Does Capitalism Have a PR Problem? — Erika Fry

Still clueless. Caught in the bubble and out of touch.

“For every one positive article about capitalism, there are 11 negative ones,” said Nathan Rosenberg, founding partner of Insigniam, a management consulting firm. “CEOs should seize their job. Capitalism has created more elevation of [the] human condition than any religion or government ever has. We don’t tell our story. We don’t talk about the benefits. We have to get out and tell our story.”...

Fortune
Does Capitalism Have a PR Problem?

Erika Fry

Brian Romanchuk — Representative Agent Macro And Recessions

J.W. Mason kicked off the latest skirmish in the never-ending macro wars with his Jacobin article "A Demystifying Decade for Economics." (Note: at the time of writing, the article was taken down until its publication in Jacobin.) This prompted a Twitter debate about representative agent macro, which eventually led to this Beatrice Cherrier article on heterogeneous agent models. In my view, the debate about representative agent models is a red herring. Mainstream macroeconomists main skill is in framing debates in a fashion that is congenial to the mainstream; however, the preferred framing leads to dead ends. My current research focus is on recessions, and although I have not gone too far in refreshing my survey of mainstream macro, the value of mainstream macro theory in this debate is limited....

Bond Economics
Representative Agent Macro And Recessions
Brian Romanchuk

Andrew Lainton — Getting Sober on Wicksell’s Wine Lake – The Financial Instability Hypothesis and the Pool of Funding

A very simple proposition.

The financial instability hypothesis as set out by Minsky and elaborated by Kindelberger, Keen and others is by far the best economic framework to explain business cycles, and especially the major instabilities that come about in ‘balance sheet recessions’ (Koo) and debt deflationary spirals (Fisher/Hoyt).

However the hypothesis is purely monetary. It depends on Ponzi investors speculating on assets beyond their fundamental value.

This is unsatisfactory as it leaves unexplained the ‘fundamental value’ of goods and assets, and so is a partial rather than a general theory and so not yet up to the wholesale replacement of lame-stream DGSE/NK models.

Let us focus on one moment a potential ‘tipping point’ at the top of the business cycle.
Consider one flawed theory of what causes that tipping, very wrong but in a very interesting way.

That being the ‘subsistence fund/pool of funding’ explanation deriving from classical economics (the Wages Fund) and developed by Bohm-Bawerk, Wicksell and Strigl. This became one strand in Austrian business cycle theory but by the late 30s had become completely taken over by the even more flawed monetary Austrian explanation whereby central banks create the business cycle...

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions
Getting Sober on Wicksell’s Wine Lake – The Financial Instability Hypothesis and the Pool of Funding
Andrew Lainton