Daily Archives: April 25, 2012

Responses to MMP Blog #47: The JG / ELR and Real World Experience

By L. Randall Wray

Before we get underway, I have two appeals.

Appeal #1: About twenty years ago Don Roper and Ric Holt created the PKT (Post Keynesian Theory) internet discussion group. It was the first such group I’d ever come across. All the “top” heterodox economists participated. The discussions were interesting and important. You might still be able to access some of them.

However, the list was destroyed by frackers.

I won’t go into all the details but here is the basic problem. Every couple of weeks some pseudo Austrian would come along with the free market /anti government ideology posts. That was not really the problem—which was two-fold. First these people had no understanding of heterodox economics—they never read previous posts and were congenitally lazy (and, it appears, dense).

Further, they had no interest in learning anything. They were selling, not buying. They were self-appointed evangelists for the Austrian cause. Now, in truth they had no understanding of Austrian economics, either—which is why they were pseudo. I gather they spent most of their time in their mothers’ basements alternating between (how shall we put this?—as delicately as possible!) fracking themselves and fracking progressive discussion groups.

Continue reading

No, Mr. Krugman, Bernanke’s Conundrum is Completely Different

By Pavlina R. Tcherneva

Our mainstream colleagues keep banging their heads against the wall. “Why, oh why wouldn’t Chairman Bernanke do more to rescue the economy?” Today Paul Krugman took on this question again, arguing that Chairman Bernanke should listen to Professor Bernanke who had far more sensible ideas about rescuing an economy from a deflationary environment, as seen in his research on Japan during the 90s.

Continue reading