Pavlina appeared on Background Briefing with Ian Masters on October 10. One topic is the new Chairwoman of the Federal Reserve Janet Yellen, the first woman to hold what is considered the second most powerful position in the world. Discussion includes the good news at the Fed and the continuing bad news from the capitol where the Republicans are offering a truce until November 22 before they resume their threat to default.
You can listen to the interview here.
In Part I of this six-part series I presented the President’s explanation of why he can’t use alternative options for coping with the default threat arising out of refusal to raise the debt ceiling, a summary of the kinds of difficulties characterizing it, and discussed two of seven options, selective default, and the exploding option, the President has to deal with it, apart from the way he seems to have chosen. In Part II I discussed the next three options, platinum coins, 14th amendment, and consols, and commented on the legal issues related to them. Here, in Part III, I’ll cover two options which have started getting attention most recently.
Posted in Joe Firestone
Tagged austerity, bill black, debt ceiling, debt limit, debt limit crisis options, debt-subject-to-the-limit, default, deficit spending, great betrayal, Jack Balkin, Kevin Drum, L. Randall Wray, Matt Levine, MMT, modern money theory, President Obama, public debt, warren mosler, wigwam
This six-part series is a reply to the President’s glossing over the options open to him apart from playing “chicken” with the Republicans over the debt ceiling. Part I, presented the President’s explanation, a summary of the kinds of difficulties characterizing it, and discussed two of seven options, selective default, and the exploding option, the President has to deal with it, apart from the way he seems to have chosen. Part II will discuss his platinum coin, 14th amendment, and consols.
Platinum Coins, the 14th amendment, and Consols
3. Using the authority of a 1996 law to mint proof platinum coins with arbitrary face values in the trillions of dollars to fill the Treasury General Account (TGA) with enough money to cease issuing debt instruments, and even enough to pay off the existing debt. This option, originating with beowulf (Carlos Mucha)in its Trillion Dollar Coin (TDC) form has gotten a lot of attention. But a variation of it in its High Value Platinum Coin Seigniorage (HVPCS) form, requiring a coin with face value of $60 Trillion for example, has received much less attention, except in my own writing.
Posted in Joe Firestone
Tagged #PCS, $60 Trillion Coin, 14th Amendment, austerity, bill black, chris cook, debt ceiling, debt limit, debt limit crisis options, debt-subject-to-the-limit, default, deficit spending, grand bargain, great betrayal, High Value Platinum Coin Seigniorage, MMT, modern money theory, President Obama, public debt
The media and politicians in both parties are still largely echoing the Administration’s framing of the fiscal situation and absolving the President of his share of the blame for the debt limit crisis. They’re reinforcing his message They’re also preparing the way for a compromise, that will, almost certainly, result in hurtful cuts to Government spending including renewed consideration of “the Great Betrayal,” also known as “the Grand Bargain,” including passage of the chained CPI cuts to Social Security over the objections of a large majority of the American people.
Posted in Joe Firestone
Tagged #PCS, 14th Amendment, austerity, bill black, debt ceiling, debt limit, debt limit crisis options, debt-subject-to-the-limit, default, deficit spending, grand bargain, great betrayal, High Value Platinum Coin Seigniorage, MMT, modern money theory, President Obama, public debt
By Dan Kervick
Evan Soltas is hoping that President Obama’s appointment of Janet Yellen signifies a new administration commitment to jobs and economic growth. Unfortunately, Soltas seems to be one of those folks who is convinced that our failures over the past five years have much to do with a monetary policy that has been insufficiently “accommodative”, and he strongly suggests that the national plague of mass joblessness and stagnation could be alleviated if the Fed would only do more aggressive quantitative easing without political pressure to taper prematurely.
Posted in Uncategorized
The 2 videos below are from Marianna’s project. The first features Pavlina Tcherneva discussing employment and labor market issues. The second features L. Randal Wray discussing money and reforming the monetary and financial system.
Posted in L. Randall Wray, Pavlina R. Tcherneva
Tagged Marianna Mazzucato, rethinking the state, videos
By Dan Kervick
I take time out from our latest national celebration of curmudgeonly misery and political decadence, which features an intense bipartisan struggle over whether to cling to liberal or conservative forms of long-term economic stagnation, in order call the reader’s attention to an economist whose innovative ideas are so insightful, so well-informed and so right that they stand in terrifying contrast to almost everything that most Americans in 2013 hold dear.
The economist is Mariana Mazzucato of the University of Sussex, who recently presented several of the leading ideas from her new book, The Entrepreneurial State, to an audience at the London School of Economics. Mazzucato ties a vast number of themes together in a sparkling, rapid-fire talk followed by a stimulating round of Q&A. Among the economists who come in for discussion along the way are Polanyi, Keynes, Schumpeter, Stiglitz and Krugman. Mazzucato pulls no punches on the inadequacies of bastard Keynesianism with its limited emphasis on economic pump-priming, and on the dead-enders of neoliberal thought represented, for example, by the editorial staff of The Economist magazine. Here is the link to the presentation:
Posted in Uncategorized
NEP’s Stephanie Kelton appeared on Chris Hayes’ All In on Monday evening, (10/8/13). The topic of discussion was “Why the debt ceiling isn’t your family budget” examining the fallacy of comparing the debt ceiling to a family budget.
See the full show here.
In the course of researching yesterday’s column that explains why Tyler Cowen’s faux “hyper-meritocracy” endangers our world I read a number of articles discussing the Northwestern University study on the public policy views of the wealthy. One of those columns was published by UPI on February 24, 2013.
One of the central points that the scholars who conducted the study made was that the wealthy use their political clout to try to cause the American public to adopt the belief of the wealthy that reducing the federal budget deficit, in response to the Great Recession, was the most important problem facing America. In my column yesterday I noted that the scholars pointed out the logical incoherence of that position given the wealthy’s strong support for the policy view that the federal government should run budget deficits as a counter-cyclical fiscal policy to a recession.
By Dan Kervick
It is being reported that the President will nominate Janet Yellen to be the next Chair of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Yellen was the obvious candidate all along, and it’s a very good thing that Obama’s earlier preference for Lawrence Summers, a key architect of the deregulated neoliberal regime of the 80’s and 90’s that helped bring us the financial collapse of 2008, was vigorously shot down by critics. The most important challenges for the next Fed chief will be in the area of financial system regulation, and despite the efforts by some of Summers’s closest friends and colleagues to give him a rush makeover as a born-again regulator, Summers was clearly not the right person for the job.
Posted in Dan Kervick
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