The news from the US housing market remains pretty bleak three years after the financial crisis began. Last week, we read that attorneys general from all 50 states were investigating allegations that some major banks inappropriately reviewed mortgage files and/or tendered false foreclosure statements which led to the eviction of thousands of delinquent borrowers from their homes. Apparently, banks and credit suppliers used “robo-signers” to sign false affidavits. The US federal regulators are meeting today (October 20, 2010) to discuss the “foreclosure crisis”. The question is whether this will become a bigger problem and spill over into the real economy and worsen the unemployment crisis. The governments have all the tools and capacity they need to ensure that any financial crisis is totally insulated from the real economy. But their reluctance to show the necessary policy leadership almost ensures that a financial crisis will spread and wreak havoc in the real economy. Their lack of policy action amounts to plain stupidity or malicious contempt for their citizens. Probably both.

Today I provide some alternative insights to to recent (not so) Nobel prize awards in Economics. It is claimed that the work of the three winners has “conferred the greatest benefit on mankind” (being the criteria for the award). The reality is that the major insights to be drawn from this trio is that mass unemployment does not exist and that unemployment is largely voluntary or a function of over-generous income support policies by “misguided” governments. The policy recommendations to be drawn from their work focus on cutting the meagre benefits that governments provide to the unemployed in times of strife. The winners’ work tells us that they think workers are lazy and do not search effectively enough, in part, because they have it too good in their jobless state. I rank their work among the most distressing and obscene of all the disgraceful con jobs that the mainstream of my profession has deliberately foisted on the public policy process.

The attacks on the use of fiscal policy to stabilise the domestic economies of nations that are still languishing in the aftermath of the financial crisis has moved to a new dimension – a escalation in the attack on China and its stupid policy of managing its currency’s exchange rate. The debate is interesting because it is in fact a reprise of discussions that raged in previous historical periods. Each time there is a prolonged recession, governments start suggesting that the problem lies in the conduct of other governments. There is a call for increasing protection (“trade wars”) or demands for some currency or another to appreciate (“currency wars”). The prolonged recession is always the result of the governments failing to use their fiscal capacity to maintain strong aggregate demand in the face of a collapse in private spending. Typically, this failure reflects the fact that the governments succumb to political from the conservatives and either don’t expand fiscal policy enough or prematurely reign in the fiscal expansion. These episodes have repeatedly occurred in history. And at times, when some “offending” governments have been bullied into a currency appreciation (for example) the desired effects are not realised and a host of unintended and undesirable outcomes emerge. This debate is another example of the way mainstream economics steers the policy debate down dead-ends and constrains governments from actually implementing effective interventions that generate jobs and get their economies back on the path of stable growth. So the yuan appreciation debate – just another sideshow. I wonder why we bother.

Its very balmy weather over here in the Netherlands at present – like early October and people were out in T-shirts are 21:00 last night. I went to Brussels in the afternoon and didn’t even take an overcoat! But in contrast, the economic climate is decidedly chilly. Each week new evidence emerges which demonstrates categorically that the fiscal austerity proponents have not clue about how real economies and monetary systems function. The world is not behaving as they predicted. The models and analysis they provided to governments as support for withdrawing fiscal support are bereft of any credibility. It is also common for economic commentators and policy makers to argue that problems are manifest and complex and there are no silver bullets. Well what Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) tells you is that when there is a recession (and/or tepid growth) such as the world is enduring now and the non-government sector is drowning in debt and unwilling to expand spending the only solution is to expand public spending. That proposition is not manifest or complex. Its simple – more public spending is required.

I am writing this on late Friday afternoon European time. Today has been very busy and so I don’t have a lot of time to write this blog. I had a birthday in my immediate family to deal with and so some special celebrations were in order. Then I had meetings with two government officials – one from the Flemish government and the other from the Dutch government – they travelled down to Maastricht for consultations. The topic was the Job Guarantee and how they could implement such a buffer stock employment scheme into their own policy thinking. I will write up some thoughts about this meeting next week. Then I had to wade through a new International Labour Organization (ILO) report – World of Work Report 2010 – which has estimated that high unemployment will persist for much longer than they had previously forecast. The talk is that the “product market” (real output) recession is now becoming an entrenched labour market recession. Meanwhile, I also read the latest IMF World Economic Outlook report and noticed they were advocating changes to macroeconomic policy positions across the advanced world that would by their own reckoning increase unemployment and prolong recovery. They are still appealing to the nonsensical idea that fiscal austerity is good for a nation. Their view now is nuanced but still a disgraceful mis-use of econometric modelling. So only a relatively short tour through this work today.

I read the headline in the UK Guardian from yesterday (September 15, 2010) – Unemployment claimant count rises unexpectedly which apparently confounded forecasts. The hopes for an export-led recovery as the expectations of the forthcoming public austerity damage private spending plans took a further hammering with the data release showing the “highest balance of trade deficit on record” in Britain and “surveys of the services and construction sectors showing employer sentiment deteriorating sharply”. Why is this surprising? The fact that the so-called analysts and the press are surprised only tells me that they do not understand the way the macroeconomic system works. When there are already severe aggregate demand constraints and the government announces that soon enough they will brutalise public spending what would you expect but a further decline in economic activity? When the rest of the world is easing the fiscal stimulus under the concerted attack by the deficit terrorists why would you expect the balance of payments to dramatically improve? None of this surprises me at all. It is exactly what an understanding of the monetary system would lead one to predict.The reality is that to lower unemployment you need to spend more. There are no surprises in that.

The Economist feature column Economics by invitation where they ask some commentators to share their thoughts on some topical issue is running with household debt this week (September 11, 2010). The topic – How far along the process of deleveraging are we? – is examining the extent to which the record levels of private indebtedness are being run down and household balance sheets reconstructed. I also noted in the discussions that have been on-going about trade and deficits on my blog that someone said that there is no evidence that budget surpluses have caused the “sky to fall in”. In this blog I explain how budget surpluses are intrinsically related to the rising indebtedness of the private sector and hence under most conditions are destabilising.

Yesterday, two public statements were made which caught my roving eye. First, the British Government claimed they were going to cut harder than planned to weed out the unemployed who took income support payments to support their “lifestyles”. That was the approach the previous conservative government took in Australia between 1996 and 2007 and so we have experience with it. It failed dismally to achieve anything remotely positive. Second, the OECD released their Interim Assessments to update the May Economic Outlook publication. It showed that the GDP growth forecasts for 2010 and beyond were being revised sharply downwards. The OECD now claims there are many negative indicators and that governments should not push ahead with their austerity plans if the world economy is really slowing. The British government has used the earlier May EO forecasts (which were overly optimistic) as authority to justify their proposed cutbacks. Well now that authority is gone. However, their proposal to further cut back public spending would seem to be in denial of what is now obvious to even the right-wing hacks at the OECD. It is time for George to admit his austerity push is purely ideological in motivation.

The Australian federal election campaign is in full swing and last night the federal opposition in Australia staged their policy launch for the federal election to be held on August 21, 2010. This is a campaign where both sides of politics are running on their respective claims to be better at implementing fiscal austerity measures. It has become a matter of who is promising the biggest budget cuts the earliest. It has made the parties barely distinguishable in terms of their overall policy appeal and has rendered both unfit to govern this country. It used to be said that procyclical fiscal policy was destabilising. This was typically in the context of neo-liberals claiming that expansionary policy always came too late and added to private spending that was already on the rebound and thus increased the inflation risk. But the reverse doesn’t appear to apply for the mainstreamers. Cutting public spending when private spending is weak is being held out as virtuous and the only way to engender growth. This inconsistency exposes the ideological nature of the austerity measures, which reflect as one UK commentator said recently – a desire to complete the neo-liberal demolition of the welfare state started 30 years ago but still incomplete or a reflection that the deficit hawks are total lunatics.

Remember back last year when the predictions were coming in daily that Japan was heading for insolvency and the thirst for Japanese government bonds would soon disappear as the public debt to GDP ratio headed towards 200 per cent? Remember the likes of David Einhorn – see my earlier blog – On writing fiction – who was predicting that Japan was about to collapse – having probably gone past the point of no return. This has been a common theme wheeled out by the deficit terrorists intent on bullying governments into cutting net spending in the name of fiscal responsibility. Well once again the empirical world is moving against the deficit terrorists as it does with every macroeconomic data release that comes out each day. I haven’t seen one piece of evidence that supports their view that austerity will improve things. I see daily evidence to support the position represented by Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). Anyway, there was more evidence overnight that I thought should be mentioned and relates to the idea that “the government is the last borrower left standing”.

Last year it was Reinhart and Rogoff being rammed down our throats as the deficit terrorists were claiming that governments in the advanced nations were on the cusp of defaulting on their sovereign debt. Their book was relentlessly misused by commentators and academics (like Niall Ferguson and others) and even the authors themselves left things ambiguous in interviews. The fact is that their research (if we dare call it that) is applicable to only a narrow set of situations none of them relevant in the contemporary setting. More recently, the deficit terrorists have been holding up a new effigy – a new hero. Another Harvard economist – Alberto Alesina. What is it about that place? Alesina has allegedly provided a solid theoretical case to support the absurd claims by the austerity proponents that cutting the very thing that is supporting growth at present will not damage that growth. He is now the new hero. Well it is another scam job! He chooses to use flawed orthodox textbook models to assert his case without mind to the situational context and other realities. He is no hero but just another mainstream economist seeking celebrity with zero substance to offer and very little else to sell other than a headline.

I am reserving Friday’s for no blog, short blog or normal blog depending on whether I can do other things and keep my weekend’s free of blog activity. In general I will use Friday’s to put a Quiz up for Saturday and prepare the Answers and Discussion for Sunday. If I have some “blog” time left and there is something interesting to write about then I will post it – like today. There was an interesting article in the UK Guardian (July 21, 2010) by Robert Skidelsky who was the biographer of John Maynard Keynes. The article – What do deficit slashers wear under their hair shirts? – probes the “assumptions made by the economists who demand rapid ‘fiscal consolidation'”. I thought that was interesting given that most of the published justifications for austerity rather vaguely invoke failed economic theories like Ricardian Equivalence and Rational Expectations. Skidelsky’s point is that these defunct macroeconomic doctrines which got us into this mess are now resurfacing as the dominant narrative. That spells disaster.

The increasingly alarmist commentator Niall Ferguson was at it again the Financial Times (July 20, 2010) in his article – Have Keynesians learnt nothing?. The article has a simple presumption – we are getting scared of deficits and as a result inflation is inevitable. What? We are scared because we expect there will be inflation and so we will act accordingly and start pushing up wages and prices to defend ourselves in real terms. The result will be inflation. This is a playback of the so-called rational expectations literature which Ferguson proudly cites as his authority. The problem is that the theory is defunct – it never was valid and only a butt of depressed cultists still hang on to it as their religion because they learned it when they were young and in doing so lost their capacity to experience the joys of wider education. We really must feel sorry for them.

As governments around the world are setting about to scorch their economies with austerity programs very little opposition is coming from my profession. It is quite astounding to me that the more extreme elements (the Ricardian Equivalence theories) are holding sway at present. These notions have been discredited often (see my blog – Pushing the fantasy barrow for a discussion). Generally, the austerity push is not being supported by any credible economic theory which enjoys empirical support. I get the impression that policy makers are now altering settings in an ad hoc manner without any real understanding of how the economy works. It is a triumph of neo-liberal dogman. However, in terms of evidence-based critiques of the austerity push, Bloomberg Opinion published an interesting article (July 13, 2010) – U.K. Bust Needs Big Spender – written by UK academic Vicki Chick and author/debt activist Ann Pettifor (thanks BM). The Op Ed summarises a more detailed research paper which demonstrates that key assumptions of the austerity proponents do not hold over a long historical period. The short message is that things are going to get worse.

It is now 2.15 am in Boston on a Thursday morning (16:15 Thursday afternoon in Australia East Coast). I always try to stay on Australian time when I make these short trips. It is hard while you are away but easier to adjust back when you get home. No real jet lag. Yesterday (Wednesday) I gave a Teach-In on the concept of fiscal sustainability to an interesting group of participants ranging from those with an active role in the financial markets to those with more general business interests. The participants came from all around as far as I can gather – many from New York which is a fair hike for a single day workshop. The discussion that followed my presentation was very interesting and while the concerns reflected the usual issues – solvency, exchange rates, intergenerational issues – the standard of debate was civilised. I don’t know how many Warren and I convinced to probe deeper but I hope we planted some seeds of doubt in the minds of the audience that the mainstream macroeconomics position is wrong and therefore untenable. After the Teach-In I read the BIS Annual Report 2009/10 – which signalled to me that they are now firmly part of the problem that we face when dealing with the task outlining fiscally sustainable policy positions.

Yesterday, I was walking over to the library and I ran into an old colleague who has been dragooned back into teaching macroeconomics on a casual basis. The person was telling me that they were dreading taking the class next week because the topic was banking and the relationship between reserves and the money supply. Accordingly, the person said the chapter in the textbook specified by the lecturer-in-charge was about the money multiplier. The person I met is familiar and sympathetic to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and posed the question “how can I do it?”. My answer was that students deserved better and that the lecture should develop the multiplier from a critical perspective so that students know about it but realise how far-fetched it is as a depiction of how the banking system actually operates.