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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: pogohere who wrote (99898)	11/25/2008 9:39:22 AM
From: bart13	5 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

And some specifics from Zarlenga: The American Monetary Act, a three part reform to bring our money system under proper public control agrees in its main features with the Chicago Plan: (the latest formulation of the Act is viewable at monetary.org First: It incorporate the Federal Reserve banks into the U.S. Treasury where money will be created by the government as money, not as private interest-bearing debt; and will be spent into circulation to promote the general welfare and monitored to be neither inflationary nor deflationary. Second: It removes the banks privilege to create purchasing media through the fractional reserve system. Fractional reserves are elegantly ended by the U.S. government initially loaning banks enough money at interest to bring reserves to 100%, converting all the past monetized credit, into U.S. government money. Banks then act as intermediaries accepting deposits and loaning them out to borrowers, what people think they do now. Third: It Spends newly created money into circulation on infrastructure, including education and healthcare needed for a growing society, starting with the $1.5 trillion that the American Society of Civil Engineers estimate is needed for infrastructure repair; creating good jobs across our nation, re-invigorating local economies and re-funding all levels of government. Full article here: monetary.org

To: pogohere who wrote (99898)	11/25/2008 10:35:42 AM
From: Robin Plunder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

"I could regale you yet again about the power of the analytical thinking of Hyman Minsky, complete with his Forward Journey turning into his Moment, followed by his Reverse Journey.5 But I don’t need to do that any more: we’ve collectively lived it and are now caught in the debt-deflationary pathologies of “the paradox of deleveraging.”6 Not everybody in the private sector can delever at the same time without creating a depression. Accordingly, the sovereign must go the other way, levering up the public balance sheet. And Washington has finally started to do so with appropriate vigor and enthusiasm. It’s not a pretty picture. In fact, it’s repugnant, giving proof to the proposition that breaking the paradox of deleveraging does involve socializing the downside of previously profitable private sector activities. In a recent speech, I called it “creeping socialism” and was interrupted by an irate, older man in the back of the room bellowing, “It ain’t creeping socialism, it’s galloping socialism!” I really didn’t have a soothing come back, noting that many things are what they are only in the eye of the beholder. But his point wasn’t lost on me or anybody else in the room. And it is not lost on Washington, DC either, I can assure you. If the sovereign must backstop a private sector activity that produces a public good, then the sovereign will, at least in a democracy, rightfully demand both bottom-up and macro-prudential rules to harness the greed that lubricates the invisible hand of capitalism. Yes, the visible fist of government and the invisible hand are presently engaged in a massive arm wrestling contest in the provision of financial services. And the fist is winning. At least for now. Capitalism, and especially financial market capitalism, brought this outcome upon itself through greed and hubris. Capitalism is now re-grouping and learning how to play by new rules, which are still being written. And ultimately, I’m sure, capitalistic bankers will once again bend those rules in the pursuit of higher profitability. And that’s okay, I think. In the end, we really don’t want to turn our banking system into the DMV [Dept of Motor Vehicles]. At the same time, we also don’t want our banking system to be nothing more than a betting parlor. Or, in the famous words of Keynes again: “Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.” " yes, this gets at the fatal flaws in folks like zarlenga, as probably most on this list are aware...the socialism, violation of property rights, intervention in the economy by central plannners working for the public good (hohoho)..these are the folks that have been feeding on and destroying our political system, ....no thanks to this BS and free market capitalism brought us here? McCulley has not got a clue about political structure, human rights, or how to preserve them. Robin