At a time when the Loch Ness monster (that is, the Tobin tax) rears its head again in public debate, it may be useful to review why a transactions tax on currency trading is unlikely to prevent speculations or serve any genuine public purpose.

By: Andrea Terzi

The Economist (Dec 31, 2011) gives a good fair account of neo-chartalism, and a momentous recognition of Warren Mosler’s long fight to have it accepted!
Like all new (and meaningful) views of the world, neo-chartalism develops from a number of forerunners, whose ideas are revamped under a new format.
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By: Andrea Terzi

One claimed objective of the single currency area in Europe is (or should I say was?) to create a large single market for producers. But now the ECB is pressing national governments to gear their policies to enhance competitiveness so that they can “count on external demand” and increase their net exports! Mario Draghi, President of the ECB, and a key figure in the team now managing the European crisis, made this statement while responding to an Italian journalist, in the Q&A session of the ECB press conference of 8 December 2011.
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By: Andrea Terzi

German central bankers (current and former) continue to voice their hostility to what the financial community now calls a Euro-style Quantitative Easing (aka big bazooka). This is the possibility that the ECB (directly, or through the EFSF) make an unlimited commitment to purchase euro bonds and remove the spreads.  Axel Weber, Juergen Stark, and Jens Weidmann have already voiced sharp criticism of the ongoing ECB’s sovereign bond purchase program (SMP, Securities Market Programme), saying it threatens the independence of the ECB.
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by Warren Mosler

1. A full FICA suspension to end that highly regressive, punishing tax and restore sales, output, and jobs.

2.$150 billion in federal revenue sharing for the state goverments on a per capita basis to sustain essential services.

3. An $8/hr federally funded transition job for anyone willing and able to work to facilitate the transition from unemployment to private sector employment.

4. See my universal health care proposals.

5. See my proposals for narrow banking, the Fed, the Treasury and the FDIC.

6. See my proposal’s to take away the financial sector’s ‘food supply’ by banning pension funds from buying equities, banning the Tsy from issuing anything longer than 3 month bills, and many others.

7. Universal Social Security at age 62 at a minimum level of support that makes us proud to be Americans.

8. Fill the Medicare ‘donut hole’ and other inequities.

9. Enact my housing proposals.

10. Don’t vote for anyone who wants to balance the federal budget!!!!

By: Andrea Terzi

Well, like all economists always do, let’s assume!

Let’s assume that Europeans have two goals:

1) Preventing sovereign debt defaults to avert a full-blown banking crisis; and

2) Saving the political project of the single currency that Europeans regard as a fundamental pillar of the integration process that started right after World War II.
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President Obama’s job proposal includes deeper payroll tax cut for all workers, payroll tax cuts for all businesses with payrolls up to $5 million, spending $30 billion to modernize schools and $50 billion on road and bridge projects, local government aid, employer tax credits.

Does this sound vaguely familiar?

Compare it to How to Fix the US Economy in Less Than 500 Words (posted by Warren Mosler on 8 February 2010)

My fellow Americans,

let me get right to the point.

I have three bold new proposals to get back all the jobs we lost, and then some.
In fact, we need at least 20 million new jobs to restore our lost prosperity and put America back on top.

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By: Andrea Terzi

The August 2011 Monthly Bulletin of the European Central Bank has an interesting chart of financial balances of different sectors in the euro area. The chart is reproduced below.

The figure shows how rising deficits in Europe in 2008 and 2009 have produced higher net financial savings in the private sector. Read the rest of this entry »