New Economic Perspectives

NEP’s Bill Black appears on The Real News and says it’s important to reimplement the Glass-Steagall Act – but it’s not enough to prevent another financial crisis. You can view here with transcript or watch video below. [embedded content] [Translate]

By L. Randall Wray My previous blog sparked a lot of discussion, especially over at Naked Capitalism. I do pity Yves Smith! There’s enough nonsense in the commentary to populate a large nation. As I have argued, it is very hard to figure out what the debt-free money folks want as they are confused on the accounting, vague on the terminology, and rarely provide details on their proposal. However, a reader has directed me to a fine published article that has mostly got the accounting right,...

By L. Randall Wray Some time ago, I labeled the “debt-free money” campaign a non sequitur in search of a policy. (See here.) However, this non sequitur refuses to die. I went on to joke that if they want a debt-free money, they ought to propose that government issue bananas as currency. I frequently am asked to do interviews and I almost always accept them. However, when I was asked last week to participate in a radio show devoted to debt-free money, I struggled mightily to get out of it....

Below is an excerpt from my most recent e-book: Real Fiscal Responsibility, Vol. I: The Progressive Give-up Formula. The book is volume I of II critiquing austerity politics at the Federal level in the United States. It exposes its fallacies, its closed-mindedness and futility, and especially its reliance on wrong-headed conceptions of fiscal sustainability and fiscal responsibility. In this volume, I relate neoliberalism, the Washington Consensus, and austerity politics pushed by the...

NEP’s Randy Wray will be interviewed tonight on Bob Brinker’s nationally syndicated ABC talk radio show Money Talk, Sunday December 6th at 6:15pm ET for around 30 minutes. Wray will discuss his new book Why Minsky Matters: An Introduction to the work of a maverick economist, Princeton University Press. The show airs live on 200 ABC affiliates including all major markets. Former guests include Alan Greenspan, Sheila Bair, Alan Blinder, Paul O’Neill, William Isaac, Peter Thiel, Joseph...

By Michael Hoexter In this series, I attempt to outline key issues facing policymakers as they meet in Paris at the UN’s Conference of the Parties-21 starting on November 30th and possibly culminating in a global climate treaty by the end of the conference on December 11th, called a “deadline” by the organizers. COP21 is being viewed as a last chance for humanity to seriously address climate change in concert and therefore face humanity’s most serious and ominous existential crisis. Human...

Edward Chancellor over at Reuters has published a review of Randy Wray’s new book on Minsky, “Why Minsky Matters: An Introduction to the Work of a Maverick Economist”. You can read the review here. [Translate]

By Michael Hoexter In this series, I will attempt to outline key issues facing policymakers as they meet in Paris at the UN’s Conference of the Parties-21 starting on November 30th and possibly culminating in a global climate treaty by the end of the conference on December 11th, called a “deadline” by the organizers.  COP21 is being viewed as a last chance for humanity to seriously address climate change in concert and therefore face humanity’s most serious and ominous existential crisis. ...

L. Randall Wray Yesterday Senator Bernie Sanders gave an important speech in which he invoked President Roosevelt’s “second bill of rights” in defense of his platform. As Bernie rightly pointed out, all of Roosevelt’s New Deal social programs to which we have become accustomed, were tagged as “socialism”—just as pundits are branding Bernie’s proposals as dangerous socialist ideas. You can see Bernie’s prepared remarks here. Just before Bernie’s speech, I was asked to do an interview with...

NEP’s Marshall Auerback interviews Branko Milanovic, Visiting Presidential Professor, The Graduate Center, City University of New York. This is almost certainly the highest level of relative, and certainly absolute, global inequality at any point in human history. Is there anything we can do to reverse or mitigate this trend? See the interview here. [Translate]