Michael Hudson: P is for Ponzi
Yves here. This is the latest entry in Michael Hudson’s Insider’s Economics Dictionary. Enjoy!
Read more...Category Archives: The dismal science
Philip Pilkington: Misdirection – Galbraith on Thomas Piketty’s New Book on Capital
Yves here. The best review so far on Thomas Piketty’s new book Capital in the Twentieth Century is by Jamie Galbraith, and we’ve featured it in Links. But the article itself is long and a bit wonky, so Pilkington’s recap is a useful distillation of Galbraith’s piece.
Read more...Bill Black: Deflation Dementia
Yves here. This piece by Bill Black not only does a great job of kneecapping some typically poor MSM reporting, but it’s also valuable as a high-level overview of the insanity of European economic policies.
Read more...Understanding the Confidence Fairy
Why you should be skeptical when economists and policy-makers talk about the value of reducing uncertainty which is code for invoking the confidence fairy.
Read more...Was Marx Right?
We participated in a Room for Debate forum at the New York Times, on the topic of “Was Marx Right?” Readers are likely to say, “But of course!” Yet Marx had such a large opus and his forecasts were so bold that any fair reading has to come to more nuanced conclusion.
Read more...Philip Pilkington: How Krugman’s Addiction to the ISLM Model Has Led to Repeated Bad Forecasts
Some people often ask why I complain about Krugman. “Hey Phil, Krugman is a good guy. He likes government spending. You like government spending. Therefore you must like Krugman,” says our budding young Socrates. Well, I’ll tell you why….
Read more...The Government Hack Trying to Squash Discussion of Government Corruption – Cass Sunstein – Doesn’t Understand BASIC Math Or Law
Yves here. This piece is heated, but looking at Cass Sunstein’s work does that to people.
Read more...Has Anglo-American Capitalism Run Out of Strategies?
In this Real News Network interview, George Irvin, research professor at the University of London takes a broad historical perspective to show how the rise of a low-wage, debt driven economy and the pressure to reduce the role of government have painted Anglo-Saxon capitalism in a corner.
Read more...These Charts Show What is Wrong With American Capitalism
For the last 30 years, neoliberals have fixated on a simple program: “Get government out of the way,” which meant reduce taxes and regulations. Business will invest more, which will produce a higher growth rate and greater prosperity for all. The belief was that unfettered capitalism could solve all ills.
That’s not how this children’s story is turning out.
Read more...Rent in a Warming World
What’s rent got to do with climate change? More than you might think.
Read more...Philip Pilkington: Thinking Makes It So – The IMF Bailout of the UK in 1976 and the Rise of Monetarism
Monetarism began it’s rise to world prominence in the ever-conservative Bundesbank in 1974. But it would be the government of Margaret Thatcher in the UK, elected in 1979, that would truly launch monetarism in central banking. After Thatcher’s monetarist experiment undertaken between 1979 and 1984 every economics student would be taught to recite the various monetary aggregates by heart for at least a decade or two.
This is what accounts for the monetarist bent we see in the economists of the last generation. Basically any economist trained between roughly 1980 and 1995 would be heavily exposed to monetarist dogma. And only those that read alternative accounts of money creation — namely, the theory of endogenous money — would be fully immunised. This explains, for example, why certain economists that champion Keynesian policies — like Paul Krugman — actually speak in monetarist tones.
Read more...Seeking Reader Input on the Outlook for the Economy
Damsel in distress!
Read more...Gaius Publius: Neoliberalism, “Just Desserts,” and the Post-Climate-Crisis Economy
Gaius examines the connections between neoliberalism and the convulsions that climate change will bring to the world.
Read more...Philip Pilkington: Keynes and Loanable Funds
A seldom-noticed book review sheds new light on Keynes’ critique of loanable funds theory.
Read more...Tax Havens Make US and Europe Look Poorer than They Are, Exaggerate Size of “Global Imbalances”
Peculiarly, despite the importance of tax havens, a pathbreaking paper published in 2013 by Gabriel Zucman of the Paris School of Economics, The Missing Wealth of Nations: Are Europe and the U.S. Net Debtors or Net Creditors? (hat tip Dikaios Logos) has received perilous little attention. Perhaps that’s because, among other things, it undercuts the Bernanke-flattering claim that “global imbalances” were a major driver of the financial crisis.
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