Monthly Archives: April 2019

How Far Can We Push This Thing? Some Optimistic Reflections on the Potential For Economic Experimentation

Crossposted from Phil Pilkington’s Blog – Fixing the Economists.

Readers are probably aware that there is quite a lot of discussion of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and the potential for fiscal experimentation batting around at the moment. Others have weighed in on this already, and I have little to add.

It is striking, however, that most of the push-back — where there is push-back — is not focused on trying to discredit the idea that we should engage in fiscal experimentation. Indeed, the notion that we should engage in fiscal experimentation seems to be, if not mainstream, at the very least part of the discussion.

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If Current Laws Prosecuting Bankers Aren’t Used, What Can Warren Change?

NEP’s Bill Black appears on The Real News Network and demolishes the notion that we can’t prosecute banksters with the laws we now have in place. You can view here with transcript.

Sen. Warren Wants to Jail Those Who Caused 2008’s Meltdown

NEP’s BIll Black appears on The Real News Network and examines the historical context of Warren’s bills for easier prosecution of banks and corporate leaders. You can view with transcript here.

Faked Emissions May Send Volkswagen CEO to Prison

NEP’s Bill Black appears on The Real News Network and examines the corrupt corporate worlds of Germany and the U.S. and how Trump ignores corporate malfeasance. You can view with a transcript here.

Financial Crisis & Fraud – A Guide with former Financial Regulator William Bill Black

NEP’s Bill Black appears on acTVism from Munich (in English) to define and talk about the role of a financial regulator. The discussion then turns to financial crisis – S&L debacle as well as the 2008 crash.

New York Sues Big Pharma for Opioid Crisis

Sackler and PurduePharma profited from “suffering and death,” NYC AG Letitia James says. NEP’s Bill Black discusses the case on The Real News Network. You can view with a transcript here.

Tom Friedman Just Noticed that the UK “Has Gone Mad” (Part 2)

By William K. Black
April 11, 2019     Bloomington, MN

Part 7b of the MMT Series
Part 7a is available here.

Blair, Brexit, and Friedman Show the Need for MMT Insights

Part One: The MMT Critique of Orthodox Microfoundations

Orthodox ‘modern macro’ is based on ‘microfoundations’ that implicitly assume that firms profit-maximize, that there are no negative externalities, that there is no market power, and that there is no control fraud or predation. In sum, they assume out of existence reality and particularly the parts of reality that produce the “endemic” global financial crises that Friedman admits his favored model produce. (See Parts 2A and 2B of this MMT Series for a much more detailed discussion of microfoundations.)

Friedman, of course, loved both Blair and Brown. In the same April 22, 2005 column, Friedman described Brown as Blair’s “deft finance minister.” (Perhaps he meant to write ‘daft.’) In 2005, the UK was racing toward the GFC. It nosed Wall Street at the wire to ‘win’ the regulatory ‘race to the bottom’ that produced the epidemics of control fraud and predation in the U.S. and the UK that hyper-inflated bubbles and drove the GFC. The UK economy was sick in 2005. It was systematically misallocating capital. It was driven not by real industrial productivity gains, but by accounting scams in the City of London. The ethics of the City of London had fallen to sewer levels. Its biggest banks had been specializing in predating on their customers for two decades. Its most prestigious bankers were driving the two largest price-rigging cartels (Libor and Forex) in world history. Even the sleaziest U.S. bankers at the ‘vampire squid’ (Goldman Sachs) based their worst, most rapacious predators in the City of London. On any real economic basis, many of the UK’s largest banks were insolvent because of their terrible asset quality.

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Tom Friedman Just Noticed that the UK “Has Gone Mad” (Part 1)

By William K. Black
April 11, 2019     Bloomington, MN

Part 7a of the MMT Series

Tom Friedman’s April 2, 2019 column concluded “The United Kingdom Has Gone Mad.” To which, the only possible response is – ‘you just noticed?’ The UK went ‘mad’ 22 years ago when Parliament elected the odious Tony Blair Prime Minister. I think many Tory policies were mad long before that date, but the Labour Party opposed them. The entire UK did not go ‘mad’ until Blair created “New Labour” and adopted Tory policies and became PM in 1997. Blair explicitly modeled the name and the adoption of neoliberal economic and military policies on Bill Clinton and the “New Democrats.” The UK became ‘mad’ when both of its major parties adopted the neoliberal economic and military policies that Friedman celebrates and proselytizes. I am dividing this article into two subparts for reasons of length. This part deals with the general madness. The next part (7b) explains its relevance to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).

Friedman’s April 2, 2019 column was about Brexit, which understandably sticks in the craw of the populist spreader of the myth that the world is becoming ‘flat’ and a ‘hyper-meritocracy.’ The wealthy rig the world to make it tilt sharply. Plutocrats tilt it to ensure that a huge and increasing share of the world’s wealth flows to them. Friedman is the most infamous shill for those plutocrats. The plutocrats tilt and warp the economy unevenly to favor not simply the wealthy, but a favored subset that is typically the opposite of a meritocracy (kakistocracy). Worse, the world tilts toward catastrophe because the ultra-wealthy kakistocracy’s political pawns have produced environments so criminogenic that they produce our recurrent, intensifying financial crises. Friedman is shocked that one of the two epicenters of the global kakistocracy and plutocracy – the City of London – has forced the UK to follow policies so self-destructive and rapacious that vast swaths of the UK rose in opposition by voting for Brexit. The City of London, of course, hates Brexit.

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Democracies With Sovereign Currencies Can Dance

By Anonymous
April 9, 2019

The mainstream attack on MMT is nothing less than an attempt to disguise the glaringly obvious error at the center of the mainstream view of economic thinking.  Mainstream economics is a nihilistic theory devoid of moral anchor.  Mainstream economics ceased to explore the operation of the real economy decades ago and has become an intellectual exercise that assumes the organization of modern society is justified simply because that is how it is.  While some mainstream economists may want to tinker around the edges to make the system more fair few really want to call into question the organizing realities.  The biggest reality they do not wish to face is that money is a symbolic creation rather than an actual productive resource.

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MMT, Models, Multidisciplinarity

By Pavlina R. Tcherneva

The attacks on MMT are taking a comical turn. A recent one, courtesy of Noah Smith, takes aim at a paper I wrote in the 90s titled “Monopoly Money: The State as a Price Setter”.

It focused on a key MMT idea—that the currency-issuing monopolist (just like any other monopolist) is a price setter. The economics that I was taught didn’t even consider the implications. So I wrote down a few equations to look at different scenarios of prices paid and real resources purchased by a currency-issuing government, given the level of aggregate tax liability and private saving desires.

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