Senior Scholar James K. Galbraith argues the fundamental illusion of viewing the US economy through the free-market prism of deregulation, privatization, and a benevolent government operating mainly through monetary stabilization - the prevailing view among economists over the past three...

A group of experts associated with the Economists for Peace and Security and the Initiative for Rethinking the Economy met recently in Paris to discuss financial and monetary issues; their viewpoints, summarized here by Senior Scholar James K. Galbraith, are largely at odds with the global...

The global abatement of the inflationary climate of the past three decades, combined with continuing financial instability, helped to promote the worldwide holding of U.S. dollar reserves as a cushion against financial instability outside the United States, with the result that, for the United...

From this paper's Preface, by Dr. Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, President: For some time, Levy Institute scholars have been engaged with issues related to the current account, government, and private sector balances. We have argued that the existing imbalances in these accounts are unsustainable and...

The Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board (FASAB) has proposed subjecting the entire federal budget to "intergenerational accounting"--which purports to calculate the debt burden our generation will leave for future generations--and is soliciting comments on the recommendations of its two...

Unemployment in the European Union (EU) is a serious problem that threatens to disrupt the integration of accession countries, the character of individual countries, and the continued existence of the EU. According to Senior Scholar James K. Galbraith, European integration poses a huge conundrum...

What in monetarism, and what in the "new monetary consensus," led to a correct or even remotely relevant anticipation of the extraordinary financial crisis that broke over the housing sector, the banking system, and the world economy in August 2007 and that has continued to preoccupy central...

There is no chance that events will right themselves in a few weeks, or that we will be saved by such underlying factors as technology and productivity growth or by lower interest rates or the provisions of the recent tax act. Rather, we are in for a crisis; the sooner this is recognized and...

Keynesian economics is back. As John Maynard Keynes stressed, total spending matters-and not who does it or for what purpose. Tax cuts and deficit spending are, therefore, on the agenda; low interest rates seem here to stay. Stimulus is the watchword of the day. It remains only to fill in the...

According to Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, we live in a time "profoundly different from the typical postwar business cycle." Our experiences have "defied conventional wisdom" and mark "veritable shifts in the tectonic plates of technology." Evidently, the law of supply and demand has...