MMT

Archive for MMT

Krugman’s Conversion to the MMT Side Is (Almost) Complete

Krugman yesterday: There’s an interesting mix of contrast and similarity between the policy debates in Britain and the United States right now. In both countries — as in every country that retains its own currency and has debts denominated in that national currency — interest rates are near record lows… It’s very hard to come […]

Krugman Ignores His Own Theory and Misses An Important Piece of European History

This whole “what danger is there for a country issuing its own currency?” argument is really slippery. First of all, what these people really mean is, “What danger is there for a country issuing its own currency and in which most of its debts are denominated in this currency?” I.e., even on their own terms, […]

The Dangers of the Modern Greenbacker Movement

Uh oh, I ask for a comeuppance by the MMTers in this new piece at The American Conservative: Lately there has been growing interest in what might be called the modern Greenbacker movement, in homage to the historical political party. The new movement deplores the current system under which the government issues interest-bearing debt to commercial […]

Yet Another Attempt at the Government Debt and Future Generations Issue

Whoa, I almost spared all of you by forgetting to link to my latest article in the Freeman. I did my best to summarize what is wrong with the we-owe-it-to-ourselves “insight” on government debt. I’m pretty sure the example I spell out in the article is new. Anyway, here is the conclusion: If an imperialist […]

Paul Krugman Hits the Bar Before Answering Steve Keen

I am super busy with “day job” stuff so I can only do a hit-and-run: In the big blogosphere battle between Krugman and Steve Keen, the latter threw out some sweeping insults of New Keynesian economics. One of the things Keen said was: Firstly, there are similar underlying principles to the DSGE models that now […]

Ludwig von Mises 1, Abba Lerner 0

I am working on my article for this month’s Lara-Murphy Report. (Carlos had mentioned that he been reading Human Action lately, and noticed that Mises talks matter-of-factly about people saving via insurance policies, so I’m elaborating on that phenomenon.) I came across this passage (pp. 843-844) which made me feel dumb: In the process of […]

Potpourri

* Bob Wenzel has some concerns about gold confiscation, if the feds get serious. In short: It’s hard to hide a bunch of metal, since there are detectors built specifically for that purpose. * Russ Roberts interviews Nassim Taleb. I will always like Taleb, because he answered my emails back in the day and even […]

Future Generations Will Be Indebted to Me for the Clarity of This Exposition

OK my piece de resistance. I’m going to post this on Facebook, so let me start from scratch: I am responding to Paul Krugman’s recent claims on why the standard political debate on the government debt is totally wrong-headed. (For a good summary of his position, see this NYT piece.) Specifically, Krugman conceded that if […]