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.

Counter Punch has the article Getting the Gulf of Tonkin Wrong: Are Ken Burns and Lynn Novick “Telling Stories” About the Central Events Used to Legitimize the US Attack Against Vietnam?.

Framing the US attack on North Vietnam as “retaliation” in this PBS documentary, which purports to tell truths about this horrific war, is a fundamental, serious, and consequential defect, one which must raise the question of why, after all these years — and when the truth about the Gulf of Tonkin “incidents” has been known for years — Ken Burns and Lynn Novick would engage in this kind of (albeit strangely belated) pro-war propaganda. (Or is it better understood as indoctrination.)

There is a lot of good information in the Counter Punch article to backup the accusations made against the PBS documentary.

Well, we have known for years that PBS has turned to the dark side, but now it ought to be apparent to the doubters.

I stopped watching NOVA on PBS years ago when they advertised that it was sponsored by the Koch brothers.

The Week has the article This radical money policy would easily pay for Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for all.

Now, it would still be prudent for Sanders to match some of the new spending with new taxes because as the economy improves, there will be less wiggle room to spend. But he hardly needs to match all of it. Reasonable assumptions suggest his plan would already result in a bit over $1 trillion in new revenue.

The article depends on the premises of Modern Money Theory (MMT), but it also emphasizes the reality of future inflation issues.

This article also fails to talk about the savings from eliminating the private health insurance overhead. The assumption that the country has to pay about the same amount of money for health care after single-payer as the country did before, is not realistic.

There also needs to be a discussion of one of the ways inflation was kept in check during WWII. That is the selling of war bonds. The purpose of war bonds was to encourage workers to put some of their earnings aside for a while instead of trying to spend it on goods that the economy could not provide at that moment. I don’t know how you do the equivalent of war bonds in a time of peace. That’s why we need to start thinking about this now.

I find this article to be a nice complement to my previous blog post Robert Reich: A Handful of Ultra-Rich Families Are Bleeding the Country Dry.

Clearing The Fog Radio has an episode with two interviews titled The Truth About the Vietnam War.

PBS is currently airing a ten-part documentary about the Vietnam War by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that is financed by the Koch Brothers and Bank of America and promoted by the Pentagon. We speak with Vietnam scholar, Professor Bob Buzzanco about the real history of the Vietnam War, what led to it and the opposition that developed. He emphasizes that it is important to understand this history so that we do not repeat it in North Korea or the Middle East. Then we speak with Vietnam Vet, David Ross, about his experiences in Vietnam and subsequently in organizing veterans to stop the war.

Pay attention to who is sponsoring the PBS series. Are you in the habit of praising what these sponsors usually promote? Does it raise any doubts in your mind?

Alternet has published the article Robert Reich: A Handful of Ultra-Rich Families Are Bleeding the Country Dry.

Taxing dynastic wealth is an absolute necessity if we hope to restore our democracy.
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Then, President Teddy Roosevelt warned that “a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power,” could destroy American democracy.

Roosevelt’s answer was to tax wealth. The estate tax was enacted in 1916 and the capital gains tax in 1922.

There may soon be an even more immediate reason why we will need to tax this dynastic wealth. The Federal Government created $29 Trillion to bail us out of the crash of 2008/2009. This flood of money did not create inflation because most of that money went to the rich who did not spend it on economy stimulating consumer goods and investments to make consumer goods and investments to make jobs. Since there was a severe lack of consumer demand in our stagnating and collapsing economy, there was nothing worth investing in. All this money was used to increase the price (value) of the things that rich people wanted. One example is corporate stocks. The stock market is now significantly over-priced, but the companies are not hiring at living wages, and they are not making more goods in the USA.

If the economy turns around, all this money that is not being spent into the economy will start to return. This is what will cause inflation. If we could convince Congress to raise taxes, that would suck this excess money out of the economy in a way that would stop inflation. However, raising income taxes will not be enough. The money is already in the hands of the wealthy, so there won’t be enough income to tax. We will need to tax accumulated wealth.

One of the things that might have a hand in stimulating the economy is the transition to single-payer health care. The reduction in health care cost to the typical resident might be enough to get them spending again. If spending were to increase faster than corporations could expand to meet the demand, we would have inflation. We would need a tax that could lower the demand, but not lower the ability of corporations to expand to meet the demand.

Taxing the wealth and income of the very wealthy would discourage their spending on personal wealth accumulation, and redirect it to investment in economic growth to satisfy consumer demand. This is the history of our economy after WWII and up to the years before the Reagan presidency.