New Issue of Review of Keynesian Economics
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…
macroeconomics
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…
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.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…