The idea of an exogenous money supply —controlled entirely through central bank interventions— was a fundamental tenet of monetarism and New Classical economics. Post Keynesians have developed an extensive literature arguing that the money supply is in fact endogenous —that market forces...

Ever since John Maynard Keynes, deficit spending has been a practical way to minimize the pain of recession and launch a recovery. But with deficits running high, those who believe deficits should be reduced right now are gaining in influence. Does austerity at this point make any sense? This...

One aspect of the contemporary crisis of the United States economy has been a sharp increase since the mid-1960s in the reliance on debt finance by corporations, households, and the federal government. This paper focuses on the borrowing behavior of nonfinancial corporations. It first presents...

The term "living wage" has been used in two separate ways: (1) a wage rate that will enable workers and their families to live above a reasonable poverty threshold; and (2) a somewhat more ambitious standard, a wage rate that will meet a family's basic budgetary needs. Both of these concepts are...

Since 1994, so-called "living wage" ordinances have passed in 20 cities in the United States, and activists are advancing similar proposals throughout the country. These proposals are a response to the declining real wages of low-wage workers in the United States-what David Gordon termed "the...

After the onset of the Great Recession in 2008, commercial banks in the United States began accumulating huge cash reserves in their accounts at the Federal Reserve. By the middle of 2011, reserves had reached $1.6 trillion, more than 10 percent of U.S. GDP, an order of magnitude for commercial...

This paper examines three sets of major issues regarding the current U.S. government’s fiscal deficit and outstanding debt, tied to the 2009 economic stimulus program, the American Recovery and Reinvest-ment Act (ARRA). First, I consider the claim that high levels of government borrowing...

Amid the wreckage of the 2008-09 Wall Street collapse and Great Recession, orthodox economists and political elites in both the United States and Western Europe have been strongly pushing the idea that austerity is the only viable policy option. The basis for the austerity hawks' claim is that...

This paper considers policies for promoting productive investments in the United States, especially as regards the project of building a clean energy economy. The four main policies examined are: 1) Expanding public investments throughout the economy and gaining the crowding-in benefits that...