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Plagiarism is not the problem – deception is

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Much attention has been given to the fact that Melania Trump, or her handlers, couldn’t come up with an original speech for her to endorse her husband at the Republicans’ nominating convention. Instead she/they lifted shamelessly from a speech given on the same occasion, at the Democrat convention, by Michelle Obama eight years ago. The unfortunate Mrs. Trump has come in for a great deal of ridicule. A plagiarism blame game has ensued.

But this all seems to miss the point. Lazy plagiarism is embarrassing, whoever was responsible. But the real problem is the content of the hackneyed, recycled phrases, and in particular:

Because we want our children <MO: all the children> in this nation to know that the only limit to <MO: the height of > your achievements is the strength <MO: reach> of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.

No children, least of all in the US should “know” this, because it is Disneyesque pap, at odds with what we know about socio-economic outcomes in our societies, and the US in particular. The happenstance of birth dictates outcomes later in life to a very considerable extent in all modern societies. It does so to a markedly greater extent in the US than in other countries. And the extent to which such “socio-economic determinism” is decisive appears to have increased markedly in recent years.
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Progressive economists should support Remain not Brexit – a response to Steve Keen

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Update: Steve Keen replies to my critique here.

140 characters are not a good basis for a debate about complex issues. Let me extricate myself from a potentially useful but frustrating twitter “debate” and write a short response to Prof. Steve Keen’s call to support Brexit.

I follow Steve Keen’s economic work at a distance but with interest and sympathy. Although I have not sought to make a career out of economic theorising, I broadly share many of his views on endogenous money and the central role of instability, uncertainty and bank debt in understanding economic developments. I was therefore surprised and disappointed to read his justification for supporting Brexit. Even if he did not formulate it as such, his statement is bound to be taken as a recommendation by his numerous followers and supporters. Yet his reasoning in the article is poor and – this is the most charitable explanation I can find – politically extremely naive.

There would be some additional points to make, but let me just address Keen’s two main arguments. [Read more…]

The right way for Germany to persuade the ECB to raise rates

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The “E” in ECB stands, lest it be forgotten, for “European”. It is the central bank of all the countries belonging to the Euro Area. It is also thanks to the Treaty and its own statutes independent of instruction from European and national public bodies. This does not prevent national lobbyists, commentators and politicians from giving it unsolicited advice, however, particularly when ECB policies are perceived to be out of line with the real or supposed “national interest”, or that of the social group in question.

Germany is something of a special case in this regard, for a number of reasons. It is the EU country most clearly associated with inflation-hawkism and, related to that, upholding the idea of central bank independence. It is the largest Euro Area economy. In theory this makes it less likely that its economic needs will differ widely from those of the currency area as a whole, creating pressure to seek changes in the monetary policy stance. Yet, in practice Germany has been something of a Euro Area outlier. It would have needed lower interest rates for much of the pre-crisis EMU period and would not, by itself, require the extraordinary expansionary measures pursued recently by the ECB. Lastly, its size, economic performance and the nature of the euro crisis mean that Berlin very much calls the policymaking shots in the EU as a whole.

It is against this background that we should reflect on reports that Chancellor Merkel is today meeting Mario Draghi and has been urged by party officials, Bundesbank president Weidmann and lobbyists from the German financial sector to – how to put this delicately? – persuade the ECB president to bring low interest rates and quantitative easing to an end sooner rather than later. [Read more…]