micky kinkajou
" Kinsley claims that: "the lessons of Paul Volcker" are that "the Great Stagflation of the late 1970s" was caused by fiscal "Stimulus" which "is strong medicine--an addictive drug--and you don’t give the patient more than you absolutely have to."
a fairly common narrative actually
the usual line about the original sin
prior to the reagan eviction of the job class from the eden
of post war
"fairly strong job markets "
"Was he not alive in the late 1970s and early 1980s? "
asks bradkins
"Does he not remember that the large fiscal deficits of the 1970s and 1980s
came not during the Great Stagflation of the 1970s, but in the 1980s
after the Volcker Disinflation?"
its YOU dear brad that isn't singing here
from the dominant hymn book
at thomatose:
anne said...
im1dc said...
ABC news is reporting
"Now Venezuela Is Running out of Toilet Paper"
By FABIOLA SANCHEZ and KARL RITTER
CARACAS, Venezuela... May 16, 2013... (AP)
"First milk, butter, coffee and cornmeal ran short. Now Venezuela is running out of the most basic of necessities — toilet paper.
Blaming political opponents for the shortfall, as it does for other shortages, the embattled socialist government says it will import 50 million rolls to boost supplies.
That was little comfort to consumers struggling to find toilet paper on Wednesday.
"This is the last straw," said Manuel Fagundes, a shopper hunting for tissue in downtown Caracas. "I'm 71 years old and this is the first time I've seen this."..."
========================================================
How embarrassing for the World Socialist Anti-America Haters.
"Now Venezuela Is Running out of Toilet Paper"
By FABIOLA SANCHEZ and KARL RITTER
CARACAS, Venezuela... May 16, 2013... (AP)
"First milk, butter, coffee and cornmeal ran short. Now Venezuela is running out of the most basic of necessities — toilet paper.
Blaming political opponents for the shortfall, as it does for other shortages, the embattled socialist government says it will import 50 million rolls to boost supplies.
That was little comfort to consumers struggling to find toilet paper on Wednesday.
"This is the last straw," said Manuel Fagundes, a shopper hunting for tissue in downtown Caracas. "I'm 71 years old and this is the first time I've seen this."..."
========================================================
How embarrassing for the World Socialist Anti-America Haters.
anne said...
How embarrassing for the World Socialist Anti-America Haters.
[ Notice the language of ceaseless slander, hatred and attempted intimidation. ]
[ Notice the language of ceaseless slander, hatred and attempted intimidation. ]
anne said...
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/16/the-sadomonetarists-of-basel/
May 16, 2013
The Sadomonetarists of Basel
By Paul Krugman
The Wall Street Journal highlights a speech by Jaime Caruana, general manager of the Bank for International Settlements, warning of the dangers of easy money and the need to raise rates now to avert … something or other. And his views matter, says the Journal:
"Mr. Caruana is no disgruntled outvoted hawk on a policy-setting council, trying desperately to set the record straight after being outvoted. Rather, he’s the mouthpiece for a global college of central bankers, almost all of whom find themselves under intense pressure from their national governments to keep things ticking over while they try to repair the economy.
"His views also matter for another reason: the BIS is one of the few international financial institutions (some say the only one) to see the financial crisis coming and to issue clear warnings ahead of time."
I guess we can check the record here and see just how prescient the BIS was. What I do recall, however — which the Journal apparently doesn’t — is that the BIS has spent years warning about the dangers of low interest rates. Except that a couple of years back it was telling a completely different story about why we needed to raise rates; you see, the big danger was of imminent inflation:
" 'Global inflation pressures are rising rapidly as commodity prices soar and as the global recovery runs into capacity
May 16, 2013
The Sadomonetarists of Basel
By Paul Krugman
The Wall Street Journal highlights a speech by Jaime Caruana, general manager of the Bank for International Settlements, warning of the dangers of easy money and the need to raise rates now to avert … something or other. And his views matter, says the Journal:
"Mr. Caruana is no disgruntled outvoted hawk on a policy-setting council, trying desperately to set the record straight after being outvoted. Rather, he’s the mouthpiece for a global college of central bankers, almost all of whom find themselves under intense pressure from their national governments to keep things ticking over while they try to repair the economy.
"His views also matter for another reason: the BIS is one of the few international financial institutions (some say the only one) to see the financial crisis coming and to issue clear warnings ahead of time."
I guess we can check the record here and see just how prescient the BIS was. What I do recall, however — which the Journal apparently doesn’t — is that the BIS has spent years warning about the dangers of low interest rates. Except that a couple of years back it was telling a completely different story about why we needed to raise rates; you see, the big danger was of imminent inflation:
" 'Global inflation pressures are rising rapidly as commodity prices soar and as the global recovery runs into capacity
paine said...
in the final analysis
pk blows the kalecki message
because he conceives of structural reforms entirely within the context of the present MNC sustaining system
implicitly he asks
"what will sustain and hopefully improve the present system'
hence his implicit observence of a NAIRU taboo line
debating whether that line is at 7 or 4 percent etc
is not the key
its the notion
to prevent
wage price spirals which are lethal
to the present system
we forgo higher output and employment
ie higher social mobilization for production
yes nairu as lethality
not
harbinger of the deeper structural "limitations"
of the present system
screaming at us
to sublate them
pk blows the kalecki message
because he conceives of structural reforms entirely within the context of the present MNC sustaining system
implicitly he asks
"what will sustain and hopefully improve the present system'
hence his implicit observence of a NAIRU taboo line
debating whether that line is at 7 or 4 percent etc
is not the key
its the notion
to prevent
wage price spirals which are lethal
to the present system
we forgo higher output and employment
ie higher social mobilization for production
yes nairu as lethality
not
harbinger of the deeper structural "limitations"
of the present system
screaming at us
to sublate them
May 16, 2013
The Smith/Klein/Kalecki Theory of Austerity
By Paul Krugman
Noah Smith recently offered an interesting take * on the real reasons austerity garners so much support from elites, no matter hw badly it fails in practice. Elites, he argues, see economic distress as an opportunity to push through “reforms” — which basically means changes they want, which may or may not actually serve the interest of promoting economic growth — and oppose any policies that might mitigate crisis without the need for these changes:
"I conjecture that 'austerians' are concerned that anti-recessionary macro policy will allow a country to 'muddle through' a crisis without improving its institutions. In other words, they fear that a successful stimulus would be wasting a good crisis....
"If people really do think that the danger of stimulus is not that it might fail, but that it might succeed, they need to say so. Only then, I believe, can we have an optimal public discussion about costs and benefits."
As he notes, the day after he wrote that post, Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post made exactly that argument for austerity.
What Smith didn’t note, somewhat surprisingly, is that his argument is very close to Naomi Klein’s "Shock Doctrine," with its argument that elites systematically exploit disasters to push through neoliberal policies even if these policies are essentially irrelevant to the sources of disaster. I have to admit that I was predisposed to dislike Klein’s book when it came out, probably out of professional turf-defending and whatever — but her thesis really helps explain a lot about what’s going on in Europe in particular.
And the lineage goes back even further. Two and a half years ago Mike Konczal ** reminded us of a classic 1943 (!) essay by Michal Kalecki, who suggested that business interests hate Keynesian economics because they fear that it might work — and in so doing mean that politicians would no longer have to abase themselves before businessmen in the name of preserving confidence. This is pretty close to the argument that we must have austerity, because stimulus might remove the incentive for structural reform that, you guessed it, gives businesses the confidence they need before deigning to produce recovery.
And sure enough, in my inbox this morning I see a piece more or less deploring the early signs of success for Abenomics: Abenomics is working — but it had better not work too well. Because if it works, how will we get structural reform?
So one way to see the drive for austerity is as an application of a sort of reverse Hippocratic oath: “First, do nothing to mitigate harm”. For the people must suffer if neoliberal reforms are to prosper.
* http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/why-do-people-support-austerity.html
** http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2011/01/21/kristol-kalecki-and-a-19th-century-economist-defending-patriarchy-all-on-political-macroeconomics/