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...

Social Security turned 70 on August 14, although no national celebration marked the occasion. Rather, our top policymakers in Washington continue to suggest that the system is "unsustainable." While our nation's most successful social program, and among its longest lived, has allowed generations...

While serving as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Alan Greenspan advocated unsupervised securitization, subprime lending, option ARMs, credit-default swaps, and all manner of financial alchemy in the belief that markets "work" to reduce and spread risk, and to allocate it to those best...

The President's commission claims that the Social Security program is "unsustainable" and requires a complete "overhaul." It also claims that the program is a bad deal for women and minorities. However, any honest accounting of all Social Security benefits finds that the program is a good deal...