Thomas Palley
The Federal Reserve has now openly adopted a two percent inflation target, with both Chairman Bernanke and the Federal Open Market Committee publicly committing to holding inflation at that level. Though not a problem today, this two per cent target represents a policy trap that will undercut the possibility of future wage increases despite on-going productivity growth. That promises to aggravate existing problems of income inequality and demand shortage. Read more
By Thomas I. Palley
In his novel, The Jungle, the American muckraking author Upton Sinclair wrote about the horrendous work and sanitary conditions in the Chicago meat packing industry of the early 20th century. It is sometimes said Sinclair aimed for the heart but hit the stomach. That is because he aimed for progressive social and economic change, but instead his work prompted the founding of the Food and Drug Administration.
The same problem of missing the target confounds current discussions of the eurozone’s problems. What the euro lacks is a government banker, not a lender of last resort as is widely claimed. Read more
By Thomas I. Palley
The eurozone‘s public finance crisis continues to fester, reflecting both political and intellectual failure. The intellectual failure is that the crisis has been interpreted exclusively as a debt crisis when it is also a central bank design crisis resulting from the euro’s flawed architecture. The flaw is the inability of eurozone governments to harness the central bank’s power to assist government finances. This systemic weakness explains why US and UK government bonds are weathering the storm, whereas Spain confronts default rumours despite having roughly similar debt and deficit profiles. Read more
The global economy is suffering from severe shortage of demand. In developed economies that shortfall is explicit in high unemployment rates and large output gaps. In emerging market economies it is implicit in their reliance on export-led growth. Read more
In 2008 President Obama captured the nation with a message of change, yet in office he has chosen to deliver change of style rather than change of substance. At the headline level this choice was reflected in his call for bi-partisanship that looked to split the difference with Republicans. In economic policy, it was reflected in the wholesale reappointment of the Clinton administration team led by Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner, a case of continuity not change.
Now, the administration is sinking under the failure of its economic policy. Read more
Mr President, With hopes of a V- or U-shaped recovery fading, there is the increasing prospect of an L-shaped future of long stagnation, or even a W-shaped future in which W stands for something worse. The reason for this dismal outlook is economic policy is trapped by failed conventional thinking that can only deliver wage stagnation and prolonged mass unemployment. Read more
There is much debate over whether the Federal Reserve should tighten or further ease monetary policy. This dichotomous framing overlooks another possibility, which is whether the Fed should change the mix of its stance, tightening in some areas and further easing in others. Read more
By Thomas I. Palley
The great German physicist Max Planck remarked that “science advances one funeral at a time.” The situation is worse in economics, which is subject to regress, as happened when the valuable but imperfect insights of Keynesianism were supplanted by the ideological blinkers of neo-liberalism.
The effects of this regress have again been on display in the confused discussions and policy responses to Europe’s sovereign debt crisis. The fact is that countries which borrow in their own currency and control their money supply will never default because they can always issue the money needed to repay their debts.
For such countries, central banks should respond to speculative debt crises with “bear squeeze” tactics that have them buy existing debt. In this fashion, countries can buy back debt below par value, in effect repaying it on the cheap. It is what the European Central Bank should have been doing on behalf of its member countries. Read more
By Thomas Palley
The last quarter of the 19th century witnessed a period of sustained global deflation. In the 1896 US presidential election, William Jennings Bryan famously attacked the gold standard as the cause of deflation, declaring “You shall not press upon the brow of labour this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” Read more
By Thomas Palley
There is widespread recognition that the financial crisis which triggered the Great Recession was significantly due to financial excess, particularly in real estate lending. Now, policymakers are looking to reform the financial system in hope of avoiding future crises. But like the drunk who looks for his lost keys under the lamppost because that is where the light is, policymakers remain fixated on capital standards because that is what is already in place. Read more
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