Naked Capitalism has the article Meet the Middle Precariat.

Precariousness is not just a working-class thing. In recent interviews, dozens of academics and schoolteachers, administrators, librarians, journalists and even coders have told me they too are falling prey to an unstable new America. I’ve started to think of this just-scraping-by group as the Middle Precariat.

The issue is that automation will eventually make human labor almost completely unnecessary. That could usher in a golden age for the people of the world. All people’s needs met with no need to work. We do not have a social system that knows how to operate under these circumstances. How do you distribute wealth if no work is required to create it?

This requires thinking so far out of the box, that “little” issues like H1-B visas are only a distraction. The 0.1% don’t want the rest of us to question how society distributes wealth and income now, and how it should be changed in the future. However, it is an issue that all of us should be concerned with.

Perhaps this quote that I recorded in 2015 will convey the problem in ways that I don’t seem able to do.

Scott Santense – posted here June 3, 2015 – source

If you give a man a fish, he eats for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he eats for life. If you build a robot to fish, do all men starve, or do all men eat?”

Naked Capitalism has the post Gaius Publius: Picking Up James Comey’s Pieces — What He Did, What He Should Have Done & Why.  This article was posted by Yves Smith with the following introduction:

Yves here. This post is detailed and carefully argued, so get a cup of coffee. If you want a companion piece as to why Comey’s arguments for letting Clinton off the hook were indefensible, the best one-stop shopping is 5 Reasons The Comey Hearing Was The Worst Education In Criminal Justice The American Public Has Ever Had. Please send this post and that link to Clinton defenders.

Another big difference is whether or not the higher ups have a social relation with the accused. If they have never even met the accused, they have no personal feelings about ruining the life of the accused and the lives of the relatives of the accused. If they have socialized with the accused and are in the same social class as the accused, they can believe the accused is such a nice person that the accused does not deserve severe punishment. Of course, when someone of your social class violates the norms of your social class, then the retribution can be as severe as the person not in your class.

Naked Capitalism has the story Congress Exposes That DoJ Overruled Recommendation to Indict Money Launderer HSBC Over Too Big to Fail Worries.

The House of Representatives released a bombshell today out of its three-year investigation as to why the UK-based bank HSBC got off lightly for money laundering, both for with states subject to economic sanctions like Iran and Sudan, as well as narcotics traffickers. The report found that Attorney General Eric Holder “misled” Congress about the evidence against the bank, and that staff prosecutors had recommended indictment but were overruled by Holder. In addition UK regulators interfered in the case, and argued that criminal sanctions would lead to a financial nuclear winter. That was demonstrated to be false in 2014, when BNP Paribas, which apparently had fewer friends in court, pled guilty to criminal money laundering charges and paid $8.9 billion in fines.

Later in the article we have the following:

Mind you, Bill Clinton also received a large speaking fee from HSBC while the bank was being investigated. From a 2015 Associated Press story:

State Department ethics officials also gave quick approval to Bill Clinton’s $200,000 appearance in Florida for British-based HSBC in 2011 despite a 2012 money-laundering settlement with federal prosecutors.

No wonder we can’t win the “War on Drugs”. Our government at the very highest levels has been bought off by the drug cartels. Are we about to elect one of the co-conspirators as another President too?

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.

Represent.Us is pushing The America Anti-Corruption Act.

End Corruption in America: Stop Political Bribery, End Secret Money, & Give Voters a Stronger Voice

Here are the sections of the act.

Stop political bribery

• Make it illegal for politicians to take money from lobbyists.
• Ban lobbyist bundling.
• Close the revolving door.

End Secret Money

• Mandate full transparency of all political money.

Give Voters a Stronger Voice

• Change how elections are funded.
• Prevent politicians from fundraising during working hours.
• Empower small donors over traditional PACs.

Enforce the Rules

• Crack down on super PACs.
• Eliminate lobbyist loopholes.
• Strengthen anti-corruption enforcement.

Common Dreams has the article Brexit and the New Global Rebellion.

Things are changing. A major crack has appeared in the edifice of globalization, and the neoliberal order that has dominated the world’s economy since the end of World War II is now in danger.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, by any means. But poisonous weeds are just as likely as green shoots to grow up through those cracks. To paraphrase John F. Kennedy: Those who make constructive evolution impossible may be making destructive devolution inevitable.

One of my complaints about the way that our country has handled globalization through trade deals like NAFTA and TPP is that the way they are being written gives a good idea a bad reputation.  This article gives a great explanation of what harm can come from giving a good idea a bad reputation.  Giving a good idea a bad reputation may be as big a crime against humanity as what the trade deals themselves do to our people.

Represent.US has the article and sign-up page So, you want to fix corruption? Here’s how you can help.

This plan sounds so plausible, that I am sure it would gain even more support than it has all ready received if more people knew about it.  It is action that we can take on a local level that will ripple up to the national government.

First we start out with an explanation that Corruption is Legal in America.

According to the above video, the next step is How to Fix America’s Corrupt Political System.