Mornin’, pups.

Good morning and thanks for the post and host SoDrag.

I hope with all my heart that the City of Oakland tells Goldman Sachs to fuck off.

Regarding the story about Oakland having to pay 4 million annually to Goldman Sachs, let’s call it what it really is. It’s paying the “vig” in mafia parlance.

Good morning.

Richard Wolff’s column in Truthout is also very good. Well worth reading.

Ah, the smell of a big, fat lawsuit in the morning…..how long will it take GoldSacks to file?

Good morning, oldnslow and pupses and thanks, SD.

Can’t wait for the book salon! Are you going to be there?

Thanks for that link. I missed that somehow last night.

Good Morning….Thanks for all the info.SD…Austin had a true rainfall last night, beautiful, with more predicted today…How nice.

Hope to be.

“The barrage of negative political ads is … doing little to change voters’ minds about their choice for president.”

That’s their purpose — in the face of the job numbers emerging.

There was probably an audible sigh of relief from the plants. So glad you finally had some rain.

Audible and clapping…Thanks.;)

Voting rights for hour on democracynow. John Lewis is guest. He still thinks voting matters.

Israel going to legalize WB settlements.

Hutto got over 3 inches. Fabulous.

The importance of voting in national elections has greatly diminished but voting in local elections does matter and directly affects the community in which one lives.

Wow…thanks. I had not heard any numbers….Im pretty central and it really came down here, for quite awhile, as well.

RT-tv. MP sez there is no way to assign blame in LIBOR bc no notes from morning meetings for evidence of who knew what when.

Yeppers. I participated in CSFB risk meetings & there were no notes. BC no one did anything as a result of the meetings.

You keep saying that.

Evidence?

Voting didn’t matter in Wisconsin.

I don’t understand.

Norway’s government has used emergency powers to step in and force offshore oil and gas workers back to work, ending a 16-day strike.

The Labour Minister has ordered the workers back, to avoid a lockout and rising energy prices. But isn’t that what a strike is all about? Not going back until negotiations yield the desired results?

Why don’t they say, no, we aren’t going back. When is it a lockout, and when is it a ‘we aren’t going to come in, anyway’?

Good Morning, SD and Peeps
In other news….
The Episcopal Church on Monday overwhelmingly voted to allow the ordination of transgender people.
I think that’s remarkable. People of faith seeing all kinds of people as equal. And, actually Acting on that belief.
Huzzah.

Crazyass school boards.

Strikes are so quaint.

Whoopee. That works out well.

It’s all fun and games until they bring out the….all the new militarized stuff.

So you like seeing Jesus riding a dinosaur in your science texts, lol! You know I’m joking.

Good morning, friends. Sunny and cool here in NW Indiana, with no rain in the forecast. RevBev and O&S, can you blow really hard to the northeast and send some of that rain up here?

I have relatives in Oakland and Northern CA, and I do hope the vampire squid gets tossed out!

Voters clearly know more about how to teach than teachers. /s

natch :) edit: did you read Nancy Drew as a kid? That is the only place I’ve ever seen ‘natch’ used.

Good morning folks.

Nouriel Roubini says, “Batten down the hatches.” The year 2013 will be the year of A Global Perfect Storm. Another sign that the US Presidential election issues this year are going to be irrelevant. Oh, and add China to the list of countries to watch for economic crisis.

Think the left and progressive democrats are getting ready to make political hay of this calamity? Don’t think so. Too focused on Obama. Watch for another missed opportunity for movemental politics.

Nancy Drew – a preppy’s idea of a mystery.

Never read Nancy Drew. Read a Hardy Boys book to my son when he was little.

I remember natch from my youth, though.

What’s DFH’s mystery pref?

Sure, and there is still a storm warning around…quite overcast here. amazing.

The WI recall was a clusterfuck and isn’t what I was talking about. Next time your county puts a referendum on the ballot stay home but don’t bitch about more money coming out of your pocket as a result.

The only people I remember using the term “natch” were preppies. IE Valley Girls. Of course this was before the work “like” was inserted every other word.

Mornin’. I made your glass of lemonade when I got home last night. What a great idea, thanks. I use real sugar instead of a sweetener though.

But it had horses. And I was a bit of a preppy, I guess. A hippy preppy. Or something :)

So, you, like, have a problem with Valley Girls?

RD Wolff:

Nor are solutions available in New Deal-type regulations and Keynesian deficit spending as promoted by economists Paul Krugman and Robert Reich. … After five years of crisis, it has become clear that any real solution for capitalist crisis must include changing the class structure of capitalist enterprises and thereby their directors’ decisions.

This is where I part company — but only slightly — with Wolff. Keynesian deficit spending — without borrowing or taxing — is an absolute imperative IMHO for any progressive change to take place between now and the time that “changing the class structure of capitalist enterprises and thereby their directors’ decisions” can take place.

I know some argue that the sooner the system collapses, the sooner that “changing the class structure of capitalist enterprises and thereby their directors’ decisions” can take place, but I’m not persuaded that is correct.

But YMMV.

Don’t recall any county referendums on the ballot.

I will be doing a diary on this very subject by the way.

Great.

Don’t forget that Reich was one of the earlier pushers of the idea that if you went to college all your econ problems would be solved. Was a cornerstone of Clinton’s econ policy. Knowledge workers was the term of art, as I recall.

So where did that get the former middle class. Deeply in debt & unemployed. WOW. Winner policy.

Dang, SD, what’d you put in the coffee this morning?

From following Wolff I read that as the Keynesian solution is appropriate in the short term but will not solve the long term systemic problems.

How can we deficit spend to the degree required without either borrowing or spending? I know the MMTers believe it’s possible but how long could we keep that up?

On edit: We could drastically transfer money from the War Dept’s budget to keep from borrowing or taxing.

Krugman an Reich are both of the “it just needs a tweak” school of economics.

ARG !

The problem is that the solutions each propose keep the current system in place. There by leaving the situation to repeat over and over and over ad infinitum.

Reich & Krugman have been assigned the roles of the public intellectual (LOL) outside edge of saying what is acceptable on the ‘left.’

I once ran into Reich at an airport gate. He’s just as visible (4’10″) as Volcker (6’4″) who I also ran into at an airport gate.

I know sweetener isn’t really good for you, but neither is the sugar. I try to limit both. A glass of fresh squeezed lemonade i just a really quick and refreshing drink. My other beverage of choice is iced tea (also with sweetener), but since tea is a diuretic, it’s important to drink water when it’s hot, too, and I’m not good about that.

EDIT to add: it seems to take more sugar to sweeten lemon juice than the amount of sweetener needed. I like lemonade very tart, but it still seems to need a couple of spoons of sugar, but only one packet of sweetener. And I use Splenda (actually, Costco’s generic version) which I think is marginally better than those pink packets.

I understand that but the system is not going to change overnight.

Krugman and Reich are cheerleaders, not critics.

sigh…no it won’t and not without a fight.

Seems to miss his point, imho.

My mother was 4’10″.

Yes, it is worth a read, but when I read Rick’s stuff it is as if I were in a time warp, and had been transferred back to ca. 1959. It’s not that he’s wrong — he fingers the structure fairly well; but the Marxist language (which is not the same thing as Marxist insight) is a trap. The teleological features grate on one’s scientific nerves. The description is spot on, but using Marx to analyze this stuff is like boxing with one hand tied behind your back. Why not use both hands?

*g*

There’s got to be a law of diminishing returns kicking in here at some point.

I use diabetisweet and stivia, myself.

I am literally a dunce when it comes to economics, although I read Krugman and Reich and Dean Baker and Yves Smith. But Krugman has been “yelling” in his blog and columns for action, which doesn’t seem to be wanting tweaking at the edges.

Egypt’s parliament has convened in defiance of military. When do the big guns come out.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been doing this anti- thing for 40 years that my thinking is focused more on the long term than short. I fully expect to be dead before the system actually changes, although I would like to see some positive movement before then. lol

My mother was, also, at her very tallest, before age started to take its toll. I have gone from 5’5″ to about 5’2″ thanks to age and arthritis.

I introduced myself to both on those separate occasions. Reich was charming. Volcker, an ex-boss of my then current boss, which I mentioned, was so shy he could not carry on a simple chit chat.

What Krugman want’s is a New new Deal but that would be like throwing a wet sponge on a raging fire, IMHO.

It’s a little different here every day. And, I’m okay with that, really.
Fer Sure!

Never heard of diabetisweet. I have used stevia a couple of times. But I’m also cheap, and I can get a LOT of generic Splenda at Costco for not a lot of money. You have to buy stevia at a health food store, and the FDA has toxicity concerns about it so I’d rather not go there.

Yep

It worked for a while — down to the early 1970s. After that, not so much. People in the 90s claiming higher education was the meal ticket were looking backward and fighting the last war. In my long career as a university professor I witnessed the coming and going of a list of meal tickets for young persons who were bright but not particularly endowed with talent, the kind of person who, if she worked hard could generally expect success in life. The first was medicine. Can’t count the number of times a student would come into my office complaining that his A- or B+ in Econ 1 had closed the door to his future in medicine. The next was law — which lasted through the 1970s and into the early 80s. By the 90s it was finance. I had a lot of gifted students who ended up in JPMorgan and Goldman Sux. I used to tell them, they are going to burn you out. Live in the company dorm and save your money so that in 5 years when your juices have been extracted, you will still have a stake of a quarter of a million or so to get started in life. Don’t know if any of them took my advice.

How come is it, that when you get shorter with age, you don’t get thinner? I feel like I’m turning into a ball.

I tried Stevia once. Awful.

I met Paul Volcker several years ago. He is 6′ 7″ or so.

Although he was not gregarious, I found him to be a reasonable conversationlist.

One has to distinguish — as always — between what they said and what they actually did. What they were saying was correct, what they actually did was a different story.

There are great benefits to higher education — but not if college prices are allowed to go so high that loan burden becomes prohibitive, and not if the banksters are allowed to ruin the economy.

I mix the two together and it works for me. But then I don’t use that much sweetener so it lasts a long time.

Lived thru the same history. Was taken in by it.

Was on Charlie Rose in summer 1992 parroting Reich, defending Clinton econ policy with Larry Kudlow on the supply side.

NOT my finest moment.

I once ran into Reich at an airport gate. He’s just as visible (4’10″) as Volcker (6’4″) who I also ran into at an airport gate.

Don’t confuse height with stature. LOL. Remember who said that, eCAHN?

No, I don’t remember.

Was making a casual observation, not a value judgement.

How can we deficit spend to the degree required without either borrowing or spending? I know the MMTers believe it’s possible but how long could we keep that up?

You mean without borrowing or taxing, right? We can. This is the central tenet of MMT — and most important for progressives to understand.

I don’t know enough to argue with you, but it seems to me that they’re all very much against austerity and deficit-reduction during a recession, and that’s what’s happening.

Was reportedly said by Milton Friedman — who was quite short — about his nemesis, John Kenneth Galbraith — who was quite tall.

Knut probably remembers. LOL

Off to swim in the great capitalist cesspool.

US KIA Afghanistan: 2,040

Afghan, Iraki, Yemeni and Pakistani casualties: estimates vary to over 2M

US MBS 2012: 23,684 and counting

No war but class war

Ludlow Massacre

Be good to yourselves, and all other living things

Namaste

Never. Give. Up.

Good morning. Amazing turnaround in the temp forcasts just overnight here in Portland. From highs in the mid 90′s by Thursday to consistent mid 80′s for the next 10 days.

One cannot take a 10 day forecast seriously, but it is nice to see.

Early morning temp here low 50′s.

I just looked at the radar map for Austin. It seems like a storm milling around south and a bit east of Austin.

Later today, my sweetie comes back from her trip and my 10 day batchelorhood ends, not too soon, IMO!

Presstv (Tehran bias) claims that Saudi demonstrations are spreading from Shia eastern provinces to Sunni areas.

If true, that would be interesting.

good morning pups. it RAINED last night. happy grass, trees, flowers.

I’ve managed to stay fairly slim, although not as slim as I useta wuz. I think exercise is the key to that. And diet, of course. As we age we become more sedentary just naturally.

Since I’ve embarked on my “no statin drug” experiment, I’ve been more careful about diet, eating less fat and red meat and a LOT more fish, and I’ve dropped about 8 lbs. without really trying.

The MMTers also say that at some point inflation will become a problem.

I once rode on an elevator with JKG. Quite tall!

JKG is blamed in a book of essays I just read about U.S. cold war exceptionalism (condemning it) for making leftie economists placid and unaware of how rightie economists were capturing all the think tanks, politicians, academics while lefties were sleeping.

x2

Yes. But we’re a long way from that. And a little inflation is better than a lot of unemployment.

Sorry this was meant as a reply to SD at #86

Weather forecasts aren’t always very reliable are they? Yesterday’s said that the low last night would be in the lower 60′s. It’s 6:12 am and it’s just a tad under 80 degrees on the front porch. I might have to take my morning walk earlier today…and tomorrow and tomorrow.
Glad you Northerlies are still getting the Cool.

I read that Wolff statement as saying that you don’t change the situation through economic policy (well you might in the short run) but what is necessary is restructuring the legal basis of the corporation and of the transfer of wealth so that that directors are held accountable to the community (or lose their limited liability, for example). On the political side of political economy.

THIS answers a lot of my questions as to WTF is going on?
( including the artificial EU crisis and the artificial concern about China [first we invite them in and now we don't like it])

What is TPPA?

Obama’s secrecy beat Nixon’s by a country mile. Of course, it was Nixon who opened the gates to China, Obama wants to open the gates to the Mongols and Visigoths. The American people don’t count except if we willingly work for slave wages. Apparently this attitude is affecting Norway as well.
The EU MUST be taken down as it has protected it’s people in the past; this cannot be allowed.

So, I figure, that’s one promise 0 has kept, he’s trying hard to renegotiate NAFTA……to make it worse….for the smallfolk.

8 lbs, wow. Good for you Molly.

Almost as reliable as economic forecasts! Almost. No wait! Economic forecasts are almost as reliable as weather.

No, wait!

I agree but it has to be kept in mind. Our modern crop of economists have a very bad habit of not looking around the next corner.

I’m headed out, too. I want to get on the bike a bit earlier this morning so I can avoid the hot uphill slog at the end. Only 71º here now, but headed to 89º again.

I recall hearing yesterday that the eventual return of inflation (10/60 post-WWII years and caused by Nixon price controls and Arthur Burns monetary policy) was responsible for a some of the complicated debt arrangements that S&L govts got themselves into, with large fees to Wall St. Now contributing to bankruptcies.

Inflation is used in econ as a scare word like terriss is used in foreign policy. Purpose is to make listeners agree to irrational stuff that will profit banksters.

Democracy in the workplace. Decision making transferred from board of directors and major shareholders to the workers themselves.

Ha! But, where, oh where, can we place our trust?
Bobby Z’s Trust Yourself.

Yeah and NOT even trying to lose weight, just being very careful with diet in the hopes that my “numbers” will allow me to stay off the statin and blood sugar drugs when I have my physical in September. The weight loss is a bonus. Except that I had bought a few new summer clothes in May and now they’re too big!

OK, gotta *poof*

I fortunately had major reactions to statins for which I was taken off. Instead, I embarked on a program using a nattokinase, which doesn’t lower cholesterol but does mitigate it’s effects on the plaque buildup.

Some are now saying that lowering cholesterol efforts is a boondoggle.

Flyin’ by today … listening to Rep Rogers from eastern Washington saying just you try to find a doctor here who will take new Medicare patients. Is that true? Will an intrepid reporter find out? Or is this monkey business?

…how long could we keep that up?

Until we start getting signals of real inflation. (Not just supply-demand imbalances for certain items.)

Any monetary policy should seek to match the actual money supply to the quantity of goods and services produced. The credit default swap crisis showed how money can be created globally beyond the reach of governments to create an asset bubble (and no doubt some of the money was cashed out into commodities speculation, inflating commodity prices). IMO, economic policy solutions are now in a global context unless every nation become an autarky. There are too many transnational transactions going on to regulate from a single country.

No argument there!

Where in Eastern WA?

Chuck Todd asking tough questions this morning. Is he trying out for Gregory’s chair? I could live with it.

Cathy McMorris Rogers … she wasn’t specific about where. Not familiar with Washington State. She stumbled through her talking points. Over and over and over and over and….

PS: there’s no way Obama’s NOT going to be “re-elected” with the TPP still being negotiated and countries being strong armed into it.
I figure the right wing $$$$$ groups are aiming for more right wing rep and senators. This way the country stay in a dead calm and behind the scene deals can be worked out while it appears the the R’s are stalling Mr. President.

The money multiplier is not stable, and is unpredictable in its instability.

All monetary theory is garbage for that reason.

All you need to know about money policy you can learn by doing the hokey-pokey.

You still have the legal-structural problem of the “divine right of managers”. Remember what Stephen Wolf did at United Airlines. He took an ESOP corporation private with nary a whimper from the unions until he started cutting labor costs. The legal basis of operation has to be sorted out so that the law does not automatically privilege decision-makers. Or…cooperatives will have to evolve a polity that can make rapid and wise decisions without designated decision-makers.

The other issue is the ability to scale up for large undertakings.

I wouldn’t argue against your statement for an eyeblink.

I spent two years at Citibank’s econ dept (1970-72), then the fortress of monetarists outside of academia.

Such a bunch of horses asses you never met in your life.

Wow! And here I was thinking I was a cynic!

To be serious for just a moment, I was once asked by a client what “school” of economics I considered myself a member of. I looked at him like he had two heads, but replied politely that I used the economics tools that seemed appropriate for the task at hand.

Unfortunately some of the stuff I remember from school had a hidden agenda that I did not figure out until very late in life. Like cost-benefit analysis, which seems sensible, is just an excuse to giving the rich a larger share of the pie.

The instability of money multipliers affect MMT as well, I would think.

The monetary situation in the US between the New Deal and Nixon was somewhat stabilized by having fixed savings interest rates, fixed loan interest rates, and making banks live on the spread between the two. That came unglued as a result of transnational factors–depletion of US gold reserves that caused Nixon to abandon the gold standard completely, transnational Eurodollars and petrodollars that allowed the dollar-denominated money supply to increase outside of US Treasury and Federal Reserve control, and the resulting spikes in commodity prices from that inflation. OPEC political use of oil supplies also was a factor.

But the general principle of monetary policy is to match the money supply to stable money-denominated values for goods and services, which means that on a moving average the money supply must equal the value of goods and services. The difficulty of policy has always been to figure out how to measure this and respond to it in practice. And quite frankly, the privacy of corporate data and the conventions of GAAP don’t facilitate the gathering of economically relevant information.

A Kentucky-stable-full of them, eh?

The devil is in the measurement of costs and benefits. Whose model?

One owned horses iirc. Can’t come up with his name right now.

Doesn’t matter whose model. Benefits are always bigger in money terms to the rich. So the outcome must favor them.

Payments to relatives of those who died on 9/11 is the perfect example of a fundamentally flawed theory. Ya see, all humans are not ‘worth’ the same amount. Those who swept the floor in Windows on the World were worth a lot less than those who were stock brokers.

That’s always been my concern.

It’s not like physics, but the economists think that it is. But then, economists never have to offer any actual proof that can be tested.

You can, and I have, done a lot of quantitative work (regression analysis) in economics.

Neolibrul economists, and all those who adhere to one ‘school’ or another, don’t pay any attention to evidence.

Mondragon. Management is elected by the entire work force. Wolff visited Mondragon this year and speaks about it here.

My westward facing backyard fence is laying in the mud.

*sadface*

Good morning SD and all you other firepups.

Correlation does not imply causation. Never, it seems, is this more evident than economics, particularly forecasts. The “not’ in that sentence seems to be ignored.

Has anyone in economics used chaos theory, particularly fractals, to study the process?

You got rain and wind, I take it!

Good morning!

We sure did. As oldnslow said up thread we got about 3 inches. 1.5 came in about 45 minutes.

Wind gusts were around 60 for a little while.

Good news is that fence belongs to the next door neighbor. Bad news is he probably won’t fix it until the weekend so I’ve got to babysit the heck out of my dog until then. She’ll be sad, not being able to hang out in the backyard.

Ooooh. Nice. Thanks for the link.

Earlier I mentioned watching the radar images around Austin. There was (is still, but smaller) a big blob of intense storm activity south of Austin and getting smaller. Seems to be heading south.

I was just watching on our local YNN radar channel (available only on Time Warner Cable™!). Weather.com says we’re supposed to get some more action around noon. Should be fun.

Interesting, indeed. According to Wikipedia, only 10 to 15 percent of he population is Shia so the revolt would probably need to spread to other groups before it becomes serious. It *is* fascinating that there are rifts in the Saudi royal family severe enough to cause one to seek Asylum in the UK after being accused of aiding the Shia revolt.

The instability of money multipliers affect MMT as well, I would think.

MMT does not depend on the money multiplier. In fact, it doesn’t exist in MMT.

What is the legal framework in which Mondragon exists. The US legal framework allowed Stephen Wolf to raid a company that was “employee-owned”.

So it’s in the measurement — how much is a life worth?

How does that work out in practice. You are using MMT to implement economic policy. What exactly do you do? Where do you read the feedback of the system from? How valid and/or accessible is the data for that feedback? How lagged?

In for a coffee break and a quick read, thanks to everyone for the economics discussions, especially.

Harvest chores and a small paying job today, the second one this year. I can really feel that economic recovery now. /s

Be well pups and carry on.

ESOP is not really what I would call employee owned, even though owning shares is considered ownership. Do the workers have a say in every major decision? Are they the ones who set the course and goals of the enterprise? At Mondragon the entire work force would have to agree to go private. Not that it couldn’t happen but the organization of the coop is different from ESOP.

In another day, I was at a consulting firm where they used the ESOP to screw all the middle managers. LOL

MMT sees the role of monetary policy to be much narrower than neoliberal economists do. The central bank only controls the price of reserves. The money supply is seen as endogenous and constructs like NGDP are not seen as a function of Fed tools.

Seems to be heading south.

Uh-oh! That’s me! San Antonio.

We also got rain yesterday – some quite hard and overnight. It looks wet outside now but no falling rain visible from the office window. It held off while I was at court and coming back, thank goodness, since I forgot to take my umbrella home yesterday. The sun was shining! It was so nice, I had my (very late) lunch at a sidewalk table, enjoying the sunshine.

We do still need more rain, though, no question.

MMT in the short run
Marx in the long run

LOLOL

Good early afternoon!

Max the kitty is snoozing comfortably, having voluntarily crawled into his carrier. He slept for a while with his head half upside down so I think he’s relaxing well. Someone yesterday commented about Smooth Jazz, so I put on some mellow music, and we’re listening to native flutes on a cd called “Dream Catcher”. Wow, all nine reviewers on Amazon gave it 5 stars.

http://www.amazon.com/Dream-Catcher-Ron-Allen/dp/B0000024FY/ref=sr_1_5?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1341936642&sr=1-5&keywords=dream+catcher

I must remember more often that music is soothing to the soul, and play it more.

(ok, now to read everyone’s stuff above!)

Max the kitty is snoozing comfortably,

Glad to hear it, Sharon (or should I call you Mary?;) ). Sounds like he’s recovering well.

You’re so right about music; I forget to put music on for long periods of time, too. Then when I do, I wonder why.

Good news. Thanks.

Dream Catcher

I have 2 Lakota style flutes. Not much of a musician but it’s soothing just to play them. Both made by Wind Pony.

Should I mention the latest infuriating action by my screwy landlord, the one who thinks cats are afraid of mice?

When I came home yesterday my water bottle/dish watering station, outside my door for the last nine years, was gone. Also the plastic feeding dish that Big Boy eats out of…I was pressed for time yesterday morning, he was hesitant about eating inside and my guys were “pressing” him, so I put it outside, meaning to put it back in when I left, as I’ve been doing the last six weeks (since landlord’s ukase forbidding “outdoor feeding.”)

Nothing was said, or written in the new lease, about not providing water. I wrote a scathing letter (and at that, waited a few hours to cool down some, and haven’t yet printed it, to cool down a little more, check language before sending), but I.am.pissed.ROYALLY!
That man is nuts on the subject of cats.
Luckily Big Boy was willing to eat inside this a.m. Last night, he actually lay on the floor for awhile after eating, even while I was out of the room. Surprise!

Okay, I feel better having shared with this sympathetic crowd. Whooo! (tension being released)

Grrr. Can’t stand people who are batshit nuts on a subject, to the exclusion of all logic.

EDIT: You taught me a new word, though. Ukase. I like it!

Are you perhaps referring to my landlord? (don’t believe I used those words….but they are not inapposite.)

Ukase…it’s a borrowing from Russian. I like its extreme connotation. ;-)

The central bank only controls the price of reserves

Is “price of reserves” the counterpart to the current “fed funds rate”? The interest charged to banks for loans to enlarge reserves?

And what information does the central bank use to determine how to set the price of reserves?

To my mind, the problem is not letting the reverse information system (money and prices) become disconnected from real production of goods and services. And not biasing the time-shifting effects of savings-investment to either the past or the future. And my reasoning is both of those corrupt the information fed back through the economy about the actual supply-demand conditions of goods and services.

A second problem is how to prevent the gaming of the system to individually preferred inequitable ends.

Exactly my point about why the legal underpinnings are important.

Employees in an ESOP have the powers that the charter of that ESOP gives them. Most often they are the powers of shareholders. Sometimes the shares might be allocated by salary level which automatically biases the system to management.

It would be good to link to a piece about the Spanish law that allows Mondragon to function in the face of strong neoliberal pressures.

It would be good to find the Spanish law that allows Mondragon to function the way it does.

If you watch Wolff’s vid some of your questions are answered. It’s not as if they don’t have problems of their own.

You’re in the NE where that stuff is almost nonexistent. Out here we have statewide, county, and even municipal stuff on the ballot alla time. Bond issues for schools, parks, water and sewer projects, etc. Also zoning issues, local city charter amendments, etc.

I believe Volcker is 6’8″.

I don’t think stealing your bowls is legal. That man is, to use formal language, a poopyhead.

Landlord. *spit*

I was thinking the same thing. He may be the landlord but he doesn’t have the authority/right to confiscate personal property.

Your landlord reminds me a bit of one of our neighbors when I was growing up in Detroit. We had three cats who all came from outdoors (they really adopted us, well except for Chuckie the kitten who was in a car engine compartment) and one summer, a neighbor kept insisting our cats were getting into his attic and he was going to kill ‘em if he caught ‘em. So we were trying to keep them indoors at least at night. So one evening, I was letting Chuckie in, but looking backward to make sure Danny wasn’t going to go sprinting by me to get out. Well, as Chuckie came into the house, and into my sightline, I saw something wiggling in his mouth! So I grabbed him, shoved his face out the door, and shook him, yelling/growling “drop it, drop it!” until he did and the poor mouse ran away. Then I tossed the kitty inside and walked to the doorway at the other end of the vestibule to see my brother and sister in the living room looking at me enquiringly (they had that “WTF? look”). They thought I was crazy for not just throwing the cat out along with the mouse.

My own personal kitties have been strictly indoor only cats. My first one, the original Max, I trained on a leash, but then he realized how fun it was out there to chase leaves. After he slipped out a time or two, no more leash walks for anyone.

I like your formal language. ;)
SD, ysp, thanks. No, I don’t think it’s legal, either. Had there been something written, maybe, but there isn’t. Not part of the deal at all.
I came close to using the word “steal” in my letter, but decided to soften the language just a tad…
I’m still pretty po’d. Guess Big Boy found a place to drink today (we’ve had rain for two days, so puddles abound), ’cause I offered him water next to his food dish (inside the kitchen door!) tonight and he never drank.

Sigh.
Oh, and SharonMI – these indoor guys are supposed to be indoor – but since I started out with ten – 5 adults and 5 kittens–of which the current 3 were among the kittens, needed an outlet (one-bedroom apt, though large) for their energy. Yard very safe, walled and gated all around, so…
It’s worked well, and of course Big Boy and Smoodgie are ferals, so while I’d bring them in, neither has been ready. May never be ready to stay in all the time. I tried my first cat on a leash, too. Ended after a friendly (!) dog came toward us…results not pretty, especially for me, trying to pick her up (blood was involved).

I admire your dedication, and sounds like the two ferals are lucky to have you on their side!