As the stock market moves sideways and house prices slow their march upward, 2014 is shaping up to be a less profitable year than 2013 for those with capital income. We saw consumption from capital income increase greatly over the last couple of years, but this year I expect it to stop rising and even […]
I’m stunned by how good the new Jacobin piece by Seth Ackerman is: “Piketty’s Fair-Weather Friends.” It gives what I find to be the best understanding so far of the whole Piketty “think space.” It’s so good that I can’t encapsulate it, so I’ll just share some of the passages I’m most taken with, with my […]
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis published an article that low nominal interest rates lead to low inflation… In essence they describe the Fisher effect about which I have been writing here on Angry Bear. There are many economists who do not accept the Fisher effect that low nominal interests lead to stable low […]
Noah Smith has documented the “anti-Piketty crusade” by Tyler Cowen, Chairman and General Director of the Koch-brothers-funded Mercatus Center. (The post seems to have gone missing from Noah’s site [pourquoi?]; here’s Google’s cached version.) The latest from Cowen is here, joining in the right-wing chorus desperately trying to debunk the long and widely documented increase in wealth inequality (documented […]
Paul Krugman is pushing for a higher inflation target. Joseph Stiglitz pushed for it a couple of years ago and then put the issue on the shelf well, he is still talking about it. (source) Even as the ECB’s president, Mario Draghi, said at the ECB conference where Mr. Krugman is presenting his case for […]
What is Effective Demand? Keynes made it a central concept of his great General Theory book. But what is it? Well, the idea is that there is only so much demand in the population for products. And that low demand can keep the economy from reaching full employment. How does that work? Keynes pointed to […]
Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism lists posts and links to documents on private equity agreements well worth taking the time to read through and comment. The list is extensive so best go there. Dean Baker weighs in today as well in the Wall Street pension scam via Truth Out. We anticipate that some of you […]
by Joseph Joyce Protesting Madame Lagarde The protests at Smith College that led to the withdrawal of Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, as this year’s commencement speaker have been widely denounced as a manifestation of intolerance. They also demonstrate a lack of understanding of the IMF and the many changes […]
by Barclay Rosser (reposted from Econospeak with permission from the author) Fred Hiatt Thinks Obama Not War whooping Enough In today’s Washington Post, editorial page editor, Fred Hiatt, has a column under his own name entitled, “A critique of Obama catches on.” The critique amounts to Obama being “too passive” in foreign policy, with this […]
That headline makes quite a statement. But it’s true. The stock of so-called “financial capital,” or wealth — all the financial assets out there, which are ultimately claims on real capital — represents only the most tenuous long-term approximation of what our real capital is worth. Certainly true: the stock (total dollar value) of “financial capital” goes up […]