Yves here. Note how the need to pretend Deutsche Bank is not undercapitalized, mentioned in passing in this post, is playing into policy.
An interview by Yanis Varoufakis, Professor of Economics at the University of Athens, with Tomas Hirst of Pieria. Cross posted from Yanis Varoufakis’ blog.
Read more...By Philip Pilkington, a writer and research assistant at Kingston University in London. You can follow him on Twitter @pilkingtonphil
Some decades ago the British economist Joan Robinson – one of John Maynard Keynes’ most brilliant students who helped him with the original draft of his General Theory – half-jokingly referred to some of her colleagues as “Bastard Keynesians”. These colleagues were mostly American Keynesians, but there were a few British Bastard Keynesians too – such as John Hicks, who invented the now famous ISLM diagram. What Robinson was trying to say was that these so-called Keynesians were fatherless in the sense that they should not be recognised as legitimately belonging to the Keynesian family. The Bastard Keynesians, in turn, generally assumed that this criticism implied some sort of Keynesian fundamentalism on the part of the British school.
Such a misinterpretation exists to this day. The second and third generation Bastard Keynesians – which include many of those who generally collect under the title “New Keynesian” – have reinforced this criticism.
Read more...By lambert strether of Corrente. And we go to Happyville, instead of to Pain City. –Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow One of the things I hate most about ObamaCare is the vicious and relentless way that it creates first- and second-class citizens. ObamaCare does this by construction, of course: ObamaCare’s central concept of eligibility — the […]
Read more...It’s hard to know where to begin with a story up at the Wall Street Journal, Risk-Averse Culture Infects U.S. Workers, Entrepreneurs.
Read more...New Gallup polls shows that economic conservatism is down, social liberalism is up.
Read more...By Houses and Holes, who is a regular contributor at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and The Drum and is a former commentator at Business Spectator. He is also the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut. He edits MacroBusiness. Cross posted from MacroBusiness. Late last week, Society Generale published a […]
Read more...“So, resolutely turning her back upon the house, she set out once more down the path, determined to keep straight on till she got to the hill. For a few minutes all went on well, and she was just saying, ‘I really SHALL do it this time–‘ when the path gave a sudden twist and shook itself (as she described it afterwards), and the next moment she found herself actually walking in at the door. ‘Oh, it’s too bad!’ she cried. `I never saw such a house for getting in the way! Never!'” –Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
Paul Jay of the Real News Network interviews Jeff Faux, Founder and now Distinguished Fellow of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, DC. He is an activist, economist and writer, He has written extensively on issues from globalization to neighborhood development. His latest book is The Servant Economy; Where America’s Elite is Sending the Middle Class. Originally published at Real News Network.
A reasonably clear-eyed view of the Democrats, in simple language.
Read more...By Sell on News, a macro equities analyst. Originally posted at MacroBusiness.
Europe, Japan and America are printing money at an extraordinary rate. It has reduced the cost of debt to negligible levels. Usually this is explained with reference to what is happening in the conventional economy, but I suspect there may be another explanation. The systemic effects of the bizarre financial system that we have created, which is based on leverage. That leverage, which is thought of as debt, is not really what we mean by debt.
One of the features of the explosion of derivatives in the last 15 years, the rise of “meta money”, is that it was achieved through the creation of massive amounts of leverage. When Long Term Capital Management nearly destroyed the world financial system in 1998, it was done through a highly leveraged play on the rouble. LTCM was brought undone when Russia defaulted on its bonds.
Read more...If you hear a kind of whooshing, rushing noise, don’t worry—it’s not US jobs moving to China. Today’s great sucking sound is the sound of agricultural wealth being siphoned off into the global financial system.
Read more...The “March Against Monsanto” in 52 countries, an unapproved strain of its genetically modified wheat growing profusely in Oregon, cancelled wheat export orders…. A rough week for Monsanto. Now it threw in the towel in Europe where its deep pockets and mastery of lobbying had failed: “It’s counterproductive to fight against windmills,” it explained.
Read more...The head of Carrington, which is known as an established distressed debt investor and more recently, an early entrant in the single family home rental business, said this week it was no longer buying houses for lease because dumb money had ruined the market.
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