Mike Norman Economics

Is it plausible that programs costing 34 percent of current US GDP can be financed without running up against those pesky real resource constraints, or by exceeding it only by a tolerable margin? I very much doubt it, which is another way of saying that I doubt that GND can be paid for only by diverting substantial amounts of presently-employed real resources from their current uses. Now we are getting down the nitty gritty — the real resources constraint. I have emphasized previusly that...

A must-read (not least because of the interview videos where Leijonhufvud gets the opportunity to comment on the ‘madness’ of modern mainstream macroeconomics)! Axel Leijonhufvud's On Keynesian Economics And The Economics Of Keynes: A Study In Monetary Theory is a free download at archive.org here.Lars P. Syll’s BlogAxel Leijonhufvud — the road not takenLars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Some fans of MMT have cited Japan as a success case, saying Tokyo has been able to boost fiscal spending without causing inflation as the central bank keeps the government's borrowing cost ultra-low through its massive stimulus programme.  Kuroda said Japan was not resorting to MMT, as the government commits to getting the country's fiscal house in order. "Japan has deployed economic stimulus policies. But the government believes it's important to restore fiscal health and make fiscal...

The 14 Republicans on the committee, including ranking member Steve Womack of Arkansas, are seeking a “hearing on the fiscal and economic implications of Modern Monetary Theory," according to a letter they addressed to the panel’s chairman, John Yarmuth, a Democrat from Kentucky. The school of thought, known as MMT, says that countries printing their own currency don’t have to worry as much about budget deficits because they can’t go broke. “The debate over the validity of this...

Mr Davies’s attempt to caricature MMT falls flat. No MMT advocate supports spending beyond full capacity. All MMT advocates recognise that constraints exist. Any suggestion that they don’t is purely misrepresentation. It is true that MMT is no panacea. It provides a description of how the monetary system works. It highlights policy opportunities but points to constraints; for countries with their own currencies these constraints are real and not, as Mr Davies and his mainstream colleagues...

What students are thinking about money. Winner of the second Bank of England/Financial Times schools blog competition. (I guess they are not teaching MMT there.) A global currency seems the next logical step in international integration. But what would provide the prototype of this new money?... Bank UndergroundCurrency will be no longer determined by those in power Estelle McCool, student, King’s College London Maths SchoolImaginative.A nearly worthless currency ignites imaginations Sofia...

Richard Murphy continues to misrepresent MMT. His depiction of the essentials of MMT covers only some of the institutional aspect and description of operations. He leaves out the macro theory that sets the foundation for applying MMT, e.g, as a policy science in policy formulation. As a result he views the MMT job guarantee as merely political rather than integral to the whole system that MMT explains in a general way. Certainly, people (voters) need to know the essentials of MMT that...

An excellent round-up of the Russia-Gate saga with Aaron Mate. U.S. Intel didn't like Trump because he criticised their foreign policy and wanted peace with Russia, and they also saw him as a bad steward of the Empire. The Democrats hated him too and so together with the Intel they conspired against him.  Liberals, the ruling elite, and the military industrial complex all worked together to undermine democracy.Peace with Russia is not good for weapons sales. So, a hideous mixture of the...

Should you be worried about the federal deficit? While campaigning, President Donald Trump followed in the footsteps of his conservative predecessors by fear-mongering about the ballooning deficit — but when he got to the White House that concern all but seemed to disappear when it came to his tax cuts for the rich and increased government spending. In fact, there’s a pattern to the Republicans’ selective concern about increasing the deficit, and it all depends on who holds the power. When...

“What's happening is that China is finally going global,” Richard Sakwa told The Real News Network’s Sharmini Peries. “[China] is leveraging its growing economic power into a network of relationships which are spanning not just Eurasia all the way to Europe, but also in Africa.” Sakwa noted that while China is now developing a second military base, the United States has approximately 600 military bases around the world: “China is challenging not so much U.S. primacy but the way that it has...