The political climate in the eurozone’s two core states is now extraordinary. A D-Mark party is running at 10pc in the latest polls in Germany, while the Front National’s Marine Le Pen is in the lead in France on 26pc with calls for a return to the franc. One more shock would test EMU cohesion to its limits.

It may be the rising right that bring down the monetary union.

Telegraph
Germany's Ukip threatens to paralyse eurozone rescue efforts
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Noah Smith — Will lack of tax hikes crash the Japanese economy?

Hyperinflation seems to be in the air.

So what [Adam] Posen is saying is essentially that debt monetization will lead international investors to fear hyperinflation - which really does kill stocks. I'm very, very suspicious of this, because I think it's just a fact that no one really knows why or when hyperinflation happens. It's always possible that investors could get scared of hyperinflation and bolt.

But suppose Japan's debt were half of what it is. Wouldn't it still be the case that investors could get scared of monetization-induced hyperinflation and bolt at any moment? What level of debt and monetization is reassuring to investors, and what level is scary? Posen has no evidence to support his contention that Japan is near a tipping point. But does anyone have evidence? Can anyone?

Noahpinion
Will lack of tax hikes crash the Japanese economy?
Noah Smith | Assistant Professor of Finance, Stony Brook University

I posted a link to Brian's post over at Noah's place.

Brian Romanchuk — A MMT View On The Theory Of Hyperinflations

The post "CMMT - Cate's Modern Monetary Theory" (on Seeking Alpha; free registration required) by Vincent Cate attracted a fair number of comments on the Mike Norman Economics web site. In that post, he presents what he calls CMMT - Corrected Modern Monetary Theory - and he argues that this correction allows MMT to explain hyperinflation. One could probably argue that MMT - as well as mainstream economic theory - do not have standard models that deal with hyperinflation. But that is for the same reason that those bodies of thought do not have standard models to estimate the impact of barbarian incursions along the frontier. It is not to say that foreign incursions do not matter - as the Western Roman Empire can attest - but that such an event is not a serious concern for the industrial economies at present.

I will not attempt to deal with the mechanics of Vincent Cate's model. It appears to based on the quantity theory of money, and it is easy for the reader to validate that the quantity theory has little empirical support. Instead, I want to discuss the theory of hyperinflations.

Bond Economics
A MMT View On The Theory Of Hyperinflations
Brian Romanchuk

Joesph Stiglitz — "The U.S. will always pay its debt. Because it just prints the dollars."

Stiglitz: "The U.S. will always pay its debt. Because it just prints the dollars."

"Let me assure you the U.S. will always pay its debt. How do I know that? If you borrow money from the United States you get a piece of paper, a bond. And what does the paper say? We promise to pay, say a thousand dollars. How do I know the United States could always pay that? Because they just print those dollars. You know, you can imagine a temporary shortage of electricity and the printing press didn't work but apart from that it is inconceivable that we would not... we promise to pay you these little pieces of paper, you were foolish enough to accept that promise, and we will deliver those pieces of paper. But Greece can't deliver those pieces of paper. When it borrowed in drachma it could deliver those pieces of paper called drachma. But now it promises to pay in euros and it doesn't control the printing of the euros. That's done from Frankfurt. And so they can't get access to those euros. So in essence the euro created the potential for sovereign debt crises in Europe. A problem that had not been there before."

- Joseph Stiglitz, The Future of Europe, UBS International Center of Economics in Society, University of Zurich, Basel, January 27, 2014

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaRW5j...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_RcFK...

"The way the eurozone was created created the risk of a sovereign debt crisis. Because it meant that each individual country was borrowing in a currency that it didn't control. It was a borrowing, in a sense, like a foreign currency. United States will never have a sovereign debt crisis. We owe a lot of money. Actually, relative to our GDP more than Europe. [...] But why would the United States with all its debt never have a debt crisis? Because we promised to pay people in dollars. And we control the printing press of dollars. Some of the rating agencies don't fully understand this and I've tried to explain it to them. The only way we would not pay back our debt is if we had an electricity blackout for an extended period of time, something happened to our printing presses that we couldn't print dollars. But that's hard to believe that we couldn't solve that problem. So, the fact is that we will never have the kind of sovereign debt crisis that has plagued so many countries of Europe.

We all should have understood sovereign debt crises because the emerging markets and developing countries... that has been a fact of life... dozens of sovereign debt crises over the last thirty years since the era of liberalization began in 1980. More countries have had a crisis than have not had a crisis. And the point is they are inevitable consequence of borrowing in a currency that you don't control. But the currency [euro] is controlled from Frankfurt and the borrowing is done in individual countries. So, that is one of the things that was not, I think, fully appreciated at the time."

- Joseph Stiglitz http://bit.ly/1qs6De0 (mp3) @ 01:45:11 http://bit.ly/1lhxZ14 http://bit.ly/1fYTRz3

"Yes, I do think [the United Kingdom and the United States] deserve to keep their AAA rating. The likelihood of a default is so small and particularly in the United States because all we do is print money to pay it back. To me the notion of default is so absurd is that it is another reflection of the absurdity, the irrationality of the financial markets."

- Joseph Stiglitz http://bit.ly/181OUw0

Steve Keen — The overdue Copernican Revolution in Economics

This is the talk I gave at the first con­fer­ence of the Inter­na­tional Stu­dent Ini­tia­tive for Plu­ral­ism in Eco­nom­ics, held in the beau­ti­ful Ger­man town of Tue­bin­gen, Ger­many on Sep­tem­ber 19–21 2014.

I cover Min­sky, money, com­plex­ity, the role of debt in aggre­gate demand & aggre­gate sup­ply, and the eco­nomic cri­sis. I spoke too fast and cov­ered top­ics at too high a level for many of the under­grad­u­ate stu­dents in the audi­ence who are part of the rebel­lion against the dom­i­nance of eco­nom­ics tuition and research by Neo­clas­si­cal eco­nom­ics. I hope putting it up here gives those stu­dents and oth­ers a chance to “hit the pause but­ton” and go through my talk more slowly.

Steve Keen's Debtwatch
The overdue Copernican Revolution in Economics

Steve Keen | Professor and Head Of School Of Economics, History & Politics

Ankit Panda — China's Military May Have Gone 'Rogue' After All

Xi Jinping isn’t happy with the PLA’s chain of command, suggesting that he may lack complete control.

Possibly important.

The Diplomat
China's Military May Have Gone 'Rogue' After All
Ankit Panda

Elena Holodny — ROSENBERG: There's A Better Way To Trade Global Instability Than By Buying Gold

"Ordinarily, gold and commodities fare well in periods of global political tensions, but not this time, perhaps owing to the softness in domestic demand growth abroad. A better way to play the instability and stepped-up military expenditures may be through exposure to global defence stocks," Rosenberg writes.

Business Insider
ROSENBERG: There's A Better Way To Trade Global Instability Than By Buying Gold
Elena Holodny

Robert Parry — High Cost of Bad Journalism on Ukraine

The costs of the mainstream U.S. media’s wildly anti-Moscow bias in the Ukraine crisis are adding up, as the Obama administration has decided to react to alleged “Russian aggression” by investing as much as $1 trillion in modernizing the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal.

On Monday, a typically slanted New York Times article justified these modernization plans by describing “Russia on the warpath” and adding: “Congress has expressed less interest in atomic reductions than looking tough in Washington’s escalating confrontation with Moscow.”…

Russia has also announced its intention to beef up its nuclear arsenal. China won't be sitting on the sidelines just watching either.

Cold War II is here, along with a renewed arms race, and the military-industrial complex is celebrating and toasting their neocon partners for another job well  done.

Where I think Parry falls short is in apparently missing that the neocon objective all along has been regime change in Russia to a neoliberal regime that makes Russia an other US vassal. The objective now is "spontaneous" uprising in Russia and the US actively promoting it. John McCain lead the charge for regime change in the Ukraine and he has now shifted his focus to Russia and replacing democratically elected President Putin with a "democratic" uprising similar to the US backed and financed on that overthrew the democratically elected president of the Ukraine in a "democratic" uprising led by neo-Nazis. (But they were "our" neo-Nazis.")

This is dangerous ground. Russia is not the Ukraine, and Putin is forewarned.

Incidentally, right-wing conspiracy sites were calling this and documenting it many month before it happened, while the press and pundits on the left missed it.

Consortiumnews.com
High Cost of Bad Journalism on Ukraine

Robert Parry

Wounded Veterans: The One time We Can't Afford An Ounce Of Prevention? It Is Criminally Stupid To Allow This Neglect.

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

And it's worse than even that statistic implies. Much worse.

Yet that's how we repay those who serve their country .... anywhere EXCEPT Wall St.

Criminal or victim?

"Communities weigh how to deal with battle-scarred soldiers who do wrong after coming home."

??

What about those battle-oiled banksters who do continuous wrong BEFORE going home from the war on our own Middle Class? (And then argue for austerity, so that "their" embezzled currency doesn't "depreciate" in buying power.)

I better quit. I'm gonna unleash a string of un-deleted expletives.

Vincent Cate — CMMT - Cate's Modern Monetary Theory

This CMMT model is just a slight correction to MMT or Modern Monetary Theory. While they have #1,#2,#3 above they are not consistent in how they treat bonds and do not have #4,#5. They say all government spending is from new money but then also have the government spending money from bonds. They say all spending is from new money but also say new money is not spent to pay off bonds. These errors make standard MMT far more complicated and not match reality. In particular, hyperinflation really happens but in MMT there is no reason for it. They have to say that the cause of the hyperinflation of money is outside their theory of money. This is just silly. With this little fix hyperinflation is easily explained. So CMMT is a big improvement over MMT. CMMT also stands for Corrected Modern Monetary Theory. :-)

FYI

Seeking Alpha (free registration required)
CMMT - Cate's Modern Monetary Theory
Vincent Cate

Tony Wikrent — US elites beginning to realize there's a problem

There were two important articles in Foreign Affairs, the quarterly journal and associated website run by the Council on Foreign Relations.… 

The first article two weeks ago, "America in Decay," was written by Francis Fukuyama, the neo-conservative economics and political science professor whose 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man provided unceasing thrills and pleasure to USA elites by arguing that the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe marked not only America's victory in the Cold War, "but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."… 

The gist of Fukuyama's article is that it has turned out that Western liberal democracy is not the end point of human political development, and there seems to be more history in the offing, because it has been replaced by - holy unforeseen development, Batman! - oligarchy and plutocracy. Of course, Fukuyama does not use these words, but the idea is clear enough: his subtitle is "The Sources of Political Dysfunction."… 

But it gets even more interesting, because at the same time, another article appeared in Foreign Affairs, entitled Print Less but Transfer More. This one was written by Mark Blyth, a professor of international political economy at Brown University and author of Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea; and Eric Lonergan, a hedge fund manager living in London and the author of - what else? - Money. The gist of their article is pretty well captured by their subtitle - and no, I am not making this up - "Why Central Banks Should Give Money Directly to the People."… 

Make no mistake: the articles in Foreign Affairs are clear signs that USA elites are starting to worry that more and more of us are beginning to demand solutions that will, inevitably, have to either take away the wealth of the rich, or take away the power of the rich to create and allocate new money and credit.

Lots more than this. Read the whole thing. It contains a good critique of "Keynesianism"as fundamentally oriented to saving the capitalist class, to which Keynes belonged, from it own overreach. The world needs more.

real economics
US elites beginning to realize there's a problem
Tony Wikrent

Philip Pilkington — Is Economics a Science? Dogmatic Economics Vs. Reflective Economics

Meaning is contextual. Economics is a social science, therefore, its context is historical time. The only timeless laws in social science are tautologies (identities) that are empty of empirical content until interpreted semantically. This interpretation varies in applicability in different historical contexts, so that general descriptions and patterns held to be necessarily invariant do not hold over time. History is time-independent and non-ergodic.

Another way of putting this is that economic theory that claims to be timeless truth is utopian, idealistic and "Platonic." It is another instance of metaphysics spun from so-called self-evidence based on introspection. When it assumes the cloak of authority, its speculative metaphysics devolves into dogmatism.

Fixing the Economists
Is Economics a Science? Dogmatic Economics Vs. Reflective Economics
Philip Pilkington

Defining something as an X implies that the definition excludes this set from the set non-X. This involves specifying criteria for making the distinction. Generally speaking, saying that something is a science or is scientific implies that it it not something else than that, such as dogmatism based on authority, an ideology based on subjective values, or speculation based on claims of self-evidence by appeal to introspection. It is also a claim that the subject is not purely formal, that is, a branch of logic or mathematics.

Generally speaking, science involves claims having to do with discovering invariant patterns of actual events. There must be some way to connect the claims of science with actual events, that is to interpret theory and hypotheses semantically in such a way that claims are semantically true.

For social science, which includes economics, to be a science comparable to the natural sciences the behavior of whose subject matter is invariant across time, it would be necessary to discover time-invariant patterns of human behavior and to express this through operational definition that leaves no loose ends with respect to terminology.

Whether this is possible, we do not yet know. What we do know is where it has not been possible, and theorizing has failed either  semantically as an accurate representation of actual events or syntactically as a formal system that is well-formulated and internally coherent, that is, follows formation and transformation rules, e.g., adhering to operational definition.

The great promise at present is in the investigation of the brain and nervous system as the foundation of mental events and behavior. Cognitive science, molecular biology, and the application of quantum mechanics to consciousness are still in their infancy and the jury is still out on whether fundamental questions are solvable.

Discover Interview: Roger Penrose Says Physics Is Wrong, From String Theory to Quantum Mechanics

One of the greatest thinkers in physics says the human brain—and the universe itself—must function according to some theory we haven't yet discovered.… 

In your book The Emperor’s New Mind, you posited that consciousness emerges from quantum physical actions within the cells of the brain. Two decades later, do you stand by that?

 In my view the conscious brain does not act according to classical physics. It doesn’t even act according to conventional quantum mechanics. It acts according to a theory we don’t yet have. This is being a bit big-headed, but I think it’s a little bit like William Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of blood. He worked out that it had to circulate, but the veins and arteries just peter out, so how could the blood get through from one to the other? And he said, “Well, it must be tiny little tubes there, and we can’t see them, but they must be there.” Nobody believed it for some time. So I’m still hoping to find something like that—some structure that preserves coherence, because I believe it ought to be there.

When physicists finally understand the core of quantum physics, what do you think the theory will look like?I think it will be beautiful.

Penrose is saying that discovery is based on elegance. The objective of science is to provide the most economical explanation of aspects of the world that are precise, accurate, and conform to the appearances (Aristotle — "save the appearances").

Obviously, physics is a science although not yet comprehensively definitive. It is therefore possible that economics met the criteria of being a science and not a dogma, ideology or speculative metaphysics, at least in some areas. In other areas, theory has demonstrably failed. There has been a modicum of success in other areas. Unfortunately, some economists have tended to exaggerate success.

Probably the question to ask is to what degree economic methodology is scientific.

This would involve recognizing that there are different economic methods. This seems to be the crux of the issue, in that the mainstream asserts that the methodological debate is now over and they won, so other considerations are irrelevant.

This brings up the issue of how that claim justified scientifically, or is is dogmatic, based on authority? That's a debate the mainstream does not want to have based on observed performance. This record of failure — we are on the second round of the Treasury view in a second great depression following "the Great Moderation" — suggests the question as to whether or to what degree economics, is descriptive or performative, or normative, or rhetorical. This pertains especially to especially macroeconomics which serves as a "policy science."

Is economics purely theoretical and only of interest to theoreticians, or it does it have application to policy and management similar to physics and engineering, or biology and biochemistry to medicine? If so, how do the successes and failures compare across these fields?

Even philosophy has become more formalized, focusing more on formal logic, and more scientific in consulting cognitive science wrt to epistemology, for example. The history of economics can be viewed as the transition from its more philosophical phase in classical economics to its more formal and putatively more scientific turn with the introduction of mathematical modeling by Alfred Marshall and the development of physics-like neoclassical theory seeking to discover economic "general laws of motion." What has survived in the crucible of experience and what has perished. Is economics about to experience a revolution similar to quantum mechanics and relatively in a transition from analysis of non-complex systems to complex systems?

Argentina's Fernandez to meet billionaire investor Soros in New York

Looks like the INET organization may be coming into some more "money", story from Reuters via Yahoo! here.

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez on Monday will meet bondholder and billionaire financier George Soros, who is suing a U.S. bank caught in the middle of the country's latest debt default, a government minister said. 

The meeting comes as Fernandez's leftist government struggles to kick-start growth and contain runaway consumer prices after failing to complete a June interest payment to Soros and other holders of bonds restructured after a previous default. 

Argentina last week enacted a new law removing BNY Mellon as trustee and replacing it with a state-controlled bank in Buenos Aires. In an advertisement published in local papers on Monday, Argentina again demanded the U.S. bank "resign" as paying agent.

I don't see how it could be helpful to get rid of BNY as a 'paying agent' for a USD liability and replace it with an Argentine state bank...

It would seem to me that the US Fed could help by forcing a 3-way deal between the US Fed, the Argentine CB and any number of other CBs that are holding $Trillion of USD balances as official reserves... but I suppose this could be seen as violating so-called 'free market' libertarian principles so it doesn't happen

Libertarianism strikes again and the chaos-fest continues.

Lars P. Syll — Keynes vs. Wicksell on loanable funds theory

"The fundamental difference between Keynes and Wicksell and in general the supporters of the LFT [Loanable Funds Theory] lies in the specification of the consequences of the presence of bank money.…

In contrast, Keynes states that the spread of a fiat money such as bank money changes the structure of the economic system. He underscores this point by introducing the distinction between a real exchange economy and a monetary economy.…

Keynes notes that the classical economists formulated an explanation of how the real-exchange economy works, convinced that this explanation could be easily applied to a monetary economy. He believed that this conviction was unfounded …" — Giancarlo Bertocco

Lars P. Syll’s Blog
Keynes vs. Wicksell on loanable funds theory
Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Bill Mitchell — G20 meetings and structure part of the problem

The G20 structure is part of the problem and given its current ideological outlook will never be anything but.

It is just an excuse for well-paid officials, most of whom are being supported by the public purse, to swan around the world, wine and dine in opulent hotel and resorts, talk a bit, and do virtually nothing that delivers any benefits to people at large.

Like the IMF and the OECD, the whole institutional structure of the G20 should be abolished.

The fundamental problem is not economic ineptitude. It is oligarchy masquerading as liberal democracy. These leaders are just shills for the global ruling elite mouthing their lines from the neoliberal playbook. Sacking is too good for them given all the immiseration they have wrought delivering for the oligarchs.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog

G20 meetings and structure part of the problem

Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at the Charles Darwin University, Northern Territory, Australia

Any Idea How The "Economics" Discipline Missed 500 Years Of Bio/Anthro/Sociological Science?

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Not to mention 10,000 years of myth & religion, and +200,000 years of human cultural operations?

The Looming Death of [The Frankenstein Called Economics]*

Hint: It was never alive in the 1st place. That was just a lie big enough to sell to gullible & cowed peasants.

"The mainstream view that people are wholly self-interested economic actors denies our innate capacity for reciprocity, fairness, and moral responsibility."

Ya think? This is news? Where has this discipline BEEN the last 500 years? With it's head stuck somewhere where the sun don't shine?

My first guess is that orthodox economics evolved as a "court phenomenon" serving purely to curry gratitude from aristocrats interested in promoting their fantasy of a divine right to manage "their" peasants.

Orthodox Economics: a disciplined method of brown-nosing;

   The Devil's Evolving Dictionary



* Apparently, no one ever tried to make a Frankstein Man out of straw before. :( So the common folk didn't recognize it, until everything went up in flames .... repeatedly.

Of course, there's a competing theory about the sect called orthodox economics, even though the labels were changed to protect the criminal.

Scott Kaufman — Former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince says his mercenaries could have stopped ISIS if not for Obama

At the Maverick PAC’s annual conference Friday night, Blackwater founder and former CEO Erik Prince said it was “a shame the [Obama] administration crushed my old business,” which could have easily defeated the Islamic State, The Daily Beast reports.
Blackwater, Prince said, “could’ve solved the boots-on-the-ground issue. We could have had contracts from people that want to get there as contractors. You don’t have the arguments of U.S. active duty going back in there.” 

His mercenaries “could have gone in there and done it, and be done, and not have a long, protracted political mess that I predict will ensue.”…

He encouraged conference attendees to pressure their Republican representatives to fight for conservative values. “I want you to tell your congressman that we pay them to fight,” Prince said.

Out thugs are better than their thugs.

The Raw Story
Former Blackwater CEO says his mercenaries could have stopped ISIS if not for Obama

Scott Kaufman

Paul R. Pillar — Neocons Grow Frantic over Iran Progress

With an agreement on constraining Iran’s nuclear program within reach, Official Washington’s neocons are getting apoplectic about the need to rev up new animosities toward Iran, an approach not helpful to real U.S. security needs, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar notes.

Consortiumnews.com
Neocons Grow Frantic over Iran Progress

Paul R. Pillar | former CIA analyst and currently a visiting professor at Georgetown University for security studies

Joe Conason — Americans' Faulty Memory: Polls Show Majority Like GOP's Discredited War Policies

If the latest polls are accurate, most voters believe that Republican politicians deserve greater trust on matters of national security. At a moment when Americans feel threatened by rising terrorist movements and authoritarian regimes, that finding is politically salient -- and proves that amnesia is the most durable affliction of our democracy.

Stumbling toward war in Dumbfuckistan.

AlterNet
Americans' Faulty Memory: Polls Show Majority Like GOP's Discredited War Policies

Joe Conason

Peter Dorman — Why Paul Krugman Is Wrong about the Cost of Climate Protection, and Why it Matters

Who’s right, those who think that economic growth can’t coexist with protection of the climate, or Paul Krugman who says “saving the planet would be cheap and maybe even come free”? Alas, neither, but for different reasons.…

Econospeak
Why Paul Krugman Is Wrong about the Cost of Climate Protection, and Why it Matters

Peter Dorman, Professor of Political Economy, The Evergreen State College

Chris Dillow — Capitalism & The Low-Paid

Is capitalism compatible with decent living standards for the worst off*? This old Marxian question is outside the Overton window, but it's the one raised by Ed Miliband's promise to raise the minimum wage to £8 by 2020.…

Stumbling and Mumbling

Capitalism & The Low-Paid

Chris Dillow | Investors Chronicle

Heidi Moore — Brad DeLong, Tyler Cowen, Stephanie Kelton and Emanuel Derman on Why is Thomas Piketty's 700-page book a bestseller?

Thomas Piketty is a French economist whose Capital in the Twenty-First Century has swept American discourse. Four experts – Brad DeLong, Tyler Cowen, Stephanie Kelton and Emanuel Derman – take on why that is.

The Guardian
Why is Thomas Piketty's 700-page book a bestseller?

Heidi Moore

Lars P. Syll — The loanable funds fallacy

Keynes and Minksy answer Krugman and Mankiw.

Lars P. Syll’s Blog
The loanable funds fallacy
Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

AFP — Mikhail Khodorkovsky breaks political silence, saying he would lead Russia

The plot thickens. The West definitely wants regime change back to the pro-Western oligarchs and oligarchic "democracy." Grooming a replacement for Putin.

The former oil tycoon and adversary of president Vladimir Putin has launched a pro-European political platform from exile.

The former tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who spent a decade in jail after challenging the Kremlin, says he would be ready to lead Russia if called upon.
Khodorkovsky’s statement, at the launch of an online movement called Open Russia, appears to break his promise to steer clear of politics, which he made after being pardoned by president Vladimir Putin in December.

“I would not be interested in the idea of becoming president of Russia at a time when the country would be developing normally,” he was quoted as saying by Le Monde newspaper.

“But if it appeared necessary to overcome the crisis and to carry out constitutional reform, the essence of which would be to redistribute presidential powers in favour of the judiciary, parliament and civil society, then I would be ready to take on this part of the task.”
Open Russia is intended to unite pro-European Russians in a bid to challenge Putin’s grip on power.…

The Guardian

Mikhail Khodorkovsky breaks political silence, saying he would lead Russia

Agence France-Presse

Saker — Ukraine SITREP September 20, 23:34 UTC/Zulu: War or Peace?

Long but useful if you are following this.

The Vineyard of the Saker
Ukraine SITREP September 20, 23:34 UTC/Zulu: War or Peace?
Vineyardsaker