Ireland: a Recovery Built on Sand
How official statistics exaggerate Ireland’s performance, largely due to its status as a tax haven/offshore financial center.
Read more...Category Archives: The dismal science
Bill Black: AEI Pushes Government Propaganda Telling Women to Marry Schlubs
Why exhorting poor people to marry more often is right wing propaganda in lieu of real policies to address poverty.
Read more...A New Stability and Growth Pact? Let’s Drop the Technocratic Veil!
On how economic growth models constrain policy debates and choices among Eurocrats, and why that is no accident.
Read more...Is the Oil Price-GDP Link Broken?
Explanations of the oil price decline are starting to acknowledge deflationary factors, even though the “d” word seems to be outside the pale .
Read more...A Wake-Up Call on Climate Change and Clean Energy
Why 2017 could be an event horizon as far as climate change is concerned.
Read more...How Much Has Global Economic Power Really Shifted?
Why the shift in economic power from advanced to developing economies has not gone as far as most accounts would have you believe.
Read more...Marshall Auerback: Donald Trump Understands the Nexus Between Trade and Immigration
By linking immigration and trade, however crudely, Trump has exposed the broader paradox and inherent contradictions which lurk between the two.
Read more...Oxfam Report on Rent Seeking Among the Top Wealthy Reinforces Neoliberal Shibboleths
A well-meaning effort to analyze rent-seeking goes off the rails.
Read more...Good Booms, Bad Booms: Why Only Some Credit Booms End in a Crisis
Credit booms are not rare and usually precede financial crises. However, some end in a crisis while others do not. This column argues that credit booms start with an increase in productivity, which subsequently falls much faster during ‘bad booms’. When this decline is severe enough, it changes the informational regime in credit markets, leading to a drying up of credit. A crisis may be the result of an exhausted credit boom and not necessarily of a negative productivity shock.
Read more...Bill Black: Democrats Need to Give Up Being Deficit Hawks Even When it Feels Good Politically
Why do Democrats act like Republican wannabes with deficit scaremongering? Let us count the reasons: Wall Street, Pete Peterson, hatred of the poor…
Read more...The Hidden Health Costs of the Global Financial Crisis
Why the hidden health cost of the financial crisis will span decades.
Read more...Misunderstanding the Great Recession
How many of the textbook explanations of the Great Depression were proven wrong, yet despite that, were misapplied to the Great Recession.
Read more...Michael Hudson and Chris Hedges: The Real World Cost of Turning Classical Economics Upside Down
Classical economics recognized the costs of rent extraction, excessive borrowing, and encouraging speculation over commerce. Ideologues have turned those lessons on their head.
Read more...Assuming Away Unemployment and Trade Deficits from the TPP
It should come as no surprise that the Peterson Institute has managed to model the impact of the TPP so that it does not increase unemployment.
Read more...Michael Hudson on Debt Deflation, the Rentier Economy, and the Coming Financial Cold War
Michael Hudson speaks with Justin Ritchie on his favorite topics, such as debt deflation, austerity, classical economists on rentiers, and the coming financial cold war.
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