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Gary Edwards

Three Schools of Economic Wizardry | The Rugged Individualist - 0 views

theruggedindividualist.wordpress.com/...e-schools-of-economic-wizardry

Mish Mike-Shedlock Voodoo-Economics Economic-Wizards Austrian-Economics Libertarian

shared by Gary Edwards on 16 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 16 Jun 12
     
    Exceellent repub of Mike Shedlock's wonderful article describing the 3 Schools of Economic Wizardry.  Includes a simplified but exacting view of the "why and how"  the Keynesian and Monetarist Wizardry Schools wreck havoc on the world.   ... Keynesian Voodoo Wizards ... Monetarist Voodoo Wizards ... Austrian Realists Remember the voodoo motto: "If it doesn't work, keep doing more of it, even if that is what got you in trouble in the first place!" ..... Excerpt: Once upon a time (today), in a land not so far away (USA), there lived a trio of economic wizards (economists), whose names shall remain anonymous (Paul Krugman, Greg Mankiw, Ben Bernanke). A fourth wizard, Murry Rothbard, is no longer among the living but resides in the netherworld. The above wizards seldom agree with each other because they come from competing schools of wizardry. Three Schools of Economic Wizardry 1. Keynesian School of Fiscal Voodoo and Witchcraft 2. Monetarist School of Monetary Voodoo and Witchcraft 3. Austrian School of Sound Money, Sound Economic Principles and Common Sense. "Dark Arts" Wizardry The first two wizardry schools belong to a class of wizardry promoted to aspiring wizards as the "Dark Arts." Philosophical Beliefs Keynesian wizards believe governments can spend their way to economic health and although fiscal deficits may matter at some point in time, they never matter now, in practice. Monetarist wizards believe money will cure any and every problem if enough is dropped from helicopters and interest rates held low. Austrian wizards believe that economic problems are created by unsound money, haphazard loans, excessive debts, and government manipulations. Keynesian and Monetarist wizards believe in the voodoo principle "the problem is the solution if only you do more of it." The former relies primarily on fiscal voodoo; the latter relies primarily on monetary voodoo. Austrian wizards do not believe "the problem is the solution," no matter ho
Paul Merrell

IPS - Obama's Case for Syria Didn't Reflect Intel Consensus | Inter Press Service - 0 views

www.ipsnews.net/...-didnt-reflect-intel-consensus

war & peace Syria WMD Obama lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Contrary to the general impression in Congress and the news media, the Syria chemical warfare intelligence summary released by the Barack Obama administration Aug. 30 did not represent an intelligence community assessment, an IPS analysis and interviews with former intelligence officials reveals. The evidence indicates that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper culled intelligence analyses from various agencies and by the White House itself, but that the White House itself had the final say in the contents of the document. Leading members of Congress to believe that the document was an intelligence community assessment and thus represents a credible picture of the intelligence on the alleged chemical attack of Aug. 21 has been a central element in the Obama administration’s case for war in Syria. That part of the strategy, at least, has been successful. Despite strong opposition in Congress to the proposed military strike in Syria, no one in either chamber has yet challenged the administration’s characterisation of the intelligence. But the administration is vulnerable to the charge that it has put out an intelligence document that does not fully and accurately reflect the views of intelligence analysts. Former intelligence officials told IPS that that the paper does not represent a genuine intelligence community assessment but rather one reflecting a predominantly Obama administration influence.
  • In essence, the White House selected those elements of the intelligence community assessments that supported the administration’s policy of planning a strike against the Syrian government force and omitted those that didn’t. In a radical departure from normal practice involving summaries or excerpts of intelligence documents that are made public, the Syria chemical weapons intelligence summary document was not released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence but by the White House Office of the Press Secretary. It was titled “Government Assessment of the Syrian Government’s Use of Chemical Weapons on August 21, 2013.” The first sentence begins, “The United States government assesses,” and the second sentence begins, “We assess”. The introductory paragraph refers to the main body of the text as a summary of “the intelligence community’s analysis” of the issue, rather than as an “intelligence community assessment”, which would have been used had the entire intelligence community endorsed the document.
  • A former senior intelligence official who asked not to be identified told IPS in an e-mail Friday that the language used by the White House “means that this is not an intelligence community document”. The former senior official, who held dozens of security classifications over a decades-long intelligence career, said he had “never seen a document about an international crisis at any classification described/slugged as a U.S. government assessment.” The document further indicates that the administration “decided on a position and cherry-picked the intelligence to fit it,” he said. “The result is not a balanced assessment of the intelligence.” Greg Thielmann, whose last position before retiring from the State Department was director of the Strategic, Proliferation and Military Affairs Office in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, told IPS he has never seen a government document labeled “Government Assessment” either. “If it’s an intelligence assessment,” Thielmann said, “why didn’t they label it as such?”
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Former National Intelligence Officer Paul Pillar, who has participated in drafting national intelligence estimates, said the intelligence assessment summary released by the White House “is evidently an administration document, and the working master copy may have been in someone’s computer at the White House or National Security Council.” Pillar suggested that senior intelligence officials might have signed off on the administration paper, but that the White House may have drafted its own paper to “avoid attention to analytic differences within the intelligence community.” Comparable intelligence community assessments in the past, he observed – including the 2002 Iraq WMD estimate – include indications of differences in assessment among elements of the community. An unnamed “senior administration official” briefing the news media on the intelligence paper on Aug. 30 said that the paper was “fully vetted within the intelligence community,” and that, ”All members of the intelligence community participated in its development.”
  • But that statement fell far short of asserting that all the elements of the intelligence community had approved the paper in question, or even that it had gone through anything resembling consultations between the primary drafters and other analysts, and opportunities for agencies to register dissent that typically accompany intelligence community assessments. The same “senior administration official” indicated that DNI Clapper had “approved” submissions from various agencies for what the official called “the process”. The anonymous speaker did not explain further to journalists what that process preceding the issuance of the White House paper had involved. However, an Associated Press story on Aug. 29 referred to “a report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence outlining the evidence against Syria”, citing two intelligence officials and two other administration officials as sources. That article suggests that the administration had originally planned for the report on intelligence to be issued by Clapper rather than the White House, apparently after reaching agreement with the White House on the contents of the paper. But Clapper’s name was not on the final document issued by the White House, and the document is nowhere to be found on the ODNI website. All previous intelligence community assessments were posted on that site.
  • The issuance of the document by the White House rather than by Clapper, as had been apparently planned, points to a refusal by Clapper to put his name on the document as revised by the White House. Clapper’s refusal to endorse it – presumably because it was too obviously an exercise in “cherry picking” intelligence to support a decision for war – would explain why the document had to be issued by the White House. Efforts by IPS to get a comment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence suggest strongly that Clapper is embarrassed by the way the Obama White House misrepresented the Aug. 30 document.
  • An e-mail query by IPS to the media relations staff of ODNI requesting clarification of the status of the Aug. 30 document in relation to the intelligence community was never answered. In follow-up phone calls, ODNI personnel said someone would respond to the query. After failing to respond for two days, despite promising that someone would call back, however, ODNI’s media relations office apparently decided to refuse any further contact with IPS on the subject. A clear indication that the White House, rather than Clapper, had the final say on the content of the document is that it includes a statement that a “preliminary U.S. government assessment determined that 1,429 people were killed in the chemical weapons attack, including at least 426 children.” That figure, for which no source was indicated, was several times larger than the estimates given by British and French intelligence. The document issued by the White House cites intelligence that is either obviously ambiguous at best or is of doubtful authenticity, or both, as firm evidence that the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack. It claims that Syrian chemical weapons specialists were preparing for such an attack merely on the basis of signals intelligence indicating the presence of one or more individuals in a particular location. The same intelligence had been regarded prior to Aug. 21 as indicating nothing out of the ordinary, as was reported by CBS news Aug. 23.
  • he paper also cites a purported intercept by U.S intelligence of conversations between Syrian officials in which a “senior official” supposedly “confirmed” that the government had carried out the chemical weapons attack. But the evidence appears to indicate that the alleged intercept was actually passed on to the United States by Israeli intelligence. U.S. intelligence officials have long been doubtful about intelligence from Israeli sources that is clearly in line with Israeli interests. Opponents of the proposed U.S. strike against Syria could argue that the Obama administration’s presentation of the intelligence supporting war is far more politicised than the flawed 2002 Iraq WMD estimate that the George W. Bush administration cited as part of the justification for the invasion of Iraq.
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Sep 13
     
    If you vote for either a Democrat or Republican for President, you are in reality voting for the War Party and it will use the same dirty tricks to start the dirty wars. Bush Administration lied to make war against Iraq. Obama lies to get us into Syria. Maybe it's time to launch a "Peace Party" that calls Dems and Repubs out for what they really are, loyal servants of the War Party.  A single issue party aimed at peeling off the the Republican and Democrat disguises from the War Partiers.    Just daydreaming. Homo sapiens have been a vicious lot as far back as archaeology can take us.  We just enhance our destructiveness as the time line moves forward. 
Gary Edwards

Dear Lou Dobbs, Who Owns the Federal Reserve? - 0 views

tvnewslies.org/...-owns-the-federal-reserve.html

Banksters Federal-Reserve Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel New-World-Order banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 20 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 20 Oct 11
     
    This is the March of 2008 repub of the infamous Dear Lou letter, written by Jesse Richard. Tracks exactly with the March 2008 collapse of Bear Stearns and the subsequent Federal Reserve - US Treasury bailout. IMHO, the Bear Stearns bailout and conversion was a test run to determine how the public and Congress would react. The key factor was the massive conversion of private Bankster debt to public (taxpayer) debt. Another way of saying this: socialize the losses and privatize the profits. The go between in this mechanism is the secret connection between the Federal Reserve cartel of private Banksters, and the US Treasury. Congress, through war and social programs, racks up enormous debt. Currently about $4 Billion of debt per day. This is the amount of spending beyond taxes and other revenue sources. To fund this debt, the Treasury sells bonds, most of which are currently being purchased by Banksters and Financial interests closely associated with a cascading network of interconnected Federal Reserve shareholders. Foreign sovereign bond purchasers like China and Japan mostly dropped out of participation in the Treasury auctions in 2008, as they started dumping US Treasury holdings. Today, the circle of USA debt works like this; the Federal Reserve provides member Banksters and International Bankster associates with Trillions of dollars of near interest free money ($16.1 Trillion in 2009-2010). The Banksters then purchase the US treasury bonds at whatever the auction interest rate turns out to be. In essence, we are loaning ourselves the money to pay off our government debt, with interest. Exactly as Mr Richard claims in his infamous letter. excerpt: Let me ask you a simple question: what country in its right mind would create a system that would force it to lend itself money and have to repay the money WITH INTEREST? What country would charge itself interest? What nation would put itself out of business by making it bankrupt because
Paul Merrell

America's Going to Lose the Oil Price War - Bloomberg View - 0 views

www.bloombergview.com/...oing-to-lose-the-oil-price-war

war & peace economic-warfare pipelinestan oil-prices shale-oil

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • This could be a bloody, prolonged battle with an uncertain outcome. Oil supply and demand are rather inelastic to the price in the short term. The price's trajectory this year will, therefore, be largely dictated by the news and the market's reaction to it. A wave of bankruptcies in the U.S. shale industry will probably drive it up because it will be perceived as a negative factor for supply. How high it will go, however, is unpredictable. It may actually rise enough to enable consolidation in the U.S. shale industry, giving it second wind and driving OPEC countries, Russia, Mexico and Norway into greater difficulties -- or it might just even out at a level that would make the U.S. forget about its shale boom. That would have dire consequences for the U.S. economic recovery. It may be time for the U.S. government to consider whether it wants to up the stakes in this price war by entering it as a sovereign country. That might mean bailing out or temporarily subsidizing the shale producers. After all, they are competing with states now, not with businesses like themselves.
  • Paul Merrell on 14 Jan 15
     
    U.S. government subsidies for fracked shale oil producers? Well, we bail out banksters bad bets; why not the oil companies' too? But watch the sparks fly if they try to ram that through Congress.  Repubs and Dems are competing on which should get credit for a slight improvement in the economic stats for the last quarter. But with gasoline heading south of $2.00 per gallon, I'd bet that it's increased consumer spending that is flowing from reduced prices at the gas  pump and is not being repatriated to OPEC.  
Paul Merrell

A caller had a lewd tape of Donald Trump. Then the race to break the story was on. - Th... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...6-875e-2c1bfe943b66_story.html

Auction 2016 Trump-video video-source

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • Reporter David Fahrenthold got a phone call around 11 a.m. Friday from a source with a tip about Donald Trump. The source asked: Would Fahrenthold be interested in seeing some previously unaired video of Trump? Fahrenthold didn’t hesitate. Within a few moments of watching an outtake of footage from a 2005 segment on “Access Hollywood,” the Washington Post reporter was on the phone, calling Trump’s campaign, “Access Hollywood” and NBC for reaction. By 4 p.m., his story was causing shock waves.
  • Fahrenthold’s story about the recording — which some observers said might deal a death blow to Trump’s presidential campaign — was the second major revelation, or “October surprise,” that came courtesy of an anonymous source. The New York Times last week revealed that Trump took a $916 million loss on his 1995 taxes, which could have relieved him from paying federal income taxes for as many as 18 years. The Times’ story was based on tax returns supplied by a source whose identity is unknown even to the Times. Fahrenthold, a 16-year veteran of The Post, said he knows who pointed him to the “Access Hollywood” video, but he will not reveal the identity because he promised anonymity to his tipster. But like many readers, he said he was surprised and shocked by what he saw on the tape.
  • As it happens, Fahrenthold was racing to produce his story in competition with “Access Hollywood” itself. The syndicated show, owned by NBC Universal, had found the Trump recording in its archives and was preparing its own story. NBC News, tipped by “Access Hollywood,” was also aware of the tape and was preparing a story, which it intended to broadcast after the entertainment show aired the recording. It was not clear, however, when “Access Hollywood” and NBC News were planning to go ahead with their stories.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Fahrenthold’s story proved to be the most concurrently viewed article in the history of The Post’s website; more than 100,000 people read it simultaneously at one point on Friday. The interest was so heavy that it briefly crashed the servers of the newspaper’s internal tracking system.
  • The story not only damaged Trump but also elicited intense criticism of Bush on social media. Bush, 44, a cousin of former president George W. Bush, is now a co-host of NBC’s “Today” show. Noting that “Today” has a huge following among women, some critics called for Bush’s resignation.
  • The quick succession of events left several questions unanswered, among them: Why did a 2005 recording of Trump remain in the “Access Hollywood” archives for so long before becoming public? And what other damaging outtakes, if any, remain in the archives of NBC’s “The Apprentice” and “Celebrity Apprentice,” the reality shows in which Trump starred?
  • Paul Merrell on 09 Oct 16
     
    I went looking for what was known about the source of the Trump video. This is all I found. The original WaPo story on the video is here. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-recorded-having-extremely-lewd-conversation-about-women-in-2005/2016/10/07/3b9ce776-8cb4-11e6-bf8a-3d26847eeed4_story.html I'm reminded of the Republican drive to impeach Bill Clinton that resulted in Larry Flynt (of Hustler magazine fame) offering a million-dollar reward for dirt on Republican members' of Congress affairs with women. He found a lot of takers and several Repubs were forced to resign from Congress after their affairs were publicized. I recall that Newt Gingrich said something along the lines of "I've never seen such a strong counterpunch before." The timing was exquisite, just after Trump let it be known that he'd be attacking Hillary in the next debate for her attacks on the women who had come forward claiming that Bill Clinton had either had affairs with them or made unwelcome sexual advances on them. The timing was also great to pull the sting from the Wikileaks release of the latest 2,000 Hillary emails showing that she perjured herself before Congress about shipment of arms to al-Qaeda in Syria from Libya. That never made it into mainstream media, although a few articles resulted from the leak of Hillary's talk to Goldman Sachs. All swept from the headlines by the eleven-year-old recording of Trump making sexist remarks. It says something about American politics that the next election may be determined by such a recording as opposed to life and death issues like U.S. foreign wars that are killing hundreds of thousands of people, climate change that threatens the extinction of the human race in as little as 100 years, etc.
Paul Merrell

In U.S., Four in 10 Say Party Control of Congress Matters - 0 views

www.gallup.com/...-control-congress-matters.aspx

polls Repubs Dems Independs Auction-2014

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • Two months ahead of the midterm elections that may very well change the balance of power in Congress, four in 10 Americans say the specific party that controls Congress matters a great deal to them, while 29% say it matters a moderate amount and another 30% say it generally doesn't matter to them.
  • The 40% of national adults now highly concerned about control of Capitol Hill equals what Gallup found a month before the 2002 midterms, but is lower than the 49% seen in late October 2010. While the views of Democrats (including independents who lean Democratic) on this question have been steady across the three midterms -- roughly 45% each year have said the party in control mattered a great deal to them -- Republicans' concern has varied. Currently, 43% of Republicans (including Republican leaners) say party control matters a great deal. It was a whopping 61% in 2010, but that was up from 42% in 2002.
  • The 2002 and 2010 elections were favorable to Republicans, as the GOP retained majority control of the U.S. House of Representatives and regained control of the Senate in 2002, and recaptured control of the House in 2010 with an enormous seat gain. Thus, while rank-and-file Republicans' concern about party control is not nearly as high today as it was in 2010, when Democrats controlled both houses, it is comparable to 2002 -- which could suggest that conditions are still favorable for the GOP. Missing from this midterm trend, however, is 2006, which was a strong Democratic year. Therefore, it is not entirely clear how levels of concern on this question relate to each party's performance.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The same poll asked respondents to identify the party currently holding a majority of seats in the U.S. Senate as well as in the U.S. House of Representatives. About half of Americans can correctly identify the majority party for each: 49% say the Democrats control the Senate, and 51% say the Republicans control the House. Somewhat fewer -- 36% -- can correctly identify the majority in both chambers, although this knowledge is somewhat higher, at 41%, among registered voters. Another 14% of Americans are aware that party control of Congress is divided, but match each party to the wrong chamber, believing Republicans control the Senate and Democrats control the House.
  • A relatively large subset of Americans, 28%, can correctly identify the majority party for only one chamber (while being wrong or unsure about the other), while 22% are either unsure about both, or name the wrong party for one chamber and are unsure about the other.
  • Americans who are knowledgeable about who controls each house of Congress are significantly more likely than others to say party control of Congress matters greatly to them: 55% of the well-informed group say this, versus about a third or less of those who can't properly identify party control. This highlights the divide in midterm politics between the politically concerned and informed subset of Americans -- a proportion similar to the typical midterm turnout rate, near 40% -- and the rest of the population that is less engaged politically.
  • For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.
Paul Merrell

Republican Candidates Outsource Their Foreign Policy - Bloomberg View - 0 views

www.bloombergview.com/...outsource-their-foreign-policy

Auction 2016 Repubs foreign policy John-Hay-Initiative

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • There's a good reason so many GOP candidates seem to be well-prepared yet uncannily in sync when it comes to foreign policy: Most of them have tapped the same group of experts for guidance, a shadow foreign policy campaign infrastructure just waiting for a nominee to emerge.Ever since Mitt Romney lost the race in 2012, his foreign policy team has been working to remain intact, become a resource for as many primary candidates as possible, and position itself to influence the next president, if he or she is a Republican. For candidates who haven't the time or resources to build their own foreign policy staffs at this stage, the project, called the John Hay Initiative, is a handy tool to get smart fast on complicated subjects and even hand off some heavy lifting on national security issues.For the party itself, the group's omnipresence behind the scenes is shaping a hawkish, right-of-Hillary-Clinton foreign policy agenda that is quickly becoming the established position of the party hopefuls going into 2016.
Paul Merrell

Republicans Warn Iran -- and Obama -- That Deal Won't Last - Bloomberg View - 0 views

www.bloombergview.com/...and-obama-that-deal-won-t-last

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Iran negotiations Repubs senators

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • A group of 47 Republican senators has written an open letter to Iran's leaders warning them that any nuclear deal they sign with President Barack Obama's administration won’t last after Obama leaves office. Organized by freshman Senator Tom Cotton and signed by the chamber's entire party leadership as well as potential 2016 presidential contenders Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, the letter is meant not just to discourage the Iranian regime from signing a deal but also to pressure the White House into giving Congress some authority over the process. “It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system … Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement,” the senators wrote. “The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”
  • Arms-control advocates and supporters of the negotiations argue that the next president and the next Congress will have a hard time changing or canceling any Iran deal -- -- which is reportedly near done -- especially if it is working reasonably well. Many inside the Republican caucus, however, hope that by pointing out the long-term fragility of a deal with no congressional approval -- something Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has also noted -- the Iranian regime might be convinced to think twice. "Iran's ayatollahs need to know before agreeing to any nuclear deal that … any unilateral executive agreement is one they accept at their own peril,” Cotton told me. The issue has already become part of the 2016 GOP campaign. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush came out against the negotiations in a speech at the Chicago Council last month. Former Texas Governor Rick Perry released a video criticizing the negotiations and calling for Congressional oversight. “An arms control agreement that excludes our Congress, damages our security and endangers our allies has to be reconsidered by any future president,” Perry said. Republicans also have a new argument to make in asserting their role in the diplomatic process: Vice President Joe Biden similarly insisted -- in a letter to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell -- on congressional approval for the Moscow Treaty on strategic nuclear weapons with Russia in 2002, when he was head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
  • The new letter is the latest piece of an effort by Senators in both parties to ensure that Congress will have some say if and when a deal is signed. Senators Bob Corker, Lindsey Graham, Tim Kaine and the embattled Bob Menendez have a bill pending that would mandate a Congressional review of the Iran deal, but Republicans and Democrats have been bickering over how to proceed in the face of a threatened presidential veto. Still, Senators from both parties are united in an insistence that, at some point, the administration will need their buy-in for any nuclear deal with Iran to succeed. There’s no sign yet that Obama believes this -- or, if he does, that he plans to engage Congress in any meaningful way.
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