gyrofry posted:
are you suggesting impper is dead

if only

cleanhands posted:

i dread to wonder who the Atlantic thinks is the greatest living novelist

Ironicwarcriminal posted:

cleanhands posted:

i dread to wonder who the Atlantic thinks is the greatest living novelist

turns out its me, which at first i thought was weird because i havent wrote any novels, then figured at least its consistent

cleanhands posted:
only the obvious stuff like a stronger & healthier labour supply and a more efficiently perpetuated middle class would enable recovery, staving off communist revolution and keeping the ruling classes ruling, keeping britain great, etc. capital had nationality back in those days *sighs wistfully*

Yeah, and I suppose back in those days you could also still appeal to a Victorian "morality" and responsibility of sorts.

cleanhands posted:
its a shame dave cameron had to sacrifice his son to the electorate bc he would been a good candidate to become a fascist dictator in 40 years time

Not a chance, he's way too puffy-faced and too much of a "real" establishment Tory. Thatcher was the protofascist and any future dictators are going to be cast in her mould, with a petit bourgeois pedigree and who truly understands the spite and resentments of middle england. Daily Mail land might vote for him but they know that deep down he's not one of them.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke returned to his roots as a university professor today, seeking to explain and justify the existence of the central bank ahead of the 100th anniversary of its founding next year.

Bernanke told 30 students at George Washington University that central banks play a key role in the modern monetary system as guardians of economic and financial stability.

His hour-long lecture, followed by questions from the students, is the first of four planned talks on the history of the Fed and is part of what public relations specialist Richard Dukas called a “P.R. offensive” to buff the central bank’s tarnished image. The Fed is being attacked from both the left and the right, with liberals criticizing it for not doing enough to bring down unemployment, and conservatives blaming it for doing too much and risking faster inflation.

Bernanke’s return to the milieu where he spent more than two decades will give the Fed’s top policy maker an opportunity to “set the narrative” on the central bank’s role during and after the financial meltdown, said Princeton University professor and former Fed Vice Chairman Alan Blinder. “The question of who gets to write the history is an important one.”

If Americans lose faith in the Fed’s ability to manage the economy and contain inflation, that will rob monetary policy of some of its potency, according to Dana Saporta, director of U.S. economics research for Credit Suisse Securities in New York. Policy has “less effect the less confidence the public has in the Fed,” she said.

ahahahahahaha god damn it's so bad

A top U.S. regulator is accusing Royal Bank of Canada of engaging in hundreds of millions of dollars of illegal stock futures trades to gain Canadian tax credits.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) alleged Monday that RBC "wilfully concealed and made false statements" in what it called a "wash sales scheme" between 2007 and 2010, in which the bank traded futures contracts with its own subsidiaries under non-arm's-length terms.

...

The trades were basically "riskless" for the bank and were designed to enable RBC to realize "lucrative Canadian tax benefits" from holding certain securities in its Canadian and offshore trading accounts, according to the CFTC.

it seems pretty odd for the CFTC to be really concerned about the canadian gov'ts tax receipts all of a sudden

“They’re quite joyous occasions,” she said. “It’s very liberating, not using money.” At one market, she said, she approached a woman who had come along with three large trays of homemade cakes and was selling them for a unit a cake. “I asked her: ‘Do you think that’s enough? After all, you had the cost of the ingredients, the electricity to cook …’

“She replied: ‘Wait until the market is over’, and at the end she had three different kinds of fruit, two one-litre bottles of olive oil, soaps, beans, a dozen eggs and a whole lot of yoghurt. ‘If I had bought all this at the supermarket,’ she said, ‘it would have cost me a great deal more than what it cost to make these cakes.’”

Q: What do John Maynard Keynes and Steve Keen have in common?
A: They’ve both been misread by Paul Krugman.

In just a couple of days I’ve gone from the privilege of being acknowledged by Krugman to being misread by him, in a way that would have any student failed in a multiple choice exam. In a passage where I specifically referred to DSGE models–which includes both “New Classicals” and “New Keynesians” he interpreted me as referring to New Keynesian models only.

And I said “underlying principles to the DSGE models”, which should have been enough of a clue that I was referring specifically to New Classical models, not New Keynesian ones.

The disparaging references to New Keynesian models came later, when I described them as being like Ptolemaic astronomers adding epicycles to an underlying model that couldn’t explain the retrograde motion of the planets.

Sigh.

Then having misread me, he concludes with “Nick uses a four-letter word to describe this; I can’t, because this is the Times”
Since I don’t work for The Times, I can and will use a four letter word to describe your poor comprehension here Paul:
Fail.

Why the brief discourse on Astronomy? Because reading what Paul Krugman is saying about banking feels like reading a Ptolemaic Astronomer describing sunrise today as if that’s actually what’s happening. He is dismissive of the view that banks can “create credit out of thin air”—so dismissive in fact, that anyone unacquainted with the empirical evidence might be fooled into believing that his case is so strongly supported by the facts that it’s not even worth the bother of citing the empirical data that backs it up.

That is so NOT the case: the empirical evidence overwhelmingly supports the case Krugman is trying to dismiss out of hand, that banks can and do “create credit out of thin air”, with the supposed regulatory controls over their capacity to do so being largely ineffective.

So Paul, not only did I distinguish between NC models and NK ones, I even mentioned you by name in that section as someone who has added imperfect competition, sticky prices and so on to that base NC model. And yet you implied that I was a moron who didn’t even know that NK models include imperfect competition, sticky prices and so on—and you wonder why you got a Fail?

i think everyone here knows how shitty paul krugman is but to see his dumb theories and arrogant attitude towards non-neoclassical economist who actually know more about neoclassical theory than kurgman himself is so god damn satisfying

here is the entire exchange from steve keen's perspective from start to finish (i refuse to link to anything that goes to the nyt):

http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2012/03/21/my-paper-for-inets-berlin-2012-conference/

http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2012/03/29/krugman-on-or-maybe-off-keen/

http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2012/04/02/ptolemaic-economics-in-the-age-of-einstein/

http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2012/04/03/oh-my-paul-krugman/

http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2012/04/04/krugman-apologises/

not only is the ownage rife in these posts, keen is extremely good at explaining what is fundamentally wrong with neoclassical theory. reminder also that you should read debunking economics

that said, keen is also a really bad source for anything related to marxism and chapter 17 of debunking economics is really pitiful. im thinking about writing a critique of it at some point. hes basically regurgitating the old sraffian interpretation that kliman demolished

Edited by statickinetics (April 14, 2012 23:55:09)

statickinetics posted:
what i dont understand is how the french socialist party is still considered a legitimate leftist party. didnt DSK come from the same party? or maybe they dont consider them "leftist" in our sense of the word. i dont know shit about france. freedom fries.

well they support wealth taxes, a shorter work week, more cooperatives, more social spending and so on. they are leftist in the broad sense, and probably one of the most left-wing major social-democratic parties in europe. yes DSK was PS. so was kouchner.

statickinetics posted:
good to know, thanks getfiscal. how soon are the elections? does melenchons party have a presence in other areas of government?

the first round of the presidential election happens april 22nd. then a few weeks later there will be a run off, probably between the socialist hollande and sarkozy, which hollande will win if he doesn't completely fuck up.

melenchon is a former PS member that created a new party called the Left Party, which is in an alliance with the Communists. they have only a little support in the national assembly.

Tsargon posted:
aha wonderful, thank you, so thats where all these people who treat seriously the idea that banks only provide liquidity and stabilize commodity prices through futures trading come from.

http://www.cfeps.org/pubs/wp-pdf/WP10-Wray.pdf