All Life Is Problem Solving

In a recent post I wrote about “The Real Solution to the Fiscal Sustainability Problem.” But I was just kidding, folks. That was a solution only for people who think that Fiscal Sustainability means controlling the growth of the national debt, and stabilizing and reducing the debt-to-GDP ratio. That view of Fiscal Sustainability, however, doesn’t […]

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The Problem The biggest problem for Americans in our time is the increasingly dangerous threat to open society posed by the trend toward plutocracy and its effects on the political system. George Soros described the antecedents of these threats in The Age of Fallibility (pp. 100-101): “Gradually, the methods developed for commercial purposes found a […]

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I laughed when I saw the title of Sam Stein’s piece about Democratic donors “going rogue” on the President. Seems to me the President’s the one who’s been “going rogue” on us since he got into office. (Cross-posted at FireDogLake and Correntewire).

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As I’ve blogged many times before, I don’t think there is a “fiscal sustainability problem” as the people who are presently deluging us with exhortations to bring the national debt and the debt-to-GDP ratio define it. That’s because I define “fiscal sustainability” in a different way than they do, as I’ve explained in another post. […]

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Yesterday, R. J. Eskow remarked: We expected to see an all-out assault on Social Security and progressive taxation in November, and we expected it to come under the banner of “deficit reduction.” That was always the plan: Wait until after the election, when a lame-duck Congress could pass the preferred policies with the least political […]

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This week and last we’ve seen the appearance of four plans for “deficit and debt reduction.” Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson started things off by releasing their Co-Chair’s plan. At about the same time, the Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform issued a plan on reform of the budgetary process designed to ensure that fiscal rules […]

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In a beautifully simple post that should crystallize everything for you, Professor Stephanie Kelton of the University of Missouri at Kansas City crystallizes the logic of the Sectoral Financial Balance Model for President, Obama, the Catfood Commission, the deficit hawks and doves and you and me. She says: In a ‘closed economy’ (one without foreign […]

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Pretty soon I plan to start blogging about the presentations and discussions emerging from the Fiscal Sustainability Teach-In Counter-Conference. But, first, I want to discuss the program design and its logic. That design was basically a reaction to the framing of the deficit hawk messaging developed from the beginning of the Obama Administration. The Peterson […]

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A few days ago I began a critique of the Catfood Commission Co-Chair Proposals draft, by focusing on a single slide of their presentation stating “our guiding principles and values.” There was enough objectionable material on that slide to justify a post. But there’s much more worth commenting on in the succeeding slides on the […]

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On April 28, 2010, The Fiscal Sustainability Teach-In Counter-Conference was held at The Marvin Center of The George Washington University In Washington, DC. The Conference was first proposed in a post I blogged on April 7th at a number of sites including this one. A group of bloggers responded and collectively, using primarily the Correntewire.com […]

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