Asymptosis: Always Approaching

Month: January 2012

  • Ironies Never Cease: Great Moments In Libertarian History

    Why have I never posted about Yasha Levine over at The Exiled? They’re the ones that first broke this story about Koch luring Hayek to America with Social Security, and I make a point to put down my coffee when reading Yasha, to avoid expensive and embarrassing spit-takes. Just a week ago he gave us this:…

  • Full-Reserve Banking, the “Right” to Earn Interest, and “Financial Repression”

    Nick Rowe replies to Richard Williamson re: full-reserve banking (emphasis mine): The key reading here (even though it appears to be about a different subject) is Milton Friedman’s “The optimum quantity of money”. Foregone nominal interest payments is a tax on holding currency…. 100% required reserves mean you impose the same tax on chequing accounts ……

  • Full-Reserve Banking and Loanable Funds

    Richard Williamson asks a sensible and straightforward question: If, as Modern Monetary Theorists propose, banks’ reserve levels put no significant constraints on their lending, why don’t we have 100%-reserve banking — and presumably no runs on banks as a result? First an explanation — I hope simple, clear, and generally accurate (if simplified): Say you…

  • Social Security: The Elevator Pitch

    • Since Social Security started it has always brought in more money than was spent. It contributes a surplus to the total federal budget. That’s true today and will continue for quite some time. • The extra revenue needed to make SS solid far beyond the foreseeable future (75 years) is tiny: 0.6% of GDP. •…

  • Why This Time Is Different

    A while back I pointed to (and demonstrated with not very pretty pictures) Randall Wray’s rather stunning observation: every depression in American history was preceded by a large decline in nominal federal debt. And I puzzled about why this wasn’t true of our latest little…event: We saw a decline leading up to 2000, but federal…

  • Economies Need a Gardener’s Invisible Hand

    I haven’t posted on Nick Hanauer and Eric Liu’s stuff, and I should have, long ago. Nick, along with Bill Gates Senior, was one of the big proponents of the Washington State high-earner income tax initiative a while back (which failed utterly, I’m sad to say). As was I, in my little way. I think…

  • Does Government Debt Impose a Burden on Future Generations/Periods/People? #12,143

    I think (after a lot of effort) that I’ve internalized Nick Rowe’s modeling of this question (follow links from here) pretty well conceptually.  His answer is Yes. There have been thousands of posts and comments across the blogosphere since Nick took Krugman to task on the issue a couple of weeks ago, and Nick has been remarkably…

  • Financial Markets Are the Real Barter Economy

    As (mis)conceived by most economists, money (which they confute here with currency) emerged as a solution to the time problem of barter economies: my spinach is ready now, but your apples won’t be ripe for months. How can we trade? Answer: you give me money for my spinach, and I give it back to you…

  • There is Only One Trustworthy News Source: Fox. There is Only One Trustworthy News Source: Fox. There is Only One Trustworthy News Source: Fox. There is Only One Trustworthy News Source: Fox.

    Repeat as needed to avoid cognitive dissonance. “Trust” percentage minus “Distrust” percentage: Via: Chart of the Day: Republicans Don’t Trust Anyone (Except Fox News) | Mother Jones. Cross-posted at Angry Bear. Related posts: Shiller on Fama: “maybe he has a cognitive dissonance” The Human and Economic Devastation of Leaded Gas: How the Visible Hand Saved the…

  • Saving Equals … Inventory?

    I’ve noticed that many others, like me, are puzzled by the mechanics of the Saving=Investment accounting identity. How do household savings get instantly and perfectly intermediated, in a period, into investment spending — the purchase/creation of long-term productive fixed assets? An Aha! for me: According to Krugman’s textbook, they don’t (click for larger): First a…

  • American Exceptionalism #238: Opportunity (Not)

    I don’t usually link to Paul Krugman because everyone reads him anyway, right? He doesn’t need my google juice. But I have to make an exception here because he adds to my trove of graphs demonstrating how America today — after thirty years of Reaganomics policies that were supposed to be all about freedom, liberty, and economic…

  • John Galt, “Genocidal Prick”

    John Scalzi: …in Ayn Rand’s world, a man who self-righteously instigates the collapse of society, thereby inevitably killing millions if not billions of people, is portrayed as a messiah figure rather than as a genocidal prick, which is what he’d be anywhere else. Yes, he’s a genocidal prick with excellent engineering skills. Good for him.…

  • An MMT Thought Experiment: The Arithmetic and Political Mechanics of Net Financial Assets

    Imagine that over the next week (in a closed American economy — the rest of the world has never existed) everyone sold all their financial assets, paid off all their debts, and deposited the remaining money (and any currency they have) in their checking accounts. No money-market funds, even. Just banks with reserve accounts at…

  • The Most Important Econoblog Post This Year: The Steve Keen/MMT Convergence

    Neil Wilson has done yeoman’s duty to (perhaps) achieve a convergence that has been too-long delayed. A Double Entry View on the Keen Circuit Model. Steve Keen is, to my knowledge, the only person who is actually encoding a Godley-esque, MMT-style, accounting-based, stock-flow-consistent dynamic simulation model of how economies work. But many MMTers have been…

  • The Upper Bound in the Fed’s Head: Inflation

    Continuing with one of my current hobbyhorses: Ryan Avent reports on the American Economic Association meeting, with special attention to a presentation by Robert Hall: Monetary policy: The zero lower bound in our minds | The Economist. Mr Hall argued that: A little more inflation would have a hugely beneficial impact on labour markets, And…

  • Answers: Taking IOR to Zero

    I want to thank all the commenters on my last post — at Angry Bear, at Asymptosis, and at Mike Norman’s blog. You’ve provided me with exactly the education I hoped to achieve. Here’s hoping others benefited similarly. I asked: what would happen if the the Fed cut the interest rate on reserves from its…

  • Question for Market Monetarists and MMTers: What Happens if IOR Goes to Zero?

    For the non-cognoscenti: “IOR” is interest on reserves. Banks keep money in their accounts at the Fed. In October, 2008 the Fed started paying .25% interest on those accounts. The Fed’s also engaged in “quantitative easing,” a.k.a. open-market purchases on steroids, creating new money and using it to buy $1.6 trillion dollars worth of bonds…

  • Menzie Chinn Explains it All for You: Demand Inflation Now!

    Whether it’s Market Monetarist NGDP targeting (a.k.a. Damn The Inflation Rate; We Need Growth!) or Menzie’s recommendation of Conditional Inflation Targeting with a notably higher target, everything tells us that somewhat higher inflation is the current path to greater and more widespread long-term prosperity. Raising the expected inflation rate will lower real interest rates and…