When I saw the headline on this article – Time to plan for post-Keynesian era – in the Financial Times yesterday (June 7, 2010) I wondered which Keynesian era we were talking about. It was written by Jeffrey Sachs who is well-known for his anti-stimulus viewpoints. The upshot of his argument, however, is that he recommends deficit reduction strategies because the bond markets will get upset otherwise. At the same time he advocates medium-term investments in green technology and education which I support but which will not be consistent with deficit reductions.

I have been writing a fiction novel lately in my spare time (which is when I don’t sleep)! It is about the usual themes – individual struggle, tragedy and perhaps realisation. I haven’t yet conceived how it is going to end yet but it will either be very grim or full of splendour. Black and White I am! The interesting part of the exercise is trying to define one’s style separately from one’s academic style. I read a biography of Jack Kerouac recently and it talked about how he obsessed about trying to develop a unique style but kept falling back to be like one or another of the great authors of the day. It was only once he typed a lot that he started to find his own distinct identity as a writer. For me, the blog helps develop alternative ways of writing outside the terse cloistered world of technical economics. Anyway, I didn’t write much fiction today (yet) but I sure did read a lot of it.

A number of readers have asked me to clarify what I mean when I say that the central bank can control the yield curve at all maturities. This came up again when Marshall Auerback commented that the 1961 Operation Twist exercise in the US provides a model for central bank policy options. In 1961, the US Federal Reserve attempted to flatten the yield curve to bring down long-term rates for an economy that was mired in recession, yet at the same time, push short-term rates up to deal with a balance of payments crisis. The fixed exchange rate system meant they were losing gold reserves and desired to stop that drain. It is an interesting story though as to what happened and whether it has implications for the present. As you will see, the fact is that the central bank can control the yield curve and eliminate the influence of the bond markets if it chooses. The only reason it doesn’t do this is ideological.

I am going to start a public campaign to help our friends in the financial markets. I would like all caring citizens to start donating comics and other light material and send it to the business houses so that the workers can actually read something productive during there time in the offices rather than the usual stuff that circulates. Unfortunately the usual so-called analysis spreads out into the wider research world – which means I read it too. Today we consider a classic case of manipulation to make a case. A denial of the empirical reality, a spurious claim to an historical relationship, and an assertion of an authority – the “bond markets” – that ultimately doesn’t exist. Classic propaganda but some lessons to learn as well.

Today I have been working in the Australia’s national capital Canberra. I have been discussing the work I am doing to develop a new geography for Australia based around the concept of functional economic regions with the Australian Bureau of Statistics which is currently seeking to revise their own geography along similar lines. You can find out about this work if you are interested via the CoffEE Functional Regions homepage. It will provide you with quite a different perspective on my other research interests beyond macroeconomics. Anyway, on the plane I was reading some monetary analysis and recalling a blog from the weekend by our favourite (not!) macroeconomics textbook writer. I started humming Take the power back to myself as I considered the damage this sort of textbook is doing to the minds of our students and the future policy makers.

Today I continue my theme from yesterday which focused on how retired politicians and bureaucrats in the US are massing using resources from rich conservative interests to undermine the capacity of the US government to fulfill its legitimate responsibility to increase employment and raise living standards. In today’s blog I reflect on an excellent US PBS Frontline program which looks back at the days when the neo-liberals led by Alan Greenspan and his gang were ruling the world. The current crisis that has undermined the employment and income prospects for millions around the world is directly attributable to their ideological zealotry. The unfortunate thing is that the gang members are either still in power or reinventing themselves as credible commentators. It doesn’t augur well.

Today’s meeting in Almaty will be discussing how the CAREC countries, that I are working with at present via the Asian Development Bank, can best achieve regional cooperation and integration. The region is very interesting and I will report more fully when things are more clear. But the challenges these countries face are exacerbated by the grip that market liberalism has on them. This is especially to be understood in the context of the Soviet heritage of most of these countries. There is a curious mix of past and present which makes market liberalism even more dangerous. So what? Well, I have been asked by many readers about Latvia, another former Soviet satelite. The deep crisis that economy is enduring is a good example of how market liberalism has failed. Yet, depressingly, the solutions proposed involve more of the same. Modern monetary theory (MMT) clearly offers an alternative and much more productive alternative recovery path.

Australia’s central bank governor is now appearing in the world press as something of a hero for putting interest rates up recently in defiance of world trends. Today he is featured in many finance home pages for his statement that the RBA cannot afford to be timid in putting rates up in the current months. This has raised expectations that we are in a race to get the target rate up towards their so-called neutral rate sometime soon. So almost rock star status for our central bank governor. Pity, the whole paradigm he is representing is destructive and helped get us into this mess in the first place. This blog explains why inflation targeting per se is not the issue. The problem is that fiscal policy becomes subjugated to the monetary policy dominance. This passivity manifests as the obsessive pursuit of budget surpluses which allegedly support the inflation-first stance. But this policy strategy is extremely damaging in real terms and will provoke another debt-bust cycle sometime in the future.

On July 8, 2009 a world first occurred in Sweden when the Swedish Riksbank (its central bank) made announced that its deposit interest rate would be set at minus 0.25. While this has set the cat among the pidgeons around the financial markets, it is a classic example of “central banking gone crazy” or more politely “quantitative easing on steroids”. The only problem is that performance enhancing drugs seem to make athletes ride or run faster. This move will do very little to make the Swedish economy increase output or employ more people. For a background to my analysis on this event in central banking history you might like to read my blog – Quantitative Easing 101.

I have been intrigued with Japan for many years. It probably started with the post-war hostility towards them by the soldiers who saw the worst of them. The Anzac tradition was very unkind to Japan and its modern generations. It always puzzled me how we could hate them so much yet rely on them for our Post-World War II boom. I also thought we owed them something for being part of the political axis that dropped the first and only nuclear weapon on defenceless citizens when the war was over anyway. Whatever, I have long studied the nation and its economy. So yesterday’s election outcome certainly exercises the mind. Will it be a paradigm shift or a frustrating period where an ostensibly social democratic government runs up against the neo-liberal machine? I put these thoughts together about while travelling to and from Sydney on the train today.

I was going to write about retail sales and company profits data today but the short story is that retail sales continue to defy the predictions (stimulus packages work). I ran a regression model today to generate a (reasonable) forecasting model of retail sales behaviour up to the point the stimulus packages were announced (November 2008) and then projected out to April 2009 and compared the dynamic trend with the actual data. Every data point since November 2008 is above the trend (which is why the ABS has abandoned its trend series for the time being). But it does tell you that the Australian economy is withstanding the world downturn. We will know more on Wednesday, when the national accounts (GDP) data comes out. Anyway, there has been more engagement with the “other side” or should I say “another side” today and I guess I should respond to that. And so the saga continues for another day.

In the days following my blog – Neo-liberals invade The Greens – I have had some interesting responses. Mostly they have been negative and personal but some have been positive and constructively trying to develop the debate. My blog was not an attack on green values – far from it. But it did pinpoint major macroeconomic failings with the current official policy of The Australian Greens which I consider need to be remedied in order to render the other excellent components of their platform viable. I would also note that it is very dangerous to start critiquing a theoretical argument if you really do not understand the basis of the argument. Here is some thoughts in this regard.