Links 9/7/12

Modern Money and Public Purpose This looks great, and you’ll recognize a lot of the names on the list of participants.

Saudi Oil Well Dries Up The Telegraph

“Misery”: A Postscript To “The Euro Is Not Unassailable” New Economic Perspectives

Quick Employment Report Preview Tim Duy’s Fedwatch

Allegations Chinese Students Forced to Work on iPhone 5s Rebel Mouse

Text of Obama’s Speech to the DNC WSJ

Draghi Paul Krugman

Google Patents Profit-Maximizing Dynamic Pricing Slashdot

NASA’s Voyager 1 Spacecraft May Not Be Near Edge of Solar System after All Scientific American

Twitter beats Facebook on mobile ads FT

Obama Phones It In for DNC Finale Kevin Drum

This year’s Democratic convention: A grimmer, edgier affair than 2008 Washington Post

Cheetah cub and puppy are BFFs! Boingboing

Worries intensify over Syrian chemical weapons Washington Post

China to Build New Roads, Subways to Boost Economy Bloomberg

One Woman’s Data Trail Diary New York Times

Parsing the Grand Bargain Promise Digby

NYPD secret police spying of Muslims ends New Jersey surveillance The Guardian

Amazon Challenges Apple With Updated Line of Kindles Bloomberg

Pinterest Beats Yahoo Organic Traffic, Making It 4th Largest Traffic Driver Worldwide Techcrunch

* * *

lambert here:

We have ignition. Lift off.*

That’s one thing George Bush said that was right: The president is the decider-in-chief. –Bill Clinton

DNCon. Michelle speech, Chinese reaction: “Another netizen from Jiangsu seethed, ‘As long as you work hard you can realize your dreams.’ In China, this phrase truly is a joke. It should be changed to something like: ‘If you have money and connections, you can get a job.’” … Clinton speech: “If I were part of team Chicago this morning, I’d make damn sure Clinton has a full schedule in key parts of OH, FL, IA, and MI over the next 8 weeks. Do that, put this thing to bed, and go home” (YouTube) (transcript) … Clinton speech: “[With Bill Clinton:] The sense of personal connection, the fading away of external stimuli – until one person is addressing one other. It was almost surreal. The only other person with whom I’ve noticed that ability, believe it or not, is Sarah Palin.Narcissists both? Perhaps.” … Cllinton speech: Original text with additions and deletions as delivered. Say what you will, the man’s craft is superb. … Weather: “The D campaign moved his speech from the Bank of America Stadium (seating capacity 74,000) to the Time Warner Cable Arena (seating capacity 20,000) on Wednesday, citing weather concerns.” Well, packing the hall is always good. … Obama speech: “We don’t want bailouts for banks that break the rules.” (heh (arcane Boomer reference (go on. you know you want to))). … Obama speech: “I’m still eager to reach an agreement based on the principles of my bipartisan debt commission.” Get your can openers ready! … Obama speech: “… where we develop a hundred year supply of natural gas that’s right beneath our feet.” Anti-fracking movement under the bus. … Obama speech: “Osama bin Laden is dead.” And not being tried in the Hague. … Obama speech: “… the kind of bold, persistent experimentation that Franklin Roosevelt pursued during the only crisis worse than this one. And by the way [hmm] – those of us who carry on his party’s legacy should remember that not every problem can be remedied with another government program or dictate from Washington.” Just has to undercut the New Deal. … Obama speech, Tampa Bay Times: “Obama’s surprisingly predictable speech sounded more like a conventional stump speech than a nationally broadcast closing argument for a second term.” … Obama speech, Taeggan Goddard: “The Obama campaign wanted this election to be a stark choice between two different governing philosophies and not a referendum on the president’s tenure. With this beautifully orchestrated convention — and with poor strategic decisions and unforced errors by Mitt Romney and the Republicans — they have succeeded. ”

DNCon protests. Street theatre: “A brass band standing on a street corner responded with an impromptu tune that drowned out the chants.” Impromptu? … Crowds: “A week of protests that began with a march by 800 people before the start of the DNCon ended with 10 more arrests on its final day.” … Police: ” Of the nearly 4,000 police officers in Charlotte this week for the DNCon, more than 2,000 are from out-of-town departments from across the country. Chicago, Denver, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Gastonia, Raleigh, Apex, Boone, Myrtle Beach, and from many other departments.”

Conventions. Evil: “It is as useless to anchor a serious political discussion to this year’s D and R convention speeches, as to plan the liberation of humanity during Mardi Gras. Truth is no more welcome at the former than sobriety is at the latter.” … Platforms: ” In a political world where policy victories are few, victories that aid in group organization and maintenance are not unimportant victories. So it makes sense that groups would fight hard to get “their” language in a platform.

AL. Convention: “There was an air of quiet exultation at the Alabama Delegates’ breakfast this morning.”

CO. Fracking, water: “A single [fracking] well can require five million gallons of water, and energy companies are flocking to water auctions, farm ponds, irrigation ditches and municipal fire hydrants to get what they need. “(MR). Best case: water is removed permanently from the water cycle. Worst: Contaminated groundwater.

FL. Foreclosure: “The [West Palm Beach] condo association filed a lien against the bank, estimating that the mold repairs and the accumulating monthly maintenance fees owed by Wells Fargo to the condo association was $23,210.”

IL. Voting: “The court battle began after a group of R candidates were booted off the ballot for not stapling their nomination papers. The all D Electoral Board rejected the papers on the grounds that paper clips did not comply with an election law saying candidate filings must be ‘securely fastened’.”

MI. Ballot initiatives: “Repeal emergency manager law, collective bargaining, 25 by ’25 renewable energy, home health care workers unionization, tax hike supermajority, and future bridge and tunnel vote.” … Gary Johnson: “A U.S. District Court in MI dismissed the MI Libertarian Party ballot access lawsuit. This was the case to get Gary Johnson on the ballot.”

NC. Police state: “‘Just being on this [terrorist watch] list alone is really frightening for me,’ [James Ian] Tyson said. ‘This could potentially affect the rest of my life. And they have no cause, they have no cause to do that at all. Some of the questions that tumble around my head are: Who’s making these lists? Like where’s the accountability? Why am I on this list? Why are other people on this list?'”

NJ. DNCon: “Each of the NJ [delegation] breakfasts has had a specific sponsor, Novartis on Monday and Johnson & Johnson on Tuesday, reflecting a self-conception as ‘the pharmaceutical state’.”

NY. Corruption: “Data rules, except when it doesn’t. The one thing [Bloomberg] has proved beyond dispute is that a full 10 years of ‘reform’ based on testing, choice and school closings does not improve education or the lives of children.” … Fracking: “We resent the fact that, even though we live here, we have been given no say in what happens to our area.” … Fracking: “Two anti fracking protesters have chained themselves to a fence at an Inergy facility near Watkins Glen, NY to impede a gas storage project.” … Broadband: ” I do believe that in the current political and economic climate, the solution to highspeed Broadband internet will come from the voice of local individuals coming together in unison.”

OH. Fracking: “[Tish] O’Dell, co-founder of Mothers Against Drilling in Our Neighborhoods, said using a charter amendment instead of a city ordinance to outlaw new oil and gas operations is aimed at trumping a 2004 state law that gave the Ohio Department of Natural Resources authority for all decisions about drilling.”

OR. Convention: “Later on I heard a calling of Ayes and Nays that went on for an unusually long time, but I’m still not sure what it was about or why it took so long” (here).

TX. Pipelines: “[Five blockaders] have locked themselves to feller buncher machines used for clearing large trees in the path of the Keystone XL pipeline. Contractors discovered their presence early in the work day, and work at the site was called off shortly thereafter.” … Voting: “TX won a stay Thursday of a federal court decision that had barred enforcement of the state’s toughened voter registration law.”

VA. Corruption: “VA’s ultra-low taxes on cigarettes are making their illegal shipment to high tax states more lucrative than cocaine, heroin, marijuana or guns.”

WI. Capitol: “Police arrested eight protesters in the state Capitol on Wednesday for holding up signs without getting permits” (hmm).

Outside baseball. Corruption: “The fat bedbugs that run the online diploma mill business [like Kaplan Test Prep and the University of Phoenix] are unrelenting. They write lengthy friendly comments to blog posts, and just underneath some of the verbiage, they attach their swollen transparent red blood-filled carcasses in hopes that some unsuspecting reader will take their links home. That is how their blood-sucking infestations spread, and once victims have given them an opening, it is too late. ” .. Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism (review): “Now we are faced with ‘an extension of airport-style security and surveillance systems to encompass entire cities and societies utilizing, at its foundation, the high-tech means of consumption and mobility that are already established in Western cities.’ [The author] is referring to credit cards, CCTV, GPS, cell phones, IP addresses, E-ZPass–the whole networked circuitry of late-capitalist consumption.” … Unilateral executive: “[BILL CLINTON:] That’s one thing George Bush said that was right: The president is the decider in chief.” (link to April, but recycled in tonight’s DNCon coverage).

Grand Bargain™-brand Catfood Watch. Barack Obama, DNCon: “I’m still eager to reach an agreement based on the principles of my bipartisan debt commission.” Get your can openers ready! … David Plouffe: “Obviously, we tried to reach a deficit deal with the Republicans. We got very close and didn’t get there. I think this election is going to make clear, I think, to the country and hopefully to members of Congress that we’re willing to do a lot of tough things – cut further spending, reform entitlements in the right way – but asking a little more from the wealthy has to be part of the answer.”

The Romney. Air war: “Senior Romney-Ryan campaign officials tell Fox News the campaign will launch an enormous media offensive on Friday. The push will include ad buys in several states that will cost tens of millions of dollars. Aides said more than a dozen new ads, each tailored to different regions and segments of the electorate, will begin airing.”

The Obama. Nice guy: “But there is a particular category of the 2012 race to the low road in which the two sides are not competing on equal terms: Obama and his top campaign aides have engaged far more frequently in character attacks and personal insults than the Romney campaign.” … Mission accomplished? “[Obama] will try to defy history and win the presidency with unemployment at 8.4 percent, hoping voters have accepted a ‘new normal.'” Some mandate, eh?

* And tomorrow the campaign proper begins.

* * *

And the antidote…

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About Matt Stoller

From 2011-2012, Matt was a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. He contributed to Politico, Alternet, Salon, The Nation and Reuters, focusing on the intersection of foreclosures, the financial system, and political corruption. In 2012, he starred in “Brand X with Russell Brand” on the FX network, and was a writer and consultant for the show. He has also produced for MSNBC’s The Dylan Ratigan Show. From 2009-2010, he worked as Senior Policy Advisor for Congressman Alan Grayson. You can follow him on Twitter at @matthewstoller.

59 comments

    1. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

      For Rent: One Moon Snail Shell

      by Constance Levy (from The Tree that Time Built)

      For Rent: One Moon Snail Shell

      For rent beside the ocean’s shore
      One cozy, well kept
      Moon snail shell.
      No snail resides there
      Anymore
      (It left and didn’t close the door).

      A hermit hermit crab came by.
      The Shell For Rent Sign
      caught her eye.

      He gave the moon snail shell a try.

      He folded in, umbrella style,
      and said, ‘I will stay here a while.’

      You see, a turtle comes with shell
      a moon snail builds one very well
      but hermit crab lives by his wits
      and has to find a shell that fits.

  1. Goin' South

    Re: the brass band drowning out protestors in Charlotte–

    The Occupiers need to learn an old Wobbly trick. The Salvation Army bands used to do the same to IWW stump speakers, so Joe Hill wrote scathing songs that could be sung to the Salvation Army tunes, e.g. “The Preacher and the Slave” sung to the tune “Sweet Bye and Bye”:

    And the Starvation Army, they play
    And they sing and they clap and they pray
    Till they get all your coin on the drum
    Then they tell you when you’re on the bum…

    Workingmen of all countries, unite
    Side by side we for freedom will fight
    When the world and its wealth we have gained
    To the grafters we’ll sing this refrain

    You will eat, bye and bye
    When you’ve learned how to cook and how to fry
    Chop some wood, ’twill do you good
    Then you’ll eat in the sweet bye and bye

      1. direction

        I heartily agree. It would be great if someone with largescale access to readers (lambert?) opened a webpage somewhere soliciting stories of what non-violent direct action tactics have been used successfully in the past (and creative countertactics, such as this one from “Goin South.”)

        I am always shocked at the young politicos in my area who, in spite of being very intelligent, have no idea about the very recent history of activism where we live.

        Does anyone know of a web resource that already exists compiling such information?

        1. direction

          no one replied, but later that day (if anyone reads this) I was contact by a Japanese friend who had entered art school in NYC who pointed me toward

          http://beautifultrouble.org

          which aspires to be a webtoolbox
          Sort of just what I was looking for. and you might be interested too

  2. Lambert Strether

    On the Saudi link: Good think we’re going to create 600,000 jobs in solar, eh? The Obama said so last night; I heard him.

    * * *

    Oh, wait. It’s 600,000 jobs in fracking. I wouldn’t have thought there were that many pipe fitters, truckers, and hookers in the country, but I guess I’m wrong!

    1. Ron

      low cost oil production is the basis for modern life and with more countries adopting the U.S. lifestyle world wide oil usage continues to increase bring about a faster end game. Our economy since the end of World War 2 has been focused on auto/truck production,upkeep, tires,road and bridge building. No thought is given to an alternative to an oil based lifestyle so it will be forced on the population by the finite reality of oil in the ground and the forever rising price of oil based fuels.

      1. ForReal?

        Oil and debt based capitalism were truly made for each other. Both create their own demand and are thus self-perpetuating, and both are equally unsustainable. Fortunately for all of us, the ultimate train wreck of western civilization is now in sight, done in by its own internal self-contradictions. Greed and the lust for domination over nature and each other must end the way it always has: in the ruin and the utter humiliation of those stupid enough to worship it. Silly fools. We won’t be missed. And to think, we thought the Soviets were deluded!

    2. ForReal?

      I think they were counting the down (waste) stream jobs added due to the increased need for healthcare treatment and diagnoses (delayed diagnoses and their concurrent well-funded university studies to refute them alone could account for years and years of health care income to fortunate industry friendly providers and associates), bottled water to replace permanently polluted local sources, housing relocations and property sales, and the windfall of all windfalls, legal fees to opportunistic legal eagles… er, vultures, who are sure to feed for a generation or more on the death and destruction left in its wake, to name just a very few. You’ve gotta think BIG PICTURE MAN! There’s opportunity in that thar’ fracking!

  3. LeonovaBalletRusse

    “Modern Money and Public Purpose This looks great, and you’ll recognize a lot of the names on the list of participants.”

    http://www.modernmoneyandpublicpurpose.com/

    Congratulations, YVES SMITH et al. at NC, William K. Black, Michael Hudson, Randall Wray, among the STARS. This shows what can be accomplished by determined American citizens, working it out over a long time, in a civilized participatory democracy.

    The Delicious Transition is past the point of no return.

    1. LucyLulu

      Four years later, the peasants are still angry.

      It’s surprising there hasn’t been violence or destruction.

      1. Neo-Realist

        67 was good provided you weren’t a drafted adult.

        77 was good aside from the economy if you were living in the bigger american cities (NYC, LA, SF) to check out punk bands in the clubs.

        1. BertS

          I hit it just right.

          In ’67 I was 11 and listening to Cream, Beck, Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.

          In ’77 I was in a small town college listening to Cream, Beck, Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.

          1. ELD

            BertS: Sabbath and Zeppelin in 1967? Life was better then.

            But really, it’s pretty clear that these days are not the good old days. What is the atmosphere of America now? Control, fear, ‘safety’ at all costs. This is what emanates from the corporate domination of public and private space. The 60s and 70s had some sort of electric mix of freedom, chaos and creativity that’s difficult to imagine happening again. But then again, why not? Whatever was agitating underneath the clean, corporate world of the 50s and early 60s is probably puny compared to what’s waiting now.

          2. BertS

            Ok, 1968 then. Everything is such a blur….

            There was the Vietnam war, draft, Watergate and Civil Rights, but I think I’d still trade now for back then.

          3. Neo-Realist

            “The 60s and 70s had some sort of electric mix of freedom, chaos and creativity that’s difficult to imagine happening again. But then again, why not? Whatever was agitating underneath the clean, corporate world of the 50s and early 60s is probably puny compared to what’s waiting now.”

            In response to the 60’s, the elites have improved and adapted their tools of crushing dissent, so even if “The fire down below” is much larger, effecting change for a better world, particularly with these larger issues of a diminution of our natural resources and climate change, will be much more difficult.

            The 60’s were a cultural comet of sorts that we’ll never see again.

  4. Valissa

    More great stuff from The Onion…

    DNC Lacking Same Delusional Magic It Had In 2008 http://www.theonion.com/articles/dnc-lacking-same-delusional-magic-it-had-in-2008,29431/

    “Obviously, people are never going to be seized by the exact same patently bullshit sense of destiny they were last time around, but I would like to see this convention have at least a little more of the totally deceptive electricity we saw in Denver,” convention attendee David Lowell said.

      1. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

        The proof is in the pudding.

        We will only know he is the one if he faces a political winter-solstice and then resurrects himself around spring equinox.

  5. LeonovaBalletRusse

    “Grand Bargain™-brand Catfood Watch. Barack Obama, DNCon: “I’m still eager to reach an agreement based on the principles of my bipartisan debt commission.” Get your can openers ready! … David Plouffe: “Obviously, we tried to reach a deficit deal with the Republicans. We got very close and didn’t get there. I think this election is going to make clear, I think, to the country and hopefully to members of Congress that we’re willing to do a lot of tough things – cut further spending, reform entitlements in the right way – but asking a little more from the wealthy has to be part of the answer.”

    RECALL:
    http://my.firedoglake.com/themalcontent/2012/09/05/help-stein-call-bullshit-on-the-uniparty/

    JILL STEIN is SUPERFINE: Stein/Honkala 2012. “Just do it.”

  6. Orwellredux

    In the data trail article,

    “cell phone in customers back pocket..”

    When he gets testicular or bladder cancer the hospital bill will bring all new manner of survillance and reporting on him to the informoloch. Turn the phones off when
    they are on your body, turn them on when you want to make a call or leve them on in a briefcase or removed from your body.

    I carry a strong magnet that I sweep over the Google instawallet things by cash registers. They all seem to go out afterwards :-)

    1. reslez

      Turning off the phone does nothing. You can still be tracked. You have to physically remove the battery.

  7. Jim Haygood

    All [Modern Money and Public Purpose] seminars are open to the public and will be accessible to individuals without an extensive background in law or political economics, although a basic conceptual familiarity is recommended.

    Eh, look out! Long ago in undergrad school, an eminent classical economist came to speak at our provincial campus. I attended his lecture. About halfway through his speech, students sitting in the first and second rows stood en masse and began chanting ‘Thirty hours work for forty hours pay! Thirty hours work for forty hours pay!’ (Yeah, who knew there were that many proto-MMTers in Arkansas?)

    After a couple of minutes, they sat down and let him continue. But the visiting eminence grise was so rattled by the unseemly display of student radicalism that he stumbled through the rest of his presentation.

    If I can organize enough gold bugs to go slumming on an Ivy League campus, we’ll greet L. Randall Wray with chants of ‘Forty grams of gold for thirty fiat dollars! Forty grams of gold for thirty fiat dollars!’

  8. Orwellredux

    BTW,laser pointers destroy most IP camera lens,
    so whatever you do, don’t point them at a camera
    or in a mirror at other people.

  9. JTFaraday

    re: “NJ. DNCon: “Each of the NJ [delegation] breakfasts has had a specific sponsor, Novartis on Monday and Johnson & Johnson on Tuesday, reflecting a self-conception as ‘the pharmaceutical state’.””

    Well, it sure as heck isn’t the telecom state:

    “New Jersey has been world famous for two areas of research – telecommunications and pharmaceuticals – and one of them is now endangered…

    Let me start with the obvious – if research is to be funded from profits, then there must be profits, and those profits must be robust enough to allow funding for an activity – research – that often sinks to the bottom of the food chain…

    there has been a general withdrawal from industrial research across a broad sector of American industry. The era of the great industrial labs – Bell Labs, IBM, GE, RCA, GM, and so forth – is gone. But even the residue of this period is drying up.

    A new report by the National Science Foundation asserts that there has been a trend among leading American industries to eliminate much of their high-risk, long-range, and fundamental research. Instead, they have turned their focus to short term results and to incremental improvements of current product lines…

    Today the great majority of all research papers are being written at universities, a little more than half of which are outside the United States… In 1970 about 85% of the papers were written by industry. By the year 2004, only 7% of the papers were authored by writers in US industry. (A very few papers were written by government employees.)

    …There is no question which state has the strongest engineering graduate schools. California has Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, UC Davis, and UC Irvine all on the list, with Stanford and Berkeley at 2nd and 3rd, right behind MIT.

    …During the dot-com boom and even now I find that graduate students at Stanford and Berkeley dream about starting companies, while those in New Jersey imagine scientific fame. The technology “air” simply feels different in the two places.”

    http://www.boblucky.com/Papers/njresearch.htm

    1. propertius

      Pharmaceutical research (at least in the US) has been hit every bit as hard as research in other STEM fields. Tens of thousands of US researchers have been laid off in the last few years, mostly as a result of mergers and acquisitions.

      1. barrisj

        Despite all the hooplah and propaganda by Big Pharma regarding R&D expenditures, costs of “new” drugs, etc., the fact is that the industry has been coasting for several years now, depending upon such strategies as “Pay to Delay”, off-label usage and direct-marketing to physicians,
        getting FDA approval for countless of incrementally different but essentially “me-too” drugs, usually far more expensive than older-line drugs they replace. And let’s not forget the Bush-era gift and licence to steal granted Big Pharma by Medicare Part D. At one time the drug companies were highly rated by consumers as “trustworthy” and all that; today however they are in the same class as Big Oil and telemarketers.
        Oligopolistic practices have supplanted major R&D efforts, as engineering regulatory capture is cheaper than developing truly new drugs de novo.

        1. LucyLulu

          You hit the nail on the head.

          BigPharma IS investing in research on biologicals, representing a new approach to treatment, as they are big ticket items and if understood correctly, their unique engineering process offers built-in protection from competition.

    2. Jim Haygood

      In 1970 about 85% of the papers were written by industry. By the year 2004, only 7% of the papers were authored by writers in US industry.

      Good observation; thanks. A possible reason is ‘crowding out’ by government-financed research.

      The NIH has an enormous budget for health-related research. In the technical area, Barry Ritholtz has a post today about how ARPA (now DARPA) invented the internet.

      All well and good. But why should industry try to compete with the deep pockets of Big Gov? If they’ve got good lobbyists, they can get government to fund their research at academic institutions with taxpayer money.

      1. reslez

        Yes, but they still try to justify sky-high drug prices by blaming it on their allegedly high R&D expenses.

      2. LucyLulu

        “But why should industry try to compete with the deep pockets of Big Gov?”
        Research initiated by the government, and amply funded, meet specific criteria relating to national welfare (security). Much beneficial research falls outside their interest. The Internet was developed as a defense against nuclear attack during the Cold War. Its commercial application was an unintended consequence.

        While the government funds some pharmaceutical research, it has not replaced the research

        1. LucyLulu

          Sorry! Accidentally hit ‘submit’ too soon.

          I was trying to say that government hasn’t filled the shortfall in R&D in bigPharma. Industry has really cut the resources they are providing towards research in favor of profits to pay shareholders.

          And btw, r/t NJ delegate breakfasts, bigPharma is big in NC too.

      1. MrTortoise

        You know, Valissa, “The Shock Doctrine” seems to me to be so … passé . After all, this was described by those “eco-anarchists” Naomi Klein and her husband in “Debtocracy” , among others (sad to say ;).

        What if private capital was put into cloning Newton or Archimedes (or maybe both) . Maybe the System would last at least till the End of Time as predicted by Newton in his non-canonical work.

  10. LeonovaBalletRusse

    http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/11391-democracy-is-a-continent-too-big

    Gar Alperovitz is onto an idea whose time has come. Should regions be divided according to watersheds? acc. to the “resource complex?” According to “pro-government” and “dog eat dog” policies? Despotic regime v. participatory democracy? How will the M-I South and West regions exist without “money” from the People of New York and New England? What will happen to D.C.? Can VA survive without its power?

    in any event, “Modern Money and Political Purpose” should be at the core of this project for One Nation Divisible.

  11. Bev

    http://www.jsmineset.com/2012/09/07/in-the-news-today-1301/

    Jim Sinclair’s Commentary

    At this time a return to the gold standard is neither practical nor desirable.

    The role of gold is to guarantee ground gained in sound monetary finance endures for generations. It does not create sound monetary ground gained.

    The right time for a return to gold standard of sorts is after a disaster, or an enlightened monetary restructuring.

    ………..

  12. Valissa

    Shepard Fairey spared prison in Obama poster image fraud http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-obama-posterbre8860z5-20120907,0,1960252.story

    While I was over at the Chicago Tribune website, I decided to check out the John Kass column archives to see if there was anything entertaining… of his most recent few posts here’s the one I lked best.

    Rahmfather, please come home. And get the good chips. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-met-kass-0905-20120905,0,1264650.column

    1. Jim Haygood

      Holy sh*t, that’s a shocker. The guy who transformed Obama’s image into the iconic red-beige-and-blue HOPE poster was facing a prison term?

      Only in America. The purpose of art is to provoke. But here it can get you sent to the Gulag.

  13. Ransome

    Our speakers should learn up on the writings of the first chair of economics at Columbia, Rev. John McVicker who wrote Hints on Banking (1827). Another NY amateur, Nicholas Johannsen wrote about debt, mal-investment of savings and recessions 75 years later.

  14. Ransome

    Google is engaging in a sophisticated form of book burning with an adjustable pay-wall to deny access to IP which should be in the public domain.

  15. Susan the other

    Columbia’s seminar Modern Money and Public Purpose really sounds good. I hope it will be youtubed. Or reported on here.

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