Bill Mitchell — External economy considerations – Part 5

I am now using Friday’s blog space to provide draft versions of the Modern Monetary Theory textbook that I am writing with my colleague and friend Randy Wray. We expect to publish the text sometime in 2013. Our (very incomplete) textbook home page – Modern Monetary Theory and Practice – has draft chapters and contents etc in varying states of completion. Comments are always welcome. Note also that the text I post here is not intended to be a blog-style narrative but constitutes the drafting work I am doing – that is, the material posted will not represent the complete text. Further it will change as the drafting process evolves.

Chapter 21 Policy in an Open Economy: Exchange Rates, Balance of Payments, and Competitiveness

This material updates the work already done on Chapter 21 that appeared in the following blogs:

• External economy considerations – Part 1
• External economy considerations – Part 2
• External economy considerations – Part 3
• External economy considerations – Part 4

The earlier draft had some gaps and some sections to complete which is what I am doing today. The sections I am working on today are not in any particular sequential order.

21.6 The relationship between the Current Account and the Capital Account of the Balance of Payments

Bill Mitchell – billy blog

External economy considerations – Part 5

William F. (Bill) Mitchell | Professor of Economics at Charles Darwin University, Professor of Economics at the University of Newcastle, and inaugural director of CofFEE

More Evidence That America's Middle Class Is Sliding Toward the Third World

The U.S. is near the bottom of the developed world in median wealth, probably the best gauge for the economic strength of the middle class....

...a middle-class adult in Finland owns $122 for every billion dollars of his or her nation's wealth. In Canada it's $13. In the U.S. it's 60 cents. Only China (40 cents) and India (30 cents) [in the countries included in the survey] give their middle-class adults less.

It's called "becoming globally competitive." The US is highly competitive,  of course. Among developed countries, the US is winning the race to the bottom hands down.

AlterNet
More Evidence That America's Middle Class Is Sliding Toward the Third World
Paul Buchheit

Gaius Publius — Did Obama deliberately lie in 2008 about his Social Security plans?

Yep. Neoliberal to the core.

America Blog
Did Obama deliberately lie in 2008 about his Social Security plans?
Gaius Publius

Goldman on currency wars in charts

Maintaining a non-cooperative equilibrium is a challenging exercise. Not only will every individual partly have to constantly monitor what everyone else is doing, but in addition, there is a constant risk of escalation into protectionist policies. Trade disputes are already on the rise. The number of WTO dispute cases in 2012 was the highest in 10 years.

Zero Hedge
Currency Wars For Dummies
Goldman Sachs

Seeing faces in clouds?