Why do CATL and BYD hold more than half of the global EV battery market when GM once dominated batteries in the US? William Lazonick and Matt Hopkins trace it to buybacks and a 2000 sale. New from INET: www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives...

The U.S. battery maker that could, and the U.S. auto company that wouldn’t

General Motors once had the technology, talent, and partnership to lead the electric-vehicle revolution. Instead, it abandoned the EV1 and its battery venture while pouring billions into stock buyback...

ineteconomics.org

Sixty years of data, eleven advanced economies, one pattern: inflation moves together, not country by country. Carlo D'Ippoliti, Daniele Tori, and Lucio Gobbi on why national explanations for inflation don't hold up. New from INET: www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives...

Microsoft spent $506 billion on buybacks and dividends from 2006 to 2025, 71% of its profits, while laying off thousands. Why would AI pay off any differently in a system built like this? Lynn Parramore on AI and the shareholder-value machine. New from INET: www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives...

The AI Boom Runs on an Even More Dangerous Machine (Part 2)

Silicon Valley promises abundance, but corporate America is built for extraction. The underlying operating system is stuck on making big shareholders rich the expense of everyone else. It’s time for a...

ineteconomics.org

The proposed Clarity Act's regulatory framework for crypto is strongly contested. INET's Research Director Thomas Ferguson and INET researchers Jie Chen, Matthias Lalisse, and Paul Jorgensen's recent published essay explains why. rosa.uniroma1.it/rosa04/psl_q...

Social Security was built in 1935 for an economy where almost everyone earned a wage. Today more of the gains flow to capital, and much of it sails right over the payroll tax cap. New from INET on why the next crisis runs deeper than demographics: www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives...

Social Security and the Vanishing Paycheck

Social Security runs on the paycheck. But a growing share of American wealth now comes from profits, assets, and ownership. The program that ended old-age poverty was never built for an economy that p...

ineteconomics.org

Two standard economic metrics give opposite answers about whether the US has pulled ahead of Europe. James K. Galbraith argues the real problem is with the measures themselves. A response to Paul Krugman, new from INET: www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives...

On the US-EU Debate: A Response to Paul Krugman

A response to Paul Krugman's recent essay on U.S. and European productivity opens onto a broader question. If the standard metrics point in conflicting directions, perhaps the problem lies less with t...

ineteconomics.org

Chuck Schumer says he's "staying out of Maine." But our analysis this week shows the two largest donors to the Maine Democratic Party are already the DNC and the DSCC. Staying out publicly and staying out financially are not the same thing. www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives...

Big Money and the Maine Election: Round 2

The upheaval in Maine's Senate race has focused attention on candidates and party leaders. Less noticed is what the campaign finance data reveal about the state's Democratic Party and its structural d...

ineteconomics.org

The Maine Democrat party says they'll resist national party influence in picking their next Senate nominee. The money says something else. The two biggest donors to the Maine Democratic Party? The DNC and the DSCC. New from INET: www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives...

The "invisible hand" appears exactly once in The Wealth of Nations. In his latest INET article, Alessandro Roncaglia interprets what Adam Smith actually argued, and how his legacy got rewritten. www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives...

Campaign finance coverage focuses on total spending and polls. INET scholars Ferguson, Jorgensen, Lalisse, and Chen map something different: the full size distribution of who actually gives. Their analysis of the Maine Senate race is striking. New from INET: www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives...

America has spent 250 years arguing about who the economy is actually for. Cultural historian Lynn Parramore on the most stubborn tradition in American life, and why it matters right now. From INET: www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives...

Happy Birthday, America. Our Best Tradition Is Taking on the Powerful.

We’ve inherited a stubborn reflex for resisting fatcats, oligarchs, profiteers, and anyone who tries to run roughshod over us.

ineteconomics.org

The "invisible hand" appears exactly once in The Wealth of Nations. Historian Alessandro Roncaglia on what Adam Smith actually argued, and how his legacy got rewritten. New from INET: www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives...

A Preface to Alessandro Roncaglia’s Essay on Adam Smith

As America marks 250 years of independence, Adam Smith is again being pressed into service as a founding myth. A deeper reading of The Wealth of Nations reveals a far richer thinker than today’s easy ...

ineteconomics.org

Meet our panelists for the Governance and Corruption in the Global South, hosted by The Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) and SOAS Anti-Corruption Evidence. Learn more about the event here: www.ineteconomics.org/events/gover...

What if fiscal policy targeted unemployment instead of a contested economic estimate? For Italy, economists argue the math actually works out better. New from INET: www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives...

From Potential Output to Full Employment: A Paradigm Shift for Italian Fiscal Policy

Europe’s new fiscal rules still bind policy to fragile estimates of potential output. For Italy, targeting lower unemployment could sustain stronger growth, improve deficit outcomes, and expose the se...

ineteconomics.org

Digital currencies are coming. Banking experts warn that if we build them on accounting designed for the gold standard era, we're coding in a category error from the start. New research from INET: www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives...

Sovereign Money is not Debt: Why Central bank Accounting Must Change

Central bank money is still accounted for as debt, a legacy of an earlier monetary order. Treating sovereign money as equity would clarify central bank balance sheets, strengthen institutional transpa...

ineteconomics.org

As the World Health Assembly meets this week, global health faces a pivotal moment. Financing has fallen sharply, long-standing gains are under strain, and debates over reform raise a difficult question. Who bears the costs when global responsibility retreats? www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives...

Are We Reforming Global Health or Washing Our Hands Of It?

Global health financing is collapsing just as demands on health systems are rising. As funding retreats and reform debates intensify, a deeper question emerges about who bears the costs, and whether t...

ineteconomics.org

Equality may matter more than economists have been willing to admit. Research across biology, philosophy, epidemiology, and economic history suggests that distribution shapes far more than incomes alone. It reaches into health, trust, and social well-being. www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives...

Why Public Policy’s Core Value Should Be Equality

Equality runs deeper than economics textbooks or policy fashions suggest. Across disciplines, evidence increasingly links more equal societies to stronger well-being, greater social trust, and healthi...

ineteconomics.org

INET’s latest research shows the new merger guidelines mark a break from the old consumer welfare consensus. www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives...

The New Merger Guidelines: Consumer Welfare vs. Protecting Competition Standards

Should antitrust law focus primarily on measurable performance outcomes such as price and output as indicated by Robert Bork's Consumer Welfare Standard? Or is it more important to concentrate on whet...

ineteconomics.org

INET’s latest research from Desan shows how a politicized Fed threatens democratic sovereignty, the real basis of the falling dollar. www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives...

The Fed, Congress, and the President: The Constitutional Authority to Make Money

The struggle over the Federal Reserve is not just a dispute about central bank independence. It is a constitutional conflict over democratic sovereignty itself: in a representative system, the power t...

ineteconomics.org

Robin Brooks@robin-j-brooks.bsky.social · 6mo ago

One year ago, after the rollout of reciprocal tariffs, "Sell America" was all the rage. But there never was a "Sell America" trade and no "Hedge America" trade either. Foreign inflows into the US are at record highs. Actions always speak louder than words... robinjbrooks.substack.com/p/what-happe...

Post-2008 reform was supposed to make the system safer. So why are regulators now easing capital rules for the largest banks? Pia Malaney looks at the quiet return of too big to fail. www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives...

Easing Capital, Reviving Risk: The Quiet Return of Too Big to Fail

Less capital, more risk, familiar consequences. The latest move on big-bank rules suggests that too big to fail was never solved, only deferred.

ineteconomics.org

Bloomberg features INET research by Thomas Ferguson and Servaas Storm, showing how wealth gains at the top have created a K-shaped economy www.msn.com/en-us/money/...

Thomas Ferguson, quoted in Bloomberg on his research with Servaas Storm shows that surging asset prices have made top households “really, really, really rich” leaving the rest of us more vulnerable www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Is the wealth of the top 0.1% a personal problem or a systemic one? From Apple’s buybacks to Meta’s stock schemes, here’s a look at the structures that let executives profit while many stakeholders don’t. www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives...

Why Chase Taylor Swift? Stop the Corporate Looting That Makes Billionaires.

A case for tackling the corporate machinery driving extreme wealth, and the reforms that could truly curb it.

ineteconomics.org

Could California’s wealth tax be missing the real culprit? Instead of chasing individual fortunes, what if the focus shifted to the corporate structures that fuel extreme wealth?  www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives...

Why Chase Taylor Swift? Stop the Corporate Looting That Makes Billionaires.

A case for tackling the corporate machinery driving extreme wealth, and the reforms that could truly curb it.

ineteconomics.org

Taxing Taylor Swift isn’t the solution to the billionaire dilemma —but curbing the corporate engines behind mega-rich fortunes might be. Let’s dive into buybacks, executive pay, and progressive governance that could reshape how wealth is created and shared. www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives...

Why Chase Taylor Swift? Stop the Corporate Looting That Makes Billionaires.

A case for tackling the corporate machinery driving extreme wealth, and the reforms that could truly curb it.

ineteconomics.org

Why do unproven medical technologies so often find their way into US health care? Cleary and Osipenko show how billing codes, reimbursement politics, and weak evidence standards can open the door. www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives...

Is That New Procedure Proven? MedTech Billing Codes and Evidence-Based Medicine

Introduced by the AMA in 2001, Category III CPT codes aimed to streamline financial reporting. Instead they became entangled in a politically driven, zero-sum reimbursement game.

ineteconomics.org

The system that got us into 2008 is still in place—and now it’s under more stress than ever.  Bergman and Feltes share w/ Lynn Parramore why another financial shock could hit sooner than anyone expects. www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives...

From Fed Failures to Inflation and Stablecoins: America’s Trust Is Cracking

Authors Bill Bergman and Larry Feltes argue that declining public confidence in government and financial institutions is putting the U.S. economy in peril -- and a crisis could come faster than you th...

ineteconomics.org

From runaway military spending to stablecoins shaking up banks, authors Bill Bergman and Larry Feltes explain to Lynn Parramore why trust is collapsing in America, and why it matters to you. www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives...

“Social media has become a failed state.” Pia Malaney reframes the debate away from speech and toward economics “profits are private, harm is socialized,” and Europe is trying to reprice the damage. www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives...

Failed State, Failed Market: Europe’s Bid to Reprice Social Media Harms

Europe’s social media crackdown is less about “speech wars” than a long-overdue attempt to price the public damage created by large platforms.

ineteconomics.org

Health researcher Steven H. Woolf warns: "I'm not too sure the average person is really aware of this -- that the length of your life depends on what state you're in." Read convo w/ Lynn Parramore www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives...

America’s Real Health Crisis? Economics — and a Generation Pays

Health researcher Steven H. Woolf tells INET’s Lynn Parramore why making Americans healthy again means economic policies that help working- and middle-class families. Raw raw milk won’t cut it, and ev...

ineteconomics.org