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BlogA Cycle to Watch Out For
Perhaps we’re back to our old ways. For many moons, the household savings rate has again been falling, though it is still above the levels reached in the years leading up to the home loan crisis of 2007–2009. There are even some signs of a resurgence of the mortgage-backed securities industry. Could the economy be [...] -
Blog
Will the Central Bank Bailouts Ever End?
(cross posted at EconoMonitor) Guess which US bank holds assets equal to a fifth of US GDP. Now guess what percent of its assets have extremely long maturities, greater than ten years: a) 10%; b) 20%; c) 30%; d) 40%; e) 50%. Answer: The Fed, and e) 50% of its assets have ten years or [...] -
Blog
Papadimitriou on Cross Talk
Everyone from Amity Shlaes to Mitt Romney and the European Commission has been telling us lately that slashing government spending under current economic conditions will depress growth. On “Cross Talk” Dimitri Papadimitriou debates the merits (or lack thereof) of austerity and explains why the United States of Europe needs to become more like the United [...] -
New Deal cercasi
L’Espresso, February 23, 2012 L’austerità imposta dall’Europa alla Grecia non funziona. Ma esistono ricette alternative che puntano allo sviluppo. A base di eurobond e di distretti industriali. -
Blog
Reader’s Guide to the Limitations of Orthodoxy
Matías Vernengo does a quick review of “Getting Up to Speed on the Financial Crisis,” which is a survey of work on the global financial crisis that will be published in the Journal of Economic Literature. “Getting Up to Speed” is intended as a “one-weekend-reader’s guide” to the crisis. It offers, says Vernengo, a fine [...] -
Blog
Fiddling in Euroland
The Financial Times got its hands on a confidential “debt sustainability analysis” that was circulated among eurozone finance ministers. The gist of the analysis is that the austerity measures being imposed on the Greek population will depress growth so brutally that the government will almost certainly not meet its debt reduction targets: …even under the [...] -
Public Policy Brief No. 122
Fiddling in Euroland as the Global Meltdown Nears
President Dimitri B. Papadimitriou and Senior Scholar L. Randall Wray argue that the common diagnosis of a “sovereign debt crisis” ignores the crucial role of rising private debt loads and the significance of current account imbalances within the eurozone. Profligate spending in the periphery is not at the root of the problem. Moreover, pushing austerity […] -
Blog
The Washington Post Goes “Unconventional”
Dylan Matthews had a piece on Modern Monetary Theory in the Washington Post yesterday that featured Levy Institute scholars James Galbraith and Randall Wray. WaPo also put together a “family tree” that displays some Post Keynesian and New Keynesian lineages. The piece has been bouncing around the internet, first with some supportive comments by Jared [...] -
You Know the Deficit Hawks. Now Meet the Deficit Owls.
The Washington Post, February 19, 2012. © 1996–2012 The Washington Post About 11 years ago, James K. “Jamie” Galbraith recalls, hundreds of his fellow economists laughed at him. To his face. In the White House. A discounted poster presenting US dollars bills in circulation is seen in the visitor center of the Bureau of Engraving […] -
Blog
Let’s Make a Deal
It has been recognized for well over a century that the central bank must intervene as “lender of last resort” in a crisis. In the 1870s Walter Bagehot explained this as a policy of stopping a run on banks by lending without limit, against good collateral, at a penalty interest rate. This would allow the [...] -
Blog
Definitely Not a Keynesian Suggestion
The people at Bloomberg appear to have made a curious error on their website yesterday. They have attributed an op-ed to Amity Shlaes that was almost certainly not written by her. You see, Amity Shlaes is a well-known skeptic of Keynes and all things Keynesian, having written the bible for those who like to claim [...] -
Blog
The New European Economic Dogma
If it controlled its own currency, the usual thing for a country like Greece to do in these circumstances would be to devalue. Since it doesn’t control its own currency, Greece is being “asked” to pull off an internal devaluation, or as C. J. Polychroniou puts it: Essentially, what they agreed to are additional measures [...]