Keynes Predicts the Failure of the Eurozone

President of the Economic Psychic Friends Network and the father of macroeconomics, John Maynard Keynes, explains to the Masters of the Eurozone why they are doomed. It was at Bretton Woods that Keynes identified one of the key problems at the heart of international economics – that imbalances in trade…

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Punk Economics: Episode 2

Enjoy! If you missed it, here’s the link to Episode One.

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Arrival of the Autocracy

Autocracy arrives in Europe. When Wolfgang Schäuble proposed that Greece should postpone its elections as a condition for further help, I knew that the game would soon be up. We are at the point where success is no longer compatible with democracy. The German finance minister wants to prevent a “wrong” democratic choice. Similar…

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Punk Economics: Episode 1

Great review of the crisis in Europe by Irish economist David McWilliams!  McWilliams has worked as an economist with the Central Bank of Ireland and as a banker with UBS bank and the Banque Nationale de Paris.  He currently does documentary television. Listen for the bit around 7:30 where McWilliams…

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“Merely Useless”

Angela Merkel fades into irrelevancy Their compact—now called the “treaty on stability, co-ordination and governance in the Economic and Monetary Union”, has as its main aim the imposition of balanced-budget rules on members. This may be a useful discipline in good times. But many worry that, at a time of…

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“Slip Slidin’ Away…”

Spain’s economy is sliding back into recession.  Nobody is surprised. PARIS — To no one’s surprise, the Spanish economy is sliding toward recession, official data showed Monday, contracting in the fourth quarter after a stagnant third quarter. Gross domestic product shrank by 0.3 percent in the October-December period from the…

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Zombie Talking Point #17: We’re Becoming Greece!

Or Italy, or Ireland, or Portugal or now even France.  No… We’re not like them at all.  Anyone who tells you that we are is either lying to you or is too stupid to understand why the United States (like the UK) is in a much different circumstance.  We are…

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The Euroslide Continues

You might have heard that the S&P downgraded several European nations this week.  What you probably didn’t hear was why.  Hidden in the appendix of the downgrade report is this gem. In our opinion, the political agreement does not supply sufficient additional resources or operational flexibility to bolster European rescue operations, or…

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MMT In Action!

One of the qualitative features of Modern Monetary Theory is that nations that have their own sovereign currency are not subject to the same constraints of countries that use another nation’s currency.  A quick look at France and Britain and the reaction of France to a threatened sovereign debt downgrade…

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Martin Wolf Channels his Inner Krugman

We all know that Paul Krugman can be acerbic… Rude even.  But the staid Martin Wolf?  Apparently he’s found his Inner Krugman.

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