Category Archives: Macroeconomic policy

The Skunk Party Manifesto

The best political system that money can buy is doing a great job for its customers and a lousy job for the rest of us.

Jackie Calmes’ “Dirty Secret” About the Opponents of Austerity is That They are Correct

When we pull away the camouflage that New York Times reporter Calmes deploys to obscure matters, the “dirty secret” that emerges is that key members of both parties realize that the purported “Grand Bargain” actually represents a self-destructive Grand Betrayal that should be opposed.

Your Humble Blogger and Dean Baker Speak with Bill Moyers About the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Budget Brinkmanship

I hope you’ll enjoy this chat. Moyers gave Dean Baker and me over a half-hour on his show, so we were able to give a decent treatment of the issues surrounding the mislabeled trade deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership as well as the ongoing budget battle

Ken Rogoff Loses It, Calls Criticism of Errors in Debt Paper a “Witch Hunt”

Ken Rogoff has just shown how out of touch he is with reality and basic standards of professional accountability, as demonstrated in an interview published in the Frankfuerter Allgemeine, which is best thought of as a center-right New York Times. He’s come as close as Serious People do to foaming at the mouth, accusing those who criticized the discovery of errors in a widely cited austerity-supporting paper he wrote with Carmen Reinhart as being on a “witch hunt” and engaging in an “orchestrated attack…as in the 1950s under McCarthy.”

Our New Piece at Aljazeera: “The shutdown is over, but the austerity fight continues”

I hope Naked Capitalism readers will check out our new article at Aljazeera, The shutdown is over, but the austerity fight continues.

Bill Moyers and Martin Wolf of the Financial Times Discuss Debt Ceiling Brinksmanship, Coming Budget Talks

The latest Bill Moyers broadcast features the widely-respected lead editorial writer of the Financial Times, Martin Wolf, who discusses the Federal shutdown/debt default negotiations and the prospects for the coming budget talks.

Obama Blames Shutdown on Lobbyists, Bloggers, “Talking Heads” and “Professional Activists”

You cannot make this stuff up.

Obama gave his usual adult talking to the children, meaning American citizens, type of speech to mark the cease-fire in the budget battle so that the two sides can work out a peace accord. These speeches are unpleasant to read because the blarney is so thick it could be packaged and sold as an industrial lubricant. But underneath the greasy veneer is the message that the Important People in the Beltway, meaning Obama, Democrats, and “responsible Republicans” in Congress must dedicate themselves to the pursuit of prosperity…of the 1%.

A Debt Deal is Nigh! A Debt Deal is Nigh! Or is It?

If you make a quick scan of the headlines, which is the way a lot of people interact with the news, you’d see numerous reports stressing that Senate leaders had made “progress” in the “let’s try not to crash into the debt ceiling” talks and were hopeful of getting a deal done. Stock markets took cheer from these reports.

Talks Over Debt Showdown Finally Underway, but Acrimony, Republican Divisions Impede Dealmaking

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In the hostage negotiations otherwise known as the budget deal, the movement on Thursday, that of the Republicans meeting with Obama and offering the idea of a limited extension of the debt ceiling with some thin conditions attached, is indeed progress. But don’t confuse progress with much progress.

Dan Kervick: Yellen Needs to Tell Politicians to Stop Passing the Buck to the Fed

By Dan Kervick, who does research in decision theory and analytic metaphysics. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives

Evan Soltas is hoping that President Obama’s appointment of Janet Yellen signifies a new administration commitment to jobs and economic growth.

Unfortunately, Soltas seems to be one of those folks who is convinced that our failures over the past five years have much to do with a monetary policy that has been insufficiently “accommodative”. That’s just another version of the “if you only have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail” thinking. If you think the Fed has to fix the economy, sure, you’d think the Fed hasn’t done enough. But the Fed isn’t in a position to pull us out of this ditch, and Yellen should quit enabling the idea that it can.

Calling on Yellen: Time for a Modest, Dull Fed

Most of the news accounts of Obama’s nomination of Janet Yellen as the next Federal Reserve Chairman focused either on what type of monetary stance she was likely to take or on biographical details.

But some writers have used the upcoming changing of the guard at the Fed to look at the bigger question of the Fed’s role, particularly now that it has continues to intervene in financial markets to an unprecedented degree, a full four years after the worst of the financial crisis had passed.

Joe Firestone: Stop “the Great Betrayal” – Kabuki Update

It now looks like the big media and leaders in both parties are no longer focusing on the Government Shutdown crisis, but are now moving on to the notion that the shutdown is melding with the upcoming probable breaching of the debt limit to create a combined mother of all fiscal crises. Don’t be fooled.

David Dayen: The U.S. Government Has Shut Down. Unfortunately, How the U.S. Governs Hasn’t.

Being ensconced here on the West Coast, I didn’t have to wait up all night wondering whether or not the government would shut down. You know things were over around dinnertime in California and points west, when House Republicans decided to pass a resolution to move to a conference committee on the continuing resolution to fund the government. The Senate has tried 18 times over the past six months, ever since they passed a budget, to move to conference, and were denied each time. So the clear obviousness of this stunt meant I could stop taking bets on the outcome.

And yet, it must be said that there is a very clear, however cruel, logic to this shutdown, logic employed by members of both parties for decades.