Only a short blog post today – in terms of actual researched content. Plenty of announcements and news though, a cartoon, and some great music. I have been meaning to write about the household income and wealth data that the ABS released in July, which showed that real income and wealth growth over a significant period for low income families has been close to zero, while the top 20 per cent have enjoyed rather massive gains. These trends are unsustainable. A nation cannot continually be distributing income to the top earners who spend less overall while starving the lower income cohorts of income growth. A nation cannot also continually create wealth accumulation opportunities for the richest while the rest go backwards. These trends generate spending crises, asset bubbles and social

At different times, the manias spread through the world’s financial and economic commentariat. We have had regular predictions that Japan was about to collapse, with a mix of hyperinflation, government insolvency, Bank of Japan negative capital and more. During the GFC, the mainstream economists were out in force predicting accelerating inflation (because of QE and rising fiscal deficits), rising bond yields and government insolvency issues (because of rising deficits and debt ratios) and more. And policy makers have often acted on these manias and reneged on taking responsible fiscal decisions – for example, they have terminated stimulus initiatives too early because the financial markets screamed blue murder (after they had been adequately bailed out that is). In the last week, we have

I read an interesting research report recently – Exportweltmeister: The Low Returns on Germany’s Capital Exports – published by the London-based Centre of Economic Policy Research (CEPR) in July 2019. It tells us a lot about the dysfunctional nature of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and Germany’s role within it, in particular. Germany has been running persistent and very large external surpluses for some years now in violation of EU rules. It also suppresses domestic demand by its punitive labour market policies and persistent fiscal surpluses. At the same time as these strategies have resulted in the massive degradation of essential infrastructure (roads, buildings, bridges etc), Germany has been exporting its massive savings in the form of international investments (FDI, equity,

Here are the answers with discussion for this Weekend’s Quiz. The information provided should help you work out why you missed a question or three! If you haven’t already done the Quiz from yesterday then have a go at it before you read the answers. I hope this helps you develop an understanding of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and its application to macroeconomic thinking. Comments as usual welcome, especially if I have made an error.

Question 1:

For workers to maintain a constant share of a growing national income, the growth in wages (the money you get paid) must keep pace with inflation, if the latter, is accelerating at the same rate as labour productivity.

The answer is True.
The wage share in nominal GDP is expressed as the total wage bill as a percentage of nominal GDP.

Welcome to The Weekend Quiz. The quiz tests whether you have been paying attention or not to the blog posts that I post. See how you go with the following questions. Your results are only known to you and no records are retained.

1. For workers to maintain a constant share of a growing national income, the growth in wages (the money you get paid) must keep pace with inflation, if the latter, is accelerating at the same rate as labour productivity.TrueFalse2. Central bankers are once again talking about the possible need for more quantitative easing to ease the aggregate spending losses associated with ongoing fiscal austerity programs in some countries. If calibrated correctly, QE can replace the net financial assets destroyed by the austerity.TrueFalse3. Assume a government

The Australian Bureau of Statistics released the latest data today – Labour Force, Australia, July 2019 – which reveals a labour market with where employment growth is not strong enough to absorb the increasing labour force as participation continues to creep up. As a result, unemployment rose again, albeit modestly. The disturbing trend in this rather weak environment is that underemployment rose by 0.2 points) to 8.4 per cent further and the total labour underutilisation rate (unemployment plus underemployment) rose as a consequence to 13.6 per cent. Both the unemployment and underemployment rates are persisting around these elevated levels of wastage making a mockery of claims by commentators that Australia is close to full employment. The unemployment rate is 7 percentage points above

Wednesday and a short blog post. I regularly work for unions as an expert analyst/witness in their struggles to achieve wage justice with employers who are intent on paying as little as possible. Often these are private employers but at the moment I am helping a union with their campaign to win a reasonable wage increase against a state government. The logic deployed by the government in relation to their fiscal affairs and their wage setting behaviour is a classic demonstration of how neoliberalism has distorted any sense of reason and created self-fulfilling problems. So today, I will just introduce this issue – given how fascinating it is.

Wage caps and fiscal sustainability
I mentioned in Monday’s blog post – We are approaching a period of fiscal dominance (August 12, 2019) – how the

Last week (August 9, 2019), the British Office of National Statistics (ONS) – GDP first quarterly estimate, UK: April to June 2019 – told us that the UK economy contracted by 0.2 per cent in the June-quarter 2019 after having grown by 0.5 per cent in the March-quarter. The UK Guardian pundits and the Remain cheer squad all screamed Brexit and were heard to be walking around in circles saying “see, we told you so”. Meanwhile (August 7, 2019), not far away (according to the Remain crowd’s much-loved gravity trade models), Germany’s Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis) press release – Production in June 2019: -1.5% seasonally adjusted on the previous month – told a sorry tale. In annual terms, Germany’s industrial production has contracted by 5.2 per cent. We also learned that Germany is

The dissonance in mainstream economics and the political debate about policy settings is getting deeper and more public. We now have examples of central bankers ‘throwing their hands up in the air’ and nearly begging governments to abandon their obsession with fiscal surpluses, and, instead, use fiscal policy to stimulate waning economic growth. What I think is happening is that we are entering a period of fiscal dominance, which will represent a categorical rejection of the mainstream macroeconomics consensus that has dominated policy making since the 1980s – the neoliberal era. In turn, this shift will ratify the main precepts of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). We are observing paradigm shift occurring as the dominant neoliberal paradigm fails at every turn. There is a long way to go

Here are the answers with discussion for this Weekend’s Quiz. The information provided should help you work out why you missed a question or three! If you haven’t already done the Quiz from yesterday then have a go at it before you read the answers. I hope this helps you develop an understanding of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and its application to macroeconomic thinking. Comments as usual welcome, especially if I have made an error.

Question 1:

The IMF and the OECD and a range of central banks equate the Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment (NAIRU) with their concept of full employment and they use the NAIRU estimates to calibrate their structural deficit estimates. Accordingly, the structural deficits will typically be:
(a) biased downwards thus indicating that the

Welcome to The Weekend Quiz. The quiz tests whether you have been paying attention or not to the blog posts that I post. See how you go with the following questions. Your results are only known to you and no records are retained.

1. The IMF and the OECD and a range of central banks equate the Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment (NAIRU) with their concept of full employment and they use the NAIRU estimates to calibrate their structural deficit estimates. Accordingly, the structural deficits will typically be:biased downwards thus indicating that the government fiscal stance is less expansionary than it actually is.biased upwards thus indicating that the government fiscal stance is more expansionary than it actually is.difficult to assess because their forecasts are

I was coming through the streets of inner Melbourne the other night after playing in my band. I couldn’t believe how many little scooters with those big boxes on the back were buzzing around, in and out of traffic, turning here and there, presumably, delivering food to people who preferred to stay in from the cold weather. I had sort of noticed these ad hoc cavalcades of cheap scooters before but never really assessed the extent of the proliferation. It represents an amazing and highly disturbing trend in our labour market. Okay, that sounds like something someone from another (older) generation might say. He who grew up when there was secure employment and wages and conditions were more tightly regulated. And I have seen Tweets from young people telling us ‘oldies’ to step aside. But what

It is Wednesday and my blog post-lite day. A few topics – thugs in Britain. Mindless ‘progressive’ journalism trying to tell readers that while Gordon Brown could use fiscal policy tools (spending and taxation) to advantage to stimulate the British economy, Boris Johnson cannot. Piffle and the lies from the UK Guardian are getting more desperate by the week. And some notes on guns. Then a nice bit of guitar playing. Tomorrow, I will be extending my ideas on the Green New Deal.

Thugs try to derail MMT presentation
We learned overnight that an event in Brighton tonight, where British Labour MP Chris Williamson will talk about Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has been compromised by mindless thugs who have threatened violence to staff at the proposed venue should the event go ahead.
The full

I am working on a manifesto (‘White Paper’) linking Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) with a Green New Deal (GND) concept. I will announce an important strategic coalition I am forming to advance this agenda in the coming period and some great events to present the framework. As part of that process, I have been sketching some of the important guiding principles that I consider to be essential if a massive socio-economic transformation like the Green New Deal (or whatever we want to call the strategy) is to be successful. Lessons from history are a good starting point to understand why things go awry. In that respect, the largest national infrastructure project that Australia has embarked on for decades – the National Broadband Network (NBN) – is a object lesson in how not to conduct government

Last week’s (August 2, 2019) release by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of their latest labour market data – Employment Situation Summary – July 2019 – reveals a steady labour market with month-to-month volatility. The US labour market is still adding jobs, albeit at a slower pace than last year. The unemployment rate remains low (at 3.71 per cent) and the participation rate has moved up a tick, which is a good sign. It is also clear that there is still a substantial jobs deficit remaining and considerable scope for increased participation. Significantly, the bias toward jobs in below-average pay sectors being produced in the recovery has intensified during 2019.

Overview for July 2019

Payroll employment rose by 164,000.
Total labour force survey employment rose by 283 thousand

Here are the answers with discussion for this Weekend’s Quiz. The information provided should help you work out why you missed a question or three! If you haven’t already done the Quiz from yesterday then have a go at it before you read the answers. I hope this helps you develop an understanding of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and its application to macroeconomic thinking. Comments as usual welcome, especially if I have made an error.

Question 1:

The more “money” there is in the economy the lower will be its value.

The answer is False.
There are situations where this statement could be true but in the way the question is presented, as a categorical statement, it is false.
The question requires you to: (a) understand the difference between bank reserves and the money supply; and (b)

Welcome to The Weekend Quiz. The quiz tests whether you have been paying attention or not to the blog posts that I post. See how you go with the following questions. Your results are only known to you and no records are retained.

1. The more "money" there is in the economy the lower will be its value.TrueFalse2. A balanced ‘budget’ fiscal rule eliminates the cyclical sensitivity of the fiscal outcome to the automatic stabilisers.TrueFalse3. Consumption adds to aggregate spending and imports represent spending lost to the domestic economy. The marginal propensity to consume (MPC) is conceptually the extra consumption that is induced for every extra dollar of national income. The marginal propensity to import (MPM) is similarly the extra spending on imports that is induced for

At present, the Australian Parliament is debating whether the unemployment benefit (called Newstart) should be increased. The conservative government is refusing to budge claiming it prefers to create jobs and get people of benefits – arguing that it will generate 1.25 million jobs over the next 5 years. The Opposition Labor Party are attacking them for being mean but are just rehearsing the massive hypocrisy that has defined that party since it became a voice for the ‘neoliberal lite’ path. Every time the Labor Party spokespersons criticise the Government for not bringing unemployment benefits above the poverty line, Australians should remember that when they were in office the Labor Ministers ran the same line – they wanted to move people into jobs and would not compromise their

A shorter blog post today (Wednesday). On Monday (July 29, 2019), the British Social Metrics Commission published their – 2019 Report – which reveals (staggeringly) “that 4.5 million people are more than 50% below the poverty line, and 7 million people are living in persistent poverty” in Britain. So around 22 per cent of people in the UK are living in poverty. In this day and age, poverty is like polio – it is completely avoidable if governments adopt the right policy mix. Persistent poverty means that a people “are in poverty now and have also been in poverty for at least two of the previous three years.” In other words, the policy failure is persistent. As Britain approaches the October 31, 2019 deadline and, hopefully, finds itself free of the neoliberal, corporatist nightmare that is

In Monte Python’s Life of Brian we were introduced to the “People’s Front of Judea”, which was “one of many fractious and bickering independence movements, who spend more time fighting each other than the Romans”. The segments featuring the Front were very amusing. It was humour but redolent of the sort of historical struggles that have divided the Left over the centuries. In Australia, the history of the Communist Party, for example, is one of many factions, splintering into new parties and leaderships after disputes about Bolshevism, then the Communist International and Stalinism, then the so-called “imperialist” war by the Allies against Nazism, then Krushchev’s revelations about the crimes of Stalin, then the Soviet invasion of Hungary, then the split between the Soviet Union and China

This is the second and final part of my recent discussion on the what a Green New Deal requires. All manner of proposals seem to have become part of the GND. The problem is that many of these proposals sell the idea short and will fail to achieve what is really required – a massive transformation of society and the role the government plays within it. The imprecision is exacerbated by progressives who are afraid to go too far outside the neoliberal mould for fear of being shut out of the debate. So we get ‘modest’ proposals, hunkered down in neoliberal framing as if to step up to the plate confidently is a step too far. In Part 1, I argued that the progressive side of the climate debate became entrapped, early on, by ‘free market’ framing, in the sense that the political response to

Here are the answers with discussion for this Weekend’s Quiz. The information provided should help you work out why you missed a question or three! If you haven’t already done the Quiz from yesterday then have a go at it before you read the answers. I hope this helps you develop an understanding of modern monetary theory (MMT) and its application to macroeconomic thinking. Comments as usual welcome, especially if I have made an error.

Question 1:

The immediate impact on the net worth of the non-government sector does not vary if the government issued bonds to exactly match ($-for-$) the increase in its net public spending or chooses not to so match.

The answer is True.
The mainstream macroeconomic textbooks all have a chapter on fiscal policy (and it is often written in the context of

Welcome to The Weekend Quiz. The quiz tests whether you have been paying attention or not to the blog posts that I post. See how you go with the following questions. Your results are only known to you and no records are retained.

1. The immediate impact on the net worth of the non-government sector does not vary if the government issued bonds to exactly match ($-for-$) the increase in its net public spending or chooses not to so match.TrueFalse2. The wider the spread between the price the central bank sets on the reserves it provides the commercial banks on demand (so-called penalty rates) and the target policy rate the more difficult it becomes for the central bank to ensure the quantity of reserves is appropriate for maintaining its target policy rate.TrueFalse3. Assume that

All over the globe now there are cries for a Green New Deal. What constitutes the GND is another matter. Like the concept of the Job Guarantee, there are now countless versions springing out of various groups, some that only seem to offer a short-term, short-week job or other arrangements that fall short of the way Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) constructs the concept. There is only one Job Guarantee in the modern parlance and that is the MMT concept. Other job creation programs are fine but they should stop using the term Job Guarantee, which is a comprehensive macroeconomic stability framework rather than a job creation program per se. In the same vein, all manner of proposals seem to have become part of the GND. The problem is that many of these proposals sell the idea short and will fail

My Wednesday blog post is designed to be short in time commitment. It clears a bit of space in the day to catch up with other more mundane matters (research contracts, some coding – I am learning Swift at present, and stuff like that). But I thought a small viewpoint on the latest dealings over who will become IMF boss were easy to dispense with today. And in that context, it was hard to go past Wolfgang Münchau’s Financial Times column – Do not treat the IMF as an EU consolation prize (July 21, 2019). He sums up the situation perfectly – “The world needs a first-rate person to run the IMF. It should not allow Europe to treat the fund as a dumping ground for washed-up officials.” Adam Tooze also weighs in on the same issue in his Social Europe article – The International Monetary Fund

The epithets being used as put-downs for Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) are growing. But some of the good old terms – that one might actually apply to mainstream macroeconomics – are also in currency. An article in Project Syndicate (May 27, 2019) – Japan Then, China Now – declared MMT to be “the latest strain of voodoo economics” that is “alluring for the Trump administration”. The article by a Yale University lecturing staff member (and former investment banker) really just reminds us why students should avoid studying economics at that university. The voodoo, I am afraid is actually on the other foot! There are some fundamental errors in the logic in the article that highlight why MMT is a superior paradigm for understanding how the monetary system actually operates in comparison to the

On July 26, 2018, UK Guardian columnist Phillip Inman published an article – Household debt in UK ‘worse than at any time on record’ – which reported on the latest figures at the time from the Office of National Statistics (ONS). He noted that the data showed that “British households spent around £900 more on average than they received in income during 2017, pushing their finances into deficit for the first time since the credit boom of the 1980s … The figures pose a challenge to the government … Britain’s consumer credit bubble of more than £200bn was unsustainable. A dramatic rise in debt-fuelled spending since 2016” and more. While keen to tell the readers that British households were “living beyond their means”, there was not a single mention of the fiscal austerity drive being pursued

Here are the answers with discussion for this Weekend’s Quiz. The information provided should help you work out why you missed a question or three! If you haven’t already done the Quiz from yesterday then have a go at it before you read the answers. I hope this helps you develop an understanding of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and its application to macroeconomic thinking. Comments as usual welcome, especially if I have made an error.

Question 1:

For nations enjoying strong terms of trade (and external surplus), it is sensible for the government to run fiscal surpluses and accumulate them in a sovereign fund to create more space for non-inflationary spending in the future.

The answer is False.
The fundamental principles that arise in a fiat monetary system are as follows:

The central

Welcome to The Weekend Quiz. The quiz tests whether you have been paying attention or not to the blog posts that I post. See how you go with the following questions. Your results are only known to you and no records are retained.

1. For nations enjoying strong terms of trade (and external surplus), it is sensible for the government to run fiscal surpluses and accumulate them in a sovereign fund to create more space for non-inflationary spending in the future.TrueFalse2. A sovereign national government, that is, one that issues its own floating currency faces no solvency risk with respect to the debt it issues.TrueFalse3. It would be impossible for a central bank to directly purchase treasury debt to facilitate the national government’s fiscal deficit while still targeting a

The Australian Bureau of Statistics released the latest data today – Labour Force, Australia, June 2019 – which reveals a stagnating labour market with only 500 net jobs created in the month. The only bright spot was that there were 21,100 full-time jobs created (net). But total employment lagged behind the growth in the working age population, which meant that unemployment rose by 6,600 to 711,500 persons with participation unchanged. Working hours fell for the third consecutive month. Underemployment fell slightly (0.4 points) to 8.2 per cent further, largely reflecting the shift away from part-time work in a weak overall situation. The total labour underutilisation rate (unemployment plus underemployment) fell as a consequence to 13.4 per cent but its persistence around these elevated