Saturday quiz – July 21, 2012 – answers and discussion

Here are the answers with discussion for yesterday’s quiz. The information provided should help you understand the reasoning behind the answers. If you haven’t already done the Quiz from yesterday then have a go at it before you read the answers. I hope this helps you develop an understanding of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and its application to macroeconomic thinking. Comments as usual welcome, especially if I have made an error.

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Productivity and the response of firms to the business cycle

I am now using Friday’s blog space to provide draft versions of the Modern Monetary Theory textbook that I am writing with my colleague and friend Randy Wray. We expect to complete the text by the end of this year. Comments are always welcome. Remember this is a textbook aimed at undergraduate students and so the writing will be different from my usual blog free-for-all. Note also that the text I post is just the work I am doing by way of the first draft so the material posted will not represent the complete text. Further it will change once the two of us have edited it.

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Europe – one step forward … but so many backward

I am in transit most of today and so have very limited time to write. An ECB Executive Board member, one Jörg Asmussen, gave a speech at the European Policy Centre in Brussels on July 17, 2012 – Building deeper economic union: what to do and what to avoid – where he admitted that the European policy leaders “had made mistakes in the way economic policies and governance were managed inside the monetary union”. I thought that was an understatement but credit for the admission. However, his speech was then steered towards “how best to” strengthen “(p)olicies and governance” – “(w)hat to do and what to avoid”. When he mentioned that the “six pack” and the Fiscal Compact constituted “significant progress” towards what to do and what to avoid I concluded he hasn’t learned much at all from the huge mistakes that the policy elites in Europe have made. The suggestion for a fiscal union is definitely a step forward but the way in which this idea is being constructed represents several steps backwards. The Europeans seem intent on extinguishing their democracies.

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Whatever else they say – they all know that public spending cuts are bad

As an outsider, US Presidential campaigns are very curious events. But that is not my topic today. Well it sort of is my topic. The US President has recently visited Virginia – a place where defense spending appears to be highly concentrated. Various senior Republicans decided to give the President a lesson in economics. The only problem is that the lesson seems to run counter to what their main hope – Mitt Romney – is trying to say. In fact, they all got themselves tangled up in a logical mess. But the truth that emerges is that – whatever else they say – everyone of them knows that public spending cuts will damage the economy. They also all know – whatever else they say – that at this present time – with private spending so weak – that such a slowdown will be disastrous. They also know that the American people are pretty easily duped by conservative talk and religious invocation. And that is the way they plan to get power. What happens to the unemployed is just a side-issue it seems. Makes you wonder what went wrong with public education in America (that these characters can be taken seriously)!

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The CON merchants who buttress the neo-liberal ideology

Two things led to this blog today. First, the IMF has once again been lecturing the world on economic policy. In the Global Financial Stability Report and the World Economic Outlook Update – both released yesterday (July 16, 2012) the IMF has downgraded their growth forecasts again yet is hanging on to the myth that austerity is the path to resolution and that the deficit reductions underway are appropriately growth supporting. Doesn’t anyone in the IMF understand logic? One cannot on the one hand admit that growth is falling below previous forecasts yet on the other hand claim that policy which caused growth to slump is growth supporting. Second, Anna Schwartz died in New York on June 21, 2012. The two events can be linked.

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US government is undermining its own people

I read an article in the UK Guardian over the weekend (July 14, 2012) – Scranton, Pennsylvania: where even the mayor is on minimum wage – which told a sorry tale of municipal bankruptcy in the US. There was an earlier story in the UK Daily Mail (June 26, 2012) – Camden, city of ruins: Depressing images of once-thriving metropolis reduced to decaying, crime-ridden rubble – that traversed similar terrain, except carried a number of graphic shorts of urban decay in the face of persistent recession. What these articles tell me is that the US Federal system has failed its people. The rigid balanced budget rules at the State level and the ideologically-driven unwillingness of the Federal government to use its currency powers to redress the damage caused by the application of those rules at the State level have combined to create wastelands across the urban landscape in the US. The damage that is being caused each day will haunt that nation for years to come. Meanwhile, the ideologues are trumpeting a new book about 4 per cent solutions that claim large-scale government cutbacks are needed to re-create the US as a great nation. From afar, one can only conclude that the US glory days (whatever they were) are passing – probably more quickly than they care to acknowledge.

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Saturday quiz – July 14, 2012 – answers and discussion

Here are the answers with discussion for yesterday’s quiz. The information provided should help you understand the reasoning behind the answers. If you haven’t already done the Quiz from yesterday then have a go at it before you read the answers. I hope this helps you develop an understanding of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and its application to macroeconomic thinking. Comments as usual welcome, especially if I have made an error.

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Saturday Quiz – July 14, 2012

Welcome to the Bastille Day Edition of the Billy Blog Saturday Quiz. The quiz tests whether you have been paying attention over the last seven days. See how you go with the following questions. Your results are only known to you and no records are retained.

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Some notes on Aggregate Supply Part 2

I am now using Friday’s blog space to provide draft versions of the Modern Monetary Theory textbook that I am writing with my colleague and friend Randy Wray. We expect to complete the text by the end of this year. Comments are always welcome. Remember this is a textbook aimed at undergraduate students and so the writing will be different from my usual blog free-for-all. Note also that the text I post is just the work I am doing by way of the first draft so the material posted will not represent the complete text. Further it will change once the two of us have edited it.

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