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BlogThis morning’s announcement and our Institute
October 10, 2011 This morning, it was announced that Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims are the winners of the 2011 Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (link to New York Times article here; link to official Nobel economics site here). Sargent and Sims’s approach is often thought to imply, among other things, [...] Blog -
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How to Improve Your Abstract
October 07, 2011 Since it’s Friday… This one is for every graduate student who’s been on the receiving end of a glazed/skeptical/bemused expression after trying to respond to a “so what’s your dissertation about?” query. Your elevator pitch would go over much better if it were more kinetic. Via GonzoLabs, Science magazine and TEDxBrussels are sponsoring a competition [...] Blog -
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Largest Decline in State and Local Jobs Since Korean War
October 07, 2011 According to Floyd Norris at Economix. Norris includes this chart, comparing our ongoing shedding of state and local government jobs to the one in the early ’80s: I haven’t been looking at any employment reports lately, but I can only assume that this has sparked a massive boom in private payrolls. Blog -
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If You Care About the Deficit, You Should Care About Jobs
October 06, 2011 The prevailing anxieties of elite opinion are focused relentlessly on the deficit and debt, with sporadic bouts of indigestion reserved for the slump in jobs. This is a complete reversal of what ought to be the case. But let’s say you really can’t get over the idea that there’s no major short-term economic problem currently [...] Blog -
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Are the Big Banks Insolvent?
October 06, 2011 Let’s look at the reasons to doubt that the big six are solvent. 1.The economy is tanking. Real estate prices are not recovering, indeed, they continue to fall on trend. No jobs are being created. Defaults and delinquencies are not improving. GDP growth is falling. Isn’t it strange that Wall Street has managed to remain [...] Blog -
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Bernanke Scraps Bold Congress Testimony for Lukewarm Version
October 05, 2011 By Gal Noir* In his Congressional testimony on October 4th, Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke uncharacteristically praised the benefits of fiscal policy, calling it “of critical importance” and conveying concerns with the looming deficit reductions. He cautioned: “an important objective is to avoid fiscal actions that could impede the ongoing economic recovery.” Many economists expressed worry [...] Blog -
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Beyond Tweedledum and Tweedledee Economics
October 05, 2011 James Galbraith talks about the mechanisms by which obstacles are placed in the way of dissenting and original voices in economics, as well as the failure of most in the forefront of the profession to see the global financial crisis coming (via INET): Galbraith has written about this before; surveying the work of those who [...] Blog -
Working Paper No. 690The Measurement of Time and Income Poverty
October 05, 2011 Official poverty thresholds are based on the implicit assumption that the household with poverty-level income possesses sufficient time for household production to enable it to reproduce itself as a unit....more Publication -
Working Paper No. 689
Effects of Legal and Unauthorized Immigration on the US Social Security System
October 05, 2011 Immigration is having an increasingly important effect on the social insurance system in the United States. On the one hand, eligible legal immigrants have the right to eventually receive pension...more Publication -
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The Most Subversive Sign Seen at the “Occupy Wall Street” Protest
October 04, 2011 (continued at EconoMonitor) Blog -
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Tabula Rasa
October 04, 2011 “We’ve put this off for too long. We need debt relief and jobs and until we get these two things, I think recovery is impossible”—Randall Wray, quoted in a Reuters article examining the possibility of negotiating massive consumer debt relief. Although household borrowing has been declining, debt burdens remain sky high: (from the latest Levy [...] Blog -
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Flirting with MMT in the Financial Times
October 03, 2011 Martin Wolf, in the Financial Times last week, “thinks the unthinkable” and inches toward what sounds distinctly like a Modern Money Theory approach: “Alternatively, the government could fund itself from the central bank, directly. Better still, the government could increase its deficits, perhaps by slashing taxes, and taking needed funds from the central bank. Under [...] Blog -
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Ponzi Encore
October 03, 2011 “It may come as a surprise to some, but the original scheme by Charles Ponzi did not make its money by providing seven decades of benefits to retirees before folding up shop and leaving town with a suitcase full of cash,” writes Benjy Sarlin. In a new One-Pager Greg Hannsgen and Dimitri Papadimitriou display just [...] Blog -
One-Pager No. 13Τα στοιχεία για την κοινωνική ασφάλιση διαψεύδουν τους παλαβούς ισχυρισμούς περί απάτης
September 30, 2011 Ο ερευνητής Greg Hannsgen και ο πρόεδρος Δημήτρης Β. Παπαδημητρίου διαψεύδουν τους ισχυρισμούς από τους σκεπτικιστές της Κοινωνικής Ασφάλισης ότι το πρόγραμμα δεν είναι τίποτα περισσότερο από ένα «σχέδιο Πόνζι». Publication -
One-Pager No. 13
Social Security Data Belie Loopy Claims of a Fraud
September 30, 2011 Research Scholar Greg Hannsgen and President Dimitri B. Papadimitriou disprove claims made by Social Security skeptics that the program is nothing more than a “Ponzi scheme.” Publication -
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Wray on the Commodities Bubble and the Coming Crash
September 30, 2011 “The problem is that we have way too much money chasing way too few good assets. The total amount of financial bets out there is way over $600 trillion around the world. There just aren’t enough good investments to absorb that amount of money. So, what happens is they blow up–one asset after another. Then, [...] Blog -
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Hudson on Privatized Credit Creation
September 29, 2011 Michael Hudson on the ECB and eurozone national central banks’ restricted abilities to purchase government debt: Their banks have perpetuated the “road to serfdom” myth that a central bank runs the danger of fueling inflation if it creates money – in contrast to commercial banks, which supposedly run no such danger if they create money [...] Blog -
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Euro Toast, Anyone?
September 29, 2011 (Cross posted from EconoMonitor) Greece’s Finance Minister reportedly said that his nation cannot continue to service its debt and hinted that a fifty percent write-down is likely. Greece’s sovereign debt is 350 billion euros—so losses to holders would be 175 billion euros. That would just be the beginning, however. Nouriel Roubini has argued that the [...] Blog -
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Operation Twist Has a Twist
September 28, 2011 According to Alan Blinder, writing in the Wall Street Journal, the Fed’s latest operation includes a detail (“the sleeper in the package”) that is aimed at boosting the housing market: For more than a year now, the Fed has been allowing its portfolio of agency debt (e.g., Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) and mortgage-backed securities [...] Blog -
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How to Put More J in the AJA
September 28, 2011 Rania Antonopoulos, director of the Gender Equality and the Economy program at the Levy Institute, has a blog post up at Direct Care Alliance making the case for adding social care investments to the American Jobs Act, citing the large employment effects of direct job creation programs in early childhood education and long-term care for [...] Blog -
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Forbes: The Smart Money Is Insane
September 28, 2011 Money quote from a recent Forbes article: “with the right parenting [psychopaths] can become successful stockbrokers instead of serial killers.” Also, a reminder that when we talk about how “the markets” are reacting to this or that, we’re talking about this guy: (hat tip to Thorvald Grung Moe, our visiting Norwegian central banker) Blog -
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Where the Action Is on Financial Reform
September 27, 2011 In the case of a major reform like the Dodd-Frank Act, the attention spans of most journalists and opinion-mongers inevitably peak around the legislative battle, pronouncements are made in the aftermath, and then everyone moves on. But as articles like this remind us, so much of the action still remains to be played out, in [...] Blog -
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Adam Smith Doesn’t Agree with You: Regulation Edition
September 27, 2011 It’s a time-honored tradition, and something of a mug’s game, to pick quotations from Adam Smith that clash with contemporary free market doctrine. But uses and misuses of Smith aside, this one happens to hit the conceptual nail on the head. Jared Bernstein, who is evidently working on a longer piece on debt, pulls this [...] Blog -
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History of the Think Tank (or, Your Fish)
September 23, 2011 “A rollicking saga that involves all sorts of things not normally associated with think tanks – chickens, pirate radio, retired colonels, Jean Paul Sartre, Screaming Lord Sutch, and at its heart is a dramatic and brutal killing committed by one of the very men who helped bring about the resurgence of the free market in [...] Blog