The debate between Tom Palley and Steve Kamin on central bank independence and the several rescues of banks after financial crises, including the more recent rescue of the Silicon Valley Bank.[embedded content]Tom suggests that central banks are dominated by financial interests, and that this has been a problem. At the same time he avoids the libertarian notion of free banking, and suggests that a central bank at the service of public interest would require alternative views, I would...

He had beliefs to do with promoting the dominion scandal. Why is Maria Bartiromo still there? Why is Judge Jeanine Pirro still there? Why is Susan Scott, CEO of Fox News, still there?

Twist in my sobriety .[embedded content]

Four week average of initial claims drops below “yellow flag” level, for now  – by New Deal democrat While GDP will get the lion’s share of attention today (and I’ll post on it later on), by and large it is a look in the rear view mirror. The more forward-looking data is weekly jobless claims. This week initial claims declined -16,000 last week to 230,000. The more important 4 week average declined -4,000 to 236,000. Continuing claims, with...

I was doing some Angry Bear housecleaning and ran across this post by Barkley questioning whether trump would leave the presidency upon after his loss. This post was written by Barkley November 10th. In keeping with his requirements to wait on posting Econospeak’s commentaries, AB was to wait a day or two. Barkley had a series of posts along similar lines about trump. Of course, we all know trump did not attempt a Coup. Indeed, he incited an...

Understanding Financial Crises

voting 217 Yes 215 no the House has passed a bill which would increase the debt ceiling, slash spending, and repeal (most of) the IRA. This ends the fun period when we could laugh at Republicans for demanding that Biden negotiate without themselves making a bargaining proposal. The bill is horrible. I am a Democrat in disarray trying to figure out how to respond (and who should respond). One possibility is to stick to the position that there...

Publications Beyond the bottom line How green industrial policy can drive economic change and speed up climate action By Sebastian Mang, Dominic Caddick 28 April 2023 Download the report...

What more can I tell you?

from Dean Baker Last week, David Brooks had a column that was quite literally a celebration of American capitalism. He makes a number of points showing the U.S. doing better than other wealthy countries over the last three decades. While his numbers are not exactly wrong, they are somewhat misleading. (I see Paul Krugman beat me to the punch, so I’ll try not to be completely redundant.) Brooks points to the faster GDP growth in the United States than in other wealthy countries. As Krugman...