The panel I am on is shifting its topic a bit to include some discussion of the latest crisis. Although this is more topical, it is not exactly moving in a direction that fits my knowledge of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). I see two broad issues. The first is the discussion of bank failures (so far!) which I have a limited ability to comment on. The second is more useful for a MMT debate: interest rate policy is not exactly as costless as neoclassical arguments suggest....Bond Economics...

1.0 Introduction I find the question in the title of this post hard to answer. I should probably say something about secondary literature, which I do not consider myself well-informed on. For purposes of this post, I ignore distinctions between socialism and communism. 2.0 Marx Wanted To Implement An Utopian Vision Of A Post-Capitalist Society You will sometimes find reactionaries assert that wherever Marxism was implemented, the government killed tens of millions. They are too ignorant...

Cathie and Laffer with a pretty good breakdown… but it’s still tainted by their monetarism… you have to filter that part out..[embedded content]

I have read enough on the bailing out of two banks (Silicon Valley Bank and the smaller Signature bank). in 2018, I had argued against increasing the $50 or $100 (?) billion limit to $250 billion. These were commercial banks which were allowed in 2008 to join with Wall Street banks to dabble in securities, Banks writing home mortgages had skipped the practice of registering them with the counties. Not a safe practice. Here we are in a situation where...

from Lars Syll As long as reading is for us the instigator whose magic keys have opened the door to those dwelling-places deep within us that we would not have known how to enter, its role in our lives is salutary.  It becomes dangerous, on the other hand, when, instead of awakening us to the personal life of the mind, reading tends to take its place, when the truth no longer appears to us as an ideal which we can realize only by the intimate progress of our own thought and the efforts of...

“France Is Furious”: Anger Grows at Macron for Raising Retirement Age as Millions Strike and Protest (rsn.org), Democracy Now. This is what happens when you let “the government” (“rich” taxpayers of a “progressive” tax) pay for your Social Security.  American Social Security was created “worker paid” by FDR exactly to avoid this (“so no damn politician can take it away from them”). And for more than 80 years that has worked.  but lately the...

With the exception of the One-handed Economist, quite a few of these consumerism and environmental articles show up in my In-Box. Some of them are actually quite good. In the past I did have some of them my In-Box Post. I thought this time I would break them out separately. Most of the are from Treehugger and Consumer Affairs. Consumerism: What is credit and how does it work? ConsumerAffairs, Jessica Render. People are getting credit from...

I have read an interesting reports in the last months that demonstrate there is a shift in thinking about inflation – away from the tired narratives that attempt to implicate excessive government spending, poorly contrived monetary policies (particularly quantitative easing) or drag in the usual suspect – excessive wage demands from workers. All of the usual narratives are very convenient frames in which those with economic power can extract more real income at the expense of the rest of us,...

My hit time will be sometime between 2 PM and 3 PM Eastern time. I’ll update you during the day.