Tag Archives: Modern Monetary Theory

MMT for People in a Hurry By J.D. ALT POST #3  (Post #1, Post #2) OPERATION #2—The federal government buys something big for the collective good. NOTE: A much appreciated comment at Naked Capitalism re: Post#1 suggested that the term “Combustion Chamber” was misleading since the “fuel” (money) put into the chamber is not burned as in a motorcycle engine but is redistributed to other accounts. I was planning to point this out further into the narrative but the comment showed that would...

MMT for People in a Hurry By J.D. ALT POST #2  (See POST #1 here) FIRST: Prime the fuel-pumps As it stands, our diagram-machine has no fuel (“money”) in it, so it can’t operate. We could go through an exercise to imagine how it could prime itself in order to begin operations. But this would lead to other topics and considerations which would only distract us from our present goal—which is to simply understand HOW the diagram-machine operates—and how, and when, in the course of its...

MMT for People in a Hurry By J.D. ALT I’m expanding an earlier essay into a short, book-length piece I hope will be useful in the unfolding public debate about MMT. The piece will utilize the “operation” of a “diagram-machine” to illustrate how our modern money system actually works. My hope is that it will be accessible and easily understood by people who have a genuine interest in MMT, but little time or patience to delve into its operations and implications. I’m posting the narrative...

Crossposted from Phil Pilkington’s Blog – Fixing the Economists. Readers are probably aware that there is quite a lot of discussion of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and the potential for fiscal experimentation batting around at the moment. Others have weighed in on this already, and I have little to add. It is striking, however, that most of the push-back — where there is push-back — is not focused on trying to discredit the idea that we should engage in fiscal experimentation. Indeed,...

By William K. Black April 11, 2019     Bloomington, MN Part 7b of the MMT Series Part 7a is available here. Blair, Brexit, and Friedman Show the Need for MMT Insights Part One: The MMT Critique of Orthodox Microfoundations Orthodox ‘modern macro’ is based on ‘microfoundations’ that implicitly assume that firms profit-maximize, that there are no negative externalities, that there is no market power, and that there is no control fraud or predation. In sum, they assume out of existence...

By William K. Black April 11, 2019     Bloomington, MN Part 7a of the MMT Series Tom Friedman’s April 2, 2019 column concluded “The United Kingdom Has Gone Mad.” To which, the only possible response is – ‘you just noticed?’ The UK went ‘mad’ 22 years ago when Parliament elected the odious Tony Blair Prime Minister. I think many Tory policies were mad long before that date, but the Labour Party opposed them. The entire UK did not go ‘mad’ until Blair created “New Labour” and adopted Tory...

By Anonymous April 9, 2019 The mainstream attack on MMT is nothing less than an attempt to disguise the glaringly obvious error at the center of the mainstream view of economic thinking.  Mainstream economics is a nihilistic theory devoid of moral anchor.  Mainstream economics ceased to explore the operation of the real economy decades ago and has become an intellectual exercise that assumes the organization of modern society is justified simply because that is how it is.  While some...

Number 2A in the MMT Series By William K. Black March 31, 2019     Bloomington, MN Introduction The second article in this series deals with Modern Monetary Theory’s (MMT) predictive and policy successes.  The article has three, separately published, parts.  Part 2A deals explains why predictive ability and policy success are so critical – and notes that MMT’s critics have been conspicuously unable to provide a record of predictive failure by MMT scholars. Part 2B deals with MMT...

By L.Randall Wray The attacks on MMT continue full steam ahead. Janet Yellen (former Fed chair, but clueless on money and banking)—a centrist–has joined the fray. Jerry Epstein—on the official left–has ramped up his ridiculous claims, now associating MMT with “America First” and fascism (you knew that was coming—it has always been the refuge of critics who couldn’t come up with valid critiques). But there are some rays of light. Bloomberg published a more balanced assessment...

The latest developments about Trump’s relationship to Deutsche Bank could be the unraveling with Deutsche Bank and Trump facing a serious legal probe on bank fraud by the House Financial Services Committee chaired by Rep. Maxine Waters. NEP’s Bill Black appears on The Real News Network to discuss. You can view here with transcript. [embedded content] [Translate]