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One-Pager No. 1A Balancing Act
May 17, 2010 Now that America’s financial institutions have been brought back from the brink, the greatest threat to global economic stability is the gigantic trade imbalance between the United States, China, and...more Publication -
BlogGet it out of the office
May 17, 2010 Getting medical insurance out of the workplace would have been a grand idea. But bowing to practicality, the Obama administration pushed through a good-enough plan that leaves it there. Let’s not make the same mistake twice when it comes to pensions. America and its retirees are facing a multi-dimensional pension crisis—one that, even more than [...] Blog -
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How many economists are out there?
May 14, 2010 The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its occupational employment and wages summary today. With a surge of interest in economics in the general public, I wondered how many of us are hired to work (search Economists and Economics Teacher, Postsecondary). What is your guess? (Hint: for every 5,021 hired workers, one economist is at work) Blog -
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Wynne Godley
May 14, 2010 Distinguished Scholar Wynne Godley, longtime head of the Levy Institute’s Macro-Modeling Team, died on May 13. He was 83. At the time of his death, Godley was professor emeritus of applied economics at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of King’s College. He was formerly a senior visiting research fellow at the Cambridge Endowment [...] Blog -
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What if women ran Wall Street?
May 13, 2010 Michael Scherer at Time has a fascinating story on three women in Washington–Sheila Bair, Elizabeth Warren and Mary Schapiro–who have risen from the ashes of the financial meltdown. If nothing else, the crisis has at least helped put some women in charge of Wall Street. Blog -
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Dean Baker on the ‘credit squeeze’
May 13, 2010 Dean Baker debunks the myth that banks are failing to lend money. Long story short: it's the recession! Businesses are looking less like good credit risks because they have less revenue. What bank would be lending more in this atmosphere? A foolish bank. Blog -
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Prometheus bound
May 11, 2010 Any time you talk about a contagion, it’s sensible to ask: where did the infection come from? The European debt crisis may look like it started in Greece, but really it began with the Stability and Growth Pact, the final framework of the European Monetary Union (EMU) that gave us the euro. That agreement is [...] Blog -
Working Paper No. 597Bretton Woods 2 Is Dead, Long Live Bretton Woods 3?
May 11, 2010 This paper sets out to investigate the forces and conditions that led to the emergence of global imbalances preceding the worldwide crisis of 2007–09, and both the likelihood and the...more Publication -
Public Policy Brief No. 111Deficit Hysteria Redux?
May 11, 2010 This brief by Yeva Nersisyan and Senior Scholar L. Randall Wray argues that deficits do not burden future generations with debt, nor do they crowd out private spending. The authors...more Publication -
Public Policy Brief No. 111
Επιστροφή στην υστερία του ελλείμματος στις ΗΠΑ;
May 11, 2010 Στο κείμενο αυτό, οι Yeva Nersisyan και ο L. Randall Wray υποστηρίζουν ότι τα ελλείμματα δεν επιβαρύνουν τις μελλοντικές γενεές με χρέη και δεν περιορίζουν τις ιδιωτικές δαπάνες. Οι συγγραφείς...more Publication -
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European Union’s mega-loan fund is no panacea
May 11, 2010 From the way markets reacted, the trillion-dollar rescue package hurled by European leaders at the continent’s growing debt crisis might well have been code-named Panacea. Stocks rose all over the place while Greek bond yields tumbled on Monday. But this is far from the end of the story. The rescue package alleviated the growing Eurozone [...] Blog -
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Not just jobs, but the right kind
May 10, 2010 The good news on U.S. employment is that we added 290,000 nonfarm jobs in April. The bad news is that unemployment rose as well, to 9.9%, because more people entered the labor force and many more returned to seeking work. So unfortunately, the employment picture remains grim, with a level of unemployment we might have [...] Blog -
Working Paper No. 596
Infinite-variance, Alpha-stable Shocks in Monetary SVAR
May 10, 2010 The process of constructing impulse-response functions (IRFs) and forecast-error variance decompositions (FEVDs) for a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) usually involves a factorization of an estimate of the error-term variance-covariance matrix...more Publication -
Working Paper No. 595
The Recycling Problem in a Currency Union
May 09, 2010 The recycling problem is general, and is not confined to a multicurrency setting: whenever there are surplus and deficit units—that is, everywhere—adjustment in real terms can be either upward or...more Publication -
Working Paper No. 594
Revisiting “New Cambridge”: The Three Financial Balances in a General Stock-flow Consistent Applied Modeling Strategy
May 08, 2010 This paper argues that modified versions of the so-called “New Cambridge” approach to macroeconomic modeling are both quite useful for modeling real capitalist economies in historical time and perfectly compatible...more Publication -
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A crisis of evasion
May 08, 2010 I’m Italian, and I’m an economist, so as European leaders work feverishly to save the Euro, I’ve been wondering: what would happen if the feared contagion occured and my own country saw its finances melt down just as Greece’s have? The short answer is that this would generate a fatal shock to the Euro, given the size [...] Blog -
Working Paper No. 593
A Contribution to the Theory of Financial Fragility and Crisis
May 07, 2010 The paper examines three aspects of a financial crisis of domestic origin. The first section studies the evolution of a debt-financed consumption boom supported by rising asset prices, leading to...more Publication -
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Employment report: a mixed bag, but stimulus is helping
May 07, 2010 The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly Employment Situation Report this morning. The headlines will announce an increase of 290,000 in nonfarm payroll employment and a jump in the unemployment rate to 9.9%. While employment grew, the labor force grew faster than usual, with 195,000 lured back into looking for work by better prospects [...] Blog -
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The “hidden” benefits of the Citigroup bailout
May 06, 2010 With the recent financial turmoil in Greece, the press has turned its attention away from the bailouts of Citigroup, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and other major U.S. financial corporations. Less than a month ago, though, Gretchen Morgenson noted in the New York Times that a Treasury Department estimate of the costs of the main [...] Blog -
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Financial regulation vs. financial innovation
May 06, 2010 Financial regulation might stifle financial innovation. And that would be a good thing. But is it likely to happen? Blog -
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Was the crisis a crime?
May 06, 2010 (This is the testimony of Levy Institute Senior Scholar James K. Galbraith before the Senate Subcommittee on Crime, Senate Judiciary Committee, May 4, 2010.) Chairman Specter, Ranking Member Graham, Members of the Subcommittee, as a former member of the congressional staff it is a pleasure to submit this statement for your record. I write to [...] Blog -
Working Paper No. 592
The Global Financial Crisis and a New Capitalism?
May 06, 2010 The 2008 global financial crisis was the consequence of the process (1) of financialization, or the creation of massive fictitious financial wealth, that began in the 1980s,; and (2) the...more Publication -
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What would Minsky say?
April 30, 2010 There is nothing lovable about Goldman Sachs, and its recent grilling by the ominously named Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations understandably drew a lot of attention. We should not, however, obscure the reality. Goldman Sachs is a bank, and except for questions about the Abacus deal, in which it’s accused of disclosure failings, Goldman was [...] Blog -
Public Policy Brief No. 110
Toward True Health Care Reform: More Care, Less Insurance
March 18, 2010 The United States has the most expensive health care system in the world, yet its system produces inferior outcomes relative to those in other countries. This brief examines the health...more Publication