Tag Archives: fiscal conservatism

Almost everything that’s wrong with conventional views on fiscal policy is on display in this column (well written and clear) by one of the key journalists from Folha de São Paulo, Vinicius Torres Freire. He suggests that the current fiscal adjustment is not credible. For him, this is a confidence crisis, caused by Lula’s insistence on attacking the central bank policy and his lukewarm support for the adjustment. Why the adjustment is necessary, he never asks. It’s evident, for any educated...

It's been a while since I wrote about the Brazilian crisis (a summary of the previous catastrophic election here). In part that election and the continued crisis explains why I have written less, not just about Brazil. This has been a long economic depression that started in 2015 (see graph), with a coup in 2016 and since 2018 the added problem of a right-wing authoritarian regime that won an election that was only possible with the political proscription of Lula. But at least the political...

Wednesday and a short blog post. I regularly work for unions as an expert analyst/witness in their struggles to achieve wage justice with employers who are intent on paying as little as possible. Often these are private employers but at the moment I am helping a union with their campaign to win a reasonable wage increase against a state government. The logic deployed by the government in relation to their fiscal affairs and their wage setting behaviour is a classic demonstration of how...

Its Wednesday and some snippets only today. I was reviewing some data on public investment in the European Union the other day and up popped an article in Barrons that covered the same issue. The data reveals the stark failure of the Eurozone and the European Union, in general. The consequences of the European Union’s ideological obsession for rules over reality is now clearly undermining the future prosperity of the Member States. While the fiscal austerity has created elevated and...

A bevy of lawmakers in Congress alarmed by soaring deficits are calling yet again for a constitutional amendment to balance the federal budget — but this time it’s Democrats. The so-called Blue Dog Coalition of moderate Democrats on Tuesday endorsed an amendment that would require Washington to balance the budget except in case of war or recession.... Are they for the return of the gold standard, too?Market WatchAnd now for something different: Democrats call for balanced-budget...

Germans will be Germans, it seems — fiscally conservative.Bill Mitchell – billy blogForget European reform – the Germans have anywayBill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia