Jeremy Corbyn must break out of the neo-liberal framing

Two articles in the UK Guardian this week summarise what is going on with the British Labour Party at present. The first (August 3, 2015) – Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters aren’t mad – they’re fleeing a bankrupt New Labour – refutes the notions propagated by the previously dominant ‘New Labour’ factions that the Left of the Party are in some way mad, deluded, or otherwise sick. Instead, it argues the Left are part of a new “grassroots political movement” reacting to the bereft nature of New Labour which is without a “clear vision, or a set of policies, or even a coherent distinct set of values”. The second article (August 3, 2015) – Corbyn’s economic strategy would keep Tories in power, top Labour figure says – provides proof of concept. It is written by the Shadow Labour Chancellor Chris Leslie and reflects an abysmal understanding of macroeconomics that only a deluded free-marketeer would dare suggest had anything to do with reality. The article demonstrates that the top echelons of the British Labour Party parliamentary wing are caught in the destructive neo-liberal Groupthink economics that not only caused the GFC but has also led to austerity being the norm for policy makers these days. And there is no doubt that it is a failed doctrine and not worthy of a progressive opposition. The new “grassroots political movement” is reacting sensibly to the intellectual carnage at the top end of their Party and lets hope it is triumphant and purges these ideas from Labour forever. But, first, it must break out of the neo-liberal framing that is pervasive in its first major statement.

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Friday lay day – Italy’s time to demonstrate leadership

Its my Friday lay day blog and I am limping into the weekend to rest up some more. There was an interesting article in the Washington Post (July 31, 2015) – Why Italy is the most likely country to leave the euro. This accords with the view I outlined in my book – Eurozone Dystopia: Groupthink and Denial on a Grand Scale – that a large economy such as Italy should demonstrate leadership in the Eurozone and pave the way for the weaker nations to restore their own growth. We would not have witnessed the torturous brutality that was dealt out to Greece recently if the Troika were dealing with Italy. The question is whether Italy is likely to provide that leadership. On July 22, 2015, Eurostat released the latest government debt data for the Eurozone which showed that – Government debt rose to 92.9% of GDP in euro area – which, of course is well above the 60 per cent threshold allowed for by the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). In the last 12 months “fourteen Member States registered an increase in their debt to GDP ratio at the end of the first quarter of 2015, twelve a decrease and in Estonia there was no change.” In the last quarter, fifteen states increased their debt ratios. Greece shows up as having the highest debt ratio but the largest reduction over the last year. But the interesting thing about the data is that Italy has the second-large public debt ratio (at 135.1 per cent) and is among the nations with the largest increases. On the numbers, Italy is being left behind, stuck in recession with high unemployment and a rising public debt ratio which will surely bring it into conflict with the Excessive Deficit Mechanism before too long.

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British Labour must escape from its austerity lite prison

I imagine we have all been keeping an eye on the evolving sham that is the British Labour Party election contest. When former leader Tony Blair, who will be forever remembered as being George Bush’s ‘poodle’ when he took Britain into the illegal invasion of Iraq and left a destabilised region, came into the fray urging party members to get a heart transplant if they thought supporting Jeremy Corbyn was an option, things turned really nasty. There has been a plethora of attacks on Corbyn alleging he is part of a sinister, return-to-Soviet control type candidate, an hysterical communist who wants to take Britain back to the dark ages, and more. What it tells me is that the Tories fear Corbyn as a candidate and would prefer the austerity-lite options like Liz Kendell to become leader because they know she won’t cause much trouble. What worries me is that Corbyn articulates a progressive set of values but might not yet have the macroeconomic understanding to defend them against a media attack primed to vilify anything that is not right-wing. British Labour must escape from its austerity lite prison but to do that they have to surround Corbyn with people who understand how the monetary system operates.

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Euro exit will not be enough for Greece

An editorial article in BloombergView (July 15, 2015) – Leaving Euro Is Better Than Eternal Greek Crisis – argued, with providing evidence, that “it would be better for Europe’s economic policy makers to spend their time figuring out how to manage an orderly Greek exit than continuing to negotiate deal after sure-to-fail deal to keep Greece in the euro”. Regular readers will know that I support an orderly breakup of the entire monetary union and if that is not possible then individual nations should exit on their own accord and reestablish some sane proportion in their macroeconomic policy settings. But exit is not a sufficient condition for restoring prosperity to a nation. They would also have to simultaneously abandon the neo-liberal Groupthink that holds the Eurozone economy in a vice-like grip of austerity. Under those provisos, the Greek economy would return to growth immediately and they could eliminate unemployment within a few quarters.

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Parents are advance secret agents for the class society

Dutch economist Jan Pen wrote in his 1971 book – Income Distribution – that “Parents are advanced secret agents of the class society”, which told us emphatically that it was crucial that public policy target disadvantaged children in low-income neighbourhoods at an early age if we were going to change the patterns of social and income mobility. The message from Pen was that the damage was done by the time the child reached their teenage years. While the later stages of Capitalism has found new ways to reinforce the elites which support the continuation of its exploitation and surplus labour appropriation (for example, deregulation, suppression of trade unions, real wage suppression, fiscal austerity), it remains that class differentials, which have always restricted upward mobility and ensured income inequality and access to political influence persist, are still well defined and functional. This was highlighted in a new report published by the the American Economic Policy Institute (EPI) – Early Education Gaps by Social Class and Race Start U.S. Children Out on Unequal Footing (June 17, 2015). Not much has changed it seems for decades.

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Why no-one should vote for the Australian Labor Party

It is a public holiday in Australia today – Queen’s Birthday, a reflection of our past as a colony. Not a lot has actually changed and we still cannot shed the monarchy. Anyway, not many people reflect on the monarchy today given it is deep winter and football matches are on as part of the holiday. But in keeping with the holiday spirit, I will only write a short blog today. The topic is why no-one should vote for the Australian Labor Party although the argument is applicable to all parties like it, who formerly represented the interests of workers and who are now dominated by politicians who have embraced the neo-liberal macroeconomic myths as if they are truths and, if that wasn’t bad enough, have become active proselytizers of this destructive religion. I might write a few words about the on-going Eurozone saga too, given the extraordinary comments by leading European politicians overnight. Then I will head like thousands of others to the football!

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Time to end the human rights atrocity in Gaza

There were three new data and analysis releases in the past week in advanced Western nations (the US, the UK and Australia) that indicate that the policy settings that are in place are not delivering prosperity and should be changed to allow governments more fiscal freedom to stimulate growth. But while these nations continue, variously, to endure the costs that the wrongful policy settings have wrought, a World Bank report issued last week (May 27, 2015) – Economic Monitoring Report to the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee – allows us to understand a little bit (in numbers and narrative) the terrible (“staggering”) cost of the blockade on the Gaza economy and living standards of the Palestinian people in that region. The plight of the advanced world is nothing by comparison, not that I want to get into a relativist defense of the situation in the advanced world.

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The incommensurate aims of the Greek people

I am continually amazed at the arrogance of the Eurozone leaders who in the face of palpable professional failure hold a straight face and continue to advocate the same disastrous policies as if nothing had happened over the last 7 years. I don’t believe they suffer from – cognitive dissonance. I think they know full well what they are doing and they personally do very well out of the chaos their policies are causing. But it is almost certain that the Greek people are suffering from a cognitive disorder brought on by historical experience and, more recently, by the media onslaught that has erroneously claimed that there would be catastrophic consequences if Greece dared to leave the Eurozone and restore currency sovereignty. The stated aims of the Greek people are incommensurate and there doesn’t appear to be a broad debate going on in Greece, which might make that inconsistency transparent.

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Structural reform – code for smash the worker resistance

The ECB had another lavish annual talkfest in Portugal over the weekend just gone in the guise of their – Forum on Central Banking. Like all these EU-type gatherings there was plenty of fine food and wines. They even provided footage along those lines. The President of the ECB Mario Draghi gave the opening speech – href=”http://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2015/html/sp150522.en.html”>Structural reforms, inflation and monetary policy – on May 22, 2015. There was also talk about how “structural and cyclical policies … are heavily interdependent” but then a denial of the same. The message from the President was like a record stuck on the turntable – “to accelerate structural reforms in Europe … even in a weak demand environment”. Well here is my message – similarly like a stuck record – structural imbalances occur because of weak demand and the best time to assess structural policy is when you have first attained full employment by appropriate setting of fiscal deficits, not before. It is madness to deliberately constrain fiscal balances to levels that ensure high and entrenched unemployment and rising underemployment and then expect citizens to support microeconomic policies that further undermine their welfare and damage what job security they have. But that is the EU way and that is why the Eurozone is a massive basket-case failure.

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The rise of non-standard work undermines growth and increases inequality

One of the on-going themes that emerges from the neo-liberal commentariat is that fiscal deficits undermine the future of our children and their children because of the alleged higher implied tax burdens. The theme is without foundation given that each generation can choose its own tax structure, deficits are never paid back, and public spending can build essential long-lived infrastructure, which provides benefits that span many generations. The provision of a first-class public education system feeding into stable, skilled job structures is the best thing that a government can do for the future generations. Sadly, government policy is undermining the future generations but not in the way the neo-liberals would have us believe. One of my on-going themes is the the impact of entrenched youth unemployment, precarious work and degraded public infrastructure on the well-being and future prospects of society as neo-liberal austerity becomes the norm. This theme was reflected (if unintentionally) in a new report, release last week by the OECD – In It Together: Why Less Inequality Benefits All. The Report brings together a number of research findings and empirical facts that we all knew about but are stark when presented in one document.

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Iceland’s Sovereign Money Proposal – Part 2

In Part 1, I briefly outlined the Sovereign Money System proposal (SMS) advanced by the Icelandic government as a way forward in banking reform. I also demonstrated that the banking collapse in Iceland in 2008 could hardly be seen as being caused by the banks having the capacity to create credit. Much more was in play including the fact that banks had stopped behaving as banks and were serving the doubtful aspirations of their owners rather than any notion of public purpose. While the Icelandic report claims that the commercial bank lending destabilised the growth cycle in Iceland the reality is that it was other factors that led to the explosion of their balance sheets. The money supply did expand faster than “was required to support economic growth” but that is because the financial system was deregulated and the banksters and fraudsters were allowed to serve their own interests and compromise the national interest. As we will see that sort of duplicity can be reigned in with appropriate structural regulation without scrapping the capacity of the private banks to create credit. In this Part 2, I consider some of the mechanics of the SMS and argue that essentially we cannot get away from the fact that a central bank always has to fully fund a monetary system. If it tries to restrict funds yet maintain private bank lending then recession would surely follow and interest rates would rise beyond the control of the central bank. I also provide some ideas on where more fundamental monetary system reform is currently needed.

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A “Budget Responsibility Lock” – a ridiculous proposal

The US Koch brothers provide substantial funds to the George Mason University to ensure it remains a bastion of so-called libertarian, free-market thinking. The brothers don’t really want a free market but it just serves their political and commercial aims to tell everyone that is what it is all about. The Economics Department at this university pumps out propaganda about the virtues of deregulation. One academic (Bryan Caplan) goes further and claims that democracy is a bad idea when compared to taking the advice of economists who advocate free markets. This idea that somehow policy choices conditioned by what would advance the best interests of the public are inferior to those advocated by economists who know what is best for all of us has permeated the debate over the last few decades and led to some very undesirable developments. This was on my mind when I was reading the Manifesto of the British Labour Party which proposes, wait for it – a “Budget Responsibility Lock” – as a framework for fulfilling its responsibilities to the British public. This is a ridiculous proposal.

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Finland – more austerity is not the answer

Finland has been one of the Eurozone nations taking a hardline on Greek austerity and have consistently refused to support on-going bailouts of Greece. At the weekend, Finland went to the polls and tossed out the incumbent government and put in its place a centrist party that stood on a platform of a wage freeze and further spending cuts, allegedly to restore Finland’s competitive position. If that prospect wasn’t bad enough, the Centre Party will have to enter a coalition with the party that came second in the polls – the Finns Party, which is a ragbag anti-immigration group that wants Greece kicked out of the Eurozone. It is possible that Finland’s Parliament will not support any further European Union bailouts for Greece. Apparently Finn’s are buying the line that further and intensified austerity is necessary because of rising labour costs have undermined Finland’s capacity to compete in international markets as the demise of Nokia, so the narrative goes, illustrates. The last thing that Finland needs right now is more austerity.

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ECB should start funding government infrastructure and cash handouts

I was a signatory to a letter published in the Financial Times on Thursday (March 26, 2015) – Better ways to boost eurozone economy and employment – which called for a major fiscal stimulus from the European Central Bank (given it is the only body in the Eurozone that can introduce such a stimulus). The fiscal stimulus would take the form of a cash injection using the ECB’s currency monopoly powers. A co-signatory was Robert Skidelsky, Emeritus Professor, Warwick University, renowned Keynesian historian and Keynes’ biographer. Amazingly, Skidelsky wrote an article in the UK Guardian two days before the FT Letter was published (March 24, 2015) – Fiscal virtue and fiscal vice – macroeconomics at a crossroads – which would appear to contradict the policy proposal we advocated in the FT Letter. The Guardian article is surrender-monkey territory and I disagree with most of it. It puts the progressive case on the back foot. What the hell is going on?

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Employer group demands free labour from Government

Last week, the peak body representing small business in Australia, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) called on the Federal Government to hand over free labour under the guise that “making coffee” will enhance the skills of the workers. The free labour they want to get their hands on are the unemployed on income support. They want the Government to continue to pay the below-poverty income support but force the recipients to work in small and medium-size businesses “making coffee or serving customers” as a solution to youth unemployment. This is the same group that thinks the pay of the lowest-paid workers (like kitchen hands, cleaners etc) should be cut. They also claim that rising unemployment in Australia is being caused by structural rigidities in the workplace (job protection, occupational health requirements etc). There is a wide-ranging attack on workers going on at the moment. This is just one aspect of this attack. Austerity is forcing more onto the unemployment pile. Once there they are being increasingly subjected to pernicious policy requirements (see yesterday’s blog – Job Services Australia – ineffective and rife with corruption – scrap it!). Then employer groups lobby government to cut wages and conditions and scrap regulative environments that protect workers. It is an important era for social democrats. Either we regain some political equanimity and coherence or we continue to call parties Socialist that impose austerity and talk about being ‘pro-business’, while attacking pensions, wages, and employment.

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Recessions can always be avoided and should be

Recessions are very costly events. The income losses come quickly and sustain for several periods after the worst has occurred. Unemployment rises sharply and if government doesn’t take appropriate action (job creation), it takes a very long time to return to previous levels. The losses of income are huge and are lost forever. The related pathologies such as increased rates of family breakdown, increased crime rates, increased alcohol and substance abuse, increased suicide rates, increased incidence of mental and physical problems, the lost opportunities for skill development and work experience among the young, make the costs of enduring recession very high. These costs dwarf any of the estimated costs of so-called structural rigidities (micro imbalances) that have been produced by researchers over the years. Mass unemployment is the single greatest source of income loss. It is amazing therefore that policy makers do not prioritise the avoidance of recession yet expend vast energy talking about structural reforms etc. The fact is that recessions can always be avoided and should be. Governments can always adjust fiscal policy settings to ensure there is sufficient total spending in the economy to avoid recession, irrespective of what the private sector spending patterns are.

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Henry George and MMT – Part 2

This is the second part in my discussion about Henry George and Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). In general, there is nothing particularly incompatible between the introduction of a broader LVT at the Federal level to replace or reduce other taxes currently levied and the insights provided by MMT. However, once you understand MMT, you realise that the discussion of the design of the tax system is quite different than just raising income from the most ‘efficient’ means. The Georgists would do well to come to terms with that and demonstrate how a land value tax (LVT) would work to free up real resources to give the real space for governments to spend. There doesn’t appear to be any analysis provided by Georgists to calibrate the impacts on non-government spending of such a tax and how this would alter the tax mix required to maintain full employment spending levels and satisfy the socio-economic spending goals of government. There are other things that might be done as well (if not prior to imposing a LVT) which would reduce the likelihood of property price bubbles. Finally, the obsession with the single LVT as a saviour is in denial of the causes of recessions and the the role that financial capital plays in destabilising economic systems. A LVT alone will do little to resolve those problems.

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A primary fiscal deficit Never ever? I don’t think so

I know I am an armchair commentator hiding out in my research environment and not really accountable to anybody other than the funding agencies I win grants from. I am certainly not a Finance Minister with a nation in crisis on my hands. But with that said I wonder how any Finance Minister who aims to create full employment and expand equity and undo years of deliberately imposed neo-liberal hardship can claim his nation will “Never, never, never!” record a primary fiscal deficit again. That comment has to be dismissed as political rhetoric rather than an expression of a serious evaluation of reality. What worries me about Greece at the moment is that we are seeing a trend around the world where politicians over promise (or lie straight out) about their intentions to apparently appease the multitude of vested interests then proceed to do what they like. I discussed how this is now backfiring in the recent blog – Time is running out for neo-liberalism. An understanding of macroeconomics will tell you (and I know the Finance Minister in question knows all this) that a government cannot guarantee to never run a primary fiscal deficit forever unless they are prepared to allow for large swings in unemployment, something I thought the new Greek government was averse to, and it is that aversion, which defines their popular appeal.

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Rising inequality – fundamental changes required

I am currently working in Sri Lanka at a very interesting time in the nation’s history. Ten days ago the nation elected a new president and ousted the bevy of officials that had been linked to the previous, rather dictatorial and seemingly corrupt regime, that had held a iron grip on power for years. The daily newspapers in Colombo each day are now devoting multiple pages to discoveries that are coming to light about the ways of the previous regime. Some previous officials have had their passports confiscated amid rumours of other politicians and their families making quick getaways to Middle Eastern nations to avoid prosecution. Arrests are being made to roundup the corrupt former government officials. The editorial this morning said that the past government had allowed “a certain person, who was accused of corruption amounting to billions of rupees, to leave the country soon after the presidential election results were announced”. I guess everyone knows who Mr Certain Person is. There was a cute report about the discovery of a ‘double cab’ (truck) which had gone missing from the Presidential secretariat’s car pool being found hidden in a saw mill. What you find in the poorer nations is that the corruption is fairly transparent and crude in its implementation and is often enforced by a martial regime. In the more advanced nations, the corruption is more subtle and harder to detect. Oxfam’s latest report (January 19, 2015) – Wealth: Having It All and Wanting More – considers the manifestations of this corruption and its pervasive nature.

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Friday lay day – more snake oil from Brussels

Its my Friday lay day blog. I am in Sri Lanka at present and will have some reports about that over the next 14 odd days. I was amazed overnight by the comments from IMF boss Lagarde who made overt political statements in an upcoming election year by claiming that David Cameron had shown “eloquent and convincing” leadership in the global recovery. She said they were a model for the European Union. When asked why the IMF had criticised Britain in 2012 for “playing with fire” by invoking fiscal austerity, she said the IMF had “got it wrong” (Source). Hmm. No recognition that Britain cannot be a model for most of the EU nations, given the latter surrendered their currency sovereignty, imposed fiscal rules that prevent growth, and have a central bank that will not act as a responsible currency issuer. Further, it was a false admission of failure. In fact, the IMF got it right and Britain didn’t implement the austerity that it had initially planned and has kept a relative large fiscal deficit that has helped support growth.

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