Monetary sovereignty

From Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

Ben Bernanke: “The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.”

Alan Greenspan: “Central banks can issue currency, a non-interest-bearing claim on the government, effectively without limit. A government cannot become insolventwith respect to obligations in its own currency.”

St. Louis Federal Reserve: “As the sole manufacturer of dollars, whose debt is denominated in dollars, the U.S. government can never become insolvent, i.e., unable to pay its bills. In this sense, the government is not dependent on credit markets to remain operational.

your personal intuition about U.S. financing likely is wrong.

talk about Social Security or Medicare running short of dollars is misguided. Even if FICA were eliminated, Social Security and Medicare would not need to default on their obligations, unless Congress wished it. They could pay benefits, forever.)

Bitcoin, NFT explainer

Two hour tour

If someone pitches you on a "great" Web3 project, ask them if it requires buying or selling crypto to do what they say it does.

Comprehensive crypto FAQ  from the NYT

Understanding crypto now — especially if you’re naturally skeptical — is important for a few reasons.

The first is that crypto wealth and ideology is going to be a transformative force in our society in the coming years.

despite the goofy veneer, crypto is not just another weird internet phenomenon. It’s an organized technological movement, armed with powerful tools and hordes of wealthy true believers, whose goal is nothing less than a total economic and political revolution.

The second reason to pay attention to crypto is that understanding it now is the best way to ensure it doesn’t become a destructive force later.

blockchains are public, permanent databases that nobody owns

What are the actual uses of crypto, beyond financial speculation?

crypto proponents will tell you that the biggest benefit of decentralization is the ability to create currencies, apps and virtual economies that are resistant to censorship and top-down control. 

Dan Wang on China

Pretty insightful

Beijing is redeemed by its intellectual life. It is the center not just of state power, but also universities and the biggest-dreaming startups. For those who can work up the courage to confront the mess of its urban city, a sparkling dinner awaits.

Everything that can go wrong in urban design has gone wrong in Beijing. The climate is arid and prone to northerly sandstorms. Its streets are unwalkable

Each region has a different personality. The north is economically dysfunctional. Large parts of it suffer from resource dependency, environmental problems, and the population loss that results from these trends.

Shanghai leads east China, a manufacturing and cultural center since the 10th-century Song dynasty, which counts the nearby cities of Hangzhou, Suzhou, and other medium-large cities. And there’s no obvious leader in the southeast, but it is between Shenzhen, the richest city in the region, and Guangzhou, the political capital of the province and a hub of international commerce since the 18th century.

Omicron is not really “mild”

omicron and us

Comments by GM are important 

Neoliberalism

Hell is Truth seen too late

The contemporary literature on neoliberalism has grown so large as to be unwieldy. For some on the left, this has presented an occasion to denounce it altogether. The purpose of this talk is to briefly diagnose some of the possible reasons for the spreading disaffection, and to link that diagnosis to some important developments in current politics. One of the most notable aspects of the literature is its unwillingness to approach neoliberalism first and foremost as a set of epistemological precepts, recruited in service of a political program. 

the critical importance of epistemology stands not as some abstract thesis, but has had dire consequences in at least two recent political battles: the post-election fascination with ‘fake news’; and the impending Uberization of modern science under the banner of ‘openness’.

Against systemic corruption

It’s always easy to find something and get outraged, quite rare to 

develop a plan to fight it

Justice Kennedy’s remark in the majority opinion [Citizen’s United], “The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy,” was out of touch with reality at the time and is now nothing short of fatuous. The problem is not just “the appearance of influence or access,” but the pervasive reality of it. There’s a name for this kind of “influence and access.” Constitutional scholars such as Larry Lesssig and Zephyr Teachout call it “dependence corruption,” or “systemic corruption.” In their writings on the subject these scholars show that the founders regarded this type of corruption as the greatest threat, going forward, to de facto democratic government.

Jayapal has introduced 

H.R. 48 which removes corporate personhood…

Rhetoric and propaganda

From Bloomberg

Upgrade your masks!

Nice thread on respirators

It’s not all bad

There was some good news in 2021

Perhaps reading these will ameliorate the sense of doom…

Intelligent Optimism. This is the idea that if we seek out and share stories of human progress we inspire hope for a better future. Why do we care about it? Because we believe that to transform doom the antidote is hope, and to create hope we need to see it, read about it, and acknowledge that there are good things and good people in the world.

At the same time, we also know that our climate future is genuinely scary and that in other parts of the world people are recovering from fires, floods, earthquakes

things can be bad, and getting better

Collapse, Renewal and the knowledge that what you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.

Is this just delusional/wishful thinking? Or propaganda to keep the people from revolution? Or will it bend the curve up at least ever so slightly…?

It did make me feel better to read, so there’s that at least