Some neighbours arrive

The other day I introduced a simple model of how a monetary economy works. The model was centred on the payments of my personal calling cards to elicit labour from the kids that live in my house. All the basic national accounting results that apply in a real economy were present. The simplicity extended to considering only two sectors – the kids (private) and the “house” (public). In terms of modern monetary theory (MMT) we start by examining the broad relationships between the government and non-government sector, where the latter comprises the private domestic and foreign sector. Some readers have suggested that the results obtained would not apply if I had have explicitly modelled the cross-border flows (that is, the external sector). Well today, I have some news … some neighbours have arrived next door to my place and the kids from each house are jumping fences.

Read more

We are sorry

On Friday (February 12, 2010) as Eurostats released the flash estimates of fourth quarter GDP for the EU (see below), the IMF released a new staff position note entitled – Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy. The bad news is the Europe is looking more like a region that is heading for a double dip recession. The even worse news is that that cretins at the IMF are claiming they know why they messed up in the past and how to address their failure. Stay tuned for a modified version of the same. The fact is that the IMF Report reveals they are as ignorant as ever of the workings of the modern monetary economy. So this revisionist exercise doesn’t signal a major paradigm stage.

Read more

Why history matters

In this recent blog – Who is in charge? – I outlined the case that all the so-called “financing” arrangements that government deploy which are held out to us as being required to allow them to spend are in fact voluntary and reflect deep-seated ideological anti-government positions. I wanted to make the point that it is governments not amorphous “bond markets” that ultimately in command of the destiny of their nations and that citizens are being grossly mislead by lies and half-truths into believing that governments have to introduce harsh austerity packages to appease the markets because if they do not the latter will “close them down”. I continue with that theme today and address some issues raised in the comments that accompanied that blog.

Read more

Coming down the face

Today the ABS released the Labour Force data for January 2010 and there was quite a strong growth in employment reveals, albeit it was dominated by part-time growth. The employment boost confounded the “markets”, some of the so-called experts had “factored in” contraction (so I guess their clients are dudded by their incompetence again!). With participation constant, the net jobs growth translates into solid reductions in unemployment. Unfortunately, total hours worked plummetted so I suspect it will be a grinding part-time led recovery. But the good news is that unless something bad happens elsewhere in the World we are now well over the aggregate unemployment rate peak and surfing down the face!

Read more

Doomed from the start

Today I have been studying data from the EMU economies where the individual member states surrendered their currency sovereignty and comparing it to other nations which have sovereign currencies (Australia, Denmark, Japan, the UK and the US). This is part of a larger project I am involved in. While the glare of the spotlight is currently on Greece and how the EMU handles the issue, most commentators conveniently forget that this problem has been many years in the making and is both a product of initial design folly and subsequent behaviour by some member states.

Read more

Barnaby, better to walk before we run

Today I have been thinking about the macroeconomics textbook that Randy Wray and I are writing at present. We hope to complete it in the coming year. I also get many E-mails from readers expressing confusion with some of the basic national income concepts that underpin modern monetary theory (MMT). In recent days in the comments area, we have seen elaborate examples from utopia/dystopia which while interesting fail the basic national income tests of stock-flow consistency. Most of the logic used by deficit terrorists to underscore their demands for fiscal austerity are also based on a failure to understand these fundamental principles. So once again I provide a simple model to help us organise our thoughts and to delve into the elemental concepts. It is clear that in order to come to terms with more complicated aspects of MMT, one has to “walk before they can run”. So its back home today.

Read more

Who is in charge?

Today I was looking over some macro data from Ireland which is leading the charge among the peripheral EMU nations (the so-called PIIGS) to impoverish its citizens because: (a) the amorphous bond markets have told them too; and (b) they had previously surrendered their policy sovereignty. Their actions are all contingent on the vague belief that the private sector will fill the space left by the austerity campaign. The neo-liberals are full of these sorts of claims. More likely what will happen is a drawn out near-depression and rising social unrest and dislocation. But as long as the Irish do it to themselves then the Brussels-Frankfurt bullies will leave them to demolish their economy. It raises the question who is in charge – the investors or the government? The answer is that the government is always in charge but what they need to do to assert that authority varies depending on the currency arrangements they have in place.

Read more

My Sunday media nightmare

Today started off as a usual Sunday – a long-ride on my bike interrupted by two punctures (why do they come in waves). Anyway, then some other things like a visit to the community garden where I have a plot. Then it was down to work and as I read news stories and academic articles I was continually confronted with the tide of hysteria surrounding the impending sovereign defaults (as we are led to believe). My principle conclusion was that these journalists etc have a pretty good job. They get paid for knowing nothing about the topics they purport to be experts about and instead just make stuff up and intersperse it with some mainstream economic ideology taken straight from Mankiw’s macroeconomic textbook. It would be an easy way to make a living. Get the text book out … turn to the chapter on debt this week (last week inflation) and start of with some “large” numbers which are “without precedent” and you are done. Easy pie! Problem is that it influences the readers who do not know these commentators are charlatans.

Read more
Back To Top