Actions by our governments are the opposite to what we require from them on climate change

The US is now a rogue state. One example is the conduct of the US Health Secretary who has been working to destroy the scientific basis for health care since his appointment last year but exceeded his own hubris when he told a podcast on February 12, 2026 that “I’m not scared of a germ. I used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats.” This topped his statements about measles vaccination, nutritional design, and vaccination in general. I know it is real and serious but it is so outlandishly ignorant that it seems like a daily parody, as do the statements of the President, the Attorney-General and the rest of the cast. But I know it is serious. The most recent outrage is the decision to reverse the ‘endangerment finding’ that the Obama Administration used to justify its environmental legislation and regulative system. It is hard to understate the vandalism embodied by this decision and the ramifications extend across multiple sectors. The automobile manufacturing industry, for example, will now be free to produce more polluting cars and greenhouse gases. Cheaper, dirtier cars for Americans, and, goodbye to American cars (thank god) for the export market. But it is the rejection of the scientific research knowledge that is most astounding. As part of my degrowth project, I have been reading several recently published scientific reports on the topic of climate change. These are credible contributions to human knowledge, which are significantly at odds with the way in which the US is heading these days. I wonder when the Americans are going to realise their federal government has abandoned reason and is now posing as a terminal threat to their well-being.

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Those who invoke the ‘Truss Moment’ should look at what is happening in Japan

In the annals of ruses used to provoke fear in the voting public about government deficits, central bank currency issuance, and fiscal activism, the experience of Germany in the 1920s was a long-standing favourite, that could be wheeled out on demand and have immediate effect. Wheelbarrows full of money being pushed to the local bakery to buy the daily bread, etc. It was a very effective vehicle for advancing the interests of the ruling class because it created a political brake on government action to reduce poverty and maintain full employment. More recently, Zimbabwe became the vehicle. It was equally effective even though it, like the Weimar ruse, was largely based on fiction. Even more recently, we have a new ‘ruse on the block’, the so-called ‘Truss Moment’, which is particularly effective in the UK. The current Labour government is petrified to do anything that might resemble a Labour government because they have a deep-seated paranoid ideation that the ‘City’ is out to get them, and the ‘Truss Moment’ is used as the summary event that apparently justify that delusion. They might have looked to the East, to Japan, to see why the ‘Truss Moment’ was about something quite different to the popular narrative that accompanies the mention of the ill-fated few months in British politics.

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Upcoming London visit and public event details

I will be working in the UK from February 19 to February 28, 2026. I have a range of activities mostly of a non-public nature ranging from meetings with publishers, a meeting with Jeremy Corbyn, and some other research-related meetings. I will also be speaking at the launch of the new Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) focused group in the UK – MMTUK Policy Research Group – on February 25, 2026 in inner London. I hope to see as many of the MMT crowd as possible at the launch (see details below).

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Australian government aids and abets the view of a person implicated for inciting genocide

The Australian government has made an extraordinary decision to deeply divide the Australian community under the guise of advancing social cohesion and bringing us all together. How such a patently stupid political decision could be made by educated adults is beyond comprehension. Once again this is not one of my typical blog posts where I write as a professional (academic) macroeconomist. I am writing this as an active author that is now facing suppression of my capacity for self-expression by an increasingly authoritarian government machine (at both federal and state levels) that has been, it seems, captured by a particular lobby group that exercises its influence and power in the most pernicious and robust fashion. What is the issue? The Australian government has invited the Israeli President Isaac Herzog to visit Australia as their guest and is tipped to make a formal address to our federal parliament. The decision is wrong on so many levels and the subsequent responses of the governments (state and federal) to what they now realise is a mass groundswell of opposition among the community to the decision is even worse.

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RBA bows to financial market pressure and boost bank profits at the expense of low-income mortgage holders

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) increased the policy rate by 0.25 points on Tuesday and claimed that it was because the inflationary outlook was in danger of accelerating out of control as a result of excessive demand pressures. This followed last week’s CPI release which showed the December increase to be 0.96 points. When we examine that increase more closely, we find that 97.6 per cent of the December rise in the All Groups CPI was due to ‘Holiday travel and accommodation’ (most associated with Xmas and the one-off Ashes cricket series) – 70.9 per cent was due to International holiday travel and accommodation and 26.6 per cent due to Domestic holiday travel and accommodation. It is nigh on impossible to construct that as an economy that is ‘bursting at its seams’, notwithstanding all the lurid contributions from the RBA cheer squad in the media, who seem to spend their professional lives repeating press releases from organisations like the RBA, without giving them any due diligence. The reality is the RBA has bowed to pressure from the financial markets and rewarded the demands for higher rates from bank economists, who work for institutions that profit from such rises. Such is the state of macroeconomic policy in Australia.

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Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund and the yen – mainstream macro myths driving bad policy

With a national election approaching in Japan (February 8, 2026), there has been a lot of discussion about the so-called ‘weak yen’ and whether the Bank of Japan should be intervening to manage the value of the currency on international markets. PM Takaichi has been quoted as saying that the weak yen is good for Japanese exports and has offset some of the negative impacts on key sectors in Japan, including the automobile industry. She also said that the government would aim to encourage an economic structure that could withstand shifts in the currency’s value, largely by encouraging domestic investment. The yen depreciation is another example of the way mainstream economists distort the debate. They argue that the Bank of Japan should be increasing interest rates further to shore up the yen. Previously, they pressured the government into creating a pension fund investment vehicle to speculate in financial markets to ensure the basic pension system doesn’t run out of money. These two things are linked but not in ways that the mainstream public debate construes. It turns out that pension myths, are directly responsible for the evolution of the yen. This blog post explains why.

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Japan goes to an election accompanied by a very confused economic debate

These notes will serve as part of a briefing document that I will send off to some interested parties in Japan. Japan is about to go to the poll for a snap national election on February 8. The recently installed Prime Minister, Ms Takaichi is betting that her recent solid showing in the polls will allow her to capture more seats in the Diet and reduce or even eliminate her dependency on the ‘uncomfortable’ coalition partner, the Japan Innovation Party (JIP) aka Ishin. That coalition was formed after Mr Ishiba, the previous PM, also bet on a snap election result, which saw the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) go backwards (losing 68 seats) and the coalition partner Komeito also lose seats. Together the ruling coalition lost its majority in the National Diet (for the first time since 2009) and Shigeru Ishiba’s popularity began to evaporate. The background to that loss was a major political funding scandal among the Cabinet ministers and the election result signalled that the Japanese people had seemingly had enough of the corruption at the top. Ms Takaichi took over after Mr Ishiba could no longer sustain his position as PM. The old coalition between the LDP and Komeito fell apart because the Buddhist Komeito could no longer stomach the new PMs imperialist ideology nor her unwillingness to deal with he insidious corruption in her party. This forced Ms Takaichi to forge a new coalition – hence the rather unlikely pairing with Ishin, which is a right wing populist party espousing neoliberal economic policies. The government is proposing a major fiscal expansion but the debate during the campaign that is now underway is very confused. The confusion arises because all the main players keep wheeling out mainstream economic arguments that tie them up into nonsensical policy proposals.

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Recent extended discussion with RadioMMT – Part 1

It is a public holiday in Australia today celebrating our national day – the day that the colonial powers of Britain first decided to set us up as a penal colony because they had run out of prison space in the old country due to the massive incarceration rates following the enclosures. The impoverished small scale farmers who relied on the open ‘commons’ to survive were dispossessed by the privatisation of the communal lands. They were then criminalised as a result of their poverty and starvation and shipped off to what is now Australia. A sorry start to white settlement. However, the country was settled at least 30 thousand years prior to white settlement by the first nation peoples. They call today ‘invasion day’ as do the whites who are sympathetic to their oppression (such as me). Today is thus a highly conflicted one – big street marches recognising the invasion, competing with traditional white Australia Day events, and, then, being challenged more recently by the so-called March for Australia movement rallies which are a front for neo-nazis who hate immigration and most nearly everything else. The call to abandon today as our national day and instead shift it to a date that would not cause the first nations people such angst falls on deaf ears. Anyway, today I am not writing any more but am promoting a recent discussion I had with the RadioMMT program on Melbourne’s community radio station 3CR. I will be back on Thursday with some analysis of the upcoming Japanese national election, which is providing lots of opportunities for education.

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Australian labour market – stronger as employment growth outstrips the growth in the working age population

Today (January 22, 2026), the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released the latest labour force data – Labour Force, Australia – for December 2025 – which showed a relatively strong increase in employment and the rising participation rate – both good signs. Taken together the demand-side of the labour market outstripped the growth in the working age population and, as a result, unemployment fell. The increase in employment was concentrated on full-time employment, which meant that working hours rose and underemployment fell significantly. However, the reality is that it is nonsensical to argue that Australia is close to full employment.

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