Yves here. This post is elegant in the way it challenges the standard (sloppy) definitions of money. Even if you don’t agree, it will force you to think and articulate why you don’t agree (hopefully in a rigorous manner).
Read more...Why structural reforms will not ward off deflation in Europe.
Read more...Why the rise of collateral-based lending has been bad for our economic health.
Read more...A long standing pet peeve is how the use of figures has been fetishized in political discourse and in our society generally, to the point where many people too easily swayed by argument that invoke data (I discussed this phenomenon at length in the business context in a 2006 article for the Conference Board Review, […]
Read more...In the last month or so, I’ve seen some remarkably dubious studies flogged around what Lambert calls the Innertubes, all ringing changes on the same themes: outsized pay for those at the top is a reflection of a state of nature. Fortunately, a new study from Lawrence Mishel and Alyssa Davis of the Economic Policy Institute has done the heavy lifting of shredding new, creative defenses of out-of-control CEO pay.
Read more...An economics professor rails against Pope Francis for daring to point out that we don’t live in the best of all possible worlds.
Read more...Problems in the banking sector played a seriously damaging role in the Great Recession. In fact, they continue to. Macroeconomic models failed to explain the interaction between banks and the macro economy. The problem lies with thinking that banks create loans out of existing resources. Instead, they create new money in the form of loans. The traditional model greatly understates bank and macroeconomic risk.
Read more...It’s now becoming cutting edge conventional wisdom that oversized financial service industries are bad for your economic health. Yet the media is only occasionally and timidly is willing to say that what is good for Jamie Dimon is bad for the rest of us.
Read more...As local food has grown, so have the number of critics who claim that locavores have a dilemma. Are they right?
Read more...Why both Keynes and Minsky regarded low interest rates as poor policy.
Read more...As Greece’s cash crunch continues and its negotiations are moving slowing and tending towards an impasse, it becomes more and more likely that the beleaguered borrower will issue some sort of scrip in order to fund operations while remaining in the Eurozone. How and how well might that work?
Read more...A 2004 book by Martin Wolf provided the intellectual foundation for the competitiveness fad. Ironically, Wolf debunked his own thesis in it.
Read more...A new study tries to justify high pay for supposedly top performers. But all it really does is prove that feedback loops are powerful.
Read more...An important element of how income inequality is becoming institutionalized in the US.
Read more...It should come as no surprise that real estate kingpins buy political favors on a regular basis. A new study estimates the payoff.
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