A blog tied to the Real-World Economics Review, publishing heterodox economics critiques of mainstream theory, inequality, debt, and economic policy.
HN commenters note its roots in the post-autistic economics movement, and discuss its posts on the Nobel prize dispute and macroeconomics, in a mixed reception.
Having read most of the comments here, I come to the conclusion that y'all need to start comprehending the difference between 'cash' and 'bank money', and no, I don't mean the conspiracy theory laden bullshit spread around by the most terrible Zeitgeist movies. I mean the real deal. Here, a paper on it:
http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue80/Huber80.pdf Huber, Joseph - Split-circuit reserve banking - functioning, dysfunctions and future perspectives
Abstract:
"This paper first provides a detailed outline of how the present money system works. This then serves as a backdrop to discuss a number of orthodox fallacies and heterodox flaws in money theory, followed by a summary of the dysfunctions of split-circuit reserve banking and a brief outlook on the perspective of a single-circuit sovereign money system."
Keywords; monetary economics, money theory, credit creation, banking theory,
fractional reserve banking, monetary policy, monetary reform
One may find comments on the paper here:
https://rwer.wordpress.com/comments-on-rwer-issue-no-80/
I'll quote part of the paper here, and I'd strongly recommend reading all of it if you want to have any understanding of modern economics at all:
"[...]
Modern money is non-cash
As far as traditional solid cash (banknotes and coins) is still in use, cash circulation represents a third circuit. In contrast to precious-metal coins, and like reserves, cash is token fiat money today. But rather than circulating between central bank…
There's actually a fair amount of drama around why this is!
https://rwer.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/the-nobel-family-dissociates-itself-from-the-economics-prize/
Apparently, when the Riksbank decided it wanted to publicly fund a prize for the category, the verbosity of the name of the prize was a concession to distance it from the other simply-named Nobel Prizes, funded by the family.
> What was the position of the Nobel family? Three days before the meeting of April 26, the then director of the Nobel Foundation, Nils Ståhle, met two members of the family and telephonically talked with a third one. Their position was that “it should not become like a sixth Nobel Prize”, but that if the economics prize could be kept clearly separate from the Nobel Prizes then it might be an acceptable idea.
> They obtained her written approval of the economics prize “under given conditions,” namely that the new prize in all official documents and statements should be kept separated from the Nobel prize, and called the “prize in economic science in memory of Alfred Nobel.” In a telephonic conversation with a nephew, Martha Nobel said that the whole thing was prearranged and impossible to oppose, so that one could only hope that they would keep their pledge that no confusion with the real Noble prize should occur.
> What has happened is an unparalleled example of successful trademark infringement. However, nobody in the world can prevent journalists, economists and the general public from…
It is true that you can analyse many cryptographic schemes by modelling them as games. In fact, my PhD was largely focused on this exact topic :-) Our discussion really depends on what we define as “game theory” and “graph theory” I suppose.
The game theory I studied in economics (albeit in my undergrad) I'm very skeptical of, though. It was about exact payoffs and rational agents and loads of assumptions that really don't work in real-life. I'd spend time literally analysing optimal strategies in board games. It all seemed kind of pointless. People always said you can apply game theory to political science and wars, but it all seemed like common sense and logic, rather than the specific stuff I was actually studying. I remember solving integral equations to calculate Nash equilibrium bidding strategies in third price bid auctions with perfect information and a uniform distribution of value to buyers. The solutions had a lot of maths, but had no bearing on reality whatsoever. What I studied was never really used to make any actual predictions in the real world. It seemed almost as if they were trying to make this subject mathematical to give it some legitimacy. A lot of it is common sense. One could argue that studying it helps you think logically I guess, but so do lots of things. Ariel Rubinstein is a famous economist and actually one of the founders of game theory and gave an excellent critique of the whole space. He is a lot more eloquent than I. You should listen to…
The evidence is in your favor where the CEO compensation just went up, up, up even as they used every justification in the world to pay workers less. The workers whose actions generated the revenues.
https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-continues-to-rise/
In most companies I've worked, the CEO's mostly just made simple or random choices based on what data people under them were producing. The companies with established models could mostly run on autopilot. They have at times in between senior management or executives. There's also been little evidence their performance is tied to their pay much outside financial manipulations with many taking golden parachutes on way out of companies doing poorly. Add in the interlocking boards effect on compensation grants, you have every reason to believe the pay gap is an artificial construct by a privileged few to further enrich themselves at the expense of the many. These other explanations are either of little effect or smoke screens to keep people from attacking the root causes of what their doing.
It's not like they hide it when talking among themselves that this is a system designed for the exclusive benefit of the rich as much as they can make it. See the leaked Citigroup memos about the plutonomy and such that they tried to take off the Internet.
https://politicalgates.blogspot.com/2011/12/citigroup-plutonomy-memos-two-bombshell.html
Particularly relevant is what's in report No 3 here showing economic inequality wasn't…
This seems like a political hit piece with no real substance.
Salaries aren't going up because employers are conspiring to push down wages[0] and non executive wages in general are stagnating or going down[1]. Furthermore as already stated elsewhere in this thread, STEM degrees have huge wash out percentages so "freshmen enrolled" is just as good a statistic as "college freshman who plan on changing the world". The real problem, which has been repeated ad nauseam here, is that there's a shortage of STEM workers at the wages employers are willing to pay.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation
[1] https://rwer.wordpress.com/2016/01/16/percent-change-in-u-s-real-wages-by-income-percentile-2007-2014/
10 Initiate provocations in Gaza
20 Run live tests on technology
30 Use the proof of real life usage in a low boil conflict to sell the technology at international arms fairs.
40 Use realistic test conditions to refine & develop new technology for 2 years.
50 GOTO 10
This efficient QA/development cycle is a serious competitive advantage, since it's hard for other countries to replicate the same controlled conflict conditions. Hence these great sales figures: https://rwer.wordpress.com/2016/01/12/the-15-largest-arms-exporters-per-capita/
And it's been ~2 years since the last conflict, so...: http://europe.newsweek.com/us-calls-americans-leave-gaza-soon-possible-492974?rm=eu