Sustainable Economic Policy V

Checks and Balances

For any Economic System to be functional, it needs to have both top down forms and controls. It needs Checks and Balances. And it also needs bottom up forms and controls (Ordinary Courts, Representation, Juries). Key to the success of such forms is a well educated and informed citizenry, and the kinds of checks and balances that prevent people from straying outside their lanes of excellence. Key to the success of an economic system is that it achieves the properties of a commonwealth. It has to serve the interests of all the people living within it, starting with majorities. To make any changes to our national and world economy sustainable they have to be institutionalized in a way that gives the right folks power while limiting the ability of folks to game, usurp or achieve too much power. Thus the issue is how we constitute our economy and how we execute that constitution.

This post is about some of the necessary Checks and Balances.

Issues with Notes as Legal Tender

This Post is wonky, so if you aren't a wonk like me, you might want to skip it.

To me it is obvious that if Congress has the right to regulate all forms of money, it has the right to declare it's "bills of credit" a legal Tender. To me this is obvious under Article II section 8:

To borrow money on the credit of the United States

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States

To me it seems obvious. But SCOTUS has often said "hold your horses Charlie!" This post is about Chase and Grant's courts. Chase, as Treasury Secretary, was pretty much the father of the modern Greenback. But while he believed that the Federal Government had the right to create paper money. It appears he had doubts about whether the Federal Government could compel people to use it. i.e... to make it a "legal tender." It took Grant's court to make our Greenbacks a legal tender.

Sustainable Economic Policy VI

Financial/Engineering Checks and Balances

In the previous section we discussed general principles of checks and Balances. Now we address some specifics.

For our economic system to be sustainable there has to be built in checks on the largess of those who hold funds, coupled with built in checks on those who would spend them. The way we do this is with forms that vet projects and other forms that review them on completion. This is the real reason we need an Infrastructure Bank. The Treasury Department, or the Department of Transportation, can perform these functions, but they need to be done universally and systematically. But to do that fairly and justly an inclusive process must be in place. An Infrastructure Bank, could in theory, just print money, but that would be a disaster shortly after the decision to do so. Bureaucracy, as much as we hate it, is a necessary evil in checking people's ambition and hubris -- when done right. One has to grant certain powers to local persons to develop and execute projects. But those projects must be reviewed for financial, engineering and marketing sanity. The principle problem with a "bridge to nowhere" is that nobody will use it. When executed right projects make sense from the get go. And that requires us to constitute an Infrastructure bank that is well constituted -- so we can't complain later that it built bridges to nowhere, or worse, bridges that fell down.

Sustainable Economic Policy IV

Adding to the Federal Reserve "Toolkit"

Janet Yellen is having a meeting at Woods Hole:

"The Fed's annual conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where Yellen speaks on Friday, is due to focus on how to improve central banks' "toolkit," but the unanimous message from the Fed's top policymakers is that those tools are not enough." [Reserve Meeting]

And you hear the usual complaints from the Federal Reserve that:

"Monetary policy is not well equipped to address long-term issues like the slowdown in productivity growth," Fed vice chair Stanley Fischer said on Sunday. He said it was up to the administration to invest more in infrastructure and education."[Reserve Meeting]

It is Up To Congress!

Fischer is expressing the World Banker conventional view. However, if the Federal Government appropriates money for Infrastructure and Education, under current law, it is forced to either borrow money at interest ("deficit spending") or to raise taxes to "offset such spending". Raising Taxes means the government must rob Peter to Pay Paul. Borrowing money means that any profits from infrastructure investment will go to Investors and not to the people "as a whole."

Congress Can Authorize an Infrastructure Bank and Delegate that function!

An Evil time

I knew it was an evil time.

I could feel the weight trying to pull me down.

I don't know if it was my imagination,

but an army of reapers seemed to be walking the earth.

And one of them seemed standing near me.

Tugging on my sleeve.

 

I said, keep away from me!

And went on to grieve,

for all who I knew were passing away

these evil days.

 

It may be just my imagination.

But I can feel when some folks are letting go.

And while i know I'll miss them deep in my soul.

At least they could let go

of the weight of an evil world.

And I know, they were taking both the good and evil.

But especially those who committed no crime.

And I say to the ineffable lord of the Universe;

Please take your evil eye off of me.

and roll the other one around.

But then I consider the better people you take

....instead of me

and I say, if it is my time, let it be.

But let me finish a few things first.

Over the weekend it felt like the very gravity of the earth was tugging me down. Today I find out that so many people I love from afar, passed. It's not my time yet.

Christopher H. Holte

Helping Veterans

In my little town of Brunswick, I have two sets of friends who are both trying to help Veterans. This post is a stub:

1. Building Veterans: [http://www.buildingveterans.org/index.html]
2. http://www.uswaterwarriors.org/

And outside of Brunswick I've made indirect contact with other veterans groups trying to help Veterans. One of them is trying to get hemp legalized again as the industrial super-product it was before it was lumped in with Marijuana and outlawed.

http://www.growingwarriors.org/

I'm putting these links here so I can find them quickly. If you want to help veterans, there are lots of vets and their groups who need your help. A lot of vets don't need anyone's economic help. Many just need us to love them. As a Navy Brat, I know this first hand. I'm also trying to help some other folks, so these links are also for reference:

• Thomas Hart's website [http://www.otpvideo.com/]
• The website I manage is gabbidc

A Sustainable Economic Policy III

Management for the Public Good

The 19th century economist Henry George, articulated the principles of commonwealth public policy in 1890:

"With respect to monopolies other than the monopoly on land, we hold that where free competition becomes impossible, as in telegraphs, railroads, water and gas supplies, etc., such business becomes a proper social function, which should be controlled and managed by and for the whole people concerned, through their proper government, local, state or national, as may be." [[Paragraph 11 Georgist Plank]

Proper Government

By "proper government", one must understand that local, state and national government all have "proper" roles in regulation and operation of the kinds of goods and systems that tend to become monopolized. Certainly healthcare, most of our infrastructure of all kinds, and many other public goods risk being mismanaged and tyrannically managed when managed of and for private cabals (corporations) -- especially when they involve public monies (bills of credit/paper money) and government function. The record shows a little more than risk, more like severe threat that private management leads to monopoly and exploitation.

These attributes apply to all our national infrastructures to one degree or another: Banks, Healthcare, Defense, Communication, Transportation and Energy. They all require that the US manage them in the public interest. And ignoring Georgist principles has led to these public goods being allowed to become monopolies run for the private, separate Interest.