Michael Hudson on Parasitic Financial Capitalism
An interview with Michael Hudson on his latest book, Killing the Host, which focuses on the destruction wrought by financial capitalism.
Read more...Category Archives: Macroeconomic policy
Frances Coppola: The Great Yield Divergence
Puzzling over the Great Divergence of real and nominal yields. Ever since the Great Depression, nominal yields have been persistently above real yields Yet in the previous 200 years, despite periods of fiat currency and high inflation, real and nominal yields didn’t diverge. Why do they now?
Read more...Tony Benn’s Ten Minute History of Neoliberalism
A must-watch speech by the great British socialist Tony Benn.
Read more...Greece: No Lessons Learned
Greece, which has undertaken the most severe austerity, has experienced the deepest economic contraction. But the policy quackery continues.
Read more...Contemporary Capitalism: Neoliberal Capitalism, Financialized Capitalism, or Globalized Capitalism?
Why “neoliberal” is the framework that best describes our new, post 1980 form of capitalism.
Read more...Frances Coppola: Rethinking Government Debt and Monetary Sovereignity
Debunking the uniformed and regularly hysterical mainstream treatment of government debt and deficits.
Read more...Corbynomics 101: A Guide to People’s QE (PQE)
Why the three big charges commonly made against Corbyn’s “People’s Quantitative Easing” or PQE, are all wet.
Read more...Credit Rating Agencies and Brazil: S&P as Neoliberal Enforcer
Mind you, the rating agencies are far from the only neoliberal enforcers as far as emerging economies are concerned. But it is nevertheless instructive to compare an official rationale with data.
Read more...David Kotz: Understanding Contemporary Capitalism, Part I
“Neoliberalism,” or more accurately neoliberal capitalism, is a form of capitalism in which market relations and market forces operate relatively freely and play the predominant role in the economy. That is, neoliberalism is not just a set of ideas, or an ideology, as it is typically interpreted by those analysts who doubt the relevance or importance of this concept for explaining contemporary capitalism. Under neoliberalism, non-market institutions – such as the state, trade unions, and corporate bureaucracies – play a limited role. By contrast, in “regulated capitalism” such as prevailed in the post-World War II decades – in the United States and other industrial capitalist economies – states, trade unions, and corporate bureaucracies played a major role in regulating economic activity, confining market forces to a lesser role.
Read more...Doug Smith: Labor Day? Let’s Tell The Truth And Call It “Assets Day”
It’s not for nothing that Ambrose Bierce wrote in The Devil’s Dictionary: “Labor: One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.”
Read more...Soft Power Raises Exports
A nation’s hard power is based on its ability to coerce, while its soft power depends on the attractiveness of its culture, political ideals, and policies. This column shows that a country’s soft power has measureable effects on its exports. Countries that are admired for their positive global influence export more, holding other things constant.
Read more...Louis Proyect: A Brief Response to Joe Firestone on IT/Grexit
Why believing that there must be an easy way for Greece to pull of a Grexit does not make it so.
Read more...Greek Debt Sustainability: The Devil is in the Tails
The debate over Greek debt sustainability is muddied by the fact that different analysts use different definitions. But once you use realistic assumptions, as in “tails risks” are actually pretty likely, Greek debt is obviously not “sustainable”.
Read more...Will the Germans Derail the Tentative Greek Third Bailout?
Human dynamics, which over time played right into the Germans’ and other hardliners’ hands in the earlier chapters of the Greek bailout talks, may now be working against them.
Read more...No, Inflation Doesn’t Erode the Burden of Debts
Inflation doesn’t reduce the burden of debt, rather it may (or may not) accompany a rise in nominal worker income.
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