by Washington’s Blog, Washington’s Blog The “Excel Spreadsheet Error” in Context You’ve heard that an incredibly influential economic paper by Reinhart and Rogoff (RR) – widely used to justify austerity – has been “busted” for “excel spreadsheet errors” and other flaws.
Tag Archives: private debt
Government Debt and Deficits Are Not the Problem. Private Debt Is.
by Michael Hudson, New Economic Perspectives Remarks by Prof. Michael Hudson at The Atlantic’s Economy Summit, Washington DC, Wednesday, March 13, 2013. There are two quite different perspectives in the set of speeches at this conference. Many on our morning panels – Steve Keen, William Greider, and earlier Yves Smith and Robert Kuttner – have …
Continue reading “Government Debt and Deficits Are Not the Problem. Private Debt Is.”
Some Modest Proposals for Reforming the U.S. Financial and Tax System
by Guest Author Michael Hudson
On November 3, 2011, Alan Minsky interviewed me on KPFK’s program, “Building a Powerful Movement in the United States” in preparation for an Occupy L.A. teach-in. To clarify my points I have edited and expanded my answers from the interview transcript.
The Global Financial Crisis Is Not Behind Us
The fundamental cause of the Global Financial Crisis was the excessive level of private debt. The deleveraging has been slowed to some degree by government action, but the need for that deleveraging has not been removed. A majority of the 16 individuals identified in Bezemer (2009) and (Fullbrook (2010)) as having anticipated the Global Financial Crisis followed non-mainstream approaches to economics, with most of them identifying as Post-Keynesian (Dean Baker, Wynne Godley, Michael Hudson, Steve Keen, Ann Pettifor) or Austrian (Kurt Richelbacher, Peter Schiff). The theoretical foundations of these authors therefore differ substantially from those of more mainstream neoclassical economists. This paper focuses on the Post-Keynesian subset, hereinafter referred to as the Bezemer-Fullbrook Group.
Australian Debt Update
Australian house prices are starting a long-term decline driven by a contraction in mortgage debt. Total private debt to GDP ratio is also starting to decline.