No Brains In Washington — Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts was the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy in the Reagan Administration and one of the developers of supply side economics. He was also associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. When he starts agreeing with Noam Chomsky and Michael Hudson about "neoliberal economics" being the problem, you know that something is up. This is not supposed to happen in a normal world.

No Brains In Washington — Paul Craig Roberts

Maybe police are finally starting to wake up to the fact that the neoliberal looting class is coming for their money, too!

Maybe this is a sign that the police are starting to wake up to the fact that even they are not immune to the parasitic wants of their neoliberal masters. Looks like the NJ State Police are suing Chris Christie over the matter of his cutting of their pensions. Good luck with that.

Of course this is all done so the rich don't have to pay another dime in Jersey or elsewhere. You see, it's happening all over, regardless of who's in office, Democrat or Republican. (Andrew Cuomo in New York State, Mike Bloomberg in NYC, Rick Perry in Texas, etc.)

All these governors and mayors can then boast about how they balanced their state/city budgets without raising taxes, which is a total joke because the budget cuts and looting of pensions IS a tax increase--only it falls on those least able to afford it.

During the Occupy Wall Street days most police were too busy (and still are too busy) cracking heads and pepper spraying peaceful protesters to pay any attention. However, they were warned. I remember very well watching many of these protesters trying to tell the cops that it would soon be their money at risk, but these "law enforcers" were too busy or excited by the thrill of throwing another victim to the ground to pay any attention, I guess. (Or maybe they were too dumb to process the information.)

Whatever the reason, I am personally happy to see the cops get their pension money confiscated and even happier that it's being done by the very same lawmakers who had been cynically praising them all along, for the great work they were doing fighting "crime." What bullshit.

To me, the cops are even more despicable than the neoliberal parasites who bought the government and are now conducting their own personal war against the rest of us. They couldn't do it without the law enforcement apparatus providing the muscle and running roughshod over our Constitutional rights. Shame on police everywhere. My hope is that you inherit a fate far, far, worse than those you helped to rob and brutalize.

I rooting for Christie to win this lawsuit. Take the cops' money, governor. Take it.

Congrats CNBC...you finally cancelled that idiot Kudlow!!!!

Free market capitalism may be the best path to prosperity, but it certainly wasn't the best path to ratings! LOL!!!

Bravo CNBC...you finally cancelled that idiot Kudlow!!! WTF took you so long?

(He'll probably end up on Fox Business of course. That's where all the Wall Street serving, banker apologist, neoliberal pushing sociopaths go.)

Read it and laugh here.

Hey, CNBC, now put an MMT guy in there and watch your ratings soar!

Ha-Joon Chang — Britain: a nation in decay [or the race to the bottom]

Ha-Joon Chang nails it. The UK problem is Thatcherism aka Neoliberalism, in which the goal is to run permanent trade surpluses by running financial repression domestically, i.e., suppressing worker compensation and benefits by eliminating the welfare state, in order to become more competitive in the global economy. Just like Germany is doing.

In reality, though, the coalition government isn't as stupid or stubborn as it appears. It is sticking to its plan A because spending cuts are not about deficits but about rolling back the welfare state. So no amount of evidence is going to change its position on cuts.
Lost in this cross-wired debate is the issue of the long-term future of the economy. Britain has been finding it difficult to recover from the financial crisis not just because of its austerity policy but also because of its eroding ability to engage in high-productivity activities. This problem is most tellingly manifested in the country's inability to generate a trade surplus despite the huge devaluation of sterling since 2008.

The Guardian
Britain: a nation in decay
Ha-Joon Chang | Professor Economics, Cambridge University
(h/t Kevin Fathi via email)

Unfortunately, Prof. Chang perpetuates the myth about Keynes and the long term when he writes,

John Maynard Keynes once famously said that in the long run we are all dead. But a lot of us have to live for a while yet. A series of short-run policies, whether based on the coalition policy of spending cuts and loose monetary policy or on the opposition policy of increased government spending, isn't going to address the challenges facing the British economy. It is time to think for the long term.

Keynes was actually criticizing the assumption of economic equilibrium being automatically achieved in neoclassical mechanics by the working of the invisible hand absent interventions. Keynes knew, of course, that the neoclassical model is time-independent, and the adjustment could come quickly — or not. Even presuming the correctness of the model, why wait when policy tools are readily available to bring about a return to full employment and optimize output by acting now.

Robert Vienneau — G. C. Harcourt On The Intellectual Dishonesty Of Mainstream Economists

On target. Another smack down of the mainstream today. feels like the energy is building.

Plus Peter Cooper gets a shout out.

Thoughts on Economics
G. C. Harcourt On The Intellectual Dishonesty Of Mainstream Economists
Robert Vienneau

Economic policies pushed by neoliberal elites destroying our freedoms

Lars Syll — There is no trade-off between equality and efficiency

Neoclassical economists often maintain that there is a trade-off between equality and efficiency. That this is a false contention is shown forcefully by research conducted for example by Andrew Berg and Jonathan Ostry.

Lars P Syll's Blog
There is no trade-off between equality and efficiency
Lars P. Syll | Professor of Economics, Malmo University

Another shibboleth of neoliberalism as a political theory based on economic efficiency bites the dust.

Thomas I. Palley — From Keynesianism to Neoliberalism: Shifting Paradigms in Economics

This article (May 5, 2004) by Thomas Palley gives a brief history of neoliberalism, how it replaced Keynesianism in the UK and the US, and what he thinks Post Keynesians need to do to reclaim the lost territory.

Read it at Foreign Policy In Focus
From Keynesianism to Neoliberalism: Shifting Paradigms in Economics
by Thomas I. Palley | Schwartz Economic Growth Fellow at theNew America Foundation