The Progressive Economics Forum

Michael Hlinka is the notoriously libertarian daily economics reporter on CBC Metro Morning (the flagship morning radio show in Toronto).  Our paths have crossed before; see my previous commentary:
http://www.progressive-economics.ca/2009/07/11/another-economics-journalism-is-possible/
Michael’s segment on September 1 (in conversation with host Matt Galloway) focused on the Statistics Canada GDP release.  It was a sensible and largely uncontroversial discussion, with [...]

Yesterday’s GDP numbers were worse than they seemed.  And they highlighted a curious feature of modern capitalism.  Nowadays, non-financial businesses have become major net lenders to the rest of the economy.  Instead of borrowing money (in various forms: debt, equity, etc.) from other sectors to finance real investment, non-financial businesses are not even reinvesting their [...]

Here’s a fascinating finding from an NBER study: “The Economic Crisis and Medical Care Usage,” by Annamaria Lusardi, Daniel Schneider, and Peter Tufano (NBER study #15843).
They undertook a broad public survey across 5 countries (the U.S., Canada, U.K., Germany, and France) on the economic and social impacts of the recession.  The survey covered over 6000 [...]

            Canada’s federal government made an important announcement this week.  It was kept deliberately quiet: with a news release issued at 4:45 pm on a calm Tuesday in the middle of the late-summer news “dead zone.”  But it should set alarm bells ringing for anyone concerned with the anti-democratic direction of global trade law.

Prof.  Myron Gordon was an economist, a long-time member of faculty at the Rotman School of business at the U of T, and a founding member of the Progressive Economics Forum.  Sadly he passed away in Toronto on July 5 of this year.
My Gordon was very influential with me, and I know with many other independent-minded economists [...]

One of the wonderful things about being away from the usual grind for a few months, is that I get to engage in this unusual activity called picking up a book and actually reading it.  What a concept!  It doesn’t happen much in the normal day-to-day life of CAW economist, engaged citizen, and co-parent of [...]

From the “fox guarding the henhouse” category comes news that the Bank of Canada has appointed Tim Hodgson, CEO of Goldman Sachs’ Canadian subsidiary, to be a special advisor for the next 18 months on financial regulatory reform.  Hodgson worked with Governor Mark Carney when the latter was also at Goldman Sachs.  (Don’t forget, Carney [...]

Bill Watson might just be my very favourite right-wing economist.  (He might disagree with that moniker.  Or he might not.  He probably thinks he’s just being ”rational.”)  Prof at McGill, punchy commentator for the National Post, and always game for a fair debate (unlike most of his ilk who just try to ignore us in hopes [...]

How fascinating, and inspiring, to see China’s workers continuing to build their fightback against the low pay and grueling working conditions that have unfortunately been part and parcel of China’s recent development.
And how appropriate that it was a fight against a global auto giant, Honda, that finally put the global spotlight on this struggle.
Finally, how [...]

The title for this post borrows from an article by Robert Rowthorn (my old Cambridge professor) and Terry Ward in the 1979 Cambridge Journal of Economics, titled “How to run a company and run down an economy.”  It’s still a classic on the difference between private cost-benefit accounting and social cost-benefit accounting (showing how the [...]

My good friend and CAW brother Paul Pugh (President of CAW Local 1075 in Thunder Bay) has brought to my attention recent economic and political developments in Uruguay, the little nation of 4 million people squashed between Argentina and Brazil.  Paul has family connections to Uruguay and follows developments there closely.  While not as well-covered [...]

Progressive economists everywhere should say a thank you this week to Wynne Godley, who passed away May 13.  He started out his career as an economist working for the U.K. Treasury, then got to know Nicholas Kaldor and moved over to Cambridge to help establish the Department of Applied Economics there (from which he retied in [...]

Last Friday I had the honour of sharing the podium (and a good supper afterward) with Steve Keen, the awesome Australian economist who was recently named the winner of the “Revere Award” for most accurately forewarning of the global financial crisis.  In fact, that award was announced the same day we spoke together to the [...]

Last week’s announcement by GM that is has fully repaid the loans it received from the U.S., Canadian, and Ontario governments (years ahead of schedule, and with interest) was greeted in most circles as another positive sign of the auto industry’s modest recovery.  Since the dark days of last June (when Chrysler was shut down [...]

The Steelworkers are carrying on their historic and very brave battle with Vale-Inco up in Sudbury.  Last week’s huge solidarity rally was a sign that the rest of the labour movement is finally waking up to the threat that this battle poses to all of us.  Imagine a profitable global company like Vale, buying up [...]

            We all know there’s an economic recovery out there, right?  Because it said so, in the newspapers.
            Problem is, no-one I know has actually seen the recovery.  (I don’t have any friends who are bank executives.  So all those multi-billion dollar bonuses being paid out by government-subsidized, government-protected banks?  No-one I know got any [...]

I recently had the joy of spending a couple of weeks in Kerala, the little socialist state at the bottom tip of India.  Apart from exquisite food, friendly people, beautiful jungles, and welcoming climate, Kerala’s greatest asset of course is its astonishing record in producing a literate, healthy, politically engaged society — all on the [...]

            A year ago, as part of his 2009 crisis budget, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty created a Task Force on Financial Literacy.  The goal was to equip Canadians with more knowledge to traverse the minefields of high finance.  This week, just in time for Flaherty’s next budget, the Task Force released its initial “consultation” report.
            [...]

Statsitics Canada has released some interesting new obscure research on what constitutes a “purchasing power parity” exchange rate for Canada.  It was summarized in an article in the December Canadian Economic Observer, and is explained more fully in an on-line technical paper by John Baldwin and Ryan Macdonald.
First off, let me remind everyone that the [...]

I guess I must be a Rodney Dangerfield economist.  Because I just don’t get no respect — at least not in some quarters.
It all started with an interesting CBC on-line column from the erstwhile Don Newman: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/01/07/f-vp-newman.html
He was taking Stephen Harper to task for proroguing Parliament.  Among other aguments, he noted that Canada’s economy had [...]

I’ve found the politics of the Buy American controversy very odd.  President Obama, to help sell his massive stimulus package to the American public, added measures to maximize domestic content in stimulus-funded projects.  From his perspective, that was sensible both economically (reduces the import leakage from the stimulus) and politically.
If anything, it should have reinforced [...]

Here we go with another media frenzy celebrating the official “end of the recession.”  Truly, this time.  We really mean it.
Harken back to July 23 of this year, when Mark Carney made it official the first time, declaring in his monetary policy update that the economy was back in the black.  His bold declaration made [...]

One dimension of today’s dismal jobs report that hasn’t received enough attention yet is the continuing slide in labour force participation.  It declined again to 67.0 percent (following a bigger decline last month that was the crucial ingredient in September’s counter-intuitive reduction in the unemployment rate).
The participation rate hasn’t been lower since July 2002 — [...]

The loonie’s spectacular flight toward parity with the greenback (and likely beyond) seems to know no bounds.  It’s climbed by over 25 percent in 7 months; its flight began the same day global stock markets turned the corner back in March.  There’s no reason why this appreciation, the steepest in our history, should stop at mere [...]

I had been girding my loins yesterday, with the release of StatsCan’s July GDP numbers, for another orgy of triumphalist headlines: “The Recovery Is Nigh! All is Good! Stop Worrying!  Nothing to See Here, Folks!  Just Go About Your Business!”
After all, Chrysler’s two humongous Canadian assembly plants went back to work in July (after a 6-week [...]

I want to share with everyone a new CAW resource that was produced for our Constitutional Convention (which took place last month in Quebec City).
It’s a 4-page cartoon book explaining the core dynamics of financial cycles, that was illustrated and deesigned by Tony Biddle — the awesome Toronto political cartoonist who also illustrated Economics for [...]

            This week marks the one-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers: the darkest moment of the global financial crisis, when those in charge genuinely feared for the survival of their system.
           This somber anniversary has sparked a modest flurry of retrospection in the media.  But the dominant tone (Michael Moore’s new movie aside, [...]

I’ve always been annoyed by the trite, horse-race-style coverage of financial markets that dominates so much of what passes for economics journalism in Canada (especially in the electronic media).
How many 2-minute “market updates” do we really need, anyway?  I typically hear 4 or more on the radio any given workday, just getting to and from [...]

Further to my recent post about the current mini wave of industrial unrest in Canada, and who should wear the blame for it…
Now we have the latest developments at Air Canada, where the Machinists local has rejected a tentative multi-union agreement which would have deferred Air Canada’s pension contributions in hopes of seeing the company [...]

The economy is in trouble, and millions of people around the world are suffering (in various ways and to various extremes), because of the failure of a deregulated profit-driven private-sector financial industry.
I think that statement is largely unquestionable.
You would think, logically, that this fact should put the free-market private sector on the defensive.  Ironically, however, [...]