Tue 2010-10-12 16:01 EDT

billy blog >> Blog Archive >> Iceland ... another neo-liberal casuality

...For a real world example of the benefits of adopting a floating, sovereign, currency we can look to Argentina....At the time of the 2001 crisis, the government realised it had to adopt a domestically-oriented growth strategy. One of the first policy initiatives taken by newly elected President Kirchner was a massive job creation program that guaranteed employment for poor heads of households. Within four months, the Plan Jefes y Jefas de Hogar (Head of Households Plan) had created jobs for 2 million participants which was around 13 per cent of the labour force. This not only helped to quell social unrest by providing income to Argentina's poorest families, but it also put the economy on the road to recovery. Conservative estimates of the multiplier effect of the increased spending by Jefes workers are that it added a boost of more than 2.5 per cent of GDP. In addition, the program provided needed services and new public infrastructure that encouraged additional private sector spending. Without the flexibility provided by a sovereign, floating, currency, the government would not have been able to promise such a job guarantee. Argentina demonstrated something that the World's financial masters didn't want anyone to know about. That a country with huge foreign debt obligations can default successfully and enjoy renewed fortune based on domestic employment growth strategies and more inclusive welfare policies without an IMF austerity program being needed. And then as growth resumes, renewed FDI floods in...sovereign governments are not necessarily at the hostage of global financial markets. They can steer a strong recovery path based on domestically-orientated policies -- such as the introduction of a Job Guarantee -- which directly benefit the population by insulating the most disadvantaged workers from the devastation that recession brings...

Billy Blog; blogs Archive; Iceland; neo-liberal casuality.

Fri 2010-10-08 20:51 EDT

Top 20 Stocks With Huge Insider Selling - TheStreet

By Stockpickr Staff

You would think that after a huge stock market rally in September, corporate insiders would be optimistic and happy to hold on to their shares, expecting even more gains to come. Instead, corporate insiders are dumping stock in droves...The selling is so big that it equals $2,341 of insider selling for every dollar of buying...The total amount of insider buying for this reporting period was $177,064, vs. an unbelievable total selling of $414 million...

Huge Insider Selling; thestreet; Top 20 Stocks.

New Economic Perspectives Wed 2010-09-29 09:11 EDT

An Interview with Warren Mosler: Modern Money Theory and the Exonomy

Economic Perspectives from Kansas City

...unemployment is evidence of a lack of aggregate demand, so what the world is lacking is sufficient aggregate demand. *In the United States, my prescription includes 1) what we call a payroll tax holiday, i.e., a tax reduction, 2) a revenue distribution to the states by the federal government and 3) a federally funded $8.00-per-hour job for anyone willing and able to work. * *For the euro zone, I propose a distribution from the European Central Bank to the national governments of perhaps as much as 20 percent of GDP to be done on a per capita basis so it will be fair to all the member nations*.

Exonomy; interview; Modern Money Theory; New Economic Perspectives; Warren Mosler.

Mon 2010-09-20 19:04 EDT

Excerpt From "Traders, Guns & Money" (Part 2)

Satyajit Das

Minyanville Professor Satyajit Das' "Traders, Guns & Money" is a wickedly comic exposé of the culture, games, and pure deceptions played out every day in trading rooms around the world. And played out with other people's money...

excerpts; gun; money; Part 2; Traders.

Mon 2010-09-20 10:14 EDT

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis: Fictional Reserve Lending And The Myth Of Excess Reserves

...1) Lending comes first and what little reserves there are (if any) come later. 2) There really are no excess reserves. 3) Not only are there no excess reserves, there are essentially no reserves to speak of at all. Indeed, bank reserves are completely "fictional". 4) Banks are capital constrained not reserve constrained. 5) Banks aren't lending because there are few credit worthy borrowers worth the risk. ...concern that excess reserves will lead to lending and inflation is totally unfounded in theory and practice. Fractional Reserve Lending is really Fictional Reserve Lending. In practice, the major constraints to lending are insufficient capital and willingness of credit worthy borrowers to seek loans.

excess reserves; Fictional Reserve Lending; Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis; myth.

PRAGMATIC CAPITALISM Thu 2010-09-16 16:15 EDT

CREDIT SUISSE: 6 BULLISH FACTS ABOUT HOUSING

TPC

Here's a contrarian view for you. Credit Suisse says the fears about housing are well overdone. In their analysis they cite 6 different bullish factors that should help to bolster house prices in the USA...The government now owns or guarantees about 70% of US mortgage debt...Valuation is extremely cheap on all measures...Delinquency ratios, charge-off and foreclosure rates seem to have peaked...Housing starts are about 1m below trend demand of housing units -- based on household formation and replacement demand... * Distressed sales (short-sales, foreclosures and REO sales) are less than a third of the total, after peaking at almost half in 2009...Housing as a proportion of GDP is now just 2.2%, compared with a long-run average of 4.5%...

6 BULLISH FACTS; Credit Suisse; Housing; PRAGMATIC CAPITALISM.

naked capitalism Fri 2010-09-10 18:46 EDT

Auerback: China is Still a Renegade Nation

Marshall Auerback

...In response to Beijing's mind boggling increase in real credit in the first half of 2009,Chinese fixed investment in industrial tradables rose dramatically...By the second quarter of this year some -- but only some -- of this new capacity began to come on stream. Further production responses to this new round of Chinese overinvestment lie ahead...But because of the potential protectionist threat and the underlying fragility at the heart of China's capex boom (along with the corruption of its political class), the change in status might prove to be ephemeral, much as Japan's vaunted rise to number 2 ultimately gave way to a post-bubble morass...in July Chinese domestic demand may have gone negative in real terms. It was only a huge improvement in net trade that kept production growth significantly positive on a sequential basis...The fact that China has the greatest fixed investment excess ever suggests that, when it unwinds, there will be a nasty economic adjustment in China...

Auerback; China; naked capitalism; Renegade Nation.

New Deal 2.0 Fri 2010-09-03 18:57 EDT

The Real Lesson from the Great Depression: Fiscal Policy Works!

Marshall Auerback

...At the outset of the Great Depression, economic output collapsed, and unemployment rose to 25 per cent. Influenced by his ``liquidationist'' Treasury Secretary, Andrew Mellon, then President Hoover made comparatively minimal attempts to deploy government fiscal policy to stimulate aggregate demand...This all changed under FDR...The government hired about 60 per cent of the unemployed in public works and conservation projects that planted a billion trees, saved the whooping crane, modernized rural America, and built such diverse projects as the Cathedral of Learning in Pittsburgh, the Montana state capitol, much of the Chicago lakefront, New York's Lincoln Tunnel and Triborough Bridge complex, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the aircraft carriers Enterprise and Yorktown...once the Great Depression hit bottom in early 1933, the US economy embarked on four years of expansion that constituted the biggest cyclical boom in U.S. economic history. For four years, real GDP grew at a 12% rate and nominal GDP grew at a 14% rate. There was another shorter and shallower depression in 1937 largely caused by renewed fiscal tightening (and higher Federal Reserve margin requirements)...

0; Fiscal policy worked; Great Depression; new dealing 2; Real Lesson.

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis Thu 2010-08-26 15:11 EDT

"Contained Depression"

Michael Shedlock

Kevin Feltes, an economist for the Jerome Levy Forecasting Center, solicited my opinion on a couple of their recent articles. Levy comes down on the side of deflation, as do I. However, the devil is in the details...That Levy managed to come to what I believe is the proper overall conclusion stems from Levy's rock-solid case presented in section 2: Why Aggressive Monetary Policy Isn't Causing and Won't Cause Inflation...

contained Depression; Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis.

Fabius Maximus Wed 2010-08-25 09:31 EDT

The face of America's decline

Fabius Maximus

...Mark Hurd, until recently CEO of HP. See the face of America's economic decline...from ``The Real Reason for Ousting H.P.'s Chief``, Joe Nocera, New York Times: [according to] Charles House, a former longtime H.P. engineer: The way H.P. made its numbers...was not just cutting any old costs, but by ``chopping R.&D.,'' which had always been sacred at H.P. The research and development budget used to be 9% of revenue, Mr. House told me; now it was closer to 2%. ``In the personal computer group, it is 0.7%''...Here we see America's formula for decline... 1. Fantastic pay for leaders 2. Stagnant pay for employees 3. Cutting jobs (efficiencies, forcing harder work, moving off-shore) 4. Slash investments in the future (capex, training, R&D)...

America s decline; Fabius Maximus; Faces.

naked capitalism Sun 2010-08-22 09:32 EDT

Auerback: News Flash-- China Reduces US Treasury Holdings, World Does Not Come To an End

Marshall Auerback

In a post titled ``China Cuts US Treasury Holdings By Record Amount,'' Mike Norman makes the excellent observation that while China is moving its money out of Treasuries, interest rates are hitting record lows. In other words, the sky still isn't falling. So, Mike wonders, ``Where is the Debt/Doomsday crowd?'' He rightly concludes: ``They're nowhere to be found because they can't explain this. This is a `gut punch' to them. Their whole theory is out the window. They just don't understand or don't want to understand, that interest rates are set by the Fed...PERIOD!!!''...Also of note today: Tokyo's Nikkei QUICK News reports that the #309 10-year Japanese benchmark government bond, the current benchmark, traded to a yield of 0.920% Tuesday morning, down 2.5 basis points from yesterday's close. This is the lowest yield since August 13, 2003. This, from a country with a public debt-to-GDP ratio of 210%!...These are facts. Inconvenient for those who like to perpetuate the lie that the US or Japan faces imminent national insolvency as a means of justifying their almost daily attacks on proactive fiscal policy...

Auerback; China reducing; comes; ending; naked capitalism; News Flash; Treasury holds; world.

Minyanville Sat 2010-08-21 10:33 EDT

How Pimco Is Holding American Homeowners Hostage

David Stockman

...According to Bill Gross ...the American economy can be saved only through ``full nationalization'' of the mortgage finance system and a massive ``jubilee'' of debt forgiveness for millions of underwater homeowners...As overlord of the fixed-income finance market [Pacific Investment Management Co. (Pimco)] generates billions annually in effort-free profits from its trove of essentially riskless US Treasury securities and federally guaranteed housing paper. Now Pimco wants to swell Uncle Sam's supply of this no-brainer paper even further -- adding upward of $2 trillion per year of what would be ``government-issue'' mortgages...This final transformation of American taxpayers into indentured servants of HIDC (the Housing Investment & Debt Complex) has been underway for a long time, and is now unstoppable because all principled political opposition to Pimco-style crony capitalism has been extinguished...At the heart of the matter is the statist Big Lie trumpeting the alleged public welfare benefits of the home-ownership society and subsidized real estate finance...the congregates of the HIDC lobby -- homebuilders, mortgage bankers, real estate brokers, Wall Street securitizers, property appraisers and lawyers, landscapers and land speculators, home improvement retailers and the rest -- have gotten their fill at the Federal trough. But the most senseless gift -- the extra-fat risk-free spread on Freddie and Fannie paper -- went to the great enablers of the mortgage debt boom, that is, the mega-funds like Pimco...there isn't a shred of evidence that all of this largese serves any legitimate public purpose whatsoever, and plenty of evidence that the HIDC boom has been deeply destructive...there are upward of 15-20 million American households that can't afford their current mortgages or will be strongly disinclined to service them once housing prices take their next -- and unpreventable -- leg down. But Pimco's gold-coast socialism is exactly the wrong answer. Rather than having their mortgages modified or forgiven, these households should be foreclosed upon, and the sooner the better...

Holding American Homeowners Hostage; Minyanville; PIMCO.

Phil's Favorites - By Ilene Thu 2010-08-19 15:58 EDT

Time for a New, New Deal?

Phil of Phil's Stock World

...The Big Lie being told by the right is that we can solve our problems by cutting spending and (ROFL) lowering taxes...Of course, let's keep in mind that the $1.5Tn the government spends directly employs 2.7M people and millions more indirectly so, for every person you cut, make sure you add back $20,000 a year for unemployment benefits and administration (or are we going to throw them all on the street?)...the real glove-across-your-face insult to your intelligence comes when they try to tell you that giving tax breaks to the rich and to corporations will help...US Corporations only paid a grand total of $138Bn in taxes in 2009 (6.5% of all taxes collected)...US Corporations have done nothing but outsource America's future for decades and it is time for the bottom 99% of the income earners (those earning less than $250,000 a year) to wake up and smell the class warfare that is being waged against them. How can we even begin to entertain the idea of cutting government and cutting government spending when the sum total contribution of Big Business America represents a rounding error in our national budget?...When private business fails to expand, when the budgets cannot be balanced because 25% of the population is unable to make income tax contributions due to loss of jobs and homes -- then a wise man knows when it is time to step in and let the Government fill the void. Not with more bailouts to the rich who, like Reagan's deficit ``are big enough to care for themselves'' but with bold programs that invest in the future of this country and utilize the skills and labor of this country and make America strong and independent...

Ilene; new; new deal; Phil's Favorites; Time.

New Deal 2.0 Sun 2010-07-25 16:20 EDT

Will Criminals Exploit Cap and Trade?

Marshall Auerback

...the carbon trading proposals embodied in the Obama Administration's cap and trade proposals are misguided. Money laundering is very easy when you have an opaque pricing structure with little in the way of regulatory protections. It's the environmental equivalent of credit default swaps. Worse, the cap and trade system doesn't work...Carbon Trading Schemes amount to nothing more than a privatization of the atmosphere...the criminals can have a field day...

0; Criminals Exploit Cap; new dealing 2; trading.

New Deal 2.0 Sun 2010-07-25 16:08 EDT

Marriner S. Eccles: Keynesian Evangelist Before Keynes

Henry C. K. Liu

...From direct experience, [1930s Federal Reserve chairman Marriner S. Eccles] realized that bankers like himself, by doing what seemed sound on an individual basis, by calling in loans and refusing new lending in hard times, only contributed to the financial crisis. He saw from direct experience the evidence of market failure. He concluded that to get out of the depression, government intervention, something he had been taught was evil, was necessary to place purchasing power in the hands of the public. In the industrial age, the mal-distribution of income (which was hugely unequal) and the excessive savings for capital investment always lead to the masses exhausting their purchasing power, unable to sustain the benefits of mass production that such savings brought...By denying the masses necessary purchasing power, capital denies itself of the very demand that would justify its investment in new production. Credit can extend purchasing power but only until the credit runs out, which would soon occur without the support of adequate income...Eccles, who never attended university or studied economics formally, articulated his pragmatic conclusions in speeches a good three years before Keynes wrote his epoch-making The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936)....Eccles' transformation from a businessman, brought up to believe in survival of the fittest, to his belief in government spending on the neediest can teach us many lessons today...The solution is to start the money flowing again by directing it not toward those who already have a surplus, but to those who have not enough. Giving more money to those who already have too much would take more money out of circulation into idle savings and prolong the depression...Eccles promoted a limited war on poverty and unemployment, not on moral but on utilitarian grounds.

0; Keynes; Keynesian Evangelist; Marriner S. Eccles; new dealing 2.

New Deal 2.0 Sat 2010-07-24 15:59 EDT

The Trouble with Tim's Treasury

Marshall Auerback

...The Washington Post has reported that one of the major impacts of the FinReg bill passed last week by Congress is the accretion of new power to Obama's Treasury Secretary. According to the Post, Tim Geithner stands to inherit vast power to shape bank regulations, oversee financial markets and create a consumer protection agency...``The bill not only hews closely to the initial draft he released last summer but also anoints him -- as long as he remains Treasury secretary -- as the chief of a new council of senior regulators.'' ...

0; new dealing 2; Tim's Treasury; Troubles.

New Deal 2.0 Thu 2010-07-22 15:54 EDT

The Summer(s) of Our Discontent

Marshall Auerback

Virtually every profile on Larry Summers tells us that he is one of the most brilliant economists of his generation...Only Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan played a more important role than Summers in promoting the deregulation and lax oversight that laid the foundations for the current crisis...the latest FT defense reflects Summers's fundamental lack of understanding of modern money. Contrary to his view, the late 90s surpluses was not the reason for that period's prosperity. The surpluses are what ended the prosperity. And until the public understands this, we should expect no fundamental improvement in economic policymaking from the Obama Administration...he violates one of Abba Lerner's key laws of functional finance: a government's spending and borrowing should be conducted ``with an eye only to the results of these actions on the economy, and not to any established traditional doctrine about what is sound and what is unsound.'' In other words, Lerner believed that the very idea of what good fiscal policy means boils down to what results you can get -- not some arbitrary notion of ``fiscal sustainability''...The government budget surplus meant by identity that the private sector was running a deficit. Households and firms were going ever farther into debt, and they were losing their net wealth of government bonds. Growth was a product of a private debt bubble, which in turn fuelled a stock market and real estate bubble, the collapse of which has created the foundations for today's troubles...

0; discontent; new dealing 2; s; summer.

Wed 2010-07-21 10:26 EDT

Professor Jamie Galbraith's testimony to Deficit Commission | Angry Bear

1. Clouds Over the Work of the Commission. ... 2. Current Deficits and Rising Debt were Caused by the Financial Crisis. ... 3. Future Deficit Projections are Generally Based on Forecasts which Begin by Assuming Full Recovery, but this Assumption is Highly Unrealistic. ... 4. Having Cured the Deficits with an Unrealistic Forecast, CBO Recreates them with Another, Very Different, but Equally Unrealistic Forecast. ... 5. The Only Way to Reduce Public Deficits is to Restore Private Credit. ... 6. Social Security and Medicare "Solvency" is not part of the Commission's Mandate. ... 7. As a Transfer Program, Social Security is Also Irrelevant to Deficit Economics. ... 8. Markets are not calling for Deficit Reduction; Now or Later. ... 9. In Reality, the US Government Spends First & Borrows Later; Public Spending Creates a Demand for Treasuries in the Private Sector. ... 10. The Best Place in History (for this Commission) Would be No Place At All.

Angry Bear; deficit Commission; Professor Jamie Galbraith's testimony.

New Deal 2.0 Fri 2010-07-16 18:50 EDT

Despite Foreign Debts, U.S. Has the Upper Hand

Henry Liu

U.S. public debt as of July 8, 2010 was $ 13.192 trillion against a projected 2010 GDP of $14.743 trillion. As of April 2010, China held $900.2 billion of US Treasuries, surpassing Japan's holding of $795.5 billion. As of 2007, outstanding GSE (Government Sponsored Enterprises like Fanny Mae; Freddy Mac) debt securities (non-mortgage and those backed by mortgages) summed up to $7.37 trillion. Does this mean disaster for the US? ...the U.S., while vulnerable, is not critically over a barrel by massive foreign holdings of U.S. sovereign debt. The reason is because U.S. sovereign debts are all denominated in dollars, a fiat currency that the Federal Reserve can issue at will. The U.S. has no foreign debt in the strict sense of the term. It has domestic debt denominated in its own fiat currency held in large quantities by foreign governments. The U.S. is never in danger of defaulting on its sovereign debt because it can print all the dollars necessary to pay off foreign holders of its debt. There is also no incentive for the foreign holders of U.S. sovereign debt to push for repayment, as that will only cause the U.S. to print more dollars to cause the dollar to fall further in exchange rates... ...trade globalization through cross-border wage arbitrage also pushes down wages in the US and other advanced economies, causing insufficient consumer income to absorb rising global production. This is the main cause of the current financial crises which have made more severe by financial deregulation. But the root cause is global overcapacity due to low wages of workers who cannot afford to buy what they produce. The world economy is plagued with overcapacity as a result. It is not enough to merely focus on job creation. Jobs must pay wages high enough to eliminate overcapacity. Instead of a G20 coordination on fiscal austerity, there needs to be a G20 commitment to raise wages globally. [Henry C.K. Liu]

0; Foreign debt; new dealing 2; U.S.; upper hand.

New Deal 2.0 Fri 2010-07-16 18:16 EDT

The G20 Plan for Prosperity: Rubber Bullets and Shredded Social Safety Net

Paul Jay

The Toronto G-20 summit sent a message to poor and working people in Europe and North America. ``You will pay for the global financial crisis through cuts to your social safety nets. There will be no taxing of those who actually caused the crisis and made fortunes in the various bubbles over the last decades.'' ...This was bad enough. But there was another message, too, sent through the Canadian police: ``If you don't like it, how about a rubber bullet?'' It looks like G-20 countries will deal with opposition to their plans through martial law and police brutality...

0; G20 planned; new dealing 2; prosperity; rubber bullets; Shredded Social Safety Net.

New Deal 2.0 Mon 2010-07-12 16:51 EDT

The Unlearned Lesson of the 1987 Crash

Henry Liu revisits the stock market crash of 1987 to dispel free market fundamentalism and the neo-conservative lust for deregulation...The Federal Reserve's actions under Greenspan in 1987 led market participants to conclude that the Fed would emphasize domestic market objectives with accommodative monetary stance, if necessary at the cost of a further decline in the dollar. By year-end, the dollar's value had fallen 21% against the yen and 14% against the mark from its levels at the time of the Louvre Accord while Greenspan, the wizard of bubble-land, was on his way to being hailed as the greatest central banker in history. Two decades later, by 2007, the Greenspan put was called by the market and trillions of dollars were lost.

0; 1987 crash; new dealing 2; unlearned lessons.

Thu 2010-06-03 17:42 EDT

World Order, Failed States and Terrorism, Part 3: The Business of Private Security

Henry C K Liu

...Social order is the main component of domestic security. Social security is the foundation of social order. Henry J Aaron of the Brookings Institution calls the US Social Security system "the great monument of 20th-century liberalism". Privatization of social security is not a solution; it is an oxymoron. It merely turns social security into private security. Neo-liberal economics theory promotes as scientific truth an ideology that is irrationally hostile to government responsibility for social programs. Based on that ideology, neo-liberal economists then construct a mechanical system of rationalization to dismantle government and its social programs in the name of efficiency through privatization. Privatization of social security is a road to government abdication, the cause of failed statehood...In the era of financial globalization, nations are faced with the problem of protecting their economies from financial threats. The recurring financial crises around the world in recent decades clearly demonstrated that most governments have failed in this critical state responsibility. The economic benefits associated with the unregulated transfer of financial assets, such as cash, stocks and bonds, across national borders are frequently not worth the risks, as has been amply demonstrated in many countries whose economies have been ravaged by external financial forces. Cross-border capital flows have become an increasingly significant part of the globalized economy over recent decades. The US depends on it to finance its huge and growing trade deficit. More than $2.5 trillion of capital flowed around the world in 2004, with more than $1 trillion flowing into just the US. Different types of capital flows, such as foreign direct investment, portfolio investment, and bank lending, are driven by different investor motivations and country characteristics, but one objective stands out more than any other: capital seeks highest return through lowest wages. The United States is not only losing jobs to lower-wage economies, the inflow of capital also forces stagnant US wages to fall in relation to rising asset values.

business; failed state; Part 3; private security; terror; World ordering.

Tue 2010-06-01 18:24 EDT

billy blog >> Blog Archive >> In the spirit of debate ... my reply Part 2

Bill Mitchell

Today, I offer Part 2 of my responses to the comments raised in the debate so far...Modern monetary theory does not use the term ``money'' in the same way as the mainstream because it creates instant confusion. As Scott said ``Money is always someone's liability, so better to be precise about whose liabilities we are talking about than saying money.'' That is why we emphasis fully understanding the asset-liability matches that occur in monetary systems. And that leads you to realise that transactions between government and non-government create or destroy net financial assets denominated in the currency of issue whereas transactions within the non-government sector cannot create net financial positions...So modern monetary theorists prefer to concentrate on what is going on with balance sheets after certain flows have occured rather than narrowly defining some financial assets as money and others not...There is no doubt that the non-government institutions can increase credit. Some slack analysts call this an increase in money. But the accurate statement is that, as a matter of accounting it increases the (in Scott's words) ``the quantity of financial assets and financial liabilities 1 for 1 in the non-govt sector. So, with private credit, there is BY DEFINITION no NET increase in private sector financial assets created.'' Once we understand that and note that typically the non-government sector seeks to net save in the currency of issue then modern monetary theory tells you that the public sector must run a deficit to underwrite this desired net saving or else see an output gap widen...Who is in control is an interesting question. Clearly, the government cannot directly control the money supply which renders much of the analysis in mainstream macroeconomics textbooks as being irrelevant. The Monetarists via Milton Friedman persuaded central banks to adopt monetary targetting in the 1980s and it failed a few years later -- miserably...Then you might like to consider it from the other angle -- a government which accepts responsibility for full employment can ``finance'' the saving desires of the non-government sector by increasing its deficit up to the level warranted by the spending gap (left by the full employment non-government savings)...Orthodox macroeconomic theory struggles with the idea of involuntary unemployment and typically tries to fudge the explanation by appealing to market rigidities (typically nominal wage inflexibility). However, in general, the orthodox framework cannot convincingly explain systemic constraints that comprehensively negate individual volition. The modern monetary framework clearly explicates how involuntary unemployment arises. The private sector, in aggregate, may desire to spend less of the monetary unit of account than it earns. In this case, if this gap in spending is not met by government, then unemployment will occur. Nominal (or real) wage cuts per se do not clear the labour market, unless they somehow eliminate the private sector desire to net save and increase spending...to maintain high levels of employment and given that the public generally desire to hold some reserves of fiat money, the government balance will normally have to be in deficit...modern monetary theory demonstrates that if you want the non-government sector to net save...

Billy Blog; blogs Archive; Debate; reply Part 2; Spirit.

Tue 2010-06-01 14:35 EDT

World Order, Failed States, and Terrorism, Part 2: The privatization wave

Henry C K Liu

[Henry Liu considers privatization] ...privatization, a movement to abdicate government by declaring the people out of the government's protection and placing them at the mercy of the market, has since gathered much ideological support in the name of liberty...Ronald Reagan viewed government as an enemy of the people. Instead of allowing government to protect the weak from the strong, Reagan wanted to protect the strong from government...

failed state; Part 2; private wave; terror; World ordering.

zero hedge Mon 2010-05-24 16:38 EDT

Presenting What Could Be The Oddest Capital Flow Observation In History

It is no secret that the last few weeks saw massive liquidations along all asset classes. The result was a huge outflow across almost all products: Loans, HY Bonds, Municipals, Commodities... all a typical reaction to broad based liquidations. However, note we said "almost" - one class that actually posted a $6.2 billion inflow was equities. Yet not is all as it seems: peeking underneath the hood indicates that the bulk of this inflow, or $10.3 billion, had to do with inflow into ETFs... or rather, just one ETF - the SPY, accounting for $10.1 billion. Did someone prop up the entire equity market last week by massively pushing capital into the most liquid equity proxy available?...

History; Oddest Capital Flow Observation; presenter; Zero Hedge.

Wed 2010-05-19 13:01 EDT

billy blog >> Blog Archive >> The origins of the economic crisis

A good way to understand the origins of the current economic crisis in Australia is to examine the historical behaviour of key macroeconomic aggregates. The previous Federal Government claimed they were responsibly managing the fiscal and monetary parameters and creating a resilient competitive economy. This was a spurious claim they were in fact setting Australia up for crisis. The reality is that the previous government created an economy which was always going to crash badly. The global nature of the crisis has arisen because over the last 2-3 decades most Western governments including the Australian government succumbed to the neo-liberal myth of budget austerity and introduced policies which allowed the destructive dynamics of the capitalist system to create an economic structure that was ultimately unsustainable. Once this instability began to manifest it was only a matter of time before the system imploded -- as we are now seeing...

Billy Blog; blogs Archive; Economic Crisis; originally.

Wed 2010-05-19 11:53 EDT

billy blog >> Blog Archive >> When you've got friends like this ... Part 2

Part 2 in a series I am running about the propensity of self-proclaimed progressive commentators and writers to advance arguments about the monetary system (and government balances) which could easily have been written by any neo-liberal commentator. The former always use guarded rhetoric to establish their ``progressive'' credentials but they rehearse the same conservative message -- the US has dangerously high deficits and unsustainable debt levels and an exit plan is urgently required to take the fiscal position of the government bank into balance. In doing so, they not only damage the progressive cause but also perpetuate myths and lies about how the monetary system operates and the options available to a currency-issuing national government...

Billy Blog; blogs Archive; friends; Part 2.

The Wall Street Examiner Sun 2010-05-09 09:58 EDT

The Minsky Cruise (part 2, Households)

...Now for the Minsky part. The theory above, in layman's terms, argues that over time, when an economy expands without serious contractions, finances will become increasingly risky. Minsky wrote of a shift from hedge finance (when debt, both principal and interest, can be serviced from cash flows) through speculative finance (when debt must be rolled over as only interest payments can be serviced from cash flows) and into Ponzi finance (when cash flows cannot cover interest payments and thus new debt must be added or assets sold). The idea in the Ponzi finance stage is that asset appreciation will compensate for the extra risk...I don't mean to suggest we (collectively) are broke, just that, as Minsky argued (and the data bears out) our balance sheets are increasingly betting on real estate and equity price appreciation with borrowed money...

Household; Minsky Cruise; Part 2; Wall Street Examiner.