Its Sunday morning in Kazakhstan and cold. My meetings in Almaty are over and I am heading home today via Dubai (backwards to go forwards). It has been a long week and it hasn’t been helped by the fact I have come down with a heavy cold. But overall a lot was accomplished, not the least being the startng dialogues with the Central Asian government officials. I have also been thinking about the book on economic development that we have started working on (with a colleague at the Asian Development Bank). In this context, today’s blog is about development, trade and modern monetary theory (MMT). Many readers have asked me to comment on recent articles in the Australian press about our current account situation. So-called experts (not) are claiming the budget balance has to be cut back quickly to avoid an external crisis. The reality is that they fail to understand what the current account balance is about.

Today’s meeting in Almaty will be discussing how the CAREC countries, that I are working with at present via the Asian Development Bank, can best achieve regional cooperation and integration. The region is very interesting and I will report more fully when things are more clear. But the challenges these countries face are exacerbated by the grip that market liberalism has on them. This is especially to be understood in the context of the Soviet heritage of most of these countries. There is a curious mix of past and present which makes market liberalism even more dangerous. So what? Well, I have been asked by many readers about Latvia, another former Soviet satelite. The deep crisis that economy is enduring is a good example of how market liberalism has failed. Yet, depressingly, the solutions proposed involve more of the same. Modern monetary theory (MMT) clearly offers an alternative and much more productive alternative recovery path.

I am feeling a little uncomfortable at present – landlocked. I am working in Almaty, Kazakstan, which is part of Central Asia and one of only 44 countries that do not have a sea edge. But it would be worse if we were in Uzbekistan which is one of only two countries that is doubly-landlocked. That means it is a landlocked country surrounded by other landlocked countries so I would have to cross two national borders to get to the surf! I will report on what I am up to over here in more detail at a future date. But even though this is a remote region, the Australian national broadcaster the ABC has tracked me down. They rang early this morning and want to talk about the Australian Treasury’s claim that unemployment fears are easing and skills shortages are now the threat to our economy – what? 14 percent of our labour underutilised and we are now back to the skills shortage debate. Anyway, the ABC has been on my mind overnight …

In the Financial Times this morning there was a thought provoking article by Mort Zuckerman entitled The free market is not up to the job of creating work which is in stark contrast to another article – Goodbye, Macroeconomics, which appeared last week in the FT and was written by Eli Noam. The former seems to understand the depth of the problem and has the right priorities but doesn’t come up with the right policies. The latter raises some interesting points but just misunderstands the nature of macroeconomics.

I am now Dubai waiting for a flight to Almaty (Kazakhstan). I spent the time on the flight reading (including Stieg Larsson’s third book in his trilogy – The girl who kicked the hornet’s nest – hard to put down. I also listened to all the Rai CDs on the plane’s enterntainment system. I came upon this music about 15 years ago when I was listening to Studio Brussel (then my favourite radio station in Europe) driving back to Maastricht (where I was living) after a bike race down in Belgium. It was bizarre – middle eastern instruments and modes – interspersed with acid jazz, house and straight jAzz. The first song I heard sounded very algerian and then the sax player went wild. I thought I was just tired from the hard race – it was so not what I was expecting – but I mmediately became a fan. So I caught up with all of the current releases – courtesy of an Emirates flight. This little blog extends that cultural saturation.

The weekend’s Sydney Morning Herald carried a syndicated article from the UK Telegraph – Why the economy needs to stress creation over distribution – which bears on the recent discussion about financial market profits and executive packages. If we were to follow this remuneration pattern then things would be very different in the world. Probably for the better. It also shows how the explanations for earnings provided by mainstream economics textbooks are ridiculous in the extreme. Another reason to stay clear of those courses at University.

Ah Sunday. I don’t go to my office at the University. I ride lots of kms on my bike. I mix working at home on my research with digging in my food production system (garden). And … if I am stupid, I read the financial press and study the data trends. At that point, any sun that is around becomes a dark cloud and I sink into a malaise and wonder why modern monetary theory (MMT) ….