Regular music spot and other commentary

When the idea of a fiscal surplus becomes a talisman

It is Wednesday and I am travelling a lot today with limited opportunity to write. I am reading a lot though. Highly significant political debates with far reaching effects on the well-being of citizens once policies are implemented are conducted on a daily basis in our national Parliaments and in the media with little correspondence to reality. This is the norm for debates on macroeconomics, which dominate political news every day. There is this fictional world that has been created to keep citizens in check. When the painful policies the neoliberals haul out inflict pain, the solution is to blame something erroneous, attack it, which then just causes more pain. This is the norm these days when it comes to macroeconomic policy. And for the rest of us we suffer in the real world but reason in this fictional world, which is why it persists.

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Apparently core MMT idea is now supported by the mainstream

It’s Wednesday and only a collection of snippets today. Today we saw some self-aggrandising hypocrisy with a short memory come out of the sewers, and a statement by a government denying that they are a “successful case of MMT”, an advertisement (call for help) and some music linked to a recent, rather significant death, when considered in the history of contemporary music. Pretty full day really.

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Travelling all day today …

There will be no blog post today as I am travelling for the next 24 hours or so back from the US. It has been a very busy two weeks or so that has taken me to many cities and meetings with many different people. A lot of different agendas to absorb and think about. From West Africa to the struggles within the US, to the Eurozone and the chaos of Britain. But the commonality is a desire to understand MMT and apply it to better deal with the problems that face us and our planet. While I am flying I will not be attending to comments that need moderation. So it might be some time before you see your comment published (or not). I am now preparing for my next foray which will take me to Japan later this month.

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The ‘rats’ are deserting the mainstream ship – and everyone wants in

It is Wednesday today and only a short blog post. I am heading to New York city today from London. More on that tomorrow. It is clear now that journalists from all over the globe are starting to pick up on the shifts in policy thinking that I have been writing about – the admission by policy makers that monetary policy has reached the end of its effective life (not that it was ever particularly effective) and that there is a crying need for a return to fiscal dominance, which was the norm before the neoliberal era began several decades ago. We have not yet reached the stage where the dots are being fully joined – monetary policy dominance dead -> fiscal policy dominance desirable -> neoliberalism dead. But that will have to come because the fiscal policy activism will have to be aimed at addressing targets that have been neglected by the neoliberal era – real wages growth, quality and security of employment, restoration of public services, environmental care priorities, scope and quality of public infrastructure, and the like. But as the journalists are starting to file copy on this topic, some are very lazy – and just want to have it on the record that they were part of the throng. One of the laziest offerings I have read was published today in the Australian on-line newspaper, The New Daily (September 23, 2019) – The economic weapon too hot for the RBA to mention: Helicopter money – and written by finance journalist Michael Pascoe, who is usually more careful with his words. While many might think any publicity is good for the spread of our Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) work, my view is that falsely constructing MMT can add to the already stifling dissonance among the public that has been mislead for years by the framing and language of the mainstream economists.

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Travelling all day today …

There will be no blog post today as I am travelling for the next 24 hours or so to Europe via LA. I have a detective novel to read – well 79 in fact, I have just started the complete Maigret series written by Belgian author Georges Simenon – so in the spirit of that great song from the Who – I hope I get finished with the series before I get old! And regular transmission will probably resume from Paris on Tuesday. While I am flying I will not be attending to comments that need moderation. So it might be some time before you see your comment published (or not). I hope to see many MMT people at one or more of the events where I will be speaking in the next two weeks – the details are overleaf.

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On visiting Japan and engaging with conservative politicians

It is my Wednesday blog post and my relative ‘blog day off’. But there has been an issue I want to write briefly about that has come up recently and has become a recurring theme. I am writing today to put the matter on the public record so that spurious claims that arise elsewhere have no traction. As our Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) work gains popularity, all manner of critics have started coming out of the woodwork. There is now, quite a diversity of these characters, reflecting both ends of the ideological spectrum and places in-between. The mainstream economists and those who profess to be ‘free marketeers’ bring out their big guns pretty quickly – inflation and socialism/Stalinism. Standard stuff that any progressive proposal to use government fiscal policy gets bombarded with since time immemorial. Easily dismissed. More recently, those who claim to be on the ‘progressive’ side of the debate have become more vociferous in their attacks, sensing, I suspect, that MMT have supplanted their relevance as the defenders of the anti-neoliberal wisdom. These characters resort to all sorts of snide-type attacks ranging from accusations of anti-Semitism (which I have covered previously), siding with Wall Street, ‘America-first corporatist sycophants’ (latest ridiculous book from G. Epstein as an example), giving succour to fascists and the Alt-Right, and that sort of stuff. Today, I want to address that last claim, which recently has been raised by a number of so-called progressive critics.

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The rich are getting richer in Australia while the rest of us mark time

Only a short blog post today – in terms of actual researched content. Plenty of announcements and news though, a cartoon, and some great music. I have been meaning to write about the household income and wealth data that the ABS released in July, which showed that real income and wealth growth over a significant period for low income families has been close to zero, while the top 20 per cent have enjoyed rather massive gains. These trends are unsustainable. A nation cannot continually be distributing income to the top earners who spend less overall while starving the lower income cohorts of income growth. A nation cannot also continually create wealth accumulation opportunities for the richest while the rest go backwards. These trends generate spending crises, asset bubbles and social instability. That is what is emerging in Australia at present.

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Of course governments will be fiscally stretched if they define large surpluses as the norm

Wednesday and a short blog post. I regularly work for unions as an expert analyst/witness in their struggles to achieve wage justice with employers who are intent on paying as little as possible. Often these are private employers but at the moment I am helping a union with their campaign to win a reasonable wage increase against a state government. The logic deployed by the government in relation to their fiscal affairs and their wage setting behaviour is a classic demonstration of how neoliberalism has distorted any sense of reason and created self-fulfilling problems. So today, I will just introduce this issue – given how fascinating it is.

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Apparently Brown could but Boris cannot – British progressive journalism at its worst

It is Wednesday and my blog post-lite day. A few topics – thugs in Britain. Mindless ‘progressive’ journalism trying to tell readers that while Gordon Brown could use fiscal policy tools (spending and taxation) to advantage to stimulate the British economy, Boris Johnson cannot. Piffle and the lies from the UK Guardian are getting more desperate by the week. And some notes on guns. Then a nice bit of guitar playing. Tomorrow, I will be extending my ideas on the Green New Deal.

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Europe should stay out of the race for IMF head

My Wednesday blog post is designed to be short in time commitment. It clears a bit of space in the day to catch up with other more mundane matters (research contracts, some coding – I am learning Swift at present, and stuff like that). But I thought a small viewpoint on the latest dealings over who will become IMF boss were easy to dispense with today. And in that context, it was hard to go past Wolfgang Münchau’s Financial Times column – Do not treat the IMF as an EU consolation prize (July 21, 2019). He sums up the situation perfectly – “The world needs a first-rate person to run the IMF. It should not allow Europe to treat the fund as a dumping ground for washed-up officials.” Adam Tooze also weighs in on the same issue in his Social Europe article – The International Monetary Fund leadership is not a bargaining counter (July 22, 2019). His conclusion is also spot on – “The eurozone crisis created a toxic codependency between the eurozone and the IMF which needs to be dissolved once and for all.” But it goes beyond the revolving door aspects of these positions and the Troika relationship that emerged during the GFC. The IMF is already in tatters – still in denial but realising its old positions are untenable – to allow the toxic austerity culture of Europe to take over the IMF would destroy any hope that the latter might abandon its neoliberalism and embrace the emerging macroeconomics paradigm that will replace dependency on monetary policy with fiscal dominance – just what Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has been promoting.

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