06 | March | 2015 | New Economic Perspectives

Daily Archives: March 6, 2015

The “Debt Crisis” According to Bruce Bartlett: Fiat Sovereignty

Posted on March 6, 2015 by Joe Firestone | 16 comments

Today, I’d like to offer the first of three commentary posts on Bruce Bartlett’s recent testimony before the Senate Budget Committee. Bruce Bartlett is a long-time veteran of the fiscal policy wars. He initially became known as a supply-side free market economist working for Ron Paul and then Jack Kemp in the 1970s. Later, he served as a senior policy analyst in the Reagan Administration, and then in the Bush 41 Administration as the deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department. Since then he’s worked at conservative think tanks and as a well-known writer on economic policy and politics, becoming increasingly critical, first of the Bush 43 Administration and then of the increasingly rightward trend of the Republican Party. Today I think Bruce Bartlett is best characterized as a fiercely independent voice still respected in conservative circles, and also, among progressives such as Jamie Galbraith and Stephanie Kelton, but never afraid to call balls and strikes on any Administration or Congress as he sees them.

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Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged Bruce Bartlett, debt crisis, debt repayment, Fiat Sovereignty, MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, Senate Budget Committee

McCloskey’s First “Cheer for Corruption” is also a Cheer for Fraud

Posted on March 6, 2015 by William Black | 9 comments

By William K. Black
Quito: March 5, 2015

In my first column in this series I discussed the gaping contradiction in Deirdre McCloskey’s book review of two books on corruption. The title of her article captures the immorality of her proposed “sermons” on corruption: “Two Cheers for Corruption.” McCloskey urges us to embrace many forms of corruption because she asserts that they add to economic efficiency and justice.

“But corruption can be efficient and just, too. It can be good for efficiency if, say, bribes are paid to get around bad laws (such as most of the building codes in American cities) or to smooth the course of sales by U.S. businesses to the Egyptian military. And the turkey at Christmas supplied by Tammany Hall justly helped the poor—if they voted right.”

McCloskey’s first of three “cheers for corruption” is inherently a cheer not only for corruption, i.e., bribery and extortion, but also a cheer for four types of felonies by elite white-collar criminals. The first crime is deliberately violating the building safety codes. The second crime is covering up that underlying crime through corruption – the bribery and/or extortion of the building safety code inspectors.

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