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Canadian economist and central banker David Andolfatto recently constructed a model intended to ‘reconcile’ (or I think more accurately to distinguish between) ‘mainstream’ and ‘heterodox’ views of the macroeconomic importance of money and banking. More specifically, he wants to answer the question: does the ability of banks to ‘create money’ when they issue loans give […]
Ann Pettifor is a director of Prime Economics, which advocates for a more Keynesian view of macroeconomics, and has been involved in development and environmental economics for many years. In The Production of Money: How to Break the Power of the Bankers (Verso, 2017) she correctly identifies that ‘money enables us to do what we can […]
Understanding Money – a non-technical account of the essential role money and its creation plays in a modern economy. This article was previously available as a pdf, but I have now posted it as a blog in its own right. Since it was originally written in 2010, I have made a few revisions and additions. Introduction […]
‘Aggregate Demand, Idle Time, and Unemployment’ – A Critique of Michaillat and Saez Introduction Like all neoclassical models, that of Michaillat and Saez (2014) referred to in Simon Wren-Lewis’s Mainly Macro blog on 16th August fails to model money realistically. This renders their model incoherent and in any case incapable of encompassing one of the […]
The causes of unemployment make it a moral issue. Radical solutions are required. In an earlier post I noted some features of unemployment from a UK perspective. The main thrust was that a fairly constant proportion of the population in employment (around 72% of those of working-age) hides a serious decline in the availability of […]
I posted this short piece on the Scotland Quo Vadis discussion site yesterday, in response to a piece by Gordon Morgan suggesting the ‘printing of money’ would be a better option than government spending cuts. It’s important to take a step back and consider the nature of money in the modern economy. It’s taken me […]
I’ve just posted a paper I produced in 1998, which seems rather prescient. I made the point that the hidden growth of money was leading to fairly predictable changes (not for the better) in our economy and society. Here’s some excerpts from the introduction: Although income inequality appears to be a fact of life there […]
Does professional sport as we know it have much longer to go? Clubs are bankrupt, the play is ignored in favour of endless analysis and criticism over refereeing or umpiring decisions, and the players are subject to pressure and scrutiny that while commensurate with their earnings is obviously not compatible with family life. Even the […]
(This is a summary of an essay I wrote in 2000!) It still seems relevant. The full document is here (pdf 36.8kb). By 2050 money in its current form as non-specific value will have been replaced by credits for specific future goods and services. These credits will be traded in a sophisticated barter network. This […]
Cryptocurrency – more fiat than ‘Fiat’ I have previously written about Bitcoin, explaining why I don’t believe it has any future as a replacement for so-called ‘fiat’ currencies. There are various reasons I cited for this, the most important being that actual state-backed currencies are not ‘fiat’ at all. They are not given value simply […]