Panglos Links

Whistleblower Protection Working As Designed: Marisa Taylor: McClatchy
Justice Working As Designed: : The Concourse
Security Working As Designed: Glenn Grenwald: The Intercept
The Economy Working As Designed: James Boyce: TripleCrisis
Prisons Working As Designed: Chris Hedges: Truthdig
Welfare Working As Designed: Daily Take Team: Truthout

Racist Police Links

Origins Of The Police: David Whitehouse: WorksInTheory
Stop Kidding Yourself: Sam Mitroni: LAWCHA
Americas Biggest Police Force: Ganeva & Gottesdiener: Salon
How One Of Them Got It Wrong: b: Moon Of Alabama
This Year In Racism: Doug Muder: WeeklySift
Two Party Racisim: Doug Muder: WeeklySift

Links

Defending Money: Gary Brecher: Pando
The Freedom They Hate Is Dick Cheney's Freedom To Torture Them: Mike Shedlock: Global Economic Analysis
Torture Shown To Induce Aversion To Torture, Even In Republicans: Jim Wright: StoneKettleStation
Why Vote?: Burnham & Ferguson: Naked Capitalism
Our Criminal Justice System: Jed Rakoff et al.: NYROB
No One Is Innocent: Alex Tabarrok: Marginal Revolution
Predatory Fining And Mass Surveillance: Alex Tabarrok: Marginal Revolution

5 Years On, The Flow History

When I began this blog, my second post was an outline of how I understood the civilizational competition I saw in the world around me. In the intervening half decade, the world has begun to move decisively on. The PRC has changed the most, Russia and India are increasingly dynamic and even Iran appears to be evolving beneath it's conservative-ism. In my analysis then, these competing systems were all hobbled to varying extents by internal corruption that prevented them from economically empowering their citizens. This domestic social policy failure robbed them of the power to compete with an American system where a residue of the New Deal still promised, if reinforced, to sustain the economic freedom that drove the productive growth of the US centered system.

In 2009 we in the US were in the depths of a financial crisis and had just elected a decisive majority of Democrats to resolve it: it looked for all the world like a replay of the Roosevelt election of 1932. The optimism was euphoric, to the extent that even the Nobel Committee bit on its "hope" rather than the unfolding reality of no "change" when it gave our new President a Nobel Peace Prize. I closed that essay with this, to my eyes at least, accurate statement: "The last thirty years, with the enfranchisement of cash by the Supreme Court in Buckley v Valeo, our system has converged to a dangerous extent with these competing systems. While I can vote, I can not get my representatives attention. I have a formal political power that has been robbed of substance by money. In the Peoples Republic of China, what the Party wants the Party gets. In the United States, the Republic of Cash, what money wants money gets." 

Money indeed got what money wanted. With control of both houses of Congress and the Presidency, had the Democrats really wanted to reform our financial system, all of the tools were in hand and the industry so profoundly disgraced any serious reform proposed would have had massive popular

Links

How We Roll: Slavj Zizek: Yanis Varoufakis
Is It Bad Enough? Mark Bittman: NYT
Apparently Yes For These Folks: USA Today
Society Of Captives: Chris Hedges: Truthdig
EuroCrisis Returns: Edward Hugh: Fistfullofeuros
Backfired: Michael Hudson

Tortured Links

New Normal: David Dayen: Fiscal Times
Lawless Society: Joe Firestone: Naked Capitalism
Sports Without Ethics: Michael Powell: New York Times
Markets Without Ethics: Michael Perino: New York Times
Police Without Ethics: Andy Cush: Gawker
Courts Without Ethics: Lawrence Hurley: Reuters
War Without Ethics: Jim White: Emptywheel
Economy Without Ethics: Binyamin Appelbaum: New York Times
State Without Ethics, Senate Torture Report: Nick Gillespi: Reason
Comparative Ethics: Joe Firestone: Mike Norman Economics

Links

Terrible Decisions: Linda Tirado: Killermartinis
An Honest Appraisal: Kathy O'Niel: Mathbabe
Interpretations Of Journalistic Lies: Michelle Goldberg: TheNation
A Burning Fuse: CrimethInc
No Good Cops: Frank Vyan Walton: Daily Kos
Because The System Is Designed That Way: Ian Welsh

For A Public Conspiracy To Restore The Constitution

Sitting hear listening to the construction noise from the nearby work at Hudson Yards the energetic density of this human coral we call New York fills the lower half of my field of vision. A giant human reef, the city embodies technologies embedded in culture, animated by people who pass their wisdom, or lack of it, from generation to generation expanding or conserving or bleaching that coral. In Aurora of Empire, I tried to understand the political economy of this great city and map certain salient points about how those people have interacted with their artifact and the culture that channels their volition. My point of view there was focused on the evolution of the physical artifact of the city as technology and culture interacting through New Yorkers to create this present on which I now look.  Seeing what the thing has become, and living that becoming these last thirty years, direct experience of a corroding of culture has me concerned about the bleaching burn of Mammon's glow as it leafs the city to it's golden taste.

In Shadows On Liberty, when I was just beginning to write, I laid out my thoughts on how our intentions as embodied in the founding documents of this erstwhile Republic have always been more aspirational than their author's practical intent. An affect has been that these idealized notions sit out there generation after generation reinforcing their simple moral clarity in the minds of succeeding generations who, in venerating their predecessors tend to credit them more than history warrants. This salutary process results, however or has until recently, in these successors struggling to live up to ideals whose creators honored more in the breach. In How We Got Here I talked about how the visionary leadership of the New Deal and America's war effort in Europe created the conditions in which the "promissory note" M. L. King saw in the Declaration of Independence, endorsed by Lincoln with the Emancipation Proclamation was, in part finally redeemed with the Civil Rights Amendments of the late sixties.

As a child of the Jim Crow South and beneficiary of court ordered desegregation in the Austin of my childhood, the perverse values of the likes of Robert McCulloch sear my soul both with their reptile hate and their familiarity. Jim Crow consisted in a nutshell of this: employ a select class of people too little and for inadequate wages and then call them criminals when they try to survive. It was a stratagem to do with economic power what was prohibited politically. Our Kurrent Konservative Khristians, now

Links

International Ineptitude: Michael Hobbes: New Republic
Piketty's Wealth Without People : Deirdre McCloskey 
The Myth Of AI: Jaron Lanier: Edge
Willingly Distracted: Ta-Nahisi Coates: The Atlantic
The Untied States Of America: George Packe/Rosette Royale: Streetroots

Links

Myth Of AI: Jaron Lanier: Edge
Coriolanus: J. W. Mason: Slackwire comments add to a great post
Putin: Ru/News
Denaturing Progress: Thomas Frank: Salon
Bent America: Matt Stoller on Zeyphyr Teachout: Naked Capitalism
Maastricht/Versailles: Yanis Varoufakis

Links

This Changes Everything 1: Michael Hoexter: Naked Capitalism
West End Boy: Adam Shatz: LRB
Spreadsheet's Spread: Steven Levy: Backchannel/Harpers
IT/Information Tunnel-vision: Ezra Klein: Vox
What It Misses: John Michael Greer: Archdruid Report

Links

Confusing Money With Wealth: John Harvey: Forbes
Why Innocents Plead Guilty: Jed Rakoff: NYROB
Information Doesn't Want To Be Free: Cory Doctorow: TechCrunch
Et Tu Poitras: Bill Blunden: Cryptome
Standing In Their Shoes: William Polk: Consortium News
Uber Drivers Strike: Kaja Whitehouse: New York Post
Income Inequality Is Bad For Rich: Yves Smith: Salon
25 Years Of Falling Wealth: Yves Smith: Naked Capitalism
Money Messes You Up: Michael Lewis: The New Republic
Who's At Risk: Bill Mitchell: Billyblog

Links

Obama Could Have Helped: Ian Welsh
But He'll Be Paid Well For Having Not: Naomi Prins: Naked Capitalism
Democrat Red Wedding: Lambert Strether: Naked Capitalism
Witness To Corruption: Matt Taibbi: Rolling Stone
Optimal Currency Zones: Michael Pettis

Links

Progressive Blind Side: Ed Walker: Naked Capitalism
American Machiavelli: Daniel McCarthy: The American Conservative
Technology And Prosperity: Ian Welsh
Soak The Rich: Piketty And Greaber: The Baffler
Lions Eat Foxes: Maria Konnicova: The New Yorker (see American Machiavelli above)
Ferguson France: John Lichfield: The Independent

Links

The Limits Of Monetarism: Steve Randal Waldman: Interfluidity
How To Think About Public Investment: Michael Pettis
How False Stories Kill: Ann Jones: Salon
How The Narrative Fallacy Limits Our Politics: High Arka
And Where It Leads: John Michael Greer: Archdruid Report

Links

Zombie West: Michael Sauga: Spiegel
Illusion Of Meritocracy: Yves Smith: Naked Capitalism comments as good as post
The Reality Constraint: Gail Tverberg: Our Finite World
Resource Constraints And Facism: Michael Pettis
Democracy, Integration And Sovereignty: Yves Smith: Naked Capitalism
Putin's View: Vladimir Putin: Vineyard Of The Saker

Links

Kobane Diary: Haysam Mislim: Newsweek
IS Retreats From Kobane: Gary Brecher: Pando
Violence And Prosperity: Ian Welsh
TBTF Esquire: Matt Stoller: Naked Capitalism
Derp Twerps: Paul Krugman: Conscience Of A Liberal
Plu Ca Change: Robert Skidelsky: Project Syndicate
Plu Ca Change: J. W. Mason: Slackwire

Ebola, NSA & Porn

While our "markets" based "health care system" has roundly flubbed it's first encounter with Ebola, it may have offered the serial liars and megalomaniacs at the NSA the best chance they're likely to get to redeem themselves. It's become clear in the last year the NSA pretty much stores and sorts data on all of us. If that information is in any way useful in our ostensible "War On Terror", it should be in the field of quickly tracking connections between people associated with some interest of the Agency.

Lets say, for the sake of argument, that Ebola is Terrifying. Further lets stipulate that a "health care system" designed to maximize revenue streams for its institutions and practitioners is likely to send people with symptoms of the common cold or flue out to propagate their various bugs to the benefit of sellers of treatments, whether lab tests, doctors visits or the spectrum of pharmaceutical products. That these symptoms happen to also include the early markers of our "Terrorist" threat has already confounded CDC, systematically enervated by de-funding low these last 40 years, and our above mentioned "health care system".

But! Since it's Terrifying, our serial liars and megalomaniacs are now well positioned to actually demonstrate the public service focus they claim as justification for their extra-constitutional intrusions into our communications. If their data sets have value, it should be in the sphere of tracking connections between people, a problem given new urgency in light of the CDC sending an Ebola infected nurse,

Links

Bolivia, Defiant And Prosperous: Bill Mitchell: billy blog
Political Economy Of MMT: Bill Mitchell: billy blog
Biosocial Roots Of Oligarchy: Tom Crowl: Civilization Systems
MBAs And Ebola: Roy Poses: Naked Capitalism
Monopoly: Matt Stoller: Naked Capitalism
What We Said In 2011 About Monopoly

Exorbitant Privilege Or Burden?

In order to be a reserve currency a currency must be broadly distributed and broadly circulated. To be broadly distributed and broadly circulated there must be enough currency in circulation to satisfy demand. In our world, as it stands, that demand includes the needs of global financial markets. Yesterday according to the New York Times something like $680 billion in US Treasuries were traded: currency adequate to support this volume must both exist and be sufficiently distributed.

In order for these conditions to be met, by definition the US must have spent abroad that volume of dollars, and US and other nations dollar denominated transactions must have provided adequate distribution. Once these conditions are met, other nations who hold our currency discover that when we sneeze they get a cold: when we have a financial ruction it tends to draw down their reserves. Should they run out of reserves, in the post New Deal world, they have discovered US sponsored institutions like the IMF and World Bank pauperize their populations and devastate their financial markets to preserve stability in the US economy.

This experience has encouraged all of our trading partners to accumulate vast dollar reserves: this, again by definition, requires the US to have first spent the desired sums. Ipso facto, the "trade deficit" and accumulated "National Debt", the first in order that our trading partners have our currency and the second in order that there is enough of it to satisfy the requirements of the two paragraphs above.

Once these conditions are met, our trading partners discover that by repressing the wage income of their populations they can force the US to continue to fund the accumulations they need both for hedges against the IMF and World Bank and whatever demand they may choose to import from the US. Once your population can't afford to purchase the stuff they make you can export that stuff to the US, who's currency is relatively strong because you keep purchasing Treasuries with that portion of your import earnings you have withheld from the workers who actually made the stuff. This decouples your economy from the US at the decisive point of savings accumulation. Savings in your country accumulates to owners of capital rather than workers and can be deployed to manage the local economy.

Thus our trading partners indirectly manage US demand through their purchases of Treasuries to sustain their domestic employment at the expense of US employment. This puts pressure on US workers who can't get jobs but must none the less meet their rent/mortgage etc obligations at the same time it puts downward pressure on interest rates. These combine to create a wonderfully usurious opportunity for creditors here in the US who have exploited it to the hilt, first with sub-prime mortgages and extortionate credit card practices and now with student debt and various new forms of sub-prime consumer finance. This is the Exorbitant Privilege: the US worker is pauperized by a convenient collusion between American financiers and repressive foreign regimes. Exorbitant Privilege indeed.

Links

Ebola In Africa: Ian Welsh
Ebola Ebola: More Crows Than Eagles
Scale, Progressivity And Cohesion: Steve Randy Waldman: Interfluidity
Slumming It: Daniel Brooks: The Baffler
Back To No Future: Alyssa Battistoni: Jacobin
Reinventing Agriculture: Roc Morin: The Atlantic
OPEC Adieu? Raul Illargi: The Automatic Earth
Or Adieu Fracking Bubble: Moon Of Alabama
Or Adieu Inflation: Yves Smith: Naked Capitalism

The Exorbitant Privilege

"The Exorbitant Privilege" of reserve currency status, while a wonderful rhetorical trope, is more a hindrance than help to non-specialists understanding of the political role of a reserve currency. The layers of abstract function embedded in a cross border currency system compound confusion over counter intuitive complexity.

First obscurity comes from the dual nature of money as both asset and liability. Because we handle it as cash we intuitively understand certain analogue properties it appears to manifest relative to our exchange of other valuables. But this obscures the essential property that sets money apart from other valuable objects: it has no intrinsic value itself, really never has, and exists always and everywhere as both an asset and liability. What is the intrinsic value of gold, a form of cash frequently misunderstood as sin qua non money? It does not oxidize, holds its luster, is easily malleable, is fairly dense and conducts electricity. It's hard to say, but it appears aesthetic properties of weightiness, malleability  and shininess recommended it as a medium of exchange, but this function in no way encompasses what is interesting about money with regard to power, which is the essentially interesting thing about a reserve currency. While cash money has properties that can be aesthetically embodied in gold, it is the liability side of money at scale, money in quantities not easily handled in cash, that ultimately creates the "Exorbitant Privilege".

A dollar is a liability to the US Government and an asset to anyone who holds it. It entitles its bearer to a dollars worth of whatever goods and services she may choose to exchange it for within the dollar denominated economy. There is a lot in those two sentences that we need to be clear about before moving on. Every dollar that exists anywhere in the world, in whatever form it is held from cash to bonds to keystroke records in a banks IT system, exists as a result of having first been spent by the US Government (or having been recorded as a bank asset/depositor liability as a loan on a Govt. chartered bank's books). If it was not first spent by the US Government or logged as an asset by a Govt. chartered bank it is at very best counterfeit: being issued and spent by the US Government is the only legitimate way dollars can come into being. It is an IOU of the US Government with which that government purchases things it determines to purchase. Politically,

Links

Character: Ian Welsh
Buffalo Wind: John Michael Greer: Archdruid Report
Dollar Carnage: Raul Illargi: The Automatic Earth
Exorbitant Burden: Michael Pettis
Appeasement: Doug Muder: Weekly Sift

Links

The World Upside Down: Golem XIV
Undervalued Law: Cassandra Does Tokyo
Battlefield Hong Kong: Rachel Lu: Foreign Policy
Non-Denial Denial: Dan Froomkin: The Intercept
Sustainability Of Trade: Michael Pettis
A Conservative Lexicon: Doug Muder: Weekly Sift

Links

Flying Cars & Sinking Profits: David Graeber: The Baffler
The Next Big Thing, Part 1: Golem XIV
Universal Basic Income: Steve Waldman: Interfluidity
Sins Of The Fathers: Adrian Peterson: Guardian
Who's Your Daddy: Glen Ford: Black Agenda Report

Links

A Short History Of Our War In Syria: b: Moon Of Alabama
Our Ongoing Civil War: Doug Muder: Weekly Sift
Our Foreign One: Joseph Cannon: CannonFire
It's Other Front: b: Moon Of Alabama
Following It Home: Chris Hedges: TruthDig
Subprime Is Back: Raul Illargi: Automatic Earth
Montecito Residence: Barton Myers: Contemporist

Links

Gaza From Abroad: John Pilger: Asia Times
Magyars Return: American Kulak: Vineyard Of The Saker
Superstition: John Michael Greer: Archdruid Report
Scotland Yes: Neil Davidson: Jacobin
The Money View: J W Mason: Slackwire
Not A Bank, But A Whimper: Michael Pettis

Links

Season In Ukrane: Coleman Collins: ESPN
Why Not Kill Them All? Keith Gessen: LRB
Truth And Burning Bridges: Ian Welsh
Limits To Growth: Turner & Alexander: Guardian
An International Problem: Yves Smith: Naked Capitalism
Black Swan Of Scottland: Raul Illargi: Automatic Earth

Links

I'm with Waldman on this:
Why Fear Inflation?: Paul Krugman: NYT
For Good Personal Reasons: Steve Waldman: Interfluidity
And Systemic Ones: Peter Dorman: Econospeak
What Could Be Done: Martin Wolf: FT
Or Something Else: J. D. Alt: Naked Capitalism

Links

What Would Be Good In China: Michael Pettis
Independent Of Declaration: Saker: Vineyard Of The Saker
Declaration Of Independence: Gordon Wood:NYROB
Hamilton The Statist: Christian Parenti: Jacobin
Poor Getting Poorer: Bill Mitchell: Billyblog

Links

Poverty Capitalism: Thomas Edsall: NYT
Furguson And Bullshit Careerism: Matt Stoller: Medum
Bullshit Russian Invasion: b: Moon Of Alabama
Topsy Turvy France: David Dayen: Naked Capitalism
Hope, Not Fear: Bill Mitchell: Billyblog
Tula House: Patkau Architects: Dezeen

LANGUAGE

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Words perfect the illusion of communication. Language defines a metaphorical alternative to the reality we experience through our senses. The seminal advantage of the linguistic alternative is its apparent communicability; that others seem to understand as we do. The more specific the subject the more precise language can be in representing it, but it is always a representation. A representation twice removed: all sensory experience is first mediated through the inherited prism of our ancient nervous system and its’ accumulated accidents, it is only beyond these filters that auditory or visual stimuli can enter into the form of language to be cast back into the world as representations. The filters are not neutral, they are driven both by mind and instinct and color our perceptions with motives, with emotions, even down to the words we hear and the words we choose to speak, or just find ourselves speaking.

Language changes everything. First, nominative words for actions or things; then phrases with action content; then simple syntax and within 18 months of the first word, complex, complete, though not yet perfect, grammar. Possibly our most powerful and productive aptitude, our shot at language is almost entirely lost by age seven where if lack of culture has robbed us of exposure we will never fully recover. For our purposes, how language evolved is interesting but not essential: how it now works on and in our minds is.

Wresting our kids from the feral pit of pre-linguistic solipsism that is infancy into the flowering of humanity we call childhood, as my father succinctly put it, “you’ll take bullshit from baby you’ll never take from anyone else.” From a certain distance and perspective, those formative years can be looked at as each succeeding generations introductory clinic on the ascent of man. So much that for the rest of our lives looks like determinism is in fact framed in those years. But an equal amount is not. The form and reach of each individuals final mastery of language determines their point of entry, trajectory and speed into the majority of the proliferating subcultures of civilization, but in no way predicts the actual journey.

At our first introduction to the use of words, we are entering into what will likely be the most coercive contract of our lives: the agreement of linguistic meaning. In ignorance we submit to its’ immense and obvious utility. We fail to understand its’ treachery until

Links

The Bigger Picture @ Furguson: b: Moon Of Alabama
Code And Law And Furguson: Lambert Strether: Naked Capitalism
American Dark Age: John Michael Greer: Archdruidreport
MH17: Niles Williamson: WSWS
The End Is Near: Andrew Kramer: New York Times
The Wages Of Victory: Robin Wigglesworth & Roman Olearchyk: FT
Ukraine-Liberal Delusions: John Mearsheimer: Foreign Affairs
Ukraines' Future: Ian Welsh

Links

Sanctity Of Debt, Sanctity Of Work: Michael Pettis
The Failed State Business Plan: Gilbert Mercier: NewsJunkiePost
Italian Runaway Train: Edward Hugh: Fist Full Of Euros
American Runaway Train: 21 Wire: 21st Century Wire
And Its' Tangled Wreckage: Raul Illargi: Automatic Earth

Links

Propaganda, here: Kramer, Higgins, Herszenhorn: New York Times
Propaganda, there: Anna: Vineyard Of The Saker
Princeton Propaganda Home: Paul Krugman: New York Times
Princeton Propaganda Away: Stephen Cohen: The Nation 

Court Yard House: Wendell Burnette: Contemporist

Links

On The Wrong Path: Gabor Steingart: Handelsblatt
US Oil: Gail Tverberg: The Energy Collective
New Demand: Michael Hoexter: NEP
Strange Defeat: J. W. Mason & Arjun Jayadev: Slackwire
Strange Defeat, An Exchange: Slackwire
We'll Be Renters: Joel Kotkin: NewGeography

Links

Ukraine On The Ground: Political Reality
Ukraine In The Ground: Michael Hudson: Naked Capitalism
Following Money To War: Raul Illargi: Automatic Earth
Dark Age America: John Michael Greer: Archdruid Report
Rising Oceans: John Michael Greer: Archdruid Report
Wrong Fights, Wrong Friends: Raul Illargi: Automatic Earth
Dark Ages As An Export: Patrick Cockburn: The Independant
Isis Consolidates: Patrick Cockburn: LROB

Links

Life Is A Toy, Not A Game: Ian Welsh
Say By To The Bubble: Raul Illargi: Naked Capitalism
Nuclear Roulette: Ian Welsh
Capitalism, Slavery & Greg Grandin: Alex Gourevitch: Jacobin
Hamas's Chances: Nathan Thrall: LROB
Adam Curtis & Zombification: Rob Pollard: New Statesman

Links

How Krugman Drives Krugman Nuts: J. W. Mason: Slackwire
Improve Yourself: The Epicurean Deal Maker
What Fracking Blows Up: Wolf Richter: Naked Capitalism
What Solidarity Looks Like: George Joseph: Jacobin
Boehner's Boner: Jim Wright: Stonekettle Station
CIA Admits Blackmailing Eavesdropping On The Senate: Mark Mazzetti: NYT
The NSA And The Rest Of Us: Dan Froomkin: The Intercept
Thinking The Unthinkable: Vineyard Of The Saker

Links

Beginning Of An End: Mark From Ireland: Ian Welsh
Germany's Choice: M Feldenkirchen, Christaine Hoffmann & Rene Pfister: Spiegel
The Russian-Chinese Political Game: Immanual Wallerstein: Binghamton
Doubts In Europe: Yves Smith: Naked Capitalism
Obama Talks Of Unease: Edward-Isaac Dovere: Politico

Links

Before I Go: Golem XIV

On Tolerance: John Holbo: Crooked Timber

American Torture: Marcy Wheeler: Empty Wheel

SITREP July 26: Juan: Vineyard Of The Saker

Energy=Power: Raul Illargi: Automatic Earth

Rights To Self Defense: Chris Hedges: TruthDig

Netanyahu's Bloody Calculations: Paul Pilar: Consortium News

Netanyahu's Lies: b; Moon Of Alabama

Syriza Of Spain: Becquer Seguin: Jacobin

The Grey Light Of Morning: John Greer: Archdruidreport

Links

It Was Putin: Pepe Escobar: Asia Times
Ruski Point Of View: Slavyangrad
Russia Speaks: Saker: Vineyard Of The Saker
If China Is With You: Ian Welsh
12333: John Napier Tye: Washington Post
US Of Blackmail: GW: George Washington's Blog
Israel Mows The Lawn: Mouin Rabbini: LRB
Hegemonic Collapse: Ian Welsh
American Requiem: Tom Engelhardt: TomDispatch
As Our Dreams Die: Jim Wright: Stonekettle Station

Links

Debt Can't Simply Be Socialized: Michael Pettis
Welfare Economics 5: Steve Waldman: Interfluidity
What Is ISIS?: Gary Brecher: Pando
The Pain In Spain: Edward Hugh: Fist Full Of Euros
On Banksterism: Bill Black: New Economic Perspectives

Links

Myth Of Profligacy: Ignacio Portes: Naked Capitalism
Oligarchy Blues: Michael Ventura: Naked Capitalism
And Resistance: Marcy Wheeler: Emptywheel
Friedman And Keynes Euthanasia: Thomas Palley
Fact Check The Fact Checkers: Bill Mitchell

Links

Neo-Liberal End Game: Paul Solotaroff: Mens Journal 
Keeping It Going: Jonathan Kirshner: Boston Review
Despite Itself: Yves Smith: Naked Capitalism
From The Russian Perspective: Saker: Vineyard Of The Saker
From The Southern Front: b: Moon Of Alabama
And What It Intends To Destroy: Brindle, Kelly & O'Neil: The Guardian

Links

Self Evident Truths: Jim Wight: Stonekettle Station
Blow Back: Glen Ford: Real News Network
Rock And Hard Place: Moon Of Alabama
Long Game: Moon Of Alabama
The Un-Ehthenized Rentier: J. W. Mason: Slackwire
A Peek At The Peak: Dave Summers: OilPrice.com
Overshoot Loop: Jay Hanson: The Automatic Earth

Links

Disloyal: Golem XIV
Racket Empire: Noam Chomsky: Naked Capitalism
Broken Thread: John Michael Greer: Archdruidreport
Optimism Bias: Raul Illargi: Automatic Earth
Varieties Of Keynesianism: J. W. Mason: Slackwire
Natural Capital Accounting: Patrick Bond: TrippleCrisis

Links

What Capitalism Does Best: Yves Smith: Naked Capitalism
Don't Fry For Me, Argentina: Ignacio Portes: Naked Capitalism
Endgame Lost?: Bill McKibben: NYROB
Google Watch: Mark Ames: Pando
Informative Correlation With Electoral Map: Alan Flipin: NYT Upshot
Naked Imperialism: Vineyard Of The Saker

Links

Open Source Revolution: Nafeez Ahmed: The Guardian
Four Seasons Of China: Michael Pettis
Disappearing Artists: Sandra Aistars: The Hill
Dark Matter: Cathy O'Neil: Mathbabe
Unmaking Capitalism: Sam Gindin: Jacobin
Taste Of Things To Come: Kris De Decker: Low Tech

Links

Welfare Part 3: Steve Waldman: Interfluidity
Welfare Part 4: Steve Waldman: Interfluidity
Paupers And Richlings: Benjamin Kunkel: London Review Of Books
Post Crash Economics: Robert Skidelsky: Project Syndicate
Finally Denying Denialists: Yves Smith: Naked Capitalism
Post-America: Stiriling Newberry: The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Links

Absolutely Nothing: Jim Wright: Stonekettle Station
Tsunami Of Debt: Dimitri Papadimitriou: The Guardian
ISIS, Taliban, Hezbollah: Ian Welsh
How To Sue Nations And Win: Golem XIV
Usury vs Debt: Tim Johnson: Magic Maths Money

Links

The Revolution Will Not Be Monetized: Will Bourne: Inc.
False Promises And The Fall Of Mosul: Juan Cole: Informed Comment
Tear Up Illegitimate Debt: Razmig Keucheyan: The Guardian
Destroying The Web Of Debt: Golem XIV
Freedum And Freedumber: Marcy Wheeler: EmptyWheel

Links

Pikettying Nits: Steven Pressman: Tripple Crisis
Piketty, Marx & Inequality: Benjamin Selwyn: Le Monde Diplomatique
The Altruism Delima: Tom Crowl: Civilization Systems
Housing And Jobs: Jim Russell: Pacific Standard
Race, Jobs, Gentrification: Jim Russell: Pacific Standard

Samizdat

Inside Pravda: Glenn Greenwald: The Intercept
Incompetence Alone Can't Explain It: Jim White: EmptyWheel
Conservative Terror: Jim White: EmptyWheel
SITREP June 11th: Juan/Saker: Vineyard Of The Saker
Syrian Spillover: b: Moon Of Alabama

Links

Welfare Part 2: Steve Waldmann: Interfluidity
RusSIa: Vineyard Of The Saker
Slagging Labor: Reistenberg and Botari: Truthout
Rise Of Right, Fault Of Left: Yanis Varoufakis
Stupidity Is Not A Defense: Raul Illargi: Automatic Earth

Links

rUsSiA:Vineyard Of The Saker
Welfare Part 1: Steve Waldman: Interfluidty
Solitary Subversives: Yanis Varoufakis
The Best/Worst Of Tines: Tony Wikrent: Realeconomics
MyoPicketty: Richard Bookstaber

Links

If Spain Gets The Itch: Michael Pettis

Austerity As Road To Facism: Ian Welsh

Ukraine Is Perfectly Rational: Gary Brecher: War Nerd
Trouble In Oil: Joe Costello: Naked Capitalism
Mark Carney Notices A Problem: Angela Monaghan: The Guardian
The Impossibility Of Growth: George Monboit

Links

Before/Beyond Picketty: Seth Ackerman: Jacobin
Everything Is Borrowed: Raul Ilargi: Automatic Earth
Michael Kingsly: Glenn Greenwald: The Intercept
Wall Street Co-conspirator: David Sirota: Salon
A Rare Sight: Pete Thomas: Grindtv

Links

Reparations: Ta-Nehisi Coates: The Atlantic
Everything Is Broken: Quinn Norton: The Medium
Omnipotent Central Bank: Francis Coppola: Coppola Comment
Picking At Picketty:
My View On Picketty: Branko Milanovic: Brankomi
Is Picketty All Wrong: Paul Krugman: NYT

Links

What About Ukraine: Vladimir Golstein: Forbes
Inaugurating The Eurasian Century: Pepe Escobar: Naked Capitalism
Double Standards In DC?: Moon Of Alabama
More Piketty's Missies: Lance Taylor: INET
Preventing Geithners: Cathy O'Neil: Mathbabe

Links

The Italian Disaster: Perry Anderson: London Review Of Books
Should Markets Clear: Steve Randy Waldman: Interfluidity
Equal Rights: Ian Welsh
How Tight The Web: High Arka
Language Power: Philip Pilkington: Naked Capitalism

Links

British Ukraine: Golem XIV
Russia's Ukraine: Mark Ames: Pando
Ukraines' Ukraine: Moon Of Alabama
NeoCon Ukraine: Ray McGovern: Consortium News
Piketty's Democrats: Yves Smith: Naked Capitalism

Links

Power Of Hypocrisy: Patrick Smith: Salon

Savings Glut Doesn't Increase Savings: Michael Pettis

What Marx Meant: Suresh Naidu: Jacobin

How To Succeed At Theft And Terror: PhoenixWoman: FDL

NeoLiberal Infrastructure: Washington Post

Links

Picketty's Misses: Karl Fitzgerald & Michael Hudson: Naked Capitalism
Picketty's Progress: Thomas Palley
Gatekeeper's Reply:
Krugman: Conscience Of A Liberal
Simon Wren_Lewis: Mainly Macro
Council Of Despair: Felix Salman: Reuters

Links

The World According To MMT: Rebecca Rojer: The New Inquiry
NeoLiberal Health Care: A. W. Gaffney: The Jacobin
Karl Polanyi Explains It All: Robert Kuttner: The American Prospect
A Quick Note On Money: J. W. Mason: Slackwire
VC For The People: Steve Randal Waldman: Interfluidity

A POTTED HISTORY OF "PROGRESS"

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

We'll look deeper into the roots and history of Western technological development in future posts, this essay looks to position the last several posts in a cultural narrative I imagine about the world I've found myself in. It is not an academic world although the products of academia feature prominently in it. Careful thinking and the clear communication of ideas are among my most avid tastes and I find them there and in certain books and blogs. My own lack of clarity is a sort of public airing of my intellectual disorganization, and for that I apologize. Reality is infinitely granular and, constrained as we are by the filter of our own senses and consciousness, not particularly available to us. So all history is in some ways potted, and I make no secrete here of my abuse of it to frame some larger points I've thought more carefully about.

As Ian Morris posits in "Why the West Rules for Now", Europe has been at the center of one of the two dominant competing world civilizations for five or six thousand years now. If you haven't read his book, I highly recommend it. The late Renaissance European world of proto-capitalism is where I'll start my story. It really begins with the Magna Carta wherein through direct contests of power an English King acquiesced to certain textually specified rights amongst his "subjects", conditions delimiting their scope of subjugation. This process of establishing by written record highly specific agreements on highly specific limits to highly specified powers has been a sort of background radiation underpinning what has actually been progressive in our bloody last eight hundred years.

That this form of agreement established itself in the particular moment of thirteenth century England was central, I believe to England becoming an early dominant industrial power. The kinds of specific restraints on power and particular institutions built to safeguard them became the backbone on which the powerful built their own rights to manage what we would come to consider "economic" activities, a subset of production regarding the management of surpluses and the benefits accruing from them. These activities developed as a fairly stable infrastructure beneath a superstructure of political power competition concerned with the allocation of lands and the populations they housed viewed primarily as organic bodies from which political heads drew their sustaining blood, whether in war or peace.

Language at this juncture was the primary fissure in otherwise fairly homogeneous populations around the fertile plains and valley's of the continent. The cultural lines thus defined became the increasing focus of aristocrats competitions to ennoble their respective political bodies. The viciousness of the results tended to prepare the way

Links

Nixon's Treason: Robert Parry: Consortium News
Ukraine On The Ground: Andre Vltchek: Counter Punch
Stagnant Economists: Rob Urie: Counter Punch
Financial Vulnerability: Atif Mian & Amir Sufi: House Of Debt
Venezuela By Numbers: Mark Weisbron: Jacobin
Revolution In Reverse: Chris Lehmann: The Baffler

Links

Innovation And Government: Jeffery Madrick: NYROB
Crushing Fantasies: High Arka
Red Lines & Rat Lines: Seymour Hersh: LRB
Putsch Comes To Shove: Robert Parry: Consortium News
Iraqi Crucible: Chris Hedges: TruthDig

Links

Agnatology's Advance: Michael Hiltzik: Los Angeles Times
Planning Opposition To It: John Michael Greer: ArchDruidReport
Incentives To Rig: Steve Randy Waldman: Interfluidity
Progress And Gratitued: Dan: Pruiningshears
Ukraine, A Fascist Coup?: Andre Vltchek: Counter Punch

Links

How The Poor Got So Rich: Felix Salmon: Reuters
Attacking US Strengths: Valentin Mandrasescu: Voice Of Russia
And Why: Ian Walsh
How China Supports It: Michael Pettis: MacroBusiness
Ours Are Bigger: Robert Parry: Consortium News
Sustainable Digital?: Kris De Decker: Low Tech Magazine

Links

Kapital For The 21st Century?: James Galbraith: Dissent
Aristocats And Inequality : Tim Firnholtz: Quartz
Collapse Part 1: John Carlos Baez: Azimuth
Inequality East And West: Joseph Stiglitz: Caixin
Plutocracy Without End: Thomas Frank: Salon

Links

Feed Every Child: High Arka
Why We Should: Matt Bruenig: Demos
The Age Of The Obvious: Ian Welsh
State Of Surveillance: Matt Stoller: TechPresident
Billion Dollar Lesson: Josh Hannah: Pando

Links

On DeBlasio 1: Ari Paul: The Jacobin
On DeBlasio 2: Nathan Newman: The Jacobin
Picketty's Inequality In Six Charts: John Cassidy: The New Yorker
Liquidity/Solidity Preference: J. W. Mason: Slackwire
Captain Ericson's Equation: John Michael Greer: The Archdruid Report

Links

Economic Consequences Of Income Inequality: Michael Pettis
The Delusions It Creates: Michael Winship: Consortium News
What To Do About It: Yanis Varoufakis
If You Ignore It: Robert Skidelsky: Project Syndicate
Syrian Blowback: Jim White: Emptywheel

Links

Putin's Counter Revolution: James Meek: LRB
The West Won't Help: Jessica Desvarieux, Jeffery Sommers & Michael Hudson: The Real News
Deconstructing Discrimination, Summary: Yanis Varoufakis
Deconstructing Discrimination, In Depth: Yanis Varoufakis
Deconstructing Discrimination, The Science: Shaun Hargreaves-Heap & Yanis Varoufakis: Varoufakis.files

Links

Will Emerging Markets Come Back?: Michael Pettis
Just Desserts: Gaius Publius: Naked Capitalism
I Was Soooo Wrong: Cassandra Does Tokyo
One More Time: Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis: Aeon
Ukraine And 1914: Christopher Clark: Spiegel

OPERATING SYSTEMS

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Wayward beasts of riotous belligerence and, on occasion, rapturous beauty, we are the keystone predators of the present, re-timing nature to the fevered steps of an instinctive tango between our collective id and ego. We flatter ourselves "the rational animal" while diligently destroying our ecological patrimony, slaves to the drives of instincts for habitats we've already eradicated and of who's primacy in our motives we remain oblivious. What we are is the "energy capture" animal: while a great deal now sets us apart from our simian ancestors, it was the energy captured from fire in cooking to pre-digest our food that allowed our genes to re-allocate energy and blood flow from our bellies to our brains delivering to us the illusion of reason. We can be reasonable, but our nature is to be smart leading us to reason only under duress, when our cleverness fails.

And in duress we reason beautifully. Some become enamored with this beauty and commit themselves to lives of reason, but these are Cassandra's mostly in an animal world ruled mostly by the hierarchical impulses bequeathed us by our ancestors on some extinct savanna. While our day to day social relations have likely evolved little from those early post-simian glen dwellers, our habitat has. Particularly, wherever the written word has imposed historical order on societies, burdening them with the institutions and memories of civilization, a systematic re-ordering of the living landscape around us has zoned life and its functions for our conscious predilections imposing ever increasing order on the production, flow and distribution of the necessaries of human life. Here those rational aesthetes, people committed to the beauty of careful thinking, have re-imagined our physical world to better support what we believe we want, or at least what the powerful tell us we want.

While civilization has mostly occupied a stable ecological niche, relying on the living energy of its people, their animals, their plants and the sun, industrialization has introduced an anthropocentric instability. While we burned wood or grass or vegetable oils to fuel our stoves, the carbon emissions thus produced re-cylced into new wood or grass or vegetables for future cycles. The living systems that harvested the suns rays and transubstantiated them into life's essentials remained natural in the sense of relying only on the sun and other living things to sustain the human built systems. It is in our nature to capture external energy and bend it to our will: as for cooking over a wood fire, so with coal and latter oil once their capabilities were understood. Industrialization and its growing dependence on these fossil fuels has disconnected human civilization from the ancient rhythms of life and at the same time precipitated a steady build up of carbon and other products of combustion in the atmosphere. We take now what energy we can from wherever we can find it to try to sustain the growth of our economic system burdening our ecology with evermore chthonic carbon and its resulting heat.

But before that it was the energy of beasts that provided the power with which we molded our habitat. Horses, cattle, elephants, dogs and countless other animals have been recruited into the work of making the human environment since before the dawn of cities. With the phase shift in social order introduced by civilization, beast of burden became a category into which we proved willing to relegate our fellow man. In future I'll write in detail about the mirror relationship between the human institutions of money and slavery, for now it suffices to point out the simultaneity of their invention, their parallel histories and the necessary hierarchy between them: slavery cannot exist without money though money can exist without slavery: dehumanized value as embodied in money creates the space for dehumanized humans in civilization.

Slavery cannot exist without civilization. While civilization can exist without slavery, there's damn little record of it prior to industrialization. Slavery is energy capture for psychopaths, but its long and persistent reality is as clear a statement of the universal psychopathic tendencies in all of us as can be made: that tolerance of slavery has been more the

Links

The Ukrainian Neo-Con: Robert Parry: Consortium News
Between Revolution And Tyranny: Musa al-Gharbi: Truthout
Overseeing Oversight: Dan Froomkin: The Intercept
Shape Shifter: Paul Pillar: Consortium News
Gaming Our Nature: James Robinson: Pando

Links

The Reichstag Fire: Cluborlov
Peacocks And Poker Faces: Raus Ilargi: Automatic Earth
Greece On The Ground: Yanis Varoufakis: Naked Capitalism
The View From Here: Occupy Wall Street
And From Inside The Bubble, Just Criticism: The Epicurean Dealmaker

Links

Productive And Unproductive Considered: J. W. Mason: The Slackwire
The Totalitarian Center: John Michael Greer: The Archdruid Report
American Weimar: John Michael Greer: The Archdruid Report
Anti-Democracy Whitewash At The Economist: The Economist
Edward Snowden's Moral Courage: Chris Hedges: Truthout

Links

Minsky To Krugman: Randal Wray: Economonitor
To Float Or Not: Randal Wray: Naked Capitalism
Our Homeless Overlords: Andrew Self: The Conversations
Rentier Posing As Entrepreneur: Streetwise Professor
The Long Decline: Frances Coppola: Coppola Comment

Links

Fracking Ourselves Over: L. Song, J Morris & D. Hasemyer: Bloomberg
What Should Democracy Be?: Yanis Varoufakis
Argentine Anomaly: Jessica Sequeriea & Uki Goni: Boston Review
Anatomy Of The Deep State: Mike Lofgren: Bill Moyers
Causal Narrative: Daniel Little: Understanding Society