The Levy Institute and SEIU 775 are cosponsoring a labor workshop at Bard College on April 20th. The workshop, which is free and open to the public, will focus on three major themes, each corresponding to a panel: The State of the American Labor Movement, The Future of Work, and New Models of Organizing and Worker Power.

The flyer for the event, including the schedule and list of participants, is below (click to enlarge; download pdf here):

Is Financial Reregulation Holding Back Finance for the Global Recovery?

Organized by the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College with support from the Ford Foundation

The National Press Club
Washington, D.C.
April 15–16, 2015

The 2015 Minsky Conference will address, among other issues, the design, flaws, and current status of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, including implementation of the operating procedures necessary to curtail systemic risk and prevent future crises; the insistence on fiscal austerity exemplified by the recent pronouncements of the new Congress; the sustainability of the US economic recovery; monetary policy revisions and central bank independence; the deflationary pressures associated with the ongoing eurozone debt crisis and their implications for the global economy; strategies for promoting an inclusive economy and a more equitable income distribution; and regulatory challenges for emerging market economies.

To register, please click here.

Participants

Lakshman Achuthan
Co-Founder and Chief Operations Officer, Economic Cycle Research Institute

Daniel Alpert
Managing Partner, Westwood Capital, LLC

Robert J. Barbera
Co-director, Center for Financial Economics, The Johns Hopkins University

Lael Brainard*
Member, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

James Bullard
President, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Vítor Constâncio
Vice President, European Central Bank

Scott Fullwiler
Professor of Economics and James A. Leach Chair in Banking and Monetary Economics, Wartburg College

Michael Greenberger
Professor, School of Law, and Director, Center for Health and Homeland Security, The University of Maryland

Bruce Greenwald
Robert Heilbrunn Professor of Finance and Asset Management, Columbia University

Thomas Hoenig
Vice Chairman, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

Jan Kregel
Senior Scholar, Levy Institute, and Professor, Tallinn University of Technology

Paul McCulley

Perry Mehrling
Professor of Economics, Barnard College

Patricia Mosser
Deputy Director, Research and Analysis Center, Office of Financial Research, US Department of the Treasury

Dimitri B. Papadimitriou
President, Levy Institute

D. Nathan Sheets*
Under Secretary for International Affairs, US Department of the Treasury

Gillian Tett*
US Managing Editor, Financial Times

Paul Tucker
Senior Fellow, Harvard Business School

Éric Tymoigne
Research Associate, Levy Institute, and Professor of Economics, Lewis & Clark College

Elizabeth Warren
US Senator (D-MA)

Maxine Waters*
US Representative (D-CA, 43)

L. Randall Wray
Senior Scholar, Levy Institute, and Professor, University of Missouri–Kansas City

* Invited

I highly recommend a movie to be released next year (that is, the year that begins next week). Terry Jones, of Monty Python fame, is one of the key developers of the film. It is on the Global Financial Crisis, but also provides a quick history of bubbles and crashes. It is highly entertaining and as good as any that I’ve seen on the crisis.

The movie features Hyman P. Minsky as well as J. K. Galbraith, who appear as life-sized puppets. One of Terry’s crew told me they brought Minsky over from England on a plane as a fare-paying customer. I would have loved to have seen the look on the faces of the flight attendants. I hope they bought him a beer.

Originally they were to film Minsky in his office at the Levy Institute, but when they saw pictures of it they said that there’s no way such a big and important economist could have had such an inauspicious office (albeit in beautiful Blithewood overlooking the Hudson). So they used a nice library down in Manhattan.

As Terry puts it, ”I wanted to be part of this project as soon as I discovered economics students are taught crashes just don’t happen.”

Here’s the blurb on the purpose of the project:

In revealing the truth about our unstable economic system, the film acts as the starting point for global project BoomBustClick.com – to get the world talking about change through education. A central hub for information, news and ideas, BoomBustClick is an online resource for everyone – can we change an unstable economic system? Can we adapt economics to human nature?

Terry interviewed me for the film. He’s as funny as you’d expect, but also deeply engaged and knowledgeable. Most of my interview ended up on the cutting room floor, but some bits survived.

You’ll also enjoy interviews with Steve Keen and Jamie Galbraith. Minsky’s son, Alan, is a natural before the camera. The actor John Cusack makes some memorable comments. Steve Kinsella and John Cassidy are good. My friend Zvi Bodie (best name in economics) is featured, as is Paul Krugman. The UK’s Andy Haldane–one of the regulators–does a bit of mea culpa for the profession’s failure to “see it coming.”

As an added bonus, the film has some catchy tunes that you won’t be able to get out of your head

Go to the project’s website for more info; I presume they’ll be posting up the film’s release date soon. There are some clips on the making of the film that you can enjoy now.

(cross-posted from EconoMonitor)

Outside Money: The Advantages of Owning the Magic Porridge Pot
L. Randall Wray
“Money is always introduced into economic models through very simple ways—whether by ‘helicopter drops,’ ‘inheritance from the past,’ or ‘deposit multipliers.’ Once introduced, money is largely irrelevant—neutral in the long run and non-neutral in the short run only because of ad hoc assumptions. This casual and misleading treatment of money contributed to the two greatest economic disasters since the Great Depression: the Global Financial Crisis and the Euro Crisis. In both cases, economists ‘could not see it coming’ because their understanding of money was deeply flawed. In the first instance, they misunderstood ‘inside’ money and led the rush toward the financial excesses that inevitably led to the 2008 crash. In the second, they designed a currency system based on a fundamentally flawed understanding of sovereign currency, creating a union that would inevitably fail. The alternative framework offered by the state money tradition—broadly defined—provides the understanding that would have prevented both disasters.”

Minsky, Monetary Policy, and Mint Street: Challenges for the Art of Monetary Policymaking in Emerging Economies
Srinivas Yanamandra
“This paper examines the emerging challenges to the art of monetary policymaking using the case study of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in light of developments in the Indian economy during the last decade (2003–04 to 2013–14). The paper uses Hyman P. Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis as the conceptual framework for evaluating the endogenous nature of financial instability and its potential impact on monetary policymaking, and addresses the need to pursue regulatory policy as a tool that is complementary to monetary policy in light of the agenda of reforms put forward by Minsky.”

An Outline of a Progressive Resolution to the Euro-area Sovereign Debt Overhang: How a Five-year Suspension of the Debt Burden Could Overthrow Austerity
Dimitris P. Sotiropoulos, John Milios, and Spyros Lapatsioras
“This paper sketches a political proposal to the problem at the level of the euro area (EA) from a progressive viewpoint. Dealing with the debt overhang in an increasing number of EA economies is primarily a political issue. The related technical details are not politically neutral: they are integral parts of political strategies attempting to influence the outcome of the ongoing social and political struggles all over Europe.”

“Our main strategy is for the European Central Bank (ECB) to acquire a significant part of the outstanding sovereign debt (at market prices) of the countries in the EA and convert it to zero-coupon bonds. No transfers will take place between individual states; taxpayers in any EA country will not be involved in the debt restructuring of any foreign eurozone country. Debt will not be forgiven: individual states will agree to buy it back from the ECB in the future when the ratio of sovereign debt to GDP has fallen to 20 percent. The sterilization costs for the ECB are manageable. This model of an unconventional monetary intervention would give progressive governments in the EA the necessary basis for developing social and welfare policies to the benefit of the working classes. It would reverse present-day policy priorities and replace the neoliberal agenda with a program of social and economic reconstruction, with the elites paying for the crisis.”

The Determinants of Long-Term Japanese Government Bonds’ Low Nominal Yields
Tanweer Akram and Anupam Das
“Japanese government bonds’ (JGBs) nominal yields have stayed exceptionally low since the mid 1990s, even though the country experienced chronic fiscal deficits, the government’s net and gross debt ratios rose sharply and remained elevated, and international credit rating agencies have downgraded its yen-denominated sovereign debt several times. This is contrary to the conventional wisdom, which holds that higher government deficits and indebtedness lead to upward pressures on government bonds’ nominal yield.”

“The theoretical reasons for long-term JGBs’ low nominal yields are simple: (1) The government of Japan exercises monetary sovereignty and Japan’s government debt is issued in its own currency, (2) the BOJ largely controls short-term interest rates by setting the policy rate, and it also influences JGBs’ nominal yields though asset purchases, forward guidance, and communication tools, (3) low inflation and deflationary pressures have also contributed to keeping JGBs’ nominal yields low in Japan, and (4) the demand for government debt remains strong, as the country’s domestic financial institutions hold the bulk of it.”

The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College co-organized an international conference on November 21-22 in Athens, Greece, on the continuing crisis in the eurozone.

Among the speakers were:

• Elga Bartsch, Morgan Stanley’s chief European economist;

• Peter Bofinger, a German academic economist and a member of the German Chancellor’s Council of Economic Advisers;

• Marek Belka, governor of Poland’s central bank;

• Giannis Dragasakis, a Greek politician and member of the Greek parliament for the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA);

• Heiner Flassbeck, a former director of the Division on Globalization and Development Strategies of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and former vice minister of the German Federal Ministry of Finance;

• Patrick Honohan, governor of Ireland’s central bank;

• Stuart Holland, a British academic economist teaching in Portugal and a former member of the British parliament;

• Stephen Kinsella, an Irish academic economist;

• numerous Greek economists, including Panagiotis Liargovas, the head of Parliamentary Budget Office at Greek Parliament; and, last but not least,

• scholars from the Levy Institute, including its president (Dimitri B. Papadimitriou), who heads the Institute’s macro-modeling team projects.

Adding to this rather illustrious list of speakers were panel moderators from The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, National Public Radio (USA), and various daily newspapers in Greece.

While there were some disagreements on policy matters among the panelists, it seems that most speakers reached the following conclusions: continue reading…

The Levy Economics Institute Master of Science in Economic Theory and Policy is an innovative degree program focusing on empirical and policy analysis, with extensive research opportunities. To learn more about the program and receive an application fee waiver, attend one of our upcoming webinars:

Saturday, December 6, at noon (EST): Co-hosted by Program Director Jan Kregel. Research focus: Monetary Policy and Financial Structure

Wednesday, January 7, at 5pm (EST): Co-hosted by Research Scholar Michalis Nikiforos. Research focus: Macroeconomic Theory and Modeling

To join a webinar, simply click here at the time listed above.

Please visit our website for more information about the program: www.bard.edu/levyms/

Regular Decision deadline: January 15. Scholarships available.

The 12th International Post Keynesian conference, cosponsored by the University of Missouri–Kansas City, Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, and Levy Institute, with support from the Ford Foundation, begins this evening at UMKC with a keynote by Bruce Greenwald. The full schedule for the conference can be accessed here.

If you can’t attend, portions of the event will be livestreamed at this link, beginning tonight at 7pm EST with Greenwald’s talk. Here is the livestreaming schedule*:

*All times below listed in Eastern Standard*

Wednesday, 7:00-9:00pm: Bruce Greenwald, “Value Investing and the Mis-measures of Modern Portfolio Theory”

Thursday, 6:45-8:30pm: Panel: “What Should We Have Learned from the Global Crisis (But Failed To)?” (with Bruce Greenwald, Lord Robert Skidelsky, and Steve Kraske)

Friday, 6:45-8:15pm: James Galbraith, “The End of Normal”

Saturday, 12:45-2:00pm: Lord Robert Skidelsky, “The Future of Work”

Saturday, 8:00pm: Lord Robert Skidelsky, “Economics After The Crash: What Should Students Be Taught?”

Update: see here for the complete conference schedule.

There is still time to register for our upcoming Post Keynesian conference at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Unfortunately, the program is full so we cannot accept paper proposals. However, there is still space for participants.

The registration is very affordable, and includes all dinners and special events, some of which are listed below. For more information regarding registration, contact Avi Baranes: [email protected]

THE 12TH INTERNATIONAL POST KEYNESIAN CONFERENCE

Kansas City, Missouri
September 25–27, 2014

Cosponsored by the University of Missouri–Kansas City, Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, and Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, with support from the Ford Foundation

List of special events:

Sept 24, Wed night 6:30-9:00 p.m.: Pre-Conference Presentation by Professor Bruce Greenwald

Described as “the guru to wall street gurus,” Dr. Bruce Greenwald, the Robert Heilbrunn Professorship of Finance and Asset Management at Columbia Business School will kick off the event with a pre-conference lecture on “Value Investing and the Mismeasure of Modern Portfolio Theory,” Wednesday September 24th, 6pm. His lecture is free and is open to the public.

Sept 25,Thurs 5:30—7:30 p.m.: Moderated Panel Discussion

What Should We Have Learned from the Global Crisis (But Failed To Learn)?

1) Bruce Greenwald
2) Lord Robert Skidelsky, Keynes’s Biographer
Moderator: Steve Kraske

Sept 26, Fri 4:00—5:15 p.m.: Special Session in Honor of Paul Davidson

Money and the Real World

Moderator: Mathew Forstater

Raconteur: Paul Davidson

Sept 26, Fri 5:30—7:00 p.m.: James K. Galbraith Keynote Presentation

Sept 27, Sat 11:45—1:00 p.m.: Lunch, Student Union. Lord Robert Skidelsky Keynote: “The Future of Work”

Sept 27, Sat 5:45—9:00 p.m.: Conference Dinner and Celebration of Post Keynesian Economics

-A Celebration of Post Keynesian Economics: M.E. Sharpe and the Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Past, Present, Future
-The International Post Keynesian Workshop: Trieste, the University of Tennessee, and the University of Missouri-Kansas City
-Lord Robert Skidelsky Keynote: “Economics After the Crash: What Should Students Be Taught?”