Australia – falling inflation belies all the boom talk

The Australian Bureau of Statistics released the Consumer Price Index, Australia data for the September 2011 quarter today and it revealed that the easing in the inflation rate detected in the June quarter has continued. The last three quarters have delivered inflation rates of 1.6 per cent in March 2011, 0.9 per cent in the June quarter and now 0.6 per cent in the September quarter. If that trend continues the annualised rate will fall below the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) lower inflation targetting bound. The annualised inflation rate fell from 3.6 per cent in the June quarter to 3.5 per cent in the 12 months to September 2011. The ephemeral factors associated with the impacts of the natural disasters (floods and cyclones) that our food growing areas endured earlier this year are now dissipating. The major factors driving inflation now are utility price increases, travel and accommodation. The RBA’s preferred inflation measure (explained below) grew by 0.3 per cent. That will put downward pressure on interest rates. You might ask whether the “bank economists” (the private sector mavens who always think inflation is about to accelerate out of control) predicted this significant easing. The answer is that they predicted that inflation for the September would be running at twice the actual rate. That is, a 100 per cent error – which raises the question yet again – why does the mainstream media rely on their input to guide the public on where the economy is heading.

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Saturday Quiz – October 22, 2011 – 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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An understanding of MMT can energise the progressive fight back.

I did an interview in August with the Harvard International Review (published by Harvard University). It was finally published yesterday (October 16, 2011) – Debt, Deficits, and Modern Monetary Theory. I consider the principles that are outlined in that interview to provide a sound organising framework for progressive movements aiming to make changes to the current failed systems. I think Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) does provide insights to the general population that are not only obscured by the mainstream media but which if they are broadly understand will empower the 99% to demand governments redefine their roles with respect to the non-government sector. Part of that re-negotiation has to be to reduce unemployment and redistribute national income more equally. We will also be better placed to have a sensible discussion about the human footprint on the planet. The three goals – full employment, reduced inequality and environmental harmony – should be central to the current civic protests (such as OWS). But we also have understand that government has to be involved in the pursuit and maintenance of those goals. The problem is not government but the politicians we elect and the coalition between them and the corporate elites. An understanding of MMT can energise the progressive fight back.

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Saturday Quiz – October 15, 2011 – 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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Imagine that NSW was Ireland

Imagine that the state I live in NSW was for want of a better association Ireland. Imagine Victoria was Greece (a good association because Melbourne is the second largest Greek-speaking city in the world). Imagine Queensland was Spain (both enjoy considerable sun). Imagine South Australia was Portugal (both regions have world-renowned wine making industries). Imagine Tasmania is Italy (both are southern regions in the respective hemispheres). Western Australia can stay as WA although it will not be long before we can add another association (Belgium, France, Estonia?). Anyway, let’s imagine that NSW was Ireland for a moment.

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Saturday Quiz – October 8, 2011 – 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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Accelerating inflation has to be out there somewhere … in the dark or somewhere

Today I was trawling through old issues of the now-defunct The Public Interest quarterly today and unfortunately stumbled on a recent issue of its successor National Affairs (Number 9, Fall 2011 edition) which carried an article – Inflation and Debt – written by Chicago economist John H. Cochrane – a known free market/anti-government commentator. It was one of those articles where the analytical framework was taken from some textbook rather than being ground in the realities of the monetary system and all the evidence pointed away from the major conjecture but the conjecture was still asserted as an inevitability. The title reflects the sort of wan, desperate need to find inflation despite vast volumes of excess capacity and zero wage pressures. Accelerating inflation has to be out there somewhere … in the dark or somewhere.

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Saturday Quiz – September 24, 2011 – 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 – September 17, 2011 – 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 – September 10, 2011 – 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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Keynesian and regular economics

Everywhere I look I find examples of politicians and leading lights making macroeconomic statements without understanding macroeconomics. Given that these statements have policy implications that impact on real people making such erroneous statements – no matter how well-intentioned one is – is a dangerous thing that we should avoid. Imagine if I suddenly started to make claims about the strength of bridges such that they would fall down if my advice was taken. There would be a law against that. One notable economist apparently thinks that macroeconomics is not “regular economics” – but rather some far-fetched misplaced set of ideas that would be better forgotten. My view is different. A correctly specified macroeconomics provides a safeguard against falling into logical traps – such as the fallacy of composition. The so-called “regular economics” is a fantasy world where the angels on the pinheads are assumed away into one representative angel who knows all and never makes a mistake (on average). If you want to understand how mass unemployment arises and how it is solved then the mainstream version of “regular economics” will leave you in the dark.

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Saturday Quiz – August 27, 2011 – 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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Moodys and Japan – rating agency declares itself irrelevant – again

I have very (very) little time today and I am typing this in between meetings. There was a lot of non-news today – the news that pretends to be news and full of import but which in reality is largely irrelevant and just serves to flush out more nonsensical commentary from self-importance financial analysis (mostly located in private banks). Then the non-news commentary suffocates any sensible evaluation and in some cases governments are politically pressured to change policy in a destructive manner – fuelling the next wave of non-news. Today’s classic non-news was the downgrading of Japan by Moodys. Once again, a ratings agency declares itself irrelevant.

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Saturday Quiz – August 20, 2011 – 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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Painstaking, dot-point summary – bond issuance doesn’t lower inflation risk

I will finish this week with a painstaking, dot-point summary of some key elements of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) to show clearly why bond-issuance which might accompany a budget deficit doesn’t lower the inflation risk of the deficit spending – not now, not tomorrow, nor at some mythical “long-run” point in time. All the inflation risk is on the spending (aggregate demand) side. The monetary arrangements that might or might not accompany the spending decisions of government do not add or subtract from the inflation risk. Mainstream theory thinks they do. That theory is demonstrably false. I will also cover several related myths that seem to have cropped up over the last week – both in the international media and among the comments made on this blog. It seems that we need some baby steps. So with my fire-suit (always) on I hope you all enjoy it. Some of the critics might like to read this news item before they start.

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The system in deep trouble and it is waiting to blow

Today is rather historic because it is the 40th anniversary of the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. On August 15, 1971, the then US President Nixon gave an address to the nation – The Challenge of Peace – where he announced the “temporary” suspension of the dollar’s convertibility into gold – and by closing the “gold window” the fixed exchange rate system was over. The demise of the fixed exchange rate system – and by implication the introduction of the fiat monetary system – provided governments with the scope to pursue domestic policies without tying monetary policy to defending the parity. It gave fiscal policy the capacity to sustain full employment no matter what else occurred. It is a pity that since then governments have been steadily white-anted by conservatives who have aimed to undermine the capacity to ensure there are enough well-paid jobs available at all times. The 2008 crisis that is now reverberating again is a direct result of the conservative political success since that time – not only directly but also indirectly, by pushing the political spectrum so far to the right that the “left” are not “right”. The result of all this is that the “system in deep trouble and it is waiting to blow”.

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Saturday Quiz – August 13, 2011 – 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 – August 6, 2011 – 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 – July 30, 2011 – 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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Misrepresentations, misunderstandings and plain factual errors

The Sydney Morning Herald disgraced itself today (July 28, 2011) with two very poor articles about the current debt debate in the US. The ratio of articles on the “conservative-do-not-know-what-the-economics-is-about” side of the debate to the alternative is infinite. There is no progressive commentary at all. Two articles today – Clever money haunts the US and Drowning in red ink – reveal how easy it is to call yourself an expert and get people to listen to you. They are full of misrepresentations, misunderstandings and plain factual errors.

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