Naked Keynesianism

There are three kinds of lies, "lies, damned lies, and statistics," supposedly said Benjamin Disraeli. This applies to John Cochrane piece in the Wall Street Journal today. Cochrane says that: "Sclerotic growth is America’s overriding economic problem. From 1950 to 2000, the U.S. economy grew at an average rate of 3.5% annually. Since 2000, it has grown at half that rate—1.76%. Even in the years since the bottom of the great recession in 2009, which should have been a time of fast catch-up...

Complex technical stuff indeed Pascal Blanqué and Amin Rajan complain about unconventional monetary policy, low or negative rates and Quantitative Easing, which they mostly blame on Greenspan and the excessive reliance on the lender of last resort (LOLR) function of the central banks (even though this precedes Greenspan). They say: The US example shows all too clearly that the longer such unconventional policy remains in place, the harder it is to exit. Most likely, ultra-low rates will...

[embedded content] Defunding a program is the best way to promote privatization. He discusses here public education, but you can go down the line. The idea of voucherizing Medicare is basically a way of defunding it, worsening its quality and eventually move to private health (you get it if you pay for it). And on education note that while Chomsky is right that it worked well and is being defunded and privatized (think charter schools), it is also true that the system was always unequal and...

New paper on the resurgence of capital controls. From the Abstract: The startling resuscitation of capital controls during the global crisis has substantially widened policy space in the global north and south. The paper highlights five factors that contribute to the evolving rebranding of capital controls. These include: (1) the rise of increasingly autonomous developing states, largely as a consequence of their successful response to the Asian crisis; (2) the increasing confidence and...

In the first quarter the economy slowed down grinding nearly to a halt. Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) slowed to a 0.5% annual growth rate in the first three months of 2016, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). By the way, federal government spending has been a drag on growth. And here in lies the problem. Don't expect any stimulus this year, and very unlikely that this would change significantly any time soon. The problem isn't secular stagnation, it is rather...

[embedded content] From the BBC Yes, Prime Minister comic series. True, most bankers never quite learned Keynes, and then had to learn the stuff from some other Milton.

Sometimes there is simple and right New paper by Professor Petri, which is always worth reading, titled "Nonsubstitution Theorem, Leontief Model, Netputs: Some Clarifications." From the abstract: The nonsubstitution theorem concerns long-period technical choice and relative prices, and was so understood in its first (1951) formulations, but the modern advanced micro textbooks that present it do not make this clear, rendering the theorem impossible to understand for students. These modern...

Engelbart's mouse I have discussed some of these issues before (here, for example, or here). But it is the last week of my intermediate macro class, and I often end up with some discussion of growth. Mostly the Solow model, and some alternative demand-led growth model. I do only the simple models, Joan Robinson's banana model and Thirlwall's balance of payments constraint, to contrast with neoclassical supply constrained stories of growth.But in the middle of that discussion, supply...

[embedded content] More on the GOP failure in Kansas. Rick Smith Show podcast here

Keynes (1883-1946) NYTimes Obituary here