Tag Archives: critics

FYI.Real-World Economics Review BlogSome constructive remarks on Wray’s “Alternative paths to MMT” Arturo Hermann

There are continual Twitter type debates and Op Ed/Blog-type articles going on about whether MMT says this, or that, or something else. The critics are refining their attacks by hammering on about “printing money” and hyperinflation, and, more recently that MMT ignores ‘power’ (whatever that is). The latter leads them to conclude that MMT is thus a naive approach and is inapplicable to a political agenda aiming at changing things for the better. These debates (if you can call them that) are...

There was an article in the Project Syndicate (July 1, 2019) – Does Japan Vindicate Modern Monetary Theory? – written by a Yale economics professor and advisor to Shinzo Abe, that reveals the extent to which the mainstream is becoming paranoid and is failing to understand what MMT is about. I won’t deal with it in detail because it is not my brief today. But it aims to disabuse readers of the notion that “Japan … [is] … proof that the approach works.”The approach he refers to is MMT....

MMT gone viral. Untested economic model has big implication on country's planned tax hike and debt policy Nikkei Asian ReviewGrowing Modern Monetary Theory debate rattles Japan officials Staff

The second article in this series deals with Modern Monetary Theory’s (MMT) predictive and policy successes. The article has three, separately published, parts. Part 2A deals explains why predictive ability and policy success are so critical – and notes that MMT’s critics have been conspicuously unable to provide a record of predictive failure by MMT scholars. Part 2B deals with MMT successes in microeconomics. The MMT work on microeconomics constitutes a powerful refutation of the...

Steven Rattner’s opinion piece in the New York Times and [Jason] Furman’s interview on National Public Radio are perfect examples of the ideas that MMT wants to debunk:  Deficits are not normal; deficits crowd out private investment; the public debt is a burden on our grandchildren; our ability to respond to societal problems is limited by the fact that the US government does not have enough money to confront them. Below is an alternative interview to the Furman’s interview that reviews...

Even if you don't read Bill regularly, you probably want to read this one in which Bill answers critics on specific points of misunderstanding.Bill Mitchell – billy blogMMT is sending us crazy – the end is near … hold on, not quite nearBill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Strain and Veuger never try to meet the burden they set for themselves with their frenzied rhetoric. The key test of a theory’s validity is its predictive ability. A theory that is so weak that it is a “joke” made by “luna[tics]” should collapse as soon as its predictive ability is tested. What predictive failures do Strain and Veuger demonstrate MMT scholars have made? None. What predictive failures do they attempt to show MMT scholars have made? None. That failure even to attempt...

Things seem to come in cycles. We have been at this for some years now – trying to articulate the principles of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) in various ways in various fora. There is now a solid academic literature – peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters in collections, and monographs (books) published by the core MMT group and, more recently, by the next generation MMT academics. That literature spans around 25 years. For the last 15 odd years (give or take) there has been a growing...

Robert Vienneau links to the "popular" trolls, followed by a short summary of MMT as essentially correct as descriptive of the monetary system.Thoughts On EconomicsElsewhere: Popular Writing On Modern Monetary TheoryRobert Vienneau