Noah Smith (and many others) is irritated by a puff piece about Stephanie Kelton and modern monetery theory MMT by Jeanna Smialak in the New York Times. I am not interested in Smialak’s article. I think that Noah sums up his critique here very well “The article then demonstrates that it has little notion of […]
Student Loan Cancellation will not Benefit the Wealthy, Alan Collinge, Student Loan Justice Org. Alan Collinge History In 1972, allegations about students abusing bankruptcy3 courts were beginning to make headlines. Major newspapers were publishing anecdotes about students who took out large college loans. Supposedly then, young graduates or students quickly declared bankruptcy to avoid paying them off. The […]
Public opinion in many countries is shifting against COVID-19 precautions and restrictions – even against vaccine requirements. This has some libertarians declaring victory. Not only are they declaring victory, they are claiming that the rollback of restrictions shows that they were right all along, and that the restrictions were foisted on us by a corrupt […]
Can Ukraine Become A New Austria? In this Sunday’s Washington Post, columnist David von Drehle suggests that a way out of the difficult Russia/Ukraine situation would be for Ukraine to become like what happened with Austria in 1955 and since; it formally became officially neutral, not joining either NATO or the Warsaw Pact, and has […]
J.P. McJefferson writes: “On a Friday afternoon in February, I finally sense a glimmer of hope. Mike Pence finding truth in his heart and openly confronting Trump & his lot of criminals by reinforcing the fact that he had no authority to overturn the election and saying Trump is “wrong”. A direct slap in the […]
Here is Michael Bang Petersen in the New York Times: As a researcher and an adviser to the Danish government on the pandemic, I have repeatedly stressed that we need to make complex trade-offs between deaths, the economy, public well-being and constitutional rights. There is not a single right answer for how to proceed. Within […]
The stability and growth pact regulated the fiscal policy of Euro bloc countries. It is currently suspended, because of Covid. There is an ongoing discussion of whether to reactivate it when the epidemic ends or whether to replace it with something else. I strongly advocate eliminating it and replacing it with nothing. Very very rounghly, […]
History is the study of the past. We can not undo the past; but we can make use of knowledge of the past to help us understand what is going on now so as to make the right choices, to take the right actions for issues of the present now; and to better our odds […]
My mind goes back to 2008. I was recently tempted to ask why bad loans by banks are a public problem. I was tempted to say that the bank made the loan, so it is their problem. If enough debtors default that the bank fails, so what? Then I remember the very appealing logic of […]
Prof. Heather Cox Richardson (substack.com) “Letters From An American,” January 31. 2022 There are more topics covered in yesterday’s Letter than I can list in the title. It is an interesting mixed bag of experiences we are enduring and what is being reported. I have also included the links below if you wish to do […]