More On Keeping Up The Spending

..Keynes denied that the market system had any internal mechanism for maintaining full employment. This meant that economies could drift on for years in a state of semi-slump. Governments should therefore assume responsibility for maintaining full employment. They could do this by securing enough spending power in the economy to employ all those who wanted to work. He invented macroeconomics. This was much more than just ‘sound money’: it involved fiscal and regulatory policy too.

 

via Robert Skidelsky – Keynes for the 21st century.

Put Off Deficit Cutting For Now

…The long-term budget problem in the US is driven mainly by rising health costs, and we have many years to go before this begins to create big budget problems. Thus waiting, say, two years to begin reducing the deficit will not substantially change the probability of big problems down the road. But delaying austerity measures avoids placing a further drag on an already struggling economy, so the likely benefits are relatively large.

via Gridlock in Washington is hurting the US economy | The A-List | Must-read views on today’s top news stories – FT.com – FT.com.

Basic Economics of Trade Agreements (Krugman)

The case for free trade is about microeconomics, about raising efficiency. There’s no particular reason to think that trade liberalization is good for fixing problems of inadequate demand. I mean, you learn in Econ 101 that aggregate spending is Y = C+I+G+X-M; that is, consumer spending, plus investment spending, plus government purchases, plus exports, minus imports. Trade liberalization raises X, but it also raises M. For any individual county it can go either way; for the world as a whole it’s a wash, since total exports equal total imports.

via Wrong To Be Right – NYTimes.com.

Video of the Day: An Abandoned Rocket Factory in the Everglades – Nicholas Jackson – Technology – The Atlantic

Video of the Day: An Abandoned Rocket Factory in the Everglades

via Video of the Day: An Abandoned Rocket Factory in the Everglades – Nicholas Jackson – Technology – The Atlantic.