New York Magazin Intelligencer has the article For First Act in Power, Democrats Consider Making Their Own Agenda Impossible to Pass.

All this would be a bit less problematic if the Democratic Party had overcome its allergy to deficit spending (and/or accepted Modern Monetary Theory as its personal truth). But it hasn’t: In addition to forbidding tax increases on the bottom 80 percent, Pelosi has vowed to honor the “pay as you go” rule, which requires the House to fully finance any and all new government spending.

The article focuses on the roadblock to tax increases on the bottom 80 percent, but only mentions “pay as you go” in passing. The second item is particularly stupid. Deficits and increasing deficits play a role in economic planning. If we should have a sudden increase in our trade deficit, the federal government might need to increase their deficit to replenish the money leaving the country in foreign trade. If the Democrats take a stance against deficits no matter what the economy requires, they are not only not doing their jobs, but they don’t seem to understand what their jobs are.

Naked Capitalism has the article Everything You Thought You Knew About Western Civilization Is Wrong: A Review of Michael Hudson’s New Book, And Forgive Them Their Debts.

“Mesopotamian societies were not interested in equality,” he told me, “but they were civilized. And they possessed the financial sophistication to understand that, since interest on loans increases exponentially, while economic growth at best follows an S-curve. This means that debtors will, if not protected by a central authority, end up becoming permanent bondservants to their creditors. So Mesopotamian kings regularly rescued debtors who were getting crushed by their debts. They knew that they needed to do this. Again and again, century after century, they proclaimed Clean Slate Amnesties.”

Reading Michael Hudson, I am finally getting some of the deeper lessons of Modern Money Theory (MMT). I have many posts on this blog about Michael Hudson. I don’t think I put it all together until I read his book Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Destroy the Global Economy. Searching this blog for all the posts about the book helps to remind me of what I learned from the book,