Tag Archives: Books

Michael Stephens | February 4, 2019 Public interest in Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is undergoing a new growth spurt, and progressive politicians are playing a key role in the current phase. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez recently referenced the heterodox framework to push back against the assumption that her ambitious policy proposals must, as a matter of financial necessity, be made budget-neutral (an assumption, as Brendan Greeley...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth reading the article about star economist Roland Fryer’s sexual harassment. Here’s his response. At issue here is how easily academic structures put junior people at the mercy of senior ones. It’s not unique to economics – see psychology Antarctic geology, and the world’s top empathy researcher terrorizing the people who worked in her lab, among many others. Given how common we’re discovering this...

Included in Martin Wolf’s (FT) favourite books of 2018:  . . . and Forgive Them Their Debts: Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption From Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year, by Michael Hudson, ISLET-Verlag, RRP $29.95 The American economist Hudson has written a fascinating book on the historical antecedents of the Mosaic debt jubilee. The work of Assyriologists has shown that by the third millennium BC, the rulers of the ancient Near East understood the necessity of...

As published on Journal du MAUSS INTRODUCTION:Désordre définitionnel du social et vocabulaire de la tromperie « Il est certain qu’en dernière analyse une langue doit son déclin à des causes politiques et économiques. (…) Elle devient laide et imprécise parce que notre pensée est stupide, mais ce relâchement constitue à son tour une puissante incitation à penser stupidement. Pourtant ce processus n’est pas irréversible. (…) Si l’on se débarrasse des mauvaises habitudes, on...

The dominant view in economics is that money and government should play only a minor role in economic life. Money, it is claimed, is nothing more than a medium of exchange; and economic outcomes are best left to the ‘invisible hand’ of the market. The view taken in this important new book is that the omnipresence of uncertainty make money and government essential features of any market economy. One reason we need money is because we don’t know what the future will bring. Government –...

...and forgive them their debts | Michael Hudson Your access to this service has been temporarily limited. Please try again in a few minutes. (HTTP response code 503) Reason: Exceeded the maximum global requests per minute for crawlers or humans. Important note for site admins: If you are the administrator of this website note that your access has been limited because you broke one of the Wordfence blocking rules. The reason your access was limited is: "Exceeded the maximum global requests...

I’m very excited to announce that my next book, …and forgive them their debts: Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption — From Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year (ISLET-Verlag Dresden), will officially release this coming November 13, 2018. The pre-order page on Amazon will be available soon, and I’ll make another announcement when that’s up. In the meantime, you can learn more about the book below. Michael Copy for book description and advance praise: …and forgive them...

As you grow up and experience more of the ups and downs of the economy, you will notice a piece of mindbending hypocrisy: during the good times, bankers, entrepreneurs—rich people in general—tend to be against government. They criticize it as a “brake on development,” a “parasite” feeding on the private sector through taxation, an “enemy of freedom and entrepreneurship.” The cleverer among them even go so far as...

How do we choose between what is fair and just, and what our debtors demand of us? Yanis Varoufakis was put in such a dilemma in 2015 when he became the finance minister of Greece. In this rousing book, he charts the absurdities that underpin calls for austerity, as well as his own battles with a bureaucracy bent on ignoring the human cost of its every action. Passionately outspoken and tuned to the voices of the...

Three years ago, today, the people of Greece staged a rebellion against their debt bondage. Though this rebellion was overthrown from within almost immediately, it remains a remarkable testimony to the power of a people to say No to the oligarchy, to wrestle control of the narrative of their circumstances from the inanely authoritarian elites, and to overcome the fear which a tiny minority uses to take the demos...