C-SPAN has a complete recording of the hearing called by Senator Rand Paul.

War Powers and Federal Spending A Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee held a hearing on war powers granted by the Constitution and whether a new Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) is needed for current U.S. military engagements. Attorneys and legal experts from across the political spectrum, including Fox News Channel analyst and former judge Andrew Napolitano, testified about Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which grants Congress the power to declare war, and put forward several examples from history, including 2001’s AUMF in which Congress gradually forfeited its war powers to the executive Branch.

The Institute For New Economic Thinking has the article The Corporate Plan to Groom U.S. Kids for Servitude by Wiping Out Public Schools.

Lafer explains that in the new system, the children of the wealthy will be taught a broad, rich curriculum in small classes led by experienced teachers. The kind of thing everybody wants for kids. But the majority of America’s children will be consigned to a narrow curriculum delivered in large classes by inexperienced staff —or through digital platforms with no teachers at all.

Most kids will be trained for a life that is more circumscribed, less vibrant, and, quite literally, shorter, than what past generations have known. (Research shows that the lifespan gap between haves and have-nots is large and rapidly growing). They will be groomed for insecure service jobs that dull their minds and depress their spirits. In the words of Noam Chomsky, who recently spoke about education to the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), “students will be controlled and disciplined.” Most will go to school without developing their creativity or experiencing doing things on their own.

This makes me more upset than I already have been with the way the world is trending. My generation may be the last one that escaped this. My daughter’s generation is struggling against the tide. What’s going to happen to my granddaughter’s generation is really frightening to contemplate.

New Economic Perspectives has the article Last Exit to the Road Less Traveled.

The last exit to the Road-Less-Travelled, then, ultimately depends on establishing a new understanding of the modern fiat-money we use today—an understanding that will enable us to see a remarkable new reality: the “costs” of resource protection and restoration are the income of artisanship.

I think one of the important parts of understanding Modern Money Theory (MMT) is that there are some things that the commons need doing that don’t profit one individual or one corporation to do. The only solution may be that the controller of the sovereign currency (our government) can spend money that is not profitable in the capitalist sense, but necessary for civilization. It is not enough to pump that currency into the system so that the profit motive can decide what to do with it all. Some of it needs to be pumped into the economy by paying for the upkeep of the commons.

How could I resist an article that said:

If you’re a hard-nosed, practical-minded engineer, don’t imagine you can’t be an artisan. In fact, you could be one of the greatest artisans who ever lived. All that’s necessary is that you apply your hard-nosed practicality to the “art” of utilizing resources sustainably to create something of utility.

That is sort of the view I had of myself as a practicing software engineer. Sometimes my bosses didn’t want artisanship, but that was part of my self-motivation. When I could no longer practice artisanship in the commercial world, software engineering stopped being fun, and I retired.

Mad In America has the article Rising Rates of Suicide: When Do We Acknowledge That Something Isn’t Working?!

When do professionals and the public alike finally acknowledge that WHAT WE’RE DOING ISN’T WORKING? When do we say “If we want things to change, maybe we should change our approach”?! When does the media start to widely question what is happening in society rather than jumping to analyzing the individual?

The excerpt above tends to reinforce you expectation that probably arise from reading the title. The following excerpt hints at some more of what is covered in the article.

“Call the suicide hotline. Know that you are not alone.”

The problem is, most of us are alone. The US, and most of Western society, centers around an individualistic culture that puts “success” above relationships, leading many to focus their lives on the pursuit of a fragile and fleeting illusion of proving oneself. This endless pursuit leaves a person crushed the moment the illusion of success disappears (which it always will). And, so, the chase is always on for more, more, more.

I have found that being alone and being focused on success are actually two different problems. Both can contribute to suicide rates. If both causes affect you, work on mitigating one issue may leave you still vulnerable to the other issue. There may also be other causes that can be identified. Perhaps issues of success are just a subset of issues of security/insecurity.

I think this article is helpful because it reminds us to think about a wider range of issues than the media (social and formal) focus on. It does not mean that we should ignore the issues that traditional sources seem to focus on.

YouTube has the video Anthony Bourdain, Struggle & Suicide-How Being Woke Can Hurt. Here might be a nice complement to the article above.

Naked Capitalism has the article How Chinese Investors Inflate Housing Markets in the US, Canada, and Australia, as Governments Try to Stem the Tide.

At first, the inflow of Chinese investor money was great and awesome. But then it turned the local markets into full-blown housing bubbles that began threatening local economies. So various levels of governments in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere – but notably not yet in the US – have created policies to tamp down on this incoming flood of money that distorts the market.

If you want to understand the possible inflationary effects of the Federal Reserve Bank pushing liquidity into the economy that has no use for it, this may be one indication (besides the stock market bubble.)

This may not end well for the Chinese investors, however. I think back to the 1989 to 1995 commercial real estate bubble caused by Japanese investors. The denouement was described in The New York Times article Japanese scrap $2 billion stake in Rockefeller.

Mitsubishi’s sudden decision to exit Rockefeller Center is the most striking in a string of recent retreats from the trophy properties stretching from New York to Honolulu that Japanese companies acquired during a real estate binge in the 1980’s.

Naked Capitalism has the article Worrying About the Deficit Is So 17th Century.

Such was the origin of that debt which has since become the greatest prodigy that ever perplexed the sagacity and confounded the pride of statesmen and philosophers. At every stage in the growth of that debt the nation has set up the same cry of anguish and despair. At every stage in the growth of that debt it has been seriously asserted by wise men that bankruptcy and ruin were at hand. Yet still the debt went on growing; and still bankruptcy and ruin were as remote as ever.

It is fun to just rule out the possibility of inflation, but then people bring up historical inflation that did occur. Then you have to explain what is the difference between situations where inflation occurred and situations where it did not occur. That’s when you can have a conversation about reality. However, by then you may have lost the trust of your audience because you didn’t admit to inflation right from the start. The comments at the end of the article take care of discussing the conditions that create inflation as opposed to those that do not cause inflation.

Yves Smith
June 7, 2018 at 2:15 pm

That is not correct. To get hyperinflation, you need significant loss or destruction of a country’s productive capacity and foreign currency obligations you can’t meet.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/04/what-are-the-preconditions-for-hyperinflation.html

New York Magazine has the article Democrats Must Reject Howard Schultz and His Radical Centrist Ideology.

In recent interviews, Schultz has argued that progressive Democrats have grown so rigidly ideological, they can no longer recognize basic political and policy realities.

He has also contended that the wealthiest nation in human history can’t afford to provide public health insurance to all of its citizens; that the national debt is a bigger threat to the United States than climate change; and that Democrats would be wise to demonstrate “leadership” to the electorate — by calling for cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

Good article. I just wish the author would take the problem of inflation more seriously. There are plenty of reasons why inflation is not a worry if we behave rationally, but those rational requirements should be addressed. Deficits, per se, are not the problem, but how they get spent makes all the difference in the world. A strong military depends on a strong economy. In the long run, a strong economy can be undermined by too much concentration on spending for the military. Investing money that creates more value than it consumes will help keep our economy strong.

Inflation is not so much of a problem as long as we have the currency that is the reserve currency of the world. We can destroy our currency’s standing in the world by using economic sanctions as a weapon of foreign policy. Engaging in trade wars is another way we can undermine our economy and our currency.

Free trade is a better policy than trade wars, but it needs to be free trade that promotes the welfare of people, not exclusively the welfare of oligarchs. Unlike the defunct TPP proposal of the Obama/Clinton administration, it should not give corporations the power to override a nation’s ability to rein in corporate excess. This power is used to further the maldistribution of income and wealth. This poor distribution leads to world political instability which does not promote the welfare of non-defense industries. Defense industries that produce products that destroy themselves and destroy people and the world’s productive capacity are not the type of investment that leads to a healthy world and healthy economy.

YouTube has the video Gar Alperovitz: What Is A New Economy?

Professor Gar Alperovitz discusses the New Economy movement and cooperative experiments in the U.S. Interview was made in July 24th, 2014 (Washington D.C.) by Antti Jauhiainen & Joona-Hermanni Mäkinen (Parecon Finland).

I may very well have this same story buried in other posts about Gar Alperovitz, but it doesn’t hurt to have this distillation posted. I like the way that he emphasizes this example’s appeal to conservatives who have a visceral dislike to anything that smacks of socialism.

The Institute For New Economic Thinking has the article Jim Chanos on Fraud: “Cryptocurrency Is a Security Speculation Game Masquerading as a Technological Breakthrough”. This has been republished by Naked Capitalism..

Law was the first person to write about the need for foreign governments to have fiat currencies and not be tethered to gold and silver. Because of the power of taxation and the power of the governments through enforcement and force of arms, they could enforce their currency to be used, and because of their ability to expand the monetary base and do all the kinds of things that central banks now do, it was in their best interest to do so.

I gave a link to both publications of this article so that you could read the comments on both of them. What Jim Chanos is saying is plenty controversial. I picked out the quote above to give you a hint at one of the controversies. To a proponent of Modern Money Theory (MMT) like me, the comments on fiat currency seem pretty devastating. At least I can say that I recognize some of what night upset MMT for the USA, see my recent post India & Iran drop dollar in oil trade to bypass US sanctions – report.

As for Jim Chanos’ comments

LP: One thing you said in “The China Hustle” is that we’ve never seen a credit build-up like the one we’ve seen in China today that hasn’t been followed by a major financial crisis. That sounds pretty worrisome.

JC: I’m always told confidently it won’t matter because they owe it to themselves. Well, if that was that were the case, then Zimbabwe would be one of the wealthiest countries in the world today!

When MMT makes this argument about the USA’s fiat currency, they say that the fiat currency allows the USA to buy whatever it wants to buy if it is for sale in the USA’s currency. What is available to buy in USA currency is a far different story from what is available to buy in Zimbabwe currency. However, the caveat that MMT states is something to take seriously. My recent post about India and Iran as linked to above demonstrates some of the things that could go wrong with the USA fiat cirrency.

YouTube has the video Bernie Yells At Chuck Todd, Stunned By Stupid Question: “Of Course Not!”.

Do you think #45 is making it up when he talks about “fake news”? See my previous post Why Trump Attacks The Media.