August 2011 – The Progressive Economics Forum

Money Runners for Marx

August 29, 2011 Ellen Russell 5 comments

On Bloomberg today is a piece by George Magnus, senior economic advisor at UBS, on the relevance of Marxian ideas. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-29/give-marx-a-chance-to-save-the-world-economy-commentary-by-george-magnus.html Policy makers struggling to understand the barrage of financial panics, protests and other ills afflicting the world would do well to study the works of a long-dead economist: Karl Marx. The sooner they recognize weâ€™re facing a once-in-a-lifetime crisis […]

Jack Layton and the Politics of Anger

August 28, 2011 Bruce Livesey 19 comments

My wife and I (and our dog Charlie) attended Jack Laytonâ€™s memorial service in downtown Toronto yesterday along with thousands of other mourners. It was a moving, emotional, soulful and remarkable ceremony, a testament to a fabulous human beingâ€™s honourable political legacy and his fundamental decency as a person. It’s tragic that just when Jack was in a position to […]

Hurricane Trichet Hits Jackson Hole

August 27, 2011 Erin Weir 4 comments

After watching Jack Laytonâ€™s state funeral, I noticed that Jean-Claude Trichetâ€™s speech from Jackson Hole is online. The European Central Bank president does not seem to get it. Far from acknowledging that last monthâ€™s interest-rate hike was premature, he touts â€œprice stability.â€ His main theme is that the economic divergence between Eurozone countries is comparable to that between American states. […]

So the BC HST Was Defeated. Now What?

August 26, 2011 Iglika Ivanova 8 comments

Earlier today, Elections BC announced the much anticipated HST referendum results. British Columbians have voted to scrap the HST. The best part about having the results is that now we can move on from the narrow issue of what type of sales tax is better and focus our energies on some of the bigger issues affecting British Columbia. Since the […]

Is There a Student Debt Bubble?

August 23, 2011 Nick Falvo 4 comments

A recent article in The AtlanticÂ looks at student debt in the United States and suggests there may be a student debtÂ bubble.Â Written by the authors of the recent book, Higher Education?,Â the article points out that “college loans are nearing the $1 trillion mark, more than what all households owe on their credit cards.” The article also features the following provocative excerpt: […]

Recession Ahead?

August 23, 2011 Andrew Jackson 11 comments

TD Economics yesterday released a rather gloomy report, putting the odds of a US recession at 40%, and arguing that that Canadian economy is more vulnerable to recession than it was in 2008.Â It highlights reduced capacity for governments to respond given that interest rates are already very low, and given that household and government debt are significantly higher than […]

R.I.P. Jack Layton

August 23, 2011 Erin Weir Leave a comment

Many have written eloquently about yesterdayâ€™s tragic news. I share the sentiments that Greg was quick to express and am inspired by Jackâ€™s letter to Canadians. Allow me to recall a post I wrote more than four years ago entitled, â€œPrime Minister Layton?â€ Back then, most people thought that idea was pretty far-fetched. In fact, he came closer to being […]

The Macro-Economics of Financing Employment Insurance

August 22, 2011 Andrew Jackson 4 comments

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 earningsÂ and the employer premium is $2.49 per $100, adding to a total premium of $4.27 […]

The Double Whammy of Defunding Universities

August 21, 2011 Nick Falvo 2 comments

As I’ve blogged about here, federal funding forÂ post-secondary education (PSE) in CanadaÂ is decreasing.Â Between 1985-1986 and 2007-2008, annual federal cash transfers to Ontario for PSE (in constant 2007 dollars) decreased from roughly $1.4 billion toÂ just under $1 billion.Â (Yet,Â during that same period, PSE enrolment in Ontario increased by more than 60 percent). And as I’veÂ written about here,Â during Dalton McGuinty’s time as […]

The Racialised Impact of Tuition Fees

August 20, 2011 Nick Falvo One comment

Mainstream policy wonks often claim that tuition fees and rising levels of student debt in Canada are relatively inconsequential. They argue that though the costsÂ of higher education for students (and sometimes their families) are increasing, so is post-secondary enrollment, meaning that raising the cost of post-secondary education clearly doesn’t block access. While enrollment is indeed rising, the increases in costs […]

Outlook Darkens as Budget Debate Begins

August 19, 2011 Andrew Jackson 7 comments

Allow me to indulge myself just this once. Almost exactly one month ago I wrote a post arguing that the Bank of Canada was being too optimistic about our economic prospects in the July Monetary Policy Report . Today, both the Governor (and Finance Minister Flaherty) conceded to the House of Commons Finance Committee that the outlook is indeed significantly […]

On Balancing the Budget

August 19, 2011 Andrew Jackson One comment

Andrew Watt has written an especially cogent piece on why the balanced budget rule proposed for the Euro area by Merkel and Sarkozy is a very, very bad idea. It also makes relevant reading for Canadians. Andrew points out (1) that fiscal rules have to take into account overall balances and that the public sector cannot balance if the private […]

Mythologies: Money and Hyperinflation

August 19, 2011 Arun DuBois 10 comments

In an earlier post, Marc Lee mentioned in passing the German hyperinflation episode of the 1920s. Itâ€™s remarkable that this event still holds such sway over the popular imagination despite other more recent instances of hyperinflation. Certainly, the imagery is powerful: German citizens pushing wheelbarrows full of worthless paper money around for everyday purchases, banknotes used as wallpaper, or dramatic […]

Remembering Gideon Rosenbluth

August 18, 2011 Marc Lee 2 comments

Below is the text of the obituary for Gideon Rosenbluth, a renowned progressive economist and inspiration to us at the PEF, and a past president of the Canadian Economics Association. **** Gideon Rosenbluth January 23, 1921 Â August 8, 2011 Gideon Rosenbluth died suddenly in Vancouver while swimming with a friend on a sunny day. He had just spent a […]

2011 Academic Ranking of World Universities

August 17, 2011 Nick Falvo One comment

The 2011 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) was released on Monday.Â Because it’s compiled byÂ Shanghai Jiaotong University,Â it’s commonly known as “the Shanghai ranking.”Â Â As I recently blogged about here, Â the methodologies used inÂ global university rankings typically advantage English-language universities. This year’s Shanghai ranking confirms this: 20 of the Top 25 universities in the ARWU are located in the United States, andÂ four […]

Concordia’s “Culture of Contempt”

August 14, 2011 Nick Falvo 4 comments

In June of this year, a report was released on governance at Concordia University.Â Entitled Strengthening Governance at Concordia: AÂ Collective Challenge, the report can be accessed here: www.concordia.ca/vpirsg/documents/EGRC-REPORT.pdf. The 39-page report was written by the External Governance Review Committee, a three-person committee chaired by none other than Bernard J. Shapiro (Canada’s first Ethics Commissioner). The report paints a picture of a […]

Auto Labour Costs and Auto Industry Recovery

August 12, 2011 Jim Stanford 5 comments

I was recently invited to speak to the annual management briefing conference sponsored in Michigan by the Center for Automotive Research, a fine outfit which does the best research work in the continent on auto employment, workers, and skills.Â My slides are available here. My panel was addressing the current UAW negotiations with the Detroit Three automakers â€“ the first […]

Market Mayhem

August 12, 2011 Andrew Jackson Leave a comment

The wild swings in the North American financial markets this week serve as yet another reminder of the weakness ofÂ anyÂ linkage between levels and changes in financial asset values and levels and changes in real economic variables. This is apparent for both bonds and equities. In the case of the US and Canada, the rise in government bond prices is […]

MMT: What it Means for Canada

August 12, 2011 Keith Newman 16 comments

Arun Duboisâ€™ blog post yesterday on Modern Monetary Theory has prompted me to write my own take on the subject.Â For those interested, an interesting thumbnail sketch of MMT, essentially functional finance augmented by a full understanding of monetary operations, is explained here. While MMT deals with the details of monetary and fiscal matters, the implications of its analysis are […]

No Retreat, No Surrender: Time For Progressives to Explode Deficit/Monetary Myths

August 11, 2011 Arun DuBois 28 comments

Friends, I’m concerned. I fear that too often, we on the left retreat when we should attack, surrender when we should vanquish.Â What do I speak of?Â Well, I am concerned that too many of us are willing to play in the frame, the box, the straighjacket of modern discourse about fiscal and monetary policy.Â Obama does it.Â The NDP […]

Thoughts on “Why not print money?”

August 10, 2011 Marc Lee 10 comments

Richard Gilbert’s “Why not print money?” in the Globe’s Economy Lab toys with more radical monetary intervention as a response to the crisis. Desperate times, they say, call for desperate measures. The title (which was perhaps not Gilbert’s at all) is more provocative than the article itself, which is mostly about tolerating higher inflation that could have beneficial impacts for […]

Japanizing the World Economy

August 10, 2011 Erin Weir 8 comments

This guest post is from PEF members Marc Lavoie and Mario Seccareccia, both of whom are full professors of economics at the University of Ottawa. The â€œJapanizationâ€ of the World Economy Over the last twenty years, the Japanese economy underwent a long period of economic stagnation that some economists have characterized as a protracted â€œbalance-sheet recessionâ€. The period has been […]

Stimulus vs Public Investment

August 10, 2011 Andrew Jackson 7 comments

A column by Stiglitz in the Financial Times makes what I think is an important point. The current debate over fiscal policy for the US, Europe and Canada is often characterized in the media as one between advocates ofÂ higher deficits from Keynesian style stimulus measures,Â and advocates of lower deficits through public sector austerity.Â Within this frame, the advocates […]

C. D. Howeâ€™s Overnight Moves Need Work

August 9, 2011 Erin Weir One comment

Less than a month ago, the C. D. Howe Institute released Michael Parkinâ€™s paper, â€œOvernight Moves: The Bank of Canada Should Start to Raise Interest Rates Now.â€ The next day, its Monetary Policy Council called on the Bank to increase the overnight interest rate. This call was terrible. The following week, Statistics Canada reported Juneâ€™s significant drop in inflation â€“ […]

About those “unfunded liabilities”

August 9, 2011 Marc Lee 11 comments

When it comes to the Canada Pension Plan, a major talking point from the right is that the CPP has “unfunded liabilities”, with the implication that is not affordable and financially unsustainable. This is nonsense, a scare tactic based on an accounting fiction that counts only future expenditures but does not count future revenues. For example, John Robson writes in […]

The New Phase of the Crisis

August 8, 2011 Andrew Jackson 7 comments

The Great Recession was followed by an anaemic recovery in the advanced economies, which threatens to be followed by a double dip or worse now that theÂ fiscal stimulus measures of 2009 and 2010 have been succeeded by austerity programs. Now we face a new financial crisis, or at least a stock market correction of major proportions, which may precipitate […]

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