The macro numbers just don't add up. I think a lot of this is hysteria and unnecessary contagion. Trade and invest using the concepts of MMT. Get a 30-day free trial to MMT Trader. https://www.pitbulleconomics.com Mike Norman Twitter https://twitter.com/mikenorman Mike Norman Economics: https://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com/ Understanding the Daily Treasury Statement video course. https://www.pitbulleconomics.com/understanding-daily-treasury-statement-video-course/?s2-ssl=yes

What is missing from the debates over monetary policy today is the understanding that the Fed was not established to control inflation. It was created to prevent financial crises by acting as a lender of last resort in times of distress. Indeed, that’s exactly what the Fed is doing now — opening up its lending facilities to banks in need. But rather than focus on maintaining financial stability, the Fed has become obsessed with controlling inflation, something it cannot really do without...

On the benefits — and dangers — of reading 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...

I. PreambleIn 2022, the vicious cycle of democratic pretensions, dysfunctional politics and a divided society continued in the United States. Problems such as money politics, identity politics, social rifts, and the gulf between the rich and poor worsened. The maladies afflicting American democracy deeply infected the cells of US politics and society, and further revealed US governance failure and institutional defects.Despite mounting problems at home, the US continued to behave with a...

People read much into the implications of currency swaps that is not there. Much ado about nothing. Brian explains why in terms that are simple to understand.Why swaps?You either have capital controls, or you have central banks acting as swap dealers of the last resort, or you have periodic meltdowns of the currency system. Pick your poison.Bond Economics Currency Swap Facility CommentBrian Romanchuk

Some numbers (nominal and adjusted). Short.A Son of the New American RevolutionGDP Data ConfusionGuest Post by Observer R

Everybody in the heterodox community, in the United States at least, seems very happy with Jon Stewart's performance interviewing Larry Summers. And of course, Stewart is very good at this kind of stuff. But in all fairness, in this he is canalizing some of the ideological views of the left, which on inflation are fundamentally incorrect. Stewart presents at the beginning the adding up theory of inflation, thirty percent demand, twenty five percent wages and the rest corporate greed. His...

Using counterfactuals in causal inference I have argued that there are four major problems in the way of using the counterfactual account for causal inference. Of the four, I argued that the fourth — the problem of indeterminacy — is likely to be the most damaging: To the extent that some of the causal principles that connect counterfactual antecedent and consequent are genuinely indeterministic, the counterfactual will be of the “might have been” and not...