Wez
DA
Haven't read my signature lately?
Essential Economics for Politicians
- Thread starter Bruddah IZ
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Haven't read my signature lately?
Bruddah IZ
DA
"If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldnʻt be any money"-- Mariner Eccles, Governor of the Federal Reserve System in 1941
Bruddah IZ
DA
If all the Bank loans were paid, no one could have a bank deposit, and there would not be a dollar of coin or currency in circulation.--Robert Hemphill, Credit Manager of the Federal Reserve bank in Atlanta, 1936
Bruddah IZ
DA
the paper currency in your purse or wallet is a liability of the Federal Reserve, legally speaking. After all, these green pieces of paper have "Federal Reserve Note" written on them. This is an accounting fiction, of course, a throwback to the days when the notes were simply claims to actual gold or silver. It's hardly a liability to have billions of dollars in "claims" against the Federal Reserve floating around, when they are claims to nothing. (If you tried to present a $20 bill for redemption at a Federal Reserve Office, you would be able to get two $10 dollar bills, or four $5 dollar bills, but certainly no other type of asset.)--HPBRW
Bruddah IZ
DA
Yes
Bruddah IZ
DA
Since they established the definition of asset
Bruddah IZ
DA
Bruddah IZ
DA
Bruddah IZ
DA
Bruddah IZ
DA
https://www.theatlantic.com/busines...ed-even-in-times-of-high-unemployment/278801/
Why Jobs Go Unfilled Even in Times of High Unemployment
Companies say too many applicants just don't have the right skills. Partnerships between employers and community colleges are looking to fix that.
Too late CC's. New Sheriff in town.
Why Jobs Go Unfilled Even in Times of High Unemployment
Companies say too many applicants just don't have the right skills. Partnerships between employers and community colleges are looking to fix that.
Too late CC's. New Sheriff in town.
Bruddah IZ
DA
Bruddah IZ
DA
Bruddah IZ
DA
https://fee.org/articles/spending-restraint-is-unleashing-the-british-economy/
Spending Restraint is Unleashing the British Economy........... BREXIT
Some of you might be thinking, who gives a crap about the brits? Europe represents about 20% of U.S. exports. If the Brits aren't doing well, neither will Europe.
Spending Restraint is Unleashing the British Economy........... BREXIT
Some of you might be thinking, who gives a crap about the brits? Europe represents about 20% of U.S. exports. If the Brits aren't doing well, neither will Europe.
Bruddah IZ
DA
I’ll Never Sneer at Budweiser Again
https://fee.org/articles/i-ll-never-sneer-at-budweiser-again/
Beer and Snobbery Don’t Mix
I trace my transition to rationality from that moment. Serendipitously, a friend showed up the next night with a beer for me. It was a Budweiser. I quickly explained my principle on that matter and rejected it. But he was persistent.
“Give it a try. It only has 140 calories, it is low in alcohol so it doesn’t drag you down, and it has a pretty good flavor.”
Here was the classic "green eggs and ham" moment: a credible source telling me that something is true that I thought I knew was false.
I’m nice and didn’t want to hurt his feelings. So I cracked it open and poured it into a glass (of course). It had a pretty look and a nice head. I lifted it to my lips and drank. Wow. It was cold and refreshing. Then I realized something: it was actually delicious.
It took me a few minutes to adapt. I could feel what was happening. My whole sense of how the world works was falling apart. I had been wrong – desperately wrong, fundamentally wrong – for as long as I can remember.
A lifetime of turning up my nose while walking past the mainstream beer section at the convenience store was now in question. Then I realized my mistake. Beer shouldn’t be a rarified and hard thing. It shouldn’t have class implications. It need not be treated as some exclusionist prop to shore up some fanciful social hierarchy. It is a drink for everyone, every day. It is part of life, not some exceptionalized experience.
Down with Snobbery
Why does this keep happening to me? I keep having to learn that the market is wise. There is a reason for the place of this beer in our culture. I used to be a snob about pop music. I was wrong. I was a snob about thrift stores. I was wrong. I was a snob about wine. I was wrong. As it turns out, I was wrong about beer too. Another principle bites the dust.
https://fee.org/articles/i-ll-never-sneer-at-budweiser-again/
Beer and Snobbery Don’t Mix
I trace my transition to rationality from that moment. Serendipitously, a friend showed up the next night with a beer for me. It was a Budweiser. I quickly explained my principle on that matter and rejected it. But he was persistent.
“Give it a try. It only has 140 calories, it is low in alcohol so it doesn’t drag you down, and it has a pretty good flavor.”
Here was the classic "green eggs and ham" moment: a credible source telling me that something is true that I thought I knew was false.
I’m nice and didn’t want to hurt his feelings. So I cracked it open and poured it into a glass (of course). It had a pretty look and a nice head. I lifted it to my lips and drank. Wow. It was cold and refreshing. Then I realized something: it was actually delicious.
It took me a few minutes to adapt. I could feel what was happening. My whole sense of how the world works was falling apart. I had been wrong – desperately wrong, fundamentally wrong – for as long as I can remember.
A lifetime of turning up my nose while walking past the mainstream beer section at the convenience store was now in question. Then I realized my mistake. Beer shouldn’t be a rarified and hard thing. It shouldn’t have class implications. It need not be treated as some exclusionist prop to shore up some fanciful social hierarchy. It is a drink for everyone, every day. It is part of life, not some exceptionalized experience.
Down with Snobbery
Why does this keep happening to me? I keep having to learn that the market is wise. There is a reason for the place of this beer in our culture. I used to be a snob about pop music. I was wrong. I was a snob about thrift stores. I was wrong. I was a snob about wine. I was wrong. As it turns out, I was wrong about beer too. Another principle bites the dust.
Bruddah IZ
DA
"Unforgiven" Explores Guns, Government, and Non-Aggression
https://fee.org/articles/unforgiven-explores-guns-government-and-non-aggression/
The inability of the disarmed population of Big Whiskey to use violence when necessary is deceptively key to the plot. If history has anything to teach us, it is that when things become illegal, they become profitable. Had the town been armed, the prostitutes have had much cheaper and faster alternatives to pursue the justice they felt they had been denied. It's also likely that the attack would never have occurred in the first place. The brothel owner, the citizens of Big Whiskey, and especially the prostitutes themselves all have strong incentives to prevent such attacks. Were it not for the town's ban on guns, they would have had much more effective means to do so.
When another character, English Bob is forcibly disarmed by Little Bill and his goons, he remarks that without his weapon, he would be at the mercy of his enemies. Given the amount of power that Little Bill has acquired as a result of banning firearms, one has to wonder whether that vulnerability and the consequent need for a strong protector is a feature, rather than a bug, of weapons bans.
https://fee.org/articles/unforgiven-explores-guns-government-and-non-aggression/
The inability of the disarmed population of Big Whiskey to use violence when necessary is deceptively key to the plot. If history has anything to teach us, it is that when things become illegal, they become profitable. Had the town been armed, the prostitutes have had much cheaper and faster alternatives to pursue the justice they felt they had been denied. It's also likely that the attack would never have occurred in the first place. The brothel owner, the citizens of Big Whiskey, and especially the prostitutes themselves all have strong incentives to prevent such attacks. Were it not for the town's ban on guns, they would have had much more effective means to do so.
When another character, English Bob is forcibly disarmed by Little Bill and his goons, he remarks that without his weapon, he would be at the mercy of his enemies. Given the amount of power that Little Bill has acquired as a result of banning firearms, one has to wonder whether that vulnerability and the consequent need for a strong protector is a feature, rather than a bug, of weapons bans.
Bruddah IZ
DA
Bruddah IZ
DA
Newly published data from the U.S. Treasury shows that the federal government has amassed $84.3 trillion in debts, liabilities, and unfunded Social Security and Medicare obligations. This amounts to $670,000 for every household in the U.S., a fiscal burden that equals 93% of the nation’s private wealth, including the combined value of every American’s assets in real estate, corporate stocks, small businesses, bonds, savings accounts, cash, and personal goods like automobiles and furniture.
Federal law requires the U.S. Treasury and White House to produce an annual report on the “overall financial position” of the federal government. The law also requires the Government Accountability Office to audit this data, which is then published in the Financial Report of the United States Government.
Despite the important and shocking nature of this report, a search of Google News shows no results for it, even though it has been almost a week since it was published.
https://fee.org/articles/federal-shortfall-equals-670k-per-household/
Federal law requires the U.S. Treasury and White House to produce an annual report on the “overall financial position” of the federal government. The law also requires the Government Accountability Office to audit this data, which is then published in the Financial Report of the United States Government.
Despite the important and shocking nature of this report, a search of Google News shows no results for it, even though it has been almost a week since it was published.
https://fee.org/articles/federal-shortfall-equals-670k-per-household/
Bruddah IZ
DA
An important purpose of the Financial Report is to help citizens understand current fiscal policy and the importance and magnitude of policy reforms necessary to make it sustainable. A sustainable policy is one where the debt-to-GDP ratio is stable or declining over the long term.
To determine if current fiscal policies are sustainable, the projections of the deficit and debt discussed here assume current policy (i.e., current law, with certain adjustments, such as extension of expiring policies that are expected to continue)28 will continue indefinitely and draw out the implications for the growth of debt held by the public as a share of GDP. The projections are therefore neither forecasts nor predictions. As policy changes are enacted, actual financial outcomes will be different than those projected.
The projections in this Financial Report indicate that current policy is not sustainable. As discussed below, if current policy is left unchanged, the debt-to-GDP ratio is projected to fall about 6 percentage points by 2024 before commencing a steady rise to 252 percent in 2091 and is projected to rise continuously thereafter. Preventing the debt-to-GDP ratio from rising over the next 75 years is estimated to require some combination of spending reductions and revenue increases that amount to 1.6 percent of GDP over the period. While this estimate of the “75-year fiscal gap” is highly uncertain, it is nevertheless nearly certain that current fiscal policies cannot be sustained indefinitely.
https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/fsreports/rpt/finrep/fr/16frusg/01112017FR_(Final).pdf
So you snowflakes know that when Trump cuts funding to PP, FHA for Mortgage Insurance, freezes all federal hiring, etc., it's because "current fiscal policies cannot be sustained indefinitely. "
To determine if current fiscal policies are sustainable, the projections of the deficit and debt discussed here assume current policy (i.e., current law, with certain adjustments, such as extension of expiring policies that are expected to continue)28 will continue indefinitely and draw out the implications for the growth of debt held by the public as a share of GDP. The projections are therefore neither forecasts nor predictions. As policy changes are enacted, actual financial outcomes will be different than those projected.
The projections in this Financial Report indicate that current policy is not sustainable. As discussed below, if current policy is left unchanged, the debt-to-GDP ratio is projected to fall about 6 percentage points by 2024 before commencing a steady rise to 252 percent in 2091 and is projected to rise continuously thereafter. Preventing the debt-to-GDP ratio from rising over the next 75 years is estimated to require some combination of spending reductions and revenue increases that amount to 1.6 percent of GDP over the period. While this estimate of the “75-year fiscal gap” is highly uncertain, it is nevertheless nearly certain that current fiscal policies cannot be sustained indefinitely.
https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/fsreports/rpt/finrep/fr/16frusg/01112017FR_(Final).pdf
So you snowflakes know that when Trump cuts funding to PP, FHA for Mortgage Insurance, freezes all federal hiring, etc., it's because "current fiscal policies cannot be sustained indefinitely. "
Bruddah IZ
DA
Make the Bouquet... Or Else!
To see how little is left of one of our most important rights, the freedom of association, look no further than to today’s unanimous decision by the Washington State Supreme Court upholding a lower court’s ruling that florist Baronelle Stutzman was guilty of violating the Washington Law Against Discrimination (WLAD) when she declined, on religious grounds, to provide floral arrangements for one of her regular customer’s same-sex wedding. The lower court had found Stutzman personally liable and had awarded the plaintiffs permanent injunctive relief, actual monetary damages, attorneys’ fees, and costs.
This breathtaking part of the Supreme Court’s conclusion is worth quoting in full:
We also hold that the WLAD may be enforced against Stutzman because it does not infringe any constitutional protection. As applied in this case, the WLAD does not compel speech or association. And assuming that it substantially burdens Stutzman’s religious free exercise, the WLAD does not violate her right to religious free exercise under either the First Amendment or article I, section 11 because it is a neutral, generally applicable law that serves our state government’s compelling interest in eradicating discrimination in public accommodations.
We have here yet another striking example of how modern state statutory anti-discrimination law has come to trump a host of federal constitutional rights, including speech, association, and religious free exercise. It’s not too much to say that the Constitution’s Faustian accommodation of slavery is today consuming the Constitution itself.
https://fee.org/articles/make-the-bouquet-or-else/
To see how little is left of one of our most important rights, the freedom of association, look no further than to today’s unanimous decision by the Washington State Supreme Court upholding a lower court’s ruling that florist Baronelle Stutzman was guilty of violating the Washington Law Against Discrimination (WLAD) when she declined, on religious grounds, to provide floral arrangements for one of her regular customer’s same-sex wedding. The lower court had found Stutzman personally liable and had awarded the plaintiffs permanent injunctive relief, actual monetary damages, attorneys’ fees, and costs.
This breathtaking part of the Supreme Court’s conclusion is worth quoting in full:
We also hold that the WLAD may be enforced against Stutzman because it does not infringe any constitutional protection. As applied in this case, the WLAD does not compel speech or association. And assuming that it substantially burdens Stutzman’s religious free exercise, the WLAD does not violate her right to religious free exercise under either the First Amendment or article I, section 11 because it is a neutral, generally applicable law that serves our state government’s compelling interest in eradicating discrimination in public accommodations.
We have here yet another striking example of how modern state statutory anti-discrimination law has come to trump a host of federal constitutional rights, including speech, association, and religious free exercise. It’s not too much to say that the Constitution’s Faustian accommodation of slavery is today consuming the Constitution itself.
https://fee.org/articles/make-the-bouquet-or-else/