Naked Keynesianism

The Fed has left the interest rate unchanged... for now. One dissident vote for raising the rate now. The main reason according to the press release is that: "Recent global economic and financial developments may restrain economic activity somewhat and are likely to put further downward pressure on inflation in the near term." Pressures for a hike in October or December will increase significantly, even if the official position is vague enough. They say: "The Committee anticipates that it...

In the last issue, The Economist suggests that the Fed should not be concerned too much with inflation, and that they should not raise the interest rate for now. They say: "Weak wage growth suggests that there is still lots of slack in the labour market. Underemployment, which includes workers who are part-time but want a full-time job, and discouraged workers who might be tempted back into the labour force, stands at just over 10%, higher than before the crisis. This measure probably has...

Tomorrow, for those around Lewisburg, I'll present my paper on “Interest rates, terms of trade and currency crises” at the economics department's brown bag seminar series in ACWS room 116 from 11:45 to 12:50.

Or close to. The figure below is not just the real minimum wage, which I posted before (most recently here). It is as it says the ratio of the minimum wage to the average wage. The figure neatly shows that while in the 50s and 60s the minimum wage was about 50% of the average wage, since the 1980s it has been closer to a third. Read rest here.

[embedded content] Although it's framed as a public defender issue, it is really about debtors' prisons and the criminalization of poverty.

New paper by Suranjana Nabar-Bhaduri published by PERI. From the abstract:India’s trade balance and current account have shown persistent deficits for a major part of its post-independence period. Since the mid-2000s, trade deficits have increased perilously, with a sharp rise in both oil and non-oil imports. This has increased the magnitude of the current account deficit, as net earnings from services and remittances have been insufficient to offset the trade deficits. India has relied on...

So Brazil (or here about Petrobras, the State oil company) lost its investment grade status with Standard & Poor's. You would think this is huge given the media attention in Brazil. If you read S&P's actual rationale for the downgrading (here) it is essentially about the fiscal situation. They say: "We now expect the general government deficit to rise to an average of 8% of GDP in 2015 and 2016 before declining to 5.9% in 2017, versus 6.1% in 2014. We do not expect a primary fiscal...

If you're around Lewisburg next Tuesday.

As much as there has been an institutional turn in mainstream economics, since the 1980s, which is not completely dissociated from the anti-Keynesian turn that started in the 1970s and led to the segregation of heterodox groups within the profession, there has been a poverty-turn in the development economic literature, as noted by Jayati Ghosh.Particularly important in this shift is that:"Macroeconomic processes are entirely ignored: patterns of trade and economic activity that determine...