The brightest minds can be so dumb in particular circumstances

Its late Sunday afternoon in London as I write this (but already early morning in Australia) – so this is Monday’s blog – I have a busy work day tomorrow. I have been reading about an interesting debate in network theory over the last few days. I was familiar with the debate when it surfaced and have been following it off and on since. It provides a classic example of how the brightest minds can be so dumb in particular circumstances. It also provides a way of understanding how my own profession functions and might also clarify for regular readers of my blog the way I consider my colleagues. Gaining a PhD generally takes some advanced intelligence (not to mention application). But that intelligence can be so specific and not preclude attempts to apply the knowledge too broadly and most importantly to areas where applicability is impossible. Counting how many angels on a pin head is a highly complicated and sophisticated area of analysis but it has no resonance in the real world. Anyone who thinks it does is dumb.

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The myth of compassionate deficit reduction

I was going to write about last week’s ECB decision to purchase unlimited volumes of government debt which means that any private bond trader that tries to take a counter-position against any Eurozone government will lose. It means that the central bank can set yields at wherever it wants including zero. It means that all the mainstream economists are wrong if they claim that deficits drive up interest rates to the point that governments become insolvent because the private bond markets will refuse to purchase their debt. I will write about that tomorrow as I have some number crunching to do. But today – a related story – the myth that there is such a thing as a “good” budget deficit reduction when private spending is insufficient to maintain full employment. That should occupy us for a few thousand words.

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US unemployment is due to a lack of jobs whatever else you think

I read an interesting study today from the Brookings Institute (published August 29, 2012) – Education, Job Openings, and Unemployment in Metropolitan America – which aims to provide US policy makers “with a better sense of the specific problems facing metropolitan labor markets”. The paper concludes that “the fall in demand for goods and services has played a stronger role in recent changes in unemployment” than so-called structural issues (skills mismatch etc). This is an important finding and runs counter to the trend that has emerged in the policy debate which suggests that governments are now powerless to resolve the persistently high unemployment. The simple fact is that governments have the capacity to dramatically reduce unemployment and provide opportunities to the least educated workers who are languishing at the back of the supply queue in a highly constrained labour market. The only thing stopping them is the ideological dislike or irrational hatred of direct public sector job creation. Meanwhile, the potential of millions of workers is wasted every day. Sheer madness!

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A veritable pot pourri of lies, deception and self-serving bluster

Today, I present a series of vignettes that traverse a range of related topics. How Australia’s richest person thinks that billionaires work hard and create jobs and wealth and the poor … well drink and smoke a lot while socialising. Then we consider today’s investment data for Australia which is a precursor to the June-quarter national accounts release. We try to make sense of claims that Australia’s (alleged) socialist government has killed investment in mining. Then we consider how leading economic forecasters mislead the Australian public by claiming that the Australian government will not have enough money to provide dental care to the poor. Then we hop over to America and learn that government spending creates jobs and even the conservatives are saying it. All in a day’s blogging. A veritable pot pourri of lies, deception and self-serving bluster.

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Accounting smokescreens excite the conservatives

I haven’t much time today as I have been travelling most of the day. But the news is that Japan – soon after its government announced it would increase taxes to “rein in the deficit” is now facing a dramatic slowdown as a result of the on-going crisis in Europe and the slowdown in the Chinese economy. Perfect time to increase taxes really! But today we revisit (for the nth time) the way in which conservatives get excited by the accounting smokescreens that have been overlaid onto the monetary system to obscure certain fundamental capacities of government. The excitement or should I say – hysteria – then leads to pressure being put on policy makers by the billionaires that control the media – and, invariably – leads to poor policy choices being made. So for the nth time – the US social security system cannot go broke. The “financial gaps” that are wheeled out to prove that it will become insolvent are just accounting structures that can be altered by Congress anytime they want. If the accounting systems led to the system being in jeopardy then Congress would quickly assert their intrinsic capacities.

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Public service employment programs – what really have we go to fear?

I was clearing out some old filing boxes today – I am moving offices soon – and came across a conference proceedings from 1976, which I had picked up somewhere in the 1980s when my own academic career really began. It was entitled: Directions for a national manpower policy : a collection of policy papers prepared for three regional conferences and published by in Washington by the US National Commission for Manpower Policy in 1976. There was a chapter in it that I recalled fondly by US economist Charles C. Killingsworth entitled Should full employment be a major national goal. He was a long-time advocate of public employment programs and understood how lacking my profession is when it comes to caring about people. In terms of public service employment programs – what really have we go to fear? Answer: not much, unless you don’t enjoy the most disadvantaged having a better life!

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Another day – and some more evidence against fiscal austerity

Eurostat released the second-quarter 2012 National Accounts data for the Europe yesterday and, predictably, the recession is deepening in many countries. The Southern European nations saw their performance worsen and data shows that Spain’s house prices fell by 11.2 per cent last month (Source) and have fallen by 31 per cent since the crisis began in 2008. The deflationary impact of that alone would push the economy into recession. The Euro elites claim they will do everything to resolve the situation. And anything they do undertake – just makes it worse. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the Romney camp has put out a very suspect economic paper – authored by some notable suspects in the propaganda campaign the neo-liberals are sponsoring to prevent governments from acting responsibly. The economic paper has been categorically demolished – even in the mainstream media. So it is another day – some more evidence against fiscal austerity – and still the criminals maintain their grip on the throne.

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The non-existent but remarkable austerity-depreciation mechanism

The conservative lobby (often dominated by Austrian school types) are increasingly running the narrative that neither monetary or fiscal stimulus can engender growth as nations wallow in stagnation. Their rejection of the use of fiscal stimulus – aka spending of one sort or another – would appear to be in denial of the basic macroeconomic rule – one person’s spending is another person’s income – or in a sectoral sense – government spending equals non-government income. Their arguments against monetary policy have some resonance with my own views. But, for example, is any one really going to argue that if the government hired all the unemployed and paid them a stable wage (in excess of any income support they might be receiving) that the shops would not experience rising sales, which, in turn, would stimulate rising orders to suppliers and increased production and higher growth. Are they really saying that all stimulus spending leaves the shores via net exports? While historical evidence is often cited, when one digs further it becomes clear that the evidential basis of the anti-government claims cannot be substantiated. And – the arguments reduces to a rather crude expression of their dislike of government activity.

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Whatever else they say – they all know that public spending cuts are bad

As an outsider, US Presidential campaigns are very curious events. But that is not my topic today. Well it sort of is my topic. The US President has recently visited Virginia – a place where defense spending appears to be highly concentrated. Various senior Republicans decided to give the President a lesson in economics. The only problem is that the lesson seems to run counter to what their main hope – Mitt Romney – is trying to say. In fact, they all got themselves tangled up in a logical mess. But the truth that emerges is that – whatever else they say – everyone of them knows that public spending cuts will damage the economy. They also all know – whatever else they say – that at this present time – with private spending so weak – that such a slowdown will be disastrous. They also know that the American people are pretty easily duped by conservative talk and religious invocation. And that is the way they plan to get power. What happens to the unemployed is just a side-issue it seems. Makes you wonder what went wrong with public education in America (that these characters can be taken seriously)!

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US government is undermining its own people

I read an article in the UK Guardian over the weekend (July 14, 2012) – Scranton, Pennsylvania: where even the mayor is on minimum wage – which told a sorry tale of municipal bankruptcy in the US. There was an earlier story in the UK Daily Mail (June 26, 2012) – Camden, city of ruins: Depressing images of once-thriving metropolis reduced to decaying, crime-ridden rubble – that traversed similar terrain, except carried a number of graphic shorts of urban decay in the face of persistent recession. What these articles tell me is that the US Federal system has failed its people. The rigid balanced budget rules at the State level and the ideologically-driven unwillingness of the Federal government to use its currency powers to redress the damage caused by the application of those rules at the State level have combined to create wastelands across the urban landscape in the US. The damage that is being caused each day will haunt that nation for years to come. Meanwhile, the ideologues are trumpeting a new book about 4 per cent solutions that claim large-scale government cutbacks are needed to re-create the US as a great nation. From afar, one can only conclude that the US glory days (whatever they were) are passing – probably more quickly than they care to acknowledge.

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