Daniel Kahneman, who was, along with Elinor Ostrom, one of the very few non-economists to win the Economics Nobel award, has died aged 90. There are lots of obituaries out there, so I won’t try to summarise his work. Rather, I’ll talk about how it influenced my own academic career. When I was an undergraduate, in the late 1970s, economic analysis of decisions under uncertainty was dominated by the expected utility (EU) theory of von Neumann and Morgenstern. The mean-variance...

 – by New Deal democrat The divergence in the trends between initial and continuing claims continued this week, as the former continued their somnolent good news, while the latter had a slightly disconcerting pop. Initial claims declined -2,000 to 210,000, and the four week average declined -750 to 211,000. On the other hand, with the usual one week delay, continuing claims rose 24,000 to 1.819 million: The first two are in the same range...

 "Finding the Money" Trailer.DeadlineGiant Pictures & Kanopy Acquire ‘Finding The Money,’ Documentary That Explodes Myth Of Deficit SpendingMatthew Carey

I’m on my way back to Nairobi. I spent the last 3 days in Rome at a UN expert group meeting on SDG2 (Ending Hunger) at the FAO, in preparation for the 2024 High-Level Political Forum that will be help in July 2024. It was a bit ironic that the FAO building where we held the meeting used to be the Italian Ministry of the Colonies under the Mussolini regime, and my main message to the FAO was about decolonizing the global economic architecture is a prerequisite for achieving the SDGs,...

For years, those who want selective access to government spending benefits (like the military-industrial complex and other parasitic sectors), while claiming the government cannot afford to provide adequate income support to the most disadvantaged citizens have used various ruses to give an air of authority or legitimacy to their claims. So in the UK, the lie in 1976 by the then Labour government that it was going to have to borrow from the IMF to stay solvent has been regularly wheeled out....

Douglas from Applied MMT is back for part 3. Douglas’ Research and Analysis is built upon an MMT and Modern Banking framework. If you are an active investor or trader you’ll find the research and analysis provided invaluable as you navigate the markets. Check out his Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mmtmacrotrader

The Fascinating Paradox of Australian Accents

The man who never wavered — Alan Bates In science, courage is to follow the motto of enlightenment and Kant’s dictum — Sapere Aude!  To use your understanding, dare to think for yourself and question ‘received opinion,’ authority or orthodoxy. In our daily lives, courage is the capability to confront fear, as when in front of the powerful and mighty, not to step back, but stand up for one’s right not to be humiliated or abused. As when Alan Bates decided to...

Marx Reveals Source of Capitalist Profit

Back when we lived in Chapel Hill NC, we made a few trips to the Outer Banks where my wife had an uncle who built fishing boats in Buxton NC. Back then, nobody was talking about sea levels rising because of global warming and yet it was obvious back then (early 1980s) that these sandy beaches were ephemeral and the buildings that overlooked them were at risk. The iconic Hatteras Lighthouse had to be moved away from the encroaching ocean back in...