My last post on TMV was on January 14, 2013. I now have returned after a lengthy hiatus.
Two months ago in June, my spouse, our 14-year-old son and I moved within the city of Phoenix to another high school district, which also happened to be closer to her employer of the past 5 years. Last week, our son started high school despite the weather in Phoenix being consistently over 110 degrees.
Arizona summers (aka Dante’s Inferno) last about 5 months beginning in May and lasting thru September. Our winters (December thru February) resemble late springs and early summers elsewhere in the country. Parts of the Phoenix area will drop into the low 30’s and 40’s for many nights but recover to the 70’s during the day. Less than a two-hour drive east or north of the Phoenix metro area, one finds much higher elevations and snow in the mountainous forests during the winters. This precipitation and occasional rains during other parts of the year in these areas provide the needed water to sustain the 4.5 million people living in Phoenix and its suburbs.
Thus I have returned to writing for and posting on TMV. I have started but never finished a dozen potential submissions during 2013, but I have been preoccupied with many other things. I also just was not pleased with them and left them in limbo. After talking on the phone with another occasional TMV blogger, I decided to get my act together and post something – regardless of its content and quality – something most bloggers don’t bother with either.
I think the most significant intellectual activity I have pursued for the past two to three years has been widening my overall understanding of Modern Monetary Theory (also known as Monetary Realism or Monetary Sovereignty). A very good overview selection of articles on this area of human study can be found be found at Pragmatic Capitalism (http://pragcap.com/mr-recommended-reading).
I strongly recommend TMV contributors and readers become far more familiar with these important concepts about how our unified financial, economic and political systems actually work. MMT eviscerates the many crackpot ideas that have been and continue to be promulgated by our criminal ruling oligarchy, its puppet political leaders such as President Obama and Congressional leaders of both parties, and our superficial national media of misinformation and corporate propaganda. In my list of recommended blogs, the sites with strong MMT content have 2 asterisks after their titles.
I have also been reading TMV regularly and my fellow bloggers keep me entertained on most days. I have also been reading a number of other blogs on a daily basis since 2007 and earlier. I have stopped reading many well-known blogs over the past six months (i.e. Huffington Post) as I view them as mere superficial entertainment rather than worthwhile journalism and insightful commentary.
The following is a list of my favorite blogs. The principle writers and contributors provide very insightful analysis based upon facts and reality. They frequently are outside the mainstream media and conventional thought. I may not agree with all their conclusions but they are worthy of regular visits by TMV readers. Many of the blogs only provide new posts on a weekly basis. Many older posts on these sites are also highly recommended.
BUSINESS INSIDER is an aggregator site with more than just business and economic news (http://www.businessinsider.com)
OF TWO MINDS by Charles High Smith (http://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html)
DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE by Dave Cohen, who stopped daily posts in July but whose many years of daily posts are worthy of exploration (http://peakwatch.typepad.com/decline_of_the_empire)
FABIUS MAXIMUS, Chet Richards, Editor (http://fabiusmaximus.com)
HISTORY UNFOLDING by David Kaiser (http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com)
INTELLECTUAL DETOX by Devin Finbarr – (http://intellectual-detox.com)
KUNSTLER by James Howard Kunstler, formerly blogging under the name “Clusterf*ck Nation” (http://kunstler.com)
MICHAEL HUDSON ** (http://michael-hudson.com)
MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY ** by Rodger Malcolm Mitchell (http://mythfighter.com)
NAKED CAPITALISM is probably one of the best aggregator site of many different blogs and news sources with many posts written & edited by Yves Smith & Lambert Strether, and it strongly features MMT contributors (http://www.nakedcapitalism.com)
NEW ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES ** is the MMT site for the professors at the University of Missouri – Kansas City (http://neweconomicperspectives.org)
PRAGMATIC CAPITALISM ** by Cullen Roche (http://pragcap.com)
SCIENCE MAGAZINE (http://www.sciencemag.org)
SHADOW GOVERNMENT STATISTICS by John Williams (http://www.shadowstats.com)
THE ARCHDRUID REPORT by John Michael Greer (http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com)
SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED by Charles Kinsley Michaelson, III (http://ckm3.blogspot.com)
THE BURNING PLATFORM by Jim Quinn (http://www.theburningplatform.com)
THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE by Michael Snyder (http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com)
THE HIPCRIME VOCAB by a multi-faceted architect blogging under the name excapefromwisconsin (http://hipcrime.blogspot.com)
THE TRANSPORT POLITIC By Yonah Freemark (http://www.thetransportpolitic.com)
WASHINGTON’S BLOG is another great aggregator of other blogs (http://www.washingtonsblog.com)
ZERO HEDGE is my final aggregator of other blogs edited by Tyler Durdin (http://www.zerohedge.com)