Austerity has failed, Germany has questionable authority on debt repayment: Piketty to Merkel

Open letter from 5 economists to Angela Merkel: Austerity has Failed http://www.thenation.com/article/austerity-has-failed-an-open-letter-from-thomas-piketty-to-angela-merkel/

Excerpts of Piketty's interview to German magazine regarding Germany's history with debt that can be found here:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-06/piketty-germany-has-never-repaid-its-debts-it-has-no-standing-lecture-other-nations

Piketty: My book recounts the history of income and wealth, including that of nations. What struck me while I was writing is that Germany is really the single best example of a country that, throughout its history, has never repaid its external debt. Neither after the First nor the Second World War. However, it has frequently made other nations pay up, such as after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, when it demanded massive reparations from France and indeed received them. The French state suffered for decades under this debt. The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.

Piketty: When I hear the Germans say that they maintain a very moral stance about debt and strongly believe that debts must be repaid, then I think: what a huge joke! Germany is the country that has never repaid its debts. It has no standing to lecture other nations.

ZEIT: Many Germans believe that the Greeks still have not recognized their mistakes and want to continue their free-spending ways.

Piketty: If we had told you Germans in the 1950s that you have not properly recognized your failures, you would still be repaying your debts. Luckily, we were more intelligent than that.

ZEIT: So you’re telling us that the German Wirtschaftswunder [“economic miracle”] was based on the same kind of debt relief that we deny Greece today?

Piketty: Exactly. After the war ended in 1945, Germany’s debt amounted to over 200% of its GDP. Ten years later, little of that remained: public debt was less than 20% of GDP. Around the same time, France managed a similarly artful turnaround. We never would have managed this unbelievably fast reduction in debt through the fiscal discipline that we today recommend to Greece. Instead, both of our states employed the second method with the three components that I mentioned, including debt relief. Think about the London Debt Agreement of 1953, where 60% of German foreign debt was cancelled and its internal debts were restructured.

ZEIT: The German Minister of Finance, on the other hand, seems to believe that a Greek exit from the Eurozone could foster greater unity within Europe.

Piketty: If we start kicking states out, then the crisis of confidence in which the Eurozone finds itself today will only worsen. Financial markets will immediately turn on the next country. This would be the beginning of a long, drawn-out period of agony, in whose grasp we risk sacrificing Europe’s social model, its democracy, indeed its civilization on the altar of a conservative, irrational austerity policy.

ZEIT: Do you believe that we Germans aren’t generous enough?

Piketty: What are you talking about? Generous? Currently, Germany is profiting from Greece as it extends loans at comparatively high interest rates.

We are the system. We can change. Civic participation and co-creation on the rise.

WE ARE THE SYSTEM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq0mRyq8wlE&app=desktop

Birgitta, a poetician and a pirate, shares her view on the future of democracy, in which the people are the motor of politics and progress, not institutions.

Birgitta Jónsdóttir is a poetician for the Pirate Party in the Icelandic parliament. She is a regular contributor to the Guardian newspaper, and had the honor to guest edit the January edition 2015 of the New Internationalist titled Democracy in the Digital era. She firmly believes individuals can change the world.

SO THEN WHAT MUST WE DO - THE NEXT SYSTEM PROJECT with Gar Alperovitz

https://youtu.be/72VyldQcNgk

http://youtu.be/P1Ql87-Y620

Author and broadcaster Laura Flanders tackles the tough issues on this refreshingly invigorating news/talk show. In this week's program Flanders talks with Gar Alperovitz, professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland and author of numerous books, the most recent of which is "What then must we do - straight talk about the next American revolution", on the movement for a new economy. With the recurring crises, the notion that we need a different economic system is beginning to gain support outside the traditional left. Alperovitz discusses the current fight-back and preliminary moves toward a democratization of the ownership of capital. teleSUR http://multimedia.telesurtv.net/web/telesur/#!en/video/laura-flanders-show-295441

Money and the Crisis of Civilization (Charles Eisenstein)

Recommended reading on the nature of money and where a new beginning might be found

http://charleseisenstein.net/money-and-the-crisis-of-civilization/

http://charleseisenstein.net/money-a-new-beginning-part-1/

http://charleseisenstein.net/money-a-new-beginning-part-2/

https://fair.coop/faircoin/

Automation, the end of jobs and income

"Since 1982, all inhabitants of right-wing-leaning Alaska have received yearly dividends from the revenues of the oil and gas industry without any obligation whatsoever.

Around the globe, experiments are conducted with alternatives for the existing social security system that has become stuck. People no longer believe in centrally organised long-term planning: change can only be brought about by bottom-up small-scale social experiments. Advocates of redistributing our prosperity and disconnecting work and income are fighting for this. In many places and using many different methods they are experimenting with handing out free money.

Michael Bohmeyer, a young German, has started a crowdfunding campaign for an unconditional basic income. With every 12,000 euros raised, one person gets an income of 1000 euros per month for a year. So far, eight people have been receiving this basic income. There are no obligations other than to submit themselves to research into how this effects their lives. In New York, Michael meets venture investor Albert Wenger who has been thinking about basic income for years. With his company he invested in many internet companies and with these investments he has helped young internet geniuses get well-paid jobs. But Wenger also sees that digitalisation has caused many people to their jobs. Embracing the development toward a basic income, he argues a new perspective on work.

British economist Guy Standing may be one of the greatest advocates of a thorough renewal of the social system. He has conducted basic income experiments in India and Namibia. He sees a growing economic class of flex workers and independent contractors with so little perspective that something needs to be done in order to prevent extensive social unrest. Earlier this year, Guy Standing was in Groningen on invitation by people from MIES (Association for Innovation of Economy and Society). Here, he had a conversation with Matthias Gijsbertsen, the alderman of Social Affairs of the city of Groningen. The alderman was inspired by the idea of a basic income and suggested to offer citizens of Groningen who are on social security the opportunity to earn extra money without lowering social security payments."

DOCUMENTARY "MONEY FOR FREE" (2015)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hlxKZDzXhnM

US Independence Day & The Conflicted Human Condition

"In this video essay, Bill reflects on the origins and lessons of Independence Day. We should remember, he says, that behind this Fourth of July holiday are human beings, like Thomas Jefferson, who were as flawed and conflicted as they were inspired, who espoused great humanistic ideals while behaving with reprehensible racial discrimination. That conflict — between what we know and how we live — is still a struggle in contemporary politics and society."

Read the transcript and/or watch the video here:

http://billmoyers.com/segment/bill-moyers-essay-the-difficult-truths-behind-independence-day/

Hydrogen production breakthrough

Burning hydrogen in a fuel-cell vehicle, like the upcoming Toyota Mirai is clean, since the only emission is water, but the process to produce the fuel is not. The process to produce the hydrogen for these vehicles involves an energy-intensive process called “steam reforming” that uses methane gas from fossil sources. There is another way to produce hydrogen, by extracting it from water using electricity, but the process is currently deemed too expensive compared to the traditional methane extraction process.

A group of students at Stanford University have invented a new way to hydrolyze water using iron and nickel, which would make it cheaper and greener to produce hydrogen from water. “This is the first time anyone has used non-precious metal catalysts to split water at a voltage that low,” said Stanford scientist Hongjie Dai. “It’s quite remarkable, because normally you need expensive metals like platinum or iridium.”

The new, low-cost process operates at an 82 percent efficiency and could help hydrogen become a bigger rival to current battery systems. While the process will involve a lot more testing before it ever becomes available for commercial use, it highlights the possible ways that hydrogen could lead to a greener future.

Via CBC News

SINGLE POINT GROUNDS ON DIFFERENTIAL CIRCUITS

In differential relay protection schemes, two or more currents are compared to ensure rapid detection of fault current within a certain "zone." The basic concept is that under normal conditions, the "sum of currents in" must equal "sum of currents out,"allowing for some error margin tolerance (restraint). When current is feeding a fault in between these current sensors, much more current enters the zone than current leaving (if any at all). For example, an unfortunate cat creates a fault current path from A-phase to the case or ground of a transformer. 

This type of protective circuit can issue a trip or "open" signal to switches that quickly isolate and extinguish the fault that could reach thousands of amperes, limiting damage to equipment, and possibly saving human life, though it only takes a fraction of a second many cases for lethal consequence: only safety work processes and procedures can mitigate such danger.  

In such differential circuits, there should be a single ground for each zone located nearest the respective relay. This must be electrically verified through a single-ground test during commissioning.

During a fault condition, multiple grounds allow a different ground potential rise for each current transformer. The result is a significant current flow through the current sensing (CT) circuit that is not representative of the primary current. 

This ground loop typically creates a potential across the operating coil or input of the differential relay causing the relay to pick up as though a fault exists in the relay's protective zone. Tripping a differential relay due to a fault external to the zone of protection is one of the most common types of nuisance trips. 

These nuisance trips may not only shut down the load, but may require a maintenance crew to spend days in testing to determine that no real problem exists in the differential zone. Further, the actual problem may go uncovered until the system is re-energized into the original fault.

Further reading:

http://www.powellind.com/main/Uploadpdf/ptb%2087%20current%20transformer%20grounding.pdf"

Nelson Abreu & 

guest writer Jeff Velena, Southern CA