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A little more than a week ago, I proposed<\/a> 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<\/a>, sardonically called by some the \u201csteal our retirements commission,\u201d<\/a> on April 27th. The Counter-conference would also be a response to the Conference scheduled by The Peter G, Peterson Foundation’s (PGPF’s) \u201cfiscal summit\u201d<\/a> on April 28th. This conference will be full of notables but won’t include even a single economist who doesn’t share the neo-liberal view of fiscal sustainability, centered around budget deficits, the national debt, and the debt held by the public to GDP ratio. The PGPF Conference, some powerful Senators and the President’s commission are spearheading a very broad-ranging campaign to persuade the American people that austerity is necessary for ordinary Americans (as if we haven’t had enough of that since the crash of 2008), including cutbacks on entitlements while, at the same time, the same people do all they can to preserve one of the periodic \u201cgreat barbeques\u201d in American history where well-off people accumulate immense wealth by looting the few resources owned by working people. It’s the purpose of the teach-in Counter-conference to oppose this deficit hawkism<\/a> point of view with a alternate new economic paradigm offered by Modern Monetary Theory<\/a> (MMT) that offers opportunity, balanced growth, and public purpose, in place of austerity, private irresponsibility, and hopeless Hooverism.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n Last week, I further proposed that Firedog Lake, The Huffington Post, New Deal 2.0, and The American Prospect jointly sponsor and provide financial backing for this teach-In Counter-conference. I said:<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n \u201cIf the Conference could be planned and implemented over the next three weeks, it could go a long way toward beginning to blunt the impact of the Peterson Foundation Event and the first meeting of the President\u2019s Commission. We need to blunt that impact if we expect to have any material success in getting progressive legislation on a host of issues in the coming decade. \u201cWe must make this commission politically radioactive.\u201d \u201c<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n One of these organizations, The Roosevelt Institute, the publisher of New Deal 2.0<\/a>, has indicated that it would like to co-ordinate with us about the Counter-conference. The other three have not taken up the call thus far. But I’m still hopeful. In their absence, some bloggers and commenters at FDL\/Seminal<\/a> and Correntewire<\/a> have joined together with 7 potential MMT speakers and other advisors to try to implement this Conference idea. With one week and a little more than five days left, here’s where we are in getting this Conference done.<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n First, and most importantly, we’ve formulated a program to answer the Administration and the PGPF Conference. The tentative program, speakers and schedule, subject to change, of course, are here.<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n\n