The Washington Post has the story Elizabeth Warren fires back at Obama: Here’s what they’re really fighting about.

“This is a long-term problem — a six-year problem, if Fast Track passes. A Republican President could easily use a future trade deal to override our domestic financial rules. And this is hardly a hypothetical possibility: We are already deep into negotiations with the European Union on a trade agreement and big banks on both sides of the Atlantic are gearing up to use that agreement to water down financial regulations. A six-year Fast Track bill is the missing link they need to make that happen.”

I am trying to track down the video of the speech Warren made that contains the above quote. I’ll add it to this post when I find it.

Yahoo has the article Why Obama is happy to fight Elizabeth Warren on the trade deal.

“Think about the logic of that, right?” he went on. “The notion that I had this massive fight with Wall Street to make sure that we don’t repeat what happened in 2007, 2008. And then I sign a provision that would unravel it?

“I’d have to be pretty stupid,” Obama said, laughing. “This is pure speculation. She and I both taught law school, and you know, one of the things you do as a law professor is you spin out hypotheticals. And this is all hypothetical, speculative.”

What I can’t understand is why, when Obama finds himself in this hole, he doesn’t stop digging. He has exactly identified what I am wondering about him. Yes, why would he fight the massive fight for reforms like Dodd-Frank, and then turn around and sign a provision that would unravel it? It makes no sense to me, but that is exactly what he seems to be promoting.

Yes, it does look like one explanation would be that he’d have to be pretty stupid. When he gets to the heart of the matter, he won’t explain why he says that what she speculates can’t possibly happen. He doesn’t address the evidence that what Warren is speculating on has already happened, and she cites numerous example, that he makes no effort to dispute.

Here is an Agenda For America.

1. Rebuilding Our Crumbling Infrastructure
2. Reversing Climate Change
3. Creating Worker Co-ops
4. Growing the Trade Union Movement
5. Raising the Minimum Wage
6. Pay Equity for Women Workers
7. Trade Policies that Benefit American Workers
8. Making College Affordable for All
9. Taking on Wall Street
10. Health Care as a Right for All
11. Protecting the Most Vulnerable Americans
12. Real Tax Reform

If you think you might be interested in having an agenda like this for this country, then follow the link to the Agenda For America to see a little detail about each one of the items on the agenda. I don’t know if you will be surprised or not at the candidate for President that is promoting this agenda, but following the link will show you who it is.

So the trick is, think about the agenda you want, and then think about finding a candidate who supports that agenda.

Thanks to Marden Seavey for posting the link to this on his Facebook page.

This is just a conjecture about whether or not using the mark-to-market method on any asset that you want to know the value of needs to be taken into account in MMT (Modern Money Theory).

My most recent post about MMT that was posted before I started thinking about this possible flaw was When Will the White House and OMB Ever Learn About Sector Financial Balances?

I haven’t figured out yet how to pose this question to MMT experts. Following the above link to learn what mark-to-market is, I am reminded that the issue is far broader than the example I am going to use to show the problem.

MMT has a nice theory that depends on their definition of what is and what isn’t external money and internal money. MMTers then describe how people and the economy must behave, based on these obvious definitions. The issue is not whether or not the definitions are logically consistent or not. The issue is how people and markets actually behave. The issue of stock value and mark-to-market, is that whether or not you, as an MMTer, believe the value of one’s stock holdings represents a fair account of real money or not, people and the economy to some extent behave as if it were real money.

The goal we are trying to achieve is not to come up with a logically consistent definition of money. That may or may not be a path to understanding how people, markets, and economies behave. Describing and understanding that behavior is the real goal. Intermediate achievements are only important if they get us to the ultimate goal.

My most recent posts that show what started me thinking along these lines are

A Critique of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and At INET Conference, Warren Adds Two Pieces to Her Financial Reform Framework.

Older posts that show that I have always had an interest in the ramifications of mark-to-market are Musings on Mark-To-Market and A Replacement For Mark-To-Market.

Naked Capitalism has the article Gaius Publius: Sanders Raises $3 Million in Four Days; Will He Split the Party?

Yves here. While I’m loath to take the site too much in the direction of politics (as opposed to finance, economics, and political economy), Bernie Sanders’ choice of Stephanie Kelton as economist to the Senate Finance Committee, his firm opposition to toxic trade deals, and his long-standing support of social safety nets and pro-middle class policies means his campaign is focused substantially on issues of economic justice. Moreover, I was bothered to see readers take up what I regard as a misguided post by the normally excellent Bruce Dixon of Black Agenda Report attacking Sanders as a what amounts to a progressive stooge for the Democratic party.

I am glad to see this article mention the BAR article. I had read it before and thought that it was a silly argument. If Bernie Sanders can’t win a Democratic primary, then it is pretty certain he can’t win a general election. Other people may want him to run just to send a message. If he refuses to run a campaign that even he is sure has no hope, refusing that option puts further credence to his claim to be in it to win it.

MoveOn.Org is giving members a sneak peak at some videos in a series they are calling the Big Picture. The first one is 10 Ideas to Save the Economy: Fight For $15.

The speaker is Robert Reich.

In an interview by George Stephanopolous, Bernie Sanders said that he would consider Robert Reich for Treasury Secretary. See the interview at my previous post at about 5 minutes and 50 seconds in.

Stephanopolous: Name a couple of people you would consider for treasury secretary.

Sanders: Robert Reich is somebody I would … was in fact the Secretary of Labor. I think he has been a strong progressive and understands that what we need are economic policies that benefit working families, not the big money.

Elizabeth Warren has a blog post I have serious concerns about ISDS. She included a list of actual cases brought under previous trade policies to show that her concern is not merely hypothetical.

ISDS isn’t a one-time, hypothetical problem – we’ve seen it in past trade agreements. Just in the past few years:

• A French company sued Egypt after Egypt raised its minimum wage.
• A Swedish company sued Germany because Germany wanted to phase out nuclear power for safety reasons.
• A Dutch company sued the Czech Republic because the Czech Republic didn’t bail out a bank that the Dutch company partially owned.
• Philip Morris is using ISDS right now to try to stop countries like Australia and Uruguay from implementing new rules that are intended to cut smoking rates – because the new laws might eat into the tobacco giant’s profits.

The Obama Administration has said that they have fixed all the problems, and nothing like that will happen here. They just won’t show you how.

The Obama administration will not show you how by simply showing you the clauses in the TPP that fix these problems. Even worse, they make no attempt to explain how they have fixed it even if they won’t show you the agreement itself. You have to wonder why President Obama is making it so difficult to believe what he says. Perhaps he feeling such intense pressure to negotiate the deal, that he hasn’t got the strength to resist. He may be hoping the American public will be incensed enough to stop it.

Politicus USA has the article Bernie Sanders Drops A Liberal Bomb On CNN’s Republican Talking Points. The article focuses on this CNN interview with Bernie Sanders.

The transcript that Politicus USA provides is invaluable.

CUOMO: Because when you say things about expanding entitlements and giving more to the have nots, that’s unpopular. It sounds like it’s expensive. And the people who vote may not like it.

SANDERS: I disagree with you, Chris. First of all, it is not expensive in the sense that if you say to people all over this country, should large profitable multinational corporations, who today are not paying a nickel in federal taxes because they’re stashing their money in Cayman Islands and other tax havens, start paying their fair share? The American people, across the political spectrum, say, yes, they should.

We’re losing well over $100 billion every single year because of those taxes. I’ve introduced legislation that would end that. Talk to Warren Buffett, one of the richest guys in the world. He says, you know, it’s absurd. My effective tax rate is lower than my secretaries. The American people understand that. So what we have got to do is spend money intelligently.

We have got to make college affordable for our young people if we’re going to compete in the global economy. I’ll tell you what else we need to do. Real unemployment in this country is not 5.5 percent, it’s 11 percent. We need to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. And when we do that, in terms of roads, bridges, water systems, rail, airports, we can put some 13 million people back to work. And that’s the kind of agenda that I’m going to be fighting for.

Also note his comment:

I am running for working families and the middle class, not against Hillary Clinton.

A very good way to tell you what he is running for, rather than what he is running against. If he can stay out of the gutter from where the siren call of the pundits is emanating, he could change the face of politics.

This is another episode in the ongoing series Bernie Sanders Tames the Pundits.

The CBC has the video interview “The Price We Pay” | Harold Crooks Documentary.

On Facebook The Other 98% shared CBC News: The National’s video.

The jobs may be going to China, but the money is going to the Cayman Islands. That’s what off-shoring really means. As long as we are allowing the 1% to shield their money from taxes, they would be fools not to take advantage. We would be (are) fools to let them buy our elected representatives who pass the laws that make this all possible. There is probably no higher return on investment than buying a politician.