Statements and Speeches of Marriner S. Eccles

commentary by Roger Erickson

Marriner S. Eccles served took office as Governor of the Federal Reserve Board, a title changed to Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System after the Banking Act of 1935. Eccles was sworn in on November 15, 1934, remained Chairman until January 31, 1948, served as Chairman Pro Tempore from February 3, 1948 through April 15, 1948, and continued to serve as a member of the Board until his resignation on July 14, 1951.

A [selective] digital collection of the papers of Marriner S. Eccles, including various letters and memoranda concerning his statements and speeches along with draft versions of his speeches, is available on FRASER (Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research).

A physical collection of Eccle's papers is held at the University of Utah.

How Can We Let America know - Fast Enough - What Americans Know?

commentary by Roger Erickson

Get rid of most copyright law?

If I read all the books people recommended to me - and which sound absolutely necessary to read, pronto - I'd be out another $1000/month, which I simply can't afford. Something REALLY has to be done about copyright & publisher's fees. ASAP. Group ignorance comes from the thousand cuts inflicted by the rentiers extracting rent on what we try to say to one another.

For Americal to know - fast enough - what Americans know, we need to OpenSource nearly everything, just to maintain the tempo of national communication needed to grow group intelligence. If most (not necessearily all) authors published their output as OpenSource, then we could return to letting the public rapidly select individuals to hear more from, via speaking and consulting engagements.

Copyright only slows down Cultural Adaptive Rate, since it acts as a direct brake on the tempo - i.e. kinetics - of Cultural Recombination. At the macro scale, copyright is stupidly mal-adaptive.

Instead of public subsidies only for sports diversions and military adventures, we should also subsidize a LOT more non-sports related "performing" analytical arts.

Case in point: why can't every single person in the USA read every one of these texts by ex Fed Chief Marriner Eccles, in free pdf format, by the end of today?

These following 2 articles alone would change fiscal politics if immediately available to all citizens.

Curbing inflation through taxation, by Marriner Eccles (1944)

Economic balance and a balanced budget : public papers of Marriner S. Eccles

Our problem is not one of having or not having information. Our problem is in inadequate and disastrously slow distribution of available information. If America only knew - fast enough - what Americans know, we'd never have to worry about stupidities like balancing our fiat.  What does that even mean?

Copyright vs Cultural Recombination & Adaptive Rate is a paralyzing issue not just in economics - it's the key drag on all policy intelligence, at all times.

Copyright extended by Faux Credentials.
Supposed credentials are always in the way of cultural evolution, hiding behind copyright to slow adaptive progress. Another example is our DoD & the topic now called 4Gwar. Modern appreciation of maneuver warfare has been a science since ~1809 - but is still largely dismissed by those with faux credentials.

Reality is that we need maneuver policy management, and - more generally - Maneuver Context Management, universally

There are always ways around the whole spectrum of instantly obsolete credentials, but they're not pursued well enough, fast enough; largely because too large a swath of people in isolated professions naively believe in credentials outside their field, and fail to see that all credentials in all fields are near instantly obsolete ... and are actually in the way.

Rethinking copyright laws would help America learn what Americans know, faster.

ProPublica — How Dark Money Helped Republicans Hold the House and Hurt Voters

In the November election, a million more Americans voted for Democrats seeking election to the U.S. House of Representatives than Republicans. But that popular vote advantage did not result in control of the chamber. Instead, despite getting fewer votes, Republicans have maintained a commanding control of the House. Such a disparity has happened only three times in the last century.

Analysts and others have identified redistricting as a key to the disparity. Republicans had ayears-long strategy of winning state houses in order to control each state’s once-a-decade redistricting process. (Confused about redistricting? Check out our song.)

Republican strategist Karl Rove laid out the approach in a Wall Street Journal column in early 2010 headlined “He who controls redistricting can control Congress.”

The Raw Story
How Dark Money Helped Republicans Hold the House and Hurt Voters
Olga Pierce, Justin Elliott and Theodoric Meyer | ProPublica

Clint Ballinger — Post Keynesianism, MMT, & 100% Reserves Project, Post No. 2

Taken from the comments on my last post on MMT/Chicago Plan/FRB & several similar pages the Questions below seem to be the central questions/objections between Full RB & MMT (or Post Keynesian, or MR).

Answering them clearly I think could reduce “talking past” each other. These Qs touch on the most fundamental differences, avoiding digressions.

Help in answering these is greatly appreciated. (PS Is using the comment section below uncomfortable? I may try to set up a wiki if enough people want).

Clint Ballinger

Post Keynesianism, MMT, & 100% Reserves Project, Post No. 2

Comment there, here, or both.

Stephanie Kelton — Forget the 'fiscal cliff'

We don't need across-the-board tax increases or spending cuts. We need policies that will create more jobs.

Los Angeles Times | Opinion
Forget the 'fiscal cliff'
Stephanie Kelton | Associate Professor of Economics, UMKC
(h/t Dan Lynch via FB)

Carl Bernstein — Why the US media ignored Murdoch's brazen bid to hijack the presidency

So now we have it: what appears to be hard, irrefutable evidence of Rupert Murdoch's ultimate and most audacious attempt – thwarted, thankfully, by circumstance – to hijack America's democratic institutions on a scale equal to his success in kidnapping and corrupting the essential democratic institutions of Great Britain through money, influence and wholesale abuse of the privileges of a free press.

In the American instance, Murdoch's goal seems to have been nothing less than using his media empire – notably Fox News – to stealthily recruit, bankroll and support the presidential candidacy of General David Petraeus in the 2012 election.

Thus in the spring of 2011 – less than 10 weeks before Murdoch's centrality to the hacking and politician-buying scandal enveloping his British newspapers was definitively revealed – Fox News' inventor and president, Roger Ailes, dispatched an emissary to Afghanistan to urge Petraeus to turn down President Obama's expected offer to become CIA director and, instead, run for the Republican nomination for president, with promises of being bankrolled by Murdoch. Ailes himself would resign as president of Fox News and run the campaign, according to the conversation between Petraeus and the emissary, K T McFarland, a Fox News on-air defense "analyst" and former spear carrier for national security principals in three Republican administrations.

The Guardian (UK)
Why the US media ignored Murdoch's brazen bid to hijack the presidency
Carl Bernstein (yes, <i>that</i> Bernstein. Shades of "Deep Throat"?)
(h/t Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism)

Woodward and Bernstein still on the job.

All this was revealed in a tape recording of Petraeus's meeting with McFarland obtained by Bob Woodward, whose account of their discussion, accompanied online by audio of the tape, was published in theWashington Post – distressingly, in its style section, and not on page one, where it belonged – and, under the style logo, online on December 3.

The take-away.

Murdoch and Ailes have erected an incredibly influential media empire that has unrivaled power in British and American culture: rather than judiciously exercising that power or improving reportorial and journalistic standards with their huge resources, they have, more often than not, recklessly pursued an agenda of sensationalism, manufactured controversy, ideological messianism, and political influence-buying while masquerading as exemplars of a free and responsible press. The tape is powerful evidence of their methodology and reach.

The Murdoch story – his corruption of essential democratic institutions on both sides of the Atlantic – is one of the most important and far-reaching political/cultural stories of the past 30 years, an ongoing tale without equal. Like Richard Nixon and his tapes, much attention has been focused on the necessity of finding the smoking gun to confirm what other evidence had already established beyond a doubt: that the elemental instruments of democracy, ie the presidency in Nixon's case, and the privileges of free press in Murdoch's, were grievously misused and abused for their own ends by those entrusted to use great power for the common good.

Bruce Bartlett — How Democrats Became Liberal Republicans

The dirty secret is that Obama simply isn’t very liberal, nor is the Democratic Party any more. Certainly, the center of the party today is far to the right of where it was before 1992, when Bill Clinton was elected with a mission to move the party toward the right. It was widely believed by Democratic insiders that the nation had moved to the right during the Reagan era and that the Democratic Party had to do so as well or risk permanent loss of the White House. 

It is only the blind hatred Republicans had for Clinton that prevented them from seeing that he governed as a moderate conservative – balancing the budget, cutting the capital gains tax, promoting free trade, and abolishing welfare, among other things. And it is only because the political spectrum has shifted to the right that Republicans cannot see to what extent Obama and his party are walking in Clinton’s footsteps....I think that a lot of the Democratic Party’s rightward drift resulted from two factors. First is the continuing decline of organized labor from 24 percent of the labor force in 1973 to less than half that percentage in 2011. And the decline among private sector workers has been even more severe....

Secondly, the collapse of the Soviet Union essentially led to the collapse of support for socialism worldwide. I think voters bought the idea that the economist F.A. Hayek made during World War II that socialism impoverishes people and necessarily becomes totalitarian eventually. The disappearance of socialism as a viable political philosophy deprived liberals of their ideological anchor, causing liberalism itself to drift rightward with the tide.

There are other factors as well, such as the dependence of Democrats on campaign contributions from Wall Street, but I think these are the most important.

The Fiscal Times
Bruce Bartlett — How Democrats Became Liberal Republicans 
Bruce Bartlett

See also Jordan Fabian — Obama: More Moderate Republican Than Socialist | ABC News

President Barack Obama believes that if he were president 25 years ago, his economic policies would make him a moderate Republican.

During an interview with Noticias Univision 23, the network's Miami affiliate newscast, Obama pushed back against the accusation made in some corners of south Florida's Cuban-American and Venezuelan communities that he wants to instill a socialist economic system in the U.S. The president said he believes few actually believe that. 

"I don't know that there are a lot of Cubans or Venezuelans, Americans who believe that," Obama said. "The truth of the matter is that my policies are so mainstream that if I had set the same policies that I had back in the 1980s, I would be considered a moderate Republican." [emphasis added]

Zero Dark Thirty — FAIL

That raises a key question: With so much evidence of so many failures -- practical, legal and moral -- of the CIA's "detainee program," why did Boal and Bigelow fail to include it in the film 

My theory -- and it is just a theory -- is that Boal and Bigelow were seduced by their sources. It's a common problem. When a writer or filmmaker gets extraordinary access, one is inclined to believe the person(s) granting the access. There is a significant constituency at the CIA which would like to defend its use of EITs in the War on Terror. This group is exemplified by Jose Rodriguez, the man who was responsible for destroying the videotapes of the CIA's interrogations -- which included waterboarding -- of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. There are many, including me, who believe that Rodriguez should have been prosecuted for destroying evidence of possible crimes. (The DOJ declined to prosecute him.) Instead, he is now promoting his book in which he claims that waterboarding worked.

Many have been won over by the views of Rodriguez and those like him who suggest that what the CIA did was tough, but necessary and smart. It was none of those things. Yet by immersing us only in the world of the CIA, Boal and Bigelow don't show us the perspective we need as viewers to see the lunacy of the CIA's "detainee program." If you want to reveal how tall a man is, you don't shoot him in limbo; you must show him in relation to others. Likewise, how can viewers of ZD30 judge the CIA's record if they can't see how others were shocked by its cruelty, cowardice and stupidity of EITs. In the film, long after the torture of "Ammar," an agent hands Maya a file folder with the real name of al-Kuwaiti. "If only I had this years ago," says Maya. Because Maya is the glamorous heroine of the film, we identify with her and wonder about the inefficiency of her colleagues. But where is the character who wonders if Maya had spent less time slapping detainees around and more time scanning actual evidence -- as the FBI did -- she might have got to bin Laden's courier much sooner.

I suspect that Boal and Bigelow's sources at the CIA shared some of the views of Rodriguez. Of course, without knowing who those sources are, it's impossible to say. What we do know, from correspondence that has been released, is that the CIA did grant extraordinary access to Boal and Bigelow.

While there is nothing wrong with access per se, what is concerning is the way that the CIA -- and other military agencies -- grant selective access. Sometimes that's because of the star status of the project. The letters show how much the agency loved Hurt Locker (one of the rare times I agree with the perspective of the CIA). Other times, it's because the agency is satisfied that the filmmakers have a vision that is "consistent" with that of the CIA. Whatever the reason, this will become a bigger and bigger concern for movies based on factual events (be they films with actors or documentaries). Why not give all American citizens to declassified information? 

Whatever happened on ZD30, we can be sure of one thing. The CIA PR team must be delighted, particularly those who were supporters of the EIT "Program." As former CIA director Michael Hayden noted, "I was happy the film was in the hands of such talent."

AlterNet
The Truth About Zero Dark Thirty: Director Alex Gibney on the dangerous myth perpetuated by the film.
Alex Gibney

War films tend to be propaganda films because they involved access. This is well known, and Boal and Bigelow have to know this. Therefore, I can only conclude that this is a propaganda piece.

Larry Kudlow's "supply side" love is really Keynesian love

Bill Mitchell — Full Employment Definition

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 complete the text by the end of this year. Comments are always welcome. Remember this is a textbook aimed at undergraduate students and so the writing will be different from my usual blog free-for-all. Note also that the text I post is just the work I am doing by way of the first draft so the material posted will not represent the complete text. Further it will change once the two of us have edited it.



Chapter 11

11.1 Introduction and Aims

Bill Mitchell — billy blog
Full Employment Definition
Bill Mitchell

John Harvey — Our Christmas Gift from Washington: Recession and Unemployment

At this very moment, our government is carefully selecting our present (although, strictly speaking, we won’t be receiving it until 2013). They haven’t decided on the size yet, but they know exactly what they’re getting us: recession and unemployment.

The deficit reduction talks, with or without a fiscal cliff, will absolutely lead to a decline in the level of demand for American goods and services. About this there is no controversy whatsoever. Even under the most optimistic of scenarios, wherein the President and Congress agree on some compromise level of deficit reduction, we will see a one to two percentage point reduction in real GDP growth and an increase of around one million unemployed. If we fall off the fiscal cliff, costs will be roughly double those. This is the kind of gift we need to return as soon as possible.

Forbes | Pragmatic Economist
Our Christmas Gift from Washington: Recession and Unemployment
John T. Harvey | Professor of Economics, Texas Christian University

This is about as clear and simple as one can make it. Good work, John.

What stimulus?? Fed actions completely offset wage and salary gains!

Every time the Fed announces another round of QE we hear the "know-nothings" in the media, on Wall Street and in the mainstream economics community tell us that we're getting more stimulus. And when the Fed does nothing, they scream about how we need more stimulus.

Well, be careful what you wish for!

For as the chart below clearly shows, the Fed actions have removed an enormous amount of interest income from the economy. In fact, it has removed over $100 bln more in interest income than the total net gain in private wages and salaries since it began undertaking these extraordinary measures.

Followers of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) know why this is true: Quantitative easing is nothing more than an asset swap. The Fed removes one asset--a Treasury, for example--and replaces it with a cash balance (reserves) in the banking system. The result is that the private sector is stripped of the interest it would have earned on that Treasury, which is more than the zero-percent it earns on cash balances.

Case in point, the $80 bln in profits that the Fed earned and turned over to the Treasury last year, was from income earned on the assets it bought. That was income that would have been earned by the private sector if it still had those bonds and securities.

So while the net change in wages and salaries since 2008 has been an increase of $317 bln, personal interest income dropped by $425 bln. That's not a stimulus by any means. It's mind boggling that the mainstream economics community and the Fed itself, doesn't understand this when they incessantly call for more "stimulus."

Gerard N. Magliocca — House "filibuster"

The latest breakdown of the fiscal cliff negotiations illustrates the problems created by another unwritten constitutional rule--no bill may be brought to the House floor unless it is supported by a majority of the majority party. It is possible that a budget measure could pass the House with the support of most Democrats and some Republicans, but that is not an option for the Speaker. The practice of requiring a majority of the House majority operates as a minority veto that is even more lopsided than the Senate filibuster, since it means that (typically) less than a third of the House can block action.

What is the source of this venerable tradition? The answer is that Dennis Hastert came up with this about ten years ago. [emphasis added]

Balkinization
Majority of a Majority
Gerard N. Magliocca

Steven Rosenfeld — Front Group for Military-Industrial Complex Pushes Hard to Slash Social Programs and Avoid Pentagon Cuts

As the so-called fiscal cliff negotiations drag on in Washington with the media covering Repubican House Speaker John Boehner’slatest temper tantrums, a bipartisancoalition of former government officials with deep ties to the defense industry and Wall Street are ratcheting up the pressure to cut retirement programs while sparing military contractors.

“Fix the Debt – a corporate-backed lobbying group advocating debt reduction with a $60 million budget – has failed to embrace defense spending cuts as a viable deficit reduction option, despite the fact that defense spending makes up over half of discretionary spending,” begins anew report by the Public Accountablity Initiative, a non-profit watchdog group, which focuses on the financial interests of who is behind cutting retirement security programs and other needed safety nets.

“The group’s 'core principles' focus on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid reforms and 'pro-growth' tax reform, and fail to even mention defense spending,” PAI’s report continues. “Fix the Debt’s eagerness to point the finger at social safety net spending while virtually ignoring defense spending makes more sense in light of its corporate backing. A review of the group’s corporate ties shows that many Fix the Debt leaders have lucrative connections to companies with billions of dollars in defense contracts.”

It’s often said that Washington insiders love ideas more than people—which is why some ideological obsessions, such as dismantling social safety nets, take precedence over more everyday concerns on Americans’ minds, such as jobs. But lurking below the superficial pronouncements in Washington’s policy wars there's often a profit-making agenda—and that is the case in the fiscal cliff crisis and negotiations, PAI reports, as it follows the money.

AlterNet
Front Group for Military-Industrial Complex Pushes Hard to Slash Social Programs and Avoid Pentagon Cuts
Steven Rosenfeld

Of course, you knew this already.

Happy Holidays from MNE!

From all of us here at MNE, to all of you!  

Happy Holidays | Forward this Picture

James K. Galbraith talk and interview

Posted at Economist's View by Mark Thoma

Roger Strassburg interviews James Galbraith-Interview I

Roger Strassburg interviews James Galbraith-Interview II

Change of Direction, IG Metall Conference – Berlin, Germany Professor James K. Galbraith December 6
Transcript of speech

Like father, like son. Jamie takes the sweeping view characteristic of John Kenneth Galbraith and as the scion of the Galbraithian school of Keynesianism.

Zero Hedge — Goldman's Fiscal Flow Chart

Zero Hedge
A Fiscal Flowchart For Dummies: Here Is What Happens Next

Submitted by Tyler Durden

How Many Politicians Can the 99% Buy?

commentary by Roger Erickson

Not sure whether to scream in frustration, vomit, or get drunk when you read the following kind of news? Now you know what Jesus, Gandhi and MLK all became aware of in their final days. The colossal extent of imbecility masquerading as Innocent Fraud is now fully exposed, and it's decision time. Do you want to "be" personally successful, or "do" something to save your nation?  Today, the threat is not from Rome or Britain, but from the monolitihic rentiers who own Orthodox Economics and, by default, our country. If you want to hedge your bets while being a martyr, maybe buy stock in antiemetic producers.

St. Louis Fed ‏@stlouisfed
Video: What are the realistic alternatives to bringing the federal budget deficit under control?

Maya MacGuineas’s CEO-powered crusade against the deficit

As a citizen, I felt soiled after reading the Maya MacGuineas article. As a point of principle I'd canceled my WashPost subscription years ago, but my wife recently insisted upon starting it up again just to read the comics & do the crossword puzzles when her mom visits.

The shame.  Surely the only way to go from here is up?  Is that the only strand of optimism we can cling to?  It really is decision time.

IPS — Internal Audit Warns of IMF Politicisation by the U.S.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s internal auditor has criticised the Fund’s recent policy on foreign currency reserves, and has offered an implicit warning that the United States’ outsized influence within the institution has resulted in policy that was insufficiently evidence-based.
The findings, which were publicised in an unusually narrow report on Wednesday but follow months of discussion, are seen as a victory for a bloc of “middle income” developing countries, particularly China, that have advocated hoarding larger stockpiles of foreign currency as insurance against the effects of the international financial crisis.

Inter Press Service
Internal Audit Warns of IMF Politicisation by the U.S.
Carey L. Biron

Zero Hedge — Guess Who Is NOT "Rotating" Out Of Treasurys

Credit where credit is due.

Spoiler: It's the PD's.

Zero Hedge
Guess Who Is NOT "Rotating" Out Of Treasurys
Posted by Tyler Durden

Robert Nielsen — What Economics Doesn’t Talk About

An economics student reports of the state of the art in teaching the dismal science. Pretty dismal.

What Economics Doesn’t Talk About
Robert Nielsen
(h/t Art Shipman at The New Arthurian Economics)

Vamsi Vakulabharanam — Why Does Neoliberalism Persist Even After the Global Crisis?

Analysis of India by an Indian economist in which the author shows how neoliberalism is joined at the hip with neo-imperialism and neocolonialism. The twist in history is that now these same methods are being used in the home countries as well whereas before the developing world was more targeted.

To this I would add, that the shift of focus to a global paradigm occurred with the fall of the Soviet Union and the liberalization of Chinese economic policy, which ends socialism as a practical alternative to market capitalism. Then the thrust was to establish laissez-faire globally, which frees elites to expropriate property based on the myth of more efficient use.

Triple Crisis
Why Does Neoliberalism Persist Even After the Global Crisis?
Vamsi Vakulabharanam | School of Economics, University of Hyderabad
(h/t Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism)

Cathy O’Neil: Why Nate Silver is Not Just Wrong, but Maliciously Wrong

Ouch. Cathy O'Neil, who blogs as mathbabe, takes Nate to the woodshed for being as out of touch as neoclassical economists with their model-worship.

Naked Capitalism
Cathy O’Neil: Why Nate Silver is Not Just Wrong, but Maliciously Wrong
Cathy O’Neil

Ben Walsh — Counterparties: 2012 — The year of bank fraud

What follows is a list of notable accusations, admissions and settlements in 2012 alone. (It’s long, so just scroll down if you just want the links):
Reuters | Felix Salmon
Counterparties: 2012 — The year of bank fraud
Ben Walsh

Ishani Chatterjee Shukla — Economic Rent

Here is a simple explanation of economic rent as gain unnecessary to production.

Buzzle
Economic Rent
Ishani Chatterjee Shukla

Pope Benedict writes article for the Financial Times

Looks like Benedict is on a roll...

Christians shouldn’t shun the world; they should engage with it. But their involvement in politics and economics should transcend every form of ideology. Christians fight poverty out of a recognition of the supreme dignity of every human being, created in God’s image and destined for eternal life. Christians work for more equitable sharing of the earth’s resources out of a belief that, as stewards of God’s creation, we have a duty to care for the weakest and most vulnerable. Christians oppose greed and exploitation out of a conviction that generosity and selfless love, as taught and lived by Jesus of Nazareth, are the way that leads to fullness of life. Christian belief in the transcendent destiny of every human being gives urgency to the task of promoting peace and justice for all.

Conspicuous absence of any mention of Ayn Rand, liberty, "free markets", creative destruction, social Darwinism, balanced budgets, deficit reduction, inter-generational debt, smaller civil government, metallic "money", etc...

In fact quite a progressive economic view imo.  This progressive view may be getting "legs" at the Vatican as this FT article follows another recent Papal message for World Peace Day that focused mainly on unrestricted economic justice.

Of course no specific policy prescriptions as my read of Benedict is that he thinks (rightly imo) that is ultimately the responsibility of the individuals of the laity who occupy positions of authority in civil government.  He touches on this in the article with a not bad examination of the Lord's recommendation to Israel to be paying the Roman poll taxes imposed by the earthly civil government of that time.

Unfortunately, all of our US faith-possessing economic policymakers seem to be solely sourced from "Christen-DUMB" at present.

Bill Mitchell on helicopter drops.

Bill explains (again) why fiscal policy trumps monetary policy.

Bill Mitchell — billy blog
Keep the helicopters on their pads and just spend
Bill Mitchell

Dirk Bezemer and Michael Hudson — Incorporating the Rentier Sectors into a Financial Model

ABSTRACT

Current macroeconomics ignores the roles that rent, debt and the financial sector play in shaping our economy. We discuss the Classical view on rents and policy responses to the rentier sector in the 19th century. The finance, insurance & real estate sector is today’s incarnation of the rentier sector. This paper shows how financial flows can be conceptually and statistically studied separately from (but interacting with) the real sector. We discuss finance’s interaction with government and with the international economy.

Michael Hudson
Incorporating the Rentier Sectors into a Financial Model
Dirk Bezemer and Michael Hudson
Published in the World Economic Association’s World Economic Review Vol #1
(h/t beowulf in the comments)

Frances Coppola — The strange world of negative interest rates

Frances Coppola explains why the thinking behind negative interest rates is so wrong and why such a policy would be counter-productive, as the Fed seems to have recognized by ruling this out.

Coppola Comment
The strange world of negative interest rates

Frances Coppola

(h/t Andy Blatchford via email)

Gail Tverberg — Why World Coal Consumption Keeps Rising; What Economists Missed

What did Economists Miss? 

Unfortunately, the list is rather long.

Our Finite World
Why World Coal Consumption Keeps Rising; What Economists Missed
Gail Tverberg | Actuary