Now I know that there is a Rabble economics section and you can tag babble posts under an Economics issues page, but should it not be given more priority for babble discussion? If I go to the babble page, there is no category section I can see with this heading.
Second, why I'm asking is because I do have some questions, and I would like to just read through a bunch of good points by other people in one neat little category section I can go to.
Okay so those are my general questions and I would like some feedback on that.
Next, I have some questions pertaining to economics. So I have been trying to understand the subject better, feeling its quite necessary on top of awareness of cultural and environmental problems, etc. In my search, I've found Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi who went from not much understanding the subject of finance to being a great help in organizing and simplifying concepts made obscure or deceitful such as concerns the bank bailout and lead up of rampant fraud in the mortage securities market. I've also found Real News Network's Economy section to be engaging, especially former Savings and Loans regulator Bill Black, who explains that he constantly has to teach professionals in law the workings of finance, a subject they typically aren't formally trained on but must acquire in order to investigate fraud. Between these two there is an understanding that one can learn finance and that one can also effectively teach finance to people who aren't familiar with the field if the subject matter is simplified and explained in terms people understand.
With that said, I think rabble/babble users could afford to more formally engage in this dialogue themselves.
Next, I want to talk about Bill Black's theoretical/analytical perspective on the economy and a field of economists to which he belongs. This approach to economics is called Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and involves from what I can tell some evaluation of sectoral balances, meaning basically graphing out the sectors of the economy into a few or even just two sides for simplicity. The economy in macroeconomics is sometimes represented in a flow formula where total GDP equals total expenditure which equals total income. When the inner dynamics of this basic equation are looked at, this equation can be further broken down such that:
Private Surplus (Savings minus Investments) = Government Deficits (Taxes minus Government expenditures) + Current Account Balance (Exports minus Imports)
What this looks like on a graph seems to suggest that Government Deficits often add equally prosperous Private Sector Surpluses. There appears to be a diametric relationship between household income for that matter and government deficits. This runs starkly counter to the ongoing austerity narrative we hear so much about.
I want to hear what people think.
Here are some graphs and links.
MMT economists dismiss inflationary concerns about any sovereign country that is ussuer of its own fiat currency (little complicated terminology that sounds more complex than it is, meaning the money is owed internally to the country and is not subject to the same interest rate loans that countries that don't produce their own currencies are subject to, and fiat basically means the currency is not pegged to any real reserves like gold, etc., so a country that uses fiat can produce as much or as little as it needs, without proportional constraints to some actual valued commodity like gold). MMT economists argue that a sovereign country that issues its own fiat currency can produce as much money as it needs to meet deficit requirements meant to flow into the private sector and household incomes. There are other finer details, and that's why I'd like feedback, maybe to enlighten me a little here, but nonetheless, some graphs.
http://fictionalbarking.blogspot.ca/2011/12/eliminating-household-sector...
The above graph is Canada's Sectoral Balance, and I saw some pretty awful ones for Greece and Italy, probably more detrimental because they are not issuers of their own currencies and are subject to harsh austerity measures under odious loan agreements for that money.
Stephanie Kelton for the MMT school did a good piece that has the graphs in the video if you watch the video through. The graphs are closer to the end of the video if you want to just fast forward to find them. Here is the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vQOk1VOU6k&noredirect=1
Also here are the sectoral balances for the United States, because it is at the center of some huge shifts in economic thinking.
The above image came from this link, but can be found discussed on other MMT sites:
http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.ca/2011/08/sectoral-balances-2nd-qua...
And finally, here are a few additional sources, discussing the subject matter,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKpvJhcnAU0&feature=relmfu
(This guy Marshall Aurbach has a good piece comparing Ontario and Quebec to Spain and Portugal at 26:00 mins in, but because of fiscal sovereignty issues, Greece suffers under a false union that doesn't help its member states fairly).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd6rGbO-ruU
Above link is Stephanie Kelton)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZQqrxHGcoQ
(This economist is Michael Hudson)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utOGgyTMJKE&feature=relmfu
(This piece is by Bill Black, and Real News has tons by him, title here should actually read "How To Steal Ten Billion Euro")
And here's some non video stuff, just material to read on MMT:
http://pragcap.com/paul-krugman-sort-of-does-sectoral-balances
http://ralphanomics.blogspot.ca/2012/02/alternative-sectoral-balance-equ...
http://heteconomist.com/sectoral-balances-and-keynesian-causation/
http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/conf_june10/Conceicao_2.pdf
Hey Thanks for giving me your time, and please please lets consider formally organizing our economics section better,
XD