Here is the description of Milton Friedman in the book J is for Junk Economics: A Guide to Reality in an Age of Deception by Michael Hudson.

In the excerpt below, I took the liberty of adding the second comma in lists of three, so that they would be more readable.

Friedman, Milton (1912-2006): The most prominent Chicago School advocate of financial and fiscal austerity, Friedman popularized the monetarist theory that changes in the money supply are reflected in proportional changes in consumer prices, commodity prices, and wages.His failure to understand that bank money is spent mainly to buy real estate, stocks, and bonds blocked him from understanding asset-price inflation or its sequel, debt deflation. He was awarded the 1976 Nobel Economics Prize for his neoliberal depiction of government as pure overhead and “interference” while distracting public attention from the asset-price gains resulting from bank credit (See “As If” Argument, Junk Economics, and TINSTAAFL.)

While I am at it, I might as well include the following excerpt:

Chicago School: Named after the University of Chicago’s Business School where Milton Friedman and other monetarists established a beachhead. The University was founded by John D. Rockefeller, prompting Upton Sinclair to call it the University of Standard Oil (The Goose Step, 1923). The essence of their ideology is that government has no positive roll, but is only a deadweight burden. Euphemizing their doctrine as “free market”, they advocate deregulation, claiming that “rational markets” will steer the economy. They also support a tax shift off property onto labor, while denying that their policy create a free lunch for rentiers. The result is to centralize planning in the financial centers – short-term planning that finds debt pyramiding and asset stripping the most lucrative activity. (See Market Fundamentalism and TINSTAAFL.)

Naked Capitalism has the article Michael Hudson: The Shape of the Venezuelan Economy, from Chavez to Maduro and Beyond.

There is no way that’s Chavez and Maduro could have pursued a pro-Venezuelan policy aimed at achieving economic independence without inciting fury, subversion and sanctions from the United States. American foreign policy remains as focused on oil as it was when it invaded Iraq under Dick Cheney’s regime. U.S. policy is to treat Venezuela as an extension of the U.S. economy, running a trade surplus in oil to spend in the United States or transfer its savings to U.S. banks.

Wow, this connects the dots you didn’t even know were there. Is Trump about to end the dominance of the USA in the world by causing an uprising of other countries?

The U.S. has overplayed its hand in destroying the foundation of the dollar-centered global financial order. That order has enabled the United States to be “the exceptional nation” able to run balance-of-payments deficits and foreign debt that it has no intention (or ability) to pay, claiming that the dollars thrown off by its foreign military spending “supply” other countries with their central bank reserves (held in the form of loans to the U.S. Treasury – Treasury bonds and bills – to finance the U.S. budget deficit and its military spending, as well as the largely military U.S. balance-of-payments deficit.

Knowing how much of a devotee of Modern Money Theory that Michael Hudson is, it is hard to digest his talk of how our military and deficit spending is financed by other countries holding Treasury securities. There is a parenthesis missing in the above quote which would have clarified some of what he meant. The parenthesis is missing from the original publication on Michael Hudson’s web sit in the article Venezuela as the pivot for New Internationalism?

The only thing I can think of is that MMT does seem to depend on the continued acceptance of the USA dollar as a world reserve currency. If that stopped being true, there would certainly be major ramifications on the economic policy options we have.

Whenever I read about the policy options MMT says that the USA has, I do think that we had better hurry up and take advantage of those options before we fritter away those possibilities. By destroying the status that the USA dollar enjoys in the rest of the world, we could no longer depend on getting the rest of the world to supply us with cheap imports in exchange for our dollars.

I have been looking for this cartoon for years. I just stumbled across the Google magic search terms that brought it right up. “cartoon machine gun rejection”.

YouTube has the video Green State of the Union 2019 by Jill Stein.

Hear Jill explain solutions for our nation. This is a response to the problems both the Republicans and Democrats are causing. The Democrats are complicit with the Republicans in the regime change assault on the sovereign nation of Venezuela. And that threatens to ignite an Iraq level civil war disaster with hundreds of thousands of potential deaths and millions of refugees.

Here is a spirited address that you won’t hear from anybody from one of the major USA political parties.

Naked Capitalism has the article The Real Reason Stock Buybacks Are a Problem.

Since the crisis, many companies have been borrowing to buy back stock.

This has been one of my complaints. I try to look for that possibility when choosing stocks to buy. One of the risks of borrowing is that it locks a company into payments that have to be made no matter what. Paying dividends is a flexible policy that a company can adjust based on business conditions. Of course, when a company cuts its dividend (or fails to increase it), its stock price can plummet. Still that’s better than going bankrupt.

The Naked Capitalism article argues against an article that they quote. Here is something from the article they dispute.

The counterargument: how are buybacks any different from dividend distributions that way? Both transfer cash from firms to households. We don’t hear people complaining about dividend distributions stealing money from workers and investment.

I have already explained why borrowing to do a buyback is bad, although some companies just use their free cash to do buybacks. However, even the idea of unlimited dividends is anathema to serious investors.

The payout ratio of dividends to earnings is an important measure to look at for every investor. When that ratio is too high, it means there is a danger that the resources of the company are being depleted. So even investors know that though dividends can be good, too much dividend payment is bad.

The investment newsletter that I use, Investment Quality Trends, has this warning about payout ratio.

Traditionally we have suggested the following criterions for Subscribers to consider in their investment considerations

…

A payout ratio (percentage of earnings paid out as a dividend) of 50% or less (75% for Utilities)

When a company’s payout ratio gets above 100%, the newsletter flags that company as “dividend in danger”.

I think that stock buybacks can be useful for adjusting the size of the company to better match the size of its markets. Sometimes the size of a market declines precipitously due to economic trends that are not in the company’s control. One way to cope with this without going bankrupt is to use the free cash the company has to buy down the size of the company.

I haven’t researched this, but I think IBM is a good example. IBM used to earn billions of dollars selling computer systems that sold for tens of millions of dollars. Since the advent of microcomputers typified by what powers a personal computer, the market for multi-million dollar computers is gone. There is no product that IBM could get into that could raise the kind of revenues that its expensive computers used to bring in. IBM has new products that bring in revenues, but it also has done stock buybacks.

By contrast, Digital Equipment Corporation, where I used to work, sold itself to Compaq which sold itself to HP and Intel. There is very little left of the former Digital Equipment Corporation. There is very little left of most of the computer companies that were once based in Massachusetts – DEC, Data General, Prime, and Wang to name a few.

YouTube has the video Rachel Maddow Russian Fear Mongering Goes Off Rails!.

I dedicate this post to certain friends and relatives of mine that just looove Rachel Maddow.

The Real News Network has the segment Venezuela Primer Pt. 1: Why Did Venezuelans Elect Hugo Chávez?

Over and over again US media outlets make the claim that Venezuela was the “jewel of Latin America” before Hugo Chavez was elected in 1998 and that his election marked the country’s downfall. In part 1 of this Venezuela primer, on the 20th anniversary of Chavez first taking office on February 2, 1999, we look at what led up to his election

Notice the Andrea Mitchell segment at the beginning of the video. When I saw her smugly reporting this, I knew she was lying. NBC had been the last oligarchs’ news media that was on my list as being worth viewing. It was shortly after that Mitchell report that I decided that I had to wipe NBC off my list. It’s not for nothing that TRNN calls itself The Real News Network.

Popular Resistance has the article US-Led Coup In Venezuela: The Plot Thickens.

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This article updates activists so we remain well-informed and can educate others in the face of a bi-partisan and corporate media narrative supporting the coup.

Medium has the article “I Oppose Interventionism, But-” But Nothing. Don’t Be A Pro Bono CIA Propagandist.

“All of a sudden now there are millions of Venezuela experts in America, and many of them could not point Venezuela out on a map five days ago,” McAdams said. “And everyone has to have this disclaimer, ‘Well, I know it’s probably worse than North Korea, but the US government shouldn’t get involved.’ It’s cowardice, because once the war starts, they can say ‘Hey I never called for US intervention!’ No, but you’re a conveyor belt for propaganda. You’re a conveyor belt to get the machine ginned up for war. And so you’ve got to stand up and take responsibility.”

I am out of my Caitlin Johnstone fan phase, but I think this column makes an important point.

There is probably very little that you and I think we know about Venezuela that wasn’t put in our heads by the world oligarchs’ news media.

Tonight was the first time that I shut off the television when the “news” came on.

YouTube has the video Nicolas Maduro’s message to USA.

Only 114 people have watched this on YouTube. I just watched it myself. I can see that we are falling down on the job if we can’t get more people to view this as an antidote to all the crap they are being fed by the oligarchs’ news media.