Sunday, September 27, 2020

Bill Mitchell – The inner Groupthink camp is breaking up – paradigm shift continues

Last week, there were some rather significant shifts in the public discourse surrounding macroeconomic policy and challenges made to the orthodox economics taboos that have been used to prevent governments from acting in the best interest of the citizens. First, the Australian treasurer broke away from the government’s previous obsession with fiscal surplus pursuit to announce that for the foreseeable future it was only going to concentrate on jobs and growth. In his statement, he basically refuted all the mainstream macroeconomic claims about fiscal deficits – higher interest rates, lower private investment, lower growth, lower private sector confidence etc. There is really nothing left of the mainstream position now and any politician or economist that tries to resurrect the ‘debt and deficit’ narratives of the past will find it hard gaining the same politician traction that they were able to garner some years ago at the height of the neoliberal period. And, if that was not enough, a former Federal treasurer attacked the ‘high priests’ of the central bank, demanding they buy up government bonds and help the government run “Mountainous” deficits to achieve full employment. The flood gates opened just a bit more after those interventions along the way to jettisoning all the mainstream nonsense that should have been abandoned decades ago....
Traction.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
The inner Groupthink camp is breaking up – paradigm shift continues
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

10 comments:

Ralph Musgrave said...

And in reaction, the rather large number of liars and incompetents at the top of the economics profession will make their usual claim that this is no shift at all, and that they backed MMT type policies all along. Yawn....:-)

NeilW said...

"when ridicule fails to kill a movement it begins to command respect."

Peter Pan said...

As if governments haven't run massive deficits in the past, present, and future?
As if Australia isn't a country with workfare programs?

Bill should call this the 'hypocrisy shuffle' or 'mainstream musical chairs'. When the music stops, workers and the unemployed will somehow not have a seat.

Matt Franko said...

“Frydenberg studied and earned honours degrees in both economics and law at Monash University, where he became president of the Law Students Society,[5] before working at Mallesons Stephen Jaques, a large Australian commercial law firm.“

“Monash University (/ˈmɒnæʃ/) is a public research university based in Melbourne, Australia.M onash is home to major research facilities, including the Monash Law School, the Australian Synchrotron, the Monash Science Technology Research and Innovation Precinct (STRIP), the Australian Stem Cell Centre, Victorian College of Pharmacy, and 100 research centres[6] and 17 co-operative research centres.”

Lawyer.... so is Jay Powell... two trained lawyers flipping the script after series of Art degree economics trained people....

Personnel matters...

Matt Franko said...

“First, the Australian treasurer broke away from the government’s previous obsession with fiscal surplus“

He’s same political partisan as Tom here ... now it’s “the government” doing it...

Matt Franko said...

“incompetents at the top of the economics profession will make their usual claim that this is no shift at all,”

Ralph they are out ... lawyers running it now... things starting to change.... because those people are out...

lastgreek said...

A little levity this morning :)

This is the weight of a carbon atom:

0.00000000000000000000019942 grams.

It also happens to be Trump's tax rate ...lol

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Mendeleev

Unknown said...

0.00000000000000000000019942

That's a lot of noughtiness!

Peter Pan said...

Don't lawyers have art degrees?
They do paint-by-plunger...

Matt Franko said...

Yes Powell has BA from Princeton...

Point is these two are not Economists... they are lawyers...

Also they don’t really understand what they are doing but they are following the law... in US the law is “maximum employment with stable prices”... we are far from maximum employment....