Bill Mitchell — The mainstream old guard tell it as it is – and how different that is to MMT

While many mainstream economists have been coming out to defend their reputations against the growing awareness that Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) presents a direct challenge to their hegemony, some of the mainstream haven’t responded at all and continue to confirm what the standard mainstream macroeconomics is about and how far removed from MMT it really is. The MMT critics claim that there is nothing new in MMT (‘we knew it all along’) in one breathe, and then ‘MMT is crazy dangerous’ in another, without seemingly realising how conflicted that juxtaposition is. But when leading mainstreamers, who are not engaging with the public MMT discussion going on, publish their Op Ed pieces, we gain an insight into what the mainstream is really about despite all the attempts by other mainstreamers to co-opt as much of MMT as they can while still claiming it is crazy. A recent Op Ed article in the Wall Street Journal (March 20, 2019) – The Debt Crisis Is Coming Soon – by Harvard economics professor Martin Feldstein – is a great demonstration of the DNA of mainstream macroeconomics. MMT presents a diametrically opposed view to this standard mainstream analysis. There is no correspondence possible between the two positions....

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
The mainstream old guard tell it as it is – and how different that is to MMT
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

David F. Ruccio — Make GDP great again

Here’s what folks need to understand: mainstream economists like Feldstein, who celebrate an economic system based on private property and free markets, build and use models in which market prices capture all the relevant costs and benefits to society. And, since GDP is an accounting system based on adding up transactions of goods and services based on market prices, for mainstream economists it should represent an accurate measure of the “public’s well-being.”

Mainstream economists can’t have it both ways—either market prices do accurately reflect social costs and benefits or they don’t. If they do, then Feldstein & Co need to stick with the level and rate of growth of GDP as the appropriate measure of the wealth of the nation. And, if they don’t, all their claims about the wonders of free markets simply dissolve.…

This quote summarizes the point — market information doesn't capture social welfare. More good stuff at the link. GPP measures transactions rather than product. Many transactions are non-productive.

Occasional Links & Commentary
Make GDP great again
David F. Ruccio | Professor of Economics, University of Notre Dame

Bet against the fools when the Fed raises rates. It's a lock!

They were all wrong about monetary policy and in particular the rate cuts, ZIRP, QE, balance sheet expansion, everything. They had it all wrong. 

People like Schiff, Faber, Rogers, Reinhart & Rogoff, Bill Gross, Martin Feldstein, the GOP, Obama, and so many more. Quacks and elite quacks. Ideologues. Snake oil salesmen and snake oil saleswomen.

We were told that interest rates would spike, there was going to be hyperinflation, gold would soar to $5,000 an ounce or higher, the dollar would get crushed, yada, yada, yada.

Some are still saying it.

Now as we are on the verge of the first rate hike in seven years many of these same quacks and fools are warning of dire consequences. They're saying that the Fed has no room to "undo" what it did, that it will bring on dire consequences, that the bubble it created will blow up with a ferocity of the Bikini Atoll H-bomb test.

What do YOU think will happen?

I'll tell you what I think will happen. The exact opposite of what the aforementioned, "Gang of Clueless" think is going to happen.

Even if I didn't know a stick of economics (MMT economics), I would bet the ranch and do the opposite of whatever those idiots say just because they've been sooo wrong for so long on so many things. Now they're talking about the dire consequences of  the coming rate hike cycle.

Ha!

Wild horses couldn't keep me from betting against these fools even if I knew nothing.

Any good horse racing handicapper will tell you that you always bet on form. If a horse is prone to winning and if that horse is prone to winning even more consistently under certain conditions then you bet and you bet aggressively. But these horses are prone to BEING WRONG AND LOSING! So I will bet heavily against them.

That’s what I will be doing.

So...rate hikes? Yep...and stocks soar, dollar crashes, commodities finally get off the floor.

Why? 

Because it's the opposite of what we've been doing for the last eight years, which has been to cut rates, strip the economy of assets (central banks are doing this) and take income away from people. 

Sure, you're helping a few folks get cheaper credit, but they have to pay it back to the banks so the banks are the ones who earn and more importantly, lower rates set the price lower of many other things.

On the other hand, when the government starts issuing people checks--I don't care whether that's a Social Security check or a payment to a doctor via Medicare or INTEREST PAYMENTS--that's  money to keep and money to spend and that's a fiscal stimulus.

The past eight years have been deflationary. The idiots got it wrong. WE got it right. The next few years of rate hikes will start the boom cycle again. Buy stocks, buy commodities, short the dollar, short bonds, clean up make a fortune and invite me on your sailboat or yacht, but make sure it's somewhere warm where the water's nice and clear. 

Martin Feldstein — What is Full Employment?

Loony tunes for your amusement.

"What is full employment." It's when wages that have been stagnant or fallen during a recession begin to recover.

Project Syndicate
What is Full Employment?

Martin Feldstein, Professor of Economics at Harvard University and President Emeritus of the National Bureau of Economic Research, chaired President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1982 to 1984. In 2006, he was appointed to President Bush's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and, in 2009, was appointed to President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Currently, he is on the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the Group of 30, a non-profit, international body that seeks greater understanding of global economic issues.

Martin Feldstein — Piketty's Numbers Don't Add Up

Martin Feldstein's critique of Thomas Piketty is behind the paywall at WSJ, which I don't link to for other reasons as well, chiefly because it is a Murdoch mouthpiece that cannot be trusted anymore than any of his other properties.

Here is a link.

Economic Policy Journal
Martin Feldstein: Piketty's Numbers Don't Add Up
Posted by Robert Wenzel

Brad DeLong — Malinvestment In The Recession?

I think Daniel Kuehn mistakes Evan Soltas's point. Soltas is arguing not against the fundamentalist Austrians and their claims that the depression is caused by previous malinvestment in the boom. Soltas is arguing against the Martin Feldstein's who claim that interest rates need to be high during the bust in order to guard against additional malinvestments committed then.

Grasping Reality
Malinvestment In The Recession?
J. Bradford DeLong | Professor of Economics, UCAL Berkeley

Martin Feldstein — How to Create a Depression

Read it at Project Syndicate
How to Create a Depression
Martin Feldstein