They're always keen to point out the efficiency of capitalism. When I look at this (source), it tells me that their definition of efficiency might have come from Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary.

@RedSky

First, if it were up to me, you could take over as Minister of Finance in this country tomorrow. Our differences seem miniscule compared to what horrendous policies our last three MoF have pushed. The one prior, ironically, was dubbed the most dangerous man in Europe by The Sun.

We're in agreement on almost everything you mentioned in your last comment, so I'll focus on what I perceive differently.

First, I'd differentiate between fiscal stimulus and fiscal spending, the former being a situational application of the latter. As you said, fiscal stimulus during an economic crisis tends to be inadequate with regards to our macroeconomic objectives. You can neither whip out plans for major investments at a whim nor can you mobilize the neccessary resources quickly enough to make a difference and still be reasonable efficient. Not to mention that it only affects certain parts of the economy (construction, mostly), leaving others completely in the wind. So I'm with you on that one, it's a terribly inefficient and ineffective approach.

Automatic stabilizers work magnificently in this regard, but they barely take any pressure from the lower wage groups, especially if unemployment benefits come with a metric ton of strings attached, as is the case in Germany. A basic income guarantee might work, but that's an entirely different discussion.

The problem I see with merely relying on reasonable automatic stabilizers in the form of payments is that they do put a floor into demand, but do very little to tackle the problem of persistent unemployment due to a lack of jobs. As useful as training and education are, the mere number of highly educated people forced to work mundane jobs tells me that, at best, it doesn't work, and at worst pushes a systemic problem onto the individual, leading to immense pressure. Not to mention the psychological effects of being unemployed when employment is tauted as a defining attribute of a proper person -- aka the demonization of the unemployed.

It's still somewhat decent in Australia, but in Europe... it's quite a horrible experience.

Anyway, my point is that I'd rather see a lot more fiscal spending (permanent!) in the shape of public sector jobs. A lot of work cannot be valued properly by the market; should be done without the expectation of a return of investment (hospitals, anyone?); occurs in sectors of natural monopolies -- all of that should be publicly run. A job guarantee, like your fellow countryman Bill Mitchell advocates quite clearly, might be an approach worth trying out. Economy in the shit? More people on the public payroll, at rather low (but living wage!) wages. Do it at the county/city level and you can create almost any kind of job. If the private sector wants those people instead, they'd have to offer better working conditions. No more blackmail through the fear of unemployment -- you can always take a public job, even if it is at a meagre pay.

I should probably have mentioned that I don't buy into the notion of a stable market. From where I am standing, it's inherently unstable, be it through monopolies/oligopolies, dodging of laws and regulations (Uber), impossibility to price-in externalities (environmental damage most of all) or plain, old cost-cutting leading to a system-wide depression of demand. I'm fine with interfering in the market wherever it fails to deliver on our macroeconomic objectives -- which at this point in time is almost everywhere, basically.

Healthcare is all the rage these days, thanks to the primaries. I'd take the publicly-run NHS over the privately-run abomination in the US any day of the week. And that's after all the cuts and privatizations of the last two decades that did a horrible number on the NHS. Fuck ATOS, while we're at it.

Same for the railroad: the pre-privatization Bundesbahn in Germany was something to be proud of and an immeasurable boost of both the economy and the general standard of living.

In the mid/long run, the effects of automation and climate change-induced migration will put an end to the idea of full employment, but for the time being, there's still plenty of work to be done, plenty of idle resources to be employed, and just nobody to finance it. So why not finance it through the printing press until capacity is reached?

As for the Venezuela comparison: I don't think it fits in this case. Neither does Weimar Germany, which is paraded around quite regularly. Both Venezuela and Weimar Germany had massive supply-side problems. They didn't have the production capacity nor the resources to meet the demand they created by spending money into circulation. If an economy runs at or above its capacity, any additional spending, wherever it comes from, will cause inflation. But both Europe and the US are operating faaar below capacity in any measurable metric. You mentioned LRAS yourself. I think most estimates of it, as well as most estimates of NAIRU, are off quite significantly so as to not take the pressure off the wage slaves in the lowest income sector. You need mass unemployment to keep them in line.

As you said, the participation rate is woefully low, so there's ample space. And I'd rather overshoot and cause a short spike in inflation than remain below potential and leave millions to unneccessary misery.

Given the high level of private debt, there will be no increase in spending on that front. Corporations don't feel the need to invest, since demand is down and their own vaults are filled to the brim with cash. So if the private sector intends to net save, you either have to run a current account surplus (aka leech demand from other countries) or a fiscal deficit. Doesn't work any other way, sectoral balances always sum up to zero, by definition. If we want to reduce the dangerous levels of private debt, the government needs to run a deficit. If we don't want to further increase the federal debt, the central bank has to hand the cash over directly, without the issuance of debt through the treasury.

As for the independant central bank: you can only be independant from either the government or the private sector, not both. Actually, you can't even be truly independant from either, given that people are still involved, and people have ideologies and financial ties.

Still, if an "independant" central bank is what you prefer, Adair Turner's new book "Between Debt and the Devil" might be worth a read. He's a proponent of 100% reserve banking, and argues for the occasional use of the printing press -- though controlled by an inflation-targeting central bank. According to him, QE is pointless and in order to bring nominal demand up to the level we want, we should have a fiscal stimulus financed by central bank money. The central bank controls the amount, the government decides on what to spend it on.

Not how I would do it, but given his expertise as head of the Financial Services Authority, it's quite refreshing to hear these things from someone like him.

Off topic, but speak of the devil and he shall appear.
Apparently a trove of 200 floppy disks owned my Gene Roddenberry have turned up, and been deciphered (they were made on a proprietary OS made just for Gene, apparently) and 'there may be surprises in store on this, the 50'th anniversary of the original Star Trek' is all that's been said about it so far....
http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/04/200-floppy-disks-belonging-to-star-treks-creator-have-been-recovered-and-could-offer-some-surprises/

Ever wonder what it looks like when the Devil lights his farts?

Playing devil's advocate...
Even where it's legal, it's usually not legal to smoke in public. It's certainly not responsible to smoke in public where kids are nearby...or others that might be drug tested. You could be doing them great harm. (As a legal smoker, I think about these things). Also, if you're caught and go to jail, you won't be at work, that is direct harm to the company and why most have clauses in the employment contract that criminal activity at any time is grounds for termination.
Sleeping with a 'lady of the evening' is incredibly risky behavior...and illegal. Many people are harmed by STDs, not just the one that contracts them first. Many are easily spread by normal social behaviors, so having someone in the office with, say, a massive herpes outbreak who wipes their face then shakes hands/shares drinks/sneezes/etc is a real safety/health issue. Also, your company is harmed if you're caught and go to jail because you won't be at work.

To the religion example, there's little to be done if people lie and cheat to get around the agreed on rules....but I'll go out on a limb and say that it's wrong, and they'll all burn in hell forever for bearing false witness. ;-)

Way more disturbing than the actual movie it's portraying. Although the movie "You're Next" ain't all that bad. It's a pretty typical slasher but one of the victims turns out to be an ex wilderness survival child born to parents who lived off the land in Australia, so she sets up all these intricate traps to slow down and kill the murders. Pretty awesome at times.

The art film director boyfriend who get shot in the beginning is real life horror director Ti West, who directed an excellent retro satanic cult horror movie called "The House of the Devil". I love that shit. Had one of the actors from You're Next.

There wasn't a rape in the film, was there? It's not like they wrote a rape scene out of it and sacrificed their art out of a misguided misogynistic protectiveness.

I'm guessing that you didn't see the film and you just expected the rape when she was dragged to the floor, and felt they pulled the punch to protect female sensibilities. But if you put a rape in there, far more people are going to ask what kind of sick weirdo shoehorns rape into something unrelated, apropos of nothing. No one is going to give a person credit for their dedication to equality in that example.

I'm going to play devil's advocate here and suggest that it whiffs slightly of misandry to expect three male murderers to be also be rapists.

Shouldn't there be a circle outside the fundamentalist circle? I'd think the way she's talking she's outside that circle too. The sheer numbers in all the discussed circles is certainly something to be weary of, and I agree the issue needs to be addressed more by those outside the fundamentalist circle.

The same circles can be applied to Christians as well. The inner circle includes people like that guy who killed those at the Planned Parenthood. The next Islamist circle would be mostly the Tea Party type Christians, those that want to force one type of Christian view on others via political action. The Fundamentalist include fundamentalist Christians, those that think gay marriage is a sin and should be outlawed. Now beyond that inner circle, most of Christianity has outgrown it's radical violent past... though their support of the death penalty and stand your ground and murder somebody for stealing your TV sort of suggests they haven't... They criticize Muslim support for chopping off hands of thieves as barbaric, but believe in stand your ground for theft... And those in the fundamentalist circle and further to the center are the ones who do all the speaking for Christianity. There was no outpouring from Christians after the Planned Parenthood terrorist attack about how he doesn't represent Christianity. There is no mass outpouring from the majority of Christians who have no issue with gay marriage to stand up for those who sin differently than them, instead letting the fundamentalist rule the show and present their views as the dominant Christian view, which appears to be that it is worth judging homosexuality as a far worse sin than the ones that they committing... The same arguments she's making for the moderate Muslims to be standing up against fundamentalist to Jihadist Muslims should be applied to Christians as well... no, they radicalized Christians generally aren't as big a threat in terms of violence, but the growing public image of Christians as being bigoted, self-righteous, feeling repressed demigods is a real problem for Christianity as well, and is in large part to blame for its shrinking numbers.

Violence and war against Islam though helps grow the radical elements. As much as Christians love to play the "help help we're being opposed" card, Muslims are increasingly more able to play that card with legit purpose. Trump's call to stop them all from even visiting the US, to register all US Muslims into a database and track them is an open invitation to radicalize more, to move more of them from moderate to fundamentalist and to move fundamentalist towards jihadist... and if it was just one radical idiot like Trump that would be one thing, but he has a huge swath of support, which makes it again easier to radicalize more as they can point out that their faith is under a real and legit attack... which proves their faith is the one true faith as the enemy is working so hard to attack it... this is an argument made by Christians all the time with the we are being oppressed cries, that prove that Christianity is the one true faith, because the devil is working so hard to push Christianity down, yet they don't recognize their attempts to push Islam down proves the exact same point to the Muslims...

I think they all show that religion does far more harm than good.

I don't think it's a hoax and I don't think their intention is to take people's money and run.

but.

Their business is predicated entirely on building hype. My feeling is they have to walk an all too fine line between making a game and creating vertical slice type proof of concept demos in order to generate and maintain interest. Essentially my concern is that getting your potential customers to invest in the promise of an amazing game will devolve into selling promises. I'm not convinced it hasn't happened already.

Releasing games is so passe but I'm sure they'll have a version 1.0 at some point with a launch party etc. It'll be interesting to see what the game actually looks like at that point. It would nice to be surprised, but I don't think I will be.

Oh. And pre-orders are the devils work.

I meant not to be particularly argumentative, only contradictory. However, I feel that I have been forced into the position to return fire with fire, as it seems you lack the capability and or willingness to discuss something without attacking me, spewing meaningless information, circumventing reason, and drawing up arse about face codswallap for your conclusions.(Look mommy, I can curse to!!!!!!!)

Firstly, I should like to address your attacks against me...

Fox bubble? My god, were I to force myself to absorb and process information from such a low level of news broadcasting, I would reel in shock from the incursion into my sanity. Luckily, however, I live in the UK, and had to research Fox on Google to even understand the reference.

Now, to business.

The investigation.... a Red Herring?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3299310/Benghazi-probe-Hillary-Clinton-facing-months-FBI-investigation-emails.html

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2015/10/27/How-FBI-Could-Derail-Hillary-Clinton-s-Presidential-Run

http://dailycaller.com/2015/10/22/fbi-director-im-following-very-closely-the-investigation-into-hillary-clintons-emails-video/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3275919/Investigation-Hillary-s-email-server-focuses-Espionage-Act-10-years-jail-FBI-agent-says-prosecuted-jus
t-failing-tell-Obama.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/fbi-probe-of-clinton-e-mail-expands-to-second-data-company/2015/10/06/3d94ba46-6c48-11e5-b31c-d80d62b53e28_sto
ry.html

Research, see? Useful. For finding stuff like....INFORMATION.

Socialism:

http://fee.org/freeman/why-socialism-failed/

https://mises.org/library/greece-illustrates-150-years-socialist-failure-europe

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/07/01/greek-disaster-is-all-about-socialism.html

http://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2014/02/25/5-ways-socialism-destroys-societies-n1800086/page/full

http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/why-socialism-collapsed-eastern-europe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

Bit of light reading, don't worry, I am getting to a point...


"Mischaracterization of Obama's record" ??????

http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2015/06/25/six-problems-with-the-aca-that-arent-going-away/

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/06/07/problems-with-obamacare-that-could-prove-difficult.aspx

http://dailycaller.com/2015/06/09/so-long-as-you-ignore-the-problems-obamacare-is-perfect/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/obamacare-problems/

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/obama-poll-disapprove-isis/2015/08/21/id/671190/

http://theweek.com/articles/589272/obamas-isis-failure

http://www.martinoauthor.com/list-obama-failures/

https://www.gop.com/obamas-biggest-failures/

Next, get a First Class Honours Masters Degree in Psychology from the University of Cambridge, and then spent five years of your life convincing rich people to give your bank their money(My job, by the way), carefully analyze anything Obama says about anything important, then come tell me my observations are "ridiculous" and "beyond contradicting".

As for Trump? Sure, all political candidates are devils in disguise. However, why don't you try to turn a mere million into a multi billion dollar empire and say you cant do anything for the economy?

You know how you get rid of 11 million people?

1. Dont let anymore in...

2. Ship the rest out with the Federal resources you already have...

3. Smile, because you just saved your bloody country:

http://dailycaller.com/2015/09/14/americas-heroin-epidemic-fueled-by-flood-of-illegal-immigrants/

http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2015/04/isis-camp-a-few-miles-from-texas-mexican-authorities-confirm/

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/20678-report-with-cartel-help-isis-crossing-border-from-mexico

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/25/mexican-cartel-sicarios-crossed-texas-kidnapped-u-s-citizen/

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/414969/mexican-drug-cartels-caused-border-crisis

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=379605&CategoryId=10718

How do you make Mexico build a wall?

1. Stop official trade with Mexico until they give up and build it.

Wow... That was easy...

As for making China ignore our debt... Basically impossible, but that's who's fault?

Obama got you blinkered people into $18 Trillion dollars of debt with his hysterically shoddy plans, I can't believe no-one is smart enough to realize that simple and plain a truth.

No way on Earth his plans would even be tried? He is the Republican frontrunner... By popular poll.

You tried Obama's plans, and his bloody approval rating is (http://www.gallup.com/poll/116479/barack-obama-presidential-job-approval.aspx). Its about time you Americans experienced some success in the world, don't you think?

Sod it all, I am tired, I could say more, but I await your response. May I request that you refrain from using vulgar language in response to an amicable post? As you can see by the content of my article here, I can be a ripe-mouthed cur, but is it truly necessary?

God created the devil, but he wasn't always Gods enemy. The scripture reveals that he was a cherub who covered the mercy seat in Ezekiel 28:11-19..here is an excerpt:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ezekiel+28&version=NKJV

14 “You were the anointed cherub who covers;
I established you;
You were on the holy mountain of God;
You walked back and forth in the midst of fiery stones.

15 You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created,
Till iniquity was found in you.

A cherub does not look like what is described in the popular imagery. You can find a description of them in Ezekiel chapter 1.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel+1&version=NKJV

We see in Isaiah 14:3-21 that Satans sin was wanting to replace God and be worshiped himself. Here is an excerpt:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+14&version=NKJV
12
“How you are fallen from heaven,
O Lucifer,[b] son of the morning!
How you are cut down to the ground,
You who weakened the nations!

13
For you have said in your heart:
‘I will ascend into heaven,
I will exalt my throne above the stars of God;
I will also sit on the mount of the congregation
On the farthest sides of the north;

14
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds,
I will be like the Most High.’

15
Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol,
To the lowest depths of the Pit.

In Heaven, Satan had a perfect life but he threw it away in a mad ambition to replace God with himself. This is exactly what he tempts us to do, as we disregard what God wants and sit on the throne of our lives as king. He got what he wanted in a way, as scripture calls Satan the god of this world, his rule over this world, as ours, is only a temporary affair; we will all stand before God on judgment day and give an account.

The devil isn't annoying, he is a murderer

John 8:44

You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

Your video, Annoying Devil in London, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

t's possible to love someone
And not treat them in the way that you want
It's possible to see your eyes
Be the devil in disguise with another front
And, it's possible to change this world
Revolutionise the boys and girls
It's possible to educate
The next generation that will rule the world someday

The changing times of the 21st century
Means nothing to me cos I would rather be
At the beginning of time, earth would be mine
Living in luxury
Discovering a world out there
Believing in the sun earth water and air
Take me there so I could see the world bloom
Standing on a sea cliff howling at the moon
Creating a world for the open minded
A unique perception of truth inside it
I know we could find it
It's just a matter of where and when we collectively decide it
The world is not a vicious place
It's just the way we've been raised
Discovering time and space
I know that we could make a change
Rearrange the way that we appreciate the world today

It's possible to love someone..

Now as i start to put my mind into words
I stall I fall I'm loosing it all, my inhibitions
The thought of wasting a way
The fact that the music's at a place not far away
Yet I stray and stick to my world
In love with my life my beliefs and a girl
Is it luck that I love this crazy place, the human race?
Don't get me wrong I still think we could change
But this life and the fact that time exists
And were here and we don't come equipped with it all
Half the fun is learning and I'm having a ball
While the world keeps turning my role is small
But I'll make a change
I hope you're feeling the same way
I hope you're seeing what I say

It's possible to love someone..

In this concrete jungle we live
Our survival is love that we give
Now my instinct is guiding my way
It's true what they say
The world is your chance to create