In examining the implications for an exit from a currency union, one of the issues that arises is the proportion of public debt that is issued under foreign law. This is a separate issue to the implications of foreign-currency denominated debt. Both issues are problematic and compromise a government’s capacity to remain solvent. I covered the former issue to some extent in my 2015 book – Eurozone Dystopia: Groupthink and Denial on a Grand Scale – when I was considering different strategies...
Read More »Serban V.C. Enache — Bulgaria and the Euro — How Mosler Bonds could help
MMT-based analysis and policy advice. Short.Splice TodayBulgaria and the Euro — How Mosler Bonds could help.Serban V.C. Enache
Read More »Italian Election–Two Months and Counting
By Marc Chandler (originally published at Marc to Market) Germany does not have a government, though the election was more than three months ago. Spain, Portugal, and Ireland have minority government. Austria is the first government since the financial crisis to include the populist right. The EU is trying to press Visegrad group of central European countries to conform to the values of...
Read More »Alexander — Russia defies Western expectations; ends 2017 with minimal budget deficit, bigger reserves
The US thinks it can "bankrupt" Russia with sanctions. Contrary to Western claims Russia in 2017 did not ‘run out of money’… What is extraordinary is not that Russia has not run out of money. It is that supposedly serious people in the West ever thought it would. The dismal truth is that no economic catastrophe in Russia is too farfetched to prevent some people in the West predicting it, whilst there is never any penalty for these people when regular as clockwork the predicted economic...
Read More »J. D. Alt — Wouldn’t it be great if America had a fiat-money
The title is snark, of course. The only difference between the money system we’ve imagined and the one we are actually using is the terminology we apply to it. We call the government’s particular fiat-money “U.S. dollars.” We call the “Citizen’s Net Gain” our federal budget “deficit.” We call the savings accounts the government makes available to citizens and businesses “Treasury bonds”—and we imagine the government is “borrowing” the dollars being deposited in them. Finally, we call the...
Read More »TASS — Russia underestimates new package of US sanctions — think tank
Ha ha. What former finance minister Alexey Kudrin thinks is a bug is actually a feature.Sanctions will result in Russia having to rely one its power as a sovereign currency issuer, which it should have been using from day one. According to ex-minister, the country will be forced to widen the use of the national currency in payments. "This sanctions story creates huge risks for transactions in more stable currencies. This will trigger the use of the ruble even if it turns out more...
Read More »Dirk Ehnts — MMT, Tajikistan and foreign bond investors
One criticism of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) that I hear very often is that it applies only to the US or the countries with hard currencies that can issue bonds on international bond markets.... econoblog 101MMT, Tajikistan and foreign bond investorsDirk Ehnts | Lecturer at Bard College Berlin
Read More »Brian Romanchuk — MMT And Automatic Stabilizers
The recent internet debates about Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) have been interesting, but the various critics of MMT have largely missed the elephant in the room: automatic fiscal stabilisers. In my view (which may not reflect the official "MMT Party Line"), one of the keys strengths of MMT is that it is largely built around the importance of automatic stabilisers, and institutional details. The conventional view is to acknowledge the existence of automatic stabilisers, but otherwise...
Read More »Bill Mitchell — Prime Minister Corbyn should have no fears from global capital markets
Bill addresses many issues in this post that MMT economists don't ordinarily focus on like capital markets, capital flows, capital flight, capital controls, and exchange rate depreciation. Since most progressives don't understand the background and dynamics they generally get sucked into commonly deployed neoliberal traps. Bill shows how they don't need to.Bill Mitchell – billy blogPrime Minister Corbyn should have no fears from global capital marketsBill Mitchell | Professor in Economics...
Read More »J. D. Alt — The Great Italian Experiment (part 2)
As I said, Italy, is now experimenting with paying for public services with tax credits. Presumably, this is happening because Italy doesn’t possess enough Euros to pay its citizens to provide all the goods and services needed to maintain and run the public sector of its social economy. And Italy can’t “create” the additional Euros it needs because that prerogative is the exclusive right of the EU Central Bank which Italy, even as a sovereign member of the EU, has no control over. But, as...
Read More »