Tag Archives: Uncategorized

from Dean Baker Globalization and technology are routinely cited as drivers of inequality over the last four decades. While the relative importance of these causes is disputed, both are often viewed as natural and inevitable products of the working of the economy, rather than as the outcomes of deliberate policy. In fact, both the course of globalization and the distribution of rewards from technological innovation are very much the result of policy. Insofar as they have led to greater...

This should have been doing better by now, indicating that, in general, unspent income is still not being sufficiently offset by deficit spending, public or private: Highlights Flat is the takeaway from the September durable goods report where orders slipped 0.1 percent, a lower-than-expected result offset however by an upward revision to August which now stands at plus 0.3 percent. A 45 percent monthly downswing for defense aircraft is a special factor in the September...

A bit fewer than expected and prior month revised down bringing it more in line with permits: A nice uptick here, but as per the chart too soon to say the downtrend has reversed. And notice, again, how employment is faltering as has been the case in most of the surveys: Highlights Markit Economics’ U.S. samples are reporting a sharp upturn in business this month, first with Monday’s manufacturing report and now with the service flash where the headline index is up nearly 3...

Still negative: Should hold up as long as the euro stays relatively weak due to portfolio selling, which has been all but continuous for the last couple of years or so. At some point ‘fundamentals’ including relative prices and the current account surplus ‘drain the swamp’ and take over: Back down again: Back down: Still negative:

from Asad Zaman We cannot understand the world around us without a sophisticated understanding of the complex but intimate relationship between knowledge and power. One of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, Michel Foucault, crafted a radically different understanding of this relationship. Instead of seeing power in brute force, he saw power as being the ability to shape knowledge. To understand Foucault, we must let go of our comfortable and conventional...

from Mark Weisbrot The international media has provided a constant fusillade of stories and editorials (not always easily distinguished from each other) about the collapse of the Venezuelan economy for some time now. Shortages of food and medicine, hours-long lines for basic goods, incomes eroded by triple-digit inflation, and even food riots have dominated press reports. The conventional wisdom has a set of predictable narratives to explain the current economic mess. “Socialism” has...

Thomas Kuhn once famously described textbooks as the vehicle by which students learn how to do “normal science” in an academic discipline. Economic textbooks clearly fulfil this function, but the pity is that what passes for “normal” in economics barely deserves the appellation “science”. Most introductory economics textbooks present a sanitised, uncritical rendition of conventional economic theory, and the courses in which these textbooks are used do little to counter this mendacious...

mosler-presentation-terni-2016-10-21

This paper explores lock-in and lock-out via economic policy. It argues policy decisions may near-irrevocably change the economy’s structure, thereby changing its performance. That causes changed economic outcomes concerning distribution of wealth, income and power, which in turn induces locked-in changes in political outcomes. That is a different way of thinking about policy compared to [...]

from Dean Baker The establishment is trying to pull a big one over on the public yet again. One of the designated topics for the last presidential debate goes under the heading, “debt and entitlements.” This should have people upset for several reasons. The first is simply the use of the term “entitlements.” While this has a clear meaning to policy wonks, it is likely that most viewers won’t immediately know that “entitlements” means the Social Security and Medicare their parents receive....