You Should Watch These Kittens, Science Says It’s Good For You Wonkette
The strange case of ‘Ozzie’ the Australian cat who turned up in Northern Ireland ITV (martha r)
What’s that Skippy? You’re left handed! ABC Science
Majority moves: Baboons make democratic decisions, study finds Los Angeles Times
Outrage over China dog meat festival Financial Times
Should nuclear devices be used to stop asteroids? Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Russian Official Proposes International Investigation Into U.S. Moon Landings Moscow Times
Burn In Hell? Ian Welsh (furzy mouse)
Industrial Agriculture Is a Threat to World Food Supply TruthOut (furzy mouse)
Data Mining Reveals How Human Health Varies with City Size MIT Technology Review (David L)
Facebook facing giant uphill battle against a major emerging market headache: making money Business Insider (furzy mouse)
The great Moldovan bank robbery BBC
Fukushima operator ‘knew of need to protect against tsunami but did not act’ Guardian (martha r)
China shakes off deep slump as credit soars again Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph
Thailand confirms its first case of MERS, death toll rises to 24 in South Korea CNN (martha r)
Dallas Buyers Club’s threatening letter to downloaders revealed Sydney Morning Herald. EM: “Less than 5000 (alleged) downloaders is considered an ‘egregious’ level of piracy? Even if this is only for the Aussie market, that seems ludicrous.”
Britain ignores past help at Waterloo as it debates EU pullout Bloomberg
Danish opposition wins election BBC. More right wing.
Grexit?
Greeks admit they will default at the end of the month as central bank turns on government Telegraph
Greek officials prepare public for Grexit! unbalanced evolution
The time has come for Tsipras to accept Europe’s deal Financial Times. Criticizes the creditors more than you’d think from the headline.
Brussels Playbook Politico. A lot of byplay on the Eurogroup meeting.
Tax Revenue Collapses in Greece; Government Denies Capital Controls; Citizens Pull €2bn in Three Days Michael Shedlock
Greece’s defiant youth opt for ‘chaos’ over more of the same Financial Times. Lead story.
Italian bond futures fall with no breakthrough in Greek talks Reuters
Thousands Rally in Athens to Urge Deal as Default Threat Grows Bloomberg. Hard to judge crowd size, but shot is from high up and the square does look full.
In Eurozone, Growing Support for a Greek Exit New York Times
The IMF’s “Tough Choices” on Greece James Galbraith, Project Syndicate (David L)
Greek pensions laid bare MacroPolis. The site has provided good posts against austerity. This one, among other things, shows the breakdown of Greek pensions by age of recipient.
Honduran army seizes hospitals after Social Security scandal Associated Press (martha r)
Dominican Republic strips thousands of black residents of citizenship, may now expel them Vox (martha r)
Ukraine/Russia
Here’s Why Moscow Doesn’t Want the Donbas But Continues to Meddle There Anyway Atlantic Council
Syraqistan
The jobless Afghans ‘paid by Iran’ to fight for Assad BBC (martha r)
Trade Traitors
House approves fast-track 218-208, sending bill to Senate The Hill (furzy mouse)
75 per cent of Canadians unaware of TPP negotiations: poll CTV (frosty zoom)
All 50 US states fail to meet global police use of force standards, report finds Guardian
Md. attorney general seeks to shut down Everest investment-advice business Baltimore Sun
MRSA superbug found in supermarket pork raises alarm over farming risks Guardian
Black Injustice Tipping Point
The Charleston Massacre and the Cunning of White Supremacy Nation
Charleston church shooting: Without gun control, racism will keep killing black people Guardian (furzy mouse)
President Obama Calls For Greater Gun Control in Charleston Massacre Speech Alternet (furzy mouse)
Charleston Shooter: Pill-Popping Racist Daily Beast
Oil
Oil price drop forced Saudi Arabia to open its stock market to the world Business Insider
FSU Students Power Wash The Kochs While Exposing Possible IRS Violations Daily Kos
Economic recovery: Wage growth is back Business Insider
Friday lay day – Job Guarantee becomes a mainstream preference Bill Mitchell
Seen That Job Listing for a While? It’s No Coincidence Wall Street Journal
Antidote du jour: Stephen L sends an image he saw on LinkedIn:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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A shout out from Pope Francis to Naked Capitalism (sort of):
We cannot fail to praise the commitment of international agencies and civil society organizations which draw public attention to these issues and offer critical cooperation, employing legitimate means of pressure, to ensure that each government carries out its proper and inalienable responsibility to preserve its country’s environment and natural resources, without capitulating to spurious local or international interests. (Laudato Si, 38)
http://leftyfretz.com/25-facts-about-left-handed-people/
whateva…as long as my blows remain decisive!
“All the decisive blows are struck left-handed.” Walter Benjamin
re: Missing puzzle piece of global economic recovery…”But after years of almost everyone forecasting that it was right around the corner, it looks like for the furthest-recovered major economies, wage growth is really back.”
really? a month ago my sister and i were ticketed for entering the exit of an abandon strip mall (not one store open). the cost of the ‘traffic’ ticket…$174.00. we both worked p/t during the late 70’s and after a year 6.00 to 7.00 was the norm. we could even bailout friends for less than the cost of our recent ‘traffic’ ticket! i noticed yesterday a half pound of fake ham was $5.99. Duncan Donuts, Dollar Tree and the Fast Foods are all paying 7.25 (and they charge a % if you don’t use direct deposit). the turnover’s for these jobs are like nothing ive ever witnessed. one young girl told me she wasn’t getting paid for 2wks work at duncan donuts…they pay weekly. she’s afraid if she complains she’ll lose her job (the 3rd job) and her siblings will suffer ‘food instability’.
im sick of the lies. where’s the Shame?
I can relate (as many others can I’m sure). My family just got hit with a $1000 a year rent increase. Paying more for the same tiny apartment on one income. Suckage.
It’s pretty freaky out there. I have friends who get hired for freelance gigs, work 3 or 4 weeks doing sign painting/ graphic design in the lucrative Bay Area and then realize they are going to get stiffed. Brutal. there’s a lot of shydie practices and fly by night jobs. And the Bay Area stinks with this weird techy libertarian vibe, with 19 year olds jumping out of their convertables dressed like the cover of Vogue, roving squadrons of fratboys taking over the Mission District: collegiates who agree that gentrification is good and if there’s no public money for ballet, then maybe there shouldn’t be so much stupid ballet.
The hyperlink “Oil price drop forced Saudi Arabia to open its stock market to the world” is broken due to an ‘a’ before the http://.
Just one more, with special reference to the TPP:
Pope Francis:
Civil authorities have the right and duty to adopt clear and firm measures in support of small producers and differentiated production. To ensure economic freedom from which all can effectively benefit, restraints occasionally have to be imposed on those possessing greater resources and financial power. To claim economic freedom while real conditions bar many people from actual access to it, and while possibilities for employment continue to shrink, is to practise a doublespeak which brings politics into disrepute.
American conservatives are already complaining that the Pope is straying in his proper and traditional role of confining his comments to sex and communism, and weighing in on issues such as the future of humanity that would be better left to the state. They really wouldn’t like it if he started commenting on “international trade.”
As I understand American Conservatives, the rule is that the Pope is only speaking with authority when he agrees with them.
This is an article on a Pew study of U.S. catholics and climate change people might find interesting: http://ncronline.org/blogs/eco-catholic/pew-survey-71-percent-catholics-believe-global-warming
i’ve seen some takes by conservative catholics trying to down play this encyclical with the use of “prudential judgement” in a RCC context, but i think they will have a hard go of it. “Commoneal” is a good source for stories and analysis covering the encyclical and reactions to it.
and by better left to the state they really mean better left to the free markets
Fixed markets. There is a higher power.
For the whole document, go here.
http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html
Capitalism: A History of Violence ~The Disorder of Things
Sad that these guys took something beautiful and peaceful like the agora where Greek merchants and buyers (might not be free citizens, but house slaves out shopping) freely – it was a marketplace – bought and sought, and expanded and mutated that into today’s capitalism.
Or maybe slaves were bought and sold at the agora as well.
We may then think that the origin of origins of capitalism lies in the act of buying and selling.
The alternative to buying and selling is making (one’s own bowls and pots) and growing (one’s own vegetables) by oneself for oneself, supplemented with barter. Here, one experiences not only the utilization of finished products, but deeply and intimately, the processes and the journeys together with these objects as they emerge from one’s creative mind into being. This alternative way of life also involves a simpler form of division of labor, with less time for specialization. To specialize is to exclude oneself from the whole, in order to focus on a smaller area. When we specialize, we lose our wholeness, we fragment (but we will richly awarded under capitalism for our efficiency). We begin to say ourselves, ‘we are not singers, we are not poets. We are not philosophers, we are not healers.” Why should we sing in the shower, write love poetry, inquire about the world and take care of ourselves/watch what we eat, when we are not certified in these fields as experts?
That last paragraph is beautiful.
Indeed. Beef At Best!
(off it goes with me)
You are almost there, but you really cannot think of any other alternatives than making for onesSELF and the need to barter? What about people making things for the good and utility the community, be it the family or the town? You seem to want to continue to infuse individualism, greed and selfishness into the equations and miss seeing that individualism, greed and selfishness is the problem.
You are talkling like a hipster, like the creative class, still trying to stroke an ego by “being” something; a poet/artist/artisinal brewer. Don’t you see how they still have you?
More and more everyday I see the only revolution that needs to happen is a deep, individual, spiritual revolution. Try being nothing for a while, the capitalists hate that, you turn into an unmarketable blip that is unsellable. But people have been convinced they need to be something because our teachers drilled it into our heads that “we can be anything we want to be”.
for most of us…learning to care for ourselves would be the least selfish action. we’d have to figure out how to create our own personal consumption, which would humbly and quickly remove arrogance from the individual. then unity steps up to the plate, making way for blissful moments of nothingness.
baby steps
Chris, you make a good point. Make things for oneself, and also make things/offer services to the community.
Energy Use in the U.S. Food System
— John S. Steinhart and Carol E. Steinhart, Science, Volume 184, 19 April 1974
A century ago, the U.S. food system consumed one calorie of energy to produce one calorie of food. By 1970, the U.S. food system required nine calories of energy to produce just one calorie of food. See “Figure 4” of the Steinhart study.
“Figure 1” shows the skyrocketing energy input into the food system, compared with only modest increases in food production. This study does not include the “energy used to generate the highly specialized seed and animal stock… because there is no easy way to estimate it.”
I dimly remember back in grad school that when you analyzed US productivity, which was at that time the highest in the world (late 1980s) the most glaring reason for it was the higher energy inputs the US used to produce things. We had to do as a project (Political Economy) an analysis using the big social science data bases of the time to look at why certain societies were likely richer than others. As with productivity, the US was the big outlier in electricity consumption per capita. We are a nation built on oil and electricity. The question is, is there a technology beyond these that can replicate the wealth boosts that came with coal, oil, and electronics?
In the Information Age, it will be how many gigabytes are in your cellphone data plan.
Well, there’s at least one person’s answer to “What outcomes do we want, from our political economy?”
A couple of years ago, as LED bulbs were appearing for “domestic” use in the home, there were several “diaries” posted at that Liberal Bastion, DailyKos. Most of the comments were about how yeah, kewl, they use less juice, so that means we can have MORE LIGHT in our special perfectly renovated 5,000 sq. ft. dream homes, and then lots of gabby chatter about what Kelvin range maximized the mood or brought out the tones or otherwise added to the titillation of the Experience of “Green” Living. Squat about that old chestnut, “Live simply, that others may simply live.”
The Precious Left, when they discover Angie’s List and Consumer Reports and Vogue and other use-it-up bibles…
Please don’t call bourgeois liberals “left”. That only encourages them.
Not now,but past: Cotton and Slavery. See “The Half Has Never Been Told” by Edward Baptist
His contention ushered in the industrial revolution.
http://theantimedia.org/new-social-media-platform-dubbed-peoples-site-anonymous/
Those TARI scoring/buying dynamics seem almost tailor-made for network elucidation and consumer training. Never mind that it’s being hosted by a Federal contractor to the intelligence community.
I say a People’s Platform doesn’t keep score.
A 25 year old cat? That would be the oldest living cat.
Thanks for this link: “MRSA superbug found in supermarket pork raises alarm over farming risks Guardian”.
When will our government officials learn that they must ban the routine use of antibiotics in factory farms? This has been going on for decades, and it needs to stop.
And then there’s the separate but similar issue: when will our government officials learn that they need to take effective action to protect honey bees? This is another dire problem that has been developing for many years. We’re governed by criminals and idiots.
Bio hazard factory farms…..the inhumane overcrowding and immune weakening practices of raising of livestock requires antibiotics.
Contrary to our false dietary indoctrination, humans do not require enourmous amounts of animal protien, witness the pathetic degenerative conditions produced in much of the population as a result of this overindulgence.
In addition to environmental devastation, the resulting super bugs are a direct result of a horribly insane business model.
Quite true. Although I’m not a vegetarian, I don’t eat meat every day. I get a lot of my protein from hummus, tofu, other bean based foods, and nuts.
Although in general I agree with Americans eat too much meat, the real killers in out society are almost certainly refined sugar, corn syrup, and simple carbohydrates in white flour. I think they cause much more of the trouble than meat does. There are, and have been, traditional societies that eat a load of meat, and they don’t suffer the same rates of autoimmune, inflammatory, and endocrine-based diseases that Americans do.
Which brings us back to the North American meat production — animals are fed growth hormones, corn, which is not their natural diet, and to counteract the gastric upset and crammed quarters, antibiotics. You are what you eat, and they are what they eat; ergo…
MRSA, mad cow, salmonella…
“sometimes you eat the b’ar, and sometimes the b’ar, well, he eats you.” -Sam Elliott
We should be teaching our kids this stuff, not how to design drones (to be able to achieve that heroic, a kid would need to know, among other things, algebra, geometry, physics, etc.).
This new teaching/learning would be a child-centered education, not neoliberal-economics-centered (where a child is a potential serf that needs training – and an expensive one too, thus the need for robots).
Depends on what you mean by killers, or who exactly is being killed. Another way of looking at it, less anthropocentric.
Shall we count the agri industry snuff farms? And maybe we should calculate the cost in lives (got to be some toll) of all that energy and acreage, going into raising soy for beef, resulting in such poor acreage production rates.
Guns don’t kill people. A system based on chauvinist authoritarianism, misogyny, racism, and capitalism kills people.
“Guns remind me that this is just an attempt to punch holes in the darkness that envelopes us now.”
Poeltl, The Judas Syndrome
Shorter Barack Obama on Charleston, SC:
At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries, but now is the time to make sure we pass TPP!
Good catch!
Someone should ask him about that.
Too bad we don’t have a functioning press — I mean,
the ones who have ‘access’.
Agreed, but guns are such a convenient tool to do it with.
I wish the excellent pension review at Macropolis had addressed the question of exactly under what conditions pensions are being resorted to and, centrally, are they serving as a way for Greeks facing the prospect of long-term unemployment to access support otherwise unavailable to them. Searching the article reveals only two references to “unemploy*” and those are both related to contributions to a specific fund, not to the rationale for turning to a pension. Especially in a severely depressed economy “early retirement” may not be voluntary and, with social services collapsing a pension serves as the only alternative to death.
My evidence is anecdotal, but I know of three cases of retired or similar Greeks, two from their Canadian relatives, one from a blog from before this was news. One is a man in his 70’s who has been retired for some time (not sure how long), lives in the Peloponnese on a small farm with an ancient hereditary olive grove. His pension has been cut twice and he is being financially supported now by his Canadian relatives. Another is a doctor who took early retirement when cuts came to his hospital in Athens, got one or maybe two pension payments, then was told he was not eligible for pension. The third is a judge whose department was being slashed, she did not apply for an early retirement but held her breath and hoped. She was not fired (at least not yet) but reassigned from Athens to a small town on an island. Oh, and her pay was cut. So ‘pensioner’ in Greece may well be like Rreagan’s ‘welfare queen’.
David Halberstam, who wrote The Best and the Brightest, started “as a young reporter at The Tennessean back in the 1950s”.
The Children, by Halberstam, recounts “the generational divide between young and old in the black community”.
The Freedom Rides were especially controversial. From what I recall, most established (and older) civil rights leaders opposed them; Martin Luther King, Jr. only came to their aid when he feared they would fail and turn into a disaster for the civil rights movement.
Wow Hillary changes positions so fast I just got whiplash.
From John Ralston @RalstonReports
Just finished intervu w/Hillary for #RalstonLive. Says she would vote no on TPA if still in Senate, danced around previous TPP support. 1/2
FYI she is a craven politician but she knows how the wind is blowing and she has to defy her fellow corporate Dems.
“Russian Official Proposes International Investigation Into U.S. Moon Landings Moscow Times”
This is a threatened response to Russia possibly losing its role of hosting the World Cup. Disappointingly, he only wants to look into what happened to the original film.
What? He doesn’t want a deposition from Kubrick’s daughter?
This short Ta-Nehisi Coates piece, partially in response to yesterday’s awful terrorist attack in Charleston, SC, is very important.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/take-down-the-confederate-flag-now/396290/
I doubt if that many SC residents even remember that the Confederate flag still hangs on a flagpole in the Capitol building’s back yard. There was quite a row about this a few years ago when the flag still flew over the Capitol dome along with the state flag–a practice held over from the post WW2 segregationist counter reaction. Coates article might have been more appropriate then.
Coates claims that “many South Carolinians embrace” the Confederate flag but just how many is that “many”? Since I live here I can say that sightings of the stars and bars are increasingly rare. In a state that seems ever more devoted to business, the states rights/lost cause crowd can be a bit of an embarrassment. Nikki Haley’s post shooting comment on the flag: “no CEOs have complained about it.” Says it all.
Here’s hoping the reaction to this terrible event won’t just be a cliche. The Intercept reports that one reason for the alleged shooter’s turn to white supremacy was that a girl he liked started dating a black man. Oddly enough in this state where the Klan supposedly still lurks in the shadows interracial couples are now quite common.
So to Coates: it could be that the reason this happened had less to do with the country’s still considerable race problems and more to do with the fact that any nut can get a gun. That by itself is more than enough reason to bash our local politicians. Haley has said that she still opposes any new gun restrictions.
When I was in South Carolina, my friends there said that people flying the stars and bars were generally viewed as an embarrassment and way behind the times.
Anecdote: One over-sized flag at a gas station led to shunning and declining sales there.
Carolina, if they didn’t know, they do now! why is the state flag and the u.s flag lowered at half mass? BUT NOT THAT SILLY CONFEDERATE FLAG???
oh i forgot…they still don’t do hate crime
http://archive.adl.org/learn/hate_crimes_laws/state_hate_crime_statutory_provisions_chart.pdf
hehe mast/still swirl’n the pope stuff
Presumably because it’s now considered an “exhibit” and not any kind of official flag. You’d have to ask Nikki Haley. I’m hazy on just what sort of agreement put it there in the first place but it may be mandated by legislation.
On the other hand if you are agreeing with Coates that this is all part of some coded undercurrent of official bigotry in the state then I’d say that’s not true. And if it is true then you are going to need more evidence than, as you call it, a silly flag. Interesting that I don’t seem to read of any black leaders in SC itself saying that it is true. The “race war” that Roof was trying to ignite doesn’t seem to be happening.
The race war you claim “doesn’t seem to be happening” has been ongoing across much of this country everyday for hundreds of years up until today when black Americans are gunned down by cops for little to no reason, where economic deprivation and ghettos are the norm and where blacks have a tiny fraction of the rights and wealth that most whites do. Wake up.
The confederate flag is a potent symbol of that war and should’ve been made illegal after the Civil War given the devastation and immiseration it represents, or at least it should be banished from statehouses across the south. The fact that it flew at the state capital alongside the American flag until a few years ago is damning enough. And the idea that its potent symbolism can be redefined by white southerners without remaining a symbol of the disenfranchisement and enslavement of blacks to black people themselves is just more southern white ugliness and denial of reality of their position vis a vis the black people that live all around them. Wake up.
The notion that Roof picked a crowd of black people in a historic black church to assassinate as the result of a disappointment in love is to ignore the entire historical racist edifice he was able to tap into for inspiration once that disappointment arose. Its that edifice, that sauce he was able to marinate in; the flags on or near government buildings being powerful symbols of that edifice. Removing confederate flags from on or around government buildings is a symbolic act but one that would signify greatly as such: that the people of South Carolina acknowledge the clear racist history of that flag and reject it. All the garbage I’ve been reading from ignorant wingers is that the Civil War was about states’ rights and that’s what the confederate flag stands for, which we know is a redefinition too far.
The fact that to many South Carolinians people those who display confederate flags are seen as “an embarrassment” is telling. As a quiet embarrassment neither they nor the flag-waivers have to confront their history or deal with the current moment of that history, which is far from healed. How very southern. The point is to reject it thoroughly at the governmental level, which will help to set a healthier, more open and honest tone for the state’s people on the subject of slavery and the ugly racial history they seem to urgently desire to revise away and ignore while simultaneously and silently maintaining as much of that historical edifice as they can. As it stands, the signal coming from the state is abundantly clear. You and that flag are complicit in the ongoing economic, legal and political domination of roughly a third of your residents.
Now can’t you do without the “stars and bars” at long last? Or do you really just have to have it?
Have you ever even been to SC? Can I respectfully suggest you don’t have the slightest idea what you are talking about. My objection to Coates–and to you–is that you are making assumptions about what motivated this person without any idea of the facts. Ever hear of the internet? It’s just possible that Roof got his racism–shocking to his own parents they say–from there rather than some subliminal suggestions from a Jim Crow artifact hanging behind the Capitol. For example I’m not aware that the fast fading cohort of Lost Cause apologists are big on the Rhodesian or South African flags that Roof wore on his jacket. Those oldsters may not even know how to use the internet.
Look before you jump could be a good piece of advice unless you just want to puff yourself up with a lot of moral posturing. Blacks and whites in my town actually get along rather well. There may not be equality but there is a lot more respect than there was even ten years ago. Obama, whatever his other failings, could get a lot of credit for this. As it turns out there is more to the South what is shown in old Sidney Poitier movies. These days it’s actually much like anywhere else. But stereotypes–might one even call them prejudices–die hard.
“There may not be equality but there is a lot more respect than there was even ten years ago.”
you’ve got the equality and perceive the respect as mutual :/
“ignis-fatuus-like, into miry wilds whence there is no extrication.”
What’s it gonna take for you southern whites to stop behaving like vicious animals to these poor people you’ve been grinding down for hundreds of years? Do we have to send the national guard down there again to make you behave like human beings? People like you have been saying denialist hogwash like “blacks and whites in my town actually get along rather well. There may not be equality but…” since the civil rights era. It sounds remarkably like what my British father was told on his first visit to the south in the mid 1960’s: “You from England right? Well, you not from heah. The people from up north tell lies, they don’t know our n_’s are happy. We treat our n_’s real good. I bought my n_ a house”. A hundred years after slavery, and now a hundred and fifty.
No one is claiming “things haven’t gotten any better”. What we are saying is that by holding onto the remnants of your awful history with symbols like confederate flags flying on government land you are indefinitely dragging out that ugly history and sending a message of terror and domination to the black residents of your state and frankly, the world. A message that casts a pall over race relations and yes, even seeped down to Dylann Roof regardless of the particular symbols he chose to put on his jacket. To pretend that you are not implying by dog whistle to your white community a glorious past when you enslaved millions is laughable.
You can deny it all you want, but that doesn’t make it go away. You southern whites have yet to learn that you can’t ignore your hateful, racist history and hope it will go away. It just perpetuates the sad, evil remnants of your “peculiar institution” into the current day. I know you don’t like to be “impolite”, but politeness often masks true ugliness and meanness of spirit. So instead of impolite, you behave like cracker racists, ignoring the feelings of many of your own residents and cravenly hiding your little flag behind your statehouse.
You’ve frankly been an embarrassing, ugly culture for way too long. Why do you have to be made to do everything decent and human? Its time for you to at least begin to go through the motions of repentance for past evil deeds and stop proudly patting yourselves on the back for being the primary progenitors of the apartheid state in America.
If only the MSM weren’t in the business of sharecropping Black culture, washing all the reality out of it, and selling it as an exotic acquired taste to young White people…
The inner city is the new Orient and Wild West all rolled into one and everyone’s getting Shanghaied into a market-based culture war.
The NSA data trawling is supposed to protect us from terrorism. It would appear that we taxpayers who are involuntarily funding the NSA are not getting our money’s worth. I think we are entitled to a refund.
and don’t forget your PINK SLIP on the way OUT
It may not be original, but it’s true: The NSA is the only part of the government that is listening to you.
The Danish elections are something of a non-story. Denmark has ten political parties, most of them quite small, but they line up into a “Blue Block” and a “Red Block” somewhat like in the US. The “Red Block” won a razor thin victory last time and then became the sort of left wing government that cuts unemployment benefit. Despite polls showing them being thrown out of office in a landslide, they lost by a razor thin margin this time. Since the largest party in the “Blue Block”, a populist anti-immigration party, doesn’t want the responsibility of actually governing, the new/ old PM will come from a party that just saw a 6% decline in its share of the vote.
http://www.voxeu.org/article/banks-are-not-loanable-funds-intermediaries-macroeconomic-implications
“In our new work, we argue that many of these unresolved issues can be traced back to the fact that virtually all of the newly developed models are based on the highly misleading ‘intermediation of loanable funds’ theory of banking (Jakab and Kumhof 2015). We argue instead that the correct framework is ‘money creation’ theory.
In the intermediation of loanable funds model, bank loans represent the intermediation of real savings, or loanable funds, between non-bank savers and non-bank borrowers;
Lending starts with banks collecting deposits of real resources from savers and ends with the lending of those resources to borrowers. The problem with this view is that, in the real world, there are no pre-existing loanable funds, and intermediation of loanable funds-type institutions – which really amount to barter intermediaries in this approach – do not exist.”
…………………………..
This money creation function of banks has been repeatedly described in publications of the world’s leading central banks (see McLeay et al. 2014a for an excellent summary). Our paper provides a comprehensive list of supporting citations and detailed explanations based on real-world balance sheet mechanics as to why intermediation of loanable funds-type institutions cannot possibly exist in the real world. What has been much more challenging, however, is the incorporation of these insights into macroeconomic models.
======================================================
Maybe if enough economists say it, the loanable funds model will go the way of cabbage patch dolls…
I think it’s likely that economists will babble on forever about it, and still get it wrong.
I have my money in checking, savings and brokerage funds. I know that 93% of it really isn’t there, and these places did something with it. The only reason I’m somewhat ok with that is my accounts are FDIC insured.
I’d say any new ground breaking theories need to include a sub component in the model for this behavior of mine.
Also, the fact that banks may do a loan one day with no free funds and have one biz day to either find 7% of it in deposits, or otherwise settle up reserve requirements with the Fed by paying a little interest for a Fed loan – isn’t something I regard as earth shattering news.
Huh?
warren goes golfin’!
i wonder if there’ll be oil trains, too.
http://www.ctvnews.ca/sports/why-trains-provide-rumbling-soundtrack-to-us-open-at-chambers-bay-1.2430596
re: dallas buyers club
voltage pictures has been extorting money from torrent users since that movie was released. I paid $2000 to those assholes…
They hire lawfirms to plant those torrent files and track them, then charge people.
Considering what the movie was about… this is highly ironic
Voltage has always been especially vigorous in pursuing copyright infringers. I hope that Voltage might could be “taken care of” the same way the Hon. Otis Wright “took care” of Prenda Law… except that Voltage is demonstrably engaged in the business of producing motion pictures.
Take some heart from that Godzilla is “taking care of them” like Tokyo (Hollywood Reporter). Yes, Toho, the famous Japanese film corporation, is suing Voltage (US) for copyright infringement. What with the TPP in play, make my popcorn a double.
What’s that Skippy? You’re left handed!
Actually ambidextrous, our mob just likes having a go at the observers, with the devils hand, that and our endurance in copulation to titillate the scientists and their readership.
Skippy…. all in good sport of course….
PS. chuffed marsupial thingy…. son just smashed the old school record for shot-put by 2.01 meters and its early in the season.
The article Seen That Job Listing for a While? It’s No Coincidence seems to be proselytizing for an economic school of thought that goes something like “the economy is improving-look at the job numbers.”
Part of the increase in vacancy owes to improvement in the economy. There are simply more openings and fewer candidates.
And yet the U.S Department of Labor shows the real deal: participation in the job market is at an all time low. 59.4% of the U. S. population is participating in the labor market-the same number we had back in May of 2009 when the economy was shedding jobs at about 0.2 or 0.3% per month; that slide began in Dec of 2006 when our society began to unravel from all of the shenanigans perpetrated by the financial, banking and insurance sectors. I can only speculate as to why the WSJ would want us to feel good about today’s lousy numbers and this seems to be one with what the Obama Administration is putting out there as a reason to give the President a good place in the history books; again just theorizing. The thinking goes something like this.
1. Oh K then, there was a major screw up back in the early 2000’s , yeah, yeah really big time. But heh, heh, Bankers will be bankers and you know like, they’re really reformed now-look at all the big fines that were slapped on them.
2. And now see we’ll (the beneficent powers that be) make up to you, the lowly peasants, by improving the economy.
In other words, more Big Lies, this time about how the economy is improving-“look at all the jobs that are being created.” In July of 2000 the Employment-population ratio was at 64.5%. Now may the gods of economic wisdom strike me about the face if I wax too enthusiastic about those good old latter day Clinton years. The job market was booming, along with so much else, as the private sector took on huge amounts of debt in the form of credit cards, new car loans and second mortgages. All of this gives a picture of ‘just right years’ that Randy Wray talks about.
Gotta run, more on this later.