MMT is, first and foremost, a balance sheet approach to macroeconomics. At its very core lie reserve accounting, then deposit accounting, and then sectoral balances accounting. There is very little behaviour in any of this. Equilibrium rules as all balances balance – in both flows and stocks – and there are no assumptions apart from the existence of a central bank, a Treasury, a banking system and some households and firms. MMT can only be learned by mastering its balance...

Recently, Robert Lucas, who was called an economist, died. This is not about him, but about his kind of economics as tweets and obituaries show that it is not yet generally understood what kind of science the neoclassical macro-economist like him produced. Their most egregious failure: after decades of work, they do not even have a shimmer of anything which could pass for a neoclassical way to estimate the macro economy, even when their ideas are squarely at odds with the macro economy...

My latest piece in Independent Australia over the fold OPPOSITION LEADER Peter Dutton’s call for nuclear power, made as part of his Budget reply speech, should not be taken too seriously. In its nine years in office, the L-NP took no steps to promote nuclear energy, not even an attempt to repeal the largely symbolic ban imposed by John Howard in 1998. Dutton’s renewed call can best be understood as a dog whistle to the climate denialists who dominate the party’s base,...

New paper by Adriana Calcagno. From the abstract:This paper focuses on the intellectual path through which Raúl Prebisch placed industrialization at the center of his economic thought and policy recommendations. It shows how the changing international  context  of  the  1930s  and  1940s  made  him  depart  from  laissez-faire  and  adopt counter-cyclical policies, gradually abandoning the agrarian export-led growth model and finally embracing industrialization as the new growth strategy for...

lol… the good ole’ “crowding out!” Art degree thesis … yo it’s probably going to cause a short term >$500B reserve drain at Depositories …. ?Markets will suffer a $1 trillion aftershock once a debt limit deal is struck A supply burst to restock Treasury 's cash will raise short-term funding rates and tighten the screws on the US eco just as it’s on the cusp of recessionBy @mccormicklizhttps://t.co/WeW92l0b25— Saleha Mohsin (@SalehaMohsin) May 18, 2023

Why hasn’t he been here? It was maybe a decade ago when I was working for Stone Ridge, an automotive company. I was in Boston visiting a plant and picking up on their purchasing of connectors I was also cost modeling those connectors. While there, I took an evening to meet Dan Crawford for the first time at a bar which had outside tables. I know we were sampling the beer and maybe we grabbed a burger, I was new to Angry Bear and Dan gave me a...

Få lobbyorganisationer i landet är mäktigare än Svenska Bankföreningen, som satt i system att rekrytera ex-politiker till vd-posten. Denna organisation och dess inhyrda lakejer har systematiskt motarbetat alla försök till ökade krav på branschen, inte sällan med hjälp av domedagsscenarier där Sverige påstås regrediera till bronsåldern om inte samhället värnar storbankernas lönsamhet. Det är en pr-kampanj som rönt lysande framgångar. Sedan millennieskiftet har de sammanlagda...

A Fed nightmare? Housing permits and starts confirm improvement from bottom, multi-unit construction sets new record high  – by New Deal democrat Housing construction is perhaps the single most important method by which the Fed seeks to translate its interest rate policy into effects on the economy.  To be blunt, the Fed’s sledgehammer attempt via one of the most aggressive rate hike campaigns in its history appears to be on the verge of...

This is an interesting commentary by David Zipper in his talk with Henry Grabar. Henry is the author of “How Parking Explains the World.” The AB title is from two questions. David was asking Henry to explain. If you have lived in or near a large city like Chicago, you are always on the hunt for a parking space unless there is a commercial garage around. If you are living in the suburbs and have to go into the city, parking is expensive. I now...

March total business sales strongly suggest that real total sales have entered a downturn  – by New Deal democrat Today’s final significant economic report was total business sales for March. This is a nominal figure; the “real” number won’t be updated until personal income and spending is reported for April in two weeks. And here, the report was a clear negative. Not only did total March sales decline -1.1%, but January was revised down by...