Fueled by Deficit Hysteria, Obama and the Republicans Are Choosing the Path of “Economicide”

By Michael Hoexter

In the “fiscal cliff” negotiations and the subsequent debt limit talks between Obama and the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives, it appears that there will be no “good guys” because the talks and policy framework within which they are operating are at odds with the welfare of the American people.  Set up by a series of interactions over the last four years between Obama and his nominal opponents in the Republican Party, the framework of the negotiations ignores the way that the US government finances itself as well as the only known economic policy orientation which will allow our economy to thrive; the proposed policies and negotiations have been to date economically illiterate.  The biggest losers in these talks if they “succeed” according to the self-evaluations of the Republican and Democratic leaderships will be the American people and politically the Democrats who go along with a framework that demands cuts in federal budget deficits at all costs.  Continue reading

An MMT Christmas Carol

By Dan Kervick

 

SCROOGE:  Cratchit!  Cratchit, come here!

CRATCHIT:  Yes Mr. Scrooge?

SCROOGE:  Cratchit, I need you to work until midnight tonight.

CRATCHIT:  Tonight, Mr. Scrooge?    On Christmas Eve?!

SCROOGE:  Yes, indeed, Cratchit.   And you must work every day until New Year’s Day.  I’m sorry about this, Cratchit, but we have very important public business to attend to.

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Kill the “fiscal cliff” instead of the Economy

By William K. Black
(Cross Posted at Benzinga.com)

Everyone now agrees that the so-called “fiscal cliff” is a stupid policy that threatens our economy and our people.  Everyone agrees why the “fiscal cliff” is stupid – it inflicts austerity at a time when it is likely to throw the nation into a gratuitous recession.  Causing a recession leads to increased unemployment and a larger budget deficit.  We have all seen austerity force the Eurozone into a gratuitous recession in which Italy, Spain, and Greece have Great Depression levels of unemployment. Continue reading

Richard Eskow Asks: Which Side Are You On?

By Joe Firestone

Richard Eskow of the Center for the American Future, posted a very good one a couple of days ago. He used the old union meme “which side are you on” to beat up the President and Congress about Social Security being placed on the negotiating table. I thought his writing on it was striking. Here’s some of it:

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NEP’s Stephanie Kelton Has Op Ed Piece in LA Times

Look, up in the sky! It’s a “fiscal cliff.” It’s a slope. It’s an obstacle course.

The truth is, it doesn’t really matter what we call it. It only matters what it is: a lamebrained package of economic depressants bearing down on a lame-duck Congress.

Read the entire piece here.

“Deficit” is the Wrong Word and Concept

By Michael Hoexter

The hour is late and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are attempting to shrink the social welfare state in the name of a lack of funds.  Barack Obama has made it now abundantly clear that he is no friend to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, after years of signaling overtly and covertly that cutting social programs was his intention.   Obama is as beholden as any right-wing politician, a group among which some might count him, to the notion that the government is running out of money, as if our money was still backed by a limited supply of gold bullion.  According to Obama and his fiscal advisors, the government’s supposedly limited funds must be conserved by cutting the activities of government while also raising taxes to, in the “hard-money” telling of the story, “increase revenue” from the private sector for the remaining government programs.  The former activity of cutting social welfare spending seems in Washington DC to take political precedence over the latter, in part because the wealthy in the private sector are a powerful lobby for their monetary holdings and income.  Meanwhile the poor and middle class have not been, over the past 40 years, a powerful lobby for the social safety net which puts a “floor” under their standards of living. Continue reading

Ecuador’s President Correa Fires his Cousin

By William K. Black

In November 2011, President Correa appointed Pedro Delgado as head of Ecuador’s Central Bank.  The appointment was controversial.  The obvious controversy was that Delgado is Correa’s cousin.  Conservatives claimed that Delgado lacked integrity.  Some progressives shared the concerns about his integrity and saw Delgado as too supportive of Ecuador’s largest banks and bankers.  The recent banking crisis, in which the owners and managers of Ecuador’s four largest banks began a bizarre campaign of threatening to induce a run on their institutions to extort Correa into withdrawing his very sensible program of increasing the banks’ taxes and reforming the bankers’ dangerously perverse executive compensation, provided a test of these concerns by Correa’s supporters about Delgado.  I explained how irresponsible the banking oligarchs’ campaign was in interviews in Ecuador and the U.S. and an article.  I explained the vigorous manner in which U.S. regulators of my era would have acted to end the oligarchs’ efforts to extort the government and people of Ecuador by threatening to cause a banking run. Continue reading

Let’s Celebrate the Failure of the July 2011Great Betrayal

By William K. Black

In July 2011, President Obama and Speaker Boehner reached an agreement in principle on a deal crafted to inflict $4 trillion in austerity by raising taxes modestly, slashing social spending, and beginning to unravel the safety net.  The deal would have been a disaster for America.  Unemployment was 9.1%.  The deal would have thrown us back into a recession and caused unemployment to surge.  Recessions and increased unemployment cause tax revenues to fall and increase demand for social services (e.g., for unemployment compensation) – they produce large deficits.  Austerity kills jobs and frequently increases deficits.  The Eurozone is the latest demonstration of this fact.  Continue reading

Full Employment as the New Progressive Paradigm

By Dan Kervick

Part Two of a four-part essay

In Part One of this essay, I evoked the dismal state of the progressive movement in the developed world, and proposed that as part of the effort to turn this situation around progressives should embrace the political ideal of a full employment economy, with an activist government permanently standing ready to provide a productive job for every person who is both willing and able to work, but who is unable to find work in the private sector.

I would hope people of every political stripe would see value in a full employment economy.  But my argument here is aimed at progressives specifically.  I want to explain why, given the kinds of defining values they have traditionally embraced – democracy, equality, solidarity and progress – progressives should be drawn to the full employment ideal.  I will first explain why, in my view, progressives should view the pursuit of a full employment economy as a political, economic and moral imperative, and embrace the full employment cause as a foundation for progressive political revival.  I will then set out a few basic proposals about how a full employment economy might be structured.

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The Miraculous Turnaround in Ecuadorian Migration under President Correa

By William K. Black

I have recently presented a series of talks and authored a series of articles on Ecuador’s and Italy’s leaders’ policy responses to their nation’s challenges.

Why is the failed Monti a “technocrat” and the successful Correa a “left-leaning economist”?

Note to Italy: Please send us more Saracenos

Ecuador: Bank Spreads, Taxes, Executive Compensation and Growth

Craziness on Three Continents

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