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BlogThe Limits of Pump Priming
October 25, 2011 Here’s one fairly standard reading of our economic policy challenge: the economy needs more pump priming, the federal government has more than enough fiscal space to provide it, but for political reasons it won’t be forthcoming. (If you needed further evidence of that last proposition, take a look at the latest House Republican job creation [...] Blog -
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Levy President on the Eurozone Contagion
October 24, 2011 “You cannot solve the problem with this level of financing. It’s not possible.” Dimitri Papadimitriou, interviewed yesterday for Ian Masters’ “Background Briefing,” gets to the heart of the matter on the shortcomings of the proposals for resolving the eurozone crisis that are currently on the table. Papadimitriou argues that we’re likely looking at a default [...] Blog -
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Levy Scholars to Advise on Fed Reform
October 24, 2011 The office of Senator Bernie Sanders (Independent – Vermont) has announced the formation of a panel tasked with drafting legislation to reform the Federal Reserve. Levy Senior Scholars Randall Wray and James Galbraith and Research Associate Stephanie Kelton have been named to the team. Wray’s recent brief on the Federal Reserve, co-authored with Scott Fullwiler [...] Blog -
One-Pager No. 16Beyond Pump Priming
October 21, 2011 The American Jobs Act now before Congress relies largely on a policy of aggregate demand management, or “pump priming”: injecting demand into a frail economy in hopes of boosting growth...more Publication -
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Taxing the wealthy will not kill jobs
October 21, 2011 I study the distribution of wealth and income here at the Levy Institute, so I read the first five hundred words of Robert Samuelson’s Washington Post column on inequality (“The backlash against the rich,” Oct. 9th) with interest and approval. But I knew it couldn’t last. Once Samuelson gets beyond description and attempts explanation and [...] Blog -
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40 Million Pennies for Your Thoughts
October 20, 2011 Are you a reclusive economist-savant who happens to know how a member state might be able to exit the European Monetary Union in an orderly fashion? Would your idea appeal to a center-right British think tank? If so, you need to shave your beard and put in for the Wolfson Prize (don’t worry, with the [...] Blog -
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The Vampire Squid of Wall Street Is Hemorrhaging
October 19, 2011 (cross posted at EconoMonitor) Government Sachs posted its second quarterly loss since it went public in 1999. No doubt that has sent Washington scrambling to try to plug the leak. (Wouldn’t it be fun to listen in on Timothy Geithner’s incoming phone calls from 200 West Street, NYC, today?) Lloyd “doing God’s work” Blankfein blamed [...] Blog -
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Tcherneva on the Radio
October 19, 2011 Pavlina Tcherneva was interviewed recently on Wisconsin Public Radio’s “At Issue” with Ben Merens and took questions from listeners. She argues that while there are plenty of good job creation ideas available, it is ultimately the toxic political environment that is holding us back. Beginning at the 33:54 mark, responding to a question about payroll [...] Blog -
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How Much Food Will a Week’s Earnings Buy? (Fall Edition)
October 18, 2011 (Click to enlarge.) Signs of serious inflation in broad price indices such as the consumer price index (CPI) have been rare over the past few years, confounding many critics of the stimulus bill and the Fed’s efforts to reduce interest rates. However, as I reported in a blog entry last spring, most food-commodity prices were [...] Blog -
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Modern Money Links
October 18, 2011 1. John Quiggin offers a critique of what he calls a “misreading of MMT.” 2. Bill Mitchell, interviewed by the Harvard International Review, waxes functional (emphasis added): Particular budget outcomes should never be a policy target. What the government should be targeting is real goals, by which I mean a sustainable growth rate buoyed by [...] Blog -
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Polychroniou on Merkel-Sarkozy
October 18, 2011 In his latest one-pager (“Dawn of a New Day for Europe?“) C. J. Polychroniou anticipates the outlines of a Merkel-Sarkozy agreement on policies designed to address the eurozone debt crisis, and comes away skeptical. Polychroniou suggests that a massive infusion of emergency funding, somewhere on the order of 2 to 3 trillion euros, would be [...] Blog -
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Great White Northern Class Traitor
October 17, 2011 Add central banker Mark Carney (governor of the Bank of Canada—and former vampire squidite) to the list of class traitors unlikely supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement, calling it “entirely constructive“: In a television interview, Mr. Carney acknowledged that the movement is an understandable product of the “increase in inequality” – particularly in the [...] Blog -
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Faith-Based Economics
October 17, 2011 Rob Parenteau has a post at Naked Capitalism commenting on Wolfgang Münchau’s article in the Financial Times. Münchau argues that policy makers in Europe largely ignored the spillover effects of simultaneous fiscal contraction across the entire eurozone. Parenteau insists that, at least at the level of ideas, the problem occurs at a much more basic [...] Blog -
One-Pager No. 15
H αυγή μιας νέας ημέρας για την Ευρώπη
October 14, 2011 Η αποτυχία εκ μέρους των ηγετών της ΕΕ να αντιμετωπίσουν αποτελεσματικά την κρίση της ευρωζώνης έχει να κάνει σε μεγάλο βαθμό με το γεγονός ότι η Γερμανία και η Γαλλία...more Publication -
One-Pager No. 15
Dawn of a New Day for Europe?
October 14, 2011 Failure on the part of EU leaders to address the eurozone crisis is in large part due to the fact that Germany and France are at opposite poles—politically, economically, and...more Publication -
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Inequality and Crisis
October 14, 2011 Nouriel Roubini argues at Project Syndicate that widening inequality lends itself to both economic and political instability. In his latest policy brief, “Waiting for the Next Crash,” Randall Wray connects some of these same dots, tying the rise of “financialization” and soaring household debt levels to stagnating median incomes in the US: …as finance metastasized, [...] Blog -
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Uncle Sam Is Not Broke
October 14, 2011 The bowling alley cannot run out of points, and the US government cannot run out of keystrokes. Research Associate Stephanie Kelton slaps down the folk wisdom that there is nothing the government can do about unemployment because it’s “broke.” “We don’t understand our own monetary system.” (hat tip to NEP) Blog -
Public Policy Brief No. 120Waiting for the Next Crash
October 13, 2011 Senior Scholar L. Randall Wray lays out the numerous and critical ways in which we have failed to learn from the latest global financial crisis, and identifies the underlying trends...more Publication -
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Neoliberalism in a Time of Crisis
October 13, 2011 “Crises are an inherent feature of capitalism. Marx knew this only too well; so did Keynes and Minsky. Neoliberals, on the other hand, tend to believe that it is government action that causes market turbulence and economic instability.” This is the opening salvo from a new one-pager by C. J. Polychroniou that takes on neoliberal [...] Blog -
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The European Troika’s Rescue Plan Will Fail
October 12, 2011 (cross posted from EconoMonitor) Yet another rescue plan for the EMU is making its way through central Europe—raising the total funding available to the equivalent of $600 billion. Germany agreed to raise its contribution to the fund by more than $100 billion equivalent. However, Slovakia has vetoed the rescue and all eyes are now turned [...] Blog -
Working Paper No. 692Quality of Match for Statistical Matches Used in the Development of the Levy Institute Measure of Time and Income Poverty (LIMTIP) for Argentina, Chile, and Mexico
October 12, 2011 The quality of match of three statistical matches used in the LIMTIP estimates for Argentina, Chile, and Mexico is described. The first match combines the 2005 Uso del Tiempo (UT...more Publication -
Working Paper No. 691
Unpaid and Paid Care
October 12, 2011 Transforming care for children and the elderly from a private to a public domain engenders a series of benefits to the economy that improve our standard of living. We assess...more Publication -
One-Pager No. 14
Neoliberalism and the State of the Advanced World Economy
October 11, 2011 Whoever said that economic science is free of ideological bias and political prejudice? Three hundred years of financial and economic crises have meant nothing to die-hard neoliberals, who believe in...more Publication -
One-Pager No. 14
Νεοφιλελευθερισμός και η κατάσταση της προηγμένης παγκόσμιας οικονομίας
October 11, 2011 Ποιος είπε ότι η οικονομική επιστήμη δεν είναι ιδεολογικά προκατειλημμένη και δεν πάσχει από πολιτική μεροληψία; Τριακόσια χρόνια χρηματοπιστωτικων και οικονομικών κρίσεων δε λένε απολύτως τίποτα στους αδιάλλακτους νεοφιλελεύθερους, που...more Publication