Saturday Quiz – April 26, 2014 – 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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Options for Europe – Part 71

The title is my current working title for a book I am finalising over the next few months on the Eurozone. If all goes well (and it should) it will be published in both Italian and English by very well-known publishers. The publication date for the Italian edition is tentatively late April to early May 2014.

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Options for Europe – Part 70

The title is my current working title for a book I am finalising over the next few months on the Eurozone. If all goes well (and it should) it will be published in both Italian and English by very well-known publishers. The publication date for the Italian edition is tentatively late April to early May 2014.

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Options for Europe – Part 69

The title is my current working title for a book I am finalising over the next few months on the Eurozone. If all goes well (and it should) it will be published in both Italian and English by very well-known publishers. The publication date for the Italian edition is tentatively late April to early May 2014.

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Options for Europe – Part 68

The title is my current working title for a book I am finalising over the next few months on the Eurozone. If all goes well (and it should) it will be published in both Italian and English by very well-known publishers. The publication date for the Italian edition is tentatively late April to early May 2014.

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Saturday Quiz – April 19, 2014 – 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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Saturday Quiz – April 12, 2014 – 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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Saturday Quiz – April 5, 2014 – 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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Saturday Quiz – March 15, 2014 – 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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Options for Europe – Part 36

The title is my current working title for a book I am finalising over the next few months on the Eurozone. If all goes well (and it should) it will be published in both Italian and English by very well-known publishers. The publication date for the Italian edition is tentatively late April to early May 2014.

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Saturday Quiz – February 22, 2014 – 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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Saturday Quiz – February 15, 2014 – 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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Options for Europe – Part 25

The title is my current working title for a book I am finalising over the next few months on the Eurozone. If all goes well (and it should) it will be published in both Italian and English by very well-known publishers. The publication date for the Italian edition is tentatively late April to early May 2014.

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Options for Europe – Part 15

The title is my current working title for a book I am finalising over the next few months on the Eurozone. If all goes well (and it should) it will be published in both Italian and English by very well-known publishers. The publication date for the Italian edition is tentatively late April to early May 2014.

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Options for Europe – Part 13

The title is my current working title for a book I am finalising over the next few months on the Eurozone. If all goes well (and it should) it will be published in both Italian and English by very well-known publishers. The publication date for the Italian edition is tentatively late April to early May 2014.

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Australia – vacancy data undermines the deregulation lobby

Yesterday, the Australian Bureau of Statistics released the latest – International Trade in Goods and Services – data for November 2013 which told us that the national economy is slowing. We learned that while exports were aout steady, imports (particularly consumption goods) fell for the fourth consecutive month and capital and intermediate goods imports rose, which suggests that explanations relating to the switching of the commodities (mining) boom from the investment to export stage are not accurate. The data tells us that household incomes are being squeezed by rising unemployment which generally means that import spending will drop. The irony is that the trade deficit fell, which means that the drain on growth from the trade sector is now lower (that is, this is a stimulatory move) despite it being driven by sluggish growth. Today, the ABS released its – Job Vacancies – data for the November-quarter 2013 and it confirmed that the labour market continues to slide backwards in the face of subdued private spending and the national government’s penury. This is all in the context of conservatives coming out and slamming gay marriages, single mothers, women who seek abortions and the meagre number of labour market protections that remain in place. It is all about priorities I suppose. The current government is suggesting their priorities are to further the well-being of the well-to-do and chip away at what assistance is available for the disadvantaged Australians.

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Saturday Quiz – January 4, 2014 – 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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Growth and Inequality – Part 1

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 publish the text sometime around mid-2014. Our (very incomplete) textbook homepage – Modern Monetary Theory and Practice – has draft chapters and contents etc in varying states of completion. Comments are always welcome. Note also that the text I post here is not intended to be a blog-style narrative but constitutes the drafting work I am doing – that is, the material posted will not represent the complete text. Further it will change as the drafting process evolves.

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There is no umbilical cord between government deficits and bond issuance

The Financial Times article (December 19, 2013) – The long farewell to quantitative easing – concluded such: “Quantitative easing has demonstrated to politicians everywhere that it is possible to finance government deficits simply by printing money, a fact which had become obscure in the developed economies in previous decades. The umbilical link, previously unchallenged, between running a budget deficit and the requirement to sell bonds has been broken in the mind of the political system. Who knows what the long-term effects might be”. While mistakenly thinking crediting reserve accounts is activating any printing press it is true that there is no requirement to sell bonds to run government deficits. Today I am updating my analysis of the latest flow of funds data in the US. The US Federal Reserve recently put out the latest – Z.1 Financial Accounts of the United States – aka the Flow of Funds, Balance Sheets and Integrated Macroeconomic Accounts. If the FT author had have been studying this and related data he would have known years ago that there was no functional relationship between government net spending and its habit of issuing debt to the private sector. The former is financially unconstrained while the latter is just a system of corporate welfare. But recently, the government has given the game way by being the dominant purchaser of its own debt. Hysterical (as in comical) when you think about it!

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Manufacturing in Australia can survive if it shifts focus

Last week, the Holden Motor Car Company, a division of General Motors announced it was intending to close its Australian operations down in 2017 after having operated on a continuous basis in one form or another since 1856. The decision has led to outbreaks of nostalgia, worries about our national identity (since when has a national identity been tied up with a foreign-owned capitalist firm?), and calls for more government subsidies to the industry that has been in decline for years. The problem is that thousands of jobs are directly and indirectly impacted by the closure (although there are some years before the full brunt will be experienced) and that is an issue that the government has to manage through appropriate policy interventions. The real issue is that the current thrust of aggregate (macroeconomic) policy does not provide one with much confidence that the government will introduce appropriate responses to the closures. I offer some thoughts by way of an introduction in this blog.

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