Travelling today

No blog post today as I am travelling and catching up after travel, depending which time zone you might be in. I am now starting my latest European and UK tour and will be appearing at a number of events and functions over the next three weeks. I am leaving a nation with elevated (very) levels of temperature (43 degrees Thursday, 39 today), out of control bushfires creating permanent changes in our fauna, flora and social settlements (many of these will not recover), and an extended drought. I am heading to a place that is normally snowbound this time of year, but as of today (February 1), there is no snow on the ground and temperatures are still above zero. I understand variance, but, the extremes are becoming more noticable as the years pass. And, I will enter the UK, as an independent nation for the first time in 47 years. I think that is something to be happy about, although I understand that a signficant proportion of the British population are not happy about it. But that is the nature of our political systems.

Read more

Two films to watch which won’t make you happy …

Best wishes to all for 2020. It is a public holiday today in Australia and I have to catch a plane to travel North. And it is Wednesday anyway and I am training myself off writing blog posts for that day. Earlier this week, I saw the Ken Loach’s latest movie – Sorry We Missed You – which I can attest is a very harrowing experience of life in Britain under neoliberalism. I was going to say under the Tories, but then life under the previous Labour government was also made harder for those in the regional areas, particularly as fiscal rectitude became the norm. You will find the movie hard going that is for sure. I also saw the newly released movie – Where’s My Roy Cohn – which is also a rather difficult movie to watch, given the way it resonates with the way the modern political classes behave in most nations.

Read more

Still on holidays

The blog is on holiday until Monday, December 30, 2018 although the usual Weekend Quiz will appear. There might be an existential question or two about Santa given the video that Norad has published. All the best from my local beach (Bar Beach today). Music to follow …

Read more

On holidays

The blog is on holiday until Monday, December 30, 2019 although a harder than usual quiz will appear later this week. All the best from my local beach (Nobbys). For the rest of the week I am finishing writing commitments that have approaching deadlines and have to travel to my next speaking engagement at the end of the week.

Read more

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.

Read more

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.

Read more

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.

Read more

Server issues and migration

Dear Readers: Sorry for the downtime overnight. We had a disk failure which could not be resolved immediately. We have also been building a new system to provide for greater security and I will be migrating to that set up on this coming Sunday. You may experience some connectivity issues again on Sunday afternoon (Eastern…
Read more

Announcing – Foundation for Monetary Studies Inc.

It is Wednesday today and a blog-lite day. An announcement and a few videos only. But plenty to occupy your time if so inclined. I have an important announcement to make, a video of our Birmingham event (May 11, 2019) and some music from one of the best guitar players. Thomas Fazi and I also have an article coming out in The Tribune magazine soon in response to a rather unsavoury and silly attack on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) by an ex-advisor to the British Labour Party. There will also be a longer version published here in the coming days – which contains more detail. But I have to finish the edits today! So with that said …

Read more
Back To Top