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BlogWray 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. 681Lessons 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. 12Δεν 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 -
One-Pager No. 12
Not 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 -
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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 -
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Gross Distraction
August 01, 2011 Bill Gross has weighed in on the debate about excessive sovereign debt, invoking a study produced by Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart that purports to show a negative relation between debt and economic growth. The “Maginot line” is a debt ratio of 90%, beyond which economic growth slows by 1%. Yet Mr. Gross does not [...] Blog -
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GDP Revisions and Our Looming Policy Masochism
July 29, 2011 The economy grew at an unflattering 1.3% annual rate in the second quarter, while first quarter GDP growth has been revised downwards to a wretched 0.4%. Against the backdrop of these abysmal numbers, the US government appears poised to do its best to make matters worse. Even if the debt limit negotiations generate an agreement, [...] Blog -
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A longer-term Keynesian approach to macro policy
July 29, 2011 Many influential mainstream Keynesian economists continue to support high deficits until the nation’s yawning jobs gap is closed. As Laura D’Andrea Tyson observes in a thorough and helpful blog entry posted this morning, this is not a fine-tuning problem requiring a careful weighing of priorities, given the current state of the job market: Like many [...] Blog -
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Will there be a Fed shutdown?
July 28, 2011 In a recent blog piece at the CNBC website, John Carney offers this interpretation of the federal debt ceiling (see also Felix Salmon’s more recent comment): “The debt ceiling applies to the face amount of obligations issued under Chapter 31 of Title 31 of the U.S. Code—basically, Treasury notes and bills and the other standard [...] Blog -
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Private-sector debt ratios still high by historical standards
July 26, 2011 With all the recent coverage of the federal government’s debt-limit impasse, it has been some time since the private sector’s financial picture has received much attention in the popular press. Nonetheless, there seems to be little news, as the most recent flow-of-funds data release from the Fed depicts a continuation of trends that have held [...] Blog -
Working Paper No. 680
The Levy Institute Measure of Economic Well-Being: Estimates for Canada, 1999 and 2005
July 26, 2011 This report presents estimates of the Levy Institute Measure of Economic Well-Being (LIMEW) for a representative sample of Canadian households in 1999 and 2005. The results indicate that there was...more Publication -
Working Paper No. 679
The Levy Institute Measure of Economic Well-Being, France, 1989 and 2000
July 25, 2011 We construct estimates of the Levy Institute Measure of Economic Well-Being for France for the years 1989 and 2000. We also estimate the standard measure of disposable cash income (DI)...more Publication -
Working Paper No. 678
What Ended the Great Depression?
July 25, 2011 Conventional wisdom contends that fiscal policy was of secondary importance to the economic recovery in the 1930s. The recovery is then connected to monetary policy that allowed non-sterilized gold inflows...more Publication -
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Do we need federal debt at all?
July 20, 2011 (Click figure to enlarge.) Could the government loan the money to itself? The federal government is expected reach its debt limit of $14.29 trillion early next month. Normally, the government more or less indirectly sells a large amount of Treasury securities to the Fed, which is technically a private entity, separate from the familiar government [...] Blog