The essay by Sylla and Gomory is stimulating and full of insights - but the focus on the corporate form leads to suggestions of modifying it, a non-starter.
Corporations are not merely large organizations needed for modern production of goods and provision of services. They enable a handful of persons to profit immensely from the labor of most of us. The gap between these rich and the rest of us has reached an all-time high. In addition, the dynamics of making profit under capitalism no longer allow any other situation.
Yes, we need a different economic order, and while it must have large organizations to make things and provide services, they cannot be run for profit, no matter how regulated. No Rich, No Poor.
Amazing! Imagine if someone laundered $1,000 personally for a terrorism sponsor or laundered hundreds of thousands for a drug cartel. Oh, they'd be going right to federal prison. Different rules apply though if you incorporate yourself, act as a bank, conduct some legitimate business, and lobby, lobby, lobby, and pay/lobby some more to buy yourself legal protection. What we have here is Standard Chartered laundering 60,000 transactions, over 10 years, worth $250 BILLION! And who's going to jail, prison, or house arrest in their Hamptons' retreats? No one. Will Standard Chartered be barred from ever conducting business in the US or elsewhere ever again? Hell no. Will it lose its banking charter? Hell no. It's a fine and Standard Chartered expects pretax profits to rise in 2012! Life is good for banksters. Thank you OFAC, DOJ, Treasury, NY AG, NY DA's Office, you just prove what a mockery the "rule of law" is. Money and banksters pay, you listen, and Iran and its banking buddies can keep on arming people that kill and maim our troops, our citizens, and the troops and citizens of our allies. So, once again, should we "see something, say something" and inform DHS that our government is completely co-opted and different rules apply to banks and corporations that actually endanger our Nation. Bankster Bloomberg, come on, these banksters are arming our enemies. Media, anything to say about how despicable this is? No, we must be wary of Occupy and the unemployed + overqualified Americans who just can't stop being a "burden" despite their best efforts to find any job, of course, banks helping our enemies arm is no threat, people exercising their 1st Amendment rights in the USA are the real threat? What a joke.
Here's the article: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/standard-chartered-to-pay-u-s-330...
One idea the essay touches on, in the last couple of paragraphs, is changing the priorities of corporations to serve stakeholders rather than shareholders. A good way to do that is to redefine capitalism, specifically to add new accounting practices that reflect associated costs. For instance, the costs of building a new coal plant should reflect the increased costs of treating people with lung disease brought on by the plant's emissions. We can't predict that increased cost exactly, but we know it's there, and we should be able to find a way to estimate it fairly. Naturally the associated benefits of corporate behavior would offset those costs, the trick is getting benefits to outweigh costs. That's why capitalism works (when it does work)--the rules are well defined, almost everyone follows them, and cheaters are punished.
There doesn't seem to be much discussion about this strategy (correct me if I'm wrong). You could sell it to the corporations by pointing out that it would increase profits. Benefits would go up for the successful, while those only interested in cutting costs would be seen for the sociopaths they are.
The whole system is designed to be bailed out by the taxpayer. Example of this is the U.S. funded IMF which makes bad loans all the time to other countries than has to make another loan so they can pay back the old loan and have some spending money !! When that money is gone the cycle starts over and another loan is made all on the U.S. taxpayers back . In other words the taxpayers are always bailing out the bad loans. It is these type of entities that we need to get rid of that would save the U.S. taxpayer billions !!! Eliminate IMF , U.N. , World Bank , Fannie and Freddie Mac , Sally May and Import eXport bank !!!! Doing this would save taxpayers Billions !!!!!!
This is old but more interesting is the massive amount of hate mail. Gez, gotta love the desire to repress thought and facts. Article here for Krugman's take on the $1 trillion coin.
Several years ago I got a Master's degree in IT. It took eight years and thousands of dollars. Thanks to these visas, however, nobody is hiring American programmers. I'm stuck in a dead-end job making less than half of what I should. I've taken exams and gotten certifications (more money down the drain), I've sent out a pile of resumes every week, but not one interview. Not one.
Companies like Microsoft are saving some payroll expenses in the short term. They're also ruining the future of this country. By using the equivalent of migrant labor to do jobs that Americans are happy to do, they're pulling the rug out from under generations of well-educated, motivated, hard-working, and intelligent people. These H-1B visas ought to be illegal, but like everything else associated with "globalization," the law is whatever the highest bidders say it is. As far as I'm concerned, these companies have cheated me out of my chosen career.
In fact, the very first post on using the platinum coin option was by Warren Mosler on January 20, 2011 about 6 months before Balkin wrote about it (you can google the link).
"Joe Firestone post on sidestepping the debt ceiling issue with Coin Seigniorage"
I'll be immodest and quote the first sentence,
"Joe Firestone has a new post on Coin Seigniorage, where he gives credit to our own Beowolf’s (sic) comment on this website."
:o)
I'm pretty sure it's HFT, in the algorithms, automated and truly not in economic, corporate profit reality and most assuredly not in the national economic interest reality.
Ya got it, the minute layoffs are announced investors "load up" on the stock. Although Citigroup's profits alone are reason they would load up but as a general rule, Wall Street rewarded labor arbitrage.
Directly from one paper: "Michael Corbat's opening act, unveiled Wednesday, was an immediate hit with investors." And isn't that what it's all about in the USA of 2012? Making investors happy? Now, never mind the fact that Joe and Jane Taxpayer now have to help these newly unemployed people (and rarely do these big cuts involve top-level people) during their search for jobs, which as we all now, will last until many of them drop off the charts/become homeless/get Social Security at 80+ (damn you 75 year olds, stop being lazy and convince those employers to hire you). How many of these people are over 40+? Because they are doomed, doomed, DOOMED. That's 11,000 less people paying into taxes at the local, state, and federal levels, or as many CEOs and politicians call them - lazy shirking idiots. And in their communities, less $ for cops, fire, schools, etc. But ignore the broader social consequences of 20%+ unemployment, that requires real thought on a broad level.
So, we've seen blue collar jobs go bye-bye. Steel? Well, Japan took that. And now Korea and China, and they will go the same way we have eventually. Cars? Japan, then Korea and China, and . . . Manufacturing of any kind? Gone. White collar jobs in finance and tech stolen? Yup, going bye-bye, importing workers and exporting it. So what's left. Well, let's ask some of the architects of our destruction.
Bill Clinton is too busy stroking his ego and narcissism at political conventions while some people actually think he and his wife actually relate to the middle class. But, but he's just like me, you know, collecting $100,000 - $300,000 for speaking at Goldman Sachs for past deeds. Yeah, how's NAFTA working out for us? How's deregulation and elimination of laws that helped protect us all working out? Glass-Steagall, no, who needs that when FDIC-backed bankers can bet trillions in Vegas and AC-like casinos and we bail them out when it all goes wrong.
Greenspan? No worries there. He did browbeat people who knew derivatives would destroy us. He loved the Internet and property bubbles that he helped created ("wealth effect" - reminds me of another Fed Chair). And he has a wife covering his ass on a MSM channel. But now he continues to play coy like he cared/cares.
Dem and GOP - who cares, all the same.
Blue collar, white collar, all gone. Nothing left. NOTHING as far as jobs to support one adult, let alone a spouse or kids in this country.
and then they lay off over 11,000. Exactly Kurtz and this is why we overview statistics. Corporate profits and Wall Street have never done better, yet they labor arbitrage the workers to the point they are destroying the nation.
Oh well, just another day, just another lie exposed for the umpteenth time.
So with these CEOs making record profits by cutting employees (Citi just laid off 11,000+) and lowering wages for everyone else, why am I treated to these CEOs on my TV appearing 100X/day lecturing us on how to avoid the fiscal cliff and how we should force Grandma Millie to eat more cat food (and eventually her cats) to survive? Why do I have to listen to Blackrock banksters and Goldman folks lecture us on how to suffer more under austerity so that they can make even more profits? I never see someone from 99.9% of the American workforce speaking on Bloomberg or Fox or CNN. It's always big CEOs that have no clue how the 99.9% live (actually, they do, they just don't care) lecturing us on how we should sacrifice and how their politicians should follow their advice. For some reason that advice never involves them sacrificing. Teddy Roosevelt's "bully pulpit" has been replaced by the oligarchs' bully pulpit - bought and paid for by them. By the way, Transparency International ranks the US still in the top 20 of least corrupt nations. That's laughable, we're way beyond that point.
Exactly,,The Treasury could decide to not even use platinum, they could use a plastic poker chip and write a number on it in crayon, even change the number when they need more. Or better yet, they could decide to make every penny in circulation worth $1000, nickles $5000 and so on.
Sounds more and more like these folks, you know, the "best and brightest," have an ongoing pattern of breaking the law, exactly what RICO is all about. Sure, they make money for the Walton family and the Walton family sure doesn't mind how that money is made, but along the way they hire people here in violation of US immigration laws through contractors to work in the US in many of their stores (Wal-Mart settled for $11 million), bribe Mexican officials, lock workers in overnight (how's that for endangering people's lives?), violate wage and hour laws, etc. And now this. So, this ongoing criminal conduct, which DOJ officials and Congressmen/Senators will speak out against these "job creators" or do their donations prohibit any honesty and integrity coming forth? Which Walton family members will go visit the victims' families in Bangladesh and other locations where these tragedies occur? Which corporate officials will go? Which ones will face prosecution here and overseas in courtrooms surrounded by angry families for their actions that lead to death and injuries? Or are these people going to hide once again when accountability is demanded and go lobby the DOJ and State Department and appear on TV and in the pages of the press to predictably say what a tragedy it is, that they "didn't know," that "it was all our contractors' fault," and other nonsense? Big enough to meet with politicians and fellow businessmen behind guarded gates and in fancy clubrooms, but not big enough to take the heat from regular folks? Exactly.
What a surprise, Walmart wouldn't pay for these sweat shop fire traps to upgrade and install safety features in the case of fire. Bloomberg has the story.
We offer author accounts upon request. I don't know if you're interested but clearly you've really dug into ways around the crazy GOP on the debt ceiling tricks. Anyone else reading Joe's comment, here is the article with alternatives he tried to link to anonymously.
in this matter. The Mint creates the coin and deposits it in its Mint Public Enterprise Fund (PEF) at the Fed. It's legal tender, so the Fed must credit the PEF with the face value of the coin. If the Fed refuses, the section of the Fed law specifying that in case of disagreement in legal interpretation between the Fed and the Treasury, the view of the Secretary will prevail, kicks in, and the the Mint gets its account credited. The Fed just keeps the coin in its vault as an asset. The Treasury Secretary then sweeps the PEF account for the difference between the cost of producing the coin and its face value. That's the seigniorage or profits resulting from the Fed's crediting the coin. The swept profits are transferred to the Treasury General Account, where they may be used for debt reduction and deficit spending. A better proposal that the $1 T proposal is the $60 T proposal. See: http://www.correntewire.com/beyond_debtdeficit_politics_the_60_trillion_...
It handles inflation concerns too, and even includes a speech for the President.
Actually, the trillion dollar (or multi-trillion dollar) Pt coin has been endorsed by just about all Post-Keynesian economists, including the Department of Economics staff at UMKC -- Stephanie Kelton, Bill Black, Randall Wray, etc..
I don't recall James Galbraith talking about the coin but suspect he is on board as well, since he is pretty tight with the UMKC crowd.
If I remember correctly, Matthew Yglesias and Erzra Klein have given the coin a thumbs up, along with Jim Carney.
The coin would never go into circulation so all this talk of "printing money" is silly.
The Pt coin would actually be DEFLATIONARY because retiring the debt would reduce interest payments to the private sector.
Pt coins could be used to lower or even completely pay off the national debt. They could also be used to pre-fund government spending for years to come, making our endless budget showdowns seem silly and pointless.
The essay by Sylla and Gomory is stimulating and full of insights - but the focus on the corporate form leads to suggestions of modifying it, a non-starter.
Corporations are not merely large organizations needed for modern production of goods and provision of services. They enable a handful of persons to profit immensely from the labor of most of us. The gap between these rich and the rest of us has reached an all-time high. In addition, the dynamics of making profit under capitalism no longer allow any other situation.
Yes, we need a different economic order, and while it must have large organizations to make things and provide services, they cannot be run for profit, no matter how regulated. No Rich, No Poor.
Amazing! Imagine if someone laundered $1,000 personally for a terrorism sponsor or laundered hundreds of thousands for a drug cartel. Oh, they'd be going right to federal prison. Different rules apply though if you incorporate yourself, act as a bank, conduct some legitimate business, and lobby, lobby, lobby, and pay/lobby some more to buy yourself legal protection. What we have here is Standard Chartered laundering 60,000 transactions, over 10 years, worth $250 BILLION! And who's going to jail, prison, or house arrest in their Hamptons' retreats? No one. Will Standard Chartered be barred from ever conducting business in the US or elsewhere ever again? Hell no. Will it lose its banking charter? Hell no. It's a fine and Standard Chartered expects pretax profits to rise in 2012! Life is good for banksters. Thank you OFAC, DOJ, Treasury, NY AG, NY DA's Office, you just prove what a mockery the "rule of law" is. Money and banksters pay, you listen, and Iran and its banking buddies can keep on arming people that kill and maim our troops, our citizens, and the troops and citizens of our allies. So, once again, should we "see something, say something" and inform DHS that our government is completely co-opted and different rules apply to banks and corporations that actually endanger our Nation. Bankster Bloomberg, come on, these banksters are arming our enemies. Media, anything to say about how despicable this is? No, we must be wary of Occupy and the unemployed + overqualified Americans who just can't stop being a "burden" despite their best efforts to find any job, of course, banks helping our enemies arm is no threat, people exercising their 1st Amendment rights in the USA are the real threat? What a joke.
Here's the article:
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/standard-chartered-to-pay-u-s-330...
One idea the essay touches on, in the last couple of paragraphs, is changing the priorities of corporations to serve stakeholders rather than shareholders. A good way to do that is to redefine capitalism, specifically to add new accounting practices that reflect associated costs. For instance, the costs of building a new coal plant should reflect the increased costs of treating people with lung disease brought on by the plant's emissions. We can't predict that increased cost exactly, but we know it's there, and we should be able to find a way to estimate it fairly. Naturally the associated benefits of corporate behavior would offset those costs, the trick is getting benefits to outweigh costs. That's why capitalism works (when it does work)--the rules are well defined, almost everyone follows them, and cheaters are punished.
There doesn't seem to be much discussion about this strategy (correct me if I'm wrong). You could sell it to the corporations by pointing out that it would increase profits. Benefits would go up for the successful, while those only interested in cutting costs would be seen for the sociopaths they are.
The whole system is designed to be bailed out by the taxpayer. Example of this is the U.S. funded IMF which makes bad loans all the time to other countries than has to make another loan so they can pay back the old loan and have some spending money !! When that money is gone the cycle starts over and another loan is made all on the U.S. taxpayers back . In other words the taxpayers are always bailing out the bad loans. It is these type of entities that we need to get rid of that would save the U.S. taxpayer billions !!! Eliminate IMF , U.N. , World Bank , Fannie and Freddie Mac , Sally May and Import eXport bank !!!! Doing this would save taxpayers Billions !!!!!!
This is old but more interesting is the massive amount of hate mail. Gez, gotta love the desire to repress thought and facts. Article here for Krugman's take on the $1 trillion coin.
But it doesn't have to be that way.
Tell your story at Keep America At Work.
Join with us to challenge Microsoft to a Duel to Keep America At Work
We can reverse this but we must unite, not cower in fear of those that have money that control the media.
Several years ago I got a Master's degree in IT. It took eight years and thousands of dollars. Thanks to these visas, however, nobody is hiring American programmers. I'm stuck in a dead-end job making less than half of what I should. I've taken exams and gotten certifications (more money down the drain), I've sent out a pile of resumes every week, but not one interview. Not one.
Companies like Microsoft are saving some payroll expenses in the short term. They're also ruining the future of this country. By using the equivalent of migrant labor to do jobs that Americans are happy to do, they're pulling the rug out from under generations of well-educated, motivated, hard-working, and intelligent people. These H-1B visas ought to be illegal, but like everything else associated with "globalization," the law is whatever the highest bidders say it is. As far as I'm concerned, these companies have cheated me out of my chosen career.
In fact, the very first post on using the platinum coin option was by Warren Mosler on January 20, 2011 about 6 months before Balkin wrote about it (you can google the link).
"Joe Firestone post on sidestepping the debt ceiling issue with Coin Seigniorage"
I'll be immodest and quote the first sentence,
"Joe Firestone has a new post on Coin Seigniorage, where he gives credit to our own Beowolf’s (sic) comment on this website."
:o)
I'm pretty sure it's HFT, in the algorithms, automated and truly not in economic, corporate profit reality and most assuredly not in the national economic interest reality.
Ya got it, the minute layoffs are announced investors "load up" on the stock. Although Citigroup's profits alone are reason they would load up but as a general rule, Wall Street rewarded labor arbitrage.
Directly from one paper: "Michael Corbat's opening act, unveiled Wednesday, was an immediate hit with investors." And isn't that what it's all about in the USA of 2012? Making investors happy? Now, never mind the fact that Joe and Jane Taxpayer now have to help these newly unemployed people (and rarely do these big cuts involve top-level people) during their search for jobs, which as we all now, will last until many of them drop off the charts/become homeless/get Social Security at 80+ (damn you 75 year olds, stop being lazy and convince those employers to hire you). How many of these people are over 40+? Because they are doomed, doomed, DOOMED. That's 11,000 less people paying into taxes at the local, state, and federal levels, or as many CEOs and politicians call them - lazy shirking idiots. And in their communities, less $ for cops, fire, schools, etc. But ignore the broader social consequences of 20%+ unemployment, that requires real thought on a broad level.
So, we've seen blue collar jobs go bye-bye. Steel? Well, Japan took that. And now Korea and China, and they will go the same way we have eventually. Cars? Japan, then Korea and China, and . . . Manufacturing of any kind? Gone. White collar jobs in finance and tech stolen? Yup, going bye-bye, importing workers and exporting it. So what's left. Well, let's ask some of the architects of our destruction.
Bill Clinton is too busy stroking his ego and narcissism at political conventions while some people actually think he and his wife actually relate to the middle class. But, but he's just like me, you know, collecting $100,000 - $300,000 for speaking at Goldman Sachs for past deeds. Yeah, how's NAFTA working out for us? How's deregulation and elimination of laws that helped protect us all working out? Glass-Steagall, no, who needs that when FDIC-backed bankers can bet trillions in Vegas and AC-like casinos and we bail them out when it all goes wrong.
Greenspan? No worries there. He did browbeat people who knew derivatives would destroy us. He loved the Internet and property bubbles that he helped created ("wealth effect" - reminds me of another Fed Chair). And he has a wife covering his ass on a MSM channel. But now he continues to play coy like he cared/cares.
Dem and GOP - who cares, all the same.
Blue collar, white collar, all gone. Nothing left. NOTHING as far as jobs to support one adult, let alone a spouse or kids in this country.
and then they lay off over 11,000. Exactly Kurtz and this is why we overview statistics. Corporate profits and Wall Street have never done better, yet they labor arbitrage the workers to the point they are destroying the nation.
Oh well, just another day, just another lie exposed for the umpteenth time.
So with these CEOs making record profits by cutting employees (Citi just laid off 11,000+) and lowering wages for everyone else, why am I treated to these CEOs on my TV appearing 100X/day lecturing us on how to avoid the fiscal cliff and how we should force Grandma Millie to eat more cat food (and eventually her cats) to survive? Why do I have to listen to Blackrock banksters and Goldman folks lecture us on how to suffer more under austerity so that they can make even more profits? I never see someone from 99.9% of the American workforce speaking on Bloomberg or Fox or CNN. It's always big CEOs that have no clue how the 99.9% live (actually, they do, they just don't care) lecturing us on how we should sacrifice and how their politicians should follow their advice. For some reason that advice never involves them sacrificing. Teddy Roosevelt's "bully pulpit" has been replaced by the oligarchs' bully pulpit - bought and paid for by them. By the way, Transparency International ranks the US still in the top 20 of least corrupt nations. That's laughable, we're way beyond that point.
Exactly,,The Treasury could decide to not even use platinum, they could use a plastic poker chip and write a number on it in crayon, even change the number when they need more. Or better yet, they could decide to make every penny in circulation worth $1000, nickles $5000 and so on.
Sounds more and more like these folks, you know, the "best and brightest," have an ongoing pattern of breaking the law, exactly what RICO is all about. Sure, they make money for the Walton family and the Walton family sure doesn't mind how that money is made, but along the way they hire people here in violation of US immigration laws through contractors to work in the US in many of their stores (Wal-Mart settled for $11 million), bribe Mexican officials, lock workers in overnight (how's that for endangering people's lives?), violate wage and hour laws, etc. And now this. So, this ongoing criminal conduct, which DOJ officials and Congressmen/Senators will speak out against these "job creators" or do their donations prohibit any honesty and integrity coming forth? Which Walton family members will go visit the victims' families in Bangladesh and other locations where these tragedies occur? Which corporate officials will go? Which ones will face prosecution here and overseas in courtrooms surrounded by angry families for their actions that lead to death and injuries? Or are these people going to hide once again when accountability is demanded and go lobby the DOJ and State Department and appear on TV and in the pages of the press to predictably say what a tragedy it is, that they "didn't know," that "it was all our contractors' fault," and other nonsense? Big enough to meet with politicians and fellow businessmen behind guarded gates and in fancy clubrooms, but not big enough to take the heat from regular folks? Exactly.
What a surprise, Walmart wouldn't pay for these sweat shop fire traps to upgrade and install safety features in the case of fire. Bloomberg has the story.
We offer author accounts upon request. I don't know if you're interested but clearly you've really dug into ways around the crazy GOP on the debt ceiling tricks. Anyone else reading Joe's comment, here is the article with alternatives he tried to link to anonymously.
we don't allow links in anonymous comments due to security issues (link spam). Register and you can write all of the HTML to your heart's desire.
in this matter. The Mint creates the coin and deposits it in its Mint Public Enterprise Fund (PEF) at the Fed. It's legal tender, so the Fed must credit the PEF with the face value of the coin. If the Fed refuses, the section of the Fed law specifying that in case of disagreement in legal interpretation between the Fed and the Treasury, the view of the Secretary will prevail, kicks in, and the the Mint gets its account credited. The Fed just keeps the coin in its vault as an asset. The Treasury Secretary then sweeps the PEF account for the difference between the cost of producing the coin and its face value. That's the seigniorage or profits resulting from the Fed's crediting the coin. The swept profits are transferred to the Treasury General Account, where they may be used for debt reduction and deficit spending. A better proposal that the $1 T proposal is the $60 T proposal. See: http://www.correntewire.com/beyond_debtdeficit_politics_the_60_trillion_...
It handles inflation concerns too, and even includes a speech for the President.
No insurance required. Loss of coin would only be the value of the platinum, not the face value.
Face value of coin not limited by law to $1 trillion, it could be $10 trillion or $100 trillion, whatever the Treasury decides.
Actually, the trillion dollar (or multi-trillion dollar) Pt coin has been endorsed by just about all Post-Keynesian economists, including the Department of Economics staff at UMKC -- Stephanie Kelton, Bill Black, Randall Wray, etc..
I don't recall James Galbraith talking about the coin but suspect he is on board as well, since he is pretty tight with the UMKC crowd.
If I remember correctly, Matthew Yglesias and Erzra Klein have given the coin a thumbs up, along with Jim Carney.
The coin would never go into circulation so all this talk of "printing money" is silly.
The Pt coin would actually be DEFLATIONARY because retiring the debt would reduce interest payments to the private sector.
Pt coins could be used to lower or even completely pay off the national debt. They could also be used to pre-fund government spending for years to come, making our endless budget showdowns seem silly and pointless.
http://www.cnbc.com//id/43931430
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