Helicopter money is different
The discussion of helicopter money may have moved from the periphery of the policy debate to its centre. Unfortunately, analytical confusion seems correlated with interest levels.
Keynes once remarked that w...
Bernanke’s four errors
I am a huge fan of Ben Bernanke. He can take a significant amount of personal credit for preventing a depression. Also, The Courage to Act is a superb book.
Disappointingly, Ben’s latest contribution to the ...
Buffett v the Landesbank – the US gets paid to have a trade deficit
It remains conventional wisdom that the US current account deficit is the accumulation of a debt that will one day need to be repaid. There are very good reasons to believe this is false. The US in fact has ne...
Nothing is permanent
To borrow a disparaging phrase from Paul Krugman, the concept of 'permanence' in economics seems “to have a special ability to create intellectual confusion, even in smart people.”
Personally, I don't reall...
The economics of language: David Hume & valuing Facebook
David Hume is the first great thinker to identify language, law and money as 'spontaneous' institutions of social organisation. Hume was on to something quite profound, which remains under-appreciated.
Langu...
Accounting as religion: Buffett, Derrida, and MMT
A number of my recent posts seem to have wound up some of the more sensitive ‘mainstream’ economists, who don't like the suggestion that the likes of Minsky deserve their own 'school’. Some philosophers of sc...
More on eclecticism
“Experience has shown that Mother Nature is eclectic”
- Paul Samuelson
This recent blog on the merits of eclecticism in macroeconomics seems to have resonated. It follows a theme Dani Rodrik has advocate...
The case for eclecticism
Most macroeconomists have a mental model of how the economy works. I think there are five relevant mental frameworks:
Keynesian. This is the approach that most people are taught in high school and un...
Sitting on cathedral steps
Confusion in economics often resides in methodology - an area where economists are weak, as Simon Wren-Lewis points out. When we engage in economic analysis it is often unclear whether we are referring to speci...
Democracy in Europe
The ability to print money is a precondition of sovereignty. It is also a cornerstone of modern financial and economic systems. For all the talk of money being created by banks, in a panic it is clear that the ...