Tag Archives: The Economist

But why should we steer the economy away from carbon?

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From The Economist just now. We live in the midst of such idiocy in almost every direction that it will be a miracle if we get through this without a major collapse, going well beyond a mere depression. You really have much to fear when it’s Daniel Andrews leading the way. Plus this:

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Our cover this week calls for a global effort to tackle climate change. Covid-19 creates a unique chance to steer the economy away from carbon at a much lower financial, social and political cost than before. Rock-bottom energy prices make it easier to cut subsidies for fossil fuels and to introduce a tax on carbon. The revenues from that tax can help repair battered government finances. The businesses at the heart of the fossil-fuel economy—oil and gas firms, steel producers, carmakers—are already going through the agony of shrinking their long-term capacity and employment. Getting economies back on their feet calls for investment in climate-friendly infrastructure that boosts growth and creates new jobs. Low interest rates make the bill smaller than ever. The world should seize the moment.

The Economist published my letter!

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In the letters section of this week’s Economist which is dated September 7, 2017.

You don’t Say

The term “Say’s Law”, (Economics brief, August 12th) was invented by the American economist, Fred Taylor, and popularised in his introductory text, published in 1921. Moreover, the phrase “supply creates its own demand” is not classical in origin, but was first used in print by another American economist, Harlan McCracken, in a text that John Maynard Keynes is known to have read while he was writing the General Theory. Jean-Baptiste Say neither invented the concept nor was he its most staunch defender.

STEVEN KATES
Associate Professor
School of Economics, Finance and Marketing
RMIT University
Melbourne, Australia

And while you may think this is purely a factual statement about the construction of a book that was published more than 80 years ago, it is actually a suggestion that the mythological version of how Keynes came to write his book is many miles short of the truth. And as for the contents of the book, that falls even many miles shorter not just of the truth [how ridiculous to have argued that classical economists had no theory of involuntary unemployment] but of an understanding of how an economy first goes into recession and then recovers.

Note to “The Economist” – your solution is the very problem itself

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economics whats wrong

I’ve just been reminded of an article from The Economist published 16 July 2009 titled, What went wrong with economics. Note that it is not a question but a statement. The Economist naturally has no clue being an ultra-Keynesian rag but this, at least, can be dredged from its commentary:

And if economics as a broad discipline deserves a robust defence, so does the free-market paradigm. Too many people, especially in Europe, equate mistakes made by economists with a failure of economic liberalism. Their logic seems to be that if economists got things wrong, then politicians will do better. That is a false—and dangerous—conclusion.

What’s missing apparently is a more sophisticated financial model to graft onto the Keynesian core of what The Economist thinks of as good economics:

Central banks are busy bolting crude analyses of financial markets onto their workhorse models. Financial economists are studying the way that incentives can skew market efficiency. And today’s dilemmas are prompting new research: which form of fiscal stimulus is most effective? How do you best loosen monetary policy when interest rates are at zero? And so on.

As early as July 2009 they could see that the fiscal stimulus had been a disaster. They just do not see that trying to drive an economy along using either monetary or fiscal policies is the problem. Public spending and near-zero interest rates leave an economy dead in the water but they cannot see that their solution is the very problem itself.