The outstanding economist Hyman Minsky was always skeptical of Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty. It assumed, he wrote, that economic growth itself would be adequate to eliminate poverty. But Minsky believed that there were structural problems that always left too many people without jobs or with...

Modern governments with a floating currency face no inherent financial constraints. Unfortunately, most modern macro-theorists continue to write as if these nations were financially constrained by (1) the magnitude of current tax "revenue" and (2) the private sector's willingness to "finance"...

This economist thinks that private debt got too far out of hand in the 1990s to make a recovery and economic expansion easy to achieve. He wants the federal government, among other things, to bail out the states and perhaps loosen its fiscal posture well beyond the short run.

Many economists, journalists, and public policy officials have argued that speculation has had little to do with the recent rapid run-up in the price of oil. If true, a case for regulation of oil markets would be more difficult to make. But the author examines the evidence in detail and finds it...

This paper examines Chairman Greenspan's recent claim that central bankers around the world have been operating 'as if' monetary policy were constrained by gold that backs up reserves. The paper argues, instead, that central banks in flexible exchange rate regimes operate with an overnight...

The credit crunch of 1966 has long been recognized as the first significant postwar financial crisis, and it was the first verification of the ''financial instability hypothesis'' that Minsky had been developing since the late 1950s. In the midst of the robust post-war expansion, the Fed...

Most of the recent claims that Social Security faces major financial challenges in the years ahead rely on the recognition that the US population is aging. Indeed, the coming wave of baby-boomer retirements plays a continuing role in calls for 'reform' of the program. However, the general aging...

During the last fifteen years the Fed has experimented with a variety of monetary targets, including reserve aggregates (borrowed and nonborrowed); monetary aggregates as measured by M1, M2, and even M3; prices, as measured by P-Star, price indexes, gold prices, and expected inflation; and a...

Recent low and stable inflation rates are, according to most observers, the result of the Federal Reserve's monetary policy, and most observers do not seem to question that the Fed's sole responsibility is to fight inflation. However, as Executive Director Dimitri B. Papadimitriou and Research...

Paul Davidson is one the best known and influential Post Keynesian economists alive today. He has insisted throughout his career that economists should focus on real world problems and that the purpose of economic policy is to help society become more humane and civilized. He is also known for...