One of the undercurrents at the recent UK MMT Conference in Leeds was the apparent unwillingness of MMT economists to acknowledge their mistake in dealing with international trade. In our new book – Modern Monetary Theory: Bill and Warren’s Excellent Adventure (published July 2024) – we devote a chapter to this issue. There are various…
Fiscal Policy
It’s the Wednesday pot-pourri – British politics, self promotion, events, sport and music. Politicians invariably claim that the situation they inherit when they take office following an election is untenable and that the ‘public finances’ are worse than they had initially thought. Of course, the idea that ‘public finances’ can be good or bad or…
I am still catching up after being away in the UK last week. I will reflect on that trip in another blog post. So, today, we have a guest blogger in the guise of Professor Scott Baum from Griffith University who has been one of my regular research colleagues over a long period of time.…
It’s Wednesday and today I don’t comment on the US Supreme Court decision to embed criminal behaviour in the presidency (how much of a joke will the US become) or the Presidential debate, which has focused on the performance of Biden while, seemingly ignoring the serial lies told by the other contender. If these two…
Over time we observe a pattern of idiocy in the financial press, where different fictions, dressed up as allegedly shattering propensities, are regularly cycled through in succession, each one getting headlines for a day or so, only to be replaced by the next sensationalised issue. So-called experts or corporate bosses are wheeled out and make…
Regular readers will know that I am not enamoured with the British Labour Party leadership and its obsession with its so-called fiscal rule, which is really just a continuation of the rule that the Tory’s were supposedly running with. How can a self-styled progressive party (so-called) that is about to take over a nation that…
The IMF joint hosted a conference in Tokyo last week – Fiscal Policy and Sovereign Debt – and the continues its misinformation campaign on the ‘dangers’ of public debt. The conference claimed that it brought together ‘leading scholars and senior policymakers’ and upon examination of the agenda it was clear that there was very little…
The UK Guardian published quite an odd article the other day (May 30, 2024) by Mr GFC Spreadsheet Fudge Man Kenneth Rogoff – Why policymakers are more likely to risk high inflation during periods of economic uncertainty – which essentially claims that economic policy has been conducted for several years by institutions that do not…
After all these years of trying, the insights provided by Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) still haven’t cut through. One doesn’t even need to accept the complete box of MMT knowledge to know that, at least, some of it must be factual. For example, how much brainpower does a person need to realise that a government…
On February 10, 2024, a new agreement between the European Council and European Parliament was announced which proposed to reform the fiscal rules structure that has crippled the Member States of the EMU since inception. I wrote in this blog post – Latest European Union rules provide no serious reform or increased capacity to meet…