BACK TO THE FUTURE: MODERN MONEY CONFERENCE IN 1999

By L. Randall Wray

I thought readers might enjoy taking a peek back in time to 1999, to a conference organized at the New School by Stephanie Bell (Kelton), Mat Forstater and Edward Nell. This was pre-UMKC, just before we made the big move. The Center for Full Employment and Price Stabililty was housed at the Levy Economics Institute and Ms. Bell was pursuing a PhD. I’m including the conference program, my outline, and my notes for presentation. Note that the conference was organized around Charles Goodhart’s presentation, based on his deservedly famous article, “The Two Concepts of Money”, published in the European Journal of Political Economy in 1998. Hence in my presentation, I adopt his taxonomy of approaches to money as the “M form” (metalist or monetarist) and the “C form” (cartalist or chartalist or state money). You will see that it’s all there–the basics of what became MMT: state money of account, taxes drive money, endogenous (private) money, and labor bufferstock to stabilize prices.

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