Category Archives: Interest Rates

The Notion of Organic Unity; Macroeconomic Field theory as a Unified, Systematic Whole

.1. Introduction

Lonergan’s treatment of the intelligibility of the plane circle provides to us a clue.  In the basic insight defining the plane circle, – that all radii are equal – all the interrelated concepts tumble out together in an intelligible unity.  The all-together intelligibility points to a template for explanation in the macroeconomic field; it fore-casts a singular unified intelligibility of the dynamic, organic economic process.  In the sweeping comprehensive act of understanding, all the abstract explanatory conjugates explaining the dynamic economic process are “yoked” together by their functional relations to one another.  The interdependencies of the flows which constitutethe whole dynamic system are grasped in a solidary whole.  And the patterns of the formulation are isomorphic with the patterns in the objective, unitary economic process.  The principle of unity and wholeness is a single, comprehensive intelligibility. (Continue reading)

Pointers Regarding Interest Rates and Inflation; The Delusion in Manipulation of Interest Rates

We encourage the reader to consult the following entries.

The Ineptitudes in Central Bank Operations

John H. Cochrane’s Article in the Wall Street Journal, Thursday 8/25/2022

Facing Facts: The Ideal of Constant Value of the Currency vs. the Fact of Inflation

The Road Up is The Road Down; the Mechanism of rising and Falling Prices

Stagflation Demystified

Paul Romer’s “Endogenous Technological Change” in Bernard Lonergan’s Framework

Here are a few brief selections from the above treatments:

Traditional theory looked to shifting interest rates to provide suitable adjustment.  In the main we shall be concerned with factors that are prior to changing interest rates and more effective. [CWL 15, 133) Continue reading

Concomitance and Credit;  A New Paradigm for the Federal Reserve Bank; Functional Macroeconomic Dynamics Drives Establishment Economics into the Shadows

The macroeconomics textbooks feature three key macrostatic models, all three of which are sublated by the purely relational field theory called Functional Macroeconomic Dynamics.  The textbooks’ three featured graphs are two momentary intersections of supply and demand curves plus the Phillips Curve correlation of unemployment and interest rates:

  1. the intersection of the supply and demand curves at a certain price of goods and services (the macrostatic AD-AS model),  
  2. the intersection of the supply and demand curves at a certain interest-rate, rental-price of money (the macrostatic IS-LM model),  plus,
  3. the now-debunked Phillips Curve correlation of unemployment and interest rates.

The key elements grounding the discovery and formulation of the immanent, field-theoretic intelligibility of the organic, unified, whole economic system include: (Continue reading)

Elizabeth Warren’s Advice to Jerome Powell; Sentiment Without Intelligence

The Wall Street Journal of 7/25/2022 featured an article by Senator Elizabeth Warren:  “Jerome Powell’s Fed Pursues a Painful and Ineffective Inflation Cure.” Because she lacks an objectivenormative, abstract, explanatory theory and, thus, fails to understand the functional interdependencies constituting the organic economic process, particular arguments in her article are a) sometimes contaminated by psychopolitical wishful opinions, b) often ignorantly one-sided because she is unaware that some policies have double edges, c) sometimes contradictory of her other arguments, and d) in at least one case, supercilious.

E. Warren suffers from the same plight as Thomas Picketty. To satisfy her responsibility to the public, she needs to achieve a scientific understanding of the organic economic process; she needs to get a “grip.”

We are at the heart of Picketty’s plight: he has no clue of the needed grip on the grounds of the inequality in history.  So, what else can he offer but a centralist solution, taxation, to history’s drunken careening. (McShane, Philip, Picketty’s Plight, 53)

In equity (the basic expansion following the surplus expansion) should be directed to raising the standard of living of the whole society.  It does not.  And the reason why it does not is not the reason on which simple-minded moralists insist.  They blame greed.  But the prime cause is ignorance.  The dynamics of surplus and basic expansion, surplus and basic incomes are not understood, not formulated, not taught….. [CWL 15, 82]

(Continue reading)

Alan S. Blinder re Transitory But Not Permanent

… the prime cause (whether it be of inequity or inflation) is ignorance.  The dynamics … are not understood, not formulated, not taught….. [CWL 15, 82]

man as external agent has not the systematic guidance he needs to operate successfully the machine he controls. [CWL 21, 109]

Academia’s failure threatens economic liberty.

Lonergan realized that failure to understand correctly what is needed if the economic process is to perform well is gravely threatening to democratic liberty.  That is why he undertook his serious study of economics. [CWL 15 Editors’ Introduction, xxx] Continue reading

The Ineptitudes in Central Bank Operations

This entry should be read in conjunction with the reading of The Road Up is the Road Down; The Mechanism of Rising or Falling Prices.  Also, in “the Road UP …”, note well the phrase “a merely theoretical possibility.”

Recently the Executive and Legislative Branches, through the agencies of the Treasurer and the Federal Reserve Board, have flooded the economic system with free money.  Much of the resulting surfeit of new money is detached from any productive contribution.  This free, intrinsically inflation-constituting money has had to sit or go somewhere and constitute an effect in circulations of the basic circuit, the surplus circuit, and the secondary market for stocks, bonds, housing, etc.  Thus, in order to understand the present inflationary situation, an explanatory “Essay in Circulation Analysis” is a present need.

Please keep in mind that Lonergan, in his purely theoretical essay, does not treat specifically the actual recent flooding of the money supply, and the associated ultra-low interest rates, in the two operative circuits and in the Redistributive Function.  But one can easily glean from his treatments the inflationary implications of this actual flooding and the manner of its correction.  Herein, as opportunity allows we graft onto his orthodox treatment comments regarding recent quantitative flooding.  We trust the reader to discern what are graftings and what are the underlying matters under discussion at that point. (Continue reading)

Alexander William Salter’s “Fed Tapering Won’t Beat Inflation”

The Wall Street Journal of 10/29/2021 featured Alexander William Salter’s article “Fed Tapering Won’t Beat Inflation”.  Professor Salter is courageously tackling an important issue.  We respectfully suggest that he consider the following: Tapering is not reversing.  It is a negative acceleration but, still, a positive velocity.  Continue reading

Bootcamp To Educate the House, Senate, Federal Reserve, and Bureau of Economic Analysis, Especially Janet Yellen and Jerome Powell

One Week Bootcamp

Restricted to persons with solid backgrounds in mathematics and the natural sciences

Topics

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Commonsense Economics vs. Scientific Economics

A sound theory is a good thing to keep around.  Clerk-Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory and Kirchoff’s laws of electric circuits are good systematics to consult when one is designing a system to deliver electricity.  Similarly, when one is seeking to understand, affirm, and manage the economic process, a reliable, scientific macroeconomics, which both explains how the process actually works and yields norms for adaptation by human participants, is a good thing to have around.

Common sense is different from science.  Common sense describes; science explains.  Common sense relates things to us; science relates things to one another.  And scientific Macroeconomic Field Theory, also called Functional Macroeconomic Dynamics, is different from the mere commonsense compilation of descriptive accounting aggregates called Gross Domestic Product. Continue reading

The Cycle of Basic Income

We ask all serious graduate students and professors of macroeconomics, government economists, conscientious politicians, poorly educated journalists, and financial-talk-show “pundits” to please read Bernard Lonergan’s Macroeconomic Dynamics, (CWL 15), Section 26, “The Cycle of Basic Income”.  That section addresses several important economic issues:

  • the adjustment of the  rate of saving to the phases of the pure cycle of expansion in the economic process
  • the complementary mechanism of changing prices
  • the significance of a relative and an absolute rise or fall of monetary prices
  • the difficulty with the theory of manipulating interest rates in that a)  it lumps together a number of quite different things, and b) overlooks the order of magnitude of the fundamental problem
  • the ineptitude of the procedure of manipulating interest rates.

Then, after the first reading, please read that section a second time.

Thank you.

[CWL 15] Lonergan, Bernard (1999), Macroeconomic Dynamics: An Essay in Circulation Analysis, ed. Frederick G. Lawrence, Patrick H. Byrne, and Charles Hefling, Jr., vol 15 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press)