Reading

Created
Thu, 19/01/2023 - 10:35
The World Europe Made, And Its Death

Most people don’t really get just how extensive European conquest of the world was.

The map’s a bit inaccurate over in Russia: most of Russia is “not Europe” and was conquered — most of it should be green, like North America. Likewise, Japan was conquered by the US, which is a European colony. Leaving aside their brutal war crimes, they were stupid to pick a fight with an industrialized continental power: there was never any chance of winning against the US, as Admiral Yamamoto told them.

Created
Thu, 19/01/2023 - 10:32
Earlier this month, former NY Fed repo guru Zoltan Pozsar wrote one of his most important reports of 2022, in which he described how Putin could unleash hell on the Western financial system by demanding that instead of dollars, Russian oil exporters are paid in gold, effectively pegging oil to gold and launching Petrogold.
Then, China's President Xi visit with Saudi and GCC leaders marked the birth of the petroyuan and a leap in China’s growing encumbrance of OPEC+’s oil and gas reserves: that's because with the China-GCC Summit, "China can now claim to have built a 'special relationship' not only with the '+' sign in OPEC+ (Russia), but with Iran and all of OPEC+."
And now, according to Bloomberg, Saudi Arabia is open to discussions about trade in currencies other than the US dollar, according to the kingdom’s finance minister….
End of an era?

Zero Hedge
Created
Thu, 19/01/2023 - 10:30
His allies don’t understand anything You all remember anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist, don’t you? The guy who said they wanted to made government so small you can drown it in the bathtub? He hasn’t had much to say the last half decade but suddenly his issue is front and center. Unfortunately, today’s Republicans don’t understand what they’re supposed to be doing because they are very deluded and very stupid. And he’s upset: As part of his deal to become House speaker, Kevin McCarthy reportedly promised his party’s conservative hardliners a vote on legislation that would scrap the entire American tax code and replace it with a jumbo-sized national sales tax. The assurance got relatively little attention at the time, drowned out by the many other concessions McCarthy made to win his gavel. But with Democrats already attacking the proposal, some conservatives see it as a political headache in the making. “This is a political gift to Biden and the Democrats,” Grover Norquist, the dean of D.C. anti-tax activists, said in an interview.
Created
Thu, 19/01/2023 - 10:00

New signage at Wolf Studios hints subtly as big things ahead for the Doctor Who Whoniverse Ncuti Gatwa has posted to his Instragram, proudly showing off the new mural greeting visitors to Wolf Studios in Cardiff. It shows a smiling Fifteenth Doctor, still in the remains of the Fourteenth Doctor’s costume, leaning against what seems […]

The post Welcome to the WHONIVERSE! appeared first on Blogtor Who.

Created
Thu, 19/01/2023 - 09:59
From an Indian perspective, it may seem momentarily that China’s economy is slowing while India’s expanded by nearly 7 percent (per World Bank predictions.) Can India catch up with China in a medium term scenario?

This is where the devil lies in the fine print. The heart of the matter is that China’s GDP growth of 3 percent translates as a year-on-year expansion of its economy by a whopping $18 trillion.

To put matters in perspective, China has added a little over five and a half times the size of India’s economy (GDP: $3.5 trillion) in a single year.…

Clearly, with global economic growth likely to decline sharply and global inflation still hovering at high levels in 2023, the economies of major developed economies are likely to show stagflation. Suffice it to say that the European countries will be inclined to view the Chinese market as holding the key to an early economic recovery. Recasting the global supply chains by decoupling from China is going to be easier said than done.
Created
Thu, 19/01/2023 - 08:18
We assess the sectoral impact of the implementation of a "green" employer of last resort (ELR) program in the US, based on an environmental modification of an extended Kurz's (1985) multiplier framework and data from OECD Input-Output tables. We use these multipliers to estimate the impact of an "optimal" ELR, designed to maximize the impact on both output and employment while minimizing both imports and carbon emissions.
Created
Thu, 19/01/2023 - 07:30
The Washington Post’s Philip Bump predictably does the best analysis of this “both sides” excuses for the “classified documents” story: Look, when there’s no need for your rhetoric not to be lazy, you land on lazy rhetoric. If you can carry the day — at least with those who you’re most worried about convincing — with little effort or logical consistency, why bother putting in the effort or assembling that consistency? If your target audience hasn’t even heard the nuances that undercut your point, why bother rebutting those nuances? So it is that we enter our second (third? Who can keep track) week of apologists for former president Donald Trump seeking to equate his effort to retain documents sought by the government with a clutch of documents with classification markings found at President Biden’s home and an office he used.
Created
Thu, 19/01/2023 - 07:08
It’s Wednesday and I have several items to discuss or provide information about today. Today, I discuss the future of the EU-bonds that were issued as part of two main emergency interventions in 2020 as policy makers feared the worse from the pandemic. The question is whether these assets can ever become ‘safe’ in the same way that Japanese government bonds or US treasury bonds are clearly ‘safe’. The answer is that they cannot and the reason goes to the heart of the problem besetting Europe – the fundamental monetary architecture is flawed in the most elemental way. I also provide some updates for MMTed and a great new book. And, of course, this week, I have to remember Jeff Beck in the music segment....
Bill Mitchell – billy blog
EU bonds will not become a ‘safe asset’ – Germany and Co won’t let that happen
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia
Created
Thu, 19/01/2023 - 06:52
Banking and money is an area of ancient debates between post-Keynesians (and their fore-runners) and mainstream economists. Many of these showed up in my earlier book Abolish Money (From Economics)!, with the theme more focussed on money. Although I believe I need to touch on this topic, I want to keep it short. Partly because it appeared in another book, and partly because I am less and less convinced that these debates are that useful for discussing banking.

Note: Once again, this is a draft of a manuscript section from my banking book. It will be in a chapter on modelling banking.

Excellent summary of "exogenous" and "endogenous" as applied to "money." This is important for understanding the relationship of finance and economics, and it underlies a good part of MMT, The descriptive aspect of which involves modeling this relationship conceptually. That is to say, MMT as a theory provides an explanation of the relationship of finance and economics in terms of institutional arrangements. One could say that the mathematical aspect of the modeling  involved is provided by the accounting.

Created
Thu, 19/01/2023 - 06:44
Earlier today,  after I tweeted out that “Proposals to mint $1tn platinum coin are designed to circumvent the US constitution’s “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts,” I got lectured by Nathan Tankus for “not grasping the most elementary legal issues in the topic […]
Created
Thu, 19/01/2023 - 06:05

New year, new Drupal for Nonprofits chat! Join us TOMORROW, Thursday, January 19 at 1pm ET / 10am PT, for our regularly scheduled call to chat about all things Drupal and nonprofits. (Convert to your local time zone.)

This month, frequent chat participant Stephen Musgrave of Capellic will be giving us our long-awaited demonstration of visual regression testing, using tools like Diffy. (Thank you, Stephen!) Got thoughts/questions/concerns? Feel free to share ahead of time in our collaborative Google doc: https://nten.org/drupal/notes!

All nonprofit Drupal devs and users, regardless of experience level, are always welcome on this call.