Powell Trashed MMT, But Wall Street Sees Room for U.S. to Try It
- Thread starter piezoe
- Start date
Think a little more carefully about your examples. You brought up two valid examples in 100 years of MMT history which are so long ago now that they might as well be theoretical. And how did we get from there to where we are now? Because the system gets gamed. Wherever there is money being created, whoever gets there first gets the most wealth. And so why would you think that anyone other than the most greedy people would end up at that spigot?
%%
More pie in the sky; debt is OK, if its US...... debt.Partly true; but the best rat toxins have something sweet/tasty in it.LOL And Nobert ; whoever called ''unemplyment...slack available to purchase'' translation=see if they can enlarge the gov slave ship.LOL.
We really do not have what could be fairly called 100 years of "MMT history." Some ideas familiar to MMT economists go back to Minsky and other post war economists. The field of MMT economics, however, is strictly a modern discipline having, if not it's genesis, at least its detailed exposition post 1971. While it is possible to state a few of the tenets of MMT in simplified form, you can no more treat MMT economics in a paragraph or two then you could Keynes' Macro Economics. These are broad and complex fields that require study and thought. However, for anyone with at least introductory level economics in their background, there are a number of monographs that are accessible. One of these would be Randall Wray's "Understanding Modern Money," 1998. This is available used at an affordable price. In 1998, productivity was still linked closely to labor, so it made sense to think of fiat money as being backed by a labor standard. Today, with a gradually increasing disconnect between labor and productivity due to automation, it may make more sense to speak of fiat currency being backed by productivity. Nevertheless the relationship between employment and productivity remains important in MMT theory. Wray's 1998 monograph is still a valid and accessible introductory exposition on Modern Money Theory for anyone seriously interested in learning what MMT economists have to say. .
Anyone who has studied MMT will immediately recognize in the comments being posted in this forum how very poor is the typical understanding of MMT. If even many of today's economists are largely ignorant of the topic, one could not expect much understanding among the general population. That's certainly evident in the comments here. And it's disappointing.
Last edited:
Please, enlighten us as to where we are wrong. Or are you appealing to authority to prove your case?
I see, so nothing in particular, except I actually did respond to a video from a MMT proponent. So maybe you're talking out of your ass.
There is too much to go into to do it properly here. What I would suggest is listening to one or two Youtube lectures as a starting point and then following up with some reading if you are still interested at that point. I'll look on YouTube and see if I can find something I could especially recommend.
edit: this one may be OK but the sound is not great.
Last edited:
There should be one small point you can make that gives us some idea that you know what you're talking about. Can you not produce a single sentence that contradicts what we're saying here ?
If you want to recent example, just look at the Trump and Bush record. Trump is the most MMT like president ever elected.
https://www.themacrotourist.com/posts/2019/02/27/bullish/
MMT says deficit doesn't matter. Trump says the same, Cheney said the same, Reagan said the same.
"Then let’s examine the next tenet of MMT - that which government spending doesn’t actually need to be borrowed, but instead can be financed through credit creation (once again, only up to the point where the economy becomes constrained in real terms - not financial terms).
Well, what is Trump saying about quantitative tightening?
Why, that it’s terrible of course and should be stopped immediately.
So let’s think about this. If Trump is pushing for the Federal Reserve to not wind down their previous quantitative easing (balance sheet expansion) then isn’t he advocating for a permanent expansion of the balance sheet? And if so, isn’t this the same as the government spending while monetizing it?
Again, it sure sounds an awful lot like MMT.
When you combine this balance sheet pressure with Trump’s complaining about interest rate increases, it is clear that Trump wants fiscal expansion (through tax cuts) along with low interest rates and a permanently large Federal Reserve balance sheet."
You can also look at counter-factual examples (opposite of money being created) to see What happend when deficit is eliminated. In the above linked presentation, almost all the time depression or great recession followed.