Ralph welcomes economist, attorney, and investigative journalist, James Henry for his expert take on what is going on in the banking system and what we can do to keep it from blowing up. And Professor and former Nader’s Raider, Alison Dundes Renteln, takes on the commercialization of our universities in her book “The Ethical University: Transforming Higher Education.”
I'm now looking forward to reading Rentein's book, "The Ethical University...". As a 1958 university graduate I'm aware of the wrong-headed shifting of attention of universities from "the liberal arts" to business training. It's a disservice to our community and I hope that it's discontinued.
It is funny how some of the most prestigious private universities, such as the Ivies, consider it beneath them to offer undergraduate business school programs, but many of these same schools have no problem running very profitable MBA/EMBA graduate business programs. Suddenly, having business schools isn't so undignified when there is considerable money to be made and when one can get the university name associated with top businesspeople.
Of course, many of these schools who consider it beneath them to have an undergraduate business school simply turn their undergraduate economics program into a de facto business degree with plenty of neoliberal economics instructors eager to play the rôle of a business school instructor. This is a shift since the time you and Mr. Nader went to school when there would have been at least some serious economics faculty at these schools. The same probably applies to other disciplines as well.
At less prestigious universities, the economics departments are often under the business school! Now that is truly unbecoming behavior!
Credit creation isn't the problem, only the power to fully implement and enforce e.g the tax (return) system which drains excess credit. The discussion about some imaginary Fed independent from government is make believe.
I don't see why the discussion participants are complicating it so much. The Fed is both the government's banking arm and the supply for the entire economy. All that any 'reform' would need to do is remove any interference by appointed decision-makers who don't or won't answer to government (or congress's) policy and oversight. Also tightening regulation to meet policy. That's it! What else could 'nationalizing' it mean? The monetarist notion of 'central bank independence', cooked up by ideologues like Friedman, who claimed a government with access to credit creation would run amok, is in the dustbin of history. The apparent central bank independence is merely illusory.
It answers to Congress/HOR. When the government says 'the debt ceiling will be raised' it just happens! When they say: 'we are going to spend X amount of money' it just happens! As Wray (Randall) and Mitchell (William) say there are the usual pretend hoops they jump through to make it look like the bank is 'getting money' for government to spend, but it can just do it, and they do indeed do it. Every single time.
On the one hand some in the discussion are claiming only "the government" does things like "bailing out the banks" or QE or spending money or levying/collecting taxes, yet at the same time they say "the Fed controls money". How does that work? If they think government is responsible they need to get policy adjustments into government policy. If they think 'the Fed' is responsible, they need to explain how e.g. QE happens only on government decree. All the talk about money for the people is confused. Failing to understanding how money moves (which Paul Lebow outlines above): government spends, as either direct spending to purchase or allows issue through the banking system, to begin meeting the public purpose. Everything it purchases is from the private sector unless it employs directly from the private sector. The very point of setting a tax levy is to create the situation where people must do things to get money settle that tax levy. This is how a government generates economic action to meet the public purpose.
All the shenanigans of Wall Street and other financial speculations sits atop the idiotic and unnecessary government bond system (aka so-called 'debt'). Which provides a risk-free base portfolio for running other financial speculation shenanigans.
Why hasn't a single member of the panel mentioned 'employer of last resort' and aiming for full-employment? Rather than dancing around notions of things like UBI - sure-fire way to raise dead money into the system alongside no creation of goods or services. And which is 'funded' how when supposedly the 'Fed' runs and fiddles the money system?
“I don't see why the discussion participants are complicating it so much. The Fed is both the government's banking arm and the supply for the entire economy. All that any 'reform' would need to do is remove any interference by appointed decision-makers who don't or won't answer to government (or congress's) policy and oversight. Also tightening regulation to meet policy. That's it!”
Bingo, Ferdy has understood the fundamental issue and the correct way to resolve that issue. The Federal Reserve is not an external of government. The Federal Reserve Board of Governors is made up of members appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The Fed has power over monetary policy (interest rates), but not over fiscal policy (government spending, taxation, etc.). Congress is free to establish regulations over banking as they are to pass government spending bills which will then be funded. People may question the influence of private banks in the organization of the regional Federal Reserve banks, but as we know from many other discussions, the corporate influence over government is not solely an issue with the regional Federal Reserve banks and these regional banks only have limited influence over Federal Reserve policy. Corporate influence over Congress is still the fundamental issue and that is where the focus should be, not making arguments about the Fed which are fundamentally untrue unless we are discussing things such as monetary policy.
“On the one hand some in the discussion are claiming only "the government" does things like "bailing out the banks" or QE or spending money or levying/collecting taxes, yet at the same time they say "the Fed controls money". How does that work? If they think government is responsible they need to get policy adjustments into government policy. If they think 'the Fed' is responsible, they need to explain how e.g. QE happens only on government decree.”
Yes! As Mr. Nader said at the end of the radio part of the episode, it is about Congress. This is where the focus needs to be, but Congress is not listening to the public about economic matters because the public is not offering anything close to an economic policy mandate. Members of Congress are not elected on the basis of economic competence. Many progressives, as I see it at least, seem to think economics is a bad word, something right-wing, and something to be shunned. Not so, economics is at the center of any kind of progressive policy and without the consideration of economics, good policy cannot be made.
When we do hear Congress speak about economic matters, what we hear is complete nonsense and old wives tales about the national debt, inflation, and so forth. The utter incompetence of Congress to even understand very basic economic matters is the result of a public that is apathetic and uninformed about economic matters. Congress is merely reflecting the public in this regard and so naturally corporate causes will bend things in their favor. There is absolutely no resistance to this right now. The good news is that things do not have to be this way.
“Why hasn't a single member of the panel mentioned 'employer of last resort' and aiming for full-employment? Rather than dancing around notions of things like UBI - sure-fire way to raise dead money into the system alongside no creation of goods or services.”
There are many issues with this concept of universal basic income and what Ferdy points out is one of them. There are other issues I outlined in my admittedly long-winded response Sunday morning. Full employment is absolutely the solution and it would be politically very popular, but we hear nothing about it. This needs to be corrected.
If you think it's a good idea have ellen brown speak about the banking crisis. Her recent article like all of her articles clear and filled with good ideas and analysis.
David makes a great point. I agree that we need public banks. What happened to the California effort?
As we already know, this goes back at least to Dodd-Frank. And as for education, oh boy. The humanities teach people how power works. Our economy is self-selecting. I worked on a degree that is intimately related to behavior. I was never going to be useful to an employer, yet when I began to understand the coercive practices (the cost) that profit-taking motivates, and the theoretical solutions, the Living Options (James was no fan of Hegel) available to us, it made it more difficult to work with others. I knew how to make things work better, but we are paid to do as we are told. Most of us. And I didn't know a thing about the world until I took classes in college. I knew I was a democrat, but I voted for Bill Clinton and listened with bated breath as NAFTA was passed! Gore was the vote that passed it. And then Dodd-Frank. That took me about ten years to understand, thanks to my education.
Based on Hannah's comment about jobs I can't resist this from the Fight Like An Animal podcast (https://www.againsttheinternet.com/), Episode: The Life and Death of a Radical Environmentalist
"I have essentially the same strategic critique of the climate justice movement as I do of Earth First which is, you know, once again I just don't think you're actually tailoring this...I don't think that REAL human needs are actually being thought about all that much. So much of that framework gets into this kind of like meeting people where they're at, like, appealing to people's immediate self interest basically within the system that we already inhabit.
I just feel like the quintessential climate-justice messaging is somebody falling all over themselves and being like, 'We're not doing this for reverence of the earth, we don't fucking care about the earth, we're actually doing because we want to build a bunch of Good GREEN JOBS! You know, a bunch of JOBS! We're just going to throw a whole bunch of mother-fucking JOBS at y'all.' As if, like, everybody just loves going to work so much that the best thing that you could ever do for them is make sure there are just a ton more JOBS everywhere so that if they happen to not, you know like, do enough work at their job already, or they don't have a job they can just go and you know fall into some other job cuz there just coming at 'em from every angle..."
Most people I know are miserable precisely because of their jobs—whether it's GenXer's, GenZs Millennials, Boomers, etc. Add to that so much of our earnings going to the MIC, and so much being taken away from libraries, it's no wonder people are losing their marbles, and, as we unfortunately learn today in Tennessee's elementary school, going postal.
Ralph makes the mistake of treating banks as just another example of corporate hegemony that can be reigned in via regulation. The notion that rich depositors should pay for their stupidity fails to realize the profound role banks play in society. Because of the way the current system is structured, banks irresponsibility MUST be bailed out. If not, our entire money system will collapse.
Think about it. The notion of a ‘run on the banking sector’ only makes sense if one withdraws their deposits in cash, otherwise one would be just transferring the only record of their money to another failing bank. People don’t realize that the banking system is the embodiment of what we view as our money.
In 1913 we made a deal with the devil with the Federal Reserve Act. We allowed bank credit to be used in place of real money and gave it sanction as legal tender. Instead, we should have put a wall between credit creation/lending and money creation. Lincoln did with the Greenback. - real US Money, to fund the Civil War. Kucinich and Conyers tried to do it in 2011 with HR2990.
Nationalizing credit creation doesn’t make sense (David). Lending is between investors and borrowers and shouldn’t be a significant government function. On the other hand, money creation should be like a public utility, providing the means to first fund public purpose programs before entering the private economy. Then and only then should the money spent into the economy be used for investment and lending in the private sector.
For those who don’t know, the reforms mentioned by Paul Lebow were put forth by the American Monetary Institute and their late leader Stephen Zarlenga. Former Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s wife was an advocate for the AMI and I believe that is how the two Kucinichs met. Thus, Rep. Kucinich’s ‘American Monetary Act’ was formed from ideas from the AMI.
I’m not going to completely rubbish the AMI’s ideas because the end goal is a noble and economically correct: spend money on public needs. That said, the reasoning put forth by Zarlenga and the AMI was rather uninformed as it pertains to the Federal Reserve. The concept of nationalizing the Federal Reserve is absurd because, as Ferdy mentioned in his reply, the Fed is a government function. The central bank of the United States, whether the Fed or some other hypothetical system, has the ability to fund whatever spending Congress passes. With that in mind, the focus needs to be on Congress passing appropriate social spending, regulating corporatism, generally implementing sound economic policy, and not on reforming the central bank when the central bank can and will realize what Congress passes.
I’m not entirely sure why my fellow progressives put so much effort into fruitless exercises about the Federal Reserve when the focus should be on Congress and their willingness to serve public needs.
Wow phenomenal episode!!! Ralph was sharp and on it as always but even more passionate and informative. Guests were great. And great questions from Dave and Steve.
Hoping the self-governing method of Sociocracy could become much more widespread, so that we can actually have some true equivalancy of voice! So desperately needed for our academic institutions.Yes! High Schools, middle schools can do this as Civic Development and imagining businesses with ethics, and literally any would-be democractic institutions from co-housing, cooperatives for local farming, etc. Please look into this awesome work for power/responsibility sharing. Thank you so much, Ralph, Steve, David, Hannah, and all team on this work for all of us!
An old, old system from Holland used by Quakers in this country long-long ago where Native people, Blacks, women, children all had equivalance of voice...
I watched a terrific episode of Frontline.org called the Age of Easy Money. Don't know if Ralph and Steve have watched this investigative report on how we became a country with an Artificial Economy and all the issues that brought us to this point in time. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/age-of-easy-money/
Bob, I read through the transcript of the Frontline episode. There is some good information there, but the show would have benefited from interviewing a more diverse set of economists such as those with expertise in labor economics. As the independent report commissioned by the BBC that was published recently mentioned (I linked to it in a comment here at RNRH a month or two ago), the BBC's own economics reporting is biased by over-reliance on corporate economists as experts for their reports and by the economic ignorance of their own reporters who allow incorrect assumptions and biases to be made by the corporate economists.
Recent cost of living increases were from largely transitory causes:
A) Production and other issues stemming from the pandemic...much of which has subsided recently so factors B and C are more relevant now.
B) Like the 1970s in many ways, increases in the price of energy caused by global conflicts...especially the war in Ukraine and the response by various governments to it.
C) Corporate greed. Some of this can be regulated, such as tighter control on mergers, reduced privatization/increased nationalization, rent controls, increased regulation on obviously idiotic things such as cryptocurrencies, and so forth. Other factors might be harder for government to directly curb, but there needs to be public awareness of these factors. For example, the auto industry has slowly but surely reduced the number of affordable, fuel efficient cars and has been pushing expensive, higher profit margin SUVs and trucks instead. Just when the public needs affordable cars with higher energy prices and higher interest rates, the auto industry is trying their hardest to force people into way more of a car than they need which means people are going to have to take out long loans. Another example of this is how Honda eliminated the base model Civic this year which forces Civic buyers to buy a more expensive model with alloy 'sport' wheels. This is pure corporate greed causing the price (and continued operating costs as the tires for those sport models cost more) of what is supposed to be a basic car go up.
Instead of looking at these transitory factors, the government is listening to neoliberal monetarist economists such as Larry Summers who place inflationary blame on high wages, high employment, and government spending. They don't want to curb military spending and corporate welfare, but they do want to cut the benefits received by the public which, of course, shifts the debt burden onto the public when it doesn't have to be that way. This is economic nonsense and Frontline should have attacked this more severely. If anything, having full employment with something like a job guarantee stabilizes prices and should be very popular politically. This is a citizen-first approach towards economic problems, but these economic approaches are rarely mentioned because the privatized bankers interviewed for these programs have to personal incentive to bring them up.
Long story short, people cannot rely on the media, even PBS and the BBC, to understand economic problems. The problem with economics reporting might not be intentional bias towards corporate solutions, but it might be as simple as the people producing these shows and segments are just not informed enough to understand the breadth of issues and solutions.
Thank you for this very insightful response to my posting. You pointed out everything I agree with in the true cause of our current inflation and how the people being hurt the most are the marginalized and middle class. Yes Frontline should have stressed all the real issues that you are pointing out putting us in this repeating predicament. That’s why I listen to Ralph’s podcast each week and people like yourself give me refreshing hope that we know the real reasons causing our artificial economy for the ultra rich and unbridled corporate greed.
Not generally a "libertarian" principle for banks to be so lawless; instead Ron Paul has talked about auditing the Fed for a long time and recommend sound investments, precious metals, etc.. The largely fraudent stock market finds friends on the right and left.
Ron Paul is economically clueless unless his intent is for a gold standard, gold exchange standard, or whatever is to further entrench the US into oligopoly. Extreme austerity measures such as a gold standard are malpractice akin to monetarism and will only multiply the pain felt by the majority of the citizens even compared to the current situation. There are meaningful reforms which can easily be made, most of which should happen at the congressional level, to greatly benefit the American public. These are the reforms, such as full employment with a job guarantee, that the public should be demanding instead of complete malfeasance such as a gold standard. Instead of rejecting fiat money, the public should be learning about how fiat money can be used to greatly improve circumstances for all citizens because that power is there if Congress only enables it...and if the people demand it of Congress in the first place. A major problem is that many in the public, and Congress, believe we have a gold standard still in place and that is why we get absurd, pro-corporate economic policy which does not account for realities possible with fiat money.
A proposed gold standard as a response to modern economic issues would be like proposing that there should not be a public drinking water system at all in response to impoverished areas having polluted drinking water.
He is not calling for a gold standard, but if you still have any money for investing, it is a heck of a lot better than being part of the Wall Street frauds. He has been calling for an audit the Fed bill.
And Ralph Nader was highly complementary of Ron Paul on his Presidential platform in a number of areas.
We should all see the federal government as hopeless now. The pandemic was a hideous and monstrous response, the "vaccines" have been shown to be dangerous at best with endless side effects and injuries as if Pharma could have ever been trusted. The military and defense budgets are an excuse for more and more wars and meddling. The regulators are not doing their jobs.
Actually, that is exactly what Ron Paul is advocating for in his proposed policy and in his earlier book, ‘Gold, Peace and Prosperity: The Birth of a New Currency’. It is nothing but Austrian School theory, the same Austrian School theory which helped shape modern monetarism, the monetary policy advocated for by many Republican and Democratic Party politicians, and the same views of the likes of Alan Greenspan.
Ron Paul, like the aforementioned Dennis Kucinich, advocated for something sort of resembling full employment, which is good by itself and something a bit different from the monetarists, but Paul completely contradicts himself by using economic theory which hinders employment. In other words, Paul may have lofty goals in terms of employment, but his methods of getting there are the exact same broken ones he’s arguing against. Thus, Paul should not be viewed as anyone capable of leadership. His economic views are completely broken. He’s hardly alone in this regard though.
“We should all see the federal government as hopeless now. The pandemic was a hideous…”
The response to the pandemic shows exactly how the economy can work for the people when Congress chooses to allow that to happen. The monetarists would say that there was no way that the public should have been assisted during the pandemic, without subsequent hard austerity to balance the budget, or the country will go ‘bankrupt’. To the contrary, the federal government did provide assistance to people and that helped keep people afloat during the pandemic.
The reality is that the money spent helping people during the pandemic will not bankrupt the country and neither would funding non-pandemic related social needs such as full employment, universal healthcare, nationalizing the military industry, or whatever other progressive goals one can name. This is only possible with fiat money. This is not to absolve the Federal Reserve as their monetary policy has been wrong-headed, but remember who nominated and confirmed the Federal Reserve Board of Governors (the president and the Senate). Laws guiding banking regulation have been lacking, but where do these laws and oversight, including of the Federal Reserve, come from? Congress. The Federal Reserve is not behind fiscal policy which is designed to enrich the wealthy by shifting the debt burden onto the public via neoliberal policies. Who is responsible for that? Congress.
If Congress passed citizen-first fiscal policy, the Federal Reserve will fund it. The Federal Reserve system is imperfect, and it is not how I would draw up a central bank, but at the same time, the Federal Reserve in their current form is more than functional to support a progressive economy if Congress decided to take that action. With that, the focus needs to be on Congress, not the Federal Reserve.
Apparently you are ill-informed. As the Ralph Nader program on the Iraq War underlined, the incestuous DC agencies and industries they don't really regulate as they once did have exploded in size. They are totally corrupt.
I'd recommend you do some research. Ron Paul at this point is not a significant politician, Rand Paul is not calling for a gold standard so why get fixated on that?
The pandemic was created by the Wuhan lab very likely by US tax dollars, how's that for a gigantic federal mess that the same group is tasked with fixing? Only they made it much, much worse. As NY Times journalist Alex Berenson showed they got every thing wrong!!! Every-thing! Also if you have an open mind you may want to read Dr. Peter McCullough's substack. Compared to the corrupt federal agencies his scientific commentary is like night and day!
“I'd recommend you do some research. Ron Paul at this point is not a significant politician, Rand Paul is not calling for a gold standard so why get fixated on that?”
I’ve done research on the economic basis of Rand Paul’s policies and, if anything, they are even economically uninformed than his father’s economic policies. I would quote statements from Rand Paul’s policy statements from his official website, but his policy statements are so short and vague that they would fit on a bumper sticker. Take this as an example: https://randpaul.com/issue/spending-debt/
For better or for worse, older versions of Rand Paul’s websites are still accessible and they do have more in-depth policy statements. Unfortunately, they are so comical, at least in terms of economic policy, that I can see why Paul shrunk his policy statements down to slogan size.
“We are currently spending roughly $7 million per minute and this reckless habit has gone on for way too long. We currently face a deficit of over $18 trillion. This is unsustainable.”
We immediately see here that Rand Paul adheres to monetarist economic principles ala Alan Greenspan. Paul has no sense that the United States has a fiat currency and what that entails. Unsustainable? How so? He can’t explain it and that’s why he doesn’t explain it. The other monetarists can’t explain it either.
“As President of the United States, I will work to balance our budget and only spend what comes in. We must cut spending in all areas, particularly areas that are better run by state and local governments.
In 46 states across the nation, a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) has been enacted in their state constitutions. I have long been a proponent of adopting the same principle for the Federal Government. As President, I will work to authorize common sense solutions that will solve our nation's fiscal crisis.”
Pure nonsense. State governments do not have a sovereign currency like the federal government has which completely changes the ability for the two bodies to spend. This is an apples and oranges comparison. Rand Paul is implying that the federal budget is akin to a household budget. This is simply not how fiat money works.
“Every dollar we spend today is mortgaged on the labor of the American worker and his or her posterity. And every dollar we print to service our debt, reduces the value of the money in your pocket.”
Complete nonsense. Federal government spending in the US does not devalue the Dollar/cause inflation. If so, given our increasing national debt over many years, the Dollar would be close to worthless by now. It is not. That is not remotely the case. Again, Paul does not understand the fundamental concepts of fiat money and that means he is advocating for austerity which will even further cripple the working/would-be working population due to a reduction in social spending and spending on demilitarization, healthcare, and so forth.
“Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve, an unelected group of private bankers, is printing trillions of dollars to bail out private industry, purchase government debt, and flood the market with cheap credit.”
Where does this “unelected group of private bankers” nonsense come from? The Federal Reserve Board of Governors is comprised of members nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. This is the exact same process as the selection of the Secretary of the Treasury and other Cabinet positions so eliminating the Federal Reserve in favor of the Treasury doesn't solve anything. The regional Federal Reserve banks do have leadership from private member banks, but one must understand the process of the Federal Reserve to understand how that works. This is the Civics 101 stuff that Mr. Nader was discussing with Prof. Renteln. I really don’t understand what alternative Paul would like. Direct voting for the head of the central bank? Privatization of the central bank?
Also, where is this “money printing” nonsense coming from? Does Rand Paul think the Treasury printed trillions in bills to wheelbarrow over to Wall Street or for any other government spending?
So, again, I can see why Rand Paul cut the policy commentary on his website because the more he says, the less viable he looks as a potential leader.
It sounds like you are just parrotting Democratic Party talking points. The 2017 Trump bill to loosen the bank regulations was signed by a bunch of Dems too; and Glass Steagal was nullified during Clinton's Presidency at the urging of corrupt Republicans like Dick Armey.
The mess is largely bi-partisan, and as Sen. Ron Johnson has shown the deficit under Biden is exploding higher. Who wants to buy bonds on this debt and at what rates?? Trump was just as bad with the spending and tax cuts for the rich. If the rich and corporations were properly taxed it would go a long way toward resolving the deficits and discourage the type of mad luxury spending we see by the top tiers.
The dollar will fall, and I and many others around the world will celebrate when that happens because US militarism and commercialism are deadly forces led by egotistical American "exceptionalism" that is intolerable for much of the world. We have no business with the incessant meddling.
Ralph, you need to apply what was said on the subjects discussed in the wrap-up to getting the big money out of politics as big money controlling politics/politicians is the cause of the symptoms that were discussed. You may notice most of the following is based on statements made in the wrap-up discussion.
The regulators do not control the banks- the banks and other big money interests control the regulators.
We can't compromise. Our side has compromised before we even start by accepting a choice between big money candidates.
The Deathocrats and Republikillers pretend to be two separate parties when they are in reality each one half of the one big money party.
The one big money party is a brand and when the brand is hurt (or threatened) we will start getting responses.
We need a threat, a wave of voices. And we need to make the threat credible by doing it at least one or twice.
Just as a coalition of donors to universities saying we're taking away our money because universities are not doing what universities are supposed to do we need to organize a coalition of voters saying we're taking away our votes from politicians that take big money because taking big money and working for the big money interests is not what politicians are supposed to do.
It is okay to admit you made a mistake in not getting behind One Demand and having me on the Radio Hour to discuss it as you said you would on Washington Journal (10-24-2018 about 13 minutes in on your segment) but it is not okay to keep repeating that mistake.
I have a two-part comment: First, I'd like to support your main idea, which as I understand it is that wealthy and corporate interests are destroying our political landscape; that government of, by, and for We the People that means so much to us has become a terribly sad and desperate joke; and that we must as our most essential first act get big money out of politics, or the battle for all else is lost. I am uncomfortable about expressing the second aspect of my comment, but I hope you will consider it: I feel dismay and irritation when you mention my lifelong hero Ralph Nader as you do. Whether or not you have a legitimate grievance, this practice can associate your otherwise potentially exciting ideas with negative emotions. I am learning from a book called Tiny Habits that we do things because they become associated with positive emotions of joy, delight, pleasure, satisfaction, and feeling good. Because of the unpleasant emotions I feel, I tend to want to disassociate myself from your ideas, even though my conclusions seem to be similar to yours. Thanks for listening.
I also feel dismay and irritation when pointing out that my lifelong hero Ralph Nader has not lived up to applying the things he says about other things to One Demand.
But that was only the last line of my comment. No one, hero or not, is perfect.
While it may be difficult, we have to be able to override negative emotions and admit when our heroes that do so much good are coming up short of our expectations and resist the urge to shoot the messenger or reject the message.
I do not see my message as a grievance. I see it as pointing out an opportunity for Ralph to do better. Kind of like Ralph when he points out things the Deathocrats could do better in his blog posts on Winning America.
I agree with Nancy. You've made your issue, message, and cause known and very clear over the years. I've accessed your website, and they've promoted it and you on this show. From my point of view as a regular listener and comment reader, you now only come off as ungrateful—which is really too bad because we all need each other's support. Yes we need each other's critiques too but you've already pointed out plenty of times what you feel could be better.
You are entitled to your opinion. In my opinion your opinion is the same kind of shoot the messenger deflection I got from Steve in the comments for Populism-the Good Kind.
Economics and higher education, two of Klassik’s favorite subjects! I will split my posts about the two subjects into two different posts in order to improve readability. I know this is long-winded, but I hope it is worthwhile for anyone who reads all of this!
As for the discussion about banking, I think David is on the right track in advocating for nationalized banks or, at the very least, a public bank. A public bank provides a banking option for the citizens and businesses which benefits from the stability that stems from the US’ currency monopoly. Given that currency monopoly, I’m rather confused as to why Mr. Nader and Mr. Henry are advocating for privatizing nationalized banks for profit. The US federal government has no need to profit in any such manner. To the contrary, it is the people of the US who stand to profit from nationalized banking and keeping them that way or, if that is not politically palatable, a public bank at the very least.
To further show that David is on the right track, and to address Hannah’s question about bank employees, we must remember that there are also bank employees living and working in our neighborhoods who serve/served the public who are not the beneficiaries of modern privatized commercial banking. Thanks to bank consolidation and general profit seeking, people may have noticed that many bank branches have closed, limited their services, or have gone to teleconference-only branches which are simply temporary arrangements to get customers to do their banking online where the only customer service they receive may well be from overseas call agents. With this, getting something like a safe deposit box has become an incredible chore even if having such an amenity is something very useful to many people.
The banks may say that running traditional bank branches is unprofitable, but the US national government with our sovereign currency does not need to worry about profitability. Postal banks will keep Americans employed in their communities and they will provide essential banking services for the public. This should be a winning argument in favor of postal banks in the face of immense lobbying by the private banks, but this can only be a winning argument if the public can counter the corporate propaganda by agreeing that the balance sheet for this operation is of no consequence and the only consequences of importance are the balance sheets of the American public...and businesses who can benefit from public banking as well for that matter.
As for Hannah’s point about Millennials and universal basic income, UBI is a subtle form of corporatism and I’m surprised Mr. Nader has not caught on to this. Perhaps it should be obvious given some of the biggest supporters of it are tech industry capitalists. A UBI would be inflationary for one thing as, for example, UBI targeted to help people pay rent will simply lead to landlords raising rents due to their customers having additional income. Furthermore, many of those advocating for a UBI intend for it to replace means-tested benefits which is completely right-wing ideology with a very thin veneer of progressiveness. Don’t fall for that nonsense, the correct solution is to advocate for full employment with a job guarantee program, combined with means-tested benefits, which serves to stabilize prices in addition to the other benefits of full employment. Hopefully someone can get the word out to Hannah about this!
Mr. Nader may believe that RNRH listeners don’t want to hear about economics, but that’s not true as I think a proper understanding of economics is critically important for the public to understand what to push Congress to support. Without that knowledge, Congress will yield to the ‘economic experts’...which means the bankers who support their campaigns since the voters supporting their campaigns are completely absent on economic matters. One of the most important and influential third-parties in US history was the Greenback Party, a party that advocated for fiat money and for labor reforms such as the 8-hour workday. The party was inherently economic-focused and Peter Cooper, a leader in the party, was advocating for postal banking as early as the 1880s after the British implemented postal banking in around the 1860s. The Greenback Party may not have been successful electorally, but the established parties, mainly the Democrats, adopted ideas advocated by the Greenback Party. As we know, that’s one of the great functions of third-parties. Surely Mr. Nader is aware of the Greenback Party and Peter Cooper.
Past RNRH shows with guests discussing economics have been popular. It seems to me that people want to hear more about this subject. I think Mr. Nader needs to give his listeners more credit for realizing the importance of economics. People know that ‘trickle-down’ neoliberal economics is pure nonsense, but they really don’t know what to tell Congress to support as a viable alternative. People turn to Mr. Nader for these answers. Thus, the RNRH should not abandon this opportunity to educate.
Now, for the part about higher education. I was not aware of Professor Renteln’s book. It sounds like an interesting read. While The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed have done many reports on the commercialization of higher education over the years, I realize most of the public aren’t reading those industry-specific sources. Sometimes topics do reach the mainstream press. The Washington Post did a nice summary piece in 2021 about the privatization of higher education and the University of Southern California is specifically mentioned as it mentions a deal it has with a company called 2U which offers outsourced graduate social work and education degrees with the USC brand. Even aside from that, the article is a good read. Here is a version of the article which is not behind a paywall: https://hechingerreport.org/more-colleges-and-universities-outsource-services-to-for-profit-companies/
As I mentioned in my comment a couple of weeks back about the UC-Berkeley anthropology library, many large public (and private) universities simply do not care about undergraduate education. Undergraduates are there to be seen (specifically, their money is there to be seen) and not heard. Core social science courses are offered in auditoriums so large that some colleges even have to set up TVs and cameras so people in the back of the auditorium can even see the professor. The courses are meant to be run cheaply and the faculty would rather work on their research, which is predominantly what tenure is based on, so they aren’t bothered to give undergraduates much time.
So, with this in mind, most professors and schools aren’t going to do anything like Mr. Nader’s suggestion for citizenship-oriented introductory courses which are more hands-on. How can one be hands-on in a class which has 400+ students in it?
I think it is entirely possible for a student to graduate from a large public university and not once talk to their professors outside of class about matters not directly pertaining to the administration of the course. Most large schools don’t even have faculty advise undergraduate students as there are dedicated advisors for that who aren’t experts in the subjects. Of course, even that advising might well be outsourced if it hasn’t already been in some places. I know services such as tutoring and mental health counseling are often outsourced these days.
Graduate students aren’t in much of a better position. Often, graduate students are viewed as cheap labor to help faculty with research and teaching and so graduate students are given poor resources (such as their libraries being taken away) and universities over-produce Ph.D.s without concern if their graduates can get the academic jobs they want. Another problem is mission creep where schools once designed to be teaching-oriented colleges want to improve their reputation by trying to become research institutions even though the bulk of research money still goes to the elite private universities and AAU/Land-grant public universities. Some of these mission creep schools foolishly try to engage in big-time college athletics as well.
I think it was Murray Sperber, whom I mentioned in my earlier Berkeley comment, who commented that it is easy to catch universities lying to prospective students. Those glossy university brochures (or whatever the online equivalent is) showing small groups of students talking to faculty imply that all their students get a first-class education. But, yet, many of these universities also extol the virtues of their honors program with their smaller class sizes and so forth. Well, if all students are getting a first-class education, why would they need an honors program? Or are the schools lying about most of their students getting a first-class education when only the honors students get a first-class education?
Decades ago, probably long before the GI Bill era, faculty were considered the heart of the university. Administrators were there to serve the faculty. More and more power was ceded to administrators to take administrative strains away from faculty so they could teach and conduct research. In recent decades, faculty have become almost powerless. Around here in Texas at least, many community colleges are no longer even offering tenure to full-time professors. Naturally, adjunct professors have no power at all other than the power to walk away and say they will not engage in such nonsense like working at three different colleges at one time and still not making a livable wage.
I have not even mentioned corporate/military-sponsored research and public university faculty who are completely biased by those entities, but I will wrap things up with one last thought about higher education. Community colleges can be a great place to avoid the abuses of major universities for new undergraduate students, but the public needs to be aware of subtle corporatism there as well. There are construction and architectural firms who solely exist to build K-12 and community college facilities. These firms know how to convince school/college administrators that they need new facilities (which will carry a plaque with the administrators’ names on it, of course). These same firms also know tactics which allow schools to get bond issues past in oddly timed elections and so forth.
Now, in some cases, new facilities can be educationally justified, but the whole process is rather corrupt. I recently talked to a community college administrator who said that they are being forced to update their facilities because the K-12 feeder schools all have new facilities and students don’t want to go to a college with much older buildings. Thus, they were working with the companies that built the K-12 schools. I didn’t buy their argument, but these are the issues which are taking up the time of community college administrators instead of actual matters of instruction and increasing accessibility. Though, to be fair, community colleges here in Texas at least are much more accessible than the public universities.
Oh, one last comment about libraries. Has Mr. Nader heard about the decision in favor of the publishing companies in the Hachette v. Internet Archive case I mentioned in the comments a few days ago? I’d be curious to hear his opinion on this. I also suspect this has major implications for UC-Berkeley and their plan to remove books in exchange for keeping scanned copies of them if that was their initial plan. If nothing else, this deserves a mention in Francesco’s segment. Updated link: https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/24/23655804/internet-archive-hatchette-publisher-ebook-library-lawsuit
I'm now looking forward to reading Rentein's book, "The Ethical University...". As a 1958 university graduate I'm aware of the wrong-headed shifting of attention of universities from "the liberal arts" to business training. It's a disservice to our community and I hope that it's discontinued.
It is funny how some of the most prestigious private universities, such as the Ivies, consider it beneath them to offer undergraduate business school programs, but many of these same schools have no problem running very profitable MBA/EMBA graduate business programs. Suddenly, having business schools isn't so undignified when there is considerable money to be made and when one can get the university name associated with top businesspeople.
Of course, many of these schools who consider it beneath them to have an undergraduate business school simply turn their undergraduate economics program into a de facto business degree with plenty of neoliberal economics instructors eager to play the rôle of a business school instructor. This is a shift since the time you and Mr. Nader went to school when there would have been at least some serious economics faculty at these schools. The same probably applies to other disciplines as well.
At less prestigious universities, the economics departments are often under the business school! Now that is truly unbecoming behavior!
Credit creation isn't the problem, only the power to fully implement and enforce e.g the tax (return) system which drains excess credit. The discussion about some imaginary Fed independent from government is make believe.
I don't see why the discussion participants are complicating it so much. The Fed is both the government's banking arm and the supply for the entire economy. All that any 'reform' would need to do is remove any interference by appointed decision-makers who don't or won't answer to government (or congress's) policy and oversight. Also tightening regulation to meet policy. That's it! What else could 'nationalizing' it mean? The monetarist notion of 'central bank independence', cooked up by ideologues like Friedman, who claimed a government with access to credit creation would run amok, is in the dustbin of history. The apparent central bank independence is merely illusory.
It answers to Congress/HOR. When the government says 'the debt ceiling will be raised' it just happens! When they say: 'we are going to spend X amount of money' it just happens! As Wray (Randall) and Mitchell (William) say there are the usual pretend hoops they jump through to make it look like the bank is 'getting money' for government to spend, but it can just do it, and they do indeed do it. Every single time.
On the one hand some in the discussion are claiming only "the government" does things like "bailing out the banks" or QE or spending money or levying/collecting taxes, yet at the same time they say "the Fed controls money". How does that work? If they think government is responsible they need to get policy adjustments into government policy. If they think 'the Fed' is responsible, they need to explain how e.g. QE happens only on government decree. All the talk about money for the people is confused. Failing to understanding how money moves (which Paul Lebow outlines above): government spends, as either direct spending to purchase or allows issue through the banking system, to begin meeting the public purpose. Everything it purchases is from the private sector unless it employs directly from the private sector. The very point of setting a tax levy is to create the situation where people must do things to get money settle that tax levy. This is how a government generates economic action to meet the public purpose.
All the shenanigans of Wall Street and other financial speculations sits atop the idiotic and unnecessary government bond system (aka so-called 'debt'). Which provides a risk-free base portfolio for running other financial speculation shenanigans.
Why hasn't a single member of the panel mentioned 'employer of last resort' and aiming for full-employment? Rather than dancing around notions of things like UBI - sure-fire way to raise dead money into the system alongside no creation of goods or services. And which is 'funded' how when supposedly the 'Fed' runs and fiddles the money system?
“I don't see why the discussion participants are complicating it so much. The Fed is both the government's banking arm and the supply for the entire economy. All that any 'reform' would need to do is remove any interference by appointed decision-makers who don't or won't answer to government (or congress's) policy and oversight. Also tightening regulation to meet policy. That's it!”
Bingo, Ferdy has understood the fundamental issue and the correct way to resolve that issue. The Federal Reserve is not an external of government. The Federal Reserve Board of Governors is made up of members appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The Fed has power over monetary policy (interest rates), but not over fiscal policy (government spending, taxation, etc.). Congress is free to establish regulations over banking as they are to pass government spending bills which will then be funded. People may question the influence of private banks in the organization of the regional Federal Reserve banks, but as we know from many other discussions, the corporate influence over government is not solely an issue with the regional Federal Reserve banks and these regional banks only have limited influence over Federal Reserve policy. Corporate influence over Congress is still the fundamental issue and that is where the focus should be, not making arguments about the Fed which are fundamentally untrue unless we are discussing things such as monetary policy.
“On the one hand some in the discussion are claiming only "the government" does things like "bailing out the banks" or QE or spending money or levying/collecting taxes, yet at the same time they say "the Fed controls money". How does that work? If they think government is responsible they need to get policy adjustments into government policy. If they think 'the Fed' is responsible, they need to explain how e.g. QE happens only on government decree.”
Yes! As Mr. Nader said at the end of the radio part of the episode, it is about Congress. This is where the focus needs to be, but Congress is not listening to the public about economic matters because the public is not offering anything close to an economic policy mandate. Members of Congress are not elected on the basis of economic competence. Many progressives, as I see it at least, seem to think economics is a bad word, something right-wing, and something to be shunned. Not so, economics is at the center of any kind of progressive policy and without the consideration of economics, good policy cannot be made.
When we do hear Congress speak about economic matters, what we hear is complete nonsense and old wives tales about the national debt, inflation, and so forth. The utter incompetence of Congress to even understand very basic economic matters is the result of a public that is apathetic and uninformed about economic matters. Congress is merely reflecting the public in this regard and so naturally corporate causes will bend things in their favor. There is absolutely no resistance to this right now. The good news is that things do not have to be this way.
“Why hasn't a single member of the panel mentioned 'employer of last resort' and aiming for full-employment? Rather than dancing around notions of things like UBI - sure-fire way to raise dead money into the system alongside no creation of goods or services.”
There are many issues with this concept of universal basic income and what Ferdy points out is one of them. There are other issues I outlined in my admittedly long-winded response Sunday morning. Full employment is absolutely the solution and it would be politically very popular, but we hear nothing about it. This needs to be corrected.
If you think it's a good idea have ellen brown speak about the banking crisis. Her recent article like all of her articles clear and filled with good ideas and analysis.
As always many thanks
Jonathan that's it
We'll look at that. We've had Ellen on a number of times.
David makes a great point. I agree that we need public banks. What happened to the California effort?
As we already know, this goes back at least to Dodd-Frank. And as for education, oh boy. The humanities teach people how power works. Our economy is self-selecting. I worked on a degree that is intimately related to behavior. I was never going to be useful to an employer, yet when I began to understand the coercive practices (the cost) that profit-taking motivates, and the theoretical solutions, the Living Options (James was no fan of Hegel) available to us, it made it more difficult to work with others. I knew how to make things work better, but we are paid to do as we are told. Most of us. And I didn't know a thing about the world until I took classes in college. I knew I was a democrat, but I voted for Bill Clinton and listened with bated breath as NAFTA was passed! Gore was the vote that passed it. And then Dodd-Frank. That took me about ten years to understand, thanks to my education.
More David and Steve and Hannah!
Based on Hannah's comment about jobs I can't resist this from the Fight Like An Animal podcast (https://www.againsttheinternet.com/), Episode: The Life and Death of a Radical Environmentalist
"I have essentially the same strategic critique of the climate justice movement as I do of Earth First which is, you know, once again I just don't think you're actually tailoring this...I don't think that REAL human needs are actually being thought about all that much. So much of that framework gets into this kind of like meeting people where they're at, like, appealing to people's immediate self interest basically within the system that we already inhabit.
I just feel like the quintessential climate-justice messaging is somebody falling all over themselves and being like, 'We're not doing this for reverence of the earth, we don't fucking care about the earth, we're actually doing because we want to build a bunch of Good GREEN JOBS! You know, a bunch of JOBS! We're just going to throw a whole bunch of mother-fucking JOBS at y'all.' As if, like, everybody just loves going to work so much that the best thing that you could ever do for them is make sure there are just a ton more JOBS everywhere so that if they happen to not, you know like, do enough work at their job already, or they don't have a job they can just go and you know fall into some other job cuz there just coming at 'em from every angle..."
Most people I know are miserable precisely because of their jobs—whether it's GenXer's, GenZs Millennials, Boomers, etc. Add to that so much of our earnings going to the MIC, and so much being taken away from libraries, it's no wonder people are losing their marbles, and, as we unfortunately learn today in Tennessee's elementary school, going postal.
Ralph makes the mistake of treating banks as just another example of corporate hegemony that can be reigned in via regulation. The notion that rich depositors should pay for their stupidity fails to realize the profound role banks play in society. Because of the way the current system is structured, banks irresponsibility MUST be bailed out. If not, our entire money system will collapse.
Think about it. The notion of a ‘run on the banking sector’ only makes sense if one withdraws their deposits in cash, otherwise one would be just transferring the only record of their money to another failing bank. People don’t realize that the banking system is the embodiment of what we view as our money.
In 1913 we made a deal with the devil with the Federal Reserve Act. We allowed bank credit to be used in place of real money and gave it sanction as legal tender. Instead, we should have put a wall between credit creation/lending and money creation. Lincoln did with the Greenback. - real US Money, to fund the Civil War. Kucinich and Conyers tried to do it in 2011 with HR2990.
Nationalizing credit creation doesn’t make sense (David). Lending is between investors and borrowers and shouldn’t be a significant government function. On the other hand, money creation should be like a public utility, providing the means to first fund public purpose programs before entering the private economy. Then and only then should the money spent into the economy be used for investment and lending in the private sector.
For those who don’t know, the reforms mentioned by Paul Lebow were put forth by the American Monetary Institute and their late leader Stephen Zarlenga. Former Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s wife was an advocate for the AMI and I believe that is how the two Kucinichs met. Thus, Rep. Kucinich’s ‘American Monetary Act’ was formed from ideas from the AMI.
I’m not going to completely rubbish the AMI’s ideas because the end goal is a noble and economically correct: spend money on public needs. That said, the reasoning put forth by Zarlenga and the AMI was rather uninformed as it pertains to the Federal Reserve. The concept of nationalizing the Federal Reserve is absurd because, as Ferdy mentioned in his reply, the Fed is a government function. The central bank of the United States, whether the Fed or some other hypothetical system, has the ability to fund whatever spending Congress passes. With that in mind, the focus needs to be on Congress passing appropriate social spending, regulating corporatism, generally implementing sound economic policy, and not on reforming the central bank when the central bank can and will realize what Congress passes.
I’m not entirely sure why my fellow progressives put so much effort into fruitless exercises about the Federal Reserve when the focus should be on Congress and their willingness to serve public needs.
Wow phenomenal episode!!! Ralph was sharp and on it as always but even more passionate and informative. Guests were great. And great questions from Dave and Steve.
Hoping the self-governing method of Sociocracy could become much more widespread, so that we can actually have some true equivalancy of voice! So desperately needed for our academic institutions.Yes! High Schools, middle schools can do this as Civic Development and imagining businesses with ethics, and literally any would-be democractic institutions from co-housing, cooperatives for local farming, etc. Please look into this awesome work for power/responsibility sharing. Thank you so much, Ralph, Steve, David, Hannah, and all team on this work for all of us!
An old, old system from Holland used by Quakers in this country long-long ago where Native people, Blacks, women, children all had equivalance of voice...
I watched a terrific episode of Frontline.org called the Age of Easy Money. Don't know if Ralph and Steve have watched this investigative report on how we became a country with an Artificial Economy and all the issues that brought us to this point in time. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/age-of-easy-money/
Bob, I read through the transcript of the Frontline episode. There is some good information there, but the show would have benefited from interviewing a more diverse set of economists such as those with expertise in labor economics. As the independent report commissioned by the BBC that was published recently mentioned (I linked to it in a comment here at RNRH a month or two ago), the BBC's own economics reporting is biased by over-reliance on corporate economists as experts for their reports and by the economic ignorance of their own reporters who allow incorrect assumptions and biases to be made by the corporate economists.
Recent cost of living increases were from largely transitory causes:
A) Production and other issues stemming from the pandemic...much of which has subsided recently so factors B and C are more relevant now.
B) Like the 1970s in many ways, increases in the price of energy caused by global conflicts...especially the war in Ukraine and the response by various governments to it.
C) Corporate greed. Some of this can be regulated, such as tighter control on mergers, reduced privatization/increased nationalization, rent controls, increased regulation on obviously idiotic things such as cryptocurrencies, and so forth. Other factors might be harder for government to directly curb, but there needs to be public awareness of these factors. For example, the auto industry has slowly but surely reduced the number of affordable, fuel efficient cars and has been pushing expensive, higher profit margin SUVs and trucks instead. Just when the public needs affordable cars with higher energy prices and higher interest rates, the auto industry is trying their hardest to force people into way more of a car than they need which means people are going to have to take out long loans. Another example of this is how Honda eliminated the base model Civic this year which forces Civic buyers to buy a more expensive model with alloy 'sport' wheels. This is pure corporate greed causing the price (and continued operating costs as the tires for those sport models cost more) of what is supposed to be a basic car go up.
Instead of looking at these transitory factors, the government is listening to neoliberal monetarist economists such as Larry Summers who place inflationary blame on high wages, high employment, and government spending. They don't want to curb military spending and corporate welfare, but they do want to cut the benefits received by the public which, of course, shifts the debt burden onto the public when it doesn't have to be that way. This is economic nonsense and Frontline should have attacked this more severely. If anything, having full employment with something like a job guarantee stabilizes prices and should be very popular politically. This is a citizen-first approach towards economic problems, but these economic approaches are rarely mentioned because the privatized bankers interviewed for these programs have to personal incentive to bring them up.
Long story short, people cannot rely on the media, even PBS and the BBC, to understand economic problems. The problem with economics reporting might not be intentional bias towards corporate solutions, but it might be as simple as the people producing these shows and segments are just not informed enough to understand the breadth of issues and solutions.
Thank you for this very insightful response to my posting. You pointed out everything I agree with in the true cause of our current inflation and how the people being hurt the most are the marginalized and middle class. Yes Frontline should have stressed all the real issues that you are pointing out putting us in this repeating predicament. That’s why I listen to Ralph’s podcast each week and people like yourself give me refreshing hope that we know the real reasons causing our artificial economy for the ultra rich and unbridled corporate greed.
Not generally a "libertarian" principle for banks to be so lawless; instead Ron Paul has talked about auditing the Fed for a long time and recommend sound investments, precious metals, etc.. The largely fraudent stock market finds friends on the right and left.
Ron Paul is economically clueless unless his intent is for a gold standard, gold exchange standard, or whatever is to further entrench the US into oligopoly. Extreme austerity measures such as a gold standard are malpractice akin to monetarism and will only multiply the pain felt by the majority of the citizens even compared to the current situation. There are meaningful reforms which can easily be made, most of which should happen at the congressional level, to greatly benefit the American public. These are the reforms, such as full employment with a job guarantee, that the public should be demanding instead of complete malfeasance such as a gold standard. Instead of rejecting fiat money, the public should be learning about how fiat money can be used to greatly improve circumstances for all citizens because that power is there if Congress only enables it...and if the people demand it of Congress in the first place. A major problem is that many in the public, and Congress, believe we have a gold standard still in place and that is why we get absurd, pro-corporate economic policy which does not account for realities possible with fiat money.
A proposed gold standard as a response to modern economic issues would be like proposing that there should not be a public drinking water system at all in response to impoverished areas having polluted drinking water.
He is not calling for a gold standard, but if you still have any money for investing, it is a heck of a lot better than being part of the Wall Street frauds. He has been calling for an audit the Fed bill.
And Ralph Nader was highly complementary of Ron Paul on his Presidential platform in a number of areas.
We should all see the federal government as hopeless now. The pandemic was a hideous and monstrous response, the "vaccines" have been shown to be dangerous at best with endless side effects and injuries as if Pharma could have ever been trusted. The military and defense budgets are an excuse for more and more wars and meddling. The regulators are not doing their jobs.
“He is not calling for a gold standard…”
Actually, that is exactly what Ron Paul is advocating for in his proposed policy and in his earlier book, ‘Gold, Peace and Prosperity: The Birth of a New Currency’. It is nothing but Austrian School theory, the same Austrian School theory which helped shape modern monetarism, the monetary policy advocated for by many Republican and Democratic Party politicians, and the same views of the likes of Alan Greenspan.
Ron Paul, like the aforementioned Dennis Kucinich, advocated for something sort of resembling full employment, which is good by itself and something a bit different from the monetarists, but Paul completely contradicts himself by using economic theory which hinders employment. In other words, Paul may have lofty goals in terms of employment, but his methods of getting there are the exact same broken ones he’s arguing against. Thus, Paul should not be viewed as anyone capable of leadership. His economic views are completely broken. He’s hardly alone in this regard though.
“We should all see the federal government as hopeless now. The pandemic was a hideous…”
The response to the pandemic shows exactly how the economy can work for the people when Congress chooses to allow that to happen. The monetarists would say that there was no way that the public should have been assisted during the pandemic, without subsequent hard austerity to balance the budget, or the country will go ‘bankrupt’. To the contrary, the federal government did provide assistance to people and that helped keep people afloat during the pandemic.
The reality is that the money spent helping people during the pandemic will not bankrupt the country and neither would funding non-pandemic related social needs such as full employment, universal healthcare, nationalizing the military industry, or whatever other progressive goals one can name. This is only possible with fiat money. This is not to absolve the Federal Reserve as their monetary policy has been wrong-headed, but remember who nominated and confirmed the Federal Reserve Board of Governors (the president and the Senate). Laws guiding banking regulation have been lacking, but where do these laws and oversight, including of the Federal Reserve, come from? Congress. The Federal Reserve is not behind fiscal policy which is designed to enrich the wealthy by shifting the debt burden onto the public via neoliberal policies. Who is responsible for that? Congress.
If Congress passed citizen-first fiscal policy, the Federal Reserve will fund it. The Federal Reserve system is imperfect, and it is not how I would draw up a central bank, but at the same time, the Federal Reserve in their current form is more than functional to support a progressive economy if Congress decided to take that action. With that, the focus needs to be on Congress, not the Federal Reserve.
Apparently you are ill-informed. As the Ralph Nader program on the Iraq War underlined, the incestuous DC agencies and industries they don't really regulate as they once did have exploded in size. They are totally corrupt.
I'd recommend you do some research. Ron Paul at this point is not a significant politician, Rand Paul is not calling for a gold standard so why get fixated on that?
The pandemic was created by the Wuhan lab very likely by US tax dollars, how's that for a gigantic federal mess that the same group is tasked with fixing? Only they made it much, much worse. As NY Times journalist Alex Berenson showed they got every thing wrong!!! Every-thing! Also if you have an open mind you may want to read Dr. Peter McCullough's substack. Compared to the corrupt federal agencies his scientific commentary is like night and day!
https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1640703876981485569
“I'd recommend you do some research. Ron Paul at this point is not a significant politician, Rand Paul is not calling for a gold standard so why get fixated on that?”
I’ve done research on the economic basis of Rand Paul’s policies and, if anything, they are even economically uninformed than his father’s economic policies. I would quote statements from Rand Paul’s policy statements from his official website, but his policy statements are so short and vague that they would fit on a bumper sticker. Take this as an example: https://randpaul.com/issue/spending-debt/
For better or for worse, older versions of Rand Paul’s websites are still accessible and they do have more in-depth policy statements. Unfortunately, they are so comical, at least in terms of economic policy, that I can see why Paul shrunk his policy statements down to slogan size.
Here is the 2015 version of the same website above courtesy of the Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20150408053203/https://www.randpaul.com/issue/spending-and-debt
“We are currently spending roughly $7 million per minute and this reckless habit has gone on for way too long. We currently face a deficit of over $18 trillion. This is unsustainable.”
We immediately see here that Rand Paul adheres to monetarist economic principles ala Alan Greenspan. Paul has no sense that the United States has a fiat currency and what that entails. Unsustainable? How so? He can’t explain it and that’s why he doesn’t explain it. The other monetarists can’t explain it either.
“As President of the United States, I will work to balance our budget and only spend what comes in. We must cut spending in all areas, particularly areas that are better run by state and local governments.
In 46 states across the nation, a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) has been enacted in their state constitutions. I have long been a proponent of adopting the same principle for the Federal Government. As President, I will work to authorize common sense solutions that will solve our nation's fiscal crisis.”
Pure nonsense. State governments do not have a sovereign currency like the federal government has which completely changes the ability for the two bodies to spend. This is an apples and oranges comparison. Rand Paul is implying that the federal budget is akin to a household budget. This is simply not how fiat money works.
In 2010, Rand Paul was even more verbose...and even more idiotic: https://www.randpaul2010.com/issues/h-p/inflation/
“Every dollar we spend today is mortgaged on the labor of the American worker and his or her posterity. And every dollar we print to service our debt, reduces the value of the money in your pocket.”
Complete nonsense. Federal government spending in the US does not devalue the Dollar/cause inflation. If so, given our increasing national debt over many years, the Dollar would be close to worthless by now. It is not. That is not remotely the case. Again, Paul does not understand the fundamental concepts of fiat money and that means he is advocating for austerity which will even further cripple the working/would-be working population due to a reduction in social spending and spending on demilitarization, healthcare, and so forth.
“Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve, an unelected group of private bankers, is printing trillions of dollars to bail out private industry, purchase government debt, and flood the market with cheap credit.”
Where does this “unelected group of private bankers” nonsense come from? The Federal Reserve Board of Governors is comprised of members nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. This is the exact same process as the selection of the Secretary of the Treasury and other Cabinet positions so eliminating the Federal Reserve in favor of the Treasury doesn't solve anything. The regional Federal Reserve banks do have leadership from private member banks, but one must understand the process of the Federal Reserve to understand how that works. This is the Civics 101 stuff that Mr. Nader was discussing with Prof. Renteln. I really don’t understand what alternative Paul would like. Direct voting for the head of the central bank? Privatization of the central bank?
Also, where is this “money printing” nonsense coming from? Does Rand Paul think the Treasury printed trillions in bills to wheelbarrow over to Wall Street or for any other government spending?
So, again, I can see why Rand Paul cut the policy commentary on his website because the more he says, the less viable he looks as a potential leader.
It sounds like you are just parrotting Democratic Party talking points. The 2017 Trump bill to loosen the bank regulations was signed by a bunch of Dems too; and Glass Steagal was nullified during Clinton's Presidency at the urging of corrupt Republicans like Dick Armey.
The mess is largely bi-partisan, and as Sen. Ron Johnson has shown the deficit under Biden is exploding higher. Who wants to buy bonds on this debt and at what rates?? Trump was just as bad with the spending and tax cuts for the rich. If the rich and corporations were properly taxed it would go a long way toward resolving the deficits and discourage the type of mad luxury spending we see by the top tiers.
The dollar will fall, and I and many others around the world will celebrate when that happens because US militarism and commercialism are deadly forces led by egotistical American "exceptionalism" that is intolerable for much of the world. We have no business with the incessant meddling.
Ralph, you need to apply what was said on the subjects discussed in the wrap-up to getting the big money out of politics as big money controlling politics/politicians is the cause of the symptoms that were discussed. You may notice most of the following is based on statements made in the wrap-up discussion.
The regulators do not control the banks- the banks and other big money interests control the regulators.
We can't compromise. Our side has compromised before we even start by accepting a choice between big money candidates.
The Deathocrats and Republikillers pretend to be two separate parties when they are in reality each one half of the one big money party.
The one big money party is a brand and when the brand is hurt (or threatened) we will start getting responses.
We need a threat, a wave of voices. And we need to make the threat credible by doing it at least one or twice.
Just as a coalition of donors to universities saying we're taking away our money because universities are not doing what universities are supposed to do we need to organize a coalition of voters saying we're taking away our votes from politicians that take big money because taking big money and working for the big money interests is not what politicians are supposed to do.
It is okay to admit you made a mistake in not getting behind One Demand and having me on the Radio Hour to discuss it as you said you would on Washington Journal (10-24-2018 about 13 minutes in on your segment) but it is not okay to keep repeating that mistake.
Hello, Don Harris,
I have a two-part comment: First, I'd like to support your main idea, which as I understand it is that wealthy and corporate interests are destroying our political landscape; that government of, by, and for We the People that means so much to us has become a terribly sad and desperate joke; and that we must as our most essential first act get big money out of politics, or the battle for all else is lost. I am uncomfortable about expressing the second aspect of my comment, but I hope you will consider it: I feel dismay and irritation when you mention my lifelong hero Ralph Nader as you do. Whether or not you have a legitimate grievance, this practice can associate your otherwise potentially exciting ideas with negative emotions. I am learning from a book called Tiny Habits that we do things because they become associated with positive emotions of joy, delight, pleasure, satisfaction, and feeling good. Because of the unpleasant emotions I feel, I tend to want to disassociate myself from your ideas, even though my conclusions seem to be similar to yours. Thanks for listening.
I also feel dismay and irritation when pointing out that my lifelong hero Ralph Nader has not lived up to applying the things he says about other things to One Demand.
But that was only the last line of my comment. No one, hero or not, is perfect.
While it may be difficult, we have to be able to override negative emotions and admit when our heroes that do so much good are coming up short of our expectations and resist the urge to shoot the messenger or reject the message.
I do not see my message as a grievance. I see it as pointing out an opportunity for Ralph to do better. Kind of like Ralph when he points out things the Deathocrats could do better in his blog posts on Winning America.
I agree with Nancy. You've made your issue, message, and cause known and very clear over the years. I've accessed your website, and they've promoted it and you on this show. From my point of view as a regular listener and comment reader, you now only come off as ungrateful—which is really too bad because we all need each other's support. Yes we need each other's critiques too but you've already pointed out plenty of times what you feel could be better.
You are entitled to your opinion. In my opinion your opinion is the same kind of shoot the messenger deflection I got from Steve in the comments for Populism-the Good Kind.
Where did you hide the transcripts?
Economics and higher education, two of Klassik’s favorite subjects! I will split my posts about the two subjects into two different posts in order to improve readability. I know this is long-winded, but I hope it is worthwhile for anyone who reads all of this!
As for the discussion about banking, I think David is on the right track in advocating for nationalized banks or, at the very least, a public bank. A public bank provides a banking option for the citizens and businesses which benefits from the stability that stems from the US’ currency monopoly. Given that currency monopoly, I’m rather confused as to why Mr. Nader and Mr. Henry are advocating for privatizing nationalized banks for profit. The US federal government has no need to profit in any such manner. To the contrary, it is the people of the US who stand to profit from nationalized banking and keeping them that way or, if that is not politically palatable, a public bank at the very least.
To further show that David is on the right track, and to address Hannah’s question about bank employees, we must remember that there are also bank employees living and working in our neighborhoods who serve/served the public who are not the beneficiaries of modern privatized commercial banking. Thanks to bank consolidation and general profit seeking, people may have noticed that many bank branches have closed, limited their services, or have gone to teleconference-only branches which are simply temporary arrangements to get customers to do their banking online where the only customer service they receive may well be from overseas call agents. With this, getting something like a safe deposit box has become an incredible chore even if having such an amenity is something very useful to many people.
The banks may say that running traditional bank branches is unprofitable, but the US national government with our sovereign currency does not need to worry about profitability. Postal banks will keep Americans employed in their communities and they will provide essential banking services for the public. This should be a winning argument in favor of postal banks in the face of immense lobbying by the private banks, but this can only be a winning argument if the public can counter the corporate propaganda by agreeing that the balance sheet for this operation is of no consequence and the only consequences of importance are the balance sheets of the American public...and businesses who can benefit from public banking as well for that matter.
As for Hannah’s point about Millennials and universal basic income, UBI is a subtle form of corporatism and I’m surprised Mr. Nader has not caught on to this. Perhaps it should be obvious given some of the biggest supporters of it are tech industry capitalists. A UBI would be inflationary for one thing as, for example, UBI targeted to help people pay rent will simply lead to landlords raising rents due to their customers having additional income. Furthermore, many of those advocating for a UBI intend for it to replace means-tested benefits which is completely right-wing ideology with a very thin veneer of progressiveness. Don’t fall for that nonsense, the correct solution is to advocate for full employment with a job guarantee program, combined with means-tested benefits, which serves to stabilize prices in addition to the other benefits of full employment. Hopefully someone can get the word out to Hannah about this!
Mr. Nader may believe that RNRH listeners don’t want to hear about economics, but that’s not true as I think a proper understanding of economics is critically important for the public to understand what to push Congress to support. Without that knowledge, Congress will yield to the ‘economic experts’...which means the bankers who support their campaigns since the voters supporting their campaigns are completely absent on economic matters. One of the most important and influential third-parties in US history was the Greenback Party, a party that advocated for fiat money and for labor reforms such as the 8-hour workday. The party was inherently economic-focused and Peter Cooper, a leader in the party, was advocating for postal banking as early as the 1880s after the British implemented postal banking in around the 1860s. The Greenback Party may not have been successful electorally, but the established parties, mainly the Democrats, adopted ideas advocated by the Greenback Party. As we know, that’s one of the great functions of third-parties. Surely Mr. Nader is aware of the Greenback Party and Peter Cooper.
Past RNRH shows with guests discussing economics have been popular. It seems to me that people want to hear more about this subject. I think Mr. Nader needs to give his listeners more credit for realizing the importance of economics. People know that ‘trickle-down’ neoliberal economics is pure nonsense, but they really don’t know what to tell Congress to support as a viable alternative. People turn to Mr. Nader for these answers. Thus, the RNRH should not abandon this opportunity to educate.
Now, for the part about higher education. I was not aware of Professor Renteln’s book. It sounds like an interesting read. While The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed have done many reports on the commercialization of higher education over the years, I realize most of the public aren’t reading those industry-specific sources. Sometimes topics do reach the mainstream press. The Washington Post did a nice summary piece in 2021 about the privatization of higher education and the University of Southern California is specifically mentioned as it mentions a deal it has with a company called 2U which offers outsourced graduate social work and education degrees with the USC brand. Even aside from that, the article is a good read. Here is a version of the article which is not behind a paywall: https://hechingerreport.org/more-colleges-and-universities-outsource-services-to-for-profit-companies/
As I mentioned in my comment a couple of weeks back about the UC-Berkeley anthropology library, many large public (and private) universities simply do not care about undergraduate education. Undergraduates are there to be seen (specifically, their money is there to be seen) and not heard. Core social science courses are offered in auditoriums so large that some colleges even have to set up TVs and cameras so people in the back of the auditorium can even see the professor. The courses are meant to be run cheaply and the faculty would rather work on their research, which is predominantly what tenure is based on, so they aren’t bothered to give undergraduates much time.
The local university to me, the University of Houston, made headlines about 15 years ago when a business law and ethics (!) professor outsourced her course grading to a company who used overseas graders: https://archive.nytimes.com/economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/outsourced-grades/
So, with this in mind, most professors and schools aren’t going to do anything like Mr. Nader’s suggestion for citizenship-oriented introductory courses which are more hands-on. How can one be hands-on in a class which has 400+ students in it?
I think it is entirely possible for a student to graduate from a large public university and not once talk to their professors outside of class about matters not directly pertaining to the administration of the course. Most large schools don’t even have faculty advise undergraduate students as there are dedicated advisors for that who aren’t experts in the subjects. Of course, even that advising might well be outsourced if it hasn’t already been in some places. I know services such as tutoring and mental health counseling are often outsourced these days.
Graduate students aren’t in much of a better position. Often, graduate students are viewed as cheap labor to help faculty with research and teaching and so graduate students are given poor resources (such as their libraries being taken away) and universities over-produce Ph.D.s without concern if their graduates can get the academic jobs they want. Another problem is mission creep where schools once designed to be teaching-oriented colleges want to improve their reputation by trying to become research institutions even though the bulk of research money still goes to the elite private universities and AAU/Land-grant public universities. Some of these mission creep schools foolishly try to engage in big-time college athletics as well.
I think it was Murray Sperber, whom I mentioned in my earlier Berkeley comment, who commented that it is easy to catch universities lying to prospective students. Those glossy university brochures (or whatever the online equivalent is) showing small groups of students talking to faculty imply that all their students get a first-class education. But, yet, many of these universities also extol the virtues of their honors program with their smaller class sizes and so forth. Well, if all students are getting a first-class education, why would they need an honors program? Or are the schools lying about most of their students getting a first-class education when only the honors students get a first-class education?
Decades ago, probably long before the GI Bill era, faculty were considered the heart of the university. Administrators were there to serve the faculty. More and more power was ceded to administrators to take administrative strains away from faculty so they could teach and conduct research. In recent decades, faculty have become almost powerless. Around here in Texas at least, many community colleges are no longer even offering tenure to full-time professors. Naturally, adjunct professors have no power at all other than the power to walk away and say they will not engage in such nonsense like working at three different colleges at one time and still not making a livable wage.
I have not even mentioned corporate/military-sponsored research and public university faculty who are completely biased by those entities, but I will wrap things up with one last thought about higher education. Community colleges can be a great place to avoid the abuses of major universities for new undergraduate students, but the public needs to be aware of subtle corporatism there as well. There are construction and architectural firms who solely exist to build K-12 and community college facilities. These firms know how to convince school/college administrators that they need new facilities (which will carry a plaque with the administrators’ names on it, of course). These same firms also know tactics which allow schools to get bond issues past in oddly timed elections and so forth.
Now, in some cases, new facilities can be educationally justified, but the whole process is rather corrupt. I recently talked to a community college administrator who said that they are being forced to update their facilities because the K-12 feeder schools all have new facilities and students don’t want to go to a college with much older buildings. Thus, they were working with the companies that built the K-12 schools. I didn’t buy their argument, but these are the issues which are taking up the time of community college administrators instead of actual matters of instruction and increasing accessibility. Though, to be fair, community colleges here in Texas at least are much more accessible than the public universities.
Oh, one last comment about libraries. Has Mr. Nader heard about the decision in favor of the publishing companies in the Hachette v. Internet Archive case I mentioned in the comments a few days ago? I’d be curious to hear his opinion on this. I also suspect this has major implications for UC-Berkeley and their plan to remove books in exchange for keeping scanned copies of them if that was their initial plan. If nothing else, this deserves a mention in Francesco’s segment. Updated link: https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/24/23655804/internet-archive-hatchette-publisher-ebook-library-lawsuit