Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy is a book written by Warren Mosler.

For those who are tempted to think, “Oh no, another deadly dreary economics book that I won’t be able to understand”, here are some words from the beginning of the book.

In the next few moments of reading, it will all be revealed to you with no theory and no philosophy- just a few hard cold facts.

Before you get to the book, you may want to know what an innocent fraud is. Here is the book’s explanation.

The term “innocent fraud” was introduced by Professor John Kenneth Galbraith in his last book, The Economics of Innocent Fraud, which he wrote at the age of ninety-four in 2004, just two years before he died. Professor Galbraith coined the term to describe a variety of incorrect assumptions embraced by mainstream economists, the media, and most of all, politicians.

From the overview of the book, I give you the list of the seven frauds that Mosler discusses.

1. The government must raise funds through taxation or borrowing in order to spend. In other words, government spending is limited by its ability to tax or borrow.
2. With government deficits, we are leaving our debt burden to our children.
3. Government budget deficits take away savings.
4. Social Security is broken.
5. The trade deficit is an unsustainable imbalance that takes away jobs and output.
6. We need savings to provide the funds for investment.
7. It’s a bad thing that higher deficits today mean higher taxes tomorrow.

Once you understand these things for the frauds that they are, you can free yourself from the tyranny of the oligarchs who control both of our political parties. Then we can get on to the business of saving this country from disaster for the non-oligarchs. There are more of us than there are of them, so it is for the good of the country as a whole to make life livable for the non-oligarchs. The oligarchs will lose some of their power, but I think they will still do alright for themselves.

The only thing that can really hurt the oligarchs is for them to get carried away to the point where the rest of society revolts. This revolution will really do the oligarchs in like what happened in the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution. We would be doing the oligarchs a favor by regaining control peacefully so that they can continue to live the good life with just a little less of the goods.

Steven D Grumbine has the Facebook post The hive mentality of the vote blue apologists is bordering on pathological. Here is part of what he said.

The hive mentality of the vote blue apologists is bordering on pathological. It is literally impossible to have a discussion about facts ranging from economics to geopolitical strategy or civil liberties because they are steeped in a religion… deifying “vote blue”… they have forsaken the ability to think beyond just falling back into the hive.

I find it useless to try to explain The Modern Money Model to neo-liberals who still think that federal government deficits are inherently bad and Clinton’s surplus was good. They brag about Obama’s cutting the deficits without realizing that these cuts helped prevent full economic recovery for anybody but the wealthy.

Naked Capitalism has the article Don’t Side With Neoliberalism in Opposing Trump.

During the Bernie Sanders campaign I heard a high-level official give a powerful speech blasting the Trans-Pacific Partnership Act for the harm it would bring to workers, environmentalists and to all who cared about protecting democracy.

Donald Trump now has signed an executive order pulling out of the TPP negotiations.

Is this a victory or a defeat for the tens of thousands of progressives who campaigned to kill the TPP?

I agree with the gist of the article and the caveat that Naked Capitalism added. However, I feel the need to add a caveat of my own.

This is not quite right “Trade deals are bad deals unless they enforce the highest health, safety, environmental and labor standards.”

Labor in the developing countries consider some of this to be the developed countries’ trick of preventing the people in the developing countries from getting jobs. There is some truth to this idea. When we negotiate trade deals, we must remember that in a fair negotiation neither side gets everything it wants, but each side must get enough of what it wants to agree to the terms of the negotiation.

The trouble with past trade pacts is that only the corporations on both sides of the deal were represented. In the future, labor and environment on both sides must be represented in the negotiations.

Thanks to Raj V. for awakening me to the issue many years ago. My take on how to respond to the issue is mine, though. I am not sure if Raj V. would agree.