financial history

Randall Wray revisits the Clintonian Goldilocks economy to find the seeds of the Global Financial Crisis, using the sectoral balance approach.

Last week, when discussing what QE3 could look like I indicated that were the Federal Reserve to start expanding its balance sheet, QE3 will see interest rate caps after a pause and period of reflection. Let me address the differences…

In the case of bailing out Wall Street – and thereby the wealthiest 1% of Americans – while saying there is no money for Social Security, Medicare or long-term public social spending and infrastructure investment, the beneficiaries are…

Rather than adding stimulus with the aim of goosing demand to help the economy reach escape velocity, I would say that the central objective of economic policy is to help the economy reach full employment. Doing so will increase demand,…

I mean to ask how deep the downturn in your country was. On Tuesday, Martin Wolf had a good graphic on this. The upshot of his analysis is that while US GDP growth compares favourably to Japan and Western Europe, its unemployment compares…

This chart is for year over year ‘real’ GDP growth. Note the recurring first quarter spikes followed by dips, presumably due to front loading annual state spending and lending.

ECB intransigence leaves little alternative to breakup. Europe’s payments-surplus nations are waging financial war against the deficit countries. Without a common union based on mutual support within a mixed economy – one capable of…

The financial repression that is being discussed is not in developing countries but in the advanced industrialized countries. The ostensible goal is to support the government bond markets. Moral suasion, the cajoling of investors are soft…

Europe’s monetary union is simply one of the most important experiments of our time. Can the countries whose wars against each other shaped to a large extent the past millennium, if not longer, form a sustainable monetary union without…

With markets now contemplating some sort of debt “re-profiling” by Greece, we thought it would be helpful to summarize the two most recent major debt restructurings by an EM borrower for some guidance on what such a move could imply for…