Scott Ritter has written the Consortium News article Russia, Ukraine & the Law of War: Crime of Aggression.

When it comes to the legal use of force between states, it is considered unimpeachable fact that in accordance with the intent of the United Nations Charter to ban all conflict, there are only two acceptable exceptions. One is an enforcement action to maintain international peace and security authorized by a Security Council resolution passed under Chapter VII of the Charter, which permits the use of force.

The other is the inherent right of individual and collective self-defense, as enshrined in Article 51 of the Charter,…

I have heard him explain this in interviews, but I have not read this article, yet. I want to post it here so I won’t lose track of it.

Intereconomics has the article Modern Monetary Theory: The Right Compass for Decision-Making.

MMT is, first and foremost, a balance sheet approach to macroeconomics.

This is a limitation of MMT. A balance sheet is a snapshot of the economy in time. A succession of balance sheets may seem like a dynamic description, but physicists call this a “quasi static” approximation. It may or may not be a good model of a dynamic system. A bank lending money has a borrower’s IOU to balance out the transaction. However, the time between taking out a mortgage and the 30 years before it has been paid back, there are a lot of economic consequences that occurred from a transaction that balanced out to zero all that time.

Surely, the Greek government, surpassing 200% of public debt to GDP in 2021, would be in for a repeat of the euro crisis. It did not happen. As we all know by now, a government cannot run out of its own money for technical reasons.

Greece is not sovereign in its own money. Greece uses the Euro which it cannot create in the way the USA Fed creates the dollar. Putting the above excerpt in this article, does not give me great confidence.

MMT sees the purchase of government bonds by the central bank as an asset swap.

This is how Sophocles got himself in trouble by abusing syllogisms. Every purchase of something is an asset swap, money for the item purchased. There are other kinds of asset swaps that are not like money for items. when someone jumps to another conclusion by asserting that buying bonds is “just” an asset swap, then you should wonder to yourself how this transaction may differ from other asset swaps.

Can you take a USA Treasury security to the grocery store to buy a loaf of bread? If not, there must be something different between money and a USA Treasury security.

In fact, a bank loan is “just” an asset swap. The bank gives you money and you give them a promise to pay it back. Unlike the USA Fed, you cannot redeem your IOU with another IOU. The bank expects monthly payments in real USA money, not promises of money.

In general, I believe that MMT is a good, but not perfect, description of the economy. As someone who made a living from writing software that modeled integrated circuits, I was a firm believer in understanding the limitations of your model. A model is not real life, or you wouldn’t call it a model. Some day, I will read the rest of the referenced article because I have other quibbles with MMT that could stand some examination.

Stephanie Kelton’s The Lens has the post A Free Lunch for Me, but Not for Thee.

An ill-reasoned take on MMT

Finally MMT proponents address why we have inflation now, but not before. I already had this figured out months ago, so I am not surprised. I wonder how many people just took the observation that the Fed was creating money like mad without creating inflation to mean there were no circumstances where there could be inflation. I warned MMT proponents to explain exactly why there was no inflation before, and why there might be inflation under other circumstances. They essentially told me to shut up. Why was I concentrating on explaining why there was no inflation. I could see the cause and anticipate the change, but you cannot wake people up until disaster happens. I know this “I told you so” will not win me any friends. I also know that the next time I have to warn people, they will pay me no heed. At least I try to protect myself from the disasters I can foresee. I can only have sympathy for those who can’t see what’s coming.

Naked Capitalism has the video Joe Lauria Interviews Michael Hudson and Richard Wolff on Consortium News.

And I’m sure what it brings with that, is all that voters can do is keep throwing throwing the rascals out of power. But they’re the same rascals, basically. So the United States doesn’t seem to have much of an opportunity to have a real alternative.

Money on the Left has the podcast The ECASH Act with Rohan Grey.

In this special episode, Rohan Grey (@rohangrey) joins Billy Saas (@billysaas) and Maxximilian Seijo (@MaxSeijo) to discuss the “ECASH” or “Electronic Currency and Secure Hardware” Act. Introduced by Rep. Stephen Lynch (MA-08), Chair of the House Committee on Financial Services’ Task Force on Financial Technology, and based on Grey’s research on electronic currency, the ECASH Act directs the Secretary of the Treasury to develop and pilot digital dollar technologies that replicate the privacy-respecting features of physical cash.

This is a wonderful concept that I had not known about until this podcast. I had been thinking that government sponsored digital cash could look like a credit or debit card, but this conversation carries the idea way beyond that.

Popular Resistance has the post Michael Hudson: US Dollar Hegemony Ended Abruptly Last Wednesday.

On Wednesday, March 23, 2022, the United States announced that it would freeze Russia’s access to its gold. Russia has the fifth highest amount of gold in the world. Economist Michael Hudson explains that this action, which follows the US seizing Venezuela and Afghanistan’s gold and assets, has effectively ended dollar hegemony, which has been in decline in recent years, and the free ride that the US has enjoyed abroad.

The Michael Hudson part starts at 28 minutes into the audio. As a follower of Modern Monetary Theory, I am pleased that Michael Hudson straightened out the seeming paradox between what Hudson wrote in this book “Super imperialism” and the rest of his writings about MMT.

Where the financing of USA deficits comes in is in our foreign trade. The deficit does not finance domestic trade. Except for Michael Hudson and Fadhel Kaboub, most MMT proponents have not talked about the foreign trade implications of MMT.

Naked Capitalism has the post NATO-Russia Proxy War: Revealing Signs of a Fading America: Michael Hudson. You can read the transcript here or listen to the interview at the Global Research post NATO-Russia Proxy War: Revealing Signs of a Fading America: Scott Ritter, Michael Hudson. At Global Research, the Michael Hudson part is in the second half hour.

Here is the opening salvo from Michael Hudson.

MH: I think it’s just the opposite of what you said. The war isn’t against Russia. The war isn’t against Ukraine. The war is against Europe and Germany. The purpose of the sanctions is to prevent Europe and other allies from increasing their trade and investment with Russia and China, because the United States saw that the centre of world growth is not in America now that it’s deindustrializing. Following neoliberal policies since the 1980s has ended up hollowing out the US economy. And how on earth can the United States maintain prosperity if it’s lost the ability to do wealth creation?

I have never heard Michael Hudson lay it out quite so bluntly as he did in this interview. If more people could hear this, they might change their mind about what is actually happening with Russia/USA/Ukraine.

The Levy Institute has the working paper What’s Causing Accelerating Inflation: Pandemic or Policy Response?.

We conclude that there is little evidence that excess demand is the problem, although we agree that in the absence of the relief checks, recovery would have been sufficiently slow to minimize inflation pressure. We closely examine the main contributors to rising overall prices and conclude that tighter monetary policy would not be an effective way to reduce price pressures. We also cast doubt on the expectations theory of inflation control. We present evidence that suggests there is currently little danger that higher inflation will become entrenched. If anything, rate hikes now will make it harder for the economy to adjust to current realities. The potential for lots of pain with little gain is great. The best course of action is to tackle problems on the supply side.

BIG by Matt Stoller has the article Judges Behaving Badly: Amazon Antitrust Suit Dismissed.

I thought it was going to be a titanic clash, and it brought critical legal questions into the courts to be hashed out by a jury. Unfortunately, the judge Racine got assigned to this case, Hiram Puig-Lugo, did not agree. Earlier this week, at what looked like a routine scheduling hearing, Puig-Lugo, whose expertise is in family law, shocked everyone involved by dismissing Racine’s Amazon complaint outright. That means the case is over, unless Racine appeals. And how Puig-Lugo dismissed the case was as odd as his choice to do so. For important complaints like this, judges almost always put down in writing their rationale for making decisions at key stages. But Puig-Lugo did not. He simply read from the bench that he didn’t think the claimed conduct violated the law.

This is exactly the kind of behavior that I think most people don’t realize. Has this topic been raised in the confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson? This is probably the most significant issue that will come before the Supreme Court, and nobody is even talking about it.

Naked Capitalism has the article Unbeknown to Most, A Financial Revolution Is Coming That Threatens to Radically Transform Everything (And Probably Not for the Better).

Around 90 central banks are either in the process of experimenting with or are already piloting central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). In a world of just over 190 countries that is a large number, but given they include the European Central Bank (ECB) which alone represents 19 Euro Area economies, the actual number of economies involved is well over 100. They include all G20 economies and together represent more than 90% of global GDP.

This article explains Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). Finally, I can see the difference between today’s system and a true CBDC. I often thought that our credit card systems are an unusual privatization of cashless payment. The central bank should be performing the cashless transfer of money without imposing any fee. (Maybe this is more like a debit card than a credit card.)

Instead of leaving the topic as “And Probably Not for the Better”, the next article in the series could be about the safeguards that must be put in place in any legislation that authorized the Fed to provide this service. The Fed should be prevented from meddling in your financial choices (digital currency neutrality). Your financial transactions should be protected by privacy requirements. Any breach of that privacy by other government agencies should require a court order.