By Philip Pilkington, a writer and journalist based in Dublin, Ireland. You can follow him on Twitter at @pilkingtonphil
Last Friday the BBC’s economics editor Stephanie Flanders ran one of the most terrible economics articles I’ve ever read: ‘The Truth About UK Debt.’ The problem is that it contains very little truth.
Read more...Wow, the AARP must be taking lessons from the Democratic Party, that you can afford sell out your putative base if you do the bidding of really big moneyed interests.
Read more...Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives.
While the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement set its sights on occupying a financial center, Germany has accomplished the vastly more impressive feat of occupying an entire nation – Greece. Germany has experience at occupying Greece having done so during World War II. The art of occupying another nation is to recruit a local puppet to do the dirty work required to repress the citizens. Germany used several puppets, most notoriously the murderous Ioannis Rallis, to (nominally) rule Greece and terrify the Greek people during World War II. (After Germany’s defeat, Rallis was executed for his treason.)
This time around, Germany has been far more successful in recruiting and using a puppet to (nominally) rule Greece and terrify the Greek people before the German occupation.
Read more...This Real News Network interview with William Crotty provides a useful overview of the current Obama stance on the Federal budget. Crotty does an adept job of delineating the gap between the President’s rhetoric and his policy stance.
Read more...By Cathy O’Neil, a data scientist who lives in New York City and writes at mathbabe.org
A bit more than a week ago I went to a panel discussion at the Met about the global financial crisis. The panel consisted of Paul Krugman, Edmund Phelps, Jeffrey Sachs, and George Soros. They were each given 15 minutes to talk about what they thought about the Eurocrisis, especially Greece, the U.S., and whatever else they felt like.
It was well worth the $25 admission fee, but maybe not for the reason I would have thought when I went. I ended up deciding something I’ve suspected before. Namely, economists don’t understand the financial system, and moreover they don’t get that they don’t get it. Let me explain my reasoning.
Read more...By Philip Pilkington, a journalist and writer living in Dublin, Ireland
Vote or die muth#%#^*#, muth#%#^*# vote or die,
Rock the vote or else I’m gonna stick a knife through your eye,
Democracy is founded on one simple rule,
Get out there and vote or I will muth#%#^*# kill you.– P. Diddy ‘Vote or Die’
The Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny has announced that a referendum will be called so that the Irish people can vote on the new and oh-so-suicidal fiscal compact.
Read more...In Greece, three-quarters of the independent doctors, lawyers, and engineers declare taxable income below the existential minimum. Tax fraud amounts to €20 billion per year (8.5% of GDP). And tax dodgers owe €63 billion in unpaid taxes (27% of GDP). The country is bankrupt and has been kept afloat by the Troika (EU, ECB, and IMF), of which Germany is by far the largest contributor. But there is a plan. And it’s not an endless bailout.
Read more...I know it’s dangerous to judge an article by its synopsis, but Harvard Business Review articles, unlike their academic cousins, are designed to be easy-breezy, so there is much less risk in taking one of its previews at face value. Here is what the HBR says Yale economist Robert Shiller presents longer form in its January-February edition:
Read more...I’m late to the remarkable interview given by ECB president Mario Draghi to the Wall Street Journal. I find the choice of venue curious, since the Financial Times has become the venue for top European politicians and technocrats to communicate with English speaking finance professionals.
But Draghi’s drunk-on-austerity-Kool-Aid message was a perfect fit for the Wall Street Journal.
Read more...By Philip Pilkington, a writer and journalist based in Dublin, Ireland
Speaking with a senior figure in Fianna Fail (the party that were kicked out of government last year by the Irish people) earlier this week something dawned on me for perhaps the first time. Namely, that the leaders in Ireland might know exactly what the issues and the problems are in Europe but they remain completely powerless to solve them.
Read more...Yves here. As someone who does not see in three dimensions, the headline metaphor breaks down for me, but it is still a good attention-getter.
By Izabella Kaminska, a former banker who writes for FT Alphaville. Cross posted from FT Alphaville via New Economic Perspectives
We’ve discussed MMT’s recent foray into the mainstream, and the confusion it has consequently courted.
But that’s the funny thing about the theory. It is naturally divisive because most of the time it fails to communicate its message succinctly. Which is weird, since the premise is actually fairly simple to understand.
Read more...The BBC’s Paul Mason, fresh back from Greece, gives a report on Democracy Now of how living conditions have deteriorated as a result of the imposition of austerity measures. One of the stunners, mentioned in Atlantic Wire (hat tip Lambert), is that not only will some Greeks have to work without pay, some will have to pay for their jobs (yes, that is not a typo). The euphemism is a “negative salary.”
Mason also discusses how this program is radicalizing the public. Communists, Trotskyists and other extreme-left groups are polling at 43%. That’s a strikingly high number. This plus the level of dissent on the street suggests Greece is on its way out of the eurozone. But will the technocrats prevail? As Michael Hudson has stressed here and in other commentary, the banks are succeeding in stripping Greece of assets, an operation that used to be possible only via military force.
From Democracy Now (hat tip Philip Pilkington):
Read more...In the “wonders never cease” category, the Washington Post, which is normally firmly in the camp of orthodox economic thinking and budget hawkery, ran a very well researched and complementary article by Dylan Matthews on Modern Monetary Theory. This may be a sign of MMT moving out of being regarded in policy circles as fringe (some might say lunatic fringe) to a useful part of an economist’s toolkit.
Matthews tries to be scrupulous in giving credit where credit is due, in both how much effort it has taken for the idea to obtain some legitimacy and who its major proponents are.
Read more...Paul Davidson is America’s foremost post-Keynesian economist. Davidson is currently the Holly Professor of Excellence, Emeritus at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. In 1978 Davidson and Sydney Weintraub founded the Journal for Post-Keynesian Economics. Davidson is the author of numerous books, the most recent of which is an introduction to a post-Keynesian perspective on the recent crisis entitled ‘The Keynes Solution: The Path to Global Prosperity’.
Interview conducted by Philip Pilkington
Philip Pilkington: Keynes famously claimed that the ideas of economists are extremely powerful and have huge influence on the way policymakers think. What struck me about your book The Keynes Solution was how well you related Keynes’ theoretical ideas to the problems the world is currently facing – and the proposed solutions. Before we talk in any detail about these ideas let me ask you this: to what extent do you think that Keynes was right about the ideas of economists?
Read more...By Delusional Economics, who is horrified at the state of economic commentary in Australia and is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests propaganda to produce a balanced counterpoint. Cross posted from MacroBusiness.
There is definitely something odd happening in Europe. I can’t quite put my finger on it, so I thought I would list out my musings on the topic and see what I can come up with.
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