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critique of loon theories around banking/money creation/the federal reserve

frogwoman said:
What is incredible is that some people see Keiser, Paul etc as anti-establishment figures. Ron Paul is, weirdly, quite popular in the US (or was) with people who were into stuff like legalising cannabis etc, as an "alternative" candidate. Most of them probably weren't aware of his mad racism or his other political views.

Keiser is employed by the fuckin foreign state broadcaster of the Kremlin ffs!
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This isn't an accident, a lot of money has been poured into organisations like the Cato Institute to legitimise the radical credentials of right libertarianism. A good example of the methods they use to cultivate this image is their choice of writers for their conferences and writers for their journal. While the donors to the Cato Institute would be horrified at the idea of implementing the economic policies advocated by, to take two examples, academic Marxist James C Scott and left-liberal Glenn Greenwald, they are more than happy to pay handsomely to use their names to promote the idea that their movement is anti-establishment.
 
Frumious B. said:
No, the production company which employs him is American.
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Oh come on, they're subcontracted by Russia Today, Putin's state broadcaster. He knows what side his bread's buttered on - ever seen him criticise the Russian Kleptocracy/oligarchy? The American broadcast company wouldn't employ him if he was likely to go 'off message' would they? If you're interested in how this stuff fits together you could do worse than taking a look at some of Chomsky and Herman's stuff on the political economy of the mass media - video here - essay here.
 
J Ed said:
This isn't an accident, a lot of money has been poured into organisations like the Cato Institute to legitimise the radical credentials of right libertarianism. A good example of the methods they use to cultivate this image is their choice of writers for their conferences and writers for their journal. While the donors to the Cato Institute would be horrified at the idea of implementing the economic policies advocated by, to take two examples, academic Marxist James C Scott and left-liberal Glenn Greenwald, they are more than happy to pay handsomely to use their names to promote the idea that their movement is anti-establishment.
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And you've got the mises website and forums, which act as a repository for stock arguments used by tedious Mr Logic basement dwelling libertarian trolls - they've basically prepared answers for everything so that credulous idiots can try and look smart on the internet.

They really don't like it when you ask why, if Ron Paul and the Cato institute are really anti-corporate, they receive such large corporate donations though :D
 
SpineyNorman said:
And you've got the mises website and forums, which act as a repository for stock arguments used by tedious Mr Logic basement dwelling libertarian trolls - they've basically prepared answers for everything so that credulous idiots can try and look smart on the internet.
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TAXATION IS SLAVERY
THE MINIMUM WAGE IS A RACIST POLICY THAT RESULTS IN APARTHEID
OBAMA IS A BABY KILLING DICTATOR (but Reagan was a saint)
 
It's very telling if the people you hang out with think that banks and neo-liberalism are a "marxist plot" taffboy gwyrdd. What does that say about them? What does it say about their politics? And you want to encourage acceptance of this type of politics on places like here?
 
In reality what distinguished Karl Marx from the millions who were affected in the same way was that, in a world already in a state of gradual decomposition, he used his keen powers of prognosis to detect the essential poisons, so as to extract them and concentrate them, with the art of a necromancer, in a solution which would bring about the rapid destruction of the independent nations on the globe. But all this was done in the service of his race.
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Thus the Marxist doctrine is the concentrated extract of the mentality which underlies the general concept of life today. For this reason alone it is out of the question and even ridiculous to think that what is called our bourgeois world can put up any effective fight against Marxism. For this bourgeois world is permeated with all those same poisons and its conception of life in general differs from Marxism only in degree and in the character of the persons who hold it. The bourgeois world is Marxist but believes in the possibility of a certain group of people – that is to say, the bourgeoisie – being able to dominate the world[...]

sorry, but these theories together with stuff about sheeple, the servile masses and bullshit about wirepullers have a lot more in common with the politics of the author of the above than any kind of progressive working class politics. and i think they are poisonous and need to be exposed for what they are.
 
Frumious B. said:
If we shouldn't trust Max Keiser or other supposed loons, who should we trust? Evan Davis? Will Hutton?
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None of the above. Paul Mason is about the best in the mainstream and Doug Henwood's left business observer is worth a look, though generally gives a US centric take on things. But I'd always recommend looking at as wide a range of sources as possible.

There's a poster on here, love detective, who really really knows his stuff - if you're lucky he might give you a few pointers too.

And if you're really, really keen reading a bit of economic history can help you see through the bullshit - Harvey's a brief history of neoliberalism, Kliman's The Failure of Capitalist Production and Paul Mattick's Business as Usual are great.

To be honest 99 times out of 100 the broad consensus on urban is more reliable than most other news sources.
 
SpineyNorman said:
...

And if you're really, really keen reading a bit of economic history can help you see through the bullshit - Harvey's a brief history of neoliberalism, Kliman's The Failure of Capitalist Production and Paul Mattick's Business as Usual are great.
...
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Another one I found good (tho of course haven't finished yet) that is floating around on the net as a PDF is Milonakis and Fine, "From Political Economy to Economics", which shows how the dismal (pseudo)science of bourgeois economics divested itself of a grounding in social reality.
 
frogwoman said:
What is incredible is that some people see Keiser, Paul etc as anti-establishment figures. Ron Paul is, weirdly, quite popular in the US (or was) with people who were into stuff like legalising cannabis etc, as an "alternative" candidate. Most of them probably weren't aware of his mad racism or his other political views.

Keiser is employed by the fuckin foreign state broadcaster of the Kremlin ffs!
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I was just wondering if you can see any irony in this
 
SpineyNorman said:
Paul Mason is about the best in the mainstream
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Interesting - he tweeted his view on the Money Week 'end of Britain' forecast: "re MoneyWeek. They are wrong on one thing: there is exit route = dump globalisation as in 1931-33. Last one out loses bigtime" It's a nice snappy answer, but I don't understand it. :( Is he saying that Money Week is right (i.e. that all our banks will be made insolvent by rising interest rates) unless we start doing all the shit jobs which we have outsourced? I suppose that would give us full employment and lower living standards and a platform for growth.
 
Frumious B. said:
Interesting - he tweeted his view on the Money Week 'end of Britain' forecast: "re MoneyWeek. They are wrong on one thing: there is exit route = dump globalisation as in 1931-33. Last one out loses bigtime" It's a nice snappy answer, but I don't understand it. :( Is he saying that Money Week is right (i.e. that all our banks will be made insolvent by rising interest rates) unless we start doing all the shit jobs which we have outsourced? I suppose that would give us full employment and lower living standards and a platform for growth.
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This is the problem with twitter - you can't really make arguments like these in 140 characters. I think he's saying that the route out of this is protectionism - and that those who try it last will lose out big time. I'm far from convinced by this to be honest - that's where the need for as wide a range of sources as possible comes in. But this kind of stuff is contested - I might not necessarily agree with it but it is a serious analysis of the kind you won't get from the likes of Keiser.

This is Mason's blog anyway.
 
junglevip said:
Not exactly cast iron but hey, who cares

EDIT

Sorry Columbia Journal Review. I am sure that you are at least in-part credible
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Probably more reliable than wikipedia - and even in the wiki article you linked to it says this:

Creation of Russia Today was a part of larger effort by the Kremlin intended to improve the image of Russia abroad.[15] RT was conceived by former media minister Mikhail Lesin,[16] and Vladimir Putin’s press spokesperson Aleksei Gromov[17]
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SpineyNorman said:
These fruitbats think that bankers can just create money to make them (or at least their banks) rich, when in reality all they make is the interest, and even that only if the money is repaid.
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Are you for real? Do you know what even 1% on every pound in circulation adds up to per year?

And do you know what happens if you can't pay back your loan? Yep, the bank gets to take things of real value - your stuff, your house maybe.

SpineyNorman said:
I agree with pretty much all of that. But that's just the system doing what the system does and they're trying to say that it's when the money is created that the theft takes place, when it's through interest, investments, state bail-outs etc that they really get fat, not through magicking money out of thin air.
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It's their system silly... they get to create money out of thin air (by loaning it), charge interest, when the loan is paid back the new money is destroyed, but the bank has done very nicely out of it. The risk is that "a run on the bank" can get them at any time, because at any time they might have far greater liabilities than cash to fulfil them with. So our lovely governments guarantee against that - this alone tells you that our governments are bought and paid for - these guarantees are worth huge sums! It's like a poker player that gets to gamble so he usually makes a profit but in the event he gets caught, the town has to pay for it. It's a horrendous scam, and it's come about because hardly anyone understood what they were up to, and most of those got bought off along the way.

It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. Henry Ford
 
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