There has been a lot of “opinion” expressed over the last few days about the causes of the British riots. If I had a meter to assess the ideological biases given breath in the press over this issue to date it would be swinging out there in the right-wing of opinion – “cultural problem”, “lawless lazy youth fed by the welfare state”, “criminality”, “intolerable monsters” all words I have read or heard in the media recently. Anyway who has my view is labelled a “left-wing cynic” who want to “makes excuses for thugs”. Opinion is after all just that so it is always of benefit to temper it with research evidence. Anyway, the short conclusion – supported by the research evidence – is that I blame the British government for the riots.

It was the last day of the 12th Path to Full Employment Conference/17th National Unemployment Conference in Newcastle, which I host. The papers were interesting all day and I will report on some of them another day. But overnight, the big news was that the US Senate has finally succeeded in forcing the US Federal Reserve Bank to release details of more than 21,000 transactions it made as a reaction to the rapidly escalating global financial crisis. The lending rose to $US3.3 trillion at its peak and dwarfs the volumes involved in QE1 and QE2 amounts. This is relevant to a debate in the banking literature about the separation of monetary policy functions (setting interest rates) and the broader monetary interventions we have been witnessing in this crisis, which bear close similarity to fiscal policy functions. The question is which macroeconomic policy functions should be accountable to the ballot box. My view is all of them!

Its very balmy weather over here in the Netherlands at present – like early October and people were out in T-shirts are 21:00 last night. I went to Brussels in the afternoon and didn’t even take an overcoat! But in contrast, the economic climate is decidedly chilly. Each week new evidence emerges which demonstrates categorically that the fiscal austerity proponents have not clue about how real economies and monetary systems function. The world is not behaving as they predicted. The models and analysis they provided to governments as support for withdrawing fiscal support are bereft of any credibility. It is also common for economic commentators and policy makers to argue that problems are manifest and complex and there are no silver bullets. Well what Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) tells you is that when there is a recession (and/or tepid growth) such as the world is enduring now and the non-government sector is drowning in debt and unwilling to expand spending the only solution is to expand public spending. That proposition is not manifest or complex. Its simple – more public spending is required.

The latest economic news from the UK and the US is hardly inspiring. Further, detailed examination of the sectoral balances in the OECD nations reveals a massive drop in private demand since 2007. The mirror image of that spending collapse has been the increase in public deficits via the automatic stabilisers (discretionary stimulus packages aside). These swings are just signs that economies are adjusting back to more normal relations (private saving, public deficits). The sharpness of the swings reflects the atypical period that preceded the crisis where growth was fuelled by private debt in the face of fiscal contraction. It will take some years for the adjustment to be completed and the danger is that ideological attacks on the fiscal deficits will derail the process. But when the sectoral balances return to more normal levels in relation to GDP then guess what? We will still have budget deficits and we all better get used to it.

Tonight we consider the tale of two countries with some other snippets of good taste included for interest. In the last few days the Japanese government has announced the largest fiscal stimulus in its modern era (since records have been kept) while Ireland announced its 2010 budget which has been characterised as the harshest in the republic’s history. Both countries are mired in recession with only the most modest signs of any recovery. So on the face of it this is one hell of a juxtaposition. What gives?

At present, Australia is embroiled in yet another outbreak of boat people hysteria such that 72 poor souls who took the extraordinary risk to travel across the Indian Ocean to improve their circumstances and perhaps escape political intolerance are cast as being threats to our national sovereignty. The current debate continues years of shameful hysteria which has seen our government imprison children indefinitely because their parents wanted something better. More people come in daily by air and remain illegally than will ever come by boat. Apart from my moral repugnance for the scaremongering, it appears to be hypocritical that the free market lobby always calls for the free flow of capital but rarely for the free flow of people while the left seem to adopt the opposite view. I was thinking about that today when I read that the British PM Gordon Brown has renewed his call for a Tobin Tax. How does that square with modern monetary theory (MMT)? Not very well.

The OECD, the organisation that has spearheaded the abandonment of full employment in all its member countries since releasing the supply-side blueprint in 1994 – The Jobs Study, has now finally realised that things are very bleak in labour markets across the World and is saying more action is desperately needed. All their rhetoric in the last decade about making labour markets resilient and flexible through active labour market programs has not apparently stopped the major economies from going belly up.

I am now in New York on business for the next few days then off south to the capital Washington. In this blog I want to outline the horrible scenario that everyone has been predicting would happen – the increasing fiscal deficits will increase taxation. I know that has been on our minds. I have reached the ineluctable conclusion that future taxation will increase as a direct consequence of the current deficits. The tax revenue gained by the government will also reduce future deficits. Wouldn’t it be preferable that we didn’t push future taxation up and instead controlled net government spending? If you believed that you would have rocks in your head. In this blog I will be also be discussing debt, inflation, and other nasties.