Modern Monetary Theory - How the US Government really pays for things
- Thread starter Misthos
- Start date
If govt can do this, why shouldn't every house print dollars as per their needs?
The founding fathers thought people were too stupid to run their own money. And it's true. Right now, the most money is created through debt. People are fucking stupid.
It's the savers who get ripped off. Your only hope is to be a really good trader or have skills that are high demand.
PS: Awesome nick, love it.
The FED is "accommodating" the political train wreck being caused by Republicans and neoclassical synthesis nutters. It is truly unfortunate that the currency must be sacrificed on the alter of the rich because infrastructure spending cannot blow money into the economy where it needs to enter (at the bottom) and taxation used to drain the excess. "Its the trade deficit, stupid."
There is nothing wrong with MMT at all. MMT simply says that inflation is better controlled by taxation than by making rich people even richer by raising interest rates. Monetary policy is a blunt instrument. Taxation isn't. Taxation can be designed to shape the economy and to grow it in a sustainable manner. Inflation does not harm the poor or the SS recipients. The increase in interest rates to "fight inflation" is the problem. Inflation (a la dollar devaluation) hurts people with big piles of dollars and fixed rate debt receivables.
Are you joking or what?
People with "big piles of dollars" have the means to participate in Fed-engineered asset inflation. Seen the Dow lately?
Those who scrimp and save to pay gas and grocery bills, on the other hand, are screwed.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/27/news/companies/walmart_ceo_consumers_under_pressure/index.htm
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Wal-Mart's core shoppers are running out of money much faster than a year ago due to rising gasoline prices, and the retail giant is worried, CEO Mike Duke said Wednesday.
"We're seeing core consumers under a lot of pressure," Duke said at an event in New York. "There's no doubt that rising fuel prices are having an impact."
http://www.cnbc.com/id/42704213
"The combined increase in the necessities of food and energy creates a harsh double whammy for already stressed consumers," Johnson said. The last time this happened was in the recession that lasted from 1973 to 1975.
Johnson estimates that food and energy eat up about 15 percent of consumer spending at today's prices, compared with about 12.7 percent two years ago.
Of course, at lower income levels, these percentages are much higher. One sign of the stress some consumers are already feeling is that some AAA offices have already seen an increase in out-of-gas service calls, as motorists try to put off filling their tanks or drive around trying to seek out the gas station with the least expensive price.
People who "have stocks" don't "have money" or "near money" because they traded the money or near money for the stocks. Whoever sold the stocks now "has money". Unfortunately, many who "have money" will instead buy futures contracts in oil and gold as opposed to buying stocks. But all such purchases erode the value of cash and T-Bills.
The adverse effects on the lower income people can be, and should be, addressed by fiscal programs of government.
What are you talking about? You're the one who brought up "big piles of dollars." I said that those with dollars have the means to participate in a rising market, i.e. trade those dollars for something that is nominally increasing in value.
As for your implied assertion that futures contracts are likely to see more buying inflow than equities, that seems out of left field, as is the hand-waving notion of addressing "adverse effects" with "fiscal programs of government."
What you casually advocate -- openly inflationary policy coupled with government largesse -- is theft backed by socialism. By extrapolation maybe we should just let the food stamp rolls expand to 200 million, turn all empty McMansions into federal housing, and offer the chronically unemployed new jobs at the post office.
Kind of like an old fashioned Monarchy but without the power to send people to the guillotine.
Except the statement "the government is not operationally constrained" is classic MMT: Technically correct, or at least technically defensible on a literal interpretation level, yet so grossly distorted in respect to real world implications that the assertion is more false than true.
The government is "not operationally constrained" in the same pedantic sense that a man standing at the edge of a cliff is not operationally constrained. He can throw himself off, but that doesn't mean he can fly.