It’s pretty amazing to read a cover story in, and by the publisher of, The American Conservative that could have run in The Nation, Mother Jones, or on Daily Kos — almost. Certainly America’s top engineers and entrepreneurs have created many of the world’s most important technologies, sometimes becoming enormously wealthy in the process. But […]

Randall Wray highlights two great insights that arose at the annual Minsky conference last week in NYC. First Joseph Stiglitz (Wray’s words, emphasis mine): Recall that part of the reason for the creation and explosion of derivatives was to spread risk. For example, mortgage-backed securities were supposed to make the global financial system safer by […]

JKH likes this line in Keen’s response to Krugman: The endogenous increase in the stock of money caused by the banking sector creating new money is a far larger determinant of changes in aggregate demand than changes in the velocity of an unchanging stock of money. It struck me as an empirical question: how do […]

I think Steve handles it admirably, and admirably briefly, so in this case I’ll simply point you over there. On bank lending’s creating deposits and Paul Krugman’s response | Credit Writedowns. Cross-posted at Asymptosis.

The key failing in Krugman’s response to Steve Keen’s response to Krugman’s paper (PDF) is here: If I decide to cut back on my spending and stash the funds in a bank, which lends them out to someone else, this doesn’t have to represent a net increase in demand. Krugman assumes here that people have […]

JKH has magisterial post up on the recent dust-up over Saving as perceived in various sectoral models — one-sector (global, for instance, or government- and trade-balanced domestic private sector); two-sector (government and private including international); the most common MMT construct, the three-sector model (government, domestic private, and international); the rather uncommon four-sector model (government, international, […]

Well if so (something I’m not asserting), it’s a Republican spending problem: Economist’s View: Per Capita Government Spending by President. Cross-posted at Asymptosis.

Jonathan Haidt reports an interesting experimental result: Two three-year-olds walk up to a marble-delivery machine that has two bins. Each stands in front of one bin. Three scenarios: 1. One bin has three marbles in it, the other has one: the winner is unlikely to share to equalize the takings. 2. There are two ropes […]

My last post prompted me to revisit one from last May that I thought Bears might appreciate. For your delectation: Conservatives love to point out that our employer-based health insurance system is a result of wage controls under FDR. Since employers weren’t able to attract workers with higher wages, they started offering benefits instead — notably […]

Or: You Just Can’t Make This Shit Up “Health Care Costs Put U.S. at Significant Disadvantage Compared with Global Competitors” I’ll let you read the details, but short story: Whodathunkit? And what do they recommend? Creating greater consumer value in the health care marketplace by using health information technology and empowering consumers with more information […]