haroldchorneyeconomist

The explosive growth of derivative products has played a role in increasing and spreading market irrationality and a movement away from fundamentals in influencing stock market traders. During the period 2000 to the collapse in 2007 -09 this explosion of artificial tradable collateralized debt obligations including synthetic portfolios and other exotica like credit default swaps greatly exaggerated the impact of the collapse of the housing bubble. This may well have happened during the most recent stock market swoon driven in part by shenanigans in short selling the volatility index, the VIX which we must note is constructed using the implied volatility of a wide range of the S&P 500 index from both calls and puts.The index is expectations driven and is not the literal variance but rather the implied variance based on the premiums that investors are willing to pay for the right to buy or sell stocks.The VIX takes the weighted average of all the option prices and attaches a single number to them which is called the VIX. For example if the VIX is 22 that means that the S&P is expected to stay within plus or minus 22 % range over a year a percentage of the time which represents one standard deviation. So clearly very few investors will understand how contingent and uncertain this product is nor also that it is expectations based and there is a built in margin of considerable error given the uncertain nature of probability. Choosing to short an index like this is a very risky strategy and it can and did backfire badly spreading its negative sentiment and panic selling. Further regulatory reform is in order.

Once again the irrational fundamentals on which the stock market is based have come to the surface with today ‘s over 4 % fall so far in the value of the Dow Jones index.At one point the market was down over 5 %. This is a significant one day drop in the Dow but by no means anywhere near the largest one day drop in its history. Previous shocking drops were of the order of 11 % or more at various unstable times in the history of the markets. Post Keynesians generally understand that markets are driven up and down by irrational exuberance followed by irrational fear. The irrational exuberance since President Trump was elected has been followed now by irrational fears that inflation is about to break out.

There is no credible evidence of  that at this time though it may possibly become a problem if accelerating economic growth drives the unemployment rate below 2-3 %. The likelihood of that however is small because the Fed has foolishly signalled it leans toward interest rate increases when in reality none are necessary. Instead if the Fed becomes obstinately opposed to growth and low unemployment by shifting to a more monetarist policy approach then it will reinforce fear rather than continued optimism. Also the nature of wage setting under conditions imposed by globalization and Neo-con agenda setting make it difficult for workers to raise their wage. Of course as part of this spread of irrational fear there are also hysterical claims being made about the American public sector deficit and debt. The debt is easily managed in a growing economy and its burden is vastly exaggerated. The most recent figure for the gross federal debt to GDP statistic was for Quarter 3  2017. The value was 103.8%. Well below its historical maximum. Furthermore this is the figure for gross debt while the better more meaningful data point is for net debt to GDP which is smaller. To arrive at this value you subtract from gross debt:  financial assets corresponding to debt instruments, monetary gold and special drawing rights, currency and deposits, debt securities, loans, insurance, pensions, standardized guaranteed schemes and other accounts receivable.

Poli 489 Course outline (under construction)
Professor Harold Chorney
Wed. H633-1
18:00- 20:15

The real estate bubble and the crash of 2007 -09 uncovered serious strains in the economic and social fabric of global capitalism. The recovery from what turned out to be the most serious recession since the great depression of the 1930s has been slower than hoped for and very uneven. In North America largely because the Fed reinforced the Keynesian fiscal stimulus with significant quantitative easing thereby ensuring appropriately low interest rates, the performance of the recovery has been more solid than in Europe where the European central bank and the European Union have both retarded the recovery by refusing until quite recently to use quantitative easing and stressing fiscal austerity rather than Keynesian policies. As a consequence European unemployment is still very high in a number of countries and Europe appears to be teetering on the edge of deflation and stagnation. But in addition to these negative features of the recovery, the crash and slow recovery laid bare the terrible and widening gap in socio-economic inequality as well as growing poverty in many countries. This course will focus on the issue of inequality and equity in a number of leading global economies in an effort to document the problem, analyse emerging trends and evaluate policy proposals and programs designed to counter it.

Texts: Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st century , 2014 The Belknap press of Harvard University, 2014 also available in the original French edition Le capital au XXIe siècle editions du Seuil.
Joseph Stiglitz, The Price of inequality, Norton, 2013.

Robert Reich, Saving Capitalism For the Many, Not the Few, 2015:Alfred Knopf.

Additional readings:

Michael Savage, Tipping Point :Richest 1 % on target to own 67% of all wealth by 2030.April 8, The Guardian 2018.

John McMurtry, Unequal Freedoms: The Global Market as an Ethical System

Dana Flavelle, Canada’s inequality growing, Stats Can Toronto Star, Sept.11, 2014.

Peter Clarke, Keynes:the rise, Fall and Return of the 20th Century’s Most Influential Economist
Joeseph Stiglitz interview with Lynn Parramore in Salon magazine.
http://www.salon.com/…/joseph_stiglitz_thomas_piketty_gets_income_inequality_ wrong_partner/‎
Meghnad Desai, Marx’s Revenge:The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism, Verso. 2004.
Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom, anchor books, NYC, 1999.,
Ethan Kapstein, Sharing the Wealth,W.W. Norton, 1999.
Frank Stilwell, Political Economy:the Contest of Economic ideas, Oxford University Press, 2012.
John Kenneth Galbraith, The Economics of Innocent Fraud,Houghton Miflin,Boston&NYC, 2004
Helen Sasson, Between Friends, Perspectives on John Kenneth Galbraith Essays by Derek Bok, Carlos Fuentes, Peter Galbraith et al, Houghton Miflin , 1999.
James Galbraith, Created Unequal:The Crisis in American Pay,Twentieth Century fund, The Free Press,Simon&Schuster, 1999.
Samuel Hollander,Classical Economics,University of Toronto Press, 1992.
Alvin Finkel, Our Lives:Canada after 1945, James Lorimer&Company, 1997.
Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers,Simon%Schuster, NYC, revised edition 1965.
Between Capitalism and Socialism:Essays in Political economics, Vintage,Random House, 1970
Robert Lekachman, Greed is Not Enough, Pantheon, NYC, 1982.
John Porter, The Vertical Mosaic, University of Toronto Press
Wallace Clement The Canadian Corporate Elite
A.A. Hunter, Class Tells:On Social Inequality in Canada, 1986
David Harvey, Limits to Capital,Verso, 2006.
Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class,Macmillan, 1912,Mentor edition 1953.
C.W. Mills, Power,politics and People
Steve Keen, Debunking Economics, Zed books, U.K.2001,London&NYC.
H.Bougrine & Mario Seccareccia eds. Introducing Macroeconomic analysis,Edmund Montgomery, Toronto, 2010.
Adam Harmes, The Return of the State, Protestors, Power Brokers and the New Global Compromise, Douglas and McIntyre, Vancouver&Toronto, 2004.
Tony Cutler, Karel Williams&John Williams, Keynes, Beveridge and beyond, Routledge&Kegan Paul,London&NYC, 1986.

Brishen Rogers et al, Work Inequality Basic Income Boston Review forum 2, 2017

Students will be asked to consult the quality and financial press including The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, the Guardianthe New York Times and the Globe and Mail , Le Monde ,Le figaro, Liberation various issues and weekly during the course for relevant articles to the discussion.

Evaluation:
Each student will required to present a topic in class in combination with one other student 20 % and make available a short 2-3 page synopsis of the presentation to all students and to me. Complete a term essay 40 % and write a final test 40 %.

Course weekly topics:

1.Introduction and overview:

2.The ethical basis of Democracy and markets :Flaws at inception.R.H.Tawney and the Acquisitive society.C.B. Macpherson, Hobbes, Locke, Bentham and Mill, Arrow, Debreau and Sraffa, Marx’s critique.

3. Keynes, full employment and the Beveridge Welfare state.the neo-conservative epoch and the return of inequality.

4.The crash and the sudden growth of inequality as an issue.

5. From Veblen to Keynes to C.W.Mills to J.K.Galbraith; James Galbraith.

6. Thomas Piketty and Joseph Stiglitz

7. Piketty and Stiglitz continued Robert Reich

8 .Reich, Piketty and Stiglitz continued

9. The Canadian case an exception? Innis, Porter, Clement, Hunter,John Macionis global inequality; The American case :Michael Hout, Inequality by Design.

10. Marx, Ricardo,Malthus Keynes and the distribution question in age of globalization

11. Distribution and development :Amartya Sen

12. Distribution and the environment, carbon taxes, stable states, guaranteed annual incomes, GDP and trade issues.

13. Review and conclusion.

Term essay: The term essay worth 40 % should be free of grammatical error footnoted or end noted with a bibliography and be 9- 12 pages in length. It will be due in the first week of March after reading week. Topics to be announced later.

Recently both the Federal Reserve  and the Bank of Canada made smart decisions not to increase rates despite pressure from some less well informed quarters that they should do so as believers in the NAIRU rate are still convinced that inflation will rear its head now that unemployment is 4 .2% in the US and approaching 6% in Canada. But the most recent inflation rate on all items excluding food and gasoline prices which were affected by hurricane disruptions shows no sign yet of approaching their targeted inflation rate of 2 %. The US rate was a mere 1.3 % and the Canadian rate was also below the 2 % target.

The Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau also delivered an upbeat fall economic statement that celebrated the fact that growth continued to be moderately strong, the projected budgetary deficit was expected to be lower than predicted and unemployment could well drop below 6 % in the coming months. All in all a vindication of the policy position I have been suggesting for a long time. The most effective way to respond to an economic shock like the crash and subsequent slump is to run a significant  budget deficit which invests in people, their social and educational needs and physical infrastructure combined with a strongly accommodating monetary policy using quantitative easing where appropriate to ensure low interest rates. This is what has been done and the results are positive.