government

Below are two messages from Franklin Roosevelt, proposing the Social Security program and signing it into law. The main points to note in the text deal with the purpose and funding of Social Security and unemployment insurance i.e. the why…

The following is excerpted from today’s UBS research note by Stephane Deo, Paul Donovan and Larry Hatheway on the consequences of a euro break-up. The full note is embedded below.

An excerpt from the August 1932 Republican Nomination Acceptance Speech by Herbert Hoover and commentary about his policy choices and ours today

Former Fed nominee and Nobel Laureate Peter Diamond spoke to Bloomberg News about how he sees the economic difficulties the United States faces. His view is that America faces a jobs crisis in the here and now and that deficit reduction is…

“Taxes drive money”—these “money things” are accepted because there are taxes “backing them up”, not because they have embodied gold. As promised, this week I will begin try to dispel the view that coins used to be commodity monies.

The point is that this is a rolling crisis where investors have realised that the sovereign debt profiles right across Euroland have problems. And because there is no lender of last resort, the weakest debtors get plucked off one by one…

Michael Hudson and William Hartung make the argument that military spending was exempted from cuts in the debt ceiling deal because it had strong backers who protected it. They also reveal that the US debt ceiling was put into place to keep…

The normal case—let us say, in the US or the UK or Japan—is that anything for sale is for sale in the domestic currency. These sovereign governments never find that they cannot buy something by issuing their own currency. However, the…

This is a polemic on fiat currency. it is long and detailed. But I believe it is both thorough and logical.

If you recall, it was George W. Bush’s father, GWH Bush, who, when campaigning against Reagan, called supply side economics’ claims that tax cuts pay for themselves Voodoo Economics. And Bush was proved right when deficits spiralled out of…