It’s Wednesday and I have been on the road most of the day so have had less time to write. A few issues are discussed below, including the problem that climate change is presenting central banks with, recent research on how an initial Covid infection appears to be causally related to a range of life threatening maladies. And then some music.
What a world we live in where we are snowed with propaganda from the elites about how the only way forward is that we accept “pain” or “sacrifice” to prevent some inflationary catastrophe from accelerating out of control and that if workers dare seek some cost-of-living redress as corporations go for broke in their margin push, then the pain the policy makers will inflict will be greater. The annual gathering of the elites at Jackson Hole in Wyoming over the last days has been one of those ‘can you believe this lot’ moments. First, we had the US Federal Reserve boss almost joyfully telling Americans that he will inflict pain on them because “these are the unfortunate costs of reducing inflation”. At the same event, the ECB Board member Isabel Schnabel told the gathering that the central banks had to inflict higher unemployment rates to control inflation to stop wages getting driven by inflationary expectations. And then we look at wages growth in Europe and see that real wages are in free fall (dropping 5.9 per cent in the June-quarter 2022).
Here are the answers with discussion for this Weekend’s Quiz. The information provided should help you work out why you missed a question or three! If you haven’t already done the Quiz from yesterday then have a go at it before you read the answers. I hope this helps you develop an understanding of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and its application to macroeconomic thinking. Comments as usual welcome, especially if I have made an error.
Welcome to The Weekend Quiz. The quiz tests whether you have been paying attention or not to the blog posts that I post. See how you go with the following questions. Your results are only known to you and no records are retained.
I read a lot about Japan. It has interested me since the early 1990s commercial property collapse and the subsequent fiscal and monetary policy measures that the Japanese government deployed to deal with it, which took policy settings outside the bounds that mainstream economists could cope with. These economists predicted the worst based on mindless extrapolations of their ‘theoretical’ models, which are really incapable of dealing with the real world in any meaningful way. Their worst didn’t come and some 3 decades later, with policy settings still at ‘extreme’ levels compared to the way mainstream economists think (and the policy makers are not budging it seems), Japan continues to demonstrate why New Keynesian macroeconomics is inapplicable and why Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has traction. And while Japan provides first-class public transport, health and education systems, a viable housing policy, good urban systems, and has maintained low unemployment rates even during the GFC and the pandemic, there is one feature that is troublesome – the flat lining wages growth over the last 20 years. I have been very interested in learning the reasons for this phenomenon, which sets Japan apart from most other nations (who have also experienced low wages growth – but not that low). I plan to work on this aspect, in part, when I move to Kyoto next month for an extended stay.
It’s Wednesday and some short items that caught my interest over the last week. The FAO’s latest – Food Price Index – shows that even though food prices fell 8.6 per cent from June (to August), “the fourth consecutive monthly decline”, they are still massive inflated (13.1 per cent higher than August 2020) and the “world’s top four grain traders” are profiting from record sales in the face of supply disruptions. The World Food Program informs us that 345 million people are enduring ‘acute food insecurity’ which is nearly 3 times the pre-pandemic number. The system is not working and I have some things to say about that below. Further, latest PMI data from Europe shows that price pressures are declining, which brings into question those (with vested interests) calling for even higher interest rates. And then some music.
As part of the my research on the concept of a ‘poly crisis’, which is the focus of my next book, I have been reading a lot about urban systems, building codes, and other facets of the climate problem. In that vein, I have been considering the concept of – Deep Adaptation – which emerged from the work of British academic Jem Bendell in 2018. His seminal paper – Deep adaptation: a map for navigating climate tragedy – was updated in July 2020 as – Update. The author has a background in geography and makes it clear he is not a climate scientist. His work on deep adaptation came up against a harsh refereeing process because it ran counter to the Groupthink surrounding how we should deal with the climate issue. Most of the resistance I suspect relates to a view that the crisis can be solved within Capitalism. In that sense, his work was dismissed as being overly pessimistic. However, the initial work on deep adaptation is rather scant on how it fits in with the ideas of class conflict within the current economic order. Jem Bendell admitted that is his original essay “the power of capital in keeping us compliant is implied” rather than explicit. His defense was that he was “writing for the sustainability profession” and he was thus “embedded in that system” (Source). This is where I am interested in the concept – to fully embed it within a more radical, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) focused paradigm. This is Part 1 of a series of unspecified Parts at this stage where I explore the concept of Deep Adaptation and try to extent it into the MMT world.
Here are the answers with discussion for this Weekend’s Quiz. The information provided should help you work out why you missed a question or three! If you haven’t already done the Quiz from yesterday then have a go at it before you read the answers. I hope this helps you develop an understanding of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and its application to macroeconomic thinking. Comments as usual welcome, especially if I have made an error.