Finance

Both before 2008 and today, there’s a disturbing tendency in Washington to not take mortgage fraud seriously

Distracted by the perceived threat of a Chinese savings glut, mainstream macroeconomists missed the writing on the wall of the 2008 crisis

In 2008 a global financial meltdown was just barely contained. But Adam Tooze says that the crisis of confidence has had long aftershocks

10 years later, Nobel laureate George Akerlof says the walls within economics need to come down

George Soros and Rob Johnson Discuss the Causes and Consequences of the 2008 Financial Crisis

Despite disparate policy beliefs, MMT and orthodox macro rely on many of the same theoretical foundations

Ten years ago, the financial crisis washed away faith and trust in economics as a guide to social prosperity. Filling a void is difficult. We are still hard at work. 

The anthropologist David Graeber has argued that as much as 30% of all work is performed in “bullshit jobs,” which are unnecessary to produce truly valuable goods and services but arise from competition for income and status. But the deeper problem is that more and more economic activity performs a merely distributive function.

In China, the government uses the purses strings of state-owned enterprises to control social unrest

It’s not just Turkey­—from India to Indonesia, external financial liabilities are a looming threat

Using datasets on transactions within business groups and social sentiment in China, I show that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) use internal funds to address social unrest, complying with the government’s political goals. 

State-issued digital money may avoid some pitfalls of cryptocurrency, but it’s no financial panacea

INET Global Commissioner Peter Bofinger breaks down cryptocurrencies, and why they’re actually far from “anonymous”

Dennis Kelleher of Better Markets explains how we can stop the financial industry from gaming Washington

To understand the rise of the League and 5 Star Movement, look at economic indicators