Wednesday, June 24, 2020
Moon of Alabama — Pompeo's UN Move Against Iran Will Fail. Why Is He Still Pressing It?
Propaganda ploy for US domestic consumption pre-election. Mike Pompous Mike is likely preparing for his own run in the future.
Moon of Alabama
Pompeo's UN Move Against Iran Will Fail. Why Is He Still Pressing It?
Also
Zero Hedge
Pompeo Mocked For Saying Iranian Jets Could Strike "Asia" Through "One Way" Flights
Tyler Durden
Modern Monetary Theory: Can the Government Just Print Money? — Neal Farmer
Yes, the government can just issue currency — as long as it doesn't lead to demand that outstrips supply. Then inflationary pressure will build up. Generally, though, the economy is not running at capacity, and there are idle resources going to waste.
Government has the fiscal capacity to put those idle resources to use. For example, with a universal job guarantee that offers work (job matching) at a living wage plus benefits to anyone willing and able to work, actual full employment (less transitional) is possible to achieve.
Investor Observer
Modern Monetary Theory: Can the Government Just Print Money?
Neal Farmer
Explaining China’s Economic Resilience — Zhang Jun
It is naive to believe that forced technological decoupling, trade sanctions, or forced changes to global supply chains will put an end to China’s future economic expansion. If critics are too short-sighted to see this, it will be their loss.Project Syndicate
Explaining China’s Economic Resilience
Zhang Jun | Dean of the School of Economics at Fudan University and Director of the China Center for Economic Studies, a Shanghai-based think tank
Bill Mitchell — MMTed Q&A – Episode 4
Here is Episode 4 in our weekly MMTed Q&A series.Bill Mitchell – billy blog
MMTed Q&A – Episode 4
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia
Looking At Some MMT Criticism — Brian Romanchuk
Work is proceeding on my "MMT primer" manuscript. One chapter I am working on (in parallel with the labour market analysis) are a discussion of what I view as serious objections to MMT as a theory. Although I want to finish off that chapter later, I am adding to it as I run into interesting criticisms. I discuss a couple of recent entries in this article. Although I do not want to derail my book with lengthy discussions of MMT critiques that are coming from every random direction, I also want to have at least some quotations of critics so that my comments are not viewed as attacks on straw men....Bond Economics
Looking At Some MMT Criticism
Brian Romanchuk
Modern Monetary Theory — Rebecca Orians
What we are up against. Unfortunately, this is where a lot of the public is on the issue. It doesn't get much worse, right down to the Fed being a private corporation and "taxpayers on the hook."
The Advertiser-Tribune
Modern Monetary Theory
Rebecca Orians
Tiffin
Tiffin
Tuesday, June 23, 2020
Zero Hedge — China Launches Final Beidou Satellite To Challenge America's GPS
Competition is a good thing, right?
U.S. Shale Has Lost $300 Billion In 15 Years — Nick Cunningham
The U.S. shale industry peaked without ever making money. Over the past decade and a half, the shale industry totaled $300 billion in net negative cash flow, wrote down another $450 billion in invested capital, and saw more than 190 bankruptcies since 2010, according to a new report from Deloitte. The U.S. shale industry more than doubled oil production over the past half-decade, a phenomenal increase in output. But “the reality is that the shale boom peaked without making money for the industry in the aggregate,”.…Oilprice
U.S. Shale Has Lost $300 Billion In 15 Years
Nick Cunningham
Also at Oilprice
U.S. LNG Exports Crash By More Than 50%
Charles Kennedy
India awakens to hidden charms of RIC — M. K. Bhadrakumar
The RIC process as such is not the focal point here but the strange coincidence of the immediate backdrop of India-China border tensions. The RIC process ought have evolved over time as a dynamic vector of India’s foreign policy. But that never happened.
Several reasons can be attributed to it, but principally, there are four factors:
India is not a great team player and feels self-confident while pursuing its interests via bilateral channels;
India is wary of giving any impression that it is ‘ganging up’ with two great ‘revisionist’ powers in the US’ crosshairs on global chessboard — Russia and China;
India feels constrained in the Russia-India-China triangle due to its troubled relationship with China; and, most important,India Punchline
India is intensely conscious that Washington regards the RIC as a hostile entity, which could weaken or undermine the American strategies in Asia and globally; a fully-loaded RIC is not an option for India given its manifest alignment with the anti-China ‘Quad’ platform....
India awakens to hidden charms of RIC
M. K. Bhadrakumar | retired diplomat with the Indian Foreign Service
Bannon on US University STEM Education
Turd world brain drain policy destroying opportunity for US students even at the land-grants...
Bannon: We want all countries to be great — that doesn't happen through an imperial talent suck by the US, particularly in STEM. Competition from full-paying foreign students, workers disadvantages minority Americans.#WarRoomPandemic
— War Room: Pandemic ☣️ (@WarRoomPandemic) June 23, 2020
👉https://t.co/HuZDFNTwiv pic.twitter.com/s7jsuGAOBW
Bill Mitchell – The Powell Memo Play in Australian higher education
The Powell Manifesto aka the – Attack on American Free Enterprise System – was a memo sent on August 23, 1971 to the US Chamber of Commerce by lawyer, Lewis Powell, who had been hired by the Chamber to craft a strategy to restore the dominant position of corporate America, which had felt diminished by the gains made by workers and citizens from social democratic policies. The dominant narrative in the late 1960s was focused on the so-called ‘profit squeeze’, which related to the redistribution of national income towards wages as a result of various government policies which increased workers’ protection, used taxation and spending as a redistributive vehicle, grew public services and infrastructure. Powell produced a path to reverse these gains by workers and citizens, in general, and ensure that corporate interests were dominant in public decision making. Conservative forces are still using it as a blueprint for their agendas. The recent decision by the Australian government to divert university students out of humanities and social science courses is a classic application of the blueprint.The Powell Memo is a neoliberal manifesto. Neoliberalism is the political theory holding that capitalism is the economic system of democracy and that capital should be favored by government over labor because capital accumulation is the basis for economic growth. "A rising tide lifts all boats," this also benefits labor more than favoring labor, which limits profits and therefore investment, and thereby stunts growth.
I analysed the Powell Manifesto in this blog post – The right-wing counter attack – 1971 (March 24, 2016).After writing his famous memo, Lewis F. Powell, Jr. was subsequently nominated and confirmed as became a justice of the US Supreme Court. He served on the court from 1971 until he retired in 1987.
Bill Mitchell – billy blog
The Powell Memo Play in Australian higher education
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia
The Powell Memo Play in Australian higher education
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia
Hellzapoppin' in full color | Colorized with DeOldify
I loved Lindy Hop, Rock n' Roll never came close. Some great jazz here too.
Why some physicists really think there's a 'mirror universe' hiding in space-time
What happens if you turn space-time upside-down?
A parallel universe going in reverse.
This universe that’s inside the “second cone” is too far down space-time for us to see. Time might seem to run backward there from our reference frame, Learned said. But beings in that universe would still see cause coming before effect, just like we do in ours. Time runs away from the Big Bang in that universe, just like it does in ours. "Away from the Big Bang" in that universe is the opposite direction from the direction of time in our universe. but it doesn't run "backward" in the way we might imagine.
The details of how the CPT-symmetric universe leads to a 480 PeV neutrino are tricky — so tricky, Learned said, that few physicists beyond Boyle and his team understand them at all.
"But these guys are not nutcases," he said. "They're respected members of the field and they know what they're doing. Whether all of that complicated field theory is correct or not, I can't say."
LiveScience
Why some physicists really think there's a 'mirror universe' hiding in space-time
The details of how the CPT-symmetric universe leads to a 480 PeV neutrino are tricky — so tricky, Learned said, that few physicists beyond Boyle and his team understand them at all.
"But these guys are not nutcases," he said. "They're respected members of the field and they know what they're doing. Whether all of that complicated field theory is correct or not, I can't say."
LiveScience
Why some physicists really think there's a 'mirror universe' hiding in space-time
Chinese TV shows with strong women characters strike a chord with contemporary female audiences
Recent shows including ‘The Romance of Tiger and Rose’ and ‘We Are All Alone’ advocating women’s empowerment are finding large audiences in China
Postmodernism takes China with a storm.
In the recent Chinese fantasy period drama series The Romance of Tiger and Rose, women are the stronger sex. They scold men for courting attention by showing off their legs, and male children are looked down upon and considered useless. In this ancient matriarchal society, men are not allowed to study or hold official positions. The whole premise of the show is the reversal of gender roles as we know it – and the audience in China just couldn’t get enough of it when it aired exclusively on Tencent Video between May 18 and June 1, racking up 1 billion views.
SCMP
Chinese TV shows with strong women characters strike a chord with contemporary female audiences
Monday, June 22, 2020
The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory Primer (Book Review) — Ted Stamas
SummaryNot yet convinced but interested. Sees difficulty in passing policy based on use of policy space chiefly because the electorate is deficit and debt adverse (after years of being exposed to the conventional wisdom and fear-mongering).
- Primer on Modern Monetary Theory.
- Useful to understand Modern Monetary Theory and economics in general.
- Concept leans to the Socialist and Utopian side of the ledger.
The post is interesting, too, in that it is the first I have encountered that is somewhat mid-range. The reaction is generally love it or hate it.
Seeking Alpha
The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory Primer (Book Review)
Ted Stamas
Kohler hearts MMT — David Llewellyn-Smith
The MMT meme again.
Macro Business
Kohler hearts MMT
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super.
Job guarantee would ensure Uber Eats and Deliveroo workers eat too — David Joy
We need a government-funded program to guarantee a job to anyone who wants one. The wage level of these "job guarantee" jobs should be set at a genuinely liveable wage. This would provide an effective minimum wage, but one enforced through workers themselves rejecting offers below the job guarantee level rather than through porous legal mechanisms.How could we possibly afford this?
If we drop misleading mainstream economics frames and use a modern monetary theory (MMT) lens, then it becomes clear. We can afford this in the same way that governments have always been able to afford to ramp up spending during wars and other crises.
National governments with their own currency are currency issuers, not currency users. The rest of us are the latter and must earn before we spend. However, currency-issuing federal governments can literally never run out of Australian dollars. They can run out of things to spend them on, but not while unemployment and underemployment remain high....The MMT meme again!
Independent Australia
Job guarantee would ensure Uber Eats and Deliveroo workers eat too
David Joy | adjunct lecturer at the University of Adelaide and academic head at Kaplan Business School
The Deficit Myth — Mark Dempsey
Economist Stephanie Kelton’s new book about Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) explains the fundamental difference between governments that are currency issuers and households that are currency users. Rather than “tax and spend”—the household pattern—MMT says people need dollars to pay those taxes, so government must spend them first before it can ask for them to return in taxes. It’s not “tax and spend,” it must be “spend first, then retrieve some dollars in taxes.”This is exactly the right lede in explaining basic MMT. Conflating the currency issuer with currency users is the foundation of the deficit myth, as well as phobia about the public debt.
LA Progressive
The Deficit Myth
Mark Dempsey, former Realtor and member of a Sacramento County Planning Advisory Council
What Did Ancient Rome Look Like? (Cinematic Animation)
Breathtaking!
The Romans must have felt their civilisation was very modern and would last forever.
The Romans must have felt their civilisation was very modern and would last forever.
Berlin in July 1945 (HD 1080p color footage)
The Destruction of War
You can only watch it on YouTube, click on the link in the box.
Bill Mitchell – The French inferiority complex
Bill Mitchell – billy blog
The French inferiority complex
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia
The “Intellectual Dark Web,” explained: what Jordan Peterson has in common with the alt-right
A controversial New York Times article describes several popular white intellectuals as marginalized “renegades.”
What is the Intelectual Dark Web? It is a politically diverse movement, but mainly it is about right-wingers who don't like postmodernism. Centuries of dominant white male rule are coming to an end, and they don't like it.
Members of the intellectual dark web want to be at the center of intellectual debate. But the center has shifted.
To understand the unhappiness of dark web intellectuals, you have to go back in time. The past few years have seen extraordinary changes in how left-wingers, liberals, and liberal centrists understand themselves. But go back a bit further and marriage equality for gay people was a controversial issue, and women’s rights and the status of African Americans in American life were the targets of intellectually lazy speculation.
Precisely because we have changed so much, we have forgotten how bad things used to be. For decades, contrarianism on questions of race and gender — ranging from opposition to certain feminist projects or to affirmative action, to flirtation with the idea that black culture and even black brains were intrinsically inferior — was part of the intellectual mainstream of the center. Andrew Sullivan published an entire issue of the New Republic devoted to presenting, and debating, Charles Murray’s claim that black people were, on average, less intelligent than white people.
The “Intellectual Dark Web,” explained: what Jordan Peterson has in common with the alt-right
Sunday, June 21, 2020
The Dangerous Myth of 'Taxpayer Money' — Raúl Carrillo & Jesse Myerson
“There is no such thing as public money, only taxpayer money.” — Margaret Thatcher, 1983
Splinter
The Dangerous Myth of 'Taxpayer Money'
Raúl Carrillo & Jesse Myerson
Millions Are Unemployed. Crises Abound. Is It Time To Guarantee Public Service Jobs? — Alexander C. Kaufman
The environment is degrading, an aging population needs care, and wages are stagnant. And that was before COVID-19. A job guarantee could address it all.
“Is there a limit to how much we can care for each other?”HuffPost
That’s the radical question at the heart of economist Pavlina Tcherneva’s timely new book, ”The Case for a Job Guarantee,” due to be published this month....
Millions Are Unemployed. Crises Abound. Is It Time To Guarantee Public Service Jobs?
Alexander C. Kaufman
The debt deception — Peter May
...why would the government borrow from a private bank when, in the form of the Bank of England, it actually owns its own?
If we persist in the idea that asking the Bank of England to create money puts us in debt, then given its only shareholder is the government we are actually in debt to ourselves – and that is no debt at all.
And logic dictates that if you are not indebted you do not have anything to pay back.Progressive Pulse
The debt deception
Peter May
What’s Holding Back A Full Recovery In Oil Demand — Tsvetana Paraskova
- Odds of a V-shaped recovery in oil demand are shrinking.
- Demand for jet fuel will continue to drag on global oil demand for at least another two years.
- Permanent changes in lifestyle and possible reduced commuting in developed economies could structurally reduce demand for oil products.
Demand for energy is a pretty good barometer of economic activity.
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