Tag Archives: austerity

Maya MacGuineas: The Profound Fiscal Irresponsibility of Resistance to Facts

Posted on March 17, 2015 by | 3 comments

Just as every Spring we can count on the Peter G. Peterson Foundation (PGPF) to do a supportive press release when the CBO issues one of its budget outlook 10 year projection reports, we can also count on being treated to public statements by Maya MacGuineas joining in the Peterson Army choir, warning about the coming debt crisis, and singing about the glories of deficit and debt reduction. And this while completely ignoring the real and sad consequences of deficit and debt reduction policies throughout the world since the crash of 2008, as well as previous applications to Latin American, Asian, and the nations of the disintegrated soviet empire, most notably Russia itself. Let’s look at Maya MacGuineas latest effort; her testimony to the Senate Budget Committee.

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The Peterson Foundation Sings the Same Old Song

Posted on March 12, 2015 by | 7 comments

The Peter G. Peterson Foundation (PGPF) always does a press release when the CBO issues one of its budget outlook 10 year projection reports. The PGPF did another in January quoting its President and COO, Michael A. Peterson. Let’s go through that press release and see how many troublesome or false statements we can find. Here’s a breakdown of the press release quotation from Michael Peterson.

Today’s CBO report reminds us once again that our nation has significant fiscal challenges that have yet to be solved.

It certainly does, but I doubt that Peterson and I would agree on what those challenges are. He thinks they have to do with bringing the national debt under control. I think they have to do with creating full employment with a federal job guarantee program, price stability, a robust economy, a great public and free educational system through graduate school, stopping and reversing climate change, providing everybody in, nobody out, no co-pays and no deductibles health care for all, a first class infrastructure, and a greatly expanded social safety net including a doubling of SS benefits.

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The “Debt Crisis” According to Bruce Bartlett: Debt Thresholds, and Wars

Posted on March 10, 2015 by | 2 comments

This is the fourth in a series of commentaries on Bruce Bartlett’s recent testimony to the Senate Budget Committee. I appreciated his testimony and his critical evaluation of the idea that there is a public “debt crisis” in the United States. I also agree that there is no debt crisis. However, I was disappointed that his views, for the most part, did not show the across the board relevance to most aspects of the “debt crisis” of the fact that the United States is a fiat currency sovereign.

In the previous three posts, I’ve outlined the many contexts in which the fiat currency sovereignty of the United States is relevant to showing that the idea that the United States has or can have a debt crisis is just bunk. In this post, I’ll continue my discussion of Bruce Bartlett’s testimony in the same way.

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Randall Wray: ¿Austeridad presupuestaria frente a déficits públicos?

Posted on March 9, 2015 by | 2 comments

Why the EMU is designed to Fail

Randy’s presentation for FUHEM in Madrid, Spain coinciding with the release of the spanish version of his Modern Money Primer. The introductions are in spanish and Randy speaks in english beginning at about 10:00 with a panel member translating to spanish. He presents  Modern Money Theory and then what is wrong with the Euro/EMU.  

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Get a TAN, Yanis: A Timely Alternative Financing Instrument for Greece

Posted on February 16, 2015 by | 44 comments

By Rob Parenteau

The recent election of an explicitly anti-austerity party in Greece has upset the prevailing policy consensus in the eurozone, and raised a number of issues that have remained ignored or suppressed in policy circles. Expansionary fiscal consolidations have proven largely elusive. The difficulty of achieving GDP growth while reaching primary fiscal surplus targets is very evident in Greece. Avoiding rapidly escalating government debt to GDP ratios has consequently proven very challenging. Even if the arithmetic of avoiding a debt trap can be made to work, the rise of opposition parties in the eurozone suggests there are indeed political limits to fiscal consolidation. The Ponzi like nature of requesting new loans in order to service prior debt obligations, especially while nominal incomes are falling, is a third issue that Syriza has raised, and it is one that informed their opening position of rejecting any extension of the current bailout program.

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Syriza Wins and the NYT and WSJ Coverage Competes for Mendacity

Posted on January 25, 2015 by | 7 comments

By William K. Black
Bloomington, MN: January 25, 2015

The Wall Street Journal and the New York Time’s eurozone reporters, who share the same unshakable devotion to TINA and austerity as the Murdochized WSJ news staff have been thrown into a panic by Syriza’s electoral successes in Greece.

Both papers are freaked out, as are the Germans, about the potential for Greece to spark a wave of rejections of the troika’s infliction of austerity in a manner similar to how the infliction of self-destructive austerity programs pursuant to the Washington Consensus’ demands led to the “lost decade” and the democratic election of what is now over a dozen Latin American candidates running on anti-austerity platforms. The Washington Consensus was drafted and named by an economist at Pete Peterson’s International Institute. Peterson is a Wall Street billionaire whose mission is causing debt and deficit hysteria and plugging the joys of austerity and unraveling the safety nets. His greatest goal is privatizing Social Security – producing hundreds of billions in additional fees for Wall Street.

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The Triumph of Radical Right Economics in Greece – At the Hands of “Socialists”

Posted on January 19, 2015 by | 4 comments

By William K. Black
Bloomington, MN: January 19, 2015

In my January 18, 2015 column, I explained that German Prime Minister Angela Merkel’s sweetest triumph was successfully extorting George Papandreou, Greece’s Prime Minister, head of the Greek Socialist Movemnt (PASOK), and President of the Socialist International, to inflict austerity and a war on workers’ wages on the Greek people.  I quoted a passage from the Papandreou administration’s  May 3, 2010, “Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies” (the Papandreou Plan) agreeing to the European Commission’s (EC) austerity and anti-worker demands that was made part of The EC’s  Occasional Papers No. 61 “The Economic Adjustment Programme for Greece” (May 2010).

In this column I explain how radically right-wing the Papandreou Plan was and the completeness with which it embraced rather than resisted the troika’s theoclassical nostrums that forced Greece, Italy, and Spain into gratuitous second Great Depressions.  In Greece’s case, the Merkel Great Depression has proven more severe and longer in duration than the Great Depression of 80 years ago.  The EC’s Economic Adjustment Programme for Greece description of the Papandreou Plan was accurate.  The Greek leaders “strongly own and support the [austerity] programme policies and objectives.”

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The New York Times Fears that Syriza Will Put “Ordinary Greeks First”

Posted on January 18, 2015 by | 6 comments

By William K. Black
Bloomington, MN: January 18, 2015

Even when the New York Times seems to think it is trying to open minded about the troika’s infliction of austerity on the peoples of the eurozone, its reporters are infected by the bizarre notion that austerity was the economically sensible response to the Great Recession. Even more bizarrely they are infected with the view that more austerity is the sensible response to the worse-than-Great Depressions that austerity inflicted on Greece, Italy, and Spain. The latest installment is entitled “Party Leader’s Populist Pitch in Greece Could Pay Off.”

The article does not explain what a “populist pitch” is (other than alliterative string of four plosives in a single title). The mainstream press uses “populist” as a pejorative term synonymous with class warfare against the wealthy that ignores economic reality.

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Greece, the Troika, and the New York Times

Posted on December 31, 2014 by | 8 comments

By William K. Black
Bloomington, MN: December 29, 2014

As I have explained in prior articles, there is an excellent chance that the Troika’s infliction of austerity on the eurozone’s periphery could, as with the austerity inflicted under the Washington Consensus continue to produce such long-term rolling recessions that it creates a political dynamic that discredits such economic malpractice and brings to power leaders elected on the promise that they will adopt economically literate policies. The first case of this in the eurozone could be Greece. (Hollande won office on a platform of opposing inflicting austerity on France, but purged his government of those that most strongly opposed austerity and implemented policies that moved increasingly toward austerity. The French economy stagnated and Hollande’s approval ratings are dismal.)

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The Way Out of Shutdown Shenanigans

Posted on December 3, 2014 by | 6 comments

Today, I received an e-mail from the Friends of (the very popular with progressives) Senator Bernie Sanders. In it the Senator says:

I’m joining with the members of Progressives United to send a clear message to President Obama that we will stand with him when he vetoes Republican legislation that attacks the well-being of the struggling middle class.

Join me and members of Progressives United to urge the president to VETO any Republican legislation that attacks working families.

NO to cuts in Social Security. NO to cuts in Medicaid. NO to converting Medicare into a voucher program. NO to new trade legislation that sends our jobs overseas and hammers our middle-class workers. NO to cuts to nutrition programs, education or environmental protection.

YES to raising the minimum wage. YES to a massive jobs program rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. YES to transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels. YES to pay equity for women workers. YES to overturning Citizens United.

We already know what “compromise” will mean from a Republican Congress: their way or the highway. In order to win in the future, President Obama must stand strong for the American middle class, and we must support him.

Tell President Obama: Standing firm is the only option, and that means committing to VETO legislation that attacks working families, and fighting for legislation that defends their needs.

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