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Working Paper No. 709«Πάρα πολύ μεγάλες για να καταρρεύσουν»
February 28, 2012 Οι κρατικές πολιτικές χαλαρής αντιμετώπισης, στήριξης και διάσωσης των τραπεζών και άλλων χρηματοπιστωτικών οργανισμών που θεωρούνται «πολύ μεγάλοι για να καταρρεύσουν» αναγνωρίζονται ευρέως ως πολιτικές που ενθαρρύνουν τις μεγάλες επιχειρήσεις...more Publication -
BlogA Cycle to Watch Out For
February 27, 2012 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 -
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Will the Central Bank Bailouts Ever End?
February 24, 2012 (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 -
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Papadimitriou on Cross Talk
February 23, 2012 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 [...] Blog -
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Reader’s Guide to the Limitations of Orthodoxy
February 22, 2012 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 -
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Fiddling in Euroland
February 21, 2012 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 [...] Blog -
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The Washington Post Goes “Unconventional”
February 20, 2012 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 [...] Blog -
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Let’s Make a Deal
February 17, 2012 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 -
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Definitely Not a Keynesian Suggestion
February 16, 2012 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 -
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The New European Economic Dogma
February 16, 2012 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 [...] Blog -
Working Paper No. 708
The Road to Debt Deflation, Debt Peonage, and Neofeudalism
February 15, 2012 What is called “capitalism” is best understood as a series of stages. Industrial capitalism has given way to finance capitalism, which has passed through pension fund capitalism since the 1950s...more Publication -
Working Paper No. 708
Ο δρόμος προς τον αποπληθωρισμό του χρέους, την πεονία και τον νεοφεουδαλισμό
February 15, 2012 O «καπιταλισμός» είναι καλύτερα κατανοητός σαν ένα σύστημα από μια σειρά από στάδια. Ο βιομηχανικός καπιταλισμός έχει παραχωρήσει τη θέση του στον χρηματοοικονομικό καπιταλισμό, ο οποίος εξελίχθηκε από τον καπιταλισμό...more Publication -
Working Paper No. 707
H ευρω-κρίση και η εγγυημένη απασχόληση
February 15, 2012 H Ευρωχώρα βρίσκεται σε κρίση, που αργά αλλά σταθερά εξαπλώνεται από τη μία χώρα της περιφέρειας στην άλλη. Στο τέλος, θα φτάσει και στο κέντρο. Για την κατάσταση αυτή κατηγορούνται...more Publication -
Working Paper No. 707
The Euro Crisis and the Job Guarantee
February 15, 2012 Euroland is in a crisis that is slowly but surely spreading from one periphery country to another; it will eventually reach the center. The blame is mostly heaped upon supposedly...more Publication -
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21st Annual Minsky Conference: Debt, Deficits, and Financial Instability
February 15, 2012 April 11–12, 2012 Ford Foundation, New York City A conference organized by the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College with support from the Ford Foundation This Spring, leading policymakers, economists, and analysts will gather at the New York headquarters of the Ford Foundation to take part in the Levy Institute’s 21st Annual Hyman P. Minsky [...] Blog -
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Greece Forced to Cut Private Sector Salaries?
February 14, 2012 C. J. Polychroniou refers here to the fact that private sector salary cuts are part of the “rescue package” recently approved by the Greek Parliament. Asked to comment at the Foreign Policy blog, Dimitri Papadimitriou explains why this attempt at internal devaluation won’t work. In an interview for Bloomberg Radio Papadimitriou also stresses that these [...] Blog -
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Farce Turns Into Tragedy
February 14, 2012 C. J. Polychroniou has a new one-pager that starts off by noting the asymmetries in the approaches taken by governments in the US and Europe to the 2007-08 crash and its aftermath: featuring bold public interventions to save the banking and financial systems but relatively limited measures for the millions of unemployed. He then turns [...] Blog -
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Employment in Greece
February 13, 2012 From a peak of 4.5 million workers in 2008, Greece has already lost 500,000 jobs. Our first chart shows that the country is already in its worst condition since the beginning of the century in terms of the share of the working age population who have a job (our projections are based on the last [...] Blog -
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A Job Creation Strategy for Greece
February 10, 2012 No matter what happens on Sunday, when the Greek parliament is scheduled to vote on the latest bailout package, on Monday Greece will wake up in the grip of an employment crisis (20 percent unemployment, with a near 40 percent youth unemployment rate). In the Huffington Post Dimitri Papadimitriou tells us what we can (and [...] Blog -
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The Sources of Personal Income Since 1947
February 10, 2012 (Click to enlarge.) See the blue line in the upper half of the figure above? That line shows the portion of personal income made up of wage and salary disbursements, as a percentage of total personal income. (As the figure notes, I’ve subtracted social insurance contributions such as Social Security taxes. Also, employer contributions to [...] Blog -
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State AGs Cave to Banksters
February 09, 2012 (cross posted at EconoMonitor) Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism has long been skeptical of the negotiations by the State Attorneys General and the banksters over the foreclosure frauds (see here). And while I had held out some hope that California and New York would either refuse to join, or would insist on good terms, today’s [...] Blog -
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Pessimism on Greek Bailout Deal (If You Need Some)
February 09, 2012 To provide a little more perspective on the news of the just-announced Greek bailout agreement, I point you to this CNN Money piece from yesterday in which Dimitri Papadimitriou notes how abysmal the underlying economic growth trends remain (Greek employment depends a lot on shipping, which is faring poorly) and reminds us that the package, [...] Blog -
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Bernanke Visits Alternate Universe
February 09, 2012 Well then. Apparently not everyone agrees that the Federal Reserve is having trouble balancing its dual mandate. Rather, I should say that not everyone agrees about the nature of the imbalance. From the Boston Globe‘s reporting of Ben Bernanke’s appearance in front of the Senate Budget Committee, we find this: “It seems to me that [...] Blog -
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The “Shovel Ready” Excuse and a Fed for Public Works?
February 08, 2012 The latest chapter in the “why was the original stimulus so small?” story is a memo from December 2008 that reveals Larry Summers’ assessment as to why the stimulus (ARRA) had to be limited to around $800 billion—about half of what was necessary, in Summers’ estimation. There are various conclusions you can draw from this [...] Blog