I realize the economy is slumping and likely to crash…because MAGA is playing blackmail chicken with the (mostly Republican spending) debt. Their austerity plan is economy destroying too, and puts millions more homeless on the streets and jobless.
It’s also responsible for the bank failures thanks to 2018 MAGA banking deregulation because apparently the right cannot remember how their deregulation of banks caused the global deep recession/depression in 08.

Yes, this MAGA shitshow continues to hurt America intentionally.

Asinine whining.

As was written in the obituary being referenced, he was once an austere religious scholar. The quickly changed headline was a cut and paste mistake, which was immediately replaced with "extremist leader". Get over it idiot snowflakes. No matter what the WaPo does, these morons will twist it to try to make it seem negative.

Now, @bobknight33, please explain why Trump notified the Russians ahead of the operation but ignored his lawful obligation to notify Congress. The answer is obvious, he believes he works for Putin/ the Russians and not America. His moronic excuse, that congress would have leaked it so he couldn't tell them, is not only just dumb, it's wrong and illegal, and doesn't make a whit of sense since he did tell our enemies-Russia and Syria. If congress had leaked anything about the secret operation before it was declassified, he could and would have insisted the DOJ prosecute them for releasing top secret info....and exposing top secret information is something Trump has done repeatedly, once directly telling Russian ambassadors top secret information that did irreparable harm to ongoing intelligence gathering against Daesh, then declassifying it after the fact.

Which mistake makes zero difference, and which is an intentional attack against American law, our government, and the constitution?

States like Wisconsin and Kansas have implemented conservative policies - how's that worked out for them? Here's a hint. Go ahead and point me to a counter-example, where cuts to social programs and austerity have provided a benefit to the people of a state. I'm damned sick of the false promises of so-called "conservative values" - they don't fucking work, all evidence supports the notion that they don't fucking work, and they're destroying the progress this country made during the early and mid-20th century to create a strong middle class.

It's in these people's own best interests to support progressive policies, but the politics of division and hatred, and the highly effective lies from the likes of Fox News have blinded them.

"That's what mature people would do.."

For some reason, in my head all i can see is a posh woman sat in one of Titanic's lifeboats, which is tipping side to side as desperate, freezing people try to climb in. "If they tip the lifeboat over we'll all die, why can't they be more mature about it?"

Trump is shit for the US and for the world, but it's a bit of an own goal to blame people who Hillary Clinton & her political supporters couldn't convince that either a) the US would be significantly better off with her over Trump for it to matter or b) they individually would benefit from what she had to offer. They don't owe you votes, you have to win their support by making them believe they'll be better off.

This is more of the same shit that we've been shoveled for years - neoliberalism is the ONLY way. Compromise, grow up, be mature, *agree with us or you're to blame for what happens*. What's the end game of a political system where the blame for the result goes to anyone who didn't vote for the two largest parties?

Look, the centre can't energise people because they don't have anything hopeful or interesting to offer. If you want a message that carries well, if you want the energy and positivity to overcome trump then it HAS to come from the left. Anti-fascist protests have attracted so many thousands of people from a position of love & togetherness, largely organised by socialist women. See Kristian Hernandez for example.

You can't get people out and marching and waving signs saying "We Want More Austerity" or "We Want Tough Talk On Minimum Wage But No Real Action" - you need a message and a hope that will inspire kids from universities to come out in droves and have those difficult conversations with friends, strangers, and their families. Have them out in the streets with music & activity spreading a positive message and showing people that there IS strength and love in a community that comes together. You need something that will inspire an entire population of forgotten black communities. YOU FIGHT HATE WITH LOVE, NOT THE COMPROMISE OF THE CENTRE. You know what the compromise of the centre gets you? It gets you a man who thinks adding "on many sides, on many sides" is how you present a balanced statement, and an audience who agrees.

The chattering classes like Maher have done very well for a very long time out of neoliberalism. He's been on the TV for years talking about the results of that ideology, earning a good livelihood off it. He has a very nice suit, looks healthy and happy, probably a nice house, looking forward to pension and good healthcare. He's calling people who have sickness and exhaustion, living in rented apartments in rough areas, looking forward to the sweet release of death, immature.

So pardon me if i say fuck off Maher; stop asking people with nothing to keep compromising your way. If you want their support, compromise their way. And if you want their energy and fire, you're going to have to share control of the reins because talk is cheap. Give them a Bernie.

Sorry for the rant.

Your video, mark blythe taking the senate to school over austerity, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

15:05-15:30: you tell Mr and Mrs Front-Porch that your loonie of 1871 cannot be compared to your loonie of 2013 (year of this interview). You went off the gold standard in '33, you abandoned the peg in '70, and your currency has been free-floating ever since. Yes, the ratio of debt to GDP has some importance, but so does the nature of your currency. Just look at Greece and Japan, where the former uses a foreign currency and the latter uses its own, sovereign, free-floating currency.

Pay back the national debt -- have you thought that through?

First, the Bank of Canada is the monopolist currency issuer for the loonie, so explain to me in detail just how the issuer of the currency is supposed to borrow the currency from someone else? If you're the issuer of the currency, you spend it into existence, and use taxation as a means to create demand for your currency, and to free resources for the government to acquire, because you can only ever buy what is for sale.

Second, every government bond is someone else's asset. An interest-bearing asset. A very safe asset, in the case of Canada, the US, the UK, Japan, etc. "Paying back the debt" means putting a bullet into just about every pension fund in the world that doesn't rely exlusively on private equity or other sorts of volatile toilet paper.

There's a distributional issue with these bonds (they are concentrated in the hands of the non-working class, aka the rich), no doubt about it. But most of the other issues are strictly political, not economical.

What if the interest rate rises 1%? The central bank can lower the interest rate to whatever it damn well pleases, because nobody can ever outbid the currency issuer in its own currency. Remember, the central banks were the banks of the treasuries. The whole notion of an independent central bank was introduced to stop these pesky leftists from spending resources on plebs. That's why central banks were often removed from democratic control and handed over to conservative bankers. If the Treasury wants an interest rate of 2% on its bonds, it tells its central bank to buy any excess that haven't been auctioned off at this rate. End of story.

What if the market stops buying government bonds? Then the central bank buys the whole lot. However, government bonds are safe assets, and regulations demand a certain percentage of safe assets in certain portfolios, so there is always demand for the bonds. Just look at the German Bundesanleihen. You get negative real rates on 10 year bonds, and they are still in very high demand. It's a safe asset in a world of shitty private equity vaporware.

But, but.... inflation! Right, the hyperinflation of 2006 is still right around the corner. Just like Japan hasn't been stuck near deflation for two decades, and all the QE by the BoE and the ECB has thrown both the UK and the Eurozone into double-digit inflation territory. Not! None of these economies are running near maximum capacity/full employment, and very little actual spending (the scary, scary "fiscal policy") has been done.

But I'm going off track here, so.... yeah, you can pay back your public debt. Just be very aware of what exactly that entails.

As for the poster-child Latvia: >10% of the population left the country.

Here's a different poster-child instead, with the hindsight of another 4 years of austerity in Europe after this interview: Portugal. The Portuguese government told Master of Coin Schäube to take a hike, and they are now in better shape than the countries who just keep on slashing.

On a different note: Marx was wrong about the proletariat. Treating them like shit doesn't make them rebellious, it makes them lethargic. Otherwise goons like Mario Rajoy would have had their comeuppance by now.

PS: Blyth's book on Austerity is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in its history or its current effects in particularly the Eurozone.

*doublepromote

Mark's been on the money since about the time he wrote "Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea", but there have been two significant developments in Europe that he seemingly didn't see coming: Portugal and the UK.

The Left Alliance in Portugal has basically been giving Schäuble the finger for two years now, with their unilateral end to austerity. How dare they defy the master of coin?! If Schäuble says you need another round of austerity, by God, you better tighten your belts, even if they are already around your neck.

Unsurprisingly, everyone going along with austerity without having a completely export-dependent economy is in deep doo-doo. Meanwhile, those pesky Portuguese actually managed to massively reduce unemployment, despite running a deficit that is entirely too small for their current situation. But that's a different story.

And then there's the UK. There's Corbyn. Tribune of the Plebs. Managed to get the youth voting by offering actual left-wing policies (the "radical youth", as the NYT likes to call them, while claiming that the warmongering, Constitution-shredding, wage-depressing, ecosphere-destroying "centrists" are not the real radicals). Managed to turn quite a lot of UKIP voters around as well. Within striking distance of the Tories, despite the media running 24h a day of drivel like "Jezza's Jihadi Comrades" -- Goebbels would be ashamed of the crudeness of the propaganda campaign by the Sun/Daily Mirror/etc.

The populist left is back, bitches. Corbyn and Sanders are the first steps past the neoliberal warmongers of the Third Way. The Obama experience of a corporatist disguised as a left populist may have given us The Orange One, but it also put another nail into the coffin of neoliberalism.

Antonio Gramsci, founding member of the Italian communist party, who was killed by the fascist regime of Mussolini, gave us the appropriate description of our time:
"The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."

That's your Trump. That's your opioid epidemic. That's the EU's austerity program in Greece, doing twice as much damage as the German occupation in WW2.

The outcome was astonishing, even i couldn't believe it and i've been campaigning for it since 2015. All of this might be out of date 3 hours after i post it, because things are happening fast.

Theresa May has decided to go into government with the DUP propping her up. If you have kept up in the last 6 weeks or so with all the smears about Corbyn/IRA/Sinn Fein and terrorism, then you should understand that the DUP is basically the *other* side of the irish conflict. They are socially conservative and many of their beliefs fall in line with sharia laws; abortion illegal (including for sexual assault or incest cases), homophobia wrong and harmful to society, creationist beliefs, climate change deniers. That list might have less impact to some in the US but in British politics, it's out there on the fringe, quite extreme.

In a month from tomorrow there will be the July marches in Northern Ireland (and elsewhere in UK), and we already saw a march yesterday where unionists (~DUP supporters) trashed a nationalist pub (~Sinn Fein supporters).

So now consider. Nationalists have been dragged through the dirt by Conservative MPs and in the press; accused of being terrorists in order to smear Corbyn to stop him getting power. Whereas unionists are being courted by the Conservative government, and the press turning a blind eye to the DUP and their connections to domestic terrorism.

The northern irish peace process was a great achievement and still stands despite bad feeling on both sides. Part of the good friday agreement that ensures this peace says that the UK and Irish governments must act as neutral mediators in times of disagreement between factions in NI.

So now it becomes clear why Jeremy Corbyn refused to criticise either the unionists or the nationalists in particular - as a true leader with a fucking brain in his head, he understood that to take sides or score points would be to risk Britain's safety and the safety of communities in NI. The reason people were able to smear him as a terrorist sympathiser and danger to this country is *because* he refused to say or do anything that endangered this country.

And it becomes rather worrying that the tories have risked all of that hard work and all of our safety in order to keep power for just a little bit longer. There are already talks of a legal challenge from nationalists.

The good side to this is that it seems doomed to failure. May's credibility is broken, in the UK and in Europe. The alliance with the DUP almost certainly can't happen or last very long. The only alternative leaders to May would make the Conservatives less popular. Polls that saw this surge coming are predicting now that Labour would do even better if another election happened right now. The last time this happened was Ted Heath, whose minority government did not last long, and Labour took over after a few days, and won an election a few months later.

Austerity is well and truly broken as an ideology.

Oh, and all the talk of "the death of social democracy" in europe was actually the death of triangulating centrists who have become completely alienated from ordinary people. Socialism lives.

So this is relevant because of a recent surge in support for "radical left" (i.e. democratic socialist, centre-left) Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn who has had a huge surge in popularity in recent weeks in a general election campaign he was expected to catastrophically lose by all mainstream sources.

Since winning two Labour party leadership elections in 2015, voted in by historic margins by ordinary members having their say for the first time, he has faced hostile criticism from all mainstream media sources and most politicians including his own party.

The grass roots, which helped drive his earlier victories, appears to be doing the same thing for him in this general election campaign. The grass roots involvement has included youth musicians, artists and activists coming together from multiple campaigns (Save The NHS, WASPI, most unions, including teachers, fire, police and transport, and far too many other interest groups to mention, including multiple disability campaigners). As well as individuals, parents, elderly, and Momentum - a group formed in the afterglow of his leadership win.

On the other hand, Theresa May's and the Tory party's campaign has gone from disaster to disaster. After claiming to be the party of economic security, they released an entirely uncosted manifesto (Labour's was fully costed, other party's included some costings). After trying to make it a match of personalities, she has gone from robotic gaffe to robotic gaffe, dodging questions whilst Corbyn's easy charm and honesty has gone quite a way to show those weaknesses up. She has claimed to be stable and strong, and the best hand to negotiate Brexit, but performed u-turn after u-turn and is now avoiding all but mandatory press contact because her and her brand have become toxic, thanks to things like the "Dementia Tax" and a promise to vote again on allowing barbaric fox hunting. She has been caught out, and regardless of the results of the general election, Theresa May is finished as Conservative leader. Potentially, the back of austerity has been broken and exposed. A movement has been started and even if the Tory's win, watch out for a mass people power'd intervention over their heinous plans.

God i could go on, this has been amazing to watch. Obviously i'm biased towards Labour, and whilst a centre-right opponent might describe things differently, the facts are the same.

Significant things are happening in the UK right now, not wholly dissimilar from the rise of Sanders, only this time it's for the actual prime minister position - Corbyn managed to outmaneuver the corruption of his party. If the election was 2 weeks longer i would predict a huge Labour landslide. After being so ridiculed by a hostile media for so long, election bias rules have forced the press into giving Corbyn a fair hearing and the more people see, the more they appear to like. The question is, have people already cast their vote by post? Will people turn up and vote? A big turnout is expected to favour Labour. A strong youth turnout will be hugely beneficial to Labour.

If Hinkley Point C is any indication, you're not going to find someone to finance/build a nuclear power plant, not in a capitalist society.

It's a massive upfront investment that private entities are basically allergic to; it cannot be insured due to the massive damage caused if things go south on you, so you need the government to act as a backstop; the price you'd have to charge per MWh is humongous compared to solar/wind, so you need massive subsidies, and that's without the ridiculous amount of rent-seeking corporations insist on nowadays.

That, to me, sounds like private is out. Hinkley Point C is being built by EDF, aka the French state, and EDF is struggling not be dragged into the abys by Areva, after the EPR in Flamanville is nothing short of a financial disaster. And we're not even talking about the troubles they are in for having fudged the specifications on the pressure vessels of more than 20 French power plants. Cost-cutting measures, as always.

So, which capitalist state is going to pick up the tab? Any volunteers? Over here, we cannot even get bridges fixed before they collapse...

And to be honest, I'm not entirely sure I would want a profit-oriented enterprise or austerity-supporting government construct something like an NPP these days. Look at the construction sites at Flamanville and Olkiluoto, they are modern towers of Babylon, with subcontractors of subcontractors from 30 different countries working for povery wages. Anyone think either of these, should they ever be finished at all, will come even close to the safety standards layed out in their official plans?

Wow, absolutely the opposite reaction to me.

I thought Rogue One was a travesty of film making. The characters were bland and underdeveloped, the plot made little sense and the dialogue was awful. The only redeeming aspect were the special / practical effects and art.

I would criticise Force Awakens for treading safe in replicating the plot of A New Hope to a ridiculous degree but the characters had a sense of identity, purpose and relatability. Most of the set pieces (Han Solo, Jakku, Falcon escape) were memorable.

The lightsaber battle definitely suffered from FX over-use. What made the one in Empire Strikes Back compelling is the austere focus of it as a battle of wills. At least this one was less ridiculous than the lava clusterfuck of Revenge of the Sith.

For Kylo Ren, a lot will depend on whether he remains a bland, corrupted villain or develops into a repentant anti-hero. Hopefully they won't follow the Vader/Emperor arc too closely. In any case, he's certainly going to take back seat to Snoke as primary villain.

Mark Blyth is my third favorite Scot, right after two brothers who are dear friends of mine. After his famous interview for Athens Live, every video of his released by the Watson Institute has pretty much been a must-watch, particularly his takes on "The Deplorables" and the Front Nationale.

I got his book "Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea" after it was praised heavily over at NakedCapitalism 3-4 years ago -- to me, there is no bigger compliment for an economist than praise by Yves and the commentariat over at NC.

His takes on the mercantilism of Germany are among the best, and by far the clearest. Bill Mitchell had some great pieces on it as well, but Blyth's capacity for facilitating understanding of these concepts is on a different level entirely.

So do I disagree with him on parts of his economic analysis? Yes, but only on the fringes where MMT/functional finance is concerned.

Check out the companion talk to his book:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQuHSQXxsjM

And a recent bit:
https://youtu.be/vGiHiZyKuAE?t=43m2s (juicy, this one)

Your video, austerity is complete horseshit-mark blythe, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This achievement has earned you your "Pop Star" Level 46 Badge!

@Stormsinger

i can agree with the intent of your comment but i think it ignores a far greater,and possibly more dangerous facet of this current election cycle.

look,
when the DNC began it's political play to nudge sanders out,and was changing the rules of application to keep laurence lessig off the ballot.it became obvious (to me anyways) that clinton was tagged for the run,and the DNC was attempting to steal sanders thunder,which was shockingly impressive,and redirect it to boost clinton.

but the DNC had failed to successfully execute this plan because they didn't understand the true nature of those sanders supporters.so their plan backfired.

the RNC did almost the EXACT same thing with trump.they hated the man,wanted nothing to do with him,but they saw how powerful his campaign was picking up steam and they attempted to play the long con.for a year they allowed trump to do and say whatever he wanted,with little rebuttal or regard.they watched as trump got bigger,and bolder,and more brash.they watched his numbers climb consistently..and they waited.and after a year,they attempted to step in and steal trumps thunder by offering a more "reasonable" candidate.

ok ok...enough with the trump.
you want cruz?...nope.
how about ben carson? he is a sweet guy and BLACK....nope.
marco rubio?he is spanish with immigrant parents...nope
john kasich?...nope

because the RNC didn't get it either.they too,attempted to steal trumps thunder and their plan backfired.

liberals didnt get it.
conservatives didnt get it.
corporate media didnt get it.
political pundits,who get PAID to get it,didnt get it.
pollsters didnt get it.
suzy mcprettyface who reads the teleprompter didnt get it.

but the americans who lived in those dead midwestern towns got it.they may not understand neoliberalism,but they could see the effects by the boarded up stores,closed banks and the only jobs to have were the night shift at the one fast food joint left in the entire town.

these are the very same people who may not fully comprehend what the bank bailouts meant,or how austerity affected them,but they understood that the biggest industry in their town was no longer coal,or steel,or fishing but production of meth.they saw small shops close and crumble under the weight of a walmart superstore,and chains of pill mills.

they watched as construction jobs dried up,and private prisons expanded.there are some towns in texas and florida that literally survive on the incarceration of other americans.so they may not have fully understood that the "war on drugs" is actually a war on people,but they certainly could see the after-effects.

and these people were being told..everyday..that the economy was doing great.
that unemployment was at an all time low.
that the american dream was still attainable.
and at the very same time they were also being told that if you were on food stamps you were a loser,and a leech.
that if you lost your home it was YOUR fault.
that if you couldnt find a job you were lazy.
and if you DID happen to find a job,but it paid minimum,well then you should have gone to college or made better choices.

and since when did it become a virtue to exploit the hopeless and the desperate? to take advantage of someones misfortune and pay them pennies to do a job,but god forbid someone actually demands what they feel they are worth,because then you are accused of being a rip off artist!

when did THIS tactic become and american ideology?

and that really is the core nugget of this tale.
the ideology of america.
the amercian dream.
it was dead,and those people finally got it.
and there is NOTHING more fanatical or zealous than a defeated idealist.

so you can judge them for voting trump,but i think we should also understand WHY they voted for trump.

chris hedges wrote a truthdig piece that is far more eloquent and illuminating than anything i could ever put to paper.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/we_are_all_deplorables_20161120

Looking back on Pie's take on the Brexit vote may be helpful in light of Trump's. There's good discussion there on how the working class has been getting fucked over by years of trickle-down Reaganomics, corporatism, and austerity have played into the UK's vote on Brexit.

The same groups in the US have chosen Trump over Clinton's faux-left elitism.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Jonathan-Pie-on-Brexit

By contrast, Keith Oberman lists reasons to be outraged by Trump,

http://videosift.com/video/176-Shocking-Things-Donald-Trump-Has-Done-This-Election

which plays well into CGP Grey's theory on memes and anger:

http://videosift.com/video/This-Video-Will-Make-You-Angry-CGP-Grey