Apparently, the US government has just announced that their budget deficit is the largest in absolute terms. Given that the US makes a net gain of one person every 16 seconds, I guess they recorded a record population today as well. Nine records were also set yesterday by junior athletes at the annual sport’s carnival held by the Charlestown Secondary School (Nevis, US). The latter are certainly more interesting and have more relevance for the health of the community. The fact is that the budget outcome is like a score at a sport’s game. Imagine if the cricket authorities decided to place a limit of how many runs a team could score in the current World Cup. You wouldn’t have much of a game. And then they decided to become austere about it and cut the available runs! Just like the runs on the scoreboard, the budget numbers (dollars) can be whatever it takes. The record deficit is not going to stop any game. The fact is that with the extent of idle capacity that you witness in the US, the record needs breaking again very soon!

I read two articles in the last few days which tell me that the bond market traders generally do not understand the intrinsic characteristics of the monetary system and that IMF economists have even less of a clue. The bond traders attribute to themselves an air of importance that it not a reflection of their real role in the monetary system. However, my own profession continues to disgrace itself and is nothing more than a propaganda machine. The mainstream economists are too stupid to realise that their models and frameworks do not explain anything that we are interested in. But such is their position of dominance in the policy space that their neo-liberal grandstanding is given credit. It is embarrassing but worse it is dangerous. Anyway, sometimes a journalist comes to the correct conclusion but for the wrong reasons. While the conclusion is correct, the erroneous reasoning does as much damage by way of misinformation than if the overall conclusion was also wrong. It is a case of being right for wrong reason equals wrong.

I have been travelling today and so haven’t had much time outside of my commitments. But I did read some truly astounding articles today. As the conservatives take control of the political processes in the advanced nations they are revising history faster than we can read about it. Meanwhile they use the TINA claim to implement policies that damage the well-being of the average citizen and set up dynamics that will manifest as the next crisis. And we say we like it – because we have been bluffed into the TINA lie. The fact that the public believe all the conservative dogma and go along with it astounds me. Economics is not that hard. If no one is spending then output will fall and unemployment will rise. But somehow the public believes the opposite. They have been conditioned to believe that a rising (large!) budget deficit is bad and a falling (small!) deficit is good. The reality is that there are no better or worse deficits.

It is funny being part of a profession which doesn’t deserve to exist in its current form. The fact is that I might have better helped the world if I was an anthropologist or perhaps just stayed being a professional musician. My profession is a total disgrace and our arrogance leaves us blind to reality. The latest survey by the National Association for Business Economics reinforces how far removed from reality my profession is. They think the most pressing problem in the US at the moment is the deficit and the public debt and downplay the importance of the entrenched unemployment. When pressed to explain this crazy set of priorities they invent a fantastic (as in fantasy) narrative about the dangers of deficits (which are?) and emphasise that unemployment is largely a voluntary choice by the individuals involved. The academic members of the profession teach their students this nonsense. They talk about the virtues of efficiency but ignore the huge losses that arise from unemployment. The reality is that the economics profession is a disgrace.

Whenever I hear some empirical proposition used by a politician my curiosity is immediately aroused and I go searching for evidence to support or refute the statement. That is the nature of my professional life as a researcher. I often find that politicians twist the facts to suit and when put in context the argument becomes more nuanced to say the least. I also often find out that the politician has just made things up which in other words is referred to as lying. The fiscal austerity push in the US and elsewhere is being justified by a number of erroneous propositions but one of the worst claims is that public workers are so well paid that they are bankrupting governments all over the world. That is a claim that needs investigating and fortunately some credible researchers in the US have done the hard yards and come up with some definitive results. They all show the claims by the austerity proponents to be lies, to say the least. Progressives should focus on these lies and construct simple messages to drown the public in – like – US public sector workers are paid less than their private counterparts! Then we can progress and discuss what deficits mean etc.

I am travelling today and then have commitments at the other end. So very little time to write. But I did read some interesting papers over the weekend which bear on the question of whether fiscal policy in the US was effective or not. The neo-liberals (mainstream macroeconomists) claim that fiscal policy is not effective. The extremists among them invoke – Ricardian Equivalence – which claims that private households and firms fear that the rising deficits will require higher tax rates and so they save more now – which means that for every dollar of new government spending there is a dollar less of private spending – so no effect. All the evidence contradicts the extreme view. There is also mounting evidence that the recent fiscal interventions have been very effective. A study I read yesterday went a step further and analysis the impact of targetting low income groups. They found that type of public spending was very expansionary. Their results support my contention that a Job Guarantee would be a very effective (and cheap) fiscal solution (as a first step) to a private spending collapse. But for all the naysayers – sorry, the evidence is mounting that fiscal policy saved the world.

I have said it before that when the facts get in the way of mainstream economic theory – which is just about always – the professors (my peers) tell their students that the facts are wrong. They have a pathological obsession with hanging on to their theories. Apart from the arrogance that accompanies this I have never really been able to work it out. As a tenured professor I could overnight become an adherent of the Austrian School or whatever and my job wouldn’t be threatened. A tradesperson who loses his/her skills has a problem. But academic life is different. We can explore new ideas any time we choose and take time to develop the news skills commensurate with these ideas. That, in part, is what research is all about. So it is more about their unwillingness to let go of what are essentially religious beliefs that leads the mainstream economists to constantly pump out rubbish and lie when they are found out (by the facts). The overwhelming fact is that the push for austerity is not based on any evidence-based understanding of how the system works. It is driven by stylised economic models that bear no relation to the real world and fail when confronted with data from the real world. As the clock ticks by – tick tock tick tock – the evidence mounts that nations that introduce austerity fare poorly.

Back in warm and sunny Newcastle. It is quite amazing how strident the attack on government deficits has become. There is very little recognition of the scale of the economic disaster that still plagues our economies. Even relatively unscathed economies like Australia is carrying 12.5 per cent labour underutilisation rates. That is bad enough. The majority of nations are in much worse shape. The scale of this disaster is so great that you might wonder who is going to be made to pay – given that the crisis was brought on by human folly. Why are those responsible being brought to account? The reality is that the criminals who led us into this disaster have done very well out of the bailout packages that they now oppose. You would have to indict the majority of my profession to achieve justice. So we might want a “national reconciliation” process to allow us to move on and forgive those that caused this. The problem is that the perpetrators are not humble in their failing. Far from it – they are now leading the charge attacking budget deficits using the same economic theories that caused the crisis. How the hell does anyone think these characters have anything to say any more? They were wrong before … so what’s changed?

I got of a plane this afternoon and learned about the devastation in Christchurch. I am feeling for my NZ colleagues today. I suppose some conservative idiots will claim the NZ government doesn’t have the money to do what is necessary to provide some relief. There is also strife in the Middle East as poverty and unemployment finally combine with a sense that governments in nations in that region are working against people rather than for them. In the UK and the US the governments are no longer working in the best interests of their citizens and public displays of anger are emerging (for example, Wisconsin). While the agenda of the oppressive regimes in the Middle East has always been clear the narratives of the conservatives in the advanced nations has always been hidden by a web of lies often supported by well-paid economists who urge us to accept austerity and deregulation because it will make us all wealthier. They tell us that the textbooks show that. The crisis has demonstrated to all that the textbooks are incapable of saying anything useful about the way the monetary system operates and the policy choices that a government running a fiat currency system has available to them. But as the conservatives are regaining control of the political processes after being shocked into silence in the early days of the crisis, it is clear they are overstepping themselves. They are continually claiming there is a fiscal crisis. But the reality is that their agenda – to crush unions and redistribute real income to capital – is becoming more transparent. That should be exposed by progressives and popular rebellions encouraged.

I have been travelling the last two days and have disrupted work patterns. But I did manage to read a few things in between other things today which made my hair stand on end and suggest that the austerity debate has moved ground. So desperately lacking is the real evidence which might support the economic claims the conservatives have been using to justify their manic desire to savage public spending when there is 10 per cent unemployment (and worse) – that the deficit terrorists are now appealing to morality – that public deficits and debt are immoral. It makes you wonder why these characters just don’t become stand-up comedians. But given how dangerous they are as a result of their positions in government it is clearly not a laughing matter. I would seek to try these characters for crimes against humanity when it becomes obvious to everyone how wrongful their actions are. It is interesting though – the descent into “moral” arguments means that you can conclude that even the conservatives know that the bevy of economic arguments that they use to justify their damaging policies are nonsense. But there is a new emerging problem. As I write today the entrenched unemployment that the deficit terrorists are now acknowledging they will cause to worsen is giving rise to employers discriminating against the most disadvantaged workers that are seeking work. What this tells us is that the employers have too much power.

I get a lot of hate E-mail. The hate used to be expressed in handwritten tomes from those with old typewriters and too much time on their hands. Sometimes there would the anonymous phone call telling me that if I kept advocating the closure of say the coal industry (my region has the largest coal export port in the world) I wouldn’t see the week out. More often these days the spleen comes via E-mail from rather odd addresses (made up hotmail etc) telling me that I am a waste of space because I support active fiscal intervention to restore full employment. “How can I care so much for the unemployed … they are the dregs of the earth and would be better shot … like you” is a typical turn of phrase. Anyway, I notice that the right-wing always gets personal when evidence against their claims is produced. Then they slink back to their desks and determine that the facts before them are not facts at all (because they violate their ideological precepts) and precede to reinvent history. This exercise is otherwise known as making stuff up. I think in these situations interaction is less productive than action. Accordingly I regularly sing to myself as I work – “We gonna smash their brains in – Cause they ain’t got nofink in ’em” (curious? see later)!

The title of today’s blog comes from an interesting article I read today in the UK Guardian (February 14, 2011) – The revenge of trickle-down economics – by retired American economist Richard Wolff. It is worth reading. As Wolff noted the persistently high unemployment, loss of income and output and increased poverty in the US and elsewhere is “an irrational economic absurdity”. The problem is simple to solve from an economic perspective. The US government has all the capacity it needs to offer jobs to all those who want them but are unemployed. The wages they paid would flow back into the spending system and stimulate further job creation. Before long, investment would strengthen and firms would be bobbing up from all over to get a share of the action. All it needs is a kick-start and the government is the only sector that can provide it. The alternative is a slow, muddling recovery with millions left behind jobless and penniless in the process. That is no place to be and is just an irrational economic absurdity.

This blog is about right-wing distortion of evidence and how opinion formation in the US appears to be, as expected, inconsistent and ill-informed. The US President brought down his 2012 Budget yesterday and as expected he promised very large public spending cuts at a time when the US economy cannot afford them. In doing so, the President was bowing to the extremist conservative views that get all the airplay and column inches in the mainstream media in the US. Fox News pumps this extremism out all day every day. But if you sought to understand what the “main street” American actually thought about deficits you might be surprised. The New York Times and CBS sponsor a regular poll and recently they delved into the issue of budget deficits. One right-wing journalist actually had the audacity to use this Poll as a vehicle for her claim that even larger cuts are required to balance the budget. It is easy to show how she misused this public information.

As an outsider, I am always perplexed by American attitudes. Some of the great writers have come from the US so their schooling system must have something going for it. Some of the great musicians have come from the US so there is creativity there. I could go on. But then you think back to the 1950s, when a whole nation was whipped up in the great propaganda traditions that would have made the Reich’s Ministry of Propaganda under Joseph Goebbels proud. Except this was America, alleged land of the free, unless you happen to take that seriously and find out that in fact the place is a repressive society bound to torture people and use martial force to suppress minority viewpoints. I refer here, specifically, of-course, to the McCarthy purges. Remember the Nazis hated the communists too. But today I read a speech from a governor of one US state who has identified a continuing red menace that will eat up the freedom of all US citizens and is the work of a sneaky but determined group of left-wing zealots (with Chinese overtones). If it wasn’t so serious it would be comical and all we would have to do is send the men in the white coats out to the governor’s office to take him away for treatment. The problem is that this is the third great US “reds under the bed” scare and like the previous scares this one is damaging millions.