Back to the Future? Lessons on Inequality, Labor Markets, and Conflict from the Gilded Age
Warning to capitalists: the high levels of inequality of the deregulated Gilded Age led to concerted and effective pushback by workers.
Read more...Category Archives: Economic fundamentals
Revealed: ECB Secretly Hands Cash to Select Corporations
Is the ECB’s latest bond-buying program creating corporate winners and losers?
Read more...Dirk Bezemer and Michael Hudson: Finance is Not the Economy
Picking apart the conflation of real capital with finance capital and explaining how that confusion undermines sound analysis of the crisis.
Read more...Care Work as the Work of the Future
Economists despair about the impact of technology on jobs. They underestimate the need for care work, as in services for the young and aged.
Read more...Expansionary Fiscal Consolidation Myth
Why fiscal consolidation, which is neoliberal economists’ pet idea that austerity increases growth, is all wet.
Read more...What Do US Wages Tell Us About the Business Cycle?
Does the US business cycle have longer to run?
Read more...The Elite “Let Them Eat Education” Fallacy
Debunking the idea that better education is an adequate remedy for inequality and high unemployment.
Read more...Banks Pushing Back Against Negative Interest Rates With Threat to Store Cash
Banks are looking into holding more cash as central banks threaten to drive interest rates even further into negative terrain.
Read more...Top Marginal Tax Rates and Real Economic Growth, Part 1
This post looks at the relationship between the top marginal income tax bracket and growth in real GDP per capita (from NIPA table 7.1) in the subsequent year or years.
Read more...How the Fed Promoted “Financial Dominance” and Shadow Banking by Promoting Repo
Yves here. This is a very important post, and sadly I’m not providing it with the introduction and commentary it warrants because I am scrambling to get organized to get out of town. By Daniela Gabor is associate professor in economics at the University of the West of England, Bristol. Originally published at the Institute […]
Read more...Hot Money and Financial Activity in Commodity Exporters
A new World Bank paper looks at the interaction between commodity prices and commodity exporters. It’s a story about hot money.
Read more...Central Banks Pushing on Strings Again
More proof that central banks have lost the plot.
Read more...Wolf Richter: Declining Productivity Bodes Ill for Growth and Jobs
Why worries about falling US productivity are well-founded.
Read more...Austria: A Case Study of How Offshoring Lowered Growth
Austria illustrates that over time, offshoring reduces the skill levels of domestic workers and even organizations.
Read more...Bill Gross Chides CalPERS for Its 7.5% Returns Assumption; Illinois Set to Lower Target
More and more experts are taking CalPERS and other public pension funds to task over their barmy return assumptions.
Read more...