Meeting Agenda and Packet Link:
https://www.marathoncounty.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/13483/638582085050419803

The covid-19 pandemic is set to increase public debt to levels last seen after the second world war. But is rising public debt a cause for concern? New economic thinking suggests perhaps not, at least for now.

Further reading:

Find The Economist’s most recent coverage of covid-19 here: https://econ.st/31E02VY

Sign up to The Economist’s daily newsletter to keep up to date with our latest covid-19 coverage: https://econ.st/3ghRh7W

Why economics sometimes changes its mind: https://econ.st/3hXRP41

Read more about the debt after covid-19: https://econ.st/2DtpX92

Why governments must beware the lure of free money: https://econ.st/2GufJXf

Read about the Fed’s biggest inflation-policy change in decades: https://econ.st/31VyJG0

Why covid-19 could eventually lead to the return of inflation: https://econ.st/354m9X4

Read about the economies that have started to bounce back: https://econ.st/2OM8fzA

Why fiscal policy must shift as economies start to recover: https://econ.st/3hnBSDB

Read our article on the resilience of banks: https://econ.st/3hjG8E2

Why investors at home and abroad are buy American government debt: https://econ.st/3hYBBaM

Who are the dominant owners of U.S. public debt? Is it widely held, or concentrated in the hands of a few? Does ownership of public debt give these bondholders power over our government? What do we make of the fact that foreign-owned debt has ballooned to nearly 50 percent today? Until now, we have not had any satisfactory answers to these questions. Public Debt, Inequality, and Power is the first comprehensive historical analysis of public debt ownership in the United States. It reveals that ownership of federal bonds has been increasingly concentrated in the hands of the 1 percent over the last three decades. Based on extensive and original research, Public Debt, Inequality, and Power will shock and enlighten.
 
At publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press’s open access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

In the wake of the global financial crisis, most of the discussion has been focused on questions of debt. And the response, almost uniformly, has been austerity and privatization: cuts to services that have been painted as forms of reckless spending by a bloated public sector. In Debt or Democracy, Mary Mellor turns the whole conversation upside down, showing that the important question is not who owes what, but who controls the creation and circulation of money in the first place. When the problem is examined from that angle, it becomes clear that privatization, far from being the answer to our problem, is the very source of it—the subordination of public finance to private interest.
 
A direct challenge to conventional economic thinking, Debt or Democracy offers a bracing new analysis of our economic crisis and offers cogent, radical alternatives to create a more just and sustainable economic future.

Public debt has become a severe problem for a great many economies. While the effects of tax policies on the allocation of resources are readily derived, the mechanisms that make public deficits and debt influence the economy are not so easily understood. This book elaborates on the effects of public debt starting from the intertemporal budget constraint of the government. It is shown under which conditions a government can stick to the intertemporal budget constraint and then, demonstrated how public debt affects the growth process and welfare in market economies. The effects are derived for models with complete labor markets as well as taking into account labor market imperfections. The focus in this book is on fiscal policy issues, but it also deals with monetary policy aspects. The theoretical analysis is complemented with empirical time series analyses on debt sustainability and with panel studies dealing with the relationship between public debt and economic growth.

America is currently involved in one of the worst economic crises of modern times. As alarm increases over how the government will balance the budget, handle the debt, and maintain prosperity for the future, the minutia of debts and deficits remains incomprehensible to many. Why is it so hard to find ways to resolve the fiscal crisis? This brief and intelligible book is a guide to understanding both the difficulties involved in managing the federal budget and why the on-going fiscal crisis is so significant for America’s future.

In order to introduce the reader to the basic composition of federal spending and to the ways that the government raises revenue, Hudson begins his guide with a “map” clarifying how to navigate the federal budget. He defines basic financial vocabulary and outlines concepts by using clear charts and diagrams that both provide basis for discussion and illustrate key points. With this budget map in mind, the second part of the book lays out how the partisan divide in America helps explain the fiscal crisis. Hudson analyzes the debate on the extent of the fiscal crisis, the ways that political parties have tried to solve it, and the political events and institutions that have surrounded the crisis.

This citizen’s guide reveals how differing views of America inform the arguments over deficits and debt. By the time readers finish the book, they will understand that the conflict over deficits and debt is not simply about where to cut or add spending, but instead is a struggle over national priorities and visions for the future.

In 1985, Frederic C. Lane and Reinhold C. Mueller published the magisterial Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice, Volume 1: Coins and Moneys of Account. Now, after ten years of further research and writing, Reinhold Mueller completes the work that he and the late Frederic Lane began.

The history of money and banking in Venice is crucial to an understanding of European economic history. Because of its strategic location between East and West, Venice rapidly rose to a position of preeminence in Mediterranean trade. To keep trade moving and credit available from London to Constantinople and beyond, Venetian merchants and bankers created specialized financial institutions to serve private entrepreneurs and public administrators: deposit banks, foreign exchange banks, the grain office, and a bureau of the public debt. This new volume clarifies Venice’s pivotal role in Italian and international banking and finance. It also sets banking–and panics–in the context of more generalized and recurrent crises involving territorial wars, competition for markets, and debates over interest rates and the question of usury.

“The single aspect that most characterizes Venetian history and historiography is the dominant role of the state in the life of the city and the symbiosis between public and private sectors of the economy, between public and private interests….A primary concern of civil authorities was to create an atmosphere of competitive opportunity on the Rialto conducive to investment, that is, to the influx of money and goods, their turnover in Venice, and their eventual outflow.”–From The Venetian Money Market

Article by Irving Fisher (1936), Professor Emeritus of Economics, Yale University, urges Congress to take back the Constitutional money power, redeem the national debt, require banks’ demand deposit to be 100% liquid, to avoiding an inelastic loan structure that bursts, leaving frozen loans behind, and avoid ‘Global Financial Crises’. Includes a brief biography of Irving Fisher.