James Rickards recently published The Road to Ruin: The Global Elites' Secret Plan for the Next Financial Crisis.Interesting not because of Jim Rickards, but rather for what Brian has to say.
If you raise the minimum wage, the increased income to those with jobs will also boost labor demand indirectly (somehow, activist and businessman Nick Hanauer figured this out when a whole lot of econ-trained think-tankers missed it!).Anyone familiar with MMT would not have missed it either.
The actual cost of the bomb is unknown. The actual cost of the program isn’t publicly available because the Mother of All Bombs, officially known as GBU-43 or the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB), is manufactured by the military and not a private defense company.
In fact, the Air Force doesn’t even keep track of the per unit cost, nor the cost of the program as a whole, because it is not manufactured privately.
“We don’t have a cost per unit” for the MOAB, Air Force spokesperson Ann Stefanek told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “These munitions were produced in-house so we don’t have a standard procurement cost associated with them.”
The Air Force mostly used existing technologies and hardware for the first MOAB prototypes and never contracted out the full production of the bomb, so they did not need to itemize and add the cost of each weapon component, Stefanek told TheDCNF.
Many reports Thursday, including USA Today, the Washington Examiner, CNBC and others, claimed the MOAB cost $314 million to develop, citing a 2011 Los Angeles Times report.
The cost estimates in that article, however, only refer to the cost of the Air Force’s biggest bunker busting bomb, the 5,300 pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), or GBU-57, which is built by private defense contractor Boeing Company.Look ma, no accounting!
Ecuador’s economic collapse and social explosion was similar to Greece’s a few years later. But in 2006, after nine presidents in ten years, the Ecuadoran people elected Rafael Correa, who was no capitulating Greek Syriza Prime Minister Tsipras or Berrnie Sanders. Correa’s government carried out programs that peoples in progressive social movements have advocated throughout the West, if not the world. Ecuador provides an example for what Greece could have done when its crisis hit, if it had a firm anti-neoliberal, anti-imperialist leadership....
Ecuador’s Citizens Revolution, not a socialist revolution as in Cuba, arose from a popular repudiation of neoliberalism and neocolonialism, similar to Chavista Venezuela and Evo’s Bolivia. It shows what can be accomplished with social programs and infrastructure investments when national wealth is redirected to benefit the majority instead of the 1%, while still confined in a capitalist system.As long as a capitalist system remains in place, those gains are tenuous and likely only temporary, as in Brazil.
When US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was telling the Russians and the US state press yesterday to stop hacking into American politics, sitting beside him was a former US Navy signals officer and lawyer named Margaret Peterlin (lead image, red circle). Peterlin’s job for the last two years was managing a Boston company specializing in cyber warfare weapons, including the latest in US computer programmes to mimic foreign hackers and convince US targets they have been hacked by Russians. Peterlin was also an advisor to Donald Trump during the presidential transition. Her targets then included Hillary Clinton and her campaign organization....Dances with Bears
The Shadow Brokers—the mysterious person or group that over the past eight months has leaked a gigabyte worth of the National Security Agency's weaponized software exploits—just published its most significant release yet. Friday's dump contains potent exploits and hacking tools that target most versions of Microsoft Windows and evidence of sophisticated hacks on the SWIFT banking system of several banks across the world....Ars Technica
Back in 1990, William McEachern started editing a semiannual newsletter that he called "The Teaching Economist." Each issue had a handful of pithy article, with a heavy emphasis on concrete suggestions linked to actual experience. After 26 years and 52 issues, McEachern has decided to that the Spring 2017 issue, #52, will be the last. However, all the past newsletters are freely available online, and they offer many nuggets for teachers willing to mine the archives.
For his work as a teacher and textbook author, as well as in editing "The Teaching Economist," McEachern has earned the right to offer some lessons and myths. Here they are:Conversable Economist
Trump spoke of the need for a new economic model, and then recalled how protectionism is far from a bad word in US history; rather, it was seen as a means to promote manufacturing and build industry.
Trump said, “Like Henry Clay, we want to put our own people to work. […] “Clay was a fierce advocate for American manufacturing. He said that free trade would throw wide open our ports to foreign production without duties while theirs remained closed to us […] Clay said that trade must be fair, equal and reciprocal.”
Trump then went on to use the term “American System”, associated with the current of economic nationalism promoted by figures such as Alexander Hamilton, Clay and Henry Carey, champions of investment in industry and infrastructure, and protection against the free market claims of European empires, which sought to undermine American economic independence in order to defend their own pre-eminence.
“In explaining his American System, Clay argued that the sole object of the tariff is to tax the produce of foreign industry with a view of promoting American industry,” Trump said. “For too long our government has abandoned the American System.”...Consortium News
I honestly don’t get it. I’m sure I’m missing something. I am also sure, 100% sure, that, even if passage of the AHCA were to make it easier for the GOP.Angry Bear
The Russian government has increased the authorized capital of the Russian National Commercial Bank (RNCB) by 15 billion rubles ($264.8 million) to facilitate the implementation of investment projects in Crimea.
"The decision will allow the RNCB to ensure the implementation of major investment projects, the stable functioning of the credit and financial system, the satisfaction of business and population demand for quality banking and related financial products and services, will contribute to the growth of Crimea’s economy," a statement released by the Russian Cabinet on Thursday says.Sputnik International
Blink, and you missed Trump’s blistering, seamless transformation into a mainstream politician.
In the span of just a few hours, President Trump flipped to new positions on several core policy issues, backing off on no less than five repeated campaign promises....
How to rule a country which is a target of war by the mad figurehead of a military junta in another country?Dances with Bears
This is not a historical question about Joseph Stalin’s options in August 1939, before he and Adolph Hitler decided on the time-buying ruse known as the German–Soviet Non-aggression Pact. Nor is this a current question about Bashar al-Assad and Syria, nor about Kim Jong-un and North Korea.
It’s the question President Vladimir Putin is obliged to ask about Russia’s options facing a US regime in which, as the Kremlin now acknowledges, a military junta has installed itself behind President Donald Trump. “We have seen this all before”, Putin declared yesterday… .
Officials working at the NSC, State Department, and Department of Defense "are not happy that Jared is so powerful in foreign policy," said one White House official. "They are expected to implement the president's agenda, but have no input or ability to get ideas in front of Jared. It's a one-man show and that's creating a lot of frustration."
The installation of Dina Powell, a confidant of Kushner's wife Ivanka, to the NSC is said to have been orchestrated by Kushner in order to solidify his power over the foreign policy organization, sources said....
Kushner, in many ways, has even overshadowed McMcaster, who sources described as seeking to avoid infighting in the White House. This has only minimized his power on the NSC, officials said.Who's in charge here anyway?
I've been reading The Nobel Factor: The Prize in Economics, Social Democracy, and the Market Turn by Avner Offer, Gabriel Söderberg, an interesting critique of the use of the Nobel Prize to undermine the Welfare State, essentially by conservative groups in Sweden, that were influential within the Central Bank (Riksbank), that disliked the Social Democratic policies in place in the 1960s.…My comment on section of the post on laws. Economists need lose the term "law." There are no "laws of economics," or any other social science, that are comparable the laws of nature discovered in the natural science, owing to the differences in subject matter. There are no "laws of history," and economics is historical — regardless of how much formalists would like to believe otherwise.
I expect the Schulz effect to fizzle out before September. German social-democrats are on the same trajectory as their European comrades. They become a splinter party, trying to be progressive with a neoliberal mind set. The Netherlands, France, Greece, and (probably) soon Spain, depending on which leadership the party choses, show that the progressive left will reorganize along new lines.econoblog 101
China will impose sanctions on North Korea if Pyongyang carries out a nuclear test, South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper said Wednesday citing a senior Chinese diplomat currently on a visit to South Korea.
"Among the restrictive measures currently under the consideration is the suspension of the deliveries of fuel and other goods, as well as the deportation of North Korean citizens working in China," the paper quoted Wu Dawei, China’s special representative for Korean Peninsula Affairs, as saying.
Talking over phone with US President Donald Trump on Wednesday, Chinese leader Xi Jinping reaffirmed Beijing's commitment to the peaceful resolution of the Syrian crisis.|Sputnik International
President Donald Trump declined to give top adviser Steve Bannon a vote of confidence during a New York Post interview published Tuesday, in which he also said the U.S. was not headed toward a ground war in Syria.…
When asked Monday by Post columnist Michael Goodwin if he still had confidence in Bannon, Trump didn’t exactly give a ringing endorsement: “I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late. I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didn’t know Steve. I’m my own strategist and it wasn’t like I was going to change strategies because I was facing crooked Hillary.”...
In the same interview, Trump told Goodwin that, despite last week’s airstrike, U.S. policy toward Syria has not changed. “We’re not going into Syria,” Trump said. “Our policy is the same — it hasn’t changed. We’re not going into Syria.”...MarketWatch
The main pro-Trump news-site, Breitbart News, is getting predominantly negative reader-comments on its articles that relate to Russia and the war in Syria. Whereas the reporters who write the articles trumpet the Trump line, the leading reader-comments to those Trump-trumpeters, under “Sort by Best” (meaning that at the top are the comments that have the highest net number of up-marks from readers, which indicates that the given comment is shared by the largest number of the readership), are hostile toward Trump, and are disappointed in the site itself for its remaining pro-Trump on the given matter....Pretty amazing accomplishment in less than 100 days in office. But then, Trump does everything bigly.
"One of the many problems with a high leverage ratio stems from the flight to safety during periods of stress, which causes bank deposits to soar. Since 2008, while the U.S. economy has struggled, deposits have risen by $2.6 trillion, often with pronounced temporary spikes that remain on a bank's balance sheet for just a few weeks. A recent example of this occurred during the politically charged debt-ceiling crisis. At that time, deposits jumped by $73 billion, according to Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. data. Deposits provide crucial funding for all banks, but as deposits surge, bank leverage ratios drop. Worse, sudden changes in deposit flow make banks' leverage ratios volatile. Most banks simply manage this volatility by staying well above the current leverage ratio requirements. That is, they are generally over-capitalized."
As the U.S. mainstream media hails President Trump’s missile strike on Syria, there has been almost no attention to either the truth about its justification or the myriad of laws violated in its execution, writes Marjorie CohnSee you in the dock.
Wang Guanxiong, a venture-capital investor, also posted his disapproval of the company on Weibo, saying, “Overselling is the responsibility of the airlines. Why was it an Asian who got beaten? This is purely racial discrimination…boycott United Airlines.”...Breitbart News
