Neoclassical free market orthodoxy, by which the world is still ruled, makes no distinction between real and speculative markets. Both are granted maximum freedom to grow. Speculative markets started as a strand within the financial sector which itself was brought into existence to support investment in the first industrialisation. But while the size of real markets is limited by the ‘appetite’ of potential customers, speculative markets have no such limit. Their growth has been phenomenal; the market for derivative securities has already been estimated as close to the GDP of the planet and many times the value of the world’s stocks and shares. But that is only the start.
Category Archives: Political Decision
The Ignorance of Economics
Despite their much vaunted economic expertise, the leading national and global institutions failed to prevent the financial and economic crisis they’re now arguing over how to clear up. The IMF’s Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) reported last month on why the IMF, as one such institution, failed to identify the risks and give clear warnings. The prime causes of that failure were identified as ‘analytical weaknesses’, which were actually shared by all relevant institutions. These analytical weaknesses included a tendency, among IMF economists, to be dominated by neoclassical free market dogma, and so to believe ‘market discipline and self-regulation’ would be sufficient to avoid financial disaster, and to trust the new mathematically based techniques for spreading financial risk, and to conflate the financial and industrial sectors, thus ignoring the influence of finance over the real economy. ‘Perhaps the more worrisome was the overreliance by many economists on models as the only valid tool to analyze economic circumstances that are too complex for modelling.’ (Paragraph 46).
Pity the Poor Banker!
Empathise with the banker, trader or fund manager looking after other people’s money, whose performance on their behalf is continually assessed and reported as the basis for a position on a league table. Two options are on offer.
1. Invest in a start-up widget manufacturer creating new employment but only offering a return of 10-15% pa and even that is at risk, or,
2. Invest in “Alternative Markets – Dedicated to providing established green sippable alternative investments. Guaranteed investment opportunities with ROI ranging from 60% to 398%. Purchasing carbon credits to offset harmful emissions is a popular carbon reducing option. Investors can invest in companies that provide credits for carbon emissions, through forestry plantations for example, which are then sold on.”
See http://www.alternativemarkets.co.uk/carbon_trading.php
Assuming both options are perfectly legal, which way is investment likely to be made?
The British Government’s Hopes for Partnership with the Unions
The end of the self-defeating miners’ strike in 1985 led to the somewhat fundamentalist right wing government imposing severe restrictions on the unions’ rights to engage in industrial action. Despite the 13 years of Labour rule, those restrictions were never undone. So it remains extremely difficult, within the law, for the union movement to mount any general industrial action. However, the wholesale nature of the current government’s expenditure cuts, presents a once in a life time opportunity for the unions to mount a hundred or more individual legitimate trade disputes, which could, to all intents and purposes, look very much like a general strike. The unions hope this will be the appearance of their London demonstration at the end of March, which they expect to attract a million supporters.
Continue reading The British Government’s Hopes for Partnership with the Unions
Bury the Dogma
Neo-classical microeconomic theory, especially in its more recent fundamentalist manifestations, has done immense damage to the real economy while nurturing the parasitic financial sector, as recounted from time to time elsewhere on this site.
Various alternative approaches have identified and addressed problems created by that theory. Welfare economics, the economics of social balance, and what is referred to as behavioural economics, have all sought to modify how the neo-classical maximising model operates. However they have not provided a clear and simple alternative to neo-classical mathematics. So the neo-classical model prevails and will survive all such challenges. Utility maximising economic man and the profit (or shareholder wealth) maximising firm, operating within an assumed to be efficient market, will continue to be accepted as the solution to maximising economic growth and social welfare. The obvious inequity of distribution between rich and poor, both within and between nations, will continue to be regretted as necessary to the utilitarian result. Moreover, it is argued, care for the environment could be more readily financed by a successful economy, rather than by one which is struggling to survive.
In Praise of Renegades
The economic mainstream has flowed on its capital oriented way with relatively little deviation despite its manifest limitations, errors, omissions and downright falsehoods. And despite the occasional disasters to which it gives rise.
In the middle of last century, J M Keynes corrected some of the more apparent errors of the classical model, but his aim was improvement rather than revolution. He did argue powerfully that ‘the madmen in authority’ should accept the maintenance of full employment as their moral responsibility, but renegade he was not.
Changing Economics
A retrospective of this year’s postings would highlight some of the flaws in accepted economic theory. Many have been flagged up elsewhere: economic theory is not, and never has been, without its severe and knowledgeable critics. However, there are a couple of errors which are fundamental to the study of economics which are not often mentioned elsewhere.
A Further Word on Cadbury
The takeover of British confectioner Cadbury, with its long and honourable history in British industry, from its Quaker origins to its death throes earlier this year, has been featured as the main topic of two posts on this site, and mentioned in passing on five others. It is a compulsive story which celebrates the satisfaction of greed, the naïve stupidity of ideologically driven government, the destruction of Britain’s real economy and its real jobs, and the fatalistic acceptance of all this by the population at large.
Don’t ask “Mr Moneybags” how to run the economy
As Nobel laureate Paul Krugman pointed out ‘a country is not a business’. So why, he asked, do politicians think it is sensible to ask a successful businessman for advice on running the country? Why, for example, is David Cameron asking Sir Philip Green for his input? His views are clear and predictable, and of no relevance to running a successful economy.
Continue reading Don’t ask “Mr Moneybags” how to run the economy
Cut or Spend? Fad or Strategy?
Before the British coalition government’s proposed cuts were announced they were greeted by 39 top business people writing to the Daily Telegraph confirming that they would create the necessary jobs so as to make the public sector cuts work. That way tax rises might be avoided and long-term cuts in public sector activity achieved. For them, any reduction in tax and spend would be a Good Thing. Well, business people would say that, wouldn’t they! But were they expressing a seriously thought through strategy, or merely expressing the currently dominant free market fad?
Fighting for Fairness by Remaking the Real Economy 