The Institute for New Economic Thinking has the interesting video from 2018 – The End of American Exceptionalism.

Jeffrey Sachs sits down with Rob Johnson to discuss his new book, A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism (Columbia University Press, 2018).

Arguing against American exceptionalism is what I try to do. The above video explains why. Even Bernie gets hung up on American exceptionalism. It’s probably a political necessity in this country. That is one of our fundamental problems.

The Institute for New Economic Thinking has this wonderful video America vs Everyone.

Jeff Sachs talks with Rob Johnson about the tragedy of modern geopolitics, and how our current race to the bottom could be reversed.

Most of this is completely aligned with the message I try to deliver on this blog. When I try to explain that technology (robots and AI) could be such a boon to society when done right, I get a lot of resistance. Same thing when I talk about the possible benefits of free trade. Maybe Jeffrey Sachs can say it more convincingly than I have. Sachs was no innocent when he first went to Russia to “help” them after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but in recent years he seems to have changed into a different person.

Levy Economics Institute of Bard College has the paper Can Biden Build Back Better? Yes, if he abandons fiscal “pay fors” by Yeva Nersisyan and L. Randall Wray.

From the preface too the paper comes these two paragrahphs

Instead of matching an expenditure price tag with the revenue that can be raised, Nersisyan and Wray urge policymakers to evaluate spending and tax proposals on their own terms, according to the goals each is intended to meet. On the expenditure side, for instance, one of the motivations behind Biden’s physical infrastructure plan is to make progress in transitioning to a green economy. Nersisyan and Wray note, however, that the Biden plan falls short of what would be required for significant progress on this front. Their concern is that tethering the spending to tax increases means the former will be limited to the political feasibility of the latter.

On the tax side, there are a number of purposes one might want to achieve through tax policy changes, such as reducing income inequality, discouraging undesirable activities, or reducing private demand to head off inflationary pressures. In the pay-for game, however, “raising funds” becomes the central objective and, as Nersisyan and Wray illustrate, simply matching the spending number to the revenue number does not ensure any of these other purposes will be served effectively. For example, budgetary offsets for new spending could be desirable if the economy were at full employment. However, if tax policy is going to play a role in curbing inflation, then we would need to choose the appropriate instruments for this task. Nersisyan and Wray argue that the tax changes being proposed are poorly suited to relieving inflationary pressures. In this context, the types of tax increases—those that will free up real resources to be mobilized by some new public initiative—are more important than the total revenue number. They also stress that there are other proven means, beyond the tax system, of controlling inflationary pressures.

Here is the link to the pdf of the paper.

Naked Capitalism has the post Inflation Is Not What We Need to Worry About: the Risk of Major Collapse in the Private Sector Is What Should Be Troubling Us Right Now.

I think the author skirts around some obvious realities.

I think the cause of the current inflation is obvious and should have been obvious to policy makers. In the USA, we have finally started to give economic relief to people who tend to have to spend what they earn. This gave a boost to spending before the supply side had recovered enough from the lockdowns to be able to respond to the increase in demand. I do not know what the policy planners could have done to avoid this situation, but acting surprised at the easily foreseen could be a dangerous reaction. It could evoke counterproductive responses to the inflation.

The other issues he brings up are certainly concerning.

Breaking Points has the segment Matt Taibbi EXPOSES Hubris Of Censoring Dr. Bret Weinstein.

Matt Taibbi provides his perspective to Krystal and Saagar on the censorship of Bret Weinstein by big tech companies and the media in general.

I don’t know how people will react to this segment, but it is one of the reasons why I think it is so silly to go after Matt Taibbi for turning into a right wing whatever some people are claiming. I have already posted about ivermectin. I see some flaws in the proponents’ arguments, but agree with Saagar, Krystal, and Matt that nobody knows enough to rule it out or to rule it in. It should be something we can talk about and investigate.

The flaw I have seen in the pro-Ivermectin story is the claim that India has been distributing it, and therefore has avoided the Covid-19 pandemic. It seems to me that recent events have shown that India is having serious problems with the pandemic. I would like to see Ivermectin proponents address this issue. Since we are not allowed to talk about this issue, we are not going to get an answer to this question. There may be a good answer, but we are not allowed to hear the answer to judge for ourselves.

I saved what I have written on Facebook elsewhere on my computer in case FB decides I cannot publish this. Turns out they did allow me to post it, but I am also publishing it on this blog in case Facebook does eventually disappears it from my Facebook page.

YouTube has the video A Conversation with Chris Hedges: Corporate Totalitarianism. The intro in the post of that video is somewhat long, but I am going to include it all here.

Chris Hedges, writer and commentator, was a member of the Pulitzer-winning team reporting on global terrorism for The New York Times. Hedges received an individual award from the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. An online columnist and the host of an Emmy-nominated television show, Hedges has been a war correspondent for The New York Times, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The Christian Science Monitor, reporting from Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has written 12 books including the bestsellers “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America” and “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” and “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt,” His book “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” was a National Book Critics Circle finalist and his most recent book is “America: The Farewell Tour.”

Hedges talks about the rise of corporate power and the danger of fascism around the globe, based on personal experience as well as academic scholarship. He has been a teacher inside the American prison system for the past ten years; a reporter on the front line at violent coups and successful revolutions in foreign countries for the preceding two decades; and an ordained Presbyterian minister and competitive boxer in earlier years. Hedges is a graduate of Harvard University and has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University and the University of Toronto.

Chris Hedges lays it all out in ways many of you may not have heard before.

As a reader of part of his last book “America: The Farewell Tour”, I appreciated an explanation of why he wrote it. I was half-way through his chapter on the pornography industry when I realized that I just could not stomach reading anymore. I stopped reading, and put the book away somewhere in my house where I will never see it again. Since then I have been a little skittish about posting things from Chris Hedges. This lecture is something I think is highly worth listening to.

Nassim Taleb’s Unofficial News Site has the post Nassim’s Keynote Speech at the CoinGeek Conference 2021. On YouTube it is part of CoinGeek Zurich – Livestream – Day 3. It is not what I would call a keynote speech, but more of a panel discussion with moderator.

I agree with Nouriel Roubini and Nassim Nicholar Taleb.

Central Bank Digital Currency should have zero transaction fees at point of use. If this is the way it is implemented, then things like bitcoin will have no market advantage. Without being fully digitized, the USA dollar already supports tens of trillions of dollars in financial activity. That is proof enough of feasibility. What will be the advantage of things like bitcoin compared to CBDC? It is too bad that Nassim and Nouriel didn’t make that point in such simple words as I have used here.

If the CBDC was forbidden to be used to conduct economic warfare by the country of the central bank, then it would have no disadvantages over the current non-government digital transaction settlement systems.

A single, world-wide unit of account has an advantage of doing away with currency exchanging, but it loses the flexibility a country has with its own sovereign currency. At the moment, I cannot picture a world-wide government being created that would have the financial flexibility to deal with the needs of individual countries (or parts of the world). That is not to say that it would be impossible. It is just beyond my imagination at the current time.

The Empire Files has the video CIA Stories: The CIA is Born.

Abby Martin introduces the first installment of a new Empire Files series about the CIA explaining why the agency was created, and how it became the most nefarious criminal organization in the world, with CIA expert Douglas Valentine.

Global Institute for Sustainable Proeperity – GISP has the podcast #105 Sam Levey: Krugman, Bond Markets & BS Jobs.

Patricia and Christian talk to MMT scholar and Deficit Owl Sam Levey about recent press coverage of MMT and the late David Graeber’s Bulls**t Jobs.

Even I learned some nuances about MMT. There is one problematic issue that stood out for me. Sam claimed an algebraic formula where the variable C appears on both sides of the equation. I know I have debunked this before because the C on each side of the equation does not stand for the same thing, and cannot be cancelled out. I think I wrote about how the correct equation could be written when Joe Firestone made a similar mistake. I can’t find this previous article anywhere on my blog.

Institute for New Economic Thinking has posted Calculating the Cost of COVID.

Inflation? Expanding digital currencies? What’s next in this brave new world?

Jens Nordvig (Founder & CEO, Exante Data) describes what he saw as the pandemic unfolded, and where it might be taking us.

More non-ideological analysis of what is going on. It is not an attempt to predict the future. I like reporting the news rather than trying to predict the news.