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It is quite interesting to see how popular myths can live on in the public’s mind and continue to cause harm and irritation even when the facts speak to totally different language. How can education fail so badly? The particular example I have in mind here is Germans’ supposed exceptionalism in matters of inflation hyper-sensitivity. Whether or not Germans really are special in this regard, even internationally many observers seem to feel that Germans would be truly justified to be that way. Hence Germans are readily excused for doing stupid things because they seem to be justified that way. There is a highly relevant context to this today: the ECB’s asymmetry in mindset and approach. I recently argued in a Letter to the Editors, “Beware what you wish for when it comes to ECB measures,” published by The Financial Times on February 26 2014, that there was actually nothing really new about the ECB’s revealed asymmetry regarding inflation versus deflation risks. At issue is a genetic defect inherited from the Bundesbank. In fact, there can be absolutely no doubt anymore about the ECB being asymmetric in mindset and approach, and more and more observers have come to realize that in more recent times. But there is also a long track record of asymmetric “stability-oriented” monetary policy that includes and precedes… Read More

The Levy Institute’s annual Minsky conference will be held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on April 9-10. Day one features a speaker lineup that includes Sen. Sherrod Brown, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, head of the Chicago Fed Charles Evans, member of the Fed Board of Governors Daniel Tarullo, and many others. On day two, Jason Furman, Chair of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers (and recently featured in this Washington Post profile), asks “Is the Great Moderation Coming Back?” The full conference program is online. Session titles include: Financial Reregulation to Support Growth and Employment Financial Regulation and Economic Stability: Was Dodd-Frank Enough, or Too Much? The Global Growth and Employment Outlook: Cloudy with a Risk of … ? The Euro and European Growth and Employment Prospects What Are the Monetary Constraints to Sustainable Recovery of Employment? Registration is open.

In a recent post, Daniel Gros asks why Greece has failed to get out of recession through an increase in exports, as he claims happened in Portugal, Spain and Ireland. He is suggesting that the problem lies in the economy resisting structural reforms: “In Greece, by contrast, there is no evidence that the many structural reforms imposed by the “troika” (the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund) have led to any real improvement on the ground. On the contrary, many indicators of efficiency of the way the government and the labor market work have actually deteriorated” “So the only explanation for Greece’s poor export performance must be that the Greek economy has remained so distorted that it has not responded to changing price signals.” Gros is therefore endorsing the Troika vision: European peripheral countries with a large current account deficit, and large government deficits, should use austerity to improve the public sector balance, and wage and price deflation to improve export competitiveness. These policies have been devastating for Greece. Our first chart reports the level of real output: real GDP in Greece has fallen by almost 25 percent, relative to 2007, the last year before the recession started. Indeed, as we have argued, the recession in Greece has been worse than the 1929 Depression in… Read More

Central Bank Independence: Myth and Misunderstanding L. Randall Wray “This paper argues that the Fed is not, and should not be, independent, at least in the sense in which that term is normally used. … Our understanding of policy, of the policy space available to the sovereign, and of the operational realities of fiscal and monetary policy would be improved if we abandoned the myth of central bank independence.” Changes in Global Trade Patterns and Women’s Employment in Manufacturing: An Analysis over the Period of Asianization and Deindustrialization Burca Kizilirmak, Emel Memis, Şirin Saraçoğlu, and Ebru Voyvoda “We provide estimates for total and women’s employment effects of world trade, evaluating the changes in trade flows in 30 countries (21 OECD and 9 non-OECD countries) for 23 manufacturing sectors by breaking up the sources of these changes between the trade with the North, the South, and China. … Our results present a net negative impact of trade on total employment as well as on women’s employment in 30 countries over the period of analysis [1995-2006]. … Country level results show that the United States has by far the largest estimated employment losses from the change in structure of trade: 81 percent of the employment losses in the North originate in the US” Full Employment: The Road Not Taken Pavlina R. Tcherneva… Read More

From Jörg Bibow’s recent letter in the Financial Times, reacting to an article by Wolfgang Münchau on deflation and ECB policy: What is really new today is that wages are becoming unanchored and hence cease to provide the safety net that asymmetric central bankers habitually rely on. This is the consequence of the collective effort to restore competitiveness practised across the eurozone. Deflationary structural reforms of labour markets can only amplify this futile and hazardous process. But with the ECB applauding these efforts as the supposed panacea to the eurozone’s ills, what kind of miracle weapon can we expect the bank to deploy to halt the resulting plight? Read the rest here.

Memo to Obama: Don’t tie progressive spending policy to progressive tax policy. Each can stand on its own. Reported today in the Washington Post: Obama proposes $600 billion in new spending to boost economy President Obama on Tuesday unveiled an ambitious budget that promised more than $600 billion in fresh spending to boost economic growth over the next decade while also pledging to solve the nation’s borrowing problem by raising taxes on the wealthy, passing an overhaul of immigration laws and cutting health costs without compromising the quality of care. Obama seeks to raise more than $1 trillion – largely by limiting tax breaks that benefit the wealthy – to spend on building roads and bridges, early childhood education and tax credits for the poor. Here’s the conceit: Uncle Sam is broke. He’s got a borrowing problem. He’s gone hat-in-hand to those who’s got, trying to borrow a few dimes off them. But they are ready to foreclose on his Whitehouse. Obama knows his economy is tanking. Five and a half years after Wall Street’s crisis, we still have tens of millions of workers without jobs. Even the best-case scenarios don’t see those jobs coming back for years. Obama will leave office with a legacy of economic failure. Belt-tightening austerity isn’t working. He wants to spend more, but he doesn’t… Read More

After taking a short breather in late January-early February, the markets now seem to be back in “happy mode.” Whether the news on the economic recovery is good or bad doesn’t really matter. The current convention is that growth acceleration is under way. That emerging markets had become key drivers of global growth was yesterday’s story, today they don’t seem to matter anymore. Developed economies are back, so we are told. The U.S. is roaring ahead, the euro crisis is over. And, by the way, central banks have no intention to really stop the party any time soon – as inflation is so conveniently low. In fact, inflation is nonexistent since labor markets are not exactly red hot and wages essentially flat. So lucky for us, or at least some of us, that at least the markets want to go up no matter what. Curiously, not even the long-awaited ruling by Germany’s constitutional court on the ECB’s “outright monetary transactions” (OMTs) or, rather, on Germany and the euro, could rock the boat. The court expressed doubts about the legality of the ECB’s supposedly all-powerful weapon meant to bolster the earlier “whatever it takes” promise, the mere airing of which had ended the euro crisis and kick-started the brisk recovery now firmly under way. “So what?”, Mr. Market shrugged his shoulders…. Read More

I recently did an interview for the magazine “Synchrona Themata” (“Contemporary Issues”). The interview, which will appear in Greek, was conducted by Christos Pierros, doctoral student at the University of Athens Doctoral Program in Economics (UADPhilEcon). What follows is the English transcript: What do you think went wrong in 2008? Why was standard macro theory unable to predict such an event? This was a collapse of what Hyman Minsky called “Money Manager Capitalism.” In many ways it was similar to the 1929 collapse of “Finance Capitalism” that led to the Great Depression. MMC and FC share several common characteristics. First, the dominant approach of economists and policy makers in the 1920s and in the 2000s was one of “laissez faire”—that is, a worship of free markets. Importantly, that meant that finance was “freed” from regulation and supervision. Second, in both cases we lived in an era of globalization—with both goods and finance crossing borders fairly freely. That ensured that when crisis hit, it would spread around the world. Third, finance dominated over industry. Our economy in both cases was “financialized”—with finance sucking 40 percent of all corporate profits out of the economy. To say that “finance ran amuck” is an understatement. To say that our economies were completely taken over by “blood sucking vampire squids of Wall Street” is only… Read More

(The following is an extended version of a piece that originally appeared in Greek in Kathimerini.) The responses to unemployment by the last three governments in Greece have been characterized by sloppy proposals and an insignificant amount of funds in relation to the size of the problem. Regardless of whether there were political considerations behind it (or not), the recent announcement of the Prime Minister highlights, unfortunately, a relentless continuation of a lack of understanding of reality. The Prime Minister recently (on January 29) told us that unemployment is a “sneaky enemy” and proceeded to announce measures to tackle the problem. He also indicated that “we do not promise things we cannot do, and we say no to populism and fine words.” The goal of the proposed measures, we heard, is to create 440,000 “work opportunities,” of which 240,000 will target the unemployed 15-24 years of age with no prior work experience. The announced measures totaling 1.4 billion euros will be financed by funds from the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF), social funds from the EU, and are classified into three pillars. Specifically, the first pillar sets a target to recruit 114,000 unemployed for the private sector; an initiative that essentially subsidizes wages and social security contributions for businesses that hire unemployed who are up to 29 years old and… Read More

From C. J. Polychroniou’s latest policy note: [I]n 2001, a three-year, multi-country study by the Structural Adjustment Participatory Review International Network (SAPRIN), prepared in cooperation with the World Bank, national governments, and civil society organizations, offered a damning indictment of the policies of structural adjustment reform pursued by the IMF and the World Bank in third world countries. Here is a partial summary of the organization’s findings […]: “The intransigence of international policymakers as they continue their prescription of structural adjustment policies is expanding poverty, inequality and insecurity around the world. These polarizing measures are in turn increasing tensions among different social strata, fueling extremist movements and delegitimizing democratic political systems. Their effects, particularly on the poor, are so profound and pervasive that no amount of targeted social investments can begin to address the social crises that they have engendered.” (SAPRIN 2001, 24) […] The structural adjustment programs in Greece, combined with the policies of austerity, are producing results that fit the patterns outlined in the SAPRIN study like a glove. No doubt, this is part of the reason why the IMF was invited to participate in Europe’s rescue schemes: the Fund’s technical expertise in advancing the neoliberal agenda, which has been fully embraced by the EU at least since the Maastricht Treaty, carries more than three decades of experience.

(The following is the translation of an interview that appeared in Sunday’s Eleftherotypia. C. J. Polychroniou talks to Jörg Bibow about the latter’s proposal for a Euro Treasury and how it represents a viable solution to the eurozone crisis — a crisis that is very much ongoing, Bibow explains.)   CJP: A number of economists, including yourself, maintain that the eurozone crisis remains unresolved, yet the financial markets are calm. Is this a case of seeing the glass half empty rather than half full? JB: Sure, if you are a believer in the efficient market theory you might conclude that things are just fine. Well, I don’t. Does anyone remember that the markets were also in a state of bliss in the years leading up to the crises in the US and Europe? As serious economists such as Keynes and Minsky well understood, financial markets are subject to conventional behavior and prone to instability. The current convention appears to be that Mr. Draghi’s famous “whatever it takes” promise is insurance enough that really bad stuff is not going to happen. Fine, but how powerful is Mr. Draghi, really? At some point the markets might wake up and wonder what it would actually take to fix the situation and how Mr. Draghi might possibly deliver on that. Complacency can turn into… Read More