Tag: econ 101

In The Matrix, Neo (Keanu Reeves) discovers that the world he thought he was living in was merely an illusion, a computer-generated program designed to keep him docile and to be, in effect, a D-Cell battery.  I’ve long held that The Matrix is a brilliant example of political cinema.  The use of…

Paul Krugman gives a talk at the LSE (The London School of Economics).  With slides!  

Run for the hills!!!!  Or not… (h/t Mike Norman) You can play with the data on FRED.

The socialists editors at the Financial Times are calling on the US to execute a large fiscal stimulus program. Pessimists have been forecasting runaway inflation since the start of the financial crisis in 2008. Clearly the markets do not agree. US Treasury yields continue to plummet – last week the…

While explaining (yet again) why household budgets are not the same as national economies, heterodox economist L. Randall Wray observes: The United States has … experienced six periods of depression. The depressions began in 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893, and 1929. (Do you see any pattern? Take a look at the…

The entire foundation of neo-liberal economics (the “mainstream”), the golden nirvana of the Tea Party Libertarian Free Marketeers, is a house built upon the sand (pdf).  So-called free markets only work when you make some fundamental, and very foolish assumptions about how humans behave.  And you know what you get when…

A wonderful, must-read piece over at Naked Capitalism on the morality of math.  Well, when you put a $ or a € in front of the numbers, at least.  It’s a funny story involving a class and marbles and an economic system run amok. From her commanding heights at the ECB Teacher…

So sayeth the IMF in a consultation with the UK: The hand-off from public to private demand-led growth has not fully materialized. Much of this underperformance relative to earlier expectations is due to transitory commodity price shocks and heightened uncertainty following the intensification of stress in the euro area. Translation:…

A great, short, talking-head video featuring Mike Norman, economist and trader who’s been a Wall Street fixture for more than 30 years.  He appears regularly on CNBC and Bloomberg TV.  His blog, Mike Norman Economics is a staple for the MMT crowd.  He’s commenting here about the stupid way people…

I don’t normally cite polls from the grossly biased Rasmussen, but this one was too absurd not to post. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 51% of Likely Voters believe the federal government will go bankrupt and be unable to pay its debt before the federal budget is balanced….