The Fiscal Sustainability Teach-In and Counter-Conference

In Washington D.C. next Wednesday (April 28, 2010) there will be two separate events where the focus will be on fiscal sustainability. The first event sponsored by a billionaire former Wall Street mogul under the aegis of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation (PGPF) promises to bring the Top leaders to Washington. It will feature a big cast well-known US entities (former central bank bosses; former treasury officials and more). It will be well-publicised and a glossy affair – full of self-importance. It will categorically fail to address any meaningful notion of fiscal sustainability. Instead it will be rehearse a mish-mash of neo-liberal and religious-moral constructions dressed up as economic reasoning. It will provide a disservice to the citizens of the US and beyond. The other event will be smaller and run on a shoe-string. The grass roots The Fiscal Sustainability Teach-In and Counter-Conference is open to all and will actually involve researchers who understand how the monetary system operates. Like all grass roots movements it requires support. I hope you can provide support commensurate with your circumstances.

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When a huge pack of lies is barely enough

Today I read another appalling beat-up from the researchers at Société Générale. The fabrications and poor analysis contained in the Report should instigate class actions from their subscribers for grossly misleading them in their investment decisions. But the real problem is that the financial journalists seem content to function as meagre mouthpieces for this hysteria – to use their columns to spread it widely without the slightest introspection or critical scrutiny. The result is that the public are continually confronted with outrageous propositions – which carry not even a skerrick of truth. They then form fallacious perspectives about public policy that ultimately undermine their own welfare. The lies are all presented as being “iron clad laws” and “inevitabilities” and “fundamental truths”. But as I learned as a youngster – lies are lies.

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Saturday Quiz – April 17, 2010 – answers and discussion

Here are the answers with discussion for yesterday’s quiz. The information provided should help you work out why you missed a question or three! 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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Unemployment is about a lack of jobs

Today I have reading a swag of literature which attempts to explain cross-country differences in change in unemployment and average duration of unemployment in the current recession. This issue has been topical in the US recently as the US Senate debates whether to extend unemployment benefits. The mainstream economics view is that the previous assistance caused the unemployment problem and a decision to extend the assistance will worsen it. However, you have to wonder what planet the proponents of these views are on. The overwhelming evidence is that the longer the recession the higher average duration of unemployment becomes and the larger the pool of long-term unemployed. The solution is always to stimulate employment growth. That simple truth is always lost on the mainstream. As you will see, among the proponents of the erroneous view that benefit provision has caused the worsening of the unemployment situation are researchers at JP Morgans. I would like to think that if the US government hadn’t bailed those bums out then these researchers might have been unemployed themselves. They could certainly use a dose of harsh reality.

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Deficits are here to stay … get used to it

Today I am writing about the sectoral balances which are derived from the national accounts. A recent article in the Financial Times uses these balances to demonstrate that attempts to reduce the UK public deficit can only be successfully achieved by engineering growth in non-government spending. That is an insight that is core to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) but typically escapes the understanding of most commentators. The article is interesting because it shows how the sectoral balances – which are accounting statements and thus true by definition – can be interpreted in different ways and influence different policy strategies. But the fundamental understanding you gain from knowledge of these balances is that at present public deficits are here to stay … and if you don’t like them … you better get used to it!

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Saturday Quiz – April 10, 2010 – answers and discussion

Here are the answers with discussion for yesterday’s quiz. The information provided should help you work out why you missed a question or three! 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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I just found out – state kleptocracy is the problem

Today’s blog is a little different to most, although don’t worry, I will get onto familiar themes soon enough. Today I am considering the latest broadside from controversial German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, who Jurgen Habermas referred to as a fascist. Sloterdijk responded to that criticism by labelling Habermas, in turn, a fascist. That debate was about bi-genetics and Sloterdijk’s implicit support for a “master race”. It was an interesting debate in itself and goes to the fundamental discomfort that exists in Germany about their past. But today I am considering his views on freedom and governments who he labels fiscal thieves and suggests that modern democracies have conspired to allow ever increasing numbers to live of the toil of others courtesy of state intervention.

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Rates go up again down here

This time last month I was trying out the mobile office concept up the coast (see blog). The experiment was a success but the blog I wrote that day coincided with the decision of the Reserve Bank (RBA) to hike short-term interest rates again, which I considered to be a mistake. Exactly, one month later, the RBA is at it again however I am in Newcastle and there is no surf! The RBA announced today, quite predictably, that the policy rate will rise by 0.25 per cent which will push mortgage rates above 7 per cent. Our greedy private banks get another free ride out of this and the decision confirms that the crisis has not really changed the neo-liberal economic policy dominance. Inflation targeting which uses labour underutilisation as a policy weapon and fiscal surpluses which further drag the economy down – are well and truly entrenched. Spare the thought.

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Saturday Quiz – April 3, 2010 – answers and discussion

Here are the answers with discussion for yesterday’s quiz. The information provided should help you work out why you missed a question or three! 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 – March 27, 2010 – answers and discussion

Here are the answers with discussion for yesterday’s quiz. The information provided should help you work out why you missed a question or three! 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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The US should have universal public health care

I have been resisting writing about the US health care fiasco because frankly the whole debate is a fiasco and demonstrates the ability of mainstream economics to obscure a widespread understanding of how the monetary system operates and the opportunities that system provides a currency-issuing government. But I have had more E-mails on this topic over the last few weeks than most other issues (bar EMU). Most readers want some analysis from a Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) perspective and so here it is. If only to stop the E-mails.

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Ladies and gentleman, civilisation is ending

Today I wasted 20 minutes reading about the end of the World. But before I did that I read some so-called progressive literature that was calling on the UK government in tomorrow night’s budget to seek a balanced budget. You say what? That’s right, what goes for progressive thought these days is what used to be the exemplar of fiscal conservativism not so long ago. While the current crisis exposed most of the myths that mainstream economists have promoted for years it seems that progressives are not seizing the day but trying to sound more reasonable (read: right-wing conservative) than the conservatives. The crisis has also pushed all these opinionated loonies like Niall Ferguson into prominence. Its getting pretty lonely out here …. wherever I am (and don’t say the left word)! (<= joke).

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Saturday Quiz – March 20, 2010 – answers and discussion

Here are the answers with discussion for yesterday’s quiz. The information provided should help you work out why you missed a question or three! 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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Oh no … Bernanke is loose and those greenbacks are everywhere

My RSS feed and E-mails have brought some shockers in the last few days from the financial markets – official bulletins from banks that don’t make any sense at all (US about to default-type arguments); hysterical Austrian school logic (from a large player in the Asian markets) and news commentary from a so-called business insider magazine. The latter should immediately close its doors and declare they are not competent to comment on matters relating to banking. Coincidentally, I also received several E-mails in the last few days asking me to comment on the particular Austrian document noted above that has been circulating within financial markets recently. I deal with that later in the post. Anyway, apart from my main research and other writing activities this blog stuff is “all in a day’s work” – Friday March 19, 2010.

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Hyperdeflation, followed by rampant inflation

The title of the blog is a little misleading but was too good not to use. I get to that five-year forecast (2010-2015) later in the blog but the first part is material that sets the scene. Yes, I am writing about deficits and debts … again! But new nuances come out in the public debate which need to be addressed. The conservative assault on government support for their economies at present is multi-dimensioned and is being pushed along by two main journalistic approaches. The manic Fox new-type approach which I realise is influential but is so patent and ridiculous that I don’t care to comment on it often. Then we have the approach adopted by journalists in so-called credible media outlets such as the UK Guardian. They dress their deficit terrorism up in arguments that the middle classes, who think they are far above Fox new rabble intellectually, will find convincing. But when you bring both approaches down to basics – rubbish = rubbish.

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iWorry about the conservatives

I can now safely call my blog – ibilly blog or billy iblog thanks to a court ruling preventing Apple from monopolising the i construction. But then I would have to change the logo and I don’t have time to do that so I won’t take advantage of the court ruling just yet. But on more substantive matters, today I have been thinking about how much momentum the conservative lobby has at present and that history is being continually re-written to give these characters the oxygen they need to warp public opinion. We are now in danger of an even greater shift to the right in the coming years than was represented by the “neo-liberal” era. It is an ugly thought. But the macroeconomics is clear – if these ideas really take over the policy making process – then we will be facing a lengthy period of economic malaise.

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Its all booming down here folks!

Whichever way the dice tumbles, the deficit terrorists are ready to rehearse their diatribes. In many countries, they couldn’t even wait for growth to return before they started calling for “credible exit plans” and “austerity measures” to “get the ballooning deficits and dangerous debt spirals under control”. The lexicon of doom terminology expanded over the course of 2009 and continues to grow into the new year. Cutting back a fiscal stimulus when the rest of the economy is going backwards is the advice that only a person who has no appreciation of macroeconomics would give. But they have also been at it in Australia which surfed the downturn thanks to an early and significant fiscal stimulus. Here the talk is now along the lines of the “mother of all booms coming”, “overheated housing markets”, “white hot labour markets” and pressure is mounting for a tough May budget and further rises in interest rates. Over-inflated predictions one day are continually shown to be without credibility by the data releases the next day, but by this time the so-called experts have moved on to the next impending data release predicting all manner of catastrophe unless austerity plans are implemented. They have no shame and probably were not brought up very nicely!

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Extending unemployment benefits … an omen

As the danger of a global depression recedes, the themes I am picking up regularly now from commentators, politicians etc are all pointing back to the mainstream status quo version of the way the economy works, in particular, for the purposes of this blog the labour market. I expect to increasingly hear and read the rhetoric that dominated the public debates prior to the crisis – that unemployment is essentially a supply-side phenomenon reflecting choices made by individuals in the context of government welfare policy that distorts these choices in favour of not working. In this context, the simple act of extending unemployment benefits in the US has been controversial. This takes us back to the dominant debates over the last 20 years which saw governments all around the World pursuing policies that were antithetical to full employment and pernicious in their impact on the victims of their policy failures. Stay tuned – 2011 – the mainstream will be in full attack mode again – conveniently forgetting where we have been over the last 3 or so years.

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Saturday Quiz – March 6, 2010 – answers and discussion

Here are the answers with discussion for yesterday’s quiz. The information provided should help you work out why you missed a question or three! 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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Would someone please put something in the water supply

When I read the financial and economic news every day I sense a global madness has emerged. Global political processes are becoming distorted by the types of debates that the conservative media companies and the mainstream economists are driving. Every day a new whacko proposition is suggested or entertained by governments. Old hatreds are also resurfacing as our economies labour on (or not labour to be more accurate!) in the face of a major private spending collapse accompanied by inadequate government fiscal responses. The collateral damage of the deficit terrorism is increasing and spreading and still the major political parties in most countries slug it out as to which one will deliver the most fiscal austerity. Would someone please put something in the water supply so that we can refocus this debate onto what is important. That was the plan in the late 1960s to chill everyone out and distinguish the meaningful from the nonsense. Something has to restore our sense of priorities. The longer this madness goes on the worse it is going to get. There is no sensible solution that will come from following the present path.

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