SWL is still caught in the monetarist fallacy. MMT has two arguments against the golden rule, which I will call reasonable and unreasonable. The unreasonable argument is that interest rate increases do not reduce aggregate demand and inflation, and therefore fiscal policy has to play the macro stabilisation role at all times. It is an unreasonable claim because it contradicts the large amount of evidence that higher interest rates do reduce aggregate demand and inflation, evidence that you will find in the academic economic literature.Those who watch Mike Norman’s YouTube channel, which is MMT-based financial analysis, will find evidence presented that contradicts this.Mainly MacroChallenges to the strong golden rule: MMT and bond market paranoiaSimon Wren-Lewis | Emeritus Professor of
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Trump is Fighting an American Class War – and Winning — Joel Kotkin
11 hours agoThe most important political event this week will not be the upcoming GOP debate but Donald Trump’s expected visit with striking UAW workers as the walkout expands to other states. In that one appearance, Trump demonstrates one of the most critical parts of political change, the emergence of the populist right.…Once hostile to unions, Republicans like Florida’s Senator Marco Rubio, Ohio’s JD Vance and Missouri’s Josh Hawley have all pledged support to the strikers. Union-affiliated Democrats may find this “laughable,” but perhaps not so amusing on election day. Certainly, Biden is doing his best to expand his working-class base. The rest of the article is about how workers have been disadvantaged by Democratic economic policy. This began in the Clinton administration when Bill Clinton
Read More »Remembering Jim Crotty — JW Mason
12 hours agoPerhaps the most distinctive aspect of Jim’s pedagogy and scholarship, almost alone among economists we have known, was his ability to synthesise these two thinkers in ways that gave equal weight to both, that placed them in conversation rather than in tension. Crotty’s Marx anticipates Minsky, while his Keynes is a political radical – a socialist – in ways that few others have recognized.Perhaps his most profound contribution to both traditions was the brilliant 1985 article “The Centrality of Money, Credit, and Financial Intermediation in Marx’s Crisis Theory” (Crotty 1985). There, he developed the idea that the Marxian vision of capitalist crises could only be understood in terms of the development of the credit and the financial system – that it was only via financial commitments that
Read More »At Least It’s Not As Bad As 1994 — Brian Romanchuk
12 hours agoThe current Treasury bear market has been impressive, and unfortunately for the bond bulls, there is no valuation reason for it to stop. For example, the 5-year Treasury is still trading well below the overnight rate. If we look back to the 1994 bond bear market, the 5-year traded about 250 basis points above cash — versus about 100 basis points below now.The explanation for this disparity can be pinned on the Fed reaction function….Bond EconomicsAt Least It’s Not As Bad As 1994Brian Romanchuk
Read More »Trump up 10% over Brandon
3 days agoIf this thing holds Trumps going to immediately slash rates in half on day 1 in January 2025… lock it…Meanwhile all the Art degree morons are all going around saying “ the Fed is independent! … the Fed is independent!…. the Fed is independent!”
Read More »It will end badly if we rely on the speculators and gamblers for a climate change solution — Bill Mitchell
6 days agoI am now in a very hot and humid Kyoto having left Australia yesterday in weather that was in some places 20 or more degrees Celsius above the norm for early Spring. The heat here and back home at this time of year is rather scary given what it portends. I also do not have much time today given I have been contending with various ‘moving in’ requirements. But I read an article on the plane last night which I think marks a divide between what ‘green’ progressives think and what I think is needed. I was talking to a friend the other day who remarked he was enduring what he termed ‘ecological anxiety’. In the week that followed, bushfires across Australia have started burning some months earlier than has been the typical pattern over a long period. There are massive ‘weather’ events now all
Read More »MMT Money Story – Print and Shred Edition — NeilW
8 days agoPrint and Shred is how the system works. All modern monetary systems work this way, no matter how much they try and hide the fact.The MMT money story explains where the ‘why not print more money’ idea falls over. The government only prints more money to buy more stuff..…New WaylandMMT Money Story – Print and Shred EditionNeilW
Read More »Trump bemoans high interest rates and indicates he might pressure Fed to lower
11 days agoCNBC here…Again politics.. You knew this was coming.. can’t wait to now watch all the political biased leftist MMT people flip and join with the monetarist morons and start to advocate for higher interest rates in response.. wait for it…“Interest rates are very high. They’re too high. People can’t buy homes. They can’t do anything. I mean, they can’t borrow money,” Trump told MTP host Kristen WelkerUsing the platform formerly known as Twitter, Trump often berated Fed officials, once calling them “boneheads,” and compared Powell to “a golfer who can’t putt.” Those remarks came while the Fed was raising interest rates in 2018 and 2019.
“We do know that I put a lot of pressure on him,” Trump told Welker. “It was outside pressure, because nobody knows whether or not you can really do that,
Read More »Politics
12 days agoAgree with Ehnts here but if you listen to 99% of the MMT commie Art degree or no degree left the current most regressive economic outcome I’ve ever experienced in my adult life is allegedly the result of improper technocracy by the monetarist morons in the academe…LOL can’t be both! Which one is it? 🤔
Read More »In Vladivostok, the Russian Far East rises — Pepe Escobar
12 days agoRussia’s pivot to the Far East, and away from the West.The CradleIn Vladivostok, the Russian Far East risesPepe Escobar
Read More »Oldest employed Americans have left the workforce never to return
13 days agoHere for you left wing commie Art Degree MMT dumb fucks: S&P Global Market Intelligence Oldest employed Americans have left the workforce never to returnThe oldest workers in the US labor force, edged out during the pandemic by retirements and health concerns, are unlikely to ever return, potentially ending a decades-long trend amongst working seniors in America and contributing to the ongoing imbalance in the jobs market.Doesn’t have anything to do with whether your fellow Art degree morons think money is real and we can run out of it as usual… Senior cohort of productive workers being somehow disincentivized to work compared to previous..MMT “brain trust” (I use that term loosely) somehow blaming their current figure of speech “inflation!” on government’s policy risk free interest
Read More »Capitalist wants government to drive up unemployment by 40-50 per cent and inflict more ‘pain in the economy’ on workers — Bill Mitchell
14 days agoTwo items this Wednesday before the music segment. First, we saw the stark ideology of the elites on full display in Sydney yesterday with a property developer demanding the government increase unemployment by 40-50 per cent to show the workers that the employer is boss and redistribute more national income back to profits. For anyone who doubts the relevance of a framework based on underlying class conflict between labour and capital, then this outburst should eliminate those doubts. On the same day, a leading research group in the welfare sector released an update in their series tracing poverty in Australia. It demonstrated a rising incidence of poverty (nearly 20 per cent of the population) and 1 in 6 children living in impoverished conditions. And the profit takers want more of that
Read More »Russia And China Channeling Hamilton — Mark Wauk
15 days agoRead the remarks of Glenn Diesen, Professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway, and Editor at Russia in Global Affairs, about how Russia and China are now following the Hamiltonian plan of the American System or National System, later developed by economist Friedrick List. In other words, these countries are not doing what the nascent US did when breaking away from the British Empire, which was not only political and military but also economic and financial. And the ROW is watching.Diessen also sees Central Bank of Russia head Elvira Nabiullina as a key player in implementing this plan rather than as the neoliberal she is usually viewed as.Meaning in HistoryRussia And China Channeling HamiltonMark Wauk, retired FBI agentSee also Wallerstein’s first breakthrough came during his
Read More »Moon of Alabama — Kasandras Beware – China Economy Will Not Hit A Wall
15 days agoContra Krugman.Moon of AlabamaKasandras Beware – China Economy Will Not Hit A WallAlsoECNSWestern journalist claiming Shanghai a ‘Ghost Town’ faces backlash
Read More »William Mitchell — The Chilean coup just one link in a complicated right-wing economics agenda to empower capital
16 days agoSeveral related strands have come together in the last week of work and thinking. Today (September 11, 2023), of course, is a massive day in history and I am not referring to the year 2001. Today marks the 50th anniversary of the overthrow of the Salvatore Allende’s democratically-elected government in Chile by the US CIA and there local puppets under the leadership of General – Augusto Pinochet. I have also been following a trail of the antecedents of the Powell Manifesto (thanks to Jonathan for a tip), which helps understand how the neoliberals infested every institution in the US and beyond. And the Chilean coup d’état in 1973 was followed by – Operation Condor – which together with the coup demonstrated the principle terrorist organisation in the world has been the US government and
Read More »Russia defies sanctions with homemade Sukhoi Superjet — Scott Foster
17 days agoA Russian passenger jet built almost entirely with domestically manufactured components completed its first test flight on August 29, a launch that gave Yakovlev Design Bureau and United Aircraft Corporation’s (UAC) respective shares on the Moscow Exchange a buoyant lift.Designed by Yakovlev and manufactured by UAC at its Komsomolsk-na-Amure factory, the new Sukhoi Superjet 100 (SSJ-100) is a narrow-body regional aircraft with a range of 4,578 kilometers (2,472 nautical miles) that can carry 87 to 108 passengers depending on seat configurations….Coupled with Huawei’s new chip, Russia indigenously produced commercial aircraft erode the Western lead in these key fields. Asia TimesRussia defies sanctions with homemade Sukhoi SuperjetScott Foster
Read More »The Rise of BRICS and the Fall of the G20 — Larry Johnson
17 days agoYou should not look at the war in Ukraine as an isolated phenomena with no bearing on the global economic order. The war in Ukraine is a symptom of the breakdown in the Western dominated “rules based” international order and this disruption is reverberating around the world. The recent coups in Africa, for example, are another sign that the vassals of the Western feudal lords are no longer willing to be de facto colonial subjects. They want some measure of independence and are turning to Russia and China to find a way out.Don’t focus on particular events, especially shiny objects. Look at the dynamics of the world system.A Son of the New American RevolutionThe Rise of BRICS and the Fall of the G20Larry C. Johnson | CEO and co-founder of BERG Associates, LLC, an international
Read More »RT — Moscow releases Russia-China de-dollarization update
18 days agoThe de-dollarization of Russia-China trade is practically complete, according to Georgy Zinoviev, the director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s First Asian Department, as cited by RIA Novosti.…The share of national currencies in Russian-Chinese payments is growing at an extremely rapid pace,” Zinoviev told the news agency. “At the beginning of 2022 it was hovering around 25%, now it is exceeding 80%.”…RT — Question More (Russian state-sponsored medMoscow releases Russia-China de-dollarization update
Read More »Pepe Escobar — No Respite for France as ‘New Africa’ Rises
20 days ago"The natives are getting restless." Once the bear’s claws tore away the veneer, a new era was launched. But it would not have happened without a fire-breathing dragon in the background. Now the long oppressed colonies are standing up. Empire is about securing cheap resources and cheap labor from the colonies, without which the lifestyle of the imperial elite cannot be sustained.Consortium NewsPepe Escobar: No Respite for France as ‘New Africa’ Rises
Read More »William Mitchell — The tax extreme wealth to increase funds for government spending narrative just reinforces neoliberal framing
21 days agoDespite the rabble on the Right of politics that marches around driven by conspiracies about government chips in the water supply or Covid vaccines and all the rest of the rot that lot carry on with, the reality is that well-funded Right that is entrenched in the deepest echelons of capital are extremely well organised and strategic, which is why the dominant ideology reflects their preferences. That group appears to be able to maintain a united front which solidifies their effectiveness. By way of contrast, the Left is poorly funded, but more importantly, divided and on important matters appears incapable of breaking free from the fictions and framing that the Right have introduced to further their own agenda. So, the Left is often pursuing causes that appear to be ‘progressive’ and
Read More »Michael Hudson — Naked Capitalism–Your Guide, Philosopher, and Friend in Times of Crisis
21 days agoFundraiser for a very worthy cause.This is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. 155 donors have already invested in our efforts to combat corruption and predatory conduct, particularly in the financial realm. Please join us and participate via our donation page, which shows how to give via check, credit card, debit card, or PayPal. Read about why we’re doing this fundraiser, what we’ve accomplished in the last year,, and our current goal, strengthening our IT infrastructure.Michael Hudson: Naked Capitalism – Your Guide, Philosopher, and Friend in Times of CrisisAlsoKLG: What Naked Capitalism Means to MeOn a different note, also at NCBiden Approves $40 Billion Worth Of Drugs To Be Airdropped To Burning Man Babylon Bee [satire]
Read More »Reuters — Teardown of Huawei’s new phone shows China’s chip breakthrough
23 days agoThat didn’t take long.Huawei’s Mate 60 Pro is powered by a new Kirin 9000s chip that was made in China by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), TechInsights said in the report shared with Reuters on Monday.Huawei started selling its Mate 60 Pro phone last week. The specifications provided advertised its ability to make satellite calls, but offered no information on the power of the chipset inside….Buyers of the phone in China have been posting tear-down videos and sharing speed tests on social media that suggest the Mate 60 Pro is capable of download speeds exceeding those of top line 5G phones……ReutersTeardown of Huawei’s new phone shows China’s chip breakthroughAlsoImportant.Moon of AlabamaHow Sanctions Failed To Hinder China’s Development
Read More »Inflation And The Labour Market — Brian Romanchuk
23 days agoThe usual response to critics who state things like I just did is “give me a better model.” The idea is that we need to replace one reductionist model with another reductionist model. The reasoning seems to be that economics is like physics, where a lot of the history of the field is doing exactly that. (Physicists might be getting into “complexity,” which may or may not be a mathematical pseudo-science. In any event, this is not what people have in mind when they compare economics to physics.) If inflation is a complicated process, any reductionist model is going to fail.Any empirical work on the link between inflation and the labour market is going to run into a snag that is the result of what I argue are relatively non-controversial positions.…Bond Economics Inflation And The Labour
Read More »Amazon is promoting the eBook version of The Deficit Myth. A one-day promotion @ $3.99
24 days agoStephanie Kelton@StephanieKeltonAmazon is promoting the eBook version of The Deficit Myth. A one-day promotion @ $3.99
Read More »Vietnam, Philippines and Brunei to join cross-border QR payment scheme — Erwida Maulia And Ismi Damayanti
27 days agoVietnam, the Philippines and Brunei will join other major Southeast Asian economies in an interconnected QR code payment system that aims to promote use of local currencies and reduce dependence on the U.S. dollar.Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore are already progressing with the implementation of bilateral transactions using QR codes among one another — which was initiated last year, said Perry Warjiyo, governor of Indonesia’s central bank, on Friday.…Nikkei AsiaVietnam, Philippines and Brunei to join cross-border QR payment schemeErwida Maulia And Ismi Damayanti, Nikkei Staff Writers
Read More »The US Problem With China: Beijing Is Better at Capitalism — Patrick Lawrence
27 days agoAs it provokes a new Cold War, the U.S. is warning that its corporate and financial interests, which came first after the 1980s Dengist reforms, no longer take precedence, writes Patrick Lawrence.Consortium NewsThe US Problem With China: Beijing Is Better at CapitalismPatrick Lawrence
Read More »GoFundMe, Go To Hell — Matt Taibbi
27 days agoCensorship moves to a new level in denying funding.Racket NewsGoFundMe, Go To HellMatt Taibbi
Read More »William Mitchell — The Ireland growth miracle is largely illusory and biasing Eurozone growth data upwards
27 days agoI have been avoiding keeping up-to-date with the Irish national accounts over the last several years for reasons that I documented in this blog post – Ireland – not as rosy as the official story might suggest (January 2, 2018). Ireland has been held out as the poster nation for the Eurozone boosters because of its seemingly ‘impressive’ growth performance after entry into the common currency and its resilience after the Global Financial Crisis. During the GFC, I wrote a series of blog posts (see below) that delved into reality of the Irish situation and we learned that the so-called ‘Celtic Tiger’ growth miracle was an illusion and was driven by major US corporations evading US tax liabilities by exploiting massive tax breaks supplied to them by the Irish government. Since then the ‘smoke
Read More »Huawei Chips Demonstrate The Perils Of Technology Protectionism — Moon of Alabama
27 days agoSullivan’s whole speech is an argument against free markets and for protectionism and sector subsidies. It does away with the economic framework the U.S. had build after the end of the second world war. This is supposed to be replaced it with bilateral and block wise agreements that are to the advantage of the U.S., to the disadvantage of its agreement ‘partners’ and which exclude China and other ‘hostile’ economies….How the worm turns. End of an era.Moon of AlabamaHuawei Chips Demonstrate The Perils Of Technology Protectionism
Read More »MMT the Movie: Coming to a Festival Near You — Stephanie Kelton
28 days agoDocumentary on MMT.The LensMMT the Movie: Coming to a Festival Near YouStephanie Kelton | Professor of Public Policy and Economics at Stony Brook University, formerly Democrats’ chief economist on the staff of the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, and an economic adviser to the 2016 presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders
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