Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)

[cawacko]

This is from John Mauldins newsletter. Here's a basic definition of it:

Essentially, MMT espouses that the public through the government owns the process of money creation, and that in addition to borrowing and taxing, should simply issue currency as payment for its obligations. This is not the sleight-of-hand that quantitative easing was. This is direct monetization in lieu of borrowing.

Basically it's printing money. One could be forgiven for thinking MMT originally comes from The Onion but it's very real. As politicians promise more and more including free healthcare and free college it's going to have to be paid for somehow. That's where MMT comes in.




Modern Monetary Madness

More than 10 years ago some Australian readers begin regaling me with the ideas of economist Bill Mitchell of the University of Newcastle in New South Wales. He was teaching about something he called (and he coined the term) Modern Monetary Theory. I looked into it and fairly quickly dismissed it as silly. Actually printing money as an economic policy? Get serious.

MMT is a revival of an early 1900s idea called chartalism. Now it is influencing the thinking of new socialist-like movements in the US and other places and cited by politicians. MMT is increasingly appearing in mainstream media like this sobering Financial Times article. Since it is increasingly discussed in more public venues, you should know more about it and that will be today’s topic.

Essentially, MMT espouses that the public through the government owns the process of money creation, and that in addition to borrowing and taxing, should simply issue currency as payment for its obligations. This is not the sleight-of-hand that quantitative easing was. This is direct monetization in lieu of borrowing.

If that sounds like printing money, that’s because it is. Upfront and in-your-face as a serious economic proposal. Most of the time when I am talking with my fellow writers and economists, when somebody mentions MMT, everybody smiles, maybe chuckles, and shakes their heads. The problem is, what seems like a joke is actually getting traction.

Let’s get the official definition of MMT from Wikipedia. My comments inserted are in brackets.

In MMT, "vertical" money (money created by the government and spent in the private sector) enters circulation through government spending. Taxation and its legal tender enable power to discharge debt and establish the fiat money as currency, giving it value by creating demand for it in the form of a private tax obligation that must be met. [And thus higher taxes create more demand for the currency and help to maintain the value thereof.]

In addition, fines, fees and licenses create demand for the currency. An ongoing tax obligation, in concert with private confidence and acceptance of the currency, maintains its value. Because the government can issue its own currency at will, MMT maintains that the level of taxation relative to government spending (the government's deficit spending or budget surplus) is in reality a policy tool that regulates inflation and unemployment, and not a means of funding the government's activities by itself. [The more you want the government to spend, the higher the taxes have to be in order to keep from creating inflation, or so the theory goes.]

Proponents argue that unemployment is caused by lack of demand and lack of demand is caused by insufficient money entering the private sector, a problem the government can solve by creating money and spending it in the private sector. Voilà, demand is created and unemployment goes down. Inflation? That can be controlled by higher taxes. Hey, it’s their theory. Don’t ask me to explain it.

Economists advising major presidential and congressional candidates on the progressive and even “moderate” left are more and more openly talking about MMT and its practical applications.

Pet Economists

I have said before that economists are the modern-day equivalent of shamans and priests. Rather than looking at sheep entrails, economists look at “data” and tell the politician (king, emperor, or chief…) what they want to hear. I have been in more than one meeting where a politician is clearly shopping for a rationale for something that they would like to propose and do. Any serious politician is going to have more than a few economic advisors attached in one form or another to their campaign.

Let me quickly state that I am not disparaging the role of economists when they act as political advisors. I have done that myself. It is actually one of the rationales for the discipline. Indeed, it would be strange if that were not the case.

Can This Really Be a Thing?

90% of readers may wonder why we are even talking about this in a serious letter. The rest of you may tell me how I’m wrong and it really will work. Let me hasten to say that 10 years ago it was much less than 1%. And it is beginning to come from readers that I recognize to be fairly serious.

There are multiple and growing motivations and rationales for adopting MMT into your own philosophical base.

Why should this be on your radar? Let me give you just a few scenarios…

Politicians are increasingly talking about “free stuff.” Free college, guaranteed basic income, more total healthcare paid for by the public, basic housing, and more. It is almost like there will be an auction to see who can promise the most free benefits, paid for by taxes on the rich. They will cite economic advisors who say it is completely doable and even necessary for the general welfare.

“The richest country in the history of rich countries can easily afford to spend more on its citizens ensuring basic income and wealth equality.” More or less a direct quote from several interviews. Forget mere income taxes. The new political ante will be a wealth tax.

That means these ideas will be increasingly promoted in the public space. More politicians will argue for increased spending and/or at least different spending priorities. Guns and butter.

Over the next few years this will enter the national mindset. An increasingly large group of voters, especially younger voters, will feel a natural affinity with the idealism. Why shouldn’t a rich nation help those who are less advantaged?

Then somewhere, while we are having this conversation, there will be a recession. Unemployment will rise and deficits increase until we are on our way to a $30-trillion debt in just a few years. This will crowd out private investment, slowing whatever recovery there might be and making us vulnerable to a quick second recession, not unlike the recessions of 1980 and 1982.

But it will also produce the potential for a true “change” election. The frustration noted among Trump voters will still be there, but it will also be shared by many on the left who will see the promises as a way to change things. It is hard to argue in the middle of financial crisis and recession that we don’t need change.

There won’t be a President Warren Harding who essentially decided to do nothing in one of the deepest recessions/depressions in American history in the early 1920s. In that case, severe austerity allowed markets to clear but the recovery gave us the Roaring 1920s. Cause and effect? Numerous scholarly books have been written to suggest that.

But that will not be the case 100 years later as we face the 2020s. There will be an increasing drumbeat for “doing something.” Change will be the mantra.

It is not far-fetched to imagine a White House and Congress beginning to work around the principles of MMT, if not adopt it outright with sharply higher taxes and spending.

Now here’s where it gets a little bit murkier. The Federal Reserve, even if a new president could pack the board with members philosophically attuned to a new president’s desire to increase public spending through monetary creation, does not have the legal authority to directly create money. That is a right reserved strictly for the federal government and specifically the US Treasury. The Treasury can issue all the debt into the private sector it wants. The Federal Reserve can then go into the private market and buy all the debt it wants, adding that debt to its balance sheet. This is called quantitative easing. It is technically not the same thing.

Congress has tried to create agencies which would use the Federal Reserve to directly create money. These agencies and methods have all been ruled overwhelmingly unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. For the Federal Reserve to create money as MMT advocates want, you would have to amend the Federal Reserve Act. Certainly a possibility, but not easy.

[cawacko]

I left out Stephanie Kelton is one of MMT’s biggest proponents and she was part of Bernie Sanders economic team last election cycle and I would assume is still with him. This is very much a democratic socialist platform.

[LV426]

Basically it's printing money. One could be forgiven for thinking MMT originally comes from The Onion but it's very real. As politicians promise more and more including free healthcare and free college it's going to have to be paid for somehow. That's where MMT comes in.

No, that's where higher taxes come in.

Free college and free healthcare are misnomers. The plans from Sanders and other Democratic Socialists is that those services are free at the point of care or service, but are funded through higher taxes and/or payroll taxes, not printing money. Total straw man.

Conservatives lie about shit like this because they don't even understand their own positions.

[cawacko]

No, that's where higher taxes come in.

Free college and free healthcare are misnomers. The plans from Sanders and other Democratic Socialists is that those services are free at the point of care or service, but are funded through higher taxes and/or payroll taxes, not printing money. Total straw man.

Conservatives lie about shit like this because they don't even understand their own positions.

SMH. You clearly have no idea what MMT is. It's whole premise is the power of the printing press allows us to run deficits basically as high as we would like to cover the programs we want to spend money on. There's no straw man there, that's what it does. Go research Stephanie Kelton, she's your main backer of it and was on Bernie's team.

Because you don't understand something doesn't make me a liar. Educated yourself on the topic.

[LV426]

SMH. You clearly have no idea what MMT is. It's whole premise is the power of the printing press allows us to run deficits basically as high as we would like to cover the programs we want to spend money on. There's no straw man there, that's what it does. Go research Stephanie Kelton, she's your main backer of it and was on Bernie's team. Because you don't understand something doesn't make me a liar. Educated yourself on the topic.

What part of "funded through higher taxes and/or payroll taxes" do you not understand?

It's not adding to the deficit if you're taxing people to pay for it, moron.

Yeesh...this guy...

[cawacko]

What part of "funded through higher taxes and/or payroll taxes" do you not understand?

It's not adding to the deficit if you're taxing people to pay for it, moron.

Yeesh...this guy...

Oh, dear lord. Read the OP. Read her work and get back to me. FFS.

[LV426]

Oh, dear lord. Read the OP. Read her work and get back to me. FFS.

The problem is that you are falsely framing democratic socialism while ignoring the fact that most of what we are proposing is funded through higher taxes and/or payroll taxes.

You want us to believe no taxes are going to be raised and the government will simply print money to pay for it, but that is not in any of the democratic socialist proposals you jackass.

In everything, the funding mechanism is always through taxation. That's got nothing to do with MMT, so what's happening here is that you are confusing two things because you don't fully understand either.

You just posture. It's tiresome.

[cancel2 2022]

SMH. You clearly have no idea what MMT is. It's whole premise is the power of the printing press allows us to run deficits basically as high as we would like to cover the programs we want to spend money on. There's no straw man there, that's what it does. Go research Stephanie Kelton, she's your main backer of it and was on Bernie's team.

Because you don't understand something doesn't make me a liar. Educated yourself on the topic.

Jezza Corbyn and his Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell also spouted the same old bollocks over here.

[cawacko]

The problem is that you are falsely framing democratic socialism while ignoring the fact that most of what we are proposing is funded through higher taxes and/or payroll taxes.

You want us to believe no taxes are going to be raised and the government will simply print money to pay for it, but that is not in any of the democratic socialist proposals you jackass.

In everything, the funding mechanism is always through taxation. That's got nothing to do with MMT, so what's happening here is that you are confusing two things because you don't fully understand either.

You just posture. It's tiresome.

You can't raise enough taxes to cover what you propose spending. That's where MMT comes in. It's why Bernie brought Kelton on board.

Do you know what's tiresome? Your ignorance.


This is from a left-wing social justice site. Read for a change and you might learn something.


“But How Will We Pay for It?”: Modern Monetary Theory and Democratic Socialism

https://truthout.org/articles/but-ho...tic-socialism/

[Truth Detector]

Nations cannot print their way out of deficits or debt. That merely devalues the currency to a point where the currency itself is next to worthless.

The printing of money can only occur when an economy is expanding and there is a demand for the currency. At that point, it can be used effectively.

[LV426]

You can't raise enough taxes to cover what you propose spending.

Of course we can. We are already spending that money in the private insurance market. So basically, what you used to pay in premiums, copays, deductibles, ambulance fees, hospital fees, and drug costs is replaced by a simple payroll tax (or higher tax rates) that will likely net out less because the administrative costs for private insurers is anywhere from 15-20%, whereas for CMS, it's about 1%.

[LV426]

Do you know what's tiresome? Your ignorance.

You posture on the internet because you are desperate to be taken seriously.

But there is no reason to take you seriously.

[Truth Detector]

You posture on the internet because you are desperate to be taken seriously.

But there is no reason to take you seriously.

I R O N Y!!! ^^

[cancel2 2022]

You can't raise enough taxes to cover what you propose spending. That's where MMT comes in. It's why Bernie brought Kelton on board.

Do you know what's tiresome? Your ignorance.


This is from a left-wing social justice site. Read for a change and you might learn something.


“But How Will We Pay for It?”: Modern Monetary Theory and Democratic Socialism

https://truthout.org/articles/but-ho...tic-socialism/

Seriously, this guy claims to have an MBA??

[Truth Detector]

Seriously, this guy claims to have an MBA??

It's a lie.