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Some of you will remember that MMT got its first huge mainstream exposure through a Washington Post article written by Dylan Matthews: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/m...story.html He’s just written another excellent story, this time about Stephanie Kelton going to Washington: http://www.vox.com/2015/1/10/7521819/sanders-mmt-kelton?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=vox&utm_content=share:article:top Finally, there might be an alternative to the deficit hawk and timid deficit dove lovefest!

EconoMonitor : Great Leap Forward » Is It Time for MMT To Become Mainstream to Save Us from the Second Global Financial Crisis of the Millennium?

The terrible thing is that Europe’s economy was wrecked in the name of responsibility. True, there have been times when being tough meant reducing deficits and resisting the temptation to print money. In a depressed economy, however, a balanced-budget fetish and a hard-money obsession are deeply irresponsible. Not only do they hurt the economy in the short run, they can — and in Europe, have — inflict long-run harm, damaging the economy’s potential and driving it into a deflationary trap that’s very hard to escape.

Much Too Responsible - NYTimes.com

NO RECENT Italian prime minister has swept into office with as much youthful vigour and brazen self-confidence as Matteo Renzi. But almost a year after he snatched power from his predecessor, the 40-year-old Mr Renzi is waist-deep in what Italians call il pantano (the swamp). Its quicksand and viscous waters—a mix of bureaucratic obstructionism and parliamentary cantankerousness—have swallowed many an earlier would-be reformer.

Italy’s reforms: Renzi’s struggle in the swamp | The Economist

How much better it would be to save everything, not only the written thoughts and snapped moments of life, but the entire mind: everything we know and all that we remember, the love affairs and heartbreaks, the moments of victory and of shame, the lies we told and the truths we learned. If you could save your mind like a computer’s hard drive, would you? It’s a question some hope to pose to us soon. They are the engineers working on the technology that will be able create wholesale copies of our minds and memories that live on after we are burned or buried. If they succeed, it promises to have profound, and perhaps unsettling, consequences for the way we live, who we love and how we die.

BBC - Future - Back-up brains: The era of digital immortality

There is little doubt that smokeless tobacco - the umbrella term that covers chewing tobacco and the more finely ground dipping tobacco - is a health hazard. It contains 28 cancer causing agents, and more of the highly addictive drug nicotine than cigarettes.

BBC News - Baseball's toxic tradition of chewing tobacco

A new device promises to be tough on dirt while gentle on your clothes, cleaning them using ultrasonic technology. It's called Dolfi, and claims to use 80 times less energy than a standard washing machine. This should make it more environmentally friendly, and cheaper to use.

Dolfi cleans your clothes using ultrasonic technology - News - Trusted Reviews

After six years of low interest rates and quantitative easing, the obvious conclusion is that the threat of secular stagnation is not going to be tackled by macroeconomic measures alone. Structural reform is needed. But not the sort of structural reform that involves pay cuts, a weakening of collective bargaining and austerity. That will increase rather than decrease the risk of secular stagnation.

Davos is starting to get it – inequality is the root cause of stagnation | Business | The Guardian

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Investors, therefore, should pay no attention to largely irrelevant arguments of euro area's price deflation as a policy mover. The ECB's decision for a massive monetary creation is an eminently political action in an environment where unnecessarily harsh austerity policies have unleashed powerful forces of protest and discontent in Greece, Spain, Italy and France – economies representing more than half of the monetary union. These forces are closely connected and cutting across entire political spectrums.

ECB’s escalating clashes with Germany

It's so hard to look away. But you really should, at least occasionally. And "remind yourself to blink."

Protect Your Eyes From Computer Screens - Business Insider

Japan's exports grew the most in a year in December, helped by a weak yen and pickup in overseas demand led by the United States, an encouraging sign for the recession-hit economy even as doubts persist about the strength of global consumption.

Japan December Trade - Business Insider

It's actually pretty difficult to explain what TranferWise does. Put simply, it lets people transfer money between different countries and currencies for a lower cost than a standard bank transfer. But the way it does that is the clever part.

The History Of TransferWise - Business Insider

First of all, I quite often encounter people who claim that Greece never really did austerity. I guess this is based on national stereotypes, or something, because the numbers are actually awesome. Here’s non-interest spending as projected in the original agreement versus actual spending since 2010. Because the troika kept increasing its demands, Greek spending has ended up far lower – austerity has been far more intense – than anything envisaged at the beginning.

The Greek Standby Arrangement by Paul Krugman - NYTimes.com

One reason cited [1] for why Syriza will be able to talk tough with the Troika, presuming it wins today, and can form a government, is that it has a healthy [circa 5%] primary budget surplus.  That’s the difference between revenues and spending, once we ignore the cost of servicing debt.  The hypothesised threat is that the new Greek government renounces the debt and has no more need to borrow from capital markets, taking more in taxes than it spends. However, this is not the whole story. Cut adrift from the Troika, the Greek government does not have the funds to stand behind its own banks.  They would be left insolvent by a Greek default [economically, they are already, really].  A run on Greek banks, either prompted by default or the threat of it, could not be stemmed by a credible guarantee of deposits.

Greece’s fragile primary budget surplus is not much of a bargaining chip | longandvariable

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Today, Oculus VR plans to figure out the entertainment industry in a big way. With Story Studio, an in-house innovation lab focused on exploring and sharing tools and techniques to craft entertainment experiences within VR, the Facebook-owned company is embarking on a different path. Outside "guest directors" will be brought in to work with the studio and lead Creative Director Saschka Unseld, a former Pixar director, in what is essentially a VR workshop. And along the way, Oculus hopes to refine what it means to inhabit VR on a cinematic level, beginning with its first animated short, Lost, which will debut at Sundance.

With Story Studio, Oculus VR embarks on its Hollywood takeover

A cyberterror attack on vital national infrastructure such as power facilities, transport networks and the financial sector could be imminent—and international governments are ill-prepared, cybersecurity experts have warned.

Cyberterrorists to target critical infrastructure

On paper, there’s no good reason to invest in Russia right now. The country’s dealing with a collapsed currency, plunging oil prices, recession, conflict in Ukraine, sanctions, and a government that’s hard to predict. The MSCI Russia Index lost almost half its value last year, and those losses could continue in 2015 and even into 2016. On Monday, as fighting in Ukraine intensified, the ruble dropped another 2.3 percent against the dollar, to its lowest level since Dec. 16. For the intrepid, the thrill-seeking, or the very wealthy, however, Russia still has an appeal. Since August, investors have poured $861 million into the Market Vectors Russia ETF (RSX), the largest U.S.-based Russia fund. “In investing, what is comfortable is rarely profitable,” according to investment firm Research Affiliates in a new analysis. “Investing in Russia now is definitely discomfiting, but it might pay off in the long run.”

Investing in Russia: So Crazy, It Just Might Work - Businessweek

For those of us who never had any intention of climbing the graduate career ladder, seeking out alternative living arrangements has been the only feasible way to sustain life in the city for much longer than these recent trends would suggest. But London is closing in on everyone now, not just the least wealthy.

I was forced to rent a shared bedroom with a stranger | Rachael Blyth | Comment is free | theguardian.com

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Along the western coast of England, under a half-moon hidden by clouds, a dark Audi sports car with fabricated plates followed an empty road toward a Barclays bank. Inside were five men, dressed all in black, and their gear: crowbars, power tools, coils of flexible tubing, and two large tanks of explosive gas. It was 1:51 a.m. The job would take just under seven minutes.

Boom: Inside a British Bank-Bombing Spree - Bloomberg Business

This isn’t the first piece of research to suggest moderate drinking boosts your health: other studies undertaken over the past few years have found that alcohol can boost your libido, extend your life expectancy, decrease dementia and diabetes risks, and even prevent against the common cold. Is it time, then, to ditch the beer guilt?

Best News Ever: One Drink a Day Is Better Than None - The Daily Beast

Apple's quarterly revenue just from the iPhone, $51.2 billion, was greater than Yahoo's entire market capitalization of $45.5 billion.

15 Mind-Blowing Facts About Apple's Q1 15 Earnings - Business Insider

It’s the quintessential American nightmare. You may have health insurance, or you may not. But millions of Americans each year end up buried in medical bills, forcing some to declare bankruptcy. In fact, medical debt is the leading cause of bankruptcy in the U.S.

Preventing Medical Bankruptcy

So-called "work martyrs" give hundreds of hours in free labor to their employers every year, encouraged by always-on gadgets, work through nights, weekends, and vacations. Trading sleep or fun for unpaid work is obviously a bad deal for employees, but there's a growing body of evidence that even apparently "free" labor might not be a good deal for employers, either.

Working more than 50 hours makes you less productive

The middle class that President Obama identified in his State of the Union speech last week as the foundation of the American economy has been shrinking for almost half a century. In the late 1960s, more than half of the households in the United States were squarely in the middle, earning, in today's dollars, $35,000 to $100,000 a year. Few people noticed or cared as the size of that group began to fall, because the shift was primarily caused by more Americans climbing the economic ladder into upper-income brackets.

Middle Class Shrinks Further as More Fall Out Instead of Climbing Up

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Investors may have to rethink when the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates following the European Central Bank's announcement that it will buy more than 1 trillion euros in bonds, Janney Montgomery Scott's chief investment strategist told CNBC on Thursday.

What ECB QE means for US policy, stocks: Strategist

The near-global stagnation witnessed in 2014 is man-made. It is the result of politics and policies in several major economies -- politics and policies that choked off demand. In the absence of demand, investment and jobs will fail to materialize. It is that simple.

Why Stupid Politics Is the Cause of Our Economic Problems | Joseph E. Stiglitz

The U.S. introduced the smallest dose of austerity, and it has enjoyed the best economic performance. But even in the U.S., there are roughly 650,000 fewer public sector employees than there were before the crisis; normally, we would have expected some 2 million more. As a result, the U.S., too, is suffering, with growth so anemic that wages remain basically stagnant.

Why Stupid Politics Is the Cause of Our Economic Problems | Joseph E. Stiglitz

Solar analysts have become more positive towards China’s solar industry this year, however. Read my bullish column from last weekend “Why China’s Solar Will Shine“. But J.P. Morgan analysts Boris Kan and Elaine Wu are not sold:

China Solar: China Not As Rosy, Japan Slumping; JP Morgan Downgrades GCL-Poly - Asia Stocks to Watch - Barrons.com

Who really matters in our democracy — the general public, or wealthy elites? That's the topic of a recent study by political scientists Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin Page of Northwestern. The study's gotten lots of attention over the past year, because the authors conclude, basically, that the US is a corrupt oligarchy where ordinary voters barely matter.

Study: Politicians listen to rich people, not you - Vox

Mark Carney says eurozone is caught in a debt trap and should ease hardline budget cuts just days after the Syriza election directly challenged policy

Bank of England governor attacks eurozone austerity | Business | The Guardian

The governor expressed scepticism about whether improving competitiveness through driving down costs – a process known as internal devaluation – would work. “Internal devaluations simply reallocate demand within the currency union. They do not boost aggregate demand in the euro area as a whole. Put another way, since competitiveness is relative, a solution for some cannot be a solution for all.”

Bank of England governor attacks eurozone austerity | Business | The Guardian

According to data gathered by Northwestern University economist Robert Gordon, the “total factor” productivity of the U.S. economy grew around 2 percent a year from 1920 through 1970 but only 0.7 percent a year from 1970 through 2014. Total factor productivity is what creates prosperity—it’s the extra output that the economy produces even without additional labor or capital.

U.S. Economy After Recovery Needs Rest of World to Grow, Too - Bloomberg Business

As Summers points out, if New Jersey used the dollar but wasn’t in a fiscal union with the other 49 states—meaning no inflows of federal aid in hard times—it would be in the same predicament as Greece. “What we would get is a New Jersey that would get into recessions and not get out of them,” he says.

U.S. Economy After Recovery Needs Rest of World to Grow, Too - Bloomberg Business

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He has a point. Over his seven-year reign at the Tour between 1999 and 2005, an incredible 87% of the top-10 finishers were confirmed dopers, or suspected of doping.

BBC Sport - Lance Armstrong two years on - the same, but different

The black and white worldview of a global struggle between Muslims and the "infidels" who seek to systematically oppress them, as presented by Western women recruits to the IS group, is also a noticeable thread in pro-jihadi accounts run by Russian-speaking supporters of both the IS group and other factions in Syria.

Why Western Women Join ISIS - Business Insider

Beijing’s mayor, Wang Anshun, has called the city “unliveable” because of its noxious smog, according to state media. “To establish a first-tier, international, liveable and harmonious city, it is very important to establish a system of standards, and Beijing is currently doing this,” he said last Friday, according to the China Youth Daily newspaper.

Beijing smog makes city unliveable, says mayor | World news | The Guardian

On their face, many assertions seem outright wrong. For example, according to the OECD's assessment, employment protection for workers in Germany are the second strongest in Europe, yet it has an unemployment rate of 5.1 percent. This suggests that labor market protections are not the biggest problem stunting growth.

Arithmetic Is Very Simple, But It's Still True | Beat the Press

Deflation across the 19 countries that use the eurozone currency is gathering pace. In January, prices in the eurozone were 0.6% down on their levels a year ago.

BBC News - Eurozone deflation gathers pace in January

Intel is getting one step closer to its goal of eliminating cables from personal computers, saying Thursday that its newest chip for work computers -- which packs in several wire-free features -- is now available.

Intel says it's time for work without wires - CNET