“The cemeteries are full of indispensable people.” In one form or another, this observation has been made many times over the last century or more. What is true of people is true of nations. In the past 25 years or so it was often claimed (and , admittedly, often denied) that, in the modern world, the United States was the “indispensable nation”. Whatever the rights and wrong of this claim, it has become obvious that, whether we like it or not, the rest of the world will now have to...

from Dean Baker Donald Trump is the world’s leading expert in getting things wrong and one thing he gets wrong bigly is the value of the U.S. domestic market. Trump seems to believe that our domestic market is incredibly valuable to the rest of the world and that access to it should allow him to extort large concessions from the rest of the world. This is a seriously wrong understanding of the world economy. The basic point is a simple one, when other countries sell us things, they are...

Looks like DOGE/Elon trying to reduce top line by $1T by September… US GDP $27T/yr…. So no multiple that’s a direct 3.7% … I guess they think they’re only reducing govt spending on unnecessary regulatory activities or something… climate nutter stuff etc… maybe the “Argentina model”… ?Reducing the federal deficit from $2T to $1T in FY2026 requires cutting an average of ~$4B/day in projected 2026 spending from now to Sept 30. That would still result in a ~$1T deficit, but economic growth...

I was interviewed by Max Jerneck for his podcast, and he alerted me to this figure (see below), which apparently come from the Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala, that has made the rounds, and has been used by right-wing think tanks. If you were to believe this, real wages fell after Milei's assumption. This is obviously sheer ignorance, or, more likely, an attempt to misinform and create doubts about the real effects of his policies. I had read a recent report by Centro de...

Podcasts What’s new in the fight for workers’ rights Ayeisha Thomas-Smith is joined by Kate Bell By Ayeisha Thomas-Smith 31 January 2025 Do you work from home? Then you’re probably not doing proper work, and you’re causing the UK’s economic...

Publications Forecasting a better future The case for a 'bucket approach' to fiscal multipliers and more By Dominic Caddick, Chaitanya Kumar 31 January 2025 Download the report...

Today, we solve the ‘Case of the Missing Report’. Recall from – The Case of the Missing Report – Part 1 – that the Asian Development Bank published a report I had written (with Randy Wray and Jesus Felipe) – A Reinterpretation of Pakistan’s ‘economic crisis’ and options for policymakers (draft version) – in June 2009 as part of work I was undertaking for the Bank at the time on economic development in Central Asia. The report was published on June 1, 2009 as an official ADB Economics Working...

With so many other countries going to crypto, wouldn’t it be ironic if the euro turns out to be the most stable currency? 

To the co-authors of “Post-growth: the science of wellbeing within planetary boundaries,” published in The Lancet Planetary Health:Thank you so much for the valuable work you have all done surveying the field of post-growth research. In the conclusion of your article, you observe "...we still know little about the politics that could make post-growth transitions possible in reality." I would like to address that issue here. While I don't presume to have all the answers, I believe I can help...

Art degree morons as usual can’t understand the Accounting abstractions… think NVDA has to be shipping the REAL units to where the Accounting ABSTRACTIONS are recorded…Like I guess they think we’re importing $300B net of Guinness, Jameson and potatoes from Ireland…It’s the same as the current Trump “tariffs!” womanish soap opera… A LOT of people are going to get that wrong for the same reasons…Looks like $NVDA GPUs have never been physically in Singapore So, according to $NVDA 10-Q...