I spent the 1990s teaching economics at a business school in Moscow. Our students were graduates of FizTech, Mekh-Mat, MIFI—the whole alphabet soup of science and technology schools that had fed the Soviet military-industrial establishment. These young men and women had degrees in things like “laser weapons platform design” that weren’t in much demand in … Read more
We all love Robin Hood. Wouldn’t it be great if Kevin Costner rode his trusty stead through Wall Street, relieving the rapacious thieves of a few trillion of their ill-gotten gains, to be redistributed throughout the lands to all the deserving poor?You remember Robin Hood from your children’s storybooks. Of course, those were well-laundered so … Read more
For several months, the outlook for the euro area has improved thanks to the positive results that have been achieved over the national and European level. Budget deficits have decreased considerably since 2011, particularly in the countries hardest hit by the crisis. Trade deficits of these countries have disappeared through fiscal consolidation and structural reforms … Read more
Looking for trends and correlations in that landslide of economic data which arrives, day in and day out, on our desks is normally something akin to trying to find a needle in a very large and raggedy haystack. From time to time, however, some things are just to obvious not to be noticed, like the … Read more
This is part of a series, following on from the last instalment that asked “Do We Need Taxes?”. Previously we have argued that “taxes drive money” in the sense that imposition of a tax that is payable in the national government’s own currency will create demand for that currency. Sovereign government does not really need … Read more
What do you get when you drop taxes? Well, Bitcoins. Sometimes the only appropriate response to critics is embarrassment. For them. Witness the following exchange on twitter: Full disclosure: I don’t twit, but someone sent this to me. I have no idea what transpired after that doozy of an exchange. In that, Doug Henwood repeats … Read more
The March employment report came in pretty much in line with expectations. Nonfarm payrolls gained by 192k, and January and February were both revised higher. If you can discern any meaningful change in the underlying pace of economic activity from the nonfarm payrolls numbers, you have sharper eyes than me: You could almost draw that … Read more
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post on the Fed’s success, or lack thereof, in meeting its dual targets of 5.5 percent unemployment and 2 percent inflation. The post featured the following “bullseye” chart, which had first come to my attention when Chicago Fed President Charles Evans used it in a recent speech. … Read more
One question keeps coming back to me from readers. Why, when it was such a big issue in the past, does the balance of payments no longer seem to matter anymore? And, related to this, are we now entering a period in which it may indeed start to matter again, perhaps quite a lot? There … Read more
About as good as it gets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zsXUDQXKuQ Haiku Charlatan has done it again with another excellent video that contrasts Greenspan’s era of the “great moderation” against the “Keynesian” golden age of capitalism. Yes, you can quibble about exactly how “Keynesian” that period from WWII until 1970 really was. I was there, and there was a lot … Read more