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BlogA Comment on the Fight against Corruption and Indian Democracy
August 24, 2011 The author is a Professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, New Delhi. His views are his own. An anti-corruption movement in India, run by a set of elites primarily from Delhi, has put poor Anna Hazare out in front and called itself a national movement. Their key demand is an anti-corruption [...] Blog -
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“It’s a classic case of moral hazard.”
August 23, 2011 Levy Institute President Dimitri Papadimitriou, as quoted in the Huffington Post in reference to revelations of the Fed’s $1.2 trillion in “secret loans” to banks and other companies. Papadimitriou told The Huffington Post that the Fed issued many of its biggest loans during the Bush administration, and that “they didn’t appear to have any difficulty [...] Blog -
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A new “voodoo”?
August 22, 2011 The early phases of the 2012 presidential election season have already brought us a great deal of debate on fundamental economic policy issues. Greg Ip, in the Washington Post‘s PostOpinions, writes about the views of a number of Republican candidates (pointer via Economist’s View). Are they believers in the “voodoo economics” that many recall from [...] Blog -
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Is There Bias at the Fed?
August 19, 2011 Rick Perry’s recent reflections/threats regarding quantitative easing have occasioned some speculation about whether his raising the political profile of the issue might actually affect Fed behavior; making the Fed less willing to engage in a third round of easing. The question of political bias at the Fed has been raised before, here in this Levy [...] Blog -
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Should we debase the currency?
August 19, 2011 You might wonder if this question is a misguided satire of Keynesian proposals like the ones in this Institute one-pager for boosting employment in a time of weak economic growth. The question is not meant as a satire, though. In a time of increasing recession fears, policies specifically aimed at reducing the value of the [...] Blog -
Working Paper No. 682Infinite-variance, Alpha-stable Shocks in Monetary SVAR
August 19, 2011 This paper adumbrates a theory of what might be going wrong in the monetary SVAR literature and provides supporting empirical evidence. The theory is that macroeconomists may be attempting to...more Publication -
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Yes, Casey, there is an aggregate demand problem
August 18, 2011 mul·li·gan noun /ˈməligən/ mulligans, plural A stew made from odds and ends of food (in informal golf) An extra stroke allowed after a poor shot, not counted on the scorecard Casey Mulligan responds to a Paul Krugman post deliciously entitled “The General Theory of Anti-Mulliganism.” Never mind for the moment that Mulligan’s claim that Krugman admits [...] Blog -
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The Shrinking Frontiers of the Possible
August 16, 2011 Joe Nocera’s musings about Kurzarbeit aside, it is not the case that what we need right now are more and newer ideas for increasing growth and jobs. We do not have a scarcity of such policy ideas. What we are lacking are the political institutions that would allow us to carry any of them out. [...] Blog -
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Tcherneva on Stupidity and Self-Inflicted Pain
August 16, 2011 Research Associate Pavlina Tcherneva was interviewed by Ian Masters for his “Background Briefing” about S&P’s downgrade, the distressing new State of America’s Children report, and our misguided focus on debt rather than growth and jobs. “If you take care of the economy, the debt and the deficits take care of themselves.” Blog -
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Wray Responds to Krugman
August 15, 2011 L. Randall Wray has responded in the Huffington Post to Paul Krugman’s latest criticism of Modern Money Theory. In addition to taking issue with the usefulness of Krugman’s historical example (France after WWI), Wray discusses the evolution of MMT and the manner in which it has benefited from the rise of social media. Update: Krugman’s [...] Blog -
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Galbraith Prods the Long-Term Deficit Narrative
August 12, 2011 Senior Scholar James Galbraith’s recent article in The New Republic (“Stop Panicking About Our Long-Term Deficit Problem. We Don’t Have One”) has sparked some reactions from Paul Krugman and Arnold Kling (JG responds briefly to the latter in comments). Galbraith, jumping off from his Levy Institute policy note, argues that there is a certain marked [...] Blog -
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If this was a recovery…
August 12, 2011 It remains to be seen if the stock market collapse of the past three weeks or so will be followed by very bad GDP numbers and renewed job losses. How far did the recovery from the Great Recession get before the big relapse of stock-market volatility? A new Levy Institute one-pager features some graphs that [...] Blog -
Working Paper No. 681
Lessons We Should Have Learned from the Global Financial Crisis but Didn’t
August 12, 2011 This paper begins by recounting the causes and consequences of the global financial crisis (GFC). The triggering event, of course, was the unfolding of the subprime crisis; however, the paper...more Publication -
Working Paper No. 681
Μαθήματα που θα έπρεπε να παίρναμε από την παγκόσμια χρηματοοικονομική κρίση αλλά δεν το κάναμε
August 12, 2011 Η εργασία αυτή ξεκινάει μετρώντας ξανά τα αίτια και τις συνέπειες της παγκόσμιας χρηματοοικονομικής κρίσης (ΠΧΚ). Το γεγονός που πυροδότησε την κρίση ήταν, φυσικά, το ξεδίπλωμα της κρίσης στα στεγαστικά...more Publication -
One-Pager No. 12Not Your Father’s Recession
August 11, 2011 President Dimitri B. Papadimitriou and Research Scholar Greg Hannsgen make the case that the recession has turned into a prolonged and very unusual slump in growth, preventing a labor-market recovery—and...more Publication -
One-Pager No. 12
Δεν πρόκειται για τη συνηθισμένη ύφεση
August 11, 2011 Ο πρόεδρος Δημήτρης Β. Παπαδημητρίου και ο Μελετητής Έρευνας Greg Hannsgen επιχειρηματολογούν ότι η οικονομική υποχώρηση έχει μετατρα̟πεί σε μια παρατεταμένη και πολύ ασυνήθιστη κάμψη της ανάπτυξης, αποτρέποντας μια ανάκαμψη...more Publication -
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Beyond Infrastructure
August 10, 2011 The topic of the moment, in the wreckage of the debt ceiling fight and the S&P downgrade, is to ask what the government can do to boost employment. The data from Gennaro Zezza’s most recent post suggest that one of the answers to this question is “stop firing so many people.” Beyond stemming the losses [...] Blog -
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To Cut the Debt, Create Jobs
August 09, 2011 While public discussion in the last several weeks has been absorbed by the debt ceiling saga, and in the coming weeks will probably focus on the S&P downgrade, employment (or lack thereof) is still a major problem. Our employment problem is one of the main factors contributing to a sizeable government deficit and growing public [...] Blog -
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In the Media
August 08, 2011 Levy Institute Senior Scholar L. Randall Wray was interviewed last week by Radio KPFK for their “Background Briefing.” Listen here to the wide-ranging discussion (beginning roughly a third of the way through the broadcast). Wray also has a piece in The Hill, expanding on his arguments about what lurks behind the hysterical focus on debt [...] Blog -
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The meaning of the federal government’s AA+
August 08, 2011 Throughout the weekend, television news coverage dwelled on Friday’s downgrade of U.S. debt securities by Standard and Poor’s, one of the three main ratings agencies that assess the creditworthiness of the federal government. The meaning of S & P’s action remains somewhat uncertain, and we doubt that, as important as the story was, the downgrade [...] Blog -
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“We get on very well in private life, but what rubbish his theory is” *
August 05, 2011 The BBC have broadcast a recent debate, dubbed “Keynes vs Hayek,” featuring Keynes’ biographer Lord Skidelsky. For anyone interested in an entry-level discussion of these competing policy approaches, and plenty of binge-drinking/hangover metaphors, it’s worth a listen. * (Keynes, in reference to Hayek.) Blog -
One-Pager No. 11
Investing in Social Care Delivery
August 05, 2011 There is little mystery to explaining our current high levels of unemployment. The Bureau of Economic Analysis recently revised its figures on GDP growth, and revealed that not only was...more Publication -
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Self-Flagellation, Revisited
August 03, 2011 Following up on a previous item, Macroeconomic Advisers have updated their analysis in response to the most recent debt ceiling deal. The results: no good news, and some serious uncertainty in the probable effects on growth (though not the sort of “uncertainty” the conventional wisdom is persistently telling us we should care about). In 2012, [...] Blog -
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An update on the Fed and the debt-limit impasse
August 02, 2011 A deal was reached over the weekend by congressional leaders and the President to resolve the debt-ceiling impasse. By that point, it was clear that the possible way out described by John Carney in a blog post to which we linked on Thursday would not be feasible. Nonetheless, the Fed’s ability to supply cash as [...] Blog