"Sustained Pressure Gets a Response"
Here's my brother on MSNBC talking about Ferguson. He makes an important point: In the vast majority of police shootings a grand jury is never even convened. We can recognize the gross injustice of the...
View ArticleGerman Unification as Proto-Europe?
Here is the opening passage of a pamphlet published by the German central bank in 1900, on the 25th anniversary of its founding: The newly established German Empire found in the organization of the...
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Unemployment and Productivity Growth
I write here frequently about "the money view" -- the idea that we need to see economic relationships as a system of money flows and money commitments, that is not reducible to the "real" production...
View ArticleThe Non-Accelerating What Now Rate of Inflation
The NAIRU is back. Here's Justin Wolfers in the Times the other day: My colleague Neil Irwin wrote about this slow wage growth as if it were bad news. I feel much more optimistic. ... It is only when...
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Posts in Three Lines
There is no long run. This short note from the Fed suggests that the failure of output to return to its earlier trend following the Great Recession is not an anomaly; historically, recessions normally...
View ArticlePriorities
The Syriza victory as a Rorschach test for U.S. politicians: Mayor De Blasio and President Obama both called Tsipras this morning to congratulate him. According to the press release from the Mayor's...
View ArticleWhat It's About
I'm as thrilled as anyone by Syriza's first week in government. The European bourgeoisie has declared war on social democracy, with the euro as its weapon to re-subordinate society to the logic of the...
View ArticleWhat If the ECB Pulls the Trigger?
Over the past week, it's become clear that the real leverage the European authorities have over Greece is via the banking system. What does Greek need continued loans for? Not to pay for public...
View Article"The Idea Was to Create a Modern Gold Standard"
My view on the euro is that it has become a project to restore the rule of money over humanity. To move us back toward a world where in every sphere of life, and especially in collective choices made...
View Article"Disgorge the Cash" at the Roosevelt Institute
I have a working paper up at the Roosevelt Institute, as part of their new Financialization Project. Much of the content will be familiar to readers of this blog, but I think the argument is clearer...
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What Has Happened to Trade Balances in Europe?
It has gradually entered our awareness that the Greek trade account is now balanced. Greece no longer depends on financial markets (or official transfers, or remittances from workers abroad) to finance...
View ArticleMark Blyth on the Creditor's Paradise
There's a lot to like in this talk by Mark Blyth, reposted in Jacobin. I will certainly be quoting him in the future on the euro system as a "creditor's paradise." But I can't help noting that the...
View ArticleA Quick Point on Models
According to Keynes the purpose of economics is "to provide ourselves with an organised and orderly method of thinking out particular problems"; it is "a way of thinking ... in terms of models joined...
View ArticleA Most Violent Year
I just watched this movie. Oscar Isaacs plays the owner of a fuel oil company in 1981, the peak year of violent crime in New York City. Needless to say, it's an industry in which organized crime is...
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Causes and Effects of Wage Growth
Over here, a huge stack of exams, sitting ungraded since… no, I can't say, it's too embarrassing. There, a grant proposal that extensive experimentation has shown will not, in fact, write itself. And...
View ArticleThe Greek Crisis and Monetary Sovereignty
Note: This post only really makes sense as a continuation of the argument in this one. It's a general rule that the internal logic of a system only becomes visible when it breaks down. A system that is...
View ArticleNew-Old Paper on the Balance of Payments
Four or five years ago, I wrote a paper arguing that the US current account deficit, far from being a cause of the crisis of 2008, was a stabilizing force in the world economy. I presented it at a...
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The IMF on Investment since 2008
Vox today has a useful piece by five IMF economists on the behavior of business investment during and since the Great Recession. [1] From my point of view, there are three important points here. 1. The...
View ArticleDefault ≠ Drachma
I've been saying for a while that people should stop assuming that a Greek default implies leaving the euro for a new currency. Much of the media coverage of the negotiations continues to assume that...
View ArticleTouchez pas au Grisbe
Regular blogging will resume shortly. In the meantime, here is a clip of me on tv. Let me make a few observations: 1. If you are going to do something like this, you need to have one simple point you...
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The End of the Supermanager?
[I am transitioning my blog over to my new site, but for now I will continue to crosspost stuff here.] Everyone is talking about this new paper, Firming Up Inequality. It uses individual-level data...
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The Myth of Reagan's Debt
[Cross-posted from the new blog at jwmason.org.]... or at least don't blame him for increased federal debt. Arjun and I have been working lately on a paper on monetary and fiscal policy. (You can find...
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OECD: Activist Shareholders Are Bad for Investment
[Cross-posted from the new blog at jwmason.org. Please comment there, and update your bookmarks -- at some point soon I'm going to stop updating this blog.] The OECD has just released its new Business...
View ArticleThis Blog Is Now at http://jwmason.org/the-slack-wire/
I am leaving this site up, but I won't post any more content here.
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