For some years now (since the pandemic), I have been receiving E-mails from those interested in the Eurozone telling me that the analysis I presented in my 2015 book – Eurozone Dystopia: Groupthink and Denial on a Grand Scale (published May 2015) – was redundant because the European Commission and the ECB had embraced and was committed to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) so there was no longer a basis for a critique along the lines I presented. I keep seeing that claim repeated and apparently it is being championed by MMT economists. While there are some MMTers who seem to think the original architecture of the Economic and Monetary Union has been ‘changed’ in such a way that the original constraints on Member States no longer apply, I think they have missed the point. They point to the fact

Xu Gao, the Chief Economist and Assistant President of Bank of China International Co. Ltd., and an adjunct professor of the National School of Development (NSD) at Peking University, has been featured on The East is Read several times.On August 19, 2024, Xu published a new essay on his personal WeChat blog 徐高经济观察 Xu Gao Economic Observation. This long essay, essentially making a case for Beijing to adopt stimulus measures, will be rolled out in three parts.Amid cautious signals from the Chinese government and the widespread belief in saving policy "ammunition," Xu Gao calls for a shift to macroeconomic thinking. He contends the government shouldn’t be tethered to the belief that money spent is money lost, as a company might. The government revenue isn’t fixed or exhaustible but

Looks like Trump going to start a crypto exchange and a USD stable coin… 🤔.@WorldLibertyFi is helmed by @realdonaldtrump’s sons, @EricTrump and @DonaldJTrumpJr and the 18-year-old Barron Trump is the project’s "DeFi visionary.” https://t.co/PSKhQWyQKu— CoinDesk (@CoinDesk) September 13, 2024

MMT without naming it.Xu Gao, the Chief Economist and Assistant President of Bank of China International Co. Ltd., and an adjunct professor of the National School of Development (NSD) at Peking University, has been featured on The East is Read several times.On August 19, 2024, Xu published a new essay on his personal WeChat blog 徐高经济观察 Xu Gao Economic Observation. This long essay, essentially making a case for Beijing to adopt stimulus measures, will be rolled out in three parts.Amid cautious signals from the Chinese government and the widespread belief in saving policy "ammunition," Xu Gao calls for a shift to macroeconomic thinking. He contends the government shouldn’t be tethered to the belief that money spent is money lost, as a company might. The government revenue isn’t fixed or

Some of the nity-gritty involving payments systems that underlies some institutional arrangement needed to understand MMT’s analysis.Bond EconomicsWholesale Payments Systems and Bank ReservesBrian Romanchuk

Yves Smith’s introductionYves here. It is frustrating to see a normally solid YouTuber almost go off the rails by getting outside his area of expertise, geopolitics, and fall for libertarian scaremongering. We’ve commented before on the tendency of certain schools of commentary to fall into belief clusters, so anti-globalists are anti-dollar hegemony (and often crypto fans) to the degree that they have not bothered understanding how a currency issuer like the US operates. A currency issuer can never suffer an involuntary bankruptcy. They can always create more currency. What they can do is generate too much demand compared to the real resources of their economy, as in inflation.In the discussion below, Micael Hudson has spend [spends] a significant portion of the interview debunking US

I am travelling all day tomorrow so I am bringing forward the normal blog post to today. I am pleased to announce that from today the MMT MOOC which we ran through the University of Newcastle’s edX facility over the last few years is now available through MMTed on an on-going basis. Read on to get the full details and access. William Mitchell — Modern Monetary TheoryModern Monetary Theory: Economics for the 21st Century – MOOC – now available via MMTed.orgBill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Trump promising a return to 3% mortgages if he can get back in…He’ll have to tell his Central Bank to lower the policy rate down to at least 2% to hope to get his 30-yr fixed back to 3%…Donald Trump says his plans to slash regulations will get mortgage rates ‘back down’ to 3%, per FORTUNE— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) September 9, 2024

Today (September 6, 2024), MMTed releases Episode 5 in the Second Season of our Manga series – The Smith Family and their Adventures with Money. Have a bit of fun with it while learning Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and circulate it to those who you think will benefit …William Mitchell — Modern Monetary TheoryEpisode 5 of the Smith Family Manga (Season 2) is now available – the Finance Report hots upBill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Some concern by Monetarists out there that current short term risk free rate of interest compared to the average of a past period of the short term risk free interest rate is a cause for serious concern wrt equity prices…Think of financial asset prices as a function of the equation P = (A-L)/A where A and L are Depository system Assets and Liabilities…At point 1 the fiscal surpluses were being saved in the TTL accounts at Depositories increasing system L by $100Bs … at point 2 the Fed increased Depository system A by hundreds of billions in September 2008, causing credit provision to cease and the GFC …. and at point 3 they again did the same thing as 2 establishing over $1 trillion of A in March 2020 causing the credit function to again cease until this regulatory function was suspended

A government cannot run continuous fiscal deficits! Yes it can. How? You need to understand what a deficit is and how it arises to answer that. But isn’t a fiscal surplus the norm that governments should aspire to? Why frame the question that way? Why not inquire into and understand that it is all about context? What do you mean, context? The situation is obvious, if it runs deficits it has to fund itself with debt, and that becomes dangerous, doesn’t it? It doesn’t ‘fund’ itself with debt and to think that means you don’t understand elemental characteristics of the currency that the governments issues as a monopoly. These claims about continuous deficits and debt financing are made regularly at various levels in society – at the family dinner table, during elections, in the media, and

Today (August 23, 2024), MMTed releases Episode 4 in the Second Season of our Manga series – The Smith Family and their Adventures with Money. Have a bit of fun with it while learning Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and circulate it to those who you think will benefit …William Mitchell — Modern Monetary TheoryEpisode 4 of the Smith Family Manga (S2) is now availableBill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Not MMT but relevant historically. How the world got here ((to dollar hegemony), as well as to monetarism, the accounting identity that is, as the basis of macro.  Adam Tooze is a historian rather than an economist, so he is able to shine a different light on the subject.ChartbookChartbook 310 The shock of the new: Dollar dominance and modern monetary macro in the 1920s. Adam Tooze | Shelby Cullom Davis chair of History at Columbia University and serves as Director of the European Institute

Something happened after the 2022 Biden unprecedented rate increases to really crush (-32%) the EPS of the NDX100… 🤔With the implication that this one time discount after the unprecedented Biden rate increases in 2022 might be reversed if those said rate increases were to be reversed…

MMT.Daily KosAn Economic program for Kamala that will benefit everyone, and win the Presidency in November! John Rudden

There is some commentary emerging that is finally starting to question the reliance on monetary policy (setting interest rates) as the primary macroeconomic policy tool with fiscal policy forced into a passive role. In Australia, this debate has intensified in the last week following the hubris from the new Reserve Bank governor, who thinks her role is to sound like a ‘tough guy’ dishing out threats of ever increasing interest rate rises even as inflation falls. There was an Op Ed in the Sydney Morning Herald today (August 12, 2024) – Maybe only a recession will fix macroeconomic management – by the Economics Editor Ross Gittins, which challenges the current macroeconomic consensus. Some of this argument is acceptable. But when he advances his alternative proposal of “a new independent

Today (August 9, 2024), MMTed releases Episode 3 in the Second Season of our Manga series – The Smith Family and their Adventures with Money. Have a bit of fun with it while learning Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and circulate it to those who you think will benefit …William Mitchell — Modern Monetary TheoryEpisode 3 of the Smith Family Manga (S2) is now availableBill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

The financial markets around the world have over the last week demonstrated, once again, that they are subject to wild swings in irrationality despite mainstream economists holding out the idea that these sorts of transactions exhibit pure rationality. Some of the capital movements are explained by a shift in the interest rate spread between Japan and the US as the former nation decided to increase interest rates modestly. That altered the profitability of financial assets in each currency and so there were margins to exploit. But the big seings came when the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released their latest labour market data last Friday (August 2, 2024) – Employment Situation Summary – July 2024 – which showed payroll employment increasing by only 114,000 (well down on

There is an interesting debate going on in the UK at present about the concept of tiered bank reserves. The concept is now being used by commentators to argue that the new British government does not need to inflict the austerity that the Chancellor has now announced (even though she is denying that is what the government is up to) because the government can simply reduce outlays to the commercial banks in order to meet the fiscal rules. The discussion is rather asinine really and features all the missteps that commentators make when trying to appear progressive but falling into the usual mainstream macroeconomic fictions….William Mitchell — Modern Monetary TheoryThe Bank of England does not need a tiered reserve system for the Government to avoid austerityBill Mitchell | Professor in

If he can get back in, would be substantial fiscal stimulus… Trump at least talking about economic proposals Dems just talking about all the transgender and climate nutter stuff while prices for real items remain elevated, unemployment rate keeps rising and rate of job creation keeps falling…[embedded content]Trump telling Powell at the Fed not to modify the policy rate before the election if he wants to finish his term if Trump gets back in…. Prediction markets now 100% probability of a cut in September so looks like Fed is going to reduce the rate before the election…Trump will then claim “election interference!” and will probably then get in front of it by promising to fire Powell on day one and guarantee a new Fed chairman who will immediately lower the policy rate to a point where

Language is meant to bring meaning to discourse. That means we want to use terms that convey information that is of use to us in making our way in the world. The problem is that economists have perverted that process and introduced a metaphorical language that is intended to persuade the reader/listener to accept a particular view of the world but which undermines their ability to actually understand the phenomenon in question. Marx knew long ago how language could be constructed to advance the interests of the ruling class. The mainstream economics commentary that is also used by politicians falls into this category. Terms are used that have no meaning in an elemental sense but provide support for ideological agendas. We, the public, allow that to happen because we are ignorant about the

Where all this may be going is anyone’s guess. Wherever, it looks like down the rabbit hole. The UK is "broke." The USD is being crushed under "a mountain of debt." De-dollarization is "in full swing."The Alternative WorldTrump Embraces the “Bitcoin-Dollar”, Stablecoins to Entrench US Financial HegemonyWhitney Webb

One of the undercurrents at the recent UK MMT Conference in Leeds was
the apparent unwillingness of MMT economists to acknowledge their
mistake in dealing with international trade. In our new book – Modern Monetary Theory: Bill and Warren’s Excellent Adventure
(published July 2024) – we devote a chapter to this issue. There are
various strands to the criticisms we receive ranging from claims we are
simply wrong at the most elemental level to others claiming trade has no
part in the MMT framework. All miss the point and I am surprised people
have tried to make a ‘career’ (or advance their egos) on this issue. As
I have noted several times in the past, the issue is nuanced but the
elementary facts are not. I am now working on a section for my new book
(with Dr Louisa Connors) on

Today (July 26, 2024), MMTed releases Episode 2 in the second season of our Manga series – The Smith Family and their Adventures with Money. Have a bit of fun with it while learning Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and circulate it to those who you think will benefit …William Mitchell — Modern Monetary TheoryEpisode 2 of the second season of our Manga – The Smith Family and their Adventures with Money – available nowBill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Audio and summary of talk.interest.co.nzIn the latest episode of our Of Interest podcast, Steven Hail gives the MMT perspective on the monetary system, inflation, climate change & moreGareth Vaughan

In Stabilizing and Unstable Economy, Minsky noted that “[a]n economy has a number of different types of money: everyone can create money; the problem is to get it accepted” (p. 228). While governments and banks usually get the spotlight, tens of thousands of monetary instruments have been issued by localities, ecclesiastic domains, local seigneurs, taverns and other private agents in many periods of monetary history, worldwide, up to the present [see Burn (1853); von Glahn (1996); Fletcher (2003); Blanc (2017)]. All these instruments are part of a “hierarchy of money” (Bell, 2001), “debt pyramid” (Olivecrona, 1957), “pyramid of credit” (Murad, 1954), or “scale of credit” (Wilson, 1811); a concept used to categorize the variety of monetary instruments available in a given area common to

Download PDF’s of slide sets from the presentations at the recent UK MMT conference.The Gower Initiative for Modern Money StudiesUK MMT Conference 2024 – SlidesSee alsoThe National (Scotland)Scotland needs its own currency ASAP after indy, say top economistsScotonomics

Not MMT per se, but it explains something of the tenacious hold that neoliberalism has on economic and monetary policy owing to the Bank of International Settlements ((BIS).Monetary Policy Institute Blog #146The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) as ideological fortress for monetary technocratsVadym Syrota, Ph.D. in economics, independent banking expert, contributor to the specialized blog of the Kennan Institute Woodrow Wilson Center (USA)See alsoThe development of BRICS and its expansion in the Global South speaks to this issue internationally. In this view, it is not possible to reform the existing system. Another system this is based on different assumptions needs to be developed instead.The failure of heterodox approaches to reform or replace neoclassical economics also argues

For the record. Trouble in MMT-land.Funding the FutureMMT’s Leeds conference and disinvitationsFunding the Future (formerly Tax Research UK)Richard Murphy, Tax Research LLP

Today (July 12, 2024), MMTed releases Episode 1 in the Second Season of our Manga series – The Smith Family and their Adventures with Money. We have spent the last several months developing the storylines and graphics and Season 2 will run from today to December 6, 2024 with episodes appearing on a fortnightly basis.Have a bit of fun with it while learning Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and circulate it to those who you think will benefit …William Mitchell — Modern Monetary TheorySeason 2 of our Manga – The Smith Family and their Adventures with Money – available nowBill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia