Interview on causes for hope, fracking, global warming and the surveillance state

@ Ian,
Interesting that you think there’s hope ten or 15 years into the future; or even longer…
With an ever increasing grip; and an ever decreasing public involvement; just how is that even a possibility?
I’m a bit skeptical of that kind of optimism.

Interesting that you think there’s hope ten or 15 years into the future; or even longer…

Correct me if I’m wrong Ian, but it appears from your statements in that interview that you base your optimistic conclusion on reading the latest tea leaves per the poll that asserts that this latest generation is no longer “alright” with constant surveillance even though that’s all they’ve ever known. I can’t agree with that, if for no other reason than polls are full of shit and will give you the results for which you are searching. In otherwords, polls are validation of your foregone conclusion, not discovery.

I know I can’t say what the future will hold. There are so many possible permutations of how this will all play out, and hopefully by now, everyone here realizes that a crisis beyond the scope and purvey of the Full Spectrum Dominance Machinery can and will break any heretofore trend line that connects past, current and future, rendering extrapolation of the previous line impossible because there is no longer any line to extrapolate.

and as Obama reminded us, you can get people to believe anything if you offer them hope and an easy fix for their problems.

Didn’t Hermann Wilhelm Göring say almost exactly the same thing? I guess Reagan and Lincoln weren’t Obama’s only inspirations, afterall.

My comment is offensive? Whatever. It was rather benign for me, I thought. Offensive in what way? Anyhow, there is a nice discussion of MMT at this link. This particular commenter appears to be as offensive as me and shares the same sentiments about this political policy disguised as economic theory.

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/modern-monetary-theory-whats-modern-about-it

Why is private sector debt preferable?
written by Neil Wilson, February 20, 2012 2:01

“his pushes them toward larger government deficits then we would see if we also aggressively used channels two and three.”

Which instead would lead to higher private sector debt and promote the dynamic instabilities that Steve Keen demonstrates in his work.

Running an economy that constantly requires poaching spending from the future relies on two assumptions

(i) that there will be more growth in the future at a faster rate – doubtful when we’re running into the planet’s limits.
(ii) that the amount of private debt doesn’t matter and that it is merely a distributional issue.

An economy where individual’s spending within their means and are able to live a life by doing that is clearly a superior policy outcome.

Requiring individuals to be in debt just to survive makes no sense.

@ selise

For what it’s worth, MMT was something greater than what is being currently presented by UMKC. My first exposure to MMT happened early to mid 1960’s from a graduate of the University of Wichita (Ks) having either a masters or doctorate (I no longer recall). At that time MMT was based upon a continuation of Keynesian monetary theory that led to Breton Woods and the original formulations for World Bank and IMF. Out of these, Keynes advanced his conception of replacing the gold standard of that day with a gold based standard, the US dollar as the world reserve currency as the US was the largest and only intact economy evident. If the current form of MMT cannot trace its development from these beginnings, then it is only an incomplete form of MMT. The early version also contained relationship to monetary policy with tax policy as well as fiscal policy in a comprehensive whole. From reading the UMKC website, both tax policy and fiscal policy relationships are weak to non-existant, depriving this rendition of MMT somewhat shallow or having reduced dimensions.

What has changed since the late 1960’s is the accumulation of international funds fed by cold war spending, entirely unforeseen by Keynesian theory as was the French attack upon the US gold reserves, exchanging French reserve dollars for gold which led to Nixon’s taking the dollar off of it’s gold base. Also not seen by Keynesian theory was the blossoming of the multinational corporation throughout this period and the creation of massive liquid funds movable at a moment’s notice to the most momentarily advantageous place to deposit. Once off gold backing, the monetary policy was used to decrease the value of the currency to promote US export trade. Blowback from this led directly to the founding of OPEC and the oil embargo of 1973 (IIRC) which created another accumulation of dollar reserves awash in the financial world, looking for a return.

For the most part, economic history of this era and subsequent developments has not been written in any coherent form. It is not likely the current economic ideology based upon University of Chicago, F.A. Hayek, M. Friedman, Leo Strauss (axis of economic evil) will enable such history to be collected in any narrative form easily accessible outside the world of the highly educated and factually retentive. The election of 1980 opened the access of neoliberal/neoclassic/neoconservative acolytes to the leavers of governmental power and the destruction of the New Deal edifice, something that the country/the world is now paying dearly for and will be for generations. The sole option for the public is to learn economics and use that knowledge to protect the republic from political charlatans gaining hold of political power, and remove those politicians who demonstrate economic incompetence.

Ian being an autodidact has a better and ideologically unadulterated grasp of economics than most PhD’s of economics and losing his voice in the debate is a costly loss. Perhaps reconsideration will emerge later, I would certainly hope so.

to the point of obfuscation.

Economics is obfuscation. MMT is purposely obfuscatory. It seeks to legitimize and rationalize the enslavement and rape of the planet. Anyone with any sense can see it for the ruse it is, but hey, it gives academics a job serving their masters like the lap dogs they are. I understand why Ian doesn’t want to go there with this crowd. You’ll never change the mind of people who can’t get outside their box, especially those who believe they have gotten outside of that box. News for you, the box goes where you go, meaning change of physical location doesn’t shirk the box. Your embracing of MMT proves this point.

It looks like Stockholm could use some of that magic MMT juice right about now, or did they already have their shot of MMT and it’s apparently not working?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2328952/Sweden-riots-Stockholm-burns-rioters-battle-police-days-violence-immigrant-ghetto.html

Hundreds of youths attacked police and emergency services last night as rioting in Stockholm’s poor immigrant suburbs escalated.

Yesterday’s violence, which has intensified over three days of rioting, saw gangs torch dozens of cars and attack two schools and a police station.

It is Sweden’s worst disorder in years and has shocked the country and provoked a debate on how Sweden is coping with youth unemployment and an influx of immigrants.

Sweden should give Yves Smith from Naked Capitalism a call. With all Yves experience and her superior intellect, Sweden, and the rest of the world for that matter, should have this all cleared up in no time.

I’m an autodidact, too – except that what I understand about economics probably wouldn’t earn me a G.E.D., so please be kind as I make some observations. I’ll do my best to take any criticism of my understanding with equanimity.

It seems to me that the Left’s romance with MMT (and Keynes in general) has to do with (re)distributive issues, while the Right – and gold-bugs in general – hate it for the same reason (the robbery of inflation.) Please sit with my over-simplification for the moment.

I think it starts to get murky when people try to justify a Capitalist sensibility within the MMT models (neoliberals on the Left, for example.) Unfortunately, in order to do so, one must worship on the altar of infinite economic growth which, as has been pointed out, rests upon infinite actual resource growth in the real world, else we realize the worst fears of the goldbugs. Of course, there is no such infinite growth, so all of the arguments about debt slavery and taxation-through-inflation are perfectly reasonable objections to the MMT.

At this point, I want to introduce the (not particularly novel) idea that the ever-vigilant “goldbugs” of the right, and their neoliberal arch-enemies who disingenuously try to wed Capitalism and the socialist distributionist rising-tide sensibilities of voodoo economics, both share one thing: Greed. By “greed” I mean the idea of wealth, of accumulation, of earning, having, and keeping stuff. There is nothing socialistic about it – the goldbugs are right, in the end it’s about the cognoscenti of finance gaming the system to extract it all at the expense of those of us who are concerned with daily living, those of us without PhD’s in skimming the economy.

Now, a hard-backed currency is nakedly (more honestly) about such greed, since it limits the money supply and exposes any (re)distributive efforts for what they are. But the MMT neo-liberals ain’t fooling me none, neither.

The point I’m trying to get around to is that yes, we are dealing with reality – in which resources are limited, and population is growing (largely because of the illusions of unlimited resources), and at the end of the day I come down on the side of inflationary re-distributive MMT-ish economic policy because I think that the proper response is for us to share the shrinking pie equally and hope we come to our senses and find an equilibrium before our infighting ensures our doom, and not be all “Life of Pi”-like and kill off the useless eaters in the boat so that the savviest greedheads survive.

(Again, I apologize if I am missing some crayons in my box.)

Well said Petro. That has been basically my take on MMT as well. Ive been suspicious of it since originally seeing Philip Pilkington promoting it a few years ago. It immediately struck me as intentionally overly complex; sly talk to get a quick foot in the door to replace an old, shit system with a new, shit system. As to Carol’s criticism, I think your line’s here “But the MMT neo-liberals ain’t fooling me none, neither.” and here “at the end of the day I come down on the side of inflationary re-distributive MMT-ish economic policy because I think that the proper response is for us to share the shrinking pie equally and hope we come to our senses and find an equilibrium before our infighting ensures our doom” must have been missed. In this ridiculous state of things currently comprising our economic system, Ill take whatever scraps I can. I liken everything to grappling, so here goes; your opponent has your back with the choking arm sunk in..millimeters count.

Thank you, dan henry.

MB, I mean Carol, I have no illusions about State-controlled currency systems, nor do I wish to “sign on” to anything, but as long as the State is involved…

Here’s the thing. In order to distribute wealth outside of the norms of the “meritocratically-minded” (greedheads) – where only the elect achieve a measure of economic freedom – with a hard-backed currency one must engage in direct, obvious confiscatory violence. In the world of fiat money, where currency is actually a governor on economic activity, one can use the soft violence of inflation (or taxation in the other direction) to achieve the same ends.

(If one is a meritocrat or social “Darwinian,” then I nothing I say here applies.)

Of course, this is within the realm of State-centric society. My real sympathies lie with more gift- and barter-based local systems, but this requires a psychological stance that is not, shall we say, particularly ubiquitous at the moment.

I skimmed your link, and I’ve read these objections before. They’re valid objections – again, from a particular framing. However, I actually do kind of agree with Cheney (god help me) about deficits – because I don’t see governments (the State) as independent entities, but merely as institutions at the service of the people, and as such I find concerns about their “solvency” to be absurd. Yea, there is some inter-governmental concerns that require the additional layer of complexity of trade policies, but the bulk of deficit is run vis. the domestic population (us owing ourselves.) Plus, I find the idea of multiple governments (flags) yet another unfortunate absurdity (no, I’m not stumping for One World Government.)

You can peg me as an idealist if you like, but I’m actually taking a rather practical position in working with things as they are in tolerating the MMT paradigm as a workable paradigm under the circumstances. Does it still require vigilance? Of course.

Like, for example, banking functions should be nationalized. This failure is one of the main reasons that our economy is so “skim-able” by the vampires draining the commonweal.

I have decidedly mixed feelings about MMT. Formerly T-bear is certainly correct that the current UMKC version making the blog rounds is terribly oversimplified, but mainstream economics has degenerated considerably over the time period he references, as well. They seem to be keeping pace with one another.

Policy economics is, potentially, very important to shaping people’s ideas about what is possible and practical and desirable. But, there’s a tendency for it to degenerate from technicality and paradox into fable. And, we need the fables: we need moral instruction. Policy economics from the Left has to be moral instruction, and that includes giving “hope” and outlining a way forward, etc.

The Right has, in Hayek and Friedman, a vision of the “market economy” as a just world. It is a morally potent tale, a romantic vision, which, conveniently, justifies authoritarianism in a rhetoric of “freedom”. It is a Big Lie — we obviously do not have a market economy, as anyone with eyes to see, would realize if they would just look; price formation is almost entirely an administrative process, and very few markets exist. As a Big Lie, it is tailor-made for propaganda purposes.

Instruction in MMT takes the form of an hypnotic trance induction — I don’t know what else to call the lengthy tracts on banking operations its devotees visit on the public. If they had some useful suggestions to implant into people’s unconscious during these exercises in extended boredom, I’d view them more favorably. And, I have no problem with building a theory on operational analysis of actual institutions — economics needs that to counterbalance the overabundance of unfounded analytic theory. There’s more to money than banks lending from deposits: operationalize financial markets already, people. It is not 1930 anymore.

Money, and the institutions of money are very important to the success of a society’s political economy, even if you cannot print oil. The French Revolution started because the ancien regime couldn’t master its fiscal problems and did not have a central bank, and then foundered because the revolutionaries couldn’t manage it either; Napoleon came to power, in part, on the strength of his willingness to create a Bank of France.

I don’t know why Occupy or similar movements do not take over a regional Federal Reserve Bank. The governance structures were designed by populists to facilitate such takeovers. If the moronic Real Business Cycle folks can take control of one, it cannot be that hard.

The Left should get very serious about the institutions of money, and resurrecting some moral fables concerning what constitutes responsible policy, that can overcome the neoliberal mythology. MMT is a pretty pathetic first attempt, but, at least, it is an attempt.

We’re clearly headed into some kind of financial collapse scenario. It would be really helpful in the next crisis if people on the Left had some idea of how to respond that didn’t involve facilitating shock doctrine, disaster capitalism’s plan for a neo-feudal future.

Odd, or not, how some writing about MMT are willing to provide links to what MMT actually says, and others are not.