I'm basically done with defending WikiLeaks as well, after the shit they pulled with the leaks of Turkish data. Completely irresponsible, that one.

However, WikiLeaks doesn't need credibility -- the data does. And the data they published vis-á-vis Clinton/Podesta/DNC is, as of now, solid. There was one fake document, but that was shown to have been injected by someone other than WL.

"Strong bias" -- oh, I do have a strong bias. Plural, as in biases, actually. For instance, I'm disinclined to take anything the US intelligence agencies say at face value, given how they manufactured more than one casus belli. I don't put much weight into (un-)official statements in general, but especially since all the misinformation they spread about issues like the coup in Honduras or the actions of Nazi militias in Ukraine.

In this particular case, however, my argument is much simpler: Occam's razor seems much more likely than malicious intent. Propaganda outlets on both sides are run by people. Maybe the propaganda outlet Sputnik intentionally twisted the content of email, or maybe they just fucked up, like people are wont to do. Maybe someone intentionally fed Trump this bad info, maybe his people are just as incompetent as he is.

There are too many parts in this that include people who have more than once proven themselves to be utterly incompetent, or in complete ignorance of even the concept of truth. I don't think Trump gives a shit about truth or facts, he strikes me as the typical blowhard who spouts whatever shit comes to mind, and spins stories on the fly like a 4-year-old when caught red-handing.

No need for a conspiracy there, with all this incompetence, naiveté and plain disregard for facts.

So when they keep on pushing the Russian angle in this, it just seems like a desperate attempt to conjure up the old unifying enemy. Why worry about Russian propaganda when there's plenty on FOX and MSNBC/CNN? Why worry about Russian hackers when you accept the unbelievably insecure method of eletronic votes, partly without paper trails, and completely controlled by private companies?

It's just very strange to an outsider like me to see them focus on perceived external influences when the internals are a complete clusterfuck. And this presidential election is the biggest clusterfuck I've seen in 30 years, which doesn't mean much, admittedly.

That said, we can't just be looking at it from the outside with binoculars, not when people are back to full-blown Cold War rhetoric. When the ruling class in the US and/or the ruling class in Russia start their pissing contests and other forms of grandstanding, it's usually brown people who pay the price, like they have been in Syria for the last couple of years. And Libya. And Yemen. And Somalia. And Afghanistan, And Iraq. And Pakistan.

Personally, all the rhetoric about "standing up to Russian aggression" and similar nonsense makes me keenly aware that the bridge just outside my hometown was constructed with a shaft to place explosives in, to slow down advancing Soviet troops... so yes, I would very much like to bitch-slap all these warmongerers on both sides, but particularly the ones in the US since they are currently the ones racking up the highest death toll.

Edit: I should have made it clearer. Yes, WL is absolutely biased against Clinton and they do seem to act in support of Trump. Assange in particular. Which bums me out to no end, since I actually met the guy in person when they presented WL at the 26C3.

No one can blame you for walking away
Too much rejection
No love injection
Life can be easy
It's not always swell
Don't tell me truth hurts, little girl
Cause it hurts like hell

But down in the underground
You'll find someone true
Down in the underground
A land serene
A crystal moon -- ahhh ahhh

It's only forever
Not long at all
Lost and lonely
That's underground
Undergroooound

Thieves, thieves and liars, murderers
Hypocrites and bastards 

Hey thanks for nothing!
Morals in the dust
Two-faced bastards and syncophants
No trust

Thieves! Liar!
Inside, outside, which side, you don't know
My side, your side, their side, we don't know
Which side are they? Which side are they?
Which side of their mouth do you suppose that it came?
Which side are they? Which side are they?
Which side of the grass is greener?
Inside, outside, which side, you don't know
My side, your side, their side, we don't know

You're like a great big fucking gun,
Just waiting to get squeezed!

Breathe, forfeit erection!
Toxical injection
Geriatric fuck-fest
We still believe in lies

Thieves! liar!
Inside, outside, which side, you don't know
My side, your side, their side, we don't know
Who started it? Who started it?
Which side are they? Which side are they?
Which side of their mouth do you suppose that it came?
Which side are they? Which side are they?
Which side of the grass is greener?
Inside, outside, which side, you don't know
My side, your side, their side, no one knows

You're like a great big hit of acid,
Waiting to be taken!

What utter tosh.

I enjoyed the open beta and I'm looking forward to release, but ohmygod if they could please inject just a little humour into these characters instead of these angsty seriousface dullard cliches... They aint all like that, but characters called "Reaper" that mumble things like "Death Comes" are totally inexcusable unless you are 12yrs old.

Are her eyes ....inked?

How is that even done?

I guess so...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3563070/Tattoo-artist-belly-button-cut-tongue-forked-blue-ink-injected-EYEBALLS.html

But ow.

I can't invoke channels, but I propose EIA.

And I know this is terrible, but frankly if there is any segment of the global population that we can collectively benefit from "evolving away from", it is idiots like this that inject shit like Krokodil into themselves until they are removed from the gene pool.

Very hard for me to feel any empathy for such people. Maybe I'd feel differently if I personally knew any addicts ... but I'm not sure even that would help.

If they do that, I hope they amend a brain treatment for convicted paedophiles that includes high velocity injections of 123-147 grain Spitzer shaped lead.

I'm not disagreeing with you that there are farms where the animals are treated well in comparison. But the majority of food does not come from these farms. Like you said these are usually small scale operations like your aunt. We're talking 50-60 billion animals a year. Millions of animals per hour in the US alone. They simply need to kill them as young as possible to even meet the demand, through industrialized means. They call it factory farming for a reason.
And no factory farmers don't care about the well-being of animals. Any minor growth benefits of happy animals are easily outweighed by a few hormone injections. It's cheaper and faster. If they cared: They wouldn't rip piglets balls off with their bare hands to neuter them. They wouldn't keep "cage less" chickens in the dark to save on electricity. They wouldn't hold a chickens head to a sander or iron to de-beak them. They wouldn't grind up baby male chickens in a blender alive. They wouldn't cut off pigs tales without anesthetic. So on and So on. Your food might comes from some nice farm like your aunts, but for most of people it does not.

You're right that eating animals that died of old age is probably the only truly ethical way you could eat them. Though they'd have to have reproduced naturally too.

I'm not a fan of the eat less concept because of the morality aspect. It might work for some people, and it's probably not a bad short term stepping stone to get to people thinking about the consequences. But it just doesn't add up to me ethically: I wouldn't go from kicking a dog 10 times a week to just 3 times a week, because it means I'm kicking 7 less dogs. It's still a terrible thing to do, so why even be part of that cycle.

Because most people are raised as meat eaters, I think their perspective is completely wrong, as was mine. When they talk to vegans they always give reasons to not give up animal products. But to me the question really is: What is the reason TO eat any animal products at all?


Health wise it's a no-brainer there are a ton of good books about nutrition, like "How Not To Die" by Dr. Michael Greger, or any book by Dr. Neal Barnard, Dr. Cadwell Esselstyn, or Dr. John McDougall. ( all their work is based on thousands of peer reviewed and published research papers ).

Animal compassion wise it's a no-brainer. Animals want to live and be happy period. Everything else is just an excuse to keep exploiting them.

With documentaries like Cowspiracy and Earthlings coming out, it's people are becoming aware that we're all on one planet and if people went vegan overnight, that's 1/2 of the global warming gone. That's 1 football field a second of rainforest (and all of the animals and unique species ) being destroyed. That's the fish not going extinct in the next 10 years. That's GMO's not killing the pollinating bees and earthworms (which are necessary part of the ecosystem, we'll die without them).

So what reason is really left to eat any animal products?

Taste. People don't want to become vegan because they think they are giving up something and it's not true. It's more like trading a bad habit for something truly great. And it's free. And it has the potential to change the world.

I'm yet to hear a good reason to eat any animal product.(from anyone I mean)

@greatgooglymoogly

Thanks for taking the time to watch it.

Like I said in my previous comment, this talk needs to take a lot of shortcuts, otherwise its length would surpass anyone's attention span.

So, point by point.

By "balanced budget", I suppose you refer to the federal budget. A balanced budget is not neccessarily a bad thing, but it is undesirable in most case. The key reason is sectoral balances. The economy can divided into three sectors: public, private, foreign. Since one person's spending is another person's income, the sum of all spending and income of these three sectors is zero by definition.

More precisely: if the public sector runs a surplus and the private sector runs a surplus, the foreign sector needs to run a deficit of a corresponding size.

Two examples:
- the government runs a balanced budget, no surplus, no deficit
- the private sector runs a surplus (savings) of 2% of GDP
- the foreign sector must, by definition, run a deficit of 2% of GDP (your country runs a current account surplus of 2% of GDP)

- the government runs a deficit of 2% of GDP
- the foreign sector runs a surplus of 3% (your current account deficit of 3%)
- your private sector must, by definition, run a deficit of 1% of GDP, aka burn through savings or run up debt

If you intend to allow the private sector to net save, you need to run either a current account surplus or a public sector deficit, or both. Since we don't export goods to Mars just yet, not all countries can run current account surpluses, so you need to run a public sector deficit if you want your private sector to net save. No two ways about it.

Germany runs a balanced public budget, sort of, and its private sector net saves. But that comes at the cost of a current account surplus to the tune of €250B. That's 250 billion Euros worth of debt other countries have to accumulate so that both the private and public sector in Germany can avoid deficits. Parasitic is what I'd call this behaviour, and I'm German.

If you feel ambitious, you could try to have both surplus and deficit within the private sector by allowing households to net save while "forcing" corporations to run the corresponding deficits. But to any politician trying that, I'd advise to avoid air travel.

As for the "devaluation of the currency", see my previous comment.

Also, she didn't use real numbers, because a) the talk is short and numbers kill people's attention rather quickly, and b) it's a policy decision to use debt to finance a deficit. One might just as well monetise it, like I explained in my previous comment.

Helicopter money would be quite helpful these days, actually. Even monetarists like AEP say so. If fiscal policy is off the table (deficit hawkery), what else are you left with...

As for your question related to the Fed, let me quote Eric Tymoigne on why MMT views both central bank and Treasury as part of the consolidated government:

"MMT authors tend to like to work with a consolidated government because they see it as an effective strategy for policy purpose (see next section), but also because the unconsolidated case just hides under layers of institutional complexity the main point: one way or another the Fed finances the Treasury, always. This monetary financing is not an option and is not by itself inflationary."

MMT principle: the central bank needs to be under democratic control, aka be part of government. The Fed in particular can pride itself on its independance all it wants, it still cannot fulfill any of its goals without the Treasury's help. It cannot diverge from government policies too long. Unlike the ECB, which is a nightmare in its construction.

Anyway, what does he mean by "one way or another the Fed finances the Treasury, always"? Well, the simple case is debt monetisation, direct financing. However, the Fed also participates by ensuring that Primary Dealers have enough reserves to make a reasonable bid on treasuries. The Fed makes sure that auctions of treasuries will always succeed. Always. Either by providing reserves to ensure buyers can afford the treasuries, by replacing maturing treasuries or buying them outright. No chance whatsoever for bond vigilantes. Betting against treasuries is pointless, you will always lose.

But what about taxation as a means to finance the Treasury? Well, the video's Monopoly example illustrated quite nicely, you cannot collect taxes until you have spent currency into circulation. Spending comes before taxation, it does not depend on it. Until reserves are injected into the banking system, either by the Fed through asset purchases or the Treasury through spending, taxes cannot be paid. Again, monetary financing is not optional. If the Treasury borrows money from the public, it borrows back money it previously spent.

Yes, I ignored the distribution of wealth, taxation, the fixation on growth and a million other things. That's a different discussion.

Well, cheers for sticking with it anyway, I really appreciate it.

It's a one hour talk on the deficit in particular, and most of what she says is based on MMT principles that would add another 5 hours to her talk if she were to explain them. With neoclassical economics, you can sort of jump right in, given how they are taught at schools and regurgitated by talking heads and politicians, day in and day out. MMT runs contrary to many pieces of "common sense" and since you can't really give 10 hour talks everytime, this is what you end up with – bits and pieces that require previous knowledge.

I'd offer talks by other MMT proponents such as William Mitchell (UNSW), Randy Wray (UMKC) or Michael Hudson (UMKC), but they are even less comprehensible. Sorry. Eric Tymoigne provided a wonderful primer on banking over at NEP, but it's long and dry.

Since I'm significantly worse at explaining the basics of MMT, I'm not even going to try to "weave a narrative" and instead I'll just work my way through it, point by point.

@notarobot

"Let's address inequality by taking on debt to increase spending to help transfer money to large private corporations."

You don't have to take on debt. The US as the sole legal issuer of the Dollar can always "print more". That's what the short Greenspan clip was all about. Of course, you don't actually print Federal Reserve Notes to pay for federal expenses. It's the digital age, after all.

If the federal government were to acquire, say, ten more KC-46 from Boeing, some minion at the Treasury would give some minion at the Fed a call and say "We need $2 billion, could you arrange the transfer?" The Fed minion then proceeds to debit $2B from the Treasury's account at the Fed (Treasury General Account, TGA) and credits $2B to Boeing's account at Bank X. Plain accounting.

If TGA runs negative, there are two options. The Treasury could sell bonds, take on new debt. Or it could monetise debt by selling those bonds straight to the Fed – think Overt Monetary Financing.

The second option is the interesting one: a swap of public debt for account credits. Any interest on this debt would be transfered straight back in the TGA. It's all left pocket, right pocket, really. Both the Fed and the Treasury are part of the consolidated government.

However, running a deficit amounts to a new injection of reserves. This puts a downward pressure on the overnight interest rate (Fed Funds Rate in the US, FFR) unless it is offset by an increase in outstanding debt by the Treasury (or a draw-down of the TT&Ls, but that's minor in this case). So the sale of t-bonds is not a neccessity, it's how the Treasury supports the Fed's monetary policy by raising the FFR. If the target FFR is 0%, there's no need for the Treasury to drain reserves by selling bonds.

Additionally, you might want to sell t-bonds to provide the private sector with the ability to earn interest on a safe asset (pension funds, etc). Treasury bonds are as solid as it gets, unlike municipal bonds of Detroit or stocks of Deutsche Bank.

To quote Randy Wray: "And, indeed, treasury securities really are nothing more than a saving account at the Fed that pay more interest than do reserve deposits (bank “checking accounts”) at the Fed."

Point is: for a government that uses its own sovereign, free-floating currency, it is a political decision to take on debt to finance its deficit, not an economic neccessity.

"Weimar Republic"

I'm rather glad that you went with Weimar Germany and not Zimbabwe, because I know a lot more about the former than the latter. The very, very short version: the economy of 1920's Germany was in ruins and its vastly reduced supply capacity couldn't match the increase in nominal spending. In an economy at maximum capacity, spending increases are a bad idea, especially if meant to pay reparations.

Let's try a longer version. Your point, I assume, is that an increase in the money supply leads to (hyper-)inflation. That's Quantity Theory of Monetary 101, MV=PY. Amount of money in circulation times velocity of circulation equals average prices times real output. However, QTM works on two assumptions that are quite... questionable.

First, it assumes full employment (max output, Y is constant). Or in other terms, an economy running at full capacity. Does anyone know any economy today that is running at full capacity? I don't. In fact, I was born in '83 and in my lifetime, we haven't had full employment in any major country. Some people refer to 3% unemployment as "full employment", even though 3% unemployment in the '60s would have been referred to as "mass unemployment".

Second, it assumes a constant velocity of circulation (V is constant). That's how many times a Dollar has been "used" over a year. However, velocity was proven to be rather volatile by countless studies.

If both Y and V are constant, any increase in the money supply M would mean an increase in prices P. The only way for an economy at full capacity to compensate for increased spending would be a rationing of said spending through higher prices. Inflation goes up when demand outpaces supply, right?

But like I said, neither Y nor V are constant, so the application of this theory in this form is misleading to say the least. There's a lot of slack in every economy in the world, especially the US economy. Any increase in purchases will be met by corporations with excess capacity. They will, generally speaking, increase their market share rather than hike prices. Monopolies might not, but that's a different issue altogether.

Again, the short version: additional spending leads to increased inflation only if it cannot be met with unused capacity. Only in an economy at or near full capacity will it lead to significant inflation. And even then, excess private demand can easily be curbed: taxation.

As for the Angry Birds analogy: yeah, I'm not a fan either. But all the other talks on this topic are even worse, unfortunatly. There's only a handful of MMT economists doing these kinds of public talks and I haven't yet spotted a Neil deGrasse Tyson among them, if you know what I mean.

I'm sill rockin out to "Ma car is dirty". That was originally a Bowie track, right?

BTW, I'd forgive a lot of the asshatery at the end given the adrenaline injection you get in tornadoes.

Just a troll trying to find a way to inject your political view into a video about a woman saving a baby elephant, among other animals. There is a place called Fox News where you can go high five other like minded thinkers in some of their forums where they don't offer solutions to problems but just attack others for not thinking like themselves.

@radx @enoch @eric3579

For one thing, give the executive or legislative power over the printing press in a crisis and they will not willingly give that power up and end up abusing it. For another, if you're simply printing money to spend then you depreciate and inflate your currency commensurately, at least in the long term. Relying heavily on this is the kind of thing that Venezuela does. There's a reason that governments instead take on their fiscal spending as debt. On that I would say, I've also become much more skeptical of fiscal stimulus in general but particularly in corrections or recessions. I'm okay with automatic stabilizers (unemployment benefits, the largely limitless kind with strings attached we have here in Australia) but not so much direct fiscal stimulus.

The fundamental issue to me is large, even extremely large fiscal spending will not affect business confidence levels of economic conditions. There is some fiscal multiplier effects (the multiple of the effect on national income over the spending injection by the government) but the worse economic conditions are, the lower this will be. Also, yes with say infrastructure spending, you're creating immediate jobs. Problem is these are in no way permanent jobs and simply pushes the can down the road on them finding new employment. Better to provide unemployment benefits and training to get them into a more permanent job faster.

Also large bouts of spending (again to use infrastructure as an example) tends to be hugely wasteful. Good projects require appraisals, consultation and careful planning. The notion of handfuls of 'shovel ready' projects is a political myth. You can instead span it out but then you don't get the mooted fiscal boost. In fact I would argue infrastructure spending is never appropriate as fiscal stimulus. It should be in a constant, planned process of improvement irrespective of business cycles or downturns. The US stimulus under Obama was largely long term spending projects like this as giveaways to the states. There is little evidence it eased the recovery or altered behaviour though. Many states simply enacted the same civic projects they would have otherwise and used this money instead of issuing debt like they would have otherwise - effectively they saved on interest.

So what are the alternatives then? The government here in Australia also heavily spent on roads, home subsidies and schools but notably also gave all income earners a cash deposit of AUD $300-950. The latter is probably the closest you can get to a pure fiscal stimulus - immediately cash to spend, injected not into banks than might save it but given particularly to low / medium income earners most likely to spend it. Again what we saw is that it hardly altered consumer / household behaviour. Many saved it, many spent it on large one off purchases (e.g. TVs, in which case most of that value was transferred overseas). So we gave a dollop of cash as stimulus to the global economy of which Australia is a drop in the ocean. Basically my attitude is, if you maintain good infrastructure, effective education systems, adequate but efficient regulation, reasonable tax rates, and importantly competitive markets, the best way to get through a crisis is to let the market stabilize by itself. Provide assistance and retraining to workers who lose their jobs by all means, but don't expect government spending to be some kind of savior.

I agree on the inflation aspect of your post. There were certainly no shortage of self-declared monetarists buying up gold in anticipation of high inflation, but as you say dollops of cash in the economy are meaningless if they are idle and the economy under capacity. The question now with unemployment in the US at 5.5% whether capacity is finally pushing LRAS levels. Probably not, participation rate is low and falling, and the unemployment rate is woefully underrepresenting forced part timers. Also as you mention the dip in oil will temper prices on the input cost side. The Fed certainly seems to think so and has started tightening rates but as so much commentary in the investing world is saying, this may turn out to be a mistake and they may end up having to reverse course.

@radx

I tend to see controlling the quantity of money along with the interest rate as a valid way for central banks to influence the economy when necessary but I admit in or after crises they are generally almost useless. Economics being a social science is always going to be notoriously unreliable in both prediction and in isolation the causes of a prior event, some would say almost useless.

Controlling purely the interest rates on overnight bank deposits for banks at the central bank (what setting the rate is, as opposed to the commonly held belief that the central bank dictates lending and borrowing rates) is if anything of little impact. These rates can be at 0% and if banks consider economic prospects poor, that will not cause them to lend any further.

Such was the case in the US in the immediate years after '08. i would argue the only action to have real economic impact was the buying up of distressed mortgage securities by the Fed. The parts of QE1, 2 that involved injecting money into the banks basically just led to them investing in low risk securities and earning interest (effectively just sitting on it) because they were not willing to risk lending it.

While I'm not a big fan of ceding authority to a largely independent organisation, I have to admit that since central banks have become independent, inflation in those countries has become a thing of the past. Now granted they get things wrong (e.g. Greenspan inflating the '08 bubble) but their main advantages is being willing to take measures that cause short term pain but long term gain. I don't think any elected politician would have been willing to take the measures Volcker did to curb inflation for example. In fact, while he was at the Fed, Reagan's government effectively inflated the Savings and Loans bubble.

hmmmm...i see.
i took the description directly from the youtube page of the canadian association for equality.i really have know idea if she is actually a sensation but her lecture was pretty non-controversial.she was simply comparing the terms toxic masculine and toxic femininity by using historical examples.

she really didn't inject her own opinion or views.she just was offering differentiating comparisons by way of historical examples.

so i was simply,and quite sincerely,curious your take on her lecture,but i have a sneaking suspicion that you didnt actually watch this lecture and instead made a knee-jerk reactionary based solely on the description.