The further down the food chain you go, the more the zealots take over

Today I am travelling to the Baltic States of Estonia and Latvian, both of which are mired in a very deep recession bordering on depression. What you see in these economies is a demonstration of right-wing neo-liberal ideology at its crudest … and the damage it causes … at its magnified worst. Both economies are an indictment of the economics profession and the multi-lateral agencies like the IMF and the European governments. It is hard to come to terms with national governments who could easily enjoy currency sovereignty – voluntarily choosing to do otherwise for ideological reasons and then using what policy space they have left to inflict harsh pro-cyclical cutbacks on the economies they are meant to be nurturing. It is surreal at best and sometime in the future there will be retrospective consensus that this era we are living in was dominated by cruel and tyrannical policy makers.

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Some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen

In sub-Saharan Africa alone some 15,000 children die every day from poverty-related diseases. Yet still the governments are required to pay out some $US30 million every day to the World Bank, IMF, and rich creditor nations. Every $US1 that’s given to that region in aid, $US1.50 goes out to cover debt repayments (source: The Debt Threat: How Debt is Destroying the Developing World). I have been thinking about that in the light of the current situation in Haiti, the poorest nation in the western hemisphere and a nation that has been burdened with debt since the time it escaped the chains of slavery. This blog looks into these sorts of issues.

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Exiting the Euro?

In past blogs I have indicated that nations were mad entering the EMU and surrendering their fiscal sovereignty. This is especially so for the so-called peripheral nations (Spain, Portugal, Greece, Ireland, to some extent Italy) who have become basket cases in a system that prevents individual member’s from using fiscal policy to improve the circumstances of their citizens. Indeed it is a system that forces aggregate policy to act in a pro-cyclical manner for nations that are undergoing crisis – that is, the politicians have somehow managed to convince their populations that it is a credible position for them to use their policy power to make things worse rather than better. So policy which should reduce poverty and empower the youth of a nation with education and employment opportunities is now doing exactly the opposite. As I noted last week, one statistic is enough to tell you the EMU system is a failure – 53 per cent of Spanish youth are now unemployed! So can a nation exit the EMU? What would happen if it did? I had some thoughts on this today.

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Looking beyond the peak

Today the ABS released the Labour Force data for December 2009 and it confirms that the Australian economy is still recovering under the steam of the fiscal stimulus. Total employment has grown by three times more than expected and participation is constant. Which means that unemployment has started to fall although underemployment hasn’t budged. While the media commentators today (including myself) have been fairly upbeat I have been reminding the public in media interviews that I have done that broader labour underutilisation (sum of unemployment and underemployment) remains at 13.5 per cent. But optimistically the trend is now looking as though the aggregate unemployment rate may have peaked. So it is now to start looking beyond the peak.

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The daily losses from unemployment

I have been doing some work again on the costs of unemployment and this blog gives a snapshot of part of that research. One of the strong empirical results that emerge from the Great Depression is that the job relief programs that the various governments implemented to try to attenuate the massive rise in unemployment were very beneficial. At that time, it was realised that having workers locked out of the production process because there were not enough private jobs being generated was not only irrational in terms of lost income but also caused society additional problems, such as rising crime rates. Direct job creation was a very effective way of attenuating these costs while the private sector regained its optimism. In fact, it took about 50 years or so for governments to abandon this way of thinking. Now we tolerate high levels of unemployment without a clear understanding of the magnitude of costs that that policy position imposes on specific individuals and society in general. The single most rational thing a government could do was to ensure that there were enough jobs to match the available labour force. Mostly, they fail badly to achieve this level of sophistication.

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100-percent reserve banking and state banks

Today we examine two propositions: (a) 100-percent reserve banking; and (b) national government spending without taxation and debt issuance. Believe it or not the two propositions have been related in the debates over many years. Modern monetary theory (MMT) is agnostic to the first proposition although individuals within the paradigm have diverging views. However in the case of the second proposition it is central to MMT that a currency-issuing government has no revenue-constraint and should not issue debt to match net spending. Further, taxation is an effective tool for attenuating overall agggregate demand rather than raising revenue for a government that can spend regardless.

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What causes mass unemployment?

Today we consider the causes of mass unemployment of the sort that most nations are enduring at present. This also involves the consideration of the relationship between wages and employment. This is an area in economics that has been hotly contested across paradigm lines for years. Mainstream economic commentators still claim that the employment situation can be improved if wages are cut. They are wrong. Modern monetary theory (MMT) is clear – mass unemployment arises when the budget deficit is too low. To reduce unemployment you have to increase aggregate demand. If private spending growth declines then net public spending has to fill the gap. In engaging this debate, we also have to be careful about using experience in one sector to make generalisations about the overall macroeconomic outcomes that might accompany a policy change.

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When you’ve got friends like this … Part 1

… who needs enemies. I am forming the view that many so-called progressive economic think tanks and media outlets in the US are in fact nothing of the sort. Tonight’s blog is Part 1 in a series I will write but the series really started in November 2009 when I wrote about The enemies from within. Today I read two position pieces from self-proclaimed progressive writers which could have easily been written by any neo-liberal commentator. True, the rhetoric was guarded and there was talk about needing to worry about getting growth started again – but the message was clear – the US has dangerously high deficits and unsustainable debt levels and an exit plan is urgently required to take the fiscal position of the government bank into balance. Very sad.

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