Sputnik — Pot Meet Kettle: Why Hayden's Attack on Trump Sounds Hypocritical

Former G.W. Bush-era NSA and CIA head Michael Hayden has joined the ranks of Trump's social media critics, tweeting that the president's "outrageous assault" on press freedom makes him feel like he's "wasted 40 years of [his] life." However, Hayden's record doesn't exactly inspire confidence in his newfound role as defender of the Constitution.…

The outpouring of support for George W. Bush's CIA & NSA chief — who oversaw torture, rendition, illegal domestic spying and an array of other evils — is so moving: "No, General Hayden, your career was not wasted!" https://t.co/Q1A2S7TT68— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 27, 2017

Sputnik International
Pot Meet Kettle: Why Hayden's Attack on Trump Sounds Hypocritical

Pat Lang — The end is in sight in Syria

Col. Lang wraps it up. Interesting comments, too.

Sic Semper Tyrannis
The end is in sight in Syria
Col. W. Patrick Lang, US Army (ret.)

At the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lang was the Defense Intelligence Officer (DIO) for the Middle East, South Asia and counter-terrorism, and later, the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. At the DIA, he was a member of the Defense Senior Executive Service. He participated in the drafting of National Intelligence Estimates. From 1992 to 1994, all the U.S. military attachés worldwide reported to him. During that period, he also briefed President George H. W. Bush at the White House, as he had during Operation Desert Storm.

Lang was also the head of intelligence analysis for the Middle East for seven or eight years at that institution. He was the head of all the Middle East and South Asia analysis in DIA for counter-terrorism for seven years. For his service in the DIA, Lang received the Presidential Rank Award of Distinguished Executive. — Wikipedia

See also

SouthFront
Interesting Statements Made During Meeting of Defense Ministers of Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition In Riyadh
lkb22

Pam and Russ Martens — A Private Citizen Would Be in Prison If He Had Citigroup’s Rap Sheet

Since its financial meltdown in 2008 and unprecedented bailout by the U.S. taxpayer, Citigroup (parent of Citibank) has been repeatedly charged by its Federal regulators with odious crimes against its pooled mortgage investors, credit card and banking customers, student loan borrowers, and for its foreclosure frauds. It has paid billions of dollars in fines for its past misdeeds while new charges pile up. In 2015, it became an admitted felon for participating in rigging foreign exchange markets. In short, Citigroup is a lawbreaking recidivist. If it were a mere human, it would be serving a long prison term. Instead, its fines for charges of egregious acts are getting smaller, not larger.

Last Tuesday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which typically has a good track record of holding the big Wall Street banks accountable for their misdeeds, imposed an unusually feeble fine against Citibank for a litany of abuses against student loan borrowers. The CFPB ordered Citi to pay $3.75 million in restitution and to pay a $2.75 million fine. When combined with the fact that the CFPB did not make Citibank admit to the charges, this amounts to a slap on the wrist to a serial lawbreaker. (See Citigroup/Citibank’s history of misconduct below.)

Adding further insult to the American public, the Board of Directors of Citigroup has kept the same CEO in place for more than five years as these serial abuses of the public trust piled up. Michael Corbat has been CEO of Citigroup since October 2012.

Wall Street On Parade
A Private Citizen Would Be in Prison If He Had Citigroup’s Rap Sheet
Pam Martens and Russ Martens

Michael Pettis — Why market liberalisation now may hurt China more

In the end, while standard macroeconomic reforms may work in theory -- albeit under an unrealistic set of assumptions -- they’ve never worked in practice. Rather than eliminating the controls that protect China from a financial crisis, leaders should confront their debt problem head-on and begin deleveraging.

For that to happen, it would help if the decision-making process were more, not less centralised. Only forceful action from the top can overcome the tremendously powerful vested interests that are blocking the redistribution of local-government wealth.

A more liberal China may be desirable in the abstract -- but not until a more controlled China gets a handle on its debt problems.

Today
Why market liberalisation now may hurt China more

Michael Pettis | Professor of Finance at the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University in Beijing

See also

While China's government debt remains contained, at 46.9 percent of GDP as per latest figures from the Bank for International Settlements, top policymakers have recently raised concerns about a sharp build-up in household debt.

Outstanding household consumer loans have surged close to 30 percent since the middle of last year and reached 30.2 trillion yuan as of October.

Outstanding yuan-denominated property loans amount to 31.1 trillion yuan and individual mortgage loans totals to 21.1 trillion yuan as of the third quarter of 2017, data from the People's Bank of China showed.

Yet, at the same time, China's economy is said to be held back by the traditionally high level of household saving, which is supposedly holding back restructuring from an investment-based economy to a consumption-based one.

CNBC
China's debt is growing at a faster pace despite years of efforts to contain it

Reuters

Bill Mitchell — Massive Eurozone infrastructure deficit requires urgent redress

The latest – EIB Investment Report 2017/2018 – published last week by the European Investment Bank tells anyone who cares to take those Europhile Rose Coloured Glasses off for just a second how deep the failure of the European policy making structures are and how long the negative impacts of those failures will resonate. This is the true ‘burden for our (their) grand kids’ sort of stuff. In claiming they had to run tight fiscal policy biased towards surpluses to avoid forcing the future generations to carry an unfair burden, these European policy makers and leaders have done exactly the opposite, as predicted – they have created an appalling future for their youth and their children to follow. The whole European monetary experiment is a failure and is beyond reform. It needs to be scrapped, national sovereignty restored and people within their own countries left, through democratic institutions to determine how the public sector operates in their best interests. The Troika technocrats should be led out to pasture. And, to the Europhile Left: take of your rose coloured glasses.

The actual issue is the availability of real resources in the present and for the future, access to which determines a society's standard of living.

The investment ratio is the proportion of Gross Domestic Product accounted for by Gross Capital Formation and indicates how much of the current production each nation is allocating to expanding productive infrastructure.

Potential GDP and hence longer-term growth is driven by capital formation. A nation that is not investing in its future productive capacity will see declining productivity growth, falling standards of living and leave its grandchildren materially deprived....

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Massive Eurozone infrastructure deficit requires urgent redress
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics, University of Newcastle, New South Wales, and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE)

Paul Robinson — The hunters become the hunted

UK Russiagate. More insanity. Paul Robinson takes it apart.

Irrussianality
The hunters become the hunted
Paul Robinson | Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa

Chris Dillow — The rich as heroes

Was Ayn Rand just the expression of a cultural syndrome and an amplification of the Horatio Alger myth?

Have new cultural myths been born to suit the historical transition from feudalism to liberalism, in the West at least? 

Are the conflicts between liberalism and traditionalism the conflict of different myths characteristic of incompatible worldview?

How is it that many conservatives find no contradiction between economic liberalism and social and political traditionalism?

Is economic liberalism just a variation of cultural traditionalism?

Stumbling and Mumbling
The rich as heroes
Chris Dillow | Investors Chronicle

See also

VOX
You're not imagining it: the rich really are hoarding economic growth

Dylan Matthews

Jonathon Cook - From an Open Internet, Back to the Dark Ages

Where are the politicians on the left and the right who believe in free speech who should be trying to stop the loss of our Net Neutrality?

RT and other non-western news sources in English provide a different lens through which we can view such important events, perspectives unclouded by a western patrician agenda.

They and progressive sites are being gradually silenced and blacklisted, herding us back into the arms of the corporate propagandists. Few liberals have been prepared to raise their voices on behalf of RT, forgetting warnings from history, such as Martin Niemoller’s anti-Nazi poem “First they came for the socialists”.

The existing rules of “net neutrality” are already failing progressives and dissidents, as the developments I have outlined above make clear. But without them, things will get even worse. If the changes are approved next month, internet service providers (ISPs), the corporations that plug us into the internet, will also be able to decide what we should see and what will be out of reach.

Much of the debate has focused on the impact of ending the rules on online commercial ventures. That is why Amazon and porn sites like Pornhub have been leading the opposition. But that is overshadowing the more significant threat to progressive sites and already-embattled principles of free speech.

ISPs will be given a much freer hand to determine the content we can can get online. They will be able to slow down the access speeds of sites that are not profitable – which is true for activist sites, by definition. But they may also be empowered to impose Chinese-style censorship, either on their own initiative or under political pressure. The fact that this may be justified on commercial, not political, grounds will offer little succour. 

Counterpunch

Jonathon Cook - From an Open Internet, Back to the Dark Ages

Kaivey - The BBC Accused of Spreading Fake News by Members of Parliament

The BBC has got into trouble for reporting the C14 Ukrainian neo-Nazi as just lovable rogues trying to protect their country. 

BBC LEGITIMISING NEO-NAZI HATE CRIMES IN UKRAINE

If the BBC carried a report portraying Neo-Nazi’s engaged in hate crime in London as lovable rogues turned to a good cause there would be outrage.  Yet that is what the BBC has done in a report on Ukraine entitled ‘C14 Group: hooligans who catch separatists’.   

An impartial journalist adhering to the BBC “editorial integrity” would have revealed that for all their denials and camouflage C14 are unreconstructed Hitlerites seeking legitimacy – BBC has shockingly assisted them. 

BBC portrays C14 as well-meaning youth who in a time of war are doing their civic duty protecting Ukraine’s sovereignty from supporters of Putin.  The assertion that the targets of C14 are “separatists” helping Putin is a convenient cover for violence consistent with their entire record of far right bigotry.   

https://ukrainesolidaritycampaign.org/2017/07/22/bbc-legitimising-neo-nazi-hate-crimes-in-ukraine/

PARLIAMENTARY LABOUR PARTY CHAIR CALLS FOR ACTION ON BBC REPORTING OF NEO-NAZI TERROR GROUP IN UKRAINE

John Cryer MP, the Chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party has joined calls for action against the far-right terror group C14 active in Kyiv, Ukraine. 

In an Early Day Motion submitted to the UK Parliament has called the BBC to account for its appalling reporting of the C14 terror group that have given legitimacy to its campaign of hate crimes.


https://ukrainesolidaritycampaign.org/2017/10/31/parliamentary-labour-party-chair-calls-for-action-on-bbc-reporting-of-neo-nazi-terror-group-in-ukraine/

The Real News - Europe's White Supremacists Have Powerful Allies

Pepe Escobar — Syria war, Sochi peace

Most of what lies ahead hinges on who will control Syria’s oil and gas fields. It’s Pipelineistan all over again; all wars are energy wars. Damascus simply won’t accept an energy bonanza for the US-supported SDF, actually led by the YPG.

And neither would Russia. Apart from Moscow holding on to a strategic eastern Mediterranean base, eventually Gazprom wants to be an investment partner/operator in a newly feasible Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline, whose main customer will be the EU. Beyond Sochi, the real – Pipelineistan – war has only just begun.

Asia Times
Syria war, Sochi peace

Pepe Escobar

Mathew Robane - Why Amazon Won’t Save Your Struggling Town

Mathew Robane says that many cities compete with each other by offering massive incentives to attract large corporations to set up businesses in their cities, but, he adds, when you do the math these financial incentives are terribly inefficient and wasteful of tax payers money.  Mathew Rohane says how these big corporations know exactly where they intend to place their new second headquarters, shop, warehouse, or offices, and are just pretending to be looking around so as to get the maximum subsidy they can from a city municipal government.

Over the summer, Apple, which is not only the most highly valued company at the moment, but of all time—and is sitting on another record $200 billion in cash reserves—announced plans to build a $1.3 billion data center in Iowa. Reuters reports that a combination of state and municipal incentives there is worth about $208 million. According to CNBC, 50 permanent jobs will be created. Do the math. $208 million divided by 50 positions results in a cost of $4.2 million per job. If you have a job making the GDP per capita every year, about $56,000, $4.2 million is what you would make after 74 years. There’s no way so few jobs will ever justify that much foregone tax revenue, especially if the new facility is a greenfield project that will need new infrastructure and other services.

Similarly, the Chinese company Foxconn got a $3 billion incentive package from Wisconsin for promising to create between 3,000 and 13,000 manufacturing jobs. That’s a cost per job of between $1 million and $230,769. According to CNN, Wisconsin won’t break even on the deal for 25 years.

All of these incentive deals—and most economic development agencies around the country—operate under the fallacy that growth can be bought. There’s this idea that it’s all a matter of building factories, widening roads, lowering taxes, and suppressing unions. But if that was the case, more economically stagnant places would be reaping the rewards of public spending.

The American Conservative

Mathew Robane - Why Amazon Won’t Save Your Struggling Town

Patrick J. Buchanan - The U.S.-Saudi Starvation Blockade

A superb article by Pat Buchanan.

Are we willing to play passive observer as thousands and then tens of thousands of innocent civilians—the old, sick, weak, and infants and toddlers first—die from a starvation blockade supported by the mighty United States of America?

Without U.S. targeting and refueling, Saudi planes could not attack the Houthis effectively and Riyadh could not win this war. But when did Congress authorize this war on a nation that never attacked us?

Yemen today is arguably the worst humanitarian crisis on earth, and America’s role in it is undeniable and indispensable.

If the United States were to tell Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that we were no longer going to support his war in Yemen, the Saudis would have to accept the reality that they have lost.

Indeed, given Riyadh’s failure in the Syrian Civil War, its failure to discipline rebellious Qatar, and its stalemated war and human rights disaster in Yemen, Trump might take a hard second look at the Sunni monarchy that is the pillar of U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf.

The American Conservative

Patrick J. Buchanan - The U.S.-Saudi Starvation Blockade

Yael Grauer — Staggering Variety of Clandestine Trackers Found In Popular Android Apps

You are the product.

The Intercept
Staggering Variety of Clandestine Trackers Found In Popular Android Apps
Yael Grauer

Rohan Grey and Nathan Tankus — Corporate Taxation in a Modern Monetary Economy: Legal History, Theory, Prospects

Abstract

Corporate taxation is a perennially controversial topic in American politics. In fact, it may be the tax policy controversy that most Americans are aware of and even have an opinion about. Nevertheless, the purpose of corporate taxation is unclear in popular, or even for that matter, academic, discourse. In this paper we lay out and critically evaluate contemporary and historical corporate tax policy debates based on three common justifications for taxation: the “revenue” justification, the “distribution” justification, and the “behavior” justification. The revenue theory argues that the purpose of taxes is to raise the money required to finance expenditures. The distribution theory argues that certain taxes are required to produce desirable distributional outcomes. The behavior theory argues that certain taxes are required to change organizational and individual behavior in ways that benefit society.

This paper will trace the application of these justifications in American corporate tax law debates from the late nineteenth century through to the present, and analyze the implications of these debates to the contemporary corporate income tax debate. In particular, we argue that: a) following the observation made in 1946 by former President of the New York Federal Reserve Beardsley Ruml that, in the context of a modern government with a non-convertible currency, a floating exchange-rate, and its own central bank, “taxes for revenue are obsolete,” the revenue theory is empirically false; b) The distribution theory case for the modern corporate income tax is weak; and c) from the perspective of the behavior theory, the modern corporate income tax has strongly perverse impacts on corporate behavior.

Binzagr Institute for Sustainable Prosperity
Corporate Taxation in a Modern Monetary Economy: Legal History, Theory, Prospects
Rohan Grey and Nathan Tankus

The Arthurian — Grab a Barf Bag!

Here's a quote that would make Lars Syll retch:

Because DSGE models start from microeconomic principles of constrained decision-making, rather than relying on historical correlations, they are more difficult to solve and analyze. However, because they are also based on the preferences of economic agents, DSGE models offer a natural benchmark for evaluating the effects of policy change.- MathWorks: Modeling the United States Economy

"... based on the preferences of economic agents, DSGE models offer a natural benchmark for evaluating the effects of policy change.

I think this is one of Syll's pet peeves! DSGE models are not "based on the preferences of" actual economic agents, but on simplified agents arising from "deductivist" assumptions....

The is a good illustration of "mindless math" aka GIGO. Mindless math presumes (hidden assumption) that quantification somehow guarantees outcomes regardless of conceptual logic that underlies the numbers.

For example, variables have arguments based on the conceptual definition of the variable in terms of a set. If the numbers do not match the defined membership of the set, then GIGO. This is all over the place in economic modeling, e.g., where homogeneity is assumed excessively, or where micro is extended to macro when the fallacy of composition applies.

Lars Syll assiduously points out these "freshman errors" in his blog. More economists should be paying attention.

I find it rather surprising that MathWorks would stumble over this.

The New Arthurian Economics

Grab a Barf Bag!

The Arthurian

Daily Mail -'American mercenaries are torturing' Saudi elite rounded up by new crown prince - and billionaire Prince Alwaleed was hung upside down 'just to send a message'

Saudi princes and billionaire businessmen arrested in a power grab earlier this month are being strung up by their feet and beaten by American private security contractors, a source in the country tells DailyMail.com.

The group of the country's most powerful figures were arrested in a crackdown ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman three weeks ago as he ordered the detention of at least 11 fellow princes and hundreds of businessmen and government officials over claims of corruption.

Just last month, the Crown Prince vowed to restore 'moderate, open Islam' in the kingdom and relaxed a number of its ultra-conservative rules, including lifting a ban on women driving.

DailyMail.com can disclose that the arrests have been followed by 'interrogations' which a source said were being carried out by 'American mercenaries' brought in to work for the 32-year-old crown prince, who is now the kingdom's most powerful figure.

'They are beating them, torturing them, slapping them, insulting them. They want to break them down,' the source told DailyMail.com. 

'Blackwater' has been named by DailyMail.com's source as the firm involved, and the claim of its presence in Saudi Arabia has also been made on Arabic social media, and by Lebanon's president. 

The firm's successor, Academi, strongly denies even being in Saudi Arabia and says it does not engage in torture, which it is illegal for any U.S. citizen to commit anywhere in the world. 

The Saudi crown prince, according to the source, has also confiscated more than $194 billion from the bank accounts and seized assets of those arrested.

Daily Mail -'American mercenaries are torturing' Saudi elite rounded up by new crown prince

Luis Alberto Moreno — A Belt and Road for the Americas?

In a time of global uncertainty, a vision of “made in the Americas” prosperity provides a unifying agenda for the continent. If implemented, the US could reassert its historical leadership among a group of countries that share its fundamental values, as well as an interest in inclusive economic growth and rising living standards.

If the US doesn't do it, then China will.

Project Syndicate.
A Belt and Road for the Americas?
Luis Alberto Moreno | President of the Inter-American Development Bank, and a member of the World Economic Forum’s Foundation Board

Andrew Sheng and Xiao Geng — The Next Battle in China’s War on Corruption

Good post. Cites David Graeber. This indicates that some Chinese are reading Western alternative viewpoints, learning from them, and integrating them with specifically Chinese conditions. But it is also about corruption in general and is not limited to China.

Project Syndicate
The Next Battle in China’s War on Corruption
Andrew Sheng, Distinguished Fellow of the Asia Global Institute at the University of Hong Kong, member of the UNEP Advisory Council on Sustainable Finance,  former chairman of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, and currently an adjunct professor at Tsinghua University; and Xiao Geng, President of the Hong Kong Institution for International Finance and professor at the University of Hong Kong.

Myles Udland — A major psychological shift is occurring across markets and the economy

Markets and the economy are increasingly being characterized by one word: certainty.

This is likely to worry some investors and market watchers who see over-confidence in the future as a sign that things are about to change.

On Wednesday, the latest consumer sentiment survey from the University of Michigan indicated that while overall confidence in the economy is sitting right near a 13-year high, “what has changed recently is the degree of certainty with which consumers hold their economic expectations.”...

Yahoo Finance
A major psychological shift is occurring across markets and the economy
Myles Udland | Markets Reporter

Erik Reinert — Towards a better understanding of convergence and divergence: or, how the present EU strategy – at the expense of the economic periphery – neglects the theories that once made Europe successful

This new working paper attempts to address some of the main problems of the European Union today. The main thesis is that the Weltanschauung and the economic narrative on which the European project has been based have changed radically since the inception of the European Project, from one conducive to convergence and cohesion to another which is conducive to divergence and, in the last instance – I shall argue – to a form of internal colonialism towards the economic periphery.

The field of Science and Technology employs the term sociotechnical imaginary [1] about the collective narratives and visions of social futures and of the common good. I shall argue that the European Union has moved away from the sociotechnical imaginary, or narrative, that dominated after World War II. I shall argue that this post WW II Marshall Plan Narrative (MPN) gave way to an equilibrium-based Neo-Classical Economics Narrative with an added innovation rhetoric, which I shall argue is based on a fairly shallow understanding of innovation (which I shall call NC+I)....

Worthwhile post. The working paper looks good, too, but I haven't yet read it.

He sums up the problem in economics as it is practiced in relation to policy formulation. Conventional economics is a simplification that tends toward oversimplification. Policy based on conventional economists' modeling assumptions and methodological choices risks being unrealistic. This has consequences that manifest not only economically but also socially and politically.

In other words, we must attempt to perceive the complex realities behind simple numbers.

Developing Economics
Towards a better understanding of convergence and divergence: or, how the present EU strategy – at the expense of the economic periphery – neglects the theories that once made Europe successful

Erik Reinert | Professor of Technology Governance and Development Strategies at Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia, Senior Research Fellow at NORISS, Norwegian Institute of Strategic Studies, in Oslo., and Founder and Chairman of the Other Canon Foundation

Brian Romanchuk — The Theoretical Incoherence Of Full Employment Arguments

One quite often runs into arguments that rely on assuming full employment, and then relating that policy decisions. In my view, such arguments are fundamentally weak; we need to refer to actual model results to discuss policy. In this article, I explain why an attempt to apply a NAIRU argument to a Job Guarantee is misguided. The analysis is unusual: instead of discussing a single model, the behaviour of an entire class of reasonable economic models is analysed. This reflects the attitude towards model uncertainty that animates robust control theory.

Since my thesis is that full employment arguments are mathematically incoherent, I had little choice but to lapse into a stilted mathematical writing style. My apologies....

Wonkish.

Bond Economics
The Theoretical Incoherence Of Full Employment Arguments
Brian Romanchuk

Update.

I have little doubt that my previous article on J* -- a definition that I invented -- was confusing to most of my readers. As I wrote, I reverted to a mathematical style of writing. It is likely that inventing a concept and proving it does not exist is a pastime that would mainly be of interest to mathematicians (and philosophers). However, I have a real-world target in mind: NAIRU. All we need to do generalise the theorem procedure, and we can prove that a similar concept -- U* -- does not exist in the current institutional structure. We can then use that information to annihilate any definition of NAIRU that ends up being equivalent to U*.

Why not take on NAIRU directly, a reader might ask? This is because economists are not mathematicians. They use any number of different concepts, and assume that they are the same thing. It is a waste of time trying to prove the incoherence of each of these concepts; we just prove that U* cannot exist, and we can then just prove the equivalence of any particular definition of NAIRU to U* as needed.

Obviously,. that seems to be a rather grandiose assertion. I could easily be wrong. The most obvious hurdle is that there could be a flaw in my J* non-existence proof. I have thrown it out there, and I am waiting for it to be shot down. A more intelligent approach would have been to approach people privately and get their opinion, but hey, I decided to roll the dice.

From J* To U*: What My Conjecture Is About 

Oliver Carroll — Vladimir Putin says all big Russian businesses should be ready for war production

Taking no chances in a dangerous world, with NATO policy being to encircle Russia and to destabilize it internally. 

Of course, the West will see this a gearing up for an invasion of Europe and the corporate media will picture it as the resurgence of the Red Menace, calling for an military buildup and renewed arms race.

Last Monday, British Prime Minister Theresa May said the UK would lead a response to counter “Russian hostility.” “We know what you are doing,” she said.

Meanwhile, China is also beefing up militarily as the US "pivots to Asia" and further encircles China. As a consequence, India is also beefing up its military.

The Independent
Vladimir Putin says all big Russian businesses should be ready for war production
Oliver Carroll

Chris Dillow — Notes on productivity

Productivity is a problem and conventional British economists don't have a theory that explains it. So what to do? Oh, right, more blood letting (austerity).

Stumbling and Mumbling
Notes on productivity
Chris Dillow | Investors Chronicle

Raúl Ilargi Meijer — Austerity, Bloodletting and Incompetence

Punxsutawney Phil Hammond, the UK chancellor, presented his Budget yesterday and declared five more years of austerity for Britain. As was to be expected. One doesn’t even have to go into the details of the Budget to understand that it is a dead end street for both the country and for Theresa May’s Tory party.

So why the persistent focus on austerity while it becomes clearer every day that it is suffocating the British economy? There are many answers to that. Sheer incompetence is a major one, a lack of empathy with the poorer another. Conservative Britain is a class society full of people who dream of empire, and deem their class a higher form of life than those who work low-paid jobs.

When you see that the British Parliament has even voted that animals don’t feel pain or emotions, you’d be tempted to think it’s a throwback all the way back to the Middle Ages, not just the British Empire. They’re as lost in time as Bill Murray is in Groundhog Day. Only worse.

But perhaps incompetence is the big one here. The inability to understand that if your economy is not doing well, you need to stimulate it, not drain even more of what’s left out of it. The people in government don’t understand economics, and therefore rely on economic theory for guidance. And the prevailing theories of the day prescribe bloodletting as the cure, so they bloodlet (let blood?). Let it bleed.

This is not a British problem, it’s pan-European if not global. Neither is the UK Tory party the only one being killed by it, all Conservative parties share that faith. They’re just lucky that their left wing opponents have all committed hara kiri, and joined their ranks when it comes to economics. All of Europe’s poorer have lost the voices that were supposed to speak for them, to economic incompetence.

Obviously, the US democrats did their own hara kiri years ago. One might label -some of- Bernie Sanders’ views left-wing, but he’s trapped in a system that won’t let him breathe.
All of this leads me to question the following:

The Automatic Earth
Austerity, Bloodletting and Incompetence
Raúl Ilargi Meijer

Will Denayer — The doomsday glacier problem

Sea level rising faster than anticipated by older models. A new model (2002) explains the acceleration. 

Coastal land value?

Flassbeck Economics
The doomsday glacier problem

Will Denayer

Lars P. Syll — Randomization — a philosophical device gone astray

When giving courses in the philosophy of science yours truly has often had David Papineau’s book Philosophical Devices (OUP 2012) on the reading list. Overall it is a good introduction to many of the instruments used when performing methodological and science theoretical analyses of economic and other social sciences issues.

Unfortunately, the book has also fallen prey to the randomization hype that scourges sciences nowadays....

Lars P. Syll’s Blog
Randomization — a philosophical device gone astray
Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Bill Mitchell – The lame progressive obsession with meaningless aggregates

Maybe the British Labour Party could get Nancy Pelosi to do some stupid tweets for them as well. She is an expert at it – see my blog – When neoliberals masquerade as progressives. She thinks it is smart progressive politics to post tweets criticising her political opponents for a policy that “explodes the deficit … dumping … debt on every man, woman & child in America”. A fallacious argument. But moreover, a very stupid strategic argument because it fails to educate the public on what deficits and public debt are and what the capacities of a currency-issuing government and locks the progressive side of politics into no-win dilemmas. When it is their turn to govern they quickly find that they have no room to move on government spending because their own taunts when in opposition are thrown back at them. Same the world over. The progressive side of politics seems to have a lame obsession with meaningless aggregates – like the size of the fiscal deficit or public debt to GDP ratio. Pathetic is not the word.

I don't believe that Nancy Pelosi would be regarded as a "progressive" in the US. She is a limousine liberal (rich) and a latté liberal (upper class Californian) that has been a Clinton New Democrat as long as I can remember. She dd not switch to supporting Bernie Sanders in the general, which is a pretty good criterion of being progressive in US politics at the moment. I think most American who are paying attention would recognize that Pelosi and the other New Democrats are neoliberals whose political strategy has been representing the Democratic Party as GOP Lite.

Nancy Pelosi et al are increasing being recognized as old school people that should just step out of the way and make room for new blood take over. The real problem in US politics is that the "new blood" is pretty much the same as the old blood on the issue of fiscal deficits and public debt. TINA (there is no alternative) means that no one is presenting any other alternative than a variant of neoliberalism in economic policy.

The real problem is that most actual progressives in US politics that are actively challenging the Clinton New Democrats for party control are under the same neoliberal illusion or at least have very strong neoliberal tendencies they have absorbed from the ongoing propaganda in US corporate media.

This problem is now endemic in the US and there is no voice of reason present in the establishment, including the corporate media. Polls indicate that it is political folly to espouse views that contract the public perception of deficit hysteria and debt phobia that have been created by organizations such as the Peterson Institute. It may take a deep depression to turn this around.

The bright spot is that Stephanie Kelton got a lot of cred and publicity as Bernie's economic adviser and now she is being featured more in the corporate media. Pavlina Tchernova also got some good exposure regarding the job guarantee that made a wave, too. So some good things are happening, but slowly.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
The lame progressive obsession with meaningless aggregates
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

WSW - Google’s Eric Schmidt admits political censorship of search results

Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, confirmed this weekend that the world’s largest Internet company is, in close coordination with the state, manipulating search results to censor sites critical of the US government.

Responding to a question about the “manipulation of information” on the Internet during an appearance at the Halifax International Security Forum, Schmidt announced that Google is working on algorithms that will “de-rank” Russian-based news websites RT and Sputnik from its Google News services, effectively blocking users’ access to either site.

Schmidt’s remarks at the gathering of military and national security officials confirm the World Socialist Web Site’s charges that Google has been deliberately altering its search algorithms and taking other steps to prevent people from accessing certain information through its search engines. The WSWS has itself been a principal target of these efforts.

The statements expose as lies the company’s previous claim that changes to its search engine were aimed at “improving search results” and that these changes were politically unbiased.

Google’s Eric Schmidt admits political censorship of search results

Lee Camp - The Real Foreign Agents In The US You Aren't Being Told About

Michael Hudson’s “TED TALK” on Economics

Contains an excellent video of Micheal Hudson talking about his book, J is for Junk Economics, and he emphasis here how Trump was the lesser evil than Hilary. That made me laugh because when I tell my liberal friends this they look horrified. The UK Guardian recently run an article by Zoe Williams titled, Why does nobody mention that Hillary Clinton is perfectly nice? But the Guardian closed CiF after only 90 comments, probably because of the type of comments it was getting, so I didn't get a chance to write, 'We came, he saw, he died, ha ha ha', with a link to the Hilary video. But the Guardian would have no doubt removed my comment.

Ross Ashcroft, who made the film, The Four Horseman, and is part of the team behind the Renegade Economists, is now a presenter at RT which seems to be fast hoovering up all the best journalists I have enjoyed over the years.

Micheal Hudson - Michael Hudson’s “TED TALK” on Economics

Pepe Escobar — How Turkey, Iran, Russia and India are playing the New Silk Roads

Big doings underway you won't read about in Western corporate media. 

The only way the Global North can stop this surge of the Global South now is through hybrid warfare.

Asia Times
How Turkey, Iran, Russia and India are playing the New Silk Roads

Pepe Escobar