Real-World Economics Review

from David Ruccio A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, “Billionaire Bonanza 2020: Wealth Windfalls, Tumbling Taxes, and Pandemic Profiteers,” reveals that the wealth of U.S. billionaires is indeed staying at home. Since 10 April 2020, there’s been both an increase in the number of billionaires (to 629) and a surge in billionaire net worth. Billionaire wealth increased $282 billion, or 9.5 percent, in just 23 days, bringing the combined net worth of the billionaire class...

Follow on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/actdottv Julianna welcomes back recurring guest Dean Baker, macroeconomist and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, to discuss the myth that adding to the country’s debt will slow down economic growth. He writes that those sounding the alarm about the national debt, are “desperately trying to create a problem where one does not exist.” Dean Baker co-founded The Center for Economic and Policy Research in 1999....

Follow on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/actdottv Julianna welcomes back recurring guest Dean Baker, macroeconomist and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, to discuss the myth that adding to the country’s debt will slow down economic growth. He writes that those sounding the alarm about the national debt, are “desperately trying to create a problem where one does not exist.” Dean Baker co-founded The Center for Economic and Policy Research in 1999. His areas of...

from Lars Syll In Michel De Vroey’s version of the history of macroeconomics, Robert Lucas’ declaration of the need for macroeconomics to be pursued only within ‘equilibrium discipline’ and declaring equilibrium to exist as a postulate, is hailed as a ‘Copernican revolution.’ Equilibrium is not to be considered something that characterises real economies, but rather “a property of the way we look at things.” De Vroey, approvingly, notices that this — as well as Lucas’ banning of...

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from Peter Radford I have been digging around a fair bit lately trying to understand the role of economics in the extent of the inequality being laid bare by the pandemic — more on that later.  A few interesting nuggets worthy of a quick note popped out along the way. Thomas Phillipon opens chapter one of his recent book this way: “The big debates in economics are about growth and inequality.  As economists, we seek to understand how and why countries grow and how they divide income among...

from Dean Baker For all the suffering caused by the pandemic, one important positive effect is that it may lead to clearer thinking about government debt and deficits. To Congress’s credit, it has focused on dealing with the problem of sustaining the country through a period in which much of the economy is shut down, rather than worrying about the large deficit it will run this year, as well as the amount it is adding to the national debt. (I strongly suspect that this would not be the...

from Asad Zaman I am in process of creating an online course on the history of Central Banking. The era of online courses has been forced upon us by the Corona Virus, though I have been meaning to do this for a long time. The WEA Pedagogy Blog seems like a great place to do a beta-test. I would like to start by inviting the audience to read through Charles Goodhart’s book on the Evolution of Central Banking. We would plan to read one chapter a week and discuss it on posts and/or comments...

from David Ruccio The coronavirus outbreak is serving as a mind-expansion exercise, making hitherto unthinkable solutions thinkable. Debts that can’t be paid won’t be. A debt jubilee may be the best way out. — Michael Hudson The United States is currently experiencing a dystopian orgy of death and destruction. In the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic, hundreds of thousands of Americans are falling ill, tens of thousands are dying, and everyone else is living in fear they’ll...

from Michael Hudson Even before the novel coronavirus appeared, many American families were falling behind on student loans, auto loans, credit cards and other payments. America’s debt overhead was pricing its labor and industry out of world markets. A debt crisis was inevitable eventually, but covid-19 has made it immediate. Massive social distancing, with its accompanying job losses, stock dives and huge bailouts to corporations, raises the threat of a depression. But it doesn’t have...