Contributor
James K. Galbraith, Professor of Economics, University of Texas
Biography provided by participant
James K. Galbraith is a professor of economics and teaches a variety of other subjects at the LBJ School at the University of Texas. He holds degrees from Harvard (B.A. magna cum laude, 1974) and Yale (Ph.D. in economics, 1981). He studied economics as a Marshall Scholar at King's College, Cambridge in 1974-1975, and then served in several positions on the staff of the U.S. Congress, including Executive Director of the Joint Economic Committee. He was a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution in 1985. He directed the LBJ School's Ph.D. Program in Public Policy from 1995 to 1997. He directs the University of Texas Inequality Project, an informal research group based at the LBJ School.
Galbraith has co-authored two textbooks, The Economic Problem with the late Robert L. Heilbroner and Macroeconomics with William Darity, Jr. He is the author of Balancing Acts: Technology, Finance and the American Future (1989) and Created Unequal: The Crisis in American Pay (1998). Inequality and Industrial Change: A Global View (Cambridge University Press, 2001), is credited with Maureen Berner and features contributions from six LBJ School Ph.D. students. His latest book The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too was published in 2008.
Galbraith maintains several outside connections, including serving as a Senior Scholar of the Levy Economics Institute and as Chair of the Board of Economists for Peace and Security. He writes a column called "Econoclast" for Mother Jones, and occasional commentary in many other publications, including The Texas Observer, The American Prospect, and The Nation. He is an occasional commentator for Public Radio International's Marketplace.
Recent Responses
December 2, 2010 11:29 PM
The Republicans would hobble Congress Truman and Frankel express my own views in this matter well. Let me just add that the purpose of the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978 -- as it applied to the Federal Reserve -- was not merely to codify what is now called the "dual mandate." The larger purpose was to place in law a procedure for regular congressional oversight of the Federal Reserve, which had already been ongoing since 1975, under a provision known as H.Con.Res. 133. This settled the question of congressional pre-eminence over the Federal Reserve, and inaugurated…
Read moreNovember 8, 2010 11:48 PM
Amateurs Versus Professionals in Seoul Let's compare jibes, one from China and the other from the United States. In a front page guest editorial in People's Daily on November 7, Professor Shi Jianxun of Tongji University in Shanghai accused the United States of – get this – currency manipulation. He charged that quantitative easing works to drive down the dollar in order to foster economic growth through greater exports. Mr. Shi wrote: “In essence this is an uncontrolled increase in money supply, equal to indirect exchange rate manipulation..." Communist propaganda? Hardly: it's obvious truth. According to Larry Summers, the…
Read moreNovember 1, 2010 09:05 AM
Gridlock? What Excellent News I had been looking to the mid-terms with horror, but the premise of this question cheers me up. Gridlock will provide a natural experiment: can America survive if the Congressional Budget Office continues to predict fiscal Armageddon – and it doesn’t happen? As I have written many times, with no contradiction so far from any economist, the CBO baseline budget forecasts are plainly implausible and internally inconsistent. While perhaps acceptable for the purpose of scoring legislative proposals, they should never have become the foundation of any actual budget forecast. The CBO forecast-world, with (among other things)…
Read moreOctober 25, 2010 05:16 PM
A Curious Missive I also found Secretary Geithner’s “Dear G-20 Colleagues” letter to be curious work. Secretary Geithner wrote: “First, G‑20 countries should commit to undertake policies consistent with reducing external imbalances below a specified share of GDP over the next few years, recognizing that some exceptions may be required for countries that are structurally large exporters of raw materials. This means that G‑20 countries running persistent deficits should boost national savings by adopting credible medium‑term fiscal targets consistent with sustainable debt levels and by strengthening export performance.” The letter doesn’t say what the “specified share of GDP” for external…
Read moreOctober 18, 2010 02:19 PM
We Don't Know Possibly the most important fact bearing on the consequences of massive foreclosure fraud is that we don't yet know what they will be. We don't know the full extent of the frauds. We don't know the effect of the ongoing exposure of fraud on the behavior of people with mortgages. We don't know the full extent of the losses by banks and investors in mortgage-backed securities as delinquencies mount and foreclosures fail. We don't know how the documentation snafu may be resolved. From an economic standpoint, not knowing is not good news. It appears that many millions…
Read moreOctober 5, 2010 12:02 AM
QE Won't Fix the Economy's Real Scourges My colleagues' comments confirm that quantitative easing is no solution. Even those who favor it have no enthusiasm. And the zero interest policy is also not helping. Together, these policies relieve banks of bad assets, provide them with cheap funds, and make them seem profitable in spite of the fact that they are doing nothing constructive. They do not increase lending to the public and therefore have no effect on spending and none on economic growth. It should be clear by now that the path to economic growth is obstructed by dysfunctional banks,…
Read moreMay 3, 2010 09:12 PM
Why do Investors trust the raters? Why, indeed? The simple first step toward reform is have some random process assign issues to agencies. Dean Baker suggests the local baseball team. But then there is the question: why bother with the ratings agencies? Their opinions are obviously unreliable. They systematically over-rated mortgage trash. And now they systematically under-rate sovereigns. So if the first solution doesn't work, the second would be even more simple: abolish them.…
Read moreApril 28, 2010 11:04 PM
Tax bankers first In 1958, my father in The Affluent Society endorsed taxes on consumption – what would now be called at VAT – in order to provide for public services. He wrote: "The community is affluent in privately produced goods. It is poor in public services. The obvious solution is to tax the former to provide the latter... Motion pictures, electronic entertainment, and cigarettes are made more expensive so that schools can be more handsomely supported. We pay more for soap, detergents and vacuum cleaners in order that we may have cleaner cities and less occasion to use them.…
Read moreMarch 31, 2010 08:58 PM
What Huge Cloud? "Mounting deficits and public debt constitute a huge cloud over ... the propensity to consume." They do? Why? I'd venture there is no evidence to support that proposition. Apart from that, I've nothing to add. The paper is an interesting commentary on the uses economists find for their time. JG …
Read moreMarch 25, 2010 01:09 AM
Oh Please In 66 pages, Mr. Greenspan fails to use the word "responsibility" even once. The word "blame" does not appear. The word "mistake" occurs once; financial firms made them. The word "failure" appears 14 times. None of them are self-referential. To have expected the phrase "mea culpa" would of course be asking too much. I agree with the Chairman on two points. The first is his defense of the Federal Reserve against the charge of having violated the Taylor Rule. One of the few things more insufferable than this paper is that formula. Mr. Greenspan effectively rebuts the idea…
Read moreMarch 1, 2010 11:16 AM
It is not 1942 Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} I’m tempted to say that Brad DeLong reads Robert barro so that the rest of us don’t have to. But let me add two points to DeLong’s useful critique. First, let's assume that Barro's estimated spending multipliers for World War II and Korea are impeccable. Barro argues that the multipliers are less than one, because private investment and consumption declined as public…
Read moreFebruary 18, 2010 09:39 AM
Home-Grown Problems More of a Threat The European situation is dire, but there is no compelling reason to think it will have a strong effect on the United States. In the most likely scenariom, the EU will posture a bit more, and then fund the Greek debt before it comes due in April. The financial system will then limp along while underlying economic conditions get worse. In that event, there is no financial shock, and falling demand for US exports would be accompanied by falling prices for commodity imports. It's roughly a wash in terms of total demand. If the…
Read moreJanuary 26, 2010 04:56 PM
Why All the Fuss? At the peak at the end of FY 1946, gross US national debt was 121.7 percent of GDP. Today the number is just under 70 percent. In 1946 the debt held by the American public – including by the Federal Reserve System – was 108.6 per cent of GDP. The comparable figure for 2009 is just under 60 percent of GDP. As of the 2010 budget it was expected to rise to 70 percent in FY 2011, and to decline thereafter. After 1945, the debt/GDP ratio declined gradually. Levels comparable to the present were seen throughout…
Read moreJanuary 19, 2010 12:39 PM
A Tour of the Ruins For the record, I visited Athens ten days ago and spent a day in discussions with the government. Other participants in the small group meeting included representatives of the IMF and the OECD. It was quite clear that the Greek authorities have two problems, one of which they can deal with and the other of which they cannot. The government recognizes what everyone knows, that the country has severe problems of public administration: inefficiency, corruption, an ineffective tax system. These problems are difficult but they can in principle be addressed, over time, by capable and…
Read moreDecember 7, 2009 01:13 AM
My expert colleagues write in somber terms. The conservatives – having never heard of the Pentagon – call for cuts in Social Security and Medicare. The lone liberal speaks bravely of new energy taxes and cutting the F-22. The moderate would put the entire "problem" off beyond 2016, further rinsing her own hands by empowering a commission to do the dirty work. All assume the mantle of realism, grimly accepting that without firm action our fate will be "disastrous for taxation, inflation, and growth." I have, in previous posts and without effect, tried to convey the accounting reality. Namely: it…
Read moreNovember 6, 2009 06:37 PM
Of all the utterly half-baked ideas. We have here ten King Canutes, who think that a commission can achieve what the laws of economic accounting, under the circumstances facing the United States, plainly forbid. Let's go through the exercise. 1. We know that Y = C + I + G + X - M. This is an accounting statement. It says that total national income is the sum of consumption, investment, government spending and net exports. It's in every textbook, often on the first page. From this is follows that: 2. [S-I] = [G-T] + [X-M] . This…
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