My new podcast is out.

“What You Need To Know About The $22 Trillion National Debt”: The Alternative Interview

Steven Rattner’s opinion piece in the New York Times and [Jason] Furman’s interview on National Public Radio are perfect examples of the ideas that MMT wants to debunk:  Deficits are not normal; deficits crowd out private investment; the public debt is a burden on our grandchildren; our ability to respond to societal problems is limited by the fact that the US government does not have enough money to confront them.

Below is an alternative interview to the Furman’s interview that reviews these points. This blog will run like a traditional interview and all the evidence for the points made are in appendices at the end...

New Economic Perspectives
What You Need To Know About The $22 Trillion National Debt”: The Alternative Interview
Eric Tymoigne | Associate Professor of Economics at Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon; and Research Associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College

Jason Furman et al — The 2017 Economic Report of the President

Summary: The 2017 Economic Report of the President reviews the economic record of the Obama Administration, focusing on how policies have promoted inclusive growth.

The White House
The 2017 Economic Report of the President
Jason Furman, Sandra Black, Jay Shambaugh, Matt Fiedler

Bill Mitchell — When New is Old and just another exercise in denial

On November 2, 2016, Furman published an Op Ed on the Voxeu.org site – The New View of fiscal policy and its application – which asserts that the GFC has led to the “landscape of the fiscal policy debate” changing “over the past decade, with academics and international organisations moving away from an ‘Old View’ of fiscal policy as ineffective”.…

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
When New is Old and just another exercise in denial
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Noah Smith — Liberals Compete for the Soul of Economics

But there are not one, but two big trends in liberal economic thinking. One wants to modify the economic thinking of the past few decades, and the other wants to rip it up. I expect to see a lot of the economic debate in the coming years play out not between the left and right, but between these two strains of thought.

More controversy on the way. Will MMT finally get a hearing?

Not if Noah Smith has it right. Noah completely ignores Post Keynesian economics and Institutinoalism as an overlapping cluster of schools and talks instead of evolutionary economics and complexity economics, which are still in their infancy compared with PKE.

Is Noah blindsided, or is this Bloomberg policy?

Bloomberg View
Liberals Compete for the Soul of Economics

Noah Smith, contributor
ht Mark Thoma at Economist's View

Jason Furman — Extracting the Signal from the Noise

Seven tips for interpreting macroeconomic data.

Milken Institute
Extracting the Signal from the Noise

Jason Furman | Chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers

ht Mark Thoma at Economist's View

JW Mason — Links for October 14

Mostly of interest here for the comments on Jason Furman's recent paper.

J. W. Mason

Links for October 14

JW Mason

James Kwak — This Inequality Chart Does Not Say What You Think It Says

Jason Furman obfuscates. James Kwak explains.

In summary, the economic factors that produce higher pre-tax income inequality—stagnant middle-class wages, high corporate profits, and booming asset markets—are alive and well, and it doesn’t seem the Obama administration has done much about them. The administration did pass the Affordable Care Act and let the Bush tax cuts expire for the rich, both of which helped mitigate the pre-tax inequality produced by contemporary American capitalism. But even if Barack Obama called inequality the “defining challenge of our time,” he has done little to tackle its fundamental causes. Let’s hope the next president does better.

Baseline Scenario
This Inequality Chart Does Not Say What You Think It Says
James Kwak
ht Mark Thoma at Economist's View

Also

Is Inequality Rising or Falling? 

Jason Furman — Is This Time Different? The Opportunities and Challenges of Artificial Intelligence

Is This Time Different? The Opportunities and Challenges of Artificial Intelligence

Jason Furman

Chairman, Council of Economic Advisers

Remarks at AI Now: The Social and Economic Implications of Artificial Intelligence Technologies in the Near Term

New York University New York, NY July 7, 2016

This is an expanded version of these remarks as prepared for delivery. 

ht Brad DeLong

Kate McFarland — US: President’s top economic adviser rejects basic income

Jason Furman, President Obama's top economics adviser, rejected the idea of a universal basic income in remarks made on Thursday, July 7, at a White House workshop on automation. Furman favors job-training and job-creation programs instead.…

Bien
US: President’s top economic adviser rejects basic income
Kate McFarland

Kathleen Geier — What Piketty’s Neoliberal Critics Get Wrong [2]

Until recently, however, there was one major group that hadn’t visibly weighed in on Piketty’s brilliant and disturbing book, and that is the neoliberal policy elites that dominate the Democratic Party establishment. 

Among the most important members of the neoliberal mafia are former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and Jason Furman, who is currently the chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. In the past week, both Furman and Summers have delivered substantive critiques of the book.

Like it or not, what people like Furman and Summers think matters. This pair and their cohort steer American economic policy today, they controlled it the last Democratic administration, and unfortunately, Hillary Clinton or whomever the next Democratic president ends up being will likely put the same people in the driver’s seat once again. To the extent that anything substantial gets done to address economic inequality in this country in the near future, it will be because people like Larry Summers and Jason Furman—or, to be more precise, the economic interests they so faithfully serve—allow it to happen.

Institutional power.

The Baffler
What Piketty’s Neoliberal Critics Get Wrong [2]
Kathleen Geier

Lynn Stuart Parramore — Obama Nominates America’s Biggest Walmart Cheerleader as His Chief Economic Advisor

Jason Furman thinks Walmart is a “progressive success story.”

AlterNet | Economy
Obama Nominates America’s Biggest Walmart Cheerleader as His Chief Economic Advisor
Lynn Stuart Parramore |Senior Editor

Progressives may be unhappy about Obama's choice, but conservatives are tickled pink. Over at the American Enterprise Institute, home to the country's most fervent free-market fundamentalists, no fewer than 11 economists haveannounced their support for the Jason Furman nomination:

"We are pleased that President Obama ... nominated ... Furman ...Although we often disagree with the administration's policies and differ with Jason on a number of issues, we respect him as a superb analytical economist. If the Senate confirms his nomination to be the president's chief economic adviser, we are confident that he will serve the president and the nation with distinction. 

'Nuff said.