Regular music spot and other commentary

Booming growth in Britain (Brexit?) but child poverty rises (austerity)

It’s Day 14 today and later this afternoon I am to be released from my stint in quarantine as a result of shifting myself from Newcastle to Melbourne 2 weeks ago. NSW (where Newcastle is located) is now an area of extreme risk according to the Victorian government, given the growing COVID outbreak in Sydney, and any resident travelling back into Victoria was required to do the 14 days in strict Iso. So today is my ‘freedom day’ after being stuck inside my residence for 2 weeks. Woo! Given my extensive CPI report yesterday, I am not treating today as my normal Wednesday work pattern and so apart from some great music, I offer a few observations on things that have come to mind recently.

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Mobility data tells an interesting story about cultural differences between Australian states

It’s Wednesday and I am catching up on other writing commitments. But I have been examining the latest – Google Mobility Reports – to assess the differences between NSW and Victoria during this latest COVID crisis that has befallen Australia. The results are not particularly robust in terms of statistical benchmarks, rather, being eyeballing exercises, but they do tell and interest story about life in Australia and the cultural differences that lie on either side of the border between our two largest states. And, as usual on a Wednesday, I get out of writing by offering music.

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British Labour remains unelectable – Part 104

It is Wednesday and I am now unable to get home to Melbourne as a result of the border closure between Victoria and NSW. That closure is the result of the incompetence of the conservative NSW government who thought they could beat the Delta variant of COVID and leave Sydney open for business. They have now learned that their claim to be the world’s best virus containing government were hubris and so regional NSW is also suffering, what will be a very long lockdown. Victoria has sensibly closed its border as have the other states to NSW, which now is an isolated, pariah state. Pity the NSW Labor opposition is so weak. Anyway, today is a few snippets about the British Labour party being so weak, some reflections on monetary sovereignty, and a note that the barbarians are trying to kill off social sciences in our universities. Then some happiness via some great bass playing.

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The central banks don’t seem to be worrying about inflation

It’s Wednesday and I have been tied up most of the day with commitments. So we will have to be content today with a couple of snippets. The first about the on-going inflation mania and the way in which the ECB seems oblivious to it. The second about the gross incompetence of the Australia government, who has put the health of the nation at risk and forced state governments to invoke rolling lockdowns as only a small number of us are vaccinated and cases keep seeping out of a flawed quarantine system (the latter being the federal responsibility). And once the anger subsides from that little discussion, we have the usual Wednesday music offering to restore peace.

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Culture of austerity distorts business decision-making and we all lose

It is Wednesday and so a few snippets and some Afrobeat. Today, I briefly discuss a rather extraordinary claim by the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia that Australian employers refuse to pay higher wages in an environment where the federal government is biases aggregate policy towards surplus creation, even though that strategy was temporarily disabled during the first year of the pandemic. The overall austerity environment has distorted business decision-making to such an extent that firms are now obsessed with cost control and have forgotten that spending equals income and by encouraging a high wage, high productivity culture, their profits rise as well. Win-Win. At present it is lose-lose.

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Announcing the Instituto de Finanças Funcionais para o Desenvolvimento

Today is Wednesday and I have to travel most of the day and present to a large financial markets gathering in Sydney tonight. My theme tonight will be ‘What the Hell is Going On’, as a challenge to the mainstream who haven’t a clue about what is happening and summarise their lack of awareness and the dissonance that is creating for them by screaming about inflation. The mainstream macroeconomists are so far off the mark these days that they must be like the flat earth theorists who watched ships successfully sail off the edge of the globe only to come back around the other side. They are lost and can only interpret the current events in terms of ‘duh, central banks buying bonds, too much money in the system, duh, must be inflationary’. Anyway, today some jazz and a video to watch.

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My blog is on holiday today

It is a public holiday today on the East coast of Australia and given I am part of the public I have decided it will be a blog holiday too. The truth is that I am travelling a lot today and will drop into the football in Sydney on the way. I will be back tomorrow.

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Price rises should be short-lived – so let’s not resurrect inflation as a bogeyman

It’s Wednesday and I am somewhat besieged. So just a few reflections today before we delve into our latest music offering. I had an Op Ed published in the UK Guardian today (my time) which analysed the latest inflation scares that have been dominating the popular media. More and more mainstream macroeconomists are coming out and asserting that economies will overheat. The usual gold bugs have been delighted by this shift in the narrative back to the obsessions and manias that keep them occupied on a daily basis. What was interesting to me was the responses of the commentators to the Guardian Op Ed. If the sentiments expressed represent the state of macroeconomic knowledge (presumably mostly in the UK) then we have a long way to go before Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and the sensible policies that it might inform gain any serious traction. Given the GFC, the stagnation in the aftermath, 30 years of Japanese history, the pandemic, which have all combined to demonstrate why the mainstream approach is dysfunctional and provides no guidance to what might happen in the real world, the commentators continued to rehearse these failed ideas about inflation, interest rates, bond markets etc. Quite dispiriting.

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The aftermath from my recent podcast on the Job Guarantee and UBI

Given I provided a detailed National Account analysis yesterday, I am using today as a blog lite day with just some snippets and then a musical offering – as per my usual Wednesday practice. I did an interview for Real Progressives last week and some of the social media reaction has been hysterical – claims that Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has gone political and that MMT advocates abandoning the capitalist system and so on so forth. Some of this stuff is coming from self-identified ‘progressives’, which makes me wonder how much meaning term retains. In some cases, the attacks were really Trojan horses for the dislike of my Brexit stance or my attacks on the British Labour Party for pushing an unworkable and neo-liberal inspired fiscal credibility rule, which they had to change just before the election anyway because it was unworkable in its original form. So the resentment of those who hang onto the ‘European dream’ for the UK manifests as stupid, lying attacks on anything I say. Fine. More importantly, Switzerland is having a little ‘Brexit’ sort of move itesel, that has angered the European Union and is another chink in the now very depleted European ‘dream’. And if all that is a bit much, we can finish with some Jazz.

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Manufacturing growing strongly in the UK as jobs fall in Australia with the fiscal cuts

It is Wednesday so a blog lite day for me. The next part of this week is a bit up in the air for me after the Covid outbreak that resulted from a breach of quarantine in Adelaide has spread to Melbourne and looks a bit ugly. Fingers crossed that I can get back home to Melbourne tomorrow. Today I briefly review the latest payroll data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which shows that despite all the bluster from the Federal government to the contrary, their fiscal retreat in March is now costing jobs, as predicted. I also examine the latest production data from the UK, which should provide good news for British manufacturing workers. And finally, we have a little birthday celebration with some singing.

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