The Stir Journal by Jonna Ivin has her article  I Know Why Poor Whites Chant Trump, Trump, Trump.

This is one of the most insightful articles I have read in a long time.  Abiding by the  Fair Use Doctrine, I will only quote a small part of the article, but let me  assure you that there is so much more to it that is worth reading.  You should read the article to see what motivates this excerpt.

Did slave owners care about white indentured servants when they pitted them against African slaves, or did they want to ensure a steady supply of cheap labor? Did Ronald Reagan care about poor white people when he trotted out the fictional welfare queen, or did he need a budget item to cut? Do wealthy elites and politicians care about poor and middle class people when they send them off to war, or are they anticipating massive profits?

Trump is railing against establishment politics not because he cares about the white underclass, but because he needs us — for now. He isn’t reaching out a hand to lift us up. He wants to stand on our shoulders so we can lift him up.

For more than four hundred years, wealthy elites have depended on the white underclass to “help keep America great.” But who are we keeping it great for? When will we realize we have more in common with all poor people than with rich capitalists and corrupt politicians who manipulate the system to increase their own wealth, power, and control? Instead of wondering which billionaire will finally reach out a hand to raise us up, we should stop waiting and start acting.

The article isn’t nearly as long as it might appear judging from the slider in its scroll bar.  The comments on the article probably take up more column inches than the article itself.

Got any hogs?  The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has the article Promises and Price Tags: A Fiscal Guide to the 2016 Election.  I think a better name for this committee would be The Committee for The Most Irresponsible Federal Budget One Could Imagine.

Time Wise posted this report on his Facebook page.

This report is so much hogwash. One of the few things Donald Trump gets right is his statement that the United States Government never has to default on its debt because that government is the one entity that legally creates US money.

This growing debt is largely the result of rising entitlement spending and growing interest costs. Social Security, federal health spending, and interest costs are projected to be responsible for over four-fifths of spending growth over the next decade, with interest being the fastest growing area of the budget.

How can Tim support a right-wing report that says our country’s debt is mainly caused by entitlements? In his rush to condemn someone he rightfully dislikes, he shouldn’t end up supporting policies that are worse.

The growing debt is largely the result of giving back tax collections to the wealthy rather than spending it on what this country needs. Further, giving money to bailout the rich who sock it away in US Treasury securities rather than spend it into the economy is preventing economic growth. This last bit is how we create money and then end up paying interest on the money we created and gave away.

In the recent financial crisis the Fed created $26 Trillion in liquidity which went mostly to the wealthy. Where else does the money come from to buy U.S. Treasury securities? If we were really worried about this country’s debt, don’t you think the money the Fed created could have gone into paying down that debt?

The crime is not that we created $26 Trillion in liquidity.  The crime is that we got almost nothing in return for that $26 Trillion.

I guess even Tim is not immune from being sold a bunch of Kool-Aid.  I hope he comes to his senses before he drinks much more of it.  Don’t you go out and drink this stuff.

NBC News has the article Brexit Wiped $2 Trillion Off Markets: Standard & Poors.

NEW YORK — The $2.08 trillion wiped off global equity markets on Friday after Britain voted to leave the European Union was the biggest daily loss ever, according to Standard & Poor’s Dow Jones Indices.

I won’t even wait for the first person to ask who’s got that $2 Trillion.  Nobody started up an incinerator and burned $2 Trillion.  The money, never existed in the first place.  That amount of money was just notional.  In other words, the accountants of the world who calculate the “mark to market” value of all the stock holdings in the world calculated what all the stocks in the world could be sold for if they were all sold for the amount of money that was paid for the last stock trade in each stock.  Anybody who knows anything about markets of any kind knows that this could never happen, yet people seem to act as if their own stock holdings have this fictitious value.

Well, “mark to market” is not irrational if you understand its place.  Valuing an individual’s stock holdings this way gives you a reasonable approximation of what you could get if you sold your holdings at the instant that the calculation was made.  This assumes that your stock holding is small enough that your sale of it would not impact the market.  It also assumes that the price is not fluctuating significantly at the time you would consider selling it.  It is that last assumption that is what really makes “mark to market” only a crude approximation at times of high market volatility.

Owners of large market positions (mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, and the very wealthy, e.g.) are fully aware that they cannot make large sales at one time and get the full, current price the market is paying for small lots of stock.