Subsidiarity – a European Union smokescreen to justify failure

One of the various smokescreens that were erected by the European Commission and the bevy of economists that it either paid or were ideologically aligned to justify the design of the monetary union around the time of the Maastricht process was the concept of subsidiarity. In 1993, the Centre for Economic Policy Research (a European-based research confederation) published its Annual Report – Making Sense of Subsidiarity: How Much Centralization for Europe? – which attempted to justify (ex post) the decisions imported from the 1989 Delors Report into the Maastricht Treaty that eschewed the creation of a federal fiscal capacity. It was one of many reports at the time by pro-Maastricht economists that influenced the political process and pushed the European nations on their inevitable journey to the edge of the ‘plank’ – teetering on the edge of destruction and being saved only because the European Central Bank has violated the spirit of the restrictions that a misapplication of the subsidiarity principle had created. It is interesting to reflect on these earlier reports. We find that the important issues they ignored remain the central issues today and predicate against the monetary union ever being a success.

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When fake knowledge peddled by macroeconomics starts to fail the ‘investors’

Last Tuesday, in Maastricht, I gave one of two lectures I presented in a series (the other was on the previous Monday night). The first lecture, which was public, focused on the Eurozone disaster and I outlined why an orderly breakup of the failed monetary union would be in the best interest of all (I will post video of that lecture next Monday). The next lecture, which was to staff and students only, focused on the failure of macroeconomics and I juxtaposed fake news with the fake knowledge of mainstream macroeconomics. I want to expand a little on that topic. The Wall Street Journal published an article last week (March 6, 2017) – Everything the Market Thinks About Inflation Might Be Wrong – which bears on the validity of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) relative to mainstream monetary economics. What I would call actual knowledge (MMT) and fake knowledge (mainstream theory). The article is not without its issues but it correctly notes that the underlying basis of orthodox inflation theory is false and fails to explain movements in inflation.

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More fun in Japanese bond markets

The Japanese bond market has been very interesting in the last week proving yet again that private bond markets cannot set yields on government bonds if the government does want then too. Next time you hear some mainstream economist claiming a currency issuing government is running deficits at the will of the investors (read bond markets) politely tell them they are clueless. Japanese once again provides the real world Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) laboratory – every day it substantiates the underlying insights contained within MMT and refutes the core mainstream propositions. The financial media referred to the Bank of Japan as putting a whipsaw to the bond markets, which in context means that the BoJ is forcing the ‘markets’ into confusion (Source). The bond markets have misinterpreted recent Bank of Japan conduct in the JGB markets (less purchases than expected, and even missing a scheduled buy up) as a sign that the Bank was weakening on its QQE commitment from last September that it would hold the 10-year JGB yield to zero and thereby allow the longer investment rates to fall. Why they doubted that commitment is another matter but within a few days over the last week the Bank demonstrated that: (a) it remains committed to that target; and (b) it has all the financial clout it needs to enforce it; and (c) the bond market investors do not call the shots.

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Bank of Japan is in charge not the bond markets

I read a report on the American news network CNBC the other day (November 15, 2016) – The bond vigilantes are back, and Trump better pay attention – which included some so-called experts in a video claiming to know something about bond markets. The report asserted that “bond vigilantes” might return to force the new US President to “tone down his spending” (as they allegedly did when Bill Clinton was in office). One expert said “we’ve got fiscal policy again and … the prospect of higher interest rates and inflation could even herald the return of the bond vigilantes”. Idiot is a polite term for him. The journalist and the commentators invoked should take time out and learn about what is happening in Japan, which remains the best Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) ‘laboratory’ there is. The Bank of Japan in now putting into operation the decision it took in September 2016 to buy unlimited amounts of Japanese government bonds at a fixed-yield. Which means? In short, it will control the yields across all bond maturities from 2-year out to 40-year and will set them at whatever level they choose. Oh, won’t the bond markets prevent that happening? How? For the bond markets it is a case of “like it or lump it”. Once again Japan demonstrates that mainstream macroeconomic theory is devoid of understanding.

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Ending food price speculation – Part 1

We are currently finalising the manuscript of my latest book (with co-author, Italian journalist Thomas Fazi) which traces the way the Left fell prey to what we call the globalisation myth and formed the view that the state has become powerless (or severely constrained) in the face of the transnational movements of goods and services and capital flows. We argue that while social democratic politicians frequently opine that national economic policy must be acceptable to the global financial markets and, as a result, champion right-wing policies that compromise the well-being of their citizens, the reality is that currency-issuing governments retain the capacity to ensure there is full employment and can advance the material well-being of their citizens. In Part 3 of the book, which we are now completing, we aim to present a ‘Progressive Manifesto’ to guide policy design and policy choices for progressive governments. We also hope that the ‘Manifesto’ will empower community groups by demonstrating that the TINA mantra, where these alleged goals of the amorphous global financial markets are prioritised over real goals like full employment, renewable energy and revitalised manufacturing sectors is bereft and a range of policy options, now taboo in this neo-liberal world are available. A chapter in Part 3 will concentrate on financial market reforms (what to do with banks etc) and one topic in that context relates to the area of food speculation. We argue that food speculation causes havoc in poor nations and a progressive stance should make it illegal. The enforcement would be through the new institutional framework I outlined previously. In today’s blog I discuss the arguments advanced to justify our position.

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Reforming the international institutional framework – Part 2

This blog is the second part (now of three) where I discuss how the international institutional framework has to be reformed to serve a progressive agenda where rich countries (and the elites within them) do not plunder then pillory poor countries. In this blog I detail why we should dissolve the World Bank, the OECD, and the BIS, all of which have become so sullied by neo-liberal Groupthink that they are not only dysfunctional in terms of their original charter but downright dangerous to the prosperity and freedoms of people. The third part will consider what a new international institution might look like and the role it can play in aiding poor nations, particularly those who are reliant on imported food and energy. We will also discuss reforming the foreign aid system.

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Full employment = mass idle labour – detaching language from meaning

In the Golden Egg by Donna Leon, which I was reading on a flight over the weekend, there was a discussion about language and meaning. The detective in question was musing about how crimes are described and concluded that when we “detach language from meaning … The world is yours”. The worst crimes become anaesthetised. In my professional domain (economics), this detachment is rife and leads to poor policy choices. One such example, which is close to the focus of my own research work over the years has been the way in which the mainstream economists have revised the concept of full employment. We now read that Australia, for example, is at “full employment” when its official unemployment rate is 5.7 per cent (1.7 per cent above its previous low in February 2008), underemployment is 8.4 per cent, and the participation rate is still a full 1 percentage below its November 2010 peak (meaning some 190 thousand workers have dropped out of the labour force). By any stretch, the total labour underutilisation rate (that is, idle but willing labour) is in excess of 16 per cent. But to some smug journalists who cannot even get their facts straight, that is ‘full employment’. Mainstream economics – detaching language from meaning and misleading a nation as a result.

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The European Commission and ECB outdo themselves in their quest for absurdity

As the years have passed, I have become inured to the depths of absurdity that the European Commission and the political elites its nurtures go to justify their existence. The Maastricht exercise in the late 1980s and early 1990s was comical. The convergence process towards Phase III of the Economic and Monetary Union in the 1990s was established a new norm for craziness. Who would believe the stuff that went on. Then the Goldman Sachs fiddle to allow Greece to enter the Eurozone two years later than the rest. What! Then the Stability and Growth Pact fudges in 2003 when Germany (and France) were clearly in violation of the rules they had bullied the other Member States into accepting. Look the other way and whistle! Then the GFC and the on-going mess. By now the Commission and the Council were outdoing themselves in pursuing absurdity. It was a pity that millions of innocent citizens have had their lives wrecked through unemployment and poverty as a result. And, now, perhaps, this lot have exceeded their own capacity for nonsense. I refer to the latest Convergence Reports published by the European Commission and the European Central Bank. Hypocrisy has no limit it seems. The Eurozone and EU is now firmly entrenched in austerity and deflation and the policy makers think that is the desirable benchmark for others to aspire to. Who could have invented this stuff! And, in relation to the upcoming vote in Britain – how the hell would any reasonable citizen want to be part of this sham outfit (EU) if they had a choice.

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The British Cabinet divides over the IMF negotiations in 1976

This blog continues the discussion of the British currency crisis in 1976. Today we discuss the growing discontent within the British government over the need to negotiate the IMF loan in 1976. While it has been held out that Britain had no alternative but to impose austerity and allow the IMF to dictate policy, the fact is that an alternative was proposed which would have been a superior option.

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The Heath government was not Monetarist – that was left to the Labour Party

This blog provides another excerpt in the unfolding story about Britain and the IMF and the Monetarist sell-out by the British Labour Party once it was reelected in February 1974. As I noted in this blog – The British Monetarist infestation – I am currently working to pin down the historical turning points, which allowed neo-liberalism to take a dominant position in the policy debate. In doing so, I want to demonstrate why the ‘Social Democrat’ or ‘Left’ political parties, who still have pretentions to representing the progressive position (but have, in fact, become ‘austerity-lite’ merchants), were wrong to surrender to the neo-liberal macroeconomic Groupthink. This is a further instalment of my next book on globalisation and the capacities of the nation-state. Today, we trace the tensions within the Tory Party during the period 1970 to 1974, when the old school “One National Conservatism” represented by Edward Heath came into conflict with the growing Tory Monetarists, who would eventually be the bulwark of Margaret Thatcher’s pernicious regime later in the 1970s.

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The Monetarism Trap snares the second Wilson Labour Government

This blog provides another excerpt in the unfolding story about Britain and the IMF. As I noted in this blog – The British Monetarist infestation – I am currently working to pin down the historical turning points, which allowed neo-liberalism to take a dominant position in the policy debate. In doing so, I want to demonstrate why the ‘Social Democrat’ or ‘Left’ political parties, who still have pretensions to representing the progressive position (but have, in fact, become ‘austerity-lite’ merchants), were wrong to surrender to the neo-liberal macroeconomic Groupthink. This is a further instalment of my next book on globalisation and the capacities of the nation-state, which I am working on with Italian journalist Thomas Fazi. We expect to finalise the manuscript in May 2016. In the last instalment, I traced back and demonstrated that Britain was engulfed in Monetarist thinking long before Margaret Thatcher took over. She really just put the ‘(rancid) cream on the top of the (inedible) cake’. I showed that the British Labour Party were infested with the Monetarist virus in the late 1960s and James Callaghan’s famous 1976 Black Speech to tge Labour Party Conference was just a formal recognition of that disease. It really just consolidated what had been happening over the prior decade. This historical journey also helps us understand that it was not the OPEC oil crisis in the early 1970s that provided the open door for governments to reject Keynesian policy. In Britain, the Treasury and Bank of England had fallen prey to Monetarist ideas following the elevation of Milton Friedman onto the world stage. These subsequent events just helped keep the insurgency moving until total dominance in the contest of ideas was won. Today, we start with the Bank of England’s so-called Competition and Credit Control (CCC), which was introduced in September 1971. This formalised the growing emphasis among the banking sector and economists that the central bank had to ‘control’ the money supply. It failed – but empirical failure doesn’t matter when people are becoming swamped with propaganda that says otherwise.

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Japan – another week of humiliation for mainstream macroeconomics

In September 2010, The Project Syndicate, which markets itself as providing the “Smartest Op-Ed Articles from the World’s Thought Leaders” gave space to Martin Feldstein – Japan’s Savings Crisis. Like a cracked record, Feldstein rehearsed his usual idiotic claims that interest rates in Japan would rise because “of the continuing decline in Japan’s household saving rate” and that “the higher interest rate would eventually raise the government’s interest bill by about 4% of GDP. And that would push a 7%-of-GDP fiscal deficit to 11%”. Then, so the story goes, “This vicious spiral of rising deficits and debt would be likely to push interest rates even higher, causing the spiral to accelerate”. At which point, Japan sinks slowly into the sea never to be seen again. It turns out that the real world is a little different to what students read about in mainstream macroeconomics textbooks. At the risk of understatement I should have said very (completely) different. Better rephrase that to say – what appears in mainstream macroeconomics textbooks bears little or no relation to the reality we all live in. Anyway, events over the last week in Japan have once again meant that this has been just another week of humiliation for mainstream macroeconomics – one of many.

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The British Monetarist infestation

I have been on the search for historical turning points again today. The famous Mitterand austerity turn in 1983 is one of these points. Another, which I will consider today, was the British Labour Prime Minster James Callaghan’s speech to Labour Party Conference held at Blackpool on September 28, 1976 was laced with pro-Monetarist assertions that have been used by many on the Left as being defining points in the decline of the state to run independent domestic policy aimed at maintaining full employment. This is a further instalment of my next book on globalisation and the capacities of the nation-state, which I am working on with Italian journalist Thomas Fazi. We expect to finalise the manuscript in May 2016. Today, I am writing about the background events that turned Britain on to Monetarism. Margaret Thatcher was, in fact, a ‘johnny-come-lately’ in this respect. The British Labour Party were infested with the Monetarist virus in the late 1960s and Callaghan’s 1976 Speech just consolidated what had been happening over the decade prior. Further, it was not the oil crisis in the early 1970s that provided the open door for governments to reject Keynesian policy. In Britain, the Treasury and Bank of England were captivated by the ideas of Milton Friedman some years prior to the OPEC price push.

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Friday Lay Day – Canadian central bank governor bucks the mainstream Groupthink

It’s Friday again, my blog Lay Day, which means I fast track the blog entry in favour of other writing tasks. But one thing that is worth noting today (and I’m sort of catching up on recent events in my reading of them), is a speech that the Governor of the bank of Canada (its central bank) gave to the Empire Club of Canada in Toronto on December 8, 2015. The speech – Prudent Preparation: The Evolution of Unconventional Monetary Policies – was somewhat of a revelation given that it was coming from a central banker. Essentially, he admitted that monetary policy in the current situation was relatively ineffective and that expanding fiscal policy was the appropriate government strategy to address the cyclical downturn in non-government spending. He also disabused his audience of the notion that the current low growth environment was of a ‘structural’ nature. He said that the slow non-government spending growth was cyclical and reflected the reality of precarious private balance sheets and low confidence in the future. He channelled the writing of John Maynard Keynes, explicitly, which in itself, was a significant public recognition, especially by a central bank governor. So Canada has now elected a new government that is promised to increase the fiscal deficit to stimulate job creation and economic growth. It also has a central bank governor that implicitly is urging the government to use its fiscal policy capacities in that way. What a refreshing change!

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British government analysis shows fiscal stimulus effective in supporting growth

The British Office of National Statistics published the – Gross Domestic Product Preliminary Estimate, Quarter 3 2015 – yesterday (October 27, 2015) which showed, unsurprisingly, that the British economy is slowing and heading back into recession under current policy settings. The annual real GDP growth rate declined for the third successive quarter as the impacts of the world slowdown and domestic policy austerity start to take their toll. The British government really has to reflect back on 2012 and realise that with non-government spending weak and a household sector carrying very high levels of indebtedness, now is not the time to be trying to cut discretionary net public spending. There is a need for a public spending injection to restore growth while the world works out which way it is going to go.

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Time to expand public service employment

Back in 2010, in the early days of the GFC, the then Australian Labor government was weathering a conservative storm for daring to introduce a large-scale (and rapid) fiscal stimulus. The package had several components but the most controversial were the decision to introduce a homeinsulation program to create jobs quickly but leave a residual of green benefits (lower energy use in the future). The program had problems but still produced fantastic macroeconomic benefits. It was little wonder that the program stumbled operationally given its complexity and the degraded capacity of the Federal public service, which has been degraded by several decades of employment cuts and restructures under the neo-liberal guise of improving ‘efficiency’. However, that mantra might be finally turning. An article in the right-wing Australian Financial Review (June 14, 2015) – Time to end outsourcing and rebuild the public service – made the extraordinary argument for that publication that public service employment had to increase to allow the government to do what the Federal Communications Minister calls “the legitimate work of the public service”. Wonders never cease.

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Bank of England finally catches on – mainstream monetary theory is erroneous

The Bank of England released a new working paper on Friday (May 29, 2015) – Banks are not intermediaries of loanable funds – – facts, theory and evidence (updated June 2019) – which further brings the Bank’s public research evidence base into line with Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and, thus, further distances itself from the myths that are taught by mainstream economists in university courses on money and banking. The paper tells us that the information that students glean from monetary economics courses with respect to the operations of banks and their role in the economy is not knowledge at all but fantasy. They emphatically state that the real world doesn’t operate in the way the textbooks construe it to operate and, that as a consequence, economists have been ill-prepared to make meaningful contributions to the debates about macroeconomic policy.

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New economics – not much will change at the current rate

My upcoming book about Europe is tentatively called ‘European Groupthink: denial on a grand scale’. I have covered the concept of Groupthink before but I have been thinking about this in relation to the economics curriculum, given our textbook is entering its final stages of completion. When I was at the iNET conference in Toronto in early April, there was much to-do about the so-called ‘exciting’ new developments in economics curricula being sponsored by iNET at their Oxford University centre (CORE). Forgive me for being the ‘wet blanket’ but the more I spoke to people at the conference the more I realised that the neo-liberals were reinventing themselves as ‘progressive’ or ‘heterodox’ and hi-jacking the reform process. I mentioned this to one of the iNET Board members who I shared a flight with back to San Francisco. He seemed taken aback. My expectation is that very little of substance will change in this new approach to economics. It will dispense with the most evil aspects of the current dominant framework but will remain sufficiently engaged with it that we will not see a truly progressive teaching approach emerge that can deal with evidence and real world facts. People are scared to break out of the ‘group’.

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Options for Europe – Part 53

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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Growth and Inequality – Part 3

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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