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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Saturday Quiz – September 1, 2012 – answers and discussion

Here are the answers with discussion for yesterday’s quiz. The information provided should help you work out why you missed a question or three! If you haven’t already done the Quiz from yesterday then have a go at it before you read the answers. I hope this helps you develop an understanding of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and its application to macroeconomic thinking. Comments as usual welcome, especially if I have made an error.

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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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Return to a gold standard – don’t even think about it

I don’t have much time today. But over the weekend the talk has been of a return to the gold standard. Conservatives hark back to the gold standard as some sort of golden age when all was well with the world. They still think that prosperity is within the grasp of a society if it anchors its currency to the price of gold. It seems the US Republican party is toying with the idea again – presumably as a pitch to rope in the real conservatives (Ron Paul supporters). They couldn’t be serious though. It would be a disaster if the world attempted to go back to a system that failed when it operated and it would lead to the further immiserisation of the poor if implemented. The salient point is that it didn’t work when it was in operation. It didn’t produce lower price variability and lower inflation rates nor did it prevent bank crises and financial panics. It was abandoned because it was politically unsustainable such was the entrenched unemployment that accompanied it.

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Fat cat bankster wants to make the unemployed even more desperate

My university office is far from clean so next week when I get back there I suspect I will find some more old insightful articles in the boxes remaining to be sorted to comment on. I haven’t much time today as I am in transit. But there are two interesting developments in Australia that are worth commenting on while the iron is hot. The first is that one of Australia’s fat cat banksters, fresh from enjoying the benefits of the federal government’s loan guarantees is now advocating cuts in the unemployment benefits to make the unemployed more desperate for work. The benefit is already well below Australia’s poverty line and there are 3.6 odd unemployed for every vacancy not to mention the 8 per cent of workers who are underemployed. The bankster thinks that by pushing them further into poverty they might up house, pack their cars and travel across the other side of the continent to work in the mining sector. Little does he know. The second piece of news was that two major mining projects have been shelved by BHP as the outlook for the sector deteriorates.

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The British government has more than demonstrated its incompetence

Today’s article from the relics (my office clear out continues) is actually two articles. One by Arthur Okun and the other by fellow US macroeconomist Gardner Ackley. Both economists are now dead but during their careers were aware of the role of government in a monetary economy. They were antagonistic to the conservative views of economists that wanted to push fiscal rules such as balanced budgets. They understood that these views not only undermined democracy but also made it impossible for governments to pursue their legitimate goals of promoting public purpose. In the current environment, if they were still alive they would be castigating those who seek to impose pro-cyclical fiscal austerity. Their insights remain relevant today. Just think about yesterday’s public finance data release in Britain. The debt reduction forecasts from the British government are in tatters because tax revenue is collapsing further and welfare spending is rising. The operation of the automatic stabilisers is signalling that the British government has more than adequately demonstrated its incompetence.

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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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Saturday Quiz – August 18, 2012 – answers and discussion

Here are the answers with discussion for yesterday’s quiz. The information provided should help you understand the reasoning behind the answers. If you haven’t already done the Quiz from yesterday then have a go at it before you read the answers. I hope this helps you develop an understanding of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and its application to macroeconomic thinking. Comments as usual welcome, especially if I have made an error.

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The labour market is not like the market for bananas

I am now using Friday’s blog space to provide draft versions of the Modern Monetary Theory textbook that I am writing with my colleague and friend Randy Wray. We expect to complete the text by the end of this year. Comments are always welcome. Remember this is a textbook aimed at undergraduate students and so the writing will be different from my usual blog free-for-all. Note also that the text I post is just the work I am doing by way of the first draft so the material posted will not represent the complete text. Further it will change once the two of us have edited it.

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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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Bundesbank showed the way in 1975

I read an interesting Brief from BNP Paribas (published August 7, 2012) today – The Bundesbank’s Bond Purchases in 1975 – which documents the seemingly hypocritical stance of the 2012 Bundesbank against the way it behaved in the mid-1970s. The short BNP analysis is in the context of the recent demands by the senior Bundesbank officials (including the chief Jens Weidmann) that the ECB refrain from purchasing Eurozone member-state bonds as a way to alleviate the current crisis. The point of the historical reflection is not, in my view, to bash the Germans for hypocrisy but to view their actions in 1975 as a sensible policy response to the growth crisis the German economy was enduring at that time. The same sort of action by the ECB would help the Eurozone get out of its growth crisis now. In 1975, the Bundesbank showed the way.

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Japan thinks it is Greece but cannot remember 1997

Last week (August 10, 2012) the Japanese Parliament approved a bill to double the sales tax (from 5 per cent to 10 per cent) over the next three years. It is a case of déjà vu. We have been there before. The economy suffers a major negative private spending shock. The government’s budget deficit increases as tax revenue collapses. The outstanding government debt rises more quickly than in the recent past. The rising government deficit supports a recovery in real GDP growth. The conservatives start shouting that the government will run out of money, that interest rates will soar and inflation surge and life as we know will end. The government raises the sales tax and cuts back spending. Real GDP growth collapses, tax revenue falls and the deficit and debt ratio continue to rise. We are back in Japan in 1997 – but the only problem is that we are playing out the same story in 2012. The reason – Japan thinks it is Greece but has forgotten about 1997.

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Saturday Quiz – August 11, 2012 – answers and discussion

Here are the answers with discussion for yesterday’s quiz. The information provided should help you understand the reasoning behind the answers. If you haven’t already done the Quiz from yesterday then have a go at it before you read the answers. I hope this helps you develop an understanding of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and its application to macroeconomic thinking. Comments as usual welcome, especially if I have made an error.

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Investment and interest rates

I am now using Friday’s blog space to provide draft versions of the Modern Monetary Theory textbook that I am writing with my colleague and friend Randy Wray. We expect to complete the text by the end of this year. Comments are always welcome. Remember this is a textbook aimed at undergraduate students and so the writing will be different from my usual blog free-for-all. Note also that the text I post is just the work I am doing by way of the first draft so the material posted will not represent the complete text. Further it will change once the two of us have edited it.

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Australian labour market – just creeping along

Today’s release by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) of the Labour Force data for July 2012 reveals a fairly flat labour market with modest gains in employment and hours worked which were sufficient to outstrip the underlying labour force growth and so unemployment fell by 2,500. That decline in unemployment was aided by a declining participation rate. In other words, some of the decline in unemployment was due to a modest increase in hidden unemployment. Certainly this data is not consistent with any notions that the Australian labour market is booming or close to full employment. The most continuing feature that should warrant immediate policy concern is the appalling state of the youth labour market. My assessment of today’s results – positive outcome but very weak (mostly flat) trend. The economy is just creeping along when it comes to creating jobs.

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Budget surpluses are not national saving – redux

I was reading several older papers from the 1990s today as part of a project I am working on where I track predictions that leading mainstream economists were making at the time about the evolution of national and global economies. It is a very interesting exercise to build the narratives that were popular at an earlier time and then consider how far the economists got things right. I have noted that there has been some debate out in blog-land about who predicted the failure of the Euro. I am less interested in documenting which person was the first or the second – there were many who saw the design flaws from the inception and could extrapolate what they would mean if a negative shock occurred. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) economists were among them. I am more interested in groupthink (at the paradigm level) and how the failed predictions can be used to demonstrate the inapplicability of a certain body of theory. That is, what can we learn from the failure of mainstream economists in general to see the crisis coming (and being in denial now of what the solution is). In this blog I consider a part of the thinking that explains why my profession proved to be unreliable in this regard. I renamed this blog – appending it with the term redux because on March 23rd, 2009 – I wrote a blog – Budget surpluses are not national saving.

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Increase minimum wages and give job guarantees for the low paid

I lived in the North-West of England for a time in Lancashire as I pursued my PhD at Manchester University. It was during the UK Miners’ Strike 194-85, which was in response to the Thatcher Government’s attack on the major unions in the UK to further its ideological war on workers’ rights and welfare provision. The union lost dramatically after a struggle of 12 months symbolising the rise of neo-liberalism. The same ideology that sought to undermine the rights of workers also led to policy changes that, ultimately, caused the financial crisis and on-going real recession. The reason I raised that experience is because I read a report from a Manchester research organisation over the weekend which highlighted a major problem in that region (poverty wages etc) but also, without stating it, provided an alternative policy approach to the current crisis which would quickly get economies moving again – creating jobs and enhancing the capacity of households to spend. A policy response that antithetical to what is being tried at present is to increase minimum wages and introduce employment guarantees for the most disadvantaged workers whose welfare has been disproportionately undermined by the crisis. That would not only help alleviate the major problem at present – deficient aggregate demand – but also redress some major equity issues that the crisis has accentuated.

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Saturday Quiz – August 4, 2012 – answers and discussion

Here are the answers with discussion for yesterday’s quiz. The information provided should help you understand the reasoning behind the answers. If you haven’t already done the Quiz from yesterday then have a go at it before you read the answers. I hope this helps you develop an understanding of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and its application to macroeconomic thinking. Comments as usual welcome, especially if I have made an error.

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Introducing economic dynamics

I am now using Friday’s blog space to provide draft versions of the Modern Monetary Theory textbook that I am writing with my colleague and friend Randy Wray. We expect to complete the text by the end of this year. Comments are always welcome. Remember this is a textbook aimed at undergraduate students and so the writing will be different from my usual blog free-for-all. Note also that the text I post is just the work I am doing by way of the first draft so the material posted will not represent the complete text. Further it will change once the two of us have edited it.

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ECB deficit funding or persistent mass unemployment

Yesterday’s Statement from the US Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC) stated that the US economy is slowing and the “housing sector remaining depressed” and employment growth slow. The US central bank indicated that moderate growth would persist for the immediate future but that it was threatened by events overseas (read Europe). And over in Europe – the pressure is mounting on the ECB, which knows it must continue to work out ways to fund member states but is being constantly pummelled by the inflation-phobes in Germany (and elsewhere). The problem in Europe is not sovereign debt but a lack of spending. Even within the flawed European monetary system design, the ECB has the capacity to fund increased spending. Those who claim this would be disastrous have a strange view of the consequences of not doing that. This debate resonates with that between Keynes and the Classics in the 1930s. The former demonstrated categorically that without external policy intervention (for example, fiscal stimulus) economies tend to states of chronic mass unemployment with massive income losses (and other pathologies) being the result. Do the Euro leaders really want that state to evolve? They are at present doing everything they can to ensure it does.

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