Tag Archives: MMT

Some years ago, I was a panel speaker at an event in Sydney covering the topic of wage developments. I shared the podium with a young woman who was something like NSW Youth of the Year. It was at a time that employer groups were lobbying the conservative government to abandon penalty rates for workers in low-wage industries (hospitality, tourism, etc) and strip powers from trade unions. I spoke about how that agenda was designed to advance their class interests and fitted squarely with the...

Why has modern monetary theory come out of the academy? Because it helps model the current economic predicament and how to get out of it. "Anything we can actually do we can afford. Once done, it is there."John Maynard Keynes (1942) Excellent post by MMT's representative in Germany.It's a bit wonkish (graphs and variables) but it is addressed to a higher level audience than a popular venue and the math is kept simple. Probably not any more wonkish than the posts that Paul Krugman labels as...

Thread by @stf18 at threadreaderapp.com1. Quick(?) MMT 101 lesson:From the very beginning in the 1990s, MMT has NEVER argued that 'printing money' was necessary. Anyone saying MMT = "print money," even if they (correctly) incorporate an inflation constraint, is getting MMT dead wrong.2. The argument from the earliest days--@wbmosler 's "Soft Currency Economics," Wray's "Understanding Modern Money," or @StephanieKelton 's "Can Taxes & Bonds Finance Govt Spending?"--the MMT argument is...

Mag[ie continues to fisk Paul Mason on Marxism and MMT. Magpie's Asymmetric WarfareGetting all Tied Up (4) Magpie

How to Pay for the Green New DealWORKING PAPER NO. 931 | May 2019  This paper follows the methodology developed by J. M. Keynes in his How to Pay for the War pamphlet to estimate the “costs” of the Green New Deal (GND) in terms of resource requirements. Instead of simply adding up estimates of the government spending that would be required, we assess resource availability that can be devoted to implementing GND projects. This includes mobilizing unutilized and underutilized resources, as...

L. Randall Wray How to Pay for the Green New DealWORKING PAPER NO. 931 | May 2019 This paper follows the methodology developed by J. M. Keynes in his How to Pay for the War pamphlet to estimate the “costs” of the Green New Deal (GND) in terms of resource requirements. Instead of simply adding up estimates of the government spending that would be required, we assess resource availability that can be devoted to implementing GND projects. This includes mobilizing unutilized and...

In this post, Stephanie Kelton takes on Paul Krugman. She appears to agree with Paul Krugman's assumption that monetary policy that is built on raising interest rates to address inflation is not backwards. Actually, central bank interest rate setting is a form of price setting, the policy rate being a variable that sets the cost of borrowing (price of money). Higher interest rates are also inflationary to the degree that increase the income of holders of securities, as Warren Mosler has...

If there were two lessons that can be taken from the GFC among others then we should know, once and for all, that, first, monetary policy (in all its glorious forms these days) is not a very effective tool for influencing the level of economic activity nor the price level, and, second, that fiscal policy is very effective in manipulating total spending and activity. Of course, those lessons provided the evidence that turned macroeconomics on its head because for several decades, as the...

I suspect Wolf chose to get this wrong, deliberately. His narrative does not work if he noted correctly what MMT said. But his real disagreement is that whilst MMT is correct (subject to his own misconceptions) he thinks the policy implications are wrong. Nice smackdown, if a smackdown can be considered nice.Richard Murphy concludes: Wolf has conceded MMT is right. Now he needs to accept the consequences. Including that democracy by and for the people should prevail. To this I would add...

In the next iteration of the financial crisis, there will be a more widely distributed response than the first, where only the wealth and well-connected were served. That produced a backlash that is still operative.CNBCThe next downturn could see a 'radicalization' of the policies used during the financial crisis Jeff Cox