Important changes in societal economic philosophy and policies occurred in the United States during the 1980s, after a transition period covering the Carter Administration, and accelerating after the accession of Ronald Reagan to the Presidency. It’s now nearly three decades later, and we can ask how well the transition from Keynesianism to Neo-liberalism has worked. It’s common knowledge that this period has seen wage stagnation for working Americans, and also growing inequality. In this post I want to present a simple table showing certain changes in key indicators across the decades and discuss its significance for evaluating the performance of neo-liberalism compared to the earlier Keynesian orientation and policies. Here’s the Table.

If the US business community wants the recession to be ‘game over’, then they need to do three things: Put more people on their payrolls; stop laying people off their payrolls; and start investing in new products, processes and marketing. And, the US financial community has got to start behaving as if they have a stake in US economic health and start lending to US business instead of hoarding their bailout money, paying the government back to get out of requirements, and trying to game the system. It would be a patriotic thing to do.

Public pension funds in the US are in alarming bad shape and their prospects are gloomy at best.

Joseph Stiglitz discusses the origins of our current economic upheaval

We can finally call this period of economic decline a recession.

On the uses of tables in an oxdown post.

Did Prof. Panarin read “The Nine Nations of North America” to base his theory?

Cross-posted at River Twice Research.

So the G20 met over the weekend, and if there was any doubt before, there should be none now: the financial balance of power is shifting. China, Brazil, even Japan can all claim more sound economies than the United States, and they collectively let it be known that they would no longer take marching orders from the Washington consensus. They expect a voice, and they are not asking permission.

“Nationalization” re-enters the American vocabulary