The Real News Network has a 3 part series that begins with the interview titled  Krugman is Wrong About the Market and Hot Money – Flassbeck (1/3) .

For most of the interview it is hard to see what was wrong with the quotes of Krugman cited in the beginning.  As they kept talking, I kept thinking, “Isn’t this what Krugman said?”  Toward the end, you finally get to hear the complaint about Krugman.

FLASSBECK: Yeah, that’s one thing, that’s one factor that’s very important. But, as I said before, it’s not only the U.S. We have zero interest rates in Japan. When the U.S. still had higher interest rate, the hedge funds went through Japan, borrowed money in Japan, and carried it to Brazil and other countries. So it’s always–there’s always a low interest rate country. Or it was done through Switzerland. So it’s not important how it is done.

But the crucial thing in here–I fully disagree with Paul Krugman. Paul Krugman said, you had capital controls in the ’50s and the ’60s under the Bretton Woods system. That’s true, but that’s not the whole truth. The much more important thing is that we didn’t have flexible exchange rates. We have flexible exchange rates, and these flexible exchange rates, with these huge flows of money, of hot money, are going in the wrong direction, they’re going definitely the wrong direction, because countries with a rather high inflation rate, like Turkey or Brazil, get an appreciation of their currencies, and everybody knows that’s absolutely untenable. Every good economic textbook will tell you that the country with the high inflation needs a depreciation. But the flexible exchange rate, the markets, the markets are doing exactly the wrong thing. And Krugman also is shying away from saying this very clearly. And this is the problem.

We had attempts in 2011 in the G20 to talk about a new monetary system, but everybody is shying away from touching this hot issue. This is the hot issue. The markets get the prices wrong. And this has to be addressed head-on. And that means you need intervention, international intervention into the market to avoid the misalignment in the first round, the misalignment driven by the market.

You’ll have to listen to the interview or read the transcript to see the parts that I have left out.  The interviewee does hint at some solutions that will be discussed in the other parts of the interview.

I haven’t seen the other two episodes yet to see if this question is answered.

How can the markets be wrong?  The people who are driving the market in the direction it is going are making huge profits.  So the market is right, and it is always right in the short term.  Well, right insofar as what individuals are capable of doing when they all make decisions that are rational for themselves individually.  What the individuals in the market and the market as a whole are incapable of doing is making decisions that are right holistically  for the society including the factors that are outside the market.  The society includes the individuals in the market, but, as I have said, the holistic actins are not actions that individuals can take.

The Real News Network has the interview State Cuts to Public Funding of Higher Education Responsible For Increases In Tuition Costs.

DESVARIEUX: But it hasn’t always been that way, right? Let’s take a look at one of the graphs from your report. We see that students didn’t always shoulder such a large share of the costs of public higher education. For example, in 1987, students paid close to 20 percent of their tuition, and in 2012 it’s inching closer to 50 percent. How has it changed in the last 25 years? Who’s funding public universities?

LEACHMAN: Yeah, well, that’s exactly right. What’s happened is that the states’ share, state and local funding, has gone down, and tuition has risen to sort of risen to fill that gap. So if you look over the last 25 years, per student revenue from state and local government, it fell by about $2,600 after you adjust for inflation–that’s per student–$2,600. Over the same period, tuition increased by $2,600. So, in other words, the entire increase in tuition at public colleges and universities over the last 25 years has gone to make up for the state and local funding cuts.

I have always assumed that the tuition rise at colleges was related to the cutting of government funding.  I think this is the first report I have seen that backs up my intuition about the cause of the problem.

The unwillingness to invest in this country’s future seems to have been passed down to us from the most wealthy.  The 1% loves the free ride of being able to gather a huge fortune as long as somebody else pays for the society that makes it all possible. They don’t seem to notice that if they take it all, there is nobody else left to pay for what they refuse to pay for.

When I say the sickness has been passed down to the rest of us, I don’t mean the people who are scrambling for the crumbs left by the 1% could be expected to make up for what the 1% take out of society.  I mean that the 99% ought to vote for a government that stops giving the 1% a free ride.  Somehow the 1% has convinced enough of the 99% to think that ending the free ride for the 1% would be bad for the 99%.  The 99% have been convinced that they need to act “responsibly” in spite of the fact that the 1% won’t.  The 99% just do not have the resources to make up for the failures of the 1%.

Change.org has my petition Rethink the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) Treaty. Please sign the petition.

The leaked information about the current draft indicates that it will worsen income inequality.  This treaty will also allow corporations to sue to overturn laws and regulations protecting the people’s health and the envrionment.  It will also raise the cost of drugs.  Surely these kinds of things do not belong in a trade bill.

If you don’t want to sign my petition, there are many more TPP petitions on Change.org. Just search for them.

Medical Xpress has the article Divorce rate cut in half for newlyweds who discussed five relationship movies.

Discussing five movies about relationships over a month could cut the three-year divorce rate for newlyweds in half, researchers report. The study, involving 174 couples, is the first long-term investigation to compare different types of early marriage intervention programs.

Here is the video from the article.

Consider this an early Valentine’s Day present.