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A structured approach for progressive political ambitions – Part 1

I am stuck in London courtesy of the terrorist policies of Donald Trump and his Israeli gang mates. I arrived at Heathrow on Saturday expecting to be home by last evening only to learn that all flights via Doha were indefinitely suspended. Big problem. I was lucky to find a hotel room at the airport where I am bunkered down for a few days before a rebooked flight on another airline is possible. Luckily, I have been able to find a flight with another airline and will leave London on Tuesday (fingers crossed). Anyway, that was a bad end to a good week’s work in London. Apart from the public launch of the new policy research group, MMTUK, which was a good evening, catching up with MMT activists in the UK, I had several meetings with various people. Those discussions must remain confidential here. However, I decided to write up some ideas that are relevant to how I think a progressive ambition can be politicised in an acceptable manner. The challenge for such an ambition is to shift the population’s focus from an obsession with financial constraints to a recognition that it is the availability of resources that matters. There are several related aspects to this challenge. This is Part 1 of a two-part series on that topic.

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Inflation in Japan – invariant to monetary policy and be careful what you wish for (tourism)

I have been thinking about the recent inflation trajectory in Japan in the light of constant calls from mainstream economists (including a bevy of private bank economists who work for institutions that benefit from interest rate hikes) for the Bank of Japan to hike rates. What is driving CPI movements? What has been the impact of the yen depreciation? How responsive is the yen to interest rate changes anyway? Are the increasing yen-denominated import prices being passed on to Japanese consumers? Why doesn’t the Takaichi Administration realise that in the face of supply-side inflation the remedy is not to expand fiscal policy? How responsive are exports to the yen depreciation? All these questions are popping up continually in the financial media at the moment. I haven’t time today to answer all these questions in detail. But here is a start.

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A successful degrowth strategy will require a massive redistribution of income and wealth towards the poorest

It is true that all big cities have areas of poverty that is visible from the streets. But I am always a bit shocked when I travel to London, where I am currently working, because the inequality is very obvious. As I work more on the degrowth, decolonisation project that I am currently involved in, one thing becomes paramount. An overwhelming proportion of the total fossil fuel energy usage is due to the consumption of the wealthiest households. And to dramatically reduce our ecological footprint will require dramatically reducing the capacity of the top end of the income and wealth distributions to consume energy. However, all the trends are moving against that requirement. Here are some notes on that topic.

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Australian labour market – labour demand tracks labour supply – steady

I am late today because I am writing this in London after travelling the last 24 hours. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released the latest labour force data today (February 19, 2026) – Labour Force, Australia – for January 2026 – which showed that the labour market was essentially steady in that employment kept pace with supply, and the participation rate was stable. There was some shuffling within total employment to full-time jobs, with a rather large fall in part-time work. Notwithstanding that fact, underemployment still rose. It remains a fact that with 10 per cent of available labour not being used it is ludicrous to talk about Australia being close to full employment. There is substantial scope for more job creation given the slack that is present.

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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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