Yearly Archives: 2012

Michael Hudson: Productivity, The Miracle of Compound Interest, and Poverty

Suppose you were alive back in 1945 and were told about all the new technology that would be invented between then and now: the computers and internet, mobile phones and other consumer electronics, faster and cheaper air travel, super trains and even outer space exploration, higher gas mileage on the ground, plastics, medical breakthroughs and science in general. You would have imagined what nearly all futurists expected: that we would be living in a life of leisure society by this time. Rising productivity would raise wages and living standards, enabling people to work shorter hours under more relaxed and less pressured workplace conditions.

Why hasn’t this occurred in recent years?

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Andrew Haldane on the Arms Race in Banking

Regular NC readers have seen us repeatedly invoke the work of Andrew Haldane, the executive director of stability of the Bank of England. His thoughtful and original work on the risks and costs of our financial system have provided serious ammunition for reform advocates.

At the recent INET conference in Berlin, Haldane recapped some of his recent observations under the rubric of an arms race, in which efforts of individual players to improve their own position wind up leaving everyone worse off.

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Jeffrey Sommers: No Exit in EU

Peter Praet, Chief Economist of the European Central Bank, defended the ECB’s policies at Levy Institute’s annual Minsky meeting at the Ford Foundation this past week in New York. In his remarks, he retreaded the EU’s wheels with the same rhetoric of inflation fighting and fiscal tightening that drove the EU off the road and into the ditch to begin with.

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EXCLUSIVE: Barney Frank, Brad Miller Launch Sneak Attack on OCC, Federal Reserve

Matt Stoller is a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute.  You can follow him at http://www.twitter.com/matthewstoller

Today, to approximately no one’s surprise, the Republicans in the House Financial Services Committee are going after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  Congressman Barney Frank and Brad Miller, though, have introduced something pretty interesting into the mix.  They have struck back by using the same attacks the Republicans are making against the CFPB on the bank-friendly regulators at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve.  Specifically, Frank and Miller have proposed to make the OCC and the Federal Reserve, the most important bank regulators, subject to Congressional appropriations.  Right now, those two agencies fund themselves through money printing (the Fed) or assessments on the banks (OCC).  What Frank and Miller are doing would be a major step forward for democratic accountability over our bank regulators.

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