Tag Archives: Modern Monetary Theory

By William K. Black March 14, 2019     Bloomington, MN Number 6 in a Series of Articles on MMT Justin Wolfers is an economist who is disgracing the university I love, the University of Michigan.  I had the great fortune to be born in Detroit and receive the first seven years of my higher education as an instate student at the University of Michigan.  I was able to graduate with virtually no debt.  Wolfers is also a native of Australia, which means he is familiar with kangaroos.  That...

By L. Randall Wray MMT continues to inflame hysterical attacks. Who would have thought that it would take MMT to bring together everyone from the crazy right to the insular left to unite in common cause against an obscure theory of money and government finance? The attacks seem to be so concerted and coordinated that one starts to think there just might be a conspiracy behind them. But why? Bill Black’s recent column The Day Orthodox Economists Lost Their Minds and Integrity exposes the...

William K. Black March 14, 2019     Bloomington, MN Fifth Article in a Series on MMT Something extraordinary happened yesterday.  Orthodox economists, frustrated by their inability to intimidate progressive elected officials, have launched a coordinated assault on MMT in hopes of making it politically dangerous for elected officials to embrace MMT.  Yesterday brought three remarkable revelations about orthodox economists’ willingness to engage in naked intellectual dishonesty in their...

William K. Black March 13, 2019     Bloomington, MN Fourth article in the Series on MMT Honest debaters do not create strawmen arguments about opposing theories and then claim victory by attacking their own strawmen. When Krugman and a bevy of the “Very Serious People” (VSP) Krugman used to ridicule created and then attacked strawman MMT positions (e.g., using Roche’s rant), they were unintentionally revealing their knowledge that they did not believe they could dispute successfully MMT...

William K. Black March 13, 2019      Bloomington, MN Third article in a series on MMT[1] I urge readers to review Scott Fullwiler’s brief paper on the theoretical and predictive successes of MMT scholars on a topic of enormous theoretical and practical importance.  You do not need economics training to understand it.  Fullwiler reports the results of two “natural experiments.”  In this context, this means an unplanned experiment.  The twin experiments were: What would happen if orthodox...

The New Keynesian monetary mainstream has brought out the big guns. Paul Krugman, Kenneth Rogoff, and Larry Summers have come out to shoot down the rising star known as “MMT,” which stands for Modern Monetary Theory. For a while, it was academically convenient to withhold paying any public attention that could foster competition in the field. Like other non-mainstream ideas in economics, MMT was simply ignored by our star mainstream economists, who are always ready and keen to lend...

By L. Randall Wray In recent days MMT has captured the attention of anyone who can fog a mirror—even those long thought dead. The critics are out in full force—from the crazy right to the insular left. A short list includes Doug Henwood, Jerry Epstein, Josh Mason, Paul Krugman, Larry Summers, Ken “Mr Spreadsheet” Rogoff, Bill Gates, Larry Fink, George Selgin, Noah Smith, and Fed Chairman Powell. After laboring for a quarter century in the wilderness, the developers of MMT are pilloried...

William K. Black March 11, 2019     Bloomington, MN First Article in a Series The massive, coordinated assault on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) scholars by the most elite forces of orthodoxy represents a watershed moment in economics, but we must not lose sight that the real attack is actually on progressives, particularly the newly elected progressive members of Congress plus Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders.  Even that statement is incomplete, for it is the combination of the rise...

By Eric Tymoigne On one side, critics argued that MMTers say nothing new when MMTers emphasize US government’s monetary sovereignty; “everybody knows this” is a common refrain. On the other side, critics argue that MMT incorrectly merges the US Treasury and Fed into a US government, which ignores the fact that the US Treasury can run out of money because it needs to tax and issue bonds first before it can spend. Something is amiss. This post shows that MMT can be understood from two...

By J.D. ALT Lawrence Summers, according to Lawrence Summers, is a “serious economist.” He has just written an op-ed in the Washington Post in which he seriously explains why Modern Money Theory—as proposed by “fringe economists,” as he calls them—is a recipe for disaster. I am going to leave it to the “fringe economists” to rebut Mr. Summers; (I’m confident that professors Wray, Kelton, Tcherneva, Tymoigne, and Fullwiler can take care of that job quite easily). What I want to consider is...