by Beverly Mann Thomas Hartmann writes via Truthout: Most Americans don’t realize that the idea that ‘corporations are people’ and ‘money is speech’ are concepts that were never, ever considered or promoted or even passed by any legislature in the history of America. Neither were they ever promoted or signed into law by any president […]

David Beckworth: global economic growth over the past few decades has outpaced the capacity of the world economy to produce truly safe assets Really? The U.S. could have just deficit-spent more, crediting people’s/businesses’ checking accounts and thereby increasing the global stock of the world’s safest asset: U.S. dollars. It could (by U.S. law is required […]

This is another look at the idea I put forth here, that – contra the standard economic idea that consumption depends on wealth – I believe that consumption depends on income.  It’s worth stressing that wealth and income are not independent variables.  Wealth is the accumulation of unspent income plus returns generated on that wealth […]

This report is now adjusted to show the impact of the population control adjustment. The employment report was the strongest this cycle with payroll employment rising 243,000. The household survey shows a gain of 843,000 but almost 250,000 of that is due to the new population adjustments so the net result is an increase of […]

Robert Waldmann comments on the Freddie Mac story recently in the news (lifted from Stochastic Thoughts): Freddster (noun): Fraudster who profits from conflict of interest at Freddie Mac (the knife). Jesse Eisinger, pf ProPublica and Chris Arnold, of the public sector NPR News have the most interesting article about ruthless greedy uh socialism I guess at […]

Matt Yglesias has a great post over at Moneybox (paragraph breaks added): The need for regime change. … The Depression discredited the gold standard and a whole set of related notions. The Great Inflation discredited ideas about the Phillips Curve … We had, until recently, the Great Moderation Consensus that … the Federal Reserve has […]

by Rebecca Wilder Is the ECB/EU Achieving Stated Objective of Balanced Growth? The primary objective of the European Central Bank is to maintain price stability; however, as a compliment to its primary objective, the Eurosystem “shall also ‘support the general economic policies in the Union with a view to contributing to the achievement of the […]

I just searched Harvard, U Chicago, and a few other top econ departments’ course offerings and major requirements. The string “account” barely appears. Chicago says quite explicitly: Courses such as accounting, investments, and entrepreneurship will not be considered for economics elective credit. Much less requirements! No wonder so many economists: • Have such profound misunderstandings […]

There’s been a running discussion of this on various blogs (sorry if I missed linking some!), inflated simultaneously by Krugman and by magisterial and mysterious commenter JKH’s “paradigm riff,” here. That discussion has brought me to the following conclusions. Assuming you have a coherent and accurately representative System of National Accounts*: • Accounting, and accounting […]