Naked Keynesianism

[embedded content]My initial comments at the seminar on the legacy of Pierangelo Garegnani's contributions to economics organized by the Italian Post Keynesian Network. The full seminar here.

More on the same issues, with a discussion of Piero Sraffa and the surplus approach (this week there will be an event on the legacy of Pierangelo Garegnani). In Spanish again.

Interview in Spanish to Radio UNAL with Óscar Morillo. We discuss the the origins of political economy and their importance and the continuous relevance for the understanding of modern capitalism. Link here.

This event organized by the Italian Post Keynesian Network. I wrote about Garegnani's contributions when he passed away here in the blog. We will discuss some of the issues he raised, but also the new directions of Sraffian economics. 

Volume 9, Issue 4 of the Review of Keynesian Economics is now available. The issue is devoted to the twin topics of “financialization” and the “macroeconomics of international finance”. The first paper by Michael Hudson analyzes the impact on distributional outcomes of adding capital gains to and subtracting rent seeking activity from GDP. The second paper examines financialization’s rolling sector dynamics whereby it loads the economy with debt. The third paper by Esteban Pérez Caldentey...

New paper by Thomas Palley. From the abstract:This paper explores the economics and political economy of financialization using Matt Taibbi’s vampire squid metaphor to characterize it. The paper makes five innovations. First, it focuses on the mechanics of the “vampire squid” process whereby financialization rotates through the economy loading sector balance sheets with debt. Second, it identifies the critical role of government budget deficits for the financialization process. Third, it...

The administration run excessive budget deficits, and accumulated too much debt in the face of successive economic crises. As a result, it was forced to compromise politically in order to avoid a catastrophic default, and the subsequent political crisis brought about chaos, and the collapse of the established institutions. Of course, this is not a cautionary tale about the United States. It is a description of the economic crisis that led to the French Revolution.But in spite of the...

There are many myths about the Phillips Curve and the so-called Monetarist Counter-Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. Forder's book is a good read on some of these issues. Jeremy Rudd's recent paper is also a must read, and has now been accepted for publication in the Review of Keynesian Economics (ROKE).It debunks the myth about the importance of inflationary expectations for explaining the Great Inflation of the 1970s, and casts doubts about the Monetarist Counter Revolution, the Rational...

Angela Merkel is stepping down, and as often happens in these circumstances (or when someone of historical importance passes; see here for my review of Thatcher and Volcker obits) there is a flood of analysis of their contributions. Merkel is no exception, and most 'serious' outlets have suggested that she was a great stateswoman, and that she managed to save the euro (an honor she often shares with Mario Draghi), the European Union and provided leadership in the midst of the vacuum caused...

[embedded content]Interview with an Argentinean radio (yes, in Spanish) on the Evergrande collapse and its possible consequences. It is clear to me that the dangers come more from having debt in foreign currency than the typical critique about crony capitalism, and the lack of credibility that The Economist, for example, has put forward. In The Economist view:Evergrande shows the importance of deeper financial reforms. But what might they look like? Liberal reformers have longed for a...