Lars P. Syll

The real debt problem The ad nauseam repeated claim that our public debt is excessive and that we have to balance the public budget is nothing but absolute nonsense. The harder politicians — usually on the advice of mainstream establishment economists — try to achieve balanced budgets for the public sector, the less likely they are to succeed in their endeavour. And the more the citizens have to pay for the concomitant austerity policies these wrong-headed...

Robert Shiller’s straw man critique of MMT M.M.T. is sometimes invoked to justify reckless government borrowing for marginally good causes, without raising taxes. Well, here’s a spoiler alert: Though increased spending on infrastructure, education, social welfare and the environment may be wise, and rising deficits may make sense some of the time, we really cannot borrow ceaselessly without risking real harm … It seems that modern monetary theory is not so...

Do​es higher interest rates inevitably cause inflation? Most proponents of MMT argue that the aggregate demand impact of interest rate changes is​ unclear. Their effect depends​ on intricate and complex relations — especially distributional — and institutions which​ makes it realiter impossible to always be able to tell which way they work. Public budget deficits and higher interest rates may cause inflation to go up — or go down. And if so, the​ neoliberal...

Mainstream theories of income distribution Markets are never just given. Neither God nor nature hands us a worked-out set of rules determining the way property relations are defined, contracts are enforced, or macroeconomic policy is implemented. These matters are determined by policy choices. The elites have written these rules to redistribute income upward. Needless to say, they are not eager to have the rules rewritten — which means they also have no...

The myth of independent central banks  [embedded content]

When people start to invade the lawn in The Magistrate’s Park yours truly knows for sure — spring is here!

The myth of barter Even in the most advanced industrial economies, if we strip exchange down to its barest essentials and peel off the obscuring layer of money, we find that trade between individuals and nations largely boils down to barter. Paul Samuelson You will find similar nonsense stories told in almost all mainstream textbooks today. And the truth, as so often when it comes to economics fairytales, is quite another: No example of a barter economy,...

Der Geist des Geldes  [embedded content] [I was happy to see a dear old friend of mine, Otto Steiger (1938-2008), appear in this film. When discussing the history of MMT I don’t think he is given enough credit. A great economic thinker and a very amiable person.]

The recession that is coming  [embedded content]

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