Modern Monetary Theory

This is a wonkish post, but bear with me, because it's important. Randall Wray's last post sparked a thought regarding trade deficits and budget deficits which I wanted to run by you. Randy said: We see from the chart that the…

by L. Randall Wray In recent months, the nation's pundits have been whipping up deficit hysteria in a mass public mis-education campaign funded by billionaire Pete Peterson. In this blog I will explain why we should not be misled. First,…

I have written a post or two offering the opinion that Barack Obama faces an economy more akin to Herbert Hoover's than Franklin Roosevelt. See "Barack Obama as Herbert Hoover" where posited the following: My intent here is…

By L. Randall Wray The following is a paper given at the ASSA conference in Denver this past week for a panel organized by James Galbraith, titled Pressures on the Paradigm, sponsored by Economists for Peace & Security. The Queen…

By Edward Harrison American politicians and citizens alike have no clear vision of the costs of a seemingly perpetual trillion-dollar annual deficit. Policy stimulus is focused on maintaining current consumption as opposed to making…

James K. Galbraith writes that the National Committee on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform's underlying budgetary analysis is faulty because it rests on the false premise that a country can involuntarily default on a fiat currency it…

I was eavesdropping on a conversation about Credit Writedowns on another blog (Pragmatic Capitalism) and wanted to share some of my thoughts with you on the conversation. One commenter, Mattay said: Harrison is an MMTer. As I read him,…

I was just having an argument/debate about quantitative easing. Marshall Auerback, Randy Wray and I all have posts here at Credit Writedowns which explain that quantitative easing does not create new net financial assets and is merely an…

Randall Wray shows that quantitative easing will be ineffective except to the degree it can induce a shift in private portfolio preferences. He uses a recent post by hedge fund manager Warren Mosler to demonstrate that QE is the equivalent…

James Galbraith was on Yahoo! Tech Ticker talking about Fed policy. The quote he made that caught my eye was this one in response to whether the Fed Chairman Bernanke believes what he says and writes: "Well, one thing you can…