Tag Archives: Debt

Yesterday I spoke on a panel discussion on economic inequality, along with Andrew Jackson and Armine Yalnizyan. We were guests at the federal NDP’s policy convention in Ottawa. The panel was moderated by Guy Caron. Topics covered included the minimum wage, basic income, affordable housing, the future of jobs, gender budgeting, poverty among seniors, Canadian fiscal policy in historical perspective, and Canadian fiscal policy in comparison with other OECD countries. The discussion was 30...

Download PDF at link below.The Levy InstituteThe Macroeconomic Effects of Student Debt Cancellation Scott Fullwiler, Stephanie Kelton, Catherine Ruetschlin, and Marshall Steinbaum February 2018 Yves comments.Naked CapitalismNew Study Finds Cancelling Student Debt Provides Broad Economic Benefits at Low Cost Yves Smith

Michael Hudson and Charles Goodhart team up. Longish and detailed but an easy read.CounterpunchCould/Should Jubilee Debt Cancellations be Reintroduced Today? Michael Hudson – Charles Goodhartalso Irrespective of what we may think of Syria, this is little but a full-scale assault on international law and the normative system embedded in the UN Charter that has taken decades of hard work to build, a fundamental cornerstone of the management and civilizational development of the world order...

Moronic. Whoever wrote this doesn't have any understanding of accounting and the credit-debit relationship that underlies accounting.  All borrowing results in a debt that is a payable and corresponding saving that results in a loan that is a receivable. A debt is account payable and loan is a account receivable.   A debt obligation is a financial liability and ownership of a loan is a financial asset. Some credit is used to to fund capital investment, and some credit is used to fund...

Review and critique of the latest OECD World Economic Outlook, from a Marxian POV. Useful. The key for me, as readers of this blog know, is what is happening to the profitability of capital in the major economies. If profitability is rising, then corporate investment and economic growth will follow – but also vice versa. But if profitability and profits are falling, debt accumulated will become a major burden. Eventually the zombies will start to go bankrupt, spreading across sectors and...

As many of you know, I have spent much of the last seven years explaining to anyone who will listen that banks do not "lend out" deposits or reserves. Rather, they create both loan assets and matching deposit liabilities "from nothing" by means of double entry accounting entries. Creating money with a stroke of the pen (or a few taps on a computer keyboard) is what banks do.But this does not mean that the money that banks create comes from nowhere. It doesn't. It is only created when they...

Randy Wray gets a mention.St. Louts Post-DispatchNicklaus: China's worry about 'Minsky moment' may be a good sign David Nicklaus, business columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Apparently, measuring the levels of two molecules—an individual’s C-reactive protein and fibrinogen (as in the charts above)—and matching them against their socioeconomic position starts to reveal the hidden mechanisms connecting social inequality and health. And the missing link turns out to be stress. Debt is a major cause of stress, and a rent-based economy is based on debt. Poverty is another major cause of stress, as is financial and economic precariousness. As more people join the...

On the evening of Friday, September 22nd, the credit ratings agency Moody's downgraded the UK's credit rating. Admittedly, it was only by one notch. But coming as it did hard on the heels of Theresa May's grand speechin Florence, it was a shattering blow.  Credit ratings agencies lost much of their lustre in the financial crisis of 2008, when they were revealed to have been complicit in the mispricing of complex financial derivatives – the “toxic waste” that brought down some of the...

The idiots at S&P are at it again, downgrading China's "debt." This asinine rating agency does not understand the distinction between a currency issuing nation (of which, China is one) and a country that doesn't issue currency or, that has debt denominated in another currency.All of China's "debt" is denominated in yuan, which they have the monopoly power to issue. There is zero risk that China wouldn't be able to meet its obligations in yuan.Anyway, what do you expect from a firm...