Accurate, however.


Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere

I'm reading that Iceland is giving the big middle finger to the IMF and neo-liberalism, and is growing into a newly democratic nation rewriting its constitution through direct citizen input. They're also prosecuting the heads of the three major banks that brought about the country's economic downfall.  

Interesting story, little told here in the U.S. More information wanted.

The system is in non-linear, chaotic mode. 2025, 2015, 2035. All is possible.

This is not to nag on dates, just to notice that things can change quite fast. Think 1930s. Like, say, Spain in the 30s speed of change.

Keynes was smart enough to know if the goddamn house is burning down you don't worry that the toilets are backed-up.

Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere

But, more importantly, in the 1970s there were a number of financial crises that were successfully contained by means of government intervention even as the economy spent a decade in crisis.

Perhaps, but did they know what they were doing? I'm skeptical.

Stagflation is the simplest form of inflation. It is caused by rising (economic) rent. And there is a very simple and quick fix to it. Rent tax. (But you don't find this in any textbook.)

James K. Galbraith: James K. Galbraith: The Final Death (and Next Life) of Maynard Keynes

This is a bad movie and we have, of course, seen it before. You may recall that in 1960 the Uncle of, as it happens, of Larry Summers, co-invented a concept called the Phillips curve, stipulating on very weak empirical evidence and no clear theory the relationship between the unemployment rate and the rate of inflation. True Keynesians, including my teacher, Nicholas Kaldor, Joan Robinson, Robert Eisner, a great hero of mine, and my father were appalled. The construct was doomed to collapse and when it did, after 1970, the school that most people thought of as Keynesian was swept away in the backwash.

Today, the failure behind the recovery forecast is conflated with the failure of the stimulus itself and the same thing is happening again. Those who failed most miserably to forewarn against the financial crisis have, as a consequence, regained their voices as scourges of deficits and public debt. There is a chorus of doom as those who once thought the new paradigm could go on forever are now inveighed against living beyond our means and foretell federal bankruptcy and the collapse of the dollar and the world monetary system amongst other scary fairy tales. This includes such luminaries as the leadership of the International Monetary Fund and of all things, the analytical division of Standard and Poor's -- an enterprise on which one might hope at least a small amount of modesty might have developed or devolved in the wake of recent events.

It would be pathetic if it were not so dangerous. But the fact is, these forces are moving down a highway which has been cleared of obstacles by the retreat, indeed the destruction of the False Keynesian position.

Economics is politics by other means