Naked Capitalism has the post Michael Hudson: America’s Real Adversaries Are Its European and Other Allies.

The success of China’s industrial policy with a mixed economy and state control of the monetary and credit system has led U.S. strategists to fear that Western European and Asian economies may find their advantage to lie in integrating more closely with China and Russia. The U.S. seems to have no response to such a global rapprochement with China and Russia leverage except economic sanctions and military belligerence. That New Cold War stance is expensive, and other countries are balking at bearing the cost of a conflict that has no benefit for themselves and indeed, threatens to destabilize their own economic growth and political independence.

Cutting back that spending, and indeed recovering industrial self-reliance and competitive economic power, would require a transformation of American politics. Such a change seems unlikely, but without it, how long can America’s post-industrial rentier economy manage to force other countries to provide it with the economic affluence (literally a flowing-in) that it is no longer producing at home?

Finally, an explanation of the USA and Russian motivations.

YouTube has the podcast #125 Sam Levey: Monopoly, Monopsony, And What To Do About Them.

Patricia and Christian talk to economics scholar, teacher and writer Sam Levey about real existing economic conditions (containing monopoly, monopsony, and oligopolistic price-setting power), the inadequate models used by economists to interpret these conditions, and a better way forward.

Interesting podcast. I think it is better if you already have some understanding of the topic to form your own judgment on some of what is being said.

Krystall and Saagar have posted this YouTube video – Matt Stoller: EXPOSING The Amazon Prime Scam | Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar.

Krystal and Saagar launch their collaborative series with anti monopoly expert and substack writer Matt Stoller featuring in depth explanations of the business models behind our largest corporations such as Amazon.

This is why I have never believed in Amazon from its inception. How could Amazon possibly sell you things so cheaply, and deliver it right to your door? At first, I bet the investors in Amazon were subsidizing the prices. This video shows you how Amazon does it now. There really is no free lunch.

YouTube has this Jimmy Dore segment- Video: Journalist Hammers State Department Spokesman Over Russian Lies.

In a testy exchange that’s garnered a great deal of attention, State Department spokesman Ned Price was confronted by reporter Matt Lee over Price’s repeated repetition of allegations of planned misdeeds on the part of Vladimir Putin’s Russia in possible preparation for an invasion of Ukraine but without providing any evidence to back up his dubious claims.

As if this video will make any impact on my friends who call themselves progressives, yet believe every lie about Russia that Rachel Maddow has told them. Thank goodness that Rachel Maddow has tired of what she has been doing, and is cancelling her show.

The video has just been published – Public Delivery Meeting #12 feat. Suzie Dawson & Sean O’Brien from Panquake.com.

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Abby Martin’s Empire Files has the interview Eyewitness Ethiopia: US Media Lies About Tigray War w/ Rania Khalek & Eugene Puryear.

Western media spent months giving one-sided coverage of the civil war in Ethiopia. To learn more about the complexities of the conflict and why the corporate media has taken the side of the Tigray insurgency, Empire Files is joined by two journalists from BreakThrough News who travelled to the conflict zone, Rania Khalek and Eugene Puryear.

This is a topic that is vastly under reported in the USA. What reporting we do get is biased toward the colonial interests of the USA. At the very least, this interview opened my mind to possibilities that I had never considered.

Briahna Joy Gray has the podcast on her YouTube channel Why Inflation is a BOGEYMAN Used to Attack the Left.

This week, Briahna Joy Gray spoke to economics professor and exceptional communicator Fadhel Kaboub about what really causes inflation, how Modern Monetary Theory can help, why the Federal Reserve should mint a trillion dollar coin, how to curb education and healthcare inflation, and why elected progressives aren’t talking nearly enough about any of this. If you aren’t already familiar with the Denison University professor, you’re in for a treat.

This is such an excellent podcast, that I cannot recommend this enough. There is one part of Fadhel Kaboub’s explanation of the history of inflation that I disagree with. I will mention it here, but this in no way detracts from everything else he said. Every thing else he had to say is such a clarification of reality that it woould be a shame if my quibbles kept you from watching this podcast.

According to Michael Hudson, the 1970s inflation came from our balance of trade deficits brought on by the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and other military overspending after WWII. The oil crisis of 1970 was a result of the previous inflation that had already occurred. OPEC raised prices because their price per barrel was stagnant while other prices were rising. OPEC decided that they weren’t getting a fair share. With their near monopoly, they were able to force the prices up. Wars with Israel and other factors you mentioned were further excuses for raising oil prices.

Taming inflation in the 1970s happened under Reagan from 1980 onward. He put this country and the world into such a steep recession, that usage of oil declined so much that OPEC lost some of its control over oil prices.

My interpretation of the 1970s inflation is based on my observations having lived through that period. I don’t have access to the data that people like Michael Hudson does. They might certainly be able to provide data to show me that my interpretation is incorrect. The explanation of what Michael Hudson says about our trade deficits comes from a recent reading of his book “Super Imperialism”. Michael Hudson is a tittle older than I am, and he certainly was much closer to the center of power than I could ever hope to be. I think he has that advantage over current day economists like Fadhel Kaboub and Stephanie Kelton.

Rising costs play a vital role for understanding prices. As an example, when thinking about costs, the cost of credit is critical.24 Hiking interest rates at the Federal Reserve raises the cost of credit and can actually contribute to inflationary pressure. Yet this remains the “common sense” approach to many for lowering inflation regardless of the costs on communities: especially working class, impoverished and historically marginalized communities of color

RT has the article Russia & China hatch sanctions busting plan to limit use of dollar.

Amid a worsening stand-off between East and West, Russia and China are increasingly contemplating using their own currencies in mutual settlements and finding ways to work together to counter sanctions, Moscow’s envoy in Beijing has disclosed.

There cannot be many people in the world who have any significant economic power that are not aware of this effort. Putin has been quiet in bruiting this about of late just in case the Biden administration is asleep at the switch, and thinks the USA can impose sanctions without the USA paying an unaffordable price.

Maybe the sanction threat comes from the same Biden administration that thinks that putting five thousand troops in Europe is a sufficient threat to counter the 170,000 troops that they say Russia has at its border with the Ukraine. Is there anybody in the USA that is not laughing at Biden’s troop “build=up”?

Democracy At Work has the podcast All Things Co-op: Blockchain and Cryptocurrency.

In this episode of All Things Co-op, Kevin talks to blogger and podcaster “The Blockchain Socialist” about the possibilities of blockchain technology as a mechanism for worker cooperatives and the Left. Though often tied to cryptocurrency, blockchains can also function as a means to enable cooperatives to maintain data sovereignty, to engage with various economic actors outside of traditional capitalist structures, and to enable scalability while retaining democratic governance of enterprises. Though blockchain is not going to fix every problem, it does offer up many interesting opportunities to shift away from centralized, hierarchical capitalist institutions.

This podcast has many useful ideas in it. I do find it frustrating all the time spent telling me what they are going to explain before they get around to explaining. A lot of this is abstract, so it sill leaves some things to your imagination. Eventually the cryptocurrency part may fall away, but there may be useful things that come out of the technology.

The 21 million bitcoin limit may be an attempt to mimic the rarity of gold. The problem is that the creation of a new cryptocurrency is easier than forming a new element in the periodic table of elements.

One of the websites mentioned in this podcast theblockchainsocialist.com

YouTube has the podcast COVID and the Meaning of Life from the Funky Academic.

The value of this is not in buying or not buying the premise. The value comes from thinking about what he is saying. In a way it is trying to figure out the meaning of this podcast. For me, a key concept is to think about quality, not only quantity. I think about how the quality versus quantity issue has affected my decision making.