Readers, this is a long article, and in my opinion well worth the effort. Liu's essays are usually well written and well researched historically. This particular essay seems exceptionally lucid. He covers both the historical and theoretical economic details. To a large extent his conclusion is in the title. In effect the use of the US Dollar as the international reserve currency was a bad idea driven by an ideologically based economics.

Readers, one of the problems with short articles attempting to address complex issues is that you will be prone to bobble something along the way. The primary reasons that the EMU PIIIGS countries are obliged to "austerity" is exactly the design of the EMU itself and that they singly and collectively did not pursue a counter merchantilist industrial policy. The secondary issues include taxation policies which bought into the trickle down and no tax upon the wealthy fantasy. Tadit Anderson

Brad De Long's original draft, the "final version was published at the Financial Times.

Readers, my only complaint with Yeva Nersisyan's analysis is her use of the alleged unemployment rates. What she uses, "10%," is yet another example of persuasive lies produced for the sake of a particular political effect. My expectation is that once the number of people available to the labor force includes those who have lost their unemployment support, those who have taken jobs grossly outside of their capacities, those who have pursued self-employment, and others the number would be much higher. This omission means very little in her analysis of the Reinhart and Rogoff book.

Readers, hopefully this new will encourage the rest of the US States and any pension fund who were scammed to go after the "Too Big To Fail" criminal enterprises

CNBC is reporting that AIG is set to pay the state of Ohio $725 million.

Felix Salmon of Reuters is reporting on twitter that the actual payment will be over $1 billion.

Here is the full press release from the Ohio Attorney General (via Felix Salmon):

(Any emphasis is ours.)
7/16/2010

Ok here were three pieces of news today. First, Goldman Sachs was fined $550 Million for duping customers. We do not need to recap the charges in detail. Goldman helped hedge fund manager John Paulson pick toxic waste sure to go bad for collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) that Goldman would sell to its own patsy clients. Goldman and Paulson then bet against the clients. Since Paulson had picked “assets” guaranteed to go bad, it was a sure bet that Paulson and Goldman would win and that Goldman’s clients would lose.

The flight from reason that now marks American public discourse came home for me last Friday when I found myself on public radio debating whether Barack Obama is anti-business. The “news hook” for KCRW’s “Left, Right & Center” show, which I have co-hosted for 15 years, was an absurd spate of charges from Obama’s former big-business allies that he had become their enemy. If only it were so.

The former Intel chief says "job-centric" leadership and incentives are needed to expand U.S. domestic employment again

Recently an acquaintance at the next table in a Palo Alto (Calif.) restaurant introduced me to his companions, three young venture capitalists from China. They explained, with visible excitement, that they were touring promising companies in Silicon Valley. I've lived in the Valley a long time, and usually when I see how the region has become such a draw for global investments, I feel a little proud.

Readers, this is something that is way over due. The killer point will be that US Banks will no longer be able to create money at will. This is likely going to put more Dollars back into circulation rather than being held as exchange reserves. In a relative valuing process the value of the Dollar outside of the US will drop sharply. The Bretton Woods agreement engineered and rammed down the throat of the rest of the world has now been canceled. As to whether the Dollar will suddenly change lanes onto the right path seems to be still only a remote possibility. This is how an empire dies.

The financial crisis in America isn't over. It's ongoing, it remains unresolved, and it stands in the way of full economic recovery. The cause, at the deepest level, was a breakdown in the rule of law. And it follows that the first step toward prosperity is to restore the rule of law in the financial sector.

First, there was a stand-down of the financial police. The legal framework for this was laid with the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999 and the Commodities Futures

If there's one thing everyone knows these days, whether they're happy about it or not, it's that we live in a "global" economy. This fact is taken as so obvious that anyone who disputes it is regarded as not so much wrong as simply ignorant -- not even worth arguing with. So it may come as a shock to many that, in reality, the cliche that we live in a borderless global economy does not survive serious examination. The key is to ignore the Thomas Friedmanesque rhetoric the media is flooded with and get down to some hard numbers.