Tag Archives: TINA

New Labour’s Economic Illiteracy Exacts a Terrible Price: “I’m afraid there is no money.”

By William K. Black
Quito: May 17, 2015

One of the great ironies is that just as neo-liberal economics and “modern finance” were falsifying each of their core claims Tony Blair led New Labour to embrace both dogmas. The result was a double economic catastrophe and it also led to the defeat of New Labour at the polls. I have already explained how Blair’s and Gordon Brown’s embrace of the most criminal and corrupt elements of the City of London (and their dogmas) and their resultant unholy war on financial regulation caused the UK financial crises and the UK’s Great Recession.

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Germany’s Passive-Aggressive “Stimulus” Program

By William K. Black
Kilkenny, Ireland: November 7, 2014

Kilkenomics, being a festival of economists and comedians, has long reflected the economic consensus that austerity in response to a Great Recession is economic malpractice akin to bleeding a patient to make him healthy. One of the great changes in Europe in the last month is that the number of economic voices willing to make this same point have grown rapidly. Germany’s “there is no alternative” (TINA) to austerity claims were always absurd, but now many more European voices are willing to point out that there are superb alternatives – in Germany. A recent Irish Times article provides a good example.

“Leading economists have criticised Germany on its public investment restraint which, at 18.4 per cent of GDP, is below the EU average of 19.2 per cent. A study by Berlin’s DIW economic think tank suggests a €1 trillion backlog has built up in Germany since 2000.”

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Matteo Renzi Puts the Lie to “There is not alternative” (TINA) to Austerity

By William K. Black

In a recent column I responded to a conservative scholar’s (Victor David Hanson) claim that U.S. “employment rates for college graduates are dismal” by showing that the employment rate for college graduates seeking employment was 96.8% – and rising.

Employment rates for recent college graduates are far worse than “dismal” in the periphery of Europe because the EU troika (the ECB, the EU Commission, and the IMF) have inflicted austerity on these nations.  This produced a gratuitous second Great Recession in the Eurozone as a whole, but it also caused Great Depression levels of unemployment in Spain, Greece, and Italy.  Those three nations have over 100 million in total population – roughly one-third of the eurozone’s total population.  College graduates in these nations have unemployment rates ten times greater than in the U.S.  (Hanson is a big fan of austerity, so he managed to get everything – the facts and the cause – reversed in his fable.)

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Beyond the Morality of Spending and Saving (Money) – Part 2

By Michael Hoexter

Ethics, Moral Advocacy and Economics (con’t)

If we look at the structure of the discourse produced by academic economists after Smith whether in print or in media appearances, moral frameworks provide a structuring role that often outweighs the technical aspect of the content which is presented.  Well-known among MMT-oriented and post-Keynesian economists are the arguments of austerity advocates, who ignore the analytically obvious monetary and economic consequences of austerity in pursuit of the seeming virtue of every economic actor becoming a “saver” of money.  Continue reading

Beyond the Morality of Spending and Saving (Money) – Part 1

By Michael Hoexter

Readers of this blog will know that the austerity drive is based on faulty macroeconomics and austerity itself is a self-defeating economic strategy.  Austerity relies and capitalizes on critical misunderstandings within economics, misunderstandings that were not conclusively and clearly enough debunked by John Maynard Keynes and others 75 years ago and in subsequent years.  Continue reading

Why Progressive Austerians do the Greatest Damage

By William K. Black

To many people, it seems paradoxical that conservatives target not the worst social programs, but the best.  There is no paradox.  Bad government programs are desirable from the right’s perspective – they discredit government intervention.  Good government programs pose an existential challenge to conservative memes, so they are the prime target for attack.

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