The Black Agenda Report has this interview with Ajamu Baraka Black Caucus Backs Trump’s War Budget. It is about more than just the Black Caucus.

Democrats detest everything about Donald Trump — except his war policies, said Ajamu Baraka, the former Green Party vice presidential nominee and spokesperson for the Black Alliance for Peace. A majority of the Congressional Black Caucus supported Donald Trump’s gargantuan war budget, which will inevitably result in drastic cuts in social programs. The Obama war-making legacy has “resulted in Black people having a less critical stance” on U.S. wars, said Baraka.

Global Research has the article Wall Street Vultures Descend On Debt-Ridden Puerto Rico. This is an interview with Déborah Berman-Santana.

DBS: With the eventual elimination of industrial tax incentives beginning in the 1990s, Puerto Rico’s governments increasingly looked to loans to balance its budget and continue practices of rewarding political cronies with contracts for large infrastructure projects. Subsequently, President Clinton’s elimination of the Glass-Steagall Act allowed for investment bankers to increasingly engage in bond market speculation. Puerto Rico received “triple exemption” because of its colonial status, which meant that every pension fund and every municipal and state government, among others, bought Puerto Rico bonds, ignoring the fact that its economy began shrinking once the special industrial exemptions were completely eliminated in 2006.

Election of a protégé of the Koch Brothers, Luis Fortuño, as Puerto Rico’s governor in 2008 resulted in a “bitter medicine” law that eliminated tens of thousands of public jobs, which accelerated the descent of an economic recession into a depression. By 2011 the major credit agencies began degrading Puerto Rico’s ratings, with the result that it increasingly resorted to short-term, high interest loans similar to “payday loans.” Bondholders increasingly unloaded their Puerto Rico bonds in the secondary bond market, which were then swooped up by vulture funders such as Paul Singer and John Paulson – often at 10 to 20 percent of the bond’s value. Today, these vulture funders possess up to 50 percent of Puerto Rico’s public debt, and are the creditors who are least willing to renegotiate the terms of the loans. They have been the major lobbyists for the Congressional law known as “PROMESA” that recently became law.

I was challenged recently to put up a link to back up my claim that Wall Street was responsible for duping Puerto Rico into its current debt situation. I did a brief Google search on Wall Street War on Puerto Rico to come up with the article above.

As I get further and further into the article it only gets worse for Puerto Rico. Here is the reaction to the question about the similarities between Greece and Puerto Rico.

DBS: I would say they are strikingly similar, and in fact that the same playbook is being used in both countries, despite the differences between them. For example, the acronym TINA, “There Is No Alternative” to continued policies of austerity, privatization, and increased taxes in order to pay off an unsustainable public debt, is constantly repeated, as is the myth that “There is no Plan B,” and that political independence for both (in Greece’s case, leaving the European Union and the eurozone) would be disastrous — as if U.S. and EU colonial rule is not already a disaster! In Greece there is already a junta de control fiscalnamed by the EU which must approve — and often even write — laws that the Greek government must implement, such as automatic budget cuts and further privatizations. While as a classic colony Puerto Rico cannot officially deal with the IMF, in practice the PROMESA bill follows the IMF playbook, as was prescribed by “former” IMF officials who were hired by the Puerto Rican government — as ordered by their masters in Washington — to produce a report with recommendations for dealing with the debt crisis. In addition, you see “vulture capitalists” such as Paul Singer and John Paulson swooping into both Greece and Puerto Rico to buy up assets such as banks and land, plus debt — at a discount. The fact that Puerto Rico is a classic colony actually makes the problems of lack of sovereignty much clearer. Greece is still officially an independent country, so for some people its de facto colonial status may not be quite as clear. Also, the problem of equating national sovereignty with fascism is particularly acute in Greece as a European country. In Puerto Rico we have some of that confusion, but it is not as strong since in general Latin Americans, including Puerto Ricans, understand the necessity for national sovereignty as part of anti-colonial struggles.

RT has the article N. Korea has already suffered untold devastation by US, knows ‘fire & fury’ firsthand – analysts.

We must remember once again that, according to Chinese statistics, an estimated 30 percent of the North Korean population was killed, 70 percent of whom were civilians. The United States waged an absolutely unrestrained air war.

I doubt that there are many people in the USA that understand this. I was only 10 years old at the time of the Korean War, so I didn’t fully get what was going on at the time. Imagine all of our people who have been born since then. What chance do they have of understanding this?

YouTube has the video Hillary Clinton Attacks Progressives, Critiques Bernie’s ‘Medicare for All’ Bill.

Hillary Clinton has been making the rounds on cable news shows in an attempt to both (a) promote her new book, and (b) continue f*cking over America even more. Not only is she tripling-down on her attacks against progressives—calling them divisive, and implying that they’re sexist—but she’s also trying to undermine Bernie Sanders by criticizing his ‘Medicare for All’ bill and condescendingly implying he doesn’t understand his own bill and can’t determine how much it will cost. She’s also trying to persuade the Democratic Party to not give Bernie any influence. Thanks, Hillary!

Naked Capitalism has the article Toys R Us: Another Private Equity Casualty. The article quotes a story in Financial Times

But the blame is perhaps to be placed most squarely on its private equity ownership. Toys R Us has spent more than $250m a year servicing $5bn in long term debt, which was “not a sustainable situation,” one investor said, as the company faced increasingly crushing competition from Amazon and Walmart.

After years of rearranging its debt burden, like other big leveraged buyouts of the pre-financial crisis era, it is presenting a restructuring under bankruptcy protection as a bid for freedom. Toys R Us says it now has a chance to bring its “vision to fruition”, announcing plans to invest in marketing and technology and even promising to raise store employees’ wages.

I had no idea about the Toys R Us Bankruptcy when I wrote my previous post Toshiba to sell chip unit to Bain Capital-led group for $18 billion about my prediction of the eventual demise of Toshiba’s chip unit in the hands of Bain Capital.

Reuters has the article Fed keeps U.S. rates steady, to start portfolio drawdown in October.

There is interesting information here, but one statement astounded me.

Fed Chair Janet Yellen said in a press conference after the end of the meeting that the fall in inflation this year remained a mystery, adding that the central bank was ready to change the interest rate outlook if needed.

The fall in inflation rate was explained by John Maynard Keynes in the late 1930s. I call it, “What part of no freakin’ customers do you not understand?” Keynes explained that you can push all the money you can into the economy, but if there is no consumer demand to stimulate investment, that money will sit idle. This lack of understanding of the failure of monetary policy to solve the problem of stimulating a little inflation into our economy is really frightening coming from the FED. If they can’t understand why their efforts failed, they won’t have a clue of what to do when things turn around and inflation comes roaring back.

Real Progressives has posted a meme about MMT Is Quite Extensive.

I have been banned from a few MMT enthusiast Facebook sites for saying this. It is nice to read this from Ellis Winningham who is an important teacher of MMT. Ironically, Real Progressives is one of those sites where I am no longer welcome.

Bernie Sanders has the podcast Episode 10: Dr. Danielle Martin.

This week on The Bernie Sanders Show podcast, Dr. Danielle Martin visited from Toronto to discuss Sen. Sanders’ Medicare-for-all bill and how universal health care works in Canada.

This is well worth the 30 minutes to listen to. You get a lot of information without the yelling and screaming from a typical USA television or radio show.

Reuters has the article Toshiba to sell chip unit to Bain Capital-led group for $18 billion.

Japan’s Toshiba Corp agreed on Wednesday to sell its prized semiconductor business to a group led by U.S. private equity firm Bain Capital LP, a key step in keeping the struggling Japanese conglomerate listed on the Tokyo exchange.

A statement later on in the article is what really raised my concern.

Also, the semiconductor business requires huge amounts of investment, and Toshiba’s chip unit risks losing its competitive ability as rivals such as Samsung Electronics roll out big capital spending plans.

It seems to me that Bain Capital has a habit of stripping the resources from companies that it buys, puts the companies into huge debt, then walsk away with the money, and leaves the remnants to the bankruptcy courts.

Since the semiconductor business requires huge amounts of investment, this approach is sure to kill off Toshiba Semiconductor. Of course, I have no crystal ball, and I am no expert. Of course, Toshiba’s weak financial position might have doomed the semiconductor division even if Toshiba had tried to hang on to it.

The Forward has the article What Bibi Said At The UN Was True — And That’s Horrifying.

On Yom Kippur, we will hear Isaiah demand that we “unlock the fetters of wickedness, untie the cords of the yoke and let the oppressed go free.” And what happens if we don’t?

On Tuesday at the General Assembly, Netanyahu gave his answer: Nothing will happen. In fact, we will prosper because what matters in this world is power. It’s Pharaoh’s answer, horrifying to hear from the leader of a Jewish state. But nothing I can see proves it wrong.

For those who don’t know the history, The Forward is a Jewish newspaper. Don’t blame me for what my maternal grandfather’s favorite newspaper has to say.