Readers this is as a concise statement of why MMT economics truly is fully functional, as opposed to ideological and sciencism, aka without science. read away, I have things to do on the local level and material plane of engagement. Tadit

Wray "Last week I explained why Minsky matters, outlining his main contributions. See here: http://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2012/03/27/why-minsky-matters-part-on...

(Tadit--)this is the url for this article:

Readers, this article covers familiar territory, but from a much different source that has been typical here. What the author refrains from saying directly is that the Bretton Woods agreement was foremost in the interest of the Wall Street bankers and their speculators. It was the US Treasury Secretary Harry Dexter White, a corporate banker himself, which pressed for using the US Dollar as the basis of the new international monetary regimen. His legacy is obscured by describing him as an "internationalist," which in a rarefied sense he was.

I'll add a comment later. It contains a good lesson as to what is in store for other sovereign economies, thanks to the lackies at the IMF.

The problem of bank loans gone bad, especially those with government-guarantees such as U.S. student loans and Fannie Mae mortgages, has thrown into questionjust what should be a “fair value” for these debt obligations. Should “fair value” reflect what debtors can pay – that is, pay without going bankrupt? Oris it fair for banks and even vulture funds to get whatever they can squeeze out of debtors?

No comment for the moment. fast forward, Tadit

“There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”
— Arthur Conan Doyle (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes)

The following is a paper given at the ASSA conference in Denver this past week for a panel organized by James Galbraith, titled Pressures on the Paradigm, sponsored by Economists for Peace & Security.

As I have written, when we peel back the layers of the real estate “onion” what we find is layer after layer of fraud. From the mortgage brokers to the appraisers and lenders, from the securitizers to the ratings agencies and accountants, from the trustees to the servicers, and from MERS (Mortgage Electronic Registry System) through to the foreclosures, what we find is a massive criminal conspiracy—probably the worst in human history. I realize that is a harsh claim but I cannot find any other words that fit.

Over the past decade and a half a new approach to macroeconomics was developed.

In a sense, it integrated the old Bastard “Keynesian” ISLM model that we all learned in intermediate macroeconomics with a Monetarist-inspired “Taylor Rule” for formulating monetary policy and a dynamic “Phillips Curve” to determine inflation.

We do not need to go deeply into the technical details. What is important is that it relegated fiscal policy to the backburner and brought monetary policy front and center.

Readers, some of the blogger's statement below are inflated to make this particular person to seem unusual by being "ahead" of all other sources. Cow patties!! Much of this part is simply not true. Steve Keen and much of the UMKC people, and even further back Hyman Minsky predicted this economic collapse. Even the FBI was predicting major levels of banking fraud around 2005, I believe. I will for this moment pardon these ego inflations, because of the advocacy of the Kucinich "NEED" bill which contains the AMI monetary reform proposal.

Readers, this is a very good overview of the current issues related to the US Federal Reserve as those issues relate to its legitimacy in serving the interests of the US economy. I expect that Wray's conclusion ill after some length of analysis will be that the US Federal Reserve is structurally not capable of serving the mandates which are the basis of its legitimacy in addressing problems within the US banking industry or in the US economy as a democratic nation. Tadit Anderson