Aggregate Demand Part 2

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 complete the text by the end of this year. Comments are always welcome. Remember this is a textbook aimed at undergraduate students and so the writing will be different from my usual blog free-for-all. Note also that the text I post is just the work I am doing by way of the first draft so the material posted will not represent the complete text. Further it will change once the two of us have edited it.

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A veritable pot pourri of lies, deception and self-serving bluster

Today, I present a series of vignettes that traverse a range of related topics. How Australia’s richest person thinks that billionaires work hard and create jobs and wealth and the poor … well drink and smoke a lot while socialising. Then we consider today’s investment data for Australia which is a precursor to the June-quarter national accounts release. We try to make sense of claims that Australia’s (alleged) socialist government has killed investment in mining. Then we consider how leading economic forecasters mislead the Australian public by claiming that the Australian government will not have enough money to provide dental care to the poor. Then we hop over to America and learn that government spending creates jobs and even the conservatives are saying it. All in a day’s blogging. A veritable pot pourri of lies, deception and self-serving bluster.

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Climate change – Australian government further entrenches the market myth

I have very little time again today so I will have to type quickly. Yesterday, the Australian government announced it has scrapped its proposed $15 per tonne carbon price floor as part of the new Carbon Tax that it brought into law in July 2012. With the introduction of the carbon price in July 2012, the biggest polluters pay $A23 per tonne for the carbon they emit. The Government plans to allow this system (the Carbon Tax) to evolve into an emissions trading scheme (ETS) on July 1, 2015 so that instead of setting the price for carbon the government will set the quotas and let the market set the price. Yesterday, the Government made one significant change to their proposed 2015 move to an ETS. It announced that from July 1, 2015, Australia will partially link its carbon pricing system to the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS). This move only entrenches the mistakes that are evident in the first proposal. Quite apart from the problems of a pure ETS, the schemes that are proposed are so politically compromised that their “market credentials” vanish. The problem of carbon emissions should be approached via rules-based regulation rather than a half-cocked neo-liberal market-based solution which will reward big polluters, lawyers and hedge funds.

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Accounting smokescreens excite the conservatives

I haven’t much time today as I have been travelling most of the day. But the news is that Japan – soon after its government announced it would increase taxes to “rein in the deficit” is now facing a dramatic slowdown as a result of the on-going crisis in Europe and the slowdown in the Chinese economy. Perfect time to increase taxes really! But today we revisit (for the nth time) the way in which conservatives get excited by the accounting smokescreens that have been overlaid onto the monetary system to obscure certain fundamental capacities of government. The excitement or should I say – hysteria – then leads to pressure being put on policy makers by the billionaires that control the media – and, invariably – leads to poor policy choices being made. So for the nth time – the US social security system cannot go broke. The “financial gaps” that are wheeled out to prove that it will become insolvent are just accounting structures that can be altered by Congress anytime they want. If the accounting systems led to the system being in jeopardy then Congress would quickly assert their intrinsic capacities.

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The British government has more than demonstrated its incompetence

Today’s article from the relics (my office clear out continues) is actually two articles. One by Arthur Okun and the other by fellow US macroeconomist Gardner Ackley. Both economists are now dead but during their careers were aware of the role of government in a monetary economy. They were antagonistic to the conservative views of economists that wanted to push fiscal rules such as balanced budgets. They understood that these views not only undermined democracy but also made it impossible for governments to pursue their legitimate goals of promoting public purpose. In the current environment, if they were still alive they would be castigating those who seek to impose pro-cyclical fiscal austerity. Their insights remain relevant today. Just think about yesterday’s public finance data release in Britain. The debt reduction forecasts from the British government are in tatters because tax revenue is collapsing further and welfare spending is rising. The operation of the automatic stabilisers is signalling that the British government has more than adequately demonstrated its incompetence.

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Some of the 20 are now rats deserting the sinking ship

Here is a list of my professional colleagues who have learned nothing in the last 5 years. That is no surprise because they didn’t learn very much before that about how the monetary system works anyway. If their ideas were to be implemented I would guess that very few of them would publicly recant and admit they were wrong. They would obfuscate, deny, misconstrue but they wouldn’t admit they were wrong. At least prospective students have a good list of departments to avoid should they wish to study economics in the US. Keep it handy for future reference. Back in February 2010, there was a letter by 20 economists supporting the Tory proposals for fiscal austerity published in the Sunday Times. It was an unashamed attempt to influence the result of the May 2010 election. A week later 60 economists wrote that the 20 were nuts. It seems that some of the 20 rats have now deserted the Tory ship but won’t really tell us why.

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Another day – and some more evidence against fiscal austerity

Eurostat released the second-quarter 2012 National Accounts data for the Europe yesterday and, predictably, the recession is deepening in many countries. The Southern European nations saw their performance worsen and data shows that Spain’s house prices fell by 11.2 per cent last month (Source) and have fallen by 31 per cent since the crisis began in 2008. The deflationary impact of that alone would push the economy into recession. The Euro elites claim they will do everything to resolve the situation. And anything they do undertake – just makes it worse. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the Romney camp has put out a very suspect economic paper – authored by some notable suspects in the propaganda campaign the neo-liberals are sponsoring to prevent governments from acting responsibly. The economic paper has been categorically demolished – even in the mainstream media. So it is another day – some more evidence against fiscal austerity – and still the criminals maintain their grip on the throne.

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The comedian still trying to make us laugh

Crazy ideas have a habit of re-entering the public policy debate even if they have been comprehensively rejected in theoretical and/or empirical terms. In fact, the whole edifice of neo-liberal thinking, which dominates the public debate now, was discredited by Keynes and others during the Great Depression and fell into irrelevance for most of the Post World War 2 growth period which delivered full employment. There are sub-sets of crazy ideas within the neo-liberal narrative that are in a similar position. In the early 1980s, we started to be barraged with what is known as supply-side economics, which amounted to a categorical rejection of demand-side measures (active fiscal policy intervention). One of the major claims of the supply-side approach was that deregulation and large tax cuts for the high income earners and companies would generate massive increases in real GDP growth (and national income) which would trickle down to the low-income earners. To fit this into the neo-liberal rejection of budget deficits they also had to come up with the claim that the tax cuts would actually generate offsets in tax revenue and improve the budget balance. This was the comedy that became known as the Laffer Curve. The economist who was pushing that line in the 1980s has also maintained an intense opposition to any use of fiscal policy to stimulate real GDP growth. He claims that the recent history shows that fiscal policy expansion damages growth. But when you dig into his argument you realise that the comedian is still trying to make us laugh. The only problem is that he isn’t very funny.

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Budget surpluses are not national saving – redux

I was reading several older papers from the 1990s today as part of a project I am working on where I track predictions that leading mainstream economists were making at the time about the evolution of national and global economies. It is a very interesting exercise to build the narratives that were popular at an earlier time and then consider how far the economists got things right. I have noted that there has been some debate out in blog-land about who predicted the failure of the Euro. I am less interested in documenting which person was the first or the second – there were many who saw the design flaws from the inception and could extrapolate what they would mean if a negative shock occurred. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) economists were among them. I am more interested in groupthink (at the paradigm level) and how the failed predictions can be used to demonstrate the inapplicability of a certain body of theory. That is, what can we learn from the failure of mainstream economists in general to see the crisis coming (and being in denial now of what the solution is). In this blog I consider a part of the thinking that explains why my profession proved to be unreliable in this regard. I renamed this blog – appending it with the term redux because on March 23rd, 2009 – I wrote a blog – Budget surpluses are not national saving.

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Introducing economic dynamics

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 complete the text by the end of this year. Comments are always welcome. Remember this is a textbook aimed at undergraduate students and so the writing will be different from my usual blog free-for-all. Note also that the text I post is just the work I am doing by way of the first draft so the material posted will not represent the complete text. Further it will change once the two of us have edited it.

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The non-existent but remarkable austerity-depreciation mechanism

The conservative lobby (often dominated by Austrian school types) are increasingly running the narrative that neither monetary or fiscal stimulus can engender growth as nations wallow in stagnation. Their rejection of the use of fiscal stimulus – aka spending of one sort or another – would appear to be in denial of the basic macroeconomic rule – one person’s spending is another person’s income – or in a sectoral sense – government spending equals non-government income. Their arguments against monetary policy have some resonance with my own views. But, for example, is any one really going to argue that if the government hired all the unemployed and paid them a stable wage (in excess of any income support they might be receiving) that the shops would not experience rising sales, which, in turn, would stimulate rising orders to suppliers and increased production and higher growth. Are they really saying that all stimulus spending leaves the shores via net exports? While historical evidence is often cited, when one digs further it becomes clear that the evidential basis of the anti-government claims cannot be substantiated. And – the arguments reduces to a rather crude expression of their dislike of government activity.

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Investment and profits

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 complete the text by the end of this year. Comments are always welcome. Remember this is a textbook aimed at undergraduate students and so the writing will be different from my usual blog free-for-all. Note also that the text I post is just the work I am doing by way of the first draft so the material posted will not represent the complete text. Further it will change once the two of us have edited it.

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Buy a cake on the way to the airport – inflation continues to fall in Australia

The Australian Bureau of Statistics released the Consumer Price Index, Australia data for the June 2012 quarter today and the inflation rate continues to plummet in the face of a slowing economy. The trend over the second half of 2011 was for inflation to ease. But the plunge in the first six months of 2012 that today’s data reveals is suggesting a weakening economy notwithstanding the first-quarter national accounts data which showed above-trend growth. pointing to a very sick economy. The annual inflation rate is now estimated to be 1.2 per cent (down from 1.6 per cent in the 12 months to March 2012) with a downward trend. The Reserve Bank of Australia’s preferred inflation measures – the Weighted Median and Trimmed Mean – are now at or below its inflation targetting range. This suggests that they will soon have to consider inflation to be “too low” and as a result engage in significant monetary policy easing. The inflation trend clearly contradicts the commentators who have been predicting the opposite on the basis of the (modest) rise in the budget deficit over the last few years as the downturn hit Australia. Their standing in the predictions stakes continues to be dented by the data. The evidence is suggesting that the economy is slowing under the weight of the federal government obsession with achieving a budget surplus in the coming fiscal year.

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Another macroeconomist who is blind

Everyday the major financial newspapers and magazines provide Op Ed space to so-called leading economists. For the majority of the public, it is these Op Ed articles that provide their interaction with my profession. It is a pity. The majority of the reasoning presented by these characters, most who occupied senior positions in US academic departments, is spurious to say the least. The public is thus being poorly educated (to put it mildly) on a daily basis and this represents a major problem for our democracies. Voting in elections is one thing. But when citizens are voting based on faulty understandings that they have derived from these economists, then what is the value of a free vote? Today I consider the views of leading Princeton economist Alan Blinder – who is another macroeconomist who is blind to the way the economy works.

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Off-shore tax havens – be sure we define the issues correctly

I was asked today what the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) position was on the new report about to be published by the – which reports trillions of dollars (and other currencies) being secreted in tax havens by the wealthiest citizens and the role that the top 10 banks have played in arranging these fund transfers. Progressives are clearly up in arms about the research findings and for good reason, especially if one holds equity to be a valid policy and national goal (as I do). But the way MMT analyses these trends is somewhat different. Once we get a good understanding of what the off-shoring of wealth and tax evasion actually means for domestic economies, it is clear that the progressive attacks often miss the point.

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Whatever else they say – they all know that public spending cuts are bad

As an outsider, US Presidential campaigns are very curious events. But that is not my topic today. Well it sort of is my topic. The US President has recently visited Virginia – a place where defense spending appears to be highly concentrated. Various senior Republicans decided to give the President a lesson in economics. The only problem is that the lesson seems to run counter to what their main hope – Mitt Romney – is trying to say. In fact, they all got themselves tangled up in a logical mess. But the truth that emerges is that – whatever else they say – everyone of them knows that public spending cuts will damage the economy. They also all know – whatever else they say – that at this present time – with private spending so weak – that such a slowdown will be disastrous. They also know that the American people are pretty easily duped by conservative talk and religious invocation. And that is the way they plan to get power. What happens to the unemployed is just a side-issue it seems. Makes you wonder what went wrong with public education in America (that these characters can be taken seriously)!

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Some notes on Aggregate Supply Part 2

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 complete the text by the end of this year. Comments are always welcome. Remember this is a textbook aimed at undergraduate students and so the writing will be different from my usual blog free-for-all. Note also that the text I post is just the work I am doing by way of the first draft so the material posted will not represent the complete text. Further it will change once the two of us have edited it.

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Australian labour force data – weak and weakening

Last month my Labour Force commentary was entitled – Australian labour market – good signs but wait for the reversal. It didn’t take very long for the reversal to come, although I caution anyone drawing trends from month-to-month variations in this sort of data. Today’s release by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) of the Labour Force data for June 2012 reveals a weakening labour market with all the negative signs concurring – falling full-time employment, falling participation, falling hours worked and rising unemployment. If the labour force had not have contracted due to the falling participation rate, the unemployment rate would have been closer to 5.5 per cent rather than 5.2 as officially recorded. Certainly this data is not consistent with any notions that the Australian labour market is booming or close to full employment. The most continuing feature that should warrant immediate policy concern is the appalling state of the youth labour market. My assessment of today’s results – weak and weakening.

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Neo-liberals on bikes …

I had an interesting conversation with a lunch visitor today about Germany (he lived and studied there) and its role in the Eurozone crisis. Yes, we talk economics even at times of rest! We discussed some of the events leading up to the Euro crisis and the important role played by the so-called progressive political parties in Germany. The conservative Christian Democrats are sounding like lunatics at the moment with the “You will have austerity and enjoy it” mantras. The focus on their harsh and destructive stance supporting fiscal austerity has taken the spotlight off the real culprits – the SPD and the Greens. We should never forget the role that they played – over the period of the Gerhard Schröder’s federal government (1998-2005) – in creating the pre-conditions that have ensured the crisis will be long and very damaging. We should also remember that Green parties have developed a tendency to be “neo-liberals on bikes” as a means of gaining power. The problem is that once they are pedalling in that direction they lose the capacity to pursue truly green policies, which extend beyond the remit of having clean building codes and sound urban design.

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Growth is lagging because spending is lagging – the solution is clear

A recurring theme in the press and one that I get several E-mails about a month is that a national government has “more space to net spend” if its past history of deficits and debt are lower than otherwise. This is also related to the acceptance by many so-called progressive economists that national government budgets should be balanced over the course of the business cycle – that is, it is fine to go into deficit when there is a downturn but the government should pay it back via surpluses when the economy is strong. Neither proposition has merit but serve as powerful buttresses for the continuation of the neo-liberal attack on government fiscal freedom and full employment. Government deficits have not caused the crisis. Growth is lagging because spending is lagging. If the non-government sector cannot sustain aggregate spending to ensure unemployment drops then there is only one sector left in town folks!

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