The dismal science Archives - Page 57 of 137

How Pursuing “Competitiveness” Crushes Labor and Lowers Growth

Why pursuing national “competitiveness,” as in squeezing labor pay and rights, does not produce the promised benefit of more growth.

Liquidity Traps as Black Holes

Beware! Liquidity traps are even nastier than you thought.

Mussolini-Style Corporatism, aka Fascism, on the Rise in the US

While the new neoliberal economic order is not a replay of fascism,, there is a remarkable amount of inhibition in calling out the similarities where they exist.

How Repo Works

A primer on repo, which due to its critical role in funding major dealer banks, is an important component of bank reform efforts.

Weaker Unions Correlated with More Inequality, Higher Pay for Top Earners

The decline in union power plays an important role in explaining the rise in inequality in advanced economies.

Negative Real Rates Signify a Broken Financial System

How the debate on negative real rates has missed role of demand for “safe” collateral for derivative positions, and why that is central.

Michael Hudson: The Paradox of Financialized Industrialization

The great question today is whether post-feudal rentier capitalism will stifle industrial capitalism instead of serving it. The aim of finance is not merely to exploit labor, but to conquer and appropriate industry, real estate and government. The result is a financial oligarchy, neither industrial capitalism nor a tendency to evolve into socialism.

Michael Perelman: The Essential Handbook for Engineering an Unequal Society

While the thrust of Perelman’s post is no doubt familiar to readers, take note of how simple and few in number are the essential principles for creating a highly unequal society, and how easy it is to describe them them in antiseptic language.

Steve Keen: “Mainstream Economics” and Its Deadly Equilibrium Assumption

Steve Keen, one of the very few economists who forecast the crisis, on “What is ‘mainstream economics’ and why has it gone off the rails?”

Mark Blyth: “Austerity Cures Nothing”

This is a bracing, no-nonsene talk from economist Mark Blyth of Brown University, who is the author of Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century and Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea.