Krugmenistan vs the Permahawks

Lift Off! That was the announce­ment by the Fed­er­al Reserve this week when the world’s biggest and most influ­en­tial cen­tral bank start­ed the long await­ed rais­ing of its bench­mark short-term rate a quar­ter point from near-zero lev­els, mark­ing the first time the Fed has raised rates since 2006. It was big news, except this rate hike was telegraphed for quite a while now and vir­tu­al­ly every­one was expect­ing the Fed to do exact­ly what it did, so it’s not as big as it could have been. If the Fed had decid­ed not to raise rates, despite all the telegraph­ing, that prob­a­bly would have been a big­ger sto­ry. But would it have been a bad sto­ry if the Fed decid­ed to keep rates at their cur­rent near-zero lev­els? There’s a big debate in the eco­nom­ic com­mu­ni­ty over that. And it’s a debate that pits pru­dent econ­o­mists with excel­lent track-records like Paul Krug­man, some­one who opposed the Fed’s Decem­ber “lift off” deci­sion, against the broad array of “per­ma­hawks”. But it’s not just the ques­tion with respect to Fed. The Euro­pean Cen­tral Bank made a pol­i­cy announce­ment this month too regard­ing its stim­u­lus mea­sure and it was indeed rather sur­pris­ing. And as we’re also going to see in this post, it was sur­pris­ing in the way that just might have done seri­ous dam­age to not just the cred­i­bil­i­ty of ECB Pres­i­dent Mario Draghi but the ECB itself. Or at least cred­i­bil­i­ty in the ECB’s com­mit­ment to its sin­gle man­date of keep­ing infla­tion hov­er­ing around 2 per­cent.

To pla­cate per­ma­hawks (to main­tain cred­i­bil­i­ty) or not pla­cate the per­ma­hawks (to main­tain cred­i­bil­i­ty)? That is the ques­tion. Or at least one of the ques­tions cen­tral banks face. Unfor­tu­nate­ly.

Germany, Greece and Franco’s Blue Division

Wolf­gang Schauble (Ger­many’s Finance Min­is­ter) has stat­ed that Ger­many need­n’t repay the bil­lions it stole from Greece dur­ing World War II, because a gov­ern­ment is not oblig­at­ed to ful­fill the pledges of pre­vi­ous regimes. The fact that Ger­many con­tin­ues to pay pen­sions to vet­er­ans of Spain’s Blue Divi­sion (which fought on the East­ern Front dur­ing World War II) sug­gests that the Ger­man gov­ern­men­t’s judg­ments are self-serv­ing­ly selec­tive. All of the con­tents of this web­site as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 35+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of video­taped lec­tures are avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve. Dave offers his pro­grams and arti­cles for free–your sup­port is very much appre­ci­at­ed.

See Dick and Jane “Tote That Barge and Lift That Bale”

Evolved from the Hin­du nationalist/fascist par­ty the RSS, Naren­dra Modi is under­min­ing Indi­a’s laws pro­hibit­ing child labor. All of the con­tents of this web­site as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 35+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of video­taped lec­tures are avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve. Dave offers his pro­grams and arti­cles for free–your sup­port is very much appre­ci­at­ed.

Greek Privatization Proceeds for Anti-Poverty Policies? Probably Not, But We’ll See

With nego­ti­a­tions between Greece and the troi­ka over how to resolve the lat­est aus­ter­i­ty-impasse still ongo­ing, Greece make an intrigu­ing offer: Con­tin­ue with the pri­va­ti­za­tion of state assets that the troi­ka demands, use the pro­ceeds on Greece’s human­i­tar­i­an crises instead of imme­di­ate­ly pay­ing back Greece’s cred­i­tors. And while the troi­ka has yet to for­mal­ly rule out Greece’s pro­pos­al, Euro­pean Com­mis­sion pres­i­dent Jean-Claude Junck­er made an unchar­ac­ter­is­tic offer last week of 2 bil­lion euros to “sup­port efforts to cre­ate growth and social cohe­sion in Greece”. Con­sid­er­ing vir­tu­al­ly all past atti­tudes by the troi­ka regard­ing Greece’s “growth and social cohe­sion”. So by wrap­ping its human­i­tar­i­an aid pro­pos­al with­in a pri­va­ti­za­tion man­date Greece did the seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble: the troika’s posi­tion on Greece is slight­ly less crazy than before. That almost nev­er hap­pens. And still prob­a­bly isn’t hap­pen­ing.

Greek Prime Minister Continues to Pursue World War II Reparations from Germany

As dis­cussed in FTR #788, Ger­many has NOT reim­bursed Greece for the enor­mous dam­age wrought dur­ing World War II. Once again, that pur­loined wealth and the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work that was the vehi­cle for the rein­vest­ment of the Nazis’ World War II loot is cen­ter stage. Greek Prime Min­is­ter Alex­is Tsir­pas is demand­ing that the mon­ey be repaid. Tsir­pas’ demand focus­es atten­tion on a dynam­ic that lies at the foun­da­tion of 20th and 21st cap­i­tal flows. All of the con­tents of this web­site as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 35+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of video­taped lec­tures are avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve. Dave offers his pro­grams and arti­cles for free–your sup­port is very much appre­ci­at­ed.

Ghosts of World War II and the Greek Economic Crisis

In FTR #746 and FTR #788, we ana­lyzed the Greek eco­nom­ic cri­sis, the EMU and “Clause­witz­ian Eco­nom­ics.” As Greece and Ger­many square off fol­low­ing the elec­tion of a left-wing coali­tion gov­ern­ment in the for­mer, the ghosts of World War II are mate­ri­al­iz­ing in fright­en­ing and dra­mat­ic fash­ion. The new Greek finance min­is­ter has not­ed the rise of Nazism in Greece as a result of the eco­nom­ic and social depri­va­tion stem­ming from the aus­ter­i­ty doc­trine. There also remains the pos­si­bil­i­ty of rais­ing the specter of Ger­many’s unpaid World War II debt to Greece, there­by cit­ing the eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal dynam­ics inher­ent in the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work, about which we speak so often. All of the con­tents of this web­site as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 35+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of video­taped lec­tures are avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve. Dave offers his pro­grams and arti­cles for free–your sup­port is very much appre­ci­at­ed.

FTR #831 The Elderly “Wouldn’t Be Fucking Help­less if You Weren’t Send­ing them Fucking Checks to Sit on their Ass and Lay in Hos­pi­tals all Day”: The GOP’s Assault on Social Security

The title of the pro­gram is a ver­ba­tim quote from Edward Snowden–the Peach Fuzz Fascist–in 2009. The GOP-con­trolled 114th Con­gress is attempt­ing to imple­ment Snow­den’s views. In addi­tion to high­light­ing Snow­den’s ultra-reac­tionary views about abol­ish­ing Social Secu­ri­ty and restor­ing the gold stan­dard, the broad­cast sets forth the GOP’s disin­gen­u­ous state­ments about the Social Secu­ri­ty dis­abil­i­ty pro­gram, exem­pli­fied by Rand Paul’s bald-faced lies about the nature of the pro­gram. After chron­i­cling the GOP’s 80-year war on Social Secu­ri­ty, going back to the ear­ly days of Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt’s first term, the broad­cast reviews the 1934 coup attempt by pow­er­ful, fas­cist indus­tri­al and finan­cial inter­ests. Those same plot­ters sup­port­ed Mus­solin­i’s “cor­po­rate state” and Hitler’s eugen­ics pro­gram, aimed at elim­i­nat­ing “use­less bread gob­blers.” Like Snow­den, the 1934 coup plot­ters want­ed to elim­i­nate Social Secu­ri­ty and restore the gold stan­dard.

FTR #828 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

As the title indi­cates this pro­gram brings up to date a num­ber of sto­ries cov­ered in the past and intro­duces some new top­ics of dis­cus­sion. The top­ics cov­ered include: JFK’s 1963 attempts at nor­mal­iz­ing rela­tions with Cuba; new infor­ma­tion cast­ing doubt on the “lone nut” the­o­ry of the 2001 anthrax attacks (which fin­gered Bruce Ivins as a “lone nut” per­pe­tra­tor); Span­ish Prime Min­is­ter Mar­i­ano Rajoy’s sup­pres­sion of polit­i­cal dis­sent, echo­ing the poli­cies of Fran­cis­co Fran­co; a Catholic mass held to hon­or the mem­o­ry of the mur­der­ous World War II Ustachi leader Ante Pavel­ic; the glob­al eco­nom­ic elites’ pur­suit of the same eco­nom­ic poli­cies that drove peo­ple into the arms of fas­cism in the 1930’s; Ayn Rand’s role in inves­ti­gat­ing the 1940’s movie “It’s a Won­der­ful Life” as pos­si­ble cryp­to-Com­mu­nist pro­pa­gan­da; the GOP’s imple­men­ta­tion of fraud­u­lent “dynam­ic scor­ing” eco­nom­ic eval­u­a­tion; the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Stephen Hawk­ing’s warn­ing that the devel­op­ment of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence could threat­en the exis­tence of human­i­ty; Mr. Emory’s 1995 warn­ing that the devel­op­ment of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence could threat­en the exis­tence of human­i­ty.

The New World Ordoliberalism Part 5: The TLTRO and Waiting for Godot. And Sanity.

With Euro­pean Union con­tin­u­ing its slow steady fall into defla­tion, the ques­tion of “what’s to be done?” has becom­ing a per­ma­nent fix­ture for Euro­pean pol­i­cy-mak­ers. But for the euro­zone, with it’s shared mon­e­tary sys­tem, the ques­tion is a much more com­pli­cat­ed “what should we all be doing togeth­er?”. The answer to that lat­ter ques­tion, unfor­tu­nate­ly, has con­sis­tent­ly been “not enough”, despite pri­or promis­es.

Still, the ECB has­n’t giv­en up entire­ly in its attempts to reflate the euro­zone. Back in June, the ECB decid­ed to inject anoth­er 400 bil­lion euros into the euro­zone bank­ing sys­tem in a two-phase loan pro­gram. And as we’ll see below, in both phas­es the euro­zone banks want­ed far less than what was offered while con­tin­u­ing to pay back their pre­vi­ous loans. In oth­er words, while the ECB has been try­ing the expand the mon­e­tary base in the euro­zone’s finan­cial mar­kets that mon­e­tary base has con­tin­ued to shrink. As the excerpt below puts it, it’s like ‘Wait­ing for Godot’. And as we’ll see at the end, it real­ly IS like Wait­ing for Godot, the­atrics and all.

FTR #826 Bringing It All Back Home, Ukrainian Style, Part 2

In FTR #824, we not­ed the deci­sive role played by the Ukrain­ian dias­po­ra in the events unfold­ing in East­ern Europe. Petro Poroshenko is imple­ment­ing a legal gam­bit to per­mit for­eign nation­als to assume cab­i­net posi­tions in his new gov­ern­ment. In par­tic­u­lar, Poroshenko expressed the desire to incor­po­rate cit­i­zens of the U.S., Geor­gia and Lithua­nia in Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment. In short order, Ukrainian/American State Depart­ment Offi­cer Natal­ie Jaresko, Lithuan­ian-born U.S. cit­i­zen Air­vas Abramovi­cius and Geor­gian Alek­san­dre Kvi­tashvili assumed the posts of finance min­is­ter, eco­nom­ic and devel­op­ment and trade min­is­ter and health min­is­ter respec­tive­ly. All three were edu­cat­ed in the Unit­ed States. Jaresko is a for­mer State Depart­ment offi­cer with close links to the US Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment. The appoint­ments come as Ukraine is close to default­ing on a $17bn IMF loan and mem­bers of Ukraine’s fas­cist vol­un­teer bat­tal­ions are lob­by­ing Con­gress for mil­i­tary aid. Poroshenko is also grant­i­ng cit­i­zen­ship to for­eign-born neo-Nazis, as well as insti­tut­ing an infor­ma­tion min­istry that crit­ics have com­pared to The Min­istry of Truth from George Orwell’s 1984.