Tag Archives: MMT

Good article. Covers the field. MMT is one of the seven.Bloomberg BusinessSeven Fixes for American Capitalism Peter Coy, David McLaughlin, Matthew Boesler, Carolynn Look, Katia Dmitrieva, Shawn Donnan, and Andrew Mayeda

This morning I responded to leading Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) proponent Stephanie Kelton's Huffington Post op-ed, "How We Can Pay for a Green New Deal," with a tweet observing that "MMT often boils down to nothing more than an especially naïve sort of Keynesianism: assume an unlimited excess supply of every resource save money balances, and, voila! monetary expansion can costlessly finance all the projects we like!" My comparison of basic MMT arguments with plain-vanilla Keynesianism is...

It seems now very opportune that I recently posted three times on my blog my views on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), an increasingly attractive theory for the left to justify government spending to meet the ‘needs of the many’. For just this week, left Democrats in the US Congress, led by the rising star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), a member of Democratic Socialists of America, launched what they call the Green New Deal (GND), an alternative programme for a future US government to adopt...

To reiterate, we didn’t need people’s money to fund the war effort. And in case you don’t believe me, take the word of someone who was there. Beardsley Ruml, Chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, published a piece in American Affairs in 1946 entitled “Taxes for Revenue are Obsolete.” Guess what he says! John Harvey might also have pointed out that this how the US government self-funds the military now, and everything else it spends money on, including Social Security. FDR knew...

I think that you don’t have to be an economist or have done a PhD involving econometrics (economic statistics) to see that the claim “doubling the monetary supply decreases the dollar’s exchange rate by 50%” does not hold at all. While monetary supply goes up almost all of the time, the exchange rate swung back and forth. There does not seem to be any causal relationship at all. This is not a surprise: almost all scholars of economics point out that the trade-weighted exchange rate is...

Essentially, Ocasio-Cortez is continuing to argue for Modern Monetary Theory — something she said "absolutely" needs to be "a larger part of our conversation" in a recent Business Insider interview. The theory says that because governments can literally print money, "they can spend as much as they like," Politico explains. "Inflation is the only obstacle" that should stop the presses, The Week details here. In short, it's a big, untested idea for a big, untested plan. Read more two...

Here he goes again. "Zimbabwe."Tim Worstall knows better. MMT's bottom line is availability of real resources to meet effective demand. Zimbabwe's problem is exceeding its real resource constraint fiscally. The predicable result based on MMT analysis is inflation.  This is trivial. Either Tim Worstall is ignorant of MMT, or he is being disingenuous. Continental TelegraphZimbabwe’s Third Time Lucky – The Return Of The Zim$ Tim Worstall

Fair and balanced. Stephanie Kelton speaks for the MMT view. The other side is presented, too, but I would say that the debate goes to left in this article. For Politico, overall positive, and that says something of itself. MMT is getting harder to dismiss offhandedly.PoliticoOcasio-Cortez boosts progressive theory that deficits aren't so scary Victoria Guida

Using common terms to facilitate understanding with the general public, the dollars required to pay federal taxes do not come from the private sector. They do not come from the rich, the middle class, the working class, the poor, large corporations, medium-sized businesses, small businesses, nor do they come from foreign entities such as China. All dollars used by the US private sector to pay federal taxes come from the US federal government. In short, you do not fund the US government, the...

Is full employment sustainable? For me, this is one question posed by the row between Richard Murphy and Jonathan Portes and Simon Wren-Lewis over Labour’s proposed fiscal rule.... Disappointing for a someone that is sympathetic to Marx, as Chris Dillow identifies himself. Stumbling and MumblingObstacles to full employmentChris Dillow | Investors Chronicle