Annie's Model in Brief

Annie says her main policy recommendation - increase the required reserve ratio at banks, either all or some, with transparency - will bring prices down.

It will also bring wages down, but a woman I met in the grocery store had no problem with that - it's what your paycheck will buy, not what its monetary value is!

And this is what the Fed and other policymakers need to debate - how will declining prices and wages affect the system? Annie says that this policy will even up inequities around the world. Wouldn't that be nice?

Brief summary: "Easy money" policy skews local, national, and global economic systems in favor of knowledge industries at the expense of personal service industries.

Debate over "free markets" versus "government control" ignores this situation and thereby allows it to persist and get worse, if all political parties align themselves with Milton Friedman, the Monetarist, when in fact John Maynard Keynes, the Keynesian, was more correct.

Annie's model shows what has happened since powerful interests have gamed Western economic systems in favor of monetarism while down-playing other valid economic approaches to the structure and organization of society.

In particular, one size does not fit all. We need a different approach from the pursuit of "efficiency" in situations that DO NOT benefit from doing things more rapidly and less expensive.

Annie calls the two sectors in her model “money-magnet” industries, and “resource-losing” industries. [That's industries, not countries.] They each benefit more, or less, from global economic policies, because they each face a different financial environment.

We might wish to treat them differently - different market-based policies might be appropriate for each - just as different human beings, facing different environments, benefit differently from them.

Annie says that global economic policies have benefited money-magnet industries at the expense of resource-losing industries, all over the world, and the challenge has reached crisis point.

It is very hard to believe that this occurred deliberately, because it may be found all over the world. Annie thinks Governments have been at loggerheads because they don't know what to do, not because they intend to be unkind. We need to talk over how it happened (is Annie correct?) and what to do about it, going forward.

Annie is in good company - Swedish Nobel laureate Gunnar Myrdal said the same thing in different language! But we are wiser now and it's time to revisit what earlier analysts thought.

Systemic Bias - an
Economist's Perspective

The essays in the next section (tan background, below) are for general readers. It will help if you have taken economics for business, but it is not required.

A "best and final" summary of Annie's analysis, for busy people, may be found under the heading "Annie's Model" at left.

The two working papers (links in boxes with blue and yellow headings) immediately below represent Annie's life experience as an economist, based on her research findings dating back to the 1980s. Back then, her conclusions were controversial. Today, she thinks the evidence is all around us.

The first paper lays out the theoretical underpinning for the second one, and it should be read FIRST. These are technical articles, for professional economists, not for the general public. The second one was completed in haste and contains a few mistakes. However, Annie says the articles merit serious discussion as they are.

Working Paper - Why US Rural Residents May Have Felt Let Down...

Working Paper - A Long-Run Sectoral Growth Model, with Money

Annie's general knowledge, economic training, and research data suggested to her, many years ago, that the global economy is a "closed system." You would have to be trained as a scientist or mathematician in order to know what that means, technically.

But the bottom line is that she used this knowledge to build an economic model that explains why some of the phenomena of the global economy do not behave as mainstream economists have been taught.

Economic theory is on the essays page. Data are in the section below and also on the Poems page, in the "People Poems" section. A link below - Annie's model for business students - will take you to something a little less technical than the academic papers. Economic background information, in particular a brief description of modern banking systems, is on the Essays page. The most important essays are here, at the series of links on a multi-colored background, below the introductory remarks.

Annie has written two Working Papers, or precursors to academic publication, which may be found at the links above. These papers are not for general readers, although you are welcome to take a peek at them.

Annie's Model of Systemic Bias

Links to Annie's Essays - How we got here and why it matters

The Global Economy - Annie's Model for Business Students

Loss of Empire - Warning

The figure above shows that the share of population living in urban areas began to increase rapidly, around the time of the Industrial Revolution (early to mid-1800s), across the globe.

Four countries listed by name are Japan, United States, China, and India. From the line labeled "World", you can see that the phenomenon is global. See also the same diagram at the bottom of this section, with further discussion.

The map at left represents migration streams within Algeria between 1966 and 1977. Re-printed with permission, from Annie's doctoral dissertation (degree awarded in1992).

If anyone thinks urbanization results mostly from rural-urban migration, they might want to think again, as they look at the figure. Clearly, there were many migration streams to and from large coastal cities.

This also confounds the idea that inter-regional wage-differentials account for city growth. (Are city-wages higher in Alger, or in Oran?) And why are many people moving between Alger and oil and gas fields in the Sahara Desert (regions 7 and 30), but not so many from other regions?

While the figure above is part of Annie's scholarly work on Migration in Algeria, Annie has also traveled to North Africa (Egypt, Tunisia, and the Sudan). What she experienced in those countries has influenced her worldview. For a more poetic take on these matters, please see the "Poems" page. Link below.

Annie's Poems Page

Annie's perspective on the path of growth and change is described in words and pictures below the poem, "Leaving the Land," on Annie's "poems" page. link at left. It seemed appropriate to put it there, with Annie's worldview, rather than mixed up with conventional economics. Annie's worldview also includes the musings on the "Happiness" page (link also at left). On that page, you may find many books and movies to entertain and educate you, if you wish.

Annie's Happiness Page

Annie's perspective on the path of growth and change is described in words and pictures below the poem, "Leaving the Land," on the Poems page. It seemed appropriate to put some aspects of Annie's migration analysis on the "Poems" page, with Annie's worldview.

Annie believes that the ideas in which we believe change over time, which then brings about change in the culture, with feedback loops in belief systems as well as in other aspects of society, such as in the systems of infrastructure, government, education, and book-learning. Since Annie is an economist, she has made a more formal model of how the flow of money around an economic system (global, national, regional, and local) enables these types of feedback loops.

Urbanization - city growth and expansion, at the expense of rural integrity - is one example among many.

Annie believes that we can reverse much of what has happened in government and finance, by reducing prices and wages across a whole economic system, up to and including the whole world.

If governments cannot do it, large or small commercial banks may be able to do it on their own. It would work best, if the banks are transparent about their financial policies and investment portfolios. The general public can then decide in which banks they choose to invest.

When Annie had developed her written summary of the path of growth and change, based on her data, she was granted an academic qualification (well, it was a Ph.D. but we plebs don't talk about that, in case people think we are snobs) based on the empirical work. She was told that she would need to model her process (in order to be taken seriously, she assumes), but advised to stop at the point she had already reached - a large and thorough empirical investigation of census data on migration in Algeria.

Many years later, she was motivated to "model the process." The model appeared to debunk Adam Smith's invisible hand, as presented in economics textbooks. Adam Smith has been called, by some, the Father of Modern Economics. Fortunately, Annie decided to read some Smith before she presumed to critique the man himself! Smith agreed with Annie! Please see the book review on the "Essays" page, for more. Smith was writing during a period of tremendous economic change. We know more now, but not enough to ignore him altogether. Please see links in the next section below.

Annie says we are, in 2025, again at the kind of crossroads predicted by famous authors such as Ibn Khaldun, Adam Smith, Gunnar Myrdal, and the people who recorded our world's great religious texts. According to a local pastor, the book of Revelation in the Christian Bible describes, not the "end times," but a revelation, just as its title suggests. It was written about two centuries ago, in another place and time, and much of it is no longer easily understandable. Annie heard some interpretations of the book of Revelation, at Williamsburg Fellowship Church last year. It is a highly symbolic reference to the collapse and rebirth of a corrupt society.

Other texts from ancient worlds have suffered in translation and over time, rather like a game of telephone, so that we need interpreters to tell us what they mean. Different cultures rely on different texts and different types of interpreters. The only caution I would offer is that, if you don't like what your leader is asking you to do, or what he/she is telling you the scriptures say - ask another leader; and another; and another, until you find something that feels right to you. Annie

Now, instead of farm workers belonging to the local community, often they are migrant workers following the work (seedtime and harvest) around. This creates a different culture from when they lived in the community year-round. How should this be handled?

The diagram at left shows how the world has changed, especially since the Industrial Revolution in the mid-1800s. There has been much city-growth.

The challenge with city-growth is that non-city regions have lost their "extra" populations and with it the "extra" work that might have been done for small local communities during slack periods (that is, periods that are not seed-time or harvest).

Annie's model explains how financial incentives create this situation, but if you don't want to bother with the technical stuff, you might just want to think about how city life is different from country life, and whether it might be nice to get the best of both worlds, if it can be done.

Annie's perspective on the path of growth and change is described in words and pictures below the poem, "Leaving the Land," on Annie's "Poems" page. It seemed appropriate to put some aspects of Annie's migration analysis there, alongside Annie's worldview.

Since Annie is an economist, she has made a more formal model of how the flow of money around an economic system (global, national, regional, and local) enables these types of feedback loops. Urbanization - city growth and expansion, at the expense of rural integrity - is an example.

For Annie's model in language accessible to the general reader who finds economics boring, please see the "Poems" page of this website, at the first link below.

For more general economics essays, inspired by questions from friends and neighbors during the pandemic, please click the third link below.

Annie's Poems Page

Annie's Happiness Page