Morning Caffeine 5-10-2012

• The Modern Monetary Theory Trader: Fed lending to the Treasury?

  Must read article: "Congress should consider providing the Federal Reserve the explicit authority to lend directly to Treasury as a last resort when other options are not viable during a wide-scale disruption. Developing a direct draw authority would require careful consideration and determination of design features and any other requirements to support Treasury’s need for an effective funding source, the Federal Reserve’s independence, and congressional oversight and accountability concerns. An approach that appears promising would be to require that both the Secretary of the Treasury and Chairman of the Federal Reserve approve any draw and agree on specific amounts and duration at the time of any draw. This might balance independence and accountability concerns with the need for sufficiently prompt action and flexibility." http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d061007.pdf

• The Inflation’s in the Poverty | Gregor.us

• You Hate Taxes, but You’re Not Moving to Nashville – Bloomberg

• Greek Elections Force Germany to Weigh Austerity Endgame – Bloomberg

• Robotic Freedom, by Marshall Brain

• Welcoming Our Computer Overlords to High School | Mother Jones

• Richard H. Serlin: Perhaps the Biggest Libertarian Bias in Economics

• Fred Wilson And The Death Of Venture Capital – Forbes

  This amount of money is only too small if we have no middle class. $30bn a year?  VC beating the market is another, related story. 

• Moneybox

  Yglesias *hearts* MMR. Perhaps we all should let him know

• Bank of America Offers Principal Reductions to 200,000 Homeowners – CNBC

• Robert Reich (The Answer Isn’t Socialism; It’s Capitalism that Better Spreads the Benefits of the Productivity Revolution)

  The MMR/MMT debate is related to this. 

• Bank adequacy: weight and see – FT.com

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.