Tag Archives: public debt

J.W. Mason posted an interesting list of arguments to not worry about government debt levels in "A Baker's Dozen of Reasons not to Worry About Government Debt." On reading it, I realised that one could cut through the whole thing by arguing as follows: the reason why we should not worry about government debt in a country like the United State is that nobody can come up with a (not highly disputable*) reason why that the stock of debt matters.I will largely leave that assertion for the...

Good summary of the main points regarding public debt.J. W. Mason's BlogA Baker’s Dozen of Reasons Not to Worry about Government DebtJW Mason | Assistant Professor of Economics, John Jay College, City University of New York

On July 26, 2018, UK Guardian columnist Phillip Inman published an article – Household debt in UK ‘worse than at any time on record’ – which reported on the latest figures at the time from the Office of National Statistics (ONS). He noted that the data showed that “British households spent around £900 more on average than they received in income during 2017, pushing their finances into deficit for the first time since the credit boom of the 1980s … The figures pose a challenge to the...

Whether the UK finally leaves or remains a Member of the EU, progressives are generally united in viewing the existing Treaty and legislative rules on economic policy as dangerously dysfunctional. In their second joint paper on the theme, emeritus Professor John Weeks and PRIME co-director Jeremy Smith set out proposals for “Economic Guidelines...

President Trump banned a CNN reporter only to find his position overturned by the judicial system. Well CNN is guilty of at least one thing – publishing misleading and alarmist economic reports about Japan. In a CNN Business article last week (November 13, 2018) – Japan’s economy has a $5 trillion problem – readers were told that the Bank of Japan has no “dwindling options to juice growth if a new crisis hits” because “it’s now sitting on assets worth more than the country’s entire...

Pubblichiamo la traduzione su Brave New Europe, una rivista online edita a Berlino, del pezzo su Econopoly. Sergio Cesaratto and Antonio Iero – It’s the interest rate, stupid! November 16, 2018 Economics, EU politics, EU-Institutions, Finance, National Politics Words of reason, but this is about German led social re-engineering in the EU rather than economics. Sergio Cesaratto is Professor of Growth and Development Economics and of Monetary...

I would suggest considering limiting federal government "bond" sales — with "bonds" meaning term secretaries — to short term notes that are essentially cash equivalents that pay a bit of interest. Longer term government securities can be issue without a term limit, which makes them appear to be "debt" comparable to private debt. The UK has already done this with "consoles." Consols (originally short for consolidated annuities, but subsequently taken to mean consolidated stock) was a...

Acting-President John Bolton speaks nonsense from his bully pulpit again. National security adviser says to cut discretionary spending Many budget experts say entitlements are bigger threat “It is a fact that when your national debt gets to the level ours is, that it constitutes an economic threat to the society,” Bolton said. “And that kind of threat ultimately has a national security consequence for it.”... BloombergBolton Calls National Debt ‘Economic Threat’ to U.S. Toluse...

Not that affordability is relevant from the MMT POV, but it's worth looking at anyway. "They" view it conventionally in terms of the interest rate "r," that is, the policy rate, and the growth rate "g" measured as change in GDP.This is the ratio of r to g, or "r : g". As long as r is greater than g, "they" consider the increasing interest affordable. In fact, "r > g" has become a meme and entered the jargon since the publication of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty–First...

PRIME’s co-director Jeremy Smith and Progressive Economy Forum Council member John Weeks analyse the “bar room budget-brawl” between the Italian government and the European Commission, and argue that the Commission’s wrong-footed response threatens to strengthen the far right – to avoid opening the door to fascism, the EU must ditch its bias towards austerity.No one doubts that Italy’s economy is in a mess. It has been for a long time. It was not always so. From 1971 until...