Naked Capitalism has the article A Pragmatic Approach to External Debt: The Write-Down of Germany’s Debts in 1953.

The Greek debt crisis has prompted a surprising number of references to an obscure agreement signed in London 60 years ago. The 1953 London Debt Agreement (LDA) marked the end of a long period of German default on external debt owed to both governments and private entities. The LDA cut the debt roughly in half, rescheduled what remained, and tied repayments to export revenues. Greece, in one of history’s great ironies, signed the LDA as a creditor nation. Prime Minister Tsipras has argued that Germany should appreciate the lesson of 1953 and offer similar debt forgiveness to Greece today. Both Germany’s and Greece’s partisans have misrepresented the LDA and in so doing obscured the motivations of Germany’s creditors in 1953. The LDA offers an important lesson, but only if understood accurately.

This is one of those articles I like to read so that I will be armed with information to ward off the inevitable misinformation from the corporate press.

Naked Capitalism has the article Glen Ford and Bruce Dixon on #BlackLivesMatter and the Black Misleadership Class.

They’ve also coined the expression “black misleadership class” to describe politicians who’ve traded on their own personal branding, as blacks who presumably would defend the interests of other blacks and members of minority groups, and instead have served as operatives for the rich and powerful.

Obama a classic of this type.

Some of what is said in the article goes further in explaining Ford and Dixon than anything you will see in the featured video. Especially the details of what they mean by “Black Misleadership Class.”

Here is but one, novel, at least to me, idea from the video.

I think that the most immediate kind of demand that this movement should have–this is my opinion, and the opinion of others with whom I work–is the demand of black community control of the police. That is the logic so far of the activity that has gone on in this incipient, emergent kind of campaign.

But that’s just my little contribution, and other folks’ contribution to the dialog that ought to be ongoing. What is not a demand is just asking people to say the magic words, yes, black lives matter.

If you think that “All lives matter” is the answer to “Black Lives matter”, then the article and the video will blow you away. On your return trip to earth, you might enjoy the ride down by calmly contemplating some of the ideas here. (Quietly contemplating doesn’t have to mean agreeing, but it might include agreeing.)

The Daily Kos has the article Head of Dept. of History at West Point destroys argument that Civil War wasn’t fought over slavery. It features the YouTube video Was the Civil War About Slavery?

The evidence is clear and overwhelming. Slavery was, by a wide margin, the single most important cause of the Civil War — for both sides. Before the presidential election of 1860, a South Carolina newspaper warned that the issue before the country was, “the extinction of slavery,” and called on all who were not prepared to, “surrender the institution,” to act. Shortly after Abraham Lincoln’s victory, they did.

Note the meaning of peculiar institution as implied by the video. It doesn’t mean odd institution. It means an institution only found in the southern states.

Naked Capitalism has the article No, Inflation Doesn’t Erode the Burden of Debts.

The author comes to sort of the right conclusion for sort of the wrong reasons.

Debt is one such example. In the United States most people have debts denominated in U.S. Dollars. A useful proxy for the burden of debt is the ratio between an individual’s or sector’s nominal debt to its nominal income.

To me the author wanders back and forth between identifying the right issue and confusing the situation. I guess I should state what I think the right answer for the right reasons is.

With the current rigged economy in the US and the world, long term moderate inflation is not as likely to erode the burden of your long term debt the way it used to do. This outcome could be changed by changing the way the system is rigged. So it is wrong to leave the impression that long term moderate inflation never eroded long-term debt burden, or to leave the impression that it never could again.

I posted the following comment:

The inflation/debt argument really only applies to long-term debt – mortgages [at fixed principal and fixed or refinanceable interest rate], student loans [at fixed principal and fixed or refinanceable interest rate], etc. And, yes, it depends on the historical relation between price inflation and wage inflation.

Rabid outsourcing and destruction of unions (related to each other) seems to have broken the connection between price inflation and wage inflation. If that connection remains severed, then inflation won’t do for the economy what is has done in the past.

When economists build theories on historical evidence of relations and correlations, they must always ask what caused those relations and correlations. If those causes are no longer present, then they are probably looking at a history that does not apply to current conditions. Not surprisingly, applying the wrong historical precedents leads to faulty predictions about the future.

If the economists won’t exercise the proper care when promoting theories, at least the reader can make her or his own judgment. Don’t depend on the corporate media to make that judgment for you. Almost none of the corporate media “journalists” have the competency to judge economics, and those that have the competency don’t have the incentive. Either way, the “journalists” get paid to tell you what their bosses want them to tell you.

Perhaps debtors can take solace in the fact that although inflation may no longer erode the burden of debts, it does at least erode the value of the debt to the lender. Misery loves company.

Vox has an article and a cute video Donald Trump’s supporters on Reddit explain why they support Trump — and it’s fascinating.

The article is focused on the Reddit item [Serious] Redditors who want Trump to become president, why?. As suggested on Reddit itself, the above link sorts the responses based on “most controversial”

Vox has the article Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders want to use the tax code to weaken Wall Street.

In 2008, candidate Barack Obama’s tax policies sought to achieve the normal ends of Democratic tax policy: Fund the basic operations of the federal government, give more money to the poor and middle class, and take more money from the rich. That is, for the most part, what we expect Democratic tax plans to do.

But the tax plans Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have unveiled are more radical than that. Yes, they raise money to fund government operations, and sure, they redistribute wealth a bit. But their real aim is far more ambitious: They want to change the way the economy actually works.

They may think they have a pretty radical article, but I have a slightly different view. Here is my comment that I posted on the article:

Give some coverage to the idea that paying down the debt may be unnecessary and destructive to the economy. Ever hear of Modern Money Theory? Do you know who Sanders’ appointment to chief economist for the minority on the Senate Budget Committee, Stephanie Kelton, is?

There may be bigger things coming than you can dream of.

Change From Within has this very interesting post Interrupting Bernie: Exposing the White Supremacy of the American Left. [The link to the article has been corrected.]

Because here’s the thing – what’s powerful about these interruptions from Black women is less how it has changed the tone of the Democratic campaigns and more about what they have exposed in the White left.

The words of the post are powerful, and I will let you read them.

The service that this article performed that drew my attention to it was the video below on YouTube.

You may never see this on corporate media, and you won’t see this much on the internet. Seeing the video is substantially different from reading brief summaries by the white, corporate press on what happened during the interruption.

I am hoping that many of my readers will have the intellectual curiosity to want to see this for themselves.

Another powerful part of the original article is the display of this poster with Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words.

These are hard words to read, but the test for the white liberals amongst us is to be able to listen to them without getting defensive. Listening is not necessarily agreeing.

Politicus USA has the article Obama Leaves Republicans Reeling After Standing Firm On GOP Death To America Comparison.

The President isn’t backing off of his comments because the Iran deal is a matter of war and peace. Republicans are trying to sink the deal without bothering to read it because they support more war in the Middle East.

The Republican behavior in response to the Iran deal has been the definition of extremism.

President Obama has put up with this behavior from Republicans all through his presidency. The President already knows that he is going to get zero Republican support, so he has nothing to lose by telling the truth about the motives behind their opposition.

I agree with the President on the need to accept this deal he has made with Iran and several other countries,

I hope his similar backing of TPP, which I strongly oppose, doesn’t ruin what credibility he has left. He seems to be as sure about TPP as he is about the Iran deal. I am just as sure that he is wrong about TPP and right about Iran. The trouble is that our disagreement over TPP makes it hard to explain how I can trust him on the Iran deal. The one thing that is constant is that Republicans are for TPP and against the Iran deal. Perhaps that is why I am so sure I am right on both issues.

If you missed the live feed of this terrific event, you missed seeing a turning point in Bernie Sanders’ campaign.

If you were paying attention to the Sturbridge For Bernie Sanders page, you would have had the link to the event.

You can go to the Bernie Sanders web site to see the recording of the event.

Bernie Sanders has finally started to focus on bringing us all together, and he has appointed a spokeswoman who can help him deliver that message.

Or you can watch the whole thing by starting the video above. As I write this blog post, the start of the festivities begins at about 35:30 into the video. I don’t know if they will later edit out the wait at the beginning.