Understanding The Modern Monetary System...
Izabella Kiminska has a great post up about automating fiscal policy: ”Compensate the unemployed with credit/debt/government spending and use automated fiscal stabilisers to tweak inflationary and deflationary side-effects. Or, alternatively, employ them — for the sake of humanity — in big mega projects that stimulate our creativity, scientific and academic knowledge, and culture. Fiscal policy [...]
I’ve been thinking a lot about this over last few weeks when I have the chance to think. It seems like we are on a real estate monetary standard. Much like how we can use assets like gold to create a commodity money system, it seems like we operate our current monetary system as a [...]
Noah Smith asks a funny question on Twitter: ”Hey, anyone remember the trillion dollar coin? ^_^ ” I’d say Paul Krugman and Steve Waldman remember the trillion dollar coin quite well. So do all of the people listed by Steve Waldman in the beginning (and the end, Frances and Ashwin!) of his post. The coin was [...]
Carlos Mucha of Monetary Realism discusses the Trillion Dollar Coin for the New York Times: “Under the Constitution, Congress is given the authority to create money. Congress has delegated this power to create money to two agencies: the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Mint. For decades, the Fed has issued paper money and assisted the [...]
Matt Yglesias points out it’s way too easy to bullshit in the field of macroeconomics: ”The work that macroeconomic theorists and modelers do is genuinely difficult—certainly I can’t do it—but it’s far too easy for people with the relevant skills to demonstrate just about anything.” This entire idea was started off by a post by [...]
Joe Weisenthal posted an incredible interview with Jan Hatzius yesterday. Hatzius is known for schooling fools on the economy, but he’s better known as Goldman’s economist. And Joe is…always working 10x as fast (and better) than everyone else in the world. Also today, David Weigel wrote about the 20 years of failures of the Peterson Institute. [...]
Today, the Unemployment Rate fell to 7.7%, and we added 146,000 jobs. This is great news for U.S. workers. The signs the economy was doing well have been obvious for a while – if you look at a few, very specific data points. First up: Taxes withheld Taxes withheld is an incredible real time indicator. [...]
People are talking about the Trillion Dollar Coin: Kevin Drum Matt Yglesias John Carney John points out even serious analysts are talking about it. And yes – a gigantic, novelty sized coin is what I picture too. With all of this chatter, others must be talking about it. All of this talk cannot be completely [...]
makes a great point: “The fundamental cause of instability is the feed-back loop caused by debt use to speculate on rising asset prices. As an asset price rises, which makes the asset a better form of collateral, in turn increases the demand for more borrowing based on that collateral, which in turn boosts the asset [...]
It’s sad, but true. The end of Hostess - and with it, the end of the nearly invulnerable Twinkie – means our Mad Max future is starting much sooner than anyone expected. We can no longer afford to make a cheap-ass, terrible tasting cake. Something our parents could buy in huge boxes, a treat I could afford [...]
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