What a joke. The current crisis demonstrates exactly the opposite—i.e. that nothing you’ve carped on about has mattered one bit, nor did decades of rising debt and deficits prevent Congress from combating the COVID recession.
You’re peddling nonsense.
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"If we could wave a magic wand and wipe out Treasury interest payments, we would have a lot of desperate people who had lost the income from savings bonds, Treasury bills, notes, and bonds and the pension funds that were holding them... 1/2
This in turn would mean less spending on goods and services, less production, and less employment for a lot of other people." 2/2
~Robert Eisner (1994)
"It is sometimes argued that this involves a regressive redistribution of income, on the assumption that the rich receive interest income...
If you see the MMT documentary, Finding the Money, you’ll hear about my struggle to make sense of @wbmosler’s ideas, including his argument that the three-sources view of public spending was wrong. 1/
Like any Econ student, I had been taught that government must choose how to pay its bills: Tax, borrow, or print.
@wbmosler argued that there was only one option. 2/
It didn’t seem right, but I worked through the mechanics of government finance (for the US) and eventually convinced myself that @wbmosler was correct. There is only one way to pay. 3/
Sorting through materials for my next book and stumbled on this piece outlining the influence of MMT in Chinese policymaking circles. 1/ bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
"Modern Monetary Theory can inspire China to make sure central bank easing supports government spending, several prominent economists said, as Beijing turns to fiscal policy to boost economic growth." 2/
"China urgently needs to 'liberate' itself from traditional ideas that fiscal and monetary policy must be kept separate and that government deficits are bad, according to Liu Shangxi, head of the Chinese Academy of Fiscal Sciences, a think tank under the Ministry of Finance." 3/
🧵
Gov spends $100 (G)
Non-gov sector now has $100
Gov taxes $90 (T)
(G-T) = gov deficit = $10
Deficit has added $10 to non-gov
Treasury sells $10 gov bonds
Non-gov swaps $10 for $10 bonds
NET RESULT: $10 increase in net financial assets to the non-gov sector (w/ or w/o bonds) 1/
Without the bond sale, the $10 would stay in bank reserve accounts at the Fed, where it would earn whatever the Fed chooses to pay on overnight reserve balances (IOR). 2/
No one would refer to the interest payments the Federal Reserve is making as the “interest burden,” and no one would refer to the funds in reserve accounts as “government debt,” even though they are liabilities (debt) of the Federal Reserve. 3/
"The first is that the government has to borrow in order to spend and run deficits. It’s the other way around...'raising revenue' is just a cover story." 2/10
"A related myth is that the government needs to repay its debt. 'Debt' is a misnomer; government debt is just money (or purchasing power) in another form." 3/10