As a liberal (without TDS), I would prefer Trump just stay another 4, and we get a real Democratic candidate.

The good thing about Trump is that there is so much gridlock that neither party has the ability to pass any laws. Shit just coasts along without much change.

If Democrats win now, while TDS is in full swing, any law they pass will be an ideological (non-technocratic) over-correction.

I get that he's "the democratic party's man", but FFS, take things seriously for a change. Yang, Tulsi, Bern', all better candidates by far. But since they're not obedient party dogs I guess they're unsuitable for the job...

I mean, what's the logic? Hey, people are dumb enough to vote for a narcissist, so they must also be dumb enough to vote for someone brain damaged? Are they trying to double down on last election?

Really? This guy?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FCGLidQN6M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA-GoeFGyIc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Nl1b1rngXU#t=11m1s

I mean, his youtube campaign ad has him stumbling around for words. If that train wreck is what his own campaign put out, how bad were his other takes for them to say 'all right, this is the best we're gonna get' ?

If there ever was a campaign that embodied "party over country", this is it.

-scheherazade

ECB Research Bulletin:

In an economy with its own fiat currency, the monetary authority and the fiscal authority can ensure that public debt denominated in the national fiat currency is non-defaultable, i.e. maturing government bonds are convertible into currency at par. With this arrangement in place, fiscal policy can focus on business cycle stabilisation when monetary policy hits the lower bound constraint. However, the fiscal authorities of the euro area countries have given up the ability to issue non-defaultable debt. As a consequence, effective macroeconomic stabilisation has been difficult to achieve.

Translation:
- all members of the eurozone effectively use a foreign currency
- they can default, because they do not and cannot issue debt in their currency
- fiscal policy has thus been completely neutered

Ergo, national parliaments have a significantly smaller policy space compared to countries with their own currency. Our parliaments intentionally surrender power to unelected technocrats, even control of the national budget, which is the primary power available to any parliament anywhere.

"Sorry, lad. We cannot pay for healthcare/pension/infrastructure/education/wages/X, we have to maintain a balanced budget to appease the market." Yet it is still illegal to call for the guillotine...

Meanwhile, Japan doesn't give a fuck. The BoJ has been vacuuming up outstanding debt like there's no tomorrow. It currently holds in excess of 40% of all government debt, effectively canceling it. It's just book-keeping. The Treasury issues the debt, the CB buys the debt. Both are part of the consolidated government sector, ergo no debt. "Hyperinflation!", they scream. Can you hear them? Except Japan has been fighting deflation for two decades, with no end in sight.

Yet the inflation-hawks are still treated as persons of authority. Flat-earthers, the lot of 'em.

And my country wants the rest of Europe to sign on to the most moronic law in German history: the "Schuldenbremse", which makes running a deficit illegal at the constitutional level (except for undefined "emergencies"). They are either a) brainwashed, b) idiots, or c) straight up evil. And I'm not sure which one I prefer.

Democracy IS the main check and balance.

Unlimited democracy is a theoretical construct.
Democracy is always "limited". There is always some "merit" bar for voting. There is always a limited agenda of what one can vote for (and get it too). One can experiment with the constraints and see what results one gets. Some experiments can be frightening, but as long as the basic principle remains (that you can attempt to repair the damage next time you vote), thats fine.

Levels of democracy (limits by "merit" and agenda or candidate availability) vary to an incredible extent among countries which on the surface look similar or even within one country.

Noocracy on the other hand proposes to find geniuses and let them loose. I am against that. Same with philosophers (that one is really funny), and technocrats (and their robots and AI).

Perfect government - humans dont need perfect day care centres. Humans need motivation to live. AI or aliens ruling us would be very depressing.

In specialised fields meritocratic peer reviewed groups work reasonably well if they are constantly renewed, and political parties can be like that for periods of time. But meritocratic peer review breaks down with political power, populism, bribery, backstabbing, nepotism and the rest of politics. Parties usually seem well organised when they are in opposition. When in government, things (people) start falling apart.

Granted there are countries where governments are democratically elected yet stable for decades and appear to be working as a meritocratic peer reviewed system. They are just lucky I guess.

Maybe if the noo tried harder they could achieve that?

As always, my views are just a layman's perspective with no claims to expertise.

@RedSky

You correctly point out the intent of the reform, to stop fractional banking which they diagnosed as a primary driver of volatility within the financial sector. They want to revert back to a system where the banks were intermediaries the way you described it: deposit leads to loan, in this case at a maximum ratio of 1:1, no leveraging.

Unlike the current system where bank deposits are mostly created by banks themselves -- the act of lending creates deposits. In fact, deposits are liabilities of the banks, not assets. Reserves are assets, but they are only traded between entities with accounts at the central bank. And, in normal times, are provided quite freely by the central bank in exchange for other assets.

Anyway, "Vollgeld" places the ability to create money exclusively in the hands of the central bank. Controlling the amount of money in circulation was a concept most central banks were eager to drop during the '90s, since it never worked. Demand for credit is volatile, central control is inflexible, even if they could somehow quanfity the need for it ex ante -- which they can't. Hell, they can't even do it ex post. You can't quantify the need for additional money beyond what's already in circulation if the central bank's action set the conditions for a dynamic development in the first place. You can't know in advance what increases in production need to be financed, you can't know how demand for liquidity evolves over time. The quantity theory of money was buried for a reason, it ignores reality.

Anyway, I applaud the proponents of Vollgeld for pointing out the dysfunctionalities of our fractional reserve system as well as how questionable it is, ethically, to hand over so much power to a small cabal of financial elites. In fact, I'm quite ecstatic to hear them point out that a nation with a sovereign, free-floating currency does not need to finance deficits through banks -- how very MMT of them. Go OMF!

But their proposed solutions are a fallback to "the market will stabilise itself if left alone, a completely independant central bank will keep the quantity of money in circulation at just the right amount". This hands-off approach resulted in absolute devastation whenever it was applied. They want to turn the state into a regular economic subject that has to adapt to the amount of money currently in circulation. It's (the illusion of) control by technocrats, where you get to disguise policies against the masses as "economic neccessities". Basically the German Eurozone on steroids.

As for the absolute independence of the central bank: you are right, that is not strictly part of the Swiss Vollgeld initiative. But it's what almost every proponent of Vollgeld within the German-speaking circles argues for, including major drivers behind the initiative. Can't let politicians have control over our central bank or else they'll abuse it for populist policies.

They are true believers in technocrat solutions, completely seperate from democratic control.

PS: I cut down my ranting to a minimum of MMT arguments, given that many people see it as just a different sort of voodoo economics.

Edit: Elizabeth Warren's 21st Century Glass Steagal Act strikes me as a rather promising way to solve a great number of problems with the financial industry without going back into the realm of monetarism.

Italy:
Renzi is creating the conditons for a new bubble? Through deficit spending on... what? Unless they start building highways in the middle of nowhere like they did in Spain, I don't see any form of bubble coming out of deficit spending in Italy. The country's been in a major recession for quite some time now, with no light at the end of the tunnel and a massive shortfall in private spending. But meaningful deficit spending requires Renzi to tell Germany and the Eurogroup to pound sand -- not sure his balls have descended far enough for that just yet.

Referendum in Switzerland:
"Vollgeld". That's the German term for what the initiators of this referendum are aiming for: 100% reserve banking. It's monetarism in disguise, and they are adament to not be called monetarists. But that's what it is. Pure old-fashioned monetarism. Even if you don't give a jar of cold piss about all these fancy economic terms and theories, let me ask you this: the currency you use is quite an important part of all your daily life, isn't it? So why would anyone in his or her right mind remove it entirely from democratic control (even constitutionally)?
If you want to get into the economic nightmares of it, here are a few bullet points:
- no Overt Monetary Financing (printing money for deficit spending) means no lender of last resort and complete dependence on the market, S&P can tell you to fuck off and die as they did with PIIGS
- notion that the "right amount of money in circulation" will enable the market to keep itself in balance -- as if that ever worked
- notion that a bunch of technocrats can empirically determine this very amount in regular intervalls
- central bank is supposed to maintain price stability, nothing else -- single mandate, works beautifully for the ECB, at least if you like 25% unemployment
- concept is founded in the notion that the financial economy is the source of (almost) all problems of the "real" economy, thereby completely ignoring the fact that decades of wage suppression have simply killed widescale purchasing power of the masses, aka demand

Visegrad nations:
From a German perspective, they are walking on thin ice as it is. The conflict with Russia never had much support of the public to begin with, but even the establishment is becoming more divided on this issue. Given the authoritarian policies put in place in Poland recently and the utter refusal to take in their share of refugees, support might fade even more. If the Visegrad governments then decide to push for further conflict with Russia, Brussels and Berlin might tell them, very discreetly, to pipe the fuck down.

Turkey:
Wildcard. He mentioned how they will mess with Syria, the Kurds and Russia, but forgot to mention the conflict between Turkey and the EU. As of now, it seems as if Brussels is ready to pay Ankara in hard cash if they keep refugees away from Greece. Very similar to the deal with Morocco vis-a-vis the Spanish enclave. As long as they die out of sight, all is good for Brussels.

I would add France as a point of interest:
They recently announced that the state of emergency will be extended until ISIS is beaten. In other words, it'll be permanent, just like the Patriot Act in the US. A lof of attention has been given to the authoritarian shift of politics in Poland, all the while ignoring the equally disturbing shift in France. Those emergency measures basically suspend the rule of law in favour of a covert police state. Add the economic situation (abysmal), the Socialist President who avoids socialist policies, and the still ongoing rise of Front National... well, you get the picture.

Regarding the EU, I'll say this: between the refugee crisis (border controls, domestic problems, etc) and the economic crisis, they finally managed to convince me that this whole thing might come apart at the seams after all. Not this year, though, even if the Brits decide to distance themselves from this rotten creation.

Just remember these are people from Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia, who likely do not understand the harm they're doing, but are simply doing what they can to feed their families. Those are some hard knock lives.

And then there's us -- the ignorant technocrats who only become outraged when our access to information catches up to us and teaches us that our viral desire for exotic pets has fueled a harmful trade.

It's just ignorance all around. Our ignorant desires and the ignorant workers our desires have employed. Is there even an evil boss/distributer in all of this? Or is it just ignorance at every single level?

όχι, bitches!

Or as a cartoon, if you prefer.

Edit: With all the nasty fearmongering by the Greek private media and the corrupt elite, it takes balls of steel to basically tell them to fuck off. The Greek economy is fucked³, politicians from the entire Eurozone were arguing for, even demanding the Syriza government to step down, so they can resume business as usual with either the old nepotic elite or freshly installed technocrats. Piss off, the demos replied.

The result itself doesn't matter that much. The process itself, like the Scottish referendum, might have set into motion a development that cannot be stopped nor undone.

Edit #2: the vitriol and pure hatred from the conservatives and many social-democrats is despicable. What champions of democracy they are. Tsipras and Varoufakis should channel their inner FDR and welcome their hatred.

Ostracized to the community of the mad men. Dig it.

@TheFreak: I see what you're saying and I don't ostracize you (as much as you'd LOVE IT), but isn't it the tendency of the intellect to take moments of existence and dramatically augment them? Like a daydream memory only in your head.

BEGIN DRAMATIC MUSIC

The simple form of filming and interviewing this man is as overly dramatic as the scoring, if it were not skipped over by our technocratic brains. I say "our" because were it not for my obsessive hindsight into the comments of others, I'd have ignored these details, as well.

Perhaps the music stands out as more farcical because WE have fallen into the dead zone of normalized behaviors, memetic response; ignoring the obvious fact that a living man in a time now gone, was recorded on camera for all of the world to see and hear and gawk at.

All forms of tampering with that moment in time, including the recording of it -- which he advocated against in the form of "live in the moment" and "LOVE NOW" -- are merely augmentations of the majesty of biological existence; human reality. To be removed of context or placed into whatever context an intellect perceives as worthy.

And then to "CREATE" as is now manifest in our minds as any range of dramatic or mundane; having now been sifted for us to discern or merely to enjoy in passing. We can choose to enjoy fleetingly or dwell on with intellectual criticism, as much as we can ignore it.

Were I deaf, I'd have no understanding, but I'd still see this wild man.

END DRAMATIC MUSIC

@enoch

I'd agree Friedman wasn't directly responsible, but served more as an academic influence and a proponent of a particular approach because many of the Chilean economists who influenced policy had studies in Chicago.

As far as exploiting a crisis, arguably the crisis itself warranted dramatic action. High levels of inflation caused by Allende's money printing to support wholesale nationalisation of industries pretty much required this.

As inflation is self perpetuation by its continuous expectation and can continue even after the original stimulus is gone, there was little choice here. After all it took Volker nearly half a decade of high interest rates to tame it in the US in the early 80s, to do that after an economic and political crisis in a undeveloped country was an entirely different scale of difficult.

Successive governments likely reversed some of the economic policies enacted under his regime, but the foundation I meant was particularly the budgetary position, free trade, and a competitive cadre of private sector exporters. The welfare, health and educational spending were all made possible by this. Without a credible tax base, trying to enact spending on this level while also raising the tax rises would have just precipitated another crisis.

Coming back to inflation and economics, I believe policies against inflation especially, are generally misunderstood in the short term and their benefits unrecognised in the long term. I would probably say the reverse of what you said, economic policy rarely shows tangible results in the short term but almost always in the long term.

It's certainly not perfect. After all economics has the unfavourable position of being the combination of social science, lacking the ability to test results in clinical conditions isolating a single factor and yet requiring highly specific answers to solve its questions. At its best, it offers answers based on the cumulative knowledge accrued from iterative policies, at each point being based on the 'best available knowledge at the time'.

But it has worked, as I like to often mention, with independent central banks, essentially the most technocratic and pure application of economic theory, inflation has become a thing of the past in those countries that have adopted it.

Then again I'm biased as I majored in it at uni

He certainly talked the talk, didn't he...

Then again, all this reminds me of the good old days (pre '68) when the Allied forces were still reading most of our (as in "German citizens'") mail and listening in to innumerable telephone calls, all by hand. Ahhh, those were the days...

To have all your communications analyzed and stored automatically by a bunch of algorithms running on a virtual machine in some remote basement is so awfully technocratic, don't you think? Desperatly needs a human touch.

On a more serious note: we've been fighting tooth and nail for almost a decade to get rid of telecom data retention over here, and to see the clandestine mirror image of it laid bare for all to see is... rejuvenating.

The Man will pay us a visit later this month. It'll be interesting to see if any of our officials have the balls to tell Obama how his NSA puts even the Stasi to shame, where surveillance is concerned.

Neither of these things is education, so why would we apply those standards to it? Critical thinking, creativity and emotional intelligence are not commodities and children are not an engineering problem or a chemical formula. Education is not linear, A+B!=C. As such, teachers are best placed to make decisions about the most effective method of education for their students. Technocrats and businessmen should not be setting education policy at the classroom level and we should not be attempting to convert the educational experience into a set of data points.

He could have mentioned that Germany has a working fiscal union as well, it is a Federal Republic after all. Domestic tranfers between the states is a very successful and popular mechanism, or at least it used to be until a few weeks ago.

But I wanted to point out something else. Germany, with its export-centered economy, is the last country in Europe that could afford general austerity in the peripheral states or the union as a whole. The resulting decline in demand would cripple the German economy more than anything else. The European free-trade zone is paramount to German interests. So why the fuck would they push these extreme austerity measures on GIPSI? Not to mention that avoiding austerity works much better, as shown by Argentina and most recently Iceland.

But it's not just austerity that is being forced upon the periphery. The German proposal to install a European Commissionar to run Greece's finances has raised the stakes enormously. Forfeiture of national sovereignty, that's one fucked up idea of solving problems. Both default and austerity have severe economical consequences for Greece. But austerity and losing sovereignty would add a whole new dimension to the European crisis. Greeks are no strangers to being occupied by foreign powers, particularly the Germans. That's one explosive mixture we're talking about.

Plus, democratically elected governments in Greece and Italy were already replaced by technocrats, so what the hell are we doing here?

very instructive article.

But, my belief that these technocrats only serve whatever political dogma that serves the greedy banksters... is only strengthened by stuff like this.

I would like to send stuff like this to my friends, but they are all completely un-interested in these kinds of technical arguments.

anyhow I blogged that on my tumblr blog. thanks again!


In reply to this comment by GeeSussFreeK:
sigh

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/inside-fed-2006-coming-crisis-12420769
1.html

Some of those technocrats in Greece seem to be fascists as well.

Well, it's not about just calling him a war criminal - he is a war criminal (or that's what the evidence I've seen so far leads me to believe, at least). I wouldn't want diplomatic relations with him, I would want to topple him by force. Like Hitler.

In answer to your question. No, you are not morally responsible for the misery in the world. No more so than your conscience dictates. I do think there's a difference between someone actively forcing someone as opposed to someone who have made some bad choices. At some point we, as a society, should say when enough is enough. If there is a benevolent dictatorship, if you can imagine such a thing, then we should not break that up for the hell of it, if the people don't care. If the people are actively rebelling against their dictator and he strikes back with full force, then I think that we should try to minimize the suffering from it

Do the least harm is basically what I want to live by, but I don't want it to be "I go out in the world to fix suffering where I see it", it's a balancing act, eh? When a certain threshold of suffering is passed, it seems prudent to me to take action.

For instance, if someone was homeless I would not necessarily give him money and stuff, but if someone fell over and hurt their leg, I would. It's all a cost/benefit analysis, the benefit being a limiting of suffering.

/ramble
>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

>> ^gwiz665:
The people are trying to stand up to him, and he's committing outright genocide. Of course, we must do what we can to help the people liberate themselves. Unlike Iraq, this is not just for the hell of it - we are helping the people free themselves, when they do not have the strength themselves, as opposed to Egypt, Tunesia and so on.
If we sit and watch as the civilians are butchered, we are no better (or at least very little better) than the butchers ourselves.

I don't exactly prescribe to your exact moral position on this, but it does seem like a "better" version of Iraq as open rebellion has been happening in the whole region. The tricky problem is, how do you support rebels without directly supporting rebels (look at how well cruise missiles helped stop the fighting in Iraq), while also having to maintain diplomatic relations with the ruler if the rebellion fails, even more so if you are saying he is a war criminal? I can't bring myself to vote for this video though, this lady seemed like she was harboring some irrational hatred for anything US, even though I think it is France (lol?) leading the charge on this one.
Just a little moral question for ya. If you buy a CD player that you don't need, are you morally responsible for the homeless person you didn't give lunch money? Not trying to be snarky, I just find problems with believing in that exact moral position. It would result in a complete stimy of action because you actions could never be probably meshed with all outcomes of maximum happiness. Technocratic morality boredom, signing out!