Mike Whitney ruminates over what the Fed intends to do in the near-future and what effects its actions will have on the world economy in the short-term. I then identify a few depressing consequences that can be inferred from Whitney’s analysis.

If you were a U.S. soldier in any branch of the United States military and retained on active duty as a result of the service implementing stop loss during Operation Enduring Freedom between Oct. 2, 2001 and Aug. 1, 2002 or Operations Enduring and Iraqi Freedom between May 2, 2003 and June 23, 2003, you need to apply for Retroactive Stop Loss Special Pay of $500 for each month you were under Stop Loss.

In case you hadn’t noticed, there is a Senate primary in Colorado – pitting a Conservadem – Michael Bennet vs a people powered candidate, Andrew Romanoff – who has taken the Obama pledge to take no PAC money.
(Conservadem is not my label, Rachel Maddow gave Senator Bennet that name for joining Evan Bayh’s coalition of conservative democrats)
Despite millions of corporate dollars being spent by Michael Bennet, Andrew Romanoff has taken the lead in polls with the Primary on August 10th.
Pundits have written that Romanoff’s win will send a message throughout politics, that we the grassroots voters, can reverse the Corporate Stranglehold on Congress .

Olberman’s special comment and Shirley Sherrod’s video statement indicate the truth. The war is not about left and right, that’s a convenient tool.

The US is not pulled right or left, it’s being pulled by Greed.

On where the rubber meets the road concerning progressivism

How long can the Obama administration weather the storm of the orchestrated political shake down by Louisiana’s politicians?

At the very end of the Seminal/FireDogLake discussion of my last post, “How Are You Going To Pay For It”, two commenters, ironymeter and konst, offered some comments about the idea in Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) that fiat currency is, to a great extent, accepted, because the Government mandates its status as sole legal tender which can be used for paying taxes imposed by the Government. Let’s begin with a reply to ironymeter

There’s often an assumption that people in different political parties, and their affiliated elected officials, are thoroughly interested in maintaining or gaining power. It’s often asserted that “we” need to send Democrats a message that if they ignore their base, they’ll get booted out of office in 2010 and beyond.

The question is, do they even care, and why should they?

Robert G. Kaiser has a new book on lobbying

It strikes me that probably the most useful, and necessary, thing that progressives –or any other political outsider– can do is to figure out very specifically how to break the dependence on Dollars to running viable campaigns.

The money game is a game we can never ultimately win.