by Summary:
Bill takedown of Sabine Lautenschläger, member of the Executive Board of the ECB and former Vice-President of the Bundesbank, presents a suitable opportunity for me to inject my own experience over the past several weeks following many hits from Google alerts on "MMT" and associated topics, including the MMT economists. I have not posted these since they are so off-base they are not even worth commenting on, and they are also repetitious. All wrong in pretty much the same ways. There as been a running debate for some time here in the comments over whether the drivel about about MMT that appears in the corporate media from so-called experts in economics and finance is owing to ignorance or a desire to malign and marginalize MMT, or perhaps a combination thereof. I have taken the
Topics:
Mike Norman considers the following as important: ECB
This could be interesting, too:
Bill takedown of Sabine Lautenschläger, member of the Executive Board of the ECB and former Vice-President of the Bundesbank, presents a suitable opportunity for me to inject my own experience over the past several weeks following many hits from Google alerts on "MMT" and associated topics, including the MMT economists. I have not posted these since they are so off-base they are not even worth commenting on, and they are also repetitious. All wrong in pretty much the same ways. There as been a running debate for some time here in the comments over whether the drivel about about MMT that appears in the corporate media from so-called experts in economics and finance is owing to ignorance or a desire to malign and marginalize MMT, or perhaps a combination thereof. I have taken the
Topics:
Mike Norman considers the following as important: ECB
This could be interesting, too:
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Bill takedown of Sabine Lautenschläger, member of the Executive Board of the ECB and former Vice-President of the Bundesbank, presents a suitable opportunity for me to inject my own experience over the past several weeks following many hits from Google alerts on "MMT" and associated topics, including the MMT economists. I have not posted these since they are so off-base they are not even worth commenting on, and they are also repetitious. All wrong in pretty much the same ways.
There as been a running debate for some time here in the comments over whether the drivel about about MMT that appears in the corporate media from so-called experts in economics and finance is owing to ignorance or a desire to malign and marginalize MMT, or perhaps a combination thereof.
I have taken the position that experts are expected to know better, so the presumption is bad faith and malicious intent.
However, I have had to change my mind on this. Now it seems to me that what I have been reading is a matter of ignorance and that the supposedly top people in economics and finance, who should know the realities of what they dealing with, e.g., the relevant institutional arrangements and accounting, don't. They are almost uniformly clueless. Worse, many don't want to know, since their minds are already made up. This is especially alarming when these people wield power in shaping the narrative and directing policy.
Even more surprising is that the hands-on financial people that have a monetary stake in the game are similarly clueless, other than a few exceptions, notably Jan Hatzius, chief economist at Goldman and some economists at the Bank of England. (This is not too surprising, since Wynne Godley developed his ideas of monetary economics while serving at Treasury, and Hatzius brought Godley to Wall Street.)
Not that there has been no adverse intent involved in this all. Most of the these people are heavily invested reputationally in a wrong paradigm and admitting this would be disastrous for them. So at least some self-protection is also likely involved.
Then there is also the pressure of group think.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" — Upton Sinclair, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked (1935), ISBN 0-520-08198-6; repr. University of California Press, 1994, p. 109.
Bill Mitchell – billy blog
ECB denial is just embarrassing
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia
ECB denial is just embarrassing
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia