Week-end Wrap - Political Economy - July 13, 2019

Week-end Wrap - Political Economy - July 13, 2019
by Tony Wikrent
Economics Action Group, North Carolina Democratic Party Progressive Caucus

Alarming after-effects of Republican budget cutting in North Carolina 
Savage tick-clone armies are sucking cows to death; experts fear for humans 

[ars technica, via Naked Capitalism 7-13-19]

Ravenous swarms of cloned ticks have killed a fifth cow in North Carolina by exsanguination—that is, by draining it of blood—the state’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services warned this week.... 

The tick—the Asian longhorned tick, or Haemaphysalis longicornis—was first found terrorizing a sheep in New Jersey in 2017 and has established local populations in at least 10 states since it sneaked in. Its invasive sweep is due in large part to the fact that a single well-fed female can spawn up to 2,000 tick clones parthenogenetically—that is, without mating—in a matter of weeks. And unlike other ticks that tend to feast on a victim for no more than seven days, mobs of H. longicorni can latch on for up to 19 days.

The state government is North Carolina no longer has any capability to respond to this type of new public health threat - the Republicans who took control of the state legislature in 2010 eliminated the  Public Health Pest Management Section -- which included the state’s tick control and research programs -- in their 2011 budget. 

Strategic Political Economy

Top 1% Up $21 Trillion. Bottom 50% Down $900 Billion.
Matt Bruenig June 14, 2019 [peoplespolicyproject.org, via Naked Capitalism 7-11-19]

Recently, the Federal Reserve released a new data series called the Distributive Financial Accounts, which combine the Financial Accounts and the SCF to provide quarterly estimates of the distribution of wealth in America that do sum to the aggregates in the Financial Accounts. The series goes back to 1989, the first year the modern SCF was administered and runs to the fourth quarter of 2018, the last quarter for which there is Financial Accounts data. 

The insights of this new data series are many, but for this post here I want to highlight a single eye-popping statistic. Between 1989 and 2018, the top 1 percent increased its total net worth by $21 trillion. The bottom 50 percent actually saw its net worth decrease by $900 billion over the same period.

“Americans Shouldn’t Have to Drive, but the Law Insists on It” 

[The Atlantic, via Naked Capitalism 7-10-19] 

“[T]he legal framework governing American life enforces dependency on the automobile. To begin with, mundane road regulations embed automobile supremacy into federal, state, and local law. But inequities in traffic regulation are only the beginning. Land-use law, criminal law, torts, insurance, vehicle safety regulations, even the tax code—all these sources of law provide rewards to cooperate with what has become the dominant transport mode, and punishment for those who defy it. Let’s begin at the state and local levels. A key player in the story of automobile supremacy is single-family-only zoning, a shadow segregation regime that is now justifiably on the defensive for outlawing duplexes and apartments in huge swaths of the country. Through these and other land-use restrictions—laws that separate residential and commercial areas or require needlessly large yards—zoning rules scatter Americans across distances and highway-like roads that are impractical or dangerous to traverse on foot. The resulting densities are also too low to sustain high-frequency public transit.”

Disrupting mainstream economics

AOC Is Making Monetary Policy Cool (and Political) Again 

[New York Magazine, via Naked Capitalism 7-11-19]

There’s a strong case that the most important economic policy decisions of the past decade have been at the Federal Reserve. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, America’s central bank decided which troubled financial institutions would live and which would die, created a public option for short-term corporate financing, manipulated asset prices by creating artificial demand for various securities, provided an unlimited supply of dollars to some cash-strapped European nations (but not to others), and began deliberately suppressing economic growth in 2015, on the grounds that the U.S. could not sustain an official unemployment rate of below 5 percent without triggering runaway inflation. 

All these decisions had profound consequences for the global economy; and that last one might very well have cost the Democratic Party the last presidential election by slowing economic growth in 2016. 

And yet, the Fed’s policies attracted scant attention from the mainstream media or elected Democrats. An unthinking reverence for the central bank’s political independence kept the American public ignorant of — and unelected bureaucrats, unaccountable for — exercises of discretion that helped determine the availability of jobs, cost of credit, and distribution of wealth in the United States. Conservative Republicans may have been willing to threaten Fed governors with violence if they didn’t start fighting non-existent inflation — but liberal Democrats barely made a peep as Janet Yellen’s rate hikes needlessly jeopardized the job prospects of low-income workers (and Hillary Clinton). 

Fortunately, the 2018 midterms brought some new Democrats to town. And the new generation is woke on monetary policy.

When Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell testifed before the House Wednesday, Team Blue’s freshmen lawmakers posed some of the hearings most incisive questions.

Week-end Wrap - Political Economy - July 6, 2019

Week-end Wrap - Political Economy - July 6, 2019
by Tony Wikrent
Economics Action Group, North Carolina Democratic Party Progressive Caucus

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just

What a Pediatrician Saw Inside a Border Patrol Warehouse
[The Atlantic, , via Naked Capitalism 7-5-19]

Dolly Lucio Sevier evaluated dozens of sick children at a facility in South Texas. She found evidence of infection, malnutrition, and psychological trauma.

At Ursula, however, the children Sevier examined—like the panting 2-year-old—were “totally fearful, but then entirely subdued,” she told me. She could read the fear in their faces, but they were perfectly submissive to her authority. “I can only explain it by trauma, because that is such an unusual behavior,” she said. Sevier had brought along Mickey Mouse toys to break the ice, and the kids seem to enjoy playing with them. Yet none resisted, she said, when she took them away at the end of the exam. “At some point,” Sevier mused, “you’re broken and you stop fighting.”

....Border Patrol has long maintained that it is not equipped to handle children, who are supposed to be transferred into the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement within three days. After that, many kids are housed in licensed child-care facilities that look more like the average public school than a jail. The federal government has attributed slow transfers to the sharp uptick in the number of migrants at the southern border; in May, 144,200 migrants were taken into custody—the highest monthly total in 13 years.

Days before Sevier’s visit, reports of poor conditions at a similar facility in Clint, Texas, drew outrage around the country. Kevin McAleenan, the acting head of the Department of Homeland Security, told reporters the outcry was based on “unsubstantiated allegations regarding a single Border Patrol facility.”
But his own agency’s watchdogs soon contradicted him—the problems are not restricted to Clint.

Predatory Finance

Sun, Sand, and the $1.5 Trillion Dark Offshore Economy 

Bloomberg Businessweek, via The Big Picture 7-6-19]

The British Virgin Islands is home to more than 400,000 companies that hold $1.5 trillion in assets.... Even though he helped get it up and running, Geluk doesn’t have permission to scan the whole database. In fact, only two people, a pair of unnamed employees of the BVI’s Financial Investigation Agency, are able to search the entire system, which holds details on about 600,000 owners who have directly or indirectly controlled companies here. It’s thought that roughly a third of all offshore companies globally are registered in the BVI....

The BVI’s place in the dark offshore economy was illuminated by the 2016 Panama Papers leak, in which 11.5 million documents from the law firm Mossack Fonseca were released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The disclosures sparked probes worldwide into money laundering, sanctions violations, and tax avoidance, and it didn’t pass without notice that more than half the companies outed in the leak were registered in the BVI. (The scandal should have been called the BVI Papers, more than a few people suggested.) It was clear from the disclosures that BVI regulation was inadequate, and that remains a concern today: Last year, BVI regulators conducted only four on-site inspections of financial firms.

Week-end Wrap - Political Economy - June 29, 2019

Week-end Wrap - Political Economy - June 29, 2019
by Tony Wikrent
Economics Action Group, North Carolina Democratic Party Progressive Caucus

Strategic Political Economy

These Three Firms Own Corporate America

Jan Fichtner, Eelke Heemskerk, Javier Garcia-Bernardo, May 11, 2017 [The Conversation, via Alternet]

Disrupting mainstream economics

The new left economics: how a network of thinkers is transforming capitalism
[The Guardian, via Naked Capitalism 6-27-19]

There is a dawning recognition that a new kind of economy is needed: fairer, more inclusive, less exploitative, less destructive of society and the planet. “We’re in a time when people are much more open to radical economic ideas,” says Michael Jacobs, a former prime ministerial adviser to Gordon Brown. “The voters have revolted against neoliberalism. 

Climate and environmental crises

It's the hottest day ever recorded in Europe, as Earth hurtles deeper into the climate crisis

Mark Sumner, June 28, 2019 [DailyKos]

The five hottest European summers in the last 600 years have all come in the last twenty years. And 2019 is looking like it may provide not just the hottest day, but the hottest week, month, and year as the radically destabilized weather system continues to draw scalding air farther and farther north. Germany is experiencing it’s hottest June ever. Temperatures in Italy have turned deadly. And records have been shattered across at least six nations. The wave of hot air is also bringing up dust from the Sahara, prompting health warnings because of both temperatures and air quality.

Week-end Wrap - Political Economy - June 22, 2019

Week-end Wrap - Political Economy - June 22, 2019
by Tony Wikrent
Economics Action Group, North Carolina Democratic Party Progressive Caucus

I apologize for the absence from last week. My computer crashed last Saturday night, and blew away a chunk of the operating system, so could not be rebooted until placed in the hands of a skilled PC doctor. I have begun searching for a feasible alternative PC at a low budget, and welcome any contributions to PayPal using my email address 2nbbooks@gmail.com. Thank you for your patience and understanding. 

Strategic Political Economy

Facebook's plan to create a global currency are insane and must be resisted. Ten good reasons: (
[Twitter by Nicholas Shaxson, author of Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World, via Naked Capitalism 6-21-19]

The way we structure money and payments is a question for democratic institutions, not technology companies.
By Matt Stoller [New York Times, via Twitter 6-20-19]

There are four core problems with Facebook’s new currency. The first, and perhaps the simplest, is that organizing a payments system is a complicated and difficult task, one that requires enormous investment in compliance systems.... 

The second problem is that, since the Civil War, the United States has had a general prohibition on the intersection between banking and commerce. Such a barrier has been reinforced many times, such as in 1956 with the Bank Holding Company Act and in 1970 with an amendment to that law during the conglomerate craze. Both times, Congress blocked banks from going into nonbanking businesses through holding companies, because Americans historically didn’t want banks competing with their own customers. Banking and payments is a special business, where a bank gets access to intimate business secrets of its customers. As one travel agent told Congress in 1970 when opposing the right of banks to enter his business, “Any time I deposited checks from my customers,” he said, “I was providing the banks with the names of my best clients.” 

Imagine Facebook’s subsidiary Calibra knowing your account balance and your spending, and offering to sell a retailer an algorithm that will maximize the price for what you can afford to pay for a product. Imagine this cartel having this kind of financial visibility into not only many consumers, but into businesses across the economy. Such conflicts of interest are why payments and banking are separated from the rest of the economy in the United States.... 

The third problem is that the Libra system — or really any private currency system — introduces systemic risk into our economy... 

We should not be setting up a private international payments network that would need to be backed by taxpayers because it’s too big to fail. 

And the fourth problem is that of national security and sovereignty....

Years ago, Mark Zuckerberg made it clear that he doesn’t think Facebook is a business. “In a lot of ways, Facebook is more like a government than a traditional company,” said Mr. Zuckerberg. “We’re really setting policies.” ...The way we structure money and payments is a question for democratic institutions. Any company big enough to start its own currency is just too big.

Restoring balance to the economy

“Poor People’s Moral Budget: Everybody Has the Right to Live” (PDF)

[Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, Poor People’s Campaign, via Naked Capitalism 6-19-19] 

From the “Findings”:

The United States has abundant resources for an economic revival that will move towards establishing a moral economy. This report identifies:

• $350 billion in annual military spending cuts that would make the nation and the world more secure;
• $886 billion in estimated annual revenue from fair taxes on the wealthy, corporations, and Wall Street;
• and Billions more in savings from ending mass incarceration, addressing climate change, and meeting other key campaign demands.

The below comparisons demonstrate that policymakers have always found resources for their true priorities. It is critical that policymakers redirect these resources to establish justice and to prioritize the general welfare instead. The abundant wealth of this nation is produced by millions of people, workers, and families in this country and around the world. The fruits of their labor should be devoted to securing their basic needs and creating the conditions for them to thrive. At the same time, policymakers should not tie their hands with “pay-as-you-go” restrictions that require every dime of new spending to be offset with expenditure cuts or new revenue, especially given the enormous long-term benefits of most of our proposals. The cost of inaction is simply too great.

Lambert Strether notes: "This is, if not MMT, at least MMT-adjacent. It focuses on resources, not money, and it wants to drive a stake into PayGo’s heart-equivalent-if-any. The report is also a useful baseline for Democrat presidential candidates."


Ellen Brown: The American Dream is alive and well — in China
[Public Banking Institute 6-22-19]

Tony needs a new computer

And selling books isn't as lucrative as it once was.

So...

Anyone who feels generous can contribute to the "get Tony back online" fund. Contributions can be sent to his gmail address where he takes Paypal.

Thanks!

Week-end Wrap - Political Economy - June 8, 2019

Week-end Wrap - Political Economy - June 8, 2019
by Tony Wikrent
Economics Action Group, North Carolina Democratic Party Progressive Caucus

You read it here first

The Green New Deal has forced into public discourse the fact that solving the crisis of climate change is going to require trillions of dollars of new investment. A recent example: 

Ocasio-Cortez: $10 trillion needed for effective climate plan
[The Hill, via Naked Capitalism 6-6-19]

Freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday that any plan to sufficiently address the climate crisis will need to cost at least $10 trillion. 

“I think we really need to get to $10 trillion to have a shot,” the progressive firebrand said in response to a question from The Hill in the Capitol. 

“I know it’s a ton," she added. "I don’t think anyone wants to spend that amount of money, it’s not a fun number to say, I’m not excited to say we need to spend $10 trillion on climate, but ... it’s just the fact of the scenario.”

If you had been reading this blog, Real Economics, in December 2014:
Dear Dems: Give me $100 trillion and I'll save your sorry ass

"$100 trillion to build a new economy" will be another test, but one that we need to impose over the coming two years. It can completely transform what issues are defined, and how, for the 2016 election. We need to get general public awareness of the need for "$100 trillion to build a new economy" - and how doable it actually is. Once we do that, it will be a relatively simple matter to determine if someone is serious about solving the problems we face. The next time we meet someone who is a leader in the Democratic Party, mention the fact that we need "$100 trillion to build a new economy" and watch carefully how they react. If they are hopeless neo-liberal water carriers for our would-be corporatist overlords, they will recoil in horror, or try to argue that such a huge amount is simply preposterous. Anyone who is stuck talking about programs of a few billion, or even a few hundred billion dollars, is simply completely uninformed about the problems we face - or just not willing to face reality - because reality is that we can no longer afford to let Wall Street play funny money games. We must figure out how to impose new laws and regulations that force banking and finance to serve the general welfare, not just private gain.

And about Trump and USA politics: if you had been reading this blog, Real Economics, in June 2014:
The best of times. The worst of times.

....what is needed to survive, we have already at hand. We have the science, and we have the technology. What we do not have is the political will to create crash programs to apply that science and technology, because that would require crushing our present rulers and leaders. Indeed, one half the formal political system in the USA has devoted itself to opposing science. And much of the other half has devoted itself to opposing technology. 

But what we lack most of all, is VISION. We do not have a coherent, plausible, positive vision. And without vision, the people will perish - another hard-learned lesson of human history the world's major religions warn us about. 

The 2008 Obama campaign showed us how powerful a vision of hope can be, no matter how much of a charade it might be. What do you think would be the electoral results if Democratic candidates starting telling people we are actually on the verge of a massive new economic boom? Because there is $100 trillion of work we need to do to solve the problem of climate change. This new boom will last for decades, just like the boom unleashed after World War 2 by meeting pent-up consumer demand and rebuilding Europe and Japan. I believe, in a few years or decades, the harshest and most important historical judgement of President Obama will be that he took office at a point where he could have led the nation and the world into a new golden age of capitalism, but instead chose to defend the status quo, and as a result the populist upsurge against the status quo veered right instead of left. (Bolding not in original 2014 posting.)

The possible routes to sustainability

Once in awhile, it's good to see what thoughtful grownups sound like when they discuss how exactly folks go about building a world that doesn't need to run on fossil fuels. Here Deutsche Welle follows some of the more promising strategies—e-mobility in Norway, the hydrogen strategy in Japan, etc. It's remarkably well done.

Week-end Wrap - Political Economy - June 1, 2019

Week-end Wrap - Political Economy - June 1, 2019
by Tony Wikrent
Economics Action Group, North Carolina Democratic Party Progressive Caucus

Strategic Political Economy

The West and Russian-Chinese Relations: Stages of Denial 

[Valdai Discussion Club, via Naked Capitalism 5-26-19]

When analyzing the place that Russia and China occupy in each other’s bilateral trade, there is an imbalance arising from the difference in the size of the two economies. But it is hard to think of a way China could use it to blackmail or pressure Russia. Fuel and energy resources dominate Russia’s exports to China as well as Russian exports in general – fossil fuels accounted for 73 percent of its 2018 supplies. Russia is one of the main suppliers of oil to China, competing for first place with Saudi Arabia.
This does not speak well of the structure of the modern Russian economy. But, from a political standpoint, all prior experience tells us that trade in energy products creates a strong interdependence between supplier and buyer. Unlike other types of goods, any pressure on energy exporters is always associated with immediate and significant losses for the importing country, so it is only used as a last resort in rare cases. 

Tech cold war: how Trump’s assault on Huawei is forcing the world to contemplate a digital iron curtain

[South China Morning Post, via Naked Capitalism 5-26-19]

I distinctly remember 20 and more years ago repeatedly arguing with conservatives in AOL message boards that utilizing cheap Chinese labor for manufacturing was going to cause long-term strategic shifts and problems that would greatly afflict USA interests. Their responses were unequivocal and never varied: an ideological recitation of the benefits of free trade, most especially how trade with USA would sneakily introduce changes into China and force adoption of "democracy." The only variation from this line was the occasional addition of complaining that American workers were paid too much, and expected too much. 

How secure is the intelligence community’s IT supply chain? 

[FifthDomain, via Naked Capitalism 5-26-19]

China claims to have 'cracked' low cost production of lithium, political implications could be huge

Mark Sumner, June 1, 2019 [DailyKos]

China’s Plan To Influence Global Commodity Pricing 

[SafeHaven, via Naked Capitalism 6-1-19]

The Electric Vehicle Revolution Will Come from China — not the US
by Lambert Strether [Naked Capitalism 5-26-19]

The conflict to come in the South China Sea 

[Asia Times, via Naked Capitalism 5-27-19]

The Failure of Establishment Neoliberal Economics

After Neoliberalism
Joseph Stiglitz [Project Syndicate, via Naked Capitalism 5-31-19]

The neoliberal experiment – lower taxes on the rich, deregulation of labor and product markets, financialization, and globalization – has been a spectacular failure. Growth is lower than it was in the quarter-century after World War II, and most of it has accrued to the very top of the income scale. After decades of stagnant or even falling incomes for those below them, neoliberalism must be pronounced dead and buried.

Vying to succeed it are at least three major political alternatives: far-right nationalism, center-left reformism, and the progressive left (with the center-right representing the neoliberal failure). 

Three decades of neoliberal policies have decimated the middle class, our economy, and our democracy 

Joseph Stiglitz [MarketWatch, via Naked Capitalism 6-1-19]

Week-end Wrap - Political Economy - May 25, 2019

Week-end Wrap - Political Economy - May 25, 2019
by Tony Wikrent
Economics Action Group, North Carolina Democratic Party Progressive Caucus

Strategic Political Economy

The radical plan to change how Harvard teaches economics

[Vox, via The Big Picture 5-25-19]Harvard finally has someone who is challenging Bush Dubya's economic guru Greg Mankiw in the teaching of introductory economics. Personally, I think Mankiw should be turned over to some impoverished country like Chad or Ecuador and tried for intellectual crimes against humanity. In the summer 2013 issue of Journal of Economic Perspectives, Mankiw published a paper entitled "Defending the One Percent."  (pdf)

Raj Chetty, a prominent faculty member whom Harvard recently poached back from Stanford, this spring unveiled “Economics 1152: Using Big Data to Solve Economic and Social Problems.” Taught with the help of lecturer Greg Bruich, the class garnered 375 students, including 363 undergrads, in its first term. That’s still behind the 461 in Ec 10 — but not by much. 

The courses could hardly be more different. Chetty has made his name as an empirical economist, working with a small army of colleagues and research assistants to try to get real-world findings with relevance to major political questions. And he’s focused on the roots and consequences of economic and racial inequality. He used huge amounts of IRS tax data to map inequality of opportunity in the US down to the neighborhood, and to show that black boys in particular enjoy less upward mobility than white boys. 

Ec 1152 is an introduction to that kind of economics. There’s little discussion of supply and demand curves, of producer or consumer surplus, or other elementary concepts introduced in classes like Ec 10.

Will China play rare earths card in clash with US?
[Asia Times, via Naked Capitalism 5-21-19]

“An American chemicals company and an Australian miner want to build a new supply chain for rare earths that bypasses China. The plan by Blue Line Corp. and Lynas Corp. is aimed at shoring up supplies of important commodities caught up in the U.S.-China trade conflict, … highlighting how companies are growing more worried about the Washington-Beijing showdown” [Wall Street Journal]. “Production of rare earths is dominated by China, and some of the world’s biggest buyers are U.S. technology companies that use rare earths in a wide range of electronics, including military equipment. The White House has been reluctant to impose tariffs on China’s rare-earths shipments, but China has slapped higher tariffs on American shipments of the unprocessed minerals. Lynas has become the largest producer of rare earths outside China and runs a unique supply chain shipping rare earths from Australia to Malaysia for processing.”

Week-end Wrap - Political Economy - May 18, 2019

Week-end Wrap - Political Economy - May 18, 2019
by Tony Wikrent
Economics Action Group, North Carolina Democratic Party Progressive Caucus

[Machine Design Today 5-7-19]

Strategic Political Economy

The Pivot Point

[Craig Murray, via Naked Capitalism 5-17-19]

The massive economic shock following the banking collapse of 2007–8 is the direct cause of the crisis of confidence which is affecting almost all the institutions of western representative democracy. The banking collapse was not a natural event, like a tsunami. It was a direct result of man-made systems and artifices which permitted wealth to be generated and hoarded primarily through multiple financial transactions rather than by the actual production and sale of concrete goods, and which then disproportionately funnelled wealth to those engaged in the mechanics of the transactions. 

It was a rotten system, bound to collapse. But unfortunately, it was a system in which the political elite were so financially bound that the consequences of collapse threatened their place in the social order. So collapse was prevented, by the use of the systems of government to effect the largest ever single event transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in the course of human history. Politicians bailed out the bankers by using the bankers’ own systems, and even permitted the bankers to charge the public for administering their own bailout, and charge massive interest on the money they were giving to themselves. This method meant that the ordinary people did not immediately feel all the pain, but they certainly felt it over the following decade of austerity as the massive burden of public debt that had been loaded on the populace and simply handed to the bankers, crippled the public finances. 

The mechanisms of state and corporate propaganda kicked in to ensure that the ordinary people were told that rather than having been robbed, they had been saved.

How Turkey Defied the U.S. and Became a Killer Drone Power
[Intercept, via Naked Capitalism 5-16-19]

Turkey now rivals the U.S. and the U.K. as the world’s most prolific user of killer drones, according to a review by The Intercept of reported lethal drone strikes worldwide. (Other countries that have reportedly killed people with drone-launched weapons include Israel, Iraq, and Iran.) The technology has been used by Turkey against ISIS in Syria and along Turkey’s border with Iraq and Iran, where ever-present Turkish drones have turned the tide in a decades-old counter-insurgency against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. 

While the U.S. was the foremost operator of armed, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the world for more than a decade, launching the first drone attack in 2001, today more than a dozen countries possess this technology. The U.K., Israel, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Nigeria, and Turkey have all used armed UAVs to kill targets since 2015. Efforts by Washington to control proliferation through restrictions on drone exports have failed to slow down a global race to acquire the technology. Meanwhile, the U.S. has set a precedent of impunity by carrying out hundreds of strikes that have killed civilians over the last decade.

Turkey’s Anka drone showcased during a ceremony at Turkish Aerospace Space Industries Inc., near Ankara on July 16, 2010.

Week-end Wrap - Political Economy - May 11, 2019

Week-end Wrap - Political Economy - May 11, 2019
by Tony Wikrent
Economics Action Group, North Carolina Democratic Party Progressive Caucus

"'Purity Tests': How Corporate Media Describe Progressives Standing Up for Principles

[CommonDreams.com, via Avedon's Sideshow 4-28-19]

"The phrase is code for elites being pressured in ways they don't like, and is often a shield against legitimate criticism of corruption or dependence on corporate power."

Strategic Political Economy

It Is Impossible To Control Corporations Without 90%+ Progressive Tax Rates

[Ian Welsh, May 10, 2019]

You cannot have a good economy, where executives plan for the future, unless they need their companies to continue to do well. That means high progressive tax rates on income, on capital gains AND on unrealized capital and wealth, with no loops. 

Taxes on unrealized capital gains and wealth are necessary because if you don’t do that rich types don’t cash out capital, instead they use loans to pay their bills. When you’re worth 500 million or even just a 100 million, banks are happy to lend, at under 2%.

And this week, the perfect example of how a republic that does not throttle the rich has its economic policy severely distorted: 

“How the Koch Brothers Are Killing Public Transit Projects Around the Country” 

[New York Times, via Naked Capitalism 5-7-19]   

“At the heart of their effort is a network of activists who use a sophisticated data service built by the Kochs, called i360, that helps them identify and rally voters who are inclined to their worldview. It is a particularly powerful version of the technologies used by major political parties*. In places like Nashville, Koch-financed activists are finding tremendous success. Early polling here had suggested that the $5.4 billion transit plan would easily pass. It was backed by the city’s popular mayor and a coalition of businesses. Its supporters had outspent the opposition, and Nashville was choking on cars. But the outcome of the May 1 ballot stunned the city: a landslide victory for the anti-transit camp, which attacked the plan as a colossal waste of taxpayers’ money.”

High Speed Rail-- A Much Greener Way To Travel Than Airplane Or Auto... And Some Special Interests Opposing It
[DownWithTyranny, May 11, 2019]

Yesterday CNBC carried a very interesting piece on high peed rail-- and why the U.S. has fallen so woefully behind other nations. Jeniece Pettitt and Adam Isaak compared the U.S. to other countries: "China has the world's fastest and largest high-speed rail network-- more than 19,000 miles, the vast majority of which was built in the past decade. Japan's bullet trains can reach nearly 200 miles per hour and date to the 1960s. They have moved more than 9 billion people without a single passenger casualty. France began service of the high-speed TGV train in 1981 and the rest of Europe quickly followed... When the high speed rail between Madrid and Barcelona in Spain came into operation, air traffic just plummeted between those cities and everyone switched over to high speed rail which is very convenient. People were happy to do it; they weren't forced to switch. They did it because it was a nicer option to take high speed rail.

It's payback time, folks

There are moments when I simply cannot muster the energy to be a "good sport." Whenever I think about how this country just wasted 2+ years playing an ultra-corny version of spy vs. spy,  I literally want to see heads roll. It was not just the non-stop lying, it's that the lies were so stupidly unbelievable. And for extra fun, these lies were retailed by some of the writers I have read over the years on sites I once visited regularly—The Guardian, Smirking Chimp, Crooks and Liars...

Karma can be a bitch. Smirking Chimp is having trouble paying the bills. The Guardian will have serious problems recovering from Luke Harding's crazed book Collusion. Ms. Russiagate hoaxer, Rachael Madcow has taken a serious hit to her ratings.

I could be talked out of demanding the return of the guillotine, I guess, if we could all agree to stop listening to these partially developed minds stuck in their "tell me a story" phase of intellectual development. Personally, I am stunned that in a country of 315 million souls we cannot come up with the few thousand functioning adults necessary to organize a government.

Bob Mueller is 74. He probably won't be with us much longer. Writing his epitaph won't be easy. It difficult to say nice things about someone who knew his "investigation" was utter BS yet wasted the lives of the nation for years while he tried to come up with a reason to not tell us he had no case.

Robert Mueller Is in Serious Legal Trouble - Here's Why

James Howard Kunstler, 5/10/19

For the Progressive Democratic “Resistance” (PDR), post-Modernism is in full flower. They have ruled objective reality inadmissible. There are only stories — his story, her story, they’s story, zhe’s story, and you must believe them because they come out of lived experience — for instance the lived experience of having lost a sure-thing presidential election to a cartoon character with zero political experience, and then having lost the grand inquisition to oust him. For the PDRs, the metaphysical concept of reality refers to some land of dark make-believe over a distant horizon where numbers supposedly add up (ha!) and the actions of persons are said to entail a strange cosmic condition known as consequence.

Now that the Mueller Investigation has concluded empty of charges — despite two-plus-years of sedulous effort by fiercely dedicated antagonists of its target — everything about it, including the sacred Mueller Report, begins to emit odious vapors like unto a rump roast that has laid uncovered in a pantry for three weeks, attracting the attention of flies. The PDRs might think twice about a closer examination of all that festering material. What they’re liable to find is evidence of how slovenly and dishonest it was and how the revered legal maestro in charge of composing it may well be subject to charges himself of obstructing justice and malicious prosecution.

Information emerged over the weeks since the Mueller Report’s release that Mr. Mueller and his team knew unequivocally that the Special Counsel’s mission and the FBI operations that preceded it were based on concocted political bullshit supplied by Mrs. Clinton and her network of flunkies and fixers, ranging throughout the permanent DC bureacuracy (a.k.a. the Swamp), to outposts in foreign intel services and the political kitty-litter box known as Ukraine. Mr. Mueller must have suspected this from the outset, but knew for sure by the summer of 2017, and omitted to advise the American public that he had uncovered a fraud. Rather, he rode on the back of that fraud for two years, as if touring a political landfill on a donkey, leaving the public to stew in anxious hallucinations.

What else did Mr. Mueller do, or omit to do? He never engaged US government forensic computer analysts to examine the DNC servers at the heart of RussiaGate story. Rather, he allowed the conclusions to stand of a company called CrowdStrike, hired by the DNC itself to supposedly investigate the theft of emails, especially those of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. (See Craig Murray’s commentary on all this.) Mr. Mueller never bothered to interview the one person who might have known exactly who supplied the purloined emails to Wikileaks, namely Julian Assange. Mr. Mueller also did not bother to interview several dozen retired Intel Community computer experts, led by William Binney, former Technical Director of the NSA, who determined that the hack was accomplished by direct download by an insider onto a flash drive.

What could possibly be the explanation for these blunders. Well, we’re going to find out in the months ahead. The DPR chairs of various House committees have threatened to ask Mr. Mueller to testify. Bring it on, I say. He sure has some ‘splainin’ to do, if not in those venues, then in a more than a few grand juries that will be convened to assess the actions of his confederates-at-law from every hummock and gator pool in the Swamp. These various parties may also seek to understand why Mr. Mueller omitted to mention the now reeking Steele Dossier in his 444-page report, and why in his 20-plus page recounting of the oh-so-crucial Trump Tower meeting he never disclosed that the two Russians present were on the payroll of Hillary contractor FusionGPS, and met with its principal, Glenn Simpson before and after the meeting. It does give off a scent of “colluding with Russians,” except obviously the odor came from the wrong direction.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared yesterday that we are in a constitutional crisis. You’re darn tootin’ we are, but it’s not coming from the flaccid threats of legal imbecile Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), who wants to prosecute the Attorney General, Mr. Barr, for refusing to make public grand jury records in the Mueller report — since the law requires Mr. Barr to not disclose the material. The crisis she mis-identifies is the coming indictment of so many supposedly untouchable and hallowed public figures, up to and including the former president, Mr. Obama, and the former heads of CIA, Mr. Brennan, and Director of National Security, Mr. Clapper, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, the sainted Mr. Mueller, a whole posse of former Intel Community subalterns, and an unholy host of creeping, crawling, and flying swamp creatures from Glenn Simpson to the shyster lawyers at DNC law firm Perkins Coie, to the errand boys at the Cable News Networks, Wash-Po and The New York Times who trafficked in leaked perfidious documents — that the cumulative institutional damage will destroy public confidence in constitutional government per se.  more

Week-end Wrap - Political Economy - May 4, 2019

Week-end Wrap - Political Economy - May 4, 2019
by Tony Wikrent
Economics Action Group, North Carolina Democratic Party Progressive Caucus

Strategic Political Economy

China’s population could peak in 2023, here’s why that matters

[CNBC, via Naked Capitalism 5-2-19]

China’s population is likely to peak in 2023, according to a study by online database company Global Demographics and analytics firm Complete Intelligence. The Chinese government had previously estimated that the country would hit its maximum population size in 2029.... The decline in births is driven by a “maternity cliff,” according to the report. The number of women of childbearing age in China — defined as aged 15 to 49 by the publishers — is set to fall from 346 million in 2018 to 318 million in 2023.
With fewer women of childbearing age and fewer births per 1,000 women, the total number of newborns will drop as well. The study predicts that 13.3 million babies will be born in 2023, down from 15.2 million last year.

The New Silk Roads reach the next level 

Asia Times, via Naked Capitalism 4-30-19]

....the West, as usual, ignored what was the absolutely key takeaway of the BRI forum: the deepening, on all fronts, of the Russia-China strategic partnership. It’s all here, in President Putin’s speech. 

Putin emphasized “harmonious and sustainable economic development and economic growth throughout the Eurasian space.” He noted how BRI “rhymes with Russia’s idea to establish a Greater Eurasian Partnership, a project designed to ‘integrate integration frameworks’, and therefore to promote a closer alignment of various bilateral and multilateral integration processes that are currently underway in Eurasia.”

Putin could not have been more specific. “The Eurasian Union…has already signed a free-trade agreement with Vietnam and a provisional agreement with Iran, paving the way to the creation of a free-trade area. The preparation of similar instruments with Singapore and Serbia is nearing completion, and talks are underway with Israel, Egypt and India. We cooperate actively with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.”

Addressing the forum, Putin added another enticing dimension, with the China-driven Maritime Silk Road possibly joining the Russia-driven Northern Sea Route, “a global and competitive route connecting northeastern, eastern and southeastern Asia with Europe” will emerge.

Disrupting mainstream economics

Economists Are Learning to Love the Minimum Wage
[City Lab, via The Big Picture 4-29-19]

....two new papers provide powerful evidence that higher minimum wages in fact boost the conditions of workers—especially the least skilled and lowest paid among them—without doing broad economic harm. 

The first paper is forthcoming in the prestigious Quarterly Journal of Economics and is currently available as a NBER working paper. (There is also a shorter, more reader-friendly research brief available.) It tracks the economic effects of more than 100 minimum-wage hikes across the country between 1979 and 2016.

Want to decrease suicide? Raise the minimum wage, researchers suggest 

[CBS News, via Naked Capitalism 5-1-19]

Week-end Wrap - Political Economy - April 27, 2019

Week-end Wrap - Political Economy - April 27, 2019
by Tony Wikrent
Economics Action Group, North Carolina Democratic Party Progressive Caucus

Strategic Political Economy

Share of wealth held by the bottom 90% by country
[Real World Economics Review Blog, via Mike Norman Economics 4-24-19]

The Great Deformation: Why Income Inequality Has Become Intractable
Yves Smith, April 23, 2019 [Naked Capitalism]

Taylor’s talk last week focused on the drivers of the rise in inequality, which came about via a rise in profit share of GDP, something we first noted in 2005 in a Conference Board Review article. That has enabled the top 1% to pull away from everyone else. Investment as a proportion of GDP has also dropped while consumption has increased. The paper has more detail, but Taylor estimates it would take 40 years to reduce inequality to 1980 levels. He also warns that wealth concentration could increase from 40% held by the top 1% to 60%....

...advocates of workers have failed to take up the task of determining what a reasonable level of profit is. We’ve mentioned before that in the early 2000s, Warren Buffett deemed a profit share of 6% to be unsustainably high. Yet for the past three years, the profit share has been nearly twice this high. 

Oddly, the left and labor supporters have not engaged with the question of what a fair profit might be. Modern cultures have deeply internalized the idea that the result of market forces is somehow virtuous, when markets sit both in a legal system and in a set of societal norms that play a large role in what supply and demand looks like.

[Below via, via Naked Capitalism 4-23-19]

Alice Evans‏ @_alice_evans

More

I'm reading @JosephEStiglitz's new book, "People, Power, & Profits". Really appreciate this point about globalisation & wages:

Week-end Wrap - Political Economy - April 20, 2019

Week-end Wrap - Political Economy - April 20, 2019
by Tony Wikrent
Economics Action Group, North Carolina Democratic Party Progressive Caucus

I have been looking at the work of Cornell University law professor Robert Hockett, who is serving as an economics adviser to Representative Alexandria Occasio-Cortez. I have been delighted to find that Hockett has been working the same angle I have: applying the classical republicanism that informed the creation of USA, to today's issues of political economy. Hockett's contribution is the development of the concept of what he calls "the producers' republic":

....the United States actually has a distinguished tradition of what I am calling “productive republican” finance. It is a tradition pursuant to which productive assets were deliberately spread broadly among diligent citizens ready to better the lives of themselves, their families, and ultimately their communities through thoughtful, hard work. 

Historically, the tradition is rooted in two complementary sources: first, an implicitly opportunity-egalitarian, “productive yeoman” colonial culture and subsequent national self-image, stemming in large measure from the Civic Republican and Classical Liberal ideological origins of the American republic; and second, an attendant suspicion of large aggregations of financial capital, stemming ultimately not only from the inconsistency of such aggregations with equal opportunity and productive yeomanry themselves, but also from many of the Founders’ and their forebears’ personal experiences, as agronomists, with exploitative absentee London banking concerns across the
Atlantic. 

This past January, Hockett was a participant in a small conference Money as a Democratic Medium, sponsored by Harvard University's Program on the Study of Capitalism, Institute for Global Law and Policy:

Money, governance, and public welfare are intimately connected in the modern world. More particularly, the way political communities make money and allocate credit is an essential element of governance. It critically shapes economic processes – channeling liquidity, fueling productivity, and influencing distribution. At the same time, those decisions about money and credit define key political structures, locating in particular hands the authority to mobilize resources, determining access to funds, and delegating power and privileges to private actors and organizations. 

Recognizing money and credit as public projects exposes issues of democratic purpose and possibility. In a novel focus, this conference makes those issues central. Scholars, policy makers, and students have often assumed that money and credit emerge from private exchange and entrepreneurial activity. Recent work, by contrast, emphasizes that modern currencies depend on collective orchestration. That approach resets the frame.

One of the participants was Jeffrey Sklansky, professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago and author of Sovereign of the Market: The Money Question in Early America (University of Chicago Press, 2017). Sklansky gave a brief but excellent overview of the career of Charles Macune, the head of the Southern Farmers' Alliance from 1886 to December 1889 and editor of its periodical, the National Economist, until 1892. Macune developed the Sub-Treasury idea to break the stranglehold the big banks and grain trading firms had on finance and credit for agriculture. There is precious little information available on Macune, and Sklansky has earned my deep respect for what he is doing.

Hockett's presentation is also in this video, as is that of Joseph R. Blasi of the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, "The Citizen's Share: Reducing Inequality in the 21st Century"

This is only one of about a dozen YouTube videos of the Money as a Democratic Medium conference.

In Having a Stake: Evidence and Implications for Broad-based Employee Stock Ownership and
Profit Sharing, Blasi writes about the federally mandated profit sharing the administration of George Washington imposed on the cod fishery to rebuild it, after the British had nearly destroyed it because it trained so many of the officers and sailors in the American navy.

....Jefferson, Washington, and the Congress chose to help the industry get back on its feet by what was essentially a tax cut (in lieu of tariffs paid for supplies coming from outside the U.S.) to the owners and workers of the cod fishery on the condition that the ship owners share the tax credits with all the workers.... they rejected outright subsidies to the wealthy owners who controlled the boats and warehouses on the basis that any government tax credits had to include workers. The law was explicit in its sharing criterion: owners had to share five-eighths of the credit with the crew, and additionally have a signed agreement with the captain and crew for broad-based profit sharing on the entire catch throughout the voyage. The tax credits were administered by the Treasury Department headed by Alexander Hamilton through the port Customs’ Houses. The arrangement helped rejuvenate the industry. Congress continued it for many decades. See The Citizen’s Share: Reducing Inequality in the 21st Century, Joseph R. Blasi, Richard B. Freeman, and Douglas L. Kruse. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 1-8. See also the Report on the American Fisheries by Secretary of State Jefferson.

Video spotlight: Why is public banking important for social change?

[Public Banling Institute 4-20-19]

Thomas Marois, Senior Lecturer in Development Studies at the University of London and recent guest on It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown, argues that until people regain control of money and credit, we will not be able to stop economic and ecological crises.
“There’s really no option. We can’t simply relegate the question of money and finance and credit … We can’t do anything until we have control of money. And to leave that to the private sector is a strategic mistake because then they control that agenda. They control credit. They control access to credit.”

Sandy Munro does a teardown analysis of Tesla

This YouTube interview of Sandy Monro is interesting to the point of being profound. Some background.

Monroe lives in Michigan and has a bunch of commercial ties to the car business. His specialty is tearing down cars to see how they were built and whether better production practices could make a better car. His company has about 100 employees, because cars are incredibly complex with dozens of systems so he needs a wide assortment of specialists.

The reason Monro has become a sensation is because he tore down an early Tesla Model 3. At first he was pretty critical but as time has gone on he has become convinced that most legacy automakers are now almost hopelessly behind. He has some wonderful stories about how institutional inertia works at a place like Ford Motor. His inside look at Teslas will probably sell well for at least a decade

And then he says some really enlightening things about China and their rapid industrialization plans. His observations may be skewed because he is probably meeting their best and brightest, but even taking a hefty discount for that, the story is still about as compelling a look at China as anything I have seen in a long time—maybe ever.

Greta Thunburg at the EU Parliament

I have a sign that says, "Do NOT question authority! They don't know either."

Now I really am impressed by young Thunberg and what she has accomplished. When you were 16, would anyone have asked you to speak in front of the EU Parliament? Would you have had anything to say worth listening to? Could you have delivered that speech flawlessly in a second language? She is truly amazing and has attracted a global following.

Unfortunately, she believes that the world's leaders are fully capable of fixing the climate problem if only they would put their minds to it. I only hope she will have her coping abilities in high gear when she discovers the worst truth of all—most of the adults—and certainly the adults she will meet at places like Davos, Strasbourg, or Katowice, don't have a freaking clue what to do either. I mean, Greta must be forgiven for believing that a good scolding should set thing right. She is only 16 and that probably is about the only behavioral modification she really understands. But for this problem, it is nowhere nearly enough. Of course, considering what she has already accomplished, she probably has a better chance of understanding this dilemma better than most.

Week-end Wrap - Political Economy - April 13, 2019

Week-end Wrap - Political Economy - April 13, 2019
by Tony Wikrent
Economics Action Group, North Carolina Democratic Party Progressive Caucus

Strategic Political Economy

“Research is vital to the moral integrity of social movements” 
Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II [Economic Policy Institute, via Naked Capitalism 4-8-19]
A must-read.

One of the quickest ways for a movement to lose its integrity is to be loud and wrong. We’ve seen too many movements that have bumper sticker sayings but no stats and no depth. Researchers help to protect the moral integrity of a movement by providing sound analysis of the facts and issues at hand. Armed with this information, we’re able to pull back the cover and force society to see the hurt and the harm of the decisions that people are making....

...the prophet Isaiah said to those who were rich, powerful and presumed themselves to be morally superior. “Woe unto those who legislate evil and rob the poor of their rights and make women and children their prey.” Isaiah even went as far as saying that religious activity—worship and prayer—was not a cover for their failure to “loose the band of wickedness.” Wickedness in that text is specific to the issue of not paying people what they deserve and trying to cover it over with a lot of religiosity. He goes on to say that the nation will never be able to repair itself until it ends the wickedness of not paying people what they deserve. Because society’s policies had actually insulated destruction, injustice and inequality could never be resolved without a change of policy. 

These statements reflect more than just a difference of opinion concerning the legislation. Rather, such bold and specific statements suggest an analysis of the society which concluded that the legislation was evil in that it was robbing those who were most vulnerable. In other words, Isaiah’s moral authority to criticize policy could be confirmed and validated by research....

The 13 former Confederate states, which only have about 36 percent of this country’s population, decide 178 electoral votes, 26 United States Senate seats and 35 percent of the seats in the United States House of Representatives. That means all it takes to win control of both houses of Congress is 25 Senate seats and 16 percent of U.S. House of Representatives seats available from the other 37 states. 

100 million is the number of people that didn’t vote in the 2016 election. 40 million is the number of poor and low-wealth people in this country. The majority of them are in the South and are the key to the transformation of our politics. 

All of the close elections we witnessed in the 2018 midterms are a sign that we are right at the tipping point. If there’s ever been a time that we ought to go south and shift the political calculus in this nation for the next 20 to 40 years and beyond, it is in fact right now.

How corporate America invented 'Christian America' to fight the New Deal

[churchandstate.org.uk 3-23-16, via Avedon's Sideshow 4-4-19]

The 2016 annual meeting for the Organization of American Historians (OAH) will feature a session focusing upon the provocative book One Nation Under God by Princeton history professor Keven M. Kruse. In One Nation Under God, Kruse argues that the idea of the United States as a Christian nation does not find its origins with the founding of the United States or the writing of the Constitution. Rather, the notion of America as specifically consecrated by God to be a beacon for liberty was the work of corporate and religious figures opposed to New Deal statism and interference with free enterprise. The political conflict found in this concept of Christian libertarianism was modified by President Dwight Eisenhower who advocated a more civic religion of 'one nation under God' to which both liberals and conservatives might subscribe....

Arguing that public religion is a modern invention that has little to do with America’s origins, Kruse maintains that contemporary political discourse needs to better recognize the political ideology being perpetuated by the advocates of America as a Christian nation. Needless to say, Kruse’s arguments will antagonize many on the Christian right, as well as many on the left who have employed Christianity as the means through which to implement principles of equality and opportunity as extolled by Jesus of Nazareth, the working-class carpenter. 

Drawing upon extensive archival research, the first part of Kruse’s book documents the alliance between religious leaders such as Congregationalist minister James W. Fifield Jr. and businessman J. Howard Pew Jr., president of Sun Oil and a major figure with the National Association of Manufacturers. Working out of his affluent Los Angeles community and congregation, Fifield formed a national organization called Spiritual Mobilization that attracted the support of big business while embracing unfettered capitalist traditions threatened by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies. The fertile ground plowed by Spiritual Mobilization and Fifield prepared the way for the influential prayer breakfasts of Methodist minister Abraham Vereide and the crusades of evangelist Billy Graham.... 

Seeking to mount a conservative movement against the religious establishment, evangelists such as Billy Graham joined forces with the administration of Richard Nixon to promote a religious perspective that would divide rather than unify Americans. Holding White House religious services officiated by leading evangelical ministers and sponsoring events such as the 1970 Fourth of July “Honor America Day,” featuring a religious service at the Lincoln Memorial led by Graham, Nixon attempted to employ religious nationalism as a means through which to brand those opposing his administration or the war in Vietnam as attacks upon American Christian values. Although Kruse includes an epilogue offering an overview of religion and American politics from the 1980s to the Obama Presidency, he assigns Nixon, rather than Ronald Reagan, primary responsibility for using religion to divide rather than bring Americans together.

I want apologies from the Russia-bashers

In 1972, I went to Leningrad. This was the age of Brezhnev—scary, dark, humorless USSR. Just getting off the boat was about all I could muster. To make matters worse, the Israeli Olympic team was taken hostage the morning we were scheduled to go on our very first Intourist guided tour. I spent the morning going from fretful to scared shitless. Once the bus got underway, I began to notice things I thoroughly disapproved of. The trucks were ugly and belched thick black smoke. Consumer goods were an insult to the Instinct of Workmanship. Construction sites were a disaster. But beneath the seediness of 70s Leningrad was an undeniable reality—this was the Imperial Capital of Peter the Great. This is one of the most beautiful cities on earth—a city where over one million died of starvation during the Siege rather than surrender it to the Nazis.

It took most of the day, but I came to the conclusion that if they had better political and economic systems, this would easily be the richest country on earth. Considering USSR had to be built twice (Stalin's industrialization and then post WW II reconstruction) they weren't doing so badly even in 1972. Then came the Harvard boys to teach the Russians neoliberal "capitalism." Caused nearly as much damage as the Nazis.

Here's the mess the son of Leningrad / St. Petersburg Vladimir Putin inherited from Yeltsin in 1999:

    ▪    The country was deeply in debt to the scum like IMF and World Bank?
    ▪    The Harvard boys had created such an economic catastrophe that life expectancy was falling, whole industries lay in ruins, the former Russian middle class was reduced to selling heirlooms in the winter cold, their savings had been wiped out, the best and brightest had emigrated. (For what Jeffrey Sachs inflicted on Russia makes him a walking advertisement for bringing back crucifixions.)
    ▪    The oligarchs who had seized the best Russia had to steal escaped with their loot—mostly to London where they triggered a bubble the real estate speculators love so much.

Add to this list of great headaches, he has had to deal with: NATO encirclement, international slander, the Banderite-fascist coup in Ukraine. Of course he had to move on Crimea. The Red Army lost around a half-million folks trying to defend and then retake Sevastopol during WW II. Crimea is REALLY important for Russia and so he had to remake economic and foreign policy to deal with the fallout of keeping Crimea Russian.

In the meantime, Russian aerospace is back on its feet. The military fights with pride and professionalism. The things Russia has been good at, they are good at again—figure skating, ballet, etc. Putin is still wildly popular. He has rebuilt relationships with China. He has opened elite schools so Russian education is again world-class. Russia became the world's leading exporter of grains last year—all GMO-free.

The list is nearly endless. And why not. He has at least 40 IQ points on any politician we have in USA and was given one of those elite educations that the commies could do so well. He is so fluent in German he holds press conferences in Germany in German. He holds 3 hour press conferences for the international media without notes. He has done something that anyone examining the wreckage of 1999 would not have predicted—he has restored pride in a people who not long ago were just drinking themselves to death.

What I find so amazing is his willingness to brush off some of the most ridiculous slanders and provocations. I was raised around pacifists so am pretty conversant with the dilemmas and contradictions of this practice. I would give Putin a solid B+. Turns out it is pretty easy to be a pacifist when armed with nukes ;-) Or maybe it really is the Orthodox church. I don't know much about those folk beyond the fact they have incredibly ornate churches and their male glee clubs have amazing basses. Reportedly Putin's mother was very devout and baptized him as a baby. Whatever. It's just that under Putin, most of the damage those barbaric Bolsheviks inflicted on this element of Russian culture has been repaired or rebuilt—reportedly over 40,000 churches have been rehabbed since the end of Bolshevism.

I have not been thrilled by the mindless Russia-bashing we have had to endure these last 2.5 years. Most of it unbelievable lies. And while I detest the liars who have reintroduced the unholy practice of red-baiting, I am even more distressed by the endless stream of self-identified "progressives" who bought into the Russiagate hoax. Robert LaFollette was a real Progressive—was the party's presidential candidate in 1924. He tried to keep USA out of the insanity of WW I thereby ruining his career as a Senator. So no, anyone who was cheerleading a restart of the Cold War and McCarthyism is most certainly NOT a progressive.

Week-end Wrap - Political Economy - April 6, 2019

Week-end Wrap - Political Economy - April 6, 2019
by Tony Wikrent
Economics Action Group, North Carolina Democratic Party Progressive Caucus

Draining The Swamp In North Carolina Yields The Head Of The State Republican Party, The Party's Top Donor And 3 Others, Including A Far Right Member Of Congress

About a decade ago, mostly back in 2006 and 2008, we used to write a lot about a North Carolina multimillionaire congressman named Robin Hayes. The district he represented, NC-08, is now mostly NC-09, the one where a Trumpist candidate was caught rigging the ballots last year, causing the election to be voided.... Hayes was a freak. One of the reasons he lost so badly to Kissel in 2008 was because he accused then candidate Barack Obama of "inciting class warfare" and claiming that "liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God." That brought him a lot of attention and he not only denied that he ever said it, he also accused the media reporting his remarks "irresponsible journalism." Unfortunately for Rep. Hayes, someone made a tape. When that was released Hayes simple denied that he denied the statement. Kissel beat him by ten points. 

Instead of just letting him quietly slip away into obscurity, the North Carolina elected him chairman of the state party, a two year term. They elected him again in 2016. Today Hayes was in court, having been indicted by a federal grand jury on a variety of charges for funneling bribe money to the re-election campaign of North Carolina Insurance commissioner Mike Causey.

It was actually wealthy entrepreneur and Republican Party mega-donor Greg Lindberg who was being investigated when the FBI stumbled upon Hayes. Lindberg would write $40 checks to the DCCC on the same day he wrote $500,000 checks to the Republican Party of North Carolina. He's contributed million of dollars to the GOP in recent years and was the state party's biggest single donor and is the money-bags behind the state's crooked Lt. Govenor, Dan Forest, who is running for governor next year.

Strategic Political Economy

Taibbi: On Russiagate and Our Refusal to Face Why Trump Won

Matt Taibbi [Rolling Stone, via Naked Capitalism 3-31-19]
This is long, for Taibbi, but an absolute must-read.

The 2016 campaign season brought to the surface awesome levels of political discontent. After the election, instead of wondering where that anger came from, most of the press quickly pivoted to a new tale about a Russian plot to attack our Democracy. This conveyed the impression that the election season we’d just lived through had been an aberration, thrown off the rails by an extraordinary espionage conspiracy between Trump and a cabal of evil foreigners. 

This narrative contradicted everything I’d seen traveling across America in my two years of covering the campaign. The overwhelming theme of that race, long before anyone even thought about Russia, was voter rage at the entire political system. 

The anger wasn’t just on the Republican side, where Trump humiliated the Republicans’ chosen $150 million contender, Jeb Bush (who got three delegates, or $50 million per delegate). It was also evident on the Democratic side, where a self-proclaimed “Democratic Socialist” with little money and close to no institutional support became a surprise contender.

How the Media Got it Wrong on Trump and Russia 

[The National Interest, via Naked Capitalism 3-31-19] 

The headline erases the intelligence community from the story. The article does not.

Veblen's idea of business versus industry

I had wanted to reply to comments in the thread of Economics as Cultural Warfare: The Case of Adam Smith, over at Ian Welsh's blog, where bruce wilder makes an important correction to my view of Smith: "Smith’s central argument rather famously is that the division of labor is the primary source of wealth!" Which of course is perfectly true, given that one of Smith's most famous passages is that describing the impressive productivity of the machines Smith found in a pin making factory. 

But my design is to utter annihilate any respect for Adam Smith by showing he is little more than an apologist for the imperial looting, immiseration, and devastation the British empire exacted on its colonial subject populations. In my world view, there is nothing about any apologist for the British empire that is worth salvaging. Was it possible that here was an anomaly for which I would have to bend my rules?

As I pondered this over the past week, I realized that tossing Smith's division of labor argument into the trash bin of history is more easily accomplished by referencing the arguments made by Thorstein Veblen regarding the differences between business and industry. I was not very surprised to find that I could find nothing on the internet about Veblen's argument that was worth linking to. Veblen has always been  persona non grata in the mainstream economics profession -- which means that he probably has gored one or more of the profession's sacred cows. Which of course makes Veblen all the more attractive in our day, when the intellectual rot among economic academicians has reached an overpowering level of stench. Modern Monetary Theory may have some weaknesses and faults, but I would rather have it blowing through the academy to dispel as much of the bad air as it can, than leaving the brain dead body to continue rotting and fouling the air.

Researching my attack on Smith, I had taken off my bookshelf Joseph Dorfman's The Economic Mind in American Civilization. I now opened Dorfman's book again to see what he had written about Veblen. I was surprised but delighted to find the best summary I had yet read of Veblen's ideas. In case readers don't know it, Dorfman wrote a book in 1935 entitled Thorstein Veblen and His America. And what readers certainly do not know is that the descendants of Veblen loathed the book, and spent years trying to persuade, then force, Dorfman to change the book, mostly the parts in which he described Veblen's personal traits and peccadilloes, including the controversies Veblen stirred up at every university that ever hired him. Veblen’s  descendants were unsuccessful. The source for this is Jon Larson, who worked with Veblen’s descendants in the restoration of the Veblen farm.

Despite this sad history, Dorfman's explanation of Veblen's ideas on the differences between business and industry are extremely useful today. I hope to see in comments someone expressing their "eureka" moment -- yes, let us bury Adam Smith once and for all, and never hear of him again.