"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master— that's all."
It doesn't matter about the grand humanistic pretensions of GATT, GATS or any of the other treaties, because it all comes down to that these provisions mean nada-zero-zed-zip when WTO Appellate Body panels ignore them. And that's how the cookies crumble in the vast majority of cases.
EP-linked Eyes On Trade blog, 'WTO is the big kid on the seesaw', surveys the record on WTO quasi-judicial proceedings to find that odds are like 20-to-1 against WTO ruling for any defense or claim under treaty provisions for food and product safety or any of the "allowed" exceptions enumerated at GATT Article XX, GATS Article XIV or elsewhere. This conclusion is based on a summary of recently compiled database, now available to the public at the World Bank.
"(Major thanks to Travis McArthur for his research for this post, and to Henrik Horn and Petros C. Mavroidis, creators of a database of the WTO disputes.)" -- Eyes On Trade
The database can be accessed courtesy of World Bank research archives at following link.
In short, the WTO bureaucracy-kleptocracy, makes a charade of any notions of due process! The irony is that theoretical support for 'free trade' is, and always has been, based on supposed advantages for "the consumer" -- even if producers may suffer.
We were told in advance about the brave new world of WTO globalism, that there would be "winners and losers." That's true of any casino, so we accepted it. But we weren't warned that the games would be rigged against us!
Aha, the Huffington Post can use research for the Center for Immigration Studies when it comes to Perry but if someone else uses any of their studies, they are a racist, funded by the KKK and should be chased to the dark edge of hell?
HO Ho Ho! I saw this and I'll read the study and try to trace their numbers.
But for now it looks like Perry never met a H-1B Visa he didn't like.
I sure hope as hell they use this again him, last thing we need is yet another global labor arbitrager in the white house, only been going on since 1990.
There's an article about this already over at Huffington Post. So at least this is getting coverage. But will it be used against Perry? Let us hope so.
Turns out all his bragging about jobs in Texas left out a crucial few points: most of the jobs created since 2007 went to immigrants. Will this story get much coverage -- will his fellow candidates call him out on his misleading assertions -- or will they prefer to let the sleeping jobless issue alone?
I hope he gets nailed big time but I figure this story will be ignored and not affect his election chances one bit.
"But analysis of Current Population Survey (CPS) data collected by the Census Bureau show that immigrants (legal and illegal) have been the primary beneficiaries of this growth since 2007, not native-born workers. This is true even though the native-born accounted for the vast majority of growth in the working-age population (age 16 to 65) in Texas. ...
• Of jobs created in Texas since 2007, 81 percent were taken by newly arrived immigrant workers (legal and illegal).
• In terms of numbers, between the second quarter of 2007, right before the recession began, and the second quarter of 2011, total employment in Texas increased by 279,000. Of this, 225,000 jobs went to immigrants (legal and illegal) who arrived in the United States in 2007 or later.
• The large share of job growth that went to immigrants is surprising because the native-born accounted for 69 percent of the growth in Texas’ working-age population (16 to 65). Thus, even though natives made up most of the growth in potential workers, most of the job growth went to immigrants."
The full article is lengthy and has got charts and footnotes too!
They are already replacing Americans with foreigners and using the OPT program, supposedly on the job training and I believe they get a tax break additionally, to displace U.S. workers and put foreign students on these Visas, in these jobs.
So, pretty much if I tout a jobs program or tax subsidy or whatever, I will require tying it to U.S. citizenship, in many cases exclusively, in some cases LPR or legal permanent resident (green card).
It's more than legal to do this. Most DoD jobs require a security clearance and also require U.S. citizenship, so there isn't any excuse to extend those requirements to government (U.S. taxpayer funded) subsidized job training, direct job programs.
I hear ya, the displacement of U.S. STEM (and also teachers, so much for unions!) with non-immigrant status foreign guest workers is absolutely another globalization, labor arbitrage mechanism.
One cannot tell me that Joe Blow graduating from university X is inferior to Foreign Student Y graduating from university Y. No way, and this is subsidized.....if foreign student Y is just so damn brilliant, there are 101 ways to hire that person already (including the abuse of the OPT program that is currently going on).
My concern with government subsidized internships is that they may put us back in a similar situation as the NIV's. Cheap labor replacing experienced employees. Instead of hiring employees, companies will hire interns at low cost and with a government subsidy only to fire them when the internship ends and replacing them with more interns. If other reforms are put in place, this may be less of a concern.
The idea is interesting, so I looked up the blog -- seems to be out of the UK and Europe, but Bowery is apparently located in the US with focus on the US.
I could not find the comment that you reference, since the link is incomplete. However, the analysis you give and a James Bowery blog that I could locate, 'Citizen’s Dividends To Capture Parliamentary Governments', gets the idea across. Except that you are leaving out Bowery's "Citizen's Dividends" (proposed political party for some hypothetical country with a parliamentary proportional-representation system).
I'm not sure how or why you describe Bowery as "incredibly right wing" since he is very big on what "the right wing" in this country (what we would think of as "right wing") would abhor and adjure as "redistribution." I am assuming that the "right wing" would be like Ron Paul and the von Mises Institute, Heritage Foundation or the National Review. I think they would consider Bowery to be a flat-out Communist.
Myself, at first view, I consider Bowery to be a radical libertarian, but since his information says something about an "environment party," maybe he is what used to be known as a "watermelon Green." Probably he can't stand the Green Party on "social issues" -- in which he would not be alone.
Anyway, that's good about an estate tax as a tax on assets or wealth -- even though it is premised upon a tax on transfers of assets or wealth ("income" per the 16th Amendment). Bowery has an interesting theoretical viewpoint, probably completely off the map, although maybe not. As I recall, none other than David Rockefeller, a few years back when he was still active as CEO of Chase Manhattan (before they added JP Morgan), went to the trouble of purchasing a full-page ad in the NYT to state his opinion in support of the estate tax.
The MajorityRights blog generally seems to be coming from the European phenomena of native (white) people reacting to influx into Europe of (non-white) immigrants. But that's an over-simplification, since the bloggers at MajorityRights are complicated thinkers ... many nuances. Anyway, the general idea is that the majority have rights, as well as minorities. That could be applicable in USA as well, of course.
How did you ever come across this to connect it up and post it here at EP? Remarkable.
BTW: I am not connected with EP or anything like that, just a guest here like yourself, but please try the Rich Text Editor link button, like this --
Also, please try, when you copy from Google, that you don't get the Google-abbreviated non-URL with parts left out by ellipsis dot-dot-dot ...... (Copy URL direct from the URL at the top of the browser page.)
Many schools of monetary theory reject fractional reserve banking. Although the term "monetary reform" may take on a range of meanings, it can be understood as specifically referring to politico-economic policy that would eliminate fractional reserve banking. (See, Wiki article 'Monetary_reform')
Monetary theory can be seen as simply one tool in the economist's toolbox -- one approach to understanding socio-economic history or behavior, and related politico-economic phenomena. In and of itself, "monetary theory" can hardly be thought to demand either support for, or criticism of, fractional reserve banking.
However, the American Monetary Institute (AMI) -- leading source of education on pure monetary theory (i.e., monetarism free of gold buggery) -- supports the American Monetary Act.
History shows that ... private interests, if given any privileged power over money, eventually undermine the public interest, and take over the whole thing. We know this from historical case studies in at least 4 major historical situations – the U.S. “Greenbacks”, The nationalization of the Bank of England, and the Canadian and New Zealand monetary experience. Anyone who proposes allowing the banks to keep any part of the power to create money are either ignorant of monetary history or are shilling for the banks.
Under the American Monetary Act we do have the best of both worlds. We keep the benefits of having the professionalism and expertise of a competitive banking system in the private sector, but we take away the dangers of having them dominate our monetary and public policies with their narrow short term profit focus, by removing their privilege to create money. Ultimately this is a question of morality. No such special privileges can be allowed to particular groups; especially the monetary privilege, which confers power and wealth on them at the expense of the rest of society.
Joe and Jane just might be ready for exactly that kind of talk!
The American Monetary Institute is the leading exponent today of the original (Henry C. Simons) formulation of libertarian economics (economics premised on priority of individual liberty).
Robert Oak summarizes Machiavellian strategy of the RNC and current GOP congressional leaders as based on the idea that "people hate the Fed, think monetary theory, fractional reserve banking is the root of all evil."
That makes it sound as if monetary theory (or 'monetarism') equates to fractional reserve banking, at least in the thinking of ordinary people.
If that is the thinking of ordinary people, then let's correct it immediately, for reasons of political strategy based on the Clausewitzian understanding of the interrelation of politics and warfare.
Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) in upper right (northeast quadrant) with Black Sea to the southwest and Caspian sea to the southeast, Caucasus Mountains to the south (map taken from public domain russiamap.org)
It's my view that we are always wrong to concede the populist low ground. Such low-lying areas are like the plains north of the Caucasus -- where the most important battles were fought.
I have been informed by a soldier who served on Germany's eastern front in World War II, that after the fall of Stalingrad, 2 February 1943, everyone east of Berlin knew the truth, that the war was over and Hitler had blown it.
Yes, we prefer high hard ground for our HQ, but never concede the low ground!
With regard to [accessible] ground ... be before the enemy in occupying the raised and sunny spots, and carefully guard your line of supplies. Then you will be able to fight with advantage.
--- Sun Tzu, The Art of War (Chapter X, Verse 3), available at MIT classics
Wannabe populists (RNC opinion 'engineers') think they have captured the key location in the public mind, but they are surrounded on all sides. They are over-extended. Their only hope is to put Romney in command, but they are too arrogant to realize that.
Hate to say it, but the most progressive tax reform plan was offered by right wing (unbelievably right wing) writer James Bowery. Introduce an annual net asset tax (the estate tax is, essentially, a one-time net asset tax).
http://majorityrights.com/index.php/weblog/comments/doing_the_basic_math...
Since wealth is far more stratified than income-- the Forbes 400 alone has a greater net wealth than the bottom 50% of the population-- even a flat tax on wealth would be very progressive. By tying, as Bowery suggests, the net asset tax rate to 3 month T-bill rate, it becomes rather powerful counter-cyclical tool that Congress could fire and forget since the Treasuries market itself (cough*Fed Funds rate*cough) would automatically adjust the tax rate. There is (these numbers are necessarily approx.) $58 billion in household net worth this year, of which top 1% ($5 million threshold) controls 35% or $20 Trillion. You could double these numbers by looking at top 10% ($1 million threshold) with $40T in household net worth. It almost goes without saying that public financing of campaigns is a necessary precursor for Congress to ever reform the tax code to make it more progressive.
So let's see, 3 month T-bills today only yield 0.01%. However the CBO projects for 2016 and every year thereafter a 3 month T-bill rate of 5% (CBO is surely wrong that rates will get that high but they won't figure that out for years). So a net asset tax on top 1% would raise a $2 billion this year but by 2016 (per CBO) would raise $1 trillion a year.
Of course, it's a Fed thing, you have to read between the lines, but it seems to me that Bernanke did recently say that the Fed had done all it could ... passing the ball over to the source of revenue bills ... who are going nowhere, holding, don't care about penalties ...
The Hospital CEO's, especially the non-profits" might think about their own salary - and reducing it. A very interesting email is circulating on the net:
"Peter Fine, is an American dream comes true. Peter, a former New York taxi cab driver, has made it big in the health care industry. Now making $1,300.00 an HOUR managing his NON-PROFIT health care corporation, Peter can easily buy a new car for CASH after working only 12 hours. An American dream comes true! How do your wages compare? Data is based on compensation figures that are public information. Internal Revenue Service, tax year 2009, DLN# 93493316013240, Employer ID 45-0233470. 40 hrs/wk 50 wks/yr 2 weeks paid vacation. Current wages may be up to 20% greater. Travel expenses and other benefits are not included."
Read the complete email at: bit.ly/nMbqck
Wikipedia Tax info at: bit.ly/nGM8uv
Truly. Unfortunately the Fed cannot force Congress to enact policies, legislation and at this point, considering their insane agenda while America suffers.....I wish they could.
I agree, every single place we know massive jobs were lost and that is bad trade deals, offshore outsourcing, bringing in foreign labor, illegal labor, a massive implosion in real estate/construction, should be deal with directly.
First, every new college grad should be guaranteed a gov. subsidized internship, at least, in their field. I don't care if it's $15/hr but they need that first job work experience and corporations would be given a gift if that was government subsidized.
Next, everyone who is a professional should be brought together in incubators to get support, pay to form new companies. The standards would still apply, have to be a viable business plan, they would have to present, just like new ventures are funded today, have to have prototypes and so on, but a system to get them together, support to formulate teams, business plans, prototyping, investor pitches and so on should be done. We have millions of people with enormous talents and skills who cannot even get a Walmart job.
Then, they should fund a direct jobs program for targeted infrastructure projects, selected by their threat to public safety and what kind of economic benefits such infrastructure would bring to that region. This crap about "schools" and such just isn't the kind of infrastructure projects to generate economic growth to an area.
Things like levies, bridges, increased communication networks, better power grid (key critical), etc. are the types of things that would bring economic growth, not schools.
Schools should be done for safety but what they really need are teachers and a cutting on the bureaucracy that goes on in schools, plus a hell of a lot of technology additions, books, supplies and so on. The building, well, it can't fall down around their heads but one can live with a crappy building for the moment.
They should start a national manufacturing policy, agenda and major incentives to manufacture in the U.S. with U.S. citizens are hires. They should institute a major buy American program for all federal, state, local government agencies.
They should ban the offshore outsourcing of all federal, state and local contracts.
Would we get any of this common sense, practical policies where their opposites can be directly tabulated to show we have lost millions and millions of jobs due to them?
Of course not. Instead we have some strange Rube Goldberg MBS purchase which I think stinks to high heaven. I think bundling MBS and passing them around like poker chips is one of the original problems. People's homes and their mortgages just should not be an investor vehicle to this degree in my view.
Now that the Federal Reserve has basically told us that their ultra-low interest rate policy and experiment with quantitative easing have not worked, they are admitting that the world’s economy is clinging to the edge of the fiscal precipice by promoting “Operation Twist”.
As shown here, a Federal Reserve President, James Bullard, admitted in 2010 that it was highly likely that Fed policies were going to lead to a Japanese-style "Lost Decade" as shown here:
"Of course, we can hope that we do not encounter such shocks (i.e. deflation), and that further recovery turns out to be robust but hope is not a strategy. The U.S. is closer to a Japanese-style outcome today than at any time in recent history."
The Fed has backed themselves into a corner but still hasn’t come to the realization that the situation is hopeless….at least publicly.
I don't know if the Fed is doing everything it can or not, but if people aren't working, does it matter if they lower interest rates? Lower interest rates helps companies to invest, but large corps already have plenty of cash and they are not investing it in the US.
1) Bring back tariffs, renegotiate FTA's such that countries that don't play by our rules (including labor and environmental) don't get free trade agreements and watch the jobs pour back.
2) Strictly limit NIV's and limit outsourcing of current jobs and watch the jobs return.
3) Finally, change accounting and tax rules to encourage companies hiring and keeping employees instead of using contractors or outsourcing
Any one of these would help the US economy tremendously, all three would make the US a true superpower again. Tax revenues would increase, welfare programs would drop and the economy would be on track without having to raise taxes. Maybe social security could even be saved! Yet none of these three ideas are entertained by any politicians.
They did vote for single payer, universal health care, or the plans promised during the campaign.
The radical right twisted all of this into a campaign but their agenda is to turn health care into a worse mess than it is, whereas the base wanted single-payer, universal health care, heavy focus on getting the for profit health insurance companies, big pharma, not making profits over the bodies of Americans.
Obama gave insurance industry much of what they wanted and I'm pretty sure all of America didn't want that.
But read the proposals of the radical right, they are even worse, if that's possible. We'll have people dying and not being able to afford health care all over the place. Ryan is the worst of the bunch, he's basically privatizing Medicare and kicking seniors to the curb.
Nice article! I find it incredible that politicians can threaten other officials and nothing happens. I think if a regular citizen said what Perry said, the FBI would be knocking at their door.
Why aren't they writing letters when the Fed opened up unlimited loans to Europe through swaps? That's a crowd pleaser, bailing out foreign banks.
I think your conclusion is right. They are out to win at all costs and people hate the Fed, think monetary theory, fractional reserve banking is the root of all evil.
This is what happens when "free" "documentaries are released on the Internet which take a few facts and twist them into some sort of grand conspiracy theory. If only there were a few "documentaries" on the radical right. Sure needs to be some because you're right, they want to wipe out the U.S. middle class and clearly, by their actions, don't care about the people of the United States and even the macro-economic level economy.
People didn't vote for Obama to shove that health care package down the throats of America. He pursued health care against the strong objection of this country and it cost him the House in 2010 and it looks like it's costing him re-election.
It's well that we can recall that there was international trade before WTO and there will be international trade after WTO ... because ...
"At this point I think they [the people] need to tell the WTO and so on to go to hell. (or should have a good 15 years ago)." -- Robert Oak
This being the last day of summer, with little if any good news on fundamentals, who needs this? But the jury is in, and the verdict is 'Guilty as Charged' for the WTO's quasi-judicial system for resolution of trade disputes. Click here to download Public Citizen's PDF 'Fatally Flawed WTO Dispute System' (one-page summary with tables presenting survey results).
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master— that's all."
Humpty Dumpty, sitting on his wall. (Thanks to PublicDomainClip-art.blogspot.com)
_________
It doesn't matter about the grand humanistic pretensions of GATT, GATS or any of the other treaties, because it all comes down to that these provisions mean nada-zero-zed-zip when WTO Appellate Body panels ignore them. And that's how the cookies crumble in the vast majority of cases.
EP-linked Eyes On Trade blog, 'WTO is the big kid on the seesaw', surveys the record on WTO quasi-judicial proceedings to find that odds are like 20-to-1 against WTO ruling for any defense or claim under treaty provisions for food and product safety or any of the "allowed" exceptions enumerated at GATT Article XX, GATS Article XIV or elsewhere. This conclusion is based on a summary of recently compiled database, now available to the public at the World Bank.
"(Major thanks to Travis McArthur for his research for this post, and to Henrik Horn and Petros C. Mavroidis, creators of a database of the WTO disputes.)" -- Eyes On Trade
The database can be accessed courtesy of World Bank research archives at following link.
In short, the WTO bureaucracy-kleptocracy, makes a charade of any notions of due process! The irony is that theoretical support for 'free trade' is, and always has been, based on supposed advantages for "the consumer" -- even if producers may suffer.
We were told in advance about the brave new world of WTO globalism, that there would be "winners and losers." That's true of any casino, so we accepted it. But we weren't warned that the games would be rigged against us!
Aha, the Huffington Post can use research for the Center for Immigration Studies when it comes to Perry but if someone else uses any of their studies, they are a racist, funded by the KKK and should be chased to the dark edge of hell?
HO Ho Ho! I saw this and I'll read the study and try to trace their numbers.
But for now it looks like Perry never met a H-1B Visa he didn't like.
I sure hope as hell they use this again him, last thing we need is yet another global labor arbitrager in the white house, only been going on since 1990.
There's an article about this already over at Huffington Post. So at least this is getting coverage. But will it be used against Perry? Let us hope so.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/22/texas-jobs-immigrants_n_976068....
Also at Huffington Post, another labor article of interest to people here. This one's about what states are losing the most jobs to China:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/22/10-states-losing-the-most-jobs-...
Turns out all his bragging about jobs in Texas left out a crucial few points: most of the jobs created since 2007 went to immigrants. Will this story get much coverage -- will his fellow candidates call him out on his misleading assertions -- or will they prefer to let the sleeping jobless issue alone?
I hope he gets nailed big time but I figure this story will be ignored and not affect his election chances one bit.
http://cis.org/immigrants-filled-most-new-jobs-in-Texas
"But analysis of Current Population Survey (CPS) data collected by the Census Bureau show that immigrants (legal and illegal) have been the primary beneficiaries of this growth since 2007, not native-born workers. This is true even though the native-born accounted for the vast majority of growth in the working-age population (age 16 to 65) in Texas. ...
• Of jobs created in Texas since 2007, 81 percent were taken by newly arrived immigrant workers (legal and illegal).
• In terms of numbers, between the second quarter of 2007, right before the recession began, and the second quarter of 2011, total employment in Texas increased by 279,000. Of this, 225,000 jobs went to immigrants (legal and illegal) who arrived in the United States in 2007 or later.
• The large share of job growth that went to immigrants is surprising because the native-born accounted for 69 percent of the growth in Texas’ working-age population (16 to 65). Thus, even though natives made up most of the growth in potential workers, most of the job growth went to immigrants."
The full article is lengthy and has got charts and footnotes too!
They are already replacing Americans with foreigners and using the OPT program, supposedly on the job training and I believe they get a tax break additionally, to displace U.S. workers and put foreign students on these Visas, in these jobs.
So, pretty much if I tout a jobs program or tax subsidy or whatever, I will require tying it to U.S. citizenship, in many cases exclusively, in some cases LPR or legal permanent resident (green card).
It's more than legal to do this. Most DoD jobs require a security clearance and also require U.S. citizenship, so there isn't any excuse to extend those requirements to government (U.S. taxpayer funded) subsidized job training, direct job programs.
I hear ya, the displacement of U.S. STEM (and also teachers, so much for unions!) with non-immigrant status foreign guest workers is absolutely another globalization, labor arbitrage mechanism.
One cannot tell me that Joe Blow graduating from university X is inferior to Foreign Student Y graduating from university Y. No way, and this is subsidized.....if foreign student Y is just so damn brilliant, there are 101 ways to hire that person already (including the abuse of the OPT program that is currently going on).
My concern with government subsidized internships is that they may put us back in a similar situation as the NIV's. Cheap labor replacing experienced employees. Instead of hiring employees, companies will hire interns at low cost and with a government subsidy only to fire them when the internship ends and replacing them with more interns. If other reforms are put in place, this may be less of a concern.
Beowulf,
The idea is interesting, so I looked up the blog -- seems to be out of the UK and Europe, but Bowery is apparently located in the US with focus on the US.
I could not find the comment that you reference, since the link is incomplete. However, the analysis you give and a James Bowery blog that I could locate, 'Citizen’s Dividends To Capture Parliamentary Governments', gets the idea across. Except that you are leaving out Bowery's "Citizen's Dividends" (proposed political party for some hypothetical country with a parliamentary proportional-representation system).
I'm not sure how or why you describe Bowery as "incredibly right wing" since he is very big on what "the right wing" in this country (what we would think of as "right wing") would abhor and adjure as "redistribution." I am assuming that the "right wing" would be like Ron Paul and the von Mises Institute, Heritage Foundation or the National Review. I think they would consider Bowery to be a flat-out Communist.
Myself, at first view, I consider Bowery to be a radical libertarian, but since his information says something about an "environment party," maybe he is what used to be known as a "watermelon Green." Probably he can't stand the Green Party on "social issues" -- in which he would not be alone.
Anyway, that's good about an estate tax as a tax on assets or wealth -- even though it is premised upon a tax on transfers of assets or wealth ("income" per the 16th Amendment). Bowery has an interesting theoretical viewpoint, probably completely off the map, although maybe not. As I recall, none other than David Rockefeller, a few years back when he was still active as CEO of Chase Manhattan (before they added JP Morgan), went to the trouble of purchasing a full-page ad in the NYT to state his opinion in support of the estate tax.
The MajorityRights blog generally seems to be coming from the European phenomena of native (white) people reacting to influx into Europe of (non-white) immigrants. But that's an over-simplification, since the bloggers at MajorityRights are complicated thinkers ... many nuances. Anyway, the general idea is that the majority have rights, as well as minorities. That could be applicable in USA as well, of course.
How did you ever come across this to connect it up and post it here at EP? Remarkable.
BTW: I am not connected with EP or anything like that, just a guest here like yourself, but please try the Rich Text Editor link button, like this --
'Citizen's Dividends to Capture Parliamentary Governments'
Also, please try, when you copy from Google, that you don't get the Google-abbreviated non-URL with parts left out by ellipsis dot-dot-dot ...... (Copy URL direct from the URL at the top of the browser page.)
Maybe Joe Sixpack hates all theory ... or anyway all theorists!
Pat Begley cartoon from Sunday Morning Comics, 3 July 2011, 'Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Bank?' edition
Couldn't blame Joe if he did! See, Paul Krugman's 'The Unwisdom of Elites' (NYT archive from 8 May 2011)
Many schools of monetary theory reject fractional reserve banking. Although the term "monetary reform" may take on a range of meanings, it can be understood as specifically referring to politico-economic policy that would eliminate fractional reserve banking. (See, Wiki article 'Monetary_reform')
Monetary theory can be seen as simply one tool in the economist's toolbox -- one approach to understanding socio-economic history or behavior, and related politico-economic phenomena. In and of itself, "monetary theory" can hardly be thought to demand either support for, or criticism of, fractional reserve banking.
However, the American Monetary Institute (AMI) -- leading source of education on pure monetary theory (i.e., monetarism free of gold buggery) -- supports the American Monetary Act.
See, "Introduction to Monetary Reform" (AMI) --
Joe and Jane just might be ready for exactly that kind of talk!
The American Monetary Institute is the leading exponent today of the original (Henry C. Simons) formulation of libertarian economics (economics premised on priority of individual liberty).
See also, Stephen Zarlenga's 'The 1930's Chicago Plan and the American Monetary Act'
Robert Oak summarizes Machiavellian strategy of the RNC and current GOP congressional leaders as based on the idea that "people hate the Fed, think monetary theory, fractional reserve banking is the root of all evil."
That makes it sound as if monetary theory (or 'monetarism') equates to fractional reserve banking, at least in the thinking of ordinary people.
If that is the thinking of ordinary people, then let's correct it immediately, for reasons of political strategy based on the Clausewitzian understanding of the interrelation of politics and warfare.
Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) in upper right (northeast quadrant) with Black Sea to the southwest and Caspian sea to the southeast, Caucasus Mountains to the south (map taken from public domain russiamap.org)
The Russians "held out against the enormous German army, decimating and wearing it out, until a relieving force encircled the city compelling the invaders to surrender." (Russiapedia.rt.com)
It's my view that we are always wrong to concede the populist low ground. Such low-lying areas are like the plains north of the Caucasus -- where the most important battles were fought.
I have been informed by a soldier who served on Germany's eastern front in World War II, that after the fall of Stalingrad, 2 February 1943, everyone east of Berlin knew the truth, that the war was over and Hitler had blown it.
Yes, we prefer high hard ground for our HQ, but never concede the low ground!
Wannabe populists (RNC opinion 'engineers') think they have captured the key location in the public mind, but they are surrounded on all sides. They are over-extended. Their only hope is to put Romney in command, but they are too arrogant to realize that.
Hate to say it, but the most progressive tax reform plan was offered by right wing (unbelievably right wing) writer James Bowery. Introduce an annual net asset tax (the estate tax is, essentially, a one-time net asset tax).
http://majorityrights.com/index.php/weblog/comments/doing_the_basic_math...
Since wealth is far more stratified than income-- the Forbes 400 alone has a greater net wealth than the bottom 50% of the population-- even a flat tax on wealth would be very progressive. By tying, as Bowery suggests, the net asset tax rate to 3 month T-bill rate, it becomes rather powerful counter-cyclical tool that Congress could fire and forget since the Treasuries market itself (cough*Fed Funds rate*cough) would automatically adjust the tax rate. There is (these numbers are necessarily approx.) $58 billion in household net worth this year, of which top 1% ($5 million threshold) controls 35% or $20 Trillion. You could double these numbers by looking at top 10% ($1 million threshold) with $40T in household net worth. It almost goes without saying that public financing of campaigns is a necessary precursor for Congress to ever reform the tax code to make it more progressive.
So let's see, 3 month T-bills today only yield 0.01%. However the CBO projects for 2016 and every year thereafter a 3 month T-bill rate of 5% (CBO is surely wrong that rates will get that high but they won't figure that out for years). So a net asset tax on top 1% would raise a $2 billion this year but by 2016 (per CBO) would raise $1 trillion a year.
Of course, it's a Fed thing, you have to read between the lines, but it seems to me that Bernanke did recently say that the Fed had done all it could ... passing the ball over to the source of revenue bills ... who are going nowhere, holding, don't care about penalties ...
"Stop clock for Substitution"
-- from 'Basketball Referee Signals'
A great platform! I like it. "Robert Oak for President."
The Hospital CEO's, especially the non-profits" might think about their own salary - and reducing it. A very interesting email is circulating on the net:
"Peter Fine, is an American dream comes true. Peter, a former New York taxi cab driver, has made it big in the health care industry. Now making $1,300.00 an HOUR managing his NON-PROFIT health care corporation, Peter can easily buy a new car for CASH after working only 12 hours. An American dream comes true! How do your wages compare? Data is based on compensation figures that are public information. Internal Revenue Service, tax year 2009, DLN# 93493316013240, Employer ID 45-0233470. 40 hrs/wk 50 wks/yr 2 weeks paid vacation. Current wages may be up to 20% greater. Travel expenses and other benefits are not included."
Read the complete email at: bit.ly/nMbqck
Wikipedia Tax info at: bit.ly/nGM8uv
Truly. Unfortunately the Fed cannot force Congress to enact policies, legislation and at this point, considering their insane agenda while America suffers.....I wish they could.
I agree, every single place we know massive jobs were lost and that is bad trade deals, offshore outsourcing, bringing in foreign labor, illegal labor, a massive implosion in real estate/construction, should be deal with directly.
First, every new college grad should be guaranteed a gov. subsidized internship, at least, in their field. I don't care if it's $15/hr but they need that first job work experience and corporations would be given a gift if that was government subsidized.
Next, everyone who is a professional should be brought together in incubators to get support, pay to form new companies. The standards would still apply, have to be a viable business plan, they would have to present, just like new ventures are funded today, have to have prototypes and so on, but a system to get them together, support to formulate teams, business plans, prototyping, investor pitches and so on should be done. We have millions of people with enormous talents and skills who cannot even get a Walmart job.
Then, they should fund a direct jobs program for targeted infrastructure projects, selected by their threat to public safety and what kind of economic benefits such infrastructure would bring to that region. This crap about "schools" and such just isn't the kind of infrastructure projects to generate economic growth to an area.
Things like levies, bridges, increased communication networks, better power grid (key critical), etc. are the types of things that would bring economic growth, not schools.
Schools should be done for safety but what they really need are teachers and a cutting on the bureaucracy that goes on in schools, plus a hell of a lot of technology additions, books, supplies and so on. The building, well, it can't fall down around their heads but one can live with a crappy building for the moment.
They should start a national manufacturing policy, agenda and major incentives to manufacture in the U.S. with U.S. citizens are hires. They should institute a major buy American program for all federal, state, local government agencies.
They should ban the offshore outsourcing of all federal, state and local contracts.
Would we get any of this common sense, practical policies where their opposites can be directly tabulated to show we have lost millions and millions of jobs due to them?
Of course not. Instead we have some strange Rube Goldberg MBS purchase which I think stinks to high heaven. I think bundling MBS and passing them around like poker chips is one of the original problems. People's homes and their mortgages just should not be an investor vehicle to this degree in my view.
Now that the Federal Reserve has basically told us that their ultra-low interest rate policy and experiment with quantitative easing have not worked, they are admitting that the world’s economy is clinging to the edge of the fiscal precipice by promoting “Operation Twist”.
As shown here, a Federal Reserve President, James Bullard, admitted in 2010 that it was highly likely that Fed policies were going to lead to a Japanese-style "Lost Decade" as shown here:
http://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2011/09/will-federal-reserve-policy...
Here's a brief quote from his conclusions:
"Of course, we can hope that we do not encounter such shocks (i.e. deflation), and that further recovery turns out to be robust but hope is not a strategy. The U.S. is closer to a Japanese-style outcome today than at any time in recent history."
The Fed has backed themselves into a corner but still hasn’t come to the realization that the situation is hopeless….at least publicly.
I don't know if the Fed is doing everything it can or not, but if people aren't working, does it matter if they lower interest rates? Lower interest rates helps companies to invest, but large corps already have plenty of cash and they are not investing it in the US.
1) Bring back tariffs, renegotiate FTA's such that countries that don't play by our rules (including labor and environmental) don't get free trade agreements and watch the jobs pour back.
2) Strictly limit NIV's and limit outsourcing of current jobs and watch the jobs return.
3) Finally, change accounting and tax rules to encourage companies hiring and keeping employees instead of using contractors or outsourcing
Any one of these would help the US economy tremendously, all three would make the US a true superpower again. Tax revenues would increase, welfare programs would drop and the economy would be on track without having to raise taxes. Maybe social security could even be saved! Yet none of these three ideas are entertained by any politicians.
They did vote for single payer, universal health care, or the plans promised during the campaign.
The radical right twisted all of this into a campaign but their agenda is to turn health care into a worse mess than it is, whereas the base wanted single-payer, universal health care, heavy focus on getting the for profit health insurance companies, big pharma, not making profits over the bodies of Americans.
Obama gave insurance industry much of what they wanted and I'm pretty sure all of America didn't want that.
But read the proposals of the radical right, they are even worse, if that's possible. We'll have people dying and not being able to afford health care all over the place. Ryan is the worst of the bunch, he's basically privatizing Medicare and kicking seniors to the curb.
Nice article! I find it incredible that politicians can threaten other officials and nothing happens. I think if a regular citizen said what Perry said, the FBI would be knocking at their door.
Why aren't they writing letters when the Fed opened up unlimited loans to Europe through swaps? That's a crowd pleaser, bailing out foreign banks.
I think your conclusion is right. They are out to win at all costs and people hate the Fed, think monetary theory, fractional reserve banking is the root of all evil.
This is what happens when "free" "documentaries are released on the Internet which take a few facts and twist them into some sort of grand conspiracy theory. If only there were a few "documentaries" on the radical right. Sure needs to be some because you're right, they want to wipe out the U.S. middle class and clearly, by their actions, don't care about the people of the United States and even the macro-economic level economy.
People didn't vote for Obama to shove that health care package down the throats of America. He pursued health care against the strong objection of this country and it cost him the House in 2010 and it looks like it's costing him re-election.
He never recovered from that.
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