How much spare capacity remains in the economy in terms of labor and capital? This question is an incredibly important one… and economists such as Krugman, Bernstein and Baker are deluded by past grandeur… You will hear Paul Krugman say that the Fed rate must stay at the zero lower bound in spite of the […]
Secular stagnation involves the idea that Central bank interest rates will be at the zero lower bound (ZLB) for a long… long… time. And they will be because of falling labor share around the world. Yet, other economists are not even including labor share as a factor. Paul Krugman and Simon Wren-Lewis for examples. Labor […]
I have written lately about the how the cultural economics of China will fail to raise wages of labor and thus fail to re-balance their domestic demand. A video interview with Minqi Li by The Real News Network notes that recent decisions by the Chinese government are meant to raise income for the owners of […]
Via the Guardian, Orthodox economists failed market test After all, the large majority of economists who predicted the crisis rejected the dominant neoclassical thinking: from Dean Baker and Steve Keen to Ann Pettifor, Paul Krugman and David Harvey. Whether Keynesians, post-Keynesians or Marxists, none accepted the neoliberal ideology that had held sway for 30 years; and all understood that, […]
The one thing I love about Frances Coppola, who is an economist from the United Kingdom, is that she is a perfect blend of someone inside the box and yet outside the box. I truly appreciate how she balances the two with an open and creative, yet grounded mind. She wrote a terrific article, The […]
The latest thing is discussing the possibility that the economy might be in a liquidity trap for a long long time or might repeatedly fall into one. So I ask what about some permanent fiscal stimulus to deal with secular stagnation. Now this question is an offence against Keynes and, much more, against new Keynesian […]
I am nearing the end of my 16 day jaunt starting in China and ending in Thailand. It has been 7 years since I have been in Thailand and the same for China other than an overnighter plus a day in Shanghai, China. Both places are surging in infrastructure and in business. Let me explain […]
Just a quick update to the productivity chart. (quarterly data, link to data) What does this graph show? When the economy is approaching the effective demand limit (red line), productivity stalls. Then a move toward an economic contraction will release a productivity increase. Note: The red line is the effective demand limit, where real GDP […]
Mr. Krugman wrote about a possible permanent slump and declining demand. He sort of offers two possible causes of it. Slowing population growth. Persistent trade deficits He does not even mention the big drop in labor share since the crisis. Yet, we see profound economists like Michael Pettis using labor share to describe the trade […]
Paul Krugman picks up on Angry Bear Robert Waldmann’s post “Why Does Fiscal Stimulus Work? ” discussing John Cochrane’s ideas on Keynesians. So some props to John Cochrane for at least trying to catch up. Unfortunately, he’s still working from the baseline assumption that people like me (and Mike Woodford, whom he really should be reading) must […]