The erroneous ‘lets have a little, some or no MMT’ narrative

It is Wednesday – so just a few observations and then we get down a bit dirty (funky that is). Today, I consider the GND a bit, critics of MMT, Japan, and more. Never a dull moment really. I didn’t really intend writing much but when you piece together a few thoughts, the words flow and so it is. The main issue is the recurring one – the lets have a little, some or no MMT narrative. This misconception regularly crops up in social media (blog...

‘Nu ropar någon Antikrist’

[embedded content] Till minnet av min vän Bengt Nilsson. Det gör fortfarande ont. Det känns ofta — som du brukade säga — ‘förtvivlat.’ Men jag minns också skratten, glädjen, omtanken, den mäktiga intelligensen, den drastiska humorn, och det starka sociala patoset. Livet går vidare, men kommer alltid att vara lite gråare, lite tristare, utan dig min vän.

Poverty and inequality—on a global scale

From David Ruccio It should perhaps come as no surprise that, as capitalism has been called into question and socialism generated increasing interest during the past decade, capitalism’s defenders have resorted to a long historical view. Look, they say, how capitalist growth has decreased poverty and led to improvements in people’s lives around the globe. Just stick with it and all will eventually be well.  That’s why, as Jason Hickel points...

Proto-Keynesians in the Last Years of Weimar Republic Germany

It is well known that the Great Depression hit Weimar Republic Germany particularly hard. There was severe unemployment, and the wage and price deflation was also severe, as can be seen in these graphs (with data from Mitchell 1992): Moreover, the wage and price deflation did not bring about a rapid or effective recovery. Austerity policies clearly failed in the Weimar Republic, and a number of German businessmen, bureaucrats, journalists, and...

How Bond Vigilantes Really Think

Discussions on interest rates tend to fall into two camps – the state based view and the market based view. The state based view says that the government can always control the cost of its interest while the market based view argues that the market (typically “bond vigilantes”) can control the rate of interest. I find both of these views confused or at least misleading. One of the nice things about being an actual bond portfolio manager is...

Australia’s Economy is a House of Cards

By Matt Bar­rie & Craig Tin­dale. I recently watched the fed­eral trea­surer, Scott Mor­ri­son, proudly pro­claim that Aus­tralia was in “sur­pris­ingly good shape”. Indeed, Aus­tralia has just snatched the world record from the Nether­lands, achiev­ing its 104th quar­ter of growth with­out a reces­sion, mak­ing this achieve­ment the longest streak for any OECD coun­try since 1970. Aus­tralian GDP growth has been trend­ing down for...

Developments in Value Theory

Previously I have discussed how Marx’s well known aggregate equalities have been shown to hold under single-system interpretations of his theory of value. In the July 2018 edition of the Cambridge Journal of Economics, there is a noteworthy paper by Ian Wright that reconciles the classical labor theory of value with Marx’s prices of production within a dual-system framework. As with single-system interpretations, Marx’s equalities also hold...

Nonsense on Stilted Language: A Review of Nine Pages of Michelle Murphy’s “The Economization of LIfe”

I’m a professor at Evergreen State College.  This year I assigned a new-ish book I hadn’t yet read to my class, and to my chagrin I discovered it was pseudo-scholarship instead of the real thing; so I wrote the following apologia.

Damn Socialists, Commies, and Libruls

In an editorial, the publisher of the Democrat-Reporter newspaper in Linden Alabama confirmed to the Montgomery Advertiser on Monday that he authored the Feb. 14 editorial calling for the return of a white supremacist hate group. In a conversation, Goodloe Sutton added to the editorial. “If we could get the Klan to go up there and clean out D.C., we’d all been better off.” Asked to elaborate what he meant by cleaning up D.C., Sutton suggested...

«4η Βιομηχανική Επανάσταση: Μύθος ή Πραγματικότητα;» Μαυρουδέας Σταύρος – Ημερίδα ΕΟΕΔΕ

Ακολουθεί παρακάτω το κείμενο και οι σύνδεσμοι της παρουσίαση της εισήγησης «4η Βιομηχανική Επανάσταση: Μύθος ή Πραγματικότητα;» (Μαυρουδέας Σταύρος) στην Ημερίδα που διοργάνωσε η ΕΟΕΔΕ στις 15/2/2019 στη Θεσσαλονίκη Ένωση Οικονομολόγων Εκπαιδευτικών Δευτεροβάθμιας Εκπαίδευσης (ΕΟΕΔΕ) Τμ. Μακεδονίας – Θράκης Επιστημονική ημερίδα: «Η οικονομία στον ορίζοντα της 4ης βιομηχανικής επανάστασης» Θεσσαλονίκη, 15/2/19 4η βιομηχανική επανάσταση:...

Inequality and Stagnation by Policy Design: Mainstream Denialism and its Dangerous Political Consequences

This paper argues the mainstream economics profession is threatened by theories of the financial crisis and ensuing stagnation that attribute those events to the policies recommended and justified by the profession. Such theories are existentially threatening to the dominant point of view. Consequently, mainstream economists resist engaging them as doing so would legitimize those theories. ...

Farsi male da soli – un paper con Gennaro Zezza

Segnaliamo la pubblicazione di un working paper di Gennaro e mio, quasi un contro storia degli ultimi cinquant'anni. Qui sotto abstract e introduzione. La pubblicazione completa qui e a breve anche sui working paper di Siena Farsi male da soli Disciplina esterna, domanda aggregata e il declino economico italiano Sergio Cesaratto° – Gennaro Zezza+ December 2018 AbstractIn questo saggio ripercorriamo la storia dell’economia italiana a...

The Ramsay Centre is frightened of academic freedom

I just signed a petition opposing any agreement between the Ramsay Centre and the University of Queensland, where I work. I am disappointed that things have reached this point. The areas of the humanities that Ramsay would support have long been underfunded: they don’t fit into either the market-driven ideology of “reform”, or the more recent technocratic push for STEM. The problem is that, quite evidently, the Ramsay Centre wants to...

Income Inequality and Redistribution in Venezuela

I had been waiting for last month’s publication of the book “Confronting Inequality” before preparing my annual update on income inequality and redistribution in Canada. I am glad I did because the book presents new and exciting empirical findings that shed light on the age-old equity/growth debate (more on that below), but also introduced me to the Standardized World Income Inequality Database (SWIID). Data comparability and granularity has...

Wealth tax in America

What if the final blow for Emmanuel Macron came from the Massachusetts State senator and not from the yellow vests ? Elizabeth Warren, Harvard University law professor, not really an adept of Chavism or urban guerrilla warfare, a declared candidate in the Democratic primaries in 2020, has just made public what will doubtless be one of the key points in the coming campaign, namely the creation for the first time in the United States of a...

Rhymes from Central Europe

LONDON – On December 3, 2018, the Central European University announced that from September 2019 it would relocate most of its teaching from Budapest to Vienna. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government had, in effect, closed down the CEU, founded by Orbán’s favourite bogeyman, George Soros. “Arbitrary eviction of a reputable university is a flagrant violation of academic freedom,” declared the university’s rector, Michael Ignatieff....

2017 Presentation on Ireland

My 2017 presentation on Ireland and the Eurozone has been uploaded to YouTube. See the previous post for the link to the full conference, which includes the Q&A. [embedded content] Advertisements

Top 15% of taxpayers should fill NHS funding gap, think tank suggests

New Economics Foundation (NEF) proposes levying £11.1bn for NHS through reform to National Insurance Contributions (NICs) By abolishing the Upper Earnings Limit on NICs, top 15% of taxpayers will pay their fair share for our health system NEF calls for increased investment in preventative measures to ensure a more efficient health system in the future The New Economics Foundation (NEF) today proposes a radical, progressive tax change to...

Some Contradictions Of Capitalism

I tend to be doubtful, albeit sometimes amused, by comments drawing on Hegel. But I thought I would adopt some of that sort of language for a post. Capitalism constantly revolutionizes production, leading to a fantastic increase in productivity. An ever more diverse set of commodities is produced, including for consumption. Machines for making, controlling, and communicating with other machines, are constantly being introduced, reducing the...

Russia at fault again? Merkel blames ‘third party’ for worldwide climate change protests

Young people around the world are going on marches demanding action on climate change, but Russia gets the blame for it. [embedded content] Talking almost in one breath about Russia, “hybrid warfare” and widespread environmental protests among schoolchildren across Europe is not bizarre paranoia, but a deliberate tactic, RT has been told.

Inequality and Stagnation by Policy Design

By Thomas Palley (guest blogger)This paper argues the mainstream economics profession is threatened by theories of the financial crisis and ensuing stagnation that attribute those events to the policies recommended and justified by the profession. Such theories are existentially threatening to the dominant point of view. Consequently, mainstream economists resist engaging them as doing so would legitimize those theories. That resistance has...

Are We Heading towards a Synchronised Global Slowdown?

This article first appeared in the Indian journal Economic and Political Weekly on February 9, 2019.Abstract: The global economy is heading towards a downturn. However, is the world prepared to deal with the consequences? Whether it is a slowdown or recession, it remains to be seen as to what the future would hold for the banking systems of Eurozone and China, and the global stocks in general.When the International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued...

Hey Democrats, the Problem Isn’t Jobs and Growth

It’s inequality. By James Kwak This American Life‘s forays into politics and economics are generally less satisfying than their ordinary storytelling fare. That’s especially true when they try to answer some specific question, like “What is wrong with the Democratic Party?”—the subject of a segment last month. The story did have some telling moments, however, most vividly when moderate Congresswoman Cheri Bustos was trying to pitch the party’s...

Housing index, Las Vegas visitors, Policy news chart

This Time Is Different: Wray on Modern Monetary Theory

Michael Stephens | February 4, 2019 Public interest in Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is undergoing a new growth spurt, and progressive politicians are playing a key role in the current phase. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez recently referenced the heterodox framework to push back against the assumption that her ambitious policy proposals must, as a matter of financial necessity, be made budget-neutral (an...

Utopian science fictions legitimising our current dystopia – 2019 Taylor Lecture, Oxford University

[embedded content] The Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, Oxford University, kindly invited me to deliver the 2019 Taylor Lecture on 12th February 2019. I chose the topic of  Realistic Utopias versus Dystopic Realities – my aim being to highlight the manner in which really-existing capitalism is marketed as a utopian science fiction that has nothing to do with… really-existing capitalism....

Why labour markets don’t clear

This post originally appeared on Pieria in July 2014. Roger Farmer has a blogpost in which he shows that labour markets don’t clear. Specifically, employment varies with the business cycle, whereas the labour force participation rate and hours worked only show long-term secular trends. During cyclical downturns, therefore, we must conclude that there is more labour available than there are jobs. New Keynesians say that the reason for this is...

Modern Monetary Theory is On the March

By William K. Black February 18, 2019     Bloomington, MN Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) continues to advance rapidly.  We are past the first phase of reaction (first they ignore you), deeply into the second phase (then they attack you), and expanding the ranks of the third phase (then you win).  We are very early in the third phase, winning with increasing numbers of people, but still a minority view. One of the proofs of MMT’s advances is a...

The coming earnings recession

Earnings were boosted by corporate tax cuts in the past year. And earnings growth has been buoyed by significant corporate releveraging. But 2019 is looking challenging for companies now and the chart below shows you why. While earnings growth came down during the period of market jitters in Octo...

Jason Hickel — A Letter To Steven Pinker (And Bill Gates For That Matter) About Global Poverty

Jason Hickel — A Letter To Steven Pinker (And Bill Gates For That Matter) About Global PovertyJason Hickel writes:Dear Steven,…Your argument is that neoliberal capitalism is responsible for driving the most substantial gains against poverty.  This claim is intellectually dishonest, and unsupported by facts.  Here’s why:The vast majority of gains against poverty have happened in one region: East Asia.  As it happens, the economic success of...

Yours truly at National Theatre discussion on The Lehman Trilogy

After attending a performance of the Lehman Trilogy, I was honoured to join a panel at the National Theatre on 16th October, 2018 to discuss the play. Readers will know that the play was directed by Sam Mendes, and starred three great actors in all of the complex parts: Simon Russell Beale, Adam Godley and Ben Miles. It was, and is a tour de force, and has now moved to New York. At that invite-only side discussion of the play, an audience of...

Bitcoin Is Failing As Money—But Bitcoin Cash Isn’t

Money has three principal functions: as a medium of exchange, as a store of value, and as a unit of account. Secondary attributes that have aided the adoption of various forms of money include interestingness (“Ooh! Look how shiny that gold is!”), uniform divisibility, portability, resistance to counterfeit, and imposeability. That last one is important, because it is what makes state-backed fiat currency the dominant form of money in the...

Inequality and Stagnation by Policy Design: Mainstream Denialism and its Dangerous Political Consequences

This paper argues the mainstream economics profession is threatened by theories of the financial crisis and ensuing stagnation that attribute those events to the policies recommended and justified by the profession. Such theories are existentially threatening to the dominant point of view. Consequently, mainstream economists resist engaging them as doing so would legitimize those theories. ...

Michael Hudson

This interview was conducted at Peking University for the Second World Conference, May 7, 2018. It was conducted by Lau Kin Chi of the Global University for Sustainability. A visual transcription is available here. [embedded content] I was born in Minneapolis, which is the only city in the world that was a Trotskyist city. During the 1930s it was a center of Trotskyism and my parents worked with Leon Trotsky in Mexico. When I was 3 years...