Stephanie Kelton Profile picture
Jan 18, 2022 12 tweets 4 min read Read on X
Some nuggets from the post. Subscribe if you'd like to read the entire thing (it's long).
"As governments embraced the use of robust fiscal policy, a growing number of commentators started to assert that 'We Are All MMTers Now'.”
The problem is that too many people still think MMT is about "printing money" to pay the bills. It isn't!
Can we blame "MMT" for the run-up in inflation? Of course not.
Should go without saying, but I went ahead and stated the obvious.
"Alongside the debate over what caused the current bout of high inflation is a debate about how to resolve the problem."
Does MMT require a tax hike to fight inflation? No, and that was *never* the MMT solution.
So what *is* the MMT solution?
It depends on the diagnosis!
"There is no one-size-fits all policy solution in MMT because every inflation is different. As my husband (a history professor) recently put it, “If you’ve seen one inflation, you’ve seen one inflation.” And that’s a point that Fed Chair Jerome Powell seems to appreciate."
/end

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More from @StephanieKelton

Oct 24
Why does the government almost always spend in excess of taxes --i.e. run a budget deficit ? A 🧵
1/ Image
The short answer is that the rest of us, on average, typically want to accumulate more US$ than what is required to pay taxes. That is, we want to net save US$. 2/
Government spending in excess of taxes--deficit spending--manufactures the $US that enable the rest of us to net save. 3/
Read 19 tweets
Jun 11
"Each time the Federal Reserve acts as a lender of last resort, it prevents some financial institution or some financial market from collapsing. 1/
When it does this, it introduces additional Federal Reserve liabilities into the economy and extends a Federal Reserve guarantee over some set of financial practices. 2/
Thus in 1966 it protected banks that used certificates of deposits, in 1969-70 it protected the commercial paper market, and in 1974-75 it extended the Federal Reserve guarantee to those who owned the liabilities of offshore branches of American banks. 3/
Read 13 tweets
Apr 20
🧵
20 yrs ago, Scott Fullwiler wrote this paper, comparing the (then extant) practice of hitting interest rate targets via day-to-day open-market operations and managing TT&L accounts with the yet-to-be-adopted practice of paying interest on reserves. 1/ papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
Scott concluded that instead of replacing non-interest bearing reserves with interest-bearing Treasuries, it would be far "more direct and more efficient" to turn the non-interest bearing reserves into interest-bearing reserve balances (IBRBs). Treasury could then stop issuing securities altogether. 2/Image
But don't financial markets need Treasuries for a whole variety of reasons? Could we really just stop issuing them? Scott explains why the answer is yes. 3/Image
Read 7 tweets
Apr 7
"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...
Read 5 tweets
Mar 29
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/
Read 7 tweets
Mar 24
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/
Read 10 tweets

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