So now we're getting somewhere. Back before the last post, I went over to Wikipedia, and reviewed what they had to say about MMT, and I suppose it wasn't representative of what you are saying. Japan's been both printing and borrowing money to "stimulate the economy", and it has kept their economy doing badly for a long time now.

Nonetheless, let me address your concept of MMT here (which is probably more accurate than my understanding of Wiki's description).

I suspect that government creation of debt free money is an improbability, because either money represents a transfer of wealth from one person to another -- in which case, it is either theft or promised to be repaid -- or else it represents the creation of wealth. Now, if it is theft, then it is interrupting the economic chain of someone else, and that actually is a destruction of wealth. If it is a destruction of wealth, then it cannot continue -- the one whose wealth is being destroyed is either going to stop the flow, or is going to dry up.

So it remains for the government to create wealth. But creation of wealth is not what governments do well. Governments regulate well. It is just the same as saying that as a manager I create wealth -- it ain't typically so. I regulate the wealth creation.

Now, there are moments when I actually catch a hiccup, and stop it -- and that is a wealth creating event. But it isn't an accountable wealth creating event: all I did was prevent a disaster. Others are actually laboring to create it. In the same way, the government can prevent disasters, and is thus not without value. But you can't say that it is really creating wealth.

Thus, I still don't think MMT works.

Nor is Japan a good example for advertising anything, because Japan has been doing badly for so long, with no growth.

Money is a COMMODITY that is used as a medium of exchange. You do realize that hand-sized pieces of paper are a valuable commodity, don't you? The day you run out, you will eat with only your right hand.

Hello, I am Janet Yeltzin, the current director of the federal reserve. I require to enact quantitative Easingwhich means placing several hundred million dollars in your bank account, with a negative real interest rate, and no specific date of repayment. In exchange for this, you must make comforting noises about loaning it out to others, to stimulate the economy.please forward your bank serial numbers, and the accoount IDs into which you wish each tranche to be placed.
In case you are wondering about the urgency of our offer, the director of Bank of America can acquaint you with his recommendations, of a most serious nature, having dealt personally with my predecessors.

Do not forget to sign the accompanying documentation. If you wish to opt out of this most generous offer, a meeting can be arranged to convince you otherwise.

Mod parent up, +1 Funny: Japan's qualitative Easing works?!?!??

A lost decade, with no growth, now being stretched to TWO decades with no growth, and you call that working?

That quantitative Easing, those bailouts, are exactly what causes the disasters. So of course they need more of it, because it is clear that they never learned their lesson.

And yes, it appears we need another round of Tarp too. The Fed's holding of worthless promisory notes, never again to be marked to market, with no date of repayment, is now up to 4 trillion dollars.

Okay, I tend to go with Mike Shedlock's blog.

His criticism of MMT is that

a) practically speaking, it isn't working for any of the governments that use it
b) theoretically speaking, if you print a billion dollars and bury it in the back yard, ther's no actual inflation. But the same is true if , instead of burying it, you loan it to banks, expecting them to loan it out to others, and they don't because they have no good stable prospects.

Thus, noting that credit itself is a commodity that is used as a medium of exchange, the credit monetary supply dwarfs the fiat monetary supply, and thus MMT ends up being ineffective anyways.

Okay, first of all, deflation is a money supply issue, and when. Sou realize that money supply includes credit -- and that credit is the largest part of the economy, then you'll find that yes, we are in deflation here in the US.

Now, what about PRICE inflation / deflation?

Well, as robotics, improved methods, and tech make manufacturing faster, cheaper, and easier, that causes deflation. Likewise, as power over little folks forces their wages down, that makes things cheaper. More slaves (you, me) means cheaper goods.

On the other side of the coin, we are not just at peak oil, we are at peak everything. So as raw materials become harder to come by, that causes price increases.

Incidentally, that may have been how Greenspan or Paulson (I forget which) triggered the bursting of the housing bubble. Until then, they had kept the CPI at a constant price inflation of about 5% singe the '50s. early 2000s, they changed policy in response to the bursting of the tech bubble, to keep the CPI constant at 0% increase. But if things are harder to get, that meas that wages have to fall. But people had taken mortgages on the assumptionof 5% CPI price INFLATION. So when their wages fell, they couldn't keep up. That forced housing prices down, which then triggered massive losses from the investment flippers, who themselves were massively overleveraged, which caused Fannie Mae to go plfft, which triggered the hedge fund leveraged derivitive bets into losses, which caused TARP and the jobless recovery...

Generally speaking, we are in deflation, not inflation. So as the commenter correctly points out, a lot of things are decreasing in price.

Here's the problem: our wages are also decreasing.

Here's another problem: a lot of things -- especially thing which we are *legally required* to buy from one source-- are increasing in price. So housing, electricity, union leadership, health insurance, the cost of government, public schools, taxes, bailouts... all are crashing through the roof.

Basically, if the purveyor thinks he has a captive market, he's grabbing everything he can.

But, that being the case, the appropriate question is not as the original headline, "how many things haven't increased in price in that long", it is instead, "how many things, when they increased in price 25- to 50-%, did you have the option to not buy, and still continued to buy?"

Typically speaking, when something went up in price 25- or 50- percent, I stopped buying it. That is, my purchases went to something like 5% of what they had been before. Often, I stopped buying it completely, because I had the incentive to find better alternatives. Once I had the better alternatives, I was done.

Here's a better question: in today's era of retail cannibalization, how will Amazon's market share hold up if they increase prices?

Okay, now I know. Maybe it is apple code; that C0 reminds me of a return, too. But no, it now appears that someone didn't get paid for their work because of Hollywood Accounting.

Apple Machine code? My memory is telling me the first is a single byte instruction, the second is a jump...

Snakes climb trees, and jump (okay, slither) out of trees, all the time. The best eggs are up there, and an occasional bite that tastes like chicken.

Point being, that this one doesn't require lots of snakes to die; it's a normal progression.

Aside from that, I pulled up the links from a google search to cherry-pick the items that I was looking for. These things have all appeared in reputable journals; but a) people who espouse popular theories odon't cite; b) those who do cite while espousing popular theories put their articles behind paywalls.

Face it, if you know about a journal article, and want to easily give references here on the web, you're going to have to learn to look at papers with theories you consider nutty.

Either that, or you're going to have to come up with a service tthat reads journal articles, references them, and summarizes them with all the relevant information, and then pays for itself with google ads.

Take your pick.

Umm... there IS evidence of Noah's flood. And georeactors are common. Admittedly, they may have some crackpot ideas, but they are right to point out that certain items of evidence don't line up with current theory.

In that sense, I wish more slashdotters would listen to creation theorists, and tinfoil hatters more often, because to drown them out implies a blind faith in scientists and textbooks, a rational absurdity.

Remember that quote that the universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine? To silence evidence that conflicts with current theory is a a no-brainer, as in, it is a negation of the brain God gave you.

That bit about continents *is* a standard theory... but it has nothing on 11k years ago. Same thing goes for the orbit. So no, it isn't the orbit, and it isn't the landmasses.

Let's see... you have the North American Clovis Point people going extinct at the same time. So it isn't *who* killed them either. If the Clovis people had killed them off, you wouldn't have had them going extinct.

Also, at the same time, you have wildfires throughout North America. That soot contains microdiamonds.

You also have mammoths in Siberia at that time, flash frozen (Alaska Science Forum November 1, 1976. Mystery of the Mammoth and the Buttercups Article #122 by J. Holland).

You also have great areas in Alaska of jumbled up, blasted fauna caracases, many of them torn apart.

Now, all told, I'm going to posit -- and I doubt I'm the first to do so -- that an asteroid hit a glacier up against the south side of a mountain in Northern Alaska. The first thing it did, was melt/throw the ice of the glacier in a great parabolic trajectory. The water of the glacier went into near space, froze to extremely low temperatures, and came down. But meanwhile, the asteroid impacted the south side of the mountain, and vaporized, causing a fireball to project back into North America.

Thus the soot, thus the extinctions (animal and Clovis culture), thus the flash-frozen mammoth, thus the tectites, thus the great boneyards.

And no, for those creationists here, I extremely doubt that ANY of this had to do with Noah's flood. Noah's flood dates to about 5000 ya, and seems to match the Madagascar chevrons and 8' of river mud, pretty well. This is something different.

Welcome to the era of Rome. 100 miles is 100.000 paces, which is very a very appropriate unit when you are asking OUT OF CHARGE!!!?!?!

The Educational Institute of Engineering and Industrial Operations