Stephanie Kelton offers the story of government on a macro level that is understandable: The full version of the debate including the Q&A session at the end is available on our YouTube channel.

John Boehner says that unemployed Americans are pretty clearly malingerers, bums on welfare who have decided that they don’t feel like working: “This idea that has been born, maybe out of the economy over the last couple years, that you know, I really don’t have to work. I don’t really want to do this. I think […]

Via the Guardian comes a few words on the drought and markets for, in this case, almonds.  But similar things could be said of other crops.  The ‘subsidized’ cost of getting water to these producers is not reflected in prices, nor is the ‘ownership’ of the water  looked at in a comprehensive manner for sustainability, as […]

Now that the Fed has sent the message that nominal rates will stay at the ZLB for a considerable time after October, let’s revisit the concept of the Zombie firm. The ZLB Fed rate makes it more likely that zombie firms will continue to limp on… Zombie firms are not good for society. The main […]

Greg Mankiw posted about his version of the Taylor rule. He basically sees the Fed rate heading into positive territory, which would indicate that the Fed rate should start rising according to the rule. However, he also sees the need to allow the Fed rate to now stay below a rule rate in order to […]

Paul Krugman and assorted others have been puzzling at this question recently, one that I’ve been grinding an axe about for some years. For the first time, I think, Krugman’s highlighted the explanation that I keep going on about: Inflation helps debtors and hurts creditors, deflation does the reverse. And the wealthy are much more likely than […]

Via an email from Greg LeRoy of Good Jobs First, we learn that the Tesla deal, as enacted by the Nevada Legislature, is even worse than announced. Aside from the widely touted 6500 jobs only being 6000 jobs for which the state is paying for, it turns out that Tesla doesn’t even have to create […]

A comment on a previous post said that the unemployment rate is under-measuring the true unemployment rate due to people having withdrawn from the labor market. The low labor force participation rate would reflect this view. Is the 6.1% unemployment rate a reliable measure of un- and under-employment? One model for the supply & demand […]

Via Social Europe Journal, Dani Rodrik points to both a perennial question on economic self-interests and elections: Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University, have recently produced some stark findings for the United States that have dramatic implications for the functioning of democracy – in the US and elsewhere. … When […]

Paul Krugman has taken aim at the profession here and here. It is not just being wrong sometimes…   by Sandwichman at Econospeak writes: Economists: Lawyers? Shysters? Touts? “Basically, a lot of economists use the tools of science to accomplish literary– or lawyerly — goals.” — Noah Smith, Economics Isn’t Science or Literature If that’s […]