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The Federal Reserve was originally set up to be America's development bank. But somehow along the way, it lost its course. Join us as we chat with Professor Bob Hockett about his ideas on returning the Fed to its roots so we can go back to investing in all of America.---Professor Hockett is the author of Financing the Green New Deal: A Plan of Action and Renewal and Money From Nothing: Or, Why We Should Stop Worrying About Debt and Learn to Love the Federal Reserve. He is the Edward Cornell Professor of Law at Cornell Law School, Professor of Public Affairs at Cornell University, and Regular Visiting Professor of Finance at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business. He teaches, writes, publishes and advises in the fields of Enterprise-Organizational and Financial & Monetary Law and Economics, among other fields. He has advanced degrees in Law, Economics, Philosophy, and Finance. He is also Senior Counsel at Westwood Capital, a boutique investment bank in New York City and a Director of both the Public Banking Institute and the Digital Fiat Currency Institute. In the latter connection, his Inclusive Value Ledger (‘IVL’) proposal, which would institute a public digital payments platform and associated system of digital wallets and currency at any ‘level’ of government that adopted it, is under consideration by the New York State Senate and Assembly. And his Digital Greenbacks proposal, which would function as a Treasury-administered IVL at the national level, is under consideration in both Houses of the US Congress. Hockett has previously worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the International Monetary Fund (twice), clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, and is a Fellow of New Consensus and The Century Foundation and a Commissioned Author for the New America Foundation. He has also frequently consulted for and testified before the U.S. Congress (Senate Banking and House Financial Services in particular) and consulted for multiple government instrumentalities at the federal, state, and local levels, including the Fed, the Treasury, and the Financial Stability Oversight Council. Most recently he has helped draft multiple pieces of high-profile legislation for each of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, and U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In policy circles he is probably best known for helping develop the Green New Deal white paper and finance plan for Representative Ocasio-Cortez; the Public Housing Green New Deal Act for Representative Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Sanders; the Loan Shark Prevention Act for Senator Sanders and Representative Ocasio-Cortez; the Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Exist Act, the STOP Walmart Act, and the Corporate Democracy Plan for Senator Sanders; the Stop Excessive CEO Pay Act for Senator Sanders and Representatives Lee and Tlaib; the Accountable Capitalism Act for Senator Warren, and the eminent domain plan for underwater mortgages adopted by many U.S. cities after the financial crashes of 2008-09.
Steve’s guest, Emma Caterine, is a consumer rights attorney with special interest in predatory lenders like loan sharks and payday loan companies. She begins by talking about credit as a social construct, To fully grasp the causes of Great Recession we must understand the difference between consumer debt, with a high risk of default, and federal spending, which is new money and can never default. When our economy grows through private debt, it’s unsustainable and leads to crises like the Great Recession. MMT economists, including Wynn Godley, Stephanie Kelton, and L. Randall Wray, have shown that the idea that public “debt” and the deficit are inherently evil and to be avoided at all costs, or that financial crises are caused by “imbalance in the economy” are all myths. What we see then is that cutting public spending -- austerity -- is a political choice. Emma asserts that private household debt and private corporate debt have similar consequences on different scales, though the households bear more of the burden. Private equity firms load companies with tons of debt to be serviced by cutting labor and selling real estate holdings, which is detrimental to surrounding local communities -- people of color and the working poor in particular. This growth model based on private debt proves that lessons weren’t learnt from the Great Recession. It’s a more intense and modern version of basic capitalism. The data underscores how undemocratic it is. It’s actually about who gets the power to make these decisions. Emma boils down the increasingly neoliberal method: austerity politicians deregulate and cut funding, then the private financial sector fills the gap with privatization. Nearly everything in our lives has private equity behind it, prepared to strip all value with no regard to long-term sustainability. Emma expresses the hope that politicians like Warren and Sanders can and will stop the Wall Street looting. Steve and Emma then turn to the effects of austerity, from abandoned malls and virtual ghost towns to shorter, more brutish lives, and an ever-growing private debt bubble from payday and title loans -- death traps for the already suffering. The average family cannot afford a $400 emergency but are forced to turn to these predatory forms of credit. Steve, as someone who suffered the ill effects of the recession, and Emma, a consumer rights attorney whose clients are working-class and mostly people of color, discuss how we cannot simply talk about income inequality but must actively choose to reverse austerity and the neoliberal paradigm to end the punishment of poverty. Emma advocates increasing public investment, regulating private corporations and the financial industry. She supports the Loan Shark Prevention Act, putting a cap on interest rates. This regulation would counter any inflationary risks of the Green New Deal and Medicare For All. Plans are not enough here; an organized, people-led movement is essential for any paradigm shift. Emma doesn’t trust “professional middle-class experts” to solve the problem but instead focuses on community groups, agitation, organizing, and allying with labor. The movement needs to be people-powered, and groups like DSA are there to hand out the (metaphorical) torches and pitchforks. Emma Caterine is a consumer rights attorney on the board of the Modern Money Network, a decades-long writer and advocate of economic justice, LGBTQIA+ racial and feminist justice movements - and a proud member of Democratic Socialists of America. @EmmaCaterineDSA on Twitter Sign the manifesto at https://jobguaranteenow.org/ https://lpeblog.org/category/piercing-the-monetary-veil/
Recently, members of the United States Senate and United States House of Representatives have introduced the "Loan Shark Prevention Act," which imposes a nationwide 15% interest rate ceiling on all consumer credit products, from credit cards to payday loans. They also propose to empower the United States Post Office to engage in the practice of consumer retail banking. This Teleforum examines the economics of interest-rate ceilings on consumer credit and the historical experience with such proposals as well as discussing the proposal to create a Post Office bank.Featuring:- Wayne Abernathy, Executive VP for Financial Institutions Policy and Regulatory Affairs, American Bankers Association- Todd Zywicki, George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law SchoolVisit our website – RegProject.org – to learn more, view all of our content, and connect with us on social media.
Recently, members of the United States Senate and United States House of Representatives have introduced the "Loan Shark Prevention Act," which imposes a nationwide 15% interest rate ceiling on all consumer credit products, from credit cards to payday loans. They also propose to empower the United States Post Office to engage in the practice of consumer retail banking. This Teleforum examines the economics of interest-rate ceilings on consumer credit and the historical experience with such proposals as well as discussing the proposal to create a Post Office bank.Featuring:- Wayne Abernathy, Executive VP for Financial Institutions Policy and Regulatory Affairs, American Bankers Association- Todd Zywicki, George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law SchoolVisit our website – RegProject.org – to learn more, view all of our content, and connect with us on social media.
Recently, members of the United States Senate and United States House of Representatives have introduced the "Loan Shark Prevention Act," which imposes a nationwide 15% interest rate ceiling on all consumer credit products, from credit cards to payday loans. They also propose to empower the United States Post Office to engage in the practice of consumer retail banking. This Teleforum examines the economics of interest-rate ceilings on consumer credit and the historical experience with such proposals as well as discussing the proposal to create a Post Office bank. Featuring: Wayne Abernathy, Executive VP for Financial Institutions Policy and Regulatory Affairs, American Bankers AssociationTodd Zywicki, George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School
Recently, members of the United States Senate and United States House of Representatives have introduced the "Loan Shark Prevention Act," which imposes a nationwide 15% interest rate ceiling on all consumer credit products, from credit cards to payday loans. They also propose to empower the United States Post Office to engage in the practice of consumer retail banking. This Teleforum examines the economics of interest-rate ceilings on consumer credit and the historical experience with such proposals as well as discussing the proposal to create a Post Office bank. Featuring: Wayne Abernathy, Executive VP for Financial Institutions Policy and Regulatory Affairs, American Bankers AssociationTodd Zywicki, George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School
On this episode, Briahna explores how, as AOC recently put it, "justice is purchased." Thanks to cash bail, thousands of low-income Americans sit behind bars without any kind of trial, conviction, or sentencing — all because they cannot afford to buy their freedom. Lara Bazelon, a law professor at the University of San Francisco, explains how cash bail criminalizes poverty. Akeem Browder talks about how his brother Kalief spent three years in Rikers Island starting at age 16 simply because he couldn’t afford bail, and how the psychological toll of that experience led him to take his own life. Bernie and AOC announcing their Loan Shark Prevention Act legislation: https://www.facebook.com/NowThisPolitics/videos/976956259362039/ ACLU and Color of Change report on the companies behind bail bond agents: https://www.aclu.org/report/selling-our-freedom-how-insurance-corporations-have-taken-over-our-bail-system WaPo article on the companies backing the anti-bail reform effort in California: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/10/29/petition-drive-backed-by-private-equity-company-pays-signature-overturn-californias-new-law-ending-cash-bail/
Bernie Sanders Address on Iran Deal, Iran War, Embassy Defense, Fake Coup Fails, GM Roundup and Venezuela, Campaign Equity Blueprint, Pollution and Dementia, Loan Shark Prevention Act, Libraries of Things, GDP is Gross, Gross Domestic Product from Adbusters: Live without Dead Time #BernieSanders Bernie-2020.com Twitch.tv/unrelatedthings
This week we seen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders introduce legislation called the Loan Shark Prevention Act. Chuck explains what it is and why it's so important.