Readers ask me if Paul Krugman could be correct that deficits don’t matter and that neither does printing endless reams of money with which to purchase the Treasury’s debt instruments that finance the deficits. If people at home and abroad who hold dollars and dollar denominated financial instruments do not care that trillions of new... Read More

Paul Krugman is widely appreciated for his New York Times columns criticizing Republican demands for fiscal austerity. He rightly argues that cutting back public spending will worsen the economic depression into which we are sinking. And despite his partisan Democratic Party politicking, he warned from the outset in 2009 that President Obama’s modest counter-cyclical spending... Read More

2,181 Italians pack a Sports Arena to learn Modern Monetary Theory: The Economy doesn’t Need to suffer Neoliberal Austerity I have just returned from Rimini, Italy, where I experienced one of the most amazing spectacles of my academic life. Four of us associated with the University of Missouri at Kansas City (UMKC) were invited to... Read More

Here’s the quandary that the U.S. economy is in: The Fed’s quantitative easing policy– creating more liquidity so that banks can lend more – aims at helping the economy “borrow its way out of debt.” But banks are not lending more, for the simple reason that a third of U.S. real estate already is in... Read More

It is traditional for politicians to blame foreigners for problems that their own policies have caused. And in today’s zero-sum economies, it seems that if America is losing leadership position, other nations must be the beneficiaries. Inasmuch as China has avoided the financial overhead that has painted other economies into a corner, nationalistic U.S. politicians... Read More

I have recently republished my lecture notes on the history of theories of Trade, Development and Foreign Debt [2]. In this book I provide the basis for refuting Samuelson’s factor-price equalization theorem, IMF-World Bank austerity programs, and the purchasing-parity theory of exchange rates. These ideas were lapses back from earlier analysis, whose pedigree I trace.... Read More

BANGKOK - With a playful smile, Paul Krugman says China will inevitably become the world's No 1 economy, depending on the criteria one applies, "by 2020 to 2040". You can't be too careful when it's early evening, but the internal clock says it's early morning US East Coast time, you crave for breakfast, but soon... Read More

Enter the world of Paul Krugman, a world either dark (the eras of Bush One and Bush Two), or bathed in light (when Bill was king). "What do you think of the French revolution?" someone is supposed to have asked Chou En Lai. "Too soon to tell", Chou laconically riposted. Krugman entertains no such prudence.... Read More