It is the season of “mini-budgets” with the Australian Treasurer launching the Mid-year Economic and Fiscal Outlook 2011-12 yesterday (November 29, 2011) and his British counterpart – the Chancellor of the Exchequer – releasing his Autumn Statement. At least Australia has summer coming tomorrow to look forward to. Both documents outline strategies of failed governments. I am watching the Australian Treasurer on the news screen at the airport right now as he asserts over and over again that even though they are now forecasting a rise in the unemployment rate over the next year there is “growth in the pipeline” and so aiming to achieve the largest fiscal consolidation in history (of the world) in one year is still a sensible strategy. I described the strategy on national radio last night as madness! Worse applies to the British government’s fiscal strategy. I consider that to be venal rather than misguided.

There was an Bloomberg Op Ed today (November 22, 2011) – Protesters Ignore American Love of Entrepreneurs – by Harvard economist Edward Glaeser. It is an attack on the OWS movement and an appeal to how great American entrepreneurship is. The ideas resonate with some recent work I have been doing on the impacts of national income redistribution under neo-liberalism on aggregate demand and the role of the financial sector. The link is that entrepreneurship in the US is not what it was and it is an illusion to think that the past two decades or so bears much similarity to the heyday of US entrepreneurship, whatever your view of the latter is. The entrepreneurs are disappearing in American and being replaced by rapacious wealth shufflers who add nothing to productive capacity or general prosperity.

It is a public holiday in NSW today – Labour Day – which originates from the “eight hour day movement, which advocated eight hours for work, eight hours for recreation, and eight hours for rest”. History will tell you that on April 21, 1856, the stonemasons and building workers on building sites around Melbourne, Australia (my home town) laid down their tools and marched to Parliament House to call for an 8-hour day. They were successful and were the “first organized workers in the world to achieve an eight hour day with no loss of pay”. Similar action saw the spread of the 8-hour day to the other states. Now Australia is in the farcical situation where 600 thousand workers cannot get any hours of work, 750 thousand cannot get enough, and millions are coerced by employer-friendly industrial relations legislation into working more hours than they desire just to keep their jobs. In recognition of the holiday I will write less than usual! The issue surrhttps://billmitchell.org/blog/?p=16325&preview=trueounding wages and conditions of work are crucial to understanding why the world entered the crisis and why it is persisting. At present policy makers, in response to the disaster that beset them in 2007-08, are skating around the edges of reform and are refusing to recognise that they will have to engage in a wholesale abandonment of neo-liberal policies before sustainable recovery will be possible. There is no more stark demonstration of this reality than in the area of wages.

Many people have drawn to my attention in recent weeks the evolution of the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) Wikipedia entry and raised concern about the criticisms that are now on that site. I thought I better go and read the entry. I certainly have not added material to the site. Having said that I am happy that there is a page available. It seems that the criticisms cited are sourced to blogs by an Austrian Schooler, a graduate student blogger, and Brad DeLong. There does not appear to be an sound academic citation. The critics actually admit to basing their views on a cursory reading of the MMT literature and then only on the blogs that are out there now (including this one). The major claim is that MMT is just an accounting tautology. That just means they have read the first of hundreds of pages of MMT and then probably haven’t really grasped its significance. MMT is in fact an accounting-consistent, operationally-sound theoretical approach to understanding the way fiat monetary systems work and how policy changes are likely to play out.

Textbooks get out of date and need revision in the light of recent data or events. Some textbooks are exposed as being just plain wrong and should be re-written completely. Obviously authors in the latter category are reluctant to admit that their textbook is not an adequate description of the way – for example, the economy works – and so they not only resist updating their offering but they also defend it against all the evidence. Anyway, after reading Paul Krugman’s most recent attempt to come to grips with Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) I concluded that it was way past the date that he should be rewriting his macroeconomics textbook. Otherwise he is misleading the students who are forced to use it in their studies. So Paul, its time to update your textbook.

I haven’t much time today. I note that the British Chancellor has made an emergency speech to the House of Commons last night (August 11, 2011) – Statement on the global economy. He claimed that the fiscal austerity had made the UK a “safe haven” for investors. The reason that demand for gilts is high at present is because the bond markets know the UK has no default risk. I also noted Paul Krugman’s wrote a blog in the New York Times yesterday (August 11, 2011) – Franc Thoughts on Long-Run Fiscal Issues – where he challenges Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) directly. To challenge something you have to represent it correctly.

I did some research today on the outstanding US public debt – not because I think it is particularly important but because a journalist asked me yesterday during an interview – how much of the total US Treasury Debt is held by the US government – I said off the top of my head about 42 per cent which was a quick calculation based on work I did about 12 months ago and a rapid adding up off what I remembered from the monthly reports since then with a quick division thrown in. It turns out after I have updated the databases I keep that my “guesstimate” was not misleading (as at March 2011). The journalist then said – “so lets get this straight, the US government owes itself money equivalent to 42 per cent of its total outstanding liabilities?” Answer: yes. He then responded: “to fix the debt problem why wouldn’t they just write it off?”. Answer: I don’t see a US public debt problem. But because you do, then the answer is that for the most part they could just write it off as long as their were some additional legislative changes (for example, they would have to finance the operations of the US Federal Reserve in a different manner). So who owns the US debt?

In the last few days I have read more misinformation and downright lies from financial and economic commentators in the media than I have for the last year. The decision by the irrelevant S&P to get some attention for their corporate profit-making activities by downgrading US government debt has sparked a frenzy of nonsensical “analysis” which is as ridiculous as was the S&P decision. The fact is that the S&P decision is irrelevant as long as the US government makes it so. The danger is that the Government will think there is something to be addressed and the US economy will suffer as a result. As long as the US government realises who calls the shots the S&P decision will be irrelevant.