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Tag Archives: debt phobia

Pete Buttigieg and the Myth of Deficit Responsibility — Luke Darby

Stony Brook University economist Stephanie Kelton is a proponent of something called modern monetary theory (MMT), a new school of economics that argues that as long as a country is in charge of issuing its own sovereign currency, it can't "run out of money." According to MMT, if Greece were still using its own currency, the drachma, instead of the euro, then it could have printed more money to pay off its debts, especially if inflation was low to begin with. Instead, as part of the...

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Pete Buttigieg’s Vow to Cut the Deficit Is Fiscally Irresponsible — Eric Levitz

“Fiscally responsible” is one of the more Orwellian phrases in American politics. Lawmakers earn that coveted title by affirming the three tenets of the Beltway’s official budgetary orthodoxy: (1) Deficits are inherently undesirable, (2) all new spending (on things that cannot be used to kill foreigners) should be fully offset by new taxes, and (3) reducing America’s existing national debt should be a top-tier policy priority. But these premises are rooted less in economic science than...

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Heiner Flassbeck — The debtor is always guilty

In German debt and guilt are the same word: Schuld. So, in Germany, debt has a morally negative connotation. Further, the state budget is referred to as “Haushalt”, which is the word for household. Germans equate state finances with those of personal finances, a concept that is reinforced by German political parties across the whole of the political spectrum. Flassbeck EconomicsThe debtor is always guilty Heiner Flassbeck

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Brian Romanchuk — The U.S. Debt Limit (Preliminary Primer)

The debt limit in the United States is currently not an object of worry, but it represents one possible avenue to default. From the perspective of a non-American, it is rather difficult to understand how such a strange custom could arise. This article outlines very briefly the history of the debt limit, and then moves to discuss the risks associated with it. This issue underlines the argument that default risk in floating currency sovereigns is political risk, not financial.... Bond...

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Bill Black — How Democratic Party Mendacity about Deficits and Banksters Lifted Trump

Stephanie Kelton and I have been trying hard to keep Democrats from, again, rushing into the trap of denouncing Republicans for running federal deficits. Yes, Republicans are hypocrites about debt and deficits. That does not mean that Democrats should repeat Clinton and Obama’s embrace of the Republican’s economically illiterate, harmful, and fake hysteria about debt and deficits.... In general, good government is good politics. The Democrats should focus on adopting and supporting...

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