Sonic Youth Gossip - The Politics Thread

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Quote:

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

in light of the progressive take on the fed lately, is there anyone around willing to discuss mmt a bit?

That's a tall order! :) I'll start by saying this: if modern monetary theory were an electronical product that I could buy, I'd get the coins together, I'd go to the store, and then I'd think, "Oh crap, what if this isn't compatible with my current computer..."

Here's a 101 on the subject: https://www.investopedia.com/modern-...ry-mmt-4588060

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

hahahahaha yes it's not compatible. exactly.

i mean, i've actually read kelton, bought her book and all. and all is well and good and makes perfect sense, except in the operating system that we actually have, because taxes that must be legislated are not a timely instrument to regulate the money supply, whereas a group of unelected technocrats can actually adjust the interest rates on a regular basis fairly easily with no political interference.

which sure, perhaps it's not ideal. but the ideal alternative does not exist. it's an impracticable concept.

so warren scolding powell pisses me off immensely because powell does not have the power to change the u.s. constitution, much less on command. i mean she's great at pocketbook issues but here she's either pandering hypocritically or a complete ignoramus. i like many of her policies a lot but she can sometimes act embarrassingly (but then again, can't we all?). anyway... she's a lot smarter than the bullshit she sometimes spews. i expect more from her.

now uncle joe is proposing a tax increase on billionaires. which is a nice start. increased tax rates don't always mean increased tax revenues, but that's at least a starting point to a fiscal (not monetary) solution to the (fake) deficit and subsequent (real) inflation problems (per mmt).

not gonna happen with this congress though. no chance in hell. how could mmt work in a system like this one? it would take a revolution or a major structural reform to make it legally possible. which we just isn't happening right now.

To be completely honest, I was on board with MMT until I read Paul Krugman's objections to it. I thought, if a left-wing economist who's not only a Nobel prize winner but one of the few people on the PLANET who admits when he's wrong has a problem with this, I better take another look...

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

do you have a specific text you're referring to or just in general?

Quote:

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

do you have a specific text you're referring to or just in general?

On MMT, just in general. On PK's criticism of this theory, I've read it in the New York Times and elsewhere a couple of times, but it's basically on what I posted above: https://www.investopedia.com/modern-...ry-mmt-4588060

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

well i've seen krugman in video (look at him on "firing line") saying that mmt doesn't do anything that keynesianism doesn't.

and i guess yeah because you can guarantee "full federal employment" through new deal type programs.

he agrees too with mmt that deficits don't matter but says that you can argue the same thing within keynesianism.

then he says (and i agree with him) that mmt lacks monetary tools. it only has fiscal tools! hahahah. which are fucking clumsy.

SO you either get deficit (fake, real) or you get devaluation and inflation. keynesianism has monetary tools for those. mmt offers "taxes".

i get the mmt paradigm, i totally do. what i don't see is a usable technology from it. the last chapter of kelton's book she says mmt is not a religion but then talks to pastors and promises pies in the sky for all.

one basic fact of economics is scarcity. we have unlimited wants and limited resources. i want to see where the limited resources meet the pavement, and how mmt deals with them.

in other words, so scarcity is not in "the deficit," that much is clear, i don' give a shit. but if so the WHERE IS THE SCARCITY? show me where it is to be found, or else it is "a religion." a religion of fiscal absolutism.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/11/polit...ner/index.html

OMFG. Is the GOP finally starting to grow some balls?

Last week I cheered Mitch Fucking McConnel for pushing back against Fucker Carlson and his endless Jan 6th bullshit.

And now Mike Fucking Pence suddenly becomes.....forceful?

I could fucking strangle them for waiting so long. But..... better late than never?

Is this the long awaited turning point?? McConnel/Pence!!

(Oh, I do hope Mitch is ok after that fall. I was so worried. WORRIED I tell you.)

holy shit! russian sukhois vs us surveillance drone crash over the black sea. stay tuned, dimitri...

if the shit hits the fan it was nice knowing you all...

Quote:

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

holy shit! russian sukhois vs us surveillance drone crash over the black sea.

Apparently, "the Russian aircraft flew 'in the vicinity' of the drone for 30 to 40 minutes before colliding". Sheesh, they really had it in for that drone. John Kirby and other officials are calling the Russian move "unsafe, unprofessional and reckless" - a way of condemning it without saying stupid shit like "FIRE AND FURY THE LIKES OF WHICH WAAHHH!!!". (Well, actually, Drumpf would have probably apologized to the Kremlin and called the Pentagon incompetent.)

Gotta put this one on later:

From The New York Times:

Quote:

How bad was the bailout?

Is there moral hazard if no one was paying attention?

By Paul Krugman
Opinion Columnist

So the Feds stepped in to protect all deposits at Silicon Valley Bank, even though the law says that deposits only up to $250,000 are insured and even though there was a pretty good case that allowing big depositors to take a haircut wouldn’t have created a systemic crisis. S.V.B. was pretty sui generis, far more exposed both to interest risk and to potential runs than any other significant bank, so even some losses for larger depositors may not have caused much contagion.

Still, I understand the logic: If I were a policymaker, I’d be reluctant to let S.V.B. fail, merely because while it probably wouldn’t have caused a wider crisis, one can’t be completely certain and the risks of erring in doing too much were far smaller than the risks of doing too little.

That said, there are good reasons to feel uncomfortable about this bailout. And yes, it was a bailout. The fact that the funds will come from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation — which will make up any losses with increased fees on banks — rather than directly from the Treasury doesn’t change the reality that the government came in to rescue depositors who had no legal right to demand such a rescue.

Furthermore, having to rescue this particular bank and this particular group of depositors is infuriating: Just a few years ago, S.V.B. was one of the midsize banks that lobbied successfully for the removal of regulations that might have prevented this disaster, and the tech sector is famously full of libertarians who like to denounce big government right up to the minute they themselves needed government aid.

But both the money and the unfairness are really secondary concerns. The bigger question is whether, by saving big depositors from their own fecklessness, policymakers have encouraged future bad behavior. In particular, businesses that placed large sums with S.V.B. without asking whether the bank was sound are paying no price (aside from a few days of anxiety). Will this lead to more irresponsible behavior? That is, has the S.V.B. bailout created moral hazard?

Moral hazard is a familiar concept in the economics of insurance: When people are guaranteed compensation for losses, they have no incentive to act prudently and in some cases may engage in deliberate acts of destruction. During the 1970s, when New York, in general, was at a low point and property values were depressed, the Bronx was wracked by fires, at least some of which may have been deliberately set by landlords who expected to receive more from insurers than their buildings were worth.

In banking, insuring deposits means that depositors have no reason to concern themselves with how the banks are using their money. This in turn creates an incentive for banks to engage in bad behavior, such as making highly risky but high-yielding loans. If the loans pay off, the bank makes a lot of money; if they don’t, the owners just walk away. Heads, they win; tails, the taxpayers lose.

This isn’t a hypothetical case; it’s pretty much what happened during the S.&L. crisis of the 1980s, when savings and loan associations, especially but not only in Texas, effectively gambled on a huge scale with other people’s money. When the bets went bad, taxpayers had to compensate depositors, with the total cost amounting to as much as $124 billion — which, as an equivalent share of gross domestic product, would be something like $500 billion today.

The thing is, it’s not news that guaranteeing depositors creates moral hazard. That moral hazard is one of the reasons banks are regulated — required to keep a fair bit of cash on hand, limited in the kind of risks they can take, required to have assets that exceed their deposits by a significant amount (a.k.a. capital requirements). This last requirement is intended not just to provide a cushion against possible losses but also to give bank owners skin in the game, an incentive to avoid risking depositors’ funds, since they will have to bear many of the losses, via their capital, if they lose money.

The savings and loan crisis had a lot to do with the very bad decision by Congress to relax regulations on those associations, which were in financial trouble as a result of high interest rates. There are obvious parallels to the crisis at Silicon Valley Bank, which also hit a wall because of rising interest rates and was able to take such big risks in part because the Trump administration and Congress had relaxed regulations on midsize banks.

But here’s the thing: The vast bulk of deposits at S.V.B. weren’t insured, because deposit insurance is capped at $250,000. Depositors who had given the bank more than that didn’t fail to do due diligence on the bank’s risky strategy because they thought that the government would bail them out; everyone knows about the F.D.I.C. insurance limit, after all.

They failed to do due diligence because, well, it never occurred to them that bankers who seemed so solid, so sympatico with the whole venture capital ethos, actually had no idea what to do with the money placed in their care.

Now, you could argue that S.V.B.’s depositors felt safe because they somewhat cynically believed that they would be bailed out if things went bad even if they weren’t entitled to any help — which is exactly what just happened. And if you believe that argument, the feds, by making all depositors whole, have confirmed that belief, creating more moral hazard.

The logic of this view is impeccable. And I don’t believe it for a minute, because it gives depositors too much credit.

I don’t believe that S.V.B.’s depositors were making careful, rational calculations about risks and likely policy responses, because I don’t believe that they understood how banking works in the first place. For heaven’s sake, some of S.V.B.’s biggest clients were in crypto. Need we say more?

And just in general, asking investors — not just small investors, who are formally insured, but even businesses with millions or hundreds of millions in the bank — to evaluate the soundness of the banks where they park their funds is expecting too much from people who are, after all, trying to run their own businesses.

The lesson I would take from S.V.B. is that banks need to be strongly regulated whether or not their deposits are insured. The bailout won’t change that fact, and following that wisdom should prevent more bailouts.

And you know who would have agreed? Adam Smith, who in “The Wealth of Nations” called for bank regulation, which he compared to the requirement that urban buildings have walls that limit the spread of fire. Wouldn’t we all, even the ultrarich and large companies, be happier if we didn’t have to worry about our banks going down in flames?

Quick Hits

Did savings and loans just take on excessive risk? Or were they engaged in looting?

Fiscal costs of banking crises: They’re big.

Crypto bros becoming unbankable.

A sudden rush to big banks.

Repukes (Pence, McCarthy, DeSantis etc) are now attacking the NYDA over the impending arrest of The Big Liar. House GOP want interviews.

Every time I think the GOP may actually turn the corner on Trump, they go and dig deeper. There is no bottom.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skuj

I have seen the future, and it's even worse than you think. From Politico:

The Federalist Society Isn't Quite Sure About Democracy Anymore

So, is today gonna be...

or what? :D

i am superannoyed because my youtube algorithm is currently feeding me a bunch of leftist videos on how jon stewart "skewered" a "lying" larry summers or whatever on the subject of inflation (as if).

the discussion between summers and stewart was indeed interesting, but i fucking hate it when idiots take snippets from someone's speech to misrepresent their positions.

does nobody understand economics, or the role of the fed?

it's not the fed's job to set tax rates or establish price controls!

wanna tax the rich? elect a congress that will do it, you stupid delusional motherfuckers. there is no other way.

seriously, on both fucking sides. the right of course is worse and not just stupid but outright evil, whereas the left is merely dumb, ineffectual and delusional. so the right sucks more. but jesus fucking christ.

notice for example the following SERIOUS policy suggestions to reduce economic inequality in the united states:

https://belonging.berkeley.edu/six-p...mic-inequality

aside from the mimimum wage, which is a legal matter but not a fiscal one, they are all tax & fiscal policy. and they all require LEGISLATION.

NONE of those involve monetary policies/the fed. which does not fucking legislate, but simply adjusts interest rates to regulate the money supply.

congress does fiscal policy, the fed does monetary policy.

monetary means related to money (and banking).

CHILDREN PLEASE NOTE, MONEY IS NOT ECONOMIC OUTPUT.

guns, butter, medical care, porno films, drinking water, sewage service, dildos, scientific research, corn, computer games, and all goods and services are economic output.

money is just the medium of exchange.

Quote:

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

guns, butter, medical care, porno films, drinking water, sewage service, dildos, scientific research, corn, computer games, and all goods and services are economic output.

Seriously though, you mention drinking water - are you referring to bottled water or all water you consume, as in "straight fom the tap"? If you're including the latter, what's the sitch over there - do they cut the utility right away if you don't pay the bill on time? I've read that my country is the only one in the world which enshrines the privatization of such a resource in its Constitution, thank you Chicago Boys and the Martian whore that shat you out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

no man, all water that is processed for consumption through labor and machinery and delivered via infrastructure or bottles is part of the national output, it doesn't matter if the government or some private concern purified and piped it. that is not the point. the point is understanding what is economic output. we drink puridied water, not money. we eat food, not money. public or private utilities, private or government farms, private or public heart surgeries, output is output.

in the case of a dildo, say it was a dildo made in china, the service of obtaining and delivering you a dildo domestically is part of the national output, even if the dildo itself was part of china's output. the retail service transportation etc is the local economic output. without that service, the dildo stays in china, out of reach and unable to satisfy. so, services are output too.

again, output, the production of goods & services, is what takes primacy over the medium of exchange/the unit of accounting. we need & consume OUTPUT. ultimately it can be bought, borrowed, or stolen, who cares, we need output to live. so, sticking quarters or crumpled up bills into whatever hole is not the same as sticking a dildo. which is why dildos are produced. there is demand for them, so there is a supply of them.

what we currently have is a mismatch between circulating money and available economic output. globally.

that is what causes inflation. the money is not matching the output. there are more dollars than dildos, and no way to further increase dildo production to match the demand, so the extra dollars are bidding up the price instead of increasing dildo supply. more dollars might command the production of more dildos up to a point, but past a certain point the factories just can't keep up, can' find workers, can't find more silicone, can't find more containers to ship their goods. which drives up the price of dildos for everyone, rich or poor. and the poor suffer more.

now there are other ways to take money out of the economy and lower inflation than adjusting the interest rates. taxes can do that too. like, rich people could be taXed so they stop snapping up houses and turning them into airbnbs, and bidding up the price of housing, for example. so houses would not go up in price so much.

and there are ways to reduce inequality through fiscal means, so as to shift the burden of inflation, like, say, offering economic incentives for the production of low income housing (increasing output thus satisfying demand).

but it's not in the central bank's power to levy taxes or drive fiscal policy

that's up to congress.

sssso, tldr, remember that with the pandemic we had an increase in money but a reduction of output. people got money for not working.

yes, it was necessary, it was a terrible emergency, and it had to be done at the time.

but more money and less output causes loss of monetary purchasing power (inflation) as explained with the dildo conundrum.

so here we are now, entertain us.

Uhhhh... Yeah, no, I get that - what I asked is: do they cut your basic water supply if you don't pay the bill on time. Is it as ruthless as it is here. That.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

Uhhhh... Yeah, no, I get that - what I asked is: do they cut your basic water supply if you don't pay the bill on time. Is it as ruthless as it is here. That.

ah, separately, i've never faced that, so i don't know, but i would assume eventually... they would turn off your water? or something? not sure tbh, water is cheap up to a certain level here, i've never heard about people unable to pay their water & sewage.

heat & electricity can get expensive though, but they can't disconnect you during winter, and there are payment plans and even resources for public assistance. but yeah in warm weather you will get your disconnection notice just like the one that came in the mail for thruston.

In "you really can't make this shit up" news, Drumpf chose Waco, TX for his first rally as 2024 candidate.

ETA: The nuts that followed David Koresh were saner, though.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

In "you really can't make this shit up" news, Drumpf chose Waco, TX for his first rally as 2024 candidate.

ETA: The nuts that followed David Koresh were saner, though.

what i personally find more "you really can't make this shit up" is that the failure of the svb and the current turmoil with the small banks is the direct result of trumpo's deregulatory bullcaca.

yes, you can't make this shit up indeed! fucker bankrupted a casino! now it's the small banks!

LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP!

hahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Quote:

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP!

hahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

And for anyone who thinks the Stormy case is small peanuts (which it most certainly is not), still ahead:

- The election interference case in Georgia
- The DOJ's investigation into the "mishandling" of classified documents
- The DOJ's investigation into the attempt to overturn the 2020 election, including any issues related to January 6
- The two civil suits from E. Jean Carroll, who accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in the '90s
- The suit from New York state attorney general Letitia James over years of financial fraud (this includes not only Donaldo but also his three eldest retarded children, plus the Trump Organization itself)

*Ding* - Oh, my popcorn's ready.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

Her phony laugh matches the phony indictment.

She should keep her fat face shut. They’ll be coming for her next. It’s long overdue.

So we still have some Trumpists here!!

Skull.....is the Manhattan DA completely out to lunch about the hush money coverup?

(Fuck me.....why did I even ask?)

It does drive me fucking insane that of all the stupid-ass shit Trump is clearly guilty of, this Stormy Daniels thing is the first indictment.

I'm sure that Skull thinks Jan 6th would have happened without Trump. Or that Jan 6th just didn't happen.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skuj

(Fuck me.....why did I even ask?)

hahahaha! yeah... why??

OK, I don't know if this has been mentioned, and it shouldn't, because it shouldn't be an issue, except this is "America", so it is. Alvin Bragg. Letitia James. Fani Willis. You don't think OrangefucKKK is saying, "These n****** are out to get me!!!"? I'm positive a good portion of his motherfucking retarded followers must be saying it OUT LOUD.

Well, at least they are joining NATO.

Fuck....I'm old enough to remember Watergate and what a big deal it was. OMFG Nixon lied!!! He tried to cover up some stupid bullshit.

And now look where we are in 2023.

Even this Stormy Fucking Daniels thing is bigger than Watergate, when you get right down to the facts as we know them.

But look at all those Repukes attacking the DA and Justice Department. These people are "lawmakers"?

We are absolutely fucking lost. It's over, boys and girls. Pack your bags.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

Cancer keeps on metastasizing, we're losing Finland:

https://news.google.com/stories/CAAqNggKIjBDQklTSGpvSmMzUnZjbmt0TXpZd1NoRUtEd2pqdG FYOUJoR3kyM3Y3ak9wVl9DZ0FQAQ?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen

the... nationalist far right is at 20% like in other parts, the center right won over some budgetary/debt issues as i understand.

this is vico's pendulum, i would not be inordinately alarmed, but yeah, worth paying attention for sure.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skuj

Well, at least they are joining NATO.

so it seems for now. the one that bugs me is fucking erdogan.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skuj

We are absolutely fucking lost. It's over, boys and girls. Pack your bags.

my bags are always ready. where is this expedition going now? xD

It's not a cult at all!!

Quote:

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

this is vico's pendulum

well, shit, i mixed metaphors and put that poorly lol.

(vico's "corsi e recorsi" is not the same as the political pendulum theory)