On Michael Hudson’s web page this article is called The Honest Sector. On YouTube this is called Webinar with Michael Hudson: a 4000-year perspective on economy, money and debt.

So far, I have only watched 25 minutes of this. To demonstrate my nerdiness, i find this presentation to be fascinating. Luckily I will know what the future holds, but most people won’t watch this. I can invest like I am reading tomorrow’s newspapers today. I only post this here for bragging rights. In the future, I will refer to this post and say “See, I told you so.” Don’t spoil my fun by looking at this now.

I just realized that with the transcript on Michael Hudson’s web page, I can easily mine this for pithy quotes.

China says: we’re not in it for the money, we’re not developing this transport and belt and road infrastructure in order to make a profit. We’re developing it in order to create a region-wide prosperity, in which we can all share.
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So, the conflict between the United States and with Europe is the tail in China. It isn’t a conflict about who’s going to make better iPhones. It’s a conflict to the death of economic systems. The United States and Europe cannot permit any country to survive that is not polarizing the economy.

It’s a conflict between an economic system that impoverishes the economy, which is the political aim of the European governments and the American governments, or an economy that is structured so as to help economies grow, which is Chinese pragmatic industrial economy.

We’re really talking about a conflict not among nations, but between what was industrial capitalism, which is evolving into socialism, or finance capitalism. The United States represents finance capitalism, and it imposed this on Europe as its satellite. As long as Europe lets itself become a satellite for finance capitalism, it’s going to end up being de-industrialized as the United States.

YouTube has the video Discussing MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) with Warren Mosler.

Discussing MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) with Warren Mosler

Warren Mosler might have explained that money created by private banks has been tried many times throughout history, but most times such monetary systems were subject to panics and crashes. That’s ostensibly why the Federal Reserve Bank system was created. Why didn’t Warren understand where the interviewer was coming from so that he could adjust his explanation to the capabilities of the interviewer? I could only stand to watch about 50 minutes of this. Maybe, in the next hour that I didn’t see it all worked out.

This is the comment I left for Warren Mosler.

Sorry to say this, but in the 49 minutes of this that I watched, it seems like you kept going around in circles. You kept sticking to your fundamental, but you weren’t successfully communicating with this guy. It’s a fun exercise if you like that sort of thing, but after enough experiences with this type of argument, wouldn’t you start to suspect that there must be a better way to go at this? Have you ever watched Fadhel Kaboub? He seems to make progress explaining these things to people that you don’t seem able to achieve.

Is there some point to discussing MMT beyond just being right? Tell me where in this two hour video I should look to see where you finally got through to this guy. If you continually fail to get through to large numbers of people, maybe the blame doesn’t fall solely on the listener. Maybe the speaker has to learn how to adapt to the way people learn.

Your teaching methods worked for me, because I have learned to understand MMT pretty well. However, the vast majority of the people haven’t go it yet. Some of the people who have got it learned from Stephanie Kelton and Fadhel Kaboub. I am also a big fan of Michael Hudson’s, but it has taken me several years to finally understand him.

It was either Bill Keane or William Mitchel who mentioned the high level of debt that was a problem in China. I thought that was an odd thing for an MMT proponent to say. It took me a few years to realize thew debt he was worried about was private sector debt, not government debt of a country that had a sovereign currency. Maybe it was listening to Michael Hudson over and over again that finally made me see the light.

I love good explanations that straighten out my understanding of reality, but I also appreciate good teaching methods that more people can use to understand the explanation.

Where I went to college we often talked about lessons where the professor would apocryphally say that “this is obvious to the most casual observer”. However, that was an ironic joke on how some professors taught. To many very smart students it was not obvious at all. We spent many hours trying not to be the most casual observer, and we still had troubles some times.

As a matter of fact, I have great difficulty explaining this problem to some leading proponents of MMT. I keep plugging away trying different methods of explaining, but so far I don’t seem to find the way to explain it. I wish Fadhel Kaboub would teach me how to explain it the way he does.

I have two previous posts that demonstrate how Fadhel Kaboub explains things. See MMT Insights on Different Amounts of Currency Sovereignty and African Monetary Sovereignty

YouTube has the video “MMT Insights for the Ukrainian Economy,” Speech for the Ukrainian Society of Financial Analysts by Fadhel Kaboub.

In this presentation, I introduce the basics of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and highlight some red flags for the Ukrainian economy with regards to inflation, exchange rate stability, food prices, real estate speculation, and external debt.

Watch the video to see how Kaboub comes to these conclusions.

This is a video that the USA and the EU would rather the Ukraine not hear. When the USA overthrew the elected regime and installed one favorable to the west, they gave the Ukraine an economic deal that is the antithesis of what Kaboub would recommend. I bet the first question being asked is motivated by the debts owed to the IMF and the EU. This deal was intended to limit The Ukraine’s monetary sovereignty. This facilitated the ability of the western powers to strip the assets from The Ukraine.

If you can make it through the Q & A part of this video, Prof. Kaboub makes the above point, but perhaps too diplomatically. Since I have no need for diplomacy, I can come right out and explain that this trap for The Ukraine was purposely set by the USA and the EU. The current build up of hostilities between Russia and The Ukraine may be motivated by the West’s need to distract The Ukraine from understanding the damage we in the West are doing to them.

I realize that this presentation is the answer to my complaint about how the leading lights of MMT discuss inflation. I have often heard them bat down complaints of inflation, by saying “See, inflation is not a problem now.” I complain that is not enough of an answer. You have to look at why inflation has not been a problem and what could change to make it a problem in the future. Prof. Kaboub’s response “Look for the actual sources of inflation in the real economy” is exactly the answer I would like to hear from the other proponents of MMT.

YouTube has the video “African Monetary Sovereignty.” Keynote speech: Association of Panafrican Journalists (April 2021)

A brief introduction to the structural economic problems facing Africa and an outline of key policy insights from Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) that will ensure higher degrees of economic and monetary sovereignty.

Event hosted by the Association of Panafrican Journalists (Yaoundé, Cameroon).

There is a lot of great information packed into only 15 minutes.

CounterPunch as the article America’s Neoliberal Financialization Policy vs. China’s Industrial Socialism by Michael Hudson.

The problem was not Russia, whose Communist nomenklatura let their country be ruled by a Western-oriented kleptocracy, but China. The U.S.-China confrontation is not simply a national rivalry, but a conflict of economic and social systems. The reason why today’s world is being plunged into an economic and near-military Cold War 2.0 is to be found in the prospect of socialist control of what Western economies since classical antiquity have treated as privately owned rent-yielding assets: money and banking (along with the rules governing debt and foreclosure), land and natural resources, and infrastructure monopolies.

Market Watch as the article U.S consumer prices surge in March, CPI finds, pushing inflation to 2 1/2-year high.

The rate of inflation over the past year shot up to 2.6% from 1.7% in the prior month, marking the highest level since the fall of 2018.

Inflation is officially only at 2.6% (the Fed has been trying to reach 2% for years). However, I have been warning my fellow MMT proponents not to say that there has been no inflation, so inflation is not a problem. I have been suggesting that MMT proponents ask themselves, “Why has there been no Consumer Price Index inflation? What in the economic environment could change that would cause inflation?”

There has not been Consumer Price Index inflation, but there has been stock market inflation because we have had massive monetary stimulus going to the oligarchs.

The change that is starting to come about is redirecting more stimulus to the people who need it most. If they now have money to spend, but the economy is hobbled by COVID-19 lock downs. (An example, I want to buy a whole house backup generator, but a lock down pause at he factory means they cannot deliver one to me until October).

Since the answers to my suggested questions are obvious with a moment’s thought by the economic experts, why haven’t there been plans put in place to handle these contingencies?
As I have been pondering these scenarios for over a year, I finally stopped procrastinating last April. I bought some GOLD ETF’s back on April 2, 2020 as a hedge against my predictions coming true. I hadn’t invested in gold since the 1970s before this.

Preliminary Election Results

The Hill has posted the YouTube video Matt Stoller’s DIRE WARNING: Don’t Let McKinsey Anywhere NEAR Infrastructure Bill.

Author, journalist and research director at The American Economic Liberties Project, Matt Stoller, discusses the Biden administration’s need to distance itself from McKinsey in order to pass the infrastructure bill.

What’s wrong with Pete Buttigieg getting his training from McKinsey? We already saw his big gaffe about “paying for” infrastructure by taxing the users. He forgets, and so do many citizens, that corporations provide their services to customers to make a profit, whereas governments are supposed to provide services to enhance the well being of the people of the country. Even many businesses recognize that providing infrastructure for their workers benefits the company. To promote the use of cost saving infrastructure, there is an advantage for the corporation to subsidize the use of these cost savers by the employees. Investing a little money here can result in bigger savings over there. Even McKinsey should understand this application of the principle applied to corporations.

On the other hand I bet I observed a policy at a company where I worked that must have come from a consultant. The management felt that they were spending too much money on printed forms. They decided that people were hoarding the forms. The solution was to cut back on the number of forms an employee could order. This edict caused the hoarding of blank forms so that they could be Xeroxed when you ran out. Surely the creation of forms by using a copier was far more expensive than having them printed with a printing press. The difference was that the cost of copying them was hidden from the consultants (and managers with MBAs).

Here is Matt Stoller’s article Keep McKinsey Away from Biden’s Infrastructure Push

Geopolitics & Empire has the interview Scott Ritter: US Empire in Decline, Biden Administration is Dangerous, Nuclear Specter Remains.

Former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter discusses US foreign policy, the decline of US empire, and the shift toward a multipolar world. He considers the Biden administration to be one of the most dangerous in modern times as it has gone back to square one (the post-WWII era), demanding American allies and the world subordinate themselves to Washington. He looks at the rise of Iran, the failed Forever Wars in the Middle East which have destroyed the American economy and military, and considers NATO a joke of an organization no longer capable of fighting a war. The U.S is unable to catch up to China’s economic infrastructure investments and the consequences of continued hegemonic behavior and failed diplomacy could translate into escalation of military conflict with Russia or China and ultimately risk the use of nuclear weapons.

I think Scott Ritter is a little naive about our history during the cold war, but he has some very important perspectives to impart about the present and the future.