New Economic Perspectives

By Thornton Parker        The way a problem is seen can determine how or even if it gets solved.  When the French engineer, Ferdinand de Lesseps, was picked to build the Panama Canal, he saw it as another excavation problem as his Suez Canal had been.  But Egypt was flat and Panama had a mountain.  When the United States took over the job, John Stevens, who was put in charge, saw it as a railroad problem.  The biggest task was to move ninety-six million cubic yards of rock and earth, as...

By Thornton Parker   The way a problem is seen may determine how or even if it gets solved.  Global warming (GW) and climate change (CC) are going to scramble many ideas about how developed economies work.  At root, GW and CC must be seen as money problems, and modern money (MM) is the key to solving them.         Energy companies spend money to find, extract, and market fossil fuels.  Other companies use money to create products and services that consume fossil fuel energy.  Money...

By Thornton Parker   The way a problem is seen may determine how or even if it gets solved.  Global warming (GW) and climate change (CC) are going to scramble many ideas about how developed economies work.  At root, GW and CC must be seen as money problems, and modern money (MM) is the key to solving them.         Energy companies spend money to find, extract, and market fossil fuels.  Other companies use money to create products and services that consume fossil fuel energy.  Money...

By Michael Hoexter, Ph.D. In the final section of this essay, I will look at the combined effect of the conflicts and collusion between the two types of Machiavellian political actors that dominate the higher offices and influential media organizations in the United States and to a lesser degree in other countries today.  Looking solely and narrowly at one party or the other encourages myopia and the creation of a “voodoo doll” in which all manner of evil is thought to be embodied, i.e....

By Michael Hoexter, Ph.D. In the final section of this essay, I will look at the combined effect of the conflicts and collusion between the two types of Machiavellian political actors that dominate the higher offices and influential media organizations in the United States and to a lesser degree in other countries today.  Looking solely and narrowly at one party or the other encourages myopia and the creation of a “voodoo doll” in which all manner of evil is thought to be embodied, i.e....

By Michael Hoexter, Ph.D. While describing the machinations of the Democratic Party Establishment creates an repellent vision of political scheming and ethical compromise, today’s Republican Party is a few qualitative steps more repellent, more reactionary, and at the same time simpler to describe.  To compare and create a realistic vision of the current American political landscape, one has to be able to conceive of both “bad” and “worse”, i.e. degrees of moral compromise and turpitude...

By Michael Hoexter, Ph.D. While describing the machinations of the Democratic Party Establishment creates an repellent vision of political scheming and ethical compromise, today’s Republican Party is a few qualitative steps more repellent, more reactionary, and at the same time simpler to describe.  To compare and create a realistic vision of the current American political landscape, one has to be able to conceive of both “bad” and “worse”, i.e. degrees of moral compromise and turpitude...

(This is a 3-part essay divided here into a total of 4 installments, with the first part divided into two) By Michael Hoexter, Ph.D. Attracting Popular Discontent The basic structure of concentric circles of the discourse and ideological “space” of a political party or partisan organization, described in the foregoing could apply to almost any political party or for that matter any group with a relatively passionately held set of beliefs against which they believe others are opposed. ...

(This is a 3-part essay divided here into a total of 4 installments, with the first part divided into two) By Michael Hoexter, Ph.D. Attracting Popular Discontent The basic structure of concentric circles of the discourse and ideological “space” of a political party or partisan organization, described in the foregoing could apply to almost any political party or for that matter any group with a relatively passionately held set of beliefs against which they believe others are opposed. ...

By L. Randall Wray This blog is based on the testimony I provided to the US House of Representatives. My written statement will be published in the Congressional Record (a version is also at the Levy Economics Institute: http://www.levyinstitute.org/publications/statement-of-senior-scholar-l-randall-wray-to-the-house-budget-committee. The full statement was co-authored with Yeva Nersisyan. I will argue that the Federal Government’s deficit and debt are not so scary as we are led to...