Regular music spot and other commentary

When progressives remain regressive

It is Wednesday and I have been tied up all day working on the MOOC that will be launched in early March. We have been filming a lot and it is starting to take shape (see below for more details on how you can enrol). So just a light blog day but that doesn’t mean what I am writing is trivial. The two stories demonstrate how far we have to go on the progressive side of the debate before we actually make progress. It is, unfortunately a repeating tale and it is hard to define a strategy that will get through the blockades that some progressives erect that sustain neoliberalism at its most elemental level. While the British Labour Party is aiming to reinvent itself by pitching its message at the worst element of the voters that it has lost in recent years – patriotism, flags etc – that sort of nonsense – progressives in Australia are revealing how regressive they can be.

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Video – Political Economy thought and praxis post pandemic

It’s Wednesday and I have been tied up most of the day on things that keep me from writing. But I offer some comments on today’s inflation data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics which will help you understand that we have to be very careful in analysing that data because quite often CPI increases are driven by government policy which allows administered prices to rise. Short conclusion: a rising inflation rate does not signal a growing economy necessarily. I also provide details about my current lecture series at the University of Helsinko, which the broader public are invited to participate in. And then some fusion.

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The pandemic is demonstrating that we can resist neoliberalism

A few snippets today, being Wednesday and my short-form blog day (sometimes). I will have a few announcements to make early next week. One will concern a streaming lecture I will be giving next Tuesday as part of my usual work in Finland this time of the year. The title of my talk will be: Political economy thought and praxis post pandemic. I give an annual public lecture in Helsinki but this time it will be coming from the East Coast of Australia, given the pandemic. Details about access will be coming early next week (Monday’s blog post). For now some comments on the pandemic.

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Bond investors see through central bank lies and expose the fallacies of mainstream macroeconomics

It’s Wednesday and I usually try to write less blog material. But given the holiday on Monday and a couple of interesting developments, I thought I would write a bit more today. And after that, you still get some great piano playing to make wading through central bank discussions worth while. The Financial Times article (January 4, 2021) – Investors believe BoE’s QE programme is designed to finance UK deficit – is interesting because it provides one more piece of evidence that exposes the claims of mainstream macroeconomists operating in the dominant New Keynesian tradition. The facts that emerge are that the major bond market players do not believe the Bank of England statements about its bond-buying program which have tried to deny the reality that the central bank is essentially buying up all the debt issued by the Treasury as it expands its fiscal deficits. This disbelief undermines many key propositions that students get rammed down their throats in macroeconomics courses. It also provides further credence to the approach taken by Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).

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My blog is on its ‘New Year’s Holiday’ today

My blog is on its ‘New Year’s Holiday’ today, while I devote more time to other writing commitments. To keep us amused, we have a great song from the 1960s, which might lead you down new musical paths to explore the musician featured. Regular transmission returns tomorrow. The photo is from the beach at Barwon Heads, Victoria, which is around where I was meant to be this week, prior to the border closures and flight cancellations last week due to the new Sydney virus outbreak. It is one of my favourite spots and I go there regularly.

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Still on holidays

My blog is still on holiday until Wednesday, December 30, 2020. All the best from my local beach (Bar Beach today). I have started to read the EU-UK agreement. Not very enlightening I can tell you. Music to follow …

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On Holidays …

My blog is on holiday until Wednesday, December 30, 2020 as I attend to other writing commitments. I am also doing a lot of calculations to see whether the current proposed US stimulus bill that the lameduck president is holding up as a last gasp exercise in power is sufficient given the output gap. This relates to comments that a Biden advisor made last week eschewing any notion of a $US2,000 cash payment to all Americans (including dependent children) on the grounds that it would overheat the economy. He has been systematically vilified by progressives but I haven’t seen any systematic analysis to see whether this statements hold up. Until Wednesday, all the best from my lockdown hub. But for today, some music to help us work better.

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Neoliberal myopia strikes again

It is Wednesday, so just a few snippets and some music. My main comment today is on the report released yesterday (December 15, 2020) by the national body Infrastructure Australia. The report – Infrastructure beyond COVID-19: A national study on the impacts of the pandemic on Australia – once again demonstrates the way in which mainstream macroeconomics, which has restricted government investment in essential instrastructure over the last three decades or so, has created poor outcomes and has failed to prepare the nation for the future. This sort of myopia just repeats itself across all nations. Hopefully, the fiscal response to the pandemic, even though in many countries it has been inadequate, is demonstrating that the mainstream approach is deeply flawed and provides no guidance for the way policy should be conducted into the future.

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Credit rating downgrades for Australian states – next

It is Wednesday and so just a few snippets before we get funky. Yes, jazz-funky. That should do it. In the last week, a credit ratings agency downgraded the rating of the state of Victoria to AA from AAA claiming that the the state was in fiscal trouble. They also downgraded the credit rating for the NSW government credit from AAA to AA+. You might wonder how the hell these corrupt and irrelevant organisations managed to survive the GFC, given the sectors complicity with the financial frauds and overreach that drove the world to near financial ruin? Well they survive because people still believe in the fictions that lie behind the whole concept of government debt ratings. Should anyone be worried about these changes in Victoria and NSW? Not at all. The announcements were just noise and tell us, in part, how far we have to go in expunging these fictions from our understandings.

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