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from Lars Syll Mainstream economists do not believe that “countries that borrow in their own currency should not worry about government deficits because they can always create money to finance their debt.” Looking at the result from a survey, not a single economist agreed with that statement. If these economists had been right, we would see lots of governments running out of money in 2020 and 2021. After all, tax revenues collapsed, government spending was increased and accordingly public...

Scenes from the April employment report: the Fed just can’t kill the employment “beast”  – by New Deal democrat There’s no economic news this morning, so let’s take a closer look at some important trends from last Friday’s April jobs report . As I and many others wrote, an important theme was that the deceleration in job gains continued, as shown in this graph since January 2021 (note 222,000 is subtracted so that latest average is at zero...

Hobart’s new stadium can only make Tasmania’s housing crisis worse That’s the headline for my latest piece in The Conversation The Albanese government’s announcement it will provide $240 million for a new stadium in Hobart has not had the favourable reception it might have hoped. Those concerned with the proper operation of the federal system can point out that this kind of funding is the concern of state and local governments. Twitter, CC BY Concerns about process are...

from Asad Zaman The truth-sensing section of the brain is lobotomized by Friedman’s methodology, according to which wildly inaccurate assumptions lead to the most significant theoretical advances. But also, complete omission of power and class struggle makes it impossible to find solutions to our economic problems.[embedded content] Even though the current economic crisis in Pakistan has a simple cause, and an equally simple solution, policy debate in Pakistan focuses almost entirely on...

On this blog, I’ve stated that economics needs a ‘periodic table of prices’. There are many different prices beyond ‘market prices’: Cost prices, Administrated prices, Government prices, Factor prices and whatever. We need a grid which enables a classification. As I, clearly, do not seem to be your average inspiring charismatic direction setting economists, nobody followed up on my statements…. With this blog, I want to start my journey towards the framework, to boldly go from where...

  Το σχέδιο ΔΗΜΗΤΡΑ και οι οικονομικές  και πολιτικές αλχημείες του Γ.Βαρουφάκη Στ. Μαυρουδέας* & Θ.Χατζηραφαηλίδης** *καθηγητής Πολιτικής Οικονομίας, Τμήμα Κοινων. Πολιτικής, Πάντειο Πανεπιστήμιο ** υποψ. διδάκτορας, Τμήμα Οικονομικών, ΕΚΠΑ 1. Μηντιακοί «σωτήρες» σε καιρούς κρίσης Σε καιρούς κρίσης είναι συχνό το φαινόμενο εμφάνισης «σωτήρων» που υπόσχονται στις χειμαζόμενες λαϊκές μάζες την σωτηρία μέσω ευφάνταστων σχεδίων που θα μεταρρυθμίσουν το σύστημα και...

from Dean Baker We have long known that people in policy debates have difficulty with arithmetic and basic logic. We got yet another example today in the New York Times. The NYT profiled Geoffrey Hinton, who recently resigned as head of AI technology at Google. The piece identified him as “the godfather of AI.” The piece reports on Hinton’s concerns about the risks of AI, one of which is its implications for the job market. “He is also worried that A.I. technologies will in time upend the...

from Lars Syll Trygve Haavelmo — with the completion (in 1958) of the twenty-fifth volume of Econometrica — assessed the role of econometrics in the advancement of economics, and although mainly positive of the “repair work” and “clearing-up work” done, he also found some grounds for despair: We have found certain general principles which would seem to make good sense. Essentially, these principles are based on the reasonable idea that, if an economic model is in fact “correct” or “true,”...

Manufacturing and construction start out the month’s data to the negative side  – by New Deal democrat As usual, we start the month with reports on last month’s manufacturing, and construction from two months ago. The ISM manufacturing index has a 75 year record of being a very reliable leading indicator. According to the ISM, readings below 48 are consistent with an oncoming recession. And there, the news is not good. Not only has the index...

Yesterday was May Day, celebrated as the Labour Day public holiday here in Queensland*. And this week, appropriately enough I’m giving two presentations on the case for a four-day working week, one to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia, a business-oriented thinktank, and one to a parliamentary inquiry. I started writing a post about the prospect of a radical change in the relationship between workers and managers in the information economy, arising from the...