The science of anti-vaccination

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Leverage

By James Kwak One of Congress’s top priorities this week and next is to pass some kind of funding bill that will keep the federal government operating past December 11. There are basically two ways this could happen. Option A is that Congress could pass a continuing resolution that maintains funding at current levels until, say, the end of January—that is, when we’ll have a new Congress and a new administration. Option B is to pass an...

Australian economy recovers somewhat as the restrictions ease

The Australian economy officially exited recession in the September-quarter 2020, but I wouldn’t tell the labour market that. A technical recession, in case you were not aware, is defined as two, consecutive quarters of negative growth. But, given that employment always lags the start of a recovery, things remain much worse in the labour market than the GDP figures would indicate. Further, we still haven’t a clear idea of what will happen when...

IPA’s weekly links

Pretty good piece in SSIR by Kevin Starr and Sarah Miers of the Mulago Foundation, why don’t big NGOs scale up other social entrepreneurs’ solutions? They spoke to a bunch of leaders and once they got past the laughter and disbelief at the idea, found “Not created here syndrome” that everybody knows about Big funders like government aid agencies prioritize project-based work Differing priorities at country vs. headquarters Hard to replicate...

Revisiting S = I + (S – I)

Warning – this one could put you to sleep if you’re not an econ nerd. I will do my best to translate this into English for those who feel like it’s Chinese.  About 10 years ago a huge war broke out in Post-Keynesian circles. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) was becoming somewhat popular, but many people (including some rather prominent Post-Keynesians like Tom Palley and Marc Lavoie) thought they were being a bit loose with some of their...

Unprecedented

It occurs to me that our current president has engaged in a rather large number of actions that are unprecedented by any other president, as well as some only rarely happening and not for a long time, many of which for nearly all other politicians would make them viewed as simply unacceptable for being a president.  However, with him, there have been so many that people simply ignore most of them as being, "Oh well, there goes Trump again...

The asymmetric mechanics of Tether

Tether is the issuer of the cryptocurrrency world's premier stablecoin, USDT. Stablecoins aim to guarantee the value of cryptocurrencies in dollar terms, hedging volatility risk and making it easier to realise notional gains from cryptocurrency's wild price rises. But Tether's relationship with the main cryptocurrencies, particularly Bitcoin, is controversial. There is a raging battle between those who think that USDT issuance pumps up the...

My Future

I am winding down Azizonomics, though, as I am sure you are already aware it has already existed in a winded down state for many years, particularly since I left The Week in 2014. I mostly started this blog in 2011 because I was concerned about the economy, and the future, and was reading a lot, and jotting down my thoughts. From today, I will be focusing on my new podcast: Cybernetics Chat. The focus of that is much more a mixture of...

The path to decarbonization

Over the fold, another draft section of the climate chapter of Economic Consequences of the Pandemic. As always, comments, compliments and criticism appreciated The response to the pandemic, in the US and many other countries, has been less than successful. But even leaving aside the disastrous impact of the Trump Administration, it must be conceded that the pandemic posed an incredibly difficult challenge. When it broke out, we had no...

The science of anti-vaccination

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2020 Election Review

[unable to retrieve full-text content]An interview with Paul Jay. Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash The post 2020 Election Review first appeared on Michael Hudson.

My new podcast episode is out.

Jobless claims, pending home sales, durable goods orders, construction spending

These continue at extraordinarily high levels: Still working its way lower, and never has had much of a recovery since the 2008 collapse. This chart isn’t inflation adjusted, so it’s that much worse than it looks:

The Pandemic, “Flexible” Work, and Household Labor in Brazil (Interview)

[The following is an interview by Paula Quental of Lygia Sabbag Fares, one of my coauthors for this post on how home quarantine has impacted domestic violence. The interview originally appeared in Portuguese and is posted here with permission.] Labor market deregulation is bad for all workers and even more perverse for women, says economist. According to Lygia Sabbag Fares, a specialist in Labor Economics and Gender Studies, labor reform is a...

Diego Maradona (1960-2020): Some Bittersweet Reflections

By Thomas Palley (guest blogger)Maradona was more than just an extraordinary footballer. He was also a complicated social icon. That further distinguishes him from other footballers, though Pele also has some of that… and it is great to see young footballers like Marcus Rashford taking up that mantle.He was both rewarded by and terribly exploited by the system. The system treated him like a “race horse”. They wanted him to play at all cost and...

Standard Money Theory and the Coronavirus

By J.D. ALT The theme and illustrations of this essay are from the new book “Paying Ourselves to Save the Planet.” It might seem, as we observe the U.S. government “instantly” generating $2 trillion new dollars for direct payments and grants to people and businesses, that the coronavirus pandemic has shed a new light on the authenticity (and necessity) of modern money theory (MMT). But that light, if it is being shed at all, is illuminating...

Weekly Economics Podcast: Finding hope during and after the pandemic

Podcasts Weekly Economics Podcast: Finding hope during and after the pandemic Ayeisha Thomas-Smith is joined by researcher and author, Christine Berry and Farzana Khan, executive director and co-founder of Healing Justice London By Ayeisha Thomas-Smith 01 December 2020...

Government Spending Comes First in a Sovereign Currency System

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) makes clear that the spending of a currency-issuing government necessarily precedes tax payments and bond sales to non-government. This has important implications. It means that a currency-issuing government does not – and cannot – require revenue prior to spending. It means that it is government spending that makes possible the payment of taxes and non-government purchase of bonds, not the other way round. And it...

New Review of My Book

A nice review of my book by Marc Morgan has appeared in American Affairs. Morgan works with Thomas Piketty at the World Inequality Lab at the Paris School of Economics. He is doing interesting work on profit accounting and determination. I would also note that Morgan attended the same secondary school (high school) as me in Dublin. Apparently, Christian Brothers College, Monkstown — although not a very prominent school in any meaningful sense...

A Three-Technique Pattern Over The Wage Axis

Figure 1: Wage Frontier for a Fixed Capital Example This post presents a perturbation of parameters in a 'one good' model of fixed capital. The coefficients of production differ from those in this reswitching example. But the model has the same structure. Consider a one-commodity economy in which labor and widgets are used to produce new widgets, the only consumption good. (The use of the term 'widget' to designate the single produced...

COVID 19-related debt relief: a consortium proposal to the SDR basket countries

By T. Sabri Öncü & Ahmet ÖncüIn Memory of David Graeber (1961–2020)This article first appeared in the Indian journal, Economic and Political Weekly, on 21 November, 2020On 30 March 2020, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) called for a $2.5 trillion COVID-19 crisis package for developing countries.[1] The UNCTAD proposals were: (i) $1 trillion to be made available through the expanded use of the International...

Social assistance: Do higher benefit levels lead to higher caseloads?

As part of my PhD thesis, I did some statistical analysis in which I asked the question: “Do higher social assistance benefit levels lead to higher caseloads?” I have recently updated the data and had it published in a journal. Here’s a short summary of the journal article’s main findings. Nick Falvo is a Calgary-based research consultant with a PhD in Public Policy. He has academic affiliation at both Carleton University and Case...

Latest SNB Intervention Update: Weekly Sight Deposits

Weekly update on SNB interventions: Sight deposits are debt for the central bank. An increase of sight deposits implies more debt and SNB interventions

Why the West failed to contain COVID-19

The promise of a “final” end to lockdowns in the spring of 2021 is the kind of hyperbole we have come to expect about new products and policies. The Oxford University vaccine may work; it may even be delivered effectively. Meanwhile, Covid-19 is still around, the UK government is extending lockdown for large parts of the country and effective protections are still being ignored, at grave cost. From the start of the pandemic, the policy...

A Three-Technique Pattern Over The Wage Axis

Figure 1: Wage Frontier for a Fixed Capital Example This post presents a perturbation of parameters in a 'one good' model of fixed capital. The coefficients of production differ from those in this reswitching example. But the model has the same structure. Consider a one-commodity economy in which labor and widgets are used to produce new widgets, the only consumption good. (The use of the term 'widget' to designate the single produced...

Leverage

By James Kwak One of Congress’s top priorities this week and next is to pass some kind of funding bill that will keep the federal government operating past December 11. There are basically two ways this could happen. Option A is that Congress could pass a continuing resolution that maintains funding at current levels until, say, the end of January—that is, when we’ll have a new Congress and a new administration. Option B is to pass an...

La surreale riapertura delle università

La surreale riapertura delle università Sergio Cesaratto[1] Sommario: “COVID-19 è una malattia che può rivelarsi fatale anche in assenza di concause. Non ci sono infatti concause di morte preesistenti a COVID-19 nel 28,2% dei decessi analizzati, percentuale simile nei due sessi e nelle diverse classi di età. Solo nella classe di età 0-49 anni la percentuale di decessi senza concause è più bassa, pari al 18%.” (report IstSupSan-ISTAT), “ O...

Austrians and Full Employment

In this video, the Austrian libertarian “Radical Liberation” claims that “full employment” is not a term used in Austrian economics:[embedded content]While it is true that Austrians rarely speak of “full employment” (which is a very low level of involuntary employment, and does not mean zero unemployment) as a policy goal, the claim that Austrians do not think in terms of the concept of “full employment” is actually rubbish, because Austrians...

Συνέντευξη στον Prisma 91.6 Fm 1-12-2020

Συνέντευξη στον Prisma 91.6 FM για την υγειονομική κρίση COVID-19, την πολιτική κατάσταση και την οικονομία, 1-12-2020 [embedded content]

Συνέντευξη στον Prisma 91.6 Fm 1-12-2020

Συνέντευξη στον Prisma 91.6 FM για την υγειονομική κρίση COVID-19, την πολιτική κατάσταση και την οικονομία, 1-12-2020 [embedded content]

First look at the 2021 economy: housing

By New Deal democrat First look at the 2021 economy: housing As I’ve pointed out for years, housing is a long leading indicator. It can give us a decent read on the direction of the overall economy 12 to 18 months out. So the strength in the housing market in the past 6 months has been a powerful positive omen for the economy going into 2021. Yesterday residential construction spending for October was reported and continued that string of...

Diego Maradona (1960-2020): Some Bittersweet Reflections

Maradona was more than just an extraordinary footballer. He was also a complicated social icon. That further distinguishes him from other footballers, though Pele also has some of that… and it is great to see young footballers like Marcus Rashford taking up that mantle. He was both rewarded by and terribly exploited by the system. ...