All Life Is Problem Solving

A little more than a week ago, I proposed a Fiscal Sustainability Teach-In and Counter-Conference to be held in Washington, DC as a response to the First Meeting of the Administration’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, sardonically called by some the “steal our retirements commission,” on April 27th. The Counter-conference would also be […]

[Read more →]

On April 28, 2010, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation is sponsoring a “Fiscal Summit” in Washington, DC. The purpose of the Conference, which is scheduled for the day after the first meeting of the President’s recently constituted National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (btw, where the Conference is happening is a mystery not cleared […]

[Read more →]

The Press continues to be full of opinions reflecting deficit: “mongering,” “hawkism,” “terrorism,” and “errorism,” all based on erroneous neo-liberal ideas about economics. There are a number of sites however that provide very good analysis and refuting of these very dangerously silly ideas, which our President, who claimed he understood economics during his campaign, both […]

[Read more →]

It looks like the Democratic Leadership will get its wish, a sprawling “health care reform” bill, mostly focused on changes to the health insurance system that deliver many millions of new customers to the health insurance industry. The Democrats are making many upbeat claims about this bill, calling it historic and claiming that it will […]

[Read more →]

In my last post I introduced Warren Mosler’s notion of “deadly innocent frauds,” (difs) and discussed the idea of fiat monetary systems and its implications for the first dif: “in order to spend money, the Government must first raise it through taxation, or borrow it.” In fiat monetary systems, that idea is false, which is […]

[Read more →]

One characteristic of modern political and economic discourse is frequent asserting of beliefs about economics and money that have been variously described by some observers as ‘myths’, ‘scares‘, ‘lies’, ‘innocent frauds’, and ‘deadly innocent frauds’. ‘Innocent frauds’ was the courteous labeling of such beliefs by John Kenneth Galbraith in his last book, The Economics of […]

[Read more →]

Sometime during the past 32 years many prominent Democrats forgot the lessons of the Great Depression, or never learned them, and, instead, absorbed the lessons of Hooverism, in part from Ronald Reagan who believed in the religion of free market capitalism, and also in the derivative idea that real economic growth always come from the […]

[Read more →]

As I wrote in Part One of this series, “deficit hawkism” is the ideology that prioritizes bringing tax revenues and Government expenditures into balance ahead of other far more essential national needs and priorities. Right now, deficit hawkism is becoming increasingly prevalent, and its expressions very strident. It’s not limited to Republicans, but is bipartisan. […]

[Read more →]