To the Iranian government: If you want to stay in the oil business leave America and our allies alone and stop being the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world.— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) January 3, 2020
Crude exports surged by 1.065 mbd to 4.462 mbd, a record. Product exports were down 57k bpd to 5.672 mbd. The combined crude and product export total was 10.134 mbd, a new record.
Things Have Changed - New Terminals Boost Corpus Christi Crude Oil Exports - RBN Energy https://t.co/qF0kyYKSCD— MidstreamEnergy News (@MidstreamNews) January 3, 2020
Corpus Christi exports are increasing at a rapid rate. From January through August of 2019, Corpus volumes averaged just 532 Mb/d on a monthly basis, according to ship-tracking data from RBN’s Crude Voyager report. Since September, however, that monthly average has skyrocketed to 1.24 MMb/d. And in the past four weeks, export volumes out of the port have been 1.6 MMb/d, 1.536 MMb/d, 1.65 Mb/d and — for the week ending December 27 — 1.257 MMb/d, for an average of ~1.5 MMb/d (top of the right-most bar stack in Figure 1). Those numbers are truly astonishing,
This is exactly what the Fed began doing in September with its "temporary" open market operations. https://t.co/zOnrTFvlq8
— Luke Gromen (@LukeGromen) January 4, 2020
Iran never won a war, but never lost a negotiation!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2020
Theory:— Anas Alhajji (@anasalhajji) January 4, 2020
1- Those who have been following me for awhile would recall my tweets about attacks on oil tankers and Saudi oil facilities in which I argued that rogue elements in the Iranian regime do not want any hint of negotiations between the US and Iran,
Next
Iran is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets as revenge for our ridding the world of their terrorist leader who had just killed an American, & badly wounded many others, not to mention all of the people he had killed over his lifetime, including recently....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2020
In my previous post, I used a rhetorical device which I think leftists should copy. This is that we should use conventional, orthodox economics to reach radical conclusions.
The point here is that we don’t persuade people by telling them that their worldview is wrong and by demanding that they change the ideas of a lifetime. We are more likely to succeed by showing them that their ideas are consistent with things they might not have considered.
Here are some examples of what I mean.
- Fiscal policy. We don’t need MMT to argue for a significant fiscal loosening. Simple maths tells us that we can run big deficits and still see government debt fall as a share of GDP when real interest rates are negative, as they now are. And as Simon [Wren-Lewis] has said for years, the idea that we should use fiscal expansion when nominal interest rates are near zero is orthodox economics....We already see this is the retort that MMT offers nothing really new and that "we it knew it all the time."
Government deficits are normal and even necessary to the health of most economies – that’s according to one of the world’s most influential economists, Professor Stephanie Kelton, who will be a Visiting Professor at the University of Adelaide this month.
Professor Kelton is the Geoff Harcourt Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Adelaide and Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Stony Brook University, New York.
Senior economic adviser to Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, Professor Kelton has recently been listed by Bloomberg as one of the 50 people who defined 2019. She was previously chief economist on the US Senate Budget Committee (Democratic staff) in Washington DC.
Professor Kelton is one of the leading experts on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), a new approach to economics that is taking the world by storm.
MMT seeks to overturn the myth that currency-issuing federal governments face similar budget constraints to households, businesses and state governments. It explains that such governments are constrained in their spending decisions only by the risk of inflation, and never by the threat of insolvency. There are real constraints, but there are no purely financial ones.…University of Adelaide (Australia)
Warren Mosler, one of the founders of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has a white paper (link) that acts as a summary of MMT. It is brief (1300 words), and does meet the objective of offering an overview of the question "What is MMT?" for more advanced readers. The brief nature of the paper means that not everything is covered, so I would point out that it does not represent all of MMT.
In this article, I will summarise the contents of the white paper, discuss what I see as the main legitimate critiques of MMT that arise, and note some of my reservations about the paper. I will conclude with comments aimed at readers looking for an academic discussion. I expect to cover certain topics in follow up articles, such as a longer discussion of critiques, as well the implications of the discussion of the price level theory.
Another point to note about the white paper is that it is extremely terse. There may be a lot of information hidden under the use of catch phrases. Since I am familiar with the arguments, I can easily follow the logic, but others might be tripped up. All I can really do is add some background information....Bond Economics
Marx of course supports collective ownership of the means of production. But by this he does not mean simply transferring ownership deeds from private to collective entities, but rather ensuring that the working class owns and controls the means of production. He makes this clear in writing, “When one speaks of private property, one is dealing with something external to man. When one speaks of labour, one is directly dealing with man himself. This new formulation of the question already contains its solution” (MECW 6: 281). The abolition of private property is a step towards liberation only if it leads to the transformation of human relations at the point of production.
This is further underscored by Marx’s statement, “Private property is thus the product, the result, the necessary consequence of alienated labour” (MECW 3: 279). It may seem that Marx has it backwards. Does not private ownership of the means of production cause workers to become alienated from their labour? His point is that so long as workers are alienated from the very activity of labouring, an alien group or class must exist that compels them to labour. Private property in the sense of class property—of a class other than the workers controlling the means of production—will continue to exist so long as alienated labour exists.
This emphasis on the priority of social relations of production over property forms carries through all of Marx’s later work, especially Capital. He there reiterates his early criticism of the notion that collective or state-owned property represents the new society:Marx views "public" or "social" as the opposite of "private," that is, worker control and not state control, as is often misconstrued. This did get misconstrued in the supposedly necessary "dictatorship of the proletariat" as a transition phase, or perhaps better hijacked than misconstrued.
Capital … now receives the form the social capital … in contrast to private capital, and its enterprises appear as social enterprises as opposed to private ones. This is the abolition of capital as private property within the confines of the capitalist mode of production itself. (Marx 1981: 567)….
Some say it is far from unique to Korea. “I think there is a middle class crisis in all wealthy countries,” Pae Hee-kyung, who runs an educational institute near Seoul, told Asia Times.
Across the developed, post-industrial world, middle classes are under perceived siege from falling living standards, evaporating opportunities and rising wealth inequality. These trends have arisen against the backdrop of a globalizing world that distributes capital and jobs away from customary centers of investment, manufacturing and related prosperities.
Some pundits posit that these issues explain Brexit in the UK, the election of Donald Trump in the US and the protests of young Hong Kongers.The dream turns into a nightmare for many as capital flows to where it is most "productive" (read profitable). A big reason for profitability is the ability to socialize negative externality. In addition, economic value does not take social value into consideration. Is this one of the factors undermining the appeal of capitalism as a socio-economic subsystem of the larger social and ecological system?
"The University [of Chicago] is the best investment I ever made in my life." -- John D. Rockefeller
A different blog post today. On November 29, 2019, I sat down with my friend Warren Mosler in Newcastle, Australia while he was on his more or less annual visit to see us. We decided to film a conversation we had about the origins of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), how we came to it, the current state of MMT and future trends, including being part of the narrative surround the Green Transition. You will hear our concern about how the work we put in place at the outset is now being used in popular debates as well as other anecdotes. We consider the recent YouTube debate that Warren participated in in Italy and clear up the misunderstandings that followed that episode. We provide our own perspective on the way the GND debate is unfolding. I hope you find the 38 minute video that follows interesting.
The conversation goes for 38 minutes and 42 seconds.
President Trump Announces Delegation for Davos Worldwide Economic Forum Conference… https://t.co/yGtdmXCK1G pic.twitter.com/9etvoT2zcX
— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) January 2, 2020
Greece now has the world’s strongest manufacturing sector, based on indexes of manufacturing activity https://t.co/sdNAZeGpvV
— Real Time Economics (@WSJecon) December 31, 2019
2004: "secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs, warns major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain plunged into 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine & widespread rioting will erupt across world." https://t.co/wFcNNKU5dg— Mollie (@MZHemingway) December 31, 2019
Year-End Repo "Crisis" Ends With A Whimper Amid Massive Liquidity Glut https://t.co/3ux954NLOz— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 31, 2019
