A new issue of the Review of Keynesian Economics is now out, and you can find it here. It features a symposium on ‘Steve Keen and his critics’, a paper by Steve Keen, and replies by Marc Lavoie, Tom Palley, and Brett Fiebiger. The Keen and Lavoie papers are available
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The Progressive Economics Forum: Flaherty’s Legacy: Ideological, reckless and just plain lucky
This piece was originally published at the Globe and Mail’s online Report on Business feature, EconomyLab. There are two reasons why it is difficult to comment on the legacy of a finance minister. 1) It is a tremendously challenging job, anywhere, any time. Stewarding one of the largest economies
Continue readingmark a rayner | scribblings, squibs & sundry monkey joys: Know your branches of economics
This comic does in one cartoon what the first chapter of Debt, the First 5000 Years does (pretty well) in one chapter. Alltop is a macro-humor generator.
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Niall Ferguson’s Latest Idiocy
As I discussed in an earlier post, Niall Ferguson, the Harvard historian and author of numerous bad books about economics, is prone to writing and saying completely ignorant things, making one wonder about the intellectual heft of so-called academic “stars” who populate our institutions of higher learning. The latest bit
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Polozogistics: Nine Thoughts About the Choice of the New Bank of Canada Governor
1. He’s Number Two: Stephen Poloz was widely acknowledged in economic and political circles as the second-best choice for the top job at the Bank of Canada. So the surprise was not that he was chosen. The surprise was, Why Not Tiff Macklem? Will someone please find out and tell
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Getting the Facts Straight on EI Changes
In a guest post at the Broadbent Institute, I flesh out some of the impacts of EI changes with three (fairly typical) hypothetical stories of unemployed Canadians. There are certainly more extreme consequences felt by some already. At least these folks have access to the Board of Referees. Many fear
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: A Green Industrial Revolution
Today the CCPA released a new big picture report by myself and student researcher Amanda Card calling for a Green Industrial Revolution. The report builds on work done for the BC-focused Climate Justice Project, bringing to bear a national analysis of green and not-so-green jobs. We take a close look
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Canada’s Self-Imposed Crisis in Post-Secondary Education
On June 7, I gave a keynote address to the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees Education Sector Conference. My PowerPoint presentation (with full references) can be found at this link. Points I raised in the address include the following: -Canada’s economy has been growing quite steadily over the past three
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Quebec Tuition: Between a Rock and Hard Place?
In the context of student protests over Quebec tuition fees, my friend Luan Ngo has just written a very informative blog post on Quebec’s fiscal situation. While I encourage readers to read his full post, I do want to use the present space to make mention of three important points
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The Times they Are a Changing: The MMT Wave Begins
Take a look at the picture below. Take it in. Now scan your eyes to the far right…there, in faded blue you’ll see the initials MMT. Now zoom out. Take it in again. Notice: a few hundred people. Spending their time learning about an economic theory called Modern Monetary Theory
Continue readingRed Tory v.3.0.3: Kunstler on the Political Economy
RT interviews James Howard Kunstler on a range of topics including the current state of the global economy, the de-legitimization of the U.S. political system, and, of course, his thoughts about the OCW movement. At the outset, Kunstler makes a … Continue reading →
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Fighting Unemployment
I was sorry to miss a celebration of the life and work of Ian Stewart organized by the Centre for the Study of Living Standards last Friday night. Ian was a former senior economic official back in the now distant days of Keynesian dominance, including a stint as Deputy Minister of Finance which will be […]
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The Macro-Economics of Financing Employment Insurance
The federal government has launched consultations on EI premium setting. This provides the opportunity to shift from a very ad hoc system to one that is more fair to workers, and more economically rational. The current worker premium is $1.78 per $100 of insured earnings and the employer premium is $2.49 per $100, adding to […]
Continue readingThey Call Me "Mr. Sinister": It Isn’t That They Are Stupid Exactly
But Wall Streeters have been making so much money trading worthless pieces of shit back and forth to each other, over the last couple of decades, that they haven’t a notion about how a real capitalist economy works. They saw what was going on in Washi…
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Navigating challenging economic waters
Down south, the Obama administration is in a dangerous game of chicken with Republican congressional leaders, who are cynically holding the US economy hostage in order to impose a radical agenda of spending cuts. Obama has seemingly bought into the rhetoric of cutting debt, rather than focusing on the real US problem of unemployment. Yet, […]
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