I know I am going to need this video every time somebody tries to smear Tulsi Gabbard over this issue.

American Affairs Journal has the L. Randall Wray article Does America Need Global Savings to Finance Its Fiscal and Trade Deficits?

Interesting article by L. Randall Wray. Lot’s of insights. Here is one.

To summarize, bond sales by either the central bank or the Treasury serve the functional purposes of removing reserves from the banks and offering a higher-interest-earning alternative to the central bank’s support rate. If, however, the central bank wants to push interest earnings down toward the support rate, it can engage in open market purchases—taking the bonds out of the system (à la “quantitative easing”).

In his usual style, the beginnings of his article start with a long description and justification for the conventional wisdom, and the latter half tells you why that is all wrong. You have to get a feel for where the switch happens.

YouTube has the video Trump: End socialism & Maduro’s reign in Venezuela.

As US politicians are putting rhetoric against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro into high gear, US President Donald Trump gave a speech in Miami calling for Maduro to step down and for an end to socialism in Latin America. RT America’s Manila Chan interviews political analyst Jim Kavanagh to discuss why he considers the Trump administration’s attacks on Maduro as nothing more than “overt imperialism.”

When Bernie Sanders decries the economic situation in Venezuela as if it were created by Socialism, remember this interview. Bernie Sanders cannot possibly be ignorant of this history. You have to wonder what Bernie Sanders is up to. What will he do for us, or to us, if he becomes President. Does Bernie want to lose the war of words with Trump this early in his campaign for 2020?

YourTube has the video Noam Chomsky​ Lecture with introduction by Bernie Sanders​.

“Deciphering Foreign Policy Jargon” (05/20/1985)

This fascinating and remarkably timely discussion comments not only on the historical state of our political system, but offers deep insights into the current state of our election processes.

At 5 minutes to midnight, I don’t have time to watch this all. I’ll have to do it later. In less than 7 minutes of watching, I am reminded of what Bernie Sanders knew about Nicaragua in 1985. That is what astounds me about what he now says about Venezuela.

YouTube has the video Michael Parenti on Bernie Sanders. Notice the date in the following quote.

Michael Parenti answers a question about Bernie Sanders, while Sanders’ presidential campaign was going on, in 2015.

YouTube has the video Bernie Sanders announces 2020 run: Extended interview.

I looked at the whole interview for the first time. Sanders’ reaction at 23 minutes and 43 seconds into the interview, is funny as all get out.

The only thing that Sanders said during the interview that really upset me were his remarks on Venezuela. He acted as if the USA had clean hands in the creation of the economic havoc in Venezuela. If somebody doesn’t manage to wake Bernie up on this issue, I am going to be very, very concerned.

What Sanders does not seem to get is that Chavez and Maduro were working against the very same type of oligarchy that Sanders wants to fight in the USA. He could take a lesson from Venezuela on what the oligarchy will do to fight him.

Maybe with Tulsi Gabbard as his Vice President, she will be able to knock some sense into him on this issue. We’ll have to watch his pick for Secretary of State very carefully. If he does what Obama did in picking Hillary Clinton, then we will know that all is lost.

Naked Capitalism has the article The Financial Crisis Was a Minsky Moment but We Live in Strange Times. I can’t find just the right excerpt to put here to do the article justice. Instead, I will quote one of the comments. The comment is a spoiler in that it gives away the joke of the title.

Susan Strange seems to have been a catalyst for a lot of what was at the time subversive economic thought. I would predict that as time goes along a lot of the economic ‘stars’ such as Milton Friedman will be revealed for the frauds that they were and that anybody who has won a (made up) Nobel Prize in Economics would also be suspect.

New Economic Perspectives has the William K. Black article Modern Monetary Theory is On the March. Here is an excerpt Black quotes from a Wall Street Journal article.

In theory, high debt levels should cause interest rates to rise. That’s because investors will demand higher returns to compensate for the risk they take on when the government borrows at unsustainable levels or because they worry that so much debt could trigger inflation. The need to finance such high levels of debt also makes less money available for other investments.

In practice, investors are happy to keep lending to the U.S. in good times and bad, regardless of how much it borrows. In 2009, for instance, when the Obama administration’s stimulus efforts sent federal deficits rising to almost 10% of GDP, the highest since World War II, the interest on 10-year Treasury securities remained below where it had been before the recession.

Something that a colleague where I used to work would frequently say:

In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice they are not.

He denies coining that aphorism, but I like it no matter who coined it. Some people have to learn that when theory does not match practice, they have to give up on the theory, not the practice.

YouTube has the video Leonard Cohen – Anthem.

YouTube has the video I’m Running For President.

Sen. Bernie Sanders announced he is running for president of the United States and called on Americans from all over the nation to join him in building a massive grassroots movement to win the Democratic primary, defeat Donald Trump, and enact an agenda that serves all people, not just the wealthy few.