The Curious Engineer

mainly macro

2014–2026

1,374 posts

← 2011–2013

2026 43

October 2026

  1. The Big Picture for the forthcoming UK Budget that the media largely ignores
  2. The Decline of Knowledge Based Policy and the Economics Nobel
  3. Interest rates and Budget Deficits
  4. Misconceptions following Burnham’s speech

September 2026

  1. Populist tendencies on the UK left, and the puzzle that never was
  2. How should the government meet its Golden Rule when debt interest increases?
  3. Racism and xenophobia are not 'legitimate concerns'.
  4. Understanding long term interest rates movements over the austerity period and today
  5. Is the fall of Starmer a warning for the Democratic Party?

August 2026

  1. Media regulation is partly about protecting individuals and groups from powerful organisations and the wealthy, but it is also about protecting democracy.
  2. Signs of recovery in comparative UK economic growth
  3. Unpicking the legacy of neoliberalism
  4. Long term fiscal projections are a good antidote to politicians talking about tax cuts

July 2026

  1. The relationship between capital, plutocracy and populism
  2. The political barriers to radical tax reform
  3. How Right Wing Populism came easily to the Conservative Party
  4. The UK’s falling debt to GDP fiscal rule is a rule to suppress public investment

June 2026

  1. Sowing the Seeds of UK Revival
  2. Why governments should not be in hock to the bond market
  3. The Consequences of Tolerating the Far Right
  4. Trends in UK Inequality and Poverty
  5. Immigration numbers and the media

May 2026

  1. New ideas from Labour on economic policy
  2. Why Labour's current disarray is ultimately the consequence of Osborne’s austerity
  3. Why has Westminster politics become so dumb?
  4. UK decline and stylised empirical facts

April 2026

  1. Capital and Right Wing Populism
  2. Should the government compensate consumers for cost of living shocks?
  3. Orbán, Trump and the International Right Wing Populist Movement
  4. Taxation as Insurance, Welfare and Entitlements

March 2026

  1. The damage that right wing populists do
  2. Both Reform and Conservatives are now officially Islamophobic
  3. Public Attitudes to taxes and spending, and VAT zero rating
  4. Idiot Wind
  5. Why Gorton and Denton is still a good result for Reform

February 2026

  1. Budgets are about much more than fiscal sustainability
  2. How Labour makes fighting right wing populism harder
  3. Fiscal watchdogs, pluralist democracy, technocracy and evidence based policy
  4. The Conservatives need to embrace the Centre Right

January 2026

  1. How Liberal Democratic Countries will cooperate without the US
  2. Greenland
  3. A Post Neoliberal Consensus
  4. What kind of crisis would a bursting AI bubble become?

2025 51

December 2025

  1. Understanding the rise of the populist far right
  2. Labour, a supply side explanation for the rise of populism, and the growing acceptability of xenophobic discourse in the UK
  3. The Budget suggests the Chancellor is thinking too much about short term management and too little about long term legacy

November 2025

  1. Expertise, Government, the Media and Covid
  2. Blue Labour’s Electoral Fallacies
  3. Labour’s Brexit stance is as untenable as their tax pledge
  4. UK Productivity and the Budget

October 2025

  1. How the reaction to a football ban showed how our politicians and media have become trapped in right wing Islamophobic narratives and detached from the majority of voters
  2. What the call for fiscal headroom reveals
  3. Populism and Economic Prosperity
  4. The uphill struggle to stop Reform

September 2025

  1. Misunderstandings on the left (and elsewhere) about the OBR, independence and the bond market
  2. Farage and the BBC
  3. Parallels between what to do about Trump and what to do about Farage
  4. Key myths on asylum, immigration and how to take on the far right
  5. The real fiscal concern should be a populist government

August 2025

  1. Reform and the UK press
  2. When did relative UK decline begin? Productivity and the Global Financial Crisis
  3. Fascism, Rivers of Blood, and today’s political and media elite
  4. UK Growth, Productivity and Investment.

July 2025

  1. Delusions on the Left and Labour Right
  2. Thoughts on the unpopularity of different approaches to tax rises
  3. Ancestry and Immigration in the US and UK
  4. Everyone knows Labour has made mistakes. What is more worrying is why those mistakes were made.
  5. Other countries' wars and the media

June 2025

  1. A minimum tax on billionaires
  2. Is the decline of democracy inevitable?
  3. Why following the path of the last Labour government will not work this time
  4. The IMF on the UK’s fiscal rules

May 2025

  1. Is the centre right doomed?
  2. Reeves is not following in Osborne’s footsteps
  3. Starmer’s Disgraceful and Damaging Remarks
  4. The mistakes that have led the Conservatives towards annihilation, and Labour copying them

April 2025

  1. What Labour is getting wrong in fighting right wing populism
  2. Is two-party politics really dead in the UK?
  3. The new silent majority
  4. Why populists can do so much harm
  5. Last week’s spending cuts were not the fault of the OBR or a medium term golden fiscal rule

March 2025

  1. Why can’t we do fiscal policy in a grown up way?
  2. Labour’s strategic error on tax
  3. Falling confidence in vaccination illustrates how the media’s obsession with balance and impartiality, and its aversion to regulation, can kill.
  4. The moves to weaken Germany’s debt brake are welcome, but ultimately higher defense spending should be matched by higher taxes. Public spending cuts will promote right wing populists.
  5. Current UK stagnation may have many causes, but one we know about is the UK media. Plus why the UK definition of a recession is no longer fit for purpose.

February 2025

  1. A New World Order
  2. Is Trump a Populist or a Fascist?
  3. Quantifying the continuing UK public spending squeeze
  4. A government of small change

January 2025

  1. Labour and Growth
  2. Mediamacro melodrama
  3. The battle of our age
  4. Vibes for the economy and other things

2024 53

December 2024

  1. After neoliberalism: dynamics of transformation
  2. The politics of stupid
  3. Investment in politics, like economics, involves risk and present sacrifice

November 2024

  1. Should governments protect citizens from external shocks to living standards?
  2. Freedom of Speech and Media Regulation
  3. How could they vote for him?
  4. The Markets, the Budget, the Media and electing a Fascist

October 2024

  1. A budget that points the way but doesn’t get us very far
  2. October Budget 7: Soaking the rich?
  3. October Budget 6: Thanks to Truss, bond market scare stories are back
  4. Why are the Conservatives ignoring the median voter?
  5. October Budget 5. The UK’s Fiscal rules: one good and one bad

September 2024

  1. Why improving health is an excellent investment in the economy
  2. October Budget 4 - Good and bad reasons to have fiscal rules, and why bad fiscal rules are worse than having no fiscal rules
  3. October Budget 3: In presenting a macroeconomic fiscal stance, Rachel Reeves and Labour need to talk about improving public services rather than book balancing
  4. October Budget 2: How much do UK taxes need to rise to end public spending austerity?

August 2024

  1. Transforming the politics of immigration
  2. October Budget 1: can economic growth end austerity?
  3. Racist riots and the Conservative party
  4. If Labour is serious about defeating right wing populism, it needs to reform large parts of the media

July 2024

  1. Was yesterday’s announcement austerity redux?
  2. More power to the OBR?
  3. Two myths about the future of the Conservative party
  4. What the Conservative rout tells us about the popularity of a right wing populist government
  5. Why tactical voting in this election could change the nature of the UK’s political debate

June 2024

  1. UK Election Special: The Conservatives could lose almost every seat to efficient tactical voting
  2. Why UK taxes should be higher
  3. Why is this election a disaster for the Conservatives?
  4. The macroeconomic cost of Conservative government
  5. Should voting in this election be about punishing the Conservatives, signalling to a future Labour government or something else?

May 2024

  1. Inside a Macroeconomic Policy Blunder
  2. Why Quantitative Easing is qualitatively important but quantitatively not so important
  3. The political right is in an illiberal trap of its own making, which offers their opponents opportunities
  4. When are large and persistent increases in debt to GDP justified?

April 2024

  1. High on their own supply
  2. The Bernanke Review of Bank of England Forecasting
  3. Could governments finance deficits by creating money?
  4. The Anatomy and Reasons for UK relative Economic and Political decline over the last decade and a half
  5. Why Quantitative Easing is currently so costly

March 2024

  1. Why raising taxes substantially is critical for the next Labour government to be sure of achieving its missions
  2. Detoxifying government debt, part 4. Labour’s inheritance
  3. On maxing out credit cards and magic money trees
  4. How 14 years have shown the impossibility of shrinking the UK state
  5. Rishi Sunak doesn’t want to talk about Islamophobia because he wants to use it

February 2024

  1. Detoxifying government debt, part 3. The Truss crisis has no relevance for Labour borrowing to invest
  2. Detoxifying government debt, part 2. Market myths
  3. Detoxifying government debt, part 1. Debt is also an asset
  4. One Rule to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them

January 2024

  1. The evolution of the UK Conservative party since 1979
  2. 2024 will be the year UK fiscal policy became a sad joke
  3. Why the centre-right has helped cause the drift to the far right in Western democracies
  4. If the next government isn’t diverting resources to investment then it will be giving up on our future
  5. The case for increasing government debt to green the economy is greater than for increasing debt during the pandemic

2023 52

December 2023

  1. How a Labour government could be the tipping point for public discussion about immigration
  2. Lessons (so far) from the inflation bubble of 2021-3
  3. Unofficial lockdowns, and Sunak’s deadly incompetence during the pandemic

November 2023

  1. Fiscal failures: The UK Autumn Statement and the German debt brake
  2. Why does the political right have such a problem with reality, and how should experts respond?
  3. Current UK and EU stagnation are in part the consequence of deficit obsession
  4. How could Johnson have become Prime Minister?

October 2023

  1. Covid and the unforgivable mistakes that cost tens of thousands of lives in the UK
  2. The extreme right and austerity
  3. What does being an iron Chancellor actually mean?
  4. Thirteen years of creating doubt and uncertainty for UK business
  5. Braverman is a feature not a bug of Conservative electoral strategy this century

September 2023

  1. Challenges to the strong golden rule: MMT and bond market paranoia
  2. Democracy on a knife edge in the United States
  3. The next time someone says the government cannot borrow to invest, just mention RAAC
  4. It’s the economy, but is it good?

August 2023

  1. Attitudes towards redistribution
  2. Wage inflation, unemployment and what you wish to believe
  3. Economics and neoliberalism
  4. What the United States might tell us about UK inflation
  5. The Farage-Coutts affair exemplifies the bankruptcy of UK media and politics

July 2023

  1. Labour Tax and Spend is a question of when, not if
  2. Why nationalisation can be a gift to a future Conservative government
  3. Inflation and pandemic recoveries in five major economies
  4. Why the Conservatives will always advocate economically damaging socially conservative policies

June 2023

  1. Wishful thinking on UK inflation
  2. Sunak is right to fear the Covid Public Inquiry, but the right wing press will remain unscathed by it
  3. The campaign against Labour borrowing to invest
  4. Rachel Reeves economic strategy

May 2023

  1. Why the Conservative stance on immigration made a Hard Brexit inevitable
  2. New fiscal rules in the Eurozone, but unwarranted lack of national sovereignty persists
  3. Why is there asymmetry in how insurgent political voices on the left and right are treated by the two main parties in the UK?
  4. The Tyranny of Nostalgia
  5. Why deteriorating healthcare is a macroeconomic issue

April 2023

  1. Which OECD country is the highest social spender?
  2. Why fiscal consolidations (spending cuts or tax increases) don't reduce debt to GDP ratios, and why politicians continue to tighten at the wrong time
  3. The poor judgements of Nigel Lawson
  4. What France can teach the UK about Pensions

March 2023

  1. How broadcasters obsession with Westminster politics repeatedly fails to alert the public about major policy failures that are obvious to experts
  2. What can be done about the Chancellor gaming his fiscal rules
  3. Will this week's Budget be pre-election giveaways, or show signs of strategic thinking?
  4. How the political right has used ‘impartiality’ to first gain political power, and then take over the BBC
  5. Why Quantitative Easing should always be with us

February 2023

  1. The political economy and worldwide implications of the Inflation Reduction Act in the US
  2. In comparing prosperity across countries, productivity and inequality are almost everything
  3. Why does the current political right find it so hard to learn?
  4. Fiscal reporting at the BBC

January 2023

  1. Sewage in rivers and on beaches may sink the Conservatives at the next election
  2. Should Quantitative Easing be reducing public services?
  3. What makes politicians act in society’s interests, and how have these mechanisms worked since 1979?
  4. Did 2010 austerity permanently reduce UK output?
  5. Health service and real wage decline: why are we only now talking about trends that began over a decade ago?

2022 53

December 2022

  1. The political, moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the current Conservative party
  2. The implications of a tipping point in public support for Brexit
  3. Why Voting under FPTP should always be tactical

November 2022

  1. How Scottish Independence has become entwined with Brexit
  2. The economics and politics of the three sides of aggregate fiscal policy
  3. A Conservative government raises taxes by a lot, again
  4. Missing a fiscal rule does not make a black hole, and a financial crisis after tax cuts does not mean markets want spending cuts
  5. Why is the Bank of England making the expected UK recession worse?
  6. It makes no economic sense to keep shrinking the state without changing what the state is meant to do.

October 2022

  1. The UK Treasury since 1976
  2. Why it is crucial to understand why financial markets move, rather than worry about the role of markets in aiding the downfall of a Chancellor and Prime Minister
  3. The self-destructive political right
  4. The Budget has left the UK economy with no good options, so why did this government make such an expensive mistake?

September 2022

  1. A budget that harms everyone except the very rich
  2. Going for growth?
  3. How to judge fiscal policy in the time of Truss
  4. The Cost of Living Crisis, its macroeconomic implications and Truss economics

August 2022

  1. How populists use broadcasting impartiality to create bias and obscure knowledge
  2. After the Virus
  3. Why our new Prime Minister is ignoring multiple crises, and proposing policies that helped generate these crises.
  4. Labour shares, decoupling, real wages and inequality
  5. Why does the Bank of England appear to be ignoring its mandate?
  6. Brexit supporters constantly deny that that problems caused by Brexit have anything to do with Brexit. Does this remind you of anything?

July 2022

  1. Sunak vs Truss: a battle between two failed economic policies
  2. The 1970s: myths of left and right about inflation and trade unions
  3. The King is Dead. Long Live the King.
  4. Wealth dynamics and wealth inequality

June 2022

  1. The origins of mediamacro, and how to consign it to history
  2. Why has UK real wage growth been so low?
  3. In praise of Biden’s fiscal stimulus
  4. The appalling autocracy of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson continues, thanks to Conservative MPs

May 2022

  1. Government spending is not limited by tax revenues or borrowing, but it isn’t limited by the productive capacity of the economy either.
  2. Rapidly Reducing carbon usage and Deficit Obsession don’t mix
  3. When did things go wrong, 2010 or 1979?
  4. Inflation and a potential recession in 4 major economies
  5. How Austerity created Brexit, and the economic and political decline of the UK

April 2022

  1. Is the UK heading for a recession?
  2. Is sending UK asylum seekers to Rwanda an example of Brexit overreach?
  3. The vulnerability of democracy in bad times
  4. Why the Conservatives cannot be the tax cutting party

March 2022

  1. Pretending the pandemic is over has been the disaster most experts said it would be
  2. Energy Prices in the UK and France: nationalisation or regulation, and Sunak's spring statement
  3. Denying national self-determination from Ukraine to Scotland, and the lessons of Brexit
  4. Information wars

February 2022

  1. Why the price of Johnson staying in power is measured in yet more human lives
  2. We are in an unprecedented era of UK relative macroeconomic decline
  3. No one should be impartial when it comes to defending democracy on either side of the Atlantic
  4. Why are interest rates on the rise in the UK and US?

January 2022

  1. The US has had the best vaccine-shaped recovery from the pandemic, despite inflation fears, yet Tory ministers pretend otherwise
  2. The damage caused by Boris Johnson and Brexit goes way beyond his office parties
  3. The BBC’s crisis over scientific fact
  4. The broadcast media - knowledge disconnect
  5. The evidence, and the consensus among economists, against Tory fiscal policy has grown over time

2021 52

December 2021

  1. The Ego-libertarian party
  2. Cutting through
  3. They lie about everything else, so why is the economy different?

November 2021

  1. Death by government policy, assisted by the Brexit press
  2. Cancellation of rail projects in Northern England shows why fiscal rules with investment caps and debt targets just create short-termism
  3. Why have Conservative Chancellors since Osborne been bad for households?
  4. The malversation of this government is not a surprise. The U turn tells us more.
  5. The danger of imprecise exceptions from fiscal rules

October 2021

  1. Will Sunak bring about an end to the recovery?
  2. Who is really to blame for the UK’s terrible pandemic performance?
  3. How many people is Johnson allowing to die as a result of abolishing all COVID restrictions in July?
  4. Are there good reasons why Starmer preferred fighting the left to Biden’s unity approach?

September 2021

  1. Should the MPC tighten monetary policy?
  2. Neoliberalism, Corporations and Wealth Inequality
  3. Three myths about Johnson’s Social Care package
  4. Is creating worker shortages by restricting low paid immigration a good idea?

August 2021

  1. Is it true that “anything we can actually do we can afford”?
  2. Like so much of what this government does, tackling climate change is just for show
  3. Sado-populism
  4. COVID in England, and another wasted summer
  5. Relearning old ideas in macroeconomics after the New Classical Counter Revolution

July 2021

  1. Quantitative Easing (creating money) is fine during a recession, as long as it goes alongside effective fiscal stimulus
  2. Will the Trump/Johnson base lead to its destruction?
  3. An independent BBC is the last defence against Johnson’s fake world, and it is disappearing fast
  4. Masks and freedom

June 2021

  1. The COVID wave the government doesn’t want to talk about
  2. What attitudes to lockdowns tell us about the right wing media
  3. A government out of control
  4. How should we think about talk of an impending US inflationary spiral?
  5. Worried about another COVID wave? Here are some pictures of Johnson getting married again

May 2021

  1. Cummings, a puzzle about delayed lockdowns and more parallels between Johnson and Trump
  2. Johnson leads a populist government which should not be normalised
  3. Is the spread of the Indian variant in the UK an inevitable result of living with COVID?
  4. Some lessons in how to combat the Tory propaganda machine
  5. How most of the West got the pandemic so badly wrong?

April 2021

  1. Eurozone fiscal rules should be based on national macroeconomic stabilisation, not national debt stabilisation
  2. Why neoliberalism’s evolution into a populist plutocracy was inevitable
  3. Two types of recovery from the COVID recession, or how you cannot effectively fight plutocratic populism by returning to the recent past.
  4. Labour should start contesting the Tory record in running the economy

March 2021

  1. Vines and Willis on the future of macroeconomics
  2. As things stand, the chances of defeating Johnson at the next election are minuscule
  3. The Royal Family is today’s England
  4. Why are the Conservatives so bad at running the economy?
  5. The budget should create a balanced recovery, but instead it will be about the deficit

February 2021

  1. Two paths to controlling COVID with vaccinations
  2. COVID-19, experts and the media
  3. Media radicalisation in the US and UK
  4. Why vaccines alone are not enough, how the UK government could mess things up again and which European country will eliminate COVID first?

January 2021

  1. The two sides of austerity.
  2. Who caused our current COVID crisis: an example of public deception by the media and government
  3. Trump tries to incite a putsch, and his UK cheerleaders reveal their own contempt for democracy
  4. Why the UK’s COVID crisis should be personal for so many Tory voters

2020 49

December 2020

  1. It is inevitable that Labour in opposition will not be a champion of social liberalism
  2. Brexit may be pointless, but it will be with us for some time
  3. If the UK government fails to do a deal over unfair competition it is not because of UK sovereignty. It’s because of crazy stupidity.
  4. A christmas for coronavirus forget for
  5. Fiscal policy during and after the coronavirus pandemic

November 2020

  1. Politicians and experts: austerity, Brexit and the pandemic
  2. How the electoral system in the US, and to a lesser extent the UK, is biased towards social conservatism.
  3. COVID, the US election and media balance
  4. How governments in the West failed to learn

October 2020

  1. Starve a kid to save a quid [1]
  2. Why do some find the economics/health trade-off so hard to get? Because it’s like the Phillips curve.
  3. The anti-lockdown crusade gains oxygen from this government's ineptitude
  4. Are there turning points in recent UK history?

September 2020

  1. Sunak and most Tory MPs do not understand the economics/health trade-off, and many people will die as a result
  2. Why neoliberalism can end in autocratic, populist and incompetent plutocracy
  3. Whether its COVID or Brexit, this government is continuing to fail terribly at everything it does. Will Conservative MPs do anything about it?
  4. In the UK Treasury cutting the deficit generally takes priority over the health of the economy
  5. Will taxes have to rise?

August 2020

  1. The political economy and psychology of COVID rebounds

July 2020

  1. The reality behind fiscal scare stories, or mediamacro is alive and well
  2. Why the election for a new Liberal Democrat leader could be the key to voting Johnson out
  3. Sabotaging the recovery

June 2020

  1. Why does this government get away with murder?
  2. Did the UK really almost go bankrupt?
  3. What lockdowns do and what they don’t do
  4. Locking down too late but ending lockdown too early
  5. How Cummings continues to gaslight the nation

May 2020

  1. A government without common sense, and with class arrogance
  2. On V shaped recoveries, and where the Treasury’s deficit obsession will matter
  3. The government is responding to pressure and not thinking clearly about defeating coronavirus
  4. Why the media in UK and US has moved beyond manufacturing consent, and why that has led to a war about reporting COVID-19

April 2020

  1. Did the scientists advising the government on COVID-19 make serious mistakes?
  2. Now is not the time?
  3. Some myths about government debt and how it is financed
  4. Who still thinks austerity was a good idea?

March 2020

  1. Following the Science or a National Scandal
  2. The economic (and political) effects of this coronavirus pandemic
  3. Coronavirus and the consequences of a compliant media
  4. Fiscal rules: a primer for the budget
  5. The economic effects of a pandemic

February 2020

  1. Low paid jobs for British born workers
  2. Guardian article on flooding
  3. The left needs to campaign for social liberalism
  4. The UK’s place in the world
  5. What causes concern about immigration

January 2020

  1. How business lost its influence on right wing parties
  2. Evidence and the persistence of mistaken ideas: the case of house prices
  3. Monetary and fiscal cooperation: the case for a state dependent assignment
  4. Was the Remain campaign always doomed?

2019 100

December 2019

  1. Can we think about politics from Blair onwards in one chart? and what it means for Blue Labour
  2. Who to blame for Johnson winning?
  3. Why you should vote tactically, and how to do it.
  4. The othering of Jeremy Corbyn
  5. Some thoughts on Labour's campaign

November 2019

  1. Will UK voters really vote for the Republican party and our own Donald Trump?
  2. In defence of the IFS, and why it cannot tell the whole story
  3. Is Labour’s economic plan credible?
  4. How to disguise a really big lie? Put it on a bus.
  5. The Tories will never undo the impact of austerity
  6. Corbyn and Antisemitism
  7. The differences between Labour and the Conservatives on fiscal policy
  8. LibDem fantasies about the December election
  9. Tactical voting advice for December 2019

October 2019

  1. Journalists’ own pact with the devil
  2. Brexit is a denial of economics as knowledge
  3. Is this good for Johnson, whether he wins or loses?
  4. A People’s Vote or a General Election: how does Johnson’s new deal change things
  5. If the UK and EU can do a deal is everything now fine?
  6. The Liberal Democrats in the next General Election may win a few seats at the expense of a Johnson overall majority
  7. Should a second referendum happen before the General Election and what should accompany Remain on the ballot?
  8. How the Brexiters have controlled the narrative around Brexit

September 2019

  1. This is the most dangerous UK government we have seen in our lifetimes
  2. Corbyn stakes everything on tactical voting by Remainers
  3. On the supposed gap in the centre of UK politics, or the alleged powerlessness of the UK median voter
  4. Why the Supreme Court must protect our constitution
  5. Some observations on tactical voting in the forthcoming General Election
  6. Different kinds of fiscal stimulus
  7. Do Conservative MPs really think they can cope with the consequences of No Deal?

August 2019

  1. Johnson suspends parliament to force a crash out Brexit
  2. A New Macropolicy Assignment
  3. Why a November General Election looks most likely, and why a government of national unity will not happen.
  4. Why did the UK become a failed state?
  5. How should academic economics cope with ideological bias
  6. Will we get No Deal because Brexiters want it more?
  7. The Remainers urging people to vote for a No Deal Brexit
  8. Does Brexit represent an alliance of Rentiers?
  9. Fiscal tightening in UK recessions: 1981 and 2010 compared

July 2019

  1. There is no mandate for No Deal
  2. When Boris Johnson won the 2019 General Election
  3. How the lessons from austerity have not been learned
  4. Reaction to “There is only one alternative to Prime Minister Boris Johnson”
  5. There is only one alternative to Prime Minister Boris Johnson
  6. Will Labour’s new Brexit policy win back voters?
  7. Our new Prime Minister is abandoning austerity and going on a tax cutting spree (if you believe him)
  8. Understanding why right-wing populism succeeds
  9. Is Brexit a culture war or a class war?

June 2019

  1. The UK right wing press: news or propaganda? The Boris domestic story.
  2. Once the Nasty party, now the Brexit party
  3. Why austerity is not Labour’s Legacy
  4. For too many Conservatives there is no spoon
  5. Bill Mitchell's fantasy about Labour's fiscal rule
  6. Is Labour’s fiscal policy rule neoliberal?
  7. After the Peterborough victory, has Labour’s Brexit policy been redeemed?
  8. Labour’s position on Brexit is not a compromise, but is taking the wrong side

May 2019

  1. The response to the European elections will define politics for some time
  2. Now is not the time to try to lessen the anger of Farage and Trump devotees
  3. On the use, or not, of expertise by government
  4. The political consequences of Nigel Farage
  5. Is Brexit still possible?
  6. Labour’s Brexit policy is long past its sell-by date
  7. Lecture on The Lies We Were Told
  8. Why are we governed by incompetents?
  9. Labour Remainers can no longer trust Corbyn not to do a deal with May

April 2019

  1. Buses are about redistribution, productivity and a greener future
  2. How the media can frame our understanding of elections
  3. When people warning about incipient fascism are criticised rather than laughed at is the time to worry about incipient fascism
  4. Views on the minimum wage show economics to be an inexact science
  5. Why the European Elections will be painful to watch for some Remainers
  6. Why have pundits got politics so wrong since 2015?
  7. The right wing partisan media is the elephant in the room in discussions of mainstream politics and far right extremism
  8. Why are we in this political mess?
  9. If the Tories lose an election before we leave, Brexit is unlikely to happen.

March 2019

  1. Will Brexit make austerity worse?
  2. Left behind movements do not just reflect deindustrialisation, but also geography, inequality and lack of representation.
  3. Labour’s Brexit stance is a tragedy for Labour but the current Brexit mess is an entirely Tory failure.
  4. Brexiters are stopping Brexit because they need to believe in the fantasy of Global Britain
  5. Triangulation or bipartisanship does not work when one side goes off the scale
  6. If you enjoyed the last two years and want more of the same, vote for May’s deal
  7. Is the German Debt Brake the worst fiscal rule ever?
  8. Is increasing workers' bargaining power a way of raising real wages?
  9. Parliament’s Brexit Game: has anything changed?

February 2019

  1. We need a political party that is tough on the causes of Brexit
  2. The new party: lessons the Labour leadership and its supporters failed to learn
  3. How to pay for the Green New Deal
  4. The Tory party lost its way from 2010, not 2016
  5. The economic cost of the Brexit decision that Leaver voters do not get to see
  6. The Media and the Public
  7. There will never be a better time than immediately after Brexit to form a new political party
  8. The Interest Rate Lower Bound Trap and the ideas that keep us there

January 2019

  1. If parliament continues like this it makes May’s deal inevitable
  2. Why the UK cannot see that Brexit is utterly, utterly stupid
  3. The key arguments for high top rates of income tax are political as well as pecuniary
  4. No deal syndrome: why do people keep buying snake oil when it doesn’t work?
  5. Parliament’s Brexit game
  6. Is Norway+ the way forward?
  7. Should we worry about temporarily raising government debt? - Blanchard’s AEA Address
  8. The 2016 referendum was a badly designed rigged vote corruptly and unfairly won. Why is there so much deference to it?
  9. Lexit misdirection
  10. What does the ‘Stupid Woman’ saga tell us about the media

2018 131

December 2018

  1. What will happen if Labour enable Brexit
  2. How Brexit circumvented democracy
  3. How Leavers can believe that a People’s Vote is anti-democratic
  4. Will the Brexiters kill Brexit?
  5. Are the Labour leadership attitudes to Brexit just the austerity story all over again?
  6. MPs need to get real about Brexit
  7. Helping the left behind: its (economic) geography, stupid
  8. Experts and Elites

November 2018

  1. On the many meanings of ‘politically impossible’, with applications to Brexit
  2. Brexit Blues: How dreams can become nightmares if you try to make them real
  3. Why Theresa May should not get anyone’s sympathy vote
  4. Poverty in the UK: radical social re-engineering
  5. Brexit. Of course everyone hates a compromise, but like much else its the best option, isn't it?
  6. Governments of fools?
  7. If May loses her Brexit vote, what happens next?
  8. The Lies We Were Told
  9. Health spending over time
  10. Mediamacro is in rude health, and is also indicative of a deeper failure

October 2018

  1. The Chancellor continues his steady fiscal tightening
  2. Why should someone who is anti-austerity care about debt
  3. The day Theresa May lied in parliament about something I wrote
  4. MMT and Labour’s fiscal rule
  5. Crashed by Adam Tooze
  6. There is a Brexit deal the country can live with, but the government cannot
  7. Implications of German export success
  8. Talk on where macroeconomics went wrong
  9. How the left stopped being a party of the working class
  10. How the media helped turn the worst recovery in 100 years into a strong economy in stable hands before the 2015 election
  11. The post-Brexit vote trade boost that never was

September 2018

  1. Would a Corbyn Brexit heal the nation or wound Labour?
  2. The Next Referendum Question
  3. Theresa May has qualities, but negotiation skill is not one of them
  4. Why Brexiters look defeated
  5. How to predict a crisis
  6. Another lesson of the GFC unlearnt: the Consensus Assignment is dead
  7. Are the EU wrong to make things easy for May?
  8. Jeremy Corbyn and Balance
  9. The IPPR Commission’s plan for a new economy
  10. Lessons from the Greek tragedy unlearnt

August 2018

  1. Conservative Zugzwang Redux
  2. The IMF as a transmission mechanism for academic knowledge
  3. Why Brexit is a neoliberal project
  4. The biggest economic policy mistake of the last decade, and it had nothing to do with academic economists
  5. Why an anti-Corbyn party is a terrible idea
  6. Interest rate vs fiscal policy stabilisation
  7. What becomes news and why
  8. Labour’s fiscal rule is progressive
  9. A decade of political deceit
  10. How China beat the Global Financial Crisis
  11. How BBC balance and bad think tanks discourage evidence based policy

July 2018

  1. Should Eurozone central bankers keep quiet about fiscal policy?
  2. Brexit Endgame: second stage (which is unlikely to end with no deal)
  3. Fake News UK style
  4. Trump and Corporatism
  5. Did a partial framing of Brexit encourage Labour’s acceptance of its inevitability?
  6. Trump and Brexit
  7. The micro incompetence of UK austerity
  8. Brexit Endgame: Stage 1
  9. Islamophobia and Antisemitism: a case study in BBC bias
  10. Brexit: The Endgame

June 2018

  1. Could the US become a democratic dictatorship?
  2. Business Brexit Blues
  3. When two mass movements clash
  4. A new mandate for monetary policy
  5. How Broadcasters should handle the Prime Minister lying
  6. The bankruptcy of the centre right: Brexit edition
  7. How UK deficit hysteria began
  8. Parliament has to start directing the Brexit negotiations
  9. Amendment wars and Corbyn wars
  10. Idée fixe
  11. A Euro Tragedy

May 2018

  1. Nominal wages are not real wages, and why it matters in the UK
  2. Delegation as a reaction to the politicisation of advice
  3. Brexiter nonsense and policy entrepreneurs
  4. A rotten corporate culture
  5. How the media and politicians dumb down economics
  6. Delusions of National Power
  7. How the broadcast media created mediamacro
  8. Remain fundamentalism
  9. Fiscal policy remains in the stone age
  10. Theresa May’s perpetual Brexit and Labour's forsaken base.
  11. How to spot fraudulent economic arguments: an example from Lexit
  12. Why was economics so insular?

April 2018

  1. The strong economy: how Brexit dishonesty began
  2. Macroeconomic Policy Reform the IPPR way
  3. Brexit: it’s the economics, stupid.
  4. A hostile environment
  5. Did macroeconomics give up on explaining recent economic history?
  6. How Brexit threatens pluralist democracy in the UK
  7. Talking to the Establishment
  8. Ian Dunt vs Owen Jones: a comment on a brief debate
  9. The complete failure of the Brexit project
  10. How do you access unbiased expertise: follow the money?
  11. Brexit and Corbyn: how our media fails the people
  12. The media and Attitudes to Austerity

March 2018

  1. Is Trump about race and Brexit about culture?
  2. Jeremy Corbyn cannot end Brexit
  3. The Output Gap is no longer a sufficient statistic for inflationary pressure
  4. Beliefs about Brexit
  5. A road to right wing authoritarian government
  6. No spring in the UK air
  7. Budget deficits, fiscal councils and authoritarian regimes
  8. The three mistakes of centrism
  9. Tangled up in red
  10. Was Labour’s decision on EU immigration in 2004 a mistake?
  11. The economic and political cost of UK austerity
  12. The dangers of pluralism in economics: the case of MMT

February 2018

  1. Labour's embrace of a customs union could end the Brexit fantasy
  2. UK productivity: too soon to get excited
  3. The persuasive power of the UK right wing press
  4. Why is the government making such a mess of Brexit?
  5. House prices and rents in the UK
  6. Do Trump’s deficits matter?
  7. A comparison in accountability: Oxfam and the NHS
  8. Labour, the polls and the Customs Union
  9. The two types of populism within Brexit
  10. Decreasing the size of the state is very unpopular
  11. Academic knowledge about economic policy is not just another opinion
  12. Large models, small models and Brexit

January 2018

  1. Brexit is fantastic project
  2. Will the Conservative party ever recover from Brexit?
  3. The fatal inconsistency within neoliberalism
  4. The unanswerable democratic case for a second referendum
  5. Microfoundations and the values of policymakers
  6. What Carillion tells us about public sector outsourcing
  7. The problem with a second referendum
  8. Does Brexit end not with a bang but a whimper?
  9. Why does economics get so much stick?
  10. Why the microfoundations hegemony holds back macroeconomic progress
  11. Minimum Wages, Monopsony and Towns
  12. Leave and the Left Behind

2017 150

December 2017

  1. Voting Labour isn’t going to turn the UK into Venezuela
  2. The political consequences of Brexit Transition
  3. The politicisation of immigration
  4. The advantage of a central bank not being ‘ahead of the curve’
  5. Immigration and Real Wages: Reality and Perceptions
  6. First Stage Reality and Brexiters
  7. Has Ireland scuppered Brexit?
  8. Government debt phobias, and possible cures
  9. If we treat plutocracy as democracy, democracy dies

November 2017

  1. Mediamacro is alive and well, unfortunately
  2. Disentangling the UK productivity problem
  3. Austerity and mortality
  4. November 2017 Budget: Tinkering rather than Transforming
  5. Should Labour be doing better?
  6. Some thoughts about the Job Guarantee
  7. The Brexit Revolution and its source of power
  8. On free trade and free markets
  9. What ignoring Ireland tells you about our governing elite
  10. What really caused the financial crisis
  11. The Brexit interest rate increases and misunderstanding inflation
  12. The journalist as amateur scientist
  13. Links between austerity and immigration, and the power of information

October 2017

  1. A short guide to why we should not raise UK interest rates
  2. Why is the UK making such a mess of A50 negotiations?
  3. A European Monetary Fund
  4. Dani Rodrik talks straight on trade
  5. Forecast errors compared
  6. The lesson monetary policy needs to learn
  7. How Neoliberals weaponise the concept of an ideal market
  8. The impact of austerity in the UK
  9. The myth of No Deal
  10. Economists: too much ideology, too little craft
  11. The OBR, productivity and policy failures
  12. Why is MMT so popular?

September 2017

  1. A Labour run on Sterling?
  2. Uber and the anti-regulations bandwagon
  3. The real obstacle for the Brexit negotiations
  4. Productivity and monetary policy
  5. Undergraduate economics teaching moves into 21st century
  6. Problems with triangulating over immigration
  7. Economists show how Fox news changes votes
  8. Revolutions in Economic Policy
  9. Cherry picking economic statistics and Project Fear
  10. Defining austerity redux
  11. Could independent central banks be advisory?

August 2017

  1. Why Brexit has led to falling real wages
  2. Would Remain win a second referendum?
  3. Medicine and the microfoundations hegemony in macroeconomics
  4. The BBC and Patrick Minford
  5. Brexit remains an exercise in deception
  6. Japan and the burden of government debt
  7. What does respecting the referendum result mean?
  8. How did the UK austerity mistake happen
  9. The politics of lying
  10. Real wages are mainly a macro issue
  11. The media cannot reform itself until it acknowledges its power
  12. How Brexit will constrain a future Labour government
  13. Is a flexible labour market a problem for central bankers?

July 2017

  1. Brexit and Democracy
  2. The UK slowdown is a result of Brexit and austerity
  3. Why Owen Jones is wrong about Brexit
  4. Lexit
  5. The politics of ignoring knowledge
  6. Should Labour triangulate over Brexit?
  7. The OBR’s risk assessment lacks context
  8. Why German wages need to rise
  9. Why recessions followed by austerity can have a persistent impact
  10. Measuring the impact of austerity
  11. Against Charisma
  12. Austerity Confusion, or why the Tories are trapped by austerity
  13. Was Neoliberal Overreach Inevitable?
  14. A completely pointless amendment

June 2017

  1. Economists and the Euro: for the record
  2. When capturing the middle ground works or fails
  3. Brexiteers versus Economists one year on
  4. UK monetary policy: you cannot be serious?
  5. Austerity will only end when our leaders start being honest
  6. Raising the inflation target
  7. Conservative zugzwang
  8. GE2017 and the Media
  9. Labour and its Left
  10. Why has the US resisted Trump but the UK acquiesced to Brexit?
  11. Could austerity’s impact be persistent
  12. What does Labour's poll surge tell us
  13. GE2017 and the stages of Leaver grief

May 2017

  1. Growth will be lower if the Conservatives win
  2. Theresa May
  3. Still not getting it after all these years
  4. Conservative Contradictions: the limits on Red Tories
  5. But do the numbers add up?
  6. The media’s unbalanced referendum
  7. Should we demand ‘fully costed’ programmes?
  8. Why are the UK and US more vulnerable to right wing populism?
  9. Underestimating the impact of austerity
  10. This stage managed, policy free election
  11. Why Brexit means more than Brexit

April 2017

  1. The Brexit slowdown begins (probably)
  2. One vote to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them
  3. Economic Competence Revisited
  4. Breaking the ‘strong economy’ narrative
  5. GE2017: Why economic facts will be ignored once again
  6. Inequality or poverty
  7. When journalism becomes propaganda
  8. Henry Farrell on economists and austerity
  9. Economics is an inexact science
  10. The Brexit depreciation and exports
  11. Brexit and the BBC
  12. Economists as medics
  13. Why rejoining the EU is so problematic
  14. Misrepresenting academic economists

March 2017

  1. Lessons from Brexit
  2. One vote that rules them all
  3. On criticising the existence of mainstream economics
  4. The Brexiteers know the war is far from over
  5. Post-truth and propaganda
  6. A response to Gudgin, Coutts & Gibson
  7. Labour MPs are keeping Corbyn in power
  8. Will May face down those who want no deal?
  9. Brexit makes the economics of Scottish independence much more attractive
  10. Does free movement really enable a low wage economy?
  11. International GDP per capita comparisons
  12. The Output Gap and the Innovations Gap
  13. Budget Day Nonsense
  14. Why it’s your bloody GDP, not ours
  15. Does democracy require implementing the referendum result?
  16. A self-fulfilling expectations led recession?

February 2017

  1. The Budget and Health Care
  2. Brexit is another Iraq
  3. The NAIRU: a response to critics
  4. The academic consensus on austerity solidifies, but policymakers go their own sweet way
  5. NAIRU bashing
  6. Brexit and Trump are fundamentally a failure of the political right
  7. The Kerslake Review of the Treasury
  8. How Brexit advocates intend to smear economics
  9. Does the Bank’s latest forecast mean Brexit has had no effect?
  10. Why is no one talking about the angry Remainers?
  11. Stories MPs tell

January 2017

  1. Why the reassuring stories about Donald Trump are quickly falling apart
  2. Why voting for Article 50 may ruin an MP's career
  3. The UK’s 1976 IMF crisis in the light of modern theory
  4. Did centrism beget populism?
  5. Attacking economics is a diversionary tactic
  6. The Single Market was Mrs Thatcher’s great achievement for the UK
  7. Fake Economics and the media
  8. Blanchard joins calls for Structural Econometric Models to be brought in from the cold
  9. Miles on Haldane on Economics in Crises
  10. Kocherlakota’s argument for fiscal expansion in the US
  11. The French election and two-dimensional politics
  12. Tough on the causes of immigration
  13. Reactionary Keynesianism revisited

2016 196

December 2016

  1. Left and Right in 2016
  2. When is an economic recovery not a recovery?
  3. Understanding free trade
  4. Why populism should be no surprise
  5. What are populist policies?
  6. Reactionary Keynesianism
  7. The public analyst in crazy times
  8. The reporting of market ups and downs is not really a joke
  9. The OBR and the impact of Brexit
  10. Hitting back
  11. Some concrete proposals for economists and the media

November 2016

  1. A little English coup
  2. The Autumn Statement and buckets of water
  3. Whatever happened to the government debt doom spiral
  4. The Autumn Statement marks the return of austerity
  5. 2016 Autumn Statement
  6. Populism and the media
  7. The folly of triggering Article 50
  8. A Mission to Explain
  9. Macroeconomics and Ideology
  10. Cutting the Mail down to size: welcome to Scotland
  11. Do New Keynesians assume full employment?
  12. Trump: Misleading the People
  13. The benefit cap: more media driving policy
  14. Freedom of Movement, Austerity, Labour and MPs votes on Brexit
  15. Public investment and fiscal rules
  16. Ann Pettifor on mainstream economics
  17. Is austerity to blame for Brexit?

October 2016

  1. Clinton’s emails and UK austerity: a sense of context and consequences
  2. Brexit and neoliberalism
  3. Being honest about ideological influence in economics
  4. Helping the broadcast media be informative on politicised issues
  5. Neoliberalism and austerity
  6. News, entertainment and Trump
  7. Structural Reforms and Greece
  8. Brexit and Sterling
  9. Did the Bank of England cause Brexit?
  10. Ricardian Equivalence, benchmark models, and academics response to the financial crisis
  11. Very Serious People and the deficit
  12. Little Englanders

September 2016

  1. Immigration and the experts
  2. Why was austerity once so popular?
  3. The total failure of the centre left
  4. What is so bad about the RBC model?
  5. Inequality under the Labour government
  6. Explaining macroeconomics to the Swabian housewife
  7. The Treasury and Brexit
  8. Paul Romer on macroeconomics
  9. In the long run ... our children are adults
  10. Economics, DSGE and Reality: a personal story
  11. Trump, Brexit and balance
  12. Stock-Flow Consistent models: response to Jo Michell
  13. The UK goes back to the 1950s
  14. Voters making big mistakes
  15. Labour elections: a response to Chris Dillow
  16. Connecting the dots
  17. Why does anyone listen to Nigel Lawson?
  18. Fiscal rules and MMT
  19. More on Stock-Flow Consistent models
  20. Competence and strategic vision
  21. Theresa May’s Brexit choice

August 2016

  1. Fiscal rules should target the deficit, not spending
  2. Project Fear = We have had it with experts
  3. Heterodox economics, mainstream macro and the financial crisis
  4. Why we must have a second referendum
  5. Why Corbyn’s Brexit campaign matters
  6. Minority rule: Migration, Brexit and Mandates
  7. New Labour and neoliberalism
  8. Brexit, economists and journalists
  9. Helicopter Money: missing the point
  10. Hard truths for the IMF
  11. Hope, experience and the left
  12. Brexit and Trump supporters
  13. The BBC and Statistics
  14. Blanchard on DSGE
  15. Entryism and Corbyn supporters
  16. Brexit harm denial and the exchange rate
  17. Brexit: a battle lost but who will fight the war?
  18. A divided nation
  19. Can we trust Jeremy Corbyn over Europe?
  20. Negative rates, helicopter money and the Bank of England
  21. If only someone had warned us
  22. Mutually Assured Destruction
  23. Blanchflower on the Economic Advisory Committee
  24. Should economics be democratised?
  25. What Owen Smith needs to do

July 2016

  1. Rebuilding a mass social democratic party?
  2. Labour: times change
  3. Osborne's folly
  4. German macroeconomics revisited
  5. A referendum on taxes
  6. Opportunity costs
  7. More on how it happened
  8. The inadequacy of left and right
  9. Economists, Brexit and the Media: Epilogue

June 2016

  1. Personal annotations on our statement
  2. Statement from members of Labour’s Economic Advisory Committee
  3. Remain denial and Labour’s heartlands
  4. The UK will soon get as Prime Minister a very British version of Donald Trump
  5. Just how bad will Brexit be, and can it be undone?
  6. The triumph of the tabloids
  7. Why do people want less EU immigration?
  8. Why defeating Brexit is so important
  9. Brexit and the Left
  10. More on Brexit and the politicisation of truth
  11. Power without accountability in our tabloid press
  12. Postgrad teaching and Keynesian economics: a survey
  13. Brexit despair
  14. Defending George Osborne on Brexit once again
  15. Brexit and Democracy
  16. How to avoid Brexit
  17. A question on blogging
  18. For economists Project Fear is Brexit
  19. Those angry baby boomers who want to Leave
  20. Bad business
  21. Money and Debt
  22. Avoiding political discourse
  23. The politicisation of truth
  24. The Media and Brexit redux
  25. When finance ministries no longer need many macroeconomists
  26. Greece under Troika rule

May 2016

  1. Why the political centre needs to be radical
  2. Neoliberalism, Mirowski and me
  3. Bonus culture
  4. Household debt and house prices
  5. Is the Eurozone dying?
  6. Economists are losers so ignore them on Brexit
  7. Helicopter money and fiscal policy
  8. Economics reporting without any economics
  9. A General Theory of Austerity
  10. Brexit, immigration and £100
  11. Media, Economics and Brexit
  12. Economists say no to Brexit
  13. Scientists and media training
  14. Economists versus bankers
  15. The anti-Corbyn militants have failed
  16. The Eurozone recovery
  17. Can governments offset helicopter money
  18. Ben Bernanke and Democratic Helicopter Money
  19. Neoliberalism

April 2016

  1. The hypocrisy of British politics
  2. Politicians and statistics
  3. Junior doctors: asking the right question
  4. Some thoughts on Paul Mason’s McDonnell road show talk
  5. Explaining the last ten years
  6. In defence of George Osborne over Brexit
  7. Its ideology, stupid
  8. Central bank mistakes: more on count 2
  9. The EU referendum and the media
  10. Can central banks make 3 major mistakes in a row and stay independent?
  11. The financial crisis, austerity and the drift from the centre
  12. Chronicles by Thomas Piketty: reflections on three reviews
  13. Port Talbot and Neoliberalism
  14. The big story behind Port Talbot
  15. Helicopters are easy to fly

March 2016

  1. When the media is biased against the facts
  2. Why high house prices are partly down to austerity
  3. Austerity and the mainstream: for the record
  4. Fiscal rule redux
  5. Is evidence based policy left wing?
  6. Time to rewrite a bit of oral history
  7. MMT and mainstream macro
  8. Budget accounting tricks
  9. Lack of accountability
  10. It’s the politics, stupid
  11. MMT: not so modern
  12. Does public investment have to pay for itself?
  13. The question that was not asked
  14. A (much) better fiscal rule
  15. Austerity past and future
  16. Multipliers from Eurozone periphery austerity
  17. The 'strong case' critically examined
  18. The strong case against independent central banks
  19. Cameron’s chickens
  20. Understanding the austerity obsession
  21. Two related confusions about helicopter money

February 2016

  1. When to be optimistic on growth
  2. Labour's new militant tendency
  3. A letter to Tony Blair
  4. Our money
  5. Sanders versus Clinton: lessons from the UK
  6. The austerity winds have changed
  7. In praise of footpaths
  8. Austerity's apologists on the left
  9. How the Eurozone can be reformed
  10. Whatever happened to the General Theory

January 2016

  1. Sanders, Corbyn and the financial crisis
  2. German exports and the Eurozone
  3. The dead hand of austerity; left and right
  4. The political right’s dangerous support for economic quackery
  5. Economics Rules by Dani Rodrik
  6. Heterodox economists and mainstream eclecticism
  7. Is mainstream academic macroeconomics eclectic?
  8. Personal debt
  9. Will Trident be Corbyn’s undoing?
  10. Confidence as a political device

2015 235

December 2015

  1. How Osborne and Cameron turned a crisis into a disaster
  2. UK flood prevention: the missing billion
  3. The unique blindness of some commentators on the right
  4. The personal debt time bomb
  5. Woodford’s reflexive equilibrium
  6. The FTPL version of the Neo-Fisherian proposition
  7. Exploring one set of reasons why austerity happened
  8. Is OMT a bluff?
  9. A crisis made in Germany
  10. Using economic statistics in an impartial and informed way
  11. Competitiveness: some basic macroeconomics of monetary unions
  12. Flooding and the fiscal charter
  13. Defining austerity
  14. UK flooding, austerity and the media
  15. Paris, climate change and the UK government
  16. Was German undercutting deliberate?
  17. The centrality of policy to how long recessions last

November 2015

  1. Five small thoughts on the Autumn Statement
  2. Is this the right way to shrink the state (NHS edition)?
  3. Political economy assignments
  4. Economists and the Eurozone: wake up calls and political capture
  5. Is this really social democracy versus socialism?
  6. When central bankers should keep quiet
  7. Austerity, the Treasury and Spending under Labour
  8. What if Labour’s pessimists are right
  9. Osborne, Cameron and fiscal irresponsibility
  10. Europe’s other taboo: reform of the ECB
  11. More on UK interest and exchange rates
  12. Where would you get the money from?
  13. Faux meritocracy
  14. Privatisations: why we need a fiscal watchdog
  15. Bernanke on austerity and the fiscal charter
  16. Public investment: has George started listening to economists?
  17. Tax cuts vs spending vs helicopters
  18. Politically impossible
  19. The ECB as sovereign lender of last resort

October 2015

  1. Fiscal council developments
  2. Is sterling overvalued?
  3. The accidental tax credit cuts?
  4. Keynes never left Canada, and intends to stay
  5. What are ABC to do?
  6. The last 7 years are an argument against inflation targeting
  7. Central bankers and their irrational fear
  8. Linking tax credits and the fiscal charter
  9. Employment and category errors
  10. How television fails in its duty to inform
  11. The fiscal charter media fiasco
  12. When economists play political games
  13. A stimulus junkie's lament
  14. Howes that
  15. One reason why monetary policy is preferred by New Keynesians
  16. Nonsense on data revisions

September 2015

  1. On giving advice
  2. The path from deficit concern to deficit deceit
  3. What do macroeconomists know anyway?
  4. Haldane on alternatives to QE, and what he missed out
  5. Central Bank Independence and MMT
  6. Labour and Central Bank Independence
  7. Labour lost
  8. Media myths
  9. More (dark) thoughts on interest rates
  10. Making the Eurozone work better: sovereign default
  11. The UK as a test case for NGDP targets
  12. Letter wars, and how policy is made
  13. Spain, and how the Eurozone has to get real about countercyclical policy
  14. Corbyn, QE and financial interests

August 2015

  1. Going backwards on fiscal rules
  2. The day macroeconomics changed
  3. A sense of identity
  4. Economic credibility
  5. Reform and revolution in macroeconomics
  6. People's QE and Corbyn’s QE
  7. German Self-Interest
  8. The Corbyn Phenomenon
  9. The Ethics of Helicopter Money
  10. The Bank, helicopter money and fiscal conservatism
  11. A way forward for the centre left on deficits
  12. Is deficit fetishism innate or contextual?

July 2015

  1. Corbyn's popularity and relativistic politics
  2. The wheels on the bus
  3. An optimistic view: a UK investment led recovery
  4. Should central bankers stick to talking about monetary policy?
  5. The F story about the Great Inflation
  6. Apprenticeships and Conservative Governments
  7. Raising the minimum wage
  8. When Labour lost its soul, and the next election
  9. Ireland and Greece
  10. Labour and the deficit: a Tristram Hunt follow-up
  11. Evidence for monetary offset
  12. Labour and the deficit
  13. Greece and Trust
  14. The Great Recession and the Eurozone crisis
  15. The non-independent ECB
  16. A budget for our next Prime Minister
  17. Austerity is an integral part of the Greek tragedy
  18. Why Germany wants rid of Greece
  19. After Oxi, what next?
  20. Greece and the political capture of the IMF
  21. The ideologues of the Eurozone
  22. What I did on my holidays

June 2015

  1. The big picture
  2. The paranoia of power
  3. The Bank of England goes Underground
  4. Telling lies
  5. Where Labour went wrong
  6. The Eurozone’s cover-up over Greece
  7. Speak for yourself, or why anti-Keynesian views survive
  8. No basis in economics
  9. Labour’s growing macroeconomic illiteracy
  10. Signing letters
  11. An interview that will never happen
  12. Should we aim for budget surpluses?
  13. Why Sen is right about what is being done to Greece
  14. What is it about German economics?
  15. Austerity as a Knowledge Transmission Mechanism failure
  16. The latest IMF paper on debt
  17. The academic consensus on the impact of austerity
  18. Multipliers and evidence
  19. The Knowledge Transmission Mechanism and Macroeconomic Crises
  20. Faith in multipliers

May 2015

  1. Recognising the success of macroeconomic myths
  2. Why helicopter money is a political economy issue
  3. UK monetary policy is too complacent
  4. Consensus in macroeconomics
  5. Do politicians need to pander to myths?
  6. We want helicopters, and we want them …
  7. Ferguson tries again
  8. On what I said before
  9. The trouble with macro
  10. David Smith's gotcha quotes
  11. Blaming Keynes
  12. Paul Romer and microfoundations
  13. Mediamacro myth makers fight back
  14. Why are some central banks so coy about the impact of fiscal policy?
  15. Don’t ask what lost, ask what won
  16. Oh what a lucky man
  17. When to go to bed tonight
  18. The IMF, Greece and economic reality
  19. Was an anti-austerity policy politically possible in 2010?
  20. The Independent, the Union and utter nonsense
  21. UK election: it was mediamacro wot won it
  22. Myths: a reply to Tony Yates
  23. On mediamacro

April 2015

  1. Chaos theory
  2. Mediamacro myths: summing up
  3. The wrong kind of political economy
  4. Mediamacro myth 8: employment growth
  5. Received wisdom in macroeconomics
  6. Mediamacro myth 7: the strong recovery
  7. Mediamacro myth 6: 2013 recovery vindication
  8. If the LibDems hold the balance
  9. Mediamacro myth 5: the long term plan
  10. Putting party before country
  11. Mediamacro myth 4: The immediate necessity of belt tightening
  12. A criticism of the IFS
  13. Mediamacro myth 3: the 2007 boom
  14. SNP distortions, again
  15. Mediamacro myth 2: Labour profligacy
  16. Greece: of parents and children, economists and politicians
  17. Mediamacro myth 1: 2010 Britain faced a financial crisis
  18. UK mediamacro myths: an introduction
  19. From seats to governments: UK general election arithmetic
  20. Should economists rule?
  21. Osborne's failure
  22. Confidence
  23. Macro teaching and the financial crisis
  24. Cyclically adjusted deficits and instability
  25. How can Labour say it didn't crash the economy
  26. Do not underestimate the power of microfoundations
  27. Silly questions or silly economics
  28. Economists vs. Business Leaders?

March 2015

  1. A quick note on two recoveries
  2. Greece and other benefit scroungers
  3. Protecting the public from policy entrepreneurs
  4. Rollercoasters and rules
  5. Why do central banks use New Keynesian models?
  6. Zero UK Inflation
  7. Controlling the past
  8. Default panic and other tall stories
  9. Sticky wages both sides of the Atlantic
  10. Fantasy macroeconomics
  11. A productive budget?
  12. Is the Walrasian Auctioneer microfounded?
  13. Radical macro lessons from the Great Recession
  14. The power of financial markets
  15. Austerity: Nick Rowe's not so silly question
  16. A campaign based on ignorance
  17. Deflation, inflation, oil prices and asymmetries
  18. Fiscal policy, correlations and causation
  19. Eurozone fiscal policy - still not getting it

February 2015

  1. Tuition fees: a last throw as the election slips away
  2. Disaster
  3. Can helicopter money be democratic?
  4. Greece and primary surpluses
  5. Helicopter money and the government of central bank nightmares
  6. Greece: a simple macroeconomic guide
  7. Greece and educating economists
  8. Endogenous supply and depressed demand
  9. The size of the recent macro policy failure
  10. On not being politically partisan
  11. Nicola Sturgeon's UCL speech
  12. The austerity story in extensive form
  13. The burden of government debt, again
  14. Policy, risks and public discourse
  15. The Divine Coincidence in a parallel universe
  16. Inequality, business leaders and more delusions on the left
  17. Asymmetries and Uncertainties
  18. Going for balance
  19. The Conservatives follow the Republicans on climate change
  20. Saying the obvious

January 2015

  1. Delusions on the UK left
  2. To all UK journalists
  3. Debt restructuring: a proposed principle
  4. Post Recession Lessons
  5. Keeping quiet about hidden motives?
  6. Alternative Eurozone histories
  7. That £170 billion bombshell
  8. Encouraging dialogue between economists and social scientists
  9. When central bank losses matter
  10. Mediamacro and responsibility
  11. What does the end of the Swiss Peg tell us about central banks?
  12. Osborne's RES speech and proposed new fiscal rule
  13. Why below target inflation is a big problem
  14. Let us hope for a Syriza victory
  15. Why did Osborne not try to protect the recovery in 2010?
  16. On the monetary offset argument
  17. Faith based macroeconomics
  18. Heterodox laziness (or worse)
  19. Sachs and the age of diminished expectations
  20. If Clegg had become Chancellor
  21. Austerity and Economic Hyperbole
  22. Who is lying about UK budget plans? The OBR test.
  23. The war with the banks has to be fought on two fronts
  24. In defence of NGDP targets
  25. How good has the UK recovery been?

2014 209

December 2014

  1. On the Stupidity of Demand Deficient Stagnation
  2. The Eurozone Scandal
  3. How to reference the REF
  4. Monetary Impotence in context
  5. Why these updated fiscal rules are a backward step
  6. Robert Peston, Mr Market and me
  7. Deficits, Mediamacro and Popular Opinion
  8. Bond market fairy tales part 2
  9. Bond market fairy tales part 1
  10. Small states, economics and food banks
  11. The imaginary world of small state people
  12. Government debt, financial markets and dead parrots
  13. The OBR confirm the dangers of Osborne's gamble
  14. Secular stagnation and computers

November 2014

  1. Destroying the state is no accident
  2. Do we get the leaders our media deserves?
  3. Understanding Anti-Keynesians
  4. Understanding George Osborne
  5. Left, Right and Macroeconomic Competence
  6. The UK feel good factor
  7. Avoiding Fiscal Fudge
  8. Redistribution under the UK coalition government
  9. Can we have our instrument back?
  10. Growth vindicates Greek Austerity
  11. A simple guide to the UK fiscal deficit
  12. Why are the Conservatives so incompetent at running the economy?
  13. Getting the Germany argument right
  14. The IMFs evaluation of 2010 austerity
  15. George Osborne’s European triumph
  16. Germany and pre-recession cost cutting
  17. A comment on Kocherlakota's suggestions for clarifying monetary policy objectives
  18. A campaign to mislead
  19. Fighting the last war

October 2014

  1. In praise of macroeconomists (or at least one of them)
  2. The untold story of the Eurozone crisis
  3. Why the Eurozone suffers from a Germany problem
  4. Redistribution between generations
  5. Helicopter money
  6. UK immigration and social attitudes
  7. The mythical Phillips curve?
  8. Ukipanic
  9. Are DSGE models distorting policy? - a test case
  10. Do we need a crisis to reduce the deficit?
  11. Defining price stability
  12. The mythical debt crisis
  13. More asymmetries: Is Keynesian economics left wing?
  14. Eurozone Asymmetries
  15. Has Cameron blown the austerity cover?
  16. Disagreements between nations
  17. Why uncosted tax cuts are apparently a problem for Labour
  18. How many UK elections can a nasty party win?

September 2014

  1. The entirely predictable recession
  2. More mediamacro
  3. Where macroeconomics went wrong
  4. Let it roll!
  5. Misleading a country
  6. That referendum was fun. Shall we do it again?
  7. Wishful thinking and economics
  8. Keynes and the Macmillan committee
  9. UK attitudes on the size of the state
  10. David Cameron (from Wikipedia 2100)
  11. Shrinking the State
  12. Can a country be too competitive?
  13. Scotland and the SNP: Fooling yourselves and deceiving others
  14. Disseminating economic expertise: a Scottish case study
  15. Unconventional Monetary Policy versus fiscal policy
  16. Utopianism and Scottish Independence
  17. Class interests
  18. Dreams of autonomy
  19. Simplistic theories of inflation
  20. Labour's austerity problem

August 2014

  1. The ECB and the Bundesbank
  2. Eurozone delusions
  3. Lessons of the Great Depression for the Eurozone
  4. Filling the gap: monetary policy or tax cuts or government spending
  5. Austerity, France and Memories
  6. Draghi at Jackson Hole
  7. Types of unemployment
  8. UK 2015: 2010 Déjà vu, but without the excuses
  9. The symmetry test
  10. Balanced-budget fundamentalism
  11. Why central banks use models to forecast
  12. Search in the goods market?
  13. Conditional and Unconditional Forecasting
  14. The risks to the UK recovery are fiscal not monetary
  15. Inequality and the common pool problem
  16. Policy Based Evidence Making
  17. On Macroeconomic Forecasting
  18. Is pessimism about European debt levels justified?
  19. Nerds, Elitism and Immigration
  20. Bonus Culture
  21. The pre-recession UK debt fuelled boom that never was?
  22. Article 123.1 and the ECB
  23. Anti-intellectualism
  24. US savings behaviour, and empirical research strategies
  25. How to muddy the waters on impact of austerity

July 2014

  1. What are academics good for?
  2. Methodological seduction
  3. UK Fiscal Policy from 2015 with shocks
  4. If minimum wages, why not maximum wages?
  5. Understanding fiscal stimulus can be easy
  6. Why strong UK employment growth could be really bad news
  7. Synthesis!? David Beckworth's Insurance Policy
  8. Macroeconomic innumeracy
  9. Is economics jargon distortionary?
  10. Fiscal deceit
  11. What annoys me about market monetarists
  12. A short note on tobacco packaging
  13. Further thoughts on Phillips curves
  14. Public Investment and Borrowing Targets
  15. French macroeconomic policy improvisation
  16. Aggregate demand and the labour market
  17. Has the Great Recession killed the traditional Phillips Curve?
  18. Why macroeconomists, not bankers, should set interest rates
  19. Hitting the poor and the disabled
  20. Rereading Lucas and Sargent 1979
  21. Taylor rules: the ZLB and Euro Diversity
  22. The financial instability argument for raising rates

June 2014

  1. Brexit, 2015 and the Business Vote
  2. Understanding the New Classical revolution
  3. Monetary policymakers as boyfriends
  4. UK fiscal policy from 2015
  5. Was the neoclassical synthesis unstable?
  6. Triangulation, Miliband and Inequality
  7. Real wages, monetary policy and innovation
  8. Fiscal rules: politics and economics
  9. The IMF apology nonsense: how to maintain a lie
  10. The race to raise interest rates
  11. Does politics dominate economics in Eurozone crisis management?
  12. John Williams on bubbles and monetary policy
  13. Good and Bad Blog Debates
  14. Monetarist vs Fiscalist
  15. The US and the Eurozone 2012-3
  16. How to change the inflation target
  17. What we do know
  18. Privatisation and government debt
  19. Reforming Econ 101
  20. Tyrie and the IMF on austerity
  21. Scottish Independence

May 2014

  1. What the Financial Times got (very) wrong
  2. House prices, rents, and supply
  3. The state, corporations and markets
  4. Mistakes
  5. How to avoid the austerity mistake next time
  6. The Eurozone Recovery and Household Savings
  7. Keynesian economics works: Eurozone edition
  8. The media, the market and truth
  9. Inflation risks
  10. Humility and Chameleons
  11. Yes, economic policy did fail
  12. Sticky prices: how we confuse students, and sometimes ourselves
  13. Economists and methodology
  14. Hawkery, or is the Bank biased
  15. Central bank advice on austerity
  16. Pareto, Inequality and Government Debt
  17. The Eurozone: out of the ashes?
  18. Looking for the flimflam

April 2014

  1. Recovery rhetoric and reality
  2. Retiring macroeconomic theory
  3. When economics students rebel
  4. Targeting wage inflation
  5. The Banks and Austerity: a simple story of the last ten years
  6. House prices and secular stagnation
  7. Misunderstanding macroeconomic models
  8. Abusing economic analysis: UK Treasury edition
  9. Inequality, inheritance tax and the UK election battleground
  10. The Fed’s macroeconomic model
  11. Secular Stagnation and Three Period OLG
  12. The IMF on Bank Subsidies
  13. Austerity, journalists and the financial sector
  14. When the definition of a recession matters
  15. Annuities and inheritance
  16. Microfoundations and the Phillips curve
  17. What a fool I have been

March 2014

  1. The Left and Economic Policy
  2. Pensions and neoliberal fantasies
  3. Time inconsistency and debt
  4. It’s the economics, not the politics
  5. More thoughts on ‘expectations driven’ liquidity traps
  6. Bank says money multiplier is wrong - should we be shocked?
  7. What place do applied middlebrow models have?
  8. Price level targeting intuition
  9. See no evil
  10. I got to the third sentence of Osborne’s speech
  11. Greece and denying responsibility
  12. Inequality and the media
  13. The sharp but effectual remedy
  14. Economics, Politics and Naivety
  15. Forward Guidance is not Forward Commitment

February 2014

  1. Two Anti-Keynesian myths
  2. Are New Keynesian DSGE models a Faustian bargain?
  3. Why Mark Carney is a breath of fresh air
  4. Are the UK floods Cameron’s Katrina?
  5. Speaking as an Old New Keynesian …
  6. Austerity and Flood Damage
  7. Breaking up is hard to do

January 2014

  1. Understanding ever increasing executive pay
  2. Bullard on the 'Death of a Theory'
  3. Adapting forward guidance
  4. Ordoliberalism, Neoliberalism and Economics
  5. Will the financial crisis lead to another revolution in macroeconomics?
  6. How the ECB could be radical by being old fashioned
  7. Was the UK government’s use of North Sea Oil a scandal?
  8. Will the MPC raise UK interest rates in 2014?
  9. Monetary versus Fiscal: an odd debate
  10. Cutting public investment has consequences: house building
  11. Economic standards
  12. On city economists and the FT survey
  13. Economics and the Immigration debate

← 2011–2013