Tag Archives: Fiscal Sustainability

One frequently encounters variations of the phrase "unsustainable debt trajectory" (or similar) in statements by mainstream economists. The phrase is popular as it offers what appears to be a sophisticated criticism of some fiscal policy setting that is disapproved of, but without having any content that can be used to prove the speaker wrong. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) largely rejects that "debt sustainability" has theoretical validity for a floating currency sovereign. I will focus on...

Scott Fullwiler's article "The debt ratio and sustainable macroeconomic policy"* offers a very good introduction to Modern Monetary Theory's (MMT) stance on fiscal policy. It covers a lot of ground, making it hard to summarise. This article has some general remarks on why I recommend reading the paper as an introduction to MMT thinking. The key argument is that interest service is what matters for sustainability (and not the debt-to-GDP ratio) -- and that the rate of interest is under the...

This blog is based on the testimony I provided to the US House of Representatives. My written statement will be published in the Congressional Record (a version is also at the Levy Economics Institute: http://www.levyinstitute.org/publications/statement-of-senior-scholar-l-randall-wray-to-the-house-budget-committee. The full statement was co-authored with Yeva Nersisyan.I will argue that the Federal Government’s deficit and debt are not so scary as we are led to believe.Neither the deficit...

Wednesday and a short blog post. I regularly work for unions as an expert analyst/witness in their struggles to achieve wage justice with employers who are intent on paying as little as possible. Often these are private employers but at the moment I am helping a union with their campaign to win a reasonable wage increase against a state government. The logic deployed by the government in relation to their fiscal affairs and their wage setting behaviour is a classic demonstration of how...

We’ve been hearing that a lot lately, being asked about things like the proposed US-Mexico border wall, the possibility of universal health care, and even regarding existing programs like Social Security. It’s a relevant question, to be sure, but 99 times out of 100 (or maybe 999 out of 1000), the context in which it is placed is completely wrong.I say this because the question is almost always asked regarding whether or not we have enough money. If there is one place where the economics...

I was going to write about the situation in Timor-Leste after its national elections were held on Saturday. But I will hold that over for another day as I get some more information. So today, I think we can learn a lot from an issue raised in the Bloomberg article (May 14, 2018) – Kuroda’s Stimulus Saves Japan $45 Billion, Easing Debt Pressures – which discusses the QE program in Japan and introduces several of the basic errors that mainstream financial commentators make when discussing...

People are allowed to change their opinions or assessments in the light of new evidence. Diametric changes of position are fine and one should not be pilloried for making such a shift in outlook. Quite the contrary. But when the passage of time reveals that a person just recites the same litany despite being continually at odds with the evidence, then that person’s view should be disregarded, notwithstanding the old saying that a defunct clock is correct twice in each 24 hours. The US...

I have encountered a number of discussions of fiscal sustainability over the past weeks. In particular, there have been debates between proponents of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and mainstream economists. This article does not attempt to settle the debate (although I am in the MMT camp, and obviously biased), rather frame the discussion. One of the problems with the debate is that the sides tend to talk past each other, as they have a quite different theoretical views, and this article...

The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City has just hosted its annual Economic Policy Symposium at Jackson Hole in Wyoming where central banks, treasury officials, financial market types and (mainstream) economists from the academy and business gather to discuss economic policy. As you might expect, the agenda is set by the mainstream view of the world and there is little diversity in the discussion. A Groupthink reinforcing session. One paper that was interesting was from two US Berkeley...

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