Balancing Budgets As Financial Warfare on Ordinary People

An actual country is an economic unit with a government. Balancing a countries "budget" should not be about the countries money supply primarily, but about the resources, capabilities and production necessary to the health of that country and its relations with its neighbors and trading partners. Money measures economic wealth and enables trade, taxes and sales of production. A country's budget is not solely about its bank account but about the people living in that country and their bank accounts. And in the modern world, no single country stands alone, rather we all must work together. Thus as Henry George prescribed 120 years ago and James Galbraith has demonstrated in his writings:

“In a successful financial system, there must be a state larger than any market. That state must have monetary control – as the Federal Reserve does, without question, in the United States.” [Review of The Poisoned Challice]

EMAD Trump -- why the wheels won't come off in Time

An article in The Globe by Thomas Homer Dixon tries to find a rainbow in all the storm clouds. But I'm afraid it doesn't work for me. He describes the Trumpenführer as a Social Dominator:

"like a bizarre hybrid of an idiot savant and a Mafia don." Who is "scarily brilliant when it comes to understanding and manipulating a crowd’s emotions, especially its anger and fear."

Problem is that he could be describing Hitler or Mussolini. In fact Thomas Dixon is describing the classic dictator personality of what Altemeyer describes as the "Socially Dominant" Demagogue! He is describing Trump's epitomizing the EMAD Scale:

E: Trump is Exploitive!

M: Trump is Manipulative!

A: Trump is Amoral

D: Trump is Deeply Dishonest

E.M.A.D!

Trump's Infrastructure plan is Dreck

Giving Sovereignty over the Economy to Pirates

When Hillary talked about balancing the budget without adding to the national debt, I wanted to cheer, and about investing in infrastructure. wanted to cheer largely and disagree in part. But when Trump talks about infrastructure investment I want to jeer his privateering plans. She and her advisors are still under the sway of certain myths about money and economy that are deeply entrenched in American Academia, Business & Finance. But, thanks to the influence of the Post Keynesians, less so than before. Her plans were reasons for guarded optimism. His are pure Dreck

Trump's Plan is a Scam

It will:

1. Will enrich the already wealthy
2. Loot the Treasury immediately through bonds &
3. Loot the treasury long term by transferring ownership to private persons
4. Be funded by Tax cuts, tax breaks and tolls/rents

Good Bye Aunt Patty

My Aunt Patty died last week. The service was 11/19/2016 (yesterday). And I wanted to memorialize her because in addition to being my mom's only Sister she was a great person; very caring, loving and dedicated to helping others. She loved most the house she lived in Lusby. A lot of stories were told yesterday. Some were too private to share here right now. But I wanted to share this poem dedicated to her. Maybe I'll write about some of them later, before I forget them and they float on the wind.

Let the children run and play here!

Love, don't send them away, my dears.

I am mother to them all, son.

Don't drive them away from where I sleep.

For their happiness is in our keep.

 

I sleep restfully, knowing

their footsteps are overhead

Their running comforts my dreams

They cannot disturb my sleep.

 

Let the children play dear,

Tell them they're always welcome here

For my time among the living is over, it is clear

And it was so they could dance near

And enjoy life beneath the sun.

 

Christopher Hartly Holte

The Fallacy of the Final Answer

History presents us with a lot of lessons. Some of those lessons are about our fallacious reasoning. One of our primary fallacies is the "fallacy of the final answer." Throughout history, mankind, and individuals have made this mistake. Chariots, close in formation legionaries, Armored Cavalry, Maginot lines, etc.... each, in turn, found itself countered and bested. In military thinking, in strategic thinking, in Science, in the Soft Sciences, in all of these endeavors; theories rise and fall, get revised, lost and reborn. And we humans still grope, fruitlessly, to put a final framework on the truth. History doesn't end. Theories tend to display weaknesses that beg revisions. One generation's certainties are the next's subject for refutations. The fallacy of the final answer is the hubris of mankind.

Hannah Arendt, Donald Trump and the Stateless

Nativists Versus the Stateless

Around the world nativism is raising it's ugly head again. Some People in nations all over the world are rising in rejection of immigrants, refugees and minorities among their own people. This phenomena is not new. It is not trivial or benign either. It was a feature of totalitarianism in the 30s and since. It is also a feature of totalitarian groups.

Demagoguing Immigrants

Unfortunately, we just elected a Nativist President in the United States. His premier appointments are the open nativist Bannon and the racist Reince Prebius. The "alt right" is just an updated fascism. They are folks who openly admire Hitler as a hero and want to continue his work. People who proudly wear KKK robes and talk about race war and their own identity. They are openly fascist. And their target are people who are minorities, "mixed races" and the stateless. Nativism is as ugly now as it has ever been. And nativists are set to direct the country from the White House. Trump himself talks openly about his racialist beliefs, but mainly he is demagogueing the subject.

Von Mises and Tony Wikrent

Economic Sophism

Sophism in economics and politics is like the Hydra. As soon as you cut off one head, new ones grow. Fascism never really goes away.

After we defeated the Nazis their fascism simply morphed into new forms. The same tropes that animated Mediterranean fascist states soon animated Latin American, Greek, Indonesian and other movements. What works for bomb throwing lefties works for bomb throwing righties. And it gets hard to tell them apart as they radicalize.

Similarly, the economic theories that support both monarchism and fascism never really went away. They are too convenient to the patroons to fund them to be allowed to go away. They serve the needs of the ambitious, to social climbers, grifters, swindlers and those with the perverse ambition and power to preserve and extend their personal power using them to bamboozle followers. So the shills for such ideas, don't disappear, they adapt.