What do you call a lie that is constructed from another lie?

Twitter: @rodgermitchell; Search #monetarysovereignty
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It takes only two things to keep people in chains: The ignorance of the oppressed and the treachery of their leaders..
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A lie is a lie is a lie. But what do you call a lie about something that in itself is a lie, which is based on a third lie, all of which is constructed from a fourth lie?

A lie to the fourth power? A four-fold fabrication? A questionable quaternary?

Here are excerpts from an article in the Feb. 25th, Washington Post:

Trump is upset the media is not reporting a meaningless statistic about the national debt
By Ana Swanson

On “Fox & Friends” Saturday morning, former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain credited President Trump with reducing the national debt, after just one month in office.

Do you remember crazy Herman Cain of “9-9-9” fame? He’s back.

The level of debt fluctuates day to day and week to week, depending on seasonal changes in growth and when the government makes payments, collects tax revenue, issues new debt and other debt matures — making the data very susceptible to cherry-picking.

Using the same logic, for example, you could claim that after four days in office Trump increased outstanding public debt by more than $10 billion.

Facts: The numbers are so small as to be meaningless, and Trump had nothing to do with them. So that was what we’ll call lie #2.

Then, building on Herman Cain’s lie, Trump tweeted (what else?) the following:

Less than an hour later, the statistic appeared on another highly visible platform. “The media has not reported that the National Debt in my first month went down by $12 billion vs a $200 billion increase in Obama first mo,” Trump tweeted.

On Thursday, the public debt outstanding was $19.9 trillion — or, to be more exact, $19,913,903,120,188.10. And while that is less than it was on Inauguration Day, it’s $29.2 billion more than it was on Feb. 8.

All that goes to say you can’t pay attention to infinitesimal movements in the debt week-to-week.

Trump’s “The media has not reported” lie is all part of his claims that media reports are biased against him. But, the tiny bit of debt datum is even worse than meaningless; it is misleading.

For instance, if the media had broadcast that the debt went up in Trump’s first four days, he would have complained (rightly), that the media were broadcasting “Fake News.”

So that was lie #3.

“Great optimism for future of U.S. business, AND JOBS, with the DOW having an 11th straight record close. Big tax & regulation cuts coming!”

Federal “debt” data doesn’t create optimism or reality about business or jobs — and now after four weeks, Trump is taking false credit for the rise in the Dow, the average that has risen from about 8,000 to above 20,000 — under Barack Obama.

So that was lie #4.

But lie #1, the Big Lie — the lie that reducing federal debt is in some way a good thing — that lie is promulgated not only by Trump, but by the Washington Post.

The so called “federal debt” is not really a “debt” in the way the public thinks about debt. For you and me and businesses and state governments and local governments, debt is a burden. We all are what is known as “monetarily non-sovereign.”

We can run short of the money to repay our debts, and even at best, a large debt can reduce our ability to spend on other things. Given enough debt, we can go bankrupt, lose our credit rating and be unable to borrow further.

None of this is true for federal debt, which is nothing more than the total of deposits in T-security accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank. In short, the federal “debt” is bank deposits, quite similar to savings account deposits.

To “lend” to the federal government, you instruct your bank to take dollars from your checking account and deposit them into your T-security account at the Federal Reserve Bank.

To pay you back, the federal government it simply transfers those same dollars back to your checking account.

And no tax dollars ever are involved in any part of the round-trip transaction. Even if the federal government collected $0 taxes, it could continue servicing any size “debt,” forever. The federal government creates new dollars, ad hoc, every time it pays a bill.

The federal government could pay off the entire “debt” (deposits) tomorrow, and not a single tax dollar would be used. The government simply would transfer all the dollars residing in T-security account back to the checking accounts of T-security holders.

Paying off federal debt is similar to the way your bank transfers dollars from your savings account to your checking account.

If, instead of calling it “federal debt” we properly called it “federal deposits,” no one would worry about size. Big privately-owned banks boast about the size of their deposits, and don’t refer to them as “debt.”

In relatively rare cases, privately-owned banks can run short of dollars; the Federal Reserve Bank cannot. It is an agency of our Monetarily Sovereign federal government, which never can run short of its own sovereign currency, the U.S. dollar.

In fact, the federal government is so safe, it insures private bank depositors against loss.

So the federal “debt” is not a burden, not a worry, not a problem for anyone — not for the federal government and not for U.S. taxpayers.

Federal “debt” (deposits) is a reflection of the size of our economy, so long-term it is related to Gross Domestic Product.

The red line on the above graph shows that the federal “debt held by the public” (deposits) was $280 billion in 1970, and rose to $14 trillion last year —  a fifty-fold increase in only 46 years — and the federal government still has no difficulty servicing it, nor ever will.

In summary, President Trump:

1. along with the Washington Post, falsely claimed a reduction in federal “debt” (deposits) is a good thing (aka the Big Lie).
2. falsely claimed he caused a reduction in federal “debt” (deposits)
3. falsely claimed the media should have broadcast this great “accomplishment”
4. falsely claimed this also caused the Dow to increase

How about calling it a “tetrad of tall tales.”

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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The single most important problems in economics involve the excessive income/wealth/power Gaps between the have-mores and the have-less.

Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics.

Implementation of The Ten Steps To Prosperity can narrow the Gaps:

Ten Steps To Prosperity:
1. ELIMINATE FICA (Ten Reasons to Eliminate FICA )
Although the article lists 10 reasons to eliminate FICA, there are two fundamental reasons:
*FICA is the most regressive tax in American history, widening the Gap by punishing the low and middle-income groups, while leaving the rich untouched, and
*The federal government, being Monetarily Sovereign, neither needs nor uses FICA to support Social Security and Medicare.
2. FEDERALLY FUNDED MEDICARE — PARTS A, B & D, PLUS LONG TERM CARE — FOR EVERYONE (H.R. 676, Medicare for All )
This article addresses the questions:
*Does the economy benefit when the rich can afford better health care than can the rest of Americans?
*Aside from improved health care, what are the other economic effects of “Medicare for everyone?”
*How much would it cost taxpayers?
*Who opposes it?”
3. PROVIDE A MONTHLY ECONOMIC BONUS TO EVERY MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD IN AMERICA (similar to Social Security for All) (The JG (Jobs Guarantee) vs the GI (Guaranteed Income) vs the EB (Guaranteed Income)) Or institute a reverse income tax.
This article is the fifth in a series about direct financial assistance to Americans:

Why Modern Monetary Theory’s Employer of Last Resort is a bad idea. Sunday, Jan 1 2012
MMT’s Job Guarantee (JG) — “Another crazy, rightwing, Austrian nutjob?” Thursday, Jan 12 2012
Why Modern Monetary Theory’s Jobs Guarantee is like the EU’s euro: A beloved solution to the wrong problem. Tuesday, May 29 2012
“You can’t fire me. I’m on JG” Saturday, Jun 2 2012

Economic growth should include the “bottom” 99.9%, not just the .1%, the only question being, how best to accomplish that. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) favors giving everyone a job. Monetary Sovereignty (MS) favors giving everyone money. The five articles describe the pros and cons of each approach.
4. FREE EDUCATION (INCLUDING POST-GRAD) FOR EVERYONE Five reasons why we should eliminate school loans
Monetarily non-sovereign State and local governments, despite their limited finances, support grades K-12. That level of education may have been sufficient for a largely agrarian economy, but not for our currently more technical economy that demands greater numbers of highly educated workers.
Because state and local funding is so limited, grades K-12 receive short shrift, especially those schools whose populations come from the lowest economic groups. And college is too costly for most families.
An educated populace benefits a nation, and benefitting the nation is the purpose of the federal government, which has the unlimited ability to pay for K-16 and beyond.
5. SALARY FOR ATTENDING SCHOOL
Even were schooling to be completely free, many young people cannot attend, because they and their families cannot afford to support non-workers. In a foundering boat, everyone needs to bail, and no one can take time off for study.
If a young person’s “job” is to learn and be productive, he/she should be paid to do that job, especially since that job is one of America’s most important.
6. ELIMINATE FEDERAL TAXES ON BUSINESS
Businesses are dollar-transferring machines. They transfer dollars from customers to employees, suppliers, shareholders and the federal government (the later having no use for those dollars). Any tax on businesses reduces the amount going to employees, suppliers and shareholders, which diminishes the economy. Ultimately, all business taxes reduce your personal income.
7. INCREASE THE STANDARD INCOME TAX DEDUCTION, ANNUALLY. (Refer to this.) Federal taxes punish taxpayers and harm the economy. The federal government has no need for those punishing and harmful tax dollars. There are several ways to reduce taxes, and we should evaluate and choose the most progressive approaches.
Cutting FICA and business taxes would be a good early step, as both dramatically affect the 99%. Annual increases in the standard income tax deduction, and a reverse income tax also would provide benefits from the bottom up. Both would narrow the Gap.
8. TAX THE VERY RICH (THE “.1%) MORE, WITH HIGHER PROGRESSIVE TAX RATES ON ALL FORMS OF INCOME. (TROPHIC CASCADE)
There was a time when I argued against increasing anyone’s federal taxes. After all, the federal government has no need for tax dollars, and all taxes reduce Gross Domestic Product, thereby negatively affecting the entire economy, including the 99.9%.
But I have come to realize that narrowing the Gap requires trimming the top. It simply would not be possible to provide the 99.9% with enough benefits to narrow the Gap in any meaningful way. Bill Gates reportedly owns $70 billion. To get to that level, he must have been earning $10 billion a year. Pick any acceptable Gap (1000 to 1?), and the lowest paid American would have to receive $10 million a year. Unreasonable.
9. FEDERAL OWNERSHIP OF ALL BANKS (Click The end of private banking and How should America decide “who-gets-money”?)
Banks have created all the dollars that exist. Even dollars created at the direction of the federal government, actually come into being when banks increase the numbers in checking accounts. This gives the banks enormous financial power, and as we all know, power corrupts — especially when multiplied by a profit motive.
Although the federal government also is powerful and corrupted, it does not suffer from a profit motive, the world’s most corrupting influence.
10. INCREASE FEDERAL SPENDING ON THE MYRIAD INITIATIVES THAT BENEFIT AMERICA’S 99.9% (Federal agencies)Browse the agencies. See how many agencies benefit the lower- and middle-income/wealth/ power groups, by adding dollars to the economy and/or by actions more beneficial to the 99.9% than to the .1%.
Save this reference as your primer to current economics. Sadly, much of the material is not being taught in American schools, which is all the more reason for you to use it.

The Ten Steps will grow the economy, and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and you.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY