Posting Hiatus

I have been busy with some consulting work, and will be travelling next week. Although I will be able to do some book editing, not sure if I can get any articles posted for one to two weeks.

Since I should knuckle down and get the inflation book out of the way, my posting should be cut back for some time. However, Larry Summers might say something stupid enough to provoke some comments.

Torrens Q&A Zoom Session

I just finished a Zoom call with some Torrens graduate students for a Q&A session. There will be a YouTube version of it available later.

I am just putting up a stub article for students who did not have their questions asked during the session. They can pose them either here or at my Substack.

Went Fishin'

Been quiet recently since I was off for a couple of weeks in Jolly Old England. This was a trip that was supposed to happen in 2020 but it was Overtaken By Unfortunate Global Events. 

The only economic content I can offer based on this trip was that I was impressed at the level of penetration of contactless payments (beyond retailers), and as usual, the U.K. seemed expensive. On a tourist purchasing power perspective, CAD is undervalued versus GBP (although one needs to take into account that VAT is built into prices in the UK, versus being added on top of displayed prices here). Since my mental GBP price anchoring is based on prices in the early 1990s, I also noted considerable inflation.

It looks like I have some consulting work that has built up over my absence, so I might not be back to a my target publishing routine for a week or two. 

Status Report: Summer Lull

I have been relatively productive writing recently — but not writing for my online articles. I am currently filling out as well as hacking and slashing my inflation book manuscript. Since it is largely not new content (although the previous Cantillon Effect primer was), no easy way to put it up on my website. Meanwhile, I am about to be hit with various distractions, and so I might not have much new content until August or so.

Happy Holidays!

I will be off until early January. Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!

Podcast

I was invited onto the MMT Podcast with Patricia Pino and Christian Reilly (thanks!): “What Is A Bond Vigilante And How Do We Get Rid Of Them?” A discussion of some of the issues raised by the wackiness in the U.K. bond market. Obviously not a current event, but a discussion of what we can learn.

Social Media Discontents

I have been fascinated by the clown car crashing into a dumpster fire that Twitter has seen since the Elon Musk takeover. Although one of my character weaknesses is finding enjoyment from management meltdowns, there was a mixture of alarm since my genius engagement strategy was to largely rely on Twitter. However, some of the more worrying developments was disinformation spread on Twitter (lol), and I do not see any immediate need for radical shifts on my part.

(Note: anyone interested in technical discussions can skip this post. This is just explaining my thinking about my content delivery.)

Technical Problem With Article Publication (Sigh)

Hi. I was unable to upload two figures to Blogger for my latest article, which is not great. I published the article on Substack here: Whither r*? This problem happened before, and went away after a bit. However, I am starting doing some consulting work now, so will have to fix this later.

Publishing Pause

Just to note that I am heading out on a trip that came up at the last minute. Although I might have some free time for writing, I do not expect to publish anything here for a couple of weeks.

Back From Vacation Mode (I Hope)

I was out camping with my family at a provincial park near Plaisance, Quebec last week, and now getting back into writing mode. The picture above shows one of main attractions — a floating walkway that zig-zags through the marsh. (Unfortunately, the chipmunks were too hyperactive to get a clear photo.)

However, it is time to get back into writing mode. I hope to get back to the inflation grind, and may or may not get a piece up ahead of next Monday.

I need to get back to watching the data flow a bit more closely, but from what I saw of the U.S. labour market data, it seems that the activity drop is still being reversed. I have no doubt that some lasting damage was done, but the prime age employment-to-population ratio is back to where it was in the middle of last cycle. The economy was a long way from overheating then (particularly since it never managed to “overheat”), but it remains tricky to guess where we will be when the economy reverts to its more usual sluggish trend growth path.

Finally, I have a longer (free) piece on my Patreon. It is somewhat off the beaten path, so I put it there. It is about another reason for my personal productivity drop — the space economic (game) simulation, Prosperous Universe.

This game overlaps one direction I want to take my agent-based model framework — to use it as an engine for a hobby video game. What I discuss are some of the issues that the designers of Prosperous Universe ran into, which set apart a video game from a straight economic model.

From an economic theory perspective, they managed to run into one of big problems that MMT addresses — price level indeterminacy. From a gameplay perspective, having the price level jump around erratically creates more interesting situations, but it is not a feature for a model you are trying to compare to developed economies. For readers that are interested, I will let you read the Patreon piece.

Email subscription: Go to https://bondeconomics.substack.com/ 

(c) Brian Romanchuk 2021

For Email Distribution, You Need To Sign Up To My Substack

I have created a Substack: https://bondeconomics.substack.com/. It will handle email delivery of my articles, as well as seeing whether it offers an improved web delivery for me and my readers. With Feedspot ending its email delivery service in July, existing email subscribers will have to subscribe to the substack to keep getting email delivery.

Not Importing Existing Email List

It is a tough decision as to whether to import my existing email subscriber list into Substack. I have decided against doing so since readers had opted into Feedspot delivery, not to sign up with Substack. Although the end result is the same from my perspective — the reader gets free email delivery of my articles — some might object to my signing them up to a different service.

Another Pause, And Email List Woes

I am still tied up with my consulting project, so will not have another instalment until next week.

I looked at e-mail distribution options, and frankly, none were appealing. The most radical solution was to set up a free Substack to use their mailing list service. I still have a few weeks to set it up, and will have to make a decision soon.

Unfortunately, I just checked my existing email subscription list, and it is heavily infested with bogus accounts. (These are mainly from "outlook.com.") Given my concerns with that list, I doubt that I will import it into whatever replacement I go with, and so people will likely need to opt in to the new one.

Note: Email Delivery (Feedspot) Being Discontinued

Feedspot is discontinuing its support for free e-mail distribution of blog articles, which takes effect within a few months. I will take a look to see whether there is a simple replacement. However, even if I find one, subscribers would probably need to re-enroll themselves manually.

I have not paid much attention to my email list since I discovered that some spammers had the idea of enrolling thousands of burner email addresses (with obviously gibberish names) on the list. (I doubt that they singled me out in particular, there is a lot of strange spam techniques that go on under the hood on the internet.) The tools that Feedspot gave to cull the fakes were too painful to use, so I gave up on managing the list. 

Having an e-mail list is normally viewed as a valuable asset. However, I am selling books that are widely available in online bookstores. The need to worry about compliance with data privacy and anti-spam laws (which Canada has) outweighs whatever advantage the mailing list provides.

Please drop a comment if you see getting articles by email as being valuable.

Otherwise, I am rushing a consulting project, so no article until the weekend.

My Next Projects (Including MMT In Space!)

The electronic book launch of Modern Monetary Theory and the Recovery has gone well, and I am waiting to approve the paperback edition. This means that I am now in the mode of considering my next steps. I am unsure what the subject of my next book will be, but I have a short-term project: develop an agent-based macroeconomic simulator. The first application of this simulator will be building a core MMT model - in space! To support my open source software projects, I have set up a Patreon, which I explain below.

Quick Update

I am in the process of giving my manuscript a last read as I start the formatting process. At the minimum, I will release the ebook across (most) bookstores simultaneously, I will see whether I will wait for the paperback or not. Given that I still might find something I unhappy with in the text, no guarantees on the release date.

I had planned on making some comments on the power failure in Texas. As an ex-electrical engineer, this was an interesting and tragic situation. However, I wasn't happy with my article, so I dropped it. To briefly summarise, my argument was that the discussion ended up somewhat overly politicised. On one side, there was an attempt to pin this on wind power, which made no technical sense. On the other, the issue was not so much the existence of energy markets -- you can get under-investment even in public utilities. You need regulators to take risks into account when mandating utility behaviour. From a bigger picture perspective, we cannot generalise too much from this incident, as it either represents bad luck, or incompetence. Telling people not to be incompetent only gets you so far.

Writing Status Update

I just want to write a quick update on my writing status.

The first thing to note is that I aim to switch my blog publishing schedule to Monday & Thursday. This is probably better timing for linking to my new articles on Twitter. (Most of my online activities are on Twitter.) 

Secondly, my MMT primer is undergoing editing. It will be awhile before it is ready. I will have to decide whether to aim for a simultaneous launch of the e-book and paperback; the paperback layout takes longer, as I prefer to wait for a physical proof. I will make that decision once the layout has been finished for at least one version.

Writing Update...

Just a short update. I have passed on my MMT primer manuscript to my editor, and am now looking forward to what is next on my plate. I relaxed a bit over the holidays, had some other projects and distractions, and puttered around trying to get my manuscript to be line with potential policy changes courtesy of American political shifts. 

The publication timeline is still vague, dependent upon how many gallons of red ink my editor needs. The paperback layout should be faster this time, since I got rid of footnotes/endnotes.

I am about to write up some comments on yield curves. After that, I am returning to the second volume on recessions, as well as starting to think more about inflation theory. (After Recessions Vol II, my plan is to do either inflation or fiscal policy/recessions.)

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays to you and yours! I will probably be offline until early January. 

 

MMT Critique By Palley

Just a couple points. 

Thomas Palley has written (yet another) MMT critique; with comments by Ramanan here. The Mike Norman Economics site has a link, with comments there. I am looking at other things right now, and I only scanned the summary. My feeling is that it revolves around political economy issues that I am not particularly concerned with. (I am currently letting my manuscript rest, will go over it again shortly, and see whether it is worthwhile adding this Palley critique to the list of critiques.)

My current interest is that I am looking at the replication code for the calculation of r* (New York Fed website). Not sure when I will be able to comment on that.

New Book Update

My MMT primer is chugging along. It is organised around a theme discussing the upcoming recovery after COVID-19 is vanquished (which may or may not be too optimistic a view on the pandemic). It is currently 16,000 words, without counting a few primers on fiscal policy I wrote in January/February.

My objective is to keep the text short, so that it acts a minimal length primer, aimed at readers who have some background in economics. I cannot promise any particular publishing date, but I hope for a quick turnaround. My publishing schedule is going to be somewhat more erratic, as I put up sections as I complete them.

Since I am focusing on this piece, my articles are going to remain MMT-centric. Once it is completed, I will be somewhat more eclectic in topics, as I expect to get back to Recessions: Volume II.

I am doing an experiment with the format: I have eliminated footnotes/endnotes. Although I enjoy making sarcastic remarks in footnotes, they disrupt the workflow for publication. By having straight text only, my non-Amazon distributor software allows for straight Word to EPUB conversion. This will allow near-simultaneous ebook release; paperback will still come after a delay. The ebook will be at an attractive entry price point, but the overhead costs of printing implies that the paperback price will end up closer to my other books.