If you can find it check out the book about an Alice Cooper 1973 tour called "Billion Dollar Baby". James Randi was part of the tour as he designed the guillotine and gallows the band used. He's quite the character in the book.

That book is also interesting because it was written by Bob Greene, who became infamous for his own reasons. And the Cooper band members resented him for writing what they felt was a trashy skewed version of his time with them on that tour.

Where was the Randy Newman?

james o'keefe and project veritas are reknowned in their deceptions and their so-called 'gotcha" shenanigans.

and when i say "shenanigans",i mean clever editing to create a false premise that suits a political agenda.in this case:republicans.

o'keefe is not the first to kneel at the altar of political money,and suck the cock of his masters,simply to buy his way into the powered elites outhouse,located on the very edge of the property.(oooh i am being sassy today).

we can look back at the tea party and literally watch dick army,former congressman turned lobbyist (shocker right there),single handedly change the direction of an entire movement to serve the needs and desires of HIS masters,by the creation of "americans for prosperity".

i am not kidding.
go check it out.
when the original tea party started their message was very similar to the occupy wall street movement in 2011,but dick army and his merry band of fuckheads,manipulated the leadership from outrage against:big banks,wall street and the horrendous malfeasance of rumsfelds department of defense (still looking for that 1 trillion dollars of tax payer money)..

to...

big government and the democrats.

it was quite impressive in its simplicity and brilliance.
reprehensible and grotesque,but impressive.

we can even look at the private organization of the DNC,and how they openly attempted to undermine bernie sanders campaign.a man who was running on THEIR ticket for fuck sakes!

i seem to be on a kick today in regards to people who sell their integrity for cash.for access.for influence.

it appears john carpenters "they live" was not just a simple,cheesy,sci-fi movie but rather a documentary.

"i have come here to kick ass,and chew bubble gum.and i am all out of bubble gum".
rowdy randy piper (rip)

Tags for this video have been changed from 'frog princess, facilier, keith david, randy newman, new orleans, villain song' to 'frog princess, facilier, keith david, randy newman, new orleans, villain song, disney' - edited by Lann

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.

This clip from Spinal Tap is apropos, because it's a lampoon of the Monkees video, but they were also lampooning Maiden, Sabbath, Priest, Saxon, Randy Rhoads, Ian Gillan, etc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-BYzaDwNoE

This is an interesting interview with Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden, because it addresses a rumor that they had walked out of Spinal Tap because they believed the band was making fun of them (which was untrue): http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1022475/He-aint-heavy-hes-captain----Iron-Maiden-rocker.html

It's important to note that the members of Spinal Tap were all musicians and played their own music from the get go, whereas the Monkees only recorded their vocals and had other people play the instruments. Of course, in time the Monkees learned to play, even if there was so much wasted recording time they had to bring in other musicians to fill in. They eventually improved enough to play live shows with their own instrument play.

I gotta do my best to defend the Monkees, Iron Maiden, and Spinal Tap, because they ARE all great acts and entertainers. I say ARE because, as of 2016, The Monkees, Iron Maiden, AND Spinal Tap are all touring to this day. Not together, of course. That would be too awesome.

Wow. That is un. be. lievable.

Where are all the videos of your little guy, Randy? He must be practically a full-grown man by now.

*doublepromote!

The advantages of laissez-bribé should be evident to anyone.

It removes the current disincentive to report bribery and the incentive to act on its influence. It reduces the ability of malefactors to gauge the effectiveness of bribes and removes any hold they have over their subject, because there can be no question of impropriety. It allows for effective monitoring of corruptive influence, provides a running record of officials' interests and creates a new platform for understanding and managing the economic imperatives inherent in the public-private interface. It even builds an inescapable fine into the act of bribery itself and converts otherwise hidden income into taxable revenue! Could there be a more elegant and socially responsible system?

Requires oversight, sure, but it's obviously functionally superior to any naive moralistic alternative.

I think James Randy Moss probably understood all this and, American hero that he is, valiantly laid his career on the line to usher in a new era of honesty and accountability in public service.

Was that Randy Marsh?

Who did you see on the list?

Kareem Abdul-Jabar
JJ Abrams
Alan Alda
Christiane Amanpour
Jon Batiste
Big Bird
Cory Booker
Tom Brokaw
Ken Burns
Bill Clinton
Andy Cohen
Francis Collins
Cookie Monster
Bob Costas
Katie Couric
Bryan Cranston
Mark Cuban
Jeff Daniels
Bill DeBlasio
Maureen Dowd
James Franco
Thomas Friedman
Vince Gilligan
Doris Kearns Goodwin
David Gregory
Terry Gross
Mike Huckabee
Arianna Huffington
Dean Kamen
Toby Keith
Henry Kissinger
Nicholas Kristof
Paul Krugman
Alexi Lalas
Cyndi Lauper
David Leonhardt
George Lucas
Yo Yo Ma
Barry Manilow
Senator Claire McCaskill
Tim Meadows
Willie Nelson
Randy Newman
Grover Norquist
Eleanor Holmes Norton
Ric Ocasek
Keith Olbermann
Mandy Patinkin
Stone Phillips
Samantha Power
Pussy Riot
Charlie Rose
Dan Savage
Smaug
Shane Smith
Eliot Spitzer
Gloria Steinem
Jon Stewart
Patrick Stewart
Michael Stipe
Andrew Sullivan
Matt Taibbi
Jeff Tweedy
Neil Degrasse Tyson
Sam Waterston
Elijah Wood

(http://www.vox.com/2014/12/19/7419893/colbert-finale-song)

Your video, Cock Magic-Randy Marsh, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

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Yeah, he does sound like Randy sometimes lol