Bernard Lonergan’s Goal: Generalization and Practical Precepts for Free People

Explanation By Gross Domestic Functional Flows To Supplement Description by Gross Domestic Product

Field Theory in Physics and Macroeconomics

Key Notions

• Introductory
• Functions
• Further Comments re. Functions
• Catherine Blanche King’s Comments Re Functions
• Science and Explanation in Macroeconomics
• Implicit Definition by Functional Relation; Scientific Significance of Terms
• Postulating vs. Explaining in Macroeconomics
• Stagflation
• Canons of Empirical Method
• The Leibnitz-Newtonian Shift of Context and Scientific Economics
• The Necessity of a Diagram for Insight in Larger and More Complex Questions
• Concomitance
• Prediction and Control: The Ideal Pure cycle and Probabilistic Indeterminacy
• “Basic” and “Surplus”
• “Profits” and “Costs”
• The Intrinsic Cyclicality of the Productive Process
• Circuits and Interdependencies
• Real Analysis; the Projection of the Dynamic Structure of the Productive Process into Correlated Classes of Payments
• Savings Are Not to be Identified as an Increase in the Money Supply
• The Social Dividend
• “Current-cy”
• Subscript k; The Application of Factors of Production
• “Dynamic”; and a Mankiw-Weinzierl Essay
• Equality, Identity, and Definition
• The Good of Order
• Criticism Requires a Normative Theory
• Haphazard

The Animal Organism and the Economic Organism

Lessons From I. Bernard Cohen’s “Revolution In Science”

Modern Monetary Theory is Backward; It Creates “illegal” Superposed Circuits

*Revision of the NIPA into Explanatory Form

• Introductory (NIPA)
• Invitation
• Sources
• Why Revise the National Income and Product Accounts: Scientific Explanation and Purposeful Application
• Gross Domestic Functional Flows: GDFF = P’Q’ + Π”Κ”; Revision and Technicalities
• The Basic Price-Spread Ratio and the Pure Surplus-Income Ratio
• Appendix to Revisions

*Notes Regarding FRB Monetary Policy and a Theoretic of Credit

• Brief Introduction
• Re Correcting Excess Investment and Inadequate Demand
• The Financial Problem: Supplying the Money Needed for Transactions
• Towards a Theoretic of Credit; How Money Should enter and Circulate Within the System

*Interest Rates and Payments

• Preliminary Guidance
• The Broad Context of Interest Rates
• Credit Money and its Circulation; the Return OF Investment
• Interest Payments and Their Circulation
• Equations for Expansion
• The Formal Cause
• Circulating Principal as Intrinsic to the Process
• Price Changes: Real and Relative vs.Monetary and Absolute
• Circular Return: Intrinsic, Inevitable, and Good
• The General Governs the Particular Generally
• Interest Rate Changes Are Double-Edged; Manipulation is Inept
• General and Concluding Remarks
• Burley’s Evolutionary Model

*Money: Notes on the Nature and Purpose of Money

• The Nature and Purpose of Money
• Fiat Money as a Promise to Pay
• The Norms Guiding the Flows of Money
• The Norms Guiding the Creation of Money
• Contra the Gold Standard
• Money, the Stock Market and the Bifurcation of Purchasing Power
• Burley’s Essays (in Money: Notes on its Nature and Purchase)

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

• Preview
• Introduction, Diagrams, and Framework
• “Sectors”, Circuits, Explanatory Conjugates, Multiplier, and Lagged Temporality
• Romer’s Assumptions and Their Implications
• Outline of Romer’s Serial Reasoning
• Equilibrium in Endogenous Technological Change
• Insight as the Key Constituent of R&D, Macroeconomics and Science Generally
• Purpose and Scope
• Lonergan’s Purely Relational and Purely Functional Frame of Reference
• Classification of Research and Development
• Notes After Reading Lonergan’s A Note on Geometric Possibility
• The Historical Context of Raul Romer’s Endogenous Technological Change
• Assessment
• Final Note
• Recommended Supplementary Reading

So-Called Modern Monetary Theory does not Qualify as Scientific Macroeconomics

FMD’s Take on Greg Mankiw’s Take on Modern Monetary Theory

Modern Monetary Theory is Backward; It Creates “Illegal” Superposed Circuits 

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

A Tale Of Two Faulty Circulations

Bloomberg TV and Intelligence Squared’s “That’s Debatable” — “Stop Worrying About National Deficits“

Bernard Lonergan, Marx, and Liberty

An Outline Of General Values And Money’s Values

The Role of Philanthropy to Achieve the good of Economic Order: Notes Towards a Normative Economic Model

Seminar on “Critical Thinking in Economics“

A Discussion About My Favorite Textbooks

Functions Are Not Seen, But Must Be Understood

A Comparative Note on Einstein’s Special-Relativity Field Theory and Lonergan’s Macroeconomic field Theory

Heuristic → Method → Discovery → Formulations → Coherent Hypothesis and Theory → Verification → Implementation

Lilley and Rogoff Recommending Negative Interest Rates

The Principle of Concomitance: The Foundation of Equilibrium and Continuity

Lonergan’s Laws of Economic Motion

Theoretical Breakthroughs of Euclid, Newton, Hilbert, Einstein, and Lonergan

Two Summaries in Functional Macroeconomic Dynamics

A Contrast: Understanding Pricing in Macrostatic DSGE and in Macrodynamic FMD

Quasi-Hydrodynamical Systems

Paul Krugman: Depression Economics

Explanatory Macroeconomic Dynamics; Relevant In Any Instance

The Relativistic Invariant; The Ideal Pure Cycle at the Root of the Aberrant Trade Cycle

New Foundations in 30 Minutes

A McShane Sampler Relevant to Functional Macroeconomic Dynamics

A Burley Sampler

Primary Relativities in the Diagram of Rates of Flow

The IS-LM, AD-AS, and Phillips Curve Models

Functions, Velocities, and the Achievement of Scientific Economics

Lonergan stands alone. No one else systematizes the explanatory functional distinctions.

Why Analyze the Rhythmic Pattern of the Productive Process First?

An Adequate Level of Abstraction and Generalization; A Deeper Explanatory Unity

Prediction is impossible in the general case

The Significance of Burley’s and Csapo’s Characteristic Equation and Its Root Solution

Two Economic Mechanisms, …

Previous “Single Paragraph for Consideration Today”  or “Brief Items”

Textbook Flaws and Deficiencies

Insight Into The “Baseball Diamond”: Discovery For Implementation

Pure Surplus Income; Capital Expansion’s Monetary Correlate

• Introductory and Context
• Features of the Production and Use of Capital
• The Concept of Pure Surplus Income
• The Genesis of Pure Surplus Income
• The Functionality of Pure Surplus Income
• Implicit Definition of Pure Surplus Income
• Functional Macroeconomic Dynamics is a New Science of a National Income Accounting
• Re Corporate Accounting
• Pure Surplus Income’s Norms in the Pure Cycle; Aberrations Called Booms and Slumps
• Appendix: Lonergan’s Earlier Treatment of Pure Surplus Income

The Einsteinian Context

Why Study Peter Burley’s Models?

Why Macroeconomists Don’t Flock to Functional Macroeconomic Dynamics

Five Images

• Lonergan’s Simple Move; The Double Circuit Replaces the Single Circuit
• What Lonergan Brought
• Sublation of “Schools” of Macroeconomics
• The Leibnitz-Newtonian Shift of Context
• The National Income and Product Accounts of the Bureau of Economic Analysis as Tweezers

Principles and Pointers; An Invitation to Minds

Help Wanted

Imaginary Letter from an Imaginary Billionaire

Practical Precepts for Free People – Consumers, Entrepreneurs, Bankers

Edifice of Formulae

Why and How the Basic Expansion Fails to be Implemented

Sublation and Subsumption; Keynes, Kalecki, Solow

Standard Footnotes

• Footnote for the Diagram of Rates of Flow
• Pure Surplus Income and the Social Dividend
• Two, Three, or More Circuits and Levels

A Note on Disagreeing with Einstein and the Determinists

Harvard Magazine’s Podcast:

Paraphrasings

Is Functional Macroeconomic Dynamics Easy or Difficult?

Bank of Images