Apparently many influential Chinese economists are old-style Keynesians. There is no indication that they understand the basic principle of MMT —  a sovereign currency issuer that doesn't create financial obligation in currency it does not issue has a monopoly on its currency. This is especially important considering that China faces deflation rather than inflation.It's up to the Finance Ministry now. Wikipedia:The Ministry of Finance of the People's Republic of China (Chinese: 中华人民共和国财政部;...

Not MMT or economics as such but it is interesting in that Bill is an MMT founder so his stance on economic sociology is relevant. There was an interesting article in the UK Guardian the other day September 26, 2024) – Take it from me (and Keir Starmer) – you should never pretend to be more working class than you are. I don’t usually agree with the journalist but this article made me reflect on a lot of things.… Aside:The scrutiny arises because many of these “Labour people” appear to have...

– by New Deal democrat On Friday I highlighted the sharp positive revision to the personal saving rate.  That was a byproduct of a similar sharply higher revision to real personal income over the past two years. Here is what those revisions, to real personal disposable income, look like: Instead of being up 6.8% since just before the pandemic, real disposable income is up 10.6%. A historical look at the most salient economic indicators...

I did not know this. In Phoenix, etc. The subject of this commentary, “Invitation Homes” has approximately 7300 available homes for rent at prices which would equal a mortgage payment, property taxes, and the required homeowner’s insurance. I am sitting in the middle of all of this in AZ. The only reason I can think of for not buying is poor credit, bankruptcy, no funds to pay for a realtor, closing, etc. Even so, why would you mess with rental...

Race and sex as causes In the potential outcomes approach to causality, sex and race are often not considered causes since they do not fit within this counterfactual manipulation/intervention framework of causal inference. Sex and race cannot be directly manipulated or intervened on, which is said to make it difficult to conceptualize what the ‘potential outcomes’ would be for individuals if they were of a different sex or race.  This leaves us in a...

The widespread use of diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis (DTaP) vaccines, which protect against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis had driven whooping cough (pertussis) to the brink of extinction in the US.“The DTaP vaccine has been a cornerstone of childhood vaccination programs for decades, significantly reducing the incidence of diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis. Pertussis, in particular, is a highly contagious bacterial infection that can...

Author Sharon Lerner at ProPublica featured at MedPage Today AB: Bit of a rewrite to shorten this up for readers at Angry Bear. Just when you think agencies and the management team will do the right thing, they do not. Lower echelon scientists to make public the issues with the findings that were not theirs and made public as theirs. A watchdog’ ‘s findings of health harms from chemicals was blocked and the finders of fact were retaliated...

Nothing new under the sun here. Maintaining profits has been a matter of fact for decades. It became more popular under Pres. Reagan. Deere Reports Strong Profits Amid Layoffs of Workers Across Iowa, Des Moines Register August 13, 2024 and Kevin Baskins at the Des Moines Register reports on the Deere & Company layoffs across the state of Iowa. Layoffs happen when the economy turns down, companies make mistakes, or when a new competitor...

What economics can learn from epidemiology In mainstream economics nowadays there seems to be a broad consensus that one somehow can establish general truths about things by simply generalizing from lots of individual RCTs. But as is well-known among philosophers of science, this kind of inference, based on induction by simple enumeration, is highly flawed. And there are alternatives: The striking feature of paradigmatic epidemiology is that evidence comes...

Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please. I’m now using Substack as a blogging platform, and for my monthly email newsletter. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack. You can also follow me on Mastodon here. Share this:Like Loading...