Department of Bust Out Profit Models and Vampiric Capitalism

I started this lengthy series by saying:

Well, it's Springtime in DC. Time for the Peter G. Peterson Foundation's annual event. The Fiscal Summit, to be held on May 15, better named the Fiscal Cesspool of distortions, half-truths and lies, is a propaganda extravaganza designed to maintain and strengthen the Washington and national elite consensuses on the existence of a debt crisis, the long-term ravages of entitlement spending on America's fiscal well-being, and the need for long-term deficit reductions plans to combat this truly phantom menace. The purpose of maintaining that consensus is to keep an impenetrable screen of fantasy intact in order to justify policies of economic austerity. that have been impoverishing people and transferring financial and real wealth to the globalizing elite comprised of the 1% or far less of the population, depending on which nation one is talking about.

I then pointed to the first two Fiscal Summit Conferences in 2010 and 2011, identified some of the featured participants in both of these, and the then pending 2012 conference, and identified the primary myths used to form the neoliberal-based deficit hawk/austerian “fiscal sustainability”/”fiscal responsibility” narrative driving the politics of fiscal policy towards debate, discussion and passage of a long-term fiscal policy plan focused primarily on deficit reduction and long-term “fiscal responsibility” and “fiscal sustainability.” I then set out to present a detailed account of the five sessions of the April 2010 Fiscal Sustainability Teach-In Counter-Conference along with comments and references (links) to posts appearing since the Teach-In. The five sessions and accompanying Q & A, covered in posts 2-7 of this series, supplemented by additional post-conference work provide a fiscal sustainability/fiscal responsibility counter-narrative based on the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) approach to economics.

In this final post of the series, I'll juxtapose the primary claims underlying the neoliberal austerian fiscal sustainability/fiscal responsibility narrative, and the MMT answers to them. The austerian claims all link to MMT-based posts that critique them. The paragraphs following each austerian claim summarize the MMT answers, and the counter-narrative. Read below the fold...

Sometimes people object to the idea of the President ordering minting a $1 Trillion proof platinum coin on political grounds, even though they believe it's: legal to mint such a coin, won't be inflationary, and will allow the President to avoid the debt ceiling crisis. Robert Rice offered the following as part of a longer comment on a post of Beowulf's: Read below the fold...

About Two and a half months ago, Mike Norman pointed out that when Federal spending and tax collections in fiscal 2012 were compared with those for the same calendar date in 2011, data from the Daily Treasury Statements (DTS) showed that 2012 Federal spending was lagging behind 2011 spending by $433 Billion; while 2012 tax revenue Read below the fold...

Looking like it was another 'buy the rumor sell the news' near term.

After you do the maths it still doesn't add up.

It can't add up.

Ever. Read below the fold...

The pro-bail out/Kleptocracy party in Greece won the election. The only good news is that Pasok, the socialist-in-name-only-party came in a distant third. That means when left parties sell out it takes a while for the entire left to accept that fact.

Somewhere in the archives at The Agonist Sean-Paul predicted that the uprisings of Arab Spring/Wisconsin/Ohio/Occupy would end like 1848, with the bad guys still in charge.

Maybe so. For now. Read below the fold...

Serious food for serious thought:

Luke Hiken Read below the fold...

My last post covered the Session 5 presentations of Professors L. Read below the fold...

The way we designed the program of the Fiscal Sustainability Teach-In Counter-Conference, was to introduce the fundamental ideas of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) in the first three presentations on defining fiscal sustainability, whether or not there are spending constraints on governments sovereign in their currency, and whether deficits, debts, and debt-to-GDP ratios are really a problem for entitlement programs and our grandchildren. Then Presentation Four, by Marshall Auerback, was given to consider the main critique of MMT's stance on deficit spending, the possibility of inflation or hyperinflation.

Finally, Presentation Five, which we'll cover in this post was designed to highlight the proposals for full recovery favored by the MMT economists. These proposals are the counter to the austerity proposals of Paul Ryan, Pete Peterson, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, David Walker, Barack Obama, and the rest of those convinced that the US Government has solvency/debt/deficit problems that must be solved by some combination of spending cuts and tax increases. Read below the fold...

In the end there won't be any such thing as a local economy, will there? Read below the fold...

One of the raps on deficit spending in neoliberal circles is that it will trigger substantial inflation or hyper-inflation. Even when mainstream economists grant the MMT point about the impossibility of the US becoming involuntarily insolvent, they will still insist that sustained deficit spending is a bad idea because it will inevitably lead to unmanageable inflation. A variant of their critique is that especially “pure deficit spending,” I.e. deficit spending without issuing debt instruments to absorb the increase in the money supply created by deficit spending, will be an inflation trigger. Read below the fold...

[Was US Manufacturing: "Worse Than the Great Depression" --lambert] Read below the fold...

Charlie Rose amongst others Read below the fold...

While trying to research the REAL truth of what is going on with Syria, since clearly the big US media propaganda machine is stenographically on board for yet another massive destruction of a country on the US and NATO’s bloody faux-humanitarian-regime-changing clipboard, I came across a remarkable article by William Hathaway entitled “America Is under Attack!”

Capitalism is inherently predatory. It demands aggressive growth. It’s either dominate or go under.

snip Read below the fold...