Tag Archives: Uncategorized

from Dean Baker Last month Amazon joined Apple, becoming the second company in the world to have a $1 trillion market capitalization. Amazon’s accomplishment didn’t cause quite as much celebration as Apple’s – it pays to be number one – nonetheless this was treated as a milestone that all of us should view as good news. Actually, the celebratory coverage of both events demonstrated the incredibly ill-informed nature of much economic reporting in the United States. A big run-up in share...

from Thomas Palley Some progressive economists are now arguing for the idea of a Job Guarantee Program (JGP), and their advocacy has begun to gain political traction. For instance, in the US, Bernie Sanders and some other leading Democrats have recently signaled a willingness to embrace the idea. In a recent research paper I have examined the macroeconomics of such a program. Whereas a JGP would deliver real macroeconomic benefits, it also raises some significant troubling economic and...

There’s an exceptional opportunity for a bright and critical-minded economist who is as passionate about social justice and working on behalf of unions and working people as they are about working with spreadsheets: CLC Senior Economist. Application deadline September 21st.   More details and job posting here. Enjoy and share:

Some progressive economists are now arguing for the idea of a Job Guarantee Program (JGP), and their advocacy has begun to gain political traction. For instance, in the US, Bernie Sanders and some other leading Democrats have recently signaled a willingness to embrace the idea. In a recent research paper I have examined the macroeconomics [...]

This paper reconstructs the income – expenditure (IE) model to include a distinction between government purchases of output versus government production. The distinction has important consequences for output and employment multipliers. The paper also extends the IE model to incorporate a government job guarantee program (JGP), and the extended model illuminates the automatic stabilizer properties [...]

from David Ruccio Everyone, it seems, is writing their version of the lessons to be learned after the crash of 2008. And most of them are getting it wrong. Here, for the record, are some of the lessons I’ve taken from the crash: What has changed—and, equally significant, what hasn’t—during the past decade? Mainstream economists got globalization wrong The policy consensus on economics has not fundamentally changed Mainstream economics has fallen in the eyes of the public—and for good...

from Yanis Varoufakis Our new international movement will fight rising fascism and globalists Our era will be remembered for the triumphant march of a globally unifying rightwing – a Nationalist International – that sprang out of the cesspool of financialised capitalism. Whether it will also be remembered for a successful humanist challenge to this menace depends on the willingness of progressives in the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom as well as countries like...

This is an extract from an article written for The Times Literary Supplement From TLSThe international and financial dimensions of Keynes’ work are today neglected in favour of the laissez-faire economics that Keynes had so vigorously contested. His profession is dominated by economists concerned overwhelmingly with the activities of individuals, households and firms. Management of the macroeconomy and of financial globalization is left largely to investors and speculators in capital...

from Dean Baker Ten years ago we saw the culmination of a period of ungodly economic mismanagement with the collapse of Lehman Brothers and a full-fledged financial crisis. The folks who led us into this disaster rushed to do triage and tend to the most important problem: saving the bankrupt banks. They also had to cover their tracks. They insisted that the financial crisis was some sort of fluke event — a lot of bad things went wrong simultaneously — and who could have predicted or...