Author Archives: Devin Smith

German growth goes negative but Merkel’s press becomes more glowing

Posted on January 16, 2013 | 9 comments

It is good to be Angela Merkel. Growth in Germany goes sharply negative in the last quarter of 2012 and press reports emphasize how sound the German economy is because it is a net exporter. This article analyses how the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times presented the news about Germany’s economy. I show that the presentation reveals more about the pathologies of our major media than about the pathologies of Germany and the Eurozone.

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9 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged austerity, beggar thy neighbor, Eurozone, germany, mainstream media, merkel

Obama commits Unilateral Disarmament as a Debt Ceiling Negotiator

Posted on January 15, 2013 | 23 comments

By William K. Black

President Obama is getting ready to negotiate (or if you believe him, not negotiate) an extension of the debt limit. The Republicans control the House and are promising to follow Donald Trump’s suggestion that they use what he called the “nuclear weapon” to terrorize the U.S. economy and people in order to gain negotiating leverage over Obama. That act of treachery was designed to produce two other acts of betrayal of the American people. First, Trump’s urged the Republicans to use their “nuclear weapon” to force Obama to inflict austerity on our Nation and force us back into recession. Second, Trump urged the Republicans to use their leverage to force Obama to gut the safety net. It is somehow fitting that Trump’s advice to act in unprincipled manner was designed to produce policies that would enrich the wealthy and cause immense harm to the Nation.

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23 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged austerity, debt ceiling, debt limit, grand bargain, great betrayal

The Political Economy of the Coin and the Debt Ceiling

Posted on January 14, 2013 | 21 comments

By Matthew Berg

A fateful Saturday in January

On Saturday afternoon, the White House ruled out using platinum coin seignorage as a way to defuse the political crisis caused by Congressional Republicans’ unwillingness to raise the debt ceiling. In the words of press secretary Jay Carney:

“There are only two options to deal with the debt limit: Congress can pay its bills or they can fail to act and put the nation into default.”

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21 Comments

Posted in Guest Blogger

Tagged #TDC, coin seigniorage, debt ceiling, MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, sequestration

The Most Embarrassing Financial Column of 2013

Posted on January 14, 2013 | 29 comments

By William K. Black

We are only two weeks in to 2013 and there is plenty of time for far more embarrassing financial columns to be written, but The Guardian’s financial editor, Heidi Moore, has opened up an early lead in the competition. Moore’s column represents five embarrassing elements. She entitled her piece: “’Mint the coin’: why the platinum coin campaign doesn’t even work as satire.”

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29 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged #MintTheCoin, MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, neo-liberal doctrine

The Bright Shiny Object of Change

Posted on January 13, 2013 | 28 comments

By Joel David Palmer

Did you feel it? The earth moved under our feet a little bit over the past week. I’m feeling quite grateful to beowolf and Joe Firestone and everyone else who laid the foundation for Mint The Coin, and to Stephanie Kelton (for creating) and Joe Weisenthal (for popularizing) the #MintTheCoin hashtag and circulating the White House petition.

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28 Comments

Posted in Joel David Palmer

Tagged #MintTheCoin, #TDC, Trillion Dollar Coin

Public Debt, Debt Ceiling and Monetary Sovereignty: Some Accounting Realities

Posted on January 12, 2013 | 45 comments

By Eric Tymoigne

The public debt is the outstanding U.S. Treasury securities (USTS). It includes both marketable (T-bills, T-notes, T-bonds, TIPSs, and a few others) and non-marketable securities (United States notes, Gold certificates, U.S. savings bonds, Treasury demand deposits issued to States and Local Gov., all sorts of government account series securities held by Deposit Funds). What are the means to reduce the public debt? Continue reading →

45 Comments

Posted in Eric Tymoigne

Tagged debt ceiling, MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, monetary sovereignty, public debt

Ezra Klein Chooses Fear Mongering the Big Coin, I Choose Ending Austerity!

Posted on January 11, 2013 | 29 comments

By Joe Firestone
(H/t to Lambert Strether for the title!)

Here’s a commentary on Ezra Klein’s recent diatribe against Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PCS).

But there’s nothing benign about the platinum coin. It is a breakdown in the American system of governance, a symbol that we have become a banana republic. And perhaps we have. But the platinum coin is not the first cousin of cleanly raising the debt ceiling. It is the first cousin of defaulting on our debts. As with true default, it proves to the financial markets that we can no longer be trusted to manage our economic affairs predictably and rationally. It’s evidence that American politics has transitioned from dysfunctional to broken and that all manner of once-ludicrous outcomes have muscled their way into the realm of possibility. As with default, it will mean our borrowing costs rise and financial markets gradually lose trust in our system, though perhaps not with the disruptive panic that default would bring.

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29 Comments

Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged #PCS, #TDC, $60 T coin, austerity, beowulf, debt ceiling, debt-subject-to-the-limit, Ezra Klein, Fiscal Policy, game-changing PCS, MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, Philip Diehl, platinum coin seigniorage, small ball PCS, Trillion Dollar Coin

Krugman and Obama’s Dangerous Austerity Myths

Posted on January 11, 2013 | 18 comments

By William K. Black

Austerity in response to the Great Recession has proven to be an economic weapon of mass destruction. On January 10, 2013, Paul Krugman (Nobel Laureate in Economics) and President Obama launched the same dangerous austerity myth in remarkably similar language.

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