Steve's Politics Blog

Truthout has the article Our United States of Indebtedness. This is an extremely eyeopening article even for me. As I read the beginning, I was afraid that the article would not make the important distinction between private debt and government “debt”.

To guard against that problem, I will take some quotes from the middle of the article, and put them up top.

Of course, debt in the abstract is not necessarily a problem. Collateralized debt (meaning it is tied to a hard asset like a house) has long been a reliable path to the American dream. Governments can use debt to build socioeconomic “goods” like roads, schools and power grids that contribute to economic productivity and growth. And debt is crucial to businesses quickly scaling up production or expanding into new markets.

However, household debt, which has skyrocketed over the last three-plus decades, is mostly non-collateralized or “unsecured” debt. A vast amount of the debt load carried by US households – including credit cards, medical bills and student loans – is not tied to a hard asset.

By the way, don’t make the mistake of thinking that a collateralized debt is the same thing as a collateralized debt obligation. I knew the difference, but paid dearly for being lied into owning some CDOs in my portfolio. The dearly part was losing 90% of the current value of that investment (after having collected and not reinvested some hefty dividends). The wisdom of diversification meant that the particular investment was less than 5% of my portfolio,

Then there are just some good lines worth quoting

And that’s the maelstrom that transformed the United States into a “trickle-up” economy. No, this economy is not a drip system. It is a percolator.

Here is part of the explanation of how things percolate.

As bubbles rise and pop, this recurring action presents profitable opportunities to those with either the liquidity or the leverage to exploit the crash. Each new boom-and-bust cycle compounds this effect as financial elites concentrate more wealth into their coffers as it drains out of the middle and working classes. When bubbles pop and assets drop in value – stocks, real estate, whole companies and industries – those armed with cash or easy, exclusive access to politically greased financial leverage (like a taxpayer-funded bailout or the perpetually low Fed lending rate) simply hoard those assets for pennies on the dollar.

I am sorry for the people who don’t understand this or have been unable to squirrel away enough liquidity to take advantage of this. Somewhere along my lifeline, I came to realize that being a wage earner was no way to take control of your life. Being an owner was the only way. That’s why I started to take more and more of my wage earnings and investing them in ownership.

I may still not be insulated enough from this crazy system, but I am hoping to at least be among the last to go down.

The article is long, but almost every paragraph reveals a valuable insight. If you have not managed to get yourself out of the rat race as I have, you really need to read this article, and start planning a strategy to get out.

Getting Bernie Sanders to be President might be your rescue, but I wouldn’t bet my life (savings) on being able to get him elected. You need a plan in case he doesn’t get elected.

YouTube has the video Ex-Baltimore Cop Michael Wood Exposes Police Culture Of Corruption & Abuse (Interview w/ Cenk Uygur).

Former U.S. Marine and Baltimore police officer Michael A. Wood, Jr. made headlines when he Tweeted about the abuses he witnessed fellow Baltimore police officers perpetrating. In this interview with The Young Turks’ Cenk Uygur Wood reveals the truth behind the “us vs. them” siege mentality pervading urban police forces that leads to a culture of corruption, racism and abuse, and what can be done to bring change for the better to policing in the United States.

This is such a powerful video, that I could not just post this on Sturbridge For Bernie Sanders and my own Facebook page.

The introduction I wrote in those two places was the following:

If I hadn’t had an epiphany like this 50 years ago, this interview might have really done it. For those of you who have not had your epiphany yet, this interview might do it.

In a post Cultural Deprivation, I have written about my epiphany.

I have posted on this blog about the study of “cultural deprivation” as a sophomore in college as being my epiphany about what Ayn Rand didn’t tell me, and what was wrong about her philosophy. This was back around 1963.

Speaking about epiphanies, I had another epiphany of sorts when I saw the Video Shows Texas Police Officer Pulling Gun On Teens At Pool Party back in June 07, 2015. The epiphany came about when I read a comment about what happened at about 3 minutes and 10 seconds into this video.

You see the police trying to smash this cute teenager’s face against a concrete side-walk. They weren’t just trying to get control over the situation. They were purposely trying to disfigure this girl. It’s as if they detected something that she might value and decided to take it away from her for life just to humble her. (See the use of the word “humble” in the interview with Michael Wood Jr.) As a crime goes, I suppose murder is worse than torture, but torture says more about the character of the perpetrator of torture than murder says about the character of the murderer.

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.