Making better investment decisions using MMT as a knowledge base (long)

This is a draft I am working on for a leading US publication. For many regular readers it will be nothing new. But while there are several things I am probing at the moment which I would normally use my blog space to tease out, time is short this week (really) and so I have to combine things. In other words, the blog space and time today is being used to fulfill commitments with very tight deadlines. But, putting the arguments together in this way might just provide some different angles for people who haven’t thought about things in this way before.

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The Weekend Quiz – July 11-12, 2020 – answers and discussion

Here are the answers with discussion for this Weekend’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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How hard is it for the government to create some jobs?

The – Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights – for the UN was released this week (July 7, 2020). It was Philip Alston’s last report in that role. It is a shocking indictment of the way neoliberalism has distorted our societies and the way the governments with the capacity to ‘move mountains should they wish’ have been co-opted as agents of capital and perpetuate those distortions. The Report is 19 pages of horror. It also resonates with the latest information coming out of Australia’s Closing the Gap campaign, which aims to bring indigenous Australians up to the material level of non-indigenous Australians. The first ten years of the campaign have been an abject failure. And the latest targets don’t inspire any confidence that the outcomes will be any different. A lot of talk. A lot of consultants. But little effective action – for example, like just creating some jobs to reduce unemployment, allow for income security and poverty alleviation. How hard is it for the government to create some jobs?

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MMTed Q&A – Episode 6

Here is Episode 6 in our weekly MMTed Q&A series. This is the second-part of my discussion on the Job Guarantee with Dr Pavlina Tcherneva and in this episode we discuss the central role that employment buffer stocks play in Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), a point that is often missed by those who think it is just a job creation program and of secondary (and dispensable) importance to the ‘banking’ aspects of MMT. As you will hear (and see), the Job Guarantee is an integral part of MMT and that status is derived from the elemental insights that MMT offers about the way a currency works. If a person thinks the Job Guarantee is an unnecessary add-on to MMT, then they haven’t understood the basics of MMT. It is as simple as that.

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We can have full employment again in a green world

Last Saturday, the Weekend Australian, Rupert Murdoch’s daily national newspaper, had a relative Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) avalanche, with two core MMT-style articles published and two that were supportive rather than hostile. That tells you something about the way the world is shifting. I have received a bit of flack for publishing an Op-Ed piece in that newspaper from those who style themselves as Leftists. It is the same old argument – dealing with the devil. And the same old reply – if you want to influence policy then you have to talk to those who make policy. It is easy plotting revolutions over lunch. There has been a lot of groundwork laid over the last several months to bring people into the conversation. It is quiet stuff. Discreet. And as things unfold I will make some of the developments public. At present, all I can say is that I have a document before the Prime Minister today and there is a lot of behind-the-scenes workshops/briefings going on at state-level. And, while activists spend a lot of time ‘pressuring’ this person and that person on social media, the big shifts that are going on at present, including the publication of Noel Pearson’s piece and my article, are not being helped by aggressive social media confrontations. Sometimes it is better to work in a subtle way and exploit networks where they are available. That is not to say that activism to promote MMT is not appreciated and helpful. But we do need to pick our path. Anyway, a number of people asked me to publish my article here because they cannot get behind The Australian’s paywall. So here is the penultimate version which is a few hundred words longer than the actual article, which I cannot provide due to copyright restrictions. I also cannot provide Noel Pearson’s accompanying and complementary article but it was magnificent.

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US labour market reverses direction but for how long?

On July 2, 2020, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released their latest labour market data – Employment Situation Summary – June 2020 – which shows that the US labour market response to the relaxation of lockdown controls gained pace in due, although the question that remains is how long can the governors of the states allow the relaxation to continue given the alarming spread of disease. Already, nations such as Spain are returning to lockdown as their hospital systems become overwhelmed by the ‘second wave’ following easing. And US states such as Texas, Arizona and Florida are approaching the time when they will have to return to some form of lockdown given the health crisis that premature easing has created. The problem is that the lack of economic support from the Federal government makes those decisions difficult to take and extremely damaging for the unemployed. It is almost unbelievable that the Republican politicians are endorsing cutting unemployment support. But, in June, as the economy reopened, the payroll numbers improved as you would expect with a 4.8 million increase in jobs net) and the official unemployment rate rate falling to 11.1 per cent. The numbers filing for unemployment insurance are now falling but now top 49.2 million since March 7, 2020. A further 1.4 million filed in the week ending June 27, 2020. How far the recovery can go depends on two factors, both of which are biased negatively: (a) How many firms have gone broke in the lockdown? (b) Whether the US states will have to reverse their lockdown easing in the face of a rapid escalation of the virus in some of the more populace states. But I do not see appropriate policy responses in place. The US government should have guaranteed all incomes and introduced large-scale job creation programs and a Job Guarantee as an on-going safety net.

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The Weekend Quiz – July 4-5, 2020 – answers and discussion

Here are the answers with discussion for this Weekend’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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The Weekend Quiz – July 4-5, 2020

Welcome to The Weekend Quiz. The quiz tests whether you have been paying attention or not to the blog posts that I post. See how you go with the following questions. Your results are only known to you and no records are retained.

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Australian minimum wage case decision – a scandalous indictment of our system

On June 19, 2020, Australia’s wage setting tribunal, the Fair Work Commission handed down its – Decision: Annual wage review – which saw the National Minimum Wage (NMW) rise by just 1.75 per cent per cent from July 1, 2020. However some of the flow-on increases (awards linked to the NMW), which would normally have been adjusted on the same date have been staggered (November 1, 2020 for Group 2 Awards and February 1, 2021 for Group 3 Awards). The new minimum wage will be $753.80 per week or $19.49 per hour (a measly 35 cents per hour extra). In terms of any inflation measure you want to choose, the FWC’s decision represents a real wage cut for the lowest paid workers (Group 1) and even larger cuts for the other Groups as a result of the staggered wage rises. There is certainly no joy for workers when the mindless pursuit of austerity by the federal government slows growth (before the pandemic), which the government’s own wage setting tribunal then uses as a pretext (the slow growth) to cut real wages. Meanwhile the major employer groups argued for zero nominal rise while enjoying growth in profits with rising productivity growth. A scandalous indictment of our system.

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