Category Archives: Macroeconomic policy

Auerback: Bernanke Fesses Up: America Has No ‘Insolvency’ Issue

By Marshall Auerback, a fund manager and investment strategist who writes for New Deal 2.0. Usually, we dread the regular Congressional testimonies of the Fed Chairman. They generally constitute a mix of obfuscation on the part of Mr. Bernanke mixed with political grandstanding on the part of Congress. But occasionally, a glimmer of truth comes […]

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Auerback/Wray: Memo to Greece: Make War, Not Love, With Goldman Sachs

By Marshall Auerback, a fund manager and investment strategist and L. Randall Wray, a Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City In recent weeks there has been much discussion about what to do about Greece. These questions become all the more relevant as the country attempts to float a multibillion-euro bond issue later […]

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Unwinding Global Imbalances

Several readers pointed to a recent post by Michael Pettis, which mainly discussed how expected wage increases in China are a hopeful sign that China is taking steps to become more consumption-oriented. But as much as this is a move forward, changing the mix of China’s composition of demand is at least a decade-long project […]

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Greece Rescue Collides With the Policy Trilemma

A fair number of policy commentators are hewing to the view that somehow the EU will cobble together some sort of solution to the Greek fiscal mess because the alternatives look vasty worse. As Paul Krugman noted: Now what? A breakup of the euro is very nearly unthinkable, as a sheer matter of practicality. As […]

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Wray: The Federal Budget is NOT like a Household Budget – Here’s Why

By L. Randall Wray, a Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City who also writes for New Deal 2.0 Whenever a demagogue wants to whip up hysteria about federal budget deficits, he or she invariably begins with an analogy to a household’s budget: “No household can continually spend more than its income, and […]

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“State of the Union: A Muddled Message”

By Marshall Auerback, a fund manager and investment strategist who writes for New Deal 2.0. If nothing else, it’s clear (as one wag wrote this morning) that the state of Obama’s rhetoric is strong. The President almost always gives a good speech, but it’s the follow-through that is generally problematic. And the speech itself sends […]

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“A Plea to the President: Tear Up That Speech”

By Stephanie Kelton, Associate Professor of Economics, University of Missouri-Kansas City My colleague and fellow blogger, Randy Wray, has just argued that President Obama should scrap the speech he’s planning to deliver tonight and surprise the American people with something entirely different. I couldn’t agree more. And while I agree that job creation must be […]

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Obama’s new triangulation strategy

By Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns As I indicated in my post Grading Obama’s economic policy after one year, I see the President as a triangulating center-left politician of the Bill Clinton variety. The reason we have seen public policy which has been favorable to big business and reactive to events on the ground during this […]

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Steve Keen: The Economic Case Against Bernanke

By Steve Keen, Associate Professor of Economics & Finance at the University of Western Sydney and author of Debunking Economics: The Naked Emperor of the Social Sciences The US Senate should not reappoint Ben Bernanke. As Obama’s reaction to the loss of Ted Kennedy’s old seat showed, real change in policy only occurs after political […]

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Could England Be the Next Iceland?

Before you dismiss the headline as nutty, at least one respected macroeconomist and former central banker, and now chief economist of Citigroup is of the view that England is at risk of a currency crisis. He noted last November: With the pound sterling dropping like a stone against most other currencies and credit default swap […]

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“Why Bernanke’s Defense of Super Low Interest Rates Does Not Hold Up”

By Richard Alford, a former economist at the New York Fed. Since then, he has worked in the financial industry as a trading floor economist and strategist on both the sell side and the buy side. A week ago, in Atlanta, Bernanke responded to his critics, including John Taylor of Taylor Rule fame (the Taylor […]

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“Spain and the EU: Defict Terrorism in Action”

By Marshall Auerback, a fund manager and investment strategist who writes for New Deal 2.0. Speaking of President Obama, Karl Rove writes, “After a year of living in his fiscal fantasy world, Americans realize they have a record deficit-setting, budget-busting spender on their hands.” Well, given his history with former President Bush, it certainly takes […]

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Roubini v. Gross on Outlook for 2010

I saw this item on RGE Monitor (Nouriel Roubini’s blog/economic analysis website) and was gobsmacked: Greetings from RGE! A couple months ago, in a widely read FT op-ed, Nouriel Roubini warned that the “mother of all carry trades,” one funded in U.S. dollar denominated debt, could pump up asset bubbles around the world… When uncovered […]

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“Robert Rubin’s absurd economic recommendations”

I should not be surprised to see that Robert Rubin, having been one of the single most destructive forces over the last two decades (Greenspan gets more heat because he was more visible, but Rubin has long had enormous sway) continues to have influence, not simply through his large network of well placed proteges (Larry […]

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“WWKD – What Would Keynes Do”

By Satyajit Das, a risk consultant and author of Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives Keynes: The Return of the Master By Robert Skidelsky (2009) John Maynard Keynes is having an excellent crisis. Dead for over a half a century, the British economist is enjoying a comeback as […]

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