New Economic Perspectives

William K. Black March 13, 2019     Bloomington, MN Fourth article in the Series on MMT Honest debaters do not create strawmen arguments about opposing theories and then claim victory by attacking their own strawmen. When Krugman and a bevy of the “Very Serious People” (VSP) Krugman used to ridicule created and then attacked strawman MMT positions (e.g., using Roche’s rant), they were unintentionally revealing their knowledge that they did not believe they could dispute successfully MMT...

William K. Black March 13, 2019      Bloomington, MN Third article in a series on MMT[1] I urge readers to review Scott Fullwiler’s brief paper on the theoretical and predictive successes of MMT scholars on a topic of enormous theoretical and practical importance.  You do not need economics training to understand it.  Fullwiler reports the results of two “natural experiments.”  In this context, this means an unplanned experiment.  The twin experiments were: What would happen if orthodox...

By L. Randall Wray In recent days MMT has captured the attention of anyone who can fog a mirror—even those long thought dead. The critics are out in full force—from the crazy right to the insular left. A short list includes Doug Henwood, Jerry Epstein, Josh Mason, Paul Krugman, Larry Summers, Ken “Mr Spreadsheet” Rogoff, Bill Gates, Larry Fink, George Selgin, Noah Smith, and Fed Chairman Powell. After laboring for a quarter century in the wilderness, the developers of MMT are pilloried...

William K. Black March 11, 2019     Bloomington, MN First Article in a Series The massive, coordinated assault on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) scholars by the most elite forces of orthodoxy represents a watershed moment in economics, but we must not lose sight that the real attack is actually on progressives, particularly the newly elected progressive members of Congress plus Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders.  Even that statement is incomplete, for it is the combination of the rise...

On The Real News Network, NEP’s Bill Black analyzes Assistant Secretary of Treasury Brad DeLong’s statement that neo-liberals should get out of the way and let the left lead since coalition with Republicans did not work. You can view here with transcript. [embedded content] [Translate]

By Eric Tymoigne On one side, critics argued that MMTers say nothing new when MMTers emphasize US government’s monetary sovereignty; “everybody knows this” is a common refrain. On the other side, critics argue that MMT incorrectly merges the US Treasury and Fed into a US government, which ignores the fact that the US Treasury can run out of money because it needs to tax and issue bonds first before it can spend. Something is amiss. This post shows that MMT can be understood from two...

By J.D. ALT Lawrence Summers, according to Lawrence Summers, is a “serious economist.” He has just written an op-ed in the Washington Post in which he seriously explains why Modern Money Theory—as proposed by “fringe economists,” as he calls them—is a recipe for disaster. I am going to leave it to the “fringe economists” to rebut Mr. Summers; (I’m confident that professors Wray, Kelton, Tcherneva, Tymoigne, and Fullwiler can take care of that job quite easily). What I want to consider is...

Trump’s “middle class tax cut” is a tax hike. NEP’s Bill Black says Trump could have been a popular President, if he hadn’t lied about middle class tax cuts and building infrastructure in Bill’s latest appearance on The Real News Network. You can view with transcript here. [embedded content] [Translate]

William K. Black February 25, 2019     Ames, Iowa Donald Trump promised to deliver a middle-class tax cut of epic proportions. “The largest tax reductions are for the middle class, who have been forgotten,” Trump said in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 22, 2016. If Trump had fulfilled that campaign promise, it would have made him spectacularly popular and vastly increased his support beyond his base.  He, not the ‘Republican Party,’ controlled the House and the Senate.  Many Democrats...

By J.D. ALT Whenever I get frustrated—which is quite often these days—I vent some steam (and feel somewhat better) simply by imagining a response that Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez might give to some conservative pundit when they say, “Yes, but that’s going to increase deficit spending beyond anything imaginable!” REPLY: “Excuse me, Anderson, I don’t use the term ‘deficit spending’ because it suggests or implies something which is demonstrably not true. It...