Scientific Economics: Review of Progress

Posted on August 28, 2016 by admin

It has been three years since this blog was launched with an inaugural post in August 2013.  What has been achieved by way of progress in building a scientific economic paradigm?  Considering the scope and ambition of the project – to start from scratch, to take nothing for granted and to build from a scientific basis – enormous progress has been made.  Here is a summary.

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Posted in Economics, Paradigm, Science | 1 Comment

Helicopter Money in Operation

Posted on May 8, 2016 by admin

The great inventive minds of modern economics (GIMME) have been busy talking about helicopter money as an option they could try in future as another unconventional monetary policy (UMP) to avoid “deflation” or “lowflation” (Lagarde, 2013).  Actually, helicopter money is a very old idea and already has been in operation for several years.  But nobody, not even some prominent critics of central banks, seems to have recognized it yet.  What is helicopter money?  What is it for?  Has it worked? Will it work?

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Posted in Economics, Finance, Regulation | 2 Comments

How Much Capitalism?

Posted on April 14, 2016 by admin

How much capitalism is optimal for economic growth and stability?  Or, equivalently, the question is how much socialism or government?  Until now, no one appears to have posed this question, as most people tend to favour more and more of one or the other, in a political rather than scientific judgement.  This post provides some tentative answers based on empirical evidence.

Under our definition, no economy is purely capitalist, because there is always a government which expropriates private property through taxes for government purposes; hence there are only degrees of capitalism.  The degree of capitalism and the size of government are two sides of the same coin, as more capitalism means less government and vice versa.

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Keynesian Black Holes

Posted on February 24, 2016 by admin

The previous post suggests that the US economy may be in a Keynesian black hole. Many other countries around the world are also likely to be in Keynesian black holes. The danger is that the larger black holes will cannibalize smaller ones, leading to a supernova explosion and an orgy of wars which are being seen around the globe.

An economic black hole is defined as an economy which consumes more than it produces, leading to wealth destruction rather than wealth accumulation as in a normal economy. A Keynesian black hole is a black hole created by the pursuit of Keynesian economic policies. The phase transition to a Keynesian black hole occurs as an economy moves through the Keynesian singularity where the Keynesian multiplier is infinite.

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Posted in Econoclasm, Economics | 1 Comment

Fiscal Stimulus of Consumption

Posted on February 22, 2016 by admin

The global financial crisis (GFC) has been in temporary recess since its break in 2008, but has recently metastasized into a more dangerous form. Extreme real-time experiments are being forced on many economies without sufficient scientific justification. The extreme measures, apart from constant fiscal stimulus, now including negative interest rates and banning or restricting the use of cash, have been designed and implemented, in Europe, Japan and elsewhere, to prevent saving and force spending, and also to protect a flawed financial system. The slow recovery from the GFC has been blamed on insufficient consumer spending.

As a past US Secretary of the Treasury and now a Harvard professor, Summers (2011), has said and has repeated on several occasions:

…the central irony of financial crises is that they’re caused by too much borrowing, too much confidence and too much spending and they’re solved by more confidence, more borrowing and more spending.

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Posted in Econoclasm, Economics, Uncategorized | Leave a comment