THE END OF KEYNESIANISM?
by ilene - July 3rd, 2010 3:59 pm
THE END OF KEYNESIANISM?
Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist
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Richard Russell certainly thinks so:
The end of Keynesianism? Yes, I think we’re seeing it now. Fed Chief Bernanke in his writing blamed the Great Depression on the Fed for shrinking the money supply. In fact, Bernanke even apologized on the part of the Fed for “causing the Great Depression.” Bernanke, wrote a famous piece explaining to “us know-nothings” that the Fed has a magic instrument, it was the ability to print money, and, if necessary, to drop this Fed-created money to the American people from helicopters. With his magic power, concluded Ben, there was no way the US could slide into another Great Depression.
It was great and comforting concept, but it didn’t work. After leaving rates at zero, printing over two trillion “dollars” and backing billions of dollars in stimulus plans, unemployment remains high, housing stays in the dumps and the national debt has sky-rocketed beyond all reckoning.
The spending plans of the Obama administration and the expansion of money by the Fed has left the US in worse shape than ever. Unemployment is still high, and the US has taken its place along with Greece and Portugal as another “half-broke banana republic.”
How did this horror story befall the once “greatest nation on earth” and the one-time “Arsenal of Democracy?” If a house is built on sandstone and with rotten timber it’s not a question of whether that house will fall apart — it’s a question of WHEN. Ever since the end of World War II, Americans have been enjoying the greatest standard of living the world has ever seen. How did we do it? Was it hard work, sweat, original thinking, risk-taking or pure luck? Hardly any of those, it was through borrowing and creating a gigantic house-of-cards. The cards were the newly-created bits of paper that we call dollars (actually, they are Federal Reserve notes backed by nothing).
Without its abilities to create fiat money, the US could never have built its “house-of-cards economy.” Without the insidious Fed, the US would never have had the ability to create trillions of unbacked Fed notes.
I’ve insisted all along that the US should have allowed the primary bear forces to fully express themselves, as they inevitably will do anyway. But in its arrogance and ignorance, the administration decided that they could halt or sidestep a
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How Long Does The Recession Have To Last Before Keynesians Admit They’re Wrong?
by ilene - September 11th, 2009 11:26 am
How Long Does The Recession Have To Last Before Keynesians Admit They’re Wrong?
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Why the Austrian, Keynesian, Marxist, Monetarist, and Neo-Liberal Economists Are All Wrong
by ilene - August 20th, 2009 7:30 pm
Fantastic dish served up at Jesse’s Cafe. Highly recommended – especially if you’re a normally intelligent person who can’t understand economics. It has nothing to do with you! Imagine being an inquisitive medical student at the time when blood-letting was used to treat all ills… I loved this:
"The ugly truth is that economics is a science in the way that medicine was a profession while it still used leeches to balance a person’s vapours. Yes, some are always better than others, and certainly more entertaining, but they all tended to kill their patients."
- Ilene
Why the Austrian, Keynesian, Marxist, Monetarist, and Neo-Liberal Economists Are All Wrong
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Served by Jesse of Le Café Américain
US Personal Income has taken its worst annual decline since 1950.
This is why it is an improbable fantasy to think that the consumer will be able to pull this economy out of recession using the normal ‘print and trickle down’ approach. In the 1950′s the solution was huge public works projects like the Interstate Highway System and of course the Korean War.
Until the median wage improves relative to the cost of living, there will be no recovery. And by cost of living we do not mean the chimerical US Consumer Price Index.
The classic Austrian prescription is to allow prices to decline until the median wage becomes adequate. Given the risk of a deflationary wage-price spiral, which is desired by no one except for the cash rich, the political risks of such an approach are enormous.
On paper it is obvious that a market can ‘clear’ at a variety of levels, if wages and prices are allowed to move freely. After all, if profits are diminished, income can obviously be diminished by a proportional amount, and nothing has really changed in terms of viable consumption.
The Supply side idealists (cash rich bosses, Austrians, Marxist, monetarist, and deflationist theorists) would like to see this happen at a lower level through a deflationary spiral. The Keynesians and neo-liberals wish to see it driven through the Demand side, with higher wages rising to meet the demands of profit in an inflationary expansion. Both believe that market forces alone can achieve this equilibrium. Across both groups runs a sub-category of statism vs. individualism.
Unfortunately both groups are wrong.
Both approaches require an ideal, almost frictionless, objectively rational, and honest economy in…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW.