Tag Archives: U.S. Policy

Now that the twenty year-long US military expedition to Afghanistan has ended in catastrophe, the US Neocon establishment has already begun preparations for the “Next Afghanistan”. That process begins with blaming Joe Biden and rewriting history. Thus, Richard Haas (President of the Council on Foreign Relations) writes in Project Syndicate: “Biden was recently asked if […]

This paper explores the economics and political economy of financialization using Matt Taibbi’s vampire squid metaphor to characterize it. The paper makes five innovations. First, it focuses on the mechanics of the “vampire squid” process whereby financialization rotates through the economy loading sector balance sheets with debt. Second, it identifies the critical role of government […]

This paper reconstructs the Keynesian income – expenditure (IE) model to include distinctions between government purchases of private sector output, government production, and government job guarantee program (JGP) employment. Analytically, including those distinctions transforms the model from a single sector model into a multi-sector model. It also surfaces the logic behind the automatic stabilizer property […]

This essay argues that some forty years ago the Republican Party struck a Faustian bargain whereby it traded integrity and decency for tax cuts and a corporate dominated economy. Now, the Republican party is reaping the consequences of that bargain in the form of its capture by Donald Trump and his followers. However, it also […]

Sunday January 10, 2021. It is now four days since the January 6 mob attack on the US Congress which President Donald Trump incited. In a manner akin to a combat situation, the numbness induced by the overwhelming nature of the event is giving way to shock and anger. What is also becoming clear is […]

There is an old saying “Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.” That saying is relevant for the current healthcare debate in which former Vice-President Biden and elite Democrats are touting a reheated version of Obamacare with a public option. It is a case of trying to fool the American […]

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Eighty-seven years ago those were the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his 1933 inaugural speech. Today, they resonate with Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, which confronts a barrage of attack aimed at frightening away voters. Fear is the enemy of change and the friend […]

The US is currently enjoying another stock market boom which, if history is any guide, also stands to end in a bust. In the meantime, the boom is having a politically toxic effect by lending support to Donald Trump and obscuring the case for reversing the neoliberal economic paradigm. For four decades the US economy […]

Thomas Palley, Louis-Philippe Rochon, Guillaume Vallet , Review of Keynesian Economics, April 2019. The Great Recession (2008/9) triggered by the financial crisis of 2008 has had considerable impact on the conduct of monetary policy. Before the recession, monetary policy was largely based on a New Consensus-type macroeconomic model and it targeted inflation via a Taylor […]

The case for central bank independence is built on an intellectual two-step. Step one argues there is a problem of inflation prone government. Step two argues independence is the solution to that problem. This paper challenges that case and shows it is based on false politics and economics. The paper argues central bank independence is […]