Naked Capitalism has the article Days of Revolt: The Black Prophetic Tradition. Since Naked Capitalism has opened the door to disseminating the video below, I feel comfortable in doing the same, myself.

Black Prophetic Fire is the name of Cornell West’s new book that is part of the subject of this interview

Bernie Sanders has only slight mention in this video, but I think the context that this video provides is extremely important. I don’t mean to diminish what Cornell West does have to say about Bernie Sanders. That is also very important. Also important is what he had to say about Barack Obama.

A while ago The Real News Network added the following disclaimer to their YouTube versions of their videos:

This video is unlisted. Be considerate and think twice before sharing.

I have been considerate, and have stopped watching and publicizing The Real News Network. It’s about time for The Real News Network to open themselves up again. Videos like this are too important to hide.

This fell out of the Q & A, I mentioned in my previous post, The Question I Wanted to Ask.

Greenspan: “There is nothing to prevent the government from creating as much money as it wants.” – COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MARCH 2, 2005

What is so shocking about this is that even Alan Greenspan acknowledges the truth of Modern Money Theory (MMT). It’s a good thing nobody is listening or we would be hearing the sounds of heads exploding all across the country.

Or as was mentioned the subject of my previous post:

Watching Stephanie Kelton guide the conversation, sitting next to Bernie Sanders as she was, it was clear the delicate challenge she faces in poking at the edges of the precepts of the status quo without pushing things into the scary and marginalized territory of counter-intuitive reality.

That counter-intuitive reality was accidentally revealed by Alan Greenspan. The problem is that if Bernie Sanders ever mentions it, he will be dismissed as more of a kook than some people already suspect he is. To set the record straight, Bernie Sanders is not a kook.

Perhaps the safest route for Bernie Sanders to take is to keep saying that we need to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for his programs. After all, it is true that we have to raise the taxes on the wealthy to solve the problem of the maldistribution of wealth and power in this country. What harm could it do to also pretend these taxes are needed to pay for Sanders’ program?

One of the life lessons I have learned is that it always comes back to bite you when you use a little fiction to explain something that is actually true.

Luckily, there are few of the people who can’t handle the truth that will be reading this blog post. So they won’t be up-in-arms over what I have revealed here.

New Economic Perspectives has the post The Question I Wanted to Ask by “J.D. Alt”.

I recently attended a panel discussion called by Bernie Sanders—and moderated by Stephanie Kelton—to discuss the crisis in Greece.
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“Does it strike anyone as odd that the discussion today has been only about money? Is it important at all what the real resources are that Greeks have within their own borders? Is it rational for Greece to borrow money in order to buy things the Greek people already own by right—their own labor, their own agriculture, for example? Or is it the case that Greece is so lacking in her own resources that she has to buy most everything her citizens consume from other countries? And, if that’s true, isn’t at least part of the solution for Greece to intentionally and systematically become more self-sufficient? Isn’t it possible, in fact, that if every nation strived intentionally to become more self-sufficient in food and energy—go “off-grid” so-to-speak—that a great chunk of the anthropogenic CO2 (which is threatening our very survival) would be eliminated? Or is the globalization of capital a more important goal than the well-being of seven billion people?”

I am sure that all followers of Modern Money Theory (MMT) have this very question on their minds.

This “J.D. Alt” post and the ensuing Q & A raise so many interesting issues, that I want to write several blog posts of my own about those issues.

As long as we are on the headline title of the post, this is a good place to interject the question I would like to ask.

How does MMT account for the Mark-to-Market method of valuing just about everything? An example of what I am talking about is that when there is one trade of a stock on the stock market, everybody who owns any shares of that company assumes that their individual shares are suddenly worth that price.

Their behavior on how they spend or save their money is quite tightly correlated to how much they think they have. Mark-to-market is as fictitious as they come (although there aren’t necessarily any better measures), so here is a perfect example of “money” being created exogenously from all the sectors that MMT enumerates.

I have asked this before, but I have yet to receive an answer. In case you don’t recognize the relevance of the question, this is tightly tied to the idea of sector balances mentioned in several comments. The mark-to-market issue is the one fly in the ointment that seems to be ignored by MMT in its discussion of sector balances.

Massachusetts for Bernie Sanders has refocused attention on the Occasional Planet article of December 2014, Elizabeth Warren: Citibank owns Obama administration.

Senator Elizabeth Warren spoke on the floor of the Senate on Dec. 12, 2014 about the provision that Citigroup added to the omnibus budget package.

I don’t know what it will take for this message to finally get through. Both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren (and their supporters) are trying as hard as we can to reach the voters with the truth about what their representatives are doing to them.

When will enough truly be enough?

I received an email over Barack Obama’s “signature”. Note the warning below. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for a mass epidemic of vomiting. So only contemplate doing this if you have a very strong stomach.

I almost forgot to mention that this will be hosted and broadcast by Faux Noise. I hate to suggest anything that will boost the ratings of that propaganda channel.

Ring of Fire Radio has the commentary Comcast Orders MSNBC To Remove Anti-TPP Hosts.

When it comes to coverage of the Trans Pacific Partnership, no one in the corporate media covered the issue more than Ed Schultz on MSNBC’s The Ed Show. When it was announced last week that they were pulling the plug on his program, they effectively killed the only national voice that was talking about the disaster of a trade deal on cable news.

But what is the real reason for MSNBC dumping Ed? When you dig down, it’s dirtier than you would think.

I had no idea of the real reason why these changes have been made. I just thought that Progressives didn’t have the stomach for media aimed at them that was a mirror image of the stuff aimed at the regressives.

The mention of Bill Clinton’s support for media conglomeration was something that I had forgotten about. I thought it was all Reagan’s fault for doing away with the fairness doctrine.

Now you have a deeper understanding of the attack these companies have been making on net neutrality. The internet is the last bastion that has held out against the silencing of Progressive voices. I wonder when I will get shut down.

YouTube has the video Bernie Sanders at Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was interviewed about issues important to Hispanic businesses and communities. He answered questions concerning the economy, immigration, race relations, and issues affecting the Latino community. He also discussed his chances of winning the Democratic nomination and vowed not to run as a third-party candidate in the 2016 presidential election.

This was a fabulous interview. The questions were great as well as the answers. It gave Bernie Sanders a chance to explain his positions, which surprisingly to many in the audience, were not anti-business and not anti-capitalism. In fact, Bernie explained how some of his “socialist” social programs like single payer health care would lift a tremendous burden off the backs of small-business owners. It would allow them to concentrate more on their own business, what they like and want to do, and what they do best. How you could call this anything but pro-business, I don’t know.

I think the moderator and many in the audience were surprised at how much of Bernie Sanders’ platform they agreed with once they heard it explained.

Robert Reich posted on his Facebook timeline a re-emphasis of the 2014 article Raising Taxes on Corporations that Pay Their CEOs Royally and Treat Their Workers Like Serfs.

Until the 1980s, corporate CEOs were paid, on average, 30 times what their typical worker was paid. Since then, CEO pay has skyrocketed to 280 times the pay of a typical worker; in big companies, to 354 times.
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The proposed legislation, SB 1372, sets corporate taxes according to the ratio of CEO pay to the pay of the company’s typical worker. Corporations with low pay ratios get a tax break.Those with high ratios get a tax increase.
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For example, if the CEO makes 100 times the median worker in the company, the company’s tax rate drops from the current 8.8 percent down to 8 percent. If the CEO makes 25 times the pay of the typical worker, the tax rate goes down to 7 percent.

I don’t see why a company should get a tax break at over a 30:1 ratio. Certainly not at 100:1. Companies should not get rewarded for doing what they ought to do in an ordinary way. They need to be penalized for not doing what they ought to do. They should certainly not even be considered for some sort of reward unless they do something extraordinarily good.

Our politicians, including Hillary Clinton, immediately jump to the idea of some corporate tax break as the solution for every problem. The share of taxes paid by corporations is already far lower than it used to be. We need to think more about my principle of using tax penalties for bad behavior, ordinary taxes for good behavior, and then, if really need be, tax incentives for extraordinarily good behavior that needs to be encouraged.

Naked Capitalism has the post Meet the Hedge Funders and Billionaires Who Pillage Under the Shield of Philanthropy by Lynn Parramore.

America’s parasitical oligarchs are masters of public relations. One of their favorite tactics is to masquerade as defenders of the common folk while neatly arranging things behind the scenes so that they can continue to plunder unimpeded. Perhaps nowhere is this sleight of hand displayed so artfully as it is at a particular high-profile charity with the nerve to bill itself as itself as “New York’s largest poverty-fighting organization.”

Yves Smith who posted this on Naked Capitalism warns that the article is a little shrill. Most of the commenters and I think it is not shrill enough.

I have always felt, without any explicit evidence to back it up, that society would be better off if the billionaires didn’t take the money in the first place before they gave it back in philanthropy. I had no measure of the extent to which I was correct. Recently, I have seen estimates that if the non-rich had advanced in the past 40 years at historical rates, they would be almost $11 Trillion dollars ahead of where they are today. I guess that figure fits nicely with the contention of this article.