C.J. Polychroniou — An Interview with Henry Giroux on Democracy in Crisis

CJP: It is widely believed that the advanced liberal societies are suffering a crisis of democracy, a view you share wholeheartedly, although the empirical research, with its positivists bias, tends to be more cautious. In what ways is there less democracy today in places like the United States than there was, say, 20 or 30 years ago?

HG: What we have seen in the United States and a number of other countries since the 1970s is the emergence of a savage form of free market fundamentalism, often called neoliberalism, in which there is not only a deep distrust of public values, public goods and public institutions but the embrace of a market ideology that accelerates the power of the financial elite and big business while gutting those formative cultures and institutions necessary for a democracy to survive. The commanding institutions of society in many countries, including the United States, are now in the hands of powerful corporate interests, the financial elite and right-wing bigots whose strangulating control over politics renders democracy corrupt and dysfunctional. More specifically, Americans now live in what the new Pope has condemned as the “tyranny of unfettered capitalism,” where the corporate, financial, and ruling elites shape politics, assault unions, mobilize great extremes of wealth and power, and enforce a brutalizing regime of neoliberalism. 

This is a period that lacks any sense of social and economic justice, a historical moment in which the existing norms, values, and for that matter language itself legitimate the production of zones of social and civil death, death spheres—driven by a mad violence rooted in a dystopian theater of cruelty. Some have argued that Americans have entered a new Gilded Age or an oligarchy, but in reality it is more brutal than these terms suggest. This new period of political, social, and economic savagery is more reminiscent of what Hannah Arendt called “dark times,” a historical conjuncture rooted in the reworked attributes of a life-sapping totalitarianism, posing shamelessly as an updated version of democracy. The new authoritarianism reinforces what conservative politicians, hedge fund managers and pundits refuse to admit, which is that in the United States the social contract and social wage are under sustained assault by right-wing politicians and anti-public intellectuals from both political parties. Moreover, those public spheres and institutions that support social provisions, the public good and keep public values alive are under sustained attack. Such attacks have not only produced a range of policies that have expanded the misery, suffering, and hardships of millions of people, but have also put into place a growing culture of cruelty in which those who suffer the misfortunes of poverty, unemployment, low skill jobs, homelessness, and other social problems are the object of both humiliation and scorn.

Is Henry Giroux poised to become the successor of Noam Chomsky as America's leading public intellectual on the left?

Counterpunch
An Interview with Henry Giroux on Democracy in Crisis
C.J. Polychroniou

Rob Urie — The Great Economic Misdirection

A central challenge for left critiques of capitalism as it exists today is the distance between the mythologies that craft understanding of the issues for the great majority and more probable explanations based on examination and analysis. The issues are that concentrated wealth is claims on social resources; that wealth ‘creation’ is an artifact of particular arrangement of social circumstances / relations and that wealth distribution is the social distribution of economic and political power. Concentrated wealth as it exists is hardly likely to distribute this power away from itself.

Counterpunch
The Great Economic Misdirection
Rob Urie

Pepe Escobar — The Birth of a Eurasian Century?

The unipolar model of the world order has failed.

- Vladimir Putin, St Petersburg, May 22

In more ways than one, last week heralded the birth of a Eurasian century. Of course, the US$400 billion Russia-China gas deal was clinched only at the last minute in Shanghai, on Wednesday (a complement to the June 2013, 25-year, $270 billion oil deal between Rosneft and China’s CNPC.)

Then, on Thursday, most of the main players were at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum – the Russian answer to Davos. And on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin, fresh from his Shanghai triumph, addressed the participants and brought the house down.

It will take time to appraise last week’s whirlwind in all its complex implications. Here are some of the St Petersburg highlights, in some detail. Were there fewer Western CEOs in town because the Obama administration pressured them – as part of the “isolate Russia” policy? Not many less; Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley may have snubbed it, but Europeans who matter came, saw, talked and pledged to keep doing business.

And most of all, Asians were ubiquitous. Consider this as yet another chapter of China’s counterpunch to US President Barack Obama’s Asian tour in April, which was widely described as the “China containment tour”....

One day before the clinching of the Russia-China gas deal, President Xi Jinping called for no less than a new Asian security cooperation architecture, including of course Russia and Iran and excluding the US. Somehow echoing Putin, Xi described NATO as a Cold War relic.

And guess who was at the announcement in Shanghai, apart from the Central Asian “stans”: Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and crucially, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

The facts on the ground speak for themselves. China is buying at least half of Iraq’s oil production – and is investing heavily in its energy infrastructure. China has invested heavily in Afghanistan’s mining industry - especially lithium and cobalt. And obviously both China and Russia keep doing business in Iran.

So this is what Washington gets for over a decade of wars, incessant bullying, nasty sanctions and trillions of misspent dollars.

No wonder the most fascinating session I attended in St Petersburg was on the commercial and economic possibilities around the expansion of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), whose guest of honor was none other than Li Yuanchao. I was arguably the only Westerner in the room, surrounded by a sea of Chinese and Central Asians....

The now symbiotic China-Russia strategic alliance - with the possibility of extending towards Iran - is the fundamental fact on the ground in the young 21st century. It will extrapolate across the BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Collective Security Treaty Organization and the Non-Aligned Movement.

Counterpunch
The Birth of a Eurasian Century?
Pepe Escobar

 

Eric Sommer — Obama’s ProtoWar Against Russia and China

Russia and China are both under attack by a multi-pronged U.S.-led ‘proto-war’ which could erupt into ‘hot war’ or even nuclear war. ‘Protowar’ or ‘proto-warfare’ is the term I have coined to describe the use of multiple methods intended to weaken, destabilize, and in the limit-case destroy a targeted government without the need to engage in direct military warfare.

Protowar methods include threats against the targeted country; economic sanctions; military encirclement around its borders. cyber-warfare, drone warfare, and use of proxy forces from within or from outside the country for political and/or military action against the local government.

U.S.-led protowars also invariably include propaganda campaigns against the targeted governments. The media campaigns are waged by the five giant media conglomerates which now control 90% of the U.S. media and which are directly linked to the U.S. foreign-policy establishment through various means including corporate memberships in the Committee for Foreign Relations.

You can recognize these media campaigns because they frequently employ the words ‘human rights’ or ‘democracy’ as the pretext for U.S. state protowars against other countries. Sometimes, of course, these words cannot possibly be applied at all, as in the massive support currently given to the murderous military dictatorship in Egypt or the midevilist kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In these cases the U.S. media and government substitute the words ‘U.S. National Interest’ for ‘human rights’ as the pretext for targeting another country....

U.S.-led proto-warfare against Russia and China has a number of elements. To begin with, it conforms to two popular doctrines in U.S. foreign policy circles. The first doctrine states that the U.S. must never allow another super-power to emerge, and must remain the unchallenged dominant force on Earth. This doctrine is clearly set-out in the original version of the U.S. Defence Department policy document known as ‘the Wolfowitz doctrine....

The second doctrine underpinning proto-warfare against Russia and China is that U.S. dominance of the planet depends on control of the Eurasian land mass, on which Russia and China occupy key positions.  This doctrine has been heavily  promoted by  former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski....

The danger of the U.S.Eurasian protowar erupting into hot war – or even nuclear war – stems from a single factor: Previous U.S.-led protowars which erupted into hot wars were against countries like Serbia, Iraq, or Libya. Those countries did not have nuclear weapons and could not effectively defend themselves against U.S. military and other pressures Russia and China are in a different category – they are nuclear- armed and can defend themselves.

The U.S. state presumably does not intend to provoke a hot war with Russia and China.. But directing intensive protowar against powerful nuclear-armed states is to risk the possibility of ‘sleep walking’ into the abyss through miscalculation, or through a gradual hightening of conflicts which finally go out of control. . In 1914, with the European powers of the day already on edge, it took just the assassination of a minor duke in a peripheral country to trigger World War I. As an old adage has it, “If you play with fire, you may get burned.”

 The real issue involved is "regime change." The foreign policy of the US is aimed at global hegemony of neoliberal capitalism masquerading as democracy. The goal is to destablize regimes that are not vassals and to replace them with vassals.

In the geostrategic picture the Wolfowitz doctrine holds sway and the US maintains a superpower military capability to prevent military challenges, and the Brzezinski doctrine holds sway about strategic control of the Eurasian land mass.

From the vantage of the military Keynesianism that is the foundation of the US economy, endless war and weapons export are an integral part of US economic policy.

Counterpunch
Obama’s ProtoWar Against Russia and China
Eric Sommer

David Graeber — Savage capitalism is back – and it will not tame itself

The real importance of Thomas Piketty's blockbuster, Capital in the 21st Century, is that it demonstrates, in excruciating detail (and this remains true despite some predictable petty squabbling) that, in the case of at least one core equation, the numbers simply don't add up. Capitalism does not contain an inherent tendency to civilise itself. Left to its own devices, it can be expected to create rates of return on investment so much higher than overall rates of economic growth that the only possible result will be to transfer more and more wealth into the hands of a hereditary elite of investors, to the comparative impoverishment of everybody else.

In other words, what happened in western Europe and North America between roughly 1917 and 1975 – when capitalism did indeed create high growth and lower inequality – was something of a historical anomaly. There is a growing realisation among economic historians that this was indeed the case. There are many theories as to why. Adair Turner, former chairman of the Financial Services Authority, suggests it was the particular nature of mid-century industrial technology that allowed both high growth rates and a mass trade union movement. Piketty himself points to the destruction of capital during the world wars, and the high rates of taxation and regulation that war mobilisation allowed. Others have different explanations.

No doubt many factors were involved, but almost everyone seems to be ignoring the most obvious. The period when capitalism seemed capable of providing broad and spreading prosperity was also, precisely, the period when capitalists felt they were not the only game in town: when they faced a global rival in the Soviet bloc, revolutionary anti-capitalist movements from Uruguay to China, and at least the possibility of workers' uprisings at home. In other words, rather than high rates of growth allowing greater wealth for capitalists to spread around, the fact that capitalists felt the need to buy off at least some portion of the working classes placed more money in ordinary people's hands, creating increasing consumer demand that was itself largely responsible for the remarkable rates of economic growth that marked capitalism's "golden age".

Anyone that didn't see this coming when the Berlin Wall fell and the USSR implode was blind to history. The thrust of Keynesianism and the New Deal was to co-opt socialism. Keynes and FDR were actually quite conservative rather than the liberal giants they are made out to be. They recognized the seriousness of the situation for capitalism and adopted an expedient approach. Once that necessity was perceived to be over, the push of the elite was for a return to the status quo ante.

The Guardian (UK)
Savage capitalism is back – and it will not tame itself
David Graeber, The Guardian

Matthew Martin — Piketty and immiseration of the capitalists

Hopefully, this [simple model] illustrates some of the theory behind Piketty's r>g proposition and its implications, and also convinces you that this is an empirical question ("Is r>g?") not a political one ("Should we care if almost everyone starves to death?").

Separating Hyperplanes — A blog between the spheres of Economic Theory and Policy Analysis
Piketty and immiseration of the capitalists
Matthew Marti

See also, Economic mobility is irrelevant.

Timothy Taylor — Economics and Morality

ECONOMISTS prefer to sidestep moral issues. They like to say they study trade-offs and incentives and interactions, leaving value judgments to the political process and society.

But moral judgments aren’t willing to sidestep economics.

Critiques of the relationship between economics and moral virtue can be grouped under three main headings: To what extent does ordinary economic life hold a capacity for virtue? Is economic analysis overstepping its bounds into zones of behavior that should be preserved from economics? Does the study of economics itself discourage moral behavior?

IMF
Economics and Morality
FINANCE & DEVELOPMENT, June 2014, Vol. 51, No. 2
Timothy Taylor | Managing Editor of the American Economic Association’s Journal of Economic Perspectives

John Quiggin — How Thomas Piketty found a mass audience, and what it means for public policy

Thomas Piketty’s phenomenally successful Capital confirms that Western countries are becoming less equal. John Quiggin looks at how he fits into a long-running debate about inequality, and finds some encouraging signs.

Inside Story (Australia)
How Thomas Piketty found a mass audience, and what it means for public policy
John Quiggin | Professor of Economics and ARC Laureate Fellow at the University of Queensland

See also, Piketty nitpicking at the Drum.

What can ordinary readers, without the capacity to do their own replications, make of all this? 

[1] The first point, true of all research, is not to put too much weight on a single study, however prominently it is reported. This was probably the biggest problem with the Reinhart-Rogoff piece: the most extreme interpretations of the results, suggesting that a debt/GDP ratio over 90 per cent would lead to disaster, got the most attention, even though the relatively small research literature on the topic did not support such a conclusion (as an aside, the ratio for Australia is around 15 per cent).

This is less of a problem for Piketty. His book reflects a huge literature on the inequality of income and wealth, in which various lines of evidence on changes in inequality have been presented, and vigorously criticised over the past few decades....

[2] Second, we need to distinguish nitpicks over trivial points from disagreements over major issues. Most of the problems raised by Giles are nitpicks ....

Stephen Roach on China and the US

The Fed’s mistake was to extrapolate – that is, to believe that shock therapy could not only save the patient but also foster sustained recovery. Two further rounds of QE expanded the Fed’s balance sheet by another $2.1 trillion between late 2009 and today, but yielded little in terms of jump-starting the real economy.

This becomes clear when the Fed’s liquidity injections are compared with increases in nominal GDP. From late 2008 to May 2014, the Fed’s balance sheet increased by a total of $3.4 trillion, well in excess of the $2.6 trillion increase in nominal GDP over the same period. This is hardly “Mission accomplished,” as QE supporters claim. Every dollar of QE generated only 76 cents of nominal GDP.

Unlike the United States, which relied largely on its central bank’s efforts to cushion the crisis and foster recovery, China deployed a CN¥4 trillion fiscal stimulus (about 12% of its 2008 GDP) to jump-start its sagging economy in the depths of the crisis. Whereas the US fiscal stimulus of $787 billion (5.5% of its 2009 GDP) gained limited traction, at best, on the real economy, the Chinese effort produced an immediate and sharp increase in “shovel-ready” infrastructure projects that boosted the fixed-investment share of GDP from 44% in 2008 to 47% in 2009.

To be sure, China also eased monetary policy. But such efforts fell well short of those of the Fed, with no zero-interest-rate or quantitative-easing gambits – only standard reductions in policy rates (five cuts in late 2008) and reserve requirements (four adjustments).

The most important thing to note is that there was no extrapolation mania in Beijing. Chinese officials viewed their actions in 2008-2009 as one-off measures, and they have been much quicker than their US counterparts to face up to the perils of policies initiated in the depths of the crisis. In America, denial runs deep....

It is often said that a crisis should never be wasted: Politicians, policymakers, and regulators should embrace the moment of deep distress and take on the heavy burden of structural repair. China seems to be doing that; America is not. Codependency points to an unavoidable conclusion: The US is about to become trapped in the perils of linear thinking.

Jewish Business News
Former Chairman Of Morgan Stanley Asia Stephen Roach : China Sets America’s Mental Trap
Stephen S. Roach | senior fellow at Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and a senior lecturer at Yale School of Management, and former Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia 

whoknu — The most important thing you will learn about Social Security today

MMT.

Job well done.

Daily Kos
The most important thing you will learn about Social Security today
whoknu

Paul B. Farrell — Big Oil vs. ‘Transformers’: Extinction either way

Get ready for the next big trend — global warming.

Commentary: Movie blockbuster an allegory for real battle here on Earth

Market Watch
Big Oil vs. ‘Transformers’: Extinction either way
Paul B. Farrell

Noah Smith — A serious proposal for undergrad econ

The problem is that there's just no room. Econ 101 is already overflowing with material. So what I actually propose is to create an econ "lab sequence" just for empirics, similar to what they do in physics. This "lab sequence" would only be for econ majors, and would be a separate but linked course. It would teach R or some other equally useful data management tool (a more advanced second-year lab course would teach Matlab). If the only thing students learn in the class is how to manage data, run regressions, and use R, the time will not have been wasted.

I also think that there should be two versions of intro econ - one for econ majors, which is more advanced and mathematical, and one for people who just want to learn some economics ideas. This is also similar to how physics departments and math departments do things.

The basic idea is to make undergrad econ a bit more like an engineering major. Since a lot of America's future managers major in economics, a more technical focus for the entire econ major will give them the skills to succeed in today's increasingly technical business world.

More math.

Noahpinion
A serious proposal for undergrad econ
Noah Smith | Assistant Professor of Finance, Stony Brook University

Brad DeLong — Unjust Deserts

We would have a much clearer discussion of issues of inequality and distribution if we would simply stick to considerations of human wellbeing and useful incentives. The rest is meritocratic ideology; and, as the reception of Piketty’s book suggests, that ideology may now have run its course.

Project Syndicate
Unjust Deserts
J. Bradford DeLong | Professor of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research

Suresh Naidu — Capital Eats the World

Naidu observes that it is not only wealth and status that confer power, but also legal and other institutional arrangement that are under the control of the ruling elite who formulate these arrangements in their individual and class interests.

The everyday encounter most people have with accumulated wealth is not through prices in the market for shoes, or the society pages, but instead the control and threats inflicted by their employers, landlords, and bankers. [1] Inequality of income and wealth means that some people live off unjustly earned income, [2] but it also means a lot more people are on the short-end of an asymmetric exchange, toiling away as personal assistants and Mechanical Turks.

This is where Piketty’s Walrasian conventions dampen his contribution: he discusses the first, but not the second. It’s like saying slavery is an inequality of assets between slaves and slaveholders without describing the plantation.

 The consequences of neoliberalism as a social, political and economic theory of society and governmance:

An economy that allows indentured labor means that wealth can purchase more power over people; an economy with robust union contracts means that capital is trammeled in its control over the shop floor. From sexual harassment on the job to the indignities of gentrification and nonprofit funding, a world of massive inequality is a world where rich people get to shape environments that everybody else has to accept.

Piketty repeatedly announces that politics plays a large role in the distribution of income. But he neglects that the distribution of income and wealth also generates inequalities of larger privileges and prerogatives; wealth inequality together with a thoroughly commodified society enables a million mini-dictatorships, wherein the political power of the rich is exercisedthrough the market itself....

But there is an important and nasty complementarity between massive inequality in income and wealth and a commodified, “fully-incentivized” world. When every action can have pecuniary rewards attached to it, and every source of well-being can be priced at exactly a person’s willingness to pay, the social power commanded by the rich is magnified in a way that is difficult to see when comparing a dollar in 1920 with a dollar today.

What are the solutions?

Where Do We Go From Here?

Piketty’s book reflects the promise and current limits of economics as a discipline. The ideas, which are powerful, could not have originated anywhere but mainstream economics. They require a command of the mathematical models of growth and taxation, and only economists would appreciate the painstaking reconstruction of the balance sheet data.

But Piketty oscillates between paying homage to fundamental forces of technology, tastes, and supply and demand, and then backtracking to say that politics and institutions are important.... 

So how to do better?
[1] A first step could be a multisector model with both a productive sector and an extractive, rent-seeking outlet for investment, so that the rate of return on capital has the potential to be unanchored from the growth of the economy. This model could potentially do a better job of explaining r > g in a world where capital has highly profitable opportunities in rent-seeking rather than production, and it would generally disassociate the growth of the productive economy from the growth of abstract wealth....

[2] More fundamentally, a model that started with the financial and firm-level institutions underneath the supply and demand curves for capital, rather than blackboxing them in production and utility functions, could illuminate complementarities among the host of other political demands that would claw back the share taken by capital and lower the amount paid out as profits before the fiscal system gets its take.

This is putting meat on what Brad Delong calls the “wedge” between the actual and warranted rate of profit.

Conclusion.

We need even more and even better economics to figure out which of these may get undone via market responses and which won’t, and to think about them jointly with the politics that make each feasible or not. While Piketty’s book diagnoses the problem of capital’s voracious appetite, it would require a different kind of model to take our focus off the nominal quantities registered by state fiscal systems, and instead onto the broader distribution of political power in the world economy.

Jacobin
Capital Eats the World
Suresh Naidu | Assistant Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Columbia University

Mark Karlin — New Allende Overthrow Info Reconfirms US Suppresses Economically-Rebellious Democracies

New revelations about the Chilean military overthrow of the popularly elected Salvador Allende regime in 1973 once again confirm that the US is supportive of democracies that enhance US economic interests, but it is the enemy of those that don't.

Truthout/Buzzflash
New Allende Overthrow Info Reconfirms US Suppresses Economically-Rebellious Democracies
Mark Karlin, Editor Of Buzzflash At Truthout
(h/t Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism)

The Arthurian — How does it get from this balance sheet to that one?

Accounting deals with balance sheets.
Economics deals with forces that change balance sheets....

Today, there is only about four cents of circulating money for every dollar of debt. Four cents. No wonder debt seems a burden today.

Every dollar of that debt corresponds to a dollar of money that was newly created when the debt was created. The debt still exists. So where is the other 96 cents?

A lot of it went into savings and other financial assets, and out of circulation.

There's a big focus these days on income inequality. Here's the root of the problem: Some people are earning interest and others are paying interest on more and more and more of the money in our economy.It's a mad house! A mad house!

The graph shows there's only four cents left, with which to pay the interest and principal on a dollar of debt and still do everything else we need money for.

And paying off a dollar of debt reduces that four cents by a dollar.

The New Arthurian Economics
How does it get from this balance sheet to that one?
The Arthurian

Philip Pilkington — What Would Keynes Have Said About the Current Stagnation?

So there you have it! With a bit of modification Keynes’ old Fundamental Equations can be used to provide quite a nice account of the current stagnation in the US, which is basically a result of households pulling back on their debt-fueled consumption spending (and the reaction of investment to this loss of effective demand).

Fixing the Economists
What Would Keynes Have Said About the Current Stagnation?
Philip Pilkington

Don Quijones — A Message to the Bilderberg Group from a Dead President

Building the global transnational corporate state .

This weekend, around 100 of the most powerful luminaries from the worlds of politics, business, finance and media will be converging on a luxury hotel in Denmark for two days of secret deliberations (you can see a full list of the attendees here). Among the rather ominous topics under discussion will be the “future of democracy”, privacy, intelligence sharing, the sustainability of the economic recovery, Ukraine and the “new architecture” of the Middle East.

There is no way for the public to know what is said behind the hotel´s closed doors, for all the guests and hotel staff are sworn to secrecy. And while the media is finally beginning to tentatively report on the Bilderberg Group after a universal blackout lasting decades, not a single mainstream publication will dare to address the massive conflicts of interests posed by our supposed elected representatives meeting clandestinely with the leaders of some of the world’s most powerful corporations.

Raging Bull-shit
A Message to the Bilderberg Group from a Dead President
Don Quijones

Andrew G Haldane — Unfair Shares

Inequality has become the issue du jour – especially, it seems, when it is expressed in French. Yet until recently, inequality was a deeply unfashionable topic among academics and policymakers. Until the crisis, it is difficult to identify a period in the past 50 years when inequality was close to the top of the public policy or academic agenda (Stiglitz (2012)).

Bank of England
Unfair Shares
Remarks given by Andrew G Haldane, Executive Director, Financial Stability and member of the Financial Policy Committee
At the Bristol Festival of Ideas event, Bristol, 21 May 2014

Military: Climate Strategy Vital, Not Political Chicken Game (via Planetsave)

Military: Climate Strategy Vital, Not Political Chicken Game (via Planetsave)

A panel of extraordinary military leaders—16 men and women generals and admirals, including prior commanders, commandants, and members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—came to a pretty devastating conclusion recently about climate strategy. The Military…

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Matt Bruenig — Locke and Hobhouse on coercion

L. T. Hobhouse and John Locke are two great British liberals separated by two centuries. But they both saw the coercion inherent in economic inequality. They both saw the way in which the person who has much can dominate and subordinate the person who has little. And they both found it reprehensible, something that must be protected against, for liberty.

Wealth = power.

Matt Bruenig
Locke and Hobhouse on coercion

Matt O'Brien — Piketty’s ‘errors’ aren’t mistakes: They’re questions, and he answered them

Thomas Piketty thinks the Financial Times knows nothing of his technical work. 

That's the Cliff Notes version of his 4,400-word response to the criticisms the Financial Times leveled against the data in his best-selling book "Capital in the Twenty-First Century." Piketty says that even though he expects people to improve on his work in the future, he still stands by it today, and the mistakes the Financial Times thinks it's found aren't actually mistakes — and that they'd know this if they'd read the appendices he put online.

Now, to recap, these alleged — emphasis here — errors fall into three categories: 1) transcription mistakes, 2) unexplained data tweaks and 3) in the case of Britain, incorrect data. But the problem with these problems, as I pointed out, is that they aren't ones. They're questions. How did Piketty choose which source to use when they told different stories? How did he adjust them? And how much did his big-picture results depend on these decisions? All good questions — but still just questions.

Well, now that Piketty has answered the FT's criticisms, let's go through them one by one.

The Washington Post — WonkBlog
Piketty’s ‘errors’ aren’t mistakes: They’re questions, and he answered them
Matt O'Brien

Myles Udland — Bank Of America Merrill Lynch Is 'Comfortable With The Thrust' Of Piketty's Analysis

Bank of America Merrill Lynch is siding with Thomas Piketty, the French economist whose data on inequality was recently questioned by the Financial Times.

"We are aware of the controversy over Piketty’s math (see the FT Money Supply blog), but are generally comfortable with the thrust of his analysis, having read his 577-pager, looked at his (problematic) spreadsheets, and cross-checked his data with alternative, credible sources," write BofA Merrill Lynch's Ajay Kapur. "His questionable assumptions do not detract from the power of his thesis."

Kapur and his team said this in a lengthy report titled, "Piketty and Plutonomy: The revenge of inequality," outlining the impacts of plutonomists, or the super rich, on investors.

They lead by stating, "Plutonomists – the very rich – cannot be ignored."

The skew toward the super-rich makes looking at averages an incomplete exercise, they argue...

Business Insider
Bank Of America Merrill Lynch Is 'Comfortable With The Thrust' Of Piketty's Analysis
Myles Udland

Nick Beams — Financial Times’ attack on Piketty under fire

[Christine] Lagarde told the conference that progress in building a safer financial system was being held back because of “fierce industry pushback” against the introduction of new regulations. 

[Mark] Carney went much further, warning that the entire capitalist system is at risk. Unbridled faith in financial markets, corruption and rising inequality had damaged the “social fabric,” he said. Inequality was “demonstratively” growing and risked undermining what he called the “basic social contract” based on fairness.

“We simply cannot take the capitalist system, which produces such plenty and so many solutions, for granted,” he declared. “Prosperity requires not just investment in economic capital, but investment in social capitalism.”

Unchecked market fundamentalism, he warned, could “devour the social capital essential for the long-term dynamism of capitalism itself.”

In its editorial on Piketty, the Financial Times asserted that if there were problems in the accumulation of extraordinary wealth derived from “monopoly profits,” then “enlightened governments” should step in and “remove barriers to entry so that unfair rents disappear.”

In other words, let the “magic of the market” and competition do their work in lessening inequality.

The fundamental flaw in this analysis was exposed by Marx more than 160 years ago. As he explained, the very aim and logic of competition is not more competition, let alone fairness, but the creation of monopoly as “one capitalist kills many.” [economies of scale]

The present economic situation, in which a few dozen major banks and transnational corporations monopolise and dominate the world economy, providing ever greater wealth to the ruling corporate and financial elites and their hangers-on, is precisely the outcome of the “free market” and competition.

The FT’s attack on Piketty is an attempt to deal with social inequality and its explosive political consequences by denying it.

Carney has decided to follow a different course in an attempt to head off deepening opposition and hostility to the capitalist system.

He is calling on the very financial interests that have plundered the wealth of society for their own benefit to undergo a miraculous transformation and become more socially responsible, in order to prevent political and social upheaval. Both efforts are doomed to failure as social reality brings an intensification of the class struggle.

WSWS
Financial Times’ attack on Piketty under fire
Nick Beams

John Weeks — "Why Is Capital In The 21st Century (C21C) Such A Success?"

About a month ago — this is a true story — after a meeting of Economists Against Austerity, I hailed a taxi in Westminster (the workers of the underground system were on strike). During the ensuring discussion with the driver I mentioned that I taught economics at the University of London before retiring. The driver then asked me, have you read this book by a Frenchman named Piketty?

A London taxi driver discussing an economics book, much less one 578 pages long (text only) qualifies the book as a “phenomenon” by the dictionary definition, “a fact or situation that is observed to exist or happen, especially one whose cause or explanation is in question”. And very much in question the cause is. I am in the process of writing a review of these 578 pages (plus the occasional excursion into a footnote), and at this point limit myself to speculating over why it has swept all before it.... 

I suspect — let me stress than I have never met Piketty, only heard him speak (see his Real News interview with Lynn Fries) — that a tactical decision was made to avoid discussion of macroeconomic policy in C21C, as well as to avoid directly confronting political debates. Most of the previous exposés of inequality had overtly linked to neoliberal policies of deregulation, especially in the financial sector. Several years of constant and duplicitous attack on this obviously correct causality by the mainstream of the economics profession, right-wing to the core, drove it from public discussion. So successful has been this counterattack that in both Britain and the United States a majority of people believe that excessive public sector spending explains the lack of a recovery if not the crisis itself.

When listing the many shortcomings of C21C we should not include “naivety”. Unless I am wrong, the decision was made to keep C21C narrowly focused on inequality, while padding that discussion with countless diversions into cultural and historical commentary. The goal was to stimulate debate over inequality rather than seriously deal with causality or policy. That is not the way I would have written C21C, but – hey – it worked. He put the inequality ball in play and now it is for progressives to score a goal with it.

Social Europe Journal
"Why Is Capital In The 21st Century (C21C) Such A Success?"
John Weeks | Professor Emeritus of the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London

Simon Wren-Lewis — What the Financial Times got (very) wrong

 So the mistake the Financial Times made was not that they allowed one of their best investigative journalists to look at Piketty’s spreadsheets (which Piketty had, to his great credit, made publicly available). As I said in my earlier post, a FT article that looked at the alternative sources for UK wealth inequality data, and questioned the idea that wealth inequality was inevitably rising in most countries, would have been an interesting piece. [1] The paper’s mistake was to write the story as an exposé.   

Why did the Financial Times want to run a ‘gotcha’ piece in the first place? Of course Piketty has become something of a celebrity, and tabloids love to knock celebrities down. But the FT is no tabloid, and to think it was just about celebrity may be politically naive. As Henry Farrell and Mike Konczal noted in a typically acute pair of posts, a focus on inequality as a central issue in economics is very threatening to some, and many of those who feel threatened will read the Financial Times.

Headline: Oxford professor calls the Financial Times political hacks.

Mainly Macro
What the Financial Times got (very) wrong
Simon Wren-Lewis | Professor of Economics, Oxford University

Paul Polman — Business, society, and the future of capitalism

Capitalism has served us enormously well. Yet while it has helped to reduce global poverty and expand access to health care and education, it has come at an enormous cost: unsustainable levels of public and private debt, excessive consumerism, and, frankly, too many people who are left behind. Any system that prevents large numbers of people from fully participating or excludes them altogether will ultimately be rejected. And that’s what you see happening. People are asking, “What are we doing here? The amount of resources we currently use is 1.5 times the world’s resource capacity. Is that sustainable? A billion people still go to bed hungry. Is that sustainable? The richest 85 people have the same wealth as the bottom 3.5 billion. Is that sustainable?” Digitization and the Internet have given consumers enormous abilities to connect and aggregate their voices. Power is dispersed, but wealth is concentrated. Further development and population growth will put a lot more pressure on our planet....

"Power is dispersed, but wealth is concentrated." Huh?

McKinsey
Business, society, and the future of capitalism
Paul Polman | CEO, Unilever. The interview underlying this article was conducted by Rik Kirkland, McKinsey Publishing’s senior managing editor, who is based in McKinsey’s New York office.

Andrés Velasco — Monsieur Piketty Goes to Latin America

A recent paper by economists at the International Monetary Fund, using a new data set covering many countries, is fairly sanguine about the potential for increased redistribution without undermining economic growth. But the paper also offers a reminder that there are limits to how much income the tax system can redistribute....

The problem is that Chile’s after-tax Gini coefficient is approximately 50 (Brazil, Colombia, and Peru have similar figures), while those of the advanced countries are mostly in the low 30’s or even the high 20’s. Turning Chile and some of its neighbors into countries with OECD levels of equality will require a great deal more than tax reform.

Put differently: if a society’s initial playing field is very uneven, that society will remain quite unequal even after a sizeable fiscal redistribution. The policy focus, therefore, must also be on what Yale University political scientist Jacob Hacker calls “pre-distribution”: changing the market-determined structure of wage incomes.

Project Syndicate
Monsieur Piketty Goes to Latin America
Andrés Velasco, a former presidential candidate and finance minister of Chile, is Professor of Professional Practice in International Development at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs

Mark Thoma — Piketty, Krugman, and Wren-Lewis Respond to the FT

Rolling out the big guns against the big guns. The FT rejoinder is Martin Feldstein's WSJ hit piece.

Piketty's full response from Vox EU (see also Paul Krugman: Thomas Doubting Refuted and Simon Wren-Lewis: What the Financial Times got (very) wrong)

Economist's View
Piketty, Krugman, and Wren-Lewis Respond to the FT
Mark Thoma | Professor of Economics, University of Oregon

Matias Vernengo — Not even the IMF believes in Reinhart and Rogoff debt limits

When you've lost even the IMF on austerity, you've lost it all — excepting the diehards, of course.

Naked Keynesianism
Not even the IMF believes in Reinhart and Rogoff debt limits
Matias Vernengo | Associate Professor of Economics, University of Utah

Steve Randy Waldman — Welfare economics: an introduction (part 1 of a series)

Lotsa weekend reading. Put this on the list.

Commenters at interfluidity are usually much smarter than the author whose pieces they scribble beneath, and the previous post was no exception. But there were (I think) some pretty serious misconception in the comment thread, so I thought I’d give a bit of a primer on “welfare economics”, as I understand the subject. It looks like this will go long. I’ll turn it into a series.

Utility, welfare, and efficiency

Our first concern will be a question of definitions. What is the difference between, and the relationship of, “welfare” and “utility”? The two terms sound similar, and seem often to be used in similar ways. But the difference between them is stark and important.

Interfluidity
Welfare economics: an introduction (part 1 of a series)
Steve Randy Waldman

Mike Beggs — A General Without an Army

For all Piketty’s mainstream respectability, it is only the radical left and the labor movement — not treasuries and central banks — that can push his program.

 Piketty has formulated policy rationale; now the need is for strategy and tactics to implement it.

Jacobin
A General Without an Army
Mike Beggs, an editor at Jacobin and a lecturer in Political Economy at the University of Sydney

Mike Beggs — Not Another Piketty Symposium

In February, a column in the Economist registered the resentment spilling over San Franciscan streets, erupting outside IT-industry awards nights and in front of the Google buses. The anonymous “Schumpeter” columnist was bemused that glamorous tech companies had joined Wall Street as villains for the Left and become blamed for gentrification.

To some extent, “Schumpeter” assured readers, this was a wacky San Francisco thing. The city “has more than its fair share of professional protesters — including those who think they have the right to live in one of the world’s most desirable places even if they can’t rub two pennies together.”

Meanwhile, “most people outside San Francisco still look on its tech firms with admiration, not disgust.” But those beyond the Bay Area ought to pay attention, “Schumpeter” went on, because this was a harbinger of things to come — namely, the “triumph of meritocracy.” The tech industry exemplified and increased “the relationship between IQ, education and reward.”

But when meritocrats enjoy those just rewards, it must be hard for the rest of us to take. “[T]hey buy up, occupy and gentrify whole urban districts: they are seceding in plain sight. This inevitably creates tensions as the service class sees a parallel world being constructed before their eyes.”

A few weeks later, this already reads like a period piece from another time: the pre-Piketty era.

Jacobin
Not Another Piketty Symposium
Mike Beggs, an editor at Jacobin and a lecturer in Political Economy at the University of Sydney

Seth Ackerman — Piketty’s Fair-Weather Friends

Does Capital In the Twenty-First Century represent a new departure for modern economics? Is Palley right to fear that Piketty’s book will be domesticated? Is Krugman right to hold it up as a vindication of the mainstream? And does it make a difference? 

It’s been pointed out that in France, where Capital in the Twenty-First Centurywas first published, Piketty and his book got nothing like the rock-star reception they found in America. The difference, it seems clear, was due to the book’s relentless prepublication promotion here by a cadre of prominent liberal economists and friendly commentators who have long sought to push the subject of inequality to the center of American public debate. Obviously, they’ve succeeded more than they could have guessed.

But as the book is digested, it’s increasingly doubtful whether (or how) its arguments can be reconciled with the MIT-style economic paradigm to which Piketty’s most ardent American promoters — liberal economists like Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Brad DeLong — swear allegiance. Piketty is having trouble on his liberal flank.

He’s having trouble on his left flank, too. For example, Thomas Palley, a left economist formerly with the AFL-CIO, has expressed the fear that after the excitement dies down, “Piketty’s book may end up being Gattopardo economics that offers change without change” (a reference to Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s 1963 novel of the Italian Risorgimento in which a nineteenth-century nobleman tells his uncle that “if we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change”). Suresh Naidu likewise warns of the potential for a “bastard Pikettyism” — a mainstreamed re-interpretation of the book that domesticates its critical messages.

In a response almost calculated to confirm Palley’s fears, Paul Krugman, the very model of the MIT liberal, chimed in. For him, the lesson of Capital in the Twenty-First Century is that mainstream theory has shown its worth: “You really don’t need to reject standard economics either to explain high inequality or to consider it a bad thing.”

Jacobin
Piketty’s Fair-Weather Friends
Seth Ackerman, an editor at Jacobin and a doctoral candidate in history at Cornell

Kevin Quinn — r and g redux

Thomas Piketty, Joan Robinson, and the overlapping generations model.

EconoSpeak
r and g redux
Kevin Quinn | Associate Professor of Economics, Bowling Green State University

George Cooper — Kuhn Wins The Piketty Debate

We are now far enough through the cycle of Piketty analysis to know how it will end. There will be no clear victor. Those who were instinctively supportive of Piketty’s thesis before reading his book will be able to ignore any alleged flaws in his data, and challenges to either his mathematical theory of capital accumulation or his narrative theory of capital destruction. This group will conclude what they already knew – inequality is too high and rising and should be addressed with higher taxation. On the other side, those who were immediately sceptical of his thesis will dwell on the discrepancies in his data and the challenges to his mathematics and history. This group will conclude that his thesis can safely be dismissed.

Of the small minority who have the time and patience to delve into multiple layers of argument and counter argument there will be a vanishingly small proportion who are persuaded to materially alter their position, based on what they have learned. A much larger number of people, on both sides, will find reason to consider their prior point of view as vindicated by the Piketty debate. This group will emerge from the affair with more deeply entrenched positions than before. As a result the economic debate will become more polarised and even more dysfunctional. In short, the confusion generated by Piketty’s book will push an already deeply dysfunctional economics further into crisis.

Perversely the deepening crisis in economics is a triumph for Thomas Kuhn and his theory of scientific revolutions.

Isn't this where we started with the orthodox-heterodox divide?

For those of us who enjoy debating macroeconomic issues this is all good entertainment. However, as a process for deciding how best to manage our economies, this sterile, divisive, debate is a dreadful way to proceed. Economics is ultimately responsible for setting the policies which determine the livelihoods of millions of people – we therefore owe it to ourselves and our children to find a better way to conduct the debate.

Fortunately Thomas Kuhn did more than just describe what scientific crises looks like, he also told us what needs to be done to resolve a scientific crisis. Kuhn explained we need to find a way to reconcile the apparently irreconcilable world views of the various competing schools of thought.

On the face of it appears an almost impossible task to find a theory which is able to agree with both the instinctively pro-Piketty crowd with his instinctive opponents. But with a little imagination there may be a way through this impasse.

Cooper's analysis of the design problem and proposal of a design solutions follows. Definitely worth a read.

Kuhn Wins The Piketty Debate
George Cooper

Dan Kervick — Piketty on the Dynamics of Inequality: Four Useful Theorems

Dan provided a detailed examination of what Piketty is actually arguing about inequality. Many other commenters are wandering in the woods.

From my (political) POV this is key:

Piketty couches most of his arguments about equality and inequality in terms of forces of divergence and forces of convergence. His approach is to identify those conditions under which the forces of divergence will predominate, and if so, how strongly they will predominate. His view is that at the beginning of the 21st century, the conditions appear to be in place for the forces of divergence to acquire renewed strength, although he also stresses that nothing is certain, and the exact course of 21st century inequality depends on a host of political, demographic, technological and economic factors. One thing Piketty routinely stresses, however, is that the forces for divergence operate very strongly when r is “significantly and durably” higher than g, and automatically lead to a very high concentration of wealth.

Wealth = power. And that power is related to class and class interests.

Once divergence of "capitalist" share and worker share sets in, power builds to maintain it and increase it. Times of convergence are rare and "capitalists" immediately set about reversing it and they have the power to do so over time, since wealth tends to concentrate through rents unless continually dispersed though effective policy.


Piketty doesn't seem to hammer on this, but it is strongly implicit at least. This is why the top tier see him as a "Marxist," even though Piketty claims not to have read Marx closely or been strongly influenced by his work.

Rugged Egalitarianism
Piketty on the Dynamics of Inequality: Four Useful Theorems
Dan Kervick

Howard Reed — Piketty, Chris Giles and wealth inequality: it's all about the discontinuities

A Financial Times piece criticising the data underlying Thomas Piketty's book Capital in the Twenty-First Century sparked a heated debate. Economist Howard Reed argues that data discontinuities play a major role in the discrepancies

Overall, the Piketty series, while not a perfect representation of the raw data (adjusted for discontinuities), fits the pattern of underlying changes in wealth inequality much better than the Giles series, which is largely an artefact of the discontinuities.

To summarise, Chris Giles's investigation of Piketty's data has uncovered some errors and inconsistencies which Piketty will hopefully address in future work. This shows the importance of quality assurance and third party checking of all results from statistical analysis – particularly when they involve spreadsheets, where it is very easy to make errors.

However, Giles then goes on to make a very serious error of his own in handling the UK data: he treats changes in the way wealth inequality is measured over the decades as if they were real changes in the underlying distribution of wealth. This error leads him to the misleading conclusion that wealth inequality fell in the UK between 1980 and 2010, whereas in fact it has increased (although not by quite as much as Piketty's published results would suggest).

If you are interested in parsing the details of the data discrepancies, Howard Reed lays it out. The takeaway is that Giles did not adjust and admits it, while Piketty did. Although there are always points to pick with respect to such adjustment, Piketty has a rationale for his choices. The raw data that Giles provides is a red herring.

The Guardian (UK)
Piketty, Chris Giles and wealth inequality: it's all about the discontinuities
Howard Reed, director of the economic research consultancy Landman Economics

Randy Wray — Taxes and the Public Purpose

In previous instalments we have established that “taxes drive money”. What we mean by that is that sovereign government chooses a money of account (Dollar in the USA), imposes obligations in that unit (taxes, fees, fines, tithes, tolls, or tribute), and issues the currency that can be used to “redeem” oneself in payments to the government. Currency is like the “Get Out of Jail Free” card in the game of Monopoly.

Taxes create a demand for “that which is necessary to pay taxes” (and other obligations to the state), which allows the government to purchase resources to pursue the public purpose by spending the currency.

Warren Mosler puts it this way: the purpose of the tax is to create unemployment. That might sound a bit strange, but if we define unemployment as a situation in which job seekers want to work for money wages, then government can hire them by offering its currency. The tax frees resources from private use so that government can employ them in public use.

To greatly simplify, money is a measuring unit, originally created by rulers to value the fees, fines, and taxes owed.

By putting the subjects or citizens into debt, real resources could be moved to serve the public purpose. Taxes drive money.

So, money was created to give government command over socially created resources.

New Economic Perspectives
Taxes and the Public Purpose
L. Randall Wray | Professor of Economics, University of Missouri at Kansas City

John Armour — Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” (or what’s so hard about MMT)

Proponents of MMT generally can’t understand why people don’t “get” MMT as it seems so obvious. They may have forgotten however, that at their critical point of ‘enlightenment’ they had to jump a number of conceptual barriers to get to the other side. 

In my experience, these are the six (seemingly) “impossible things” you have to believe (before or after meals, it doesn’t matter) to have any hope of ‘getting’ MMT. Once you believe these “impossible things” however, the getting of wisdom follows quickly and logically.

The order of priority is based on my experience of the degree of ‘jaw dropped-ness’ as I’ve sought to explain to friends, family, and household pets.

(1) Taxes don’t fund anything

(2) The government doesn’t borrow from anybody to finance its spending

(3) The government’s fiscal balance (deficit) is the non-government sector’s surplus.

(4) The government creates currency by fiat (‘out of thin air’)

(5) Bond issuance is not borrowing.

(6) Banks lend without reserves constraints imposed by the central bank.

They are of course not “impossible things” but the absolute reality of the sovereign fiat monetary system we actually operate under.

I could’ve added a few more but I needed just six to fit my literary allusion (“Through the Looking Glass”).

Modern Monetary Theory: Real Economics“
Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” (or what’s so hard about MMT)
Guest Post by John Armour

MMT for Kids, Professional Economists, Pundits, and other underdeveloped frontal lobes: Austerity is Nuts!

Ok kids, for today’s Fun Friday story time, lets look out the window for a lesson in econ 101. No need for your textbooks today, unless you need to stack up the Mankiw’s to see over the window ledge. Yes Billy, your Hubbard will work ok too.

Once upon a time, there was a forest full of oak trees and hungry squirrels. You see, the oak trees didn't have to save their nuts, because only they could make them! That's because the oak trees are the monopoly issuers of acorns. They grow their own acorns, and then they let the squirrels collect them. The squirrels are users of the nuts, and so they do need to worry about how they will get them, and maintain their supply of acorns in the future. Thats why smart squirrels dont eat all the acorns at once; they bury some away for the future. But the oak tree doesn’t have to do this, because it can just create more acorns! If the oak trees dont create enough acorns to feed all the squirrels, then some of the squirrels will have to go hungry. While the best trained squirrels may be able to beat the competition and have enough for themselves, there may be some other squirrels who go hungry. This is like how job training programs are somehow supposed to lower unemployment--it doesnt matter how trained employees are if there is not enough money to hire them. So is the US government the monopoly issuer of the dollar? Does Pete Peterson shit in the woods a gold toilet?

And guess what? The ability of squirrels to save nuts is based on how many the oak trees create. If the trees create only enough nuts to feed all the squirrels in the present time, none of the squirrels will be able to save any nuts for the future!  This is just like when the federal government does not create enough dollars for the economy, us folks as a whole cannot save. Perhaps our good friend Mike Rowe should spend some more time in the woods, and less time hanging out with Glenn Beck. If a deficit hack screams in the forest, and only squirrels are around to hear him, does he make a sound? Its ok either way, because no matter what, he can get a job at the Washington Post. The end!

Zuckerberg, wife gift $120M to CA schools

AP story here.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, are donating $120 million to the San Francisco Bay Area's public school system.

Boy, aren't the children in the SF area school district lucky to have people like this couple to help their local public education institution obtain USD balances to use to provision their school system.

If not for these two, where else could the USD balances have come from as every other current libertarian moron administered government institution in the country is "out of money!" at this time.

These two have indeed saved the day for these poor children in the bay area who just want a robust primary education like every other previous generation of US citizens who have enjoyed a robust public primary education.

Thank goodness these two bazillionaires have come to their rescue!

I'm sure these two fell pretty good about themselves after taking the liberty of providing this huge free will donation of all their hard-earned "money" .. what kind of person wouldn't?

Stephanie Kelton — Seeping into the Mainstream?

Scott Fullwiler spent part of the afternoon reading (and reacting to) a paper that John Cochrane just gave at a conference on central banking in Stanford, CA. I haven’t read the paper yet, but judging byScott’s reaction on Twitter, there’s lots to like about it. (Mostly because it appears to draw heavily from a broad swath of at least a decade of published work from MMTers.)

New Economic Perspectives
Seeping into the Mainstream?
Stephanie Kelton

The Ever Expanding MMT Video Library

 From Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/notes/mmt-deficit-owl-usa-committee/the-ever-expanding-mmt-video-library/668751819864639

The Ever Expanding MMT Video Library

By Mike Wright on Thursday, May 29, 2014 at 6:41pm

Stephanie Kelton Thom Hartmann April 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdFWJRTkUgo
Marshall Auerback RT April 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxA1FFV1AhQ
Stephanie Kelton Augustana Symposium April 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkAKG6nkFM4#t=64
Warren Mosler API Torino March 2014 5 parts
http://apitorinocms.directio.it/multimedia/video/2014/03/25-mosler-parte-1
Warren Mosler TG3 Calabria TV Interview March 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vp1xAYMsKFc
Warren Mosler University of Bergamo March 2014
Part One: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrVYZ_GoJ40
Part Two: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_s3ntxoC1FA
Part Three: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMnn3LGDfWw
Part Four: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFRWc015ZeE
Warren Mosler Interview with Euro Truffa March 2014
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llWuNco2YU0&feature=
L. Randall Wray Interview with Euro Truffa March 2014
6 parts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDGNA6a-Muw&index=7&list=PLEoX3LlTIIvqCKFzfFQJOfg_hEyF80kJH
Warren Mosler, Andrea Terzi, Stefano Lucarelli, and Riccardo Bellofiore March 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbhA6Id9lbk#t=1000
Stephanie Kelton Real News Network March 2014
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11492
L. Randall Wray Thom Hartmann Feb 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us_dIMU2Yak
Warren Mosler RT America's Boom and Bust Feb 2014
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI_xHB7u54E
"Paul Krugman, Let Me Explain" by Joe Firestone. Video by Hitesh Panchal Feb 2014
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm3rnJy18W4
Warren Mosler in Italy Jan 2014:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM-9vUGavG4
"Diagrams and Dollars" by J.D. Alt. Video by Trixie Jan 2014
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTZGU9s0idM
Pavlina Tcherneva "Modern Money and the Job Guarantee"
Jan 2014 http://vimeo.com/83813741
Bill Mitchell "Framing Modern Monetary Theory" Dec 2013
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHcueExMkOU
Narrated slide presentation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2JwUKEUdPY
L. Randall Wray INET interview w/ Marshall Auerback Dec 2013
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfMnbnMXpOA
Stephanie Kelton Thom Hartmann Dec 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3C6_OhuU20
L. Randall Wray Rethinking the State Dec 2013
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJg04BBsz8Y
"A Bad Day For Informed Debate" by Bill Mitchell. Video by Alberto Veronese.
Nov 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIsdN2oS91Y
Marshall Auerback Interview with Jan Kregel Nov 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVMcq2EXq0E
"What Does the Owl Say?" Stephanie Kelton's MMT Coloring Book. Video by Alberto Veronese Nov 2013
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLntiX4AeWc
New Economic Perspectives on the Government Budget, Deficits, and Debts by UMKC grad students Nov 2013
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCrn4lfwQLc
Stephanie Kelton Moneybizlife.com Nov 2013
http://www.moneybizlife.com/videos/money-and-the-deficit-with-dr-stephanie-kelton/#.UudCFBDnbrc
Warren Mosler Italian Parliament Nov 2013
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h073A1oE-Yk
Pavlina Tcherneva Rethinking the State Oct 2013
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3f7RGoYdkvo
Pavlina Tcherneva w/ others MM&PP 8 Sept 2013
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3uWDnLVPv8
Warren Mosler at UMKC Aug 2013
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1uWVj0YJ3M
Marshall Auerback INET Interview of Charles Goodhart Aug 2013
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p8fPRGACUQ
Warren Mosler INET interview w/ Marshall Auerback July 2013
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGuNpqYBkZk
Warren Mosler v. Robert Murphy (MMT v. Austrian Economics) June 2013http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUTLCDBONok
John Henry EPIC interview June 2013 6 parts
part 1) http://youtu.be/emFEQuPwWY8
part 2) http://youtu.be/bZ2fQP0hCQA
part 3) http://youtu.be/euFI3uWeZaU
part 4) http://youtu.be/GAqI6FBt7zs
part 5) http://youtu.be/2MWOI6CNYuY
part 6) http://youtu.be/wlPEzhiftmI
Marshall Auerback Matterhorn Interview May 2013
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6oMsLOBnxY
Scott Fullwiler w/ others MM&PP 6 April 2013
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soVyyyXrcwo
Warren Mosler Zurich Speech "The Euro Past, President, and Future" March 2013
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YhrtktLQQw
Q&A:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEgBKSPMKhY
Marshall Auerback, Stephanie Kelton, and Bill Black EPIC Interview March 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhSXhkWjN8I&feature=youtu.be
Warren Mosler EPIC Interview March 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gv5J_6ZkKg&feature=youtu.be
L. Randall Wray Thom Hartmann March 2013 6 parts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O03xa40oDPI&index=2&list=PLwNpQQv79seHz1DSujvZZTvf71g4CPa_a
Stephanie Kelton Thom Hartmann Feb 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHjUguFzkUs
Michael Hudson Thom Hartmann Feb 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzSNkNaLRc8
Stephanie Kelton on Chris Hayes MSNBC Jan 2013
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alFXKTTr8eE
MMT Movie: Economics for Dummiez by Trixie Jan 2013
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw3uXAQ4DwE&feature=youtu.be
L. Randall Wray "The Return of Full Employment" Dec 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXY8mZKfXUY
Stephanie Kelton RT's Capital Account Dec 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yiw8Lyw1XGc
Pavlina Tcherneva INET Interview Dec 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bhros6jImt4
"The Financial Crisis: Europe and the US" video by UMKC grad students Dec 2012 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL9YET2gg0k
Stephanie Kelton Majority Report Nov 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCOVldiGeQY
Stephanie Kelton "Fiscal Cliff" & The Economy CSPAN Nov 2012
http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4161813/stephanie-kelton-presenting-fiscal-cliff
Jan Kregel and John Harvey MM&PP4 Nov 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X39M9MXRNyg
Warren Mosler Interview @ Rimini II Oct 2012
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VceHvn69joM
Mat Forstater Interview @Rimini II Oct 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-JpVT7xBgQ
Marshall Auerback and Yanis Varoufakis MM&PP 3 Oct 2012
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuU32WLMjl8
Warren Mosler and Stephanie Kelton MM&PP 2 Sept 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba8XdDqZ-Jg
L. Randall Wray and Michael Hudson MM&PP 1 Sept 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zEbo8PIPSc
Scott Fullwiler MMT-MCT Institute Seminar July 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsKqgTItYWU
Bill Mitchell "The Need for Full Employment" July 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayJnDb4K08M
Warren Mosler at Occupy Dallas June 2012
http://www.livestream.com/owsmakewallstreetpaydallas/video?clipId=pla_334828f7-343b-4a95-afa3-8edb4dbb37d8&utm_source=lslibrary&utm_medium=ui-thumb
L. Randall Wray Capital as Power Forum: Keynote Address April 2012
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZdZmu8mHTw
L. Randall Wray RT March 2012
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfDoKVf3L3A
Stephanie Kelton Rimini I Feb 2012
Feb 25: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coreG-Kc2bk
Feb 26: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd6rGbO-ruU
"Chartalism- Fiat Money System Explained" video by Kerry Fritz II Feb 2012http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0QEQxZcTfM
Stephanie Kelton Luther College Oct 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coreG-Kc2bk
Pavlina Tcherneva At Issue with Ben Merens Oct 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1HLGG26jM
Marshall Auerback Bloomberg TV Sept 2011
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/62625312-marshall-auerback-discusses-fed-policy-job-guarantees.html
Mat Forstater at Howard University 2011. http://vimeo.com/16867727
L. Randall Wray Real News Network May 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVMaQmDSi9Y
Warren Mosler Fox Business News May 2011
http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/4250679/spending-necessary-for-economic-recovery/#sp=show-clips
L. Randall Wray KUOW 94.9 fm March 2011
Part one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ehZHfnBJ_0
Part two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58IPoVryknc
Eric Tymoigne "Responding to the Financial Crisis" Feb 2011
http://vimeo.com/20259439
L. Randall Wray Crash Course on Minsky June 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRE-IDYfi8Y
1st Fiscal Sustainability Teach-In and Counter-Conference April 2010http://www.netrootsmass.net/fiscal-sustainability-teach-in-and-counter-conference/
Warren Mosler CNBC April 2010
http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=1410610592
L. Randall Wray and Bill Mitchell "Modern Monetary Theory" 10-parts May 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch v=4Ap0ymmVlwA
Other Videos:
Fred Lee Last Graduate Lecture May 2014https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HncE6ApwgY
Marc Lavoie "Essentials of Heterodox and Post-Keynesain Economics" March 2014 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KC1peSmglOg&feature=youtu.be
Bill Black Ecuador's Gama TV March 2014
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfwOD13yCMk
Bill Black "How To Rob A Bank" TedxUMKC March 2014
http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/How-to-rob-a-bank-William-Black
Bill Black USAWatchdog.com Jan 2014
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUHS7TVVgww
Edward J. Nell "Europe Not In a Debt Crisis, It's An Austerity Crisis" Jan 2014 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCX1ZA-JJGg
Edward J. Nell "The President and Republicans Are Both Wrong on Deficit Reduction" Dec 2013 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdtHN4Qw92Q
JFK Yale University Commencement (June 11, 1962). Video by Alberto Veronese. Nov 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6h-FI0rB1A
Rob Parenteau AllianzGI Nov 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kt-F2gysKn0
Frank Newman "HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE NATIONAL DEBT" MMX Special Event Oct 2013
http://www.modernmoneynetwork.org/frank-newman-conversation.html
Saving for Medicare today is like wearing a sweater in August to save warmth for January. 1 min clip
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7PbulfIlWU
Bill Black CNBC July 2013
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2013/07/neps-bill-black-appears-on-cnbc.html
Warren Mosler Downshift Interview June 2013
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y45i0Yi8oo
Bill Black, Mike Norman, and Lynn E. Turner MM&PP 7 May 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFk6epIveY8
Frank Newman "Six Myths That Hold Back America- and What America Can Learn From the Growth of China's Economy" March 2013http://vimeo.com/41449585
Rob Parenteau AllianzGI Investors Feb 2013https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CP3IJARuvg
Bill Black Extracts from Huffpost "Wall Street uses Third Way to lead its assault on Social Security" Nov 2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0GO9Ll4t24
Bill Black CNBC Aug 2012
http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000108525
Michael Hudson German interview July 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-Tkn9zi1Yc
Bill Black Fox Business News July 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tmWTeH9BSQ
Ben Bernanke to Ron Paul July 2012 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pH2RLObp41o
Bill Black Chris Martenson.com April 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9JfmzUtlWM
Bernard Lietaer "La MMT ha ragione" April 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8XmdwipNac
Bill Black Rimini I Feb 2012
Part one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utOGgyTMJKE
Part two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur01Vz_aJGE
Bill Black "Detecting, Investigating, and Documenting Fraud" Feb 2012http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOem3it4Js4
Bill Black Democracy Now Jan 2012
Part one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTEULWvbp80
Part two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYuX7sAFBco
Bill Black "Criminogenic Environments, Bubbles and Financial Crises" Dec 2011 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36kizAjPmuo
Bill Black at Occupy LA Nov 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_AuvLTJNh0
Bill Black at Occupy Wall Street Oct 2011
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XJe7O-3QBc
Fred Lee at Occupy KC Oct 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TTWuNlkj2M&list=PL0C507B4F7AE81D0E
Stephanie Kelton wins Hallmark contest Jan 2011https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3eQbTCGqrc
Ben Bernanke 60 Minutes Interview with Scott Pelley Dec 2010
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxSv2rnBGA8#t=06m31s
Bill Black House Financial Services Committee April 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8CqaHTygSc
Rob Parenteau Howestreet.com July 2009https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wogH8RaF8yU
Bill Black Bill Moyers Show April 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rz1b__MdtHY
Alan Greenspan to Paul Ryan March 2005
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNCZHAQnfGU
Alan Greenspan to Ron Paul February 2004
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1geq2xAHr1w